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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."
Almost sad to see a portion of such a large industry going through its death throes. I imagine the horse & buggy manufacturers acted much the same about 100 years ago...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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.
I spent ages on KaZaA looking for the fuck off Madonna track, filling my computer with propert Madonna material.
The historians can't seem to settle whether to call this one "The Third Net War" (or the fourth), or whether "The First P2P War" fits better. We just call it "The **AA War." Everything up to then and still later were "incidents," "patrols" or "police actions."...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
RIAA members are going to see their sales shrink again this year. Kazaa is only one manifestation of the mp3 trading that will doom them. Many I know, don't use Kazaa, they just trade with friends via CD-R, DC++ and S-FTP.
I was driving near the airport in SF in Feb. I looked at the car next to me. I saw a teenage girl leafing through a 3-ring binder full of CD-R's with band/album names drawn on the CD-R with a black marker. With or without Kazaa and public p2p, these guys are going to lose another 10% this year.
Musicians will have to make a living from live performances.
IEEE Spectrum Magazine's topic for the month of May is "Invasion of the Music Snatchers." A number of copying and filesharing attacks and counterattacks are discussed.
Many of this month's articles are online, but if you are not an IEEE member you are limited to the "publicfeature" URL's.
Flooding networks with spam files will just result in networks becoming smarter to route around the garbage. Suppose for example that new p2p networks use a weighted reputation system where individual content files can be rated by the users of the network. Of course, positive ratings by users who have good reputations would indicate that the file is good, likewise negative ratings for a file by reputable individuals would indicate that the file is garbage. Similar to how these comments are rated on Slashdot.
It's their own customers they're risking alienating. If they fight fair, they'll win, and deservedly so. If not, then there will be consequences. It's as simple as that.
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
I used to do this a lot when you had to upload 2 songs for every one you downloaded via ftp.
KaZaA Lite has a webpage with verified downloads (seems to be under construction, right now). Or just google. That simple.
Despite this, there is a rating system in KaZaA Lite.
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
...P2P trust model infrastructures.
It looks like the RIAA/MPAA are driving innovation, for a change.
The "what the fuck" clip has already even been remixed. The site with the links for that is here.
A screenshot of madonna's hacked site can be found here.
Any legal action taken by the P2P companies against RIAA would fail under equitable estoppel (aka. the "clean hands doctrine").
If the networks were simply being flooded with random garbage, they might have a case. But since the complaint is one of misrepresentation -- that the files appear to be valid copyrighted material -- the P2P networks clearly do not have "clean hands" with respect to people searching for those files.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I just can't feel bad for anyone who intentionally tried to download Madonna 'music'.
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
You can find the original "wtf do you think you're doing" Madonna mp3, along with a pile of remixes at the Madonna Remix Project.
I was watching Celebrity Justice of Fox (I know, I know) and apparently the person saying that line on the music files is Madonna herself.
Its dissappointing that people in the music industry dont seem to understand the concept of free advertising...
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
Unlike spam, you solicit your downloads by choice. If they used a bug in a P2P network to fill people's hard drives with crap unsolicited, the anti-spam angle would seem workable. As it is you solicit their system to engage in obvious copyright infringement. Your claim for relief against fraud for an for an 'unpaid' service while attempting to break the law is going to be seriously weak.
I think you'd have a better chance asking the judge to prosecute someone for selling you a joint filled with oregano. At least in that case, you gave someone money and thus (in most states) there is an implied contract of fitness for the generally recognized use of the product.
On the one hand, you really can't FAULT the RIAA for trying to do something, but on the other hand the route they're taking amounts to essentially vigilante justice. Whether you think people SHOULD be allowed to share music or not, they AREN'T at the moment, so (technically) should be "punished." It is not up to the RIAA to dole out this punishment, however. What they're doing is also wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right (my mommy taught me that, happy mother's day to her).
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone
... you mean to say someone has figured out her last name?
Wow
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
The RIAA should stick to legit services like Apple has started and stop the electronic goosing - it's hardly the high road.
The P2Ps should 'fess up, at least to themselves, lose the weak arguments (95 percent of what they claim as justification) and realize they are in fact trading in illegal-by-contract goods and should be grateful they're around this long.
Theyre really just treading water in "it's-only-illegal-if-you-get-caught land. Silly basis for an industry.
And remember, for the most part, you get what you pay for. It doesn't matter how scammed the traders get, and it doesn't matter what the RIAA does, it won't stop them.
A fair and well-managed system will. When it's reasonable, people will pay and use just like books. The VCR didn't kill the video rental or sales industry, and the copier doesn't stop a single sale at Borders or B&N. Granted digital copying makes things easier, and the ecoonomics helps, but that's what needs to be in the new model. Most people with most traditional media would rather have a legit copy than a pirated one.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I loathe Madonna's music, but I really wanted a copy of her saying that, I don't know why. I looked, and I couldn't find a fake song of hers on the Kazaa network.
Does anyone have a file name & size to look for?
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
1) What the F*ck Do You Think You Are Doing? - Madonna ...
2) F*ck Off and Buy the %$#^*@! CD - Metallica
3) We Don't Want Your P2P - Hillary and the Shylocks
4)
In other entertainment news, a startling shift has occurred in Madonna's music style as the lyrics to her latest #1 single are found to be far less offensive than usual and the song far more musical in general.
Sigs are bad for your health.
... or is the RIAA getting real desperate? It amuses me that their broad 'onslaught' of lawsuits against P2P networks, downloaders, uploaders, etc.. as well as more 'creative' activities such as these envisioned to battle illegal copying of shared digital media had almost zero effect on its proliferation. P2P file sharing is alive and kicking and I just bought myself a brandnew Sony car radio that - big surprise - also plays MP3s (what irony I might add). UPS is also in the process of delivering my shiny new KISS DP-500 from Europe, which plays DVDs and - you probably guessed it - DivX and Xvid files as well (and it has an Ethernet port - droool ;-)
So, I really wonder what the RIAA's vision of the future is - obviously they are paying a lot of people (i.e. lawyers) very high consulting fees to come up with something to preserver their 'interest' (pun intended) - and this is the BEST they can come up with? LOL
Seriously - a friend of my and I came up with a working, commercial P2P digital distribution model 3 years ago, that would kick illegal copying to the curb since it actually rewarded people for downloading. We actually pitched it to the usual suspects and got laughed at. I'm actually surprised that noone has replicated our effort up to this point - maybe I'll pick up on it when I'm done with my current company.
Maybe Rosen should buy herself a copy of 'Sun Tsu' (a book about the art of warfare which predates the bible) - and I quote: 'fighting a protracted war against an overwhelming and resourceful enemy should be avoided at all cost.' It is time that the RIAA fesses up to its evils and relinquishes these silly stabs against P2P downloaders - they just wind up pissing off their greates asset - the kids willing to pay good money for concerts and 'affordable music' (Rosen: re-read the last sentence three times).
Hell yea, use the anti-spam laws to counter the effects of the DMCA. That would be so ironic. The RIAA can choke.
After all, it now tells the RIAA which users are supplying "the best dope" to the p2p system.
Then now have an awfully good system to find just who to target... the users that are providing the best goods.
Imagine (bear with me) that all drug users had an online survey to report just who their favourite dealers were. Don't you think the Drug Czar would pay attention, and go after the providers of the best smack first?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
In most countries, it is not illegal to download copyrighted music. It's illegal to redistribute copyrighted music against the wishes of the copyright holder.
The RIAA can't come after you just for downloading music. You have to be actively re-sharing that music out again to break a law.
On the flip side, though, you are not procuring that music through legal/legitimate means, so you may not be granted certain protections and warranties that you might otherwise be granted, so your law suit might be tricky.
Your jurisdiction may differ, though.
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..."
Maybe, in the long run, instead of wasting money on P2P control (in the short-run they should continue it), they could bring all the participating record labels together and make purchasing music easier. At the same time, they should push a campaign about how morally wrong it is to pirate songs. (Of course, they are already doing it, but this should go together).
Music labels working together could make custom CDs and, maybe, even DRMed music downloads (for MS Win and Mac users at least) from across music labels. This is especially beneficial for custom CDs.
For instance, I want songs A, B,...,K. Songs, E and G are owned by Klingons while songs F and K by Romulans. The rest are owned by the Borg. Furthermore, except for songs A and B, all other songs are from different artists or different albums.
A good part of P2P users are probably doing it because they find it difficult to buy 200 different CDs in which more than 65% of the songs are not what you want.
Thank you
GrimReality (The Idiot)
2003-05-11 16:51:54 UTC (2003-05-11 12:51:54 EDT)
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.
What about the movies that are family titles that are actually cheap pornos, maybe they are behind that as well!
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.
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.
Ironic, isn't it, how quickly we forget about the First Amendment when it's somebody else's speech being protected instead of our own?
Asking somebody "What the fuck do you think are doing?" is not in any way, shape, or form illegal. So yes, you do have to deal with them saying that. Why is this country so hellbent on destroying the idea of free speech?
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
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...
So you're the bastard responsible! I spent 7 days downloading that on dial-up!
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
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 thought music was an art? All about the consumer?
Who gives a damn about selling CDs? No one but the RIAA, Musicians tour and give concerts and would make more money without the RIAA around, Fans would be given more concerts and better overall deals along with cheaper music.
Looks like both the creators of art and the consumers of art win with P2P, if we are a democracy and not a plutocracy, we should have a vote on it and if the people decide on P2P, the laws should be changed.
Outlawing P2P in my opinion does more harm to the industry than making it legal, musicians cant make money because of the contracts with the RIAA not allowing them to use P2P to advertise their concerts.
You see, P2P makes a musician popular enough to give concerts, and this is where the real money is made.
College students wont pay for music, but we will pay to go to a concert, I go to the movies more now that P2P exists than I did before it existed, I'll be going to see the Matrix, and I WILL buy software if its at a decent price,
People who think P2P makes the industry lose money, they are right the guys in suits who dont create anything lose money, and I hope they all go bankrupt, but the musician gains money and the consumer gains quality service, better concerts, and can get music at a better price.
What ever happened to democracy? the DMCA wasnt requested by anyone but CEOs and lobbyists who dont even make music.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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
Contact the John Cage estate and tell them the RIAA is distributing copies of Cage's copyrighted silence (4'33", exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence). They've won cases against people infringing against their silence in the past. If they're distributing any substantial chunk of silence as "music", it's probably a copyright violation.
I am reading through all these comments and no one seems to have nailed it.
The way I see it there are several reasons the RIAA is in trouble.
(in no particular order)
1. Todays music sucks donkey ass through a crazy straw. This is the oldest reason, and the reason why the RIAA loosing money predates Napster. On the surface it sounds like I am blaming the musicians, after all they are making the music. Wrong. Many years ago the RIAA realized that POP music is where all the money is. They have been ignoring decent artists for a while now in favor for people whom they consider low risk. It is those risky folks that put out great music.
2. Failure to acknowledge and take advantage of a changing marketplace. If the RIAA had been on the forefront of digital downloads this would be an entirely different, and I suspect legal marketplace. Instead they screamed and kicked like a 4 year old. No amount of wishing and suing will make the digital domain go away. For whatever reason that I cannot understand the RIAA refuses to even consider to adapt. My best guess is it is a poorly chosen use of 'pride'.
3. Abuse of there most loyal customers. I used to buy a lot of music. Something along the lines of 2 to 3 albums a month with the occasional splurge of a 5 album or a box set purchase. Then I began learning about my computer. Then I bought a CDRW drive. What I did next was to back up my investment. I am tired of scratching overpriced CD's and making them useless. I am tired of having them stolen. I am tired of having to track them down when I have misplace them. I am tired of having to decide what gets kept at work and what not. A PC and a CDRW drive (legally too I might ad) resolves all those problems. Now whenever I buy a CD I feel like a scmuck. I feel like I am being treated so badly by these people I must be out of my mind to spend money on the overpriced product.
That is no way for an industry to act. I should feel good buying there product.
The RIAA is dying and it is a death that cannot come soon enough.
Sooner or later a talented and smart musician will utilize the web and digital downloads to reach superstardom and cut the RIAA trappings out of the equation.
That day will be the axe to the neck of the RIAA and it cannot come too soon for the industry.
Users of the Agnitum Outpost firewall can download the Blockpost plugin which blocks access to sites at the IP level (i.e. you would not even be able to ping such restricted sites). A Blockpost filter list based on the P2P Enemies list can be found in this thread.
That teenagers are just about the only people downloading movies and/or music (and if they couldn't download it they'd find someone at school and copy the CD) everyone else who is not a teenager uses the P2P to download porn
Two wrongs don't make a right....and when the RIAA pulls this crap, all they do is hurt their cause. This is why ultimately they will lose. This is a desperate act, much like someone who has nothing to lose would do. Their problem is, the RIAA has already lost. They just don't realize it yet. They had a two year window to embrace the new technology; instead they tried to squash it. Problem is, though you can kill a server room full of computers, you can never kill an idea. Every time they win a court battle and out one p2p program offline, three replace it. In fact, the tide is beginning to turn and they're now losing battles in court. Their response now is to break the law themselves, killing any credibility or moal high ground that they ever had. As I said, a true act of desperation on their part.
...they're pissed because some people just aren't buying the same things again and again and again. I can only stand so much of the same crap. I've stopped listening to the radio. I haven't searched for an mp3 for my own amusement and delight in at least a year and a half. I download, pretty much, from technomusic.org or just sit with DI open over an mp3 stream. The CDs I make for my car are techno remixes and rips of CDs I own. I have become that anomoly of a person who owns just about every mp3 they have and prefers them for management space over CDs.
I still support the P2P experience.
Peer-to-peer networks are not responsible for their content. The only 'point of contact' is the software provider, but there are many of those, now. gnutella (the original client) is all but gone, replaced by a million clones. There's dc, dc++ and a few hundred clients and p2p networks like it. No one could ever watch them all.
The RIAA can't get a grip on the idea that they're slowly losing album sales to mediocrity. MTV is slowly disintegrating. The economy is in the trash, unemployment is fluctuating, but mostly towards the rising / steady mark, not towards the steady / dwindling one. It couldn't be that a decline in sales came from a decline of readily available money on hand, could it? Heaven forbid.
They're spending an awful lot of money on people who will be able to do one of two thing: make them regredt it, or be able to ignore it entirely.
What utter crap. Of my rather large CD collection, I'd say about 15% was produced by a large record label, and only about half was produced by a label at all. I don't infringe copyrights because the music spewed out by labels is almost completely crap, and the few bright spots I'm more than willing to pay for.
I get most of my CDs by going to shows and getting them (usually for free) from bands I like, or downloading the tunes from their websites.
Ever heard of marketing? Mailing lists? Salesmanship? Good old-fashioned pressing the flesh? I know lots of bands that do that to get people interested in their work. Oh wait... you mean you want musicians not to have to work at it?
Hello! Earth to Eminor! The music being spit out ALREADY lacks credibility. The quality ALREADY is no good. In fact, the only decent music I can find with a very few exceptions comes from people that RIAA members wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
Hey, if you feel you need some suit to decide what music you should choose from, go for it. But don't act like they're doing the rest of us a favor, OK?
All's true that is mistrusted
...it just seems to be very hypocritical to me. I hate the fact that the **AA uses its seemingly infinite legal budget to stab at broke college students and and all the other users of P2P. At my school, recently the MPAA wanted to have the University kick the student out of school for sharing a copy of Austin Powers. I think that is a bit obsurd. The advocates complain that every new step in technology, the hackers (crackers) will be there to break and abuse it. The problem is as long as the steps continue to limit the features that people can use, people will revolt and just find a way around the new restrictions. Anytime you assume you are smarter than someone else, you will always eventually find an instance that you're wrong. That being said, if people are going to use "illegal" methods to crack their software, I don't see why they can do as much as possible to make it harder for them. The only people that are being hurt by a fake song on KaZaa are the people that are attempting to steal that song. (Okay, sure, you can say you're going to get a "back-up copy of a song that you own... Sure, that's what everyone is doing.... In that case, rip it yourself). Thus, you can't say "Heeey, the RIAA is making it harder for me to steal songs." Either you foot the money, or find a way to filter out the bad songs (checksums?) Anyway, how long can it be before the bands realize that they don't have to deal with the crap from the record companies. They get into a contract where the get $.50 (or less) on an album that is sold for $18. Sooner or later, they'll realize the record compainies are the enemy there... not the people who actually like the music.
You, sir, are a retard.
Look at regular TV, its free, thats the only reason why its so successful.
Regular (read: broadcast) TV is not free. The price of watching TV is watching advertisements. You might not have a problem with that. Some people do.
Cable TV is very much not free. It, too, is quite successful. While there are some people who steal service (although, from your posting history, you will disagree with my usage of the word "steal" here, but that's okay; you're a fucking retard anyway), an overwhelming majority of people who receive Cable TV signals pay for them.
Look at the internet, its free, and its successful.
The internet is not free either. Routers, lines, switches, and everything else all cost money, in terms of initial capital expenditure, maintenance, and personnel costs. While you yourself might not be billed explicitly for internet access, you are paying the price, as are other people.
Most websites are not free. They, like broadcast television, have advertisements, or are membership-based. There are very few good places for free content that do not attempt to recoup costs through advertising, or asking for donations.
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?
The RIAA cannot prevent me from writing my own songs, and performing them in front of a live audience. Nor can the RIAA prevent me from distributing recordings (either live, or in a studio) containing my own songs either online, or direct mail, or in person. Sure, I probably can't get space at the local Best Buy, Tower Records, or FYE. But that's how business works. Grammy Malda can't sell her homemade jams at the local MegaSupermarket, either.
MTV is as much a monopoly as CBS or NBC is. NBC will not let me write my own TV show and put it on TV. I guess that means I should make copies of Friends and ER available online. Are you really as retarded as you seem? Yes, actually, it appears that you are:
Why not let some free Music get play on MTV and maybe people wouldnt pirate the RIAA so much anymore.
Because, by and large, most people do not want to listen to "free" or "independent" music. I personally find most popular music today to be horrible. Obviously, a significant portion of the population disagrees, which is why it's called "popular music" in the first place. That's fine. They're free to have their own opinion, and buy the songs. But they (and you) do not have the right to download music without paying for it--either out of protest, or for any other reason.
You, once again, are a completely and utterly nimwitted and retarded juvenile who lacks a superego.
Hey, play nice! The guy has an opinion that is different to yours, and is presenting an interesting theory with some merit. It is reasoned and original, maybe with logical flaws, maybe with a few facts that are opinion, but at least it's a relatively new thought rather than the usual quacking that goes on here. Maybe you disagree, maybe there are some flaws in the theory, but that really doesn't excuse such a vile attack. If you really do feel that strongly about the definition of "free" entertainment and the merit of the RIAA, present your argument politely with respect and people will listen to you. Otherwise you end up sounding like the immature one, and those who you offend will simply stop posting their new ideas. And these forums will be the worse for it.
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?