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RIAA Headway Dwindling
JKnowledge writes "This article points to the fact that Yahoo! and various other ISPs are joining in Verizon's fight for the privacy of thier users. Perhaps this silly debacle in the rights of Anonymous Cowards will soon lose steam and sink into the rot that it rose from."
Surely the RIAA will simply claim that terrorists are responsible for the piracy of their wares and, in the blink of an eye, Yahoo et all will be forced to hand over the information without the need for further proof.
:-(
America -- land of the free -- although perhaps not quite so free in a post Sept 11 world
Don't think that these companies are fighting for the privacy of their users. The companies are fighting so that they don't have to take responsibility for what their users do.
It's in their own best interests to help out the little guy on this one, but don't assume everybody's motivations align so well.
The battle won't be over until the RIAA is disbanded. Legal setbacks are meaningless other than as delays in pursuit of their goals. They have as much money and time as they need to chip away at consumer rights. Failure in any attempt they make simply means they'll come back again using different tactics.
I don't see the RIAA going away any time soon, so neither will the battle.
the RIAA will next time. Am i being a pessimist? Yes i am. But I think they will win. Entertainment industry---->Media------------>Positve press coverage------>re-election. they win. WE LOSE. sad.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Should we violate the rights of every citizen ACCUSED of being a criminal by the RIAA? The person in question is supposedly not a criminal until proven so under the American system of justice.
Everyone has certain rights (such as anonymity) until they commit a crime. Pirating music (whethey they're justified or not) is still a violation of copyrights. Why do ISPs have the right to refuse handing over the information when they can be considered criminals? Is it because they don't provide the actual connections for the P2P network?
Ah, but therein lies the problem, there is no due process under the DMCA. Just the mere accusation is enough.
Dselexic RIAA employee writes down an ip address wrong, switching the last two digits. Next thing you know is that someone is kicked off their connection, hauled into court under the No Electronic Theft Act, and they have to prove their innocence, rather than the accusser having to prove their guilt.
What's wrong with this picture?
The scenario changed when it became a criminal act and not a civil matter.
Come on, this legal bickering is for weasels. The problem isn't whether or not the DMCA's subpoena rules apply to P2P users, or any other legal technicality. The problem is that the copyright ownership industry is so lucrative, and it's that way because Congress has made it so, by obligingly making copyrights last longer and longer at the whim of the entertainment industry.
The recording industry wouldn't have anywhere near the power they have if their rights only lasted a few years, which was the original intent of copyright. It was meant to encourage creativity and inventiveness, not as a tool to keep anything valuable from ever dropping into public domain. But by extending copyrights again and again, people like Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) have given the copyright-ownership industry a golden goose, which they naturally want to keep alive forever.
If you want to help fix the problem, find out who your congressional reps are and write to them, on clean paper in an actual envelope, asking them to rollback copyright law to a sane level. I'd really like to see people actually exercise their freedom of speech in this matter, instead of lawyers merely using it as body armor.
Everybody want money
=> ISP want money
=> ISP want customers
=> ISP customers = internauts
=> internauts want fun as well as money
=> internauts want fun without paying (or at bargain price)
=> Internet surfin isn't that big fun
=> internauts want something else
=> something else = e.g. mp3 sharing
=> no p2p = no need 4 broadband
=> no cash 4 ISP
=> RIAA is an enemy of ISP
And what the hell is the RIAA trying to do?!?!??!?!
Yep, there is, barely. Now, I'm not going to claim this isn't somewhat self-inflicted: the music industry does unquestionably charge absurd amounts for material, it does unquestionably pack albums with a couple of decent tracks that get released as singles and then filler rubbish for the rest, and it does unquestionably produce lots of production line acts that just aren't very good right now. But none of these give you a right to break the law and rip them off.
If you don't like it, make like every other industry in the capitalist world and vote with your wallet: buy good stuff, don't buy anything else. They'll soon enough get the hint at that point. Just don't rip the last three Britney Spears CDs over Kazaa and then claim that the recording industry profits have been hit because they produce cheesy pop that no-one wants to buy.
And by the way, yes, I bought my copy of Windows (not with a new machine), I bought my copies of Baldur's Gate II, Deus Ex, Quake n, and so on, and my office does have legit licences for all the MS software we use (and everyone is very careful not to violate licensing agreements on more expensive software for which we have limited licences available).
Yawn. If you don't like it, take it out on the zillions of people who are ripping off the media industries wholesale and forcing them to go down that path. I don't like it either; I'm a member of a dancing club, and we routinely (and legitimately) shift music (all of which we've bought, and for which we have the appropriate public performance licences and such) onto premixed CDs and such. When we can't do that any more, our lives will be more difficult, and we haven't done anything wrong to deserve it. But lots of people have, and being objective, I find it hard to be upset when the RIAA tries to defend its legal rights, and very easy to laugh at people who use "fair use" as a blanket guard against "I can't rip my Britney CD any more and it's not fair <sob>".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, people are pirating music, but so what?
People shoplift.
People speed.
People do all sorts of horrible nasty things. But we've managed to stick with due process
What's so different and important about alleged copyright violations that we need to jettison the the Bill of Rights?
Can someone please explain why the RIAA and MPAA members are deserving of a new special status under the law?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
But that actually is fair use, as long as they don't intend to redistribute that Britney CD. At least, it's just as much fair use as your dancing club shifting music onto pre-mixed CDs. It seems ridiculous that you'd complain about other people doing the exactly the same legal thing you are. Just because somebody else has crappy taste doesn't make their position any less legitimate.
And this stoic "I'll be upset when I lose that right, but I'll take it in stride because the record companies are just protecting themselves" attitude is another way of saying "my rights are not important and can be trampled." Whether you're a Britney fan or a professional musicologist doing serious academic research, laws like the DMCA hurt us by taking away rights and extending copyright far beyond what is was meant to cover.
So, if you don't go with the RIAA, you can't play your song on any ClearChannel station and you can't have your concert at any ClearChannel venue. Basically, you'll play local bars and clubs and hopefully get big enough to be invited to a mainstream venue.
Ever wonder why none of Prince's post-WB stuff is on the radio? Hmm...
Yeah, right.
Isn't this sort of combined monopoly what the Sherman Antitrust Act is supposed to prevent? You have an organization made up of not one but five major players (and a boatload of minor players) joining forces to act as a monopoly. If that's not a cartel, then I don't know what would qualify as one. Sure, the FTC has accused the RIAA of price-fixing schemes and has managed to get Hilary's boys to agree to some token settlements, but that has little changed the economic arena for either the consumers (CD prices have yet to fall as a result of competition amongst labels) or the signed artists.
I know Microsoft hasn't been a Boy Scout in its business dealings and probably needs to be smacked around for its arrangments it makes with OEM's to help support their monopoly position. But IMHO, the RIAA is in even bigger violation of antitrust laws. I think it's high time for the DOJ to dismantle the RIAA and make all labels, majors and indies alike, to compete in the marketplace. Then, you'll see some labels raise their market share as a result of signing superior talent, superior marketing of said talent, and selling their music as at a fair price. And you'll see others fall by the wayside. The ones that fail will not fail as a result of "piracy," but instead as a result of not running their business as well as their competitors.
Even a monopoly can't charge arbitrarily high prices without driving customers away. Only in the IP industry can one claim that all declines in sales are the result of "piracy." In the IP industry, the music and movie industries are the ones beating the piracy drum the loudest. Is deciding that I won't buy the newest Nelly CD because its price is $18 "piracy"? Or how about the fact I've slowed my CD-buying to a trickle because the music that's coming out of this cartel almost never coincides with my music preferences? Is that piracy? What about the fact that I find other things more worthwhile for my entertainment budget than buying CD's? Is spending my money (which the RIAA practically claims is their entitlement from God) on a museum admission, an evening of blackjack at the casino down the road, or seeing (gasp!) a live band piracy?
It's a shame we don't have term limits on members of the U.S. Congress in this nation. We have Congressmen that have been in office 30 or 40 years, and a few even longer than that. And we expect those people, who probably lost touch with the music industry in the early part of the vinyl LP era, to make lasting policy decisions that will affect not only the music industry but the entire "intellectual property" industry as a whole? I just hope that the damage that the DMCA and future legislation that this underinformed Congress passes at the request of the RIAA's (and its allies') lobbyists reveals itself slowly enough that the next generation of legislators who grew up in the "Information Age" can take steps to stop and eventually reverse it.
Remember when MSFT tried to argue the states had no right to to bring it to court with different antitrust charges. Thirty somthing states awoke from their slumber and chalenged it.
Microsoft asked the court to take some of the states power.
Now Congress and President Clinton have tried to take some of the courts power and hand it to law enforcement and a group of wealthy companies!
The DMCA circumvents the judicial branches power approve or deny the when where and how of law enforcment action when criminal charges are brought. The courts can do somthing about it too, they can strike the law down as violating due process as stated in the constitution.
Verizon and friends lawyers just need to present it to the Judge that way and it will be gone in a second.
Judges must face peer review too, how can they face their equals and superiors with, "I took the moral low ground, contridicted the constitution, and made you condierably less powerful.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath