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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tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system."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.
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.
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.
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.
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.....
:)
and forwards the porn to the network admin for closer inspection
Yeah, yeah. I know.
But taking your comment seriously for a moment I might point out that offering positive feedback to one's enemy when they behave in a manner you find desirable isn't hypocrisy.
KFG
How do companies survive so long after so many people actively loath them?
Because much more people don't know or don't care. Tens of millions people buy what RIAA sells. I think that all this antifilesharing campaign's real purpose is just to frighten the majority of people. They aren't very familiar with the details, what is really legal, what is not, etc. They just hear over and over that downloading of mp3s is illegal and may end up in jail. So they just keep buying...
We could have saved sixpence. We have saved fivepence.
Obviously the porn is the stuff with the dirty bits.
KFG
Hopefully if the RIAA directly contacts people it'll come to light all the quicker how random their contacts have been. So far they've claimed to be taking legal action against 300+ people for file trading. Their record at the moment stands at suing four children under 12, almost 10 people who don't have machines to run the software they claim they used, or even accounts with the ISPs they claim they used to download software from, and six people who don't own a PC or have internet access to begin with. By my reasoning 4+9+6 makes for 19 out of that 300 who obviously aren't file trading how the RIAA says, AT LEAST
There are certainly people who will have the software able to trade, the machines to run it, on ISPs the RIAA claims, but who DON'T trade. Whats their error rate hitting then? somewhere up around 10% of people they're taking legal action against
It's shotgun tactics.
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
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.
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