Slashdot Mirror
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 want them to know about Usenet???
but leave IRC for the rest of us
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Preferably on a small, non-US influenced island someplace warm?
Want to let a room?
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
legal cost of going after individuals is too high.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
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.
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.
Can I claim fair use if I own the CD? Can I counter sue?
:-)
Well, you can. But that doesn't mean a judge is going to listen to you.
Then you had better have a hell of a lot of receipts.
And a good lawyer.
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
IRC is about as simple as it gets.First off, mIRC is simply *one* irc client, and has no bearing on this topic at all. and the IRC "protocol" is simply plain text. Unfortunatley, for those who use IRC for such things, it's just as easy, if not easier to track such activities on IRC
Don't Tread on Me
If you're going to act like that, see if I ever pirate your music again.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
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.
The RIAA argues that you have no right to share these songs on P2P networks, which is from a legal point of view 100 percent correct. And they claim that this causes them damages because people downloading wouldn't buy the CDs. With this argumentation you could cause very large damages even with a very small number of file and a suitable big pipe - if the songs are sufficiently popular then you would cause very large "damage" this way. The only problem I see with this argumentation is whether their claim of the damages is correct.
Note that you definitively don't have the right the share song unless you get an o.k. by the copyright holder. "Argueing" that the entertainment industry is "greedy" or "is exploiting the artists" doesn't negate the fact that you commited a crime.
And subpoenas are for securing evidence. The measures here are IHMO ok when you note that evidence on computer systems can be easily forged or deleted. You can't demand that they'll watch their lawsuits die just because some jerks argue that his "IP" was forged etc.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
So if they go after file sharers with at least 8 songs or more that still translates to a $1.2 million lawsuit. Now all they have to do is get people to cough up the dough and their members will be rolling in it!
Many of the subpoenas reviewed by the AP identified songs from the same few artists, including Avril Lavigne, Snoop Dogg and Michael Jackson.
:-)
Well, if they're going to go after people sharing that kind of crap, they can do it all they want for all I care.
Someone here introduced me to it, and I have dumped Gnutella since (Not that many files yet, but that will change soon . . .).
GNUnet: Encryption (RSA), pulls files together from different parts of the network, and since they have incorporated "GNU" into the name, you don't have to worry about putting a "GNU/" or not.
..is it possible for them to monitor Usenet traffic?
I belong to the ______ generation.
Ifor the last eyar I've read countless time on slashdot that they should go after the people and not the technology, now that they do, you still complain.
871 down, ~40 000 000 to go...
Please direct all bug reports to
No, actually when you transfer a file with someone else, the protocol DCC connects directly with the other client, not through the IRC servers.
Yes! Finally those famous warez bastardz will be sued and brought down!
First of all, why is illegal to make songs available for download? There are legitimate reasons copyrighted material could be made available for download.
Second, isn't it legal for me to download music if I already own it? For example, I have quite a few record albums. Let's say I get a hankering for ELO's Time. I have it on vinyl but I don't have a record player. Can't I seek out and download cuts from that album legally?
It follows (to me) that if there are legitimate reasons to download then there are legitimate reasons to share, therefore the onus is on the downloader to act appropriately. RIAA should go after those who are downloading illegally (at least within the borders of the US).
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.
And now I understand what is really going on. The RIAA is suing to hurt the business of their competitors, not in the music distribution game, but in the internet service providing game. I wonder if verizon could have avoided the hassle by opening an mp3 store ala apple, or maybe buying a small label?
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I can't wait for the RIAA to go after all the trading on Usenet. Next thing the RIAA will know is that they are broke, and the lawyers will be demanding their next payment.
Seriously. At least they're using the existing legal system to do this and not trying to create all kinds of retarded legislation this time. They might still be trying to do that, but there's no need to. Our existing legislation is fine and supports what they're doing. Therefore, I have no problem with them trying to defend their property.
Cheers,
-JD-
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
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
are sure going to wish they had secured that wireless.
They probably can trace back many postings. I know my news server puts my IP in every message I post, and it's certainly possible to trace a message back to the news server it came from with the NNTP Path header. I'm sure not many ISPs and news server hosts are going to think twice about giving up the user's information in the face of a threatened lawsuit. As regular Slashdot readers know, Verizon tried to fight back, but lost.
Yes, but the list of files is typically available publically to anyone on the channel in which you are serving. Doesnt take much after that to find out who you are.
Don't Tread on Me
How does this help the people running the actual mp3 fservs? If you can find em, so can the RIAA.
Dont' buy their music and don't download their music. This is the point of no return for the music mafia. If they start going after the small time file swappers they will very quickly begin to alienate themselves from their customers as a whole. As soon as you get Joe Teenager and his mom on the evening news more than a few times a month because they are being sued for having 20 or 30 songs on their box, the real backlash will begin. The vast majority of people out there see file swappers as "those bad, bad other people" because that is the only way you see them portrayed by the mafia and the news. Now, with lawsuits apparently going after the small fish, they will finally begin enfuriating the mainstream public who of course see themselves as law-abiding and virtuous.
Let the mahem begin!!!
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
It's well known that IRC is already monitored by the several law enforcing groups for 31337 haxors and warez kiddies.
I always wonder how people can be that stupid. Every service where they can track down your identity is not save for doing such illegal things. Sometimes they won't get you at once because they have much data to process but they will always get you in long term.
It's quite surprising that so much haxors, warez and mp3 traders use IRC. You would first conjecture a priori that they should know at least a little about security. But they are plainly too stupid to grasp even the elementary facts.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
It may be inconvenient to do so, but I suggest buying cds pressed by record labels that aren't under the riaa umbrella. I don't mean a boycott, I mean permanently. Most of it's shit anyway, isn't it?
Sure there are some Smiths cds that I don't have, but I'll live.
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)
This does affect you even if you use an IRC server that masks ip addresses. A direct connection will give out your ip address and they can get that by requesting anything from fserve be it the file list, an mp3 or even a dcc chat session.
If a direct connection is not used then you can be protected by a foreign server more. The only way to be truly safe on irc is not to send files and be on a server that masks ip's.
As I pointed out elsewhere on this article. Most of the fserves are hacked boxes. I know because I've had to clean one up. It took a warning from the ISP before my buddy realized what was going on.
What is going to happen when this reduces the RIAA's sales figures because people are trying out less music?
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...
ISPs have had the ability to do this for quite a while, the reason they don't report their customers for piracy is because they would lose them all to other ISPs who promise privacy when using P2P apps. I know a Small Businesses ISP in the UK that tried blocking Kazaa traffic on their routers using some kind of packet inspection, because nearly 60% of all traffic was Kazaa and it was bogging their infrastructure down. Some customers loved it since it meant they didn't have to do anything to stop their employees from possibly incriminating their company, but many others claimed it was a breach of service contract and threatened to cancel their subscriptions. In the end they had to allow the traffic again or lose loads of business. I can't see many large ISPs shooting themselves in the foot like that IMHO especially the likes of AOL who are losing loads of customers at the moment anyway.
Reading these posts, you would think /.'ers have a moral obiligation to download illegal copies of music.
Stop crying. Your stealing and the RIAA is going after you. Your basically shoplifting. How is this any different?
Your free ride is over.
I think he knows this: he said "mIRC and the IRC protocols", not "the mIRC and IRC protocols"...
I'm still surprised to see so much insane stuff in this thread, like 'If you take your music to your local radio station, they'll play it.' I live in Center City Philadelphia, the fifth-largest radio market in the United States. Clear Channel owns everything. Sheesh.
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.
No, The proper way is to either use a proxy for everything (either an irc proxy(bnc) or just an http proxy that allows connect). Or connect from a shell, either way.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
That sig of your is really funny!
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
From Aruba.com re: their government.
You will find that Aruba is a very safe, stable and friendly Dutch island within the kingdom of the Netherlands.
They live off of tourism and banking. They produce their own electricity (albeit coal fired). They are close enough to S. America that you can make a good run for it should you need to. They are located outside of the hurricane belt, have two seasons (summer and more summer), and have a sufficiently large white population that a cracker like me would not feel out of place or construed as a 'White Devil'.
Anyone farmiliar with Dutch law?
Yea, the judge is going to buy that argument. I don't like MEGA CORP'S either but reguardless music sharing on the internet is ILLEGAL period. The same goes for people that pirate Windows and other software. I will not hesitate to turn in a pirate, busting pirates quickly turns them into OSS users.
Got Code?
It's like with a rat. You put a rat in the cage and give it a food pellet every time it does something, and you can rest assured it will keep doing that to get the food. The RIAA has discovered two things that give it the food, its business model, and suing people, and it's now going to keep doing just that. All we can hope is that one time someone slips it some rat poison instead of food...
But the dcc request goes through the servers. The DCC is just a ctcp DCC SEND which as everyone knows is just another privmsg. I could hack out a shell script to show all dccs going on on my irc server in about a minute. So could your isp. So could your irc servers provider.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Sure, and they'll never go after the little guys using P2P because there are too many of them and it'd clog up the court system. You can break the law with impunity because you'll be below their RADAR. Oh, wait...
It's relatively trivial for them to find out who's using IRC to transfer files around. They probably don't even need to monitor the direct file transfer itself; the set up will do nicely. Suppose you go onto a server, and ask if anyone's got an MP3 of the latest Eminem track. If they have someone there who says yes and you ask them to send it to you, you probably just screwed yourself. If the police can do it in chat rooms to track down scumbags trading kiddie porn, what makes you think the RIAA can't do it to track down music traders?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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
Pay EFF
These are your options. Pick one.
RIAA
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
The impression I get from speaking to IRC admins is that logging/monitoring traffic on the server takes too much resources for busy servers to make it a viable option. And unless you actually admin a server, you can't spy on others.
Clever signature text goes here.
Even if you own the CD, you will be assumed guilty until you can prove you are innocent. After they raid your house, and take you to court, then you can look for proof that you purchased CDs.
Of course the RIAA can always pressure you to settle, knowing they have super lawyers and knowing you cant win the case even if you did buy the CD.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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!
I'm in the middle of deliberately downloading MP3's of every song I can think of through Kazaa. Two problems for the RIAA with this: 1) I'm in the UK - so fuck em. 2) In the UK I'm entitled to have a copy of any music I've paid for in a format of my choosing. Like to see them do something about that. The worst they could do is get a judgement against me in the US but seeing as I don't ever intend setting foot in the Communist Replublic of the USA I can't see that being too much of an issue. USA - Land of the free? If that's freedom you can keep it.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
Will it be in that order? They might be necrophiliacs.
"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!
This will just push people into using other services, just like what happened with napster and AG.
If you are paying $50 a month for a Time Warner cable connection, it also includes free music downloads! ;)
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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
But logging/monitoring off the server isn't that hard or resource intensive. And what's stopping them from putting up their own server?
I mean we know you support them, I mean its not like you subscribed to http://freenetproject.org/ or EFF
You know, you can pay your $ to the RIAA, or you can pay the EFF, but either way you are going to pay.
So who would you prefer tax you?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Whoever provides connectivity to the ircd can sniff it to.(eg qwest, internap, cogent, yipes, etc)
On something as active as most public warez filled nets, it would probably take a decent amount of cpu, but the price of it isnt really much when you think about the price of sending out all the subpenas, all the time setting it up, lawyer fees, and all that. Making that money back is easy when you're sueing for $130K per copyright infringement, though.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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
Stop stealing the RIAA's profits and pay their damn tax!
You arent from Boston like me, so you dont get a teaparty.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Um... No.
You have no personal right to break the law. If it were a case of life or death abuse, or someone was in immediate danger of harm, you might have a moral case for taking the law into your own hands, but this is nothing like that. There are processes to advocate changes in the law if you don't like it, and choosing to break the law instead is not an appropriate response.
Your right to privacy is being eroded because you or people like you abused it, and didn't fight hard enough to keep it.
The "draconian" regulations are similarly there because straightforward, more trusting agreements were flouted en masse by a significant fraction of the population.
You brought this upon yourselves, you have no-one to blame but yourselves, and you deserve everything you get. It's a shame that the innocent parties who weren't involved in the widespread abuse get hit with the same thing because of your own social irresponsibility.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"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
Well, then, you own the CD, and you shouldn't have any trouble claiming fair use on a CD you own, right?
Go ahead and pull the trigger, start suing thousands upon thousands of music listeners. You'll spook the old people who don't understand it, and then when they die off, I invite you to try and maintin the same profits with the then grown-up and pissed off crowd whose lives you tried to wreck, when they become the dominant people buying what you put out.
Not just geeks use file sharing apps, and not just geeks buy music. Do you really have any idea how many future customers you're turning off?
SecondPageMedia - Wha
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.
As near as can be determined from the article, all subpoena's are related to sites that are publically offering songs for download. There is nothing about targeting those who download, or intercepting of private file transfers between two people sharing.
This is about people who are re-distributing works that they do not have rights to. The number of distinct titles is irrelevant to the legality, moralilty and actual damages of the act.
These actions are not "sharing". They are about publishing material without permission of the owner. If you want to defend that practice, fine. You have the right to do so. But the wording strikes me as deliberately trying to confuse this act with minor infringements.
I generally assume that those that need to confuse the issue have a weak case.
My read of the story shows no signs of snaring legal behavior and/or truly minor infringements in some sort of rabid enforcement move. I only wish the Federal Government showed this much restraint and targeting when going after "terrorists".
What to do..
What to do..
Boycott? No, that will just make the numbers worse, which will actually make the RIAA's case "stronger". Corporate ego and hubris will prevent them.
What we have here is a market failure. Believe it or not, it is not with CDs. Although expensive, with the Internet, you can order anything pretty much. As well, the rate of which used CD places are popping up is helping things. (Although the situation will get worse fairly quickly IMO)
No, where the market failure is in is the radio market. That is obvious. The consolodation of both stations and playlists, as well as the rerising of the "playola" scam, is standardizing the industry, to the detriment of music lovers.
That is really where P2P is competing. With Radio. CD sales are fairly stable (which frankly is a minor miracle, considering the competition from DVDs and the weak economy). From an economic standpoint, the actual music industry is actually rather uninvolved in this.
Yes, technicially it is illegal. However, it is correcting a market failure, and this needs to be acknowledged. Either in opening up competition in radio broadcasting, (especially webcasting) or allowing filesharing.
Their choice.
I don't question the right of the RIAA to enforce their members' copyrights, I do however wish to see a little bit of headroom. There is no doubt in my mind the most sickening aspect of the RIAA is their gestapo-like operation; if your head hurts, decapitate yourself.
I am a great music lover and often purchase music that is 20-30 years old by popular artists at the time. I use P2P to try and find rare songs that some of these bands have recorded, but are nigh on impossible to purchase. What exactly is my crime? On that same token, more than half of the albums I own were influenced from hearing the bands' MP3 from Napster, Kazaa or Direct Connect.
Its certainly time the RIAA stop exploiting their racket, and start exploring other ways of content delivery, take a damn clue, 60 million (or whatever the figure was) Americans can't be wrong.
If you honestly believe that political parties have more influence than $, then there is no reason to argue with you because you have clearly lost touch with reality.
Show me a Republican (or whatever "party" you think is the answer to all worldly problems (read as: don't need to think for myself because party thinks for me) with a similar effort to create a grassroot supported campaign, and I will gladly visit their site and consider supporting them.
I don't care about "political parties." It seems like a completely obsolete way to get one's message out cheaply. The Internet exists now. Don't you think it is time you started thinking for yourself?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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.
Exactly. There is no need for the RIAA to go scanning DCC logs, even if the existed.
If people can find you mp fserv, so can the RIAA. They can go there and download a song. They have their proof.
Lets all boycott the RIAA and start buying used CDs and keep the backups.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
They're only going after people who share songs. So don't share anything, just download. "Leech", if you will.
I've been doing this ever since Napster caved to Lars' demands and banned my username for sharing a Metallica song. (Seems like ages ago.) Before that, I was all for 'helping the community' and all that, sharing everything I had. After that, fuck 'em. There's enough other people who will still be sharing.
Of course if *everyone* stopped sharing, it wouldn't work. But don't worry, not everyone will. There will always be someone else.
Well, there will always be someone else until the RIAA sues them all out of existence. But it won't be you. Self preservation, right?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Thats the RIAA manifesto!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
You will listen to what the RIAA tells you to listen to when they give you permission, in the way they decide! You will then pay your tax so that you may have the right to listen to what they want you to listen to, in the way they want you to listen to it, when they decide its time.
If you disagree with this statement, you are a thief who supports piracy and communism.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Last time I looked on Kazaa there was something like 4 million gigs being shared. That's a lot of tracking down for them to do. Maybe we can make a program to spoil the whole thing, making millions of virtual clients.
Ok i'll sell all my CDs tomorrow, after I make private copies of each and every one of them. Then I will use the money to buy more CDs and repeat.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
As long as you don't do anything stupid like brag on slashdot about where you get your copyrighted material....
...on the music industry. A classic case of being dead right. Companies suing their customers, even through a proxy like RIAA, is a losing strategy. There's no way you can put a happy face on billionaires suing college students for a few pennies trying to protect a business model and distribution system that's no longer viable. And, no, I'm not defending file swappers. The whole situation is just pathetic. And adding to an already bad situation is that moron Congressman from Michigan wanting to make file swapping a federal offense. Just what the Democratic party needs right now, a proposal from one of their own to turn millions of otherwise law-abiding citizen into federal criminals. Brilliant. Well, the best I can do is take a few of my songs, slap a Creative Commons copyleft license on them and make at least a small effort to make sure there is some content that's legal to trade. I'm half expecting my ISP to get a letter from RIAA about my own material. They remind me of a rabid dog. Sad, sad, sad.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One thing I've been thinking about lately... say you share a bunch of songs, all named like real songs, all with a plausible file size. RIAA sees this, and notes you down. Has anything really been proven? Am I not allowed to make a file on my harddrive containing the words "I own, I own, I own..." over and over again until the file takes up a logical amount of space, name the file say "Metallica - Enter Sandman.mp3", and share it? What's wrong about that?
Some RIAA person would have to download the file in order to prove that I was in fact sharing copyrighted material, and not just some oddly named textfile. AND, in the US, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, right? So RIAA would break the law by downloading it. Unless of course they have a search warrant, but then the person would have to be made aware of this in advance.
I guess this thread is too old now for anybody to reply... but still.
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.
Lets write checks to our congressmen and sign contracts agreeing to pay increased taxes in exchange for a War on RIAA plan, you can model it after the successful War on drugs, War on poverty, War in Iraq, and War on Terrorism.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sure, if you have the name "Usher" in your shared MP3s, you may not be guilty, but it's still going to be a royal pain if the RIAA tries to get you. On another note, I live in Canada. Am I home-free? In Canada, we pretty much believe nobody cares about filesharing (except universities). The RIAA's death grip does not extend into the vastness of Canada. That is why nobody cares. On another note, does Freenet protect your IP? How does it deal with the likings of tcpdump?
You are robbing millions of musicians who wouldnt make a penny before you started stealing music.
You are robbing rich CEOs who desperately need your money to buy their new set of houses and car collection
You are robbing millions of tax payers who will be forced to bailout the RIAA when the RIAA forces Bush to give them 20-30 billion dollars of your tax dollars.
Just give them the money. Or do you want them to steal it?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
of course, if the self-righteously indignant stopped buying CDs and thus 'boycotted' riaa companies, riaa would be facing a truly unpleasant outcome to their practices.
i predict this won't happen. the people who are doing the bulk of this mp3 swapping are not 'music lovers' -- they're greedy people out for a free one, somewhat like people who loot after a riot. or, people who pig out at a buffet dinner. the fact that you down 10 hot dogs at a picnic does not make you a 'hot dog lover' -- it makes you a hog.
i don't believe that riaa's long term outlook is good. but i don't believe, either, that the users of p2p software will be the ones who break the back of the corporate music monopoly. i don't think they have the backbone or the persistence to take on that battle.
i detest riaa as the epitome of corporate greed and overweening hubris. but i don't have much respect for file downloaders, who so far have demonstrated no other moral character than that of their enemies. when i see some actual fighting back, some boycotts and letter campaigns, some court battles where downloaders actually put themselves at risk, some negative publicity for riaa, i'll change my mind.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
The RIAA knows how to play politics... I'm certain that the lists of people being sued will be groomed with a fine tooth comb to make sure nobody important gets sued.
Quick! go get your last name changed to Hollins!
Oh, wait. I think I heard that the clerks' office is unusually busy right now...
the RIAA exclusively loses bots that scan the most popular p2p networks like Kazaa and gnutella. It doesn't do jack about IRC or bittorrent.
Repeal the DMCA!
By that I mean, what songs do they search for in order to prepare the lawsuits?
My guess is that they will veer towards their most popular artists -- the ones currently on the Top 40 plus all the "superstar" acts of the past 20-30 years. People who download more obscure acts might not be so vulnerable.
If you insist on continuing to make other peoples copyrighted material available for download, I'd suggest keeping accurate logs of the number of downloads of each song. This way you have some information that your lawyer can use to argue what the actual damages are after the RIAA claims that you personally cost them $12,000.00.
If every defendant can demonstrate that the actual damages are low enough to move the case to small claims, and insist on an actual court appearance, the RIAA instantly needs many more lawyers than they expected, the expense will soon outway the amounts the RIAA can reasonably expect to recoup, and this tactic may prove too expensive for the RIAA to continue.
Read, L
unless you wanna move on in a couple of years :-)
here we're copying the US. The consumer culture and everything that connects to it that is. think TV, think filesharing, think music.
First we copy the cultural assets (Realiy shows, American Idol, the music, and other blabla) and then the "appropriate" legislation. sucks living on this earth. anyone wanna move to the moon with me? If we get enough people to donate we could maybe...
seriously, do you think that maybe one day there will be no place left to go ?
"Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
From the article :
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.
So, I guess this means that the court is so busy that they can't go after other types of criminals, such as Enron executives and terrorists...
the Transportation Department will be arresting anyone they see using a motor vehicle, under the suspicion that it might be stolen, or that they might cause an accident.
Rock!
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 :).
We need to prepare the fires so we can burn you along with the communists and liberals!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Okay, who posting here is ACTUALLY a lawyer? They should get a +1 bonus for actually knowing what they're talking about.
As shown in past episodes, what happens with the mod system is people mod up rhetoric that they like to hear, assuming its presented nicely.
On to the subject at hand: My letter to cognressman Harold Ford Jr. (my rep) is going out Monday. What about you?
Michael C. Hollinger
Is the concept of an album - e.g. a group of songs conveniently less than 74 minutes in total length - be obsolete?
Originally, and I'm just speculating, the album made sense. There had to be enough music there to satisfy the audience and convince them that paying $XX dollars for it was 'worth it'. With the advent of the internet (thanks Al!) we no longer think of downloading an 'album' but downloading 'the songs we like'.
Should the distribution model of a CD be eschewed for a direct release of individual songs? Radio stations very, very rarely play more than a handful of tracks from an album as it is. If you want to listen to it in your stereo use WAP or Bluetooth to listen to your home PC playlist. Your car stereo could read DRM discs and play all your tracks on a burned DVD.
A lot of people think DRM is the devil - but implemented correctly it could allow for an individual to do anything they want with the purchased media and would allow for the record companies to continue to make money. It would get rid of questions like 'Is this MP3 legal?' because the only way it would be is if you had the certificate for it. No fuss, no muss.
Thanks,
--
Matt
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
What they are mainly worried about is their marketing and advertising policy being subverted. Simply put, they rely on marketing rather than the quality of the music to sell it, and spending all that money pushing the latest "artist", spending millions on publicity TV and radiotime is worth nothing is people can download their music, think "what shit", and then find some other unknown artist's music as easily.
P2P enables people to judge music merely on its quality, and find and listen to music through alternative channels, and not the usual bought corporate media (sorry if I'm beginning to sound Chomskyesque :)
P.
a copywritten mp3
Jeez, people, the word is "copyrighted". The root is "copyright", not "copywrite".
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Regardless of weather the RIAA is right or wrong in their ethical practices using Kazaa et al. is being just as unethical. If we want to sink the RIAA (and believe me I would) I would feel a whole lot better with boycotts and legaslation.
I can't believe that there aren't enough people who care on /. alone that we can't fight this fight standing rather than just pirating the music. Doing that says that you don't care that the RIAA is a megalomaniacal organization, but rather that you 'just hafta hear' the latest JLo song.
Sending the wrong message is worse than sending no message. (Well I said it. So much for my excellent Karma)
100% Crunchier
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
All possible proof has been hidden, lost or corrupted.
We are left with speculation. There are several things about the case that don't make sense (the gun, the note, the position of the body). I'm not saying he was murdered, but the evidence he commited suicide is not convincing.
Personally, I don't think Bill has the balls to have someone whacked.
Hillary, on the other hand, is a different breed...
Here's the problem with the subpoena's.
/windows/OpenOffice-1.2.3-tar.gz. It *may* be infringement if that file contains MS-Office, but if they don't check, they don't know... And we get violated.
Where's the evidence that the person whose privacy they are raping is even running a file sharing application? The burden of proof is 'Hey, subpoena the ISP for this information because I requested it'. Even if that burden was met, secondly, where is the evidence that they are in fact distributing copyrithed material. Its not infringement to clone a title. Its not infringment (which ONE OpenOffice mirror got a C&D letter about) to have a file called
In the DirecTV cases. Since when does 'I bought a smart card interface kit from you' suddenly become equated with 'I have committed what is considered an illegal act'.
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.
http://www.subpoenadefense.org/
Its done.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Oh shit! That's my roommate! *Frantically pulls plugs*
Disclaimer: I'm only joking; I'm not even in college.
-insert a witty something-
Been there, done that.
835,000 yanks get busted for pot every year and 88% of them are for simple possession.
Yeah,...thats a tactic that's worked brilliantly.
US teenagers smoke twice as much dank as Dutch kids do and its quasi-legal there.
zeke
Since they no longer need *any* evidence, they could conceivably just send entire blocks of address to an ISP and demand the names.
" They are on broadband, so they MUST be pirating "
Then its your ( costly ) job to prove them otherwise. Or just give them the upfront $ which would be somewhat less then if you go to court and WIN..
And once the bill passes to make it a felony, they can also order a search of your home and toss you in jail during the 'process'. Just beacuse they are in a bad mood that day.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They probably cost money to file.
-insert a witty something-
Should have a P2P network that allows:
a) encrypted traffic
b) end users that do get sued to broadcast knowledge of suspicious IP addressses across the network
If that does not work,
then, trade names and home addresses of lawyers that sue on behalf of these companies. Ya may not win in court but you could at least go kick their ass.
This is my sig.
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.
This is outrageous! Terrible! I am aghast and lack the words to convey my frustration! A new version of Kazaa Lite is out, and nobody told me! For shame, for shame...
Oh yea, and, um, RIAA=bad too, I guess
What the heck is a 'sig'?
I'm confused (as you probably noticed from the subject :) ; Is the RIAA sueing (sp?) file *downloaders* or file *sharers*? And are they only sueing those who download/share copyrighted music, or are they going for the whole enchilada and sueing *all* sharers? Like, can I download independent music/stuff not governed by the RIAA?
OK, so Kazaa usage trickles down to near zero. Now what? No more downloading Three Dog Night's unreleased studio sessions? No swapping of the full catalog of Fishbone? In other words, no more impulse downloading of dozens of old, obscure songs you'd never actually pay for anyway, even at 25 cents a song. How's this supposed to help CD sales, again?
Do they really think people are going to go back to buying the latest hits at $17.99 a pop when it's still so easy, even without major filesharing programs, to burn a copy of the lastet CD from someone else in your dorm, or to swap mp3s over IM with trusted friends only?
I don't begrudge their attempts to pursue legal remedies but at this point the barn door is wide open and the horse is halfway to the next county.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
There. I am now an EFF member.
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?
US teenagers smoke twice as much dank as Dutch kids do and its quasi-legal there.
One might say that one negative instance does not establish a rule.
That beside, I don't think that the current US tactics will help any. From what I understand, the war on drugs dates back to Nixon and is designed to "take care of the black problem without seeming to". Or so I've heard the semi-recently released tapes had indicated.
If society is genuinely concerned about kids being on drugs they should try to give kids a reason to value their lives. I don't mean that Boys Club bs either, but actual oppurtunities to do something. Yeah, you probably won't dent casual users, but I don't see that as that much of a problem anyways.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
Don't get me wrong, I used to love usenet. Then the spambots, and cancelbots came along.
I can't find anything on alt.binaries.* these days that forms a complete file set. Maybe it's just that uunet (my provider) is in bed with RIAA.
Putting up a server is no problem. Getting it connected to a network, such as IRCnet or EFNet is another matter.
Clever signature text goes here.
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.
871 out of more than 60 million? Not a very large number. The RIAA's hatred of P2P reminds me a of a quote: "New ideas are feared by those who think the future is an extension of the past."
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.
Dear RIAA,
Napster, Kazaa and P2P are the least of your problems. The above-mentioned USENET isn't a major threat either.
It's the consumers. Or rather, the non-consumers, who get to partake of the fruits of your labors each time they turn on the radio, or fail to stick their fingers in their ears when a car drives by their home at night with the bass turned up.
Surely, not everyone who is exposed to, say the latest offering from Eminem, legally owns the album - and therefore does not have the right to listen to the "work for hire" RIAA product.
Unfortunately, no amount of marketing will change this. Some people just do not realize that what is popular to a hand-selected focus-group should be popular enough with everyone to justify the purchase of the disc.
The solution is simple however. By applying concerted pressure to the Senators and Representatives whose mortgages are underwritten by the RIAA and their associates, Laws may be drafted and passed to impose a Federal lever tax on all US Residents. This culture tax, of approximately 2% of their annual income (a meager amount to spend on entertainment and the pinnacle of human culture, provided by the RIAA) would surely off-set the loss of potential profit suffered at the wicked hands (or ears) of people who steal music by listening to it from passing cars and the radio, without ever paying for the distribution media.
Please consider this solution, offered by this concerned consumer, and feel free to suggest it to your friends at the MPAA, Disney, Sony, Viacom, AOL-TW, and anyone else who isn't realizing the profits they are so rightfully entitled to.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
The priacy people who copy music and sell for profit outside the US including terrorists in Iraq are stil not charged by RIAA..
and yet still no listening to music lovers request fo downloadable song tracks which we are willing to pay $0.99 per track..
and yet RIAA business model burns..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
(This is derived from a former supervisor who declared telnet as non-standard. Yes, it's deprecated, but she said that RFC 854 didn't exist either, after I showed it to her.)
This sig no verb.
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.
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
NOONE in this thread said that only Replublicans are sold out. Anyone who's paying attention can see that each of the major parties is just sold out to a different set of interests.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
In case you did not hear, there is a P2P way to trade anonymously called freenet:
n load
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=dow
There isn't much content because it's fairly new, but with a little help a few uploads it could be come a very good trading network.
I agree fully. We, the customers, are obviously disatisfied with their business practices. But instead of listening, they're attacking. I'm sick of paper doll bands which are all exactly the same. I'm sick of remix CDs which shouldn't even have been wasted with. I'm sick of 30 minute CDs. I'm sick of CDs which only have 1 or 2 decent tracks. I'm sick of artists being advertised as a genre they're not. And I'll be damned if I'm going to pay 14 bucks to take a gamble on a CD.
If the recording industry just made a cut in their executives, I bet there'd be more room for cheaper CDs, seeing as how the company makes money from CDs while the artists mainly gets it from touring.
And they also gotta knock it off with controlling music types. I'm not a big fan or rap or pop so I can't watch music TV or listen to the radio. I want to be able to go in a store and be able to see more then 4 music types. The day I see VNV Nation in a Best Buy or FYE for at most 9 bucks is the day I'll stop bitching.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
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
They are required to submit a signed affadavit attesting both that the work under question is XX and they represent the copyright holder of XX, and that they believe there is infringment, before the subpoenea. If the work in question isn't XX or they do not represent the copyright holder, they are guilty of perjury. Fine them ten times the damages they are claiming.
I want a high standard they have to meet to avoid chilling effects.
People in general do not steal physical objects because they would be taking that thing away from someone else, whereas music copying does not deprive anyone else of the music itself. Beyond that I guess you have to ask yourself whether art belongs to society or corporations - should profits over-ride culture or should culture take precedence over profits
Personally I believe that laws are meant to reflect society not mould it.
>>mIRC and the IRC protocols are too widespread
>>and too basic for them to monitor all of it
>>accurately
Incorrect, with the right legal documents the RIAA could easily force an irc server operator to enable various debug and logging modes. Log private conversations? All activity from an IP?
While not common, it can be done.
Well, for a start, 'file-sharing traffic information' is neither kept, nor is it needed in this case. The only relevant information is who had the IP address at a particular time. The trouble is, people often take a long time to report, or even notice, problems. If you purge your logs too often, the information just isn't going to be there when you need it for technical reasons.
The same people who managed to score my other posts as
:-)
Score: 1, troll
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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!
I was wondering the the RIAA has enough lawyers to try all these cases before the copyright runs out on the songs they are sueing for.. 75 people a day, 27375 people a year, that puts my court case at approx. the year 2096 - anyone interested in defending a post-mortum file sharing copyright case?
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Apparently, VW hasn't learned, you can't just go around giving away people's mp3s and - worse - posting them on the internet.
/joking
just follow the link to the "Pods Unite" link (its a Javascript to a flash... how "Apple/VW) and you'll see VW has mp3's POSTED on their website!!!!
This is just asking for trouble....
Seriously, though.. i don't get it.
some of the songs on VW's website are copyrighted songs - For example (again, sorry, the VW site is a (really nice) Flash site, so i can't give you a direct link), The Decemberists song is available on the VW site, but they obviously want to sell their music.. but, confusingly, provide an MP3 from the CD on their website too? So, if i share this mp3 with Kazza, does that mean that i'm violating copyright or not? So exactly which songs are copyrighted? Is there a list of the copyrighted and non-copyrighted songs on the CD? Does that mean i have to buy the CD to determine which songs are copyrighted?
The song is clearly on the CD that they are expecting you to pay money for, yet they are indiscriminately providing a link to copy copyrighted materials!
And on the VW site - i don't see any information informing me what rights i have to the mp3s they are providing... are these songs copyrighted?
the rules are so fluffy as to be unbeleveable... yet people are going to jail?
this sucks.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I'm a professional artist (photographer). I make art for a living, and sell it to people. I like to think that the art I create belongs to me. Otherwise, I couldn't make a living. Occaisonally, I choose to give my art away. The musical artists here are making no such choice.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The original lie is that music is a commercial product to begin with.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
WHAT P2P filesharing tools are there (that encrypt transfers?) that maintain privacy for their users?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
However, as far as I understand, sftp only encrypts the control data and leaves the file being transfered in the open.
Now, given the recent success the {M,R}IAA has enjoyed in strong-arming the ISPs into revealing detailed information regarding the habits of the "infringers of the IP rights", I do not feel that sftp is secure enough. I must be able to conceal the filename and data as well.
Any advise?
PS. FreeNet will not do. I will not touch that Java abomination with a 3-foot pole. After I discovered that Mozilla's Java plug-in download doesn't work (=work in "install shield" fashion), I have given up any hope of getting something as complex as the FreeNet to work.
BOO! TERRO
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.
You may not think you have any musical ability or inclination, but you're probably selling yourself short. And if you must, then don't sell the rest of the world short with you. We would all appreciate food without McDonalds, we would have commerce without Walmart, and we will have amazing music without the RIAA.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
First regardless of a constitutional challenge, or any "court" victory, the law right now says, if you own a copy right and someone violates that copyright you are entitled to sue.
Forget the moral arguements, as they are meaningless. Bottom line, you are a criminal.
I heavily reccomend moving to GNUnet or some similar service.
Granted, I am now downloading GNUnet and have not used it before, but here is the big one that GNUnet offers:
Deniability.
Since on GNUnet it is unclear both who has the goods you're looking for and who originated the search, and transfers do not happen directly, just because there is data coming into your box does not mean that you are it's destination. Similarly, data coming out does not implicate you as the source.
Lawyers nightmare, anyone?
At first glance subsection 1 seems to allow it, but don't stop there. Let's look at subsection 2 which has the Thou Shalt Nots:
(a) doesn't apply in this case unless you charge for it.(b) might get sticky. You're not passing around copies, but distributing is definitely the purpose of passing the original around. A court might rule that passing the original around is moot. Might not. Until there's a solid case where both sides have the money to fight it out and establish case law, I wouldn't want to bet against the recording industry.
(c) probably nails p2p copyright violations.
(d) can we nail the people with Disaster Area class car stereos with this one?
I think the people who trust that this allows endless copying also trust the magic phrase "Are you a cop?" too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't want to pay for music, but I would gladly pay for products like CDs (if they weren't so overpriced), t-shirts, concerts, etc from a band I like.
Your making a distinction without a difference. Ownership is about control. You own something when you control it...when you get to decide what does and does not happen to it. It doesn't matter whether that thing is an image or a hockeystick, if you control it, you own it.
I don't care about the photo paper, and I don't care about the ink, and I don't care about the CD I burned with the original image file on it. I care about the work of art I spent several hours creating with my $20,000 worth of photo and lighting equipment and $10,000 worth of computing equipment, and my 15 years of experience, training, and knowledge, and my God-given talent. Now you're going to tell me that after all that...I don't own it? It's nothing more than an ink pattern on a piece of Fuji paper? Sorry, that dog won't hunt. That's my image, that's my art, that's a piece of myself that no one else on earth could create. What I do with it is my own business. Sometimes I sell it. Sometimes I give it away. Sometimes I delete it. But I get to decide...not you.
I have no problem with my works entering the public domain after a reasonable period. Anything I don't sell after about a year I'm not going to sell anyway.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If you want free, great songs.... 3 pretty girls in Vancouver BC have got some great songs on their albums at mp3.com http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/97/4play.html
LIke the old days, only share with people you know.
Too bad the RIAA lost my business due to this crap. If i cant sample something, im not going to fork out 20 bucks 'just to see'. I have purcahsed over 500 CD's, and even more vinyl recordings over the years. And many beacuse i was able to hear them in their entirety FIRST.
Screw them. No more $ from me. That ends today.
Oh, and before you say im stealing, first look up the true definition, and also note i send cash direct to artists of stuff i keep... the ones who CREATED the stuff in the first place.
Every buck i send them is more then they got from the industry...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In all of the cases brought by the RIAA, has anyone ever challenged the RIAA's right to sue or questioned their cause of action? After all, the RIAA is a third party that does not actually own any copyrights (to my knowledge) -- so what exactly is their claim for damages based on? Wouldn't the actual copyright holder need to file suit? Maybe someone more familiar with the inner workings of the organization could clue us in. Since the RIAA has won a number of cases, I presume they do have a leg to stand on somewhere...
Anyway, I recalled this thread about the BSA and how it has been repeatedly ignored, often without consequence. Of course, the BSA doesn't usually SUE... it "AUDITS". But fundamentally, what is the difference between the 2 groups???
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Need to check your 'rights'. When you purchase a album/cd/etc you get a license to listen to that particular music, regardess of 'source'.
.. then its a wash )
Therefore you can download replacement versions as you please ( of the same song ). Until they license and then warrant the 'hard' product, that will hold true.
You are not really commiting any copyright violations.. ( though be prepared to present the alternate media if they come knocking on your door )
Oh, techically vinyl is the higher quality sound, the CD is lower quality but more convienent. Its why its called "sampling' its NOT the same as the orginal. ( though if they used crappy digital recording in the studio.. well
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Can someone please tell me why the RIAA isn't considered an anti-competitive trust. Is it because the RIAA is an organization and not a company in itself?
Aguably, if all these labels weren't acting in concert, fixing/deciding on pricing, etc a few would break off the the RIAA "party line" and take a risk on MP3s well before the Apple iTunes store opened. I'm starting to think that all the problems the RIAA has can be traced back to the fact that in many ways it acts like a monopoly and tries to immunize itself from normal and healthy market forces.
I also don't see why my tax dollars should be subsidizing this monopoly and its aging non-encrypted CD format. All they have to do is release everything on some strong DRM and casual MP3 trading will more or less cease to exist. Make all the DRM players have no easy way to line-out to analog and watch the casual "mp3 rippers" fade away. Not only that but no more CD to CD copies. Everyone can register their DRM CDs online just like they do software.
That's how you control your product, not through mass lawsuits.
He does in a way own rights even to the copy. Technically when you sell an artwork you have to pay a percentage on the profit of the sale. I'd call that a pretty hefty licensing program. Even the RIAA doesn't require you to mail them a check when you sell your CDs to a record store. I'm sure if they thought people would do it they would be all for it though.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
Some people think it's obvious, that they own the bit-patterns that they create, just as some people think it's obvious that two people of the same gender can't get married. ("Marriage is between a man and a woman, period!").
The question isn't so much whether people do or do not own the bit-patterns, it's whether people should or should not own them. That is, do we want our society to contain that concept? Sure, if we changed, some people/businesses would no longer have a way of generating income. But I think they are inherently doomed anyway, and the draconian laws that we'd have to enact (and are, come to think of it) to protect those people/businesses are a far worse price to pay, societally speaking.
are still online trading. Are they undaunted, insane or looking for a fight? Can the RIAA sue non-Americans? What are they gonna due? Extradite Brits for file-sharing? We know there's promise in the potential of legal P2P distribution. Look for our ongoing series of video shorts featuring Hawaiian Tropic models on Kazaa/Altnet (Keyword: Girls of Hawaiian Tropic) And we're not alone. I would hate to see the RIAA screw it up for "legitimate" distributors, too. SoSoHot.com
OK, so let me get this straight. Somebody like my sister, who is 14, doesn't know a thing about copyrights, and is otherwise the RIAA posterchild, is liable to get my family sued, because she and her friends use KaZaa to share boy bands (that sounds dirty, doesn't it?), oldies, and rap?
<sarcasm>
No, really...
</sarcasm>
Probably if I told her what she was doing was illegal, she wouldn't care.
I was in the Navy in my early twenties, and I had a work center supervisor who loved getting reactions out of people. Generally speaking, he was...odd. But in retrospect, some of the things he said then now seem eerily prescient.
In those days, I lived for rock 'n' roll. With my Sony TCD-5M almost always at my side (this was before there was any such thing as a Walkman), I was the running joke of the division. There was no factoid from the Rolling Stone Record Guide I couldn't recite.
When I made it for the first time to the exchanges in the Philippines (this was a long time ago), I loaded up on new audio gear, and set it up in one of our workspaces to play with it. That same afternoon, my supervisor showed up. He basically ignored the new gear strewn all over the workbench, but lingered over the attache case containing my cassettes. He simply turned to me and said, "Someday you won't care about any of this," and walked out.
I wish I knew where he is today so I could tell him he was right. It didn't happen overnight, of course. It's taken perhaps the past ten years for it to happen. The consolidation and subsequent homogenization of commercial radio, the ever-rising costs of CDs, and the antics of the RIAA, have worn me down. And just when I thought the RIAA whores couldn't do anything shittier, couldn't do anything more petty and just goddamed lousy, it surprises me with these latest tactics.
So as I said in the subject line: Fuck it. I never have finished reading A Tale of Two Cities. I think I will now. Not only that, but the work is in the public domain.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
"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
Try DirectConnect (DC++ or DCGUI for client, and one of the many FOSS servers). Require a password from all users and run your own hub.
I want my Cowboyneal
Since you couldn't be bothered to include it yourself:
From this link.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.
KDX works well for me.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
IIRC for libel/slander you have to show a negative effect on your reputation or that the accusation cost you business or other quantifiable damage. Also, I think there's some provision that the person making the claim has to know it's false. Frankly, if they let you sue for that, then everyone who has ever been acquitted of a crime would have a suit; that's why the news always refers to "the accused" and "the defendant" as opposed to "the criminal".
On a side note, who decided that we need separate words for oral and printed false accusations that damage a person's reputation? Is it really all that important to know that someone wrote the claim rather than speaking it? What if they said it, then wrote it down? What if they were reading from a prepared statement? What if they said it and somebody else wrote it down? What if they were saying the words aloud as they wrote? Does it matter? NO! Stupid English.
Interestingly enough, though every definition for libel mentions that it involves written communication, slander apparently can be used to refer to both if you don't want to use the legal definition. I have made my decision. From now on, no more libeling! Here's to slandering!
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
Not even technology - outdated pricing. CD prices have only risen since they were introduced in the '80s, even though the tech has matured immesurably since then. If they dropped it to anything under $10.00, they'd see a huge drop in piracy. Drop it to anything under $5.00 and watch it disappear.
Of course, this doesn't do anything to help artists who make pennies per CD and get most of the recording/promotion/printing costs taken out of their cut...
Hey **AAholes - it clearly wasn't me, but some terrorist wardriving past my WiFi connection.
In all seriousness, would this defense hold?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Besides, because NNTP services are very centralized, the users would not be at fault there, but those offering the NNTP services would be ordered to stop carrying binaries groups. Of course, uploaders might have there own problems.
Musicians that sign through the RIAA don't own their music. It's work for hire. If you were a photo journalist for Time, guess who would own your photos that got published?
Any artist that releases an album through an RIAA CANNOT choose to give it away or decide on the prices. They have NO control over their art once it leaves the recording studio. (Some would argue they have little control there)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Offering the services that make the crime possible is not the problem. Eliminating the innovator whose innovative technique/service is abused is not going to solve the problem, but is only going to add new ones. What the government is allowing right now is the stifling of our innovative capacity.
What the government should be doing is going after the proven infringers (those directly violating the law) and doing nothing to help nor hurt the service providers.
Along your RANDOM OVERUSE of CAPS, your argument is foolish.
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.
A complete, 100% lie. You are hurting the artists. You think the labels will keep bands around if their stuff doesn't sell? What the hell is the matter with you?
You don't care about the artists one bit. You're just used to the convenience of downloading mp3s whenever you want and are justifying it to make it seem moral to yourself.
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.
No, you're not. You're illegally pirating their material. You are shamelessly abusing artists by grabbing their music and never even dreaming of sending them a single dime for it.
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.
It is clear you don't, or you wouldn't be stealing artists' music. You exhibit the typical Slashbot drone mentality of anti-corporatism and self-righteousness, trying to justify your illegal piracy as if it is part of some sort of movement of morality. What part don't you get? You're stealing artists' music.
Listen to yourself. You're claiming that the reason you pirate artists' music is because you care about them. You're so full of it.
Artists don't have to get signed if they don't want to. They don't have to sign those allegedly horrible contracts. Nobody is forcing them to do a single thing except themselves. But you need them to be victims so you can steal their music and not feel ashamed for it.
Rot in hell in the meantime.
Guess we'll see you there.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
Precisely.
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.
Some feel they're only hurting labels and not artists by freely pirating their music all over the internet so that nobody pays them for it. It's insane.
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.
This is the smartest thing that's been said in this entire discussion. What happened, Slashbots? I remember those arguments as well.
People are used to the convenience of downloading anything they want now, and they're struggling to come to grips with the fact that it shouldn't have been occurring all along. There is always an excuse because they don't want to feel guilty. Witness some of the posts today.
"Sufferin' succotash."
When the RIAA goes after the sharing technology slash-dotters get pissed. I'm one of them that gets really pissed at that. Going after the technology is wrong. However, going after the people who violate copyright law IS the correct response.
So what is the problem people?? Yes, we all hate the RIAA. Yes, they are the scum of the earth but the great thing about our country is that even scum have rights.
Stop sharing copyrighted material. Don't buy copyrighted material. Don't support assholes in Washington who would circumvent our constitution by endlessly extending the copyright period **Cough, Clinton, Cough**. And if you are driving along and see one of these assholes crossing the street remember that claiming diminished capacity can sometimes get you off a manslaughter charge... (Just joking on that last one...)
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Totalitarian powers? The RIAA going after people who are illegally distributing music for others to obtain without paying for it is totalitarian? You're not allowed to protect what belongs to you?
What are you smoking and have you shared it with any other Slashbots? Seriously.
How about you write a program for some software publisher I hate, and I distribute all over the internet and justify it with "the publisher has totalitarian powers of the US citizens." And your software ends up selling less and you make less money than you should have because people now everybody has your software, and they all try to explain it away as some sort of silly movement against tyranny?
What excuse will you downloaders come up with to justify that?
"Sufferin' succotash."
iRATE sounds interesting, but it apparently excludes label artists. Not all labels are the same, and if you support the ones that support smaller artists, it would also broaden the music landscape.
Fact is, that if you get signed to a big label and they tell you "no more downloads", guess what, Mike? No more legal downloads for the fans that "indie" artists are always so concerned about, until they aren't indie anymore.
Supporting exposure of bands is all very well, but even 46,000 downloadable tracks from fringe bands isn't going to reform the music industry.
In an article like this, use the following to cause the crackheads to fall over themselves modding you up fast enough:
1.) Turn the discussion into an anti-corporate speal.
2.) Mention something, anything, involving an executive and his BMW.
3.) Mention a failing business model. Claim they don't care anything about artists, even though it's the artists themselves who get signed up and put their names on those contracts.
4.) Ignore that people are still taking artists' music without paying for it. Pretend it's all some moral movement as justification.
5.) Ignore when artists complain about it. Claim that they're RIAA shills.
6.) Make mention of lowering the price of a CD as if you'd really stop downloading in that situation. You're too used to the convenience of downloading to stop now.
7.) Pretend that it wasn't you in the previous lawsuit articles who was crying out for the RIAA to go after "individual infringers" instead of the P2P network itself. Now that they're doing it, again desperately attempt to paint the RIAA as the wrongdoer here.
8.) "+5 Insightful."
"Sufferin' succotash."
I'm just curious why so many here are still trying to paint the RIAA as the wrongdoer in this article.
What are they doing wrong? They're simply suing people who are breaking the law. Nobody argues that what those users do is against the law. So what's the problem?
Why do so many Slashbots appear to be against this at every step? Could it be because they don't want to stop pirating music?
"Sufferin' succotash."
$cientology and SearchKing didn't have much luck, so watching the RIAA and every artist they claim to represent drop to the bottom of the pigeon ranking would be fun.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...the governing body of justice? Besides the fact they have lawyers out the wazoo, they can't change the law. OOPS; my bad, yes they can. God have mercy on us all.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
So..we have a freedom of information act. Why doesn't someone get the names of the people the RIAA has obtained subpoenas against and post them on the internet so they can be warned of any legal actions that will be coming there way. This way people can say.."Hey, I downloaded one of their songs to see if I liked them and then went out and purchased the CD". Then they can show the CD since they would have the same information as the RIAA has. Say John Doe downloads 1 Tool song and it's listed on subpoena. He could then go out and purchase the CD and say in court.."Here it is judge"...see, I purchased it. I just downloaded one song to see if I liked them :-)".
Just a thought.
The only way this is going to get resolved is exactly what's happening now: the industry has to sue a few hundred (or a few thousand) joe beers and bobby bookworms. This will inevitably get some propogandized coverage on one of the buffoonish "news magazine" shows (most like either a sixty minutes music fluff piece or an NBC "Dateline special") which will, also inevitably, lead to plenty of backlash. At that point a different network will pick up the same story with a slightly different spin, which will lead to one or more senators getting called on the carpet to explain why johnny's mommy and daddy are being forced to give all johnny's tuition money to the RIAA over something so insipid as a bunch of Britney Spears singles.
I hate to say I told you so, but I did. This is the only way the issue is going to get settled, and it's been in the making for a very long time. This is the only way to get things done when you live under a corporatist - but reactionary - political regime.
If you want to put Big Name songs on your custom wedding DVDs, just toss in the original music CD as a side gift. Then your use of the song might be considered fair use.
But still I wouldn't want to test that in court
--- Eat my sig.
You're hearing the same bytes either way. What's the difference?
Millions of dollars of campaign contributions.
There's a difference between "illegal" and "wrong".
Tech Public Policy stuff
Absolutely. I can't express enough how satisfying it has been for me to discover quality music from artists I've never heard of before. And it isn't until you find an good alternative source of music that you realize how many great artists out there were passed up on by the major labels simply because they showed up at the wrong time. Being indie doesn't mean artists have no talent... it just means the major labels didn't think their style of music would sell in the current market.
I strongly urge anyone who has wide musical interests to check out EMusic. Especially if you like Jazz, Electronica, Blues, Punk, or Classical (all genres that haven't seen much mainstream sales), EMusic is fantastic. Even outside of those genres though, there are many "out of time" artists with great albums. I've found songs via EMusic that I firmly believe could have been "big hits" if they were released years before (or after).
The only drawback to EMusic is that there are soooooo many artists on there and you can expect to recognize very few (since they are indie). Using the EMusic service is like a journey through "Lost Music Land". I find most of my tips on the message boards there... lots of friendly people in the same boat... we're all just looking for great music.
Oh and one last comment about the quality of the MP3s, as that used to be a concern. These days almost all of the music is encoded using VBR (about 192kbps on average) using lame (can't remember the exact setting they use). I too wouldn't go anywhere near 128k CBR, so I waited for them to switch up to the better quality before I signed up.
Simply put, if you're willing to explore for music, EMusic is hands down the best place on the net to legally download unrestricted MP3s. Oh, and the RIAA won't appreciate it either if you're into that sort of thing. :)
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.
Well, if their intent is to persuade their own best customers that it's time to find non-RIAA music to buy, they certainly are. If I had a pipeline into the RIAA, I'd tell them to "GO FOR IT, THE PUBLIC IS BEHIND YOU 1000%."
Who goes to the trouble to make P2P server space available and pay for the bandwidth to make them available?
Only the people who are really serious about music and want people to hear the latest and coolest new sounds so they'll buy their own copies. . . that artists will be encouraged to make new music. These are the people with hundreds and thousands of legitimately purchased CDs and who go to concerts.
Also known as the RIAA's latest targets. Every one who gets a subpoena or an extortion threat from RIAA lawyers is a person who'll be putting his energy into persuading others NOT TO BUY.
But not buying just feeds into the PIRACY!!! propaganda.
Destroying the RIAA means buying exclusively from non-RIAA musicians, and spending as much or more as you usually do on music.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Take a look at this:
1 755
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=71426&cid=646
Copyright violations are punishable by imprisonment.
I hope someone decides to mod this up, because the world should know...just because the music you listen to is not played on commercial radio/MTV, does not mean it's independent music. The above post is very well written, but the fact remains:
Matador Records is a member of the RIAA. You may think you're 'indie' because you listen to Belle & Sebastian TOO, but you're money's heading into the RIAA's pockets.
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
Except Freenet doesn't support large files very well, and all files only live for a short amount of time--depending upon the size of everyone's cache. It also doesn't support searching as far as I can tell.
Freenet was made to prevent censorship and promote freedom of speech. At its current state, it doesn't even seem to do that very well. It wasn't designed to swap music. Even if someone finds a way, you'll probably only be able to download Pop 40 songs anyway. You may as well listen to the radio.
So this isn't a matter of a kid getting busted for doing something "wrong", a parent who can afford to is very likely not only to pay for lawyers, but to look for organizations that are fighting them and start them in their absence. And in the meantime, start calling the politicians they contribute to and ask them "What the fuck is going on with this?"
If the RIAA makes A Cause out of themselves in mainstream America... their bought politicians will have to cut them loose to dangle in the wind.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I forgot to mention that while I'm no lawyer, I *have* read most of the relevant US law on it. All of the law I've read is aimed at the "supply side".
Here is a link to US copyright law. Most sections aren't as long or difficult as I would have expected. You just need to take it peicemeal and pind the important parts. Chaper 1 defines what protections copyright grants. Chapter 5 covers infringement, and the NET act is in there. Chaper 12 is the evil DMCA anti-circumvention portion. Those are really the the important parts. Just by looking at the other headings it should be pretty clear you can completely skip most of them.
Other highlights include:
Chaper 3 is home to the countless copyright extentions, including the infamous Sony Bono extention.
Chapter 8 is CARP. That part gets pertty hairy, it's the part that is strangling internet radio. The problem isn't so much in the law itself, but mainly in the fees set by the CARP panel created by the law. The RIAA convinced the panel to set the fees several times higher than regular radio fees.
Chaper 10 is the main part of the Audio Home Recording act which completely killed Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and all digital audio technology and products. DAT came out a DECADE ago and you still can't go into the mall and find a digital audio device. The law mandates that the devices MUST contain DRM systems. The simple fact is that no one wants to buy a crippled product. They are currently discuussing options for mandating DRM in all high definition digital TV products, and if they do then people wont buy them either.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If all people do is not buy music, the RIAA will blame PIRACY!!!, and the member label CEOs will go to their bosses and whine about PIRACY!!! cutting sales and demand even worse laws from the politicians they 0wN.
If people spend just as much money from independent musicians and labels and supporting their gigs, the music industry press will be giving this lots of ink... followed by the mainstream media in the context of RIAA boycott.
This will reduce the value of RIAA labels and the stock prices of the multinationals that own them.
Expect the collapse of the major labels shortly thereafter, their owners will be unloading "tainted brands" to the highest bidders before they drop in value any further.
I think you know what you need to do.
Tech Public Policy stuff
How is it shoplifing? The copies are still on record store shelves. Can you count?
So you're stealing music every time you listen to the radio? Well, then, you'd better hide your radio, trollboy. Go away, the grownups have something important to discuss.
A 128K broadcast-quality music track is a promotional good of no commercial value except in that a listener hearing it might be induced to buy it in better quality form as a CD or high-quality digital track like iTunes is selling.
Redistributing that 128K track is exactly like giving a record company free radio airplay. Where's the theft in that?
If they really gave a shit about piracy, they'd be paying off politicians in Asian countries to shut down pirate CD PRESSING PLANTS
This isn't about stealing, it's about control. They don't want media to exist they can't control to play artists who owe them nothing anywhere the public can hear them.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Who profits from the stupid idea that all an indie artist needs to do to give his music a fair chance at airplay is to take it to a radio station?
This is like the idea that all one has to do to give one's position on a bill a fair hearing is to write your Congresscritter a letter without a $5000 check enclosed.
Profitable mythology.
Who profits?
Tech Public Policy stuff
What biggest offenders? According to news reports, they have gone after with 5 to 8 files shared.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The problem is that if a large chunk of the public did this, the record labels would scream PIRACY!!! about "lost sales" and use this as an excuse to buy even worse laws from politicians, and their CEOs could go to their multinational bosses and say "The boycott isn't significant, it's just that they're stealing our music instead of buying it."
The answer?
Continue to buy music, but from musicians who are not involved with the RIAA in any way, shape or form.
When the press sees that only musicians and labels making money are not involved with the RIAA are making money, the music industry as we know it is totally fucked.
Their parent companies will probably have to unload the "tainted" brands at 25 cents or less on the dollar.
But to destroy them, we have to keep on spending money on music.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You can't legally aquire an illegally gained item to replace a legally owned item you lost or broke.
How do you know the guy you're downloading from actually owns a legal copy?
Copy your CDs, movies, whatever the first time you use them. That way you can enjoy them while backing them up. Then store them on CD-R, DVD+-R, a HD, or whatever.
Then if you ever lose or break the original copy, pull out your backup and make a replacment. Doing so for your own personal use is perfectly legal.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
is that the distinction between file swapping and tape swapping is purely a legal one made by buying politicians.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Anyone around here know for sure?
Tech Public Policy stuff
I don't think you understand why parking tickets exists. Yes, people do want parking tickets, but not because of the government revenue. It's because if cops didn't issue parking tickets, then everyone would just park anywhere--including the middle of the road or use up two stalls. It would be hell trying to drive around all those parked cars. It would be hell trying to find parking spaces in a lot which should be half full, but all the spaces are used up by rude drivers.
It would be unfair if all car owners had to pay a "parking violation" tax because it is assumed everyone will break parking laws, just like it is unfair that all buyers of CD-burners and blank CDs are forced to pay a "copyright" tax because it is assumed they will violate copyright laws.
In order to make full use of Freenet you have to get Fuqid (A tool that works with freenet), it allows you to que downloads, and uploads.
There exists many other tools that work with Freenet that really enhance its usability.
Do you have a link for that? I did a google search and came up with very little.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Even if we assume that obviously people should own the bit patterns they create, there's the question of whether they should own them for several generations years after they die.
Dyolf Knip
So you are saying it hurts your professional art career when someone simply has a copy of your photo on their computer's desktop?
I would be honored, as I have in the past, when my works get spread around. It gives me free advertising since the signature and website they can obtain more is always at the bottom-right of the image.
Now if a company used my artwork for advertising purposes, or enhanced the resolution and started selling framed copies, then we'd have a lawsuit.
It's not like grandma was really going to buy a JPG of your latest creation anyway. She'll just go to phong.com and grab something better for free.
I guess what I am saying is that your point isn't thought through. Either that, or you'd prefer to have no exposure.
I recall when MP3 first started to boom, CD sales skyrocketed. Then the RIAA started being assholes about the whole thing and CD sales plumeted. You do the math.
Anyway, you being Mr. Artist should know about fair use when it comes to artwork. Your entire trade is about 'borrowing' styles and imagery.
No troll intended.
Doesn't matter...you can get sued into oblivion if they catch you. It's not worth losing my entire business because I just HAD to have "Time of Your Life" or something. If we're talking about my personal vacation photos, that's fine, I wouldn't care...but here we're talking about selling something for profit. I'd rather not take the risk, thanks...I need to eat.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
When a dog barks at me, I don't bark back.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The Apple Legal Store : All your alltime favorite copyright lawyer consultations for just $.99/consult.
Hey...it could happen.
It certainly isn't killing my business...I'm doing just fine. It's just a shame that so much music will never heard again. There's plenty of blame to go around, but certainly Disney deserves a large portion of it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
No, I fully understand where you're coming from. I'm not saying I'm going to sue somebody for scanning one of my photos and putting it on their desktop computer. I've had this happen before...I do some work for a local magazine. We did the editor's family photos. A few weeks later, I'm in the editor's office going over our latest photo shoot we did for them, and the family portraits we did are her desktop wallpaper. She scanned them...that's fine, I didn't say a word.
Most of what I do is portraits, weddings, and magazine work. Whenever my wife and I shoot a wedding, we send free sample photos to the venue, the caterer, the florist, the cake maker, etc, hoping they will show these to their prospective clients. We also put our website at the bottom corner of the photo, too, so the client will know just where they got it from.
However, my argument is that, regardless of whether I give them away, or sell them, or whatever, they're still MY images. I created them...it's my artwork, it's my talent, it's my time, it's my life, it's my thousands of dollars worth of equipment and years of experience and training. *I* get to decide how they're distributed, or how much I care whether somebody copies them. Not you, not "society," not government...me. Have you ever read or seen "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand? Fascinating novel.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I'm saying the RIAA shouldnt own all the music and the distribution.
I'm saying p2p should be legal.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Maybe you want one corperation or government to rule over you and take away all your rights while forcing you to pay a tax.
I so wish you were born in soviet russia during the proper era.
Maybe you'd like to live under the rule of Saddam. I mean you dont have any rights, you do exactly what the company says, but exactly what the company says buy, pay exactly the price they want to do exactly what they tell you to do with what you pay for, for the exact amount of time they want.
You sir are a fool. Maybe some of us dont respect the company and refuse to pay the tax. Ever hear of the Boston Tea Party? Your stupid ass would still be buying British Tea.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Even if you don't get an attorney to represent you in court, do talk to an attorney, so that the documents you have to file are written correctly. You may be unaware that they have to be formatted a certain way. There are certain keywords that mean magic things to a judge but may appear ridiculous to the non-specialist.
If you go to most any attorney and tell them you're a struggling college student and the RIAA just sued you, they will almost certainly help you at least write your response correctly.
The last time I consulted an attorney, the only payment he required was a promise that the next time the subject came up, I tell whoever I'm talking to that attorneys aren't the bad people that many make them out to be. This gentleman got my ass out of a sling, and all he wanted was for me to say he wasn't a bad person.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Stop supporting RIAA artists by trading their songs. All you're doing by sharing mp3s of RIAA artists is giving the RIAA free marketing and proving that they're still relevant. Go to mp3.com or something and support independent artists who want you to share their music.
If you want to hurt the RIAA, stop supporting them through marketing.
Is this app still in available in the wild?
Whats sad is there is still people downloading and listening to music from those 3 idiots? Especially MJ who has a thing for little boys and having dozens upon dozens of face surgeries and acid baths to make himself look white.
Well duh! If people start trading Michael Jackson mp3s, they might be able to say 'hey, despite being a freak, some of his music isn't that bad!'
Being able to seperate talent from image would spell death for the record companies, who spend more time and money on promoting the persona of an artist above their actual work.
I'm not saying Jackson is a good artist (though I do enjoy some of his older stuff from time to time), but come on. I can see no logical reasoning for the RIAA's assult against file swappers other then to quell any sort of ability amoung the masses to objectivly evaulate music on its own merits instead of the manufactured images of those creating it.
The Internet is generally stupid
For years now I've shunned P2P in favor of
Usenet, and up until now they've ignored us
too. So why bring it up? Dumb!
you mean they were serious about that?
My ilk? Damn. That's a little harsh.
Heck, I'm an engineer, too. I got a Master's in EE from the University of Florida, and I'm still working on my Ph.D. My wife and I also own a photo business.
I don't think you understand how this works. We are more than willing to sell the copyright to our photos...after a wedding, we sell the high-res photo CD (we shoot digital, so there are no negatives) for $500. See, it's like this...we need to make, say, $2500 off a wedding for it to be worth our time. A wedding takes about 40 hours worth of work or so. First, there's the shooting on the wedding day. Then there's the processing, the editing, the retouching, the digital artwork, then the hosting on the website, etc etc.
So, you've got two options. If you don't want to own the photos, pay us $2000. We'll give you a bunch of prints, and then we'll make the other $500 off your friends and family when they pay us for reprints. Or, you can just pay $2500, you own all the photos, and then you can deal with the hassle of making the prints and dealing with your friends and family. Either way...so long as we make our $2500, it's profitable and worth our time. So, take your pick...you can own the rights and pay more, or you can just get lots of prints and pay less.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
" The RIAA is trying to cling to its old business model, when it clearly does not apply to today's technological/economical reality."
This sad arguement is still being pushed by the EFF even though the RIAA has provided legitimate means of downloading files online. This statement is so last week.
"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."
No company should be forced to adjust price through extortion, i.e. sell it to me cheaper, or I'll just take it anyway without paying you a penny. Even if they refused to offer songs online for a fee, you have no right to demand it that way. You simply have the right to offer to buy it that way, and they have the right accept or refuse. That's how free market works, which is a fundamental necessity for real freedom.
Vote for Pedro
Economic Warfare.
Someone (you there) put together a site of non-RIAA labels, and we visit it, and buy music from those labels, and no music from the RIAA labels, so that they feel the heat.
What I see is we boycott the smaller RIAA labels, so that they will have to drop out of the RIAA or go out of business. Then we maintain a action list of those who drop out and go buy their music.
You see, the RIAA cannot live without it's members. Once Sony, Universal, and a couple of others are the only ones left on there, then the new artists will have choices.
"Piter, too, is dead."
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).
I'm not sure exactly how ISPs log dynamic IP with dial-up, but I do know that with broadband (cable, DSL, etc) it's really easy to log a machine's MAC address with an IP (plus I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that most p2p file swappers use broadband). Dial-up modems all have the same MAC, so you can't log it that way. With my personal router that connects to my school's Ethernet, the log includes the MAC address, the IP assigned to the NIC, and what time it was assigned/used/expired. The only way this could be wrong is if I somehow spoofed my MAC (some cards allow you to enter your own in the bios), or if the router messed up. And we all know computers are NEVER wrong ;)
but now the RIAA has started to completely reject the ideas of freedom of speech. Why should we be sued for the use of their own promotional tools. Isn't it clear that this is simply a case of the industries fear to lose what they have created?
Beyond this I would say that some fault lies in the system of law that governs where the limit is on what information on the internet is private, and what is free for organisations to view.
The UK can not be affected by organisations like the RIAA since the Data Protection Act prevents the aquisition of data without the permission of the end user. This means that the worms and other devices the RIAA are using world wide to gain IP addresses is infact illegal in this country, as illegal in fact as the viruses that we care so much about stopping.
But they carry on. Just because what they are doing is legal in America doesn't mean that they should do it world wide.
Am I wrong?
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com
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
The right to privacy doesn't exist in our constitution (though I think we should petition our congressmen to shove one in) - despire what the supreme court may think.
If we really had a right to privacy, that would spell an end to drug busts, among other things, which would not be well accepted by the drug war crowd.
I'd love for the supreme court to apply the non-existant right on drug busts, but its not going to happen.
I never have bought music from any RIAA artist, and they have now absolutely gauranteed that I never will, period. However, most people are too uncaring to mind when their rights are stolen by corporations. They just want their bread and circuses.
But there must be SOME way to make people understand what is going on. Unfortunately, most large-scale distribution channels (TV, Newpaper, Radio) are owned by the very pigopolists that need to be run out of town, so you'll never see anything about these criminal activities on them. However, the one channel that they do not, and arguably CANNOT control is the internet.
First, a simple letter explaining what needs to be done to correct these injustices. Write one, and E-Mail it to everyone in your address book, with explicit instructions to repeat the process. If the average pass-on rate is greater than one, the rate of sending will go supercritical and everyone will have no choice but to see it.
Unfortunately, I strongly doubt that enough people would read the letter and even fewer would pass it on. However, there is a way to almost gaurantee that it gets passed on.
The people who use linux don't need to see this; They probably already understand what's at stake. Most people who use a non-MS operating system probably do. And that is currently the critical advantage: The people who DO need to be educated are almost certainly using the world's most insecure OS, and the default insecure E-Mail client that comes with it. It would be a simple enough matter to create a virus [A term used loosely, as it usually implies malicious intent. The intent of this "virus" would be anything BUT malicious] that would access the users entire address book, and then send out a copy of the letter to them with itself attached.
It would do no harm, and I would suppose you would be immune from prosecution in the unlikely event your are caught, as you did nothing bad to anyone. Your transmission rate would be gauranteed to be >1, and the message would almost immediately go supercritical. Before long, almost every inbox in the world would have a message in it with the subject "Are your rights being stolen?". Here's a sample message:
Dear recipient,
This message is to inform you that your rights are very likely being stolen from under you. If you do not live in the United States, you can ignore this message as it specifically pertains to American citizens.
Since 9/11, much of your right to privacy has been gutted. New, vastly over-broad laws threaten the privacy of each and every one of us. Did you know, for example, that the requirements for the government to wiretap you have been substantially loosened by the the PATRIOT act? That the current Attorney General, John Ashcroft, attempted to create a domestic spy program named "TIPS" that encourages neighbors to spy on each other?
Don't go into anything too specific or complex, just stay with the general idea. Offer a link to a mailing list to sign up to, perhaps. Explain what the government and some of the corporate cartels are up to. Don't get to virulent. Just lay it out, plain and simple.
Ok, that concludes this...
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.
I believe most photographers and videographers can use this kind of music as long as they use a CD that the client has purchased. This should fall under fair use (though barely) since it is for private, personal use. A lot of wedding videographers I have seen do this and the RIAA haven't gotten Medieval on them yet. This is just my understanding, though.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Use the force luke.
let the slashcode guide you.
a slackfull majority of bobs own click on the secret link that appears to be my name highlighted above to pick h'orsedoerves from
my buffet of human ReSEARCH.
to troll is to exhibit effort,grasshoppah.
open your third nostril and be.
if a frog bumps not its ass ajumpin,what it the sound of one buttock farting?
if bob hasn't seen your $30, are you not a mere pink one?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"File swapping on P2P is simply distributing the same tracks that the record labels PAY radio stations to broadcast to the public on the dime of the public itself. "
You're confusing performance of the song -- playing it over a radio with very strict rules as to how the listeners can control what they're hearing -- and distribution -- getting a copy of the recording of the specific song you want.
Yes, artists want their songs to get a lot of radio performance so that people will *buy* the actual distributions of the recordings. For many many people out there, mp3 sharing over the internet is not the equivalent of promotional performance, but rather the equivalent of getting the distribution.
You try to write this point off by saying that "128K MP3s are promotional goods of NO commercial value outside their use in getting people to buy the real products." This is simply not true. MP3s are certainly *good enough* for most people as a "real product". Why do you think the online music craze skyrocketed with the mp3 format? I mean, we've had audio compression before then. But it wasn't good enough. Now it is.
And maybe some people don't like the artifacts in a 128K mp3. For many of these people, increasing the bitrate makes it good enough. Where do you draw the line?
You're also concentrating on audio quality, and ignoring a very important aspect -- the *on-demand* nature of distribution. Performance of recorded songs, like I said, has strict controls over the listeners' abilities to choose which songs they hear. Too much control, and it can be considered a song distribution medium, not just a performance one.
---
Anyway, I hate the RIAA. They take too much money out of the whole process purely for profit, charge way too much for CDs, and give the artists way too little of a cut. I do think artists should get paid, but I wish I could do it more directly. I do download illegal music, but if I like it enough, I pretty much always go out and buy the actual CD.
I do think mp3 spreading is helping the popularity of many artists. I do believe that the RIAA's claims of lost money from file sharing are *very* exaggerated, if not completely fabricated.
But I think your assumption that free mp3 sharing is ONLY acting as a promotional tool is a very over-simplified standpoint. Certainly not worth the amount of bold and all-caps text you used on it.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
1. Hit them where it hurts. Don't buy anymore of their precious copyrighted material. boycott-riaa.com has a RIAA membership list. Don't let them see a penny of your money.
2. Get educated and vote. Vote politicians out of office that support these morons. These ignorant assholes are going to ruin our country. Standing up and voting will send a message that we are sick of these friggin lobbyists.
use the force luke.
gimme a dollah and i wont tell no one you coulnt do it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If we want the system to change, maybe we need to REALLY work at changing it, and that means bankrupting the record labels. You can help. Share everything you have. Turn other people on to file sharing. Rip everythig you come across, even if you don't like it, then find someone who DOES like it and will share it for a while, and give it to them. Use newsgroups and Xnews, BT, Waste, kazaalite ---EVERYTHING, and share it up. Start putting shares on public computers at libraries and universities and internet cafes. They want to kill you? Fine, but you should be doing your best to try to kill them to. Also, support free music during this time. If three is a local band that allows you to download their music for free, go see them, and tell them you're there BECAUSE you dig their music. If we all put an hour a week into really promoting p2p by redistributing quality content, this war would be over in 6 months.
It's only feasible for them to sue while there is still something there for them to protect. Let's try to really start hurting their profits, rather than passively doing so by just file-sharing.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
There are limits. ISPs must be registered with the government. They lose their Safe Harbor if they allow violations to continue after they become aware of them.
Maybe, but you're on really shaky ground. If it turns out you're wrong, and they find out, and they sue you (and their lawyers cost a lot more than anybody you can afford), then you're screwed. I know several videographers, and they're in the same boat. So, nobody's willing to take the chance.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You're a troll but I have to respond anyway.
I think we all understand that bands should get paid for their work. We also understand that copyright holder is the only one who gets to copy and distribute the music.
It is entirely another thing for the RIAA to go after individuals who cannot defend themselves against a fleet of lawyers. They are not enforcing their copyright, they are trying to scare people by over litigating the competition to their outdated business model. Suing an individual for almost a hundred billion is going way beyond anything reasonable. Most normal minded people can see that.
In adition to the pathetic excuses for enforcing their copyright, the RIAA is trying to justify huge expenses for a broken business model that doesn't pay off when they cannot seem to follow basic economic principles of supply and demand.
I regard this as a distinction without a difference from the point of view of exposing the audience to promotional material.
Yes, artists want their songs to get a lot of radio performance so that people will *buy* the actual distributions of the recordings.
For many many people out there, mp3 sharing over the internet is not the equivalent of promotional performance, but rather the equivalent of getting the distribution.
I regard your second statement as completely unproven, though the claim plays a part in RIAA propaganda. Evidence, please.
You try to write this point off by saying that "128K MP3s are promotional goods of NO commercial value outside their use in getting people to buy the real products." This is simply not true. MP3s are certainly *good enough* for most people as a "real product".
Then why does iTunes make the claim that their format is higher quality than MP3?
A "real product" is something you can get people to pay for. Where is the commercial market for broadcast quality MP3?
While Joe Sixpack may not understand psychoacoustic masking and dynamic range and frequency response and the difference between lossy and lossless compression, he does know that CD audio sounds better on his home or college dorm stereo system. And if the music matters to him, he goes out and buys the CD regardless of whether he got to listen to the MP3 from the radio (128K MP3 is the universal broadcast automation format) or P2P or a drastically degraded Internet Radio stream. If the music doesn't matter to him, he wouldn't have bought it regardless of the medium he heard it on.
Why do you think the online music craze skyrocketed with the mp3 format? I mean, we've had audio compression before then. But it wasn't good enough. Now it is.
For casual listening, certainly. If you're out jogging with a portable MP3 player or driving with a car stereo, you'd better not be concentrating on the music.
And maybe some people don't like the artifacts in a 128K mp3. For many of these people, increasing the bitrate makes it good enough. Where do you draw the line?
128K MP3 is also the universal format used for broadcast automation software packages. I think 128K is a perfectly good place to draw the line between "promotional material" and "digital product", and I believe that 128K MP3 or lower quality should be subject to mandatory licensing for commercial / non-profit use based on the broadcast industry model that has served not only users, but the music industry over the years. If the quality is better than that and no permissions for use have been given, I'll hand the RIAA the book to throw myself.
I work with a musician on getting her material promoted, and that's the line I've advised her to draw. Note that we also have downloadable tracks on our site. In 128K MP3 format.
You're also concentrating on audio quality, and ignoring a very important aspect -- the *on-demand* nature of distribution. Performance of recorded songs, like I said, has strict controls over the listeners' abilities to choose which songs they hear. Too much control, and it can be considered a song distribution medium, not just a performance one.
I regard this as a distinction without a significant difference in this context.
Anyway, I hate the RIAA. They take too much money out of the whole process purely for profit, charge way too much for CDs, and give the artists way too little of a cut. I do think artists should get paid, but I wish I could do it more directly. I do download illegal music, but if I like it enough, I pretty much always go out and buy the actual CD.
Just like everybody else.
And you reinforce the
Tech Public Policy stuff
If you have a ECF/Pacer account you access the court doucments you can find out. Just go to http://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov). There is a liink there to open a pacer account. You need an account -- access costs a 7 cents per page, but is otherwise public via the web. The subpoenas include usernames.
They're a group on an independent label, sold by milesofmusic.com. I just got their dual album ("Southern Rock Opera") in the mail and it's AWESOME. I showed it to a friend of mine (who happens to be a trucker :) ) and he said he wanted one of Miles of Music's catalogs. After all the urban/J-Lo/Britney garbage THAT I CAN'T RELATE TO AND WILL *NEVER* LIKE this is a breath of fresh air.
/tirade mode on
It seems like every time I turn on the radio I can only handle maybe a minute before I have to turn it off and put on a CD. While I think the RIAA has twisted the Framers' intent for copyright past all sense and logic, at least half of my antipathy for them stems from the fact that they must apparently think of me and people like me as undiscriminating cattle. I can think of no other reason why they would spew such monolithic garbage year after year. I'm not an urbanite, nor do I ever wish to be. I can't relate to life around the "gangstas", and I neither dress, speak, nor look like these people the RIAA is pushing as America's seeming role models. Furthermore, I do *not* appreciate the intimation that I should surrender my culture or view of social norms for what they're pushing. As far as I'm concerned, it'll be a cold day in Hell before I buy anything from them again.
This fight has gone out of proportion. This RIAA thing, to me, looks like a QuakeFest with real people's lives. 150k for a song, and nobody really lost anything (as compared to really stealing a cd from a store). I dont even see the logic behind IP.
Also, when you buy a car, what would you do if the dealer said "You can watch the car, but it would be IP theft if you actualy tried the car without buying it.", because it would be the same situation, except that car companies want to sell their cars because they are GOOD. And people should SEE FOR THEMSELVES _BEFORE_ buying the product.
Granted, a car is a greater investment. But I dont see anywhere in the law where it says "Applicable only if it costs less than , otherwise, IP theft does not occur.". If I download MP3s of a band, and that I actualy like more than 3 song, I'll buy the cd, because I will beleive they DESERVE it. If I dont like it? Well I'll delete the mp3 and never listen to it again..?
The entertainment industry is having major issues, and file swapping is not the problem. All the movies, lately, have been shitty. We dont see GREAT movies anymore. Once in a while we do, and then its worth paying the fee to go watch it in a theatre, and then buy the DVD.
Is it so bad to try-and-buy for the industry? You bet your ass it is! Why? Because most of the music just plain SUCKS. They sell you that one CD (1 easy payment of $15.99) which has 1 or 2 good songs on it. That's $8/song.
Also, if I bought the cd, then lost it, did my license end? I think not. Will they send you a new one? Dream on it. Downloading it seems to be the only solution (other than buying a 2nd license for the same person). But then, how can you prove you had it in the first place? Well, you can't. That's the beauty of it, you pay them by buying cds, they sue you because you downloaded it! It's a win-win situation.
Also, I have been wondering about something. What if 2 person buy 1 cd, they each pay half of it. Which means, they both own "half a license". I am not to sure what the law has to say about that one tho. But I was thinking, what if 100 people paid 20 cent each? Would it be legal for the 100 people to listen to it? Just a thought.
Anyway, its getting late.
Another 20 years go by.
When, instead of portable (read, pocket-sized) 20Gb music players, we have 20Tb players, with CPU speeds to match.
When the faster CPUs allow use of far superior sound compression algorithms that better model the sources of sound...
When transfer speeds make USB 2.0 look like RS232...
When said handheld players will be able to contain not your entire present music collection, but nigh all music in recorded history.
When all you might ever lack on any given day is the newest music, and that's assuming you even like it (since you're 20 years older), or even have the time to listen to it (since you'll have so much already).
While P2P is a terrible thing in the eyes of the RIAA, I can't help but think back to the '80's and two things of the past:
- recordable audio cassettes
- recordable videotape
Both involve magnetic tape that holds practically nothing compared to recordable media today, and it takes *forever* to record onto them. Yet, they scared the record and movie industries to death, to such a degree that the movie industry tried to kill VCRs.
The implications for the future are staggering by comparison. Not only is it *digital* media, its size and ease of recording will, IMHO, be the *real* nail in the RIAA's coffin, *not* the Internet. When you can get in your car, head ofer to your buddy's house, and transfer all music in human history, that will be the true death knell for any company seeking to profit from an artist's efforts. Organizations like the RIAA consume far more in funds and resources than are necessary to support individual artists; when those funds start drying up, there must eventually come a breaking point where being affiliated with the RIAA is a financial liability. After all, who here still pays someone to deliver ice--or milk? The RIAA *will* go the way of the dodo, but I don't think P2P will be their killer asteroid, it will be the slow, steady march of technology.
Will they pay exhorbitant sums to our legislators to close the "analog hole"? They may try, but I doubt such an effort can succeed. Unless they can ban general-purpose programmable computers and resistors, anyone can digitize sound and put it into an open format. I don't care how much clout the RIAA has with Congress, the tech industry is ten times their size and will not suffer being downgraded to the era of Timex-Sinclair ZX-80's and TI-99/4A's. May as well tell everyone to turn in all their cars and TV's and go back to radio with vacuum tubes.
Slightly OT late-night idea ahead...
As I type this, one way to speed the process might be to create a slick-as-butter, easy-to-use way for beginning artists to get some airtime. How about something simple where websites could run some Java or Javascript that let users listen to a minute of an indie artist's song? Indie artists could sign up at some central site, and any website running this Java or Javascript would go out to the site, pick an artist at random, and pull a minute of music that it can play if the user clicks the play button...
As we all know, corporations are greedy, amoral and only interested in profit. But there is a difference between how they go about that, and Verizon is perhaps the least worst of the Baby Bell monopolies. Of course, that isn't difficult: SBC is trying to sue everyone who uses frames in a Web site, and Qwest is appealing to the Supreme Court that it has a first ammendment right to sell its customers' private information.
Still, Verizon does deserve a small amount of credit for standing up to the RIAA. Many corporations (Verizon included) consider their public image very important, as we can see from the huge amount of money they spend on stupid advertising and PR in an attempt to persuade people that they're not evil. If they see that actually doing non-evil things can gain them a good reputation, they will do more non-evil things.
If I leave my front door open and somebody walks into my house, grabs my television, and walks off with it, will the police arrest me for leaving my door open or the thief for taking the TV? ... It seems to me like the RIAA's new practice of suing those who "leave the front door open" is ludicrous, and it shouldn't stand up in court. It's not the sharer who is breaking the law, but the person who decides to actually download the file.
;) I'm not totally certain on the legal definition of "copy" when it comes to music, though, is anyone able to shed some light on it?
I'm also curious how they're going about verifying that the shared song is indeed a new Michael Jackson single; do they just guess based on the filename? I can put 5 megabytes of random garbage into a file and call it "Michael Jackson - Supaleet New Single.mp3" in less than ten seconds. OR, is the RIAA going around downloading the files named as such in order to find out if they're actually copies of the music they are supposed to protect? If so, wouldn't they in essence be the thieves walking off with the aformentioned television? I would find it ironic if, in their policing of the internet, they are rampantly breaking the law they are claiming to try and uphold. It almost makes me want to set up a honeypot of sorts on the fasttrack network to attract the RIAA hounds; just to see what they're up to.
And finally, my very last point (although a very nitpicky one that I hope I don't get modded down for) is that you cannot digitally COPY audio from an analog source. Way back when I had my first Digital Music class in college, I learned that analog sound (like on a vinyl record or cassette tape--remember those?) is stored in a very pure and very clean wave, while digital sound is stored as a stair-stepped approximation of the sound which is (depending on the sampling rate) a pretty close *approximation* of the original source analog sound. Digitally recording any analog audio source guarantees that you end up with a likeness of the original audio, but not a true copy. This "likeness" becomes even less like the original when you compress the data with MP3 or OGG Vorbis algorithms. At that point it isn't just digital audio, either--it is raw binary data which needs an appropriate interpreter in order to re-create the audible approximation of the original analog source. Of course, I'm sure the working legal definition of copy includes the synonyms of: impersonate, approximate, make a likeness of, imitate, and etc. Oh yes, "etc" is most-likely part of the definition--this is America we're talking about, after all.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
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.
I'm going to setup a spare pc as a p2p server and load it up with *FAKE* Madoona, Brittny Spears and Metallica files and sit back.
When they file a suit against me I'll hand it over to my lawyer and counter-sue them.
$$$ for me.... So sorry RIAA and MPAA, you greedy f*cks just suck and deserve it...
I wouldn't worry about that. Musicians aren't stupid, and getting on board with a major label at this point is like buying a ticket and boarding the Titanic while it is visibly sinking.
Anyone getting a contract now is liable to find that by the time they've finished their first album, nobody's around at their label to service their account because it's just been sold to somebody with no current connection to the music industry and the few people left have no idea who's running things.
When the labels go down, it's over. All the investors who buy the "tainted brands" will want will be catalogues and artist contracts. Why would they want the management that made the labels affordable by running them into the ground? The people who can magically transform $10B companies into $1B companies are not exactly in great demand. We saw enough of that during the dot.com crash.
My analysis of news and trends says... we're no longer talking years before the major labels go down. They've got a few months to go if they are very, very lucky.
And when they start getting sold by their multinational whose patience with the label CEOs PIRACY!!! excuses have run out and fear their own stock prices dropping if they continue public association with the RIAA labels, they'll get sold at fire-sale prices (what good is a brand that people go out of their way to avoid?) to investors who will have something entirely different in mind and whose first move will be to take their labels out of the RIAA.
Tech Public Policy stuff
As much of a convenience as downloading is why don't you all realize that you ARE BREAKING THE LAW. Downloading is illegal, cut the RIAA some slack. They're just trying to crack down on something that isn't right.
I firmly believe that the moderation boxes should not appear it you are filtering at above zero.
Either that, or moderating anything which is already above 1 should cost 2 points.
Labels are just going to have to think of more exciting incentives in order to get consumers to buy the actual album compared to stealing it. It may not reach everyone but people like free stuff or "extras" "perks".
So if a song is a corporate work for hire and the copyright is owned by the corporation, how do the copyright laws apply? Life plus 70 years for an immortal corporation?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.