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Inquiry Into RIAA's Piracy Crackdown Tactics
MongooseCN writes "Sen. Norm Coleman started an inquiry to check the RIAA's tactics on attacking online music swappers. He believes the RIAA's tactics may not be taking into consideration the damage they do to innocent people. It's good to know that someone remembered people in the US have Rights." As a former roadie, Senator Coleman doesn't oppose file sharing penalities, he merely wants to make sure the punishment fits the crime.
Why did they have to wait so long? Couldn't this have been done _before_ so many people lost their money/got expelled. Do we really need to make so much noise before they make things happen? All in all, I'm glad they finally got their act together, but I worry that the only reason they're doing this is because the RIAA has something else planned.. Apparently, you only have rights if you belong to a group big enough to actually influence politics.
He believes the RIAA's tactics may not be taking into consideration the damage they do to innocent people
I'd be more intrested in questioning the legality of the RIAA's 'tactics'.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
to answer the first post - it took this long because now is the perfect opportunity for a politician to finally speak out and garner some public support for their election given the latest round of subpoena's has indicted innocent victims or third party individuals who were a matter of circumstance. It's best summed up in this paragraph:
>>> "The industry seems to have adopted a 'shotgun' approach that could potentially cause injury and harm to innocent people who may simply have been victims of circumstance, or possessed a lack of knowledge of the rules related to digital sharing of files," Coleman wrote. >>>
Before it was students etc they were filiong against and the claims were pretty justified - there wasn't much leeway for a politician to step up - now there is a distinct case to be made and popular support to be garnered from it.
Fear Breeds Knowledge
At the end of the article:
"I must confess, I downloaded Napster, and then Napster was found to be the wrong thing," he said. "I stopped."
So, he's a former roadie, and a Senator, and he waited until the justice declared Napster the wrong thing to stop using it? when he downloaded songs off Napster, shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
So yeah, go Senator, but I wonder if he's not just another file swapper with a louder voice than everybody else, who tries to hide the fact behind "I recognize the very legitimate concerns about copyright infringement" statements, so as to not be labeled as a pirate by the RIAA.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
class-action lawsuit against the RIAA by the innocent people caught in their massive web.
Fight fire with fire.
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Isn't this the guy ... Who, after his political opponent Paul Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash, gave his first televised interview posing against a small private plane in a hangar?
Dunno; would that be relevant, somehow? Is nobody allowed to have private planes after their political opponents die in plane crashes?
And so on. Interesting opinion. Unfortunately, it's incorrect.
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun back, Dowling v. the United States: 'It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner," that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, "is an infringer of the copyright."'
I know that this is playing to the gallery, but if we're simply going to redefine terms to suit ourselves, how about try a bit of it ourselves. For example:
Then we get a go:
Not perhaps technically accurate, but hey, they started it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Point 2: The RIAA is seeking the close assistance of republicans with point 1.
Point 3: Sen. Norm Coleman is a republican.
Point 4: The parties mentioned in (3), merely question the methods that the RIAA used to get their subpoenas and whether or not the penalties are affecting "innocent" people. He does not think that P2P is legally or morally OK to use. In fact, he calls the copyright infringement "theft", which clearly it is not.
Theory: RIAA uses its connections to the Republican party to pass new laws, all the while the unsuspecting consumer is egging the republicans on because they are "talking a good talk". While I'm optimistic at the sound of this inquiry, I won't hold my breath for a favorable outcome, and I am suspicious of Coleman's motives.
Current music industry goes down the tubes.
what happens to society?
New music industries rise up to fill the void. New industries that may actually compete with each other for awhile.
Cut the old dinosaurs loose. They're already extinct.
Their hooked jaws are losing grip on the intestinal walls of society. They keep releasing segments in search of more vulnerable places to attach but those segments are not faring well either and are being excreted by the host at a rapid rate.
All kidding aside, the RIAA is getting pathetic. Going after children now. What's next, small animals?
Even putting the debate on file sharing aside, if something isn't done soon the RIAA is going to have the court system so bogged down with all of these cases that others will fall by the wayside. No one group should have the right to monopolize the legal system in such a way.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWI'd just assert here that the fear among many musicians is that when (not if, because it will happen) the recording industry flops, there won't be any money for touring, which the musicians I know love best. Sure, they can still put on local shows, but it's expensive travelling all over the world, and the labels currently foot that bill. The labels also provide "mainstream exposure" because there are so few major labels and they are each fairly selective (though lately it would appear they're selecting the worst they can find). In a case where there are tons of independent labels, there becomes a flood of different things available - all well and good for those of us who listen, but the musicians are far less likely to be distinguished and will have a hard time finding money to tour nationally or internationally.
I don't like the RIAA or the record labels, either. Neither do most of my musician friends. But they are all worried about what happens when the labels fail, and I can understand their concerns. There's no clear-cut path for what happens next, and they're musicians, after all, not businessmen. They just want to entertain. Whether the current system works or not, it does allow them to do that, and as long as they're still able to put on national and international tours, they're not likely to turn tail from the labels.
There's a thriving industry of indie music already. Most indie bands do indeed tour, at least nationally and quite a few internationally.
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
Why not write to your elected representatives and propose a bill to limit the term of copyright to five years from the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years from the date of publication if no royalty payments are rceived within that time, after which the work enters the public domain. This term should not be extensible under any circumstances and, if any technological measures are used to prevent copying, at least one unprotected copy should be placed in escrow with the relevant authorities in order that the work can actually be placed in the public domain. Circumvention of protection on a work which has, or should have, already entered into the public domain should be explicitly permitted.
The whole idea of copyright is to provide a limited term of exclusivity so you can make money from your work, in return for the promise that one day, your work will enter the public domain. Frankly, five years should be enough time for anyone to make a fair profit {which is why I think it should be counted from the receipt of the first royalty payment}; and, if you haven't made any money out of it in that time, you're never going to, so you should cut your losses.
I'll maybe rewrite this in more bill-like terms and repost it, if anyone else thinks it's a good idea.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"any idiot could walk into a courthouse, lodge a form with a court clerk and the process is started."
Wait a minute. Could *I* do this? Could I perhaps inadvertantly target, say, certain industry associations, because my spidering software had mistakenly identified them as distributors of my IP? Could I then hold them to the same standards of proof that they are holding random Kazaa users, and force their lawyers to establish a precident, as the defendants, for just what you have to show in court before you can win such a case?
Seriously, it seems that there's a nice legal hack to be had in creatively abusing the ability to send subpeonas without a judge. Could someone who IAL suggest some possibilities?
support the EFF to defend our liberties
support the ACLU to defend our liberties
This I don't get. At least in this matter. What "liberty" do you have to pirate media via P2P? So what people don't like getting sued for pirating [in this case] music. Ah too fucking bad.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
" That's because if a Republican makes a legimate stupid mistake, everyone, including Republicans, jump on their case. If a Democrat does the exact same thing, "
An excellent example of this is Clinton vs Nixon. Nixon (a Republican) commits crimes, and the Democrats and majority of Republicans in Congress turn against him. Clinton commits crimes, and the Republicans, but almost no Democrats, turn against him.
While I respect your relatively low user id #, your views are somewhat mislead. Understand that here in America (don't know if you're american or not) we have a rule by majority. Concentrate on that word..majority. It takes a larger group of people to get hurt or angry before something will be done about what is hurting them. Until now the RIAA had both the loudest and the most numerous voice, thankfully the right number of people have spoken up for some action to finally be taken.
I will conceed that some corruption happens on the hill on a daily basis, it's gonna happen because some people feed on that. However, I will not conceed the point of view that all people who make a living running this country are corrupt. They do what is either in the best interest of their constituants, or they listen to those people when they change their minds (as a majority). He still needs to get votes to keep his job.
On a side note, yes attorneys have a large voice in DC, but that's because they hire a ton of folks to do lobbying for them. It's not what you say, it's how many voices you say it with.
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
Back in the early days of radio, the FCC had to step in and prevent record companies from PAYING radio stations to play their songs, so that people could listen to more than the music the record companies wanted to promote. Nowadays, the radio stations do not pay a fee to broadcast copyrighted music, though they could in theory be charged for it. The record companies know it would not make business sence to charge the radio stations for free advertising.
Nowadays, most artist's contracts are set up so that they don't make much at all from CD sales. That is the record company's cut. The artists make money from concerts. The only reason the artists bother with signing with record companies is the advertising and promotion that they provide. Without this adveritsing and promotion, artists wouldn't be able to command such large crowds while on tour.
But file sharing services have the ability to promote artists without the need for a record company to send free CDs to a radio station or put up posters and ads, or produce videos for MTV2, or market songs to Clearchannel execs.
This is good for artists. File sharing services, like radio stations are a form of airplay which serves to promote the artists. It's free word of mouth adverising - the best kind.
The record companies are scared out of their pants because they realize that they won't be needed if people can download the music they want when they want it. Without the record companie's monopoly on promotion and distribution, record companies know artists won't need them. And neither will consumers, since most computers nowadays come with CD burners.
Now freely and easily tradable, songs will compete on merit. The really good ones will make their creators famous and they will get rich off their popularity by giving live performances. Music will go on, customers and artists will be happier, but the record companies will be cut out.
OH NO! They scream! File sharing is *destroying our business model* government, protect us from these thieves!
Society as a whole does not hold 'business models' sacred enough to protect, so they say that this thieving will hurt artists and consumers. Most artists and consumers know better. The fact that record companies are on the verge of becoming obsolete is obviously a good thing. But that means their continued existance, and continued profit taking - if it is allowed to continue through legislation to protect their business models - is parasitic on the music industry as a whole and decreases the amount of fundage available for making music for consumers.
The current litigations against file swappers will, if continued, only cause people to switch to more anonymous file sharing networks. As there is a tradeoff sometimes between security/privacy and speed, consumers will choose the least secure system that they think will keep safe from the RIAA. If the RIAA breaks into that one, a more secure one will be built and used.
The record companies are doomed, and they know it, unless radical legislation is put into place to protect their 'business models' i.e. their ability to keep parasitising the artists and consumers they deal with now that they are no longer needed.
Eat at Joe's.
Disclaimer: This isn't about the RIAA, it's about the Interactive Digital Software Association. It could have happened with RIAA, though.
A client of mine got an email from their cable ISP yesterday, claiming they were violating their agreement by offering copyrighted materials (computer games) on KaZaA. The attached log (from the IDSA) had a timestamp of June 30th, three days before my client's new firewall picked up the IP in question.
A simple phone call cleared the matter up, but what if the copyright holder demanded contact information, instead? I'd hate to end up in court just because DHCP handed me a "dirty" IP.
Go read Federalist No. 10 (Madison's comments on rule by factions). America is absolutely NOT a majority-rules country. There are plenty of countries that are, and if you want to live in one of them, I can send you a list. If america were a majority rules country, we would not need a constitution or bill of rights; only ballots. Slavery would still be legal, gays would be oppressed (even moreso than they currently are), we would have a National American Church of Christianity (which you'd be forced to belong to and pay taxes/tithings to), and all sorts of other horrors. Rest assured, even if 99.9% of the population wants something, the minority is protected. At least in theory. Yes, a certain majority can amend the constitution, but history and the actual process involved show that that is very, very hard to do. An "Equal Rights (for women)" amendment couldn't even get passed.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.