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RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping
pazu13 writes "The RIAA is taking action against college "Napster networks". It's suing four network operators, two at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University, and one at Michigan Technological University. Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources."
Can you use the DMCA against them? Create a system that only lets local IP's access the servers. Then use some simple crypto to transfer the files. Top it off with in access policy that forbids non-student use. If they access your network, it would then be illegal.
By reading this you have broken the DMCA as this message is encrypted with the English Language Cypher. I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV.
Quit College.
shutting down warez sites so i can't sample software?
STARVE the RIAA.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The recording industry has stepped up its campaign against campus music swapping, filing suit against four university students who operated file-search services on their school's internal networks.
The lawsuits, filed against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University, ratchet up the pressure that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently has been putting on universities to block campus file-trading. The trade group still has not filed suit against average file-swappers who use more common services such as Kazaa, however.
"The people who run these (campus) networks know full well what they are doing--operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "The lawsuits we've filed represent an appropriate step given the seriousness of the offense."
University students have been widely viewed as the core of the various file-swapping networks ever since the appearance of Napster on the digital scene in late 1999. Universities have seen half or more of their network bandwidth used by people uploading and downloading songs, software and movies over the past few years.
Schools have attempted to crack down on the practice of file swapping in various ways, ranging from blocking network traffic associated with Napster or Kazaa to confiscating computers used to trade files. In a recent congressional hearing, some lawmakers called for criminal prosecutions for campus file-swappers.
In its lawsuits, the RIAA compares the use of the campus search software--variously called "Phynd," "Flatlan" or "Direct Connect"--to the defunct Napster service, dubbing the services "local area Napster networks." The particular technology in these lawsuits in fact represents something different than the file-swapping techniques used by Napster or Kazaa, however.
"Phynd" and the other pieces of software set up servers--often on ordinary dorm room PCs--that search all the computers connected to a campus network that have Windows file-sharing turned on. Unlike Napster or Kazaa, which helped create a network of computers that would not have existed otherwise, "Phynd" and the others search a network that already exists.
"Dan," a university student who runs a similar server but has not been sued, said the RIAA is missing critical differences in the file-sharing technologies. He asked that his full name and university not be used.
"With or without these services, people would be able to share these files," the student said. "It's Microsoft that's allowing people to share these files; we're just accessing public information."
That difference in technology may or may not have any effect in court, attorneys said.
"It does seem like all it's doing is indexing resources that are available on a network that people are already a part of," said Fred Von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that has defended file-swapping companies in court against the RIAA. "It doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with building a tool to do that. And it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with running that tool."
Where the students could run into shadier legal territory is when those indexes and search results come back loaded with MP3 files, Lohmann said. According to the RIAA lawsuits, several of the students also maintained archives of hundreds of songs on their own machines.
All four civil suits were filed in federal court near the universities.
So NFS and windows file sharing are illegal now? It is almost impossible for network admins to know what is on every single network share on the LAN. Especially if people are running shares from their desktop machines.
It seems like nailing the network admins for the (mis)behaviour of the students is a bit of a broad move to make.
They have an AUP I'm sure, but at the bigger schools, it becomes tough to enforce. The inability to control what the students do (at some level) somehow makes the admins responsible? I don't agree with that, but that's just me.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
I support the recording industry locating and suing and/or prosecuting people who illegally violate copyright on publications of all kinds. But that is the people engaged in the illegal activity. Peer to peer networks have legitimate functions and can be used in a non-infringing manner. They should have similar common carrier status to the phone companies.
If they were locating and prosecuting some students engaged in illegally copying copyrighted content, that would be different.
This action may be legal, but it isn't right.
Because there are a lot more artists than what you see on MTV, Radio, and Amazon. In fact, much of the music I listen to is not available by any of the sources you mentioned. And if Amazon sells it, it is likely imported and lacking samples.
How is this an example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? These kids broke the law and the record companies are taking legal action against them for it. And as far as I'm concerned, they deserve to pay the price for their actions. Organized illegal file swapping is organized crime, nothing more and nothing less. If you're big enough to make a name for yourself on campus, you need to deal with the consequences.
HA, like they actually play music on MTV.
my other penis is a vagina
On a slightly odd recent discovery, it seems the RIAA may not have been so evil at a point.... jpg
http://members.cox.net/datafox166/irony
I pulled this off an album circa 1965 or something like that. It _was_ that now its doing this? What happened?
why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com
because i'm not interested in who corporate america wants me to like/listen-to/buy. money/power to buy airtime does NOT constitute talent!
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Encode your files using OGG-S. I am sure your college's IT community would be a great testing and developing environment.
If they crack the encryption, unleash the DMCA on them. Settle only if they let CowboyNeal screw lightbulbs into Hilary Rosen's ears.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
[old argument] Yeah, that works great for the n% of artists that the major recording companies have signed and paid their way onto the radio playlists. For the 100-n% that are making it on their own, or are being suffocated by a major label contract they can't escape, GOOD LUCK. Soon the RIAA will move to kill the college stations, and if they succeed they will control the entire radio market top to bottom [/old argument]. MTV is even worse, you have to be able to afford to produce a palatable video that'll fit nicely into one of their anointed genre pigeonholes.
Indy bands that give away a few mp3's on their websites get my vote however. Best way to promote your music online, IMO. And it heads off "music piracy" the RIGHT way.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Shutting off all the TVs to prevent minors from viewing violence.
I mean really, its not the RIAA's job to be our parents. Its should be left up to the college. Capitalism is important yes, but its not everything, money is not more important than education, if you cannot have freedom of speech even in the educational enviornment well then I'm going to move to China, I mean if we have to be monitored by the RIAA, whats the point of staying in the RIAA's country, Its not ours anymore, if we had a vote right now most people would be for piracy, and for filesharing, this reminds me of prohibition, or people who try to outlaw porn.
Look, it will never work, give it up, the people want to share music, the RIAA can adapt to the industry, or they can hiijack our government and change the laws. If they are allowed to change our laws, we arent a democracy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...how we are going to be able to find older, less popular music titles? Case in point: for some time (years), I was looking for Red Seven's self-titled album or CD. My local record stores told me it was out of press, so I couldn't order it. I couldn't find it any of the used record stores around town. Finally, after a lot of searching online, I found one song from that album through a gnutella client (Note to RIAA: I'd be glad to send $1 or whatever to the rights holder in exchange for a full-quality *.wav). Until the music industry gets off its hands and makes it easier for the public to find and *pay for* the music it wants, without all the nutty paranoia, the KaZaA's of this world are not going to disappear.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
How is the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes Association) finding out what is being traded on these networks? From my understanding (based on the file sharing network at my school) is that the system is only accessible to people on the school's local network (which requires a direct connection to a on-campus drop or use of VPN software AND the use of a school-issued userid/password). Is the RIAA illegally breaking into people's LANs, hiring campus spies or what?
I wonder why they're choosing lawsuits over legal prosecution. As I understand it, lawsuits require less proof, and give them much greater investigatory allowances, but in my book these people should be prosecuted rather than hassled with lawsuits.
What the hell is the point of forcing us to sit through 15 second FBI warnings before movies if they're not going to use the FBI?
because it's not on the radio MTV,
because it's not on MTV or the short samples available on Amazon.com
because they are short, sound like crap, and take an awful lot of effort to listen to a series of them.
Seriously, there are a lot of us who don't listen to "the popular" music, and even if you do, you maybe get to hear one or two songs on the radio. (MTV is even worse.)
There is no way, short of borrowing a CD from a friend or using P2P to listen to an "album" a couple of times to see if you want to buy it.
Believe it or not, there are people who use P2P networks to listen to non-mainstream artists they've heard about, to evaluate new music, etc. And believe it or not there are people who buy more music because of what they've heard on P2P. I can say this because I am one of those people.
Once they've won their million dollar lawsuit, the judge might not throw out the "trespassing" charge against them, but it would be a slap on the wrist penalty for it.
And it sure as hell won't protect you from the million dollar settlement.
Besides, they might not even use the evidence they've illegally obtained. Rather, they would find some student/traitor that would be witness to the "awful theft of IP".
The law isn't a tool you can use, it's for them to use. Think of it as a smart gun that knows their fingerprints... you might punch them and take it, but it won't ever shoot them.
Too late. Music industry is run by corporations, and they already do that. If you're listening to bands outside of all this, it doesn't effect you anyway.
The RIAA is horribly misguided. Those networks are used to share movies, not music. Yeesh.
Actually, to be more specific, those networks are used to share porn movies, not music. :)
GMD
watch this
How about finding the artist's web page and listening to a few samples stored therein? If they are indie bands then you should be able to find legal copies of their work on their sites, right?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Censorship at college?
Theres been censorship at college forever. Even a good science student like myself has been exposed to it.
Oregon State 1992 - History of Western Civ "no blasphemy" on the midterms or finals. That was tough, the instructor was a hardcore Catholic, how can one talk about the Reformation without it being blasphemy?
There is academic censorship everywhere.
Gee, I though College was about learning, not about downloading music without fetters.
I'm not there for downloading or going to parties, I'm there to get a degree.
I used to run a Phynd server for a little over a year while in the Berkeley dorms... it was actually pretty cool, but it's not like Napster.
Basically, the Phynd concept is actually very basic: scan all SAMBA shares (i.e. windows shares), store the results, put in a file/DB and then make a searchable webfront or application. FlatLAN is actually a separate, user-friendlyish application to the webfront. Scanning only takes place every couple of hours, so it might miss a couple computers. Also, if people turn their computer off, the shares are still listed in the database, but aren't accessible. It isn't updated in real-time like Napster/KaZaA/
The reason this is popular, in case you don't know, is that you're just searching all available shares and downloading them at the speed of the internal network... mmm... 100Mbit switched network... it was quite useful, especially if you're looking for bigger files.
While I think that the RIAA does have a point, I mean, honestly, why would you put a compressed (.zip/.rar/.arc) category or a mp3 category to narrow searches down?
However, they do miss a really great aspect of Phynd: it can be used as a security scanner. Since a lot of new computers do come with their computers sharing the entire harddrive (in the same way some trojans do), it's easy to figure out who needs to secure their computer.
Another legit use is actually sharing ISOs... no, I'm not talking about your latest w4r3z fix, but the latest Linux ISOs. I was able to pull Slackware 7.1 (I think it was 7.1) off the network at a cool 2-4MB/s which is much faster than trying to grab it from a mirror at 50-100K/s.
Damn you RIAA...
Once again, the RIAA demonstrates that it doesn't know who or what it's up against.
I can only imagine how many war-dialers will go into infinite-loop mode calling that number.
I'm beginning to think that RIAA really stands for Really Ignorant Arrogant Assholes.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
Give me a fucking break. File sharing on college campuses is about nothing more than getting free music. Ask the average kid with a new Dell on a wired campus what he or she does with that computer - well, they "download music and burn cds, duh". Most of these kids aren't even aware that this type of stuff is a violation of copyright (whether or not you agree with that is a different story altogether).
The "sampling music" argument is such bullshit it makes me cry inside. Admit it. You're getting something you used to have to pay a pretty penny for for free, have been for a few years now, and now it's being taken away, campus by campus, server by server. Don't expect this to change anytime soon - the recording industry probably has more resources to proctect their copyrights than some college kids crying about not getting their free music any more. Note that the same can be said for the movie "trading" that has increased in recent years.
The next person at my campus who talks about their "rights" being taken away when the RIAA comes in to shut down some kid's MP3 server gets a punch in the face.
While we're at it, let's sue ISPs for spreading virii through email, Cisco for building routers that forward packets used by P2P apps, and ATT for providing the backbones that transport these packets. I just don't see where the NetOps are responsible for this.
No.
Yes. Remember, alcohol is also illegal, and they certainly try and crack down on that more than they do on piracy. Do they think that's gonna stop us?
Phynd does block external access from IP addresses outside of the RPI LAN.
~An anonymous Phynd User/RPI Student
The RIAA is taking legal action against the Department of Defense. It believes the DoD has caused serious harm to RIAA members, in its harbouring of and creation of the Internet.
"The people who built this huge network know full well what they are doing--operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music piracy," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "They built a protocol called TCP/IP that has been shown to provide ample opportunity for stealing music online."
Not all p2p is illegal though. Why should services be shut down if they have completely legal purposes?
Look, I don't mind paying $18 for a CD if its something I want. Honestly. I download stuff I think I might like, listen to it on my computer (which is a hassle still) and see if I like it enough to buy it. If I don't, I delete it. Honestly. How hard is it to grasp that there are mature people out there who's use of P2P actually benefits the RIAA and other (non-RIAA) artists?
It's not specifically spelled out in my previous comment, but the college students now are also the future consumers of tomorrow the second we're out of college driving the American economy. I know car dealerships such as Mercedes will let teenagers test drive cars even though they know they won't buy them, but they also keep in mind that the teenagers that express an interest in buying a Mercedes now are also probably the most likely to be the ones buying one in ten years. Likewise if the music industry of today, learns to treat its customers as customers rather than thieves, it will have a lot to gain in the future.
It's over. The genie is out of the bottle. The RIAA wonders how it will control and profit from music distribution. It won't.
How will artists make money? Just like they do now, from live appearances, endorsements, and the other trappings of fame. They already make on avearage less than zero from record sales royalties. As more artists realize this and release music royalty-free (except the ones under dealth-penalty lifetime contracts) the need for record labels will finally be over.
How will artists get the money to record? Please. The requirement for expensive studio time isn't just over, it never existed. Some of the best music you'll hear on the radio came from live sessions on what are by today's standards junk equipment. And for those that want to use multi-track mixing, 24-bit mixers are about as expensive as a new Statocaster. The popularity of ~128Kbps MP3s shows that music isn't about perfect fidelity for most folks. You wan't better fidelity? Go to a show.
-Ryan C.
-Ryan C.
If you're listening to bands outside of all this, it doesn't effect you anyway.
Right. If you're careful about only trading MP3s that have only been legally downloaded from MP3.com, band websites, etc... then the RIAA won't bother you at all. They do extensive checking for each and every song to make sure that 1) The RIAA represents the artist in question, 2) that it's the right song, and not something with a similar name, and 3) that the band hasn't decided to make the MP3 available intentionally. Only then do they reluctantly issue a cease & desist order.
They would never abuse their position and simply issue a blanket C&D on the mere suspicion that there might be an infringement. Sure, it's more expensive to do the careful checking, but they can't take the chance that they might alienate their customers.
> Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources.
I'm sorry, I don't believe you.
Look, the rhetoric of "I want to have file sharing programs so I can legitimately and legally under fair use laws make backup reproductions" is getting old. Not only do I not believe you, but the media does not believe you, the law does not believe you, and the industry sure-as-hell does not believe you.
People want to steal and pirate music and movies. They are doing it, and no amount of legislation and regulation is going to change that.
What does this imply? Well, quite rightly, a fundemental transformation of the actual value of art and entertainment media itself.
This has been going on since the invention of the printing press -- since the age of the bard. Over time, the cost of reproduction goes down, and thus so does the value of the individual unit of media.
The industry can fight it, but it will lose over time. That is inevitable.
However, profit can still be made. The winners will be those who offer media that can not be reproduced digitally (vinyl, packaging, etc), and those who adapt the earliest and fastest to the future economies of entertainment. Those that predict the changing value will have a head start on capturing the emerging market.
In other words, an hour of music is no longer worth $15 - $20. The earlier the industry realizes that, they better they will do.
And the sooner consumers stop trying to deceive themselves, the lawmakers,and the industry, the better this will be for all of us. Legislature is being crippled by a lying consumer (fair use, my ass), a lying producer (free market, my ass), and people trying to take advantage of the deception (Microsoft DRM, my ass).
"As the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fading. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a changing."
PS: Don't believe there is a trend? Think about music in the middle ages. You had to pay someone to play. And when they were done, they were done. You'd have to pay them again to hear the music again. By the beginning of the 20th century, you could spend a fortune on a record player and another fortune on some vinyl, but you could listen as often as you liked. By the end of the 20th century, cassettes and CDs were ubiqituous and cheap, but had a cost associated with physical reproduction. Today the physical costs are nil. See the trend?
Its a ongoing problem, many groups DONT get air play, so their sales suffer and remain virtually unknown.
Sampling via 'illegal' means is the only way you decide if you want to buy the rest of their stuff...
And a 10 second sample doesnt count, that is not representative of a artists work.
And yes ive bought many albums i never would have risked money on, unless i could hear the WHOLE thing.. I have to work for my music budget...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know, many of these bands used to play on webradio, but then that was essentially silenced by fees (the RIAA was behind that too). Normal "air" radio doesn't have fees to pay to the RIAA, however you reach a smaller audience AND you still have to pay for licensing and equipment and stuff.
So far so good, no misinformation yet. But then the spin gets started:
"These systems are best described as 'local area Napster networks,' said Cary Sherman, President, RIAA. 'The court ruled that Napster was illegal and shut it down. These systems are just as illegal and operate in just the same manner."
Ok, so now we're defining a LAN as a LANL? And Sherman is saying that a LAN is the same thing as Napster? But wait, it gets better:
"This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet,' added Sherman. 'The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing ?'"
The first quote already differentiated between LANs and the internet, but now they're being lumped together. Also, that question mark at the end is in the original article, and I think that it deserves to be there, since now we are referring to LANs specifically as "Napster networks." But wait, now things get really confusing:
"The perpetrators of these internal Napster networks named in the suits filed by the RIAA make use of software known variously as Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect."
Ok, so LANs are "Napster networks" which use software? I thought that Napster was software too, but now I see that it was a network, though I'm still not clear on whether it used software or not. Anyway, I learned a lot from this article, like the RIAA's music piracy hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT. Call in and report a rival company or school that is hosting a "Napster network," and keep America running!
survive. Drop CD prices to $4.99!! Personally i would rather have my music on CD if I could buy 3 or 4 CD's for the same price as one Brittany Spears album. I would be plenty happy to buy TONS of music. I just can't justify spending $15 on a damn CD that I don't even know for sure I like. So what do I do? Download a couple of songs and give it a spin, find out I don't like the CD and never buy it. CD's only cost $0.01's to manufacture anyway. Pellets go in, CD's come out. Come on tell me, if you could buy a CD for the same price as a gut bomb at Macindon's would you buy a handful on a whim?
(reposted from "Would Free Music Sell Cars?" makes more sense in this discussion)
"With or without these services, people would be able to share these files," the student said. "It's Microsoft that's allowing people to share these files; we're just accessing public information." So, if some technotard shares out their "My Music" with windows file sharing, they are sueable?
The DMCA represents a significant amount of time and money expended by the RIAA. Are you saying that anyone should be able to just invoke a law, when they never paid for it? That's un-American!
i go to RPI, and i know both the students here that were sued. one of them wrote a win32 front end to the web based search engine operated by the other student.
the web based search engine, phynd (http://www.phynd.net/) was written originally about 5 years ago by a student at RPI to scan SMB networks. the original author has since graduated, and the 3rd generation of phynd admins was the one sued. the win32 front end "flatlan" (http://www.flatlan.com/, currently slashdotted, i guess) was written by a current student at RPI.
because the only good songs if there are any on an album these days with a scant few exceptions in the past decade were the ones they already played. The point of swapping to taste test is to check out the rest of the album before dropping the cash.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com (or wherever) to get an idea of what the artist is like?
Personally, when it comes to the mainstream English music I only buy the CD under 2 conditions: 1) I actually like 80% of the songs on it and 2) after listening to those songs for about 2 weeks (not constantly, but often) I still like them. That's why I prefer to download an album (when I can't borrow it from a friend) before I buy it. Most music retail sites rarely have all the songs in an album up, and even when they do hearing only 30 seconds of a song is decieving because if there's an annoying interlude 2 minutes into it that makes me detest it then I'll hate the song (maybe I'm too picky). Also, from past experience, mainstream English music when I like it tends to wear itself out really fast about half the time. I'm hesitant to buy CDs I might be absolutely sick of even the sight of in a couple of weeks. With the price of American mainstream CDs these days, I don't want just "an idea" of what an artist is like, I want to be SURE I like the album I'm paying for. Every artist has good and bad albums.
I blame American mainstream music industry for the high occurrence of crap among their products. I've noticed I'm drastically less cautious when shelling out the cash for foreign albums, part of that is because their albums even look a lot spiffier. I appreciate a product that looks, as well as sounds, thoughtfully produced.
A little OT, but I once heard a DJ say Rush would be a cult band if it weren't for the 20 million fans. They rarely get airplay and yet have been putting out albums since the 70's. No, airplay or MTV is not necessarily a way that I'm going to find music I like thought I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that will.
On another note, have you checked out iuma.com? That's a site where musicians (all types) can post their samples for preview. It's a great way to find stuff you'll never, ever hear on the radio. There is usually some info on how you can obtain a CD
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This is the most absurd thing I have read in recent days. The notion of stealing music inorder to preview it for later purchase is insane. Would you steal a CD from the music shop only to turn around and go make a purchase of the exact same thing. NO, you would not!
People think up the weirdest shit to justify that their actions are legitimate, and many times they belive their own lies. I can speculate that some folks steal music, and then go out and purchase some of the tunes they stole. But how many tunes are sampled, yet never purchased. Also, a sample of music is typically a segment of the audio, not the entire tune. People do not trade samples, they trade entire tracks/albums.
Simply put, napster is not designed to be a preview service. It is designed to move mp3 files from one computer to another, and search the data of remote computers for whatever your criteria is(genre, artists, albums, etc). I'm not sure what is worse, people who download music from napster, or peope who make their albums available on napster. The people who share their tunes are facilitating a criminal activity by the people who steal (aka download) the music.
My opinion on the entire mess is that if Napster could hurt the music industry, it probably does. Dowloading a binary file is inocent in of itself. A downloader has no notion if the binary they download (mp3's) are copyright, or not. The notion of a filename is meaningless as files can be renamed, so respect of copyrights based on recognition of the bands name in the filename is a flawed argument. Clearly the criminal liability points to the people who make music available for download, but since in napster downloaders, and publishers are one in the same. Thus, the method of correcting the criminal situation is to remove the napster servers.
</rant>
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Right...So you're saying I should pay money to evaluate whether I want to buy something?
Because in practice you can't sell CDs for the same price you buy them, new or used.
In Japan, I used to rent CDs as a palatable method of evaluating music before I bought it. However, here in the good 'ol US of A, the RIAA in their infinite wisdom got legislation passed which prevents this. Thanks to them, I'm basically forced to buy it or "steal" it.
Well, tough shit that you can't sample. There is absolutely no right to try before you buy.
When you go to the movies, do you pay on the way in or on the way out? On the way in. You ask friends, read reviews, and watch ads/trailers before you buy your $10 ticket. And if you don't like it, don't make that mistake again.
If you want a book, you can either get it at the library or buy it. Didn't like it? Sell it to a used book store, because the food-smeared pages of your LoTR aren't going back on the new bookstore's shelf.
It's nice to try before you buy, and if you really do that, congrats, you're more honest than 99% of the population. But just because you like doing it doesn't mean you get to do it. No matter how big or small, the record company paid to make that record, and you have no right to deprive them of the ability to get a return on their investment. It's not that hard to figure out what you aren't going to like before buying, and you don't have to p2p to do it.
I don't download, and I'm generally quite happy with the music I buy, and it sure as hell isn't because I can hear it on Clear Channel 1000 times before I make my purchase. I read reviews and do my homework. You should try that before whining that people don't want you to have unlimited free, perfect samples of everything you've ever wanted.
Unlike Napster or Kazaa, which helped create a network of computers that would not have existed otherwise, "Phynd" and the others search a network that already exists.
Okay. Phynd is a straightforward SMB indexing server. As per comments here from one of the RPI students, one of the persons charged wrote some of the Phynd software, and the other person admined a Phynd server for RPI. The RIAA is *not* going after the people who are serving infringing data, but after the CS students who wrote indexing software...because it's more convenient for the RIAA.
When file indexing services become illegal because one of the servers that they index contains potentially infringing information (as just happened), the world has turned completely upside down. Google indexes copyright-infringing images and text every day, and in *far* larger quantities than these SMB indexers. Should *they* be served with a lawsuit and ordered to shut down? How about Yahoo? AllTheWeb has an FTP search engine, not that far from an SMB search engine...is *that* illegal as well? Hell, if you have a multi-user system, a user stores infringing information in his account, and your cron daemon runs updatedb, you're in the same boat as the students that got charged.
I'm very, very uncomfortable with this, and I feel that the RIAA has gone too far.
May we never see th
I would just like to speak out, as a student at RPI, that Celery and Phynd, the samba search engines in quesiton have been an invaluable tool. Yes, they are frequently used for mp3's, divx, warez, and even pornograhpy, but at the same time they are invaluable when it comes to locating a paper that your class group is sharing when you've forgotten where its shared. There are lots of times these engines have saved my butt.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
The biggest trouble with p2p networks that I see these days is that they don't seem to take into consideration Internet geography. Wouldn't it make sense to trace route potential sources for files and prefer ones that are fewer hops away? This way you would automatically download from people on your campus, or for home users, other people on your ISP. Seems like this would really cut down on the backbone traffic and speed up many of the downloads. I mean sure the traces would take time, but the saving in bandwith and the faster downloads would probably more than make up for it. Of course the few LANs that block outside ICMP packets would suffer but they would still prefer users on their own LANs.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
Look, guys -- file-swapping of RIAA content is, in fact, copyright infringement except in certain VERY NARROW circumstances. Napster lost big, and didn't contest the 9th Circuit decision, so here we are: it is contributing to such infringement to run a Napster-like network.
Why would we revile RIAA for asserting these rights now. This isn't some technology regulation, like DMCA -- it is enforcement of entirely legitimate intellectual property rights against actual infringers.
I would rather they went after the students actually doing the swapping, but we lost the server battle, at least for now.
Sampling? Right. Like my old roommate who used to suck down MP3s ten at a time on Napster and had well over 3000 MP3s (which I'm sure he backed up from the roughly 15 CDs he owned) on his Winamp playlist. He's going to get around to buying all those CDs he's been sampling, sure.
But seriously, I think retail stores are going to make the "sampling" argument irrelevant. Just tonight I was at a music store called Coconuts and they have little devices set up where you scan a CD and -POOF- you can listen to snippets of every track on the CD. Seriously, it's not like you can only listen to top 40 albums, I mean every damn CD I picked up had its tracks available. What more do you want?* You can sample music and purchase right on the spot. As more and more stores latch on to this technology you're going to have less and less ways to rationalize your behavior.
* Inevitably, someone will point out that thirty second snippets of songs just aren't enough and therefore these kind of efforts by music stores are worthless.
25 cents an mp3, a CD has around 10 songs right? maybe 15? 15x25=375 so for about 4 bucks you'll have a whole CD, while right now 4 bucks pays for just a single.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
How is it "working" for you? What are you getting for not buying CDs? You think you are voting with your dollar but the RIAA isn't hearing you. They see a decline in sales and assume that all losses are due to piracy. So, they start adding DRM and making disks that can't be played in any computers. Maybe someday the price will be down to 8 bucks but it will probably only play in Windows 2005 using Super Secure Media Player 10.
Consider this example, a store sells a shirt that come in red and yellow. You and a bunch of other people like the style but want it in blue. So you all "vote with your dollar" and refuse to buy the shirt. How is the store ever going to know that it could have a lot more sales if it offered the shirt in blue? Unless you tell the RIAA why you aren't buying CDs, your vote is likely not being heard.
I'm sorry, I don't care whether or not you believe him (or me.) Let me be the 8,000th person to say this on /., but I do buy more music thanks to file-sharing. Before Napster, I bought, on average, 5-10 CDs a year. I'm very, very picky. I like quite a bit, but I don't buy most of it. Only after extended listening, usually due to a friend owning the album (we're talking 5+ listens to the full album here) would I buy a CD.
Post-Napster, I'm buying 20-25 CDs a year. I burn entire albums, yes. Some are acts I already know, but want to check out an album that I don't own. I've been burned enough by the "I like one CD, so I'll probably like all of theirs" mentality enough to avoid it. Some are of acts I've only heard about. Burn it, enjoy it (or not), and expand.
In the middle of last year, I got onto an extended hip-hop kick. I've always been a big fan, but I started listening almost exclusively, and started snapping up CDs both new and used at the rate of 2 or 3 a week. Why? Because after listening to A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders for about the thousandth time, I happened to be in front of a PC when I heard the line "favorite rap group back in the day was EPMD." Went to Amazon, read some reviews. Downloaded and burned Strictly Business, and listened to it on the way home. Went nuts. Went out and bought two other EPMD albums. Moved on to Nas (1 burn, 1 buy), Biz Markie (2 buys), De La Soul (2 buys), etcetera, etcetera. The result? My hip-hop collection has gone from about 30 CDs to about 80 (15 of which are burns), and I have an extensive collection of early hip-hop which I'm still adding to at a very accelerated rate for me. The moral, as always with posts like this, is that for the price of me "stealing" 10 albums, I've bought 40 others. Yeah, I'm "stealing and pirating." Yeah, the RIAA can feel free to condemn me. But if they would just take their heads out of their butts, they would realize and capitalize on this. So yes, I'm saying the same thing everyone else says, and you probably don't believe me or don't care. But they should.
To bastardize a quote: "Fuck the RIAA. Fuck them up their stupid asses."
In the final analysis, who is this really hurting?
Everybody!. Because the universities must spend more money in defending themselves, which raises their budgets, in the long run they have to raise their tuition.
This means that we have fewer students who can afford college; fewer graduates who have the skills and knowledge to improve our society; fewer educated people to make decisions.
I have watched the deterioration of our educational system for too long. I am getting very damned angry. What can be done to stop this? Do we have to declare open season on lawyers who take cases on simply out of greed? We should at least start slapping down companies/organizations who pull this kind of shit; it's obviously not contributing to the common good. Perhaps fines aren't enough; dismember the companies involved and execute the greedy fucks.
Good lord. I am sick of where this country is headed. The greedmongers have taken over, and we are all fucked in the long run. Maybe it *is* time for a revolution. I honestly don't know what else can be done at this point. The sheeple don't know enough to fix things - not that our political election system seems to work right, either.
Fuck.
SB *does not give a shit about karma tonite*
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
As opposed, of course, to the idea of trivializing the countless murders, rapes, and thefts commited by pirates on the high seas by using the term "piracy" to describe someone breaking copyright law.
Adam, a classmate of mine in a course on Information Technology and the Law noted on the course newsgroup that FindLaw has the complaints online.
The irony is that this happened the same week we discussed the Napster case in the class.
They have succeeded in knocking down your site with the threat from high-profile proscutions. That was their intent, and they have succeeded. That might be enough for them since it is unlikely they have the legal resources to fight everyone at once.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Please note that according to this article at The Chronicle of Higher Education that a lot of the colleges are surprised and upset that the RIAA did not contact them or try to work with them on this. My guess is that it's because the institutions have lawyers who can defend in court the fact that a search engine is not illegal. So skip the lawyers by skipping the college. Oh, and don't tell the students until after the lawsuits are filed.
"Is this not a rare fellow, my lord? He's as good at any thing, and yet a fool." -from "As You Like It", Act 5,