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RIAA Sues Backbone ISPs to Censor Website
prostoalex writes "Music labels filed a lawsuit against major Internet service providers for not blocking access to Listen4Ever.com, music site located in China. The defendants in the suit include AT&T Broadband, Cable & Wireless USA, Sprint Corp., Advanced Network Services and UUNET Technologies." Wow.
If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss your fair use rights good-bye.
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.
*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.
..they could start paying off government officials in China, it's worked well enough in the US.
- Peter
Thanks for the link slashdot this is better then Kazaa!
Nyquil = Nectar of the devil
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.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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?
"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!"
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
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.....
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).
1) Screw customers
2) Screw now former-customers
3) Censor the internet
4) ???
5) Profit!
"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!"
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. :-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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?
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"?
I can always find the coolest technology by just watching who they sue!
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
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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)
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
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.
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*
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.
* 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.
Look a monkey!
Does anyone else see the irony in the US blocking CHINESE web sites ??
The lizard is your friend...I went there, didn't see any popups at all, and refused their cookies (from multiple servers).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
"Derp de derp."
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.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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*.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
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.
The only good weather is bad weather.
It appears that they have a user-agent redirect setup to go to mp3mediaworld.com.
Any IE derivative browser gets to listen4ever, anything else gets mp3mediaworld.com.
Thanks to Ethereal and Mozilla's customisable user-agent setting, I can now actually get to the site in Mozilla and turn off those squillion pop-ups.
Oh and a big thanks to the RIAA for letting us know about this site
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Same with verizon....silent redirects to mp3mediaworld.com. Guess who seems to also be missing from the list of sued companies
Funny though when I went to www.listen4ever.com/software.htm, there was no redirect.
I will try to mod you up some more if I can, to get more people to notice.
badness 10000
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Strange. Lets take a little look at the this website/server.
x 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
/. junk filter bites.
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,te
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,
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