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The Law and P2P
Anonymous Coward writes "Here's some interesting legal commentary on the continuing saga of copyright enforcement and Apple's attempt at a constructive approach."
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Available on Kazaa soon
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Apparently your magic-8-ball has never had the pleasure to use it personally.
My magic-8-ball has been formerly introduced to the product. When I asked it's opinion, I recieved "Outlook not good".
Try exposing your 8-ball, and rechecking it's results. If the message does not change, you may have a defective 8-ball, and should call the manufacturer for a replacement.
Sorry, no links.
Why Grokster and Morpheus Won, Why Napster Lost, and What the Future of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Looks Like Now
By CHRIS SPRIGMAN
----
Thursday, May. 08, 2003
On April 25, in M-G-M v. Grokster, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of movie studios and record companies against Grokster and Morpheus. (Grokster and Morpheus are peer-to-peer services that enable users to share copyrighted music, movies, and other content over the Internet without paying a dime to the copyright owners.)
Many observers were surprised. They had assumed that Grokster and Morpheus would - like Napster in A&M Records v. Napster - be shut down for facilitating individual file sharers' copyright infringement. But Judge Wilson, after carefully examining the underlying technology, found that though users' infringement was occurring, Grokster and Morpheus were not contributing to or authorizing it. Thus, they could not be held liable.
The decision is obviously bad news for Hollywood studios and record companies. If it is upheld on appeal, they will continue to face wide-scale infringement of their copyrights.
If the decision is indeed upheld on appeal, will that be good news for consumers? That is a more complicated question. The answer depends heavily on Hollywood's reaction. Will it continue its battle on other fronts - focusing perhaps not on the services, but on their users? Or will it, instead, launch new strategies to take advantage of the powerful business opportunities that peer-to-peer might provide?
Comparing and Contrasting Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster
To see what is likely to occur in the future, it's helpful first to take a closer look at the differences between Grokster, Morpheus, and Napster.
First, Grokster. It offers for download a branded version of software owned by Sharman Networks, a company incorporated in Vanuatu - a remote Pacific island chain that markets itself as protecting corporate secrecy.
When a user boots the software, his computer is directed to sign on to a "root supernode" (a server owned by Sharman), which then directs the user to a "local supernode." The "local supernode" is some user's computer, which has been temporarily designated to route file-sharing requests among a large number of other users. (A particular user's computer may function as a local supernode one day but not the next; the process is largely invisible to the user).
Suppose a Grokster user requests a certain file - it could be a song, a movie clip, a video game, or an e-book. His search request is relayed among a large number of local supernodes and on to individual users. Once the requested file is found, it is transferred directly between the users.
Now let's look at Morpheus. Its software is based on the Gnutella peer-to-peer platform, built from "open source" code. Morpheus users connect to the Gnutella network by contacting another user who is already connected. (This initial connection is usually made by linking to a computer on the network that maintains a constantly changing list of IP addresses for certain currently active nodes.)
The Gnutella network is a "pure" peer-to-peer network - composed of users running Gnutella-compatible software such as LimeWire, BearShare and Shareaza. It does not use supernodes. Instead, user search requests are passed from user to user in the network until the requested file is found. The file is then transferred directly between the two users.
So what's the difference between Grokster and Morpheus, on one hand, and Napster, on the other? It is this: when Grokster and Morpheus users search for and receive digital files, they do so without information being relayed to or by any computer owned or controlled by Grokster or Morpheus. Thus, as the district court noted, if Grokster or Morpheus shut down, their users could continue to share files with little or no disruption.
In contrast, Napster users relayed se
-- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
The distributedness was really the clencher though. Basically, the opinion states that Morpheus and Grokster had no ability to prevent copyrighted files from being shared due to the nature of the network. This, of course, requires that there were significant other uses than copyright infringement.
-Alison
It is quite likely that at some point the music industry will end up making more money out of Internet distribution of their music than they do out of selling CDs. It is also entirely likely that they will continue fighting against P2P tooth and nail until they have exhausted all possible options.
The problem is that right now the lawyers are making the decisions. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if you are a laywer - you often assume that all problems can be solved with a law suit. This mentality will likely continue to persist until it is absolutely obvious, even to the lawyers, that it can't work.
What does this mean? Well, for one it means that we should fully expect legal attacks against users of P2P networks to continue. This will simply serve to encourage greater use of Freenet and other future systems which protect user anonymity (Freenet still needs work to make it well suited to this task - but if there is a demand, someone will create a suitable third-party app which uses Freenet as a back end).
After Freenet or its successors have finally demonstrated the futility of trying to use the law to halt progress in communications technology - the music industry may eventually accept that it needs to adapt, but don't hold your breath for it to happen any time soon.
Sell at $1 a song until business gets sluggish, then surprise users with a $20 a month, download-all-the-songs-you-want subsription service. Everyone goes gah-gah because they have been paying $100-a-binge for songs and signs up for the service. Mac users revel in the fantastic deal they're getting from Jobs.
RIAA now has the business model it wants, though Apple gets a small cut, in that instead of people paying $17 a few times a year for a cd, they now have them automatically paying $240 a year. Cell-phone pricing syndrome has everyone blissfully unaware that they are paying way more than they ever wanted to in the first place and the RIAA uses the extra dough to have public executions of P2P software engineers.
While the Napster decision may have rested on that (didn't read the decision), that wouldn't qualify as a difference between Napster and Grokster/Morpheus. Because Napster was client-server as opposed to true P2P, Napster as a company was found to know about and also to be able to prevent copyright infringement. Since they could've done something, and since shutting them down stopped the problem, they were rightly (IMHO) held liable.
Grokster/Morpheus, OTOH, because they are pure P2P, are more like copy machines. They have substantial non-infringing uses and there is no way for the manufacturer to know whether a user is copying an item in violation of a copyright.
If, for example, record companies included some kind of encryption in their files that would prevent them from being played without some kind of key, and if Grokster/Morpheus included in their software some ability to strip out that encryption, then Grokster/Morpheus would be violating the DMCA, and might also be held liable for copyright infringement.
John
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
Of course, resorting to such extreme measures would almost certainly inflame public opinion. And, as George Washington University Law School Professor Orin Kerr has argued, it might even land a few record company executives in jail, absent Congressional immunity for such tactics, which (believe it or not) has been proposed."
I personally would love to see this happen, if they damage my computer, I want the bastards in jail. If somebody came into a music store and stole a bunch of cd's, they can't just break into their house and smash them - along with anything else they might believe is stolen, they'd have to notify the authorities. I'm not trying to defend copyright infringement here, but two wrongs do not make a right.
Napster was ruled against because it isn't really P2P; requests went through a central server.
Grokster and Morpheus were not ruled against because they are really P2P; if the backend companies shut down the users wouldn't be affected.
Previous attempts at online music services failed because they were too expensive and too restrictive.
Apple's online music service will not fail because it is not expensive and not restrictive.
The media industries should follow Apple's lead.
IMO, this article wasn't that interesting, nor that informative. It was yet another summation of the story thus far. At least it was a quick read.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Guarenteed quality. Guarenteed speed. Instant preview streaming. No one cuts off your download because they're shutting down, or just being an asshole. Guarenteed complete albums. Cover art. Exclusive artist news and videos which are also free with the service.
$0.99 isn't exactly rock bottom prices, but it's better than going to a store and dropping $19 for the one track you like, and it's way better than sitting on the computer for 3 days trying to find a reliable download on Gnutella.
I just tired the iTunes store yesterday, and it's BETTER than I thought it would be, and I'm a die-hard Mac user. Honestly, I have no idea why it took so long for someone to get it right, and all sly remarks about "leave it to Apple to show you how it's really done" aside, I'm glad it's been done, and prehaps this whole "Threat of the Digital Age" bullshit can finally be the fuck over with.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Why, just the other day I was thinking about how Home Depot leaves those crates of stuff out front and how I should just drive by after midnight and take what I wanted. Why pay, right? Then there was this time driving through a school zone. I went 40MPH, just because I felt like it.
I hope my neighbor doesn't mind me parking on his lawn, because, well, Why Not? Right?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
No no no, you've got it all wrong... the blanket term is "Napster-like theft ring" nowadays. :)
Did you RTFA? If you had, you would have noted the "Compare and Contrast" nature. For brevity's sake:
.2 * .04 = 40,000,000
Compare =({"music", "file-sharing"});
Contrast = ({"p2p", "client-server", "free/$.99"});
It also compared them to other RIAA sanctioned online music systems that are failing miserably because of their price structure. The fact that the article finishes with a very viable (IMO) business model that would not only increase the distribution and profits for the MPAA and RIAA backers, but also lower the price for consumers is a welcome change from the rampant "RIAA BAD! MPAA BAAAAAD!" arguments I see.
The article is a how-to for both sides. It points out the flaws of failed file sharing systems as well as what the current ones are doing right (and why the corporate strongmen hate them for it). It also looks at the other side as to why the corporate anti-piracy measures and their on-line distribution methods are both failing and why Apple sold 1,000,000 songs in it's first week.
From the article, only apple users can use their service. Apple has 4% of the computer market. I'd guess about 20% of the world is on the net. 5,000,000,000 people on the planet. This leads to:
5,000,000,000 *
At 1 million songs, that's 1 song for every 40 MAC users. Now consider that MACs have a heavy niche in primary and secondary education facilities where kids under the age of 18 can't use the service or in college computer labs where the users can't keep the songs or play them at their fancy (at least not like a home computer). All in all, the overwhelming early success of MACs new service shows that at a reasonable price, people ARE willing to pay for music online, but only if it is quality sounding, fairly priced, and their's to own after purchase.
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
Actually what's going to happen is that Napster is going to reform, retool and re-appear on the scene letting users download any and all music for $0.10 per song with no DRM restrictions using lossless open source audio compression techniques. The RIAA will take them to court, be defeated, and all of it's members will be jailed for being jerks to music lovers.
Naturally I have no evidence to back up these wild claims.
Which is exactly the same amount of evidence you have for claiming that Apple and the RIAA are going to pull a PressPlay on its customers.
Here's a concept: Maybe they're the first people to do this thing correctly. Maybe in a year's time everyone will be doing it this way. Maybe all non-Mac users will look back on the fact that Apple led the way with this model and laugh nervously and rapidly change the subject. Kind of like they do with most of the other innovative firsts to come out of Cupertino.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I don't think he'll mind you parking there since really, if you think about he's not out anything. His lawn's still there, albeit under your car and there should be ample time for the grass to get sunlight and water during those times you're at work or just out using your car. I say go for it.
.99 a song is fine. The quality is fine. The freedom to do what I want with my freshly bought track is adequat for my needs.
Since Napster was cranking along I've been downloading what I wanted and just flat out not caring whether it was stealing or not. I'm 37 years old and the record labels have been bending me over for music for decades so right or wrong I just plain didn't give a fuck what they thought. I always said that I wasn't going to give them $15 or $20 for one song on a CD that sucked and that if I had a legal and affordable alternative I would be glad to pay for it. Well now I do and I am.
I'll pay to download from Apple instead of searching for it on Kazaa because it's the correct thing to do. Put-up or Shut-up time for those of us who said "we would if they would...".
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
"Why would i pay to download music on one service, that i can download for free on another? "
Why would you go to Starbucks and buy a coffee when you could make your own? Simple: you get your coffee quicker with more consistent quality. $.99 buys you a fast download plus really good search capabilities.
"Derp de derp."
in a couple of ways, but one specifically - the author states that Gnutella does not use supernodes. in fact Ultrapeers (the gnutella term for supernodes) have been on gnutella for quite some time. there weren't as effective as hoped, but that was because of several bad iterations of implementations. things are getting better - check out any respectable (BearShare, LimeWire) gnutella servent and you'll see.
smd4985
"Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots") know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free."
Then explain to me how Apple sold 1 million songs? Explain to me why a lot of people would pay $300-$400 for an iPod or similar piece of hardware when they don't want to spend $15 for CD?
You assume it's about price tag and it never occurs to you that what's really wanted here is to be able to make music more interesting and entertaining. MP3s have brought on an interesting revolution in music by making it more portable and more customizable to the listener. (Playlists, etc.) Meanwhile, in an effort to combat this on every level (including the legal uses of MP3s), the RIAA's gunning for sweeping changes to destroy the rights of individuals, instead of just doing the right thing and filling the demand people have. Apple's site proves that people are happy to pay for music as long as the service is good and prices are fair.
So yeah, nice troll. Congrats on getting your ill-thought comments modded up. Never mind that people want their music to be more interesting, no no, it's all about making it free. That's why MP3 players are making so much money when people could burn their MP3s to a music CD.
"Derp de derp."
The RIAA might just let the cops do it for them.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. - Berke Breathed
I wonder what the pricing breakdown per song for iTunes is. What percentages are going to the Record Industry and the Artists? Since there is no cost of the physical "CD", besides advertising, promotions, etc.
I don't think that this is necessarily a solution for the artists, but a solution for the consumers. The RIAA always talkes about how it's artists are loosing money because of P2P. I hope whatever "tax" that Apple has to pay the record industry to pay for the copyright use of these songs, that a greater percentage goes to the artist.
The customer was not being served by the music industry. Apple's recent Music Store opening offers ample evidence of that. It certainly has shortcomings but the overwhelmingly positive response to it clearly demonstrates that people will pay a reasonable amount to download a quality recording.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor