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Grokster's President Talks About Court Win
An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Morpheus/Grokster trial is over, the heads of the various P2P services are hoisting their glasses in triumph. Ciarán Tannam interviews Grokster President Wayne Rosso to get his two cents on the verdict. Xolox also applauded the ruling and posted this release. Of course, it aint over yet as the RIAA has vowed appeal."
When I saw "Vowed appeal" I was expecting to see "Vowed REVENGE!"
Maybe Napster should come back and sue all these *ster names. Its like everywhere I go there is something.. for an example roogl--err i mean, feedster. What has happen to creativity..
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
But I figure this will end up like the MPAA vs. VCR. Fight the technology tooth and nail until you realize it's another way of getting fistfuls of cash shoved in your general direction.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
And it appears with their recent activity (which compromises a trial) they are going to start this on a larger scale.
;-)
I apologize for sounding selfish and I hope those who will bear the brunt of these lawsuits will forgive me. I must say that this is indeed a good thing. There will be an initial sacrifice on the part of The People in this case, but the long term result will be positive.
This eliminates the single point of failure we've seen with Napster. If these guys are forced to go after the users, it will take them a lot longer to accomplish their goals. Instead of taking a sledge hammer to a P2P network, they will be forced to chizel away, one scrape at a time. But there's still more.
The RIAA/MPAA/IP-Obsessed-Co. will spend bundles of money on these lawsuits. It is not cheap if you're the plaintiff. This increase in their costs will cause them to raise the prices of their product. Consumers will note this increase and more will resort to piracy. It's a feedback loop.
On top of that, the more frivilous lawsuits they engage in, the less favor they will hold with the courts. Like it or not, a judge's decision is influenced by his personal feelings. If you piss off the judge, expect him less likely to rule in your favor unless the letter of the law absolutely dictates it. Otherwise, many things are up to her interpretation. The more of a fuss the RI/MPAA make, they will be perceived more and more as a nuisance.
Of course, I could be totally wrong on this.
Join Tor today!
I can tell the RIAA is on the side of the little guy. They're going out there and suing the tar out of those evil P2P guys.
'Cuz no little guy would ever use P2P to promote their art.
Not me, not Anything Box, and certainly not any other artist truly making new and original art. See... without the RIAA, nothing would ever get created. This is the true artistic genius of the world: Hillary Rosen and her copyright-legislation-writing hands.
fifth sigma, inc.
The RIAA should focus their attention on concerts and other activities where they present their artists. The recording industry is going to dimish much much more before it stabilizes. There's too much opprotunity for people and hackers to circumvent what ever technology they throw at us. But if they concentrated on doing very well done public events, they could smash whatever level of income they made before with records. As it is now, concerts are no where near the potential they hold. And wouldn't it be nice of them to release onto P2P networks songs so they could advertise their artist in the public forum? Even if they release 96kps ripped songs, I think it would do more to spread their coverage than it is to attack the networks. The last time I was on Kazaa, there were 4.4 million people on! That kind of potential audience can only be rivalled by television (and soon it will even eclipse that). All they have done is hurt their image time and time again. I have NO sympathy for them at all. Fat Cats looking to become fatter.
grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt. [from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the void type these days."
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/grok.html
The president says, "Yes, now what?"
Oh, just the small detail that the evil entity hasn't been defeated yet and is now heading straight for Earth at a somewhat excessive speed. And you know what? I think the EVIL in that movie symbolized the RIAA. The Fifth Element symbolized freedom. And the whole This is a police alert; Put your hands in the yellow circles. thing symbolized the way WE are gonna live if things don't change... in apartments that look like some Industrial Zone in Doom II, with yellow circles and KEEP CLEAR painted on your wall, and police will look inside your apartment anytime they want and snatch you away in a body bag if someone so much as accuses you of a crime. Only in our REAL future, there won't be any Fifth Element to come along and rescue us. That's how things will be if organizations like the RIAA have their way. See my other posts about sheep, et cetera. It's just like the title of my post says...
AOL [yes I use AOL, bite my shiny white arse] has a survey it's users can participate in, on it's internal homepage thing.
Here are the questions and results, as of just now:
Do you think online music trading is wrong?
84% No, it's the CD prices that should be illegal - 204,896
16% Yes, stealing is illegal, period - 39,978
Total votes: 244,874
What would most effectively curb music piracy?
54% Lower CD prices - 135,991
33% Nothing, it's too late - 82,687
6% Better pay services - 15,809
6% Threat of prosecution - 15,411
Total votes: 249,898
You'd think someone at AOL-TW would take note of this, since they're the ones asking.
(As well as which of their members voted for what and may require "further investigation" as a result.)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Incorrect, grasshopper
Understand this and understand it well. It is NOT illegal to download a file from a P2P network. It MAY be illegal for you to possess the file if it is a copyrighted work that you have no other legal basis for owning. If you have a paid-for CD that includes the track in question, you have done nothing wrong by DLing a copy from the 'net for your personal use, although it would be a little more sanitary, from a legal perspective, if you had ripped and encoded that mp3 yourself. It is NOT illegal to "Rip, Mix & Burn" ((C)Apple Computer, 2002) for your OWN use! It IS illegal for you to serve out files over a P2P network and it IS illegal for you to "Rip, Mix & Burn" ((C)Apple Computer, 2002) and give the CD-R to someone else, because you are DISTRIBUTING the work in violation of the copyright.
utter rubbish
Let's get ONE thing perfectly straight here ... there WAS no trial! Grokster won it's case on a Motion for Summary Judgment. Basically, the court looked at the evidence submitted by the parties (who BOTH moved for summary judgment) and said "there are NO material facts in dispute, the only questions to be decided are questions of law, therefore, I can decide this suit WITHOUT a trial.
... Napster DID have control over their network and they COULD ban users engaged in copyright infringement. It is a matter of FACT that Napster turned a blind eye to rampant copyright infringement on their network when they had a (rather blunt-object sort of) means to control it.
... (cf, e.g., Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, many sci-fi fanfic authors). P2P means that people don't have to maintain crappy geocities websites to distribute their creative works for free if that's what floats their boat.
Why is this distinction important, you ask? The lawsuit was in FEDERAL court. The federal courts of appeal in the US are VERY deferential to the District Courts in deciding whether a summary judgment was the proper way to dispose of a case. The Court of Appeals will start from a presumption that the judge was RIGHT and the burden will be on the RIAA to prove that the judge was wrong on the LAW he followed in deciding the case. The burden is on the RIAA to show that the judge's decision was "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to the rule of law." This is an EXTREMELY heavy burden on an appellant, especially since the district judge's "Memorandum and Order" appears to be WELL supported by U.S. Supreme Court case law.
<rant>
To state the matter bluntly, the RIAA has throw a punch and drawn back a bloody stump for their effort. The fact that this has occurred in the entertainment industry's own back yard means that this case, when it is affirmed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, will establish a VERY important precedent (I would estimate that it will be at LEAST as important as the Betamax case) with regard to whether a technology should be suppressed because it CAN be used for copyright infringement. Napster was correct
Grokster, KaZAa, LimeWire, gnutella, etc., are the opening efforts at a very promising internet technology. P2P promises to make the distribution of FLOSS and independently published literature and art a routine matter. It is true that you can't make a profit on your work if you share it by P2P, but true artists often work for the love of the art
It is now and always HAS been my postition that I support strong copyright protection. After all, that's what keeps free (libre) software free. The FSF ACTIVELY enforces the copyrights assigned to it by various FLOSS authors.
Why the HELL isn't Hollywood willing to do the same when their copyrights are MUCH more valuable, from a financial point of view? One possibility is is that these highly profitable companies who, collectively, have more money than Bill Gates, would rather spend that money buying legislators who will pass laws shifting the cost of enforcing their property rights to the general public than spend it directly on legal fees (which are recoverable under copyright law).
A darker thought is that they want criminal penalties attached to any and ALL forms of copyright infringement fot the purpose of invoking the legal doctrin of "liability per se", which would award them a damned near automatic judgment against anyone convicted of a criminal copyright infringement, whether that is shipping MILLIONS of pirated CDs a week from your warehouse in Hong Kong or sharing a ripped mp3 file of a copyrighted work out to the internet.
The media conglomerates want to stomp out peer-to-peer because it threatens their stranglehold on the distribution of entertainment. More
utter rubbish
...this could just be a dastardly plot to lure all of those P2P execs in one building...then BAM! 'Accident' involves gas leak mixed with suspicious DRM-compatible audio equipment.
That doesn't sound right to me. They didn't completely answer the question: what discovery services do they use? Every P2P Servent has discovery services. Kazaa has a bootstrap server, Gnutella/Gnutella2 (Shareaza, Gnucleus etc.) has GWebCache... what does Grokster have? I seriously can't think of another way to obtain a list of "Supernodes"/"Hubs"/"Ultrapeers" other than a centralized location. Well, maybe port scanning a range of IP's to see if they're running Grokster and know of any Supernodes, but I don't think they'd do that...
It just seems like they were avoiding that question, trying to get Grokster "unaffiliated" with anything "central". Because "central" = easy to shut down.
Frankly, I really don't care what happens to Grokster. Grokster isn't in for it for the evolution of P2P technology, but rather money. Hell, they didn't even really code Grokster, they just license other P2P clients from other companies which were created from other companies. All they do then is create cute GUI layer then stuff it to oblivion with Spyware and other ads which yield them, apprently, "millions".
What I think won this case was their defense that P2P can be used for "good things". They probably use Gnutella as a prime example, where the network is free, open and decentralized. FastTrack (the network Grokster is modeled after) is none of those. IMO, it's a three strikes your out philosophy. Is your closed source? Strike. (Okay, you can get away with that one) Is your client network closed? Strike. Do you earn profit? Strike. Grokster is outa' here.