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Filesharing Up 10% After RIAA Threatens Users
Moldy-Rutabaga writes "Technews says filesharing
has gone up 10% on some sites such as Grokster since the Recording Industry
Association of America's announcement on June 25 that it will start tracking down
and suing users of file-sharing programs. Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster,
commented 'even genocidal litigation can't stop
file sharers'."
I was speaking to a lay-person friend of mine last weekend, and he mentioned to me that he had heard about the threat of lawsuits, and decided to quickly install Bearshare, download all the songs he wanted and then uninstall it. Apparently at least some people are spooked.
G=C800:5
Guess this just shows that sharing is a part of human nature even the RIAA can't stop no matter how much they want to.
I'm just curious..
How exactly do they go about finding these people? It's not like they openly give out their names on things like KaZaa?
96% or so (+/- a couple due to frequency distribution) of file-swapping system users realizing that their last names do not start with 'A'
they decided to print out the article and come have a serious talk, and how I should realize filesharing is wrong.
you know when your non-technical parents get it on the action, one of two things:
1) my parents are androids from the future sent by the evil RIAA
2) this is more of a marketing campaign then anything...
VISIT http://www.napsterbits.com for the hillarious adventures of the napster kittyhead!
They're considering suing normal people, people who for the most part don't shoplift, don't deal drugs, don't kill people etc..
You need to understand your market if you are to sell your product to it. With the Internet the market has changed, selling a song to the 'net generation is a lot more complex than a flashy video and radio play. This is the X factor that the recording industry hasn't really bothered to look into and I find it very interesting that one of the most successful online music sites is part of a computer company (Apple).
In summary the record labels need to send their marketing and product development guys off to college, study the success of e-commerce and redesign their business model cus CD is after all only a storage medium.
What a pointless statistic. I bet you would find a month-on-month increase in P2P usage as more non-techy people out there discover how ridiculously easy it is.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
While I am a little suprised to see the numbers up 10%, I can't say that it wasn't expected. More and more people seem to want to taunt the recording industry, they want the RIAA to come after them it seems.
All the money they are spending on their lawyers should rather be dumped into iTunes or Rhapsodey like services. How much proof is needed that that is the way to go?
The industry needs to face facts. The full-format physical media isn't going to sustain their business model. With todays need for instant gratification, people want to buy only what they want and they want it now.
Removing dependance on full-length physical media will do a couple of good things. First it will force the industry and artists to put out more quality tracks instead of relying on a couple radio tracks to sell a disc made mostly of filler. Second, the consumer will no longer get stuck with a lousy disc.
tinfoilmedia
Seriously, if enough people blatanly disobey copyright laws, if there is enough civil disobedience, it almost HAS to force a change in the law. The question, though, is how much is "enough" and do we REALLY need to go through all of the heavy handed law enforcement attempts before this happens? Can't the law makers see for once, that this is what the PEOPLE want and step up to the plate to do their job? Rant over.
Interpretation:
We don't mind the RIAA making money... just make them get it from somebody except us
AKA, the "not it!" theory.
Davak
People generally don't respond very much to possible consequences. There is a high chance of getting a speeding ticket, yet almost everyone goes above the speed limit, often ignoring the safety of themselves and others. There's not likely much the RIAA can do to make even a slight decrease in file-sharing.
It seems odd that the RIAA doesn't try and work with the consumers. But I'm sure this has already been said .. so with that..
Make Backup copies of your stuff like you've never done before! GET TO IT! Make it a 50% increase.
And from the "they keep shooting themselves in the head" department, Metallica says no iTunes do to principles. :
.. I have a great idea. Let's tick off our customers. They want this, but let's not give it to them. In fact, let's prosecute them. Works for me.
"Artists hold out on iTunes on principle
Reuters News Service
LOS ANGELES -- The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica are refusing to make their music available as individual downloads on Apple Computer's iTunes online music store.
That move comes in response to Apple's decision to allow users to buy single tracks and is intended to protect the future of the long-playing album, said Mark Reiter of Q Prime Management Co., which manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and several other artists.
Green Day and Linkin Park, according to a source familiar with the situation, have also refused to make their songs available as individual downloads on the Apple service, which has sold over 5 million songs. "
-- Hey
Idiots.
I'm mostly curious which network they will bring down first. There are a few major ones. I sure miss audiogalaxy!!!
What do you think: EDonkey or Kazaa?
More than enough BS
Has anyone tried Earthstation5?
supports SSL, Proxys, tunneling of UDP though port 80 and some other goodies to hide from ISP's, RIAA, etc?
I've downloaded and tried it and was quite happy with it. You take a speed hit for your privacy but when the RIAA is screaming bloody murder it might be the only alternitive. Now all we have to do is e-mail them like made to get it ported to other OS's!
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
I think this is a matter of users stocking up before the lawsuits start. Oh well. I really don't think it can be stopped, because people want it. It can only be made inconveniant. Besides, according to the Copyright Act (of Canada) I'm allowed to make copies of stuff for personal use. I can't share them, but my cable modem provider yells at me when I share anyway, so I don't.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
With the RIAA being in the news so much recently, is it possible that this is simply more people all of a sudden discovering that they *can* share files?
"What? We can do that? Cool. Look, there's links in the article to this software..."
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
'even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers' Or to put it in the immortal words of the great Teacher and Leader of the American People comrade George Bush, BRING IT ON!
Bush Lies Watch
It should be noted that this contradicts what has been reported in the main stream news, with one cable news channel reporting a 15% drop in file sharing.
(off topic, when I'm posting a new comment to an article, slashdot should include the article on the page where I'm responding so I can reference it)
My Gnutella node was loaded down with Linux ISOs, Cygwin software, and free ebooks (mainly PG texts). I say was because when this announcement came out, I decided getting caught in the crossfire was too high a risk (even if my offerings are 100% legitimate) and removed myself from the P2P scene. Given the RIAA's violent thrashings here -- for example, suing the college students for running mere indexing services -- I'm standing as far back as I can to watch the dinosaur's death throes. I'm sure I am not alone in that attitude, and the P2P traffic went up 10% anyway. I'm sure when you start seeing the stories entitled such things as "10,000 file traders arrested" we'll start seeing the boycott movement start in earnest.
Do you like Japanese imports?
This is free market in action. The artificial scarcity created by government regulation (copyright) is way out of touch with the reality so the free market, even when it has to operate as a black market, will take care of the customer demand.
What needs to happen is serious consideration of how the supply can be kept running under these circumstances. One solution would be to allow unlimited music distribution as long as you don't charge any money for it. If the commercial exploitation of copyrighted material would still be an exclusive right of the copyright holder, I believe there is a big market where the copyright holder can make good profit. This would pretty much legalize the current practise where individual people can trade music online freely while the commercial distributors (e.g. CD sales) would have to pay.
It's true.
/. speculated, the RIAA's setting their sights on the end users is spurring the creation of P2P systems where the identity of the end user and/or what they are sharing are practically impossible to ascertain.
Just as many here on
Nothing motivates people quite like the fear, however small, of being prosecuted and having to cough up your life's savings to a bunch of greedy bastards.
Memo to RIAA: Just give up, okay? You made your bed with the years of overcharging and price-fixing, now it's time to lie in it. Your customers are fed up with being overcharged and assumed to be criminals. If I have to pay you a piracy tax for every blank CD I'm buying, then I'm going to download some shit-- after all, I've already paid you for it.
Your business model has been obsoleted. Get with the times, give the people what they want, or prepare for termination.
Lot's of search sites has emerged so you can pick and choose what you want, and leaving a few uploads open all the time as quid pro quo.
You can even rate the stuff out there.
Help fight continental drift.
"Weiss said the recording industry should lobby for special taxes on CD burners and Internet access as a way to recoup losses incurred from file sharing, an idea that Grokster's Rosso also supports."
Yeah right, so you can't properly secure your own cd's or whatever, so go ahead and put a tax on internet access and cd burner's to make up losses because of your own incompetence. And as we all know, no one uses CD Burners for say....backups, or transferring legitimate files from one person to another. No one uses the internet to do do legitament things like research. So of course everyone should Pay the RIAA and help them. Never mind that if they really want to stop piracy they should be better protecting their own media.
The worst thing is that the RIAA probably has enough influence in Washington to pull something like this off!! What's next, Microsoft builds an internet monitoring meter into windows to send usage statistics to the government so they can bill you monthly. Then Linux is outlawed for not having the US government metering package?
The RIAA does not own the copyrights to anything. According to the DMCA only the owner of the copyright can sue for infringement. The owner first must communicate in writing to the user's ISP, demanding that they take action.
The ISP is bound by law to inform the user, who has the right, under penalty of perjury, to deny that he/she is offering infringing material.
Now it gets interesting.
If the user denies that he/she has been sharing, the ISP must inform the copyright owner, and that copyright owner has a limited amount of time during which it MUST bring suit against the alleged infringer, or the ISP MUST restore access.
So, someone please tell me how the RIAA has the right to sue, since they own no copyrights?
Also, if every person sued denies they are sharing, forcing the actual copyright holder to bring suit, wouldn't the sheer weight of litigation costs make this a really bad strategy?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The example of Prohibition shows that if enough people regard a law as a bad one, it will eventually fall. If enough people believe that there is a de facto monopoly in the music business which results in the product being hugely over-priced and managers being over-rewarded, and they choose to circumvent that over-pricing, the effect is no different from if they simply stop buying the product altogether, which is legal.
I can't resist a plug at this point for Terry Pratchett's book Soul Music which manages to make some of the issues amusing.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
If any, definitely Kazaa.
eDonkey doesn't have a central server, and anyone can run a server if they want to. That's more than RIAA can currently(1) handle, I think.
Also, Kazaa seems to be more popular for sharing MP3's.
(1) What I mean is, RIAA can eventually summon enough power to bring down both, but Kazaa would be much easier.
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
I view the sharing of music now days as a form of political protesting.
Regarding the music industry, there is a lot to protest about in my opinion. Prices are too high, quality is questionable, and the RIAA are out of control. What better place to protest and get your points across than downloading music from the internet?
You know the rise could be do to RIAA trying to track down everybody. To get even more paranoid. Maybe the RIAA is behind the hack challenge for today. To cover up their tracks. "Dr. Evil laugh now"
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
>>Do people need to do those things in order to
>>be prosecuted for a crime? Were does a society
>>based on laws draw the line?
When laws no longer provide safety, justice, or no longer represent the majority of people, these laws need to be re-examined. The laws are supposed to protect the majority from the minority in theory.
RIAA threatens to sue dozens, hundreds, or thousands of file-shares. File-sharing increases, and we brag about it? "Woohoo! Look at us! You can't get me RIAA! Your threats and lawyers and lawsuits don't bother me at all!"
Look, I'm all for giving the RIAA whatfor, just on principle, but STOP TELLING THEM YOU'RE INFRINGING THEIR COPYRIGHTS (not stealing, as we all know... right?) AND QUIT FLAUNTING THAT YOU'RE NOT AFRAID.
Because they are going to drop the hammer. And they are going to sue some poor college kids and high school kids and ruin their savings and credit and quite possibily their future. This isn't funny. People should be switching to anonymous technologies ASAP. It's like a burgular going back to the same house after having a long conversation with the owner in a coffee shop about how he previously stole from the owner, and he didn't care that the owner now has some nasty looking guard dogs, a moat, and a team of lawyers ready to defend him when he shoots the burgular in "self-defense."
So shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's for your own good.
The RIAA/MPAA have a slight problem when it comes to file sharing. Napster and file-sharng in general is already ingrained into American culture. If they had stopped this say 5 or 6 years ago, they would have had a good chance of actually squashing file-sharing. But now everyone knows about file-sharing. I guess you could say file-sharing is like a herpes virus, once your infected (American culture) you will never get rid of it.
The RIAA can't win here - the very business dynamic they are trying to exploit is what will hurt them the most. Just like the major airlines, which make a majority of their money from Business Class passengers, the music indutry makes its money from a small number of acts (Britney, etc). Those acts and albums will be shared, whether in the US or overseas (out of RIAA reach), so they will be hurt regardless. Much like Southwest Airlines disrupting the major airlines business through a new, low-cost overhead business model, things will change. This current negative PR campaign of "suing your customers" will only hasten this trend.
Nah, that couldn't be it. That would mean this article is poorly-researched and misleading.
This, ironically, is what many of Napster's defenders said they should be doing back when the RIAA was threating Napster instead.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If I was the RIAA, I'd set up a paypal donation page and say "Look, we'll ignore all the sharing that goes on if you make a few donations."
It's so crazy, it wouldn't work!
reminds me of my mom - I told her that Chillean Sea Bass is an endangered species and that restaurants that do serve it are breaking the law. Since then it's the only thing she orders whenever it's available...
I'm mostly curious which network they will bring down first. There are a few major ones. I sure miss audiogalaxy!!!
What do you think: EDonkey or Kazaa?
They aready brought down Napster, you dolt! Granted , some of the newer ones seem to far exceed the old ways of Napster. Now the justice system has made it known that the methods of filesharing are legit and it is the people who are using them that should be dealt with. I am surprized that Napster still continues not to function after that ruling. I would think that such a ruling would bring it back to the front of the line, but I guess not.
Place something witty here
Society has made an agreement, via its legislature, that artists have some control over how their works are distributed in order, in part, that they can at least have a fair go at getting some payback for what they did. If their work's not popular, or they prefer to just distribute it for free, then they'll not get anything, but for the rest, they have a good chance.
That's a reasonable agreement, and many artists - musicians, authors, directors, etc - have created entirely new works and made them available on the understanding that this agreement stands.
Even when one comes up with the argument that there are laws that "no longer represent the majority of the people", it strikes me as bogus to suggest that this immediately makes a law unjust and worthy of repealing. Arguably, the Jim Crow laws had the support of the majority of the people in the juristictions where they applied, but it was entirely reasonable that they be struck down, and laws to counter discrimination - opposed by the majority - erected in their place.
We have to be very careful before claiming a law is unjust simply because of popular opinion. And the argument that people should be able to use an artist's work outside of that artist's terms of creation because "everyone's doing it" (well, a lot of DSL users are doing it) strikes me as a very dubious argument at best.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
While this article is total fluff, It made me wonder what kind of effect this news might have had on anyone. So I did an informal poll of people here at work, only about 15 people of varying tech knowledge and general-informedness but all of whom I knew used filesharing programs. What I found was:
6/15 knew what the RIAA was.
1/15 knew about any RIAA lawsuits.
7/15 became/at least acted concerned when told about the lawsuits, and the potential for themselves to be sued.
The numbers are way too low to really mean anything, but it seems to follow that just MAYBE people don't act like they care because they really don't know. We'll see what happens when the RIAA actually gets a file sharer in court.
The basic issue is that music and DVDs are not worth 20+ dollars anymore when everyone know that blank CD's cost less than a couple of cents, if that. In the Philippines, file sharing is not that popular because it is actually cheaper and more convenient to buy the excellently pirated and reproduced media (complete with liner notes, etc.) from the old women in the market than to deal with Kazaa, etc. (bandwidth isn't really an issue, for people who can afford PCs, affording broad band is not a problem.) If the record and movie industry's were to sell there product at the same price as the pirates (or a little more with the guarantee of quality) they would beat the inconvenience of file sharing very easily. They just can not accept that the days of overcharging consumers are over. Every Filipino gets with a CD player has all the Brittany, Madonna, CDs etc. he or she wants. (sorry, that's what they're into ...)
You can already get perfect DVDs of Terminator 3 Charlie's Angels on the street, not badly done copies made by some guy with a camera but real copies. Friends of mine send me these everynow and then (no ... I won't sell them here. Jail isn't fun.)
My point is that the record industry should learn from this example, that millions of people are willing to pay money for CDs and DVDs instead of downloading when the prices are reasonable.
Likely, the won't learn though. Now, every few months, the record industry pressures the State Department to enforce copy protection laws in the Philippines. The local authorities dutifully bulldozer some CDs from the market place.
What isn't mentioned is that the same authorities worked it out with the merchants the night before, saying that they have to put a show on for some stupid Americans at such and such a time and place and could the merchants have some old, defective or otherwise unsellable stuff ready for smashing on the evening news...
I can see a small whitelist circle of trust system working, but I can't see a wide system with blacklists managing to fly under RIAA's radar.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not to give the bastards ideas, but it's only a matter of time before they start doing high profile random prosecutions. Right now people feel safe because they think, I'm not sharing a ton of files, they'll go after the big dogs and leave me alone. But if the RIAA starts doing random prosecutions then people will really get spooked. My recommendation, boycott RIAA affiliated products. Buy from indy labels. Right to your favorite bands letting them know why you are boycotting and try to persuade them to leave the label and/or speak out in favor of sane legislation. I think the last idea might be the most effective. If we can get the stars to back a balance between public domain and IP, we can declaw the RIAA and MPAA. This will require some meeting in the middle. Artists are very protective of the work. We must not come out saying everything should be free, but rather that both IP rights and public domain are both very important and need to be preserved. The other part of the problem, the punishment far outwaying the crime. This is harder to fix. Perhaps we need find ways to prosecute companies, congressman, branches of government and judges under the DMCA.
link for other interested
Help fight continental drift.
If I download a piece of music how am I supposed to know it is copyrighted? Video has a copyright notice at the beginning (FBI warning, etc.). Music does not....... The recording industry should be required to have a spoken copyright notice before each song. Then go after anyone who removes the notice NOT the someone who has no clue that it was copyrighted.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=what is
:o)
"Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is."
" The network can be used in a number of different ways and isn't restricted to just sharing files like other peer-to-peer networks. It acts more like an Internet within an Internet. For example Freenet can be used for:
* Publishing websites or 'freesites'
* Communicating via message boards
* Playing simple turn-based games like Chess
* Content distribution "
It's been around for awhile
It used to be that if I heard a song on the radio (or in a movie, TV show, etc) I liked, or that a friend would mention, I'd go download a few from the group. If I liked them, I'd buy the CD, if not, I wouldn't. I bought _more_ CDs after the start of music sharing (eg: via Napster, usenet news (newscene rocks), and winmx, than I had before. The more BS RIAA speaks, the fewer CDs I buy - now I haven't bought one in almost a year.
Price CDs at $6-10, and I'll think about buying. Remember - they said CD prices would drop lower than tape.
--
+1 Karma Bonus due to RIAA love and low user ID.
I dunno if somebody knows about e-Mule, but this exellent P2P proggy allows one to leech blocks from different sources, even when a source itself does not have the complete file yet. So these sources are in effect not necessarily sharing media, just parts of it.
The only thing e-Mule now needs is a tedency to distribute complete files over different parts of the network, so that very few access points share the complete file. Once the file is downloaded, e-Mule then just shares parts of it, but never the complete file. Depending on the required parts, the shared parts may even vary over time.
Seems like the perfect nightmare for any DMCA groupie-lawyer to me.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
You chose an interesting mix of crimes.
shoplift == inpersonal petty thieft. [just like P2P]
drug dealers:
I can buy 30 x 10mg valium for $40 from my local dealer.
or
"ROCHE VALIUM 5mg 30 $60.00", from a
medical practicianer
How about monopolists, racketering, embezelment, corrupt governments, corrupt police etc.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Laws aren't supposted to 'protect the majority from the minority', infact the oposite, laws are supposed to protect the weak.
In this case the RIAA are weak and people are strong.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I really hate it when different "groups" start lobbying for a new tax to solve all their woes. I will be outraged if I have to start paying a special tax on a new cd burner or internet access to offset the RIAA's losses. It's not MY fault they have an antiquated business model. And not everyone has internet access solely for the purpose of filesharing...hell, I bet nearly NO ONE does. Why am I going to pay the RIAA so I can read slashdot and backup my harddrive? This has all been said before, so mod me down if you will, but come on...now even the filesharing companies, who are supposed to be on "our" side, are showing their true colors...it's all about the benjamins.
When their numbers dwindled from 50 to 8, the dwarves began to suspect Hungry.
People are stupid.
They're filesharing right into the copyright holders' hands.
This is going to be the first class-action criminal defense in history.
Invest in prison uniforms.
Why why why why why why why WHY do they insist on saying that these people use the companies' websites to trade files?! Jesus fuck-me-in-the-eye Christ!! Okay, get this - I might blow some of your minds here but hang on, the payoff is worth it. They use this little thing (which they happen to get from the website) called (are you ready?) an application. Mmkay? They use the application to do this actual trading. Yes, Kazaa is a program (a different word for application), not a website. Uh huh. Napster was a program too and, again, not a website. Go forth with this newfound knowledge and unfuck yourselves... morons... ack!
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
I work in a college IT department and we found early on that students using file sharing programs didn't even know that the files were setup to be shared by default. As I understand it, the RIAA is going after the bigtime uploaders. A lot of people may be bigtime uploaders without even realizing it. Let's say Grandma has a broadband connection to download pictures/videos of the grand kids. Let's also say a few of the grand kids like free music a lot and setup a file sharing program on grandma's pc. A lot of music accumulates on grandma's computer which is left on most of the time. The grand kids acquire quite a music collection at grandma's. Then one day grandma get's busted by the RIAA for pirating music via p2p. The whole point of this little segment is to point out the distinct possibility that many of the greatest p2p uploaders on the net may not even know they are big uploaders or uploaders at all.
only if it were a distributed proxy, meaning everyone on the network is a proxy for someone else. The RIAA will try to shut the proxies down if its a limited number.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If they wanted to profit off P2P, they'd buy Kazaa and Grokster, then they'd make money off the free P2P services via Ad Revenue, they could build a streaming technology and stream video commercials through P2P, in the same way that TV is paid for, the P2P filesharing could be paid work.
It works for TV, it works for Radio, whats their excuse? We dont pay for TV or Radio, why do they think people will pay for filesharing?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
First, I don't use sharing software for music because:
1. I like whole albums
2. People suck at encoding
3. Too time consuming
Second, I believe the RIAA is more interested in making a big stink to position itself to have new laws passed that will generate even MORE money for them (taxes, etc...).
Third, to sell more CDs, produce GOOD music and lower CD prices. $17-20 is a crock. CDs should be $10. 'nuff said.
Lastly, the RIAA are evil annoying idiot fucks...
Listen to Allan Greenspan, the laws must adapt to the technology, you cannot control distribution anymore with the internet, the artists need to give up that ability.
I mean I dont see any other industry asking for this much control, I dont see car makers suing car owners for sharing their car with people, Cars have more than one seat.
When you buy a TV I dont see the TV makers getting mad saying too many people are sharing TV and saying only one person per TV.
So what right does a musician have if no other industry (not even the movie industry) can control what we do with stuff once we buy it?
They need to stop being control freaks and follow the model used currently to pay for things which are free, follow the model we use for TV, Radio, etc. That business model has worked this long,I dont see why people are making it so complicated when the model already exists.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Go read the Constitution and the US Penal Code. Maybe then you'll have an understanding of the issue at hand.
Some bad things:
1) Instead of having one or two radio friendly songs to get you to buy the album, so you can then hear the more innovative stuff they really want to do, record companies may force bands to only release "radio" friendly music, since that's what sells. Leaving a lack of innovative music.
2) Selling individual songs on the internet could lead to bands being pressured to shorten their songs. If you get 99 cents a song, record companies would rather a 3 minute 3 Meg song to a 10 minute 10 meg song.
3) The death of the "concept" album. If each song has to stand or fall on it's own, what incentive does a band have to release something with a larger scope? No more Darksides, Quadrophenias, Red Headed Strangers, Kind of Blues, etc.
Buying music by the song may be the future of bubblegum pop, but I hope it'll never be the future of truly creative music.
And what is a known offender? When someone gets hit with a lawsuit, it's not going to say "IP x.x.x.x sends his regards". Somewhere in the log of people that downloaded the offending file(s) is the IP they used, and are now using something completely different.
Blocklists might lock out file hogs, but they'll be useless against the RIAA's collectinators.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"A more general concern is that laws can never be fixed in perpetuity. As societies and economies evolve, the details of the law, though generally not its fundamental principles, need to change. But any uncertainty about the clarity and fixity of the law adds to the risk of trade, which as I noted, is reflected in a higher real cost of capital.
We in the United States endeavored to lessen legal uncertainty by embedding our most fundamental principles in a constitution, which we made difficult to amend. The commercially and economically salient specifics are typically expressed in federal or state statutes. In general, this arrangement seems to have provided us with a healthy balance of continuity and predictability and, yet, also the requisite flexibility to respond to evolving economic and societal circumstances.
* * *
Reflecting that flexibility, the direction and the emphasis of legislative revision over the generations have mirrored the changing structure of our economy. In recent decades, for example, the fraction of the total output of our economy that is essentially conceptual rather than physical has been rising. This trend has, of necessity, shifted the emphasis in asset valuation from physical property to intellectual property and to the legal rights that inhere in the latter. Though the shift may appear glacial, its impact on legal and economic risk is only beginning to be felt.
Over the past half century, the increase in the value of raw materials has accounted for only a fraction of the overall growth of U.S. gross domestic product. The rest of that growth reflects the embodiment of ideas in products and services that consumers value. This shift of emphasis from physical materials to ideas as the core of value creation appears to have accelerated in recent decades.
Technological advance is continually altering the shape and nature of our economic processes and, in particular, is promoting the trend toward increasing conceptualization of U.S. GDP. The size of our radios, for example, has been dramatically reduced by the substitution of transistors for vacuum tubes. Thin fiber optic cable has replaced huge tonnages of copper wire. New architectural, engineering, and materials technologies have enabled the construction of buildings enclosing the same space with far less physical material than was required, say, 50 or 100 years ago. More recently, mobile phones have markedly downsized as they have improved. The movement over the decades toward production of services requiring little physical input has also been a major contributor to the dramatic rise in the ratio of constant dollars of GDP per ton of input.
This dramatic shift toward product downsizing during the past half century stems from several causes. The challenge of accumulating physical goods and moving them in an ever more crowded geographical environment has clearly resulted in cost pressures to economize on size and space. Similarly, the prospect of increasing costs of discovering, developing, and processing ever larger quantities of physical resources has shifted producers toward downsized alternatives. Remember that dire concerns about the prospects of running out of the physical resources that allegedly were necessary to support our standards of living were reflected in a report from the Club of Rome three decades ago. Another cause of product downsizing is that, as we moved the technological frontier forward and pressed for information processing to speed up, the laws of physics required the relevant microchips to become ever more compact.
More generally, in the physical world, the usual situation is that each additional unit of output is more costly to produce than the previous one; that is, production, at least eventually, is characterized by increasing marginal cost. By contrast, in the conceptual world, much of production is characterized by constant, and perhaps even zero, marginal cost.
For example, though the set up cost of creating an on-line encyclopedia may be eno
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An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Indeed, number three would be very bad. I am sure, however, that the few bands capable of putting together a truly good epic CD will still do this and fans will still buy it.
As for number one, looking at a claimed 20% drop in sales since '99, it is obvious that they are doing something wrong. We all know that it is ludicrous to blame piracy for all 20%, so they are obviously not catering to the audience as well as they could be.
However, more innovative indie labels are experiencing a large upswing in sales.
tinfoilmedia
You get the I'm address from your 'modified' client of people downloading copyrighted data.
You demand the users real name from his ISP under the 'suspected infringement' idea, which was upheld in court.
With his name and address, you send it to the court, or just the lawyers.. And you toss in ' using an alias to hide the criminal activity', showing intent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You steal TV.
You steal Radio.
You let your friends steal your car when you give them a ride.
You you let people steal your clock which I'm sure everyone in your house looks at.
You let your friends take a shower in your house, they steal your water.
Everyones a thief. Or maybe not?
Perhaps the music industry has no right to control what I do with a CD I purchase, perhaps I actually have rights of my own and the right to share is one of my rights?
The law is backwards. If we can share everything else, and information is supposed to be treated like physical objects, why the hell doesnt information follow the rules of physical objects. No one can tell you how to use a physical object once you buy it, if you buy a bed and you want 20 girls to sleep in it with you, the bed company doesnt sue you for sharing the bed.
The models for TV and radio, BTW, are about as bad as you can probably get. Saturated by advertising, only large corporate entites can afford to enter the market due to the infrastructure and organization required. If you want every bit of music out there to feature "product placement" and sound pretty much the same, you'll get it if you demand the TV/radio model you wish for.
Just pay for the damned music, or make use of the many sources of "free" music that do respect the wishes of the music's creators.
I told you how we can pay for music, use the Radio or TV model. This isnt about the artists, artists dont care what you do with their music after they get paid. Its the record industry which wants absolute control over what you can and cannot do with your music AFTER you purchase it. You cant listen to it in a room with people, you cant play it in your car, you have to have your rights of ownership stripped away. Look, when we buy physical objects, we own those objects and can do whatever we want with them, why is it when we buy information, the record company still owns it? Thats bullshit.
Just pay for the damned music, or make use of the many sources of "free" music that do respect the wishes of the music's creators.
I pay for the music in the way I want to pay, in business you have to make a deal, a contract, you dont put an offer on the table and bully everyone into signing. What do I get out of the deal? I want enhanced fair use rights.
The models for TV and radio, BTW, are about as bad as you can probably get. Saturated by advertising, only large corporate entites can afford to enter the market due to the infrastructure and organization required. If you want every bit of music out there to feature "product placement" and sound pretty much the same, you'll get it if you demand the TV/radio model you wish for.
Thats how music currently sounds now under the RIAA anyway, so I dont see how anything would change. But I wasnt saying it would be "RADIO", it would still be P2P, we would still share music, we'd still have control of distribution, the RIAA would just get paid, and artists would have a way to get paid based on how often their music is downloaded.
The TV/Radio Model is the only one which will work, nothing else will work, you cannot have a subsription service unless its higher quality than the free services out there, the musicians need to profit off the free services, and then charge a fee to access higher quality pay services without the advertisements.
Like Cable TV.
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Actually, I think DVDs are at about the right price point now. It's that CDs with about 10 audio tracks cost just as much as a DVD movie with a hojillion dollars worth or special affects that seems interesting to me.
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Oh well. How about if I connect to a proxy server and share all of the music I want to? I do not see how they can really do much about it.
DISCLAIMER:
I don't believe what I write, and neither should you.
The people making the laws really don't care about civil disobedience these days. Or 'public' opinion. If they did a lot of laws would never have even been placed on the books. Such as Clinton boy's so called 'anti assault weapon' laws for example. Mass disobedience having an effect only worked with the 18/21st amendment. And that was LONG time ago, and a much different world then we live in now. In today's world keeping the law in place just means more $ for the lawyers, who are running this show anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'll stop calling it "genocide" when the scumbags at the RIAA quit referring to copyright infringement as "piracy," which involves the robbing and killing of people on the high seas.
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According to the logs I keep of kazaa's traffic, usage has declined by something like 2%... Maybe I'm not getting the whole picture. The way I sample the data to make the pretty plot is simply by reading from my kazaalite client's status bar, and logging those numbers (users, files, GiB) to a text file which I massage with php+gd every once in a while.
Let me know if you need more data, I have over a years worth.
even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers
Although I'm not familiar with the case, I don't remember extermination camps being discussed as part of a remedy. The RIAA's efforts are punitive, vengeful, and certainly suicidal, but not genocidal.
I am very much against the RIAA in this affair, but ridiculous exaggeration like this severely damages our ability to make the case to Joe Sixpack.
Lots of people might be wondering why folks download music they haven't bought, and use words like "wrong" and "pirate" and "infringement" and even "hypocrite". Well, just to show them how wrong they are, here's why I download music.
Music today sucks - it's nothing but the same old mass produced RIAA rubbish that no one wants to buy. So like millions of others who want to get hold of music they don't want to buy, I download it. Because, um, it sucks too badly to buy, but not so much not to listen to at all. Just the right amount of suckage so I'm not spending anything. Yeah.
So I'm downloading all this music I don't want because it sucks, and I hear the RIAA want to close down the file-sharing service! Well that sucks! They should be going after the users, not the service. There's all kinds of legitimate things you can do with the service. What about all the legal files (ok, I don't know anyone who actually downloads legal files using P2P, but I'm sure I may have seen one or two once when I mistyped the name of the new Metallica single) - if I was an artist and wanted to dsstribute my music freely, without P2P all I could do is use a web site or an ftp site or post CDs at nominal charge. Or if I already owned the music, then without P2P I'd have to actually put the CD in the drive and rip it which would take, like, ages. Look at free software, I bet all those Linux users got their files over P2P as it's such an obviously good way of distributing large files legally. That's why Kazaa has pretty much the same content as freshmeat.net .
But what gets me even more than the RIAA going after the serice is when they go after the users! These are just kids here, and they don't have the money to buy all that music they downloaded, so why should they be charged for it? Why not just go the whole hog and expect them to pay any time they want soemthing that doesn't belong to them? What kind of a way is it to run a business if you treat your customers (sure, they might not actually buy very much, but with all that downloaded music they're customers all right!) like criminals just because they're doing something illegal?
And anyway, it's not like it's really illegal. At least I saw someone call it theft once and I said "Ha ha you dumbass it's really copyright infringement" and so everything they said about it being illegal is probably wrong too, I sure told them. Yeah, it might seem like taking something that doesn't belong to you, but what matters isn't what you think is right, but what the law says, and it says it's not stealing.
And besides, what matters isn't what the law says, but what you think is right. That's why it's ok to copy things if you feel it's ok, because it's like, civil protest. Only not the kind they had with the civil rights people, all that protesting in public and deliberately getting arrested to challenge the law. This is the kind of civil protest where if the law stops you doing what you want you just break it as secrely as you can and hope you don't get caught. Not being in prison means you have even more time to pirat... I mean protest so it's even more effective! MLK and Gandhi could sure learn a thing from me!
Because it's pretty obvious copyrights are bad. Except for the GPL, that's good. And some of the software ones, they must be ok because I like to say warez is bad. Oh, except Microsoft warez which is probably ok, because M$ sux and Linux R0XX! Yeah, +5 Informative! Actually, I don't remember getting too upset about copyrights before Napster came along, but I'm definitely sure they're bad now, as they stop me downloading anything I want.
And the artists don't like them either. Well, they don't like the RIAA, and that's almost the same thing. Well, Courtney Love and Janis Ian don't like the RIAA, which is pretty conclusive proof that all the other artists don't like their contracts either. And the ones that go on TV and stuff and ask me to stop pirating are just the coporate stooges. The RIAA is
Isn't Comcast one of those zombie ISPs? (Bankrupt, but still shambling around looking for brains?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Far more downloaders buy the CDs than those who don't download. RIAA is entrenching itself against it's primary customers (young, poor, college & HS students). It is a genocide alright. The systematic elimination of the very buyers they need.
As for me, I look for stuff that I can't get on an album anymore. Jazz that hasn't been released in 50 years, techno-mixes that are actually good but homemade, and the occasional classic hit I don't already have in my extensive collection. Do I feel that I have the right to download a song or two considering I have $5-8000 of legally purchased music? Absolutely. Am I buying MORE since RIAA decided to get nitpicky? Absolutely not. When they bitch about the 20% decline, I can guarantee you I am a part of it. When they ask "wha happened?" I am sure they can comfort themselves by blaming it on downloading, but in my case, it's just a LONG overdue case of buyers remorse.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Internet2 needs to be finalized.
With IPv6, it would increase RIAA's work 3 fold.
The reason I say it will fail is because its before its time. People arent ready for it yet.
Right now people want to share files via P2P, despite all the problems which can occur, and all the dangerous, people want unlimited access to files.
So how do we do this? Theres an option, you can pay for music via commercials, lets assume everyone using the P2P service is a broadband user, or perhaps have AOL include this service for broadband users.
It could work by streaming video/audio commercials in a window while the user downloads. The same commercials that pay for TV, and for radio could pay for P2P.
I am not sure if we have the video streaming technology yet but I know we are close, I hear AOL is working on it right now, I think this is the way to go.
First you profit off free, just like TV is profitable and Radio is profitable, then you offer a higher quality ad free network a few years later (sorta like what cable is to TV).
I think people would pay if the pay services were better than the free services in quality, Itunes needs to improve its quality. If they used Flac or high quality waves yeah people would download, maybe if it were a flat fee, I'd think about subscribing but I wont pay
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Heres why Ads dont pay for P2P, They dont pay for P2P because the RIAA doesnt want them to pay for P2P. The RIAA wants control not profits. They want to be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with the music you buy, and have absolute control over you.
The TV companies arent doing this, thats why they are still profiting and P2P isnt a threat to them, I dont see NBC, ABC, Fox and others cracking down on P2P, the reason they dont is because they know how to deal with P2P, they've been profiting off of free TV for years.
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If there is a connection made between clients, there is a way to trace it back.
Its really that simple.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Some people pooh-pooh the RIAA's technical skills. Perhaps true, but they can afford to hire talent. I'm not sure if this made it to Slashdot, but here's an AP news article about the sort of people that they are hiring. "MediaDefender's engineers - previously in the business of foiling radar systems for the Pentagon". Hmm.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Just shot my morning milk out my nose.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Indeed, number one could almost be seen as false advertising. Which leads to distrust among consumers. It does allow new bands to get their music out there though. I'm sure most of them would rather not be pressured into releasing a radio friendly song in the first place.
Which is why I think indie labels are seeing such growth. They allow the artists to decide what is art, not some marketing survey. The RIAA's real problem is the RIAA.
The solution to the RIAA's problems with file-sharing, is simply to embrace it.
All they gotta do, is start selling blank cd albums, with everything the normal cd has, except the songs just haven't been burnt onto it.
Sell the blank cd for half the price of a normal cd, say $7 or so.. then the customer can go on their favorite file-sharing, download the songs, and then burn them.
I've never heard anyone claim there is a morality to copyright. Its my understanding that copyright is a business proposition to encourage artists to produce more stuff, not a indication of ownership.
Ideas can't be owned; they can simply be monopolized to a certain extent by government fiat. But that hardly constitutes a moral imperative.
Let me put it another way.
As a consumer, I can listen to the radio. I can tape songs off the radio. I can take that tape and burn it to a CD. That's apparently okay. But if I add "Internet" in that chain of events, then its not okay, even though the end result is the same.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This statistic of 10% growth does not show that people are diregaring the RIAA. It just shows that certain file sharing programs user base grew 10%. If the user base grew 20% the month before...and now it only grew 10%...well, maybe people are afraid to file-share. Regardless, the article doesn't give enough information to draw any real conclusion...especially one as broad as people are disregarding the RIAA announcement. Does anyone know the preceding 5 or 6 month percentage growth so we can compare?
Well, LOTR made a billion dollars in theater ticket sales world-wide(per Google). That more than made a profit for them as the production cost was ~100 million dollars (per Google). For movies, the social experience of going to the theater will always be better than watching at home. The Filipinos I know both immediately buy the pirate copy on the street AND will also go the theater to enjoy the experience. As for sales of non-pirated DVD's, I think that, unless the price goes way down, the market is doomed.
...)
It might mean that the quality of movies goes down for a few years until they can offer fantastic special effects with a 50 cent per copy price for the DVD release. Maybe not, though, as super high payed actors might be replaced by CGI characters. Look at how good Gollum was; imagine in 20 years with better technology. High tech special effect rendering could be done in cheap places like the Philippines or India or even Africa when they sort themselves out. Anyway, at the profit rate LOTR made from just ticket sales, they don't have to worry.
(On a side note, we might see the big actors of today licensing their likenesses as for CGI, meaning that your grand-kids will be watching T34 with Arnold in all his glory. There might not be new faces in the movie business in the future, just the same 20th and early 21st century actors over and over again. Imagine Bogart, Arnold and Audry Hepburn in a movie
Nelson: Ha, Ha!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
haha Right.. That's why they charge me $20-50+ a ticket to go listen to them in concert right? Come on man, don't believe that bs some of the artists are feeding you. Look at how many artists now own their own labels because they got tired of the living under someone else's rule.. Then MAYBE 10% of those people actually distribute their music for free.. I don't know what news you've been getting, but all the time I hear about how bands are against file sharing.
Wow a few hundred artists own their label, while millions dont. This isnt about artists making money, this is about control. Artists can charge you 20 bucks to go to their concert, artists can also profit off ads for P2P, the difference here is freedom, you can record a concert and share it on P2P, artists dont care as long as they profit. Artists dont care about control just profit.
The artists who own record labels arent artists anymore, they are businessmen/businesswomen.
Eminem is no longer making music because he wants to create art, hes all about making money now.
Same with metallica and others, it doesnt matter if they have talent or not, they ceased being artists when they decided the business was more important than the culture.
Artists should stop continuing to resign with these companies if they really want the people to enjoy their music for free.
I personally think the artists and producers really are doing their part lately, a lot of the bands I like always seem to release at least a couple mp3s on their sites for free these days.. Kindof like how magazine publishers have their magazines out where you can flip through them..
Yeah but the only way to free both the artist and consumer is to destroy the RIAA. This is what filesharers are doing, fighting for themselves and for artists. Artists will make more money without the RIAA, and consumers will get more music without the RIAA, everyone would win except for the RIAA.
The RIAA is a distribution company, they were RECORD companies which were founded because at the time, it was difficult to store and transport information, they had a use and purpose. Now we have the net and P2P, these companies are obsolete, they know they are obsolete, consumers dont need them, musicians dont need them and they have control over both the consumer and musician.
The P2P companies can take their place, we dont need columbia record, interscope, universal etc. Their business model is dead, they are corrupt, and they rob both the musician and the consumer of their rights. Musicians no longer own their copyrights, and consumers dont really own the music they buy, both sides are losing to the RIAA.
So at this moment musicians and consumers are on the same team, this is why I say its not about the musicians making a profit. Its about the RIAA having control over the musicians profits and the consumers.
I dont believe distributing Mp3s is wrong, just like boycotting isnt wrong. This is the only way we have as consumers and artists to punish them and prove to them we dont need them anymore. We dont, we can distribute our own music, P2P is just better and theres no reason why we shouldnt use something thats better.
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Most people I've know that do P2P, not counting the computer geeks, don't even know what the RIAA is. Nor do they care that the RIAA is ripping people off. They just know that they can download a song they like for FREE. They don't understand or care that it is stealing or if they do they figure it is a victimless crime because they don't have to faceoff a shopkeeper while trying to shove a CD down their pant leg.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Less of the emphasis/bold. I deliberately ignored your post for that reason
45 days? for a dime bag? are you kidding me? i don't even think that's legal.... weed is a misdemeaner... generaly carries a mandatory minimum of 1 day in jail and a fine.
i know that varies from state to state... but damn. in cali it's a fine... in NY it's a fine... in seatle it's 1 day and a fine...
sometimes i seriously question the state vs federal system. THAT amount of varience is ridiculous.
i mean were you operating heavy machinery at the time? or assaulting a puppy?
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
where teh majority votes with their dollars into congressional pockets
this is why we are supposed to be a republic.. but i wont' get into that rant again just check the link in my sig
The problem is that they (RIAA) cannot control the new medium (the Internet).
the only decent band listed there is chili peppers and they should know better.. hell their entire carefully crafted image is around carefreeness
metallica is absolute shit, hell i got their new album from kazaa and it sucked horribly, but i kept it up anyway just to piss them off
green day has always sucked and hasn't even written anything new since i was in highschool (i graduated in 98)
linkin park wants to be metallica
conclusion? no loss, let them fuck themselves out of existence they deserve nothing less
Suppose that I possess a copy of Metallica's new album (I actually don't, but let's imagine that I do).
The music on Metallica's new album is not intrinsically or naturally a scarce resource. It is in fact an unlimited resource. I can, at no (or insignificant) cost to myself, meet an unlimited demand for this particular resource.
However, copyright law prevents me from meeting an unlimited demand for this resource.
There are people who would like to have a copy of this music, but who are not willing to pay the price associated with it at a retail store. If it were not for copyright law, I could satisfy this demand.
Because this scarcity is not intrinsic or natural to the resource in question, it is an "artificial" scarcity.
The intent of causing artificial scarcity of a resource is either to increase the market value of the resource, or to regulate the resource for broader social reasons.
The meager (at best) potential benefits of copyright on artistic works do not in our present society warrant its continued status as law.
The majority of those who truly have the potential to advance the arts will do so fully or to a sufficiently acceptable degree whether or not they are granted monopolistic control of the distribution of their work.
The benefit of the few who will not or who will not so greatly, is outweighed by the free mixing and distribution of ideas that will come about in our society in which it is becoming increasingly true that everyone, not just a select few, are creators and innovators (and yes, you twit pisser, producing a derivative work is being creative and innovative).
The arts are not advanced to a greater extent because artists are able to indulge in luxuries daily that cost more than the average worker makes in a week.
That Mr. Pfuckshisowndiddy can throw millions around like pocket change is not a cause that we as a society have an obligation to advance.
Just the opposite: we have an obligation to take his wealth up to the point that were we to take any more he would not able to advance the greater good as much as he has, and instead redistribute that wealth to those who will innovate, create, and advance the greater good.
For his contributions, Mr. Pfuckshisowndiddy deserves an annual income of about $22,000 USD, and not a cent more.
If the RIAA gets it's way... which is a distinct possibility.... we will see 2 things happen amongst traders.
First will come the file-trading encrupted and distribiuted networking solutions... such as freenet.... where communications will be inherently anonymous and highly hidden... where the data will be spread across the network in a simlar fashion to RAID... keeping them availble and at the same time not dependant upon one users machine.... imagine if everyone simply gave 40 megs of space to a netowkr of millions of users to be shared out RAID style....
the second thing we'll see is the advent and return of sneaker-net... with so many small and highly portable devices that store data on nearly everyone.... the ease of getting songs at your buddies house or work or in the park will become more and more prevelant. Although not easy with the iPod right now.... i have a distinct feeling it will be shortly.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
the RIAA just keeps shooting themselves in the foot. Every major lawsuit just leads to more public attention.
I remember when mp3's were only found on IRC or FTP server or crappy porn filled mp3 warez sites or college network shares. the Dimond RIO suit put mp3 in the spotlight and the napster lawsuit made mp3 a household name. They may will according to the law, but thats all they are winning.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
From the article:
When has it become our duty as US citizens to make sure that any business model succeeds? If a business cannot adapt its business model for each new generation, then it deserves to go down in flames. The sad thing is that something like the above could happen. The dirty RIAA/MPAA with their dirty money will bribe the prostitutes of congress and have them pass a bill that allows them to tax all internet usage or all cd burner purchases. As if the only possible reasons we dirty citizens use the internet or buy a cd burner is to steal their crapppy music. This crap makes me mad.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
So are the MPAA and the DMA. They should all be taken down by the Patriot Act, RICO, and every other law aimed at putting away such criminal enterprises.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
If they did (almost certainly), ask them if they felt guilty and ashamed about stealing FROM ARTISTS?
Tell them that filesharing is simply doing the same thing using your computer to grab them from P2P instead of the radio and your hard drive instead of a tape recorder.
Tell them the only difference between what they did and "filesharing" is that the RIAA bribed a bunch of politicians to declare the digital version is illegal and that the tape version is explicitly legal.
What's important here isn't that this changes the law, but to let them know what you're doing is merely illegal, not wrong.
If your parents can't tell the difference. . . you've got some unpleasant time to do before you leave home, good luck.
Tech Public Policy stuff
1.) Dual boot
2.) Dual computers
3.) Wine
And occasionally, a group like the freenet project will release linux formats.
A few more downloads will not hurt them.
What it will do is give them more arguments when lobbying Congress. "See, we have done all we could. Our businesses will die unless you pass more laws for us." If you read the Morpheus dismissal order, that is exactly what the judge argued for. He basically complained that his hands were tied and that Congress should pass some laws so he can do something about it.
Why have they never mentioned usenet? Because they can't stop usenet file sharing unless they are allowed to cancel files and the isps are forced to abide.
Similarly, they cannot stop p2p unless they are somehow allowed to filter an isps traffic and put filesharers offline without wasting time on due process (which applies only to government action, not RIAA action).
Expect more assaults on the free flow of information. The question is not whether they will succeed under the current paradigm. (They can't.)
The question is whether they can get Congress to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Hopefully they can't.)
In the UK case they can go to an ISP to get the information having gathered enough evidence to get a magistrate to ok it (which isnt a huge barrier when you can show the time, the data, the files, a video of the download, the music playing and a signed testimony you own the copyright). Data protection law is not a right to do illegal things anonymously. In fact an ISP is permitted to give such data to the police without them even asking if it has good reason to believe a crime is being committed.
.
I'd expect people in the UK to be dealt with by UK law, just as large scale UK video pirates were. Large scale video piracy was stopped by basically targetting the big pirates and giving them nowhere to advertise their wares either. Now its a hand to hand market or dodgy street market stalls and that keep the volume of piracy under control
As regards file names - given a few downloads that are verified as pirate and the relevant paperwork done and affidavits filed I suspect the rest would be resolved by seizing the equipment in question and seeing what else is on it.
I approve of the RIAA approach this time, its the first sane thing they've done for a long time. Go after the bigger copiers, instead of harassing everyone, screwing up the law and building unusable systems actually go after the criminals for once.
What should be the real limits on "fair use" is another debate, but it will be a lot easier to have when large scale copying of copyright works is under control, and also may actually go back to the old ways - as video has where small scale copying/lending isnt a threat, helps everyone and the law is conveniently ignored by all parties
Everybody always has done it, up to now, legally.
Any musician and anyone else serious about music who's older than Britney Spears' generation grew up taping off the radio and swapping tapes. This was how people swapped music files before the Internet and personal computers.
Do any of us feel guilty about STEALING MUSIC and being PIRATES!!!
Of course not, tapes effectively extended the range of radio broadcast promotion of albums, i.e. taping songs off the radio helped sell albums, just as P2P and Internet radio helps sell CDs now.
The only difference between fileswapping and taping is that the RIAA paid Congress to make swapping songs via Internet illegal.
If you believe differently, you have been suckered by RIAA propaganda.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Additional content like provided on DVDs. . . interviews, games, band information, pictures. . .
"Members only" areas on band websites, you get an ID number off a CD or play it when you access the site get access.
Drawings for free tickets.
If one really likes the music, one buys the CD because it sounds better, AAC is NOT a lossless format.
I wonder how many people are buying iTunes tracks and buying the CDs later? Anybody see numbers yet?
Tech Public Policy stuff
As it turned out, this increased album sales, just like file-swapping now.
The only difference is that politicians were paid off to make the logical extension of this into digital illegal.
Tech Public Policy stuff
But the diffrence here is its not about human rights, its about a huge corp (whos already been convicted of price fixing) ripping of the customer and when the customer tried to fight back by useing P2P instead of doing the right thing and fixing their biz modle the corp gets new laws passed.
And hell P2P isn't bad for the artists at all, its bad for the RIAA ONLY. indy artists probley love it.
You mean like downloading the worst ever comic movie in hollywood history?
Why?
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Easy to solve thoses problems:
1) not true, actuly this has the reverse effect, a band can produce any sort of material and the put it up for download/sale on the internet. If it wasn't going to sell a CD and is not radio friendly then with the net it'll get to poeple who enjoy and listen to it. More then a CD would (IF the RIAA LET them put it on the CD)
2) change the price cheam to per min instead of per sogn. Or let the artist set the price for the sogn.
3) Not all albums are like that, and thoses that are (far and few between, well at elast good ones) can be sold as a entire album package.
As it stands CDs suck only because the price fixing and gougeing. and that RIAA wants to control everything,
No RIAA, many indy companies, cheap CDs (no 50% of price spent on RIAA dn ads) then CDs would rule again
Hey Music To Eat, do you write on any sites? If not, I would like to talk to you about my site.
theguy at tinfoil dot net if you are interested.
Let's now return you to your regularily scheduled program
tinfoilmedia
The sad thing is, that you're most probably (I don't know, cause I haven't been here for too long) right. Tell me I shouldn't do something, and I will do it just to annoy you and show that I still can (no, I have never crapflooded myself). I wonder if people would stop fp'ing and stuff, if it was made 'legal'?
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
The get to continue existing
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
The oft quoted example is 'Often, you'll find that Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery the DVD is cheaper than Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery the soundtrack is.
Really.
DVDs really are at the right price point, and you get a hell of a lot of bang for your buck. Especially if you have a decent HT rig. And a decent HT rig ain't all that expensive.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
But, leaving that aside, you appear to be proposing that because RIAA members have been caught price fixing, that this means it's legitimate to screw artists, regardless of who they work for.
Sorry, no it isn't. I don't buy that any more than I buy DeCSS being banned because someone used it to make a billion copies of The Matrix.
Copyright isn't bad because of the members of the RIAA. Some members of the RIAA suck. It has nothing to do with copyright.
And if you want free music, and want to promote an environment where free music is the norm, the moral, and right, thing to do is to make that music, or, if you're a talentless Slashdotter, put your money where your mouth is and fund artists on the specific understanding those artists are producing works for the public domain. It's not impossible, it's happened in other areas where copyright is an issue: Don't believe me? Ask Richard Stallman. He's managed to persuade hundreds of thousands of programmers across the world to produce free software, encouraged businesses to fund that software development, and fostered an environment in which the leading commodity-hardware computer operating system for enterprise server usage is free.
There's no excuse for ripping off people trying to make a living from their own work.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I've been saying this for YEARS.
Copyright only exists to protect and encourage the arts and sciences. There is no intrisic moral value in copyright.
Given the nature of modern technology, and the low cost of modern distribution (electronically), we can safely abolish the concept of copyright.
Politics is the difficult business of allocating resources effectively. In this case, the happiness of the many (public, and, I would argure, the artists (and wannabe artists)), outweight the needs of the few (RIAA, big 4 record companies).
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Amazing how a guy who's been dead for 10 years can still be on topic...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
MusicCity
As you see on the site, artists are getting paid through P2P. The RIAA just doesnt want to give P2P a chance.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
ooops heres the URL http://www.musiccity.com/
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So this is the new tourist brochure for the United States?
And I thought my school district was turning out imbeciles...
Society in the past has made an agreement to give the author time to earn money on his or her creative work. There were assumptions about who the author might be and what a reasonable amount of time might be.
That's a reasonable agreement, and many artists - musicians, authors, directors, etc - have created entirely new works and made them available on the understanding that this agreement stands.
No sane artist is going to claim a completely new work. There is give and take, and in some cases outright theft. Beyond that, the copyright laws are suppose to release works into the public domain on a regular basis so the future artists can create works targeted to new generations.
This is an important and important process or recycling. For example, there is little original in Harry Potter. It is an effective recycling of ideas created by a British writer of other British writers and targeted to the a new generation of children. The same thing is true for Madonna, which just repackaged Blondie's look (and feel) for a new set of teenagers.
Even when one comes up with the argument that there are laws that "no longer represent the majority of the people", it strikes me as bogus to suggest that this immediately makes a law unjust
So it is not just a matter of the people thinking that the laws are wrong. I agree that such a thing is necessary, but not sufficient condition. The real issue is the copyright laws have changed significantly enough so they may not be fair to authors or customers. First, we are being asked to accept that a corporation can be the 'artist.' Though many would say that this is just a natural extension of the law, I think it hurts the true artist. Despite popular opinion, a corporation is not a person, it does not create art, and does not promote creativity. Humans or groups of unincorporated humans are those we wish to encourage to create works, not fictional entities. Second, we are being asked to rescind the requirement that old work go back into the public domain so they can be retooled to new generations. The fact that Disney has made it's fortune, and continues to make it's fortune, doing this is well documented. The fact is that Disney is not the creative, or financial powerhouse, it used to be. If the U.S. needs anything it is a financial powerhouse like Disney used to be. Where is this company going to be if the U.S. has copyright laws that prohibit the use of old work into perpetuity? Outside the U.S., of course, helping another country's economy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The difference in this sense? The listener and provider of the file are redistributing this ad for the record company free of charge. Nobody's listening to the radio station's ads, but if the radio station isn't providing the content, why should we?
I wonder how many pro-RIAA postings are from people employed by RIAA PR agencies as opposed to "useful fools" who spread the RIAA message because they've been pumped full of bullshit and have the urge to spew it at somebody?
Tech Public Policy stuff
This will never happen, the RIAA is just going to cause people to boycott buying CDs entirely, and then when and if they do get their songs off P2P, no one will buy them and people will just listen to indie stuff.
Its a lost cause, what the RIAA needs to do is respect fair use and perhaps instead of trying to have absolute control over distribution, give up on control of distribution, modify copyright so that people can share files, and go after the people who burn CDs and sell them.
P2P is about as stopable as Linux, its not going to happen because P2P gives people freedom. People will not give up their freedom to share the music they purchase, and they will not stop distributing music, the best thing the RIAA can do is learn to profit in a world where they dont have absolute control. Perhaps if they stopped asking the question of how to stop piracy and started asking the question of how to profit off filesharing, this problem would be solved and all sides would be happy.
I can tell you for a fact it will never go back to the old days, thats like saying you can convince people to stop using the internet by blocking access to a few sites. It wont happen.
P2P is here to stay, I suggest they work with Kazaa to profit off P2P in the same way they profit off Radio and TV, Ad revenue. I dont mean banner ads, but high quality commercials should be added onto P2P, most users wont mind a commercial playing in the backround of Kazaa just like they dont mind when commercials play on TV or Radio.
Theres also taxes which can be used to give artists stipends, and the RIAA can use make ISPs pay, and have ISPs pass the bill down to users.
Theres alot of ways to do this which make more since than suing the world.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Use encryption, highest order currently available . .
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.
.
, .
.
.
, .
. .
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.
.
I think it is 2,048 bit like hushmail uses, upgrade this
and make it a encryption module that can be adapted as
further needed in the future
Disregard the NSA request for Keys, andMake it a dynamic server model . All ppl are servers, but only for a short random while,
and then the duty is passed
The servers start building a dynamic remap, then deliver the
time for remap and reassign after the hand off and receive
servers have negotiated and checked the links for stability
and reliability
Hide the Ip addresses, and use a disassociated means of
node identification . IP address will get you connected to
a Dynamic DNS that is floating on foreign hosted servers
in countries that care not a wit for the RIAA or what it wants
Design it as a many tentacled beast, with polymorphic traits
like a polymorphic virus . Use multi-casting to update server
lists and keep the nodes informed
Use dummy data to send the fox chasing the fake hound
the wild goose chase . Put pieces of the data in certain
packets, and those certain packets change as the network
morphs in the course of the day . Like was preposed for
Dark Angel 2000
Clients will dynamically re-route, and shift their registration
info all encrypted, and IP addresses are masked/encrypted when
used, and are used as little as possible
Idle process similar to what the SETI@home screen saver uses
could determine the best machines, and use them to build
an 'A' list of nodes, but rotate that responsibility as to not
lock it in to certain machines, ie. keep it moving
So with a encrypted structure by a random shifting tree
they would have a "damn" hard time tracing it if all the
packets themselves were coded
A whitelist is possible, but could be compromised by a member
being caught thru other means, ie. vindictive significant other
Then what was a good node could be used to reverse engineer it,
and listen to the network
So it has to be designed so that those on the network themselves
could monitor, but it changes quickly, and changes in ways
that are not straight forward easily understood, A network chameleon of sorts
Only the master chameleon could "hope" to understand the network,
but the very fact of how fast it changed would make it a daunting
if not overwhelming task . If someone who had the idea of
"Dark Angel 2000" could apply it to peer 2 peer it could happen
Well enough day dreaming , hopefully some very bright mind
will see this and help it or a variant there of on its way
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
skynet... ugh... p2p will always be there! there's no way of shutting it down!
my blog
research firm Yankee Group estimates that 56 million people use file-swapping software in the United States.
Has anyone else noticed that more people use file sharing software in the United States than voted for President Bush in the last election?
If you want to rant about the Russian Harry-Potter-type book that was written that Rowling's publisher subsequently sued over, then that's one thing (though I'd disagree about the Chinese version purely because it was marketed as being "Harry Potter" and Rowling has a right to defend her creation and the work associated with her name.) But saying that, for instance, Madonna has no rights to claim something is an original work because she copied Blondie's image (I'd disagree, but let's pretend that's true), is another thing altogether. Madonna has certainly composed a lot of original works. They may or may not be of similar genres to other creations, but there's no doubt she created, composed, and performed those specific songs herself (or with the direct permission of the copyright holders.) The same applies to Rowling, who wrote her own stories.
I don't think writing a "Boy Wizard" story or being a Blonde Singer is stealing from anyone. I do believe that someone who writes a book or song has a perfect right to expect users of those works to use them on their terms.
This isn't a discussion about patents. Unimplemented ideas are not at issue here.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Piracy is a term referring to what is going on. Are you calling the people at the RIAA literal walking bags full of scummy matter? Of course not. Stop being so stupidly literal.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Actually, they top the charts right now, unfortunately. Of course they suck now, and a lotta fans have turned against them, but their target audience now is basically the in-stync crowd, who could care less about integrity, and are happy to believe that art is what Lars Ulrich says it is.
I regularly take informal polls at the start of each semester in my college class just to see where exactly students stand on the copyright issue. Since I teach a computer-oriented course for art students I feel the topic is relevant and, as such, the sampling of results are often interesting.
Over the course of the last 5 semesters, it's been pretty clear that a good deal of those sampled have no real concept of what copyright is. I mean they understand it's there to protect the rights of the artist / creator but that's about the extent of it. Of course, that much is probably no big surprise. What is surprising is that many of these students believe it's perfectly legal to make a copy of your friend's CD/DVD/Video game/Microsoft Office CD as long as you have no intent to sell or distribute it. Of course some of that falls more under breaking your EULA than copyright, but the fact remains, the ethics of copying doesn't even apply here since they think it's perfectly legal to begin with.
At any rate, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a big wakeup call when the RIAA throws down the hammer. A good sampling of their "victims" might not even be aware that they're actually breaking any laws.
DigiSquid Design.
s/its customers/some of its customers/
In which case, that's the entire vending machine industry out, then. Along with most of the banking and financial industry. Just about all the retail industry (with those security tags). The hotel industry (otherwise guests' rooms wouldn't need keys). The car industry (all those keys, alarms, and immobilisers). In fact, just about every industry everywhere!
Not that there aren't valid arguments against copy-protected CDs &c, of course, but ./ers do seem to overstate the case a little.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
You post is: 100% Ad Hominem and 100% OFF TOPIC!!!
Find a better place than RIAA propaganda to get your info.
You are of course, simply wrong to the point where nothing you say about the business of music can be taken seriously. The case for every song on commercial radio being a result of payola can be considered established fact.
BTW, the major labels are all in major financial trouble, and paying for this part of promotion is part of the reason. Better cash your paycheck quickly.
No guarantee on data availability. I simply keyword-searched on my personal database on payola. If any URLs don't work, Google is even your friend. Keyword search on "payola".
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/06/25/pfp_co ngress/
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/06/25/eagle_ eye/
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/24/1515236.shtm l?tid=141
http://features.slashdot.org/features/01/06/05/103 4234.shtml?tid=141
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/25/1316255.shtm l?tid=141
http://www.latimes.com/cgi-bin/slwebcli?DBLIST=lt0 1&DOCNUM=41999&TEMPLATE=9002&DBPUB=20010529KFHQeKB S&QDesc=Logs%20Link%20Payments%20With%20Radio%20Ai rplay
I've never seen a pro-RIAA posting on Slashdot.
THAT'S WHAT THE PREVIEW BUTTON IS FOR. READ YOUR POSTS BEFORE POSTING.
There's a serious issue here concerning the rights of artists.
Only in your mind, and only in the imagination of RIAA publicists. Eminem's latest album was completely uploaded to the Net as MP3? His album went straight to #1. Please explain to him in public how his rights were violated by EVIL PIRATES.
There is NO convincing evidence anywhere that P2P displaces record sales.
As for your example, Isaac Asimov, too bad he never saw the Baen Free Library. Out of print science fiction books have been uploaded by several name authors to the library, betting that it would expand the sales of current titles. NO DRM, just zipfiles you can turn into .RTFs or html pages.
The experiment has been a success, and given Asimov's intelligence, we can be sure that if he were living today, he'd have his back-issue stuff either there or somewhere similar under his control.
Your copyright strawman doesn't cut any ice with me, I'm a published writer and have applied for more than one patent, and know far more about the law in this area than you will ever need to know. I certainly don't support getting rid of copyright.
While there are some people here who want to do away with it, most here would be content with reform, i.e. changing current law to add mandatory Internet licensing to mandatory broadcast licensing, so anyone who broadcasts via the Net for commercial purposes has to pay a royalty to songwriters, collected via Performers Rights Societies like ASCAP and BMI. (and tracked via the same people who do SoundScan)
Selling music is about promotion, and the RIAA version of the story is simply an attempt to restrict mass distribution of music promtional materials to channels like radio they can buy control of.
Thanks to your RIAA buddies, I had a hell of a time getting the music tracks of an independent artist I'm personally working with onto Kazaa for fear of attack by the thugs you either work for or even stupider, are working for free of charge.
As for your imaginary "moral obligation", our moral obligation to artists is buy from them if we like their work. We have NO moral obligation to RIAA labels and no amount of your whining can make one. Perhaps you will buy a major label record because a label ad says to. Nobody else will.
Distributing broadcast-quality tracks of an artists' work simply provides them with free promotional exposure. If you think there's something immoral about someone hearing a track off an album that a record company didn't pay for radio time or the bandwidth before, you're a dumb shit.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You have a point.
I'm a Yank, but I lived in the UK in the early 90's. Bought more than my share of CDs at the time. I remember a bit of hubbub about unfair CD pricing, essentially predatory pricing at a 1-to-1 dollar-to-pounds ratio. Is a CD that sells for, say, $18 in the States still selling for 18 pounds in the UK?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
And how do they get capable, if they're never given the chance? By Dark Side, they'd had several albums' worth of experience and practice. I can't see Tubular Bells making it in a singles' chart.
Of course, it was still a problem, even then. Would anyone ever have heard of The War Of The Worlds if it hadn't had the radio-friendly Forever Autumn? Oxygene too had its single-length part to get it noticed, and even The Wall probably wouldn't have achieved quite such legendary status with out Another Brick in the Wall part 2 (one of the least likely Christmas Number 1s ever...)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
So, what was the growth rate before? 5%? 15%? In other words, if the growth rage has increased then the point is well made, otherwise it is just crap
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Why should *I* pay for other users to download/burn mp3s, when I use none of these things for music piracy?
If their business model is that broken (or their content is so lame) that they cannot sell their content and turn a profit, then their industry has become irrelevant and should die.
You don't get typewriter manufacturers lobbying for a tax on PCs because they're making the typewriter irrelevant do you? No - the companies involved diversified and started putting out PCs.
Ditto for the manufacturers of rollerskates wanting a tax on rollerblades...
Either the RIAA adapt to new technology, or (and this is their fear) they become redundant and people make do without them.
I think the fact is that "they" have been ripping off artists with grossly inflated "promotional costs" for years, and now artists have an alternative for distribution (buy online for much cheaper, and put out some free content to get publicity) the lies are all unravelling and its sent them into a panic...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Pretty much, yeah. Although I admit that it's insulting to bags of scummy matter.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
3) The death of the "concept" album. If each song has to stand or fall on it's own, what incentive does a band have to release something with a larger scope? No more Darksides, Quadrophenias, Red Headed Strangers, Kind of Blues, etc.
You know, I bet this argument was used against instantly seekable cds. Even vinyl albums have a problem in as much as people can listen to any track they want to without seeking. All you have to do is move the swing arm to the right spot. The responsibility of listening to the entirety a concept album has been in the hands of the listener for some time now. If they don't want to experience the whole thing, fine. I'm sure artists will still make them. Music fans will still download the whole thing.
Hell, most concept albums are just showcases for whatever crazy sound effects the band can dig up. You might not want to listen to "Track 1: Battle of the Evil Blackboard Scratchers vs The WOLF" anyway.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
Society has made an agreement, via its legislature, that artists have some control over how their works are distributed in order, in part, that they can at least have a fair go at getting some payback for what they did.
That's not an agreement. That's just a position.
A proper agreement -- and this is particularly so in the case of copyright, since it is a utilitarian doctrine -- is one that benefits both sides.
You've pretty accurately said how it benefits the artists getting the copyrights. So how does artists getting copyrights benefit Joe Schmoe? How does artists getting copyrights benefit other artists?
Don't forget to take into account that copyrights are by no means a big, indivisible block. We could protect works more or less than we do now. And we could extend such protection entirely, or variably, to some artists and not others, or only if certain formalities are taken care of, or only for certain sorts of works.
Once you've considered if THIS configuration of copyright law benefits everyone, please consider whether a different configuration might benefit everyone more.
There will always be some infringers, I'm sure. But I suspect that more beneficial copyright laws would yield fewer infringers as a side benefit.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Maybe the people behind Gnutella should come up with a way to only share a fixed (yet random) set of songs at any given time.
:(
Don't get it? Try this.
Develop a function that allows others to "see" a max of 50 songs at a time per user. The user could have thousands of songs but only 50 would be viewable at any given time. Set the refresh to something like 60 seconds... thus obfuscating the difference between the small and large fish by making it difficult to determine how many songs a user truly has.
If I knew how to code, I'd do it myself
Newsflash: RIAA understands "viral marketing" and is getting P2P filesharing networks LOTS of free press!
...
They obviously figured out that P2P filesharing has caused revenues to go up. However, they wear the veil of ignorance and claim that filesharing is evil and causes revenue loss -- all the while embezzling money and otherwise squandering it, to make the bottom line look reduced to support their phony claims.
All this buzz around P2P filesharing and how easy it is to get pirated music for free causes people who would not normally try such a thing, to go out and try it -- repetetive "advertising" of these filesharing networks in the form of headline news almost daily.
RIAA can then pocket even more money once the viral marketing takes off and they need to spend less money on actual marketing and promotion efforts. Just hire a few more lawyers to keep the news buzz going and get rid of the marketing folks
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
Now, of course, the latter is somewhat undermined by the Internet, and that's not in itself a bad thing. But the former is most definitely positive. I think it's great that people can built careers upon creating new and wonderful things. And, of course, there are many forms of art that wouldn't exist, period, if copyright didn't. Film and television would be two major examples. With it costing millions to put together a low budget movie, and hundreds of dollars an hour for the cheapest TV station to stay alive generating its own content, I think it's fair to argue that without copyright at least providing the means to guarantee a revenue stream for content of reasonable quality, it wouldn't exist.
I never said the current system was perfect. (And in several follow-ups, I've said it isn't, that I favour lower copyright lengths (lifetime or twenty years, whichever is later, guaranteed fair use rights for people to make use of works for their own personal use, etc.) But I believe that the principle that someone should be able to expect to have control over what they create is a good one. I wish someone other than Hanzo San would address that point, rather than insisting on creating bogus strawmen and addressing arguments I've never made, don't agree with, and find ridiculous.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Look how much free information and multimedia tidbits are free over the Internet.
It's time a well structured open source movement got under way in entertainment. After all, we're talking about publicly disseminated bits duplicated on a mass scale, that would sooner or later be made widely available (surely there is a word for such things).
Open source entertainment would mean professional quality with copyleft.
Besides, in so many years, computers will produce the entire entertainment experience like a mini Matrix. They're already so good at special effects, it's just a matter of time.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I've been waiting for years for RIAA to do what they are now doing. There is no way the industry will survive attacking their consumers. Consumers vote.
-- $G
This is like poking an old man with a stick and laughing while he makes idle threats... except in this case, the old guy actually deserves it. "Damn kids with your rock music and makeout parties! Why in my day, sonny, we payed for our CDs, and all the crap that came on 'em! Do you expect us RIAA folks to actually get a productive job?!" VirtuaKnight does not condone the poking of old people
The constitutional reason for regulating it is to promote the development of new works. Would Metallica have created a new CD if they knew they would get $0 for it? Maybe, maybe not. But shouldn't it be theit choice to do so, not yours?
There are plenty of people on the Internet who create writings and music and art for free for all to see and hear. But it's their choice to do so. When you choose to put Metallica on Kazaa, you are making the choice for Metallica.
If they tax my internet access I might be driven to trade music files to recoup my losses.
There are two kinds of societies: sustainable and doomed.
Hey your preaching to the choir here. I agree that is how it SHOULD be but effectively it is stealing. A copyright holder has the right to control how it's copied and he has the law on his side. Should he have that right is another question. One that most P2P'ers don't have a clue about or frankly give a shit about from my observation.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
If the artists truly owned the copyright to their music, then why is the name of the band's recording company placed after the little symbol, and the name of the band itself?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Thanks for the offer Tinfoil. I checked out your site, and I like what you're trying to do with it. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of free time right now to dedicate to something like that. Good luck though.
I didn't say a thing about copyright being bad.
What i'm talking about is how a large portion of the population feel that downloading music is A-OK because in the end it DOESN'T "screw artists", IN the end they benifit greatly by haveing more people listen to their music online.
Its been poitned out before, you have 3 kinds of P2P downlaoders
1) always buy, download to sample and buy if the lsiten to it
2)downlaod to sample and buy if they like enough tracks on the CD, or like the artists, most poeple will buy a CD even if they donwlaod it, IF they like it. They never download instead of buying, they download to see if its worth buying (and yea i guess this screws over the artists who suck and depend on ads)
3) never ever buy, always download.
now the mean is #2, most poeple will buy something they like, and do not download as a replacement. and some poeple always download. Download is not a replacement for owning the real CD. And the market hasn't suffred from P2P, allthou the RIIA would have you belive so.
its really no diffrent then recording it to tapes/CDs and passing them around witch has been going on for a lot longer. It doesn impact sales anymore then that did.
What the RIAA doesn't want is to lose contol of whos popular and who sells, megahits.
On the other hand this could be a kick in the pants for the concept album, and might even play into the hands of those who both promote and create them. Example: Let's say you write a 105-minute rock oratorio. You release a couple of three-minute arias from it for 99 cents each. Promote the cuts, but point out that they're part of a larger, more comprehensive work that costs $10 to buy the entire thing -- and which not coincidentally the artist doesn't have to shoehorn so it'll fit conveniently onto a physical medium.
Like every other medium out there, downloaded music will open up possibilities for experimentation for those who choose to use it.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Well, the obvious one is that stuff gets created that otherwise wouldn't have been.
Is that good? Well, I guess we can agree that that's good.
And, of course, there are many forms of art that wouldn't exist, period, if copyright didn't. Film and television would be two major examples. With it costing millions to put together a low budget movie, and hundreds of dollars an hour for the cheapest TV station to stay alive generating its own content, I think it's fair to argue that without copyright at least providing the means to guarantee a revenue stream for content of reasonable quality, it wouldn't exist.
Well, so what? If I had a natural spring I would cherish the desert; it would be the desert and the barren soil that would make my spring profitable. Never mind the fact that for most people it might be a fairly miserable existence.
If a better set of copyright laws -- one that produced better results for everyone as a whole, and which chiefly served the interests of the public -- happened to make film or tv impractical economically, I wouldn't shed a tear. Not because I don't like film and tv; I am a big film fan.
But rather because it would be apparant that I would be better off without them than with them. The cost of the system in which they were viable was too great.
So the 'it wouldn't exist' card is worthless. Perpetual copyrights that were very broadly construed might make possible a movie with a billion dollar budget that would be, by far, the best work of art humanity has ever produced. But it would still come at too high a cost. I'd rather not have it, if that's what would have to be paid.
it makes the publishing industry viable which means that there's a real distribution network for these works
Naw, I don't believe that. Publishers are just out to make a buck. Pirate publishers have been around since the days of the Stationer's Copyright. You can see the same thing in action back in the days when the US didn't permit copyrights for foreign authors; their works -- if there was a market for them at all -- were reprinted here, and the publishers made out like bandits. It's profitable for them -- they don't have to pay out royalties.
Anyway, the one question remains: we're giving away copyrights, and what we're getting are apparently works that otherwise wouldn't be created. Is that a good deal for everyone? Or could it be better?
Thus, where you say: But I believe that the principle that someone should be able to expect to have control over what they create is a good one. I disagree. I don't think that's a good principle. I think it's good if it leaves me better off than without it, and I think it's bad if it leaves me worse off than without it.
There's no more work required than that simple analysis. I have no love or charity to give to artists, AND I AM ONE. I'll accept their having control if it suits me; if it's best for me; measured by what I want. And if not, then I see no reason to grant such control.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
How much time will the RIAA waste suing people who are trading legal files? All of what I have downloaded over the past few months have been from DJs and artists who want their songs to be swapped. I'm on KaZaA all of the time, and have pretty high rating...when the man comes knocking, he won't like what he's going to find.
"I've been waiting for years for RIAA to do what they are now doing. There is no way the industry will survive attacking their consumers. Consumers vote."
With what? The money they didn't spend? Or the vote they never used to keep the political process balanced?
Call me when you guys have real teeth.
1) You can already do this now, and you don't need the RIAA to change their business practices to do it. Great sites like Acid Planet and MP3.com have tons of great music available. Like this shameless self promotion I collaborated with a buddy on.
2) I've always said if they're going to do this they should charge by the megabyte, not the song.
3) The problem is that it would completely change the landscape. People would stop thinking in terms of "Albums" and start thinking in terms of "Songs". The whole concept of making an album would go out the window. As soon as a song was done it would go up on the internet for sale. To sit on it would be costing them money.
Yea, but the flaming lesbian carpet-munchers ruined all that in the 90's.
Sounds quite similar to the "CD sales dropped by 12% due to filesharing" statistic released by our mates in the RIAA...
... and then there were none
On the same day, June 25, but in 1876, arrogance cost George Armstrong Custer his life adn the lives of the men he led.
If an artist wants to release an album as a 'single work', why not release it as a single 78 minute long file (containing multiple songs)?
People also forget that 128kbps MP3 is *not* CD quality. 256kbps is much better, but I'd still be reluctant to pay CD prices for something slightly worse than the original media. Given that I also have to pay for the bandwidth to download the track and the CDR to burn it to (hard disks fill up or go pop eventually, and I'd want to listen in the car) then 99c per track is a bit steep.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
wouldn't global temperature increases (and thus global warming) be in the southern and northern hemispheres?
I'd expect the northern hemisphere to warm in the spring! Bet ya it cools again in the autumn!
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this effectively already the case? To a certain extent, at any rate. Even with copyright in place, in the quest for ever-higher profit margins, media companies have been busy eating each other for some time now, mom and pop outlets are disappearing, and rare works are relegated to those few hole-in-the-wall stores still open. At least on the web you can find stuff without spending months tracking down and physically visiting oddball shops and sorting through their idiosyncratic collections.
Besides, as some have shown (like Bruce Eckel, among others), just because a book or other work is freely available online doesn't mean people won't still want a hardcopy. I don't like to look at a monitor for hours on end, but a that same book in hand could be bliss on a sunny day instead of a myopic headache.
It comes down to packaging -- what you pay for in many instances isn't the content so much as how it's presented. That's how the linux distro business seems to work (certainly for desktops, and for enterprise as well if you count support as part of the package). Heck, even with cars -- how many lemons have been sold on the basis of some actress' cleavage? But seriously, even though I could (and partially did) watch Two Towers weeks before the release, I still went to the theatre, and at that more than once. Copyright alone isn't the issue here.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Another factor is the falling costs involved in recording music. For example, nowadays it's easy to use a decent soundcard to create the effects that a $2500 effects unit (or daisy-chaining crappy $50 stomp pedals) to get a variety of decent sounds coming from the $5000 Marshall stack. Yeah, nothing sounds exactly like the real deal in hardware, but we're talking mp3 & ogg, near enough is good enough.
Well, the obvious one is that stuff gets created that otherwise wouldn't have been.
It can also be argued that current copyright can discourage creations of new materials.
And, if I may defend an industry that's constantly under attack here, it makes the publishing industry viable which means that there's a real distribution network for these works.
Since when has it been appropriate for governments to support specific industries and business models. If the publishing industry is so important that's more an argument for nationalising it...
And, of course, there are many forms of art that wouldn't exist, period, if copyright didn't.
Plenty of art forms predate copyright. Thus they did not require copyright to come into existance.
Film and television would be two major examples. With it costing millions to put together a low budget movie, and hundreds of dollars an hour for the cheapest TV station to stay alive generating its own content, I think it's fair to argue that without copyright at least providing the means to guarantee a revenue stream for content of reasonable quality, it wouldn't exist.
Both film and television are technologies which postdate the concept of copyright. The only thing that can be said is that the current business models surrounding them assume copyright.
Does anyone have a breakdown on what actually costs what in film and TV production. Including expenses which may only exist because of copyright...
Good luck with the economy going down the toilet and each state having bilions in debt, read CA, $58b, once the current budgets get put in and states go on a massive deflation, you will see loads of services cut from cops to garbage cleaners to youth centers and libraries. You really think the courts and cops will give a toss, when they have their phones ringing like hell on heaps of 911 calls and people rioting and pillaging wallmarts? Real crimes will not get cut, the soft harmless to society crimes will get ignored, after all would cops rather go arrest a 16yo and his PCs or actually go investigate a 10-11 at 711 ?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Are we revolutionaries? We are poised to change the future. Q: Whose money is the RIAA using? A: Ours! I would wager that every person that has downloaded a song has also purchased a CD or DVD. Am I correct? Thus, we have collectively contributed to funding of the legal machine that wishes file sharing be brought to a halt. What do you think?
How many of those p2p'ers are doing
/dev/random > J.Lo.mp3
cat
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
How many of us sell our mp3s? I have never sold a music cd made from mp3s, Have you? Isn't the RIAA's bigest gripe about not making money from sales???? Second hand music stores have been selling used music media forever. After the initial album sale, the record company never sees another profit. The seller does, first the person who had bought or was given the album, then the re-seller, the second hand store. There is just no way to tell how many times the album has been from one hand to another. People who frequent these types of stores will trade and sell with them a lot! That same album could pass through the store doors many,many times. Is the mp3 legal then if I rip it from a record or tape or cd from a second hand shop? If not why? The RIAA never expected to recieve any profit from these apparently. They are clearly not concerned with profit loses from this segment of the community. Something is very askew here. BTW, just how many times do I have to replace a vinyl record, cd or tape before I can have a copy of it on my hard drive?
this is not scientific research, but I have found that just about everything is around 20% more expensive in the uk when compared to the us. When I was in the market for a laptop I did a lot of shopping around, and for some models I could have bought a ticket to the us, bought my laptop, and flown back with change rather than buying in the uk.
Instead of pouring money into fighting the Internet, the RIAA should be smart enough to figure out how to make it work for them. They must realize that they cannot continue to alienate customers in this manner. I, for one, would be willing to pay for a service where I could download high quality sound files legally.
"And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
> does anyone need a threatening e-mail sent to president@whitehouse.gov?
I do.
I ignored the _content_ of the post but challenged the netiquette. Implication being that if the parent wants to be heard, should play fair. Happy now AC?
Uh, dude, s/closet/lavatory/
The Cocaine industry that is. Without millionaire rockstars where would the poor old drug dealers get money for gas and food? Come on, think of the big picture here!
It was the July 4th weekend. Most normal people have fun stuff to do on a holiday weekend...
god's lonely man
"If easily fabricated evidence such as this can get someone in jail"
It's called "logging." And what "fabricated evidence?" Your entire argument is based on your assumption that the only thing the RIAA has to go on in the IP and your assumption that it's all a court need. Whereas that's never actually been the case.
The ISP also would probably have logs of your activity at that time. I know my University can determine what's being transfered over the networks if it has a reason to care. I could run Etereal on my own network and track everything anyone on my network is doing.
If someone uploads pirated stuff to my server and some company comes along and threatens to sue me, I can pull up my logs and get the exact time the files were uploaded and what IP did it. The company can then go to the ISP for that IP at that time which the ISP can reduce to a single account and verify they were indeed uploading the pirated files to my server at that time.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
As for Napster, my guess is its two things
I do not think people are downloading as a means to hurt the RIAA. It really doesn't hurt them anymore if you intended on not purchasing the album nor downloading it in the first place , to go and download it, if only out of spite to download it. I haven't purchased an album in years. For me to go download now doesn't really take away from their sales. It may give the appearance that it does, but all I see is some manager at RIAA gaining the excuse to hire more staff and beef up his own compensation. Remember, not all managers make decisions in the best interest of the company. They will always do what's in the best interest for themselves, whether it serves the company or not is a different matter.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp