Slashdot Mirror
Investigating the RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims
zrosener writes "I've put together a site with a lot of information on the cases. I created
diagrams and explanations of the file sharing systems these students created
that the RIAA is suing them for - and how they are functionally and
technically very similar to Microsoft's tools built right into windows,
and how they are dissimilar from Napster's." Good detective work.
A lot of this is from a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Buisness", which by the way if you're a musician is a GREAT read and point of reference. I think that opening story is actually word for word out the book (I'll have to check my copy at home though to be sure). But Steve Albini, definatly knows a thing or 2 himself.
"So if google cache is OK, why would this be any different?"
a.) Google just provides the link and the info, not the poster's interpretation of it. Not sure if you've noticed, but pretty often the article description is way off from what's posted on the site being linked to.
b.) You have to approach Google to get Indexed. Not the casae with Slashdot. With Slashdot, people run around the web and look for stories.
c.) The point of using Google is to go find the site, cache is intended to be used in case the info's gone or if the server's down. Slashdot, on the other hand, would be causing the server outage. If the target site generates ad-revenue, they're going to have a beef with it, especially if Slashdot's ads appear in the cache. Illegal? No. Sticky issue? Well you don't want to piss off the people hosting the interesting content, right?
Then there's the whole matter of hosting the bandwidth. The reason why Slashdot doesn't get slashdotted is because it's minimal imagery and server load etc. A good chunk of the sites we end up on have lots of graphics etc. Slashdot can either host them and require significantly more bandwidth (more ads as a result?) or not host the images and end up in the trouble mentioned in point 3.
Could it be done? On a technical level yes. Can it be done to everybody's satisfaction? Possibly, but it takes more work than just setting up a mirror server.
I think Slashdot's doing just fine having the users that made it in paste the info.
I've seen no mention that these students cataloged files that were not on public shares. I'm fully aware that Windows machines have more holes by default than swiss cheese, but there's no need to break in when the doors are wide open, and there's no point confusing the issue with what's possible when all that matters is what actually happened.
Besides that, it still doesn't change the fact that the files were accessable and locatable without these student's spider programs. If the RIAA wants to nail them for the files they actually had and were sharing, that's fine. I hope , however, that the judge will see how rediculous it would be to essentially find directory services illegal.
Any good legal team would know that a countersuit is in order in this case. They can sue and recover all of their legal fees straight from the RIAA. Do to the "in the press" nature of the lawsuits, these students can file suit for harrassment, defamation of character, etc. It should be easy to win this case assuming there are no hitches in the initial RIAA claims.
Besides, I bet there are some lawyers who would do this pro bono since it is a high profile case dealing with students who most certainly can't afford it.
The basis used by the RIAA for calculating damages in all these cases is fundamentally absurd. They take the number of copies, multiply by the highest recent retail they can find, and draw a big red circle around the result.
In order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order.
Recall that for the combination of any given product and any given consumer, there is a price below which the consumer will buy it (sometimes that price will be zero or lower, but there is a price).
There is also a price below which the seller will not sell it.
The space between these two prices is where purchase transactions are viable.
So, in order to calculate the losses, we need two things:
The second of these is naturally much more complicated. Different buyers have different price thresholds. Across a population, the aggregate of these prices can be approximated with a function (I'll spare the math). This function can be estimated by using price elasticity data that sellers accumulate as part of their normal market analysis. Of course, it differs in different demographics so it's important to use a demographic that matches the arena in which the pirated material is distributed.
Once you have these two things, you can calculate the real losses quite simply. Say there were 1000 copies of something that the seller was willing to discount to $20 and had never sold for more than $30. Say further that the buyer curve for the distribution demographic was nice and simple, ranging from $0 to $50, with 80% below $20. Treating everything higher than $30 as $30 (since that's the highest price the product had been available for), you'd get something like $5000 in actual losses (forgive me, my back-of-the-napkin calculus is not good).
Meanwhile, the RIAA would claim that the loss was $30000, 6 times higher than reality.
The difference is explained by copies in the hands of people who would not have otherwise bought the product for a price at which the manufacturer was willing to sell it, and which therefore do not represent a legitimate market.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Hello RIAA, are you tired of beating up on little boys in college yet? I'm not trying to insinuate that you're bullies, just that there's some serious meat out there for you.
NetIQ has had a product called MP3 checker available for years, which does essentially the same thing as Wake, Phynd, and all the others. It even prints out a pretty list for you so that you don't have to run it over and over again.
Like I said, I know you're not just a bunch of effeminate bullies, so it won't phase you at all that NetIQ is a partner of Microsoft. Go sue!
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
I suggest to introduce into the legal system the notion that in case the plaintiff loses, he has to pay the defendant exactly the amount he is sueing for.
That would give a natural limit to such amounts.
-Max