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RIAA Chats With Song Swappers
einer writes "Orignally seen
on Drudge; in reaction to their recent loss in court, an IM was sent to 'hundreds of thousands' of grokster and Kazaa users by the RIAA warning that they were NOT anonymous and that they could face legal consequences if they did not stop sharing copyrighted material. The IM was sent to users hosting copyrighted songs for download. Is this a scare tactic or an honest attempt to reform the p2p user community, or both?"
"User banned by Metallica" dialog boxes, as well as a scare that "they" knew who you were, and had your name, email, and whatever else logged.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
They are using the built-in messaging facilities of the P2P clients themselves.
... er, I mean "educational alerts" ...
I wonder how long it'll be before they start doing pop-up spam
"They simply cannot subpoena Grokster or KaZaA (thanks to the recent ruling) for users' names -- let alone actually find their e-mail address to send a nastier C&D 'letter'."
Forgetting the Verizon rulings so quickly? They just wanted to sue the companies that make the software out of business. In terms of going after the users, they've got court backing on that one - they simply go to the ISP. Heck, they don't even need a warrant, judge's order, or even probable cause.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
HTH
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
According to the patriot 2 act, if it is passed, you will be able to go to jail for an additional 5-10 years if you are cought "stealing" music even if that charge only gets you a fine.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
No one has ever OD'd on weed, either. Maybe cheetos...
One of the private "we'll find people who are violating your copyright" firms allegedly pays people to run a P2P spidering program on their home broadband connection. It's sort of like SETI@Home, except instead of ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, they're searching for Evil Terrorist Infringers. (The bounty is rumored to be about $20/day if you leave the app running 24/7. No, I will not name the company as I do not have any proof to back it up with. However this company supposedly places newspaper ads of the "make money with your computer" sort.)
RIAA maybe be assholes, but they're not stupid, and they've got deep enough pockets to hire people to do the things they are stupid about.
The only "copyright enforcers" who are dumb enough to spider from their own network are Cyveillance. They tend to change IP blocks now and then. They used to be 63.148.99.0/24, though it looks like they might have smartened up and SWIPd out a lot of smaller blocks instead.
Yes, and yes.
-completely anonymous users, file transfers, hosts, etc.
Freenet is still suseptable to a man-in-the-middle attack. Your ISP could log everything you insert. Also, it won't protect you from your own software. For example if you publish a word document with your name and LAN address embedded in it, you've pretty much given up your privacy.
its a win only app available here
. 160.127.255
R anger:204.92.244.0-204.92.244.2551 92.0.0-65.192.0.255. 255.255e fender:66.79.0.0-66.79.255.2552 25.292.0-64.225.292.127. 255.2552 .150.191.0-12.150.191.2559 9.57.128A :198.70.114.0-198.70.114.255. 67.255.255
N etPD:128.241.0.0-128.241.255.2554 .106.170.128-64.106.170.192- 209.204.191.255. 255
OverPeer:65.174.255.255
OverPeer:65.160.0.0-65
Ranger:216.122.0.0-216.122.255.255
MediaForce:65.
MediaForce:65.223.0.0-65.223
MediaForce:4.43.96.0-4.43.96.255
MediaD
MediaDefender:64.
RIAA:208.192.0.0-208.255
RIAA:208.225.90.0-208.225.90.255
RIAA:1
MPAA:63.199.57.96-63.1
MPAA:64.166.187.128-64.166.187.192
MPA
MPAA:209.67.0.0-209
NetPD:207.155.128.0-207.155.255.255
UnknownC&DCop:6
BayTSP:209.204.128.0
Vidius:207.155.128.0-207.155.255
Xupiter.com:63.236.32.50
It currently blocks this range of IP's, so I would guess that's a good place to start with in your firewall
No, because Madonna owns the copyright of that "song" she can distribute however she wants. It still remains her copyright, which means no one else could publish it -- though she would have a hard time getting any damages if she tried to sue anyone after intentionally releasing it to P2P.
You have something called an IP address which you can spoof if you're using UDP for the queries and data transfer. Of course, it makes flow control difficult. http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/
Get your own free personal location tracker
Not quite so. Using a scheme akin of anonymous remailer that problem could be avoided altogether:
Clients establish encryped connections with masters. The connections are either direct (client to master) or forwarded (client to master to another master). For forwarded connections, the client does not tell from which machine the connection came from (it could be the machine or some of it's clients). So the server at the end of the request chain sees only the server immediately before it. That server sees only one before it and so on. None but the originating client knows which machine is the client.
Of course that would be slow, and quite un-interactive, but it would work well enough if each master would randomize the path it tries to follow to the final target. With a TTL-like requests, the number of intermediate servers could be controlled by the client. And the masters would never make up the route to the client, but use the route the client connected with them.
In that case, it'd be her problem, not anyone who passed it on after she'd released it. If harassed, people would be able to claim a defence that they had the reasonable expectation that it was freely downloadable (here we talk about "free as in beer" only, though) as the artist herself had released it.
And remember, we're talking about the "Fuck you" mp3, not an actual track from her album.
They are right, of course. Which is precisely why you should all use Freenet which IS anonymous, totally distributed, and has a much better distribution model in that popular content is automatically cached all over the net and all downloads are automatically "swarmed" so you don't get stuck downloading Madonna's music off of someones 56k modem. Using 60 download threads I can consistantly get 90k/s on recently inserted files, no matter what the connection speed of the person who made them available.
I finally got what *I* was looking for. A quick easy way to scan for tunes, check em out, and buy em online. That new iTunes service from Apple is amazing. It takes just a few minutes to scan, preview, download, and drop into my ipod and away I go. No hassles, I only get the tracks I want, and the DRM is very reasonable and usable.
I guess if you're time isn't worth much, then paying for your music isn't very attractive, but this new apple thing answers all of my issues with pay services. Albeit, it is still a bit expensive (Apple's new ipod holds 7,500 tunes and so how much would it cost to fill it?) but I'm happy.
I still use bittorrent to grab my fave TV shows because my cable co is too stupid to offer recent TV shows "on demand" for a reasonable price, but once they get their heads out of the sand and offer that service, I'll pay a buck to watch a TV show (sans commercials) as well.
So, it would seem that we need a peer-to-peer service that is built with the following attributes:
-completely anonymous users, file transfers, hosts, etc.
-reliable and stable structure
-decentralized topology
-efficient data management
-and complete deniability (I didn't host that file, or I didn't download that file, as member's cant control content on the network)
We do. We have several.
- FreeNet, and similar projects (Publius, FreeHaven) for distributing anonymous files
- The Invisible IRC Project for anonymous, deniable instant messaging
- InvisiBlog for blogging
- MixMaster and Hushmail for email
- Anonymizer and Peek-a-booty for browsing
Anyone care to add to this list? I've only put the ones that immediately spring to mind, but I know there are more distributed anonymous deniable chaffed encrypted file-share programs that I've not tried.
We do have to realize that it is the recording industry that signs artists, produces and records their work, and markets them to a vast audience.
But it's the indie labels who actually do this honestly, not the RIAA. And the indie labels are doing better than they ever have, despite frequently giving away free samples online, despite the economy being bad, and despite the problems the RIAA is having.
Like it or not, content distribution depends on the good will of the consumer for profit. You won't make any money on something, regardless of whether it's good or popular, if people don't think they should pay you for it. The RIAA's legal tactics have made people not want to pay them, and this means that they don't make money.
It doesn't even have to be illegal to not pay RIAA companies: if you just listen to the radio, buy used CDs, buy from indie labels, and listen to the music you already have, they don't make any money. Someday, perhaps, they'll realize that P2P is like radio, except that they don't have to pay huge amounts of money to get their music on it.
Under that rule, it would seem that computers are completely illegial.
It seems to have numerous other interesting oddities as well:
That could potentially mean that mislabeled audio files are illegial... A practice RIAA is deeply involved in.
Of course, I'm no lawyer, and legalese is nearly as hard to read as German to me. Corrections welcome!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Nope. The Audio Home Recording act likely refers to making a copy from an origianl for personal use.You don't need to own the original, but you do need to make a copy from it.
IANAL, I am Canadian (don't know US law, although it seems very 'interesting') and have very little time right now to research the equivalent in US law... But in Canada, you are free to make an analog or digital recording for personal use from an original recording and there is an exise tax on blank media specifically for that purpose. The law is also clear that you must personally make a copy of the original. For example, you can lend Joe your brand spanking new {insert album name here} CD, and he can make a copy and return the original to you. BUT, he cannot give you a blank and have you make a copy for him.
The reason P2P violates the law (as it is written now) is that you aren't making a copy from an original. The other, much bigger violation, is that someone is distributing.
The RIAA and MPAA have always had the ability to track the downloads of songs, using an IP address or some ungodly hostname like pool-2-246.manhattan.ny.ny.us.fooisp.com The RIAA is asking for Verizon to hand over who was using that IP/hostname at the timestamps specified. Verizon contends that you need a real warrant, signed by a judge, to get access to their logs. I agree with that totally, but apparently they have yet to find a judge with sufficent clue.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
It looks like NH will pass into law a bill that says if your wireless network is unsecured, no charges can be filed against anyone who comes snooping around your network. I think that's great and coincides nicely with this idea. Can anyone shoot some holes in this theory for me? I wonder if any of those college kids who are getting hit for $97 billion had a wireless setup?
this sig deleted by another sig
That is why there are separate music CD-Rs and data CD-Rs. The music CD-Rs have the built-in tax, the Data CD-Rs do not.
The original basis of the AHRA was because the record companies were so scared of DAT (how prescient of them). The compromise was the Serial Copy Management System which is built into consumer digital recorders. You can make any number of copies of an original CD. But you can't make a digital copy of another copy. Because SCMS is not built into computer CD-recorders, it is not included in that definition.
No, it just means that they are not digital audio recording devices, as defined by the AHRA.
A copyright is any of the exclusive rights granted to the author of a work under the Berne Convention, or under local copyright laws, such as USC Title 17 for those of us in the US. These exclusive rights can be transferred, as occurs with Copyright Assignment to the Free Software Foundation, but even such a transfer isn't the copyright itself, but a transfer of ownership of copyright.
The GPL not a copyright, it is a license, and a non-exclusive one at that. A person who makes use of the GPL to redistribute or modify software doesn't have a copyright for the software, they have permission from the copyright holder to do certain things under certain conditions. The GPL makes use of copyright law, but that doesn't make it a copyright.
Music licensing is more complicated. Sometimes a license is given to redistribute a work, or to use a sample in a recording; sometimes music is licensed en masse . Sometimes copyright is assigned to various parties, sometimes it isn't, sometimes it is assumed as part of a "work-for-hire" contract. Sometimes the copyright is split, the songwriter having copyrights for the lyrics, the band having copyrights for the score, the producer having copyrights for the studio recording, and these can get licensed in whatever ways. But, again, the license is not the copyright.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice. Determining which parties own which copyrights can be a complicated issue demanding professional legal help.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Uh ... the judge did not say "what was going on wasn't illegal" ...
The judgement said that the P2P mechanisms themselves weren't illegal ... the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted works is clearly illegal -- it's just not Kazaa's fault.
Sending thousands of messages for a commercial/political interest. That's the definition of SPAM.
I suggest you read Slashdot
If Madonna creates a new recording, and it is not explicitly released to the Public Domain, it is copyrighted. Whether she owns the copyright or someone else does is a different question; as I understand it, the producer traditionally owns the copyright to a music recording, not the artist, but the industry is known for complicated contracts so it's anybody's guess who actually owns the copyrights.
If the RIAA has a license with the right parties to redistribute this work without restriction, then I would think it would be perfectly legal for them to put up a Grokkster node and distribute it. Users downloading the file would be downloading it legally. The legality of such users redistributing it is a complex legal question that I'm not going to try to properly answer. I would presume that the RIAA would say redistribution was illegal, but your argument that under the circumstances, sharing was assumed and therefore allowed might hold real water here. If the RIAA is working in certain ways with the police, Entrapment may also be a defense.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above should not be interpreted as legal advice. Redistributing copyrighted works over the internet without a license carries with it a high risk of legal complications, I suggest getting professional legal advice before considering it.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I'm sure I need to RTFL (that's an L for law) somewhere, but is the law broken when someone who owns a license to listen to a song shares that song, or is it broken when someone who doesn't own a license to listen to that song comes along and downloads it?
If it's illegal to share in the first place then the RIAA should be able to take legal action against file-sharing services forcing them to disallow users from sharing their music files, but the ruling in the Streamcast case seems to indicate that just the act of sharing isn't illegal, because it could be that the files are being shared only between people who already have a license.
If it's an unlicensed user downloading the file that's illegal, how in the world does the RIAA prove the absence of a license? We've already been made to understand that when we go buy a CD, we don't own that CD, we own a license to listen to the music on that CD. So even if that CD is lost in a fire, the license to listen to the music should still persist, right? It would then follow that obtaining the content from a P2P network would be perfectly legal. For the RIAA to prosecute a file-swapper, they'd have to prove that the receiving party never owned a license, and they'd be hard pressed to do that.
I know it can't be that simple, so someone kindly flame me for missing the obvious illegality here. Obviously the law is being broken daily, but how are they going to prove infringement under the 'licensing' system they've created? It seems to me like they've shot themselves in the foot, but I'm sure I'm missing something.
After this scenario, I think file-sharing gets pushed to a technology which effectively hides the content being transferred and who it's being transferred to. Unfortunately, this implies significant proxying. The ideal design would take all sharable content, break it up into encrypted blocks, and distribute them at random amongst all nodes. The files you're sharing would be discrete from the files you have on your machine (and hard drives are getting cheap enough this is feasible). When you requested a block, it would talk to a random peer, who would then proxy from 0 or more other peers.
I'm not sure on all the technical details, but what you describe sounds remarkably similar, at least in intent, to the Freenet project. And you're right, from what I've heard, it's quite slow at the moment (although it's expected to improve somewhat with more users and newer versions of the software).
It's fairly easy, once you have a few tricks up your sleeve.
1) Buy used CDs if you *need* something by an RIAA label. Essentially the same as downloading, since no one but the store gets your money. The RIAA actually tried to condemn this at one point in time, but they were taunted mercilessly and began to cry.
2) Buy import CDs. A little more dubious, because many of the big guys are international comglomerates. Still, I feel it's safe to assume that the views of Sony Music USA's are not those of Sony Music Japan's.
Indie CDs are still a good choice. So is MP3.com, although it's become a little harder to find quality music there.
Not "always has been." Has been since 1976. Prior to 1976, you need to attach a proper copyright notice prior to distribution or the work entered the public domain immediately.