Studios, RIAA Warn CEOs On File Trading

pcosta writes "Record companies and movie studios are turning an anti-piracy spotlight on corporate America, sending a letter to top CEOs this week warning of illegal file trading going on at 'a surprising number of companies.' Full story on C|Net." Earlier this month, they also warned schools as well.

Comments

I just realized

[fleener]

I haven't gone to the movie theatre in more than six months and it's been over a year since I bought a corporate CD (only local artists now). Who needs 'em?

Corporate Spying

[N8F8]

Is it corporate spying to monitor another company's network traffic? Not to mention that the only way they could identify the material as infringing would be to intercept that traffic.

Is the company to blame?

[solostring]

Is the company to blame if its employees are using P2P applications to share files? Whilst I can understand the $1m settlement won by the RIAA for the company allowing its employees to use their intranet to share copyrighted material, this letter is clearly aimed towards employees using their internet connection to trade peer to peer across the net.

My limited understanding of the law is that with P2P apps such as gnuttella, it is the end user who is at risk of prosecution, and not the organisation in charge of the network.

If companies are going to be sued for not firewalling P2P apps, then where is it going to end? Will the RIAA set its sights upon the ISP's? The backbone carriers?.... where will it end? *sigh*

what about public networks?

[hikeran]

What about libraries whom allow people to use wireless acces points that allow internet usage with their own machines? Will the library be held responsible for their actions?

Since threatening YOU hasn't worked...

[krinsh]

Now they threaten your teachers and your boss; hoping they'll get better results if they make it look like said lawyers would be happy to sink their teeth into larger fish. How many people are going to lose legitimate business use of their computers and the internet because of this? I already know too many places that make you sign 20 disclaimers before you can actually log on to the local network to get your email.

What a surprise...

[Kjella]

You mean company employees breaking copyright laws on company time using company equipment could create liability for the company? What a shocker.

Of course, as an employee I expect a bit of privacy as to what I do during my work, but if the company is clearly aware of me doing something illegal or very obviously avoiding to investigate (like after receieving reports of such), I would expect that. So, I'd consider the company liable only if it failed to respond to it, very much like an ISP could be liable if it fails to take down a homepage carrying illegal material after recieving notification.

The problem is that at most companies and just like in the rest of the world (look at P2P booming), they don't look at it as any real crime. Many companies I've heard of have taken steps to stop various programs and "conventional" downloading of mp3s, but only to save company resources (bandtwidth, employee time) and not to prevent crime or to remove liability. And I hardly think this letter will make much of an impact.

Kjella

I this really a problem anymore???

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Napster was popular. So popular even my non techy friends were aware of it as well as Kazaa, Morpheous and others. But now because Napster is dead and many of the others have had rumors of, or had spyware in them, most of those non techy folks don't use P2P anymore. Even my techy friends don't mess with it because it's more hassle then it's worth and they are tired of going halfway thru a download and it blows up on them or there's nothing out there. Why is thr RIAA still on the warpath with this stuff when hardly anyone uses it anymore (they have all just gone back to using hidden ftp sites! :)).

It can be difficult to stop...

[Chicane-UK]

I speak from experience here.

I work as a technician / 'network engineer' at a college... We have spent a LOT of time trying to prevent our fantastic (mutter) students from getting on p2p networks but it is very difficult.

We have tried many different things, including :

* Recent installation of a firewall - it has helped a little, but some p2p apps go out on 'safe' ports like 80.. we haven't quite got to the packet filtering stage though.. this might help.

* Using some of the tools on the quite amazing Trinux security tool kit.. on our switched network, we set up a port span between the router, and a port in our office - we could then run utilites like ntop to identify who was hogging bandwith, or tcpkill all data on, for example, port 1214 (Kazaa). Very cool, very powerful, and of course it is free - I think if they have a donations page though, we should be paying a visit.

* Installing policies and software on client machines to attempt to block students from installing things like Kazaa.. has helped a great deal, but those determined enough seem to be able to circumvent it.

Maybe the RIAA need to be a little more sympathetic.. yes, in some situations companies can be using file sharing apps quite happily breaking the law. But in situations like ours, where we have spent bloody weeks of time trying to find solutions to stop it, they need to be a little more easy going! Our network has 1,500+ client workstations and only 15 or so technicicans to police it.. can be pretty tough to identify those abusing it.

You aren't safe at home either

[nomadicGeek]

I've already gotten my cease and desist letter...

The complaining party, the Interactive Digital Software Association ("IDSA"), specifically requests that you immediately cease and desist in the distribution of copyrighted software. In addition, please inform the Abuse Department of (my ISP) in writing, that the alleged activity has ceased.

I think that everyone needs to realize that when you fire up a gnutella client, you are broadcasting what you have on your computer and the files that you are sharing for all to see. It doesn't take much coding to start logging who is sharing content that you own. It also doesn't take long to cross reference the IP address and find out who owns those addresses.

If you are sharing files on a gnutella client you can expect to get a cease and desist email from your ISP eventually. Many ISP's are receiving notifications from contents owners on a weekly basis. Sharing files on gnutella violates virtually every usage agreement that I have ever seen. Although the ISP's don't want to loose customers, they don't want to take the heat for being unresponsive.

I don't think that the Copyright holders are going to change their minds anytime soon. Right now it is probably much cheaper for them to hire a few coders and a few lawyers and start scaring people than it is to try to develop new business models.

I think that things will slowly change. There are already people out there trying out new business models. Some artists are also into it. Eventually someone will figure out a reliable way to make money and artists will eventually follow. I think that it is going to take years though. The establishment has things locked down pretty tight.

Why do this at work anyway?

[Arcturax]

First off, why should people be downloading music files at work? Given that under current law it is illegal, you should definately not be doing it where you can easily be monitored and fired and possibly prosecuted for it.

Not to mention, you should also be doing something productive, not searching and downloading music you didn't pay for. If you want to do that on your own time, fine, but don't be so dumb as to do it at work. Same thing goes for porn, do it at home, not at work.

While I don't agree with the RIAA's tactics and I know they are simply trying to save their dying buisiness model, I do agree that people should not be doing this kind of thing on company time.

Re:Why do this at work anyway?

[forkboy]

You sound like a very uptight and frustrated middle manager.

Not everyone has loads of work to do while at work. It should be noted as well that computers are now able to multitask. It's true! One can actually download music at the SAME TIME as reading email, sending a memo, and printing!

As far as the legality of the whole thing goes, well, companies do their fair share of robbing their employees' pension funds blind while at the same time laying off thousands...so, they should expect their people to follow the example they set.

Now realize what this means for them and you.

[twitter]

CD (only local artists now)

If you work at some big dumb company, your CEO will now keep you from sharing those songs, regardless of the artist's intent. Duh, Big Dumb CEO is going to be convinced that music is not something for the coporate intranet if he is not already. The policy will be made and the violators shit canned. Thank the RIAA both for threatening lawsuits and raising FUD over bandwith.

In the end, you will be lucky to have music at all in that kind of company. Just a little more FUD about company IP walking off in iPods and USB keyfobs, evil backdoored music software that's not MS Media Player and real info on the Media Player's licensing that makes it a backdoor and poof, you are without music.

There are two things to remember as you are expected to put in more of your personal time for work and are alowed to do less of what you need to get done there. First, enjoying your job is like stealing from the company. Second, get back to work, you are not being paid for the power of your dreams.

Great... another witchhunt, another wasted week...

[Tenebrious1]

Looks like I know how I'll be spending all of next week. I expect to see the email from my boss forwarded from the CTO forwarded from the CEO by 10:30 monday morning.

I'd love to reply and say "tell the RIAA to blow it out their ass", but I doubt that will get me too far. So instead, I'll have to dig up cache server and firewall logs, app managment logs, probably send around a few hunter/killer apps to look for mp3 caches. As far as I know, no one is running P2P on my network, but god help the sap I catch doing it this week...