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Telcos Stand Against RIAA
john82 writes "In an interesting and insightful article, NetworkWorld Fusion discusses how lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting the RIAA's attempts to monitor their customers. As we've heard before, RIAA wants the telcos to report when users download any copyrighted material. Lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting back. They also claim that the RIAA is trying to grant themselves powers that are outside of even the Patriot Act. Now where have heard that before? NWFusion also points out that RIAAs handwaving, threats, tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system." In other RIAA news, taped2thedesk writes "According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, the RIAA will now contact P2P users before suing them." The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.
Shout Out To Gobbles!
Werd.
So does this mean that we *don't* hate telcos this week ?
Is this also the week that eggs are bad for us ?
RBOCs stand tall against recording industry
By Johna Till Johnson
Network World, 09/29/03
I usually don't say nice things about telcos. And I almost never say nice things about their lawyers. But here I'll do both: Kudos to the lawyers at Verizon and SBC for opposing the Recording Industry Association of America's request that the telcos compromise the privacy of their customers. Way to go, guys.
Here's the deal: the RIAA has asked the regional Bell operating companies, including Verizon and SBC, to monitor customers' usage of their DSL services and report downloads of copyrighted material. To their everlasting credit, the telcos have refused to comply and are fighting the RIAA in federal court.
"The recording industry is essentially granting itself more power than law enforcement has under the Patriot Act," Sara Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel, said in one report.
The RIAA doesn't believe that civil rights are the issue.
"[The phone companies' position] doesn't pass the laugh test or the smell test," Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of legal affairs reportedly says.
With all due respect, Mr. Oppenheim, that's horsepucky.
The former RBOCs have a long and distinguished track record of protecting their customers' privacy, even at the expense of the telcos' own interests. I worked with RBOCs in the mid-'90s on the development of quality of service that would have required IP packet inspection. RBOC executives ultimately rejected these services because they conflicted with customer privacy.
What doesn't pass the smell test is the RIAA's own position with respect to copyright enforcement. Ultimately, its approach is outdated, impractical and Orwellian - and benefits neither the artists whose interests the RIAA supposedly represents, nor the fans whose dollars fuel the entire music industry.
Don't get me wrong: I believe in copyright protection. Artists, software developers and other content creators have the right to be compensated for their efforts and deserve protection of their intellectual property.
But that's not what the RIAA is really fighting for. The RIAA acts on behalf of record companies, not artists. And record companies are fundamentally distributors and promoters - not creators - of content.
What's going on is that the Internet has dramatically cut the costs and enhanced the efficiency of distribution and promotion mechanisms, in the process is making obsolete many of the core business processes of record companies. In other words, record company executives are in approximately the same position that manufacturing workers were in during the '80s and '90s: Their jobs have been made redundant by technology.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
What the RIAA needs to do is wake up and develop cost-effective distribution and promotion models that serve fans and artists well. If it can't, the organization should be replaced by one that does.
Regardless, kudos to Verizon and SBC for standing up to the RIAA's encroachment of our civil rights.
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. She can be reached at johna@nemertes.com.
Related Links
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. Reach her at johna@nemertes.com.
If the telco's could develop something that filters it out every time the RIAA lies and calls downloading "theft" when on the phone....
Um, I'd like to see the shell script that runs on networking equipment that determines which packets are copyrighted, which are legitimate, and which are porn.
They ring you up.. "We demand you pay us $ or we'll take you to court"
What choice do most people have? None.
Maybe big business can accomplish what a million screaming geeks can't...
sig?
[sig]darkfus[/sig]
Pacific Bell sues, senator questions RIAA
By Grant Gross
IDG News Service, 08/05/03
Requests by the Recording Industry Association of America for ISPs to give up hundreds of names of customers allegedly downloading music files has run into backlash, with a U.S. senator questioning the practice and a second major ISP filing a lawsuit.
Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) spoke out Thursday with concerns about the RIAA's "shotgun" approach to filing administrative subpoenas authorized by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). A day earlier, Pacific Bell Internet Services, a subsidiary of SBC, filed a lawsuit against the RIAA and two other organizations after Pacific Bell received more than 200 subpoenas asking for the identities of its customers.
The RIAA responded by statement to both actions, saying it would comply with Coleman's request for information on the subpoenas. The information will confirm that the RIAA's actions are consistent with U.S. law, the RIAA said.
"(The information) will demonstrate that our enforcement program, one part of a multi-pronged strategy, is an appropriate and measured response to the very serious problem of blatant copyright infringement confronting the entire music community," the RIAA statement said.
The DMCA allows copyright holders to subpoena ISPs for the names of people they believe are using their copyrighted material without permission. These subpoenas are issued by a court clerk without a judge's action, but Pacific Bell and other critics have suggested the subpoenas could be abused by anyone, including stalkers and rapists, who claimed to be copyright holders.
"We really believe that anyone who can take the time to fill out a form letter can get it stamped by the court clerk and get the name of an Internet user," said Larry Meyer, a spokesman for SBC. "The potential for abuse is very great."
For the past year, Verizon Internet Services has been fighting two subpoenas from the RIAA and has lost in court twice. Verizon turned over the names of the alleged downloaders in early June but promised to keep fighting the DMCA subpoenas.
The Pacific Bell lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asks that the subpoenas be declared invalid, Meyer said. The company filed the lawsuit last week because several of the RIAA subpoenas had last week as their deadlines, he said.
Pacific Bell is also fighting demands from copyright infringement tracker MediaForce that it cancel the subscriptions of "thousands" of its customers and a subpoena from adult-themed entertainment company Titan Media, which demanded the names of 50 Pacific Bell customers. The MediaForce demands suggest the ISP should cancel customer accounts on "their word alone," Meyer said.
"This lawsuit is about protecting the privacy rights of our customers," he added.
The RIAA called Pacific Bell's arguments against the subpoenas "old news," with the company "recycling many of the same arguments" already rejected in the Verizon case.
"It's unfortunate that they have chosen to litigate this, unlike every other ISP which has complied with their obligations under the law," an RIAA statement said. "We had previously reached out to SBC to discuss this matter, but had been rebuked. This procedural gambit will not ultimately change the underlying fact that when individuals engage in copyright infringement on the Internet, they are not anonymous and service providers must reveal who they are."
Meanwhile, Coleman, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote a letter to the RIAA asking it for a copy of all the DMCA subpoenas it has requested, a description of the methodology the RIAA is using to find evidence of illegal file sharing, and other information.
Coleman said in a statement he does not support illegal file trading, but there may be a "more circumspect and narrowly tailored method" for the RIAA to go after file downloaders.
"The industry seems t
According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, the RIAA will now contact P2P users before suing them.
"Hello, SBC Customer Service? Yes, I'd like to order Call Screening for my -- why, yes, that is the number I'd like to block. How did you know? Hmm, three days? Fine. Thank you very much." *click*
The coolest voice ever.
for that RIAA Do-Not-Call list!
At the risk of my karma, I'd just like to say that this whole thing is getting to the point where I just wish the RIAA would fuck off and die, and take SCO with them. How do companies survive so long after so many people actively loath them?
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
can we say Karma Kweer?
... may i have another.
Well I hope the B(lue)S(creen)(of)D(eath) is dying.. that stupid BSoD is really friggin annoying.. especially on this Windows ME box.....
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Every time a story like this is posted, I see a number of posts saying "God bless SBC!" or "I love Verizon!"
Before you assume they're suing the RIAA just to protect your privacy, think again. The main reason is to avoid the costs of looking up someone's info every time the RIAA issues a subpoena.
Bleh,
Though I havent bought a cd in a while (ive just been listenening to classic rock on the radio), ive decided recently that its time for some new music. I bought a few cds off cdbaby.com and have been very pleased. The music rocks and the service rocks! I hope their prices and all else stays the same.
The crap that the RIAA is pushing these days isnt even worth my time.
Speaking of the RIAA, as far as one crime that is known to have been comitted, where the hell are our settlement checks from their price fixing? These things were supposedly to come out this summer, but it's fall already and I sure have not received mine, even though I bought the last albums I'll ever buy in the proper time period and filed the claim in time.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
- Call people, telling them the RIAA is going to sue them back to the bronze age unless they fork over an arbitrary amount of cash.
- Make it an automated message, calling out with caller ID info blocked, so people can't respond except to the address provided in the message.
- Checks roll in.
- Angry rants also roll in; these may be safely discarded.
- Profit!
Voila: no reliance on the old revenue stream. Just keeping up with the times by switching to an IPL[1] business model. It's the new wave -- catch it!(tm)[1] Intellectual Property Litigation.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This is, after all, the same Verizon that spent who knows how much in legal fees fighting the RIAA's right to subpoena information on their customers at all. So if it's a cost issue, it's enlightened self-interest: They believe that customers choose them for the value-added of privacy. I don't think their decisions make economic sense on only that basis. Love 'em or hate 'em, I think they're operating out of pride: We're the phone companies, and any hacker, phreaker, or record label trade group who crosses us is going down. But once again I could be wrong.
RBOCs stand tall against recording industry.
By Johna Till Johnson.
Network World, 09/29/03.
I usually don't say nice things about telcos. And I almost never say nice things about their lawyers. But here I'll do both: Kudos to the lawyers at Verizon and SBC for opposing the Recording Industry Association of America's request that the telcos compromise the privacy of their customers. Way to go, guys.
Here's the deal: the RIAA has asked the regional Bell operating companies, including Verizon and SBC, to monitor customers' usage of their DSL services and report downloads of copyrighted material. To their everlasting credit, the telcos have refused to comply and are fighting the RIAA in federal court.
"The recording industry is essentially granting itself more power than law enforcement has under the Patriot Act," Sara Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel, said in one report.
The RIAA doesn't believe that civil rights are the issue.
"[The phone companies' position] doesn't pass the laugh test or the smell test," Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of legal affairs reportedly says.
With all due respect, Mr. Oppenheim, that's horsepucky.
The former RBOCs have a long and distinguished track record of protecting their customers' privacy, even at the expense of the telcos' own interests. I worked with RBOCs in the mid-'90s on the development of quality of service that would have required IP packet inspection. RBOC executives ultimately rejected these services because they conflicted with customer privacy.
What doesn't pass the smell test is the RIAA's own position with respect to copyright enforcement. Ultimately, its approach is outdated, impractical and Orwellian - and benefits neither the artists whose interests the RIAA supposedly represents, nor the fans whose dollars fuel the entire music industry.
Don't get me wrong: I believe in copyright protection. Artists, software developers and other content creators have the right to be compensated for their efforts and deserve protection of their intellectual property.
But that's not what the RIAA is really fighting for. The RIAA acts on behalf of record companies, not artists. And record companies are fundamentally distributors and promoters - not creators - of content.
What's going on is that the Internet has dramatically cut the costs and enhanced the efficiency of distribution and promotion mechanisms, in the process is making obsolete many of the core business processes of record companies. In other words, record company executives are in approximately the same position that manufacturing workers were in during the '80s and '90s: Their jobs have been made redundant by technology.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
What the RIAA needs to do is wake up and develop cost-effective distribution and promotion models that serve fans and artists well. If it can't, the organization should be replaced by one that does.
Regardless, kudos to Verizon and SBC for standing up to the RIAA's encroachment of our civil rights.
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. She can be reached at johna@nemertes.com.
Related Links.
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. Reach her at johna@nemertes.com.
I'm glad to see the telcos taking this position, and I applaud them for it. But I also think it's worth considering that a love of freedom may not be the only thing that inspires telcos and other ISP's to take a position against the RIAA.
Avoiding any and all responsibility for policing the content that travels over their connections is strongly in the best interest of any ISP. Having the longest history of operating a complex communications network, the telcos probably have the strongest understanding of that concept. In asking the telcos to report file sharing behavior, the RIAA is asking them to take a certain amount of responsibility for content that the telcos cannot control.
If the telcos acquiesced to the RIAA's request, one can only assume that they'd also have to police their corners of the internet for terrorism-related activity, porn, blasphemy, and all manner of content that sufficiently powerful organizations object to.
Uhh... no... the manufacturing crisis in the 80s, 90s and today are caused by offshore relocation not by file sharing. (the same malaise that is now affecting white collar jobs)
As an aside, does anyone know what will it take for the media to understand the *REAL* jobs issue in the United States?
"...than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system."
Mod me down (I have plenty of karma to burn) but I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing this line of tripe. If you have something better than put your money where your mouth is otherwise shut the fuck up. Saying something over and over ad nauseum does not make it true.
RBOCs stand tall against recording industry
By Johna Till Johnson
Network World, 09/29/03
I usually don't say nice things about telcos. And I almost never say nice things about their lawyers. But here I'll do both: Kudos to the lawyers at Verizon and SBC for opposing the Recording Industry Association of America's request that the telcos compromise the privacy of their customers. Way to go, guys.
Here's the deal: the RIAA has asked the regional Bell operating companies, including Verizon and SBC, to monitor customers' usage of their DSL services and report downloads of copyrighted material. To their everlasting credit, the telcos have refused to comply and are fighting the RIAA in federal court.
"The recording industry is essentially granting itself more power than law enforcement has under the Patriot Act," Sara Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel, said in one report
The RIAA doesn't believe that civil rights are the issue.
"[The phone companies' position] doesn't pass the laugh test or the smell test," Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of legal affairs reportedly says.
With all due respect, Mr. Oppenheim, that's horsepucky.
The former RBOCs have a long and distinguished track record of protecting their customers' privacy, even at the expense of the telcos' own interests. I worked with RBOCs in the mid-'90s on the development of quality of service that would have required IP packet inspection. RBOC executives ultimately rejected these services because they conflicted with customer privacy.
What doesn't pass the smell test is the RIAA's own position with respect to copyright enforcement. Ultimately, its approach is outdated, impractical and Orwellian - and benefits neither the artists whose interests the RIAA supposedly represents, nor the fans whose dollars fuel the entire music industry.
Don't get me wrong: I believe in copyright protection. Artists, software developers and other content creators have the right to be compensated for their efforts and deserve protection of their intellectual property.
But that's not what the RIAA is really fighting for. The RIAA acts on behalf of record companies, not artists. And record companies are fundamentally distributors and promoters - not creators - of content.
What's going on is that the Internet has dramatically cut the costs and enhanced the efficiency of distribution and promotion mechanisms, in the process is making obsolete many of the core business processes of record companies. In other words, record company executives are in approximately the same position that manufacturing workers were in during the '80s and '90s: Their jobs have been made redundant by technology.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
What the RIAA needs to do is wake up and develop cost-effective distribution and promotion models that serve fans and artists well. If it can't, the organization should be replaced by one that does.
Regardless, kudos to Verizon and SBC for standing up to the RIAA's encroachment of our civil rights.
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. She can be reached at johna@nemertes.com.
Related Links
Johnson is president and chief research officer at Nemertes Research, an independent technology research firm. Reach her at johna@nemertes.com.
So why is it that the telcos keep getting nailed and we dont hear anything about Comcast...
I guess people with Cable modems dont share files.
Filing the lawsuit itself changes very little--They are still using the threat of a big and costly lawsuit to extract a comparably insignificant but still sizable amount of money from people. That the RIAA did this (the call-first policy) in response to the Senate hearings is a riot. "No, Mr. Coleman, we aren't using our harsher-than-Patriot Act powers to intimidate people with bankrupcy-inducing lawsuits into settling for $3-4,000! We're calling them and threatening with the prospect of filing the lawsuit!" I don't really see how the RIAA calling and saying "We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000" is any different from "We're gonna proceed with our suit unless you so hand over $3,000"
I mean, if every one of those sued file sharers challenged the RIAA, then it would quickly run out of resources. But since the lawsuits are cheaper to settle and unaffordable any other way, we have the prisoner's dilemma--everyone pleads guilty to the 3 year sentence in order to avoid the 20 year sentence, because nobody knows what their peers are going to do. I can't imagine the RIAA reasoned it any other way either.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
And the real reason SBC/Verizon are fighting the record companies is to protect the jobs of telco executives, not the rights of consumers.
Don't think that the telcos are acting on altruism. They'd screw you just as badly as the RIAA would, if they really felt it'd benefit them.
It's in their best interests to protect your privacy - just be glad that they are smart enough to realize that, and enjoy the little victory.
The RIAA is like an animal trapped in the corner - and just like one, it'll bite anything nearby out of fear. In this case, its busy biting the very hands that feed it.
Stand back, wait for it to calm down, and enjoy the ride.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.
... Just call this 1-900 number and your settlement fee will appear on your next phone bill. Paying the RIAA can be that easy!
Just like they did when they sued people who called them & voluntarily gave contact information during the amnesty period?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
If the RIAA starts cracking down on file sharers, the demand for lucrative broadband connections is going to be negatively affected. This is what will truly affect their revenue streams. Whether for good or for bad, at present legally tenuous trading is probably the biggest driver for fast internet connections.
I'd also like to think that it's due to the ISPs overwhelming desire to do the right thing and protect customer's privacy, but I'm having trouble reconciling this view completely with the generally held views of corporate entities and their desire to run profitably.
Just my 2 cents worth.
The Mothership
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday October 03, @03:08AM
from the closer-looks dept.
john82 writes "In an interesting and insightful article, NetworkWorld Fusion discusses how lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting the RIAA's attempts to monitor their customers. As we've heard before, RIAA wants the telcos to report when users download any copyrighted material. Lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting back. They also claim that the RIAA is trying to grant themselves powers that are outside of even the Patriot Act. Now where have heard that before? NWFusion also points out that RIAAs handwaving, threats, tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system." In other RIAA news, taped2thedesk writes "According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, the RIAA will now contact P2P users before suing them." The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.
Man, I work for Verizon, and they really don't have the ability to do this from my vantage point. Most of the systems we use are still Telnet based. I still fix accounts on a daily basis that haven't been touched since they were first transferred over to the system in 1990 (that's usually the only time there's a major problem with the records, when the data switches databases). They'd probably have to build a whole new system from scratch in order to comply with RIAA's wishes. Of course, I only deal with the business office lines, but most other departments use the same system I use.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
I don't deserve a settlement check. I stopped buying CD's as a moral decision when the RIAA censored Napster out of existence.
The providers of DSL know that they are getting an indirect subsidy from "free" music. There are people out there that are paying $40/month so they can download music. If customers had to pay for the music too, companies like Verizon would have fewer customers.
The telcos are just profiting from other peoples creative works. Of course they don't want this to stop.
What next... they have to help turn-over people involved in other questionable activity done on the phone? ... people who called escort services just because some group wants those names? ...identify people martha stewart connected with just because they might have talked about imclone?
Yeah, they can do that, but the process involves a warant. Just just a request from an industry group.
If they have to start monitoring for questionable activity from any group that requests it, the next step might be for them to be responsible for illegal activity.
"...protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system." How is giving it away for free an better. No matter what you say such as "if only we had a viable digital sales system we would use it," and "if only the artists would get more money," you defenders of freedom will still steal it anyway.
Say I download a song or five, once or twice a week, using Kazaa Lite.
Say I don't post files to share -- I just grab a few files now and then.
What's the risk? Will RIAA really find out?
-kgj
"We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000" is any different from "We're gonna proceed with our suit unless you so hand over $3,000" This sounds an awful lot like extortion to me, I wonder when they'll try to pull this on someone with the resources to take it to them.
"According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, [...]"
I find it rather silly to give Ars Technica credit when they, themselves, are referencing the same Washington Post article.
I used to do work for a telco (cable), and about the only thing they're CAPABLE of monitoring is usage. We had problems auditing for signal piracy, more less software piracy.
No doubt the phone companies are more on the ball, but even then I'd be surprised if they could tell what exactly was coming down the pipe without copying it and reassembling it themselves. Probably the most they could do (economically) is flag high use addresses for the RIAA to check.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...that they *know* they can't stop it. Encrypted services will pop up, people will use them and stuff will flow. And then the ISPs gets blamed for the mess "You were supposed to stop them, but you didn't". No, I think part of it is that RIAA made the bed, and now they get to sleep in it, the ISPs sure don't want to take their place.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
RIAA is trying to grant themselves powers that are outside of even the Patriot Act
Don't worry, that can surely be fixed. However, not necessarily the way most people here would like it to be.
When men used to be men
there are powers OUTSIDE the patriot act? i thought that pretty much covered everything ;)
What's going on is that the Internet has dramatically cut the costs and enhanced the efficiency of distribution and promotion mechanisms, in the process is making obsolete many of the core business processes of record companies.
Yup, it costs me nothin' except for the time and bandwidth to download a CD of MP3's. The efficiency of file sharing still has a looong way to go. The number of bogus files, or files that you will never see complete after you initially start downloading them make it so hard to download a CD of music that I've resorted to buying CD's again. Some times it takes so long to download a CD, that the bandwidth costs of the uploading (I'm not a leech) is competitive with the cost of a second hand CD.
So for the CD's I absolutely must have, I buy them second hand just to make sure the RIAA still get screwed. Then I can still rip them to MP3's, listen to them in the car, on my mp3 player, computer, etc.
To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
Can you say, Blind?
Here's one of his posts.
Or could it be all the consumers suing them that bought into the "download free music" every ISP uses when the consumer can't anymore. Just a idea not saing it's true. When you think about it they also have cellphones, POTS and intenet access all which require a degree of good PR, customer loyalty and happness as well a a good reputation to maintain as a going concern. Getting sued by your own customers isn't good for your PR giving and them up to the much hated RIAA really bites as far at that goes. It's all about their own bottom line. It's still self interest any which way.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
RIAA: Pay up or else!
Sounds like extortion to me. Kinda like organized crime. Maybe it's time for some Piracy Insurance. In case you decide to pirate music, so you don't get your legs broken.
This opens up a whole new range of email and phone scams for those who are willing to do a little research and social engineering. Imagine getting a drama major to pose as a corrupt process server for example. Or just simply getting a pre-law roomate to call up the building warez kiddie and scare the shit out of them. I can't wait to get started!
We care. We have to. We're the phone company.
I would create a firey ball of 2 Gigajoules of electricity and have the RIAA taste my fury!
I just thought of something. The other day, the construction company working on my deck managed to plug enough equipment in to trip the breaker that happened to be on the same circuit as my computers. If I 'accidentally' had a 'faulty' breaker, thus frying my hard drive beyond repair, would that rule all the RIAA's log files as circumstantial evidence? If so, I could just run this hard drive through an industrial strength electromagnet, followed by several jolts of 1.21 gigawatts until the platters were melted and be as free as a bird.
Arr Ie Aye Aye Suing Department, please do not hang up as our collect call to your phone is very important to our revenue. This call may be monitored for further financially benefiting lawsuits.
To check your penalties amount, press 1.
To pay your penalties by credit card, press 2.
To pay your penalties by check, press 3.
To pay your penalties by organs, press 4.
To answer in court, translate "YOUAREDEAD" on your touch tone phone.
To speak with a suing lawyer, press 666.
To repeat the options again, say "I confess, I am guilty".
Otherwise, stay on the line and wait for an even bigger lawsuit
I believe that a court should have to validate
any subpoena, period. I do not believe that any
organization should be able to demand private
information from another organization without
having demonstrated a legitimate right to that
information to a bona-fide judge.
Let's say that I am an individual who wants to
resolve the function that maps IP -> full name.
Is it true that all I have to do is complete a
"bullsh**" DCMA-based subpoena claiming a
fictitious copyright violation by the user at
such an IP address at such a particular time,
even if I don't legitimately hold a single
copyright?
Isn't this what courts and judges exist for?
What's next, "write-your-own" arrest warrants?
Lincoln DeCoursey
Utica, NY
microsoft like to boast about who they have sued or settled with, they even send out news letters in the mail to reseller to keep us up to date who they have sued and how much, RIAA is using a similer tactic of going after anyone/everyone. is this just another "respect threw fear" tactic. if i could i would stand against them and hamper there effets every chance i get, no one pushes me around. but i do everything by the book, playing dirty would be sinking to there level.
[sVen]
Not to sound like a grammar Nazi, but where is the subject?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
No, this week the yellow parts are bad, and next week the whites are bad.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
"We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000"
Doesn't that violate a SCO patent?
They have nothing to offer me that I can't provide for myself, at my own profit.
They have two things.
Radio airplay access, and brick-and-mortar franchise access.
Of course, given how much they charge you for these two things, you've probably got the better deal going.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
this is already commonplace. Every few days I get a spam on my cell phone saying "you owe us X yen for site usage fees, pay up within 24 hours or we will take legal action". There used to be a lot of people taken in by them, but these days almost nobody believes them anymore.
Honestly would you expect any less from the nations worst high speed network, featuring technical support that know less about their network than you do. They block port 80 on your address, and the connection is spotty because of supremely messed up ARP tables in their gateways. Comcast has one seriously overpriced crappy ass network it cost me $57.95 as opposed to when I had optonline at $39.99 which was uncapped, far more reliable and way faster.
Comcast treats their customers like crap that is your answer they know your going no where so they can screw you. The phone companies have the same thing going but they also want to remain in total control, they do not like the precedent rolling over for the RIAA creates.
As for comcast look at what was recently printed in the NY times where they gave the RIAA a customer who they claimed was pirating and it turned out to be a grandmother with a mac incapable of running the Kazaa software they claimed she was using. Also ther claim was she was sharing a large library of snoop dogg. How funny is that. But at least I know what the com in comcast stands for it stands for inCOMpetence.
There is already scam artists calling numbers out of the phone books. Using names within sounding official and asking for credit card numbers to settle file copyright infringment.
Do not settle with anyone over the phone be very careful you will want to see documents.
I'm Glad to hear this. As a student at Purdue University, a few days ago it was rummored that some students in the dorms were more or less raided by police, and their computers scanned - if present with KaZaA the computers were confinscated, I belive this happened to somewhere inbetween 5 and 10 students. However living off campus, I haven't been able to validate this entirely, but as soon as I can the rest of you will know.
"In an interesting and insightful article"
Too bad their's not Interesting and Insightful moderations for main posts, he's already done all the work.
vampirical
RIAA: "This is the RIAA.... "
Me: "May I please have the full details of your name, company and address."
RIAA: "Wha.."
Me: "I need to inform you that you have violated the Do Not Call Registry. I am not interested in your services".
RIAA: Click.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
In that manner, you destroy the P2P networks at much faster rate than any RIAA/MPAA or other officials. Fucking leech.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.
Hi this is [insert your name] on behalf of the RIAA. Please pay us [insert your desired amount] immediatley or we will take you to court. Send your cash payment to [insert your P.O box here].
To admit guilt, please either hang up now, or press pound, star, or any number. To state that you are innocent, in wich case we will never bother you again, please press "q" or "z" on your touch tone phone. If you dont have a touch tone phone, or are calling on a cellular phone please hang up now, and we will automaticly assume your guilty.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
...totailitarian regimes such as that, can surely also be fixed. However, not necessarily the way RIAA would like it to be.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well for me after my dot com went out of business and not being able to find work and being flat broke they can call me all they want. They can't get anything from me. I will keep sharing all my files. RIAA you guys are suckers!!!!!!!!!
Indeed, how right you are! Hardly anyone uses those antiquated means of data delivery anymore!
There's nothing wrong with their delivery methods -- it's cost : benefit ratio for the consumer is losing balance.
As if the ISPs could even manage real-time content scanning on a reasonable sized pipe.
But seriously folks, the moment ISPs might actually start trying such an exercise -- after being dragged kicking and screaming into it -- does anyone doubt that every P2P would start employing public key strong encryption (e.g. AES) on file transfers?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Think about it. How do you know if your song is copyrighted, and by whom? Is there a database where you can query to determine if you are violating the copyright of any RIAA affiliated company? If so, I sure haven't heard about it. Have you?
Kind of like Comcast that says we'll cut you off if you use too much of our "unlimited" internet service, but we won't ever tell you what that limit is so that you can avoid it.
The RIAA is not telling you ahead of time just what songs you shouldn't be trading. Don't tell me they don't know themselves. And don't tell me they don't have a web-site where they could provide this information.
Are they taking lessons from SCO? Enquiring legal minds want to know.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, that part I got down pretty good. Now, my enemy is my friend too, if he behaves. Ok, I got that too.
:-)
Maybe Jesus was right, maybe we should just love our enemies?
The RIAA and SCO announced that they are to be merged, "We think the move will greatly strengthen our need to protect our IP", SCO CEO Darl McBribe, when confronted directly an RIAA spokesperson stated "The merger will enable us to use SCO's advanced Mathematical models to hunt down IP infringers, and will send out a clear message to all Linux users and file sharers!"
... one would expect of the MAFIA, for crying out loud!
... when the free and the brave wise up and start counter-attacking, reduce the effort down to a 'street-level' series of 'personal, one-on-one' conversations with 'potential illegal downloaders', before the fact.
...
Set up huge precedence with a FUD-campaign, some 'heads on a pike' (typical PR bullshit term) with press coverage of 'criminal downloaders' being interspersed on nightly Reality Television, and then
Next we'll be seeing an effort by the RIAA to have you sign over 'recording/consumer rights' to your 'kid sister, your mom, and cousin' for use in the back alleys
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Nope. You have more chance to be struck by lightning... And if by any chances you are not American, your chances drop to almost zero.
But the karma has been worse lately. By going after the filesharers, the RIAA is generating bad karma between themselves and the filesharers.
Getting something for nothing that others have spent something to produce, may also generate bad karma. You can feel it by feeling a bad conscience. At first, the novelty made up for all that, but now when the copyright holders are taking more and more action, it's starting to lose its charm. In karmic understanding, this is because you are doing something against someone else's will, so that a conflict arises.
Don't mistake anger at RIAA for not having bad conscience, and "sticking it to the Man". The anger is just covering the distress, bad conscience and fear of being caught, which rises everytime RIAA takes public action. Anger is always produced out of fear and separation. Of course, you can be angry that CDs are expensive, but nobody is forcing you to need those CDs. At some level you're following the massmarket willingly. At the highest level you always pay the right consequences for your actions and choices.
Myself, I have stopped filesharing. I cut down on TV, movies and music. You can get so much more from a hike in the mountains with a best friend or lover. I sing with a group, do yoga and meditation. We don't need to be spoon-fed entertainment and dumbed down to the lowest denominator, at least I know I don't.
One more thing: By getting something for nothing, you will value it less and less. The very enjoyment will be gone before you realize it, and may be replaced with an addiction which never fullfills. At some point, you may realize that the juice has gone out of the orange, and you're left with a dry unedible skin.
Of course, this is all part of the process. Nothing is ultimately good or bad, it just is as it is. Never make this into dogma that restricts your life in any way.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
"The telcos are just profiting from other peoples creative works"
Oh really? I didn't realize that the RIAA employed any creative people. TO the uninformed, it looks like a bunch of lawyers and lobbyist.
Now that I now they're creative, well, they can just fuck themselves to music!
If you're not trolling, then you've got mental problems. This rant is about the most incomprehensible thing I've read since Jack Velenti's last public utterance.
"you can't have a local line with no long distance service; maybe a second line, but the primary line requires it according to them."
Not true w/ Verizon anyway. When ATT briefly dabbled with charging a monthly min of $5 whether you made any calls or not, I ditched long distance. More correctly, I lost phone service for non-payment to Vz for several months when I was out of work a few years ago. When I paid the Vz charges and restarted my service, I did so with no long distance provider. ATT continued to dun me for a while for the ~$30 they claim I owe them (not for calls, but for the monthly minimum); I refuse to ack their supposed right to have unilaterally instituted the monthly min without my agreeing to such charges. Note that without long distance svc I am still able to reach toll-free #s.
Ok Here it is:
The P2P system not only includes illegal files. Right? So. We make a P2P system that distributes a random file for every 5 files, to the user's PC. Whether they want it or not. So eventually, everybody will have illegal stuff on thier PC, without asking for it.
Think about it. That'll piss off RIAA.
If they have to file the lawsuit before they get Telco information, how are they going to know who they need to sue? this sounds like a big constraint to me.
The RIAA have turned into pirates (shiver
'me'timbers) sailing around scaring people and plundering their property (computers) and money.
And what i ask you do we do with pirates? yes, we line them up against the wall and put a bullet in them. Use your right to bear arms America!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
You call their bluff and NOT pay them until the minute before you walk into the court room.
"The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer"
Well, settling is not a bad deal if you're a scumbag swapping copyrighted material. I do feel bad about people who are falsely accused or were too stupid to monitor what others were doing on their computer.
What the hell does the premise of #1 have to do with the conclusion? A consumer 100mbps eithernet switch has NOTHING to do with providing high speed data over long distances. I work for network operations for a unviersity, of I have some idea what I'm talking about. It is COMPLETELY different to grab a little switch and have a workgroup than it is to have a large carrier class facility.
For one there is just the switches and routers themselves. Not small, not cheap. We aren't talking $60, $600, or $6000 but tens of thousands of dollars for a single blade (of which one chasse holds many) in some cases. Then there is the fact that copper ethernet won't run over long distances; 100 metres is the spec limit, so we are talking some other kind of technology, never mind your house doesn't have the wiring to it for that. There is then of course the cost of maintaining all this infastucters. Stuff breaks, it needs to be replaced, and in the case of wires to houses, it's not cheap often.
Then there are the two biggest costs: The support staff for customers and the bandwidth. Data doesn't magically get on the Internet, bigass lines to other carries are required and that's not cheap in any fashion.
As for laying fibre to your house, you have NO concept of how expensive that sort of thing is. It wasn't cheap to build our copper network. It took many years and a lot of dough. To upgrade the whole thing to fiber will cost even more and probably take longer. You don't just wave a wand, you have to dig shit up, lay cable and so on. Also fibre requires additonal percaustion since it really can't be spliced if it is going over any sort of distance.
Look, there are a LOT of problem with the phone companies. I'm sure I've dealt with more than you have. However, just because you can buy an 8-port consumer grade, made by Linksys, switch for $60 does NOT mean that the telcos can get a carrier class switch for the same price, much less everything else needed. It's not like they buy a bunch of cheap Linksys gear and hook it together and everything works magically.
& their capitollist hill cronIEs.
that's right. we'll not buy ANYthing from ANY of them until they get over this 'we're in charge of you' attitude. we've scene enough to be able to get by without them/their whoreabull payper liesense scams.
the customer is ALWAYS right? lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. get ready to see the light.
yes and the miss america pagent was rigged also...
but who`s gonna believe it?
Actually, the whole issue here is that they don't have to file a lawsuit to get the information. Scary, huh?
You could fill a text file with the string "riaa sucks" repeated until it is the same size as a rip of the latest Britney Spears song and rename it with the same title. How could they possibly know from logs what you actually downloaded?
...including this /. post. It is copyright 2003, Mike Wren, All Rights Reserved.
Once a work (including music, video, text) is in a fixed tangible form, it is covered by copyright law.
The issue is that if you read between the lines, it appears that the RIAA is asking the ISPs/telcos to decide what copyrighted works users can download (the latest Dave Matthews or David Gray concert) and what users can't download (the latest 50cent studio CD from KaZaA). Not only is the RIAA putting them in the impossible position of monitoring and reporting, but also differentiating what is legal and what isn't.
Take-home message is this: It appears that the RIAA is expecting the Telcos/ISPs to do their job for them... all the RIAA would have to do then is file the court paperwork and/or bully the end-users directly for a nice quick and easy out-of-court settlement.
"I'd also like to think that it's due to the ISPs overwhelming desire to do the right thing and protect customer's privacy, but I'm having trouble reconciling this view completely with the generally held views of corporate entities and their desire to run profitably."
Big corporations don't have morals of any sort -- good or bad. If you want a corporation to behave as if it wanted to do the right thing then design the system such that it is in the corporation's interest to do the right thing.
The Telcos just happen to be in a position such that in this case the "right thing" is in their self interest. This is good for us.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Thank you for the measured, intelligent, philosophical reply. Genuinely insightful and moving. (Unlike another responder who simply called me a "fucking leech".)
-kgj
is that it is all the week that we don't hate the Republicans... .
Today, Senator Coleman announced he will push legislation this year to reduce the penalties for copyright infringement and also press for changes in federal law to require judicial review for subpoenas. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) has already introduced legislation aimed at curbing subpoena power, but his version only received "lukewarm support" at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last month. Coleman did not provide numbers for the revised penalties, but he believes the $750-$150,000 per infringement is excessive. from
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
in california verizon lost a law suit for over billing its customers, i was one of them. i'm going to get my money back.
it was verizon that did not take the 'antics' of the r.i.a.a. seriously, and they, (verizon), who then unwittingly assisted the r.i.a.a. in their, (r.i.a.a.'s), witch hunt. no one likes to be the pavement for someone else's agenda. i mocked verizon for this.
now the r.i.a.a. and telco's are like titans in an arena; we lesser mortals should still be fearful. but i cannot help but cheer for verizon on this level. i firmly believe that verizon is a souless group of oppurtunistic preditors who are currently hunting a vermin that i believe collectively represents another form of hate mongers.
Actually, I attend the University of Maryland, and here they use what they call a Packet Shaper, which somehow manages (aparrantly by port) to grant priority to certain kinds of traffic in such a way (from highest to lowest):
1. All university offices and research facilities
2. FTP traffic
3. Game traffic (woot!)
4. Web surfing (Your pron dls go here unless you get it from an FTP server)
5. Kazaa/P2P crap
Now, realizing that there's a random port checker on the latest version of kazaa, it seems strange that they're able to regulate it's access, but they completely shut it down this past summer as a test, then started allowing it larger and slightly larger amounts of our bandwidth.
It's not impossible to stop Kazaa altogether, but I think if the RIAA wants to take the stance of some legitimacy to P2P, they need to understand that you either need to allow it all, or don't allow any of it, because you can either kill Kazaa via an ISP (and you'll get shit), or you let it go, but limit the bandwidth it takes up (which is now detectable, case in point UMCP).
Sig for GotSpider threatens to invade. France Surrenders.
Well today's enemy may be tomorrow's friend, cherish the thought but in a couple years the RIAA might just be the hero too, saving us from the treacherous Anti download music policies (including the legit stuff) that the telcos might be implementing to save bandwidth, I know it sounds far-fetched but you wait...
...in bed
I don't really see how the RIAA calling and saying "We're gonna sue you unless you hand over $3,000" is any different from "We're gonna proceed with our suit unless you so hand over $3,000"
I don't see how this is much different from them saying "Vinny here gonna be very sad if you don'ta paya us da money. And when Vinny gets sad, he likea to break things".
I mean, threatening somebody with a completely illogical sum of money in the form of a lawsuit unless they pay out isn't much more than extortion, albeit legalese extortion.
Universal Health Care == TIA
Think about it.
I wonder how long until the telcos realize they can also receive "settlements" when they sue users for using their networks to traffic copyrighted materials........ I hope there are no telco execs reading this.... What's a sig?
Remember, according to the RIAA and MPAA, if you download music, movies, and/or files, regardless of their copyright status, you're a terrorist. And even if you don't do these heinous criminal activities yourself, rather support filesharing and file downloading, then you're supporting terrorists and the terrorists have already won. Be a real American - just say no to filesharing and remember to report to your local fascist RIAA office anyone you know that does commit such crimes. Even if their your son, daughter, father, mother, brother, or sister. Thank you.
Leech indeed...
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Next time I rip a fart and someone smells it without my permission, I'm gonna sue 'em.
Like if it gets cut to just patch it at the cut and go. You have to go back to those preexiting joints and lay between them generally. If copper gets cut, I can hook it together right there in almost all cases.
Does Verizon charge the RIAA for each name? Doesn't the DMCA state that the ISP can charge a reasonable fee for it? Why doesn't Verizon just charge large fees to the RIAA?
"NWFusion also points out that RIAAs handwaving, threats, tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system."
You morons will never get it. Rhetoric like this proves it. You will never understand freedom if you make moronic statements like this. Then again, Stallman thinks GPL = Free speech, so I'm not surprised.
Anger is always produced out of fear and separation.
... but abstracted situations call for reason, not emotion.
... but man, we should grow up before we hurt ourselves.
... we all belong to the world now; anyway that's my view. At that scale of abstraction, anger is utterly irrational.
... do I not hate all life?
And, damn! -- who wants to live in a world like that?
Agreed, fear and separation often lead to anger; and these are bad motives for anger.
There is a righteous motive for anger: in response to violation of your space.
If someone gets in your face, anger is justified: I figured this out the first time I got mugged.
By extension, it's natural to get angry if someone breaks into your house: English common law is largely based on the principle that "a man's home is his castle".
Abstracted further: if someone invades my bank account, you wouldn't be surprised if I get angry.
But the further we abstract, the less righteous the anger. Anger is righteous indeed as a life-saving measure: might save you from a mugger, or worse.
But in bank account invasion, anger doesn't save me from a life-threatening emergency. Oh, abstracted anger is motivational, I'll place calls, register complaints
Take away the emergency, and the only practical application for anger is vendetta: keeping alive hate out of desire for revenge. Granted that's an old familiar story
Because we've abstracted ourselves outside our bodies, outside our homes, outside our tribes, villages, cities, states, nations
If I hate another man
-kgj
but the RIAA is steadfastly seeing themselves in the business of selling "buggy whips". They are so tied to their buggy whip business model that they are suing their customers to get them to continue to buy buggy whips.
In a short time, certainly inside of ten years, no one will need the RIAA's buggy whip product, the 12-song CD. Not the consumers. Not the artists. The music industry is going to change dramatically. A generation of net-savvy artists and promoters will "motor" right buy the CD business. There will be many more artists making money from commercially distributed music. The prices will be lower, much lower, but vastly more of the revenue will go into the artists' pockets. Consumers will buy the songs that they like. Art will succeed, or fail, on its own merits, not through the efforts of some Mega Media PR machine. Boy-bands will be a thing of the past. It will be a good day...
Justified anger, righteous anger (like Jesus in the temple), is anger WITH consciousness. You're conscious you're angry, and you're not so easily swept away on emotions making you uncontrollable.
... the Wise Old Cop abruptly explodes with anger, red-faced, shouts at the Japanese guy, makes a big scene in public, only verbal no hitting but really losing it verbally. Afterward, Wise Old Cop returns to his usual calm. The Young Cop is totally baffled -- what the hell happened here, why'd you do that, I thought that losing your temper means losing face, to the Japanese? And the Wise Old Cop explains, Yes, losing temper does mean losing face ... which allows the Japanese guy to go back to his bosses with news they do not wish to hear -- by losing my face, I help him save his, which furthers everyone's interests.
Thanks for the followup, you've confirmed my earlier notion (based on your first post) about the similarity of our worldviews.
Re: conscious anger -- simulated anger as a tool:
A scene comes to mind, from Michael Crichton's "Rising Sun", where the Wise Old Cop (normally a calm Zen guy) is talking with a low-level sarmiman from some Japanse corporation, explaining some news that the Japanese bosses will not like
-KGJ
-kgj