RIAA Sues Backbone ISPs to Censor Website

prostoalex writes "Music labels filed a lawsuit against major Internet service providers for not blocking access to Listen4Ever.com, music site located in China. The defendants in the suit include AT&T Broadband, Cable & Wireless USA, Sprint Corp., Advanced Network Services and UUNET Technologies." Wow.

Comments

listen4ever.com?

[matthewn]

Am I the only person who hadn't heard of this site till now? At any rate, I appreciate the big labels bringing it to my attention!

Re:from the rabid-knee-jerk-reactions dept.

[tim_maroney]

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss your fair use rights good-bye.

Providing complete copies of copyrighted recordings is by no means fair use. Fair use would be providing short sections for critical discussion and analysis.

Take a look at this excellent article on real threats to fair use. It defines fair use as follows: "If you are accused of infringing, you can make an argument that your use of the protected works is 'fair' because of some combination of these factors: The nature of the original work makes it important that it be publicly discussed; the nature of your use of it is important because of teaching, research, or commentary; you do not use very much of the original work; your use does not significantly affect the market for the original work." All of these four criteria fail in the case of pirated popular music.

--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org

Re:Hard to say...

[ajs]

I get your point, but last I heard ISPs (be they retail or backbones) were not classified as common carriers by the FCC. Common carrier status is a major deal, and it's not all good for the carrier.

But it won't stand, under DMCA

[Kourino]

Read the thing. (EVERYONE HERE needs to have the copy of it in PDF format.) Title II, sec. 202, subsect. (a):

"A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief ... for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlld or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if--

1. the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;
2. the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
3. the service provider does not select the recipintes of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;
4. no copy of the material is made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
5. the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.

so, IANAL, but it looks like this suit isn't legally valid, under the DMCA of all things. (Not that we're surprised ... ^^; ) Now's the time to get serious with your boycotts if you haven't been already.

Re:But it won't stand, under DMCA

[DeepRedux]

The above quote is incomplete. It should begin:

A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection ( j), for injunctive or other equitable relief,...

Section (j) allows for a blocking order.

( j) INJUNCTIONS.--The following rules shall apply in the case of any application for an injunction under section 502 against a service provider that is not subject to monetary remedies under this section:

(1) SCOPE OF RELIEF.--(A) With respect to conduct other than that which qualifies for the limitation on remedies set forth in subsection (a), the court may grant injunctive relief with respect to a service provider only in one or more of the following forms:

(i) An order restraining the service provider from providing access to infringing material or activity residing at a particular online site on the provider's system or network.

(ii) An order restraining the service provider from providing access to a subscriber or account holder of the service provider's system or network who is engaging in infringing activity and is identified in the order, by terminating the accounts of the subscriber or account holder that are specified in the order.

(iii) Such other injunctive relief as the court may consider necessary to prevent or restrain infringement of copyrighted material specified in the order of the court at a particular online location, if such relief is the least burdensome to the service provider among the forms of relief comparably effective for that purpose.

whois record - Re:U.S. Domain name?

[Malc]

~$ whois Listen4Ever.com

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: LISTEN4EVER.COM
Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
Whois Server: whois.melbourneit.com
Referral URL: http://www.melbourneit.com
Name Server: DNS2.HICHINA.COM
Name Server: DNS1.HICHINA.COM
Updated Date: 08-jan-2002

>>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 17:02:01 EDT

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
Registrars.

Found crsnic referral to whois.melbourneit.com.

Domain Name.......... listen4ever.com
Creation Date........ 2002-01-09
Registration Date.... 2002-01-09
Expiry Date.......... 2003-01-09
Organisation Name.... Jun Sun
Organisation Address. No.15 Xinghua yizhi road.
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. tianjin
Organisation Address. 300381
Organisation Address. Tianjin
Organisation Address. CHINA

Admin Name........... kery crise
Admin Address........ Rotterdam-Maasvlaktee Europaweg
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ Rotterdam
Admin Address........ 223211
Admin Address........ Rotterdam
Admin Address........ CHINA
Admin Email.......... yourlisten4ever@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... (31)10-2217741
Admin Fax............ 31)10-2217752

Tech Name............ luo qiang qiang
Tech Address......... Linguo beilu
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Lasa
Tech Address......... 223211
Tech Address......... Xizang
Tech Address......... CHINA
Tech Email........... sfp@eyou.com
Tech Phone........... (86)0891-63322444
Tech Fax............. (86)0891-63322444
Name Server.......... dns1.hichina.com
Name Server.......... dns2.hichina.com

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, don't buy music from recording labels? The best way to express your disapproval towards any business or group of businesses is to not buy their stuff.

This only works if you write to the record labels and tell them you think the RIAA sucks and that you're not going to purchase any of their products until they disassociated themselves from the RIAA! Just sitting in your backyard without any music isn't going to do anything to harm anyone...

The best way to get the message across is to pick one label, say Sony, and boycott that company in particular. Everybody writes letters to Sony, everybody stops buying music from Sony, everybody stops going to concerts of Sony artists (or goes carrying "RIAA sucks" banners), etc. Once Sony caves, you then pick another prominent RIAA member and do the same thing to them. Convincing artists to get in on the act can only help things out...

BTW, just because you're boycotting somebody doesn't mean you have to stop listening to the music! Feel free to listen to Linkin Park on the radio as much as you want! Hell, napster the entire disc then send a check for 8 bucks directly to the band... As long as the record label doesn't get any money, you're good to go!

Don't Buy Music From These Labels

[sessamoid]

The RIAA member labels can be found here. Don't buy music from them. There are plenty of good independent labels with good artists that deserve your money. Don't give it to those RIAA shills.

I don't think you're quite getting it here...

[Spleener12]

It doesn't really have anything to do with the content of the site, so much the fact that the RIAA is trying to get ISPs to block it. If they win, then all kinds of sites will be censored, such as warez sites and VillainSupply.com. Nevermind the fact that you can't really buy things there... warez sites have nothing but broken links.

And if someone gets away with banning porn... Jesus, they'd half to block half the fucking internet...

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[1010011010]

Yep. Maybe while we're in this legal atmosphere, we should get together and sue all the baby bells and long-distance carriers as well? Maybe we can shut down the internet and the phone system at the same time. Let's also sue the power companies, because they supply the electrons that make copyright infringement in the digital millenium possible.

Re:Actually, what Al Gore invented was Spam.

[ImaLamer]

Up until then it had been a government, educational-insitiution, and suppliers-to-them sort of thing, and commercial speech was largely banned. ...and no regular Joe Sixpack users access considering most of us don't fit into the above.

I was lucky to get a university (SLIP) account because we had a high-school home page, at this time no one else was really out there.

Thank you Al Gore for Slashdot, and the many other good things we now have.

now that I think about it maybe the RIAA should sue Al...

User Agent Redirect on Listen4ever.com

[ColaMan]

It appears that they have a user-agent redirect setup to go to mp3mediaworld.com.

Any IE derivative browser gets to listen4ever, anything else gets mp3mediaworld.com.

Thanks to Ethereal and Mozilla's customisable user-agent setting, I can now actually get to the site in Mozilla and turn off those squillion pop-ups.

Oh and a big thanks to the RIAA for letting us know about this site

Re:User Agent Redirect on Listen4ever.com

[ColaMan]

Put the proper settings down...

Google is your friend.. but in cases like this, it's hard to find the right search terms... "user-agent mozilla" gets you close, but anyway, here's what you need.

Put this in a file called "user.js" in your profiles directory (it should be in the same directory as "prefs.js")

user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)");

This will make IE-only sites believe that Mozilla is IE5.0

When you want to download a song, you need to right-click and "save link target as..." otherwise (in my case, anyway) mozilla will download the file and try and run it in your mp3 player without prompting you to save to disk.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[NotoriousQ]

Same with verizon....silent redirects to mp3mediaworld.com. Guess who seems to also be missing from the list of sued companies

Funny though when I went to www.listen4ever.com/software.htm, there was no redirect.

I will try to mod you up some more if I can, to get more people to notice.

We need to support Candidates

[Drew_Arrowood]

who oppose the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There is a viable candidate in my home district who has clearly come out against it. His name is Tripp Helms, and he is running in the 8th District of North Carolina for U.S. Congress. See his comments.

He could sure use everyone's help.

Re:How are ISPs violating copyright?

[cthugha]

You might want to check the links (including court papers currently filed) provided by the GrepLaw story on this topic. The suit is being brought under Title 17, Section 512(j) of the US Code, which explicitly gives the right to a plaintiff with standing to seek an injunction against an ISP or backbone provider to block a particular infringing site. I'm not sure whether the offending provision was inserted as part of the DMCA, but I suspect it was. I'm sure you can come to your own conclusions about the kinds of burdens that this provision could place upon backbone providers given the number of infringing sites out there.

Things to do about RIAA...

[tlambert]

Rather than complaining, there are a number of things you can actually do about RIAA.

The number one thing you can do is to get them legally disbanded (discorporated).

The Government Giveth... The Government Can Damn Well Taketh Away.

The Recording Industry Association of America is a California Corporation, corporate number C1858372.

Contact CAlifornia Secretary of State Bill Jones, and request that their incorporation as a legal entity be terminated. Contact information follows...

Mail or in person:
California Secretary of State
1500 11th Street
Sacramento, California 95814

Public Contact Phone Numbers:
General Information - (916) 653-6814
Corporations Unit & Branch Offices - (916) 657-5448
Executive Office - (916) 653-7244
Legislative & Constituent Services - (916) 653-6774
Political Reform Division - (916) 653-6224

Email:
ConstituentAffairs@ss.ca.gov

PS: For good measure:

- Governor Gray Davis
- State Capitol Building
- Sacramento, CA 95814
- Phone: 916-445-2841
- Fax: 916-445-4633
- governor@governor.ca.gov

-- Terry

free, legal alternatives

[sheimers]

If you want music for free, look at the following sites:

www.freemusic.cz(free as in free beer)
free.superhits.ch(free as in free speach)
www.mp3-prod.org/(both free speach and beer)

there are many more similar sites, just look for "free music" with your favorite search engine.

ATTBI i Minnesota is block the site now

[kenp2002]

I can't ping it, hit it, finger it (gross!) tracert to it, nada zip and zilch.

America the free, so long as you don't do anything that could possibly offend someone else.