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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?"
Ok, so first they argue in court that there are no legit uses for these services. Then they use them themeselves. Are they not admiting to doing something that they would claim is not legal?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'm not sure I get this... they say that there's no legit use for these programs, but they only send messages out to people who are "breaking the law." Not sure about this, but if they have to single out those people, doesn't that prove that there are legal and legit uses for these products?
I don't think I have a sig.
To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question... or is it?
The basis for the RIAA case against Verizon, as pointed out in the article, is that Verizon must release contact info for customers because the RIAA has no way to contact these customers without Verizon's help.
The Verizon lawyer just said: "Wait a minute. You just contacted millions of people."
Also, about "the messaging": it appears that the RIAA is "logging on" to popular file sharing services and using simple scripting to message users through the system. Kazaa provides this functionality.
See, the thing I don't understand, is that to do this sort of thing *legitimately* - that is, prove the user who they're messaging IS distributing copywrited content - the RIAA must log on, search, download, and play a potentially infringing file. Then, the RIAA has to send out the message.
No matter what the speed of the RIAA connection, something tells me that it's going to be very difficult for them to download millions of songs, check them by hand, and then send out messages - since it simply isn't possible. Perhaps they could hash files, sure, but they're STILL downloading thousands of songs. In other words, this is what this says: "I just used this file sharing service to illegally copy a song - and if I want to, I can sue you for it." In previous suits, the RIAA has said things to the tune of: "Since you didn't own copyright to this and my computer made a copy, regardless of whether or not I own copyright, the file isn't legally mine." Or, translation: "I committed a crime to prove your guilt."
I'm pretty sure that isn't legal.
True enough, but a pretty good scare tactic for 95%+ of the population. The average computer user knows little or nothing about how their online activities can be tracked and prosecuted.
And it must have been disturbing as hell to get one of those messages, at your own computer, in your own office or bedroom, from a weird quasi-government body who may or may not have the wherewithall to arrest you/fine you/harass you.
The anonymity of the internet is what empowers people to download songs they have no business downloading. Without that to hide behind (or even if they think they can't hide behind it anymore), 95% of the use would drop off quickly. I'm not exactly applauding this tactic, but if they're looking to cut down on trading, it's a pretty effective idea (especially when compared to their other recent tactics).
Back when Napster was the rage, I used it's chat feature. I found it parrticularly helpful when I found a song that I wanted, but was only being hosted by a red or yellow (low speed) connection. I'd IM the person to ask if they were downloading or uploading anything else at that time. If they weren't, I'd let them know that I'd like to try and grab a file from them, and well.. yeah, that worked. That way, I avoided trying to cram another mp3 over an already overloaded 56k modem that was transfering other mp3s.
So, I did find a use for Napster's chat features. However, since most people who have just about every song are on "broadband" these days, I don't try to see if it will be a hastle to download from a particular user.
The chat feature was/is still helpful.
Anyone know of a list of the netblocks owned by the RIAA/MPAA and any member organizations, contracted companies, etc?
I've been building up a fairly large blacklist of hosts returning bogus search results, but that only works so well. If there was a good blacklist, P2P programs could include it, and deny all connections from those ``nasty" hosts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Everyone should remember that repeated threats of legal action qualify as battery... If RIAA oversteps their bounds here, there could be a nice big class-action lawsuit over it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
time to move to encryption. encrypted peer to peer is the answer i think.. distributed 128 bit encrypted p2p. now that is music to my ears.
Do the owners of the music lose it after you steal it? if not, it's not stealing.
:-)
Maybe not -- but if you deprive them of the income they might otherwise have earned by way of sales -- there's a case to argue that piracy is a theft of money even if it's not the theft of music itself.
The problem we face here is that until recently, the only way the market could express its dissatisfaction with the quality or price of a product was not to buy it.
Thanks to P2P networks, digital duplication and the like, that same market can now voice its dissatisfaction by not buying the products concerned -- but using them anyway.
One could argue therefore that the industry is losing no money because those who pirate this stuff would not have bought it anyway.
I hope the RIAA has thought this whole thing through very carefully.
What are they going to do if, once they've killed all the pirates, sales don't improve?
Surely there'd be at least a moral case for the pirates to say that they were falsely blamed for the industry's woes and file a class-action defamation suit
To the RIAA -- beware of what you wish for, you may find it's not what you want.
Out of curiosity, can Morpheus and Grokster use SPAM laws since the RIAA sent out a mass amount of unwanted messages with negative connotations?
.smell my feet.
Freenet is simply not a good system for P2P. It's very design makes no sense.
Besides that, although FreeNet may have more anonymity built-in than other P2P services, it's far from anonymous... It only provides a measure of deniability ("No, *I* didn't download that movie, FreeNet did that automatically for some reason"), which is just as possible with Gnutella ("No, I was searching for something wholesome and just accidentally downloaded that because it was embedded with tons of other perfectly legal files. It's just shared because I share everything I've downloaded automatically.")
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I don't know about you... but I have a wireless basestation.... no password... soooooo I suppose someone else from my IP MUST have been d/ling all the copywritten stuff... I just use KAZAA for the *significant* non-infringing uses... /Sounds like reasonable doubt to me...
hillary rosen and her gang are engaging in online terrorism and scare tactics.
"Buy CDs and you support terror!"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
There are only a few real problems with the record companies. Incredibly high prices. Artists getting a small cut. Artists getting locked-in to long contracts. Releasing less-than-half-full CDs.
Make your own record company that sells hour-long, $5 CDs, and have $1 (or more) of each sale go to the artist. No copy protection is really needed, because 99% of people will just buy the CD.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And here is a paper (PostScript) describing what GNUNet means by anonymity.
From the official GNU page for GNUNet:
Sounds good to me. According to the docs, the final version should be ready in time to ship with HURD 1.0!
(That last bit was a bad joke. I hope.)
If Kazaa sued the RIAA because of this, I would assume that this would be interpreted as they (Kazaa) are responsible for enforcing the Acceptable Use Policy which also says unlawful transfers are not permitted. The RIAA could then sue them back and win this time.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
uh, when I was fifteen and younger, all I knew was FREE MUSIC too. My room had STACKS of tapes in it, not a single one an original. I bought maybe 10 CDs my whole teenage life, but "pirated" many more.
Now that I'm older, I buy at least 4 CDs a month, as a minimum. I own over 1000 CDs.
Just wondering why you think copying will create FREE MUSIC LOVERS rather than just MUSIC LOVERS.
Anyway, I'm off to hit command-D about fifty times on this Britney MP3 on my desktop. That should really DRAIN britney's bank account, eh?
Yep, we're trying to build a P2P app that uses spoofed UDP source addresses. It works, but it's only in very basic alpha at the mo. It uses anonymous broadcasts to perform the queries. The main problem is the file transfer - it is hard to do flow control if you can't talk directly to the remote host. Have a look - http://udpp2p.sourceforge.net/ - if you think you can help, we'd be grateful.
Get your own free personal location tracker
wow doesnt sending a mass of unwanted IMs constitute spam??? a new virgina law makes the sending of spam a felony. hmmmmmm make you wonder
Freenet doesn't just have "more anonymity built-in," it has leaps and bounds of more anonymity built in for the person who placed the file there in the first place. It is effectivly (nothing is impossible) untraceable to the originator and the argument of "I really didn't download that" does fly because there is not a simple deal to know for sure what one downloaded (esp. with all the safty gaurds like segmentating and encrypting the data). The key is that FreeNet data is most likly not sourced from someone who has also downloaded that data with intent or by the originator.
:).
This defense is untested in court and may or may not fly but FreeNet brings a peace of mind when it comes to P2P.
A better argument against FreeNet as a serious P2P application is that it doesn't handle large files (aka movies and TV shows) very well
The judge said that the makers of the software were not responsible for the actions of it's users.
He didn't say the user's actions were not illegal.
The best point made in this article was that the RIAA was stressing that they could NOT contact the users themselves, therefore Verizon had to give up confidential information. By doing this {messaging scare tactic} they invalidated their own arguments, and weakened their position overall...
Why do you think we have such corporate sponsored pop-music travesties such as Britney "Pepsi" Spears? Because people actually buy their garbage! With file-sharing only the strong will survive, and the RIAA and Music labels cannot continue to put one or two good songs on a CD with 16-17 "filler tracks" and make billions. The crap will not get listened to. People will download and burn only the good stuff and this will force the no-talent pop-stars on the shortbus back to Creative Inspiration special education school.
If you want people to pay 15 bucks for a CD you had damn well better put $15 worth of decent music on it. In the end we must realise that we have created this monster. We, the consumers, financed and permitted these people to build this empire and in the end we can only strive to take back what we have allowed them to annex from us. filesharing is one way of telling these people that enough is enough.
I am now off to download all of Madonna's work just for the hell of it. In the end she, and the greedy alcoholic neanderthals of Metallica have shown us the depths of greed that a person can sink to once you give them a taste for money and popularity.
Since 1992, the U.S. Government has collected a tax on all digital audio recorders and blank digital audio media manufactured in or imported into the US, and gives the money directly to the RIAA companies, which is distributed as royalties to recording artists, copyright owners, music publishers, and music writers:
In exchange for those royalties, a special exemption to the copyright law was made for the specific case of audio recordings, and as a result *all* noncommercial copying of musical recordings by consumers is now legal in the US, regardless of media:
The intent of Congress was clear when this law was passed (http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1993-01From House Report No. 102-873(I), September 17, 1992:
From House Report No. 102-780(I), August 4, 1992: Therefore, when you copy an MP3 the royalties have already been paid for with tax dollars in accordance with the law. If you are a musician whose recordings are publicly distributed, then you are entitled to your share of these royalties by filing a claim under Section 1006 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1006.html)Napster tried to use this law to defend their case, and the court ruled this law did not apply to them because they are a commercial company. But as a consumer it seems to me you are perfectly within your rights when you make a copy for noncommercial private use.
I had a thought recently, can someone explain to me why an MP3 is actually a copy of a song ripped from a CD. The MP3 differs in many many ways to the original digital source (Due to compression, file format etc etc).
There are no copyright issues for me to go into a gallery and make a sketch of a rembrandt picture, so why should there be for lossy copies of original recordings.
CD->CD copying is something different I think.
Below is the MPAA lawergram, I think the important phrase in it is that they have 'good faith' that the files are copyright and being illegally distributed. So they assume that a file with the name of their property is their property.
Which is, to be honest, a fair assumption.
>
> RE: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
> MPAA Case Name:
> Reference#:
>
> Date of Infringement:
>
>
> Dear abuse@myip
>
> The Motion Picture Association (MPA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:
>
> Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
> Disney Enterprises, Inc.
> Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
> Paramount Pictures Corporation
> TriStar Pictures, Inc.
> Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
> United Artists Pictures, Inc.
> United Artists Corporation
> Universal City Studios, LLLP
> Warner Bros., a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
>
> We have received information that an individual has utilized the above reference IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted motion picture(s) through a peer-to-peer service, including such title(s) as:
>
>
> The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted motion pictures constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3). This conduct may also violate the laws of other countries, international law, and/or treaty obligations.
>
> Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
>
> 1. Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above, and
> 2. Take appropriate action against the account holder under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.
>
> On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.
>
> Also, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the State of California and under the laws of the United States, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
>
> Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.
coldcity
code, life, art
"If you are a musician whose recordings are publicly distributed, then you are entitled to your share of these royalties by filing a claim under Section 1006" I am a semi-pro musician, having posted original music on Napster, Kazaa...etc.(publicly distributed) Who do I call to get check! Really I think that all this RIAA mess is a good thing, we are in the middle of a revolution, we are the rebels fighting the RIAA/DMCA Empire. We have a obligation to force change in the record industry. I am not for copyright infringement, but I am for a new way of music distribution. I would love to see less emphasis on global promotion of artists and more local music scenes. I have spent years playing and writing music (I ended up in the IT industry, imagine that) and I still performed 134 shows last year, I believe, wait I know that there are thousands of great musicians out there and never get recognized because they do not fit into the monopolized record industry world. Imagine being able to use P2P to get music from your area, or the work local filmmakers. It is time for us to make a stand and revolutionize the music industry. Freedom the is freeedom to say that two plus two is four. If that is granted, all else follows. George Orwell, 1984
And how can someone on Gnutella tell if the file they are downloading from you, originated from you? How can someone tell that you didn't just get it from somewhere else?
It's really not difficult to start picking apart FreeNet if someone wanted to. Just one node-in-the-middle, and it gets two pieces of the request.
Yes, but it could apply (nearly as well) to any other P2P system. It doesn't give piece of mind, it gives the illusion of anonymity, which can be even worse.
I basically glossed over that point when I said: " Freenet is simply not a good system for P2P." I think it's technical diffencies have been well documented and discussed, and I didn't want to bother rehashing the same old facts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And how about if I publish a document with *YOUR* name and address in it?
That part, at least, is a non-starter when it comes to lawsuits.
Yes, I agree that FreeNet is WAY overhyped, and not only does it not provide privacy, it isn't even a technically good P2P program. (I've said this elsewhere on this thread... Browse at +3)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Repeat after me: Reproduction for non-comercial use is NOT theft! Leave it to the RIAA and libraries will be illegal.
I read your solution to the riaa/verizon fight.
It seems to me that Verizon providing encrypted logs to the riaa would not actually be providing anything. I doubt if a judge would agree that providing even trivially encrypted logs is making them available.
What struck me as really weird was that, in the Verizon case, the SAME judge that found for the RIAA also found for them again in the appeal. I thought the appeal would go to another judge.
On 97.4 in Detroit they did a radio segment of RIAA and P2P networks. Unfortunately I didnt get the chance to call in yesterday but I sent them an email today. The entire show missed the point. They spent the entire time arguing over whether or not pirating songs was legal or not. I did not listen to the entire show, but I never heard them bring up legitimate uses of the networks, or the tactics of the RIAA. It was pretty much(I am paraphrasing here) "P2P = Piracy = Bad". Hope they actually read my email because I told them to come read /.
That's not actually necessarily true, they could file a lawsuit against "John Doe" and then get a subpoena to force Verizon to tell the court who the John Doe is so they can serve papers on him.
I haven't actually read the Verizon case (and so could be very wrong) but I've always assumed that they're trying for the middle ground of being able to send formal cease-and-desist letters to the users instead of having to file actual lawsuits to get names and addresses.
There's also an important quirk of the law, here. The DMCA makes it pretty clear that, for the big awards, the violations need to be "willful," which means that you knew you were breaking the law when you did it. Proving willfullness is notoriously difficult - this is a case where ignorance of the law is an excuse, and most people can plausibly claim that they had no idea that they were breaking the law. Unless, of course, you got a cease-and-desist letter from the RIAA telling you it was illegal...
If the cease-and-desist letters are then ignored, the RIAA would then obviously have the option of formally filing suit. But, I believe, even if they lose the Verizon case, the RIAA can still sue the sharers as "John Doe" defendents and probably get the court to force Verizon to give the information up, anyway, in that context.
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I've been predicting this phase for years. As on a lot of other things ($.99 major-label downloads) I was a bit ahead of the curve, but I think this is an inevitable development. Copyright law pretty clearly shows that what the users are doing by sharing is illegal. Napster and the first round of p2p were easy to shut down because they ran services, and were clearly complicit in the legal violations. The next round, as the RIAA is finding, are decentralized enough that they can reasonably claim they have no check on their users' behaviors, which means that the creation of those tools is not a violation of the law.
That doesn't, of course, eliminate the problem that what users are doing is a clear violation of copyright law. And not just the much-hated DMCA; what users do under Naptser would've been perfectly illegal in 1992 (albeit the penalties would've been insignificant since it was not-for-profit). The big change in the DMCA was to make it clear that violating copyrights even when you didn't personally profit from it was still something you could get a big damage on.
Anyway, I've been saying for years that the RIAA's attacks against providers were going to run out and the were going to have to go after individual users. If they have the stomach for it, that'll solve the problem - after a few dozen people declare bankruptcy after receiving multi-million dollar damage awards, people will really begin to understand that when they share music, they're breaking the law, and they're not anonymous.
The real question mark in all of this is what the political ramifications of this will be. Will there be enough public outcry to decriminalize the sharing of music? Personally I doubt it; there is too much money arrayed on the other side, and the long history of copyright in this country is an expansion of copyright. It's hard for me to imagine it going the other way.
One way or another, though, this is finally moving to endgame. I see three possible outcomes:
1) The RIAA fails to have the backbone to prosecute individual end-users. If this happens, the world as we know it today will exist indefinitely - lots of bluster from the RIAA and MPAA while users continue to ignore the law. This is the least likely outcome, in my opinion.
2) The RIAA actually sues people and wins. Enourmous public outcry forces Congress to revisit the issue. Despite heavy lobbying from entertainment (and software!) interests, the portions of the DMCA that made not-for-profit distribution of copyrighted material punishable by large cash fines is rolled back, effectively decriminalizing fil
What the RIAA did? I mean they are entangled in many lawsuits against various people and companies over this thing and they turn around and harrass the very people they are in the lawsuits against? Its basically the same thing as if someone killed one of my family members so I went to the suspects house and started harrassing them and their families. This can't be legal. When you are in a lawsuit there are certain things you can and cannot do when it comes to contact with the other parties.
I believe the IM went something like this:
We are the RIAA. Big Rosen is watching. You will cease and desist or we will blow up your home planet using... umm... lawyers. EXTERMINATE! You have no chance to escape make your time. *Evil laugh*
But seriously, what the hell do they think they're pulling on this one? A mass lawsuit to all who use Kazaa? Now that would be funny... Or maybe they're going to try to shut down Kazaa through mass scare tactics, hacking, and mass poisonings of the networks. Don't they get an idea? They really need to get a clue and realize that if they don't stop they will go under within months.
The RIAA selling some people a DVD without a legal player for *nix is also useless, but it happens every day.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
4) The RIAA sues a small number of people and wins. The vast majority of file-sharers are successfully intimidated into removing their libraries from the file-sharing services. Having been intimidated to the point of having to change their favorite behavior, those 40 million angry, upset users stop patronizing the music industry. The stop buying CDs. They give 99c downloads the big finger. CD sales crash as the RIAA boycott spreads, and average people decide that they will no longer buy music from terrorists.
Speaking of which, in the ongoing debate over the battle between file-sharers and the music industry, one aspect that has been conspicuously missing is the fact that in the last few years, a widespread RIAA boycott movement has been forming. If you do a google search on RIAA BOYCOTT, you'll find over 8000 hits, most of which are either calls for a boycott of the recording industry, links to existing boycott sites, or articles expressing support for a RIAA boycott, yet no one ever cites this as a possible (probable) factor in the downturn in recording industry sales.
Successful individual lawsuits against file sharers may be just the thing that the general RIAA boycott movement needs to become truly widespread and start producing positive results -- positive results being defined as sales drops that threaten the ability of the recording industry, and thus the RIAA, to survive.