Slashdot Mirror
Analysis of RIAA vs Princeton Student
An anonymous reader submits: "Joe Barillari, a computer science student studying
under Prof.
Ed Felten, posted an analysis on his blog of
the lawsuit
filed by the RIAA against a Princeton college student for running "Napster-like" networks. He
argues that the case doesn't quite live up to its contributory infringement
claim due to limitations in the DMCA. A good
read!"
The DMCA not infinite-reaching? Time to rewrite it or get a refund - they didn't get what they paid for!
They can't collect the full 97 billion, obviously, but most of that is punitive damages, which are immune to bankruptcy. So, if the RIAA wins, the defendants will be in debt to them for the rest of their natural lives, unless one of them gets very, very rich.
fp?
This is just another example of case fabricated by the DMCA with little legal grounds.
Checking out my form of escapism.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
...the Bible (I'm sure you're heard about it) or the Constituition. God nor the Framers could care less about your piracy.
Maybe the student in question could pay the $97 billion using those great credit cards they're always handing out on college campuses!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
The RIAA keeps saying things similar to "If you listen to music for free, you're a criminal."
The radio? The RIAA doesn't get paid for that. 128kbps mp3s aren't much better quality than the radio.
I can finally load up kazaa again without worrying about being sued into the stone age. Eat me metallica!
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Turn in everybody! 280 million people can't be arrested. Let the law fall through sheer weight of numbers!
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
He makes a lot of good points, and the gist of it is that the RIAA's case is pretty poorly made. But that's something that most people already know, maybe even including the RIAA. Thing is, they don't have to win in order to be effective. They could get creamed in court and it still wouldn't matter. All they have to do is scare the living bejezus out of a handful of people and they'll get what they're after. Aiming a multi-billion dollar lawsuit at one student has a pretty sobering effect on anybody that's nearby and watching, and the RIAA has the resources to file suit all day and night, win or lose.
Of course, based on some of the numbers that have been coming out over the last few years, they might actually stand to gain more by collecting the $96 billion from this one guy than by ending file sharing.
You don't have to be a lawer to use your brain.
And an opinion of a Princeton CS professor does matter.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Dan Peng, a Princeton sophomore, for direct and contributory infringement of their members' copyrights. This essay analyzes that contributory infringement claim. Peng allegedly operated a computer service called "wake" which cataloged the publicly-shared files on the campus network. The RIAA draws a parallel between "wake" and Napster, and calls upon the court to apply the reasoning from the Napster case. Their analysis falls short in three respects:
1. "Wake" differs fundamentally from Napster in that it (allegedly) indexed a pre-existing network, just as Web search engines index the pre-existing web. Napster, on the other hand, created the network on which its users traded music.
2. Napster's software indexed and shared only MP3 audio files. Wake, on the other hand, (allegedly) indexed all public documents on the network, which substantially expands its range of non-infringing uses.
3. "Wake," as a pure search engine (rather than a search-engine-plus-file-sharing-system, as Napster was), is protected by the DMCA, a fact which the RIAA does not address.
> So, if the RIAA wins, the defendants will be in debt to them for the rest of their natural lives, unless one of them gets very, very rich. ... or unless they leave the country. The crap like this rarely happens anywhere else in the world.
Joe Barillari, a computer science student
~~~~~~~
...the artists what THEY thought of this? I'm sure that at least some of the artists being shared are among the 90% or so of musical artists that are in favor of file sharing; or did the RIAA simply add up the files and multiply by 150,000 each?
Based on the article the RIAA claims have serious flaws. I dont doubt that the wake system did 'facilitate' illegal sharing of material by making it easier to find if noting else but it does not seem to fit many of the criteria to satisfy the claims. From what I cam make of the article it almost looks as if MS are much much to blame for providing the file transfer infrastructure !!
Given the way things are going though I think its only a question of time before the network and infrastructure admins are the ones held liable for the software running on their systems. Massive lawsuits against students are ridiculous and will damage public perception. How long before they go after the universities etc who at least will have insurance to cover the financial claims.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
How is this insightful? Wouldn't this normally be a troll? First, how does his opinion not matter? It's a well written argument that goes over the lawsuit and goes over the parts that are legitamite and points out the fallacies. To those who aren't well informed about the subject, its a great article with some good points. You should've put the a little higher. =P
Right, thanks for the correction.
While the article makes some good points regarding the ambiguity of the lawsuit and how the RIAA doesn't have much ground to stand on, for any of that to matter the Judge and Legal counsel would have to be technologically literate. Without that even the Law / CIS professors from Princeton testifying would mean nothing (not including the author, I doubt a student would testify).
Turn in everybody! 280 million people can't be arrested. Let the law fall through sheer weight of numbers!
No, they'll arrest everybody, but Gomer will perform a citizen's arrest on Hillary Rosen.
Every 142th american is in jail now... You want to increase the number?
Lawsuite like this are why I gave up downloading music and moved onto downloading only porn...
_______
cheap web site hosting
Wake.princeton.edu was just the beginning. What the RIAA is trying to pre-empt is a university-sponsored effort to lash together 32, then 256 PCs for "testing networking, filing and interpreting research" according to an article in the campus paper, the Daily Princetonian!
How so? Well the "Prince" reveals that the university has just installed its first brand new Beowulf cluster to do just that!
Beowulf lurks around every corner, I tell you!
Should've posted earlier, before the guy sent his $97.3 billion check to RIAA headquarters. Gee, Felten, that post would have been a little more helpful on Saturday.
Ok... so basically what the article is saying is that RIAA hasn't hopw of winning the indirect infrigement charge and if the kid can get a decent legal representative he can eat the direct damage charges a long with those. So I have a few questions/points I want to raise.
1. Has the RIAA left themselves open to a countersuit for such a poorly founded lawsuit?
2. How can we inform the public at large at how poorly this (and other) RIAA finding is founded.
3. The author repeteadly apply's internet conventions and precedents to the lan, this makes sense to me, but will it make sense to the average computer user?
Thats all folks,
Nalanthi
I can't find my
LOGOUT. Good. :)
... all my friends are getting iPod's for Christmas. I've been taking the best of everybodies collection and, well, collecting.
I've never downloaded one (1) illegal song. Everything on my iPod, up until recently, I owned the original CD for.
Thanks to the RIAA, and the fact that I happen to have a little money myself
On their new iPod for Christmas will be the complete library of decent music that was ever made. All 100% free.
Fuck them.
Looks like the guy wrote an indexing service for Windows SMB file shares on the local LAN. Made it real easy to copy mp3's from everyone elses systems. But that's just it, the same thing could be accomplished with start>search>files & folders, this just simplified that by indexing everything so you wouldn't have to go comp by comp.
Doesn't look like they have a leg to stand on. They just need to hope for a relatively intelligent judge and/or jury, depending on how far this goes.
On the original Slashdot article, people pointed out that the number of songs was unreasonable - it was more songs than Amazon carrys, by several factors of ten.
So my question - I suppose that the "list of files" contained multiple duplicates. Can you imagine how many individual copies of a given Eminem song MP3 there would be on a college campus?
Given that he mantained a list of networked files, and there were bound to be duplicates, how can the RIAA sue for (the number of songs in the list) x $150,000 (the maximum per song)?
if there were three copies of Dave Matthews Band's "Crash", would that not be suing for $450,000 for one song?
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
According to , over 500 million people in the continental United States are arrested or given tickets each day. All you have to do figure out which day they're going to arrest people like you and you can speed all you want.
Jolan Tru. (If you know what this means, you're a tru geek)
As a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I recieved a rather lengthy education in the facets of Copyright Law (which is essential when producing creative works). While my knowledge pales in comparison to Mr. Barillari's, I can safely say that the RIAA has no case against Mr. Peng.
The basis of Copyright Law is simple: A copyrighted work can not be used to make money by anyone but the copyright holder. If Mr. Peng were "bootlegging" copyrighted music - ie Making CDs and selling them for a personal profit - then yes, he would be in violation of Copyright Law. But this wasn't the case.
WAKE, the program Mr. Peng used to index publically available files on the campus network, is not a file trading system, like Napster or Kazaa. Like Google, it's just a search engine. All it does is let you know what's out there and where. To download something you find using WAKE, you'ld have to go about it in some other manner.
Also, the nearly 650,000 files that the RIAA claim's Peng was distributing weren't all his. How can they sue him for something that's not his? It's yet another attempt at a power grab by a bunch of rich folks who only want to get richer. Sad.
My prediction: While the RIAA might get some considerations, they won't get anywhere near what they want. Peng won't see any jail time, and the RIAA will have a black eye.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Anyway, no I certainly don't want to increase the number. But given that our Beloved Leaders are perfectly happy with this figure and show few qualms about making everyone a criminal, I suspect things will get a bit worse before they get better. Note the DEA's willingness to use cheap tactics to get around state legalized marijuana laws. And has any politician ever gotten elected on a "Let's get rid of some of the godawfully stupid laws" platform?
Dyolf Knip
The president of Michigan Tech sent a letter to the RIAA offering his dissapointment about the whole fiasco -- in a politically correct way of course. Nice to know that although the University does try to uphold the DMCA, they officially disapprove of this newest stunt.
I find it very funny that the official phone number ot the RIAA is 1-800-BAD-BEAT;
;).
I mean concidering that 95% percent of the new music they release these days is less than stellar; perhaps they really are advertising the fact that they represnt music with some bad beats
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
Turn in everybody! 280 million people can't be arrested. Let the law fall through sheer weight of numbers!
Not everybody in America downloads MP3s illegally.
Some of us [gasp] buy CDs! Some of us believe that folks should be reimbursed for the products/services they provide.
And just because a lot of people do something that's illegal does not make it right.
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
A Ashcroft
B Bush
C Chaney
D Dick Chaney to be served consecutively, gotta be flexible.
This is fun.
E Every other neo con.
F
The University grants students a "reasonable expectation of unobstructed use of these tools [telephones, the Internet]," knowing that the former will be used to call both classmates (academic use) and parents (nonacademic use), and the latter will be used both for class research (academic use) and reading Slashdot (nonacademic use). The University does not restrict use of the network for legal, non-academic file-sharing, so long as its bandwidth use is not excessive.
Bah! Slashdot is a great research tool.
Other than that, Way to go Princton, that's a great user policy. Please educate my cable and telephone companies.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
How many of those are Black?
How many of those are White?
What's the ratio of African Americans to Caucasian Americans?
What color is the President?
What color was the last President?
And the one before that?
What color are the majority of judges, police, politicians, CEO's?
The point is (and it took me long enough to get here, didn't it?) that your numbers don't mean a whole lot, as a dispraportionate amount of people are in prison because of racism built into the system. Are the people in jail guilty? Yes. Are we just finding more non-whites on the wrong side of the law because that's where we're looking, they can't afford proper legal council, or they've been found systemically guilty? Now that's the big question.
In short, we will not increase the amount of people in jail because we're running out of people to blame.
According to the filing, this student had shared several songs from his own collection, which apparently includes "music" from Blink-182 and Everclear. Yuck, string him up.
The analysis points out a number of weaknesses in the RIAA argument.
But there are two strengths of the RIAA charges that the analysis glosses over:
1) Peng is charged with a substantial amount of direct copyright infringement on his own system(s). The liability he may have for these issues could easily force him to settle with the RIAA without ever bringing up the more-questionable "contributory infringement" copyright issues to court.
(That said, the RIAA charges are largely missing details of these charges, focusing instead on the sexier napster-like namecalling. It's not clear whether this implies the direct-infringement evidence is weak, or merely not useful for PR purposes.)
2) It seems to me that the 3 legal requirements the analysis outlines to declare something as 'contributory copyright infringement' should not be too hard for the RIAA to demonstrate: "that an act of direct infringement took place, that the alleged contributor knew about the act, and that the alleged contributor facilitated the act". If all three of these are demonstrated, the question whether the DMCA safe harbor provision comes into play is at issue, but I don't see that as providing Mr. Peng much protection if he knew about specific infringing incidents and did nothing but continued to facilitate them, particularly if he joined in and participated in them. This would clearly be up to a court to rule upon, but it is not an easy win for Mr. Peng.
I think the Barillari analysis demonstrates that someone in Mr. Peng's position might conceivably have a good case for operating a Samba indexing service on campus and not being guilty of contributory copyright infringement. I don't find the analysis particularly compelling that Mr. Peng won't get the axe. That said, I wish Mr. Peng the best.
--LP
This student is a criminal and should be forced to pay the full amount to the RIAA for his criminal misconduct. If he can't pay he should be imprisoned and enslaved or executed. He is a criminal and a terrorist.
Ok, give it up already... April 1st is long gone.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Yes, almost every American is arrested twice a day. Man, we realy do need to do something about this crime rate.
Take a look at Title 17 of the United States Code. This "fair-use-is-not-a-law" bullshit was an argument that Jack Valenti made in an interview a while back; amazingly, no one called him on it.
Where is the filter for only displaying "great" or "fantastic" reads? Do not bother me with simple 'good' reads, ok?
....this whole read quotient blathering by editors has been going on for ages, and it still reaks of lazy.
You have no idea what I consider to be good or bad when it comes to reading, so don't try to convince me you are anything but a copy boy.
Isn't that like the equivalent of 12 internets, with its speed?
- Joe
Welcome to America, land of the free, home of the brave (and incarcarated). Hope you like sodomy, and you can bite down on this flag to keep you from chewing off your tongue. You're gonna need it for the salad tossing promptly at lights out every other weeknight.
It's only $96 billion dollars...
;-)
Can't he set up an online donation fund or something?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
if I was looking for somewhere to point out that no, in soviet russia Natalie Portman with a bowl of hot grits down her pants WOULD FIND YOU!
This is where I'd look.
-If I was Looking Troll
So where's the goat?
good, except it's Cheney.
Remember, jokes are the one place spelling actually matters because misplelling thows of the timming.
no one matters
You know, Metallica totally sold out. They used to be cool, then they hit the 90's. Master is still one of the greats.
Artists want to be paid for there music? Not in the slashdot world. You must be new here.
Most artist give some away for free, but they want you to visit there site to build "communitiy" around the artist/band. Most artists (I know 2 professional musicians that don't have recording contracts.) don't seem to think that napster like song sharing does them much good when the rent is due.
It's funny, I was at Princeton as a coach during my grad studies and I was amazed at the network in place on campus. Not only was it blazingly fast, but everyone connected to the network had shared drives.
Some of the shares were at C:\ level and gave full rights. Others had Gigs upon Gigs of pirated software and movies. It was somewhat of a competition between users and they became popular for having a good loot of files. Not particularly intelligent IMHO.
father?
Raise awareness of a rediculous lawsuit (and maybe poke a bit of fun at kevin mitnick too) with a bumper sticker or a t-shirt design.
Does "hello.jpg" ring any bells for you?
I'd vist torrentse.cx...just as often as I visit goatse.cx; maybe slightly less.
I couldnt agree with you less. The issue is the broad reaching implications of such a case. Wake is a search engine which searches for files. You can use google also to search for files on internet using advanced search. Does this make search engines illegal. I guess this is a chance to take RIAA head on. Give examples of google, Lycos search, Hotbot.... all these are search engines.
What RIAA says amounts to like, "This guy built the road on which trucks ferry pirated CD's... Arrest him!!"
Whoa what is it all coming to! I Hope the guy wins, or it will set a very very very bad precident. Meanwhile a stronger public campaign is needed against RIAA.Dont Buy CDsMy Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
The whole point is just to scare people away from file sharing. Very few people are willing to deal with the legal hassle/expenses, and the anxiety of fighting a court case with RIAA. RIAA can lose every single case, but as long as they got the money to keep suing people to create news like these, many people will be think twice before creating anything that can be used/related to file-sharing. And that's what RIAA wants.
Oliver.
So if he made no profit; and his liability is zero
If he made no profit, his liability is $150,000 under 17 USC 504(c)(2).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why have a fuckin computer if you can't network it to another computer to share files!
Hopefully he wont be hurt too much financially with legal fee's defending himself. In the end I hope it will work out for his carrer with all the publicity.
here is the google cache of wake.princeton.edu.
Do you honestly think that 90% of musical artists agree with distribution of their music without getting paid for it (regardless of whether they get a lot or a little)?
Well, if they listen to the august Janis Ian they do. Here's a woman whose been around the RIAA block more than once, has released a number of songs freely available for download on her website- and profited from it.
Read it, it's a good article. Also note the follow up link at the top of the page for later consumption.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The older among you will remember Archie, the internet's first search engine, out of McGill, which indexed all known FTP servers and let you search for files.
Wake is effectively identical.
Archie was the grandfather of the web. One would hope a court would not declare it retroactively to have been illegal.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Anyone want to comment on using strong encryption to prevent evidence gathering? There are a few projects out there that let you have very, very strong encryption for your OS of choice. Anyone got any articles on this?? Is there some reason these can't be used? Does the 5th amendment apply to giving up your decryption keys? Inquiring minds want to know!
It seems to me observing what goes in through the network cable is circumstantial if you have no actual files on the computer. At least, no useable files. Why doesn't everyone use ridiculously strong encyption? I mean enforcing copyright is one thing, but this is overboard.
Dang, when I wrote this, I was shooting for Funny but instead I got modded up as Informative! Who would have thought?
I even added a little smiley in a lame attempt to show I wasn't serious! Oh well, moderation is wierd, ain't it?
...when Grammar Nazis make mistakes in their own nitpicking reply.
Perhaps you meant "couldn't"? Sheesh...
First rule of being a Grammar Nazi: make sure your own grammar and spelling is perfect. Only THEN do you have a platform to bitch. In other words, if you're gonna bust someone else for bad spelling, be sure YOU don't make any errors.
Ah, clearly a post by another illiterate moron who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "terrorist" but likes to use it because he hears others using it.
Silly troll...
are you an employee, or just the human relations director?
There'll be a book review on Slashdot: "Money Werks, How I was sued for $97 billion and please buy my book!"
I have never heard anyone say anything about using antitrust law against the RIAA, at least recently.
You'd think someone would be pursuing that, given that the RIAA presides over just a few colluding record labels that clearly operate in lockstep on issues of this type, to the detriment of the public weal.
One could hardly say they are competing at all.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Nor does something being illegal make it wrong.
OTOH, a lot of people doing something _should_ mean it isn't illegal. That is, after all, what things like democracy are about.
The campus network here at Iowa State University is indexed by software called strangesearch. There have been a few concerns about the legality of running a network search engine which is used primarily for sharing music, movies, and porn. Recently, four students were arrested for sharing child pornography. The interesting thing is that without StrangeSearch, law enforcement would have never seen material on the students' computers! (Ever try to look at files shared on several thousand individual computers?) For this reason, nobody plans to shut down strangesearch.
A version of FreeNet for colleges/LAN, however...
Take that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea! Nobody in the "axis of evil" can touch our incarceration rate! If we are to preserve our lead we must start incarcerating file traders. American will win the war on freedom! Other regimes think they are oppressive, but nobody has the jail capacity of the United States. So you can gas Kurds with your American made anthrax Iraq, and you can test your missiles North Korea, and you can oppress women Iran, but you will never be able to compete with the prison state that is the United States of America!
Do me a favor and double it!
It's pronounced "hundred and forty two-th" or "hundred forty secondith".
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
Mr Barillari wrote a nice article, but since he's not a lawyer, he doesn't know a pretty important point: this is just the complaint. The RIAA doesn't have to provide a watertight legal/logical argument in its complaint. It doesn't even have to allege true facts, as long as it reasonably believes those facts have a chance at being revealed true during discovery. All the RIAA needs to do in its complaint is state why the court has jurisdiction, hit each element of its claims, and claim whatever relief it wants -- bam, it has a complaint.
So it's nice and all that he argues all those points -- he may even be right on some of them -- but it's not like the complaint is the sum total of the RIAA's argument.
No, you cuntblood cretin! You have to begin with
Saddam Hussein, DEAD.
All caps! Twit! Assclown! Retard! You took an awesome troll and you fucked it up!
YOU FAIL IT!
Yeah, the chilling effect has been rapid and amazing. The Phynd hub here at UConn was shut down within a day, and I'm sure the same has happened at various campuses across the country.
I wonder if students running these machines could incorporate the "venture" as an LLC, so that the damages---no matter how huge---can be rolled up into the corporation and not touch the individual. MegaCorpBigCompany does it all the time; can students?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
No, it can't.
If you go to a court in Germany and demand 96 billion euros, the court will first decide what is the "disputed value" of the court case - that is 96 billion euros, then the court fees are calculated as a percentage of this. Lawyer fees are also calculated as a percentage of the "disputed value", and all these fees would add up to about 3 billion euros.
After the court decides how much the defendant has to pay, the cost is split accordingly. Lets say the court would convict these students to actually pay 9.6 billion euros, payable at 100 euros a month over the next eight million years, then this is 10 percent of what the plaintiff demanded. Accordingly, the students pay 10 percent of all fees, the plaintiff pays 90 percent. That is about 900 million euros to the court, 900 million to their lawyers, 900 million to the students' lawyers.
Guess what: Students are bankrupt, RIAA is bankrupt. Victory against the empire of evil with a minimum of collateral damage.
142nd
You all probably know this, but I didn't until recently.Anyway:
He is being sued for a pure indexing service! No files supplied, no network established, just searching the (pre-existing) local princeton SMB-network. Which ofcourse is filtered, so it's only useful for Princeton-students.
If assisting people in finding information that has been put public by others can give you a 96 {insert redicilously large unit here} dollars fine, I'd f*cking flea the country allready!
This is madness. I'll go and get a criminal record now, to ensure that I'll never ever will get the chance to enter US territory.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
And pirates have abused the privilege. That's why now we have DMCA. Blame the pirates.
or is it about those noises (known as music), did a bunch of five year olds write this, ok some folk may need help with the technical bits- but seriously, to dumb it down and follow it up with "also known as" is laughable.
these Internet computer resources (known as bandwidth)
surely that could be better written
this bandwidth (a finite, expensive resource)
I was educated (Tanenbaum) that there was such thing as Campus Area Networks for University campuses.
How can a University be called a 'mini-internet' in the grand scheme of things, surely by it's definition theres only one Internet.
I wonder how Princeton Law is going to come out of the woodwork on this one, and how RIAA will counter that sort of muscle. The endowment and funds at Princeton might be in jeopardy (since their computer networks facilitated the alleged action in the first place). If so... I'd expect them to bring out the big guns.
Perhaps some high profile Princeton Law lawyers will feel compelled to help their alma mater... perhaps the law school will take it upon themselves to defend their own?
Interesting developments lay ahead!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Do you honestly think that 90% of musical artists agree with distribution of their music without getting paid for it?
That is, if you consider anyone that has (ab)used a musical instrument to be an artist. All those band that are making essentially no money on selling their music, but from live performances. The ones that don't get radio time, or shelf space in major retail outlets, but maybe have a homepage where they sell CD-Rs.
However, that shouldn't prevent the 10% that do make a living from music from doing so, anymore than it should stop the 10% using Napster legally from doing so. Because my friends shared mp3s of the music they had made, doesn't give me the right to rip off Metallica. Because we published some novels, doesn't give me the right to take Tom Clancy's latest book.
Unfortunately, when you look at the P2P networks, you also realize that the 10% on top are 90%+ of what is being illegally copied.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The new one the Prince mentions isn't Princeton's first. It's the first one that everyone on campus can use and is centrally supported. The Geology Dept and Plasma Physics Labs and maybe Astrophysics and a couple other departments already have their own Beowulf Clusters.
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean its wrong. You buy CD's. Why is this any more 'right' than me downloading an .mp3? How much of the $15-$20 did the artist see for that? Artists have been getting fucked over by the riaa with shitty contracts and deals for a long time. The riaa is only trying to protect their profit margin. No, I don't think stealing is wrong. But I also don't think there is anything wrong with me purchasing a CD and ripping those tracks to mp3's for use on my computer, or iPod. I also don't think there's anything wrong with burning an extra copy for the car, or backing up the data so that if something happens to the original, I'm not out 20 bucks. I am not made of money like you or the RIAA, so I can't afford to buy another CD everytime a track gets scratched.
The difficulty with the arguments here is that it is no longer a black and white 'steal = bad' issue. P2P is not illegal, but it is being made that way by the RIAA. They have also begun to threaten the fair use which I have listed above.
I believe that the majority of people are inherently good. They have no reason to download music off the internet other than the fact that it is easy to do, and that music is easily portable. They can mix whatever tracks they'd like to. It's also good for finding live recordings. If the members of the RIAA provided a solid online distribution mechanism, and hosted those files on its own servers for a fair amount, I believe illegal filesharing would be cut by at least 50%. The RIAA would have to guarantee high speed transfers of the files as well as HQ encodings with complete ID3 tag information for each file. I belive that charging about 75 cents a song would be reasonable for this, and would result in a very good deal for the RIAA. If they got a dollar for every other song downloaded on a P2P application today, they would be making more than they are now, which is ZERO. Piracy isn't the issue here. People only 'pirate' because its easy. Make it easy for them to legitimately acquire the music they want, and you will see a drop in illegal music-sharing. It's never going to go 100% away. You can't possibly hope for that. I used to pirate everything, apps, music whatever. I find that as I grow up and become a little more mature, I realize that people should be compensated for their work, just as I feel I should be compensated for mine. I would happily 'get in line' and pay 75 cents a song. Why 75 cents? We're not getting the pretty book, or the jewel case, or even a CD. Just the data. So a discount off the usual price of the CD is warranted. I don't buy CD's because of the RIAA. I did once, I have stopped, and I refuse to buy them again or give the RIAA another penny until I see lawsuits like this stop. I go to concerts and buy t-shirts. I don't want to support the owner of the record label. I want to support the artist. So that's what I will do. The system worked previously, because the artists needed a way to get their music out to people. The RIAA provided a means to an ends. Their services are no longer needed. Thank you technology.
request proof that RIAA represents the interests of copyright owners of each and every song they claim was found, after all if found quilty the file would be based on the total count.
If past cases are anything to go by, the publishers are VERY lax at looking after their IP.
I think you misunderstood the analysis. It said he might get off of the contributory infringement charges, but the analysis specificly avoided the direct infringment charges. Simply because if the facts show the defendant is guily of direct infringement, then he will lose (that part anyway).
My worry is he may also lose on the contributory infringment (I don't think the paper said he would for certain win it), even in a small way, and the RIAA will use this precident to go after anyone who creates generic technology which may possibly be used for copyright infringement. The RIAA, MPAA, and friends are really the oppressors of the information age. Goodbye internet!
RIAA suing telephone company.
In a bold move, the RIAA is suing all telephone operators. Apparently, it has been found, that young people often talk on the phone with each other, often engaging in "party lines" which are "napster like networks" for audio transmission. This activity has been found to date back to the 1970s, leading to calculations of staggering losses. Unfortunately, the RIAA forgot to consult the law that says "The Telephone Company always wins".
Next up according to leaked reports, is CB radio. A high level of corruption has even been found in police departments accross the country who surreptitiously use these "audio sharing networks".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Does that apply to white-majority racism? If so, why? If not, why not?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Maybe it won't happen that way, but they could get a large company (Microsoft) to produce a DRM system (Palladium), then sue anyone who "assists" copyright infringement by creating or running any free and open system (Linux, FreeBSD, etc).
The implications of these DRM
A DRM system based on public key encryption (such as Palladium is reported) is going to allow the maintainers to censor anyone they like. All they have to do is send a rejection certificate for the unwanted entity, and the system no longer allows that entity to publish anything on the DRM network (even send email). The way it seems now, I suppose they'll have each computer as an entity (so they can stop your computer from creating content), and you will probably have to estabish your identity to be allowed to create certain files (such as audio).
If they reject your computer's certificate, then you can just go buy a new one. But if they ban you from registering programs (or certain classes of programs), you'll be screwed. Say you're a popular independent musician. You refuse to do business with Microdisnews corp because of their unfair contracts. They see you as a possible threat to their monopoly. Guess what? You're now banned from distributing music on the internet! In fact, you can't even use any audio recording / editing programs! How are you supposed to turn out CDs now?
Also, you have to get Microsoft to sign your programs. Someone said this only applied to drivers, but how long do you think it'll take them to extend it to all programs? If they want to continue their constant stream of anti-trust violations, making everyone sign every single program is an easy way to do it.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
1) Are the RIAA committing a crime? I.e. is it an offence to submit documents of this sort which you know to be factually inacurate. I must say that it sounds like perjury to me.
2) Assuming several unlikely scenarious (e.g. a sane and unbribed judge, a rich benefactor to pay the legal fees) is it possible that this would be enough to have the case dismissed?
3) Assuming the same unlikely scenarious, would it be technically possible for the RIAA to be counter sued or face criminal sanctions?
in a democracy, if majority of people think that all left handed people are gays and gays should be shot, they could very well put through a law stating that shooting left handed people is ok, or that jews should be shot, or that gypsies should be put into ghettos, or that pi is 3.
does it make it 'right' or 'just'? no, of course not, but what is right depends on the person making that judgement. some people find rasing animals for fur to be murder but majority doesn't think so.
this is what's disturbing and unbeliviable in b&b's iraq future policy, even if they managed to erect democracy, the majority of the people(in iraq) have same views as iran has which are strongly against usa's policy in general.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
>If the RIAA triumphs over these students, and they face punitive damages of such astronomical proportions, I would hope that they'd be put on 24/7 suicide watch.
... ENOUGH! This shit has gotten blown WAY out of proportion and if they want some blown out of proportion shit then I can give them some blown out of proportion shit.
... imagine just how bad it could get if someone with $97B worth of 'I was wronged' focused at a particular institution (I am not disputing whether or not what he did was wrong, I am merely attempting to empathise with him.)
... until this guy has done what he feels is worth $97B.
...' and gives them the chance to drop it and they don't - he is justified in doing $97B worth of damage.
Oh man has nobody the ability to see the silver lining in these most evil dark clouds? I am glad that this didn't happen to me, but you gotta ask yourself - what is your price? At what price do you say
The Gulf War II is costing, oh I dunno, maybe $1B a day. Ninety seven billion dollars will buy 9,700 days worth of $1M bad days - and for $1M I would do horrific things against humanity (assuming you classify the RIAA guys as human.) That Malvo guy has shown what a loser with no motivation and a gun can do
Now maybe Princeton college kids are wusses, maybe not, but if this guy was a Texas A&M or UT/Austin student it would really suck to be an RIAA executive after pushing him over the limit. If the guy's life is already ruined, and methinks that may be the case, suicide would be the LAST thing you need to be worrying about. I would be watching for Ryder trucks that smell like nitrates parked out in front of the RIAA building
This kid needs a copy of Sun Tzu. And a small bankroll (+/- $10,000.) And an attitude check. If he walks up to the RIAA guys cool as Cool Hand Luke and asks 'Are you really, really sure this is what you want? Reality check fellas, because I can blow shit out of proportion too
Sucks to be him, but if he is going to go down for $97B, he might as well make a statement worth $97B.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
...but those 1100 mp3s were really fast!
I think this case's achillies heel is the incredible sum of money being demanded for a very trivial action.
This is like suing the butterfly that flaps his wings in China for the tornado it caused in Kansas. I think Greenspan was right that we need to rethink quite a bit of our "idea economy". There are problems on multiple levels:
If this "crime only takes 5 seconds and the push of a button, physically harms no one, and steals only "potential revenues" I wonder if a crime has been committed.
Do the rights of the IP owner extend to prevent me from sharing my property I've purchased? For instance - if I play a cd for a friend who visits, is that different than emailing an MP3 (don't pick on me for wasting bandwith) to a friend? Do I have to pay someone if I play music in my place of business?
And by the way, given that copyright laws are being extended infinately, when are the labels going to stop making new music and just recycle the old... Wait a minute... with all the remakes and remixes out there...
$G
-- $G
Nor do you have to use your brain to be a lawyer...
The Web would be useful in the absence of Google.com
I disagree. Without Google, the web is nearly useless.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Your analysis abridges too much of the historical detail that would give your three-centuries long meta-history a chance to grow real teeth. But there are definitely more than a few nubs of truth here and there. Impressive, especially considering this also comes nearly twenty years after Lyotard's disaffected diagnosis of The Postmodern Condition. More than anything, historians and politicians need a critical meta-history, but none have been coming in large part due to the wasteland of consumer entertainment culture which inhibits the growth of socially responsible politics.
However, television is not solely to blame. The political disorganization of the masses (whom you refer to as "the rabble") is the product of powerful cultural fantasy-machines and these machines include music, art (high and low), philosophy, religion, etc. What makes these machines so distracting is the belief that postmodernity cannot be examined (let alone reconfigured) because global capitalism has completely and permanently obscured the relations of production (the relationship between the owners and the workers | the elite and the rabble). In other words, our media are in the main useless for the political organization of the masses (or at least, not as effective as the deep entanglement of global corporatism) because many of us have come to believe that there is nothing more desirable than satisfying our consumerist appetites: everything takes a second seat to buying power including love, spirituality, and compassion.
Socially concerned meta-histories, such as the one you propose, are more important than ever. However, because you post anoymously, there is no way for scholars such as myself to attribute your work or refer others to you. Even so, I am notifying a few colleagues about what you've posted here.
Then again, you could be someone from the corporatist side trolling for black list candidates, in which case, sign me up! In the case that you are not, I'd very much like to consider other work you've done regarding these issues.
Respectfully,
mistersquid
blog
Set aside, for a moment, the credibility (or lack thereof) pertaining to this case. What scares me is the way a large bullying corporation can intimidate and screw individuals through litigation. Clearly, the RIAA's goal primary goal here is intimidation. Even if they lose the lawsuit, if they can prevent individuals from creating perfectly legal software and services which fringe upon RIAA financial interests and venues of profitability, then they will see themselves as successful.
This ability to intimidate is simply stifles innovation. Now law-abiding citizens will need to be looking over their shoulders to wonder if their perfectly legal work threatens RIAA interests, hence setting them in the crosshairs of a litigation nightmare.
So I'm sure Google should get a RIAA letter every time one of their appliances are installed on a local network. This is really a no-brainer.
-Foxxz
You must be one of those scumbags who moderated my original comment as "overrated". I just hope you are erroneously sued by a greedy croporation, just like the filthy sockpuppet you are deserves.
If they win, I demand that every RIAA artist grab a shotgun/pick ax/shovel/machete/whatever and march towards the RIAA buildings to demand their fair share of the $97 billion.
After all, that's $97 bill that was stolen from the artists because of lost sales, right RIAA??
OK what about the people that just want to have thier 1500 CD collection available on the computer.. and use P2P networks for backups ??
/ogg/ mpc files i have so that i can sue their arses back when they find out i own the damn Cds..
Do you think that if I loose my hard drive im going to pull all the Cds i want to rip again into my PC ? or download them ? which one do you think will take longer if you have broadband?
What if i decide that i dont want my songs in form of CDs and keep the receipts but rip the cds into my computer and burn the cds because they take too much space?? are they gonna sue me ?
I wish they would sue me for my collection of mp3s
Commenting and moderating in the same thread? You know I can't do that. Furthermore, I agree with your comment. Back off and don't be such an asshole. Jesus.
I'm not a lawyer. I don't even know what I'm talking about. But can't the prosecutors argue intent? Like for instance if 98% of the traffic on your hypothetical road was to ferry pirated CDs, and the guy who built it was profiting from this, getting his own copies, etc.
It's nice that blogs can't be slashdotted. Makes the little guy's stories a lot easier to read from /....
"only a truly incompetent computer manufacturer will ship a workstation with all files shared by default."
There they go, blaming Microsoft's problems on OEMs...
The RIAA always says that they lose money when people pirate music. But I would bet that porn is probably second only to music at the most pirated thing on the internet, and possibly more if you look at gigs pirated instead of number of file, and you never hear Vivid going after porn pirates. Instead, porn is VERY profitable, and the only industry on the internet to consistently make money. Heck, I bet people buy more porn after seeing samples on the internet. Maybe the RIAA needs to look at the porn industry for guidance.
I have blog like everyone else
First, the existence of filesharing technology does not imply that the developer of that technology (Microsoft) knows about a specific act of infringement using said technology (e.g. you copying files over Microsoft's SMB protocol using MS servers and clients). The RIAA case suggests that Daniel Peng does know about such specific acts, in part because he participated in them.
Second, I believe that Xerox or Microsoft would be immune from contributory copyright infringement due for the reasons outlined in the Betamax case, notably the "substantial non-infringing uses" defense. Now in theory, this might apply to Mr. Peng, but as my original post tried to point out, given his own (alleged) direct copyright infringement, he doesn't quite meet the test outlined in, say, this EFF analysis:
The recent court interpretations of the "Betamax defense" have at least two important implications for P2P developers. First, it underscores the threat of vicarious liability--at least in the Ninth Circuit, a court will not be interested in hearing about your "substantial noninfringing uses" if you are accused of vicarious infringement. Accordingly, "control" and "direct financial benefit," as described above, should be given a wide berth.
Likewise, I doubt a court will be much interested in hearing about the "substantial noninfringing uses" of Mr. Peng's SMB indexes if he himself is involved in substantial direct (not even vicarious) infringement.
Third, depending on the type of use Mr. Peng's SMB indexing service received according to whatever evidence would be at trial, it might be possible for the RIAA to show that his indexing did not, in practice, have substantial non-infringing uses. This is why the RIAA's ability to show the "top 20 searches" may be relevant; if all of them were copyrighted songs, it would be hard to successfully argue that Mr. Peng's network had 'substantial' non-infringing uses.
The more I read about this case (Findlaw has the legal papers), the more it looks to me like the RIAA carefully scoped out exactly which 4 campus network cases offered them the strongest cases. But then maybe I'm just being paranoid?
--LinuxParanoid (disclaimer: I'm a coder, not a lawyer)
Other universities, namely umass and rpi are known for their smb indexing utilities to share files throughout their networks. My question is why pick on Dan Peng of Princeton University for creating wake when several other universities have been doing the same thing long before the inception of wake. canofsleep being a perfect example. Also the flatlan client created by an RPI Engineering student.
I love music. I own over 100 cds. I am now instituting a personal boycot of all cds associated with RIAA member companies. This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content. General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning. As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine. However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly. If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it. Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen. In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources. If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
This boycot is a direct result of your suits against 4 college students for contributory infringement. These students are being sued simply and only because they operate general purpose search engines that happen to index copyrighted content.
General purpose search engines, operated in good faith, are legal. It was incumbent on the copyright holder to notify the operator of the engine about the indexed content that was infringing. Instead, you sued the operators for an unreasonably amount of damages without warning.
As a computing professional in the area of search services, I find your actions reprehensible. Find direct infringers, notify them that they are infringing, sue them if they don't stop. That's fine.
However, your suits against these four students are an entirely separate matter. These suits attempt to establish a precedent that anyone who provides automated search services for files, where the engine allows a user to search for an arbitrary files size and extension, is a contributory infringer. This suit is a blatant attempt to criminalize all automated search engines. If your action wins, it will strike fear into all search engine developers, and search technology will suffer. Damaging search technology in order to avoid the effort and public image hassle of locating and prosecuting real infringers is lazy and unjust. It is, in short, evil. I don't use that word lightly.
If you continue this war against progress, I will do everything within my power as a citizen of the United States and computing professional to insure that your companies become the casualties of this war, instead of the technology you oppose. Embrace progress, prosecute infringers, and the world will be a better place for it.
Therefore, my wife and I are instituting personal boycotts of your music. We will review our decision to avoid RIAA member company music in April of 2004. Until that time, I will make this a topic of conversation with my friends and family. I'm a pragmatic conservative, as are my friends and family. When a well spoken, intelligent, pragmatic, conservative criticizes a company, people listen.
In addition, I am making a committment to learn more about independent artists. As I find artists worth listening to, I will talk to my friends and family about them. Many share my taste in music. I hope to divert as many sales as possible from your companies to other music sources.
If, by April 2004, you've substantially changed your policies and dropped your suits for contributory infringement against these students, we will consider buying music from your companies again. We're not concerned with the direct infringement cases. If one of your devoted consumers directly infringed enough to truly do you damage, by all means, sue your customers. I think it's a bad business decision, but I don't own stock in your member companies. That portion of the suit will not effect my boycot.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
Remember, the above beautiful diatribe is about the top 1% or so. They pay virtually NOTHING in taxes, since to them, the money is simply part of their game. A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I say it is, so it must be true
>Who do you think tax(e)s were really affecting, the slaves and the indentured servants? You think Jefferson and Washington were poor bastards, relative to the general population? Hardly.
**Yeah, it did affect slaves and indentured servants. Hugely. The founding fathers started fomenting revolution when the abolitionist movement got started in England. As an English colony, America would be subject to his Majesty's law, which was on the verge of abolishing slavery. That's why the primary articles of the Constitution guarantee the government can't take away a man's Property. Why stay English when the crown's going to outlaw slavery? We can start bitching about actually _paying_ for postage stamps! Or Tea Taxes! Outrageous!
All rights the people (the rabble) have are given to us by Amendments to the constitution, whereas property and speech rights given to corporations have been given to them by 233 supreme court decision. Judicial fiat, done by Lawyers, giving more and more personhood to corporations which are ostensibly property.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Yes.
If so, why?
Majority opinion is the cornerstone of democracy.
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:www.zianet.co m/earth/essay14.htm
is what you quoted. I'm not sure that you are this person, or aren't, but if you aren't then it wasn't very nice of you not to attribute the source.
Has everyone started spamming (or whatever the telephone equivalent of spamming is) 1-800-BAD-BEAT (the RIAA's hotline to report piracy, http://www.riaa.org/PR_story.cfm?id=629) yet?
What the heart of the issue: Recording companies greatly fear the Internet. It allows artists/bands to cheaply and easily distribute music to listeners. The artist can develop a fan base that, through simple software, can be quantified and analysed. With this knowledge the club/arena dates can be booked, advertised and even tickets purchased through Web sites. Artists/bands do not make any money from record deals, they make money giving concerts. Holy crap! I just invented my new business! I will create a Web site that allows artists to upload demos that my staff will critique and if marketable invite the artist/band to build an online album for free download to the public. We analyze the downloads and feedback and if the numbers and public opinion are good we finance the band and book a tour. We take a fair cut of the after expenses profit and eat the loss if we are wrong. The band gets its fair share or a free trip if no money is made. We can not take advantage of the band because this is too easy to set up and competition will force honesty and good business practices. The public get music. Bands get real earned money based on talent qand hard word instead of record company hype. I am a genious.
Why don't we give the RIAA the power of the IRS?? I mean we could give them power to police the entire internet, blow up whatever servers they want, they could get the People who have used File Sharing to pay for its infrastructure, it would undoubtledly kill our civil rights (Microsoft has been after those for awhile-DMCA and the XBox any one?), they would also be able to file flagrant lawsuits with little or no chance of compensation for the 'victims', they would be able to arrest whoever they want, they could seize whatever money the wanted, etc. I think this would be alot easier on the internet community,
I mean you deal with the IRS every year...why not make it every day with the RIAA?