Slashdot Mirror
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.
I've had enough of paying twenty bucks for a CD so some lazy kid doesn't have to get a job.
Hello.
News at 11 - The recent trend beating of dead horses not only continues but quickens.. is there hope for rationality?
-Digital Extremist
no more individual swapping for me--it's whole truckloads of illegal immigrants from now on!
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.
Good...
Desist? I wonder if they will go further than that, since it's going to be hard to prove anything beyond something appearing in a log somewhere. Is downloading music illegal, or just posession? If this was a criminal trial, they'd be a long way from a burden of proof, but again, this is probably a civil matter...
Wow actually going against people who broke the law? I didn't like that the RIAA was going after all these middle men who provided sharing services and software but the file swapers actually broke copy right law. I think this is a much fairer tactic. They also started with warning letters instead of a bagillion dollar lawsuit. I think this is the way they should handle copyright infringement.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Anyone else find this ironic?
Yes, but Verizon today, Road Runner tomorrow.
The RIAA (and anyone else) can simply point to the Verizon lawsuit as presidence in any future case where they want the names of "pirates".
Personally, I'd like to see the C&D letters the RIAAs henchmen sent out. I'd bet Hillary Rosen's soul (assuming she actually has one) that they're demanding payment for "infringing" on the "artitst's rights".
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
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 .
There's no question that thousands of people pirate music, and have tons of it stored illegally on their computer. We know the whole thing is just a scare tactic by the RIAA. They could never prosecute 10% of who pirate music. It's like speeding. They'll catch whoever they can to deter everyone else.
The only thing is you have much better chance at getting caught going 90 in 60 than you do with 40 GB of mp3s on your hard drive. So they've got 9 people so far. 9 lucky winnners of the RIAA lawsuit lottery! I'm pretty sure this will stop just about no from 'buying their tickets.' (i.e. pirating)
I think they plan to save a lot of money by using bulk mail and address everything to "Resident". :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
They can't take *everyone* to court. They'll make an example out of these few and it'll stop some of the people, but the majority of p2p file shareing of music and movies and such will continue as usual because users will be secure in the knowledge that RIAA/MPAA can't spend a gazillion dollars chasing everyone down. It's like trying to kill all the mosquitos in the forest with a fly swatter.
My journal has hot
-Cancel Verizon DSL Service.
-Check stash for those drunken nude Hilary Rosen pics...just in case.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
And people stay with them.... why?
I mean, isnt it time to get a new provider? If everyone left, then maybe they'd fight the fight again...
I seem to remember Verizon refusing to turn over the subscriber names to the RIAA and fighting a court battle for their privacy. Only after losing that fight and being ordered by the courts to turn over the information did they finally consent. And even then they waited until the imposed deadline. Now you are advocating that everyone leave a provider that resisted and fought the RIAA? Just because they ultimately lost in court? Good luck finding many with the balls to challenge the RIAA. I've never used Verizon for any service, but I'd hardly fault them for this.
Does the RIAA's computer systems still exist? I would have think they would have angered the wrong group of hackers/cracker enough times by now to have only a smoking crater where their computers used to be...
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.
Thank goodness I never check my verizon.net e-mail address!
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
"The more you tighten your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Because the best way to generate business is to treat your customers like criminals.
First of all, these people aren't 'swapping' anything. That implies a trade where one item (or file) is exchanged for another one, with an implied transfer of ownership. They are COPYING music from one another, not trading it (and trading CDs is NOT illegal, contrary to what some seem to believe).
And that brings me to rant #2. It's easy to regard the RIAA as an Evil(tm) organization when you read (and believe) some of the things people claim the RIAA believes/practices. People here have claimed that the RIAA wants such things as making individual backups of personal CDs, and playing said backups on their computer illegal, and that is simply not true! People make these claims without providing a shred of evidence to back up their assertions. They might as well be accusing Hillary Rosen of violating young children, with as much proof they base their statements on.
Please read this article which clarifies many of the misconceptions about the RIAA's position on fair usage. I think some of you will be very surprised (I know I was).
Is the RIAA perfect? Not even close. But putting words into their mouth for the sake of tricking people into thinking you know something they don't is no way to conduct an honest and meaningful discussion.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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".
The RIAA doesn't have that many illegal immigrants for you to steal. They only pretend to have that many so that they can tell the government how much they're losing in illegal immigrant sales. Plus, it's really hard to get a truckload of immigrants through p2p because the copy protection on illegal immigrants (DNA) is a lot more difficult to bypass than traditional forms of media.
You'll have to keep pirating songs instead.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
In a word, NO. They ratted a customer to the US Navy without any legal basis for doing so. Check here
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You don't haave to punish everyone, just enough so that the majority are scared of punishment. And you have to mean business.
There is a story of Sun Wu (Sun Tzu Wu of The Art of War), who is demonstrating the effectiveness of his strategies and rules. He give an order (turn tight I think), and the soldiers (actually a group of the king's concubines) giggle. He says that if the troops do not follow orders because they are not clear and well spoken, it is the generals fault. He then gives other orders (turn left). They giggle again. He says that if the ordes are spoken clearly, but not followed, it is the officers fauult. he then order the two lead women killed. After some argument with the kin, they are killed. The next orders he gives are followed.
It's a similar concept, except that RIAA is going after the followers, instead of the leaders, which breeds resentment, not respect.
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
"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.
Everybody knows it's illegal to distrube copyrighted material? If it's p2p or ftp or http or ...
This is exactly right. When the RIAA went after Napster, everyone was all for going after individual users and leaving Napster alone. Well, it's too late for Napster, but now a judge that isn't smoking crack has agreed that Grokster and Morpheus aren't responsible for the copyright violations, and the RIAA is now forced to go after individual users who are breaking the law.
Is it a bad law, one that no longer applies to the world we live in? Maybe. But it's still the law.
This the way it should be enforced.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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!
Generally oranizations pursue legal tactics when they have no clue about their own business models or how to evolve them when times change.
How much does all this legal bullcrap add to the overpriced cost of music?
I kinda get the impression that the only reason they do this is to facilitate RIAA's own existance so they can say "see look what we are doing for artists?" What I say to artists is this... take a look at Janis Ian's website http://www.janisian.com/ she effectively uses the web to to keep her fans in tune to her music long after the recording companies (RIAA) found her to be "unprofitable".
I've said it before and I'll say it again... RIAA and the Record Companies do not make artists into stars, their Fans do.
RIAA bite my dingleberry-crusted ass, i'd rather sit in the dark and hum to myself rather than deal with your crap, that's why your sales have been lagging recently.
Stop hiding behind your lawyers and start listing to the Fans/Customers, peace = contentment, you want peace in the music bus make your customers content. Here's a little clue your attorneys are not the answer, didn't you get the memo?
I love every bone in her body, especially mine!
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.
... or maybe we can convince them to use p2p to distribute their c&d letters, in which case we can argue that p2p has a legit use :-)
On a more serious note, a previous poster claimed that distribution of copyright materials is illegal. It's only illegal if the copyright holder limits said distribution. Look at Linux - copyright Linus Torvalds, yet freely distributable :-)
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.
It's kinda hard to be an "individual swapper". Isn't that a bit like ftp'ing to 127.0.0.1?
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.
-----------
What's tough to swallow after reading all these posts is the amazing dichtomy of opinions regarding violation of copyright vs. violation of copyleft. Break copyright by downloading gigs of copyrighted songs, and you're a hero for the common man. Break copyleft by incorporating code into a "for-profit" product and you're the reincarnation of Satan come to barbeque every newborn on the planet with some green peppers and steak sauce.
Every time you get pissed the RIAA is going after some college student, imagine Bill Gates is personally inserting your code into the next version of Windows, and you have to think of a way to counter it... Would you just let it slide? Probably not...
And yet 75% of slashdot posters seem think that that RIAA shouldn't enforce their copyrights. Why is that?
re #3... if the music is so crappy, why is everybody sharing so much of it? RIAA members have a monopoly on music now? You can't go to the store and buy your own instruments, write and perform your own music? This isn't like the frivolous lawsuits against Negativland, who were arguably using other's music in a Fair Use context. This is a legitimate use of the law and in perfect keeping with the common lament on Slashdot that the RIAA should go after individual users rather than the service providers.
I do not have a signature
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.
They might stop people from downloading. They're also helping to not sell albums.
If Windows is so crappy, why do people keep using it? Same reason they listen to the crap music. It's there, it's what's pushed on them, it's what they see on MTV. It's *everything* they know. Most of us capable of finding alternatives prefer those, wether it's indie bands or Linux or whatever. The mainstream is content with what they have because it's good enough for them. Of course, "Fear is the mind killer." When I first got into Linux, I was afraid. I had no idea what I was doing or what needed to be done. I didn't know which programs were good and which were to be avoided. The same thing happens with indie groups. People don't hear them in commercials or on music videos, and while it's not exactly the same thing, many are afriad to try new things. That, I believe, is the reason why so much RIAA music is being shared.
Apologies if I rambled.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
I can see it now.
ARTIST: Er...can I talk to someone about my contract?
RIAA Front Desk: How much did you make for us on your last release? ARTIST: Uh...$500,000. ish. RIAA FD: In that case, no. But I feel sorry for you, so here's a buck for your next cardboard house.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
If the RIAA is the rights holders to a song, and they put the song on a public P2P share for the world to download, what is illegal about downloading it? By putting the file where they did, they are essentially granting permission for P2P users to copy the song.
How is this different from, say, the RIAA setting up a table at the local mall (a place where their market gathers) and handing out free CDs, and then accusing the people they gave the CDs to that they 'stole' that music because they did not pay for it?
It seems to me that these 'honeypot' P2P traps are on tenuous legal ground for this reason.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
This week, NPR reported that indie labels are doing better than the Big Record Companies; for example, one major folk label (I believe 'twas Rounder Records) just had its best year EVER.
The clear and obvious conclusion: Folkies and indie listeners are less prone to dastardly thieving music piracy than, say, Metallica listeners. Of course, the other explanation, that some labels are actually carrying acts people WANT to listen to as opposed to pushing mass-produced synthetic sound-alike cardboard cutout bands and buying air play for them, THAT explanation is too preposterous to consider...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Please note, this is a civil action, not a criminal prosecution. The standard of evidence required is "balance of probability", not "beyond all reasonable doubt".
If you are running a service on your machine that is responding to a file sharing protocol and choosing to advertise that you have a 5MB file called Metallica-Enter-Sandman.mp3, what is the balance of probability. Is it more probable that this is a copy of that song that you are offering to make further copies of, or is it more probable that it's your 2 million word magnus opus that you just happen to have given that name?
OK, no doubt you (dear reader) consider yourself a special case. No doubt you deliberately keep piles of misnamed files around, or perhaps just have a hacked client that responds to any searches with "Sure, here it is", just to troll the RIAA. Fine, keep telling yourself that a court will believe you. But look at it another way; if files like that were on 100 Joe Filesharers' hard drives, how many of them would you expect to be copies of copyrighted songs, and how many renamed benign or random content? 1? 5? 10?
If it's fewer than 50 (and it is, if we're being honest) then the balance of probability is that any given file found advertised on a filesharing network does exist, is the content that it says that it is, and is available for duplication in violation of copyright law.
That's all that the RIAA have to show. They don't need to send in the Gestapo to kick down your door and sieze your machine (although they will if they can). They just have to convince a court that you probably duplicated content in violation of copyright law.
Thank you for your attention. Normal service of shrieking about first amendments and absolute proof may now resume.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"...four individuals for allegedly pirating its music on P2P networks..."
I didn't even know the RIAA had an album out.
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