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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."
This isn't intentionally a troll, but if it ends up that way, well, so be it.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Among those signing the letter were: Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden
Hmmm...this would be the same Joesph Biden who's 1988 Presidential bid was abruptly curtailed when it was revealed that he'd plagiarized passages in several of his speeches, and had also been involved in a serious plagiarism incident when he was at law school?
What an asshole.
This is new, so pay attention to what's happening. A truly new crime has been invented--that isn't something that happens often.
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. 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.
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.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
If he were so smart he'd release some mp3s to napster with links to his site in them, and people wouldd go buy his cds if they like it, or buy his mp3s and burn them.
For the little guy who will never get a contract and be on MTV and be on the Billboard lists, that's probably not a bad idea. An artst with a small, devoted following might make a couple hundred dollars selling MP3s from a website (although, if you think about hosting costs, you'd have to have more than just a few dozen people actually buying your MP3s). But obviously the record industry has decided that they don't want to distribute their copyrighted material this way, and for good reason: it's not as profitable.
Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, record execs don't care as much about art (getting truly good music out there, profits be damned) as they do their bank accounts. That part isn't a shock to anyone. And that's the reason I am *sure* that the record industry has put in a massive amount of energy determining how to handle this whole MP3 situation. You don't make billion-dollar PR and legal moves by flipping a coin.
That's why I'm so surprised that people can't fathom how the RIAA can be so ignorant. "MP3 is the wave of the future! The record labels are stuck in the past!" When you see hundreds of 13 year-olds screaming for an artist who built his or her reputation solely by online distribution, that's when you'll know that the tides are changing.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Huh? How naive can you get?
You think the RIAA will just be nice and leave P2P software makers alone once trading of RIAA 0wn3d music on P2P networks drops through the floor? You think the RIAA will just ignore all those independent artists that they don't have any control over but who would now have more relative exposure on P2P networks?
You've gotta be kidding me. What world did you grow up in?
The RIAA will not stop until all music distribution methods are completely under their control. Total domination is what they're after and they're not going to settle for anything less. And because they 0wn Congress, they have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Oh, yeah, they might destroy the Internet in the process, but everyone knows that the only people who use the internet as anything other than a glorified TV set are 3v1l h4x0rz and terrorists, right?
Sigh...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Oh, dearie me, what shall we do with half our government in jail for illegal file sharing? ;)
m ai n/0,14179,2874687,00.html
;)
ZDNet posted an interesting opinion piece back in July about how we should quit using P2P now that the Senate has. Check it out here:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
The part that interested me most was this quote:
>> The Senate, which is now crafting legislation
>> that would further restrict the illegal sharing
>> of copyrighted works over networks, was
>> apparently a hotbed of illegal file sharing and
>> other peer-to-peer (P2P) networking activity.
>>
>> Last week, the Senate Sergeant at Arms clamped
>> down, and cut off all P2P networking within the
>> Senate. The reason? Such networking practices
>> were a security risk, and they were being used
>> to violate copyright laws.
As they say, "our tax money at work". The senators involved (it does not name names, but gives the idea that such activities were widespread) were not only breaking the law, they were using our tax money to do it. If you check the various news stories, at least two movies were illegally downloaded and watched by the senators during Senate hearings on legislation such as the Hollings bill. One of the videos was pirated by a senator, the other by the President of Disney.
If these congresspersons are correct (some of the ones asking for the FBI's "help" were senators), shouldn't the FBI take care of the most widely publicized cases first, the ones with easy proof, that involved public money?
After all, they are the ones who think this is such a henious crime that we have to pull the FBI off of child kidnapping cases and the "War on Terror" to deal with it.
Me, I think the FBI has better things to do than bother with people sampling music before a purchase and freeloading kids who wouldn't or couldn't pay for a CD anyway. But then our senators are the ones with all the file-sharing experience, not little old me. Surely they know better.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"
Democracy cannot work with large populations because ultimately the policies follow the money.
That's a ridiculous theory. With an intelligent, educated populace, the politics will never follow the money - rather they will be issue based and the government will be the voice of the people.
However, when the population does not have a proper grasp of the issues involved and is easily swayed by advertising - (that's all campaign contributions are good for, btw they can't be used directly in any way) - that's when I say the populace is incapable of participating in a democracy.
Mmmm.. Donuts
With an intelligent, educated populace, the politics will never follow the money
I agree completely. I think the federal government should mandate at least one year of Rhetoric classes for every high school student. If we can develop an entire generation of adults who understand how they are being swayed and have been taught the skills for critical analysis of media and information, then politicians will have to focus on issues. Money can't buy issues like it can buy the swaying of people's emotions.