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Anonymous User Challenges RIAA Subpoena
Arclightfire writes "First there was the setback of a New England judge throwing out an attempt to uncover the names of students at MIT accused of piracy and now CNet is reporting that a 'Jane Doe' is arguing that the subpoena violates her right to due process." There's also a Reuters story.
"The most important issue is that if you are innocent, if the RIAA has screwed up, it is critical that individuals have the ability to challenge the subpoenas before their identifies are compromised," said Fred von Lohmann, an EFF attorney.
.02
Definitly. Problem here is this: She also "participated" in the Kazaa file-swapping community but tried to prevent other people from accessing files on her computer, the documents state. So, while she was using it as a media player (*cough*) she was also "participating" (whatever that means). Just because she "tried to block it" doesn't excuse her. This isn't going to help the public much.
Just my worthless
"Anonymous User Challenges RIAA Subpoena" ...And he still cant post at score above 0 on slashdot. I didnt give much for this anonymous coward person until now. He should be a hero!
True ravers don't need drugs
I'm just curious as to how much money the RIAA is spending on all these court battles (which they will be foreced into)! Maybe they should be spending that money on finding new Artists or reducing the cost of exsiting material? Perhaps even setting up their own "online" song distribution system (as theres obviously a market for it [iTunes etc])
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
That's right, leechers should go to prison!
codegolf.com - smaller *is* better.
She mainly uses kazza to listen to music ripped from her CD collection and tries to prevent people from accessing her collection? that sounds a little fishy but it is irrelevent. The point is the unconstitutional methods used by the RIAA
The Television Wiki
"The courts have already ruled that you're not anonymous when you're publicly distributing music online," said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president at the RIAA. "Her lawyers are trying to obtain a free pass to download or upload music online illegally. Their arguments have already been addressed by federal court and been rejected."
Seems to me like this is an entirely different set of issues. As far as I know, the courts never addressed this on an individual, MY-rights-are-violated level. Surely her privacy rights are a lot stonger when asserted on her own behalf than when an ISP says they shouldn't have to disclose identities because that might be bad for whoever that might be that isn't represented in this hearing.
For its part, the RIAA said that Jane Doe's motion to intervene matters little, because a federal court has already upheld the validity of the subpoena process.
"The courts have already ruled that you're not anonymous when you're publicly distributing music online," said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president at the RIAA. "Her lawyers are trying to obtain a free pass to download or upload music online illegally. Their arguments have already been addressed by federal court and been rejected."
The obvious problem with this is: who says she's "publicly distributing music online"? A court of law? A judge? No, just the RIAA. Sure, it may later be shown that she was, in fact, doing what they claim. They may have enough evidence against her to convince a judge to issue a warrant or a subpoena. Or, the RIAA may have made a mistake again. We have legal procedures in place to prevent abuse of the system, and these procedures are not being followed. In the past, the RIAA hasn't been exactly careful when determining who is or is not distributing copyrighted MP3s.
Even scarier:
"We informed the recording industry that one of our customers intended to challenge and asked the RIAA to deal with the lawyers directly.
Instead, according to Deutsch, the RIAA went to court recently and filed a motion to compel Verizon to provide the name.
Surprisingly (for those of us who have long considered them to be an evil company), Verizon is clearly doing all the right things here. They're only doing what they've already been forced by a court to do.
I wish Jane Doe the best of luck. She'll need it. Oh, and by the way, the first article mentions the EFF is working on fighting this too; they're always accepting donations.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So, while she was using it as a media player (*cough*) she was also "participating" (whatever that means)
In her defense, I have gone to uninstall Kazaa on people's machines, and there are some that really do believe that its the only way to listen to their MP3's. I often have to explain to them that there are many other players out there that work better! The vast majority of casual users out there really just don't know any better, and that fact may have a major impact on these subpoenas. How do you prove that someone is computer literate enough to know they were doing something wrong?
Sound waves should be free!
It seems to me that whether she is guilty or innocent is irrelevent. The complaint here is that the RIAA is "circumventing" due process with their subpoenas, and it needs to be corrected.
now where can i send contributions? i'm sure fighting the riaa will be expensive.
There are a number of different issues in the spotlight regarding this problem. It seems that the RIAA's comment in the CNet story is trying to make copyright violations the issue... quote: "Her lawyers are trying to obtain a free pass to download or upload music online illegally"..
But in fact, this case is about the music industry prying into your personal life and invading your privacy. If you ask me, the RIAA is violating constitutional amendments that made this country what it is..
Let's just keep the different cases in perspective and uphold all laws instead of destroying others in the process...
That doesn't make sense because subpoena is part of the due process of law. So have can a subpoena *violate* due process of law? It is the other way around. If there was no subpoena, that would violate the right to due process of law.
-Brent
And the FBI is violating the privacy rights of child pornographers who use the internet to distribute the content by using the same methods.
One should read their ISP's Terms of Service. If it says "we will assist law enforcement authorities and copyright holders" (maybe not in so many words) then yer screwed. And even if it does not say that, then your complaint is with the ISP and not the RIAA. Afterall, as far as they are concerned, you're violating their copyrights (or the copyrights of their members; no matter how much you agree with them or not).
So these days, instead of people becoming educated and reading contracts they get into, they get mommy and daddy to hire a lawyer to sue for them.
Uhh while that may be true you didn't closely read the article. The main argument is that the RIAA's tactics are unconstitutional because they violate due process. Sure she's going to say she didn't do anything wrong but even if she did I think the case has merit on the grounds of the due process argument and that would very much help the public.
The Anti-Blog
Kids keep pitching tents in their pants hoping that some case like this will all of a sudden make downloading mp3z and 0-day warezezz perfectly legal. Of course that will never happen.
This is challenging the subpoena process, which a superior court has already upheld. So, most likely, nothing will come of it.
I'd like to see the case where someone is subpoena'd by the RIAA, and proves in court that they'd never offered so much as one copyrighted work for download. Like it was all fan fiction and independent music or whatever. Headlines blazing "music industry sues guy for doing nothing", RIAA lawyers with egg on their face.
I don't have a problem with them targetting people who are legitimately harming their business. But I have a problem with automated spiders flagging people to be sued or harassed. Automatic threat letters being sent to some person with the unfortunate name of Britney Spears, stuff like that.
They don't do a lot of fact checking before they launch these suits, and do absolutely none at all to send a C&D order. That's wrong and should be punished.
Anyways.
I love iPods mod me up.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
All she has to do is win, and that gives legal grounds for everyone else of the 1000 unfortunate souls to follow suit.
So, RIAA, when you can't sue the network or the users, what exactly are you going to do, will you finally ADAPT? Or will you try and buy/strongarm your way into another tactic to hang on to your ancient business model?
Survival of the fittest in action, unless the RIAA trims the fat, they're on their way out.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
I assume you mean this 'setback':
But Judge Joseph L Tauro said because the subpoenas were issued in Washington, DC they cannot be served in Massachusetts.
This really isn't a 'setback' at all. It was simple a procedural error. Those subpoenas will be filed again but this time in Massachusetts. Then they will be served.
Then there's this from the article:
"This is more invasive than someone having secret access to the library books you check out or the videos you rent,"
LMAO! So in other words, not very invasive at all. Besides, last time I looked checking books out of the library and renting videos was legal. Maybe because both are paid for! (Libraries operate on taxes in case you didn't know. That's what makes it a Public Library.)
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
That's a pretty lame excuse... I have several friends who have used Kazaa, most of which are PC novices, and everybody knew it first and foremost as a passport to free music. I don't think that argument will hold any water in court, particularly since(as noted above), she admits "participating" in the sharing network. There are plenty of reasons to despise the RIAA and their tactics, but this lady better have something good up her sleeve...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It seems like the RIAA wants to become another department of the US and hold a cabinet position with the President. I can just see it now, The Department of the RIAA, an army of us.
Obviously.. this 'anonymous' user is Georgy ;)
Jane Doe used the Kazaa file-swapping software as a music player largely to listen to songs she had ripped from her own CDs and to music that came pre-loaded on her family computer. Which makes the best music player; WinAmp, MusicMatch, or Kazaa... hmmm... Not that I support the RIAA in any fashion, but come on.
you could quite easily use it to show what kind of music you like, for example. and still not really share anything(because you have set the speed to zero, or by other means).
it's not illeagal to simply use kazaa now is it? it's ridiculous how riaa acts as a police(and court) on what you're allowed to do. it's not riaa's job, if they see something wrong going on shouldn't they report it to a 3rd party(mainly, the police) that is supposed to punish law breakers? or should i as a normal man be responsible for trying to catch pickpockets and have the power and ability to sentence them on the spot too? if so what use there of a court system that's meant to provide fair hearing and sentences.
-
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
this person knows how to rip her own music from CD. She's not using Kazaa to listen to her collection.
This isn't Joe Blow downloading songs and thinking that he has to use Kazaa to listen to them.
She's my heroin on white horse. I want to marry her. Now I just need to contact her... hrm.
Just as we keep telling them, their business model is outdated .... we need to understand that P2P download model is outdated. First the napster went, now P2P is gone. Just wait for the next generation of technology.
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
Ah, but no one has ever proven in a court of law that trading/sharing files on a P2P network is illegal. Maybe they've proven that people downloading them *can potentially* damage their industry, but it's never been proven illegal to share files. Not only that, what if someone is using a file-sharing system to download the music, listen once, then delete the file? That is a legit use, just like me handing a tape to my friend to listen to for a week is a legit "fair use" doctrine. What the RIAA is so scared of, ultimately, is that it's near impossible to actually make it harder to share the files. In the days of cassette's and CD's you either bought a recordable tape to dub your friend's CD or tape, or you you couldn't get a copy of it. It's almost worth the extra $5 to just buy the full tape. But now you don't need to buy anything other than the computer and internet connection to get TONS of stuff for *nearly* free. The cost is far, far less. So the RIAA and MPAA see their profits dwindle because they've got nothing new or innovative to offer. Guess what, that's their problem, not mine. And no, they cannot abuse the law to force me to do it their way. That's a monopoly, and what even bigger industry giants like Microsoft have already been convicted of.
I say more power to this anonymous "Jane Doe." She'll most likely win.
most of the people around slashdot are tech oriendted but what is going to happen with the RIAA goes after all the people that barely know how to use a computer, these people's defense is just going to be "whats an mp3?", "whats wrong with that?", then there going to end up in prision or at least major fines. The RIAA must just be focusing on the smart people (MIT student, Boston College) right now, then they'll get to the nubz.
I'm always unclear about the due-process and what it really means. Even if the (censored) wanted to get your name, address, etc from your ISP or even if you get your phone service from (censored), (censored), or (censored); can they just storm in like (censored).
This is like 1984's (censored-police, where even thinking bad thoughts can get you on a list. I mean that doesn't happen these days, does it?
Sincerely,
(censored)
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
It's really about time that people started standing up to the RIAA. Quite frankly, i think if you are illegally stealing files you deserve what comes to you. it's against the law to steal music. just because you're allowed to use the file sharing clients doesnt mean it's ok to steal music with them.
HOWEVER, the RIAA is simply out of control. they are sueing people without any grounds other than their own greed. ( ie: www.chewplastic.com ) I say screw the copyright associations and give the money back to the artists that MAKE THE MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE. i say screw the RIAA, and if need be, punish the people who are breaking the law via file sharing. it's still illegal to steal music/movies, etc... but i think the gov't should be controlling the punishment for such crimes, not the sueing of some rediculous ego-pimped company who things they own the world....
kinda reminds you SCO, no?
I haven't dared to boot into the windows because of the worms. Its linux or nothing and since the current wine CVS is in a mess I can't run kazaa. So the RIAA can shove it (and im not in the .us either so there)!
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
As a couple of others have pointed out, it does not matter if she is guilty or not. She could be the bloody Boston Strangler (and I am sure Jack Valenti would liken her to that) for all anybody should care. Rights are something that everybody has, and they have to be protected.
She is innocent until proven guilty (remember that phrase?). In other words, she is innocent until convicted in another trial with another jury completely unrelated to this.
The RIAA and the record industry as a whole are on trial here, not Jane Doe.
She should have your blessing, too, because she is fighting for your freedom from tyranny.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Since the goverment has no control over our country anymore, why should we be obliged to pay taxes and adhere to its laws?
Our legal system is set up so that it is very difficult for the police (a government employee) to get a warrant for a search, but the RIAA (a private company) can do it at will?
If there is some crime here, then I belive that the govenment should prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
Do banks supoena bank robbers?
Keep in mind that I have never used Kazaa or similar service, and do not belive in the whole "sharing" thing. But I refuse to have corporations coming into my private life for something the feel is suspicious. Can I get a supoena to look at RIAA's records for price fixing and their business practice because I don't like it?
This is not a slope that I want to see our govenment go down. If so, then they have relinquished all power over its people, and that will lead to anarchy and/or revolution.
Granted, if she didn't know that by running Kazaa she was serving files, the judge could be lenient. This could also get thrown back at Kazaa for users "not knowing" that the program was sharing their files.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Instead of Media Player and WinAmp .. Just because you don't, doesn't mean everyone else does. It comes back to the ole gun arguement again .. Lots of different uses, but just by owning one doesn't make you a killer. The RIAA simply cannot be allowed to be above the law, ever. They must be reigned in, and some of the senators are noticing the victims of this are mostly innocent and the punishment is not fitting the crime. $11k fines for a swapped song? Try $5.
If you download an mp3, get it of a cd, you will open it and play it with MS installed apps.
So how exactly would a complete and utter noob get to install kazaa to play an Mp3? I know far more people that are convinved that Windows Media Player is the only way to play their music, and who think that since it has windows in front of it Linux can't play Mp3s.
Oh and yes they are of course right. Kernels are well known for not playing music :)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The consitution is, in effect, the DMCA for the law itself!
So in effect... this is a true battle of corporate law vs. political law.
Will the RIAA be allowed to circumvent the law of the people in order to persecute a person based on a law of the people (established by and benefitting corporations).
This is more "contemporary political reality" raising it's ugly head.
Btw, you can go here at the eff to query the subpoenas.
Well, atleast here in the US, ignorance is no defence.
I don't know how that works out for you europeans though.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Has anyone else read the john grisham book the rainmaker? Its about a young lawyer who sues an insurrance company and wins something like $50 million....the underdog won and won bin. too bad this doesn't happen in real life. Does anyone else see a problem with the American leagal system when its almost a forgone conclusion that Jane Doe has no chance of winning. The fact is tho she will lose. not only because the Riaa will spend about 100x more money but because if they can prove she was sharring files, then she knowingly broke a law. whether you happen to agree with the law or not, she is still guilty of that. Legal systems are based on the fact that if you did it, you're guilty, regardless if you even knew it was against the law, if you only did it only one time, or if you did it for a good reason. for ./ readers i think this would be more helpful...
if (law==broken)
janeDoe=guilty;
else if(lawYouDontAgreeWith==broken)
janeDoe=guilty;
Has anyone come across an instance of the RIAA mistakenly handing out subpoena's to ISP's where the users have been distributing their own musical material? Or do they only go for their clients songs?
--Mods giveth, Mods taketh away--
At least clients/networks like eMule reward people for uploading and allowing incoming connections. During busy times, leechers on eMule have to wait about 4-5 times as long for files. I wish that eMule had an option to ban them all together, but when eMule servers get really busy, the leechers, or "LOW ID" people, can't get a single file.
More than enough BS
illegally uploaded/downloaded music, her anonymity should be protected. The RIAA is trying to extort money from individuals and frighten the community. They are NOT attempting to prove cases in court. In most cases, they couldn't. But the threat of extensive expensive litigation against a well funded corporate entity is enough for most people to buckle and settle.
ignorance under the law is no excuse.
from the stand-up-stand-up-stand-up-for-your-rights dept.
Ugh Michael. It's "Get up, Stand up," not "Stand up, Stand up." You are now the whitest man on earth.
This case serves no purpose, but to have the RIAA, going forward, serve sopoenas correctly (i.e. through a court). This case is not about sharing MP3's, although her lawyers seem to be about as off-base as the RIAA. Not much will come of this, except maybe some firmer stances on what Verizon and other ISP's are required to do in situations such as these. To my knowledge, that portion of the argument has already been upheld by a court, though. So much of this moot and dead in the water. Apparently, there isn't really a legitimate way of stopping these cowboys. Maybe I should create original material with similar names to popular RIAA artist tracks, offer them on Kazaa with a beowulf cluster and wait for them to download and prosecute me. Then, I could proove their tactics illegal and inaccurate. I dunno, I'll continue to boycott the bad music they sell for $17.99USD, as I am not interested in their digitized poop.
"Majority just means the idiots agree" -Ronh Atian
You have not heard much about the DMCA, have you?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
P2P sharing of copyrighted works is NOT illegal. Downloading without authorization IS illegal. Think about the difference.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
The RIAA sueing all the file traders
or
SCO sueing all the Linux users for licence fees.
They both have a few million lawsuits to get through in the next few years.
Now would be a good time to become a lawyer. There will be an unlimited supply of work for the next couple of thousand years.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
If there was a program available that did all the motions of sharing copyrighted material without actually doing so, and people started using it, RIAA and theirs friends would have a fair bit of work to do in order to prove what was used -- Kazaa et.al or their faking counterparts.
Does everything include nothing?
In Sweden it's currently (come Jan 1st most certainly) legal to _download_ but not to _upload_. I.e - using KaZaa is perfectly legal as long as you don't share yourself.
it's in my head
> Well, atleast here in the US, ignorance is no defence.
Well duh. If they allowed that defence no one would ever be convicted.
I'm wondering what music came preloaded on her computer? Did she buy it from Dell or did she buy it from her son who spent a semester at school on an OC-3 connection? It is not supprising that she used KaZaA to listen to her music. She probably heard about it from people or maybe those random popup windows came on and downloaded it for her and automated the ripping of her music to mp3 format. She was within her fairuse of the music ... untill KaZaA shared it for her. The RIAA is going after major file sharers, so how much music did she have and what kind of internet connection? I mean if she was on a 128K line she would notice that ammount of traffic slowing her down from just getting email.
When I run Ad-Aware on people computers at school I typically get 300 - 500 spyware associated hits. This is amazing and the student who owns the computer is like huh, thats why I get popup windows and why my computer is so slow?
IMHO there should be some way of regulating computers and their user, just like with automobiles. Should she be held accountable for attempting to disable file sharing? I tried to stop my lead foot from speeding but the cop didn't belive me.
People need to take the initiave and educate themselves on how to use a computer on the internet. Drivers education is mandatory in some states if you are under 18 years of age before you can legally drive a car. If you never took drivers ed you are a dumber drive according ot the insurance companies so you pay more. I'm tired of having to pay for stupidity of others when it comes to computers.
~ryan
First, easy enough, don't buy their CDs. If you think the music is too expensive, don't buy it. Second, don't upload, download or share and music associated with the RIAA. If you possess music files that were not purchased, unless the songs are free, it's stealing. Either buy the song or delete it. If nobody has RIAA music on their computers, RIAA can't use P2P stealing as an excuse. Third, don't even watch music videos or listen to the radio when RIAA songs are playing. Since advertising revenue comes from here, doing this will help them. When people start legally battling RIAA by ignoring them, then they will eventually die. Bottom line, music is arguable a luxury, not a necessity. There are many alternatives to RIAA music. Choose one of those alternatives.
Green Monkey san
NO.
Not only that, what if someone is using a file-sharing system to download the music, listen once, then delete the file? That is a legit use, just like me handing a tape to my friend to listen to for a week is a legit "fair use" doctrine.
You are retaining a copy of the music on your computer and now giving it to someone else.
Unless Kazaa deleted your file after they downloaded it, it would be the same.
Regardless, since when is ignorance an excuse?
... since the last decade of the 18th century (in the USA, anyway).
... until we have licensing for the use of a computer system, with basic computer-education to insure everyone is expected to have a certain level of knowledge, it is clear the law does not require that people know (or necessarilly be responsible for) anything their computer is doing without their knowledge.
Umm
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but ignorance of the activity almost always is.[1] It goes to intent, it goes to motive, it goes to opportunity. If someone buries a body on your property without your knowledge, you are generally not tried for collusion with the murderer. If you are, and you can demonstrate that you didn't know it was happening, you are most certainly acquitted.
If many people are using Kazaa because they believe they need it to play back their own, legally ripped mp3s, then the RIAA doesn't have much of a case. Copyright violations have to be willful and intentional to receive most of the punitive rewards, and with computers things are even murkier, as trojan horse programs (which Kazaa arguably is, in this context), worms, and viruses often hijack people's computers to do things they have absolutely no idea are being done.
Or are we going to arrest everyone whose computer has been comprimised by SoBig.F or whatever it's latest iteration is, for DOSing Microsloth's web services? After all, "ignorance is no excuse..."
[1]Willful, or negligent, ignorance of course is an exception. Having a good idea someone is doing something neferious, but saying "I don't want to know!" isn't enough to get one off. However, true lack of knowledge that something bad is going on, even on one's own property, is in most cases a valid excuse. However, a computer user not understanding what a trojan or trojan-esque program is doing on their computer hardly qualifies
And I don't see even this government stooping to licensing computer use anytime soon.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And by pleading the 5th, she is indicating that she might had done something illegal... a sure bet to get investigated further.
People, stop stealing, the government hates competition.
I can't wait. I have several dozen (Still Going) Mp3's shared on Kazaa.
They all have different names like:
beetles - penny lane.mp3 2.8Mb
shakira.mp3
All of which are my peronal ramblings about the songs or artists. None of which contains copywrited material.
F*ck the RIAA.
I get letters from them all the time at work.
User with IP x.x.x.x is sharing via the Kazaa network.
Sharing one or more of the follwoing:
(They list like 5 songs)
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah
Bastards are fishing for Tuna in a swimming pool.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
s/would/wouldn't.
Can you see them standing there in their tighty whities? I can.
Its all fun and games until you get caught. Erm whats p2p? I just used kazaa cause I thought it was the hip thing to do. Those files listed with the little bar thingies....... I thought people were just listening to them from my machine and it was just buffering them.
They already did, it's called the DMCA. There's also the CDBTPA bill that was withdrawn after 9/11, but will likely be resubmitted.
That's a monopoly, and what even bigger industry giants like Microsoft have already been convicted of.
I'm sure this threat will deter them. I mean, look at how successful the case against Microsoft. I mean, we now longer have to worry about them releasing Internet Explorer or Outlook Express products in the future! </sarcasm> We need a president and administration who give a damn about the average consumer before antitrust and fiscal responsibility and such will enter into the minds of corporate leaders.
I have rights! The Constitution protects me! Blah blah blah blah blah. These cases are civil lawsuits and will be decided by civil courts. The Constitution doesn't even enter into it. A judge would laugh you out of court if you tried to argue that the Fourth Amendment prevents the RIAA from serving you with a subpoena. This isn't the Supreme Court kids. And the RIAA isn't the Federal Government. Bringing up the Bill of Rights into a civil lawsuit makes about as much sense as killing flies with a sledgehammer.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
That was my point, dude.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
...could everyone that has recieved a subpoena file similar complaints and delay the RIAA efforts as they have to go state-by-state to clean it up? I have no legal training but the man-hours the lawyers would have to put in would surely cost the RIAA a pretty penny. Anyone know if this would work or not?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
this person knows how to rip her own music from CD. She's not using Kazaa to listen to her collection.
... I have almost all of my music on my hard drive in ogg format because it is easier and more pleasant to have all of my music at my fingertips than to fish around for CDs every 42 minutes, and NO, I absolutely do not under any circumstances engage in illegal file sharing), and then showed her another (or the same) nifty program to play them back. That program happened to be Kazaa, and it is perfectly likely that she had no idea it was making a chunk of her hard drive (and all of her music) available for others to copy.
This isn't Joe Blow downloading songs and thinking that he has to use Kazaa to listen to them.
"This person knows how to drive a car. She's not using her Corvett to drive down the highway."
Did you even think to semantically parse the statement you just made?
Of course she knows how to rip her own CDs. A friend probably showed her this nifty program to rip her CDs onto her hard drive (for convinience
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
IANAL! but Insecurity is not a crime!... If I want to set up a linux box on my network, lets say I set up an FTP server on that box. and I allow anonymous login. Then I don't look at , log into, or even think about that box for a year. Is that a crime? People can upload or download anything they want .. am I leagally obliged to monitor the server? Lets say I don't run anonymous login, but I have really easily guessable passwords, and people figure out a login and use my FTP server "without my knowledge" to swap MP3's. Am I liable for not picking a better password or monitoring my machine. I would like to think no. but really whether the awnser is Yes or No really only depends on how much money you have, If Bill Gates Or anyone else with a couple of Billion $ wants the awnser to be Yes, It will be Yes, If they want it to be NO it will be. Sad but true! There is no justice@!
How do you prove that someone is computer literate enough to know they were doing something wrong?
Nobody has to prove this.
Ignorance has always been a very poor excuse for not following the law.
I live in the boston area and I find really sad that their is no due process for cases like these. I mean I find it sad that the RIAA and MPAA are conducting a witch hunt for piraters and yet ruin innocent people through doing this. I know that MIT has a stringent policy on piracy. I also know that Northeastern MASS has that policy too. My hat goes off the girl for taking on the search and policy at the MPAA and RIAA. Because we all know that their are some that are innocent of these searches of peoples machines. Its a subject that 2600 in Boston hates, and we should support free speech and not greed!!
if the files you are swapping are encrypted then how would any of them be able to prove that you actually swapped a file with someone else...
LOW ID is differnet from a leecher, lowid is a client who can only initiate connections, for example people behind proxies.
leechers are people with a low credit.
you are making excuses, and you know it.
She ADMITS to using Kazaa to share. She KNOWS how to rip her files (and if anyone showed her how to rip them), I will put money on the fact that they told her to use either WMP or WinAMP.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
"Well, atleast here in the US, ignorance is no defence."
Ok, so you have a linux server on the net, you are a novice, I hack your server I use it to do bad things, it gets traced back to you, not to me, you get charged. You say " but I diden't know, I must have been hacked, it wasen't me... etc. etc. " the fact that you were "ignorant" of how to properly secure your machine should not make you responsible for the actions of another who hacked your machine. a license to use a computer would be nice but it dosen't exist as of now so this is all pretty much a grey area, I don't think that ancient sayings like "ignorance is no defence" are as clear cut in cyberspace.
This is not about ISPs giving up information.
This is about challenging the DMCA, which offsets due process by allowing subpoenas to be ordered by copyright holders without the approval of a judge.
The question of "Jane Doe" being guilty of file-sharing or not is irrelevant. The terms of the ISP are irrelevant as well.
Also: ISPs don't really care about copyright infringement. File sharing gets them customers. Chasing child pornographers is fine by them too, the nuciance it causes for them is far smaller than the potential loss of public good-will.
but this lady better have something good up her sleeve...
Nah.. nothing good... just the constitution.. which doesn't mean shit lately (since we're consumers now, not citizens)
Responding to the point about the lame excuse, a lot of people REALLY are that dumb. I do, however, feel that this woman really wasn't.
Get paid to code OSS
I agree with you in some sense. I guess the bigger point I'm making is that it's all about processes. Microsoft's current business process isn't working out too great for them, what with all the virii and cost of their product vs. quality of said products and such. OpenSource and file-sharing seem to be much more popular and successful processes right now than the processes of "closed source" and strictly controlled media distribution channels. I suspect that with people sticking up for the right to do things the way they want to (i.e. Jane Doe sticking up for her rights to follow her own "process" - using Kazaa) that we'll eventually begin to see the processes change. It's unfortunate that companies like Microsoft and organizations like RIAA and the MPAA don't see the desire to change processes by their customers and are trying to force everyone to "do it the good ol' way." Ultimately their customers will abondon them completely in favor of processes that work better - open source and p2p being two such processes that appear to be working better.
What's worse, if the US government doesn't recognize these process change requests and go with the flow, we'll get clobbered in the greater world economy and power structure as the new processes begin to produce products and services ten times better than the old way of doing things.
The Japanese auto-industry did it to the American auto-industry.
Let's face it, Microsoft changed the process of computing -> Bill Gates put a computer on every person's desk at home and at work. (Well, many people, you understand what I mean) And Big Blue nearly died a horrible death not recognizing the changes Microsoft was making for the world. Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot and once again, the small guys "get it", and the big ones don't.
So Kazaa is changing how we find musicians and the songs they write. The RIAA had better figure it out quick or they too will be dying a horrible death.
You don't even know how to write. Why are you posting here?
By other means, then, beause you can't set the speed lower than 24 kilobits per second in KaZaa.
Not that I disagree, but "Kazaa Media Desktop" does have media management/player functionality in the program, and their web page hypes those features over the P2P stuff. It's their way of pretending to be a legitimate program.
It's quite possible that a user wanted to use those features without understanding that they were sharing files. Kinda like how people suck their MP3s into iTunes or WMP without really understanding what's going on.
In the US, you are innocent until proven guilty.
But Oppenheim countered that "their arguments have already been addressed by a federal judge -- and they have been rejected. Courts have already ruled that you are not anonymous when you publicly distribute music online."
The above statement presumes that you are already guilty. At the very minimum there should be a hearing to validate that the a supeona is warrented (pun intended).
All your base are belong to us!
My heroine, my heroin.
Thank you - may I have another?!
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
The dude in trigun is a plant, related to to the weird biomass plant thingies that allow human habitation of the planet. And yes, it's an alien plant - hence the mobility and polymorphing stuff.
Unfortunately, AFAIK lower courts seldom rule a law unconstitutional without precedent. This one will have to be carried to the US Supreme Court, a long haul. I wish her luck. I'm glad to see the EFF there.
Since when has verizon been nice enough to notify it's users that their personal information is being requested. I thought that
;)
1) verizon's contract said it can disclose a person's personal info without notification
2) verizon has such a hard on for driving people crazy, that they would never do something to help a fellow out
am i wrong?
Sorry, but no. Fair use does not give you the right to make copies of music you haven't paid for, even if you delete them later. Fair use is not a "try-before-you-buy" law, it lets you do certain things which copyrighted items you have legally purchased.
just like me handing a tape to my friend to listen to for a week is a legit "fair use" doctrine.
Fair use doesn't even enter into this. If you lend a friend a tape you are not making a copy, and so copyright law has absolutely no bearing. You are simply lending out a physical item, like a library. If you mean making a copy of a tape for a friend, then fair use certainly DOES NOT allow this. It is simply too minor a crime to be prosecutted for, however.
If you'd like to review the fair use doctrine for yourself try here or here. BTW, you are correct in that there is absolutely nothing illegal in using P2P services to share non-copyrighted items, or copyrighted items where you have the owner's permission to share.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
They are only accused of violating the law. They have not been found to actually violate the law.
Should a corporation turn over any personal information of an anonymous individual private individual to another corporation.
Lacking permission of the individual this is generally not permitted.
In the case where there is a court order the individuals wishes are overruled by the government.
Should the government overrule a persons right to privacy? On what grounds? Accusation without evidence? Accusation with circumstantial evidence?
What protections will be in place for this private information?
If a company can overrule my privacy rights, I should be allowed some way to pretect them.
I am not suggesting privacy for criminals, I am advocating that innocent people should retain their privacy until there is at least a reasonable chance they are guilty of something.
Why don't you people just stop buying CDs?! I know that a large portion of Slashdot probably already does this, but you need to go a step further. Tell your family not to but CDs. Tell the same to co-workers, and anyone you can. The RIAA will not let up on its practices until one thing happens: THERE IS NO MONEY LEFT! They will fight like this until they have no money left. This is what happens when organizations are crazy and desperate. Look at SCO. Look at Scientologists. And now, the RIAA. This is what happens when organizations are desperate and out of ideas. They bring out the lawyers to try to bully and intimidate people into accepting them. Don't let them win.
You are retaining a copy of the music on your computer and now giving it to someone else.
Unless Kazaa deleted your file after they downloaded it, it would be the same.
Okay, that brings up an interesting angle. Suppose we had a file "sharing" system that did exactly this, in order to emulate the physical world. Naturally, the actual original media still exists as a separate copy, but the total number of copies after sharing will never exceed two (the physical original and the digital copy). If I understand the fears of the record labels correctly, they are _mainly_ afraid of one copy multiplying explosively, right?
There would be many ways to implement such a system. Here is one of the painfully obvious ones: when a file is about to be "shared", it is first rendered temporarily unusable on the source computer by a simple encryption, then copied to the destination computer, then the decryption key is passed to the destination, and then the key is destroyed on the source, and finally the file deleted at the source.
The source computer could obviously circumvent this sharing mechanism, but it would be very inconvenient since the files to be shared would have to be copied from a separate place each time it is "shared". My guess is that convenience is the principle driving force in this environment, and so the main mode of operation would tend to follow the basic rules, with circumvention being uncommon.
A dingo ate my sig...
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it your responsibility to know the law? If you get pulled over for speeding, the excuse of "I didn't know I was in a school-zone!" isn't gonna fly.
Hmmm....Prophylacticism....Did I just invent that word?
Kiddies, I've said this before and I'll say this again. If you HAVE to do P2P, install an open Wi-Fi access point on your home network. Keep all your goodies behind a firewall, but have that open Wi-Fi there. When the RIAA drags you into court, you will have a big wad of plausible denial on your side. There is NO LAW that makes you liable for unauthorized use of your network access.
Besides, if you're willing to share your music, why not share some bandwidth too?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Ignorance of the law isn't a defense.
Ignorance of the act is.
She ADMITS to using Kazaa to share. She KNOWS how to rip her files (and if anyone showed her how to rip them), I will put money on the fact that they told her to use either WMP or WinAMP.
The question that I didn't see answered, which is going to be very material to this case, was: what was she downloading? If it was music from independant artists or freeware, then she has done nothing wrong. Now I admit, most likely, she was downloading copyrighted music, and therefore in trouble, but if she claims she didn't, and can explain away her sharing as the legal kind, then the onus shoud be on the RIAA to prove otherwise, if they can't, and the judge isn't just another coporate worshiper, then she may just get away with this and set a very nice precident, something along the lines of, you actually have to file a suit and ask the judge to let you subpeona those records before getting them.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
We should have a law like that.
Fuck you, RIAA.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
subpeona machine.
I think the only way in the end to fix this problem is with bloodshed. A lot of bloodshed.
This is OUR FUCKING COUNTRY. BY THE PEOPLE. OF THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
Nowhere in there is "BY THE CORPORATIONS". These people are nothing more than big nosed middleman using bully tactics.
And the Supreme Court! Fuck them! Those bastards gave up on justice when they invalidated Florida's votes! Fuck them and their stupid asses!
The RIAA is acting like a rogue government body. I think what should happen is they should be taken out in the street and shot.
I had that problem too, until i discovered Apollon
It uses the kazaa network (with the FastTrack plugin), isnot quite as friendly/easy to use as kazaa but "'twil do, 'twil serve"..
the apollon site has all the links you need. good luck and happy grabbing
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
How about a frog in their pocket?
Ok, so you have a linux server on the net, you are a novice, I hack your server I use it to do bad things, it gets traced back to you, not to me, you get charged. You say " but I diden't know, I must have been hacked, it wasen't me... etc. etc. " the fact that you were "ignorant" of how to properly secure your machine should not make you responsible for the actions of another who hacked your machine. a license to use a computer would be nice but it dosen't exist as of now so this is all pretty much a grey area, I don't think that ancient sayings like "ignorance is no defence" are as clear cut in cyberspace.
Alright, I feel like I am getting trolled, but I couldn't resist.
That saying, to which the above poster was refering to, which is true, is "ignorance of the law is no defense." Which is a hell of a lot different than what you are describing. If you are truly ignorant of a crime being commited, even if it is using your property, then you have a pretty valid defense. Except in cases where the ignorance is willful, basically you see someone digging a hole in your yard at night with a big plastic bag, say about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, and you simply ignore the situation and don't report it.
So yes, the "ignorance is no defense" saying is just as valid in cyberspace as it is anywhere else, unless you are ignorant of the meaning of that saying. There is nothing magical about cyberspace, all the smae basic rules apply, its just the execution that gets fuzzy.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Go ahead, write that application. And within a week of release, you'll find a program out there (probably shared on your P2P netwrok) to periodically check directory A(original copy) and copy any files from it to directory B(the shared folder) whenever one goes missing.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
She's sticking up for her right to due process, not her right to follow her current process of obtaining music through kazaa. I'm sure that if there is any success on this front, she will then moev on to stick up for her right to use kazaa.
I just had the bestest idea ever! We should make a catalogue of prime RIAA music hits, and use the Free Software song, and make tons of copies, and rename the files to the catalogue of RIAA music hits, and offer it up on Kazaa! Then, get targeted by the RIAA, take 'em to court, and play all the songs, which are really all just the Free Software song, for the judge to show just how full of shit the RIAA is! w00t.
Let's see, you have the huge coporations who own most of the govenment at this point versus an average serf, er... citizen. Not to be cynical about it, or maybe just to be cynical about it, but I don't think this lawsuit has a snowball's chance in hell. I would love to see this person win her case, and maybe undo some of the damage from the DMCA, but I just don't see it happening. The RIAA is going to do everything it can to convince the judge that she is just another pirate who is trying to hide behind that annoying privacy thing, and that the DMCA is necessary to finding and persecuting, er... prosecuting her. And the judge will probably buy it.
Perhaps I have just given up, but I think at this point we mihgt as well go all the way and rename the USA the UFSC (United Feudalistic States of the Corporations).
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Not to address her particular claim of having used Kazaa as a media playing device for her music, it IS a legitimate idea.
Say you have all the music/songs you like from YOUR CDs copied to YOUR computer at home. Say this computer has an always on broadband connection. Say you have a laptop or are visiting a relative/family member with a system also connected to broadband. You don't want to fill you laptop HDD with music files, you have them on your home PC. You don't want to carry around a bunch of CDs. So, you plugin your laptop to your friend's/relatives broadband connection and listen to YOUR music from YOUR computer in your new location. Kazaa makes a perfectly good app for doing this. A lot of other P2P apps could work the same way.
Whether or not SHE was actually doing something like this is not the point. It IS a possibility and fully legal means of accessing YOUR music or data. No one can restrict you from listening to YOUR music (or watching YOUR movies) anywhere you want to. They don't like the method you used to do this? Tough shit.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
On that note, i wholeheartedly support Jane Doe and i'm glad Verizon backed her up with their own motion opposing the RIAA's motion to compel.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Nah.. nothing good... just the constitution.. which doesn't mean shit lately (since we're consumers now, not citizens)
I know a place where the constitution doesn't mean squat... the supreme court.
As you pointed out, yes, there certainly are legal ways to use a P2P network (such as downloading music only to sample it and then delete it when you've listened to it once).
I think the problem is, once the RIAA realizes this is the case and they can't realistically go after people for downloading the music, they'll go the other direction and attack anyone serving the music. (If you don't own a legal copy of the music yourself, you're not allowed to "loan" it out to others like a library, even if they *are* only listening to it once and deleting it. Real lending libraries and rental places own legal copies of everything they lend out.)
This is pretty much how things went down with commercial software offered on BBS systems (pre-Internet days). I never saw a BBS user get in legal trouble for downloading commercial programs from BBS's, but they went after the system operators for making the files available.
Where it gets interesting, though, is with trying to prove a user doesn't actually have a legal copy of music being shared online. Unlike commercial software, there's no unique "CD key" needed, or registration with the company producing the work. Not only that, but CDs are cheap. If they cited you for distributing 50 songs, you could buy all 50 CDs, used, for as little as $100 or so - and they'd have a pretty hard time proving you didn't own those before you posted the songs.
so how would anyone new join in? by sharing worthless files? or do you want to keep people away and maintain a small clique of 1337 h4x0rz ?
How do you prove that someone is computer literate enough to know they were doing something wrong?
Nobody has to prove this.
Ignorance has always been a very poor excuse for not following the law.
That's not right, maybe in life or death situations, but not understanding computers should not be a crime.
Since the RIAA is all into paying the owners of copyrights, I wonder if they have bought SCO licenses for every Linux machine they have?
What? You mean SCO hasn't PROVEN their claims yet so the RIAA doesn't have to pay?
However, the RIAA hasn't proven the case against Jane Doe, but she DOES have to pay?
Riiiiiiggghhhttt.....
I am a strong believer in 'innocent until proven guilty', but I also see the humor in the irony of the RIAA winning.
Just imagine that it was impossible to find any music by any RIAA members online. People would go to the p2p networks, and only find music of artists that encouraged their files to be traded. Some of them wouldn't have the polish of commercial artists, but there would be enough "good" music for people to be happy. The end result would be diminishing interest in the RIAA bands.
Be careful what you wish for...
( As a footnote, if you do want to share music online, check out the bands and artists that allow their work to be redistributed freely. Listen to their music, and, if you like them, put them into your 'share' folder of your p2p app, with the information in the id3 tags [or whatever ogg uses], and a text file in the same folder explaining the copywrite information and links to the band's website. Of course, once you end up sharing enough megs of files this way, you'll probably get sued by the RIAA, so make sure you have a good lawyer and can countersue for costs. )
Copyright is a strict liability offense. This means that civil copyright violations do not have to be willful. A willful violation is more serious than a non-willful violation. Copyright law raises the maximum salutatory damages from $30K to $150K if the action is shown to be willful.
... copyright law is far more evil and perverse than even I believed. The idea that someone can sneak into your office, use your copy machine to illegally copy and distribute a book, and then get you thrown into jail for up to five years and fined $250,000 per offense is utterly and completely unjust, and worthy, quite frankly, of a violent change to the system (if need be).
Good God that's appalling. You are correct
Or is this limited to the copyright violator? If so, my point stands. It is not the unwitting user who has accidentally, and unknowingly, made a file accessible to others to download who has violated copyright law, it is the person actually doing the dowloading.
So, unless contributing to another's act of copyright violation doesn't require knowledge (which means the scenerio I outlined above is possible, in which case we should all be polishing our revolutionary guns [toung in cheeck, folk, toung in cheek. Holster those handcuffs, Mr. Spook.]), then the unwitting Kazaa user whose files someone else is copying is still off the hook.
Otherwise, quite frankly, any use of any computer within the boarders of the United States carries with it an unacceptable level of liability, and we should all either relocate to a saner jurisdiction or go back to using abicusses.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Someone a while back said someone should write a bot that gave a list of filenames, and linked them to garbage, to plug up the DMCA and RIAA enforcement bots.
http://cbservices.dyndns.org/Anti-DMCA/Here it is.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
This strikes me as a statement made by someone who knows he is going to lose. What he failed to mention was that it was upheld by the DC Circuit Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
Now if you've ever studied the law, you probably know that the circuit court decisions are only considered binding in the circuit in which they were filed. When a Massachusetts court ruled that the subpoenas were invalid in their court system, that means that the RIAA in those cases is now bound by the decisions of the 1st circuit courts, which may not match those of the DC circuit (and probably won't, given that the DC courts are one of the more conservative circuits, and thus more likely to be friendly to the RIAA than the 1st circuit would be....
Now enter Jane doe in Sacramento, CA. California is part of the 9th circuit. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is well-known to be one of the most liberal circuits in the country. It also issues the most zany rulings of any circuit, probably largely to force touchy issues to the Supreme Court. (It is the circuit with the most overturned rulings as well, though, so don't assume that a favorable ruling there will necessarily stand.)
The point is that this won't end until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue, and to my knowledge, they have not. This injunction filing in a California court is a very good and potentially effective step towards kicking the abusive parts of the RIAA squarely in the nuts.
Not all of the RIAA is technologically inept, though. I've dealt with parts of the RIAA recently, and they were very professional and courteous. It's too bad their upper management has taken that organization, which performs a lot of very useful services, and corrupted it, co-opting it to make abusive attacks on the public. I daresay that they do not speak for all of the RIAA, much less for all of its members. Here's hoping they get put in their place.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
"She also "participated" in the Kazaa file-swapping community but tried to prevent other people from accessing files on her computer, the documents state. "
This is bogus; unless Kazaa reset itself after the no-sharing checkbox was selected, or the no-sharing checkbox doesn't mean a damn thing. Either way, the chick either failed to adequately ensure that the program wasn't sharing files, or didn't much care. Did she never check her firewall?
If she says she tried to stop the program from sharing her files, then she knew the program was capable of sharing files and that the sharing was wrong. What is her legal case once the subpoena issue is dealt with? I'm sorry your Honor, yes, I knew the program could share files, yes, I knew I wasn't supposed to share the files, but all that counts is I tried real hard to stop the program from sharing files?
First thing any judge with half a brain is going to ask is 'were there other programs that would let you organize and play your files?' Answer; thousands of such programs.
And then he/she will tell her that the only reason why she was using Kazaa was so that she could download other people's files -- and while the RIAA isn't so hot to nail downloaders (they want the uploaders), all the RIAA has to prove is that she downloaded a few copyright-protected mp3's to prove she deliberately was violating their copyright, and she's on the hook for all fines and legal fees. Is she hoping that the RIAA never kept logs of her activities on Kazaa?
She's stupid for fighting this; she's hoping the whole mess will go away. She should seek a settlement and uninstall Kazaa. It's a spyware-installing poc anyway.
how they prove that it was any given individual sharing files? For instance, there's 5 people in my household. All of them have access to the computers. The internet service is in my name. Just because someone is out there using my service doesn't mean that it was *me*.
It has always been this way in the trading community. The people sharing complaining about leechers...
If you're going to share, then share. If not, then don't and shut the fuck up. There will always be more downloaders than uploaders... Duh, that's the nature of the beast... Man, what a bunch of dumbasses.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
As they download files, chunks of the files they have already downloaded become available to other users.
Yes, it sucks for users who don't have any content, but once they start downloading files, they have chunks to share with others.
As for getting their first files, they could go to special servers for people with no files. This could automatically be handled by eMule.
More than enough BS
Thanks
The word you're looking for is "digital library". It has been proposed before, and no doubt will be again. :-)
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Yes, I said this "Copyright infringement only becomes criminal when it occurs on a massive scale". Downloading $1000+ worth of music in a six month period seems a tad excessive to me. Of course, the FBI does not track file sharers, and gathering the evidence to prove you infringed that much in the necessary time period would be quite difficult. I know the RIAA is trying to use bogus calculations to exaggerate the level of infringement, but hopefully these efforts will be tossed out by the courts. AFAIK, to date all actions against individual file sharers have been civil in nature, not criminal.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Now I admit, most likely, she was downloading copyrighted music, and therefore in trouble, but if she claims she didn't, and can explain away her sharing as the legal kind, then the onus shoud be on the RIAA to prove otherwise, if they can't, and the judge isn't just another coporate worshiper, then she may just get away with this and set a very nice precident, something along the lines of, you actually have to file a suit and ask the judge to let you subpeona those records before getting them.
The thing is, she is entitled to due process whether or not she is innocent or guilty.
The fact that she is very plausably innocent (though quite possibly not) should serve to underscore this point to the unwashed masses whose kneejerk response is to scream for the pirate's head on a platter hours before the court papers are even filed, but it should have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on her contention that subpeanas being issued without court order identifying individuals for acts of potential barratory by a cartel are inappropraite and probably unconstitutional.
Copyright law is appalling in that one can be put into prison for 5 years for doing something utterly unwittingly and unknowingly. If in fact one can go to prison for utterly unwittingly and unknowingly contributing to someone elses violation of the law (who themselves may be doing so utterly unwittingly and unknowingly), then we really are living in a police state the awful powers of which we are just now waking up to.
It has been rather obvious to anyone in the digital world that copyright is the tool for oppression and censorship of those in the developed world (in the latter 20th century and 21st centuries, at least), but to think that people can be imprisoned for events to which they are peripherally bound without their knowledge is truly unthinkable. I'm not talking about ignorance of the law, which has never been an excuse, but ignorance that an action has even been committed (by oneself, or someone one has a connection to that makes them an unwitting contributor).
Certainly if this woman didn't know Kazaa was sharing her files with others on the internet, she not only wasn't aware of the copying that was going on, she wasn't even aware that she was contributing to the potential act.
Any system that would hold someone in such circumstances guilty of anything or hold them accountable for even one penny of damages, much less imprison them, is a system that needs to be scrapped immediately and, if necessary, forcefully. (to my knowledge, however, contributory copyright infringement does require knowledge of the fact, or at least "any sensible person should have known", but IANAL and I could be wrong. If I am, it is past time to emigrate or take up arms, and the former is a much higher percentage game than the latter, so I'm outta here)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
idiot
so how would anyone new join in? by sharing worthless files? or do you want to keep people away and maintain a small clique of 1337 h4x0rz ?
The parent does not quite understand the eMule network. lowid is when a client is behind a firewall or proxy or something and can't accept incoming connections. eMule doesn't have a penalty for not sharing enough files. Although the client will up your maximum download rate if you raise your maximum upload rate.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Personally, I've been waiting for someone to offer this defense. By either configuring the P2P application to not allow uploads, or by blocking the port used for uploads at a firewall, you can have thousands of song titles appear as shared when in fact they are not. From all I've read about the RIAA methods, they don't actually download any of the files, they simply compiled a list of accounts showing thousands of files shared. That in itself is not a violation. To be in violation of their Copyrights, the user has to actually allow those files to be downloaded from their PC.
In summary, this WILL benefit the public - by setting the precedence that the RIAA must show the person was actually sharing and not just appearing to share their Copyrighted works.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Because he knows how to type?
Jurisdiction. According to the Constitution (Art. III, 2):
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Minis-ters and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Contro-versies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of dif-ferent States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
"In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Con-gress shall make."
Appellate jurisdiction has been conferred upon the Supreme Court by various statutes, under the authority given Congress by the Constitution. The basic statute effective at this time in conferring and controlling jurisdiction of the Supreme Court may be found in 28 U. S. C. 1251 et seq., and various special statutes.
Didn't Ms. Rosen already state that "If you're using KaAaA today, you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song -- not what the artist did in the studio..."?
1 95 %2C3492869%2C00.html
http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0%2C24
If that be the case, does the DCMA really apply (and therefore the subpoena) since the premise of the law was to stop "perfect digital copies"?
Seems odd to apply a copyright law to something that was "not what the artist did in the studio", and especially when no one else is profiting from the violation (I can draw a picture of Mickey Mouse for my own personal use [and even give it away] without breaking the law. It's only when I try to sell it...).
The only complaint is by them means and format. I really question the application of the law.
It's times like this i feel relieved i live in Canada.
Now i'm not sure if the RIAA can launch legal action against Canadians (IANAL, although I believe they can't), but even if they can I'm pretty sure they have enough to do in America as it is...
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Always check RIAA Radar before buying any music.
Of course, if you hate software patents, too, you should not buy from Amazon like magnetbox.com suggests.
I can only think of one or two artists that are published by RIAA members, and I can live without them.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
However, what really throws things in the computer user's favor is Chapter 10, subchapter D, section 1008.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?It seems to me that this whole thing is a sham. The RIAA and others got laws passed that cost us money to protect their copyrights. Then when people actually start taking advantage of the intended purpose of those laws, they come back and whine that "oh, those laws don't apply here."
I call bullshit.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
But deliberately running a P2P server could could be criminal if it distributes songs worth $1,000 in 180 days. Using Apple's $0.99 per song retail price, a well connected P2P server could easily do this. Actual prosecution would require that the a Federal prosecutor file changes. The RIAA cannot ask a prosecutor to do so, but not force them to file.
At least so far, all of the RIAA's actions against P2P users have been civil not criminal. They have gotten the government to use criminal law against large scale counterfeiters.
There is much confusion in these discussions because of the distinctions between criminal and civil law. If your knowledge of the law comes from watching Law & Order on TV, then you may think that criminal law is the only law that exists. Civil law is thought to be too boring for TV drama. Shows like Law & Order will take real civil cases and turn them into criminal cases by having someone connected to the case be murdered and/or raped.
You don't really understand the law at all do you? It IS NOT legal to download music to sample it once and then delete it. The only exception to this is if the copyright holder allows you to do so (and this is not typically done through downloading the song to your HDD, but rather through low-bitrate streaming.
Also, do you not understand that these subpoenas are not going after people downloading the music, but rather those that are serving it...
And since when are you allowed to share music that you own online? Last time I checked, you're not.
Please, stop spouting false information and do a little research before you post next time. A wise man once said that it's better to keep your mouth shut and let others think you a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
but not understanding computers should not be a crime
I don't know how to use the brakes in my car, so I don't stop at stop signs.
No offense, but that is idiotic. That doesn't prevent copyright infringement! I'm very surprised that the EU allows that law.
Funny Pics
Ok .. so just a question.. imagine this if you will. Lets say that I'm a cracker, I do all sorts of illegal stuff on the net .. so I set up a windows box, with no virus protection and I set up back orifice on it, and leave it wide open. I would think that if I am accused of anything, they would seize my computer see that the back orifice "trojen" is on the computer, so when I claim that "I diden't do it" they would have to prove that I was sitting at the computer to prove that I did it since back orfice allows about the same control on a windows box that the console does. I would like to know exactly how they can prove that "I" was sitting at my comupter between x and y on whatever night, even if I was in my house, they can't really prove that I or anyone else was on the machine. Can They? again, this is a windows box,lets say win 98 (no logging etc.)
Notice how I wrote "Come Jan 1st"? That's because the Swedish version of the EUCD will come into effect then.
"Fair use" in Sweden allows you to make copies of music you own and share with family and close friends. One of our ministers did just that as a christmas present for her relatives (she even downloaded the music from the net). The criminal investigation was dropped.
I see no difference between that and taping a show on TV to share with a friend. I would be surprised to find anyone here who would think of that as illegal.
it's in my head
Well, that makes sense. Copyright is to do with the right to copy. When you download a protected work, it is the owner of the server who is making the copy, not you; you are merely recieving the copy.
In the context of KaZaa, a client is also a server unless you specifically disable that function. Once you disable that function, you are no longer distributing copies, merely recieving them.
Is it not the case that the RIAA is subpoenaing those who are sharing the works to which they own the copyright? This does seem to align with common sense, as well as the practical issue of monitoring who is recieving such illegal copies.
you don't know how to use brakes,, you don't get a license to drive.. Last I checked you diden't have to pass a comptency test to use a computer. Not that I'm saying you shoulden't have to .. but that's another discussion.
It's the same deal in Canada.
Now what if a host uploaded random data instead of a MP3? The catch is, that the random data can be transformed into a MP3. Technically the MP3 was created on the user's own computer and not shared at all.
To put it another way, if our computers were infinitely fast, all you would have to do is give someone a MD5 hash of a MP3 and the computer would eventually be able to generate the MP3 from only the MD5 sum. You can already do this today, but the time it would take to generate the MP3 would not be worth the effort.
But using my MD5 example, does transfering the MD5 of a copyright MP3 count as the same thing as transfering the MP3 itself? Both can be used to play the same song. (given enough computing time) It gets even sketchier because my e-mail to my grandma could also be transformed into a MP3 given the right transformation algorithm. Remember it's all just 1s and 0s, you can do whatever you want with them.
So what I'd like to know, what exactly does the law cover here?
Felony oregano trafficing?
~Tommy Boomfiger http://www.gotapex.com/forums
Yeah, kinda like the Windows users who get jailed because that OS is fucking up most of the Internet, including large corporations email/network systems.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
"Random House Publishing Sues Every Library in ths US" I go to a library, check out a book, read it, then give it back. Does this violate the copyright?
After reading this statement, I'll admit I haven't done extensive research into the subject, but it's all starting to sound like another case of monopoly, something akin to another Standard Oil. A vertical monopoly I believe it was referred to. I'm going to have to go home and do some research back to my history and econ classes.
How would we even begin to fight something like this?
99% percent of users do not know how to disable file sharing. And, just about everyone I know who uses Kazaa doesn't realize that when you click the X, the program is still running in the background (which is when most music unknowingly uploaded). Never overestimate the average user.
Everyone says ignorance of a law is not an excuse, but, with hundreds of thousands of pages of US law on the books, it seems unreasonable to have a life where you must check with a lawyer before you do anything.
So, ignorance of the law SHOULD BE an excuse.
This is my sig.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Ya know, it would be interesting to see a virus that infects lots of systems and passes around MP3 files as its activity.
Unpatched systems would allocate some percentage of the host disk for MP3 storage, hold it there, and occasionally bounce it across to
other hosts and advertise its contents. Voila -- P2P file sharing using insecure systems as the hosts.
Would the RIAA then sue M$akers of vulnerable system software?
Wouldn't this basically mean that they'd be connecting with other people with nothing to share?
No I wasn't. Nothing gives you the right to make copies of copyrighted works without the owner's permission, with the exception of fair use and other similar, more specific, statutes.
While this particular usage (temporary P2P downloading) isn't explicitly stated in the body of law, it could very well be supported by a judge anyway. There are other means by which you can do the same thing---the radio, the music store, the library---and as such, creating that copy does no more harm than walking to the music store, demoing the CD on one of their little machines, and leaving without buying it. In all cases, you have listened to it once, but have not kept a copy.
When you listen to the radio, the radio has paid to distribute the copyrighted work to you (you are allowed to copy songs of the radio, BTW). Listening to music at the music store or borrowing from the library has absolutely no bearing on this, since you are not making any copies, just borrowing a physical object. It doesn't matter if you feel that you haven't done any harm, or that it is the same thing, the execution of the act (copying a copyrighted song) is illegal, even if you delete it later. An analogy could be if you ask your neighbor to borrow his car vs. if you take it without his permission. Even if you bring it back, and you feel that "no harm was done," or "it's the same thing" it would be illegal to take his car and you could be prosecuted (not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you get my point).
Generally, in order to obtain damages, there must be harm. A copy made without harm, such as an archival backup copy, cannot be ruled as infringement. Temporary copies of computer programs for execution purposes are not infringement according to the DMCA. Section 512 provides similar protection to ISPs who cache temporary copies of material.
When did I say that backup copies weren't legal, they are expressly protected under Title 17. However, you are talking about apples and oranges here, since all of the rights you mention only apply if you have a legal copy of the copyrighted work. You do not have the right to make "backups" of software you don't own. As far as determining harm and damages, that is left up to a judge to decide that on a case by case basis. However, a judge may very well decide that making illegal copies of copyrighted works, regardless of the duration, IS harmful to the copyright owner, depending on the circumstances.
Care to explain how a computer doesn't qualify? Or, for that matter, how making a tape for your friend doesn't qualify (since that's the exact thing that this passage of law was meant to protect)? Are we not paying that $8 to the government so we can use that CD burner in that way? Are we not paying extra costs on the media to go back to the copyright holders?
After rereading this passage several times I believe what it is saying is that you may use your recording devices (including computers) in any manner that you want, providing you are not violating any other copyright sections of course. This means that while you may be able to make a backup CD for your personal use, I don't see anything in there that gives you a right to distribute copyrighted works, including giving copies to your friends. Of course, IANAL, and if you seriously intend to use this defense in a court of law I suggest you get the advice of a good IP lawyer.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
This is only delaying the inevitable. If the courts hold that the RIAA's subpoena's are unconstitutional (after multiple appeals), guess what?! They'll legislate into existence a new process with the same results. Namely ISP's receiving subpoena's and people getting sued. You really think that after this much trouble the RIAA will/would give up?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
SCO is using trumped up, untrue (at least until proven otherwise) press releases and obviously basing much of their arguement on code that is NOT theirs, that they DO NOT own copyright over and is in NO WAY a violation of their IP. Basically, put in simpler terms, they are lieing.
The RIAA is at least representing real copyright violations in some cases. Let's face it, though Jane Doe may be completely innocent, and certainly the RIAA has made gross mistakes in the recent past, no one, even here on /. can deny that there are those who use p2p file sharing software to basically aviod buying music.
SCO is using lies and deceit and running an extortion racket pure and simple, whether you believe that is to simply pump up their stock price or to extort money out of innocent end users of Linux, what they are doing is just plain wrong and should be illegal.
IMHO to even hint at a similarity between the RIAA suits and SCO almost, unintentionally lends credence to the SCO claims. There are those who feel that the RIAA has every right to persue those who share copywritten files. Whether you or I agree with their tactics is not the point, in part, the basis of their claims are legitmate to a much greater extent than anything SCO has uttered.
Please let us not confuse the two here especially amongst the knowlegeable!
The RIAA is using unconstitutional tactics to persue their cause and that is definitely something to be up in arms about and I support Jane Doe, whoever she is in the fight to uphold her constitutional rights. SCO is persuing an entirely bogus CAUSE in the first place so with them the cause itself is wrong.
Thanks for listening, we now return you to your regularly scheduled /. postings.
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
The question that I didn't see answered, which is going to be very material to this case, was: what was she downloading? If it was music from independant artists or freeware, then she has done nothing wrong. This would be true only if the artist released his/her work onto the sharing network. Just because an artist isn't backed up by the RIAA goonsquad doesn't mean that it's ok to rip him/her off.
And since when are you allowed to share music that you own online? Last time I checked, you're not.
Silly me. I better unshare those recordings of my original music.
You misunderstand what the LowID in eMule/eDonkey network represents. Leechers come in all flavours, Low ID and High ID. A Low ID signifies that you are behind a firewall and/or cannot accept incoming connections. A High ID is derived from your IP address, as far as I know. Mine changed when I changed my static IP. Obviously, a leecher can have a High ID; leech status is established via the rating numbers that appear in user info.
Now no one likes Low IDs (and if you CAN accept incoming connections you should check your config or try a different server) because somehow the false rumour got around that Low IDs are leeches. They can't upload to as many people (to other Low IDs in other words), but they're not necessarily leeches.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
It would effect whether or not the RIAA is allowed to subpoena those records though.
I think that if someone made up some fake mp3's that matched size and name of real mp3's and placed them up for download when the RIAA comes looking you can argue that you did nothing wrong, while maintaining that they got your information without due process.
True, but follow the thread please. That has nothing to do with what I was replying to.
I still strongly support Apple's approach on this. I know it is not really a P2P model or "file sharing" but since we all know the heart of the matter is, music companys want $$$$ and consumers want a cheaper way of getting their favorite songs. I think the Itunes store hit the nail on the head, everyone seems to be happy. The ONLY complaint I have is that they still are building up their collection, but the model is great and seems to make both sides happy.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
That's not even a valid example. This is why you have to be licensed to drive a car. Are you licensed to operate computers?
A classic strawman response, with a bit of equivocation thrown in. There is a difference between "owning" music in the sense of buying a CD, as the grandparent meant it, and "owning" the copyright. The difference being, basically, that it is illegal to distribute the former without permission. But I suspect you knew this, and IHBT.
It doesn't matter if you knew it was stolen because the law assumes that you did. Same thing here, "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" has been quoted so many times i couldn't even tell you who said it first
If you buys stolen goods without the knowledge they were stolen, you foreit the goods (which is just if not entirely fair to you they buyer, as they do clearly belong to someone else).
Once again, I will reiterate. Ignorance of the law is never an excuse ("I didn't know hitting him on the head with a baseball bat was illegal!" doesn't fly), but ignorance that something was done ("I didn't know John Wayne Gacy buried the corpse on my property!") almost always does equate to innocence. Clearly, "I didn't know I was buying stolen goods" as a criminal case should fall in the second category (you had no idea you were buying something that was stolen), and just as clearly it should fall into the first with respect to civil law (you don't get to keep the stolen good: it belongs to someone else and they deserve to have it back).
Copyright, as it turns out, is murkier (and IMHO pretty unjust: what if someone knowingly insinuates their code into your project, then sues you for accidentally violating their copyright? Under the law, for civil charges, it sounds like they win even though your intention, and any reasonable interpretation of your actions, was innocent). For civil damages you don't even have to know you've done anything wrong (I still have yet to see a clear answer on whether charges of contributing to someone else's violation of copyright can be unwitting and still lead to monetary sanctions or not), but for criminal charges you must in fact have meant to commit the act.
If in fact you are guilty of a crime for having unknowingly bought stolen goods, and if in fact the law is written to pressupose guilt automatically, then the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" is simply untrue on its face. Even in these disgusting times I doubt that is the case, and if it is, I doubt it would hold up to constitutional review. If it in fact does hold up to constitutional review (given the current surpreme court, as packed from the radical right, it wouldn't surprise me all that much), then everything, and I mean everything, that this country purports to stand for is an utter, complete farce.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is even worse....one of my friends actually still used NAPSTER to organize and play her mp3's up until a few weeks ago! Now, of course....she uses Kazaa. And I'm sure she doesn't use Kazaa Lite, so she could definitely be sharing files without her knowing it. I think it's a valid argument.
I belong to the ______ generation.
I don't understand why the challange is being muddied with this issue. As I see it, this user is saying due process was bypassed by this subpoena. Period. Why the Kazaa-as-media-player bit was thrown in, I have no idea, just makes the whole thing look like an excuse. Real criminals, murderers and rapists, are being acquitted all the time because due process and their rights were violated. If such scum of the earth is afforded such a courtesy, I don't see why these relatively minor 'on the internet' crimes are treated in this manner. Here we have regular court clerks being given the powers previously reserved for judges. The power to expose someone's identity, a search warrant in effect.
If you killed 10 people, and your house was searched based on such a flimsy piece of paper, you'd just get off free, and the legal system would get a(nother) black eye. But those bit copiers, man I tell you, they'll be the downfall of society as we know it, and they must be stopped!
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Although you could use creative file naming. i.e. "U2 on One Tree Hill" which is a mpeg of 2 of your friends on One Tree Hill.
Or if your name happens to correspond to a famous artists name nothing wrong with using it in your file names.
In Germany, both exist. Ignorance of the law applies only on a very limited basis, though. Basically, it is a valid defense if there is a basis for the ignorance (for example if a foreigner does something that is clearly legal in his country, but is not in Germany) and the ignorance was not avoidable (meaning there was no commonly comprehensible reason for said foreigner to know about the law).
I absolutely agree with this,
I am stunned by some peoples lack of knowledge!
A friend of mine just dropped 3 grand on a fully dialled in computer, 21" monitor...128meg video card...DVD burner...all the toys.
Hes had it almost 6 months, never burned a single cd or anything with it...
we was using some music player that was just (wasnt kazaa though)ridiculous, it had an ad window pop up when you started it, and 2 more popped up when you closed it. i asked him if he had ever heard of winamp and he was like 'huh?'
anyway i 'fixed' his computer, it was all spyware/adware related. I explained where his problems came from (kazaa/Grokster)
and went back two weeks later IT WAS ALL BACK
he didnt listen to a word I said...
damn punters...its should be like driving a car,
you need a test and a licence before buying a computer!
" she admits "participating" in the sharing network."
To be fair, you 'participate' by default when you install Kazaa.
"Derp de derp."
Driving requires a license. You can't get one without knowing how to operate a car... Try again...
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Here's my question... Would we be so protective of these people rights if the violators in question were spammers or worse virus writers? Recently I had the thought of some ideas to help alleviate the spam burden, including stiffer penalties and easier reporting methods. But determining your suspect could be blocked by litigation like this. Although the majority of Slashdot readers feel that file trading is mostly a victimless crime and should go unpunished, this may lead to difficulties in prosecuting people who most Slashdotters feel deserve the guillotine.
if you don't feel better tomorrow, we'll just cut your legs off about here. - Theodoric of York
Poke around and look for the Napster case. The court explicitly states that people are allowed to make copies for their friends, and dismisses Napster's defense because people you don't know cannot really be considered friends. In other words, you can make a CD copy and give it to a friend, and you could even make a dozen and give them to a dozen friends, but if you make a dozen and give them to random people on the street, that's not fair use.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
"She ADMITS to using Kazaa to share. "
No, she admitted to 'participating' on Kazaa. By default, Kazaa finds what you've got and shares it. They may find she was sharing music, but they may not find she was doing it intentionally.
" She KNOWS how to rip her files"
BFD. She had music on her computer when she got it (Wasn't it Gateway that was doing that?) and she wanted to know how to make the rest of her CDs do that too.
"I will put money on the fact that they told her to use either WMP or WinAMP"
So?
Your case is circumstantial at best, and it certainly doesn't address the issue of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.
"Derp de derp."
" The idea that someone can sneak into your office, use your copy machine to illegally copy and distribute a book, and then get you thrown into jail for up to five years and fined $250,000 per offense is utterly and completely unjust..."
Does the RIAA have tours of its offices?
"Derp de derp."
In civil cases, it's just about whether someone's conduct caused [financial] harm to another party, which must be established only with a preponderance of evidence (as opposed to "beyond a reasonable doubt" as in criminal cases).
If copyright infringement is strictly a civil matter, why can the offender be sentenced to jail time, especially with such a small burden of proof? I'm not disputing what you're saying at all, but don't understand how a civil infraction such as this (leaving things like ignoring parking tickets and court orders, etc. out of it) can result in 5 years of jail time.
Care to point out the relevant section of Title 17 or another reference? AFAIK making copies for friends is NOT covered under fair use, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Come on now, Slash Mods, where's the ol' FLAMEBAIT mod! OH that's right! Forgot about the ol' Slash Mod Double Standard.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
HAHAHAHAHAHAH FUCK YOU TITWAD YOU SUCK BALZACS stupid god damned lameness filter. malda, you suck fart clouds from my hairy ass.
Yes, you are right, I glossed over that point a bit. What I was refering to, but seemed to have failed to get across, was independent artists who have agreed to have their songs shared on P2P services, sorry, I should have been a bit clearer.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
As you are the second to point this out, please refer to my response to the previous poster as to this faux pas.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
But abaci don't have spell check!
"so how would anyone new join in? by sharing worthless files?"
The same way you pump up your d/l ratios on your local BBS: by changing the names of the files you upload so that the machine thinks you're uploading something new.
Damn I'm old...
Ignorance isn't a defense? That's odd. It seems to be a great excuse to rob someone legally...
---
Why is a clerk playing a major role in our judicial system? Judges can make a decision about wether there is validity to a case or not, this clerk is just going to put an 'APPROVED' stamp on the paper and wave it on.
This should either be modded down, or modded funny...
1) Does Hilary Rosen have children?
2) If so, where do they go to school?
Then why is it considered a felony if you trade over certian amounts of music? Then it would be considered criminal, right?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Long live the bill of rights. To hell with the RIAA. Don't buy CDs.
How ya like dat?
I was shut down on 19 Aug by the DMCA as well. See this article .
I am really dismayed at the lack of debate my story has generated: No one replied to my call to action in the thread, and every one basically just said how America sucks and started flaming about the MIddle East :-)
Really, good for her for getting so widely covered! I have posted to many independent media sites including Rense.com, EFF, and the ACLU and still nothing. Maybe it is teh difference that my program empowered people? Hopefully people will respond to this thread :-)
Below is a copy of my letter to my senator, McCain, of Arizona. Feel free, indeed encouraged, to email your own senator (or even others!) and representatives. You can find their addresses at [Senate] and [House] .
===============
Dear Senators:
Some of you have reservations about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the many ways in which it violates the guaranteed Constitutional rights of the populace. It affected me personally on 17-Aug 03. I am the main developer of one of the few person-to-person filetrading programs for UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, etc) machines and MacOS X.
Apparently I was struck without warning by some DMCA clause for downloading 'copyrighted material.' In other parts of the law, you need habeus corpus, search warrants, judicial review, warning, etc. With the DMCA they merely terminate you, with no warning, with no appeal, with no representation, with no pretense of jurisdiction, based upon evidence that was 100% obtained outside the framework of any noticeable governmental or 3rd-party oversight.
In short, it is an apparently open fascist policy prone to rampant abuse, supporting the rights of the Establishment over the People.
My life revolves around the marvelous information transport technologies collectively referred to as the Internet. I attend a part-time university online (www.accis.edu), near 95% of my contact with my friends and family is online, 100% of my employment is online (via rentacoder.com), and my personal hobbies and political activitism are online.
In short, terminating my internet without warning has seriously halted my life. It is time we make the right to chat online a fundamental human right. The government should be allowed to restrict a person's movements (prohibit uploads, downloads, etc) by placing restrictions on the amount of data a 'criminal' should be able to send online in a given day or so (500KB should be sufficient for email, chat, etc). Such bandwidth caps are already implemented by teh vast majority of broadband suppliers throughout the nation adn would be just about as easy to implement and enforce as the current DMCA suspension of accounts.
I just wish there would be *some* judicial process involved in the DMCA. I should have my constitutional right to a fair trial. This is above and beyond the reasons why most people download movies. People overseas download movies and music because of artificial monopoly regulations that delay the international exportation of American media by weeks and even months.
People in America download media because they are either too poor to purchase the overpriced media (partly because the MPAA and RIAA use a lot of the profit in legal battles against P2P and political lobbying), and also primarily to see if a given media is of good enough intellecutal quality to warrant purchasing, due to the unequal consumer rights 'laws' which prohibit the returning of open media.
Generally, people download not out of nefarious intent, but because they lack real alternatives to verify the intellectual quality of any given electronic Media before purchasing.
Thus, more consumer rights laws, less 'illicit' copyright infringement.
Sincerely,
Theodore R. Smith
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
Get a clue dude. The Constitution is the LAW OF The LAND in AMERICA. It trumps all. Civil, federal, state laws. Get a Clue. Or consult someone other than an RIAA attorney for your legal advise. Please don't come back until you have your head out of your ass. Thanks,
Who will guard the guards?
Although the client will up your maximum download rate if you raise your maximum upload rate.
:)
Though since it's open source, presumably this can be rectified easily enough...?
I was at my local computer reseller (u know the kind that sells lots of shiny brand name boxes) a while back and the salesmen was basically selling mp3 piracy with the computer. Saying that with this computer they will be able to download music with Kazza (they mentioned that - and if memory serves right said that its preinstalled). Also stating that the CD-Burner can be used to burn audio cds of the music they download.
They did not mention any legalities with it at all.
Also - a *LOT* of people who go to my school do not know that downloading commercial music off the internet is illegal. They were shocked to find out that they had been breaking the law.
That's ok, we never use them around here anyway.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
If you're downloading something how are you supposed to know whether the copyrigbt holder wants you to download it or not? If the copyright holder is fine with your copying it then it would be a violation of their free speech to require them to tell you. This leaves the responsibility to the people who don't want you to copy it.
Seems to me that if a recording doesn't start out with an announcement of its' copyright restrictions then you cannot know whether you have done anything wrong, and that therefore you cannot be shown to have had intent to infringe.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Take, for example descramble ( http://www.joeysmith.com/~jwecker/descramble.mp3 ). There is no way in principle to know whether Joesph Wecker wishes to distribute this song freely or not, and I have not asked him. If you download this song you don't know if you are supporting his free speech right to be heard or you are violating his copyright.
/. some other day...)
It certainly isn't his responsibility to announce that it is ok for you to download this song. Requiring this of him would be a violation of his right to free speech. Copyright, as you have presented it (which for the sake of argument I will accept as the current state of affairs) gives me pause about whether to download the song or not. If Joe does in fact want to be heard then his free speech right to be heard has been chilled. This is clearly unconstitutional.
(Ignore, for the case of this example, the fact that Joesph Wecker is Australian. ALso, I'll figure out how to do URLs on
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
I love this strategy. I've posted it before. I haven't heard anyone suggest any reason why this would not work. If it's a criminal case, they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you downloaded music infringing upon copywrite AND that includes proving that you did not have a legal right to the copywrited material, such as owning a hard copy (CD, tape, record).
In a civil case there is not so much of a burden of proof, but it would be easy to go out and buy every copy, in many cases find a used CD or tape. If you can get free or cheap council it would be best to drag this on for as long as possible as the law suit would be costing the RIAA a lot more than it would cost you. Just be careful not to put your face out there too publicly or use your own credit cards. I have doubts if the RIAA could effectively handle a big search either, but I suppose they could technically hire people to get your Visa records, or petition the court for a subpeona for those records to show whether you had bought those items after the violation had occurred.
Heck, I think people would donate CD's to a cause like that.
No, on the contrary, I think I have a pretty good handle on the copyright law in the United States. It's a topic that interests me.
The subpoenas currently issues *are* aimed at people distributing songs, but the RIAA was very recently quoted in numerous news articles as saying they'd take this to the end user if they had to.... to anyone trying to download free copies of songs. In their eyes, either activity is equally worthy of prosecution.
I think the law isn't exactly "crystal clear" on the whole issue of the legality of sharing music you own, either. Granted, I am not the copyright holder on any of the music I purchase, but the whole idea of "fair use" was introduced so folks could make reasonable use of the works they paid for. These days, it seems the courts are largely happy to throw that out - as though it's meaningless. Nonetheless, there's a very good case to be made that your sharing of only music you legally purchased *may* be "fair use". What's your intent? Maybe to make it easier for you to get to your songs, so you can listen to your music from work? This is the whole battle raging with Apple's iTunes software, you know. Until the latest update, you could share your music with it so your Mac at work could play the songs stored on your hard drive at home. Then, Apple opted to completely gut that feature, as a "sledgehammer" way of getting around any potential legal questions. Doesn't mean it was illegal to use it that way!
Doesn't mean it was illegal to use it that way!
Actually, if it allows someone other than a licensee of the work in question to download the material, then it is illegal. You're probably one of those warezer's who would run an ftp with a blanket log-on notice saying that if they're law-enforcement or an unathorized user of the ftp that you can't be held responsible, and really think that you wouldn't get eaten alive in court because of your little message aren't you?
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I can corroborate this. I know a guy who quite literally still runs Napster (!) because "it has all my MP3s". I tried explaining the many better alternatives, but he's just not interested.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Uh, yeah - you really got me there. I guess I better go edit my login notice on my warez site now - because wow, I had no idea I might be held responsible if I claimed no law enforcement people were allowed on my site!
(And now, for some reality.)
Some of those disclaimers on ftp sites *do* offer a measure of protection to the site operator, depending on their wording. If it can be shown that a particular server was indeed "private", not "open to the public" - that makes for a very different legal case.
If you're old enough to remember the BBS days, you might recall that practically nobody's BBS got busted if it was a private system. The only ones who had trouble were the boards that let anyone create new user accounts.
In fact, the "warez" boards that did get busted typically didn't ever have law enforcement officials directly calling them up and collecting evidence. Instead, they had informants do that for them. That way, they could completely sidestep the whole "entrapment?" question in cases where BBS's did claim that no law enforcement officials were allowed to use them.
My dad still uses Napster on his machine to play his mp3's. He won't change!
All you have done by posting this utter crap is convince me even further that you have no clue what you're talking about.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
That's ok. Your tagline says you voted Democrat, which tells me quite a bit about your problems dealing with logic.....
Ahh see, but (before I changed it to the new sig) it was actually a joke... You have also just proved you have no sense of humor. Let me restate the sig for you (since it is no longer my sig): "I voted democrat because I was sick of the way republicans were doing things. Which turns out to be about like shooting yourself in the head to cure a cold."
Now class, today we're going to learn about a little thing I like to call "Sarcasm". Can you say it with me? "Saaaar-casss-mmm"
Just in case you didn't catch it this time, I'm actually a Republican. I don't always agree with everything the party does, but its a heckuva lot better than Democrat's. Mainly because I think killing unborn children is wrong, and there are few Democrats who share that stance.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.