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RIAA Warns Individual Swappers
Joey Patterson writes "CNET News.com reports that the RIAA has sent cease-and-desist letters to four individuals for allegedly pirating its music on P2P networks." They have yet to publicly release the names of who they have contacted, but 4 of the 5 were Verizon subscribers involved with their previous high profile case.
As usual the RIAA is resorting to the use of FUD to stop people swapping music. College Students, High School Kids and Lone P2P Users are very easy targets for a massive corporate body.
It may even be working to a certain degree.
Anyone else find this ironic?
I stopped buying CDs once this whole situation with copyrights and piracy came about. I barely download music, and strictly listen to others' CDs or stream obscure music from free sites. The last CDs I have purchased were independent, and CHEAP. I have not purchased a CD from a major music label in years, and do not plan to until prices for 10 songs goes below 20USD.
Just my $0.02 .
Yes, this is the way that they should address copyright infringers, but sad that this won't work in the way that those with a rosy-eyed view of our American legal system would hope.
Even if these people were totally innocent of any civil or criminal wrongdoing (which I doubt) the cost of successfully defending themselves would bankrupt them -- not, of course, that innocence is any guaranteee of victory.
And, if they were in fact guilty of some civil tort, they would face paying for, not the actual damage that they may have caused, but rather huge *statutory* damages.
Great system: Cause some RIAA member $1.25 in damage, and face $1.25 million in costs. Nothing like equal justice under law.
I received, or I should say my ISP received a C&D from the RIAA a couple of months ago for a single file that I had downloaded over eDonkey. They are certainly not just going after the "big fish".
"broke the law"
Why the quote marks, dude? They *did* break the law. You may not like the law, anymore than you like the speed limit, but it's still the law. Going after the P2P software guys was like going after the auto manufacturers because they enable speeding violations. And logic bombing an alleged transgressor's PC is just plain wrong. Going after the individual -- speeder or downloader -- is the right and fair way to do it.
If you don't like the law -- speed limit or copyright -- you can break it, and hope you don't get caught, obey it grudgingly, or speak out to your legislators to get it repealed.
The "Napster Era" is over, friend. We wanted to be able to sample and acquire music online at a fair price, and it is now available. We wanted the Powers That Be to lay off the P2P technology itself, and now that's happening, it seems.
Time to move on. You want to do 90 in a 55 MPH zone, that is your prerogative. I do it myself occasionally. It's just not a news story, or a movement, or a cause celebre, any more, and that's fine.
Logs won't really prove that you downloaded one specific file, at least not for networks like eMule. You can make a search for, say, hicksville.mp3, which you know Simon Posford released to the public, but you can't find his website anymore. You get a hit on this search from a peer, and a hash of the file content is returned to you. You then ask the network who else has the file with this hash, and get perhaps 20 replies. You then start downloading it.
As it happens, the file is named "Metallica_Enter_Sandman.mp3" on most of the clients, and the "hicksville.mp3" was renamed such by another user who wanted to hide it. You still have no idea that it's a Metallica song you download, as you searched for hicksville.mp3.
The logs of those you download from, and who might be RIAA agents, might well show that you're downloading a Metallica song, but in this case there was no intent to do so. During the download process, others can also download parts of the file from you -- before you've had a chance to check it out. Logs from the outside will show that when someone searches for "Sandman.mp3", yours is one of the hosts that share it out. So you're also sharing it out -- thing is that you might not know, and it might not be your intent!
Summing up: There's no guarantee that the file name on the sending side is the same file name as on the receiving side, or that the file-sharing user even knows that there's a discrepancy. The file name on the remote side must be dismissed as evidence.
Regards,
--
*Art
How much trading do you have to do to before you draw attention to yourself?
Is downloading a catchy tune I heard on the local Clear Channel station gonna get me busted? What if I share it after downloading?
Will I have the RIAA coming after me for downloading (and then sharing) the latest Billboard Top 20 Dance/Club tracks?
Or does it take me downloading Blender's "500 albums I must own before I die" and then sharing those to the world?
Exactly how much can I get away with?
It seems these kids must be doing something incredibly stupid to get the RIAA coming down on them when there must be many millions of people sharing at a given moment.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Who should be targeted: People who rip CD's, People who host content or 'links' to content, People who download, or everyone? Is it ok to target people randomly to make examples of them while not going after the rest?
Ive never ripped a CD in my life, my biggest crime is downloading mp3's and allowing my P2P software to share them with others. Ive never speeded, commited murder, rape, genocide, ive never mugged or assulted anyone, or shoplifted or burgled. Im not a pedophile or an international terrorist, and ive never held power in a government while doing dodgy financial dealings for my own gain.
I've paid my Starbucks and McDonalds tax, and i even watch commercials sometimes.
But, i could still be raided at 6am and have my computer confiscated and get a criminal record and loose everything just for downloading music. FFS ive never even intended to buy a CD, if i didnt download things i would only listen to the radio.
What a great world were everyone gets their prioritys right.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Why doesn't everyone just turn themselves in. The legal system will be backlogged and this is the ONLY WAY congress will see that we arent talking about Pirats (narrr) but real people.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
1. Label most of your customers as criminals.
2. Send them thretening letters.
3. Make Crappy Music. Release it on "crippled" CDs
4. ?????
5. Profit!!
What I know about this whole situation is if I were sent a letter I would probably oblige and never download another file ever again. But I already know I will never buy another CD again.
C'mon RIAA, keep it up, keep hitting the customer (not consumer, consumer assumes that your customers will actually buy your crap) with a bigger and bigger stick, I'm sure they'll come around and give you your money.
Individuals are easy targets. They have no PR machine and their ability to generate sympathy is highly localized. Even then, it's still manageable from the industry's point of view. Going after individuals is a pretty safe bet even with widespread media coverage.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I gave up on p2p about a year ago. Most searches were a waste of time as the first hits (fastest, closest hosts) were always in leech mode (never really sharing).
These days, I use streamripper. To snag shoutcast streams. I set it to download a stream, queue songs up for an hour, then start listening to them. As I listen I delete the ones I don't want.
I've found a lot of new music this way, and the network admins don't really mind because I'm not using one of the banned p2p clients anyway.
-- yawn. --
The RIAA seemingly refuses to do what it needs to do to weaken the flow of work through p2p 'sharing'. They go after whoever manages to catch their attention, and they just grumble about the other millions that slip by.
What should the RIAA do? Quietly acknowledge that they are powerless against p2p 'sharing', that new laws are not needed, but that they will continue lawsuits against large p2p 'sharing' users. At the same time
- sabotage the p2p networks by setting up a couple hundred servers in the US (and abroad) with their library spread through-out. Each song on their servers would be specially modified after the first thirty- to sixty-seconds by application of special filters to render the remaining content to noise. Servers would log IP addresses of downloaders and other servers would investigate quantity & type of files being 'shared' by the downloader for possible later legal actions.
- introduce legal downloads using non-DRM format (mp3, ogg, etc). Downloads would be priced according to quality of encoding (ie $.25 for "92", $.50 for "128", $.75 for "192", $1 for "256"). Download would be bound by license, with ample 'fair-use' rights, and some FUD against 'sharing' (ie download has been watermarked, we will prosecute if you 'share', etc). After maybe 3 months if the service is popular then the price starts dropping by $.10 every 6-9 months.
These are examples of what I would do if I were in charge of the RIAA. If anybody at the RIAA is reading - please feel free to use these ideas.
Isn't it? I've read the article too and while that isn't their stated aim, it's certainly the result of the DMCA, which is the RIAA's baby. On the last page of the article, the interviewee avoids the question altogether and suggests that not being able to make copies of your disks is somehow good for you!
Of home 'fair use copying, they say:
You should feel free to copy it onto other formats, such as .mp3, so that you can listen to it on your computer.
But if they will only sell you a copy-protected disk, which under the DMCA, it is illegal to crack, then how do you make your fair use copy? Answer: you can't. That's the problem with the RIAA and the DMCA.
I needn't even go into the massive lobbying for copyright extension so they can keep charging for stuff that should now be publicly owned; the heavy-handed threats; the pursuit of people who hadn't done anything; and finally their incredibly stupid assertion that their cartel keeping CD prices high has nothing to do with declining CD sales.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Uh, not quite. It may be the way you interpret copyright and fair use law, and it certainly is the way the RIAA interprets it, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you may think. Other legal viewpoints say that fair use is still being invoked in many P2P cases, and P2P can be used for obviously non-infringing files. Ultimately things will be decided by conclusive court cases, at which point you may be able to say definitively they broke the law. Right now it's just a point-of-view that is being propagandized to the masses, and to the courts.
And to your point, the propaganda is mostly working.
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Well all, I don't know about the rest of you...but I'm done with this bullshit. The RIAA has stepped over the line this time. Today, I take my entire CD collection down to the local music trading store to sell them.
If you all need me, I'll be on one of those "free independent music" sites downloading music made by people who are concerned about making good music rather than creating overexaggerated legal cases that cost them more money than any revenue they may have lost from a few college kids buying their worthless crap only to have it not work in their brand new cd players they spent two week's worth of food allowance on.
Long before napster and the Kaza people where freely trading mp3 files via usenet and ftp and small centralized networks. Very few if any legal ripples. Before that people traded copies of CDS on tape ext. and while the RIAA hated it, they didn't knock on many doors. As long as you didn't set up shop selling them you were (mostly) ok. Sadly, the genie is now out of the bottle. I suspect more technical users might start to move away from p2p and back to usenet and more "old fashioned" methods of sharing files. Failing that, those anonymous ISPS that allow users to send a wad of cash in the mail each month might see a big jump in the number of subscribers.
I am here to tell you that I recieved a threatening letter from the RIAA, accompanied by a "comply or we'll cut you off" letter from my ISP, Comcast. And I know exactly why
I don't have any illegal shared files in my limewire shared folder. what I do have there is a number of original tracks that I have recorded over the last year, for people to check out. I was innocently poking around on limewire, when i found a small (50k or so) WMA or ASF file ( i just know it was an MS format) titled "must have - hilarious.WMA" so i clicked, and downloaded, when i opened the file, Windows media player fired up my browser, and directed me to a website telling me that the RIAA caught me, and my isp had been notified. it had my IP address and some file names (the ones it chose to display were some tracks from my single "the family guy", which i guess they think should be incriminating evidence.
what i do know is that they even admitted that they copied files from my computer. hear me now, RIAA: Immediately delete my files, get your hands off of my hard drive, and you better believe i will be watching you for derivative works.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
There is a problem, though, in that people do not realize that the digital format that makes sharing music so easy is exactly what makes it protected material, and that's what makes anyone who downloads it potentially vulnerable to being charged for criminal conduct. It isn't likely to get you or me simply because there is no money in going after individual downloaders. However, there can be loads of money in going after kids running even small warez servers... Where one CD can cost as much as $600 (and more, depending on the product), allowing multiple downloads of multiple files could quickly result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal copies.
Of couse, if one CD didn't cost $600 in the first place, it wouldn't be such a problem. College professors assume that everyone on the planet uses Microsoft Office, but they fail to consider how many of us use a pirated copy. Even better, how many of us use pirated software specifically because we must have it for school or work and can not afford to buy it? The problem, in this case, is that some schools literally will not tolerate other software, and some inane professors actually require students to use particular software.
Software piracy is a problem... Piracy is a result of expensive alternatives, and the alternatives' prices increase because of piracy. What do we do? Well, we can only move in one of two directions:
As technology becomes more advanced, I can hardly imagine restricting information any more without morphing the United States into a sort of prison-state where no move can be made without Big Brother's watchful eye carefully monitoring your every move. Is that what we want? Or would we rather have the freedom to trust each other?
I choose choice.
Okay, for most casual file traders, Sec.506(a)(1) doesn't apply, so let's look at (2). It looks like you have to download $1000 (retail) worth of music in a 180 day period--about six months. At about a buck of retail value per track, that's 1000 songs in six months. Some people do collect music at that rate--but I suspect it's a small fraction of the population. Maybe it should be a Slashdot poll.
It certainly means that it is inappropriate to describe individuals with moderate file collections 'criminals'. Heck, mp3s have been readily available for what, about five years now? If you download steadily, you could have acquired a ten thousand song music library without committing a criminal act. It may also be difficult in a criminal case to prove that the requisite amount of music was downloaded within the 180 day time frame. It might be difficult to find a prosecutor who wanted to go to the trouble of charging you, even if you asked very nicely. Civil proceedings still make more sense.
~Idarubicin