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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tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system."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.
So does this mean that we *don't* hate telcos this week ?
Is this also the week that eggs are bad for us ?
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]
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?
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.
I usually don't say nice things about telcos.
I, for one, will start welcoming our telco overlords.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
How isn't the distribution system horribly out-of-date? The very concept of taking data, sticking it onto physical discs, putting those discs inside plastic wrappers, moving those discs via trucks, holding them inside stores, requiring the consumer to transport themselves several kilometres to buy the disc, then transport it home, simply so the customer can play music? That system makes sense for physical goods; not for pure data.
Internet distribution of music is modern, efficient and convenient. You can argue (though you didn't) that the current systems are broken because the artist isn't compensated, but I don't see how you could possibly argue that the physical distribution system is anything other than antiquated. It's a 100-year old distribution model that hasn't significantly changed despite several generations of telecommunication improvements.
"...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.
Yeah, all my friends are talking about IUMA artists. I hear them from car stereos everywhere. I mentioned Britney Spears to some friends yesterday and they were all like: Britney Who??? Then they turned away to listen to the new IUMA artist Solid State Reciever.
Wow. Maybe Coldplay should join IUMA, because they haven't gotten many fans from the classic distribution method. Plus, I hear they are begging in the street because they get no money from EMI.
Grow up: without the majors spending millions on promotion, most bug acts would be giving up to get real jobs.
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
If you have something better than put your money where your mouth is otherwise shut the fuck up.
Ironic.
If you'd snail-mailed me this post it might have made sense. But using the very type of distribution system you claim doesn't exist to propogate your claim it doesn't exist ranks right up there with "This sentence is not in English." (The difference between this post and a music file is merely one of scale, and not much of it.)
As for people actually doing it, it's not my responsibility or anybody else's to show them to you. All I know is I intend to sign up with EMusic soon. And that's just one example.
"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.
"As for people actually doing it, it's not my responsibility or anybody else's to show them to you."
It is their responsibility because they are making a claim with no facts to back it up.
...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
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.
You don't understand. It isn't outmoded for the record companies. It's outmoded for me as a musician.
Professional recording equipment and expertise is cheaper now than every before in history. I can record an album in a studio for what I can save up on a minimum wage job. If I have some expertise myself I can do it myself at home for "free," at higher quality than even the pros could do it 20 years ago.
I can produce CD-Rs on my own or have CDs pressed for pennies apiece, including jewel case and inserts.
I have no need of a record company's money to finance my album.
As such I don't have to buy my own CDs back from them at full wholesale in order to distribute them as demos or for sales either. In fact, I don't have to distribute CDs as demos at all. Instead of spending $20k to mail out a few thousand demo CDs I can now upload many times that many for free direct to whomever I wish to hear them without the need of a go between.
I can make sure my website address is attached to those demos. At my website I have worldwide promotional capabilities, including making cuts available for free download as a promotional giveaway, and, of course, album sales.
Of course my website will be heavily promoting my live appearances as well, where I will be selling CDs for ten bucks and pocketing nine of that in profits.
On sales of no more than a few thousand CDs I make more profit than I would with half a million in sales with a Sony contract.
I grew up in a radio household (my dad was sales and marketing development manager for GE Broadcasting Corp.) and been a working musician for for three decades. Half of my friends have recorded, some of them for labels. Most of those that have recorded for a label now do so as private publishers.
This isn't "Pie in the Sky." It's the way many are already doing business, and it's already proven to work.
I can't imagine signing with a label. They have nothing to offer me that I can't provide for myself, at my own profit.
KFG
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!
I think the problem here is that whenever someone does come up with a better system, they get their arse sued off. So, their money never reaches their mouths...it get intercepted along the way.
We care. We have to. We're the phone company.
How do you "steel" data? This is curious, you could make yourself rich possibly.
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
Don't put money in your mouth, don't you know that money is one of the filthiest things in the world.... almost as fithy as SCO and the RIAA
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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
I have been toying with this idea for a little while. I want to get someone to download a copyrighted file of mine, without my permission, and then try to get a DMCA subpeona against you. It would be an experiment to see how easy it would really be. Im building the website now, and looking for volunteers er, "defendants".
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
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.
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
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."
... 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/
"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.
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.
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.
Genius, safety in numbers
It's legal, and people use it. I know there are methods of copying ringtones, but people don't. WHY? Because it's easier to download them, and they are cheap enough that people can't be bothered.
My point is (and partly yours), is that people are prepared to pay. Think about it - I know how to wire up networks, but I would rather pay someone and do something else.
Buying CDs is more work than downloading. You have to either order online and wait for it to arrive, or get in a car and drive into town.
What the record companies also have to do is reduce the price of tracks. Plenty of people know that an 11 CD has a lot of costs that a download doesn't like pressing, distribution, shop profit etc. Make it the equivalent of 4-5 per CD and I'll be interested.
Actually, the whole issue here is that they don't have to file a lawsuit to get the information. Scary, huh?
...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!
The problem isn't "scumbag's" swapping copyrighted material. Well.. wait, yes it is. Quick! Without looking it up, tell me if Drowning Pool's "Tearing Away" can or cannot be legally traded. Never mind - go ahead and try looking it up, I'm sure you still can't tell me with any certainty. I honestly don't know either: I found a full-quality copy of it offered up as a mp3 sample from the album on a highly visible review on a commercial music site that's been around for awhile. Yet, the album says that copies cannot be made and distributed. No terms were attached anywhere that I could find on the site, and I couldn't find any agreement or information that says that the site is legally distributing the files. Can I, or can I not legally own that without buying the CD?
If it were clear to the masses what is and is not "protected" under copyright law, the "scumbag file swapper" argument wouldn't be so laughable - if it's clearly illegal, even if it's not necessarily wrong - DON'T DO IT (just whine about it on Slashdot...). But, if the waters are muddy, who's responsibility is it to clear them? Should the individual be responsible for trying to beat the information out of somebody who knows it, or should the people who know it be making some attempt to deter this sort of behavior by making it clear what is and isn't an acceptable use of their material?
Beyond that, I might point out that, unless you've got a lot of money to burn, you can't afford to fight the RIAA by yourself even if you're innocent (which I realize you mentioned). The RIAA will lose money fighting you, but get a big payoff if they win, whereas you can only lose large amounts of cash by fighting no matter your innocence or guilt. Even if they lose, they can afford it. If their scatter-brained approach is going to hit any innocent people, they shouldn't be doing it - especially given their massive abuses of the legal system (courtesy of our idiot lawmakers) and the fact that they let the whole thing run rampant for so long. Then, there's the fact that they have no evidence that it's even hurting them, much less that it's hurting them as much as they claim. It's kind of hard to go to court in civil litigation and not look like a total jackass when you stand up and say "Well, your honor, we say that this person caused us $750,000 in damages even though file swapping has been loosely correlated to increased sales in recent history, our industry's downturn matches up to what should be expected as a result of the economy, and we have nothing to refute even this weak, merely circumstantial evidence".
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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.
Actually, no, you made the claim "Saying [the music distribution system is outdated] over and over ad nauseum does not make it true." I know this to be false. Since you want us to "shut the fuck up", and by implication you want us to change our opinions, the onus is on you to provide me a reason to believe you. I already know you're wrong.
With "put your money where your mouth is" you imply that nobody has created a music distribution system. Again, I know you're wrong. Unless you can provide me evidence that nobody is doing anything with new distribution models, which is to say, unless you can provide evidence that iTunes and EMusic don't exist (good "fucking" luck!), I'm not going to change my mind.
The responsibility for evidence lies not with the person making a positive or negative claim in this sort of situation, but with the person trying to change minds. Since the evidence is overwhelmingly against the strong statement you made, you're toasted. (Now, you could argue that it's not good yet, but the difference between "I think iTunes is doing OK" and "I don't think iTunes is doing OK" is hardly worthy of the rancor you seem to have.)
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.
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?
Leech indeed...
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Good post. I'm reminded of a quote I heard recently. I liked it enough I made a copy, shown below.
"Dissent and rebellion is what rock 'n' roll was founded on. The record companies back then encouraged it, wanted it, publicized it. But now they don't want no trouble." -- John Mellencamp
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?
How is that an argument? Half of the households in Izbahkistan don't have electricity and use cow dung for heat. Would you now claim that the local dung seller isn't selling an out-of-date system of heating?
I never said anything about copying songs without permission. I'm not disputing that the RIAA can pick and choose the distribution system. I'm just challenging the idiotic claim that physical delivery of music is not out-of-date. Of course it bloody well is. The existence of companies who only distribute music via the Internet is proof that there is a new method of distribution, therefore proving that the old method is OUT OF DATE.
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
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