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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!
You know, I've been reading all morning the other threads over here about citizen's rights to bear arms.
A pretty good argument is that armed citizens could defend themselves against a tiranny. How is that compatible with the current situation where corporations seem to have totalitarian powers over the US citizens? Granted, these corporations are not the US goverment, but the inaction of said goverment, either speaks of a very high degree of inefficiency or a very ingrained corruption.
Doesn't this permanent attack of personal rights, erosion of privacy and draconian regulations equate a tiranny?
But from the RIAA's point of view, this is probably the best tactics they could adopt (assuming all PR efforts have gone out of the window.) They will always be one step behind trying to compete on technology, and if they stick to the biggest offenders then this gives the smaller guy the idea that they are safe. As P2P networks are constituted of many smaller traders, worrying those seems to be the most efficient way of making a big impact.
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
I think we're going to have a lot more anonymous cowards in these types of discussions now, so please set your threshold lower... :^(
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The RIAA is trying to cling to its old business model, when it clearly does not apply to today's technological/economical reality.
They don't want to stop file-sharing to protect artists. Bullshit! They don't give a rat's ass for the artists. All they want is to protect their business model and, of course, some well paid and obsolete corporate tycoons.
If they really want to stop piracy, or at least reduce it immensely, here's a recipe: Drop the price of a CD to $3.00. I bet you MP3 file sharing will go down the next day. But then... Ah, how's poor RIAA exec going to pay for his BMW? It's Easier to sue everybody.
I almost pity the poor bastards. They're dinosaurs fighting against two formidable foes: Time and Technology...
Justice is a vending machine that only takes $10,000 coins, usually a lot of them. And sometimes the chocolate bar still gets stuck.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Even if you normally defend the right of the RIAA to try to prevent copywritten music from being stolen, this should seriously scare you if you care anything about your privacy. Just in case there is still anyone who isn't fully aware of this, the RIAA, under the DMCA, is able to file informational subpoenas without the signature of a judge. This particular provision of the DMCA has been unsuccessfully challenged by Verizon in US District Court.
So, even if you have never downloaded a copywritten mp3, the RIAA (if they wake up one morning and decide that they feel like it) can legally demand information about you from your ISP. Your real name, your address, your phone number, and who knows what else. This, my US citizen friends, is unacceptable. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for the enforcement of the law, but when my privacy can be violated for the sake of finding who the person is that stole the latest Justin Timberlake single so that the RIAA can fine them for between $750 to $150,000, then things have gotten out of hand.
Pay EFF
These are your options. Pick one.
RIAA
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Which do you prefer? Corperate Welfare? Freenet?
http://freenetproject.org/
Options are limited, you are a slave to the RIAA, or you support freenet.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"There were no subpoenas on file sent to AOL Time Warner Inc., the nation's largest Internet provider and also parent company of Warner Music Group."
Ridiculous. The largest ISP doesn't get a single notice, while Verizon, the only ISP with enough backbone to fight for their customers, gets over 100. The RIAA is selectively punishing those who don't use AOL, because members of AOL put money in the pockets of RIAA members.
-R
Now the RIAA is targeting copyright infringers and not the tools themselves. What's the problem? Isn't that what they're supposed to do? Does this somehow prevent you from sharing non-copyrighted files over P2P (which, as we all know, is the "primary" use of P2P)?
I mean, I just don't understand this mentality. Why do you feel like you're entitled to redistribute the copyrighted works of others? Why? When did this become a right? I can kind of understand downloading an MP3 of something you already own IF you can be sure it came from the copy of the album you own (i.e., none of this, "I bought the vinyl, now I'm entitled to the higher quality CD version" crap), but sharing the file to millions of people? I don't remember that being part of "Fair use".
Simple solution: stop sharing copyrighted materials over P2P. If P2P really is this wonderful tool for sharing Redhat ISOs and MP3s of lame garage bands, then put your money where you mouth is. Don't share anything copyrighted, don't download anything copyrighted, and fully support the RIAA and MPAA when they go after people that do either. No one has gone to jail or ever will for sharing non-copyrighted materials. There might be cases here and there of people getting hassled over misunderstandings (that professor who had "Usher" in his MP3 filenames), but no one is going to get charged with anything if they really are on the up and up.
Sure, and there are legitimate reasons for P2P that don't involve illegally trading material subject to copyright. But everyone knows (and I defy anyone to claim otherwise) that the vast, vast majority of P2P use if for this purpose. Contrary to what many here may believe, the courts aren't stupid or naive. If a technology is being abused by 99.99% of its users, they're not going to accept "But it has legitimate uses!" as a black and white defence without something a bit more convincing to back it up.
I would strongly suggest that you don't ask for legal advice on Slashdot. As I've just noted in another post, plenty of people will give you their "informed" opinion, probably modded up to +5 by those who agree with it. Unfortunately, as the EULA fiasco shows, "informed" Slashdot opinion frequently disagrees with the opinion of a court, and guess who wins in that case. :-/
My personal take, from a common sense perspective rather than a legal one, is that if both the source and the sink know damn well that they're involved in making an illegal copy of material, they should both be liable to penalties for copyright infringement. If only one party knows, and the other is innocent, then only the guilty party should be subject to penalties, though the other might be legally compelled to erase any copies they made without knowing. To my mind, fair reasons a party might be innocent include:
I'd like to think the current legal system reflected that, and I suspect that sooner or later case law will come down to something along these lines. But I certainly wouldn't claim that this is how the law is today, because I don't know, and neither do most other people posting here.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm wondering why such a fuss is being made about this. If you illegally distribute copyrighted material you are liable for damages. The damages are real. They aren't as big as the RIAA makes them out to be, but they are real nevertheless. Privacy and grandiose interpretations of the First Amendment have nothing to do with it. Nobody is entitled to do stuff that is not legal.
All the people who think the RIAA is trying to protect an outdated business model and should just fall over and die need to take a good look at their own morals. Just because their business model is outdated (is it?) doesn't mean you can take the law into your own hands. What's more, the model isn't outdated at all. The musical horizons of most of you would not extend beyond playing the banjo if it wasn't for the RIAA.
The people who think technology will solve this problem need to think again. There will always be ways to illegally exchange copyrighted materials. But there won't be some kind of Uber-P2P app that destroys the RIAA in one fell swoop, with kissing and credits. Reliable, Cheap, Mass-appeal: pick one-and-a-half.
Some people seem to think it's more of a social dynamic. The cat's out of the bag, can't put the genie back into the bottle, so much for Pandora's box. They think nothing of sharing music. It's just a natural thing to do, and since so many people are doing it, everybody else will just have to adapt. It's the mob mentality: democracy at its very worst. These people talk about freedom and individuality, but they seek cover behind the anonymity provided by the mob. Even if that anonymity is just an illusion, like it is on the Internet.
What the RIAA is doing now is exactly what they should be doing. They are not demonizing any particular technology. They are not pushing for overly broad and vague laws. They are simply tracking copyright violations. If you don't like that idea, then stop violating copyright. It's really simple.
Personally, I couldn't care less. Sometimes I'll grab a few tunes off Gnutella or Usenet, or post a few albums. But I've stopped telling myself that file sharing will dramatically change the way the music industry works. If anything, it is the other way around: the music industry will do more to change the computing industry than vice versa.
Besides, I like to go outside and browse in the record store. It's not so bad.
Two items in this article worried me a little: "The RIAA's subpoenas are so prolific that the U.S. District Court in Washington, already suffering staff shortages, has been forced to reassign employees from elsewhere in the clerk's office to help process paperwork, said Angela Caesar-Mobley, the clerk's operations manager." and: "A spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the clerk's office here was "functioning more like a clearing house, issuing subpoenas for all over the country." Any civil lawsuits would likely be transferred to a different jurisdiction, spokeswoman Karen Redmond said." Here the RIAA is overloading the D.C. District Court to the point they need to transfer people, which leaves other staffs shorthanded, which slows down other (more important) aspects of the Clerk's office - Such as dealing with REAL criminal cases. Oh, and not to mention these clerks are likely working more than normal. So the RIAA has already stuck it to us all by even filing for subpoenas. Our tax dollars pay for those clerks who are doing the RIAA's bidding. Isn't it nice to know even when we dont want to help the RIAA, we are?
Out of the 800 some subpoenas filed. Someone in that ever growing group is bound to have enough money or know someone famous that will assist and help them stand up for themselves. Unfortunately most of the people are probably high school or college kids or people just trying to get by in life. If I were in the group and forced to settle, part of the settlement agreement would have to be that I'm allowed to talk about what happened to me in public. Embarrass the hell out of the RIAA. Go on as many talk shows and radio shows as possible. If they can't fight them in the courts then use the media.
As most people currently acknowledge (if only grudgingly), wanton copying of songs is, whilst not immoral, certainly illegal in the eyes of the law. The answer to this phenomenon of music downloading isn't encrypted filetrading etc, but MAKING IT LEGAL.
As a recent example that comes to mind, look at the overturning of the sodomy laws in a few US states that still had them on the books. On the day prior to the overturn you could have been arrested for having sex with your gay significant other, however one day later and you were LEGALLY able to do so without fear of arrest.
Did the morality of the situation magically change overnight? No, of course not. What changed was that society at large recognised that the legality didn't gel with the morality, and therefore overturned the law itself because it was not considered to be of "benefit" to society any more (it never was IMHO).
So should it be for copyright law in the digital age, where information can be easily copied for near zero cost (other than buying hard drives etc).
I am reminded of another good example, though fictional at this time, of matter replicators as seen on Star Trek et al. If we could download the recipe for a meal and replicate it, should that be deemed illegal, or should we end world hunger virtually overnight?
If it is accurate that most (>50%) people download music then we should overturn the whole concept of copyright, move with the times, get rid of outdated business models (distribution monopoly through artificial scarcity) and start over. Society should base laws on accepted morality, not corporate buyoffs of laws paid to politicians.
Finally I just want to say this:
Listening to a song on the radio is legal. Time-shifting a recording for viewing or listening later is legal. But if I download that same recording from P2P to time-shift my listening to when I want to listen to it instead of when some DJ decided it was time to listen it, suddenly I'm a criminal. What the fsck???
(The answer of course, is that by stripping out the ads the radio station can't sell their advertisers the audience. Yes, YOU are the PRODUCT being sold BY radio stations TO advertisers. It destroys yet another outdated business model. Middle-man based industries are the ones dying off, and it is these industries that are now paying off the politicians to keep themselves in control that little bit longer until they can cash out.)
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
honestly, this is exactly what the RIAA should have been doing all along. going after the networks themselves was futile - with the demise of Napster came the advent of AudioGalaxy, then Gnutella, then Kazaa (with a couple of others omitted out of laziness on my part). most have fallen like dominoes, only to be replaced by progressively less centralized networks.
shutting down the networks is akin to closing a road just because people speed and suing the contractor that built the road. cities, though, have to bitchslap those who are actually breaking the law. siren, lights, ticket, court date.
and that's just what the RIAA is learning now. they can go after the networks all they want, but as long as the end users feel immune from harm for their trafficking, another network will spring up in its place. by going after the actual swappers, the RIAA is finally going to make a dent in its little problem here.
argue about the inequality of the music industry, its uneven balance away from the artists themselves, the unfairness of the current copyright schema, and all that jazz... but that's the way the world turns today. the consumers are not going to instigate change in the music industry - the balance will favor the artists only when the artists start standing up for themselves. and truly, if the balance were that unfair you'd see that happening.
laws are another matter, but the same necessity. just like the musicians need to stand up and wrestle back some control over their art, the American people need to stand up and wrestle their government back from corporate interests.
the whining that goes on in here and around the net is disappointing. we know what the current regime is. we know what the consequences are. unfair or not, we shouldn't act surprised when you get caught.
woof!
You own the physical objects -- the negatives, the paper photographs themselves. You are granted the right, for a limited time, to grant licenses to copy those images.
BUT -- you do not own the images. The images are not property. A copy of the image is not theft, for you do not own the image.
IF someone steals your physical property, theft is committed. If someone copies the photos, it is a copyright violation, which is a civil offense which should carry no criminal penalties, only monetary ones as determinted by a court.
I know it is common for artists and corporations to think that ideas or words or images are their property. But those things are not property.
Copyright was instituted to insure that, for a limited time, creators of new art could receive money for their work, *in order to increase the body of art and knowledge for all*. The idea was not to create a new body of property. Copyright exists to reward effort, for a limited time, and then, *the ideas or art are released for the good of all*.
The U.S. for most of its history refused to honor the copyrights of any other nation, much less consider such as property. Only in the 20th century did the idea of "intellectual property" arise. It is a new idea, a meme that could eventually retard science, medicine, art, politics, teaching, the list is endless.
One of the first proponents of "IP" on the net was Scientology, who initiated the first IP lawsuits against netizens back in the early '90's. The cult wanted to stop ex-members from talking about what they had been told, what they had read, based on the idea that the cult "owned" all that information as a trade secret. They've been the major backer of the DMCA and the new copyright police state.
You can't own patterns of information, which is what content actually is. But a new regime in the U.S. wants to create this new law, and they are getting away with it by selling the idea that they are protecting artists.
They aren't. Artists have historically been robbed, in payments for books, TV, music, movies, you name it. Artists who want to view their work as property are actually selling their souls to immortal corporations which will actually own the works in perpetuity.
Viewing artistic works as property will ruin the artists themselves. Keep copyright laws as they should be: don't give the major corportate powers the ability to acquire ownership of all the works of man -- for all eternity.
"These are your options. Pick one"
Here's another one. Don't break the law. The courts don't give a damn what you think about music or the RIAA. You can think music should be free all you want. That isn't going to change the fact that someone else has the copyright to it, not you. And despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth here, last time I checked, there was no right to copyright infringement of any kind. Just because it's cheap, and easy, and it's music doesn't get you an exemption in the eyes of the law. And don't scream fair use at me either. Distributing a song to 100,000 of your closest friends on KaZaa isn't fair use.
Oh, and I seem to recall most of Slashdot's posters saying "Go after the infringers, not the technology!"
Well, looks like they called the bluff. Now that they're actualy suing individuals, the tune around here seems to have changed.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Oh, I fully agree. I'm very upset with the state of copyrights. I mean, what is it now, like 70 years after the life of the original author? Essentially, nothing recorded in the 20th century will ever see the light of day again.
Like I said, I'm a photographer. I do a lot of weddings, and one of the services I like to offer my brides is to put their wedding photos in a slideshow on a DVD, set to music. Makes it really easy to show all their friends and family their photos, because you can just drop the disc in the player, and show it to everybody on the big screen.
Well, at first I thought I would like to put big-name songs on the DVD to go along with their photos. So I call up ASCAP, who manages the copyrights for just about every artist out there, and asked how much it would be to sync some big-name songs to my photos. I wanted to make about three copies of the DVD (one for the couple, and one for each set of parents). Try $50/song. Right...I'm only charging like $300 for the service as it is, and it takes a couple hours to set up one of these DVDs.
Wouldn't it be great if copyrights were still 17 years? Then I would access to everything produced before 1985. That would be an enormous library of music in the public domain to choose from. Now, though, thanks to Disney, I can't get my hands on anything after like 1920. The real crime is that most anything that old isn't making money anymore these days anyway. They've locked out all the music from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s...even though probably less than 2% of music from those eras is still making any money these days.
Disney got rich off the public domain in the first place. Snow White was a Brothers Grimm tale, wasn't it? Cinderella was a Chinese fairy tale (with magic fish instead of a fairy god mother). Tarzan? Public domain. The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I doubt they paid Victor Hugo anything. Little Mermaid? Thanks Hans! Disney raided the public domain gold mine of the 19th century, but they'll be damned if you can do the same for their creations of the 20th.
Sorry for the rant...just pisses me off that I have to use crappy public domain music, or compose it myself...which actually isn't that bad with Apple's Soundtrack that comes with Final Cut Pro 4.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
128K MP3s are promotional goods of NO commercial value outside their use in getting people to buy the real products, which are CDs and better than broadcast quality digital tracks. no moral or ethical issues here, other than the question of "why are people giving the record labels free bandwidth and promotional exposure?" Only RIAA propaganda says their is some. You can't believe everything coming out of your TV set.
Piracy has NOTHING to do with this, otherwise the RIAA would be spending their lobbying bucks on getting Congress to pressure foriegn governments into closing down bootleg CD PRESSING PLANTS pumping out bogus RIAA member content by the millions of copies.
This is about control. It isn't that the record companies mind us paying to distribute their content. It's that you and I have the same access to P2P channels to distribute our own material that they do, and they fear that they can't play on a level playing field even with billions in budgets and exclusive control over radio and major venue concert distribution.
Illegal? Certainly. But only because they bought and paid for politicians to make it so. The law said "swap audio on analog tape = legal, swap audio as broadcast-quality digital files - go to jail."
Your parents swapped audio tapes with ultimately, the blessing of the RIAA. Tape swapping got the word out and ultimately turned the Grateful Dead and ironically, Metallica into successes.
The record industry doesn't want it to be possible for musicians to succeed outside their system.
Not that it's a bad idea to stop uploading RIAA member tracks to P2P. They don't deserve distribution help. They deserve oblivion.
You really want to hurt the RIAA member labels?
If you just stop buying, they'll blame piracy and buy worse laws. Want Palladium made compulsory?
Just take every dollar you spend on entertainment and spend it on independent musicians. Go to their gigs, buy their records.
When the CEOs of the multinationals that own the RIAA labels find that the only record labels that are increasing profits are ones not affiliated with the RIAA or their lobbyists, the whines about piracy from label CEOs will cease to be accepted as excuses.
Their next logical move is to dump the brands the major CEOs have irretreveably tainted in the public eye. Their new investors will be buying catalogues and artists contracts, why would they be picking up the contracts of the management that destroyed their own companies?
Perhaps the new "Big 5" will be Apple, HP, Microsoft, Dell, and IBM.
Does this mean that music won't be run by fuckheads? No, but at least the fuckheads running the new music industry will live in the same world the rest of us do.
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