Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers

saikou writes "Yahoo has published a news about proposal of 19 lawmakers to prosecute P2P systems' users. Allthough Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes", there is not enough info in the story to see if this "should" will change to "must in addition to", if or when trying to arrest major node operators fails to curtain song swapping online. Of course, questions of what to do about foreign users and foreign music are omitted. RIAA claps its hands. I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative."

Comments

Ashcroft

[Anonymous Coward]

Missiouri voters decided he was less fit for public office than a dead man. What more can I say?

Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!!

[Newer Guy]

Don't we have terrorists roaming around? Haven't half of people's retirement funds vaporized thanks to big business' gluttony? ...and Congress wants Ashcroft to bust FILE SHARERS???!! Somethings wrong here... REALLY WRONG HERE!!!

Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!!

[Dryth]

With all these evil terrorists and executives roaming the streets, I'm appauled we're still busting all those poor innocent shoplifters and breaking up domestic disputes! Civil servants should be profiling foreigners and storming office buildings, not enforcing all those trivial matters that don't REALLY effect us! *end sarcasm*

Terrorism is a matter being dealt with. Big businesses are under the microscope. Are we to put down everything else until these matters are completely resolved? 'Cause y'know what? They won't be. Ever.

File sharing is a matter of concern. I think we all accept that illegal activity is the norm on P2P networks, and I'm not just talking music piracy (noting the bias hereabouts against the RIAA). Just because there're bigger things going on in the world, doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to all the smaller concerns.

Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!!

[Stonehand]

They've got three choices, really.

1. Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.

2. Enforce the laws regarding copyright and those who violate them.

3. Tolerate an increasing disregard for the law, and have yet another law on the books which /might/ at some time be selectively prosecuted, but isn't often.

1, alteration or dropping, probably isn't going to happen until either the voters make it such a priority that they're willing to sacrifice their incumbents for it, or until SCOTUS says so.

2, is what they're going for.

3, leads to a situation where people may get used to non-enforcement and then get burned later if, say, a prosecutor feels like raising his profile, and where people may feel free to start disregarding other laws as well.

And law enforcement is /big/. It's capable of multitasking, believe it or not...

I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of p2p traffic violates copyright. Yes, there's legal sharing of music. And yes, we can disagree about whether the illegal sharing is wrong.

But it seems the suggestion is that the FBI uphold the law. They are not outlawing p2p. They are not prohibiting legal music trades. Instead, there's a suggestion that the FBI enforce the law against users who traffic in large amounts of illegal software and pirated music.

If I put up a web page with links to tens of thousands of dollars of pirated software, I should expect either my ISP to yank my connection, or to get a visit from the FBI. And I would expect many /. readers would think I got what I deserved.

If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.

So, before we get hysterical about "protocols being outlawed", perhaps we should look at (a) the proposal, and (b) the ethics of those 'big fish' traders who traffic in warez and mp3.

Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.

Re:I don't understand...

[lunenburg]

Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.

If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.

Well that's good...

[Loki_1929]

I'd hate to see all the entertainment industry waste all that money on bribing so many of our nation's lawmakers without anything to show for it.

Seriously folks, when are we as a nation going to say enough is enough with this legal corporate bribery? Can anyone please explain the practical difference between bribery and massive "donations" ? I'm reminded of a remark made by George Carlin, who said "this country was bought and sold years ago". Was he right?

Intergenerational Warfare

[FreeUser]

Welcome to the world of intergenerational warfare. I'll bet no science fiction novel you ever read prepared you for this.

Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.

A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.

Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.

Another front on an intergenerational war, between the dinasaurs of the Jack Valenti Generation of Greed and the emerging, technically savvy information generation they seek to repress and quite possibly destroy.

This escalation will likely claim even more victims, fill our prisons even more with people even less inclined to violence than the many drug offendors who account for half our inmate population today.

Worse, we'll have to listen to even more self-righteous tripe along the lines "but these fans are stealing bread and milk from the mouths of Lars and Britney," and "we'll win the war on copyright infringement! These pirates will never see the light of day again! God Bless America!"

What's next, a broken egg on a frying pan with the words "This represents your Life on MP3?"

Make no mistake, this is intergenerational warfare, waged by the parents and grandparents upon the children who have chosen to live differently than their elders, indeed, differently than their elders can comprehend. As we draw closer to the technological singuarity I think we can expect ever more extreme examples of the same.

Hell, I haven't even finished writing a novel set in 2057 that depicts exactly these sorts of events. How close is one to the Singualarity I wonder, when real world events overtake science fiction faster than it can be written?

This will help the REAL artists...

[trims]

Imagine if you will, this scenario:

1. DOJ crawls through the P2P networks, scanning your file swapping list, and arresting everyone it can find which they believe is illegally sharing copyrighted materials. They prosecute a buch of big-time file-sharers, winning some, losing others. But they get enough that it scares most people.
2. The big P2P sharers leave the networks. Usage drops drastically. However, the P2P software makers are still in business, as they are now left alone. Music is still being shared, only now its stuff that explicitly has been allowed by the Artists to be shared.
3. Now that the P2P network isn't clogged with NSYNC tunes, people actually can find (and listen to) stuff that isn't on ClearChannel or the other big chain Radio stations. Bands have small successes - releasing 128Bit MP3s to the P2P networks, and selling 256Bit ones on their websites for a couple of dimes. It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year (100,000 sales @ 40 cents each adds up), and people start to flock to the P2P networks again.
4. Big-time artists notice it. Those which are in controll of their catalogue (through foresight, ownership of their label, or lawsuits), decide that its possible now. Somebody big tries it, and makes a couple million in sales on their back-catalog in the first month. The artists drool, as they see 75% profit margins on per-MP3 sales, with nothing going to the label (or other middlemen).
5. Artists flock to the P2P networks to sell their songs, and the big labels are reduced to what they really are: promotional marketing houses. Artists contract with them for fixed fees (or precentages of gross receipts) to do promotion and such, and label no longer get ownership of the music, as Artists now have the means to say "Fuck You" if the label demands it.

I'd love to see this scenario, and I think it's realistic given two BIG "ifs":

• IF they really start to clamp down on the big P2P users with huge illegal catalogs, so we can get all the infringing crap off the P2P networks. Once it's all legal and above board, you can start running real marketing analysis and do the business case studies that you need to make it a real sales market and distribution channel.
• IF the artists continue on the current road of fighting to get ownership of their music. If they quit (and continue with the Faustian bargain of their soul for 15 minutes on MTV), then it's over. I'm hoping they have the backbone to stick it out.

And realistically, isn't this what we want? P2P networks with LEGAL music for us to try out and see what we want? And an economically viable way for the artists to produce music and get paid for it in a reasonable manner?

Call it what you want, but sharing copyrighted MP3s right now is definitely illegal, and in the long turn, harmful to everyone. Don't do it - it's NOT the Right Thing.

-Erik

Re:This will help the REAL artists...

[serutan]

That sounds great until you consider that the end result of your scenario is that the music industry dies. Musicians absolutely can survive without the industry, since there is now a free mechanism to distribute their music without signing away the rights. As new bands flourish on the Internet and popular bands move to the Internet, the Music Industry is left with only their existing catalog of increasingly moldy oldies to peddle, becoming a nostalgia industry that eventually folds up.

Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:

Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.

Re:Oh, is the war on terrorism over now?

[dimator]

Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.

I prefer:

Memo to Congress: fuck you!

Re:This is new folks

[dboyles]

Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment.

I don't think this is either. While obtaining material that you know to be stolen (s/stolen/infringed\ upon) is illegal, I think everybody is wanting to go after the actual distributors. I don't think even Ashcroft would go so far as to say we should go after the kid who downloads a copy of a latest-and-greatest MTV single.

Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.

Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.

Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.

You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.

Re:Good.

[kabir]

When the music industry charges 20 fuckin bucks a CD; with pennies on the dollar going to the actual artist; with 3 of the top 40 songs available as singles, THAT activity is still theft.

Actually, no it isn't.

Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.

The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.

A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.

Its ok to steal stocks but not britney spears

[Billly Gates]

I wonder how long a 15 year old kid would get in the slammer for downloading a britney spears mp3 vs the CEO of Worldcom who defrauded 7.1 billion dollars worth of employee's and stockholders life savings.

Manipulating and stealing Stock ok, downloading mp3's bad.

Same is true for packet sniffing and reverse engineering. Under the DMCA, packet sniffing to make a program compatable with something else is illegal and bad. However killing competetion and cutting tens of thousands of jobs who use to work for your competitors ok. If Microsoft never existed do you think Oracle, Borland and Watcom would have like 10x the staff they do now as well as enjoy healthy competition from companies that would of existed because Microsoft would never exist. My guess is that Netscape would be quite huge right now would and its software would be a whole platform and not just a web browser. Its a shame.