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RIAA Obtains Subpoenas Against File Swappers
SniperPuppy writes "Fox News is reporting that the RIAA has secured 871 subpoenas against suspected file swappers, with 75 more being approved each day. Between this, and the latest versions of FreeNet and Kazaa Lite being released, will technology be able to keep traders away from court?" Apparently, just suing the "major offenders" wasn't enough of a warning shot, so now they're going after people who share as few as eight songs. Wait until the RIAA discovers all the stuff that gets posted to Usenet!
You want them to know about Usenet???
but leave IRC for the rest of us
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Is it okay to download mp3's of songs that I legitimately own on CD? Can I claim fair use if I own the CD? Can I counter sue?
-B
I'm sure they already know about Usenet and IRC and (insert other less prominent distribution methods here). It seems they are more concerned about scaring away the average person (who doesn't even know what Usenet is, or how to operate an IRC client) but just runs Kazaa or another easy to use Windows p2p client.
It's clear that all piracy can not be stopped - the intent few will always pirate through more obscure networks regardless of the level of litigation, this is just a question of going after the most prominent network with the least tech savvy users.
If you're going to act like that, see if I ever pirate your music again.
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Crudely Drawn Games
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.
This is probably true. But if RIAA can trot enough "criminals" through a legal mill, then they'll be able to justify a bigger surcharge on recordings, blank media, or even internet access. Like the "recording surcharge" already on blank tapes & CDRs, it would go straight to the RIAA coffers.
And all these surcharges are exactly why folks are downloading instead of buying. Or to quote my 16 yr old daughter, "If new CDs cost five bucks, I'd buy them."
As for me, if Columbia Records (to use a specific sig-related example) would let me purchase an annual subscription to download Bob Dylan concert recordings on a next day basis, I'd be sending 'em my money today!
The real problem that the recording industry faces today isn't downloading, it's lack of imagination.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
are sure going to wish they had secured that wireless.
Inaction? The government is complicit, running a protection racket for the copyright industry. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, DMCA, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, are just three of the most obvious bits of tripe to pass the U.S. legislature in the last decade+1, and more legislation is pending now.
If you are a U.S. citizen, get involved. Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be: a temporary grant of monopoly on the right to reproduce creative works in exchange for an ultimate benefit to the public domain, not a welfare program for multi-billion dollar industries and the great grandchildren of creative people.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
The Grateful Dead were/are a good example of this. While they could be vicious pursuing commercial bootleggers, they would happily sell a fan a "taper ticket" that included a place to plug in & a roped-off area near the soundboard to set up the mike stands.
Or for true confusion, visit http://www.bobdylan.com ... the website actually features audience-taped songs from recent shows. Of course, Dylan has gone on record several times decrying commercial bootleggers.
I know there are many other bands & performers that do this kind of thing, but I'm an old mossback & there's about to be a Dylan-Dead tour ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Even if you normally defend the right of the RIAA to try to prevent copywritten music from being stolen, this should seriously scare you if you care anything about your privacy. Just in case there is still anyone who isn't fully aware of this, the RIAA, under the DMCA, is able to file informational subpoenas without the signature of a judge. This particular provision of the DMCA has been unsuccessfully challenged by Verizon in US District Court.
So, even if you have never downloaded a copywritten mp3, the RIAA (if they wake up one morning and decide that they feel like it) can legally demand information about you from your ISP. Your real name, your address, your phone number, and who knows what else. This, my US citizen friends, is unacceptable. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for the enforcement of the law, but when my privacy can be violated for the sake of finding who the person is that stole the latest Justin Timberlake single so that the RIAA can fine them for between $750 to $150,000, then things have gotten out of hand.
Pay EFF
These are your options. Pick one.
RIAA
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"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
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 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.
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.
Oh, I fully agree. I'm very upset with the state of copyrights. I mean, what is it now, like 70 years after the life of the original author? Essentially, nothing recorded in the 20th century will ever see the light of day again.
Like I said, I'm a photographer. I do a lot of weddings, and one of the services I like to offer my brides is to put their wedding photos in a slideshow on a DVD, set to music. Makes it really easy to show all their friends and family their photos, because you can just drop the disc in the player, and show it to everybody on the big screen.
Well, at first I thought I would like to put big-name songs on the DVD to go along with their photos. So I call up ASCAP, who manages the copyrights for just about every artist out there, and asked how much it would be to sync some big-name songs to my photos. I wanted to make about three copies of the DVD (one for the couple, and one for each set of parents). Try $50/song. Right...I'm only charging like $300 for the service as it is, and it takes a couple hours to set up one of these DVDs.
Wouldn't it be great if copyrights were still 17 years? Then I would access to everything produced before 1985. That would be an enormous library of music in the public domain to choose from. Now, though, thanks to Disney, I can't get my hands on anything after like 1920. The real crime is that most anything that old isn't making money anymore these days anyway. They've locked out all the music from the 30s, the 40s, the 50s...even though probably less than 2% of music from those eras is still making any money these days.
Disney got rich off the public domain in the first place. Snow White was a Brothers Grimm tale, wasn't it? Cinderella was a Chinese fairy tale (with magic fish instead of a fairy god mother). Tarzan? Public domain. The Hunchback of Notre Dame? I doubt they paid Victor Hugo anything. Little Mermaid? Thanks Hans! Disney raided the public domain gold mine of the 19th century, but they'll be damned if you can do the same for their creations of the 20th.
Sorry for the rant...just pisses me off that I have to use crappy public domain music, or compose it myself...which actually isn't that bad with Apple's Soundtrack that comes with Final Cut Pro 4.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
128K MP3s are promotional goods of NO commercial value outside their use in getting people to buy the real products, which are CDs and better than broadcast quality digital tracks. no moral or ethical issues here, other than the question of "why are people giving the record labels free bandwidth and promotional exposure?" Only RIAA propaganda says their is some. You can't believe everything coming out of your TV set.
Piracy has NOTHING to do with this, otherwise the RIAA would be spending their lobbying bucks on getting Congress to pressure foriegn governments into closing down bootleg CD PRESSING PLANTS pumping out bogus RIAA member content by the millions of copies.
This is about control. It isn't that the record companies mind us paying to distribute their content. It's that you and I have the same access to P2P channels to distribute our own material that they do, and they fear that they can't play on a level playing field even with billions in budgets and exclusive control over radio and major venue concert distribution.
Illegal? Certainly. But only because they bought and paid for politicians to make it so. The law said "swap audio on analog tape = legal, swap audio as broadcast-quality digital files - go to jail."
Your parents swapped audio tapes with ultimately, the blessing of the RIAA. Tape swapping got the word out and ultimately turned the Grateful Dead and ironically, Metallica into successes.
The record industry doesn't want it to be possible for musicians to succeed outside their system.
Not that it's a bad idea to stop uploading RIAA member tracks to P2P. They don't deserve distribution help. They deserve oblivion.
You really want to hurt the RIAA member labels?
If you just stop buying, they'll blame piracy and buy worse laws. Want Palladium made compulsory?
Just take every dollar you spend on entertainment and spend it on independent musicians. Go to their gigs, buy their records.
When the CEOs of the multinationals that own the RIAA labels find that the only record labels that are increasing profits are ones not affiliated with the RIAA or their lobbyists, the whines about piracy from label CEOs will cease to be accepted as excuses.
Their next logical move is to dump the brands the major CEOs have irretreveably tainted in the public eye. Their new investors will be buying catalogues and artists contracts, why would they be picking up the contracts of the management that destroyed their own companies?
Perhaps the new "Big 5" will be Apple, HP, Microsoft, Dell, and IBM.
Does this mean that music won't be run by fuckheads? No, but at least the fuckheads running the new music industry will live in the same world the rest of us do.
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