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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The artists will never see even the tiniest bit of the money. Check out this link and tell me how much of that money you think the actual artists are going to get: the problem with music by steve albini
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Wow...thats bright.
The magnatism of your power lines is out of wack and now you have totaly lost your connection to the net.
Wish they would fix these silly power lines right so the broadband would give us the 2GB capacity.
1) /. server.
2) Claim inflated losses for each potential viewer lost * theoretical maximum recieved from each one.
3) Sue.
4) Profit!
Don't laugh. It's their real-world business model.
Tuition's high enough these days--there's no need for RIAA to go after these kids' with lasers strapped to their lawyers' heads... I wouldn't mind paying for SACD-quality recordings, if only I could buy them easily and efficiently (read: online, one click at a time).
I'll-be-slashdotted-before-5th-post-department.
I mean really, if you're going to submit your own site, there's no excuse for an instant slashdotting.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
People, why aren't we mirroring sites on other high-profile facilities with no bandwidth caps or problems?
Because that would be a violation of the sites' copyrights, and could get OSDN and Slashdot sued.
Any more brain-busters?
why not establish mirrors before you submit to slashdot, especially if it's a self referral?
must like the slashdotting effect.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
aah crap sorry bout the formatting
another try:
This site contains information on the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA against 4 college students for contributory and direct copyright infringement seeking damages of up to ninety seven billion eight hundred million dollars.
$97,800,000,000
Defendants
Defendant: Daniel Jonathan Peng
Princeton University, Sophomore
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# Analysis of the Complaint - written by Joseph Barillari
# Wake (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Daniel Peng
Daniel Jonathan Peng maintained and developed an application / website called "wake" that allowed users of the website: http://wake.princeton.edu (cached) to search for files shared on Princeton University's Local Area Network. It appears that Wake was a front end to a SMB file spider that searched and catalouged all "shared" files on computers connected to the Princeton's LAN. SMB, also known as Samba, is a file sharing protocol developed originaly by Microsoft. It is a widely used and established technology for sharing files between computers accross a network. RIAA charges include contributory copyright infringement accusing that Peng "has taken a network created for higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it into an emporium of music piracy where copyright infringement is simplified down to the click of a computer mouse", and of direct copyright infringement for "copying and distributing hundreds of sound recordings over his system without the authorization of the copyright owners". Fred Van Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, volunteered to represent Peng in court.
Defendant: Jesse Jordan
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Freshman
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# www.chewplastic.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Jesse Jordan
Jesse Jordan maintained and developed a website called "chewplastic" that allowed users of the website: http://ww.chewplastic.com (cached) to search for files shared on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Local Area Network. It appears that chewplastic.com deployed an application called "Phynd", also an SMB file spider, to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's LAN. RIAA accuses Jesse Jordan of direct and contributory copyright infringement.
Defendant: Aaron Sherman
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Senior
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# www.flatlan.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Aaron Sherman under the direction of Mukkai Krishnamoorthy, Associate Proffessor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Aaron Sherman under the direction of Associate Proffessor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy developed a network application called FlatLan. It is also an SMB file spider, designed to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected a Local Area Network and capable of searching this catalouge through a web interface. The software was distributed for free and deployed on a many different school networks including Bryant College, Lehigh University, Michigan Tech, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Texas, and Western New England College. The RIAA accuses Sherman of direct and contributory copyright infrigement. The complaint also states that Sherman "started a commercial enterprise to further profit from thee acts of infringement". The details to Shermans' "commercial enterprise" are shown a cache www.flatlan.com's "Products" page (cached) where he offers to sell "a complete Flatlan suite with unlimited FlatLan client licenses!". Apparently the RIAA took him up on this offer and through "trade association, have themselves purchased from the Defendant his software for $500".
Defendant: Joseph Nievelt
Michigan Technological University, hell of a coder
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
As with so many other legal issues, it's a question of intent. With student-written file sharing systems, you are intentionally sharing your files with the whole world. With Windows File Sharing, you are unintentionally sharing your files with the whole world.
> Because that would be a violation of the sites'
> copyrights, and could get OSDN and Slashdot sued.
>
>Any more brain-busters?
Exactly. This is why google no longer caches pages...err...never mind.
So if google cache is OK, why would this be any different?
This site contains information on the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA against 4 college students for contributory and direct copyright infringement seeking damages of up to ninety seven billion eight hundred million dollars.
$97,800,000,000
Defendants
Defendant: Daniel Jonathan Peng
Princeton University, Sophomore
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# Analysis of the Complaint - written by Joseph Barillari
# Wake (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Daniel Peng
Daniel Jonathan Peng maintained and developed an application / website called "wake" that allowed users of the website: http://wake.princeton.edu (cached) to search for files shared on Princeton University's Local Area Network. It appears that Wake was a front end to a SMB file spider that searched and catalouged all "shared" files on computers connected to the Princeton's LAN. SMB, also known as Samba, is a file sharing protocol developed originaly by Microsoft. It is a widely used and established technology for sharing files between computers accross a network. RIAA charges include contributory copyright infringement accusing that Peng "has taken a network created for higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it into an emporium of music piracy where copyright infringement is simplified down to the click of a computer mouse", and of direct copyright infringement for "copying and distributing hundreds of sound recordings over his system without the authorization of the copyright owners". Fred Van Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, volunteered to represent Peng in court.
Defendant: Jesse Jordan
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Freshman
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# www.chewplastic.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Jesse Jordan
Jesse Jordan maintained and developed a website called "chewplastic" that allowed users of the website: http://ww.chewplastic.com (cached) to search for files shared on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Local Area Network. It appears that chewplastic.com deployed an application called "Phynd", also an SMB file spider, to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's LAN. RIAA accuses Jesse Jordan of direct and contributory copyright infringement.
Defendant: Aaron Sherman
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Senior
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# www.flatlan.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Aaron Sherman under the direction of Mukkai Krishnamoorthy, Associate Proffessor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Aaron Sherman under the direction of Associate Proffessor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy developed a network application called FlatLan. It is also an SMB file spider, designed to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected a Local Area Network and capable of searching this catalouge through a web interface. The software was distributed for free and deployed on a many different school networks including Bryant College, Lehigh University, Michigan Tech, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Texas, and Western New England College. The RIAA accuses Sherman of direct and contributory copyright infrigement. The complaint also states that Sherman "started a commercial enterprise to further profit from thee acts of infringement". The details to Shermans' "commercial enterprise" are shown a cache www.flatlan.com's "Products" page (cached) where he offers to sell "a complete Flatlan suite with unlimited FlatLan client licenses!". Apparently the RIAA took him up on this offer and through "trade association, have themselves purchased from the Defendant his software for $500".
Defendant: Joseph Nievelt
Michigan Technological University, hell of a coder
Quick Links
# Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
# www.mtu.flatlan.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Joseph Ni
Google seem to get away with it with their cache system ;)
No one expects the Republican Guard.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, I haven't been able to read your site, as the server of course has been slashdotted, but I gather you have collated a list of similarities between the software in questions, and (legal) software which has already been out for a while.
Given that you made the effort to prepare this work, I suggest that you take it the final step and send it to the lawyers in charge of defending the students against this lawsuit by the RIAA, or if they have none yet, try to get it to their hands.
Oh, one more thing. You might want to send it anonymously; you never know, you might be sued next. (I'm only half-joking).
Pete Wilson, Ex-Gov California claimed a billions for all the Illegal Aliens syphoning off California's wealth before his cronies could get to it. It was tossed, this will be too. However it does tend to make people think twice, while they will win, the RIAA will make them drain their bank accounts for legal fees. Defense funds will form and they too will suffer. The idea is to make everyone in favor of trading suffer somehow. Even if they lose this time the next time there will be fewer willing to donate. The Artists need to understand the the Record companies are not their friends. The make more without the even if they don't have a gold record
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
http://www.massdebate.net/mirror/RIAA_4-10-2003/
I have a partial mirror. I have not been able to get the images yet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've put together a site with a lot of information on the cases...
:)
Apparently, you haven't yet heard of the Slashdot Effect. Still, with a Slashdot User ID of 518655, I guess you're still a newbie. No offense, of course!
I think not:
SMB!=Samba.
Likening SMB spiders to Windows' search is a pretty big jump, IMO. I can't get to the demonstration of linked near the bottom of the site, though (http://zacker.no-ip.org/slipperyslope). Was there a good explanation there?
Also, is there a legend for all of the icons used in the pictures?
> host zacker.no-ip.org
zacker.no-ip.org has address 130.126.70.42
> host 130.126.70.42
42.70.126.130.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer arh2130.urh.uiuc.edu.
Looks ResNet-ish to me.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Furthermore, it's not that hard to setup IIS to limit bandwidth or concurrent users so that you don't take the server down. In Apache just install Apache::Throttle and configure as well. Either way, the worst case scenario is that during a spike some users receive a "Try again later", while other users who have already established a connection can keep using the site at a reasonable speed.
Even if you don't have access to your web server, configuring a web application server (such as Tomcat, Cold Fusion, or ASP.NET) to limit connections before it goes into a "low bandwidth" or "static" mode (kind of like CNN did during 9/11). I know a lot of these sites are personal sites, but most seem to be PHP or Perl sites which assumes that a coder of some sorts is involved.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
SMB = Server Message Block, Not Samba.
h tm l
http://www.ossir.org/ftp/supports/96/netbios-3.
I hope the rest of the information in the article was better researched.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
What is this? Logic? Examination of the lawsuit and using factual meterial instead of simply pulling a random number out of the air??? Sue him! He's violating the DMCA is some way which we will figure out later after the lawsuit has been prepared and filed! Sue him!
Dear Slashdot,
Some punk put up a site with information detrimental to the RIAA. It's running on a 286 and he pays by the megabyte - all on his daddy's credit card! Please post a story about his eensie weensie site and turn his server into a smoldering pile of melted goop while bankrupting his papa.
Smooches Roblimo,
H. Rosen
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
There are a lot of problems with Albini's article. One is that he lists a fairly good selling band as example, a poor selling band (and there are much much more of them than ones that are in Albini's words "hits") would end up costing their company money (only 10,000 copies sold, still quite a few, and the company is in the hole $700,000), even though the band ends up with their advance and publishing money (they do get publishing money, in Albini's case the song writers get $.07 per song per album sold minus ascap fees, if we assume 10 songs then the writers are getting $150,000). So really the bottom line assuming entire band write all the songs should read $400,000/(number of members in the band). Another thing that Albini's rant quite starkly portrays is that touring looses money, in this case $875.00. Thats right you go on the road (and work very hard) you end up with less money at the end. Thus the idea that the recordings should be free and people should only be paid to perform simply doesn't fly. What Albini was trying to say here is that Big Record Companies (eg Warner, Sony) are a rip off, and Small Artist Run Places (in this case specifically Touch And Go, I think he was pissed about the Butthole Surfers going to Warner) will make the artist more money. Ask Albini what he thinks of Shawn Fanning or the like getting rich on the backs of Slint, Low, Big Black, The Pixies, or even Bush and he will tell you another story.
His server might of had a chance if he didn't have images on it. Say if it was text only, and he had a decent upstream 1mbps (optonline anybody?).
:)
Other then that, posting yourself to slashdot, AND having images on your site. That's just plain stupidity.
I posted a comment one time related to interesting places for computers, and I had my gallery, and that wasn't even a real "slashdotting" and it was on my ADSL, constantly doing 80kb/s out and I felt like I was on dialup. (The comment was +5)
But then again, that was my choice, I knew how much bandwidth I had, and I could've just capped the webserver
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Did you contact the administrator?
The universities would be more helpful if the RIAA let them in on a cut of the sales! They could set up a shop at the student centers and also on the Uni's network. Drop the price way down per track say Let's face it if online music won't work at schools with massive bandwidth and a captive audiance, then it won't work at all! RIAA--try it out or stop crying and sell records which can't be easily copied [every digital copy would be illegal/ subject to fair use only!]
New to the /. effect, naive or malicious? You decide.
"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.
"Why do I want the ending explained when the whole movie was such a painful piece of crap?"
A.I.'s ending is flawed, causing a lot of people to miss the point of it. As a result, lots of people hated it. If you understand the ending, there's the possibilty you can appreciate the movie which is actually quite good.
But if you wish to intentionally be ignorant, that's fine with me. I just thought it was an interesting read. The author makes a damn good point.
This won't make any difference. We already know the musicians don't see much (if any) of the money collected, we know the RIAA inflates their reported losses, now we know how similar these file trading systems are to windows.
So what?
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at
In soviet Russia, all your us are belong to base!
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
He must have forgot to filter the Evil bit...
I thought it said 'investigating the RIAA's billion dollar crimes.'
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
The tuition price comment was a joke- everyone knows students at Princeton, RPI, etc can afford another few billion added to their debtload
What I'm asking to pay for is a higher quality recording than is available from audio CD or mp3.
The recording industry has high quality masters for practically all recorded songs, and the RIAA has more choices than just (1) Dying from piracy, or (2) turning against its customers.
I'll buy higher quality recordings (yeah, even with DRM) for the same reason you, (or that guy down the street) has an two thousand dollar turntable-- I like the way it sounds.
Hi, not to be too picky, but you've got a factual error about SMB about 11 lines from top. "SMB, also known as Samba, " but SMB = server message block protocol. Samba is an SMB talking application that can use SMB from unix and other systems, but Samba != SMB, like Internet Explorer != HTTP.
AHAHAH i slashdotted myself then took a nap... i was tired! sorry -Zack
Oh. Looks like it was a typo ...
From here --
Only 98 billion dollars? Carry on!(I still wonder if they'll take a check. Or how about PayPal?)
absurd as a billion or trillion dollar verdict may be, the simple fact is that (IIRC) there are statutory damages for copyright infringement in the US that don't require proof of damage. From there on, it's just simple math - max damages x files copied = ~US GDP.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
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.
and my next study is going to be invapor computing.
This is an experimental study into how to reach the next level of computing called "vapor computing" the idea behind it is to so over stress your sytem that you turn your computer into vapor. Thus reaching the next phase of computing power, vapor computing. Please help me in this by going to my site and constantly hitting refresh. My webserver is only in the liqued phase of computing right now.
Wish they would fix these silly power lines right so the broadband would give us the 2GB capacity.
You think you've got it bad? Hell, my service only puts out 60 Baud and all I seem to get is 010101010101010101010...
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
thats funny, on my ADSL, i've had pretty much non-stop hits since the floppy enterprise article, and it's never seemed to slow my downstream rate.
/.'d"
and i have have some pictures on my site, as well as in some of the articles mirrored
Maybe he did it for bragging rights.
"Hey man, i got
the ladies love that.
It the RIAA is successful, could an artist (or anyone who makes a mp3 in hopes of a quick payoff) make a similar claim? It seams that Microsoft is just as much (also meaning NONE) to blame than these four kids. The big difference is that Microsoft would not loose this legal battle (and thus would set a good precedent), and Microsoft does have $97B.
--ted
http://www.phynd.net/files/phynd4.tar.gz
A bunch of C and Perl. To lessen the Slashdot effect please share on Kazaa or your P2P network of choice.
Even when "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License"?
If anybody's interested in checking out the RPI student paper's stance on this mess, check it out here.
Lots of letters to the editor and a few articles.
I'd just like to point out a misnomer in the linked article that "SMB is a file sharing protocol developed originaly by Microsoft". As alluded to in Samba's History, SMB was originally invented by Digital Equipment Corporation.
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.
Here at the beautiful University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, we have a rate-limiting system in place for bandwidth in the dorms (since zrosener lives in a dorm, I'm guessing he hosted it in his room). At 600 MB of traffic (last time I checked) one's bandwidth gets slightly smaller. At 750 MB, bandwidth shrinks considerably. After a few gigs of traffic, one gets removed from the network and needs to call in to some office to get back on. I'm really curious as to how much traffic zrosener had...I'm guessing he's been cut off though. Now hopefully he won't get our EWS servers /.ed. I imagine it'd be hard, but not impossible...
Since the author seems to have Samba on the brain, I wonder why all of the computers in the diagrams were Windows boxes? Do Samba users participate in file-sharing?
I'm guessing that's not the number of simultaneous connections his server can handle/
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
A. By defintion, a mirror contains no interpretation. It's just that: a mirror.
B. Google indexes everything. You have to make an effort NOT to be indexed (robots.txt).
C. Again, if you're mirroring, the ads remain... what part of "mirror" is confusing you?
Bandwidth is cheap. At larger volumes, it's down below $0.40/gig. That's cheap.
I just wanted to let all /.ers know that one of the defendents in this case, Jesse Jordan of Rensselaer has set up a furom for discussion of the lawsuit and whatever else. Find it at http://www.chewplastic.com/bb
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You should let Phish and other bands like them know about that, if they have any free time from counting their money. Touring can be very lucrative if you do it constantly and you are good.
Most bands on major labels end up costing money rather than making it. That's what happens when you spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on every album.
Primus spent five grand on their first album and ten grand on their second; even their third album, which was released on a major label and had a couple of videos, only cost thirty grand (I'm sure the videos cost extra). They didn't need to sell a million records to make money.
Like the fact that Peng's site was lauded in the Princeton newspaper as a great way to get music for free. And like the fact that these guys were making a ton of music available from their own computers.
*Whoops*
Why is my alma mater always at the wrong end of the news?
... all of which are staples of my current CD collection. But that's preaching to the choir here...
It's not like it's anything new... My CS neighbor in Warren Hall back in '95 built a rather comprehensive web-based search engine... but back then, it wasn't taboo to share.
Without the filesharing on the internal net, I never would have found the Crystal Method, Filter, Moby or Delerium
Say the name of that site five times fast, in a thick Southern accent.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
they do get publishing money, in Albini's case the song writers get $.07 per song per album sold minus ascap fees, if we assume 10 songs then the writers are getting $150,000
And they may not even get that. To the best of my knowledte, before a songwriter publishes a song, there is no reliable way to check whether or not that song infringes the copyright in another musical work. George Harrison got burned by this.
How do you solve the problem of accidental infringement?
Ask Albini what he thinks of Shawn Fanning or the like getting rich on the backs of Slint, Low, Big Black, The Pixies, or even Bush and he will tell you another story.
President Bush hasn't really done much about copyright. Or is there another Bush that I don't know about?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not flaming you here, but I have a couple of questions.
Are you sure that Google are on safe legal ground when mirroring sites? If they copy material without permission, they are no different to someone who photocopies a chapter from a book.
Are you sure that sites have to be submitted to Google for indexing? I thought their web spider followed links and indexed the pages that it found. Try searching for server error messages, or ' index of / ' , you will get a ton of results.
Whatever Google's intention, and regardless of whether they provide interpretation of content or just mirror it, copyright is copyright. If Google make a copy of my crappy homepage without permission, I can demand that they take it down. I imagine the reason material is mirrored on Google is that hardly anyone asks them to remove it.
I agree that the current system of people pasting content seems to work ok. But at the end of the day, apart from where quoting extracts for criticism, Slashdot could be asked to remove these posts just as it could be asked to remove a mirror of the site.
I'm happy to be corrected on any and all mistakes in the above.
I'm wondering how many of those "transfers" that came from that student's computer didn't finish transferring. Its possible there are alot...and they're being counted in the mp3 transfer total.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
So that's how you do it...gonna go set one of those up now...
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
and consequently after thi post, my router takes a big shit.
bah.
glad i have a week off from school, finally have some time to sort through a buncha ol' ISA nics and see which ones are good so I can get a decent (suse 8.2 laugh if you will) set up.
Why couldn't a meta tag be created to allow permission for mirroring?
<meta name="mirror" content="allow"> Have the W3C declare it an offical tag meaning anyone is allowed to put exact copies on other sites.
Then again, if the site operator is submitting the story, why doesn't he/she put the document on some p2p systems, and submit a magnet url? Oh, that's right, the DRM cartel will sue him/her, and submit a bunch of bogus DMCA complaints, shutting down his/her site and kicking him/her off his/her ISP.
What I noticed about the software/services described here is that 1) they could be extremely useful to large organizations (e.g. General Motors) for locating existing resources within the company WAN and 2) they are all to some extent research projects.
I think this is a pretty clear-cut case of the RIAA attempting to hinder technological progress in defence of its business model.
They're not going to win, though. This software is useful for all sorts of things, not just music piracy. It infringes as much as Google does.
This suit is bullying, plain and simple. I just hope the defendants have good lawyers.
And I hope the RIAA gets busted for barratry over this.
Bush - the band
Oh thanks. I had forgotten about Bush.
jackass
What does jackass have to do with Bush or any of the other bands you listed?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I fail to see how RIAA claimed damages could total $90 some billion. In fact, I might venture that a monetary value cannot be assigned to losses because of these reasons:
(note: I know there are alternatives to MP3 but the desire for simplicity in my explanations prevailed)
1. The RIAA would have the burdon of proof that all logged transfers of MP3 files in their calculations were copyright violations and not students within fair use (i.e. students owned the CD and didn't want to spend time ripping).
2. The RIAA would have the burdon of proof that each and every copyright violation (see #1) resulted in a lost sale. Many who download MP3 files never would purchase CDs anyway, whether or not MP3 technology existed. In essence, the RIAA has to prove that the customer in each case would have actually bought a CD, had it not been for the search engine.
3. The RIAA would have to demonstrate that the purpose of the software was for music trading. It seems to me that this "spider" indexed everything. From the description of the software, it doesnt seem to be exclusively for media files. Media files are indexed along with all other content, as the software doesn't know whether an MP3 file is for a garage band posting their stuff or a video file is of someone dumping soap into a fountain to make it bubbly. Same goes for software - People may very well want to check out what the Computer Science department is chugging out.
Hopefully whoever presides over this case will throw it out as frivolous. In my opinion, this is similar to somebody suing "Perfect Kitchen Silverware Company", because someone was murdered with a knife manufactured by the company.
Or zip the site and put up a bittorrent link (hosted elsewhere) along with the web site. Maybe the submission page should be changed to suggest this. At the very least it'll show off how damn handy bittorrent is.
Fair call, both realisticly are parasites. Both are competing for the same thing. One leverages money and connections (sociopolitical) the other uses technology and a corrupt spinoff of the Hacker Ethic. 'Information want's to be free' becomes 'Music wants to be free'. Hogwash. The victims are the Artists. Of the two The Record Companies at least provide backing for a vision. The P2P sharing only robs the robbers (RIAA etc) who will gobble up the profits from a Hit Record and claim it was all used for 'Return on Investment' the costs of putting the record out and losses form failures of others. I remember Amiee Mann (Till Tuesday) on NPR a few weeks ago talking about how Her one hit record still hasn't paid Her a dime.
I was in the Music industry for 10 years before I turned Hacker, it's true. The record companies just eat up all the money. Bands that make money do it from touring. A hit album is just free publicity. Don't expect to see a dime from it. Kim Thayil of Soundgarden once told me that he was making more as a Cook then what he got off their record.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
but a record is worth nothing
lets make it up as we go along shall we?
A blog I run for the wealth
"This site contains information on the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA against 4 college students for contributory and direct copyright infringement seeking damages of up to ninety seven billion eight hundred million dollars."
It was much funnier when Dr. Evil said it.
Nope!
Does this mean the RIAA names Microsoft as an accomplice now?
So RIAA is now going after people who write and maintain SMB spiders now?!? Is this for real? SMB search spiders have so many uses beyond piracy. Just because they're college kids doesn't mean that they're automatically guilty of piracy. Does that automatically mean that the network was used for cheating and plagiarism? SMB/CIFS comes boxed with just about every major OS (Win, MacOS, Linux, xBSD) and is available for just about every other OS. Just because these guys developed some search software doesn't make them pirates -- they're innovaters. The burden of proof should be on RIAA to show that piracy (of their IP) was the primary use of this network.
I mean, Napster is one thing -- hell, RIAA even had a point (arguably) that their IP was being ripped out from underneath them.
After Napster was shut down, RIAA had a little time to reorganize and try distributing their music online. It looks like that's failing miserably -- so now their (business) plan is to sue anyone within arm's reach of them. Sounds a whole lot like what the folks at Rambus and SCO are doing (although Rambus and RIAA actually have a product ;P ).
What a bunch of fucking fucks. Their tactics have gone from questionally justifyable, to ridiculous. RIAA really can eat my ass.
-Turkey
No offense meant, but you've just responded to an informed and supported post with a poor combination of FUD, wishful thinking and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. While I certainly do not believe that record companies are exactly charities, I'd like to correct some facts:
:)
BULLSHIT. You can't justify stealing with that argument. What they're saying is, "Most of our investments fail." Would you be satisfied with that performance rate as a business? If you accept that premise, why should a successfull artist have to support 99 crappy artists?
Because they accept this BEFORE they are succesful. Record companies offer a simple deal to artists: upfront funding and marketing support versus some ownership on their production for the next few years. No artist is ever forced with a gun on his (her) head to accept this deal. The reason why they sign is that NOBODY knows beforehand whether the artist will be succesful or not. Please also note that small/independant labels do EXACTLY the same. It's not the privilege of big business or RIAA members. This is actually very similar to venture capital: invest in a number of companies, rake in on the few succesful ones. VCs are not exactly angels either, but I guess you get the point.
The answer is of course they're lying. They own the studios that record the albums, they own the song writers who write the songs, they own the plants that press the cds. It's called vertical integration.
Wrong. Record companies unsually do not own pressing plants, it does not make economic sense. They outsource this job to (usually) independant companies with the industrial knowledge and equipment to produce huge numbers of CDs, DVDs quickly and cheaply. Cinram, for instance is a public company doing just that. Also, I'm sure that you know that since the civil war, nobody can own another person. Record companies don't own songwriters, they own some rights over their production, for a given length of time.
They produce the album as cheap as possible, CLAIM it costs a fortune, and pocket the rest
You're implying that the labels are making huge profits. They are not. Check their publicly available financial data. Most record companies generate profits but not unusually high profits. For instance, operating profit for Universal Music is 8% of its sales, for Warner Music it's 2%. That means that when Warner makes $1 on a CD, their costs represent 98c. Before you claim that they lie on their numbers, please remember that underestimating your profits does not make much sense when you're a public company.
Do you really think the owners of record labels sit around and say "You know the thing that sucks about this business, we're always loosing cash." If that were the case record companies would go out of business all the time when their income sources (artists) dried up.
Poor logic. There's a middle ground between overcharging and going out of business. And that's precisely where most record companies stand. And no, they are not sitting around; they're just trying to improve their bottom line like anybody else. This basically means reducing costs, increasing the efficience of their artists selection process and maximizing the cash they generate from each artist they sign. Nothing intrinsically evil here.
Now, once again, I'm not saying that these guys are the artists' or the public's best friends; they are just businessmen. I realize that most mainstream bands suck hard. I'm just trying to point out that this kind of posts is just a self-indulging attempt at finding a moral justification for your actions. Face it. You download mp3s because you can, not because it's right.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.