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File-sharing and AOL

Posted by timothy on from the close-your-eyes-for-10-seconds dept.

Andrew Leonard writes "Farhad Manjoo's cover story in Salon today, on AOL's refusal to take a stand on the RIAA's (so far) successful attempt to get subscriber information from Verizon, is a detailed look at the most important battle in the file-sharing world right now."

8 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Not in a possition by bace · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I dont think that AOL will cave into the demands. If they do cave in, people might think twice before signing up for AOL, and present users might think about jumping ship. The numbers might sound trivial, but see numbers drop ould hardly be a good thing for AOL in its current financial situation.

    Sorry about the spelling, too much free beer.;)

    --
    =If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
    1. Re:Not in a possition by scott1853 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So are you assuming that people choose AOL based on rational analysis of cost, quality, support and political agenda?

    2. Re:Not in a possition by Simonetta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let me see if I understand this:
      1> At the beginning of 2003, there are thousands of ISPs which offer internet service to about 100 million people in North America. Of all these people, about maybe ten to twenty million use P2P occasionally.
      The RIAA monitors the P2P networks and assumes that they own everything that is flowing across any P2P network.
      The RIAA selects one million or so intercepted P2P streams a month at random and orders the smaller ISPs to identify and turn over the identification of the 'criminals' to them. All legal threats to AOL are ignored by AOL as 'under review for possible questionable activity'
      The smaller ISPs immediately cancel the service of their clients randomly selected by RIAA. Their names go to the RIAA and RIAA sends these names to the other small ISPs and threatens 'legal action' if anyone on this black list is allowed to sign up on a different ISP. AOL allows allows these little lost lambs the opportunity to sign on for $24 a month plus a small surcharge for being a 'criminal'.
      2> The RIAA threatens AOL. AOL tells the RIAA to back off or Warners will leave the RIAA. Faced with the possible loss of 25% of its membership and its subsequent breakup, the RIAA allows AOL Warner to 'continue to study the situation for any possible wrongdoing'. It backs off. AOL gives a small percentage of 'criminal surcharge' (which is growing by millions of new customers per month) to the RIAA for 'operations research'.
      3> Early 2004, all the small ISPs are gone. There are one or two medium sized ISPs that handle nothing but people who hate everything offered by the P2P networks and never have or would download anything from them, and AOL. AOL has tens of millions of new customers all paying $35 a month at least and about half of them also paying a 'criminal surcharge' (which will never be removed).
      4> AOL Time Warner's stock price goes back to the mid-50s. Levin, Turner, and Case are brought back from exile at the pig farm to run the company in its new glory era.

  2. I don't see the big deal by Noksagt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article even points out that MSN and others have refused to comment. Why then is AOL so suspicious just because of their TW relationship?

    If _I_ had an ISP, I wouldn't comment either (I'd just go for another swim in my money....)

    These big companies rarely have a unified front, as /.ers have pointed out many times on the media/hardware manufacturer copy protection debates.

  3. Who writes the law? by migurski · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "I was one of the 10 industry representatives who was there to draw up this law," said Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel for Verizon. "There were five people from the telecom sector and five from the content sector -- and it was clearly our interpretation that the content would have to be on our network."

    Why are industry people there in the first place, to draw up the law? Are they balanced by ten representatives of the public?

  4. User vs IP address by chill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will get interesting when the RIAA comes crashing into a dorm room that is NATted behind a proxy/firewall.

    They have a warrant to search...

    IP WW.XX.YY.ZZ, but THAT is the IP of the NAT proxy/firewall. Oops, no music THERE! No warrant for any OTHER IP, such as the PC which is 192.168.0.100...

    User "Joe Schmoe", who, by the way, HAS no MP3s. THOSE are all stored on his friend's PC -- who isn't named in the warrant.

    OR, "Joe Schmoe" doesn't OWN the PC, he only is paying for the service. The PCs actually belong to someone else -- who is not named in the warrant.

    OR, the PC with the goods belongs to a minor, who just happened to be the purchaser of all the CDs that he ripped and shared. A minor who CAN'T ENTER INTO A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT such as a music licensing agreement...

    OR... take your pick. The costs for the RIAA to start tracking down and legally pursuing individuals would be astronomical.

    Good luck proving successful downloads of songs for copyright infringement. Not to mention proving the downloads were of the SONGS claimed, and not some other file with the same name. Even if the file "baby_one_more_time.mp3" exists on the subject's machine, and the RIAA downloaded it and tracked back to to the subject that is only ONE violation. There is no way they can legally prove other infringements -- maybe the person was sharing a copy of bible reading masquerading as Brittany Who's-Dumping-Me-Today Spears? Maybe the RIAA was the only one that got the real thing?

    The sheer expense will deal with this issue.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  5. This gets modded up? by ALoverOfPeace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Salon is having major financial troubles. They make their money by having people view their ads when reading their content. There is no registration required to view their content. If you have a problem with viewing an ad as a requisite for accessing their content, why not try to find a print substitute of Salon's quality that costs money.

  6. Two Things: by idiotnot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. AOL doesn't want other agencies snooping into its network, because it'd make it easier to find out the other illegal stuff going on in there. Nice, wholesome kiddie pr0n, for example. The fewer eyes that aren't theirs, the better.

    2. Yes, TW is in the music business. They don't have a good way, however, of preventing filesharing from happening. As others have poined out, the slow speeds within AOL itself are enough of a deterrant there -- where they ought to be concerned is in the TW broadband area.

    So they're gonna cool their jets and see what happnes. Makes sense to me.