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EFF Ad Campaign On File Swapping
miladus writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is launching an ad campaign
to
counter the RIAA's lawsuits about file
swapping. There are more details available at the File Sharing: It's Music To Our Ears subsite." The press release kicking off this campaign says that "EFF's Let the Music Play campaign provides alternatives to the RIAA's litigation barrage, details EFF's efforts to defend peer-to-peer file sharing, and makes it easy for individuals to write members of Congress."
Our work newsgroups went into a panic when the RIAA announced that they were going to be sueing people.
Amusingly it took them about 30 seconds to get around to Freenet and how it might be worth investigating it.
Evil contains the seeds of it's own destruction as they say - being over zelous with a bunch of basically honest people who like to share some music yet still buy lots has foced them onto a more efficient, totally untraceable (or rather plausibly deniable) network. It's certainly not pushed them towards legal services.
Beep beep.
"The problem is that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copyright holders."
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is flat our wrong. There are SEVERAL music services that allow one to download music, burn it to CD, carry it on portable players, and the like. I use two, emusic and iTunes (which appearantly is going to be available for Windows this year).
I get the feeling, that music "sharing" people are only interested in a service if it costs NOTHING. If that is the case there will NEVER be a way to pay artists, since noone wants to pay. Get of your ass, quit downloading music you didn't pay for, and quit bitching.
Burn Hollywood Burn
In fact, that's how our representative republic works. At least, millions of people doing activity X tends to make it legal.
As an example may I suggest prohibition - drinking was illegal, but that was soon changed when overwhelming public opinion became pro-drinking.
Beep beep.
Yes, copyright is way out of whack today. (Personally, I'm for 20 years, and 5 for software with mandatory source code escrow.)
Yes, the content producers want to take away fair-use rights. (Meaning format-shifting, not what's commonly referred to as "file sharing" -- which is just unauthorized copying.)
Yes, it is true that spreading music files around can help lead to sales. (This is only right to do when the copyright holder authorizes it.)
Does that somehow make sharing copyright-protected material right? Most definitely not. I hope the EFF doesn't send the wrong message here.
Countering the suits against the infringers is exactly what should not be done. The copyright holders are finally doing the right thing by going after the actual infringers, instead of the service providers.
Hasn't worked for the millions of pot smokers being persecuted in the name of the children.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Current P2P systems are being hampered by deliberately corrupted files, as well as music companies joining the network to get evidence against users.
Solution:
1) create new protocol for P2P sharing
2) patent that protocol (in as many countries as possible, or at least all those that the xxAA operates in), ideally giving the patent rights to somebody like EFF
3) release code/client with a patent license that prohibits the behavior above
If the RIAA/MPAA/xxAA violate the patent, charge them with DMCA or patent violations.
Just a thought... the DMCA can work both ways, you know.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
EFF should be putting in efforts to target one of the RIAA's lapdogs which is running against someone who supports the EFF's efforts. Just one Congress-critter being defeated with the efforts of the EFF would cause many, many more members of Congress to do more of the EFF's bidding. And that's what we want.
Letter writing campaigns like the EFF proposes right now is wasted baggage. Congress critters don't c are about letters, they care about getting reelected.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
I admit that I use P2P apps a lot, to download music without paying. But at the same time I own quite a lot of CDs. And you know what? A lot of the time those CDs have been bought as a direct result of downloading music!
...but I hope not :)
For me, P2P is a great way for me to listen to new bands that I discover. If I like them, I buy the CD because frankly I feel guilty not paying for the music, and also the mp3s people share tend to have been ripped from a gouged CD, using some 3rd-rate software to encode it at 128kb/s CBR.
It is the same for most of my friends. Many of them seem to agree P2P is only necessary because the current distribution methods seem to be an anachronism. I would rather pay for a service whereby maybe I can stream a couple of songs from an album to see if I like them, then pay to download them. Yes, I know there are services like iTunes and emusic, but these services have their own problems, like regional issues (I live in the UK, so this causes problems with different labels having distribution rights and such) and hardware (I believe iTunes is still only available for Mac, although perhaps I read about PC support in the future perhaps? I forget).
So, basically I am in support of this campaign and I truly hope that they expedite the implementation of a more modern and more useful system for acquiring music. However, I have my doubts- sometimes I think that the large record companies feel such a great need to control peoples musical tastes that they might fear that the greater freedom that an electronic system could provide would cause them to lose control of being able to force certain bands down peoples throats as "the next big thing"...
We're talking about industries like the RIAA and the MPAA which operate under a specific business model. This business model has been in place for at least the past 50 years. Along comes a concept of the Internet and file swapping which is forcing these industries to rethink their business model.
The problem is...they won't change their model. People are very frightened of change, and the Entertainment industry has evolved from lots of smaller labels and movie makers that were interested in putting out good product to these HUGE MEDIA JUGGERNAUTS that are only interested in the almighty dollar/franc/pound/etc...
If you can get them to change the business model and prove it works (Gee, didn't Apple just do that?), they'll come along for the ride. Until then, they'll continue to think we're all crooks.
Music and movies are no longer art and entertainment, it's part of Corporate big business now.
Nuff said.
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
The MPAA/RIAA had a chance years ago to work *with* this wonderful new decentralized distribution system which obviously had consumer appeal. The rewards would have been enormous for corporation and consumer alike.
However, threatened by a new distribution method which would (necessarily) erode their absolute control over unit pricing, artist contracts, and royalty payments, they chose the ignorant and paranoid method of attempting to hold water in their fists merely by gripping tighter.
Instead of meekly returning to their easily-predictable demographic marketing boxes as demanded by the Media Masters, many consumers chose instead to exercise this new-found freedom. An economic downturn decimated the disposable income of hundreds of millions who could no longer afford to gamble on whether the contents of a CD matched the quality of the lone song pushed in heavy rotation by related radio stations across the country.
In a further effort to reign in the unmanaged masses, the RIAA/MPAA turned to ridiculous claims of speculative "loss of potential income" and outrageous lawsuits which only served to alienate higher numbers of consumers. Some who were merely curious grew bolder and some who like to sample prior to purchase became dedicated pirates. Too late, some industry entities released anemic and over-priced "services" that were mere shadows of the technology embraced and demanded by the consumers.
So now we have artists denied the ability to manage their own work (ie when Sony denied The Offspring the right to release their upcoming album via MP3), multi-million dollar lawsuits against private individuals, and blatantly illegal activities (release of virii into the wild, attempts to hack into suspected "offenders'" systems). The hypocrisy and greed of the corporations becomes more evident with every action and every press release.
The RIAA/MPAA made this a problem. They have only themselves to blame.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Copyright laws are fine. They make the GPL possible fer chrissakes.
If I write a song and don't want anyone to hear it, that should be my right. If I want to charge $100 per listen, fine. If I want to place it in the public domain, I can do so. I could even GPL it.
No. The problem is not with copyright law, it's with a bureaucratic elimination of competition. IMHO, it's insane that anyone should be demanding distribution methods that the free market can easily provide, as the argument goes, because it would be so damn popular.
But what I've recently realized is that the whole take on the issue is rather short sighted.
Ask yourself what the real problem is. Most will probably say 'I can't make copies of my music for my own use'. Or, 'I can't preview music for free'.
With regards to the former point, people in computer science must recognize that duplication of data (except for Backup/QOS purposes) is an evil thing. How much time, effort and storage media is wasted by storing a song in a gazillion places - by a gazillion people?
If any network administrator discovered that the file containing the company's phone directory was stored locally on 400 machines, he'd have a fit.
Much better is to have it stored in a central location where anyone can access it at any time. And, it can be backed up/mirrored to make sure it's always accessible.
So the solution is central storage. Streaming audio is very do-able over broadband today. Wireless shouldn't be too awfully far behind. Your current system with CD rack/jukeboxes and/or multi-gigabyte MP3 storage can devolve into a wired/wireless receiver that will be served whatever you wish.
You'll be able to create your own playlists in many different ways. In short, you'll be the programming director of your very own set of radio stations - each of which, you can select at will.
Yeah, it will cost something. In most cases it will mean (nicely targeted) commercials inserted by the servers. But it would be a trivial thing to allow/encourage commercial free programming for a monthly fee.
And the artists would get a micro-cent every time their song is selected. Seems fair. 'Course if the had a problem with this, the could release their songs (or just a demo song) as 'zero-credit'. In other words, no charge. And the end-user could select these exclusively.
I know that there are a lot of system administrators out there that actually like to manage data. I just want it to be there when I want it. All of it.
duplication of data (except for Backup/QOS purposes) is an evil thing
Later you write:
Streaming audio is very do-able over broadband today.
Broadband isn't affordable in all locations today. Where residential high-speed Internet access is affordable, this is because 1. throughput is oversold, and 2. the typical TOS considers several-hour outages acceptable. I find storing the data locally on a machine located within the end user's household a valid "QOS purpose".
Will I retire or break 10K?