File-sharing and AOL

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."

Comments

Not in a possition

[bace]

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.;)

Re:Not in a possition

[scott1853]

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

Re:Not in a possition

[Simonetta]

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.

Was that my IP?

[crisco]

All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94.

Hmm, I wonder what my IP was last July 15th...

Re:Was that my IP?

[kruetz]

Hexadecimal? It becomes: 8D.9E.68.5E ... but then again, since the RIAA can't even count burners (maybe they were using octal, so 150 becomes 104!) it's more likely they got lost counting the digits in the IP address - "one, two, three, ... three ... ummm ... oh hell, there can't be more than eight! yeah! there's eight!"

Internal company conflict

[James_Duncan8181]

AOL's media division need the DRM leash. AOL's ISP side need to sell bandwidth. THese obviously conflict. This is just like the Sony Music (pro-DRM) / Technical department (pro cool gadgets and anti DRM functionality killing) problems - two departments company that HAVE to work out the conflicts inherent in the situation and can do quickly beaacue it is internal to their company.

If you want to see where we will be in 5 years as a general, having a look at the solutions adopted in these situations would seem to be a damn good guide.

Heheheh...

[YellowElectricRat]

From the article:

All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94

...and a nasty case of trying to count without taking their socks off... :)

This doesn't make any sense.

[goatasaur]

It takes, like, five hours to download an MP3 on AOL.

Re:This doesn't make any sense.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

And does it go "beep beep beep beep beep beep" and then half of your MP3 is gone?

Thats funny

[trotski]

Warner music is one of the most imortant members of the RIAA

AOL is a part of the AOL-Time-Warner corporation; so is Warner music. Is there therefore a conflict between divisions of the company? Hmmmm... me thinks it's time to sell my ATW stock.... wait, I don't have any anyway.

I don't see the big deal

[Noksagt]

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.

Re:I don't see the big deal

[appleprophet]

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

Considering AOL just posted a loss larger than Russia's entire budget, I don't think money swimming is a common sport over there.

Great.

[mikeophile]

Not only are all the tech jobs going overseas, but now the US is going to lose it's warez site superiority too.

ATTENTION RIAA! NO NEED TO CONTACT MY ISP

[Veovis]

I just downloaded Metallica's "Enter Sandman" from the following P2P network:

Kazaa

My IP is 204.39.65.157, a proxy

My information is:

Home Address:
John Abshire
14387 SeeYouInCourt
Whatareyougonnadoaboutit, MI, 48hahaha

You may also contact me at my work address:
John Abshire
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA USA 98052-8300

Re:ATTENTION RIAA! NO NEED TO CONTACT MY ISP

[kruetz]

Pity the poor bloke that actually lives on SeeYouInCourt Rd, Whatareyougonnadoaboutit. "Alright, buddy, get in the van!" "What? What's this about?" "We know you've been downloading illegal MP3s. Now move it!" "But I don't even own a computer! I only moved in last week!" "Look buddy, we saw your post on slashdot. Now're you're fucked!" -- slashdot nabs another net-thief

Yea, Right

[Veovis]

Dialing..... Connecting... Loading... WELCOME! YOU GOT LAWSUIT!

Who writes the law?

[migurski]

"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?

8, 12, what's three digits between friends?

[autopr0n]

All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94

Of course, it would have been 8 digits if it was written in Hex. maybe the author was just a hard-core nerd? And thought, digit = 4bits?

Patrick Henry, Slave Owner

[handy_vandal]

Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death" -- but he didn't say it to the slaves working his plantation.

"He concedes the evil, laments his entrapment in the system, suggests it will be abolished in the fullness of time, and declares that he will transmit to posterity, together with his slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery. Henry was skilled at the politics of gesture and brave in defiance of convention, but on this issue -- the gravest and most fateful in our history -- [he followed] the common path of least resistance and left successor generations to sip the sorrow of his era's default."

The Political Legacy of Patrick Henry

heyyyy

[The Other White Boy]

wait a minute ... people still use aol?? now that's what i call a news story!

666

[rolux]

from the article:

The RIAA analyst who logged in to Kazaa last July 15 discovered that the Verizon subscriber had 666 music files available for others to download

and, imagine: he or she had even set the file permissions to 0666!!

All that the record industry had on the alleged thief was an eight-digit Internet protocol address, 141.158.104.94

so, lets see... 1+4+1=6... 1+5=6... 8 ("eight-digit internet protocol address") is the 6th digit... 104+94=66+66+66...

bring on the californian inquisition!

User vs IP address

[chill]

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.

Re:User vs IP address

[MBCook]

Well all know that this is just a fear tactic. The idea is that if they can make a few big cases and get a few big sentences on some of the major sharers, it will make the news. And your average person doesn't think P2P is that bad, but if they see people going to jain for 10-20 years for using P2P, they'll stop. Let's not forget that the major news outlets are owned by the same parrent companies that own MPAA and RIAA companies, so the stories will be

Man in Utah arrested for downloading music files, gets 20 years

not...

Man in Utah arrested for giving 50,000 copies of unreleased movies away to people on P2P and selling copies of CDs and making kiddie porn and...

That will be enough to scare most of the people away from P2P, thanks to half truths. They don't intend to actually go after everyone because that wouldn't be cost effective, as you've noticed.

Welcome!

[grub]

You've Got Warez!

This gets modded up?

[ALoverOfPeace]

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.

RIAA taps AOL chatroom

[grub]

Welcome to: w4r3z_w4ld0

40L_h4x0r: g1bb0r m3 j00r ju4r3zzzz!
h4x0r_g0d: gn0, j00 g1bb0r m3 j0000r ju4r3zzz!!!
40L_h4x0r: J00 f4gg0rzzz!! G1BB0R M3 J002930mczxcfsdf lsd3 0 013
###CARRIER LOST
***40L_h4x0r has joined w4r3z-w4ld0
40L_h4x0r: where was I.. oh ya.. G1BBOT M3 J00R JU4R333ZZZZ F4GG000RRRRZZZZ!!!!

Now I see why the RIAA is so worried. Crime as organized as this is a threat to everything that keeps democracy flowing.

Two Things:

[idiotnot]

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.

Report

[Malicious]

I say we report to the RIAA Officials that we've found Millions of Illegal MP3's on IP 127.0.0.1

See what happens.

What's the article about?

[MacAndrew]

I couldn't figure whether it was about:

1. AOL's conscience (?)
   
2. AOL's search for its soul (?)
   
3. Proof required for a subpoena (details?)
   
4. Corporate tension between making profits one way (ISP) versus another (DMCA) (who's Mr. Hyde?)
   
5. How big companies try to spin things to avoid blame ("we had to squeal")
   

Personally, I think the burden of proof for the subpoena is the whole bananna. Note that once the RIAA has your name, is still must make its case you broke the rules. They'll maybe get part of that by suckering you into downloading directly from decoy computers. The hard part will be getting you for nickle-and-dime offenses. More likely, they'll look for the folks who host thousands of titles on P2P. And perhaps they should.

I don't really have a problem with copyright in the abstract, unlike many here, but do with the basic privacy issue in careless attempts at enforcement. Can weirdoes (e.g., Capitol Records :) get my name and address from an ISP on a whim? Just on grounds of personal safety, let alone privacy, this is not a good trend. (We're not in the phone book, never have been, for example, but the internet has the number anyway ... enough exposure already.) I'm among those who doesn't want strangers flipping through any data about me without a convincing reason. This whoke binge of law enforcement, civil and criminal, could make for some really lousy precedent, such as we're seeing already in the jurisdiction battles over libel.

Perhaps the simplest fix is a method of IP obfuscation. But anonymizing makes legitimate enforcement of far more compelling laws (kiddie porn, stalking, etc.) will become more difficult -- yet another side-effect of this whole enterprise.

Nice to see some positive mention of Salon, though. They did some interesting journalism a while ago, and I wonder if those days are long gone.

Re:What's the article about?

[Weirsbaski]

Personally, I think the burden of proof for the subpoena is the whole bananna. Note that once the RIAA has your name, is still must make its case you broke the rules. They'll maybe get part of that by suckering you into downloading directly from decoy computers.

If they have enough info for a subpoena, then can take your name to the feds to make a little "surprise visit" to your residence, taking your computer (and cd's, and x-box, and stereo, and cordless phone, and anything else remotly related to alleged file sharing) back to their ofice for "further investigation" .

In this case, even if they don't find a single thing to nail you to the wall with, they still made an example out of you and still won.

Will they include the sound...

[bobdotorg]

So in version 11 of AOL's software, after a few downloads can we expect to hear, "You've got busted" ?