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EFF Warns Against RIAA Amnesty Program
kpogoda writes "Check out the latest warnings from the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding the recent actions from the RIAA. If you or anyone you know was contemplating handing over information to the RIAA, you may think twice."
We promise nothing bad will happen if you admit guilt and give us all your contact information.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
If you're not anonymous while trading songs online, how come they need to get someone to figure out who the hell you are?
that the action by the RIAA isn't really defensive, it's offensive. Chances are, you're going to keep sharing after you file the forms. Now, if you violated a written agreement, they have a far more solid basis upon which to prosecute. It turns into a black and white case. Otherwise, the RIAA seems to me to be a police force of sorts now, prosecuting people left and right. Karma whore help me out - there is a law against the abuse of the legal system in overusing lawsuits, isn't there? The RIAA is practically using form letters to send them out.
webpage
That's pretty much the sum of it. That, and the fact that they're not promising to
"Addressing the issue recently, Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs at the RIAA, said that courts have already ruled that individuals are not anonymous when they publicly distribute music online."
I find it interesting that he states that your not allowed or should be disregarded of being anonymous when you distribute music online. What if i want to distribute my OWN music online, anonymously. Sure theres probably little reason for me to.
I find it disturbing that they seem to be confusing distributing music online with copyright violations.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
You sign a document where you admit you illegally shared Metallica songs, under the condition that the RIAA not ever sue you.
Then Metallica sues you.
It's a sucker deal. Not to mention that you're also agreeing to refrain from engaging in lawful behavior as well!
Any thing with word "amnesty" in it, should be a warning by itself.
yeah, watch out for amnesty international, or they'll protect the hell out of your human rights.
The public reaction to the lawsuits needs to be loud and clear--
Boycott.
And it needs to be directed not just towards the RIAA, which is a lobbying industry group meant to be considered separately in the mind of the public from the actual companies.
I think maybe a targetted boycott campaign against not the RIAA blanket company, but a particular member (chosen randomly) would wake them all up. Put some direct pressure on one pillar, somethign that will hurt, and maybe they'll start to get the message.
A month-long focused boycott of a single RIAA member company-- recording division only-- Internet-wide. Think of the media attention that would get! Then the next month, a new company...
Just a thought. Anyone wanna pick up the ball?
...please try not to pass on your genetic map to offspring, and do us all a favor. Thank you for your cooperation.
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This CNET article on the topic points out one of the major flaws of the amnesty program.
"The group said it would not use the information gathered for marketing purposes or share it with any other group of copyright holders. Critics such as the EFF's von Lohmann dismissed the assurances, saying that the RIAA's privacy policy allowed the information to be shared if "required by law," a clause which could allow groups such as music publishers or Hollywood studios to subpoena the information from the RIAA to use in their own lawsuits."
Aaarrgghh... who am i supposed to hate more, RIAA or SCO... maybe i'll get lucky and a microsoft story will be up next and complete the slashdot axis of evil :)
What about that last quote, where they said that because they weren't a legal organization, they weren't bound by the limits of search?
I'd be dubious of giving anything to anyone who said they didn't have to honor the law.
collage students etc
;-)
Not just collage students! Papier mache students and bas-relief students too!
All the arts & craft students are at risk!
You can't take the sky from me...
And of course the RIAA would *never* share this info with the MPAA to go after movie sharing... nope, not gonna happen.
err... hang on there's a knock at my door...
@$#^% [NO CARRIER]
It's a good thing the world sucks or we'd all fall off.
For those that haven't been following along
What the RIAA says: We are just fair minded people protecting the artists.
What they mean: Our middle managers want a raise.
What the RIAA says: For every 50 bands that get signed only 1 "makes it"
What they mean: Hookers are expensive, and sometimes when we get drunk we sign people that aren't very good
What the RIAA says: If you promise to erase all the MP3's you were letting other people download we won't prosecute you
What they mean: yet
What the RIAA says: The illegal distribution of MP3's are hurting our CD sales
What they mean: We thought our near monopoly on music distribution would protect us in an economic downturn
What the RIAA says: No one wants to play the heavy
What they mean: We hired these god damn lawyers, it's about time we use them
What the RIAA wants you to think "It's about what is fair" what they don't want you to know is that in every single case brought against them by an artist for failure to pay royalties, they have lost. (Ok, maybe not that time michael jackson sued)
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
If you or anyone you know was contemplating handing over information to the RIAA, you may smack yourself.
-Valiss
#define DRM chmod 000
You sound like the guy who drove into my Bentley at 35mph when it was parked at Wal*Mart. Why don't you give me your name, address, license plate number and a notarized admission of guilt?
Oh yeah, I was only borrowing the car to deliver pizza, but I'm sure the actual owner, his insurance company and bank won't sue you into oblivion if I hand all your documentation over with an admission of guilt.
Bessos.
I remember in the 80's Regan and his nazi crew wanted an anonymous phone call to police to be probable cause for a search warrant. So, as per High Times instructions, the police lines were flooded with tips about lawyers with non-existant cocaine stashes. After a couple of raids and the resulting lawsuits, the gov quickly gave up on that idea. Same concept here. Sounds like a solid plan to me.
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge
Ok - I'll bite.
I was a target for the local Head of Amnesty International. Mark - Who was a teacher at Lewis Univercity back in the 1990's.
They decided that the execution of a rapist-Murderer that chopped up his victims was barbaric and held a cadle light vigil at stateville penitentiary in Joliet Illinois.
I wrote an op ed piece for the local paper explaining how we were eliminating a dangerous animal rather than a normal functioning member of society. Mark flew into a rage. He contacted the paper and demanded to run a rebuttel against my op ed piece - with a tag line stating that replies to replies would not be printed. He called me an animal, and was espicially vindictive when I had asked Amnesty International to come up with a better solution that would make sure that murderer-rapist-dismemberer never was a threat to society again.
What's more In his class I argued that the military did indeed provide a benefit outside of military actions, talking of jets, rocketry, navigation , MASH type emergency surgery, and dozens of other things that have spun out of military research and experience.
I went from an A averege on tests to a "D" in his class for my "Audacity".
Yeah, amnesty international is great. The people they get to head up their chapters are stellar. Boy, they sure have their heads on straight, and us folks living in the real world should STFU.
Yeah, I got karma to burn - but I had to get this off my chest.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
It's not 100% clear that's true. The Fourth Amendment says:
It doesn't say that the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated by the government, but that it shall not be violated. That at least suggests that private entities shouldn't be able engage in unreasonable searches and seizures, either.
Even if it applies only the government, you have to remember that the courts are also part of the government. That means that private entities should not be able to use government power in the form of court orders to perform searches that would be rejected were a government agency to try them. That may leave it open for private agencies to snoop in ways that the government isn't allowed to, so long as they don't use court orders to do so and they obey relevant laws against trespass, unauthorized computer access, etc.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The reason that you're not anonymous (when trading files) is because you do actually have a name or persistent identifier attached to you. This is like the difference between being an Anonymous Coward on /. and being a regular poster. The AC is, as the name suggests, truly anonymous; /. has taken some steps to make it so that even they can't identify ACs some time after the fact. Regular posters, though, are pseudonymous- hiding behind a false name. You can track what an individual poster does, but you can't necessarily connect them to a particular flesh and blood person without help from /. Even if the poster deliberately puts identifying information on his user page, that information could be fraudulent, so you'd actually need to ask the /. staff to uncover the information in their records to have a good chance of proving who they are to a court.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.