Slashdot Mirror
The War Between p2p and Record Companies Heating Up?
the-dude-man writes "Securityfocus.com Reports that there may be a new nasty turn to the battle between the p2p networks and the RIAA/MPAA. recently, the RIAA has been trying to flood kazza with files that appear to be valid copyrighted material (movies,mp3s, ect) but are empty or, in one case, of Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, contain a voice file asking, "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?". The p2p networks are considering a possible move agianst the RIAA in response to this by using recently enacted anti-spam laws."
I sue the RIAA for $1.00 or something
I have to spend it quickly, because the RIAA is about to sue me for $17,000.
I'm not going to be the one who simultaneously antagonises the RIAA and admits in court that I tried to pirate music.
Most courts in an illegal contract will just leave the parties as they stand, unless one party can show less culpability such that they should be allowed some relief. The court could construe that by advertising a copyrighted work on a P2P network, that in itself is illegal, and therefore, whoever recieves that file would not be able to claim that they were defrauded by getting a fake file. While it's a nice conflict of law here, I don't think it will fly.
Indeed. P2P networks may be largely used to facilitate copyright infringing distribution of music, movies, books etc but lately I use it for downloading legitimate files such as game demos, movie trailers, and free software updates (whether those updates are for free software, or games and other software I have paid for). P2P is incredibly useful in this regard. I don't have to register with gamespy or wait in a long queue for my download. Long live P2P. RIAA - grow up, evolve, or die.
I used to do this a lot when you had to upload 2 songs for every one you downloaded via ftp.
"What the f*ck do you think you are doing?"
Isn't that harassment? Kazaa is so far a legal program. Until it's declared otherwise I don't think I should have to deal with obscenities screamed at me by one group that doesn't like what I'm doing.
The coolest voice ever.
you really havent been on kazza much have you?
I've backed up my home directory, all my software devlopment stuff..and docs...totaling about 650 megs after bzip...i gpg it with a 4096 bit key...then name it blade2.dvd.rip.avi and share it on kazza...ii did that 2 months ago and when i do a search for it i still find it on peoples shared folders..for some stupid reason people just dont delete stuff that turns out to be bad more often than not.
Ah well...kazza makes a great backup system
Despite this, there is a rating system in KaZaA Lite.
Yes but it isnt worth shit. I downloaded an "Excellent"-rated copy of a Zwan song only to find it was a 10 second repeating loop for 3-4 minutes.
After Madona flooded the P2Ps with mp3s of her repeatedly saying "what the fuck do you think you're doing?" somone took an appropriate response by hacking her website, posting her full new album on it, and writting "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing..."
But if they're allowed this solution, they shouldn't be allowed legal redress as well, or their response would be disproportionate. I would hope that the courts would and will recognise this in their considerations.
But seriously, I can't see how this does anything other than shift the rules of the game back to the way they were: copying between friends was fine (and will still be better - and faster - than it was in the cassette days), but the wanton copying between people who have neither met nor would care to will decrease as the costs of copying in terms of time and effort increase.
I think you are saying the same thing about music. That putting files on the sharing networks can actually HELP the music sell in stores. And this is so true. Early demos are either bootlegged, or the artist probably recorded it, and make a bunch of CDs. Eventually they get spread somehow. I've seen a lot of weird, old Pink Floyd CDs in used CD stores. Strange demos, live recordings, etc.. Also, on eBay there are a lot of old demos, live stuff, etc.
What ever happened to "It's ALL about the music maaaan..." ?
I want to say something to the selfish artists: you guys are greedy. You used to be cool, but now you want money and to "make it big." If you want to do that, fine. But you are sell-outs. You are not genuine anymore. You instantly become phony-balony manufacturing tools the moment you sign away your heart and soul.
Not when you take the stage to rap against eminem, but the VERY INSTANT you sign! You hesitate before signing your name, then you feel shame as you are writing it, and finally you know you have lost all honor when you dot the "i" in your middle-name, "Idiot".
Consider many points of view when you sell your art in public.
I suggest you read Slashdot
This was news about 2 weeks ago. Even the security focus article was posted on May 04, 2003. TechTV had stuff about it last weekend.
.gov, .mil, etc address it would be useful too.
TechTV had an interview with one of the guys at one of the P2P companies and he said something like, "They are free to connect to our P2P network, but when they start using fradulant claims, flooding, and sending out unsolicited messages, they start to break user agreements."
It would be pretty easy to track down the networks they are using and then just have a little button in your P2P client that blocked their networks. There are programs to do this, but they seem to not work 100% of the time. If it also blocked known
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I was in the record store the other day and saw Madonna's new album. I remembered that she had done her silly little 'what the f**k do you think you're doing' thing.
On a whim I put some other CDs on top to hide her regurgitaged euro dance crap.
Now every store I go into I do that... Just my little way of protest...
Soulseek, the P2P client, doesn't really have problems like that because of its more community-oriented nature. I have about 10 users that I download albums from who I know always have real mp3s ID3ed correctly at 192kbps.
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
I'll make music, so will every other musician, do you know why? The musicians dont make money selling CDs, we make money selling concert tickets!
I'd spread my music all over the net, just so I can sellout at all my concerts and make $20,000 in a day, about the same amount I'd make in a year selling CDs if I made anything at all.
Theres no shortage of wannabe musicians, some which have talent, I suggest you go outside more, theres free concerts all the time all over the place, because musicians are desperate for fans.
Fans matter more than CD sales, CD sales only matter to record companies, Fans go to concerts, buy Tshirts, and give musicians the big money.
A musician is not a doctor or engineer, you arent trained to do it, you can take a kid and give him a mic and this kid could be the best singer of all time (Think Michael Jackson),
Under this Model we will have increased supply, the quality will be just as good, but because there will be more to choose from, YOU might not like alot of the new music flooding the market, this doesnt change the fact that there will be alot of music you will like.
Whats wrong with increasing the supply? Music is not a profession its an art.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Look at regular TV, its free, thats the only reason why its so successful.
Look at the internet, its free, and its successful.
Then you have the music industry, which isnt free, and the RIAA controls almost 100 percent of the industry, this is the probblem. Cable is a niche market which you dont need to watch tv, theres pay sites on the net, which you dont really need, but they fill a niche,
The RIAA controls every type of music imaginable, and has a monopoly, they dont let independent music on MTV, so they wonder why people pirate their music?
Why not let some free Music get play on MTV and maybe people wouldnt pirate the RIAA so much anymore.
Honestly most of the music I listen to is from independent artists anyway.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
OK, how's this for an analogy? Trading music is like speeding. People do both en masse, and both are viewed by the majority as minor offenses. The difference is that speeding directly contributes to physical injury, death, and property damage while p2p may put some people out of a job.
don't understand?
it's not like she didn't get HUGE press for that.
it was covered in all of the music/entertainment news..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So.. if the whole premise is that the RIAA's and Madonna's actions "are deceptive" and "affect commerce," and it's a given that they're being deceptive, how is it again that P2P inteference is "affecting commerce"?
... but then completely neglects to explain how the RIAA's actions actually "affect" commerce while going on at lengths to describe how the actions are deceptive.
So says the article:
'The actions of RIAA and MPAA in placing files on p2p networks to deceive users of those networks into thinking they're actual music or video files, to waste their time, resources, energy and bandwidth (not to mention hard drive space and CPU cycles) quite likely is "deceptive" and undoubtedly "affects commerce."'
Oh, so he thinks that wasting someone's free time and a few fractions of a cent worth of hard drive storage somehow qualifies as "affecting commerce"?
Does he think that the commerce in this case is the transaction of the consumer and their ISP? Who says there's a guarantee that the customer must have clean connectivity and that disconnects, packet loss, and other forms of network problems aren't part of this nebulous "commerce"?
And who says that inserting machines onto a P2P network that say, "Yea, I have that song. Here!" and then send chunks of garbage to the requester is illegal to begin with? Does that mean that anyone who causes a song or movie to be corrupted to the receiver (for example, by deliberately jiggling the network cable) is similarly liable? Is corruption defined as missing pieces, too?
This is all such fucking bullshit. The answer is superior technology and networking that is robust to interference, not lawyers and legislation.
The only people fucking whining about Madonna inserting those samples are the ones who are too stupid to use a network that enforces file integrity with MD5 or rsync-like rolling hashes. Let the whiners whine. Madonna and people like her aren't going away. The solution is to deal with it with a better P2P network, not to sue Madonna into the dirt. As soon as we do that, we're no better than them.
Sheesh. Haven't we learned anything yet?