Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
badness 10000
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.
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