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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!
Sounds like they took a page from DirectTV's playbook. And why not? It appears to be working. But how are they going to stop international users?
Is it okay to download mp3's of songs that I legitimately own on CD? Can I claim fair use if I own the CD? Can I counter sue?
-B
I'm sure they already know about Usenet and IRC and (insert other less prominent distribution methods here). It seems they are more concerned about scaring away the average person (who doesn't even know what Usenet is, or how to operate an IRC client) but just runs Kazaa or another easy to use Windows p2p client.
It's clear that all piracy can not be stopped - the intent few will always pirate through more obscure networks regardless of the level of litigation, this is just a question of going after the most prominent network with the least tech savvy users.
For all you guys saying IRC is where you'll make your trades, you should know it won't scale and they do monitor it. My buddy received a warning from his ISP that someone had asked he be tracked down due to file sharing on an IRC channel. The kicker is he was sharing and didn't know it, someone had taken over his win 2k box and was running a bot on it to share movies. It's been almost a year so I don't remember the name of the kit but It took about 10 seconds of hunting on google to get info about it once we located it.
On a related note, I've been running Freenet for awhile, and the new version is pretty good. Although the flood of new people thanks to the slashdot post did slow things down for awhile, it's faster then ever now.
People who share their CD collections online know that they're breaking the law, they just think they'll get away with it. They're no different than people who drive over the speed limit.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
This is probably true. But if RIAA can trot enough "criminals" through a legal mill, then they'll be able to justify a bigger surcharge on recordings, blank media, or even internet access. Like the "recording surcharge" already on blank tapes & CDRs, it would go straight to the RIAA coffers.
And all these surcharges are exactly why folks are downloading instead of buying. Or to quote my 16 yr old daughter, "If new CDs cost five bucks, I'd buy them."
As for me, if Columbia Records (to use a specific sig-related example) would let me purchase an annual subscription to download Bob Dylan concert recordings on a next day basis, I'd be sending 'em my money today!
The real problem that the recording industry faces today isn't downloading, it's lack of imagination.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Dear god I hope that somebody indicted will be a congresman's son or daughter off at college. That's exactly what it'll take for these senators and representatives to call for an "Inquiry" into the legality of filing all these lawsuits and hopefully get some of them overturned.
My prediction for the future of file swapping? It'll still be big, perhaps even bigger than now. If a company wants to make money then the first step is NOT to piss off people who are already appreciating the fruits of their labor. All people do then is get an even more renegade attitude about it and keep swapping away, anonomously this time
The problem is twofold:
/dev/null. Regardless of how you feel about information freedom, copyrights are the teeth in many of the licenses that we hold dear that enable our intellectual and informational freedom. Copyrights are the law, and these companies are doing what they should do, have every right to do, and what most rational beings have been asking them to: going after law breakers.
1. Going after downloaders on P2P is not really easy (or possible, for that matter) without large scale tapping.
2. Your possession of those MP3's might be arguably legal. Assuming the copies were from vinyl, there would be little that could be argued against it. But if they were CDs, an argument could be made that the CD is a distinct work. You might not buy that argument, but it is an argument.
However, the unchecked distribution is essentially complicitory infringement. Similar to not checking ID's on liquor/porn sales - you can't assume that the person can be legally given the goods.* The onus can be legally on the distributor as well.
* note: I do not consider these crimes to be morally equivalent, don't insert usual argument about theft != infringement, or point out differences in the analogy in an intellectually dishonest way to discredit the argument. It is an analogy and will, by its very nature, be incomplete. Idiotic, rhetorical picking of nits will be sent to
So if a spammer uses some copyrighted information in the contents of his spam, can the copyright holder use the DMCA "subpeona cause I feel like it" clause to find the spammer?
Also, there's a section in the DMCA (section 1309.c) which says that if you didn't realize it was copy protected, it's not you're fault. Maybe a loophole?
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
You mean like WASTE?
No wonder AOL was so worried.
There are now more file swappers than people who voted in the last presidential election so use p2p to construct a campaign advertising that any presidential candidate who will give a publicly sworn or even better, written guarantee to tame the RIAA will get the entire vote of the file swapping community thus guaranteeing them a win in return.
OK so copying music is illegal but the RIAA should stop behaving like a bunch of spoilt 4 year old fuckwits and adapt to the new marketplace in the same way that the British coal miners had to adapt to changes in the coal industry when Maggie "the mad phsyco bitch queen from hell" Thatcher killed it off in the 80's.
C'mon you lot over the pond, you keep going on about democracy, give a demonstration 'cos we've forgotten what it is in the UK!
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
The deftones recently released 49 bootlegs so fans didn't have to buy them off e-bay.
think for yourself. question authority.
I knew this would happen months ago. :P The great shakedown starts. If they want to stop P2P, they should destroy particular users. But no, since it's not about the P2P, but about the shakedown, they'll stick to a few thousand bucks per year. Increasing as people refuse to stop P2P.
If it pisses you off. Never give them money again.This is not a "boycott" which has the overtones of people who are willing to go back to buying once the companies clean up their acts. This is a "lifestyle change" where you realize that they will lie and fuck you over so you never give them money ever again. No matter how much they protest that they've "cleaned up" down the road.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
"Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be"
This is America . . . Money walks, right? Almost all politicians get their money from rich, influential groups. Letters might make the politicians aware of the problem but only money will win their support. Howard Dean is the only politician I am aware to receive most of his $ support from regular individuals (if there are others, please post here). We should support these types of politicians and ignore the rest. Remember, the best way to kill a politician is to ignore them.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
First they came for the spammers, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a 419er;
Then they came for linking to the DeCSS, and I did not speak out--
because I was not 2600;
Then they came for reverse engineering, and I did not speak out--
because I was not Dmitry Sklyarov;
Then they came for the file traders, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a K-Lite user;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to Slashdot for me.
- tim.movementarian.com
Of course, this also brings up an interesting corollary to the Patriot Act. With Librarians destroying logs of what people checked out immediately after those books are returned to keep the government from scanning those logs without people's knowledge, how long is it until logrotated has its cycles tweaked to delete traffic information early? Or maybe just file-sharing traffic? Even a compliant ISP can't give the RIAA data it doesn't have.
We're not stealing... We try it... We like it = we buy it! Now that iw what RIAA fail to comprehend. I have bought many cds which I wouldn't have even heard of, if it wasn't for the illegal distribution of music. Because the radio won't let me listen to alternative music, I can only find out about it on the internet (Or rarely on special shows in the middle of the night). But I have no doubt, that I will be sued and condemned by RIAA if they should ever catch me doing something nasty, because they can't fathom why on earth I would want to buy the CD if I already had the music on my computer.
------- I fumbled my registration and I now must suffer
You simply don't get it. Your time is OVER. People like me now boycott buying CDs altogether because we see that YOU are the biggest crooks in this picture.
The ONLY people we care about are the artists, and while your endless speeches talk about how music pirates are hurting artists, we KNOW that the only people we are hurting are the labels.
You, the labels, are the fucking hypocrite here. You shamelessly abuse the people we actually DO care about (the artists) and then sue US for hurting the artists??? Maybe you have forgotten, but WE ARE YOUR ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME.
Enjoy your BMWs and Mercedes while you have them, because the second there's a way to cut you and your friends out of this picture, we will do it, and I will then start buying music again because I, unlike you, actually DO care about the artists.
Rot in hell in the meantime.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
1. Purchase records (you paid cash for your laptop in a place with no cameras, didn't register it, etc., right?)
2. Listen for wireless transmissions with that MAC before the bust, DF them to your house, get no-knock warrant.
what if the MAC is spoofed?
Good answer :).
From this AP article at the Washington Post:
Verizon, which has fought the RIAA over the subpoenas with continued legal appeals, said it received at least 150 subpoenas during the last two weeks. 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. Earthlink Inc., another of the largest Internet providers, said it has received three new subpoenas.
So, I'm wondering if users of RoadRunner, owned by Time Warner Cable, are somehow being granted a "pardon" as well by our associates at the RIAA for using TW's services.
Michael C. Hollinger
Since RIAA is going to file basically identical lawsuits, lawsuits that they are almost guaranteed to win, someone with a good knowledge of the law should come up with a HOW-TO that will explain how to:
- defend yourself without having to hire a lawyer
- give a solid, standardized argument that will minimize the damages you might have to pay
RIAA's tactics are based off the aversion people have to the legal system. But a collaboratively developed, standard defence can reduce the pain. And letting people know they are not alone will reduce the intimidation factor
I download some tunes from the Net but I purchase the CD's I like and the music I don't like gets deleted - and inevitably I'm glad I listened to it first since it was most disappointing. I've found a lot of artists I never knew about and liked the songs enough to buy the CD.
The music industry should try and promote new artists a bit more. I'm not suggesting it might curb all piracy but playing different tracks, promoting other artists people haven't heard might just tempt them to buy CDs. Makes sense doesn't it?
My suggestions to promote other artists (which might curb the downloading music trend):
1. Rotation on the radio stations blows. Stop hourly regualar rotation of the same 5 songs.
2. Some music stores have demo CD's that you can listen to in the stores. It would be nice if some were more open to sampling to more CDs.
3. Better promotion on labels' websites.
4. Finally, albums more than 2 years tend to jump by %25. Lower the premium, which has stopped me from buying some CDs - and people might not download older albums either.
Just remember to login onto Kazaa with a descriptive user name instead of Joe Bloggs or hi45y45 try the following:
"File Sharing is legal in my country"
"It is my legal right to share files"
"File sharing is not piracy"
"Know your rights visit www.eff.com"
"RIAA represents companies convicted of operating illegal cartels"
"IANAL but I have access to one"
"You cannot prosecute me I am underage"
"P2P helps music grow"
"CD prices equals extortion"
"Music is an addiction sue the pusher"
or my current favorite:
"Who watches the watchers"
Remember to use an underscore instead of spaces,
Enjoy.
It always amazes me when the recording industry sets up a shell game to hide where they get their money. They most certainly don't get their money from the people that they're suing. They must love the publicity that they're getting by trashing students and taking their life savings. In reality, these overpaid, overstuffed and overcredited group of lawyers are paid by companies like Sony, Universal and others on the basis that they are entitled to compensation for the rights of use of their properties. These companies are paid by us every time that we buy a CD or watch or listen to something with their music assets on it.
Perhaps we should threaten the RIAA's monetary revenue stream by cutting off revenues to the upstream source. Well, it would seem to me that the music listeners and the music creators needs to get together using the internet as a transport tool. About the only way to do that is to setup a website and distribution network that allowed the music listeners to interact with and support the artists. Musicians have been complaining for years that the studios screw them over on a regular basis. Music listeners have been complaining for years that their choices for music have remained unavailable. If a non-profit, public-benefit, independant-reviewed, regularly audited company were to spring into existance, it would change the face of music forever.
Consider this, musicians need to have a way to connect with their listeners. They do this by creating songs and going on tour to play for their listeners. So, if this non-profit company were to contract with every single artist on the planet to provide this valuable service to their listeners, the RIAA would then be obsolete. Granted, songs created prior to the date that the company signs the artists would still remain in the RIAA's evil graps however, any new songs would remain in the public's hands. In that case, it would remain in the best interest of the public for the music to remain free. We could use the tools that are already available, such as GPL, shareware and freeware to develop the legal structure of the system. In addition, music listeners would be able to interact directly with the artists via the usual internet communication methods of email, forums and chatrooms. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a subscription to a service that paid the artist directly so that I could listen to the music I wanted and get the new stuff the day it is published by the artist.
I don't think that the traditional music industry will ever understand what the music listeners are really desiring. They will continue to provide a facless entity that continues to destroy our right to support and interact with our musicians and artists. It is in their best financial interests to do so. The only way to resolve this difference between our interest in listening to music that we like and the musicians interests in creating that music is to provide a system that directly connects the two. This way, our support of the music doesn't pass through a pile of greedy hands, including the RIAA.
Once a system like this is in place, the court system can then go back to going after real criminals, such as bin Laden, instead of John and Jane Q. Public, whose only crime in life was really liking their favorite musicians. Musicians would have a huge venue through which they can publish their music. And we would have the richness in art that we deserve.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
Putting the "is MP3 trading really hurting anyone" argument aside, as a DePaul student I'm very concerned over my privacy rights. DePaul is fully working with the RIAA and not even put up a legal defense to maintain the privacy of its students.
This is simply unacceptable. Will all our traffic be sniffed by various copyright holders in the future? I don't like carry around thousand page books so I just scan them. If the publishers of america jumped on the RIAA bandwagon would I be a criminal and my ISP/University would fold instantly when asked for information? I'm afraid the answer is yes. Then I have to goto court and try to defend myself in front of a world of technophobes and vs. some lawyers that know all the tricks.
To me it looks like ALL format shifting has come under question, regardless of the legality of the use. Imagine if I gave someone a copy of one of my scanned books for academic use so we can work together on a project. Again, the "format-shift police" and the lack of privacy means that I'll probably be forced to defend my fair use rights at lawyerpoint.
When will it end? Will sigs in emails be checked to see if anyone owns them too?
A wholesale destruction of privacy rights and the destruction of fair use is not good for anyone, even the dreaded RIAA. Let's not forget the flaps their artists are always going through regarding illegal sampling, stealing obvious musical progressions, etc.
This whole MP3 thing is eroding our civil liberties faster than we'll be able to get them back. This will all lead to the day of the DRM enabled browser that won't let you copy and paste or link to copyright articles. This will put a massive chill on speech.
Laugh at the above all you like, but the web works mostly because of fair use and privacy. We've successfully fought off the "hyperlinking without permission is illegal" crowd and the "you must tell me who is anon39595 is" crowd. The RIAA is only helping those people. We are living in a time where copyright holders are more or less simply calling ISPs, giving an IP address and a time and getting back info like name, address, phone number, etc.
I really hope the RIAA doesn't have their stuff together and someone can build a defense on barratry. As I see no other way out of this problem. The file traders won't quit and neither will the RIAA.
Just a thought...
Since AOL/Time Warner is part of the RIAA, do they even need to get a subpoena? They already have the user information a subpoena would provide.
I thought the only reason they went after Verizon in court was that Verizon wasn't coughing up the names after being 'politely' asked by the RIAA thugs.
Use meetup.com (or an equivalent) to host local CD-ripping parties on a monthly basis. Let's see the RIAA stop that.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I mean, I just don't understand this mentality
Okay. They're going after the users, not the toolmakers. This is good. However, I'm still outraged for a few main reasons.
1. The max penalty is $150,000 per song. Had you stolen a CD from a store, would you be charged $2,250,000 (assuming that there are fifteen tracks on a CD, not unreasonable)? Any store would be laughed out of court if they wanted 2 and a quarter million dollars in damages for a single CD. However, the RIAA gets away with it.
2. The use of the DMCA outrages me. It's a violation of basic constitutional rights, like due process. They can subpoena you without a court order. They can force an injunction merely by notifying you -- they don't need to prove you guilty of something, merely suppose it. That's damned dangerous.
3. There are legitimate uses for P2P. If, indeed, I've performed "copyright infringement," by downloading music, then that means that I've violated a license to listen to that music. That means that buying a CD isn't buying a specially pressed piece of plastic -- it's buying a license to listen to certain music. That means I'm legally justified in downloading MP3s of the songs I own on CD. And often times, I misplace CDs. So I feel totally fine about downloading MP3s of those CDs. However, if the RIAA saw me doing this, they'd slap me with a lawsuit. And then I'd have to waste thousands of dollars on legal fees proving that what I was doing wasn't illegal. And that unnerves me. I mean, you steal a CD from a music store, and lights flash, alarms go off, etc. It's pretty clear-cut as to who's stealing music and who's walking away with it legitimately. But the possibility for false positives on illegality for P2P makes it far less justified to just "shotgun" off lawsuits, especially to only casual users.
4. A democracy is made up of the general will of the populace. MILLIONS of people in the country share files (lets save the debate about whether it's sharing or theft or whatever for another time. It's just the verb I'm using). Most of these people are college students and people in their twenties. These are the future of America. The RIAA is what, two hundred 50-year-old lawyers with a giant bank account?
The government should be responding to how people act en masse. Copyright is a civil granted right -- it's not a natural right. That means the people can revoke it. (As opposed to your right to life, to not be beaten up on the street, etc.) And if millions of private citizens are acting in concert in a manner contradictory to how current copyright law acts, well, it's time to change the law.
5. No one has gone to jail or ever will for sharing non-copyrighted materials
Tell that to Dmitri Sklyarov.
Ah. Sorry about that. I don't know much about windows, but there are SSH servers/clients for it. There is a tutorial here: http://pigtail.net/LRP/printsrv/cygwin-sshd.html. Maybe someone knows of a way to do it without having to install cygwin...
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. Earthlink Inc., another of the largest Internet providers, said it has received only three new subpoenas.
Doesn't it strike anyone else as *amazing* that the LARGEST Internet Service Provider in the nation does not have ANY subscribers being sued?????
HOW are they deciding which filesharers to sue? Surely there must be several thousand AOL'ers sharing mp3 files. Are they overlooked because they share through IM or what???
My paranoia is telling me the RIAA is being used an an underhanded strongarm technique to consolidate ISP's. Chase away one ISP's customers by suing them, and likely they will change ISP's as well.....
*mumbles* gotta stop watching too much TV....
blue
"We all know" is a term that has caused more historical injustice than we could all know. 'P2P' is a popular term describing a handful of sharing protocols with wide news coverage. Peer-to-peer file transfers on the other hand are the foundation of network computing. All files move from one computer in essentially peer-to-peer fashion. It will be impossible to tightly legislate the first without destroying the latter. There have been posts here describing how to move mp3's with lpr Unix print queues, will the RIAA have domain over printing as well?
Why do you feel like you're entitled to redistribute the copyrighted works of others?
Sigh. Copyright is an artificial arrangement granting a very small class of citizens a temporary monopoly for, originally, a short period of time. Your question begs the question with its underlying tone of property rights. Why do you feel that everyone's ability to exchange files be criminalized to, and let's be blunt, minimize loss of profits to an oligarchy which distributes (not creates!) the most trivial, non-essential product know to society. To my way of thinking that's madness.
And with those two adjectives - 'lame' and 'garage' - Cereal Box shows who he really speaks for: the status quo. No music unauthorized by a major label could possibly be worth hearing, and they must all come from a 'garage'. But then, you sum it up yourself in the last paragraph when you say the way to end this dispute is to do what the RIAA demands, which I doubt would work anyway. Subject to authority, give up your right to exchange information (files), be patient when the RIAA wrongly accuses you.
No thanks.
Here's another one. Don't break the law.
RIAA is after money, and whatever you are doing will become illegal unless you do something about it..
Sad but true ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I was thinking, you share on KaZaa (over cable like rr), you get a subpoena in the mail saying the RIAA is suing you.
So you go to the store and buy a wireless router and a wireless card for your PC. Oh yeah, remember to delete all your *illegal* MP3s. Move your PC to the other side of your house to give it some distance between it and the wireless router. Now, you tell the RIAA that you've been using wireless for the last 6 months and that it wasn't you but probably somebody else using your wireless network that you keep open. Since the burden of proof is on them to prove that you *personally* downloaded it and they can't prove it, you get off free. Well, with the cost of a wireless router and hopefully just a small amount of lawyers fees.
The Members of the RIAA (lables) are the for-profit companies. The members are who really own the copyrights, IP and Artists.
Suing the RIAA for anti-trust would be like suing NORML for being the only real marijuana activist group or suing the American Medical Association (AMA) for being the primary association for doctors.
Professional and Trade Associations have become an intregal and pervasive part of our political landscape. It's a shame that most people don't even realize that they exist. Assocaitions are so pervasive that there's even a California Christmas Tree Association.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Disregarding the usual legal vs. legitimate discussion that always takes place after these kinds of posts for a second, let's focus on the technical hurdles the RIAA has to take.
... and use a different client for your real downloading needs. If 40M people would try this the RIAA would have to stop soon enough.
There are plenty of options out there to cover your tracks if your dealing with illegal content, e.g. the new Kazaalite and Freenet. What about doing it the other way around?
Do a massive rename of legal songs into Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, etc. The songs are legal, yet the RIAA will try to sue you. If enough people do it they won't know where to begin. You don't think they actually listen to the songs, right? It's the same they where trying to do on the Kazaa network a year or so ago, themselves.
To make sure these servers don't bring the networks down a few precautions have to be made. Don't actually share your content: throttle down the upload transfer maximum. Then, open up your listing to everyone. You will be spotted soon enough.