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RIAA Obtains Subpoenas Against File Swappers
SniperPuppy writes "Fox News is reporting that the RIAA has secured 871 subpoenas against suspected file swappers, with 75 more being approved each day. Between this, and the latest versions of FreeNet and Kazaa Lite being released, will technology be able to keep traders away from court?" Apparently, just suing the "major offenders" wasn't enough of a warning shot, so now they're going after people who share as few as eight songs. Wait until the RIAA discovers all the stuff that gets posted to Usenet!
Inaction? The government is complicit, running a protection racket for the copyright industry. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, DMCA, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, are just three of the most obvious bits of tripe to pass the U.S. legislature in the last decade+1, and more legislation is pending now.
If you are a U.S. citizen, get involved. Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be: a temporary grant of monopoly on the right to reproduce creative works in exchange for an ultimate benefit to the public domain, not a welfare program for multi-billion dollar industries and the great grandchildren of creative people.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
The Grateful Dead were/are a good example of this. While they could be vicious pursuing commercial bootleggers, they would happily sell a fan a "taper ticket" that included a place to plug in & a roped-off area near the soundboard to set up the mike stands.
Or for true confusion, visit http://www.bobdylan.com ... the website actually features audience-taped songs from recent shows. Of course, Dylan has gone on record several times decrying commercial bootleggers.
I know there are many other bands & performers that do this kind of thing, but I'm an old mossback & there's about to be a Dylan-Dead tour ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
If everyone started downloading legal music instead, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs from indie bands, and seeing their shows, instead of enriching the major labels every time you buy a Britney or New Kids CD. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads are not copyright violations because the artists give you permission to download them.
Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com . See especially their genre index . Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.
Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet ?
The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.
There are better sites for hosting MP3s than MP3.com. Some of them allow you to buy the band's CD from the same page as the MP3 download. Among them are The Internet Underground Music Archives, CDBaby, Epitonic.com, Lulu, SoundClick, Matador Records and insound .
Monotonik provides BitTorrents with zip files containing 60 to 100 MP3s apiece available here.
If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here . Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.
There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b] .
Unfortunately, musicians are often not very good website designers, so poor usability is a significant obstacle to getting music directly from artists' websites. If you're a musician, and you'd like to know how you can improve your website so more people will download your music, please read my article If Indie Musicians Wanted Their Music Heard....
Finally, there is the problem of finding the music that's actually worth listening to. The labels do serve the (somewhat) legitimate purpose of picking out the good from the bad. But we can do that ourselves with legal downloads by using collaborative filtering, for example by downloading our music with iRATE, which you'll find at
Request your free CD of my piano music.
First, *YOU DO NOT NEED TO HIRE AN ATTORNEY*, you are entitled to represent yourself. And you should.
Second, the Courts tend to give leniency to pro se parties. This means the laws of evidence aren't quite as strictly enforced and you can get away with a lot of stuff attorneys can't. Believe me, I know.
Third, there are few things attorneys hate more than dealing with pro se litigants. You never know what's going to turn up and whether or not the judge might allow it because he/she feels sorry for the pro se guy.
Fourth, this gives you the opportunity to create a circus atmosphere. Invite the media. Make angry speeches. Just go nuts.
Now, if the RIAA wants 5,000 cases like what I described above, their attorneys will literally tear their hair out. A lot of them will quit, a lot of them will boost their fees, and a lot of them are going to be pissed off at the RIAA for giving them such a headache.
DO NOT ROLL OVER AND SETTLE. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! If enough people respond this way, the RIAA will lose, and it will lose in a very, very ugly way. Don't think you need an expensive legal team to give them a problem. You, yourself, with $15 of copies at Kinko's can literally shove their crap back up the orifice it came from.
If you think I know not of what I speak, check my sig....
IAAL
Actually, just because the data is coming from a certain IP does not mean that's where the actual file is coming from. Freenet essentially builds itself a large private encrypted network, with each node storing data, and routing traffic coming from other places. There's no way to prove the file came from a particular machine because the data in the store is all encrypted, it could have simply been routing it.
You wanna argue that if you route that traffic then you're liable?? Then you'll have to also argue that service providers are liable also since that data is passing through their systems.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
The labels give the music to the radios but bill the artists for it. The artists also foot the bill for the rest of the promotion stuff, like ads in magazines.
This is part of the reason why only a handful of the very successful artists actually make money.
The labels are a sort of specialized bank, giving a lot of money to artists (well, not actually giving it to the artists, but spending it on behalf of the artists, and then billing the artists for it).
A lot of the Freenet tools can be located here:
l s
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=too
Fuqid is hosted on Freenet, if you Freenet installed click the link above.
Another good trick is to use Freenet to add high bandwidth content (like Mp3s) to your websites