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

from the rabid-knee-jerk-reactions dept.

[Cliff]

Now if this doesn't convince you that the RIAA Amoeba is the lowest, most evil form of life on this planet, I don't know what will.

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

I think I will end this before I start stringing together several run-on sentences comprised solely of Carlin's Seven Words you Don't Say...

Music industry indeed. Why not call it like it is and start calling them the Music Mafia? Oops. That's insulting the mafia...I shouldn't do that.

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

[ejdmoo]

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

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge.

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

[cmowire]

Damn, a good first post for once. ;)

Seriously, if the RIAA goes through with this, you can kiss your ISP's fiscial stability good-bye.

Can you imagine how many sites for illegal content appear outside of the US? Can you imagine how many requests every large backbone provider would have to deal with? Can you imagine how quickly the blocking tables on the router would be stuffed to the gills?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your association of the recording industry with amoebae patently offensive, and demand an immediate retraction.

Sincerely,
That Gigantic Fucking Amoeba-Thing from Zelda 64

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

[spoonist]

"If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge."

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Constitution goodbye.

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

[NanoGator]

"If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Constitution goodbye."

If this suit passes in favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss .... Uuh... shit you guys got all the good ones. Why couldn't you let me go first?

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

[for(;;);]

> If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then
> you can kiss The Constitution goodbye.

Uh, The Constitution's *already* gone, "like a turkey through the corn." You can satisfy your kissing urges by kissing the police state hello.

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

[Anonvmous Coward]

"If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge."

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss Listen4Ever.com goodbye. The rest is only speculation.

Before you mod me as redundant, consider this: What are the real consequences of the RIAA winning this? Well, Listen4Ever.com will probably be blocked, fair enough. Does this give the RIAA too much power? Well, that depends. Let's say that the RIAA demands that ISP's sue another site like Listen4Ever that pops up. Will that mean the RIAA can demand ISP's to block it? That depends on the exact findings of the judge. The judge could say "ISP's must block this site..." or he/she could say "ISP's must block sites that break copyrights...".

In the first case, the RIAA would have to sue again in order to block another site. (Eventually that'll get a bit spendy...) In the second case, the ISP's could appeal. They could challenge any site that the RIAA attempts to block. It wouldn't take long for a freedom of speech case to come up. It is hard to imagine that the RIAA could develop any real policing powers.

In other words, nothing is absolute. The more ridiculous steps that the RIAA takes to control content (especially when they can't prove they've lost money on 'unauthorized copies'...), the harder it is for any legislation to be passed to lock up the content. "We shut down this site, but our income didn't suddenly grow." -- How well will that hold up? I think this type of crap makes it less likely that new versions of the SSSCA will get passed. I see a silver lining either way.

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

[frovingslosh]

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge.

I expect the judge will provide the best justice that money can buy.

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

[lboxman]

A good point, but the real issue here is censorship. Why should an ISP have to block ANY website? They aren't the ones breaking the law. It is up to individuals to follow the law/do what is morally right, and corporations should not be enforcing morality, and especially should not be enforcing the law!

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

[alouts]

Please. Speculation, sure. But fairly well-founded speculation.

If the RIAA wins this, they have a legal precedent for blocking whatever the hell they want to under the guise of copyright infringement. Now, the second time around their case may not be as strong, and the backbone operators may stand a chance of winning if they challenge, but with precedent on the **AA's side, it is not in the financial interest of ISP to follow through on that challenge. Defending yourself against litigation is costly, and the lesser your chances of winning, the smaller your desire to pursue.

The problem with your scenario is that so far as I know, the ISPs aren't altruistic slashdot readers, they're businesses. And when backed into a corner by the legal system, businesses usually prefer to just pay the fee to the troll under the bridge rather than fight it for a chance to pass for free. It ends up costing them less in the long run.

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

[cmowire]

Sad, but true.

However, my logic is still sound. If the ISPs are having this much trouble surviving without needing to block addresses, imagine how much more trouble they would have surviving with needing to block addresses.

In reality, the bubble is the main reason for why the ISPs are having problems. Too much excess capacity, not enough fiber was a myth, etc.

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

[kapella]

If this suit passes in favor of the RIAA, then the terrorists have won.

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

[Dyolf Knip]

Now *that* is Insightful

So this single-celled organism, without so much as a finger to type with, has managed to acquire a Clue whilest the entire Recording Industry Association has not. I swear, sometimes it's a real shame we humans have insulated ourselves from 'survival of the fittest' because there's an awful lot of chumps out there that need to be Darwinized.

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

[Latent IT]

Have you listened to the radio lately? With the right 30 seconds of any song, I could loop it into the *whole* song. It's only popular these days if it's brain-dead.

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

[Amoeba]

I find your association of the recording industry with amoebae patently offensive, and demand an immediate retraction.

Sincerely, That Gigantic Fucking Amoeba-Thing from Zelda 64

Mom reads ./?

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

[Dark Paladin]

The problem here isn't about fair use.

Should we sue the Post Office for anthrax sent through the mail? Sue the Dept of Highway Safety because a gangster robbed the bank then made his getaway on the highway? Sue the telephone service because a stalker keeps calling your house?

No company - no company - should be able to sue a communications company just because they don't like what somebody says. If the government of China doesn't want to shut it down, then the RIAA should be applying the powers that be there - not on the communications medium.

Personally, I hope that AT&T et all take them on and give them what for.

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

[Fat Casper]

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss Listen4Ever.com goodbye. The rest is only speculation.

No, you just won't be able to reach Listen4Ever.com from anywhere that goes through these backbone carriers. Carriers. That's an important word here. The RIAA isn't suing a copyright infringing website, they're suing the phone company. These backbone folks are "common carriers," meaning that they are not responsible for what passes over their cables.

An FTP request is an FTP request is an FTP request. If it goes to Listen4Ever.com, goatce.cx or whitehouse.gov, it doesn't matter to them. They've got a really fat pipe that they're trying to keep up. They're not some public library that went and accepted federal money to get on the net and has to put mommyware on their boxen, they're common carriers. Once they start picking and choosing what traffic to allow, they're responsible for all the traffic they carry: terrorists' instructions, gay bashing emails, kiddie porn and auctions of Nazi memorabilia.

The telcos aren't going to let anything take their common carrier protections away from them. I think that the RIAA finally took on the wrong opponent.

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

[1010011010]

Why should an ISP have to block ANY website?

For the same reason the telcos block the phone numbers of suspected copyright infringers!

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

[canadian_right]

ISP's, and the big back bones should all be declared "common carriers". You CAN'T sue the phone company because you didn't like what some sid on their phone system because they are a "common carrier". The same laws shoyld apply to ISP's etc...

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

[Your_Mom]

Mom reads ./?
Yes I do dearie!

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

[langed]

If the RIAA wins this, they have a legal precedent for blocking whatever the hell they want to under the guise of copyright infringement.

Uh-oh. Precedents aren't "owned" by the winner. So in our country, that means that anyone else can use it. Microsoft could use their lawyers pull a similar stunt against kernel.org, on the grounds of the historic writable NTFS issue.

Or, we could see this used as a means for attack for patent infrigement. The ISPs will be running scared, afraid of being sued, and will start getting block-happy about things.

Loho will send out threatening letters, resulting in Davezilla being blocked.
Forgent Networks could do some serious blacklisting of any site that hosted jpeg-editing software

The possibilities are endless for such a vague precedent. This could be quite the witchhunt-inspiring precedent.

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

[neuroticia]

Err.

People opposed to this insane measure taken by the Music Industry are not necessarily opposed to copyright. I don't beg for, borrow, or steal music but I'm COMPLETELY opposed to what the industry is requesting of the backbone service providers.

They are advocating CENSORSHIP, they are pushing and pulling with every muscle they have, and they are tying up our courts with frivilous lawsuits and innane complaints, and pursuing people who are not going out of their way to cause harm or break the law(backbone companies). Rather than pursuing these companies that provide American Citizens with much-valued connectivity (at already absurd prices which would only be driven up by the necessity of blocking certain sites) they should pursue the bootleggers who sell CDs at Times Square, those who sell their music without their permission, and the *actual offending parties*.

Censorship on a backbone level hasn't been done for even cases that most people would consider deserving, such as child pornography sites, terrorist sites, sites that advocate the hunting and killing of pro-choice doctors, and the list goes on. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SHOULD NOT RECIEVE PRIORITY OVER THESE OTHER SITUATIONS, and I'd even be hard-pressed to say that censorship of these sites should rest on the backbone provider.

The recording industry has just proven that if anything, it is OVER-FUNDED and has too much money to spare to tie up the courts with airheaded legislation (DMCA) and lawsuits that should never see the light of day.

How long before they say that speaking up against the DMCA is a violation of the DMCA since it advocates the abolition of a copyright protection measure (the DMCA)? Oh, wait. It's already happened on a much more subtle level. I belong to this mailing list, and posted an innocuous question about how to copy a CD at a raw data level without having to mount it because some backup software I used (To create a backup of my own hard drive with my own personally-created information on it) creates backup CDs that are non-mountable. I could use the backup software to dupe the CD, but the read-write process it uses would take 3 hours with a 32x burner, and I had over 200 CDs that I wished to create a second backup set of to keep off site. (Being located in NYC, this would be a good idea, no?) Apparently this question was in too "murky" an area, and the list owner did not want to deal with the possiblity of the question being misconstrued by anyone who might be listening in.

Tell me that the "entertainment industry" isn't sounding a bit hitlerish, and having way too much control over way too many things?

But.... Shhh.. I didn't say that. I don't want anyone "listening in" to misconstrue things.

-Sara

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

[RylandDotNet]

This suit has nothing to do with copyrights. It isn't the job of AT&T et al. to protect the copyrights of RIAA member companies, especially not by censoring sites on the internet. If they have to block Listen4Ever, then the RIAA have carte blanche to sue any ISP to block any website they want. What's next, blocking sites that are critical of the RIAA? Say goodbye to Slashdot.

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

[berzerke]

I'm not so sure. First, the ISP's being sued do have the money to fight. At least they have a chance (the old justice to the highest bidder game). And they have incentive to fight.

If they win, they now have a legal precident which would help deter future lawsuits, not just from the **AA, but from anyone with a gripe about a website. Think abortion friend/foe, various religious groups, companies (MS suing to block Linux sites for instance), etc. Face it. If every web site that contained something someone didn't like was blocked, there would be very few websites. If they fail to fight, they are just inviting many more lawsuits, again, not just from the **AA (see list above).

Now the big question is are the execs at the ISPs bright enough to see this.

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

[Ralph Wiggam]

"Personally, I hope that AT&T et all take them on and give them what for."

I'm guessing that AT&T and friends are going to fight this tooth and nail. It's in their financial interests to do so. Once they become responsible for blocking every single site with illegal IP content, they're screwed. They would need a whole new department just to deal with that, and they're struggling for cash as it is. I thought that "common carrier" rulings already laid this out very clearly that if you run a communications network (at the time phone companies) that you were completely not responsible for people using that network for illegal activities.

I also liked this quote: "The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site."

Sue first, ask questions later.

-B

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

[walt-sjc]

Depends. If the airlines KNEW you were flying to california to kill someone and said or did nothing.... (ISP's have logs, and know about sites like listen4ever...)

Hate the RIAA, but I'll play devils advocate here...

If you are the driver in a getaway car in a bank robbery, are you not a criminal too?

Hopefully the ISP's can use a "common carrier" defense, but I thought that has been tried before and lost in court.

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

[Sleepy]

If you are the driver in a getaway car in a bank robbery, are you not a criminal too?

Interesting point
But in this case, I would say the "getaway car driver" is the webhosting firm in China. A "getaway driver" is an active participant or conspirator in a crime. Is that what AT&T is?

I'd say the carrier ISP's are the *highway* (where have we head that term before :). Would you want to sue a road for something someone did on it?? It's totally illogical to sue the highway system because someone stole your car and drove on the highway with it.

What is

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

[Krellan]

Too much excess capacity, not enough fiber was a myth, etc.

There would have been demand for the capacity... if organizations like the RIAA had not ruled it illegal! As more and more of the good new uses of computers are being made illegal, demand for bandwidth is dropping. The same is happening for CPU power (DVD ripping, music encoding, etc.). End users are afraid to upgrade their computers, for fear of triggering Windows Product Activation. The whole tech economy is in a tailspin, caused by copyright greed....

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

[IHateUniqueNicks]

rash or irrational

Preferably both.

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

[xenobyte]

"It wouldn't take long for a freedom of speech case to come up."

This is exactly the defense that must be used! - Add reviews, editorials and so on to the site, written by users of the site, and then blocking the site will block free speech. Force the judge to weigh the first amendment directly against DMCA and similar commercial legislation.

What is important here is to efficiently stop RIAA (and MPAA) from playing their stupid little greedy power games on the net.

Make the choice this simple: If you continue to fight 'unauthorized copies' on the net, we will make more of those copies and do what we can to spread them in an act of civil disobedience. Work with us, wise up and change your prices and distribution policies so it is possible to acquire legal versions of a given title anywhere in the world about the same time as we normally see the first pirated versions pop up.

I mean, the main reason why pirating occur is availability, closely followed by price. As long as a DVD costs as much as it does (most of that price is profits) and is released months after theatrical release, and often several more months later in different territories, there will be a need for people to jump the queue. And that's a fair need because the MPAA clearly abuses its distribution powers to discriminate people based solely on their geographical location. Same thing with the RIAA, although their power isn't as great because the CD-format is global without any regional restrictions.

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

[GutBomb]

the issue here is not "who should be blocked" the issue is "no one should be blocked" censorship of RIAA's online material is ok? It's not censorship, just an intentional routing glitch? Ok, if that is not censorship, why IS it censorship when the RIAA tries to block access to other sites then. The best way to take a stand against the RIAA is to make yourself heard. Tell a norman non-techie about this. you may have to explain the concept of a backbone and the RIAA, but tell them the implications, and that this is exactly what they are after (control of what you listen to, buy, and download) I just told my father in law about this, and he is VERY non techie. He was visibly angry that some guy in a california office building could someday threatan an ISP to block access to any site in the world, just because they allegedly have some copyrighted stuff up there, even if the whole world does not obey the same copyright laws. He has no had it pounded in his head time and time again like we have here, but he still understands The best way to get people to fight back against the RIAA is not to block them in your routing tabloes, that's just childish. The best way is to tell your non-techie friends who probably don't know that the RIAA exists, and who probably assume that the artist gets the bulk of the money made from the "copyrighted material" that the RIAA "protects"

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

[Andy_R]

Did that description of fair use come out of a book on Chinese intellectual property law, or are you falling into the RIAA's trap byquoting something totally irrelevant and assuming it applys in all jurisdictions?

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

[mpe]

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

The site is in China thus is is subject to Chinese law. If Chinese law does not acknowlage foreign copyrights then tough, it's not that long ago that the US ignored copyrights on everything published outside the US.
This sounds rather similar to the Yahoo! case in principle.

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

[Planar]

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Constitution goodbye."

If this suit passes in favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss The Internet goodbye. I mean, if any jerk can sue the ISPs for transmitting packets they don't like, the Internet just cannot work.

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

[mpe]

Should we sue the Post Office for anthrax sent through the mail? Sue the Dept of Highway Safety because a gangster robbed the bank then made his getaway on the highway? Sue the telephone service because a stalker keeps calling your house?

Hence the concept of "common carrier".

No company - no company - should be able to sue a communications company just because they don't like what somebody says. If the government of China doesn't want to shut it down, then the RIAA should be applying the powers that be there - not on the communications medium.

Or they should be petitioning the State Department about it.

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

[mpe]

How long until the entire web except for CNN and Amazon isn't accessible because of people getting pissed off and submitting sites that aren't illegal just because they don't like their views?

What makes you think that CNN will be ok, e.g. because of their not being pro Zionist, ditto Amazon since they carry book reviews.

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

[mpe]

If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge.

You can probably kiss the whole economy goodbye. Since who is their right mind is going to want a business where they are responsible if their goods or services are used to do something possibly illegal?

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

[rmadmin]

If this passes in favor of RIAA, I'll block RIAA's site, and every other damn site that has .0001% affilliation with RIAA. I'm not in favor of illegal MP3s, but I feel I have the right to run my ISP the way I want. Its not my job to block sites for RIAA. Since Cable & Wireless my upstream provider, I'll feel the crush along with them. Plain and simple, if RIAA doesn't want people going to that site, they need to get it shut down. If they can't get the jurisdiction to do it, tough, thats their problem, not mine.

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

[tcc]

> An FTP request is an FTP request is an FTP request. If it goes to goatce.cx or whitehouse.gov, it doesn't matter to them.

Yeah speaking of which, I'm starting to wonder who are the biggest assholes of the two nowadays :)

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

[cybrthng]

Tell me about it! I lost my hotmail account because someone who didn't like me running my website claimed i was distributing illegal copies of software.

Now i'm not upset, who needs spammail err hotmail, but the fact was this user said i was violating a law, a coorporation made that final and kicked out my hotmail/passport accounts.

All i was doing was offering flight simulator addons for download, but it turns out that there is a lucrative "pay as you play" market for high speed access to these files.

Apparently, my free high speed access pissed off these people so they claimed i was infringing on copyrights since there was no way i would do it for free.

oh well, just thought i'd rant about how corporate decisions can be final with no way to dispute them and if the RIAA wins, thats exactly where will we will be even to a higher degree.

patoooey

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

[tim_maroney]

You're discussing copying for personal use. I was discussing providing copies to others. Those are very different cases.

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

[kesuki]

Okay, Fair use rights are already under siege. Okay this case won't reduce fair use any more than it already is. But the RIAA IS using the DMCA that evil vile law to press this case. The backbones providers of the internet have a chance to take a tooth or two out of the DMCA here, by preserving the rights of a common-carrier.
If the DMCA doesn't apply to the common carriers, then the DMCA only takes away fair-use in america. Watch google set up shop overseas to reduce legal defense costs. This is a chance to take a tooth out of the DMCA, obviously it still has a lot of teeth left, but it's good if Common-carrier status is protected, and those living in america can kiss fair-use of any type whatsoever goodbye, because the DMCA will apply to common-carriers providing access to sites operating outsides the bounds of the DMCA now.
This case is about pirated music, but it's also about the DMCA, and how it applies to common carrier protection status here in the US. If the DMCA can be used against a common carrier... *shudders*

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

[funkhauser]

*BOOM*

Oh... Was that Hillary Rosen's head? Dang!

Good idea

[AmigaAvenger]

RIAA doesn't need them sensored, slashdot will probably take care of the site themselves with a good slashdot effect!

I'm shocked.

[Moonshadow]

Not really.

Eeep!

[Anonymous Coward]

LoL...first of all china wants to censor things coming in from other countries...

The chinese government does, that is...

American companies want to censor the content coming in.

Who really runs our country?

Re:Eeep!

[neocon]

He said, and forked out $17.99 for another CD.

The citizens do have the power -- if they didn't buy CDs, the RIAA wouldn't have the money for lawsuits like this. The problem is, this doesn't mean you have a right to bootleg music just because you don't want to pay for it, and like most citizens, you don't actually care about this issue enough to go through the inconvenience of not listening to new music.

Your mouth is saying `screw the RIAA', and your money is saying `thank you, may I have another?'.

O_o~

[Twintop]

*Quickly bookmarks and downloads everything not on newsgroups.* Seriously though, this is the direction that things are going, and the RIAA is just trying in a futile attempt to stop it. There isn't ever going to be a way to police anything on the internet: it's to large and too spread out. Eventually the RIAA is going to have to realize that album sales aren't going to be bringing in the big bucks anymore, and instead there are going to have to focus on promoting concerts, t-shirts, and other things that can't be ripped from the web.

Re:O_o~

[captain_craptacular]

and instead there are going to have to focus on promoting concerts, t-shirts, and other things that can't be ripped from the web.

Yeah, until 3D Printing comes to the desktop... Then we can print whatever we want!

The point is, you can't hide from technology. It WILL find you. The RIAA is the embodiment of the ancient rich corporation who refuses to believe that the world has changed around them.

Re:O_o~

[Khalid]

I completly agree. I bet the RIAA hasn't grasped the revolution which took place. They just keep suing, suing, and suing hoping this thing will just go away. But it won't, it never will, the genie is out of the battle, and you simply can't stop the sea with your hand as they say.

*checks calender*

[interiot]

Nope, it's August 16th.

oh cripes

[JayDoggy]

Wherever will I download "Songs of Ocarina" and soundtrack to "Legends of the Fall" if they shut off access to this great site!!!!!

Maybe...

[dokutake]

..they could start paying off government officials in China, it's worked well enough in the US.

"us domain name"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did .com become a US only domain?

Re:"us domain name"

[yobbo]

Since Al Gore invented the internet.

Re:"us domain name"

[teaserX]

I think they are refering to the "Listen4ever" part being in English. Not necessarily U.S. but probably not Chinese. Still, when did English become a U.S. only language?

Damn....

[mhandlon]

Thanks for the link slashdot this is better then Kazaa!

Makes sense to me!

[phraktyl]

This is wonderful! With this precidence set, I'll be able to sue the state for the highway I was on if I have an accident, and the power company for supplying the electricity that started a house fire.

Now would *needs* to happen is that someone needs to pass a law that bans the RIAA from doing *anything* on the internet. Hell, even saying or writing the *word* internet should hold hefty fines for them!

Wyatt

Re:Makes sense to me!

[coryboehne]

and you can sue the fast food company, that's already been done.

Re:Makes sense to me!

[God! Awful]

This is wonderful! With this precidence set, I'll be able to sue the state for the highway I was on if I have an accident, and the power company for supplying the electricity that started a house fire.

Believe it or not, you can sue the city for negligence (e.g. if your car gets a flat tire from a pothole) or the power company for negligence (e.g. if a power line breaks and sets your house on fire).

You can hold a business accountable for negligence, even if you are not their customer. Banks can have their assets seized if they don't take steps to prevent money laundering. On a smaller scale, pawnbrokers are held responsible for selling stolen goods.

Generally, when an industry creates a technology that facilitates an illegal or dangerous act, that industry is held responsible for part of the cost of monitoring and preventing that action.

-a

Re:Makes sense to me!

[eyeball]

...power company for supplying the electricity that started a house fire....

nah, the power company will sue UPS for delivering solar panels to your house (you electricty thief!)

Re:Makes sense to me!

[EvanED]

Now that I'd LOVE to see. (You want us to censor content? OK, we'll censor content...)

Re:Makes sense to me!

[SIGFPE]

Hey! If you commit a crime you could sue your parents for not bringing you up right.

Re:Makes sense to me!

[scrain]

Hey... as long as the RIAA can't see the chinese site... it's all good, right? Just filter it from them. =)

could be a good thing

[kid zeus]

Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets. We're talking AT&T here, not some little indie ISP. Seems to me that the RIAA might have been better off not pissing off some of these companies who can field as good or better a legal team and who can throw as much money at Congress.

Re:could be a good thing

[quantum bit]

If I were AT&T I'd just add blackhole routes for the websites of all the RIAA members.

Re:could be a good thing

[doorbot.com]

Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets.

I hope the RIAA has an internet connection from AT&T, or whoever else they claim is responsible. Then AT&T (or whoever) can simply cut off the RIAA and the problem is solved... blacklist the RIAA's internet connection and it will be pretty difficult for them to track "offenders" (although not to sue them).

Re:could be a good thing

[guttentag]

Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets.

It turns out those really "deep pockets" of UUNet's (UUNet is part of WorldCom) are actually "holes" through which money falls and disappears. It's a common mistake -- apparently even WorldCom's accountants mistook them for really deep pockets:

"Wow! Look at how far down this pocket goes! I can stick my whole arm in! Now if only I could find the money in this pocket..."

Hard to say...

[sterno]

The thing is that the DMCA provides safe harbor provisions for an ISP if they remove an offending website. The offender can then get the content returned if they affirm that they are not violating copyright.

Of course the safe harbor provisions were intended for the ISP at the end of the line. So I'm not sure what legal precedent would be in play here. Given that these carriers are common carriers, with no control over the content they carry, I should think the RIAA would lose the case. If they didn't, then it would become the responsibility of carriers to monitor traffic on their networks for illegal activity, etc. It would be akin to holding AT&T responsible for embezzling because two mafiosos talked to eachother over a long distance phone call.

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.

Lowest Common Denominator

[FFFish]

Perhaps one of the potential outcomes of globalization is that we all sink to the lowest common denominator. America blocking access to foreign sites? That's so... Chinaesque!

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[aero6dof]

Yeah, next thing you know we'll have goverment officals doing favors for money and detaining people without legal representation. Err.. Hmm.. which nation was I talking about?

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[1010011010]

which nation was I talking about?

The Land of the Free and the Home of the...

ah, fuck it

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[Art Tatum]

Aye! If it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[FFFish]

"Land of the Free-ish, Home of the Resigned."

Re:Lowest Common Denominator

[orthogonal]

Mod parent up!

The parent makes the excellent point that law is an abitrary invention of man (natural rights theory, ingrained in the American perspective, to the contrary).

The original poster makes a distinction apprently based on property rights, and were property rights in fact the crux of the matter, I might agree with him. I have no intention of downloading music in violation of copyright -- just as I expect my copyrights to be respected.

But it's not about property rights. Unless you mean my property right to the use of the internet access I pay for.

It's about a prior restraint of my ability to use a service -- internet access - that I've paid for. A prior restrainst based on the incorrect and insulting presumption that I'd steal the music given the opportunity.

Just because RIAA is unable to gain relief from the alleged violater -- whoever is running the server alleged to be providing material in violation of copyright -- does not give them the right to curtail my rights.

The RIAA prefers to harass ISPs and to dictate to every person using those ISPs what they may read or veiw. And the original poster is worried about the RIAA's property rights? Yes, let us all weep for the RIAA.

theme party

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we just get the RIAA, MPAA, most major computer software and hardware vendors, the major ISPs, portals and most patent holding corporations together and have one big fuckin' sue party? I mean christ, Adobe sues Macromedia, Macromedia sues Adobe, RIAA sues ISPs, one member of RIAA sues another member, someone gets ready to sue everyone who ever made a bot, the hyperlinks are claimed to have been patented and we're fucking liable, some of the genes in my body have been patented by some asshole. Fuck it all. Christ, the whole goddamned American-inspired capitalist corporate world fucking sucks and it's swallowing us all. Somebody please help me find a better country. How are Iceland and New Zealand?

Re:theme party

[EvanED]

>>Sweden seemed to be good at giving homes
to US folks who wanted to skip the Vietnam
draft.

So perhaps a war with Iraq that's long enough to require a draft could be a good thing...

Re:theme party

[NeuroManson]

"How are Iceland and New Zealand?"

I dunno, lemme try suing them...

Damn, they're already broke...

Re:theme party

[NeMon'ess]

Well if we could get all the companies TOGETHER then we could just bomb the fuck out of them cheap and easy.

Re:ok...

[Mathonwy]

I'd agree with you, except...

Looking back at a lot of the things RIAA has gone after, it's not clear (to me, at least) that they NEED a legal requirement. Because, in lou of laws to support their interest, they just use... boatloads of money to support their interest. Oh, and to make laws to support their interest, if it looks like something that might come up often.

Fortunately, in this case, if they go after big ISPs, big ISPs might have enough money to duke it out. I really hope that's what happens, and they don't just go "Ok", and agree to jointly help RIAA screw over the general populace of consumers...

Dang, now I don't know if I should write letters to my congressman, or to my AT&T broadband rep...

In other news...

[Skyshadow]

In other news, congress has passed the DMTA (digital millenium transit act), which will force people to continue using horses for transportation despite the fact that a faster and more effective format, known as an "automobiles", has been available for some time.

"We can't make money on cars," said a representative of the Harness Makers Association of America (HMAA), "so they should be illegal. Think of all the poor horsies that would be turned into Elmer's if these criminal 'auto enthusists' got there way."

Politicians hailed the passing of the DMTA as a "strong step towards halting all progress and keeping the world exactly as it is. After all, change is scary!"

Re:In other news...

[Skyshadow]

Think of all the poor horsies that would be turned into Elmer's if these criminal 'auto enthusists' got there way.

Of course, that should be "their way". Lordy, you'd think I was trying out to be a /. editor. My sincere apologies to my third-grade english teacher at Maywood Elementary School in Monona, WI for the mix-up.

Re:In other news...

[ttyRazor]

Cars vs. Railroads might be a better analogy.

Re:In other news...

[halftrack]

It seems to me (who is happy to not being a US citizen) that your government is no longer for the people but for the free market. Who should they protect and serve the people or big corporations?

Re:In other news...

[BitwizeGHC]

A free market is actually a good thing. Too bad it doesn't exist in implementation.

Re:In other news...

[halftrack]

Free market would work if all people were nice, so would communism.

Re:In other news...

[Sancho]

No, the analogy is completely off. MP3s are far from illegal. Copying copyrighted material is illegal. MP3s are a good format for doing so, but no one is saying that MP3 trading or sales should be illegal. Just MP3s that reproduce copyrighted material.

It's really a shame that so many people here are sheep[burn karma here] that can't think for themselves.

Re:In other news...

[norton_I]

It would be nice if there were a free market, but that doesn't change the fact that the government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people". The free market is a means to an end, which should never be confused with the end.

Re:In other news...

[EvanED]

I sense sarcasm in the "Wow... great example" post. Now, I'm generally VERY bad at picking up on sarcasm in print, so when I suspect it, I'm usually right.

Re:In other news...

[pangloss]

Isn't the next logical step for the RIAA to sue U.S. airlines for continuing to provide service to countries known to harbor merchants of pirated music? ;)

I mean it's the airlines' responsibility to ensure that music pirates aren't using their routes to facilitate their misdeeds.

It's a good thing the RIAA hasn't heard of those Canadian pirates, coz then we'd have to shut down the highways, too.

Re:In other news...

[debrain]

Or airplane versus railroads, a battle which really did exist.

Re:In other news...

[Sancho]

My Sarcasm Detector (tm) broke shortly after I started reading Slashdot, my apologies :)

We're Asking the Wrong Question

[Schlemphfer]

It seems there are at least four or five stories about the RIAA every week on Slashdot. Most deal with circumventing their legal lobbying, technical approaches for dealing with proposed DRM techniques, and whatnot.

Meanwhile, it seems the RIAA sinks to a new depth every week. With this latest story, I think it's time the tech community started asking a different question. What can the tech community do to damage the RIAA or render them irrelevant? And what are the best legal methods for kicking the RIAA where it hurts?

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[Skyshadow]

And what are the best legal methods for kicking the RIAA where it hurts?

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.

Of course, as we've seen (bnet vs. Warcraft 3, MPAA vs. LOTR DVD), sticking to your principles is pretty tough. For example, I bought the new Linkin Park CD because I'm against the RIAA and, as it turns out, a hippocrite.

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[km790816]

The way one shows distaste in a free market is to use the power of the market.

Everyone: stoy buying music and instead get illegal copies from your friends.

Oh, wait...

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[jeffy124]

here's one way....

[If | When] they legalize DoS'ing P2P, launch attacks against the RIAA's "P2P" node (www.riaa.org) to "impair the use" of "copyrighted" DoS tools.

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[ziegast]

The best way to express your disapproval towards any business or group of businesses is to not buy their stuff.

... which they use as an argument in their defense. "Less people have been buying from us, so they must be pirating it all." Companies don't learn from the customers they don't have. They learn from the customers who complain.

Write a letter to your favorite record label. Tell them how much money you used to spend on their product in the past. Tell them how much you spend now (hopefully much less). Tell them why. Tell them what you would support (for example, $X/song or album for Internet downloads and fair use or $X/month for subscriptions to Internet radio statons or content servers).

I used to spend $50 per month on CDs. I haven't bought one in at least three years (and I don't pirate). Instead, I just listen to the radio. I still rent movies a couple times a month, though.

When I have some disposable income again, I'm going to donate an equal part to my local NPR station and an organization fighting the industry's over-reaching efforts. People have to fund the people speaking out for us.

Be creative. Make some effort. Don't just "not buy stuff". They won't get the message that way.

-ez

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[bwt]

Sooner or later somebody will write an email worm that makes people send a random mp3 or two out to everybody they know.

Is windows media player scriptable?

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[charstar]

there is some good news here... some record labels (ie: Metropolis) are not members of the RIAA, and even allow webcasters to play their music!

I'd like to see more of this.

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[EvanED]

"What can the tech community do to damage the RIAA or render them irrelevant? And what are the best legal methods for kicking the RIAA where it hurts?"

I wonder how much it would take down the RIAA's bandwith if everyone from slashdot suddenly got very interested in the content of their home page and spent, oh, 10 minutes each day there, just looking around at all the interesting content.

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[eyeball]

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.

Unfortunately, the people who care about this don't make up the majority of purchasers. You, or for that matter ever /. user not buying CD's (if any of us do) won't put a dent in their revinue.

The best way is to do your own music (if you're capible), promote it online without a major label, sell your music online (you'll probably make just as much cash as popular artists barring the top 100 Madonna/Britney/etc. class).

(And don't gripe and say shit like "oh, but I wanna make it BIG." Here's a concept for you: Music wasn't meant to be big or make anyone big. It's an art form that was slowly turned into a mass commodity by an overzealous music industry over the decades, and without them, you wouldn't be BIG no matter how good your music was)

If you're not a musician (or even if you are), then patronize (I mean in a good way) non-major musicians, and enjourage that non-industry. Browse mp3.com. They have good stuff! And check out local bands, also.

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[Art Tatum]

How about grenade launchers? Please tell me there will be grenade launchers!

Re:We're Asking the Wrong Question

[Tony-A]

Exposure. Ridicule. Why listen to dead music? Try your grandparent's music. It might surprise you.

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!

Audacity indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says that the plantiff's claim that Listen4Ever.com is registered under a "U.S. domain name". What the heck is that all about? So websites in any other country must use their nation's domain, but only "U.S." websites can use a .com ? The RIAA truly astounds me with what they'll say/pull.....

Re:Audacity indeed

[EvanED]

And at least that would have some ground... from all I've heard the TLDs like .com, .org, etc were not supposed to be country specifi even though they largely are.

Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that link

[phr2]

Surprisingly it's not slashdotted--there must be big pipes behind it. I didn't try loading any mp3's.

Just viewing the site launched endless popup ad windows some of which resized themselves to fill the whole screen, popped more windows when you closed the old ones, etc.

Interestingly, the actual mp3's come from an entirely different set of domains, that don't appear related to the gateway site and probably aren't hosted in China. The site being sued over is more like a portal (link farm) than an actual mp3 host. It has tons of "legitimate" advertising including audio devices, Visa cards, etc. But I couldn't stand looking at it long, because of all the damn popups.

Anyway, this isn't some warez kiddie's server, it's a highly commercial site, and it astounds me if RIAA is really having trouble finding its owners (asking its advertisers where they send their checks is an obvious approach).

RIAA's obligitary business plan post

[joebp]

1) Screw customers
2) Screw now former-customers
3) Censor the internet
4) ???
5) Profit!

Re:RIAA's obligitary business plan post

[t0qer]

the underwear gnome thing is about as cool as the beowulf cluster comments. Just my opinion though...

Re:RIAA's obligitary business plan post

[x136]

*ahem*

1) Screw artists while profiting
2) Screw customers while profiting
3) Screw now former-customers while profiting
4) Attempt to screw over used CD buyers while profiting
5) Sue anything that moves while profiting
6) Censor everything that moves (and most things that don't) while profiting
7) Profit while profiting!
8) GOTO 1 (while profiting!)

WHY EVERYTIME YOU BREAK DOWN MY WALL?

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I can hear it now...

"Every time I build, you American show up and take down my wall! Stop it! You take down my wall for the last time! Stupid Americans!"

Re:WHY EVERYTIME YOU BREAK DOWN MY WALL?

[SCHecklerX]

Ahh! Sweet and Sour Pork! God Damned you Americans!

Music artists, time to wake up!

[mikehunt]

This must be the call for all music artists to wake up and abandon
the music industry vultures.

If the RIAA has its way, and the court rules in its favour, it could result in all
Internet access from the US to China being cut off.
Is this how you want US law making to influence democracy
in China? Is this how you want your record label to spend
the vast majority of your income?

Re:Music artists, time to wake up!

[bwt]

Are there any good sites out there for finding mp3 friendly labels?

Yep, it's the T-Rex complex!

[Infonaut]

Great post, kid zeus.

Those RIAA nimwits may be meeting their match here. Not only do they have deep pockets, but think of it this way - when the folks in Washington see this battle, they may rethink what's more important: keeping the Information Superhighway (tm) alive and propelling the New Economy, or keeping the music industry alive in its current bloodsucking incarnation.

T-Rex, meet Godzilla. :-)

Re:Yep, it's the T-Rex complex!

[Infonaut]

lol..

sorry, it's "T-Rex meets Godzimma!"

Re:Yep, it's the T-Rex complex!

[zmooc]

Have you seen this?:) I wonder when they're going after WD:P

Re:Yep, it's the T-Rex complex!

[RickHunter]

More like Godzilla meet Mecha-Godzilla. Both are giant firebreathing monsters, and no matter who wins, the public (and the infrastructure) gets squished and charbroiled in the process.

Re:Yep, it's the T-Rex complex!

[Brendan Byrd]

Worse yet...

AOL Time Warner Guilty Too

[jmoloug1]

As if this story isn't ridiculous enough,

The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site.

I am a RoadRunner user and have no problem accessing the site. If AOLTW is going to sue somebody to block communications, why haven't they taken this "simple" measure within their own systems?

Re:AOL Time Warner Guilty Too

[Rakarra]

I am a RoadRunner user and have no problem accessing the site. If AOLTW is going to sue somebody to block communications, why haven't they taken this "simple" measure within their own systems?

Because they don't want to seem to be the "bad guy" to their customers. If they block access to a site but the rest of the Internet doesn't, they stand to lose a number of customers to ISPs which don't block. However, if the site is blocked for -everyone- (which is necessary to achieve their plan), then they stand to lose almost no customers since they aren't at a disadvantage in that issue.

Re:AOL Time Warner Guilty Too

[akb]

Could be that AOL uses the companies being sued for transit to China. Why pay your engineers to update your own routers when you can sue someone else to fix it on theirs?

Besides, the issue of making tier 1's responsible for content going through their network dwarfs this little mp3 site.

Re:Automakers

[littlej]

Or sueing the Department of Transporation for keeping up the highways that criminals use to distribue contraband!

This is...

[TheDanish]

absolutely, positively, beyond ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER the MOST ludicrous thing I've heard. I wouldn't have believed it except it's on Yahoo news... this is madness! Suing ISPs for not censoring websites! Whatever they arbitrarily decide goes against their agenda they can sue to take away? They're more powerful than the government! ...........I just don't understand, and if this lawsuit goes through, I WILL move out of this country. Just because they're outside their jurisdiction doesn't mean that you attack the people who provide the Internet.

That's a bit like a store owner cigarettets to a 30 year old, who in turn sells it to a little kid and runs to mexico, and then having the store owner sent to jail! I mean... that... Ugh... It's repulsive...

This is your reward for voting for Bush

[GoatPigSheep]

Well, thats what you get for voting in bush, who's entire campaign is built on large amounts of 'contributions' (should read 'bribes') from many corporations. Everyone who voted him in should be blamed for this lose of freedom at the hands of large corporate entities. I have noticed that ever since bush was president, and especially after 9/11, corporations have been attacking free speach left and right.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, Bush is a *hero*, who's actions are helping us all. Lets just wave our flags while corporations wipe their collective asses on us.

The RIAA is out of control, we must do something about this before we end up losing all our freedom of speach. I think it might take drastic measures to fight this corporate monster.

Re:This is your reward for voting for Bush

[mesocyclone]

Sigh. The predictible Bush bashing comes along, regardless of whether it is right or not.

Guess what! The Democrats entire campaign was also built on huge contributions. Furthermore, they Democrats are the partly closest to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The biggest pusher of digital rights management (read: restrictuions on what you can do with media) are Democrat congressmen.

But wait... the truth...

That wouldn't stop you from a baseless troll against Bush!

Corporations do what corporations will do.

The real problem here is that congress passes bills extending ownership "rights." A copyright is *not* a natural right. It is granted as a result of the authority given in the US Constituiton. However, that grant also includes a phrase about public interest.

If you elect politicians who vote for judges who actually read the constitution (i.e. "original intent"), you might get judges who would find many of these copyright abuses to be unconstitutional - not supported by the copyrights and patens clause in the US Constitution.

But guess what? THOSE politicians are republican conservatives. Oops...

Oh well, that won't stop the Bush bashing...

Too many people have been brainwashed into believing that Republicans are the tools of corporations, while Democrats are somehow the saviors of the people. Wake up! Corporations give to whoever they think will support their business. And Hollywood gives to DEMOCRATS.

Re:This is your reward for voting for Bush

[Rakarra]

Why do you think Gore gave up? The numbers were against him. The Democratic statistician that testified, minipulated stocastic theory in order to promote the Democrates filtered recount plan. Her reasoning has been demonstrated to be flawed. Basicaly she lied! The court was not fooled. The only reason that this was ever an issue was that the media whanted Gore to win.

I don't think the counting of the votes was what the parent poster was talking about, I think it was the allegations of preventing minorities from reaching the polls.

Re:This is your reward for voting for Bush

[Nygard]

Well, you did end up sounding very much like a troll.

In fact, the two reigning parties have built themselves a legislative and procedural fortress.

They have defined the election procedures such that it is almost impossible to get 3rd party candidates on the ballot. Dems & Reps get automatic slots on the ballot, but any other parties must collect tens or hundreds of thousands of signatures. The laws actually name the parties explicitly!

Furthermore, even if you get a 3rd party candidate elected, they have to "organize" with either the Democrats or Republicans. In other words, for the purposes of committee chairs and the right to appoint committee memberships, you still have to ally with one or the other -- even if you were elected as an independent!

When you look at the way that the system has been manipulated and distorted, it is really astounding. Despite their public disputes, these two parties have colluded to eliminate direct representation as a form of government.

So, we are stuck with two unacceptable alternatives. Other parties that more closely match my views are effectively excluded from the process.

Re:This is your reward for voting for Bush

[mesocyclone]

Actually, the two party system has worked pretty well IMHO. It forces political compromise across the spectrum. It means, of course, that there is no party that any one person completely agrees with, but I don't think that is a negative. Having two parties provides a well understood framework for political action. It also prevents the sort of absurd coalitions that occur in multiparty democracies. For example, in Israel one has extreme ideological enemies forming coalition governments. The result is a government which is very ineffective - even in the face of an extreme threat - a threat to its very existence. Our two-party system tends to prevent that sort of absurd deadlock.

To me, the biggest problem with our political process is the media. Our media do a much worse job of informing our public than the UK media, simply because they lack ideological diversity. We tend to have a *one party* media - the large newspapers and all of the TV networks (except Fox - thank you Australia!) are significantly biased towards a particular world view"progressive"; anti-business except for farming and, of course, media; pro-abortion; anti-religion; emotional instead of rational - but of course emotional programming sells; pro-censorship of all but their ideas - also known as political correctness; pro-discrimination on the basis of race; pro-democrat.

I don't have a problem with some of the media having those views. I have a big problem with entire forms of media having the same opinion, and I especially dislike their strong assertions that they are, by their training, objective and reporting news, not opinion. This homogenous media is what led, in the US, to the strange phenomenon of conservative talk radio - for a long time the only place that people with different viewpoints could hear anything they agreed with, and the only place that they could hear certain information at all!

This, combined with the dumbing down of news, is why campaign financing is such an issue. Without a reasonable media, people are either uninformed or misinformed about the political process.

Of course, our educational system has been taken over by idiots for the most part, and those idiots are also generally of the same viewpoint as the media.

Thus we are left without an informed citizenry, which the founders of our country recognized as critical for a democracy.

Re:This is your reward for voting for Bush

[mesocyclone]

I used to be a registered Libertarian. But I rarely vote Libertarian.

See below for why the two party system is a good thing (and why I no longer vote Libertarian except for Arizona State Mine Inspector (to keep the party on the ballot).

1. The Libertarians are utopian idealists. Their ideas are no more likely to produce a working society than the ideas of the Marxists. They *do* contribute positively to the debate. However, the best of the libertarian ideas have been taken up by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. It is significantly more Libertarian than even a decade ago. And this is what happens in the two party system - third party ideas, if significant, move into the one or both of the major parties.
2. The Libertarians have no chance of winning any significant race in most states. They are too far from the mainstream. As I stated, the two party system leads to parties of compromise, which is ultimately what is needed in a democratic system
3. The Republicans and Democrats are dramatically different in areas that are important to me: taxation, the role of government, income transfer, states rights, gun control, constitutional strict constructionism, the race issue (quotas vs race blind policies), defense, globalism, environmentalism, abortion, education. I mostly agree with the Republicans on *every one* of these issues. I disagree with them on health insurance (although the Democrat approach would be just as bad), drug legalization (although the most influential conservative publication, National Review, is *for* drug legalization), and a few other minor issues.

   Those who argue that the two parties are alike and use the term "Republicrat" are either over-focused on one or two issues where they offer little difference, or missing the point. In other words, in most very important areas, the two parties offer real differences and a real choice.

4. I believe that a two party system is reasonable. Nobody imposed it - it evolved. It provides Americans with a choice among the two primary philosophies of western democracy: progressivism or classical liberalism. Both sides are supported by big business, but which businesses support whom is a different story.

   For example, the trial lawyers association almost owns the democratic party with their huge contributions. Wonder why we don't have tort reform? Wonder why there are huge class action lawsuits, where the plaintiffs typically win a right to purchase a product from the defendant at a discount, or some other trinket, while the lawyers take home hundreds of millions? Thank the Democrats. Oh, the other organization that owns the democrat party (and forms a significant part of its organization and votes at the convention) is the teachers' union - that organization that has turned our educational system inot the mess that it is, even though we spend more per pupil than most far more successful countries. And, of course, large corporations frequently contribute to democrats. For example, a good way that a big company can keep little companies from rising to challenge it is to have lots of government regulation in the industry. Only the big guys can afford to deal with it, and since they all face the same issue, they still can compete with each other. So, they tend to contribute to pro-regulation democrats!

5. In modern history, third parties have done nothing other than skew the presidential elections in bizarre ways. Ross Perot brought us Clinton (remember, Clinton got only 43% of the vote - in fact Bush, in 2000, got a much higher percentage of the vote than Clinton ever did).
   

   I doubt if many Perotistas were closer to Clinton than Bush-I in their views! I was working with Perot Systems at the time and knew Perot and his closest friends. His friends were basically conservative Republicans! Perot was tilting at windmills (I personally think his motivation was getting even with Bush-I for a case where Bush, as head of CIA, refused a spurious Perot adventure in a proposed POW/MIA rescue).
   

   Ralph Nader brought us Bush-II. How many Greenies prefer Bush to a potential Gore? Personally, I thank Ralph Nader for what he did, because *I* think Bush is vastly better than Gore would have been.

6. 
   

   1. 
      
      Finally, I urge everyone to vote for the Green Party in every election. Please, slashdotters - VOTE GREEN! Please!
      

aimed at a US audience?

[matthew_eeph]

The news media says "The suit states... the site... appears to target an American audience" If that's so, why does the top of the site itself say "Add listen4ever.com to your Favourites"?

Don't thank /., thank the RIAA!

[dasboy]

I can always find the coolest technology by just watching who they sue!

Re:ok...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

what legal requirement do all those ISPs have to block those sites to begin with? If there's none, RIAA has no case whatsoever.

Well, as of late, the RIAA has been pushing the theory of "contributory copyright infringement". In essence, it goes like this: You didn't infringe any copyrights. But you helped someone else infringe them. So you're just as guilty. As the .sig says, it's sort of a dumb logic that undermines any concept of personal responsibility. But the courts have been remarkably well-disposed toward this insanity, so the RIAA might win.

Nice...

[doi]

I love the irony of a U.S. organization (RIAA) suing U.S. corporations (ISPs) for NOT doing something they're NOT required by law to do, thereby destroying the ISPs potential revenue (!), just because they're NOT blocking a site in a Communist, totalitarian country! (with whom the U.S. is spending a great deal of time, money and effort in opening new trade and business relationships)

Not a good move by the RIAA

[Sangui5]

You may think that the RIAA is good at influencing the legal and political process, but I think they've just picked a fight they can't hope to win. The big backbone providers got to where they are through skillful manipulation of the system. If any set of entities is capable of playing the litigation game, it has got to be the phone and cable companies.

First off, every other case the RIAA has attempted has been against shallow pockets. Not so here. While WorldCom is in trouble, they do have a large legal team sitting around doing nothing (can't work on the bankruptcy 'cause that's not their area). I don't think I need mention how deep the pockets of ATT, Sprint, et. al. are.

Also, in the past they've gone against entities without experience. At any one time any major phone company is involved in more litagation than you can imagine (minimum of 3 major legal actions per state--justifying their current rates, attacking the justification their competitors give for their rates, and fighting to keep their preferred status as incumbant carrier, besides various federal and local actions). They know how to take full advantage of the rules, which rules they have to follow, which they can bend, and which they can break. They'll make dragging any information out of them during discovery a total nightmare, while at the same time demanding the most minor scraps of records the RIAA has. They'll abuse the calander, run the clock, and overall be just not very nice.

The RIAA may act like an 800 lb. gorrilla, but they've just picked a fight with the 8000 lb. bunch. Not a good idea.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[Renraku]

Yeah, but why not comply..that way they get out of fines..AND make it harder for their users to take up bandwidth on anything but pr0n?

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[cpeterso]

I think the RIAA does not actually expect to go to court. They probably just want the backbone providers to compare the cost of going to court versus simply blacklisting "just one web site". Once the Listen4ever.com precedent has been set, then the RIAA could keep pestering the backbone providers with more web sites to blacklist.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[DoctorFrog]

Very, very salient point. Hopefully this might spin out into the defendants objecting to any idea of being forced into having DRM technology in their routing servers. Well, I can dream can't I?

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[DoctorFrog]

Settling out of court does not set a legal precedent. IIRC it can't even be brought into evidence when eventually the pesterees decide that enough is enough, sue and be damned.

Besides, as the grandparent said, the backbone providers keep a stable of lawyers on retainer anyway; it's less of a burden for them to go to court than it would be for a smaller target.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[einer]

Wha? Like AT&T would think to themselves: "Well, it's just one website, and I'm sure the RIAA would stop there... " That's absurd. They're doing this to go to court and win. They wouldn't do it otherwise.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[Sangui5]

Also in response to Renraku's comment above.

The trouble is, there is a cost to blacklisting : violation of their contractual peering/carrier responsibilities. They have agreed to carry a lot of traffic. Some for money, some in exchange for peering, but they've agreed to carry it nevertheless. If they just cave, then they open themselves to suits from all of the people they've contracted with for breach of contract.

Now, true, you can't contract to do something illegal and have the contract be enforcable. However, they need to make a reasonable effort to fulfill their contractual obligations, which would include fighting back. Additionally, this is a civil matter, and not a criminal one, so even if they fight and loose, they could still be drug into court over failure to deliver. They may win such cases, but if they just cave to the RIAA, they can't also just cave to all of their customers. And their customers aren't small fry either -- I believe UUNET now requires you to have 3 geographically distant POP's connected by 10 Mbit to even vaguely consider peering.

Also, corporations are fully aware of the idea of setting a bad precident (shit, is that spelled right? 'prolly not). Every time they let somebody dictate what they can carry, it makes it that much easier for the next person who wants another IP block to be stopped at the border. The big baddass backbone routers already have oversized routing tables--they simply can't afford to add any unnecessary entries. And if adding these entries causes service to slip, well, most big backbones include all sorts of lovely penalty provisions against themselves in their carrier contracts, because they know that they can charge extra for the ironclad guaruntee.

No, they all but have to fight. They can either fight the RIAA in one big battle, or fight their customers in a hundred big battles. 1 is a lot less than 100...

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[dh003i]

That is, assuming the ISP's don't back down.

Its too much to hope for that two evil forces will oppose eachother.

No, evil forces unite to crush good forces.

Just look at our Senate and Congress. They might not be able to agree on tax cuts or balancing the budget, the they all unanimously agree that they deserve a fucking pay raise, despite doing their job worse than last year.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[daniel2000]

But if the backbone providers don't really care too much either way- if they block or not- then this may just be enough to tip the balance.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[Reziac]

But wouldn't even a single blacklisting open providers up to the problem that if you censor ANY material, you have just made yourself legally liable for censoring ALL material, and doing so per the wildly-disparate laws of every little burg you do business in...??

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[Sycraft-fu]

Actually I think the carriers would be lothe to do that. Why? Simple right now they treat their internet service (at least on the large scale) the same way they treat their telephone service: they are a carrier, nothing more. That doesn't mean that they won't discontinue an account if someone uses it to do something illegal, but they don't censor traffic from other networks ebcause they don't monitor it.

Now if they agree to this then the RIAA has ground to stand on to demand they start doing this sort of thing all the time, and the carriers don't want that. We've had the same sort of debate at the university I work at.

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[EvanED]

The proper move if they agree (or are ordered by the courts) to censor the site is to also all agree to censor the RIAA's site. Whoops! No more RIAA website...

Re:Not a good move by the RIAA

[xigxag]

I think the RIAA does not actually expect to go to court.

I think if that were the case, they would've tried to negotiate this behind closed doors without filing a lawsuit at all. In fact, they probably tried that, and each defendant said, "No dice," or at least, "not unless the other guys do it too."

It wouldn't surprise me, though, if one or more of the defendants coughAOLTWcough secretly hope to lose the case so they can tell their customers they were "forced" to shut down access to this site, and subsequently to ban USENET "alt" groups and Kazaa's port 1214 and so on. And of course if a legal decision comes down, every ISP will be forced to do the same thing and AOL, et. al. won't be at a competitive disadvantage.

Haha suckas... yeah mess with the big boys

[LowneWulf]

Yeah that's right. Pick on the ones who can fight back. Take on the industry that has taken every opponent, even the government, and lived to tell about it.

Hehe. I can imagine the executives meeting.
"What do you guys control?"
"I control cell phones."
"I am the master of cable."
"I am the undisputed champion of the US Internet backbone."
"So... what do you control for world domination?"
"Ummm.... CD music. Not anything good though, just the really commercialized stuff."
*crowd contains guffaws and laughter starts leaking out*

Re:Haha suckas... yeah mess with the big boys

[PatJensen]

That is some funny shit. Thanks for the laugh. Have a good weekend. :)

-Pat

Re:Haha suckas... yeah mess with the big boys

[Com2Kid]

Hehe. I can imagine the executives meeting.
"What do you guys control?"
"I control cell phones."
"I am the master of cable."
"I am the undisputed champion of the US Internet backbone."
"So... what do you control for world domination?"
"Ummm.... CD music. Not anything good though, just the really commercialized stuff."
*crowd contains guffaws and laughter starts leaking out*


"But I actualy turn a profit."

*crowd lets out collctive awe of amazement*

Did the RIAA actualy sue any profit generating companies here, or did they limit themselves to companies that /once/ turned a profit and now suck?

Set up to allow leeches

[sam_handelman]

Whoever set up this site displays most of the technical skills of their new arch-enemies (the RIAA.)

I can download these songs with DAP without messing around - this means, among other things, that it doesn't check refering URLs; I'd geuss there'll be fifty sites leeching their content by this time tomorrow.

Self-Inflicted?

[_Sprocket_]

I can't help but wonder if some of this is self-inflicted. As various corporate entities capture the ISP market and begin to play fast and loose with content control, they have began to give up the "common carrier" stance that has been the ISP's protection in the past. Once an ISP is no longer a common carrier, they are immediately liable for any kind of traffic coming through their network.

The only reservation I have on this point is that I'm not sure all the parties involved have taken steps that could be considered abandoning common carrier status. For example, while I'm sure I remember seeing AT&T Broadband taking such actions, I don't remember seeing anything from UUNET that would expose them to this kind of action.

Of course, previous establishment of common carrier status for ISPs was under a slightly different political climate. The attitude towards the Net has changed. New deals have been done in business and politics. All bets could very well be off.

Upcoming lawsuits from RIAA

[halftrack]

* Markerpen and PostIt makers for publishing technology enabeling people to use their CD's.
* Power suppliers for making peoples computers run.
* CD-R makers for making piracy easy.
* Microsoft for making WMA (which listen4ever.com uses)
* Linus Torvalds for making Linux and Bill Gates for making Windows which both enable music on computers thus encouraging piracy.
* Consumers for not buying enough CDs.
* Movie companies and game creators for making products that are worth the money so that kids use their money on DVDs and games instead of music.
* Themself for publishing music, thus making it subject to piracy.

Re:Upcoming lawsuits from RIAA

[EvanED]

You forgot one:
*The artists, for writing the music that people pirate

terrorism and the RIAA

[crystalplague]

You know, terrorists are not always a bad thing...here's why:

Legistlation is obviously not stopping the RIAA in any capacity from stripping our rights from us under the guise of protecting themselves. Even boycotts barely make even a dent on their revenues. There are just too many people willing to just take their shit, and it is entirely too easy for them to buy people off. It IS happening and can't be denied.

I propose an entirely different solution to this resistance. Abandon all of this useless legislation and boycotting, because democracy and the free market has abandoned us here. The only way I forsee us winning this is if we make it harder for them to do business. I'm sure many people here have access to or control a good bit of their infrastructure. Unplug routers to their website, hack their servers, just do anything that will make it harder for them to operate. There a limited number of them and a hell of a lot more of people like me that are pissed off and resourceful. They will learn to fear us and we will be their demise. This is the new kind of terrorism, a good kind with a just cause. Join the fight!

Re:terrorism and the RIAA

[mesocyclone]

What you are proposing is not terrorism. It is somehwere between civil disobedience and conspiracy to commit badness.

Terrorism involves attacking *people* and scaring large numbers of them. Don't water down a perfectly useful word.

Furthermore, IMHO terrorism is *never* justified. Civil disobedience sometimes is. What you are recommended, IMHO, is not - but that's just my opinion and that of the law.

Re:terrorism and the RIAA

[jmv]

What? The RIAA didn't tell you that not buying enough CD's is terrorism?

Re:terrorism and the RIAA

[mesocyclone]

Freedom fighting means violent action for one's rights. Whether it is terrorism depends on the means, not the goals.

For example, Palestinians who attack Israeli military may be freedom fighters. Those who intentionally attack women and children may be freedom fighters, but they are using terrorism, and hence are the lowest form of scum.

Another example: the attack against the US marine barracks in Beirut, 1983?, was an act of war, not an act of terrorism. Likewise the attack against the USS Cole. However, the latter at least was probably a *war crime* - but again, not terrorism.

The attack against US Embassies, the destruction of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, the IRA bombs in England, the NLF bombs in Saigon, the NLF killings of village chieftans and their families, and Sept 11th were acts of terrorism.

Terrorists are scum, regardless of their cause.

Given the right judges

[DoctorFrog]

This could be terrific. It's about time that ISPs were clearly defined as common carriers, like telephone companies are. It's absurd to expect an ISP to monitor and vet all traffic through it, and there's no good halfway solution; any requirement for ISPs to act as a censoring agent is fraught with so many issues as to be unworkable.

The RIAA would be well within their rights to sue Listen4ever in an international court, but suing the ISPs because it's too difficult to track down the copyright infringers is like suing the phone company because someone is hassling you from a series of public telephones and it's too hard to catch the caller.

The only point I can think of for the RIAA is that maybe there should be a process for shutting down a domain that is clearly violating international law. That raises all kinds of other issues, but pushing for amendments to international treaties might be an acceptable way for them to deal with their problem.

(Admittedly it would also be awfully hard to implement effectively given how easy it is to register a new domain name. In the end the only real solution is to catch the perpetrators; if that's too difficult, then you just have to live with the issue until you can improve your methods of finding and prosecting them.)

Making the ISP responsible for the messages it conveys basically shuts it down as a medium of free communication, and that's a price that is way too high for protecting copyright holders.

Re:Given the right judges

[mpe]

The only point I can think of for the RIAA is that maybe there should be a process for shutting down a domain that is clearly violating international law.

Most issues of international law are nothing remotly to do with the RIAA also the origanisations involved tend to be governments

That raises all kinds of other issues, but pushing for amendments to international treaties might be an acceptable way for them to deal with their problem.

You'd end up with the same kind of issues as with the ICC, support from the US in principle, but opposition when it looks like their people might wind up amongst the accused.

It was inevitable

[corvi42]

Don't you think this sort of thing is inevitable? A big lumbering giant like RIAA is such a vulnerable target. Sure they might be able to clobber Napster, but as soon as they do, a dozen new services spring up, and new clever ideas like this spring up.

I think its pretty clear that this is the beginning of the end for the music industry as we know it.

Oh yeah... Here it comes....

[joshki]

Guys -- I think they finally bit off more than they can chew. If anyone can buy the justice system in the US it's AT&T and Sprint...

Seriously, though -- there's no way this will work in their favor. I'm sure AT&T and Sprint's lawyers are salivating over the fees they're going to earn beating ??AA back and forth around the legal system until they beg and scream for mercy. And the bad guys started it!

I don't agree with copying music without compensating the artist (note I didn't say record company) in some way, but this is like trying to hold the phone company responsible if someone phones a bomb threat in to a school. It's ludicrous.

Re:ok...

[jeffy124]

ok, that's probably the argument they're gonna be using. another poster indicated this is like sueing the state highway administration for an accident, or the electric company because of an electrical fire. (others exist, like gas canister makers for arson)

given the size of the companies named as defendants, they're lawyers will argue first amendment and/or make use of scenarios like those previously mentioned.

Fair rights has nothing to do with it

[lanner]

Dear Sir

The issue at hand has absolutely nothing to do with fair rights usage.

It is not your fair usage right to violate copyright holders by downloading all of the warez and mp3s that you so desire. If you want that, stick with cable TV. This is the Internet, an information sharing network -- if the information is not your's to publish, then don't.

The issue at hand is the question of if the communication network which provides access by Americans to a Chinese based system which violates United States law.

For people who violate copyright law by publishing duplicate copies of commercial software and copyrighted music and movies, I have no sympathy. Shut this server down.

The Chinese website in question is clearly violating United States law. It may also be violating Chinese law, but to this I am not knowing.

This action seems very similar to the legal pursuits of the French government against eBay and Yahoo for posting content which is illegal in their country, but not in the U.S. Specifically, they were after WWII memorabilia, and anything deemed to be offensive by the French government.

Are ISPs which provide transit access to illegal material themselves responsible for the illegal material itself, even though it is under a different administrative domain outside of their control, and outside of the control of the U.S. government?

I do not think so. This is like holding the phone companies responsible for someone who did something illegal using their network. The ISPs in question do not condone or approve of the server in question which is violating U.S. law.

I hope you do not condone it either. There are enough mp3 downloading fools on this network already. I use the Internet to publish a daily journal, to share pictures that I take with my digital camera, and to communicate ORIGINAL WORKS by myself to others, and to obtain their own original works.

Fair rights ain't got nothing to do with it.

And I THANK the RIAA

[TheDarkRogue]

If it wern't for them trying to have that site blocked, I would have never found out about it :)

The host listen4ever isn't too bright...

[Omega]

The host of the mp3 site isn't too bright. Sure the site may be located in China, but they have actual Amazon.com referrer-ids for the "Buy this Album" link. The MPAA can't get you if you're in China, but they can get your referrer fees from a US based corporation. :-D

They will lose!

[AlgUSF]

The RIAA is screwing themselves. I never heard of this site, but now I have. I bet this site is going to have to get a bigger server, maybe a US10000. A lot of my friends didn't use Napster, until they saw Lars Ulrich (Metallica) on prime time TV denouncing it.

Hmm.

[Renraku]

Don't backbone providers have a clause that denies their guilt in any illegal activity going over their own lines, instead shunting the blame to the user? (where it should be) I mean, God forbid you track down the actual offenders. Instead, track down the people that make the offense possible. If this gets through, expect the Internet (at least according to the US) to be shattered by the RIAA and MPAA, and whatever other group decides that they should be able to give us ethics and opinions to abide by.

Re:ok...

[Moonshadow]

I think that legal requirement is something like "We have more money than God himself, and will sue you into oblivion unless you comply."

Section 404 Alpha subsections 19-87 of the Evil Corporation's Handbook.

No More Music

[ajs]

I like music. I used to buy a lot of it. I downloaded a lot of it too. No more.

I'll go listen to local bands play in local clubs. I'll buy or download music from a band's own Web site.

Downloading corporate music doesn't really get me anything, really. No more of my time, money or brain-power will be devoted to such a corrupt industry.

Whoa

[WndrBr3d]

Does anyone else see the irony in the US blocking CHINESE web sites ??

Re:ok...

[Sancho]

If you read the article, you'll see that they're suing to get a court order requiring the blocking of the site. They're /attempting/ to set a legal precedent where there is not yet one as opposed to suing /because/ of a legal precedent in order to get money.

Re:Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that li

[ncc74656]

Just viewing the site launched endless popup ad windows some of which resized themselves to fill the whole screen, popped more windows when you closed the old ones, etc.

The lizard is your friend...I went there, didn't see any popups at all, and refused their cookies (from multiple servers).

Outmatched

[man_ls]

The RIAA is outmatched this time. The telecom industry isn't just going to lie down on this one...I see this being the starting point of either having the RIAA dissolved, or having copyright law redefined...

I honestly do think that the backbone providers should just "turn off" the RIAA's web site, and stop taking their money.

Then the RIAA would be in a bit of a bind, wouldn't it...

And in other news...

[cnkeller]

The RIAA domain has been dropped by its ISP. Something about turnabout being fair play....

How are ISPs violating copyright?

[NanoGator]

I dont understand how the RIAA could make a case. How is the ISP violating copyright? The ISP is a non-descriminant transport vehicle. They shouldn't have to know what's in the packets and then police them. The RIAA shouldn't get special powers to get sites blocked for such a silly offense.

This is a serious problem with the digital world. The more digital things become, the more individual things can be blocked. Imagine if the power-grid was digital. Your computer would need a form of address to get the appropriate amount of power for your device. Then imagine the power company could specifically disallow power to that device. In a case like that, I could see the RIAA suing an electric company to not provide power to computers that go to an offending site. It's ridiculous that the RIAA could win, but if a case like this one goes the right way, it could establish a bizarre precedant.

I guess what I'm saying is: Just because somebody has the power to block this type of thing, doesn't mean they are obligated to. The RIAA has laws in their favor to go after somebody who does something like Listen4Ever has. The ISP's shouldn't have to pay because the RIAA isn't willing to do the necessary investigation to find out how to shut that server down. They're not the ones committing the crime, they are not even aiding them in copyright infractions. If the ISP's aren't treating them any differently than they are treating anybody else, I don't see how they can be held accountable if somebody breaks the law.

No organization should have that kind of power.

Re:How are ISPs violating copyright?

[foniksonik]

i agree...

You might as well sue GM, Toyta, and all the other car manufacturers and all their vendors for supplying transportation for pirates who transport copied CDs in cars.

Why not sue China instead? Lobby your government to stop favored trade status with the countries that are stealing your property. This is starting to look like the 'war on drugs'.

They have opened pandora's box and who knows what th end result will be.

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.

Why are you so surprised?

[TheSHAD0W]

I wasn't surprised. It was obvious to me how far intellectual property companies would go to keep milking their audiences.

The next step will be to sue people making equipment or software that doesn't include DRM controls. Yup, Microsoft is facilitating piracy, since their operating system allows the DivX codec to play ripped DVDs. So is Intel, since their processors will run operating systems that don't include digital rights management protections.

-- free the information --

that's why the subpoena was invented

[phr2]

They should be suing the John Doe site owner and subpoena'ing the advertisers, if they're really trying to find the site owners. Really though, what they're up to is finding a roundabout way to seize control of human to human communication by saying they decide what traffic telecoms and ISP's can transfer.

the RIAA's future

[Ellen Ripley]

Eventually the RIAA is going to have to realize that album sales aren't going to be bringing in the big bucks anymore...

You're shoveling the RIAA's spin. The recording labels are not losing money because of mp3 downloads. They still make huge money; profits go up every year. The idea that mp3 downloads are hurting sales is pure RIAA propaganda.

... [they] are going to have to focus on promoting concerts, t-shirts, and other things that can't be ripped from the web.

They probably will try this, but right now artists live on ancillary income way more than on retail sales. I don't think it's a good idea for that income to start going to the labels now.

More important, the technology finally exists for artists to make and distribute their music without any need for the labels. Why should artists give 95% of their sales revenue to a bunch of suits? That money could go into the artists' pockets, and it should.

Ellen

You too, can live the cracksmoke lifestyle!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Heh.

I'm sorry, but this sounds too much like the argument about why "Micro$oft will never endorse DRM".

Now we have Palladium.

This is getting very annoying

[gblues]

Can we please call a moratorium on the use of the Underpants Gnomes bit? This is getting as bad as "All your base," and at least AYBABTU had a string of funny photoshops to give it some merit!

Thank you,

Nathan

Re:This is getting very annoying

[_Sprocket_]

Oh yea. You did it now. Like the unholy union of Microsoft and Starbucks beget Slate... you've opened to door to AYBABTU/Step-Profit hybrids.

Step1: Collect Base
Step2: ???
Step3: All your base are belong to us!

Re:This is getting very annoying

[_Sprocket_]

Hey... fine... you can be the first lined up against the wall to be shot. I'd hate to cut in line. ;)

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

[Amazing Quantum Man]

MOD PARENT UP!

fight the lameness filter!

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.

Broadband still hasn't caught up...

[t0qer]

Where is my subspace communications capability? I was promised flying cars and subspace communication ability by 2000. Not only that where is my computers that try and kill people. Weren't we supposed to be headed for Jupiter by now?

I should be able to go anywhere and watch any movie while my computer tries to kill me in the silence of space.

i hereby

[Gavitron_zero]

wish to announce my lawsuit against the major players involved in paving and maintaining roads. It seems that stolen cars are sometimes driven on these roads, and we have to put a stop to that.

LOL, thanks for telling me about the site, RIAA

[dh003i]

Thank you, dear RIAA, for informing me of that site which I had no idea even existed.

Now, I think I'll go and download some Christina Aguilera music. I don't particularly like her (more of a B. Spears person), but since its free, I'll take it.

Seriously, ISPs have no business blocking web sites, or otherwise censoring the net. They are there to connect people to the internet, not to block them off from parts of it that special interests think we shouldn't see.

U.S. Domain name?

[SealBeater]

From the article:

"The suit states that despite Listen4ever's connections to
China, the site uses a U.S. domain name..."

Maybe I am just slow today, but what exactly is a "U.S. Domain Name"? It's not
Listen4ever.us.

SealBeater

This can only mean one thing...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Time to invest in companies developing encryption.

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:ok...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

given the size of the companies named as defendants, they're lawyers will argue first amendment and/or make use of scenarios like those previously mentioned.

They will very likely fall back on their "common carrier" status -- meaning the law demands that they carry anyone who wants it, but then exempts them from exercising content control. It's meant to make sure that, for example, the phone company doesn't discriminate against someone and just stop their phone service.

Re:ok...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

This is just stupid, if the ISPs are guilty of the copywrite[sic] infringment, than arn't the power companies guilty for powering the net?

That's just silly ... that argument could never hold up in

[fade to black screen]

Something the ISPs could do..

[Anonvmous Coward]

... they could block all domains relating to the RIAA. Their reasoning could be "Well, you expect us to enforce your copyrights, so we're prventing people from copying data from your site and resposting it elsewhere. This is what you wanted. I mean, somebody could copy and paste images from your site and use them illegally!"

The RIAA would be forced to sue the ISP's to unblock them. Then the ISP's could be court ordered to remove all the blocks and let free-speech reign. Either the ISP's have the right to choose which sites they block, or they cannot block any at all. So either the RIAA earns their own blockage, or the ISP's cannot be forced to block anybody they don't want to.

Legal equivalent

[Reziac]

This is the legal equivalent of suing the contractor who maintains your local streets, because some people used said streets as a getaway route after a bank robbery -- a robbery that happened over the border *in another country*.

Avoiding U.S. law

[clem.dickey]

"Listen4ever has clearly located itself in China to avoid the ambit of United States copyright law," the suit said.

Interesting. The same device that the U.S. is using to hold prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. Too bad we (America) didn't think to patent that practice. Though if we did, RMS would probably object ...

This could be a good thing...

[Registered Coward v2]

Look at it this way - if a backbone provider begins to block traffic based on content, then:

1. - they may put their common carrier status at risk; and,

2. - other illegal content should be blocked as well.

So, if you live in a state where spam is illegal, a natural extension would be for the backbone carriers to block spam sites (of course, the problem with open relays means all of the far east may be blocked, but hey, spam is spam.) Of course, when jurisdictions start forcing the blockage of legitimate (read RIAA member) music sites because of language or other content, cutting them off from their customers, the RIAA may wish they never went down this road.

Not that I really think forcing the pipe owners to block content is a good idea, but the law, like landminds, can harm friend and foe alike. It's all in how a weapon is used.

Re:This could be a good thing...

[fliplap]

of course, the problem with open relays means all of the far east may be blocked, but hey, spam is spam.

No biggie, I, as well as a large amount of other companies and individuals, already block all of the far east. No useful mail comes from there anyway. There's no point to contacting the providers since most don't speak english and the ones that do don't care if thier relays are open.

Re:This could be a good thing...

[MajroMax]

1. - they may put their common carrier status at risk; and,

Firstly, common carrier status comes with the _requirement_ of content-blind transportation.

Secondly, the only reason the RIAA has a case here is that I don't believe it's been established that Internet backbones posess legal common-carrier status yet; it's been talked about and assumed, but I don't think it's been codified into law. If we get a reasonable judge on this one, common-carrier for networks may become the legal precedent.

RIAA's (revised) obligitary business plan post

[srvivn21]

You have this out of order...

1) Profit! (They already are profiting)
2) Screw customers
3) ...

Re:Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that li

[Sancho]

The site is now slashdotted :) It now points to:

http://www.mp3mediaworld.com/

Which is not the site I saw when I clicked the link the first time :)

Re:naiive

[EvanED]

The problem is that if they go along with the RIAA and censor, they'll then be subjected to 100 bajillion other censor requests.

boycott!!!

[global_diffusion]

From the article... According to the suit the artists whose works are being unlawfully copied and distributed through Listen4ever are: Christina Aguilera, Bruce Springsteen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eric Clapton, Barbara Streisand, Lenny Kravitz and Whitney Houston

Now we know which bands not to buy music from anymore. Thank you RIAA.

*cough* Bullshit! *cough*

[mark-t]

Well, as of late, the RIAA has been pushing the theory of "contributory copyright infringement". In essence, it goes like this: You didn't infringe any copyrights. But you helped someone else infringe them. So you're just as guilty. As the .sig says, it's sort of a dumb logic that undermines any concept of personal responsibility. But the courts have been remarkably well-disposed toward this insanity, so the RIAA might win.

Then they are just as guilty for aiding in copyright infringement for providing their material on digital media in the first place. If they had never left vinyl, none of this would be a problem.

So there! Nyah!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[fm6]

Yes we're talking AT&T. But remember that AT&T is on the financial skids. As is C&W and WorldCom, the parent of UUNet. Don't know about the other defendant, Advanced Network Services. These companies are all big, but they may not be able to afford the legal battle.

Notably missing are two leading ISPs owned by one of the plaintiffs: AOL and CompuServe. I'd be interested to know if those ISPs are blocking this site.

Well, at least they're suing, not blacklisting. My big fear has always been that freedom-loving ISPs would be made to restrict user access, or lose their backbone connections. And AOL/TW is a big backbone provider.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[pythorlh]

Notably missing are two leading ISPs owned by one of the plaintiffs: AOL and CompuServe. I'd be interested to know if those ISPs are blocking this site.

Yes and no. I've got RoadRunner, and Listen4Ever.com automagically routes me to MP3Mediaworld.com, which looks nothing like the cached version of Listen4Ever that Google gives me. So, there blocking it, but in a backhanded way that doesn't even let the average mp3 leech know what they're missing.

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.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[Gantoris]

Im in Australia and im getting a silent redirect, it appears to be somwhere inside spiritlink.net namespace. At least thats where the trace diverges.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[unsinged int]

Same here with Verizon.

Do a 'host listen4ever.com' and use the IP as the first part of the address to get around it.

Doesn't seem to work for downloading music from them though, as I keep getting messages about the virtual directory listing being denied.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[tuxedo-steve]

Hey, I'm getting the same thing in freaking Australia. You know why? When you hit www.listen4ever.com/, you get a 302 Moved Temporarily.

This isn't a `silent redirect', kids. This isn't a global conspiracy. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[phalse phace]

And it's the same with MSN. But then again, should I be surprised?

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[Spazzz]

I've tested this from Cable and Wireless, BellSouth, and AT&T's networks and below is what I get. It might be interesting to note that traceroutes do end up in China, so it looks like the packets are making it there unmolested, but the web server on the other end is what's making the redirect:

$ host www.listen4ever.com
www.listen4ever.com has address 61.136.61.40
$ telnet www.listen4ever.com 80
Trying 61.136.61.40...
Connected to www.listen4ever.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.listen4ever.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 04:23:11 GMT
Location: http://www.mp3mediaworld.com
Content-Length: 149
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGQGQQVBY=BNCJFELBHICBPNLLAPKEOKBC; path=/
Cache-control: private

<head><title>Object moved</title></head>
<body><h1>Object Moved</h1>This object may be found <a HREF="http://www.mp3mediaworld.com">here</a>.</bod y>

It's also interesting to note that it appears that BellSouth uses UUNet for *all* of their transit. At least every traceroute I've done out of BellSouthLand has gone through UUNet's network, and the traceroute to www.listen4ever.com is no exception. As for www.mp3mediaworld.com. I don't see anything there that's worth the RIAA getting their panties in a bunch except for some links to sites that can help find MP3s. -Jeff

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[BrookHarty]

Strange. Lets take a little look at the this website/server.

Proxomitron
GET http://www.listen4ever.com/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.listen4ever.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; I USE MOZILLA, Support Mozilla www.mozilla.org)
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,tex t/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,video/x-mng,image/pn g,image/jpeg,image/gif;q=0.2,text/css,*/*;q=0.1
A ccept-Language: en-us, en;q=0.50
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1, utf-8;q=0.66, *;q=0.66
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

+++RESP 112+++
HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 04:25:24 GMT
Location: http://www.mp3mediaworld.com
Content-Length: 149
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGQGQQVBY=HNHJFELBEKKDNLLOJBCNPHHP; path=/
X-Cache: MISS from sexy
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
+++CLOSE 112+++

Lynx

[iw@sexy] ~ >lynx -noredir -dump -source http://www.listen4ever.com/
snip
This object may be found @ HREF="http://www.mp3mediaworld.com"

nmap
Interesting ports on (61.136.61.40):
(The 1542 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port State Service
21 ftp
25 smtp
80 http
85 mit-ml-dev
135 loc-srv
139 netbios-ssn
1021 unknown
1025 listen
1030 iad1
1433 ms-sql-s
3389 msrdp
6666 irc-serv

Port 6666, looks like some gnutella clone or something..
-> repeats this line "f:\songlib/-NeAmL/IN/s/w1r`O"

I think this is a persons workstation, so they are redirecting to save bandwidth. (IMHO)

BTW, /. junk filter bites.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[purplemonkeydan]

I'm with Telstra BigPond Broadband in Australia, and I don't get redirected at all.

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[nels_tomlinson]

I've seen the comments which say that the site itself is redirecting us to mp3mediaworld. When I tried to go look, I got ``No web site is configured at this address''. When I try

$ host listen4ever.com
listen4ever.com. has address 61.136.61.40
$lynx http://61.136.61.40/

I get the same thing. Looks as if he got slashdotted!

Re:Deep Pockets and Deeper Affiliations

[orthogonal]

silently redirecting web sites is kind of like sticking someone in prison incommunicado so no one can hear what they have to say.

That would never happen here in America. American citizens have habeus corpus rights.

Well, unless a government beaurocrat declares them to be "enemy combatants".

Of course, I'm not criticizing the government. After all, John Ashcroft told me that doing so just aids the terrorists.

So help out your country: shred the Constitution to make packing materials for the RIAA's CDs.

Can't find the guys actually doing something wrong

[jonnythan]

Listen4ever has clearly located itself in China to avoid the ambit of United States copyright law," the suit said.

Seems to me that since they can't find the guys who are actually doing something wrong, they'll go after the guys who have the big, deep pockets.

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.

Re:Don't Buy Music From These Labels

[Hektor_Troy]

And that helps how?

RIAA will just claim, that the reason they're records are selling less and less is because of piracy. And that the reason the non-RIAA-labels sell more and more is because it's drivel that noone wants to pirate.

You're ass-invaded if you do, and you're ass-invaded if you don't.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Re:Don't Buy Music From These Labels

[sessamoid]

That helps by actually getting money to worthy artists. This isn't all about screwing the RIAA, you know. I still buy CD's from indepedent labels, but at least I know they're more likely to be getting a decent share of the money that way. For those enslaved by RIAA labels, there's always Musiclink, for when you do feel like screwing the RIAA as well as paying the artists.

Thanks /.

[freebsd45]

Thanks for pointing me to Tori Amos' new album, one which won't be released for more than two whole months! Wooo hooo! I knew reading /. every day would come in handy sometime in my life.

Re:ok...

[topham]

Thats the fantasic part of all this:

If they take it to court and the RIAA loses they lose BIG TIME.

They would never be allowed to take a similar approach.

Re:Suing your DNS provider

[jonabbey]

Companies sue other companies that they do business with all the time. If ATT.NET dropped RIAA's DNS, RIAA would simply have grounds for an additional suit, depending on the terms of the contract between AT&T and RIAA.

Actually, what Al Gore invented was Spam.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Since Al Gore invented the internet.

Actually what Al Gore did was promote legislation giving commercial users unrestricted access to the Internet. Up until then it had been a government, educational-insitiution, and suppliers-to-them sort of thing, and commercial speech was largely banned.

Al's legislation largely spiked attempts by the users and operators of the Internet to block commercial speech. At first this just gave people posting ads to email lists and news groups an excuse. But eventually the first spammers began harvesting addresses and sending automated email (apparently starting with an ad for such email software B-( at least that's the first spam I got) and the flood was on.

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...

Re:Actually, what Al Gore invented was Spam.

[ImaLamer]

Money vs Technology huh?

Re:naiive

[Iguanaphobic]

The problem is that if they go along with the RIAA and censor, they'll then be subjected to 100 bajillion other censor requests.

All at a reasonable implementation fee. Say $5k per request per ISP.

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...

Do that when they start DOSing. B-)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

For one we can ask all the big major backbones (whom the RIAA is sueing) to block their website at the routing points :)

That will be especially interesting when/if the RIAA gets congressional authorization to DOS P2Pers.

"Those guys were flooding our network with packets and DoSing some of our customers' customers. That's against our acceptable use policies and it was chewing up our backbone bandwidth. So we had to cut them off. No, it's just a coincidence that they were already suing us..."

Crappy music jokes aside

[Breakfast Pants]

If the site being blocked were a child pornography site, would you the general slashdotter have the same reactions? I FUCKING HOPE SO.

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[NeMon'ess]

I would have a similar reaction. The internet as we know it is threatened by regional restrictions on content. If the USA is allowed to block content that violates its laws, why can't China, Egypt, and France? I don't know of any countries where child pornography is legal, but they may exist. If so there are diplomatic measures one country can take against another to hopefully get the law changed. It should be up to users to obey the laws of their countries, not the ISPs job to determine what can and cannot be viewed.

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:Crappy music jokes aside

[DDX_2002]

It take a really ballsy kiddie porn maker to sue somebody for copyright infringement of their porn.

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[Breakfast Pants]

Wow a literalist! I haven't seen many of those here on slashdot. VERY ORIGINAL SENSE OF HUMOR!!

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[GMontag451]

I don't know of any countries where child pornography is legal, but they may exist.

There are many countries where what would be considered child pornography in the US wouldn't be in that country. For example, countries where the legal age of pornography is 17 or 16. This isn't even a moral issue, as "child" pornography is still illegal in those countries, its just that there is a difference of opinion on what age you cease to be a child.

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[Anonvmous Coward]

"If the site being blocked were a child pornography site, would you the general slashdotter have the same reactions?"

No. They're not equal to compare. Child pornography is totally illegal. Music downloads are not.

Re:Crappy music jokes aside

[NeMon'ess]

You're quite right about the age of consent. It would seem though that hard-core pedophiles prey on pre-pubescent children, while a larger group wants children just entering puberty.

Fuck it, I'm sick of it.

[Guppy06]

Between the DMCA and DRM and Congress helping corps trash Title 9 and the First Amendment I've had my fill. The only thing members of Congress (like this guy) seem to be doing is opening their wallets to lobbyists and campaign contributors and don't seem to give a rat's ass about the people they're supposed to be representing. I'm getting to the point where I fear the only way things will change is if I do it myself.

I turned 25 last month. I'm a resident of my state. I've still got three months until November. Does anybody know of any "Running for Congress for Dummies" websites or books out there? I think I've found most of the necesary paperwork but I don't think that's all there is to it...

What happens if

[phr2]

Let's say:

• I'm a music pirate in China with no computer and no internet connection, but I do have a telephone and an answering machine.
• I put a Metallica song on my outgoing message tape, so anyone who calls my number hears the song.
• I publish my phone number all over the world.
• The RIAA for some reason can't locate me through the Chinese phone company, so they sue to make US phone carriers block calls to my number.
• At no point in any of this are computers or the internet involved.

Would they (the RIAA) get anywhere with that lawsuit? I really don't know. But if there's a reasonable answer, I'd hope the answer for the current Internet situation is the same answer.

Re:ok...

[Salsaman]

Well, as of late, the RIAA has been pushing the theory of "contributory copyright infringement". In essence, it goes like this: You didn't infringe any copyrights. But you helped someone else infringe them. So you're just as guilty.

Cool. I never knew about this site until the RIAA brought it to my attention. Therefore, if I download anything from there, the RIAA are themselves contributing to copyright infringement.

Hey RIAA, you better go and sue yourselves !

Re:What's next...

[brain159]

no no no, they have to go inside the skull, round at the back, and have that nifty black rubber whip antenna sticking up above your ear.

then they just hack your brainstem so you can't speak english anymore, only their DRM-speak, and they're sorted

wanted, 1 copy of Nam-Shub of Enki for WindowsXP

Works okay for me...

[alphaseven]

Funny, site works for me, the only annoyances is that new links open in a new window and that it's pretty slow.

Tried downloading a nirvana track here with explorer, and not a single pop-up. The quality only went up to 96kbps and it was a wma not an mp3, but the site worked better than most mp3 warez sites. And it's slow, Kazaa Lite is the faster service.

Sure there's not any spyware on your system that's causing the pop-ups?

Re:Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that li

[ColaMan]

Via Telstra (australia), I still get the original listen4ever site. And I saturate my ADSL (50KB/sec) when I load pages from that site... perhaps your upstream ISP is being devious?

Re:Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that li

[ncc74656]

Interesting. When I try the site, I get redirected to another site called mp3mediaworld.com. Did you find the same thing ?

It happened with some of the links. Links to actual music files came back as garbled text...my understanding is that they're supposed to be ZIP archives (why?), but their server's MIME type settings must be seriously fscked since Mozilla tries to display it as text. (Hell, I have Apple II archive files here, and clicking the links with Mozilla brings up the proper download dialog. Two lines in $APACHE_ROOT/conf/mime.conf is all it took for that...and I'd expect that the MIME types for ZIP archives are already configured in every webserver out there.)

Re:Yeesh, turn off javascript if you click that li

[prostoalex]

It has tons of "legitimate" advertising including audio devices, Visa cards, etc.

Actually if the site owners are indeed located in China, the business might be legitimate.

In Russia, for example, you can create your own musical server, just like the mentioned site provided you pay the nominal compulsory licensing fees enforced by Russian copyright laws. The term compulsory also implies that a label is forced to grant a license to whoever asks for it, provided that they pay the fee for every song that has been downloaded. Check Zvuki.ru (site is in Russian) for an example of such a site, it has legit MP3's and pays labels. More about compulsory licensing scheme (which was invented in the US, by the way) can be found in Lessig's "Future of Ideas".

Impossible

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

That would make that America would comply with the Kyoto treaty.

Business opportunity?

[kcbrown]

And when backed into a corner by the legal system, businesses usually prefer to just pay the fee to the troll under the bridge rather than fight it for a chance to pass for free.

Hmm....

1. Become a Slashdot troll. Position yourself under a bridge.
2. ???
3. Profit!

:-)

Great Firewall of China

[stinkydog]

If the RIAA is so all fired up about stopping this sight, why not pay China to do it? They already have the firewall in place. A few greenbacks to some 'key officials' and the IP adress just dissapears. Heck for a few more buck you could get whoever's hosting it "reeducated".

SD

Re:ok...

[Saeger]

Only in a bizzaro universe could a site like ShareReactor be blacklisted from the Internet for a supposed reason as stupid as "contributory copyright infringement".

And in the very very very very unlikely case (I need to believe that) that the backbone providers don't have any backbone and cave, you just know something OTHER than DNS will be layered (securely) ontop of tcp/ip. Assuming that the backbone ISPs don't also outlaw random data (i.e. suspicious encrypted activity) crossing their lines, there's not much they can do anyway.

--

Warner vs. Warner

[eswan]

'Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as' ... 'Warner Brothers Records, a unit of AOL Time Warner'

So, since I can get to this site via RoadRunner, will Warner Brothers be suing Time Warner Cable?

Re:New Linkin Park

[ImaLamer]

You know... I stuck a pencil in my ear and that song is still stuck in my head.

AND IT'S LOUDER THAN THE RINGING...

IN THE END IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER

With the direction America is heading

[Aexia]

the next time some redheck jarhead incoherently screams "Love it or leave it" as a response to any argument, I may have to take him up on that offer.

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:And the RIAA doesn't go after radio?

[forkboy]

You can't every song by just about any artist upon demand through either the radio or XM. You can over the internet. That's why they're claiming CD sales are down....because some people are downloading the music instead of buying the CD. (But let's not forget the people that find a few songs by an artist they've never heard, decide they like them, and then go buy every CD they've ever made )

Maybe if they offered low cost internet purchase options people would stop pirating like crazy. Who can afford $15-20 per CD anymore?

Stupid solution

[Swaffs]

Why go to all that trouble and bad PR to have ISP's block a site when you can just get a story about it posted here and have it slashdotted?

All the recording industry ever does is whine

[Skapare]

All the recording industry ever does is whine. If they would actually put up a real music site online where people could actually honestly pay for music, at a price that does not include the costs of manufacturing and distributing CDs (but would include the cost of running a site and the associated bandwidth, of course), then I believe a lot more people would honestly pay for the music. The price should be about $2 per 60 minute album, but definitely not more than $5.

This needs to be in format(s) to allow it to be played on any computer or any playback device. As long as they want to impose this DRM shit, then people are going to find ways around it, and as they do, sales will be lost in greater amounts than DRM would protect. If they are going to discriminate against certain sectors of the market and not sell music that they can play, then they should not whine when the people in those sectors find a way to get the music without paying.

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.

Ugh

[retro128]

And to think, Peek-A-Booty was developed for people who live under oppressive governments censoring the web. If things go the RIAA's way, and I think they can pay enough judges to make it happen, we'll be needing it ourselves. How ironic. Land of the free and home of the brave, eh? Or, should that be land of the pretend-to-be-free and home of corporate interests?

att blocking.

[BenTheDewpendent]

it seems ATT broadband is redirecting well at least in my area...

disapointed. i hope they win over RIAA. greedy bastards...

Re:And the RIAA doesn't go after radio?

[alizard]

Piracy is a red herring. RIAA wants to block any content providers their don't control completely.

The arguments about lower quality music selling CDs is one of the two core factors of the RIAA business model. If you like a song played on FM or via any MP3 provider, you'll buy the CD, it's a lot less hassle than a 50 meg CD audio and you get full quality and all the nuances you paid for when you got your big bucks stereo or Dolby Pro Logic system.

The difference? If I'm an independent artist, I can upload to any P2P or any Internet Radio provider that's left. If listeners like what they here on P2P, they'll tell their friends. If the owner/DJ of a Internet Radio station likes it, they'll play it on the "air". No money changed hands.

As an independent artist, (which I'm not) I can NOT get access to a FM radio station playlist without paying a shitload of money to an "independent promoter" who pays the radio station in an under or over the counter transaction. Even given the money, the good timeslots go to the regular customers, all of which are RIAA labels.

So RIAA labels have a monopoly on FM radio content. That's where the sheeple go to hear "new music". Anything you hear on commercial radio is a commercial for an RIAA label band or musician. (A series of Salon articles lays out the whole deal) That's the OTHER core factor in the RIAA label business model, exclusive access to FM radio.

If an artist goes platinum without record company backing, he'll have made $5M-$10M. If one goes platinum for the first time with a label behind him, he might break even against his record label advances, partially due to legit advances but mainly due to Enron-style economics.

The day one goes platinum without a record label, the business model used by all the RIAA labels just went into the dumper.

Metallica will hear "this guy went platinum and made 5 MILLION DOLLARS OFF HIS FIRST RECORD?"... and I predict they will be among the very first to tell their lawyers "GET US OUT OF THIS RECORD LABEL CONTENT NOW!!!". However, this will probably be page 10 of Billboard, that issue of the magazine will be the first "all lawsuit" issue.

With Internet Radio and P2P unplugged, the record industry can say to an artist "You make a living with us or not at all, without us, the only people you can sell CDs to are the ones who show up at your gigs."

Without exclusive control by labels over any method a musician can use to get to the public, all a RIAA label is, is a ruinously expensive source of venture capital, both in terms of money and personal integrity, and if they change their mind about promoting a record, the musician can;t legally work.

Anyone who talks about piracy is either a conscious shill for the industry or parroting industry propaganda. Check out what Courtney Love and Janis Ian have to say about this. (presumably you know how to use Google)

MP3s and songs played back on analog FM are promotional tools, NOT products.

What's really weird about this

[Milo_Mindbender]

This site is strange, every time I connect to it with a different machine, I'm redirected to a different site. My (linux) PC sent me to www.lmp3.net, my (windows) laptop went to www.listen4ever.com and my home (windows) machine went to www.mp3mediaworld.com. Maybe this is why they are having trouble tracking the thing down!

Question...

[BrookHarty]

Any lawyers know, Can we counter SUE with the telcos, for trying to censor the Inet access I pay for? Get a couple million people to sign up. Hell, lets find some small town, where the Judge is a card carrying EFF member. :)

If its all legal battles, why cant we fight back? Why are we so powerless? Why cant we win?

-
I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. - J. Edgar Hoover

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

Try this link - it works

[myov]

After telnetting to the server (port 80), I discovered that it runs on IIS. After probing, I discovered that http://www.listen4ever.com/default.htm seems to work, without redirecting.

(FWIW, I redirect too, using Rogers HiSpeed)

Re:ok...

[Hrothgar The Great]

I believe that's why he specified that it was a long distance phone call - so that some of the carriers of his conversation would have no control over what he does or whether he is connected to the network. It makes his analogy pretty solid.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, PEOPLE

[alizard]

I just spent some time googling and searching at the THOMAS US Congressional legislation Website. I did this because while the record industry is driven by insane greed that they've managed to escalate to an active danger to liberty in the entire world, they aren't remotely close to that stupid. If they were, they wouldn't be dangerous.

The only reference I could find to "Recording Revenue Collection Act" was at uncoveror.

The record labels pay independent promoters lots of money per song to get on the radio which then goes in part to radio stations, far more than they could possibly collect from end users. Why? Because most people find out about music they buy from FM radio.

They discourage people from listening to FM, they've broken their business model.

Yes, the idea you describe is insane. If Hollings introduced such a thing, RIAA would unplug its campaign support immediately.

If Hilary Rosen took an idea into her head to get Hollings to write anything like that, her employers would not only consider her insane, they'd probably do their best to get her locked up in a booby hatch.

I should have checked the site first. Here ar a set of stories on their front page.

MAFIA TO OFFER PRE-PAID ILLEGAL SERVICES

MICROSOFT DEVELOPING WINDOWS BSD

NEW DAWN BIOTECH ADMITS THAT CHICK'N IS REAL

OSAMA BIN LADEN MAY ATTACK FROM SPACE

THE UNCOVEROR IS AN ONION-STYLE HUMOR SITE, YOU IDIOT!

Bring in Eric Raymond

[Epeeist]

> And what are the best legal methods for kicking the RIAA where it hurts?

I understand that the American constitution allows you to be members of armed militias to prevent government becoming overly dominant.

What you seem to have is a weak government, with corporations taking over its functions. It would seem logical therefore to apply constitutional principles to what is the effective government of your country.

Dear Mr. RIAA Lawyers,

[Flounder]

Could you please call the lawyers of the MPAA and inform them of your brilliant plan. I need to find some new sites to download DVD rips from. Oh, and can you also contact the Software Publishers Association? I can't get all the files for the CD images for GTA3.

What RIAA really stands for...

[KC7GR]

...is (I think): "Remaining Intelligence Abruptly Atrophied."

Or perhaps "Real Idiots After Angst?"

How about "Robots Inventing Angular Alternators?"

C'mon... I'm not the only one who can think these up. Let's see some of that /. creativity! ;-)

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.

Powers that be there?

[vitus]

I think RIAA is not so mad to apply to the powers
that be there. They realize pretty well that not
every country in the world is Iraque or Afganistan.

China got five times more population than US.
quite a few nuclear missles and so, and some national honour too.

I think RIAA and US goverment would be afraid
of creating another sort of precedent - some powerful country saying "Go away with your stupid
laws, you are not an only force in this world"

It is far safer to them to treat American companies which they have much more ways to press on.

Re:Bulls**t......

[mpe]

And to, pirates purchase CDR's and CDR recorders with credit cards. So they are to blame for all the pirated MP3's. This is becuase, pirates backup MP3's and full copies of the raw data on CDR's which they bought on credit cards. thanks,

Best sue banks, since they manage credit cards too...
Alternativly maybe someone could sue the RIAA for not providing the music they want to listen to or not making artists they like rich...

cdnow

[yerricde]

Wherever will I download "Songs of Ocarina" and soundtrack to "Legends of the Fall" if they shut off access to this great site!!!!!

Here. Of course, you'll need a postal network address, a modem for the connection medium, and some client software.

Stop Buying Music and Listening to the Radio

[spirality]

Look,

We don't like this. So let's put our money where our mouths are. Stop buying from them, and stop buying from their sponsors. Stop listening to the radio stations that broadcast their crap, and encourage others to do the same. This kind of shit has to stop.

Yes, what I'm saying is boycott the music industry.

I don't listen to the radio anymore (pop music sucks anyway). I go and watch local bands in bars, and buy their CDs from them. It's good stuff too. You can always find someone in your area doing good stuff.

Also, there are tons of independent record labels. They also have good music. Buy from them.

Anyway,

That's my two cents.

Later.

-Craig

RIAA MPAA et al .. can kiss my ass

[-=Izzy=-]

http://roio.stradlin.com no banners, popups, or any of that sort of stuff. just 9 gigs of mp3's.

Seriously though, not every mp3 is subject to the RIAA.

Scare Tactic

[brad3378]

They don't care if this is a legitimate lawsuit.
By merely naming the website in the lawsuit surely hundreds of ISPs will block it for fear of being next.

Unfortunately, what they didn't count on was a bunch of Slashdotters bookmarking the site.

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.

Pounding sand would be more effective

[swb]

Really, do you think that there's any legal basis for the government of California to revoke the incorporation status of the RIAA? Even if there was some basis (and it would be weak on a good day), do you think that the elected government of California would have the political will to disband one of the most influential and significant business entities in the state? This would be paramount to the state of Texas doing the same for the oil business, New York state killing off NASD, and so on.

Sorry, but this is about as ignorant and ineffective as anything possibly could be. You might actually get farther writing the military and asking them not to kill people.

Re:Pounding sand would be more effective

[swb]

if a really large number of people became really pissed at corporations in general, and made enforcement of these existing provisions a big deal, there'd be more than enough ground to clean up this mess.

if, if, if. Most people are too eager to support corporations because either (a) they actually believe that corporations are doing them good, or (b) in spite of the bad things that the corporations do, they get a pretty reliable paycheck which pays the rent, buys food, etc or (c) all of the above.

Since anyone who votes Republican chooses (c), and most everyone else chooses (b) or (a), then where will the mandate for change come from?

This *can't* be happening,

[man_ls]

but I can't access the thing at all.

A traceroute of the connection shows that "p-3-0-r1-a-tjtj-1.cn.net" [202.97.38.98] is the last connection that works...after said point, everything's dead.

I imagine they're a 2nd-tier backbone provider because of my trace, it goes Alternet > CN.net.

Not good...or maybe they're just bogged down.

It's only a matter of time

[Our Man In Redmond]

before the big backbone providers start blocking 208.225.90.120.

That's in Tibet!

[absurd_spork]

• Tech Name............ luo qiang qiang
• Tech Address......... Linguo beilu
• Tech Address......... Lasa
• Tech Address......... 223211
• Tech Address......... Xizang
• Tech Address......... CHINA

That's Lhasa (= lasa) in Tibet (= xizang)!

Really interesting to see where this is run.

And a very interesting side note on the whole "US censors Chinese sites" issue.

Re:ok...

[Nygard]

It's even worse than that... now the doctrine is being interpreted as "You didn't infinge any copyrights, but you did nothing to prevent someone else from infinging, even though you had the means to do so.

Them again

[HiThere]

If the RIAA is for it, I'm again' it.
It they thing a lawsuit is good for them, then I hope they loose.
In the last year I can't think of a single thing they tried that was to my benefit, and most were at least tangentially damaging. So I just hope they go bankrupt quickly. I'm not really interested about whether or not they might be in the right "this time". They are so frequently in the wrong, that I assume that they are again (though I will admit I notice that this time I'm not as certain as sometimes).

If they pick me for the jury, they're going to need to dig to get reasons to knock me out (though I bet they'd just spend a preemptory challenge). I wouldn't actually lie, but I sure wouldn't volunteer any reason. And I feel that I would be deciding on the evidence. Past actions are a reasonable guide to future actions, and definitely color the estimated motives for known current actions.

Re:And the RIAA doesn't go after radio?

[alizard]

You got it. It does NOT take persuading the masses to collectively boycott RIAA. All it takes is for an indie to prove that one can make real money without the help of an RIAA label.

Hmmm... I'm not the best person to give you the list you're asking for... but here are 3 sites I know that have both downloadable MP3s and non-RIAA CDs for sale:

• Courtney Love. She was the first "name" artist to denounce record industry business practices publically and effectively. Bookmark and wait a couple of weeks, the site's down for upgrading.
• Janis Ian is the one who recently wrote some remarkable articles on piracy and the record industry which have been slashdotted, she also sees MP3s as promotional tool, not product.
• Elian Gedeon. She's an independent artist who's just beginning to get the word out about herself. I know who's going the e-commerce route to market her CDs and merchandise. "New music" by definition.
• Here is what should be a complete RIAA membership list. If the label isn't listed, it's safe to assume that it is NOT RIAA.

However, the great majority of artists you've never heard of who are selling their own CDs and making downloads available are non-RIAA. If in doubt, ask.

RIAA vulnerablities

[alizard]

1. Political: If the "geek community" builds an effective PAC (e.g. NOT geekpac), we can buy just as much political access as Hollywood can. Actually, more for the same amount of money, we have numbers as well as more money than they do. The average NRA member or AARP senior citizen makes quite a bit less than the average IT pro. Why do they have groups with political influence and we don't?

2. Business Model: If ONE artist goes platinum without the help of an RIAA label and announces $5-10M in profits, their business model crashes, their mainstream artists will be bailing. Perhaps we can accelerate this process. The linked post also explains why piracy is a red herring, a non-issue which is core to the RIAA disinformation campaign.

Re:RIAA vulnerablities

[Chris Johnson]

I don't think that guy has ever run a business. Do you know how tough it is to sell a million of anything? It's like those jokes:

1: record some music
2: ???
3: sell a million!

Never mind that 'platinum' is an RIAA certification...

I sound very negative, here. I don't mean to- it's just that this area, I know. I may not target pop demographics with my music but I know the rules... and you've got to come up with more attainable goals.

There's people out there really dedicated to building alternatives to RIAA distribution. You'll see in my URL above that I use one of them- Ampcast- not RIAA, not publically held, out there making this happen and with a long history of tough decisions well met. They are not a 'free mp3 hosting-???-profit!' site: you pay for them, but they beat what even most Slashdotters would be able to come up with, due to the range of services including the CD burn-to-order system, and the ability to get a UPC code for your CD much more cheaply than if you tried to get one yourself.

More importantly, they're a business- they do what they have to, to keep their independence so they can continue to offer musicians distribution that doesn't involve signing over your music to Vivendi (hint: mp3.com). They had to switch from free ad-supported to a paid hosting service, and musicians FREAKED and swore and you know what? Other free services have died and Ampcast is still around and hasn't altered its terms of service to make an IP grab on people's music. And some of the musicians who swore went out and tried to roll their own package of services, and got bills ten times the size of what Ampcast asks, and came back saying 'oops, hello again'- welcomed back, too.

I'm an online musician myself. I've had slashdotters write and say 'really liked your music, thanks'. I'd love to go 'yay! Yes, give ME that million sales!'. Certainly not turning people away- but that idea is not realistic. I can tell you, I don't care WHO you pick, it's not going to happen that way.

Better if some of you go out and shoot for TEN sales- hell, go out and shoot for 'my music is out there, distributed, buyable as a CD, all without use of any RIAA distribution channels'. More people need to be able to say that. I swear by Ampcast for that, but if you don't like Ampcast (or JavaMusic, or ElectronicScene) then get out there and roll your own! Might cost you more, you risk screwing up and going out of business, but I can't think of a better way to respond.

It _is_ possible to go up against the majors when they're weak- Motown happened that way, plus it was black-owned in an era where that was almost unthinkable. But you don't plan to sell a million- your plans are the details of how you do that, the million is the desired effect. Keep trying.

Re:RIAA vulnerablities

[alizard]

Oddly enough, I do run a business. No, I'm not selling 1M unit quantities. Your point?

I've also been around for a while, the first VC-funded software development company I worked for ran in a C-64 environment.

The fact that you can't sell 1M units without an RIAA label doesn't mean that it's impossible to sell 1M records on the Internet.

This is not to say that "YOU SUCK!", this is just saying that becoming a "hit" isn't guaranteed to be any easier just because one is marketing via the Internet.

However, neither of us has any reason to believe that this is impossible.

Let's say a well-known artist with a fanatic following finishes a contract committment and he runs through the numbers and decide not to renew with a major label because his profit from his next CD is higher even with a fraction of the sales generated by her last one...

Let's say somebody's career takes off 'the old fashioned way' based on Internet airplay from non-US Internet radio and word of mouth because everybody likes it.

Do you know why unknown artists suddenly become popular other than 'well, I guess the marketing must have really worked out'... 'the stars must have been right'... ? If you don't know how someone can go from zero to rock hero, don't say that nobody can do it on the Net.

My point is that not only is this not impossible, I think it's going to happen sooner or later. RIAA's problem is that they have to prevent it from happening anywhere for anybody.

Working with an independent artist now. We get CD-on-demand from where ampcast buys it. I don't expect to sell 1M units... I see the person in question as appealing to a niche market. I'm just hoping if we can get the pieces together and put enough effort into it, the artist gets to make a comfortable living.

Uhhhh

[greenrd]

That didn't sound like sarcasm to me. Perhaps you confuse the word "sarcasm" with the word "troll"?

Here's how it's done...

[allanj]

Great idea - all you need is campaign funding! Off the record, I know these two organizations that DESPERATELY needs a(nother) congressman. You could probably persuade them to give huge donations, in return for helping to make laws more ... managable ... to them. They're called the RIAA and the MPAA, and you can contact them by cal....

Oh wait...

ISP's Already Blocking the Site?

[EngineOfCuriosity]

I'm on msn, i cant get to the site...it gives me a 403 forbidden message.

Have isp's already blocked it...are they deciding for me what sites I can or cannot see?

It isn't about piracy or whether or not I am downloading music. I can't see the website period,and if following a link in a website or through an isp is illegal then why did yahoo news link to the site through thier newstory yesterday?

Re:ISP's Already Blocking the Site?

[xee]

I believe that the site has been removed from the web server that was hosting it. Try using a *real* web browser instead of Microshit Internet Exploder. You'll see the server's error page instead of the dumbed down one that IE shows you no matter what the actual error is. IE would show you the same error page if *your* internet connection was down.

Vexatious Littigant.

[sg_oneill]

Big stakes fighting huh? I've got an idea for em. You may not be able to do this over in the USA, but in Australia we have a legal concept where you can get someone suing you declared a "Vexatious Littigant". Basically if a littigant has a history of launching huge amounts of fucked up lawsuits, one can get them declared a vexatious littigant ("habitually suing asshole") to strangle off all the stupid lawsuits and wasting good court time

Imagine if RIAA and the move guys where declared vexatious. That'd hose em sommething bad.
But again, IANAL, so it's just a guess.