Slashdot Mirror
Kazaa Backs Plan To Bill P2P Music Transfers
Darth Coder writes "From this article at The Age:
Kazaa has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads.
The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."
slashdot charged for first posts? I'd be bankrupt!
Music swapping file sharers prepare to abandon networks in droves.
their networks... call the RIAA lawyers...
I never used their spyware and never will...
and thus endeth Kazaa.
If they did that, how long would it be before another network popped up to replace them? Hours? I guess they forgot they aren't the ones who invented P2P...
I guess they also don't realize people use the network....because it's... free... Not free and it will go away.
This is just posturing. Even if they were able to pull it off, imagine how many hashes each song would have. How many different versions of each song do you typically see on a P2P network?
It has to be server oriented to work, and is nothing more than a smoke screen for Kazaa, not that I am a record label sympathizer.
Kazaa had a pretty decent system. It's a shame it had to go.
Didn't Napster try this? It must be why they're still so popular ; )
If there was ever an incentive to get people to lock down their wireless networks, this is it.
ISPs will probably also like the idea that it provides an incentive for people to not share their broadband connections with their neighbors.
Since all my KaZaA downloads end at about 4% anyway, will my payment be reduced 94%?
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
P2P file sharing apps work for just that reason. People sharing on their own free will.
What is the reason to share if you are paying for downloads?
What about movies.. and ebooks.. and software.. and roms.. and images.. and the personal documents of people dumb enough to share them..?
This sounds a lot like the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act), which added a surcharge onto the cost of tapes, divided among labels, songwriters and artists, under the assumption the blanks would be used to duplicate music.
I don't think you'll ever get people to pay for what they can get for free. Why would I pay $1 for what I can get for free three clicks away?
There is an interesting experiment going on where ex-members of Candlebox, (now KMHW) are giving away their next CD in return for label-like benefits ($$) by increased sales of their sponsors product. It's more like the sports model, where Shaq and Tiger make more money from Reebok and Buick than they do from their team/winnings.
Interesting alternative. But pay Kazaa though my ISP? Wouldn't that violate the "no internet taxes" law? Also, how would FTP, Usenet, and Freenet (among others) transfers be taxed?
It seems that what is happening is that labels are saying "hey this worked before, let's try it again!" Perhaps if more people considered new models like the KMHW one, taxing bandwidth would be unnecessary.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
1. So it would just be another pay-to-download program or something more? 2. What do they mean " but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."? From how I understand it, it is just another pay to download... (and would people just not switch to another p2p?)
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Finally some compromise, I'll be glad when I can finally pay for the music I sometimes download. I live in a small town so trying to get my favorite bands is too much of a hassle because of long order times. Once this is fully phased in I can instead enjoy 3 minute downloads of my favorite songs through my broadband connection.
As a bonus, hopefully this could see a standard p2p system developed and maybe ported to Linux - then I could get rid of my Windows partition completely.
Shh.
Not every download of an MP3 is copyright infringment. It's doubtful the RIAA will make any distinction.
Frankly, I don't see why they should make people pay for a service they're not providing, especially when they don't know why somebody is downloading an MP3.
"Derp de derp."
On the "How Much Crack Would I Need To Smoke For This To Seem Like A Good Idea?" Scale
Charging people to download songs is a good idea, but I would only support it if I knew my download money was going to the artist of the song I was downloading.
:)
Then again MP3s don't contain any fancy packaging, and they take songs out of context, reducing an album to a bunch of singles.....Buying the full package will always contain a certain magic for me
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
yeah, ok .. this'll work :p
this is what happens when idiot business school
graduates get ahold of something
it all falls perfectly in line with how the world
works, tho
those who can - do
those who can't- teach
those who can't teach - become managers
those who can't manage -
they wind up 'english majors'
and those that can't be english majors wind up
as cmdrtaco or writing for PC World
Once you give something to the public, taking it away isn't very practical, especially when the technical ability to 'give back' something that has been taken away exists among many talented people. It might not have been legitimate to start the initial P2P network sharing of music (though I'm not here to debate ethics), but it's been done, has been widely adopted, and is seen positively by music consumers. It's not going to go away when fifty million people want it.
If the RIAA wants to do something useful to preserve profit, they should provide lower quality versions of the tunes available for download. Three things that could be beneficial/changing for this:
- It'll give people something to download and listen to, if their reason for being on P2P networks is to preview music before contemplating buying it. They get to hear it, and they might be willing to spend their hard-earned money for a better copy.
- It'll put lots and lots of poorer quality mp3s on the filesharing networks, making piracy of the CD rips more difficult. If you can't download it and you really want it, buy it.
- Lowering the price of CDs will cause consumers to actually preview and buy music "legitimately", rather than relying solely on mp3 downloads which can be awkward to play in cars and on larger stereos without a computer connection. Not everyone knows how to take mp3s and turn them into CDs.
The RIAA doesn't seem interested in doing this though, so the situation will continue in perpituity.Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Please save us KazaaLiteK++. IP spoofing maybe?
Now, technically, if Kazaa wants to bill its users for downloads, shouldn't WE be getting paid? Kazaa itself only provides the login servers and the search mechanism. The overwhelming majority of the bandwidth and content provided by the service is paid for by the users themselves.
Why should I pay Kazaa when their service plays only a small part in the P2P network?
You don't think people will pay for what they could get for free? Explain hookers, please.
stuff
This could work out for the very best.
the Freenet developers are currently working through some teething pains of the new Freenet routing protocol. When this settles (and this seems to be happening quicker than expected), Freenet should be ready for the really big time, especially with all the new Freenet client programs coming up for release.
With KaZaa 'phasing in' this billing, there's every chance that Freenet will be ready in time for the millions of KaZaa refugees.
Let's just see the RIAA/MPAA/BSA try to sue Freenet users. Would be easier to persuade Microsoft to release all their products under the GPL.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
That most people just don't want to pay2p
I wonder if the idea of paying for online music is now finally at a state where the average consumer can consider it. Apple's offering is one example of how successful it can be, and there are a lot of other options out there with different payment options.
I am curious to see if we see a mass-migration to another system (like from Audiogalaxy to Morpheus) or if people will be happy to pay for the service and stay.
However, can Kazaa can legally charge for the transfer of files it doesn't have any rights to? Have they signed any contracts with the big music-heavyweights?
lolz
ebay
here's hoping stanford decides to start including free internet in dorms before kazaa goes stupid...
what about kazaalite?
What I don't understand is that Kazaa is already riddled with fake, false or Madonnaized songs. Not only that but what about the random qualities you find. I see this as so much ass kissing to the RIAA, we bow down says Kazaa in tacit indignation to those who made it what it is.
Die First, Then Quit
that's it for kazaa. what we need is a robust, decentralized network -- anyone know of any current implementations?
in the kazaa boardroom meeting: "our enormously popular service isnt making us much money. wtf? i know, lets start charging our users for every download. if they are ignorant enough to be using kazaa instead of kazaa lite, they wont realize that there are other file sharing networks."
well, they will make a few bucks this way, but only for as long as it takes for the alternative to become popular. in a few weeks after it becomes pay to use, the word will be out about the next big network, even among novice computer users, and things will move on.
so tell me, can kazaa lite still function if someone sets up a proper server for it?
You don't think people will pay for what they could get for free? Explain hookers, please.
Funny, but not a bad analogy. Pretend you're in Amsterdam and see two beautiful women in the window. One is free, one is $250 an hour, and she is slightly better than the free one. I know which one I'd pick. B)
If you're saying "why pay if your wife or gf gives it free" I would suggest that if you have a steady wife/gf you probably would make less use of professional resources.. heh.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
as long as p0rn isn't effected :-)
Advertisement: Nokia mobiles Home > Technology > IT News > Article Kazaa backs plan that could spell an end to the days of free music By Sue Lowe October 10, 2003 Print this article Email to a friend The world's most popular song-swapping network, Kazaa, has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads. The proposal, which could finally end the days of the free lunch for millions of music fans, has been put to big US record labels at the same time as a new legitimate version of the former file-swapping giant Napster is launched in the US. The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus, that allow users to copy music directly from each other's hard drives. Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill. With the success of Apple's iTunes and the launch of the new legal Napster in the US this week, the five big record labels are finally getting behind online music distribution. But they are still turning their backs on the peer to peers seen to support widespread music piracy. Kazaa now hopes the music industry will forget past grievances and tap into the cleaned up versions of the networks that already have millions of users, rather than build their own networks from scratch. "The whole effort here is to go where the consumers are, to convert all that energy to selling licensed music," said Marty Lafferty, president of the Distributed Computing Industry Association. Nikki Hemming, the Sydney-based chief executive of Sharman Networks, which runs Kazaa, said the business model offered "great hope for the entertainment industry". Kazaa says about 5 million simultaneous users are logged into its network at any time. Mr Lafferty predicted that within four years of the big record labels adopting the plan, online music sales would outperform traditional offline sales. By that time, he forecast, 1.8 billion licensed tracks would be downloaded a month, worth more than $1 billion a month in revenue. The five big record labels are yet to respond to the proposal. Print this article Email to a friend React to this article Submit a news tip Top Search all Fairfax archives (*Fee for full article) Advertisement Want to pay less credit card interest? 10.99% p.a.* ANZ Low Rate MasterCard Simply low interest. *Interest rate current as at 1 October 2003 and is subject to change Terms and conditions available on application. Fees and charges apply. Advertisement It news | Opinion | Reviews Technology * Microsoft pledge to improve security * Crackdown on immigrant visa lottery websites * Net pedophile jailed for five years National * G-G backs first strikes on dictators * Family judge warns MPs on custody * Qantas queries role of air marshals World * It's cultural genocide, says Dalai Lama * Plan to rename airport sparks controversy * Spotlight on vow to balance party politics and the books Opinion * Depression cuts a broad swathe * A reform only the PM wants * . . . but there is a better way Business * Ansell applies handmade solution to Sara Lee * Dollar surge hits finance giants * Perseverance leads Victoria's gold renaissance Sport * Murphy stakes early claim * India rocks New Zealand * Paulin takes long journey back to Melbourne marathon Entertainment * Where fashion reigns * Not your average frocks * Lady and gentlemen text | handheld (how to) membership | conditions | privacy Copyright (C) 2003. The Age Company Ltd advertise | contact us
Nader-2004
Sharman Networks does not pay my bandwidth. It does not hosts any music files. It does not need to run any server, except its web server. The only thing they give in the deal is their software, which they already sell. Can anybody give me a plausible reason for me to give them a cut of the money?
well if they could track what you download and bill your ISP, how long would it take for Uncle Sam to build up a datacenter of everyones downloading habbits. I'm pretty sure they can't do it, but it does feel very orwellian.
num->num->pineapple
"Mr Lafferty predicted that within four years of the big record labels adopting the plan..."
Yea, but iTunes for PC launches next Thursday. Thus ends the MP3 "war". After that anyone who wants to pay can, and anyone who doesn't can go elsewhere. I don't see a crappy P2P service anywhere in the $ picture.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Then Napster got shut down and Kazaa rose like a brilliant phoenix from its ashes and all was good once more.
Then Kazaa decided to start charging its users, and the future became very bleak indeed.
Until a new savior approached, destined to bring free content to the masses without any spyware.
You see, I hope Kazaa realizes that while people may be using them because they are the easiest to use now....that the convenience is certainly NOT worth paying for. The only reason the service is used as much as it is is because it IS free.
Not to mention the fact that they don't exactly have a massive bandwidth bill to pay because of the nature of P2P.
I wonder if Kazaa Lite and its ilk will be able to bypass this. I also wonder if this will spur the masses to move to other P2P platforms, thus giving a much needed boost to the userbases of alternative P2P programs.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill
Dream on, sphincter boys. Many people have tried to solve the problem of micro payments on the internet. The ISP is NOT going to handle this for you, and they shouldn't.
Never mind the 'automagical' detection of what you have to pay. No way that will ever fly.
btw (OT): what the hell is going on with the really low amount of replies to articles on slashdot (and the low amount of moderating?)
Two possible arguments:
Offtopic? No, it's a digression. Go give your mod points to that guy down the page who deserves an Interesting.
this is an important thing here, the network should pay users for uploads of new songs. or would that be illegal all over again?
....it's not going to be easy to make them pay.
After years and years of being overcharged for CDs with 2 good songs, people found a way out. Now that the idea has settled in and gained (massive popularity) I seriously wonder if *any* form of paid p2p is going to work.
All they can do is make implementation more difficult - which will simply drive attention, coders and users to FreeNet type applications.
They've made their millions (billions?) ripping the consumers off, and I suppose it's payback time.
When will these companies learn the only reason they have these huge numbers is because they're free and havens for mostly illegal activities, the second the piper comes along for money the people disappear. Happened with napster and many other apps, it will happen to kazaa, and the next big thing will pop up.
[i]"Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."[/i] You know, if Kazaa wants to bill for their service, fine by me. But if you're telling me my ISP is going to scan ALL traffic going into and out of their network, and "bill appropriately" depending on what I download, then I'll take my business elsewhere. Uh, hello? They're ALREADY billing me $40 a month for the service, why should I have to pay extra for certain content? Never mind that it wouldn't work anyway... if they charge based on what ports are used, someone will figure out how to change it to port 80. If they search packets for MP3 file information, someone will write a "wrapper" program to zip and encrypt a download. Dave
For Files on the shittiest P2P network as far as dumb users are concerned ? Yeah right I'll go download a shitty track ripped by an asshat at 128kbps with wrong ID3tags.. And then I'll have a Madonna song instead..
I'll pay for 128-256kbps VBR mp3s coming from a central server if the speed is a guaranteed 100Kb/sec, else, leave me alone and I'll "steal" stuff using Soulseek.
It's more like the sports model, where Shaq and Tiger make more money from Reebok and Buick than they do from their team/winnings.
There's very, very few atheletes that's true for. It's only really going to happen for the top 1 or 2 athletes in any given sport.
It's not a business model you try for; it just sometimes happens if you're the best at what you do.
"Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."
Those idiots over at Sharman realize that the majority of their userbase doesn't have credit cards don't they? Also, this is not something parents are likely to just hand over their card for. "Sure Jimmy, you can download all you want and charge it to my card, AND open us up to potential lawsuits!" Nope, I can't picture that one happening any time soon.
The one thing I would be interested in seeing is if by paying....if you were to download a copywrited file illegally, and then get busted...would they indemnify you?
Would they be held responsible because they would be profiting from the distribution of copywrited material?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The reason Kazaa appealed to people was because it had FREE music. How many of their user base will stick to Kazaa once it's a pay service? I'm sure once Kazaa makes the change there will be an instant replacement for it.
Sherman Networks seems to think that users will just stick with Kazaa because they know its name and they don't want to switch because Kazaa is nice and familiar. Their buisness plan just isn't viable. For example if I wanted to download a song on Kazaa I would get more than 100 matches. I choose to download one and it turns out to be a hoax, but its too late. Its already been charged to my bill. If they want to have any hope at success then they need to switch from decentralised to centralised, but of course that would defeat the purpose. So then they would have to introduce a rating system so users could tell if it was a hoax, and they'd have to figure out a way to eliminate wrongly name songs.
I personally believe then that Kazaa's only choice is to stick to giving their adware-riddled software away for free.
"Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."
Do ya know when every single ISP will have the infrastructure to invite online services to tack on categorized fees?
Teh Nehvar.
If it sounds like bullshit, and quacks like bullshit...
There's very, very few atheletes that's true for. It's only really going to happen for the top 1 or 2 athletes in any given sport.
Indeed true, but how difficult would it be to get at least the top 500 -1000 bands sponsored, lifting the subsidy off the labels' backs and maybe enabling them to do what they do well...find and market talent.
They havent had a chance to do that in ten years.
Hey I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a pantload better than "we'll sue you motherfucker" don't you think?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Doing something like this may persuade the RIAA to back off of Kazaa, giving them a year or more of safety from lawsuits, as they are "preparing" a pay per download service...
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I would suggest if you have a wife/gf, you are paying in inumerable ways. "Oh yes honey, I'd much rather go to the flower show than play video games and drink beer with my friends."
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
TCO for a woman. There is TCO for children too. It is either $1 or $20 million per clone, I can't remember.
Ummm... someone gets a virus on my box, then convinces my ISP that I dowloaded a whole bunch of crap, then I get a huge bill, then I have to prove I didn't download?
No Thanks.
If that's going to work, the ISP had d*** well better be sure they are filtering packets on a per user basis, so that I can't download anything through the Kazaa port unless I really am a registered Kazaa user, and they had better make sure that if "I" try to do that they flag it as a virus and not a new signup or something. No other way.
Look.
The ISP billing right now is "pure". I get billed for connectivity and that's it. The last thing I need is for my connection to turn into something like the POTS line, where kids in the house could "dial" the equivalent of a 900 number.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
+5: Informative
I would suggest if you have a wife/gf, you are paying in inumerable ways. "Oh yes honey, I'd much rather go to the flower show than play video games and drink beer with my friends."
ROFLMAO.
Proof that currency can be ephemeral, but the accounting software sucks.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
I propose we start a non profit org which earns money through ads or whatever combination of profitable methods, and then this money gets donated directly to musicians, not the RIAA but the actual artists. I'm sick of seeinng stupid plans which take our money and give it to the RIAA, the RIAA does not create a damn thing and they do not deserve a penny and until our money goes to the artists I dont want to support this.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
"Why would I pay $1 for what I can get for free three clicks away?"
Tell that to Apple's customers.
I'm sorry, but I've never been a big fan of this argument. People don't just pay for goods, they pay for services. Coffee is free where I work, but many of my coworkers still hike a couple of blocks to go to Starbucks. Why would they do that? They're engineers. They know that the coffee is free! So why do they do it? Because it tastes better! Starbucks is competing with free coffee where I work and winning.
So why would somebody pay for music when they can get it free from Kazaa?
1.) Availability on Kazaa is a variable. Availability on a web-based service is constant.
2.) Mp3s from a website will come down a good deal quicker.
3.) The user wouldn't need to download a bunch of different songs in order to make sure one of them came through in a reasonable amount of time.
Right now, I'm paying $10 a month for Listen.com's Rhapsody service. I have unlimited access to their 300,000+ song library. They have a nice search engine that makes it possible to find new stuff. When I want to hear a song, I just click it and within a few seconds it starts playing. Boom, I have the whole album right there. I don't get to keep the music, I have to stay subscribed to listen, but I'm paying less than the cost of one album a month for it. I don't use Kazaa anymore. It's not everything to everybody, but it definitely competes with 'free'.
You're right in the sense that the RIAA can't compete with Kazaa as long as they don't enter the digital arena. I completely 100% agree with you there. However, the view that they can't compete with it is short-sighted. There are plenty of examples of competing with free.
"Derp de derp."
Is this just another spin on the tax for using the internet? What next?
I've been using MLDonkey for a while now, mainly because Kazaa doesn't have a GNU/Linux version, and it is nothing short of amazing. You can download files from any of about eight different networks, including FastTrack (Kazaa), eDonkey, Gnutella 2, and others. The important thing is that FastTrack--the underlying network behind Kazaa and Morpheus--is not controlled by Sharman Networks.
So now, they can back any old plan they want. If they get too greedy, their users don't even have to switch networks. All they have do to is just use a different client. I mean KazaaLite is already a really popular, and vastly superior alternative that they have _no_ control over.
So I say screw 'em. Let them ask for money until they turn blue. It doesn't matter.
That site is cool as shit! Where you find sites like that.
So from the article it looks like they aren't collecting a levy to be paid to the music industry but an actual payment for service. What happens when I upload? Since I'm assisting them in providing the service do I get a credit to my account if I upload enough, thus keeping Kazaa in business?
What a great business idea. Charge for downloaded music but provide non of it your own thus they don't have to worry about failed downloads, poor quality recordings, just plain wrong filenames, etc. All they provide is a service.
So lets see, you'll pay your isp for bandwidth and then Kazaa will then charge you for a service that uses your upstream bandwidth? Not only is that non-free but that's a rip off. If Kazaa wants to charge people for downloads they can host the files themselves.
Then again most people don't use their upload space and most broadband services have a capped upload speed. So if Kazaa creates profits for isps with plenty of upstream bandwidth it might liberate the connections of the rest of us.
If everyone had enough upstream bandwidth to host a small website, then we'll finally have a real Internet, instead of enthralled as consumers as we usually are.
I agreee with you...I wouldn't use Kazaa or most P2P services myself. Grab it off IRC or Usenet and save a lot of trouble.
Like you seem to be, I always challenge the concept of "having" media, versus "consuming" media. My feeling is that the two will eventually will merge, and actual ownership of the bits will be irrelevant.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Or will Kazaa-lite still work?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
...but in the future downloads would be automatically detected...
mv metallica-enter_sandman.mp3 mom_pics.zip
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
All I really know about the Gnutella protocol is that it didn't download very fast on Windows and some files didn't download at all.
Kazza Lite on the other hand has lots of users for finding files from and the downloads almost always complete successfully.
Just my Windows experience however, I just repartitioned and installed SuSE 8.2 on my machine today so I still have a lot to learn about Linux.
Shh.
If you put it there, you can be sure that it won't be accepted.
db
Cig:
ôô
Today, I've got about all the tunes I had set out to get. Mostly replacements for the LP's and 45's I used to collect, the cassettes that have worn out, and the odd song here and there that I couldn't find in any record stores.
That being the case, I no longer have any desperate use for P2P. For now, it's no longer something I'm really all that interested in.
But there is one fly left in my ointment... Has there ever been a Linux version of a P2P application?
Granted, I haven't been using Linux for very long (only since March), but I'm comfortable with it enough not to ever go back to using MS Windows at home ever again. Should I ever decide to jump back into file sharing mode again, is there a Linux version, or are Linux users expected to do the ol' Codeweaver/dual boot/VMWare kinda maneuvers?
Automatically billed by ISP? This should really piss off my next-door neighbor, who has left his 802.11b router unencrypted, allowing anybody access though his cable modem... but seriously, how are libraries etc. that want to provide free internet service going to block this?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
It is apparent that we should start separating concerns as soon as possible. If we proceed along these lines, with a kazillion ad hoc contracts and agreements, everything is going to come in to a babelesque and screeching halt.
Time for a few RFCs.
Everybody should do one thing well. Music licensing companies do one thing well -- collect money and offer licenses. P2P services do one thing well, facilitate distribution of content and sharing of information.
I can conceive of a few things we could do to facilitate it.
Imagine a license server protocols for license servers, which are capable of tranmitting a license, song-by-song, that permits the licensee to receive from ANY party a file representing that song. Presumably, the licensee can be given a token and authentication means that a prospective filesharer can check, perhaps by interaction with the license server, which then permits the file-sharer to transmit that song at will.
Now, conceive of various ways to engage in lawful commerce of great tunes:
1) enhance p2p services to perform license checks, so that when a person seeks to receive a tune, it will first have to authenticate the right to receive it. now, p2p can operate completely legally and in the clear -- and evolve to provide whatever value it can; and
2) vendor servers, either on the web, or through applications like iTunes, can provide super-duper interactions with users, combining and putting together tunes and samples, and then sell the tune to a customer (if unlicensed, sell the license -- if licensed, perhaps charge a bit because of special quality encoding or whatever).
Thus, we can always check to see if all of our tunes are licensed, and we can always check to see if the recipient can get our license.
Clearly kinks should be worked out, but I would WAY prefer to see the internet community get together to figure out the right way to do this -- rather than see yet another distribution infrastucture built up to protect yet another ridiculous hunk of turf.
This approach should be VERY attractive to music sources, making it possible to collect real revenues almost immediately, and from a kazillion purchase sources, without worrying too much about technology or distribution, and without having to negotiate with each and every individual prospective vendor -- by making it possible to create lightweight music servers that comply with the law, we make it easy for everybody to get legal.
This would be a good thing.
As an ISP, I will not be billing my customers for any such thing, and will gladly move away from any upstream provider that decides to bill us.
Check out the giFT project...
Thank you for the link I'm going to bookmark it and come back to that link once I understand Linux a bit more.
Shh.
"File sharing" networks are unnecessary for paid downloads, after all. The record industry has no need for Kazaa, except for, maybe, the brand. And the record industry is already dealing with "the new Napster".
Well if they charge people that are downloading for me, I better be getting some of it since it is using my bandwith. Say 50%, after all, we are acting as distributers.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Sueing a few kids who download? No contest, RIAA wins. Trying to make commercial ISP's, college nets, and anyone else who hosts a connection charge people for each download? Or in the case of "free" connections like the colleges host, force the ISP to pay for each download?
"Hey, Joe, how come there are suddenly so many more lawyers at the defendants' table?"
Watch for this one to go down in flames.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Right.... I'm gonna pay for downloading music when I 90% is crap to begin with. You know what I'm talking about, blank mp3 files the RIAA stuck on the network, music with skips, blank spaces, only encoded at 112 kbps, etc. No thanks. I'd use the Apple online music solution, or any other method, before I would pay for access to a network where I would get music from other users - and then get billed by a company that didn't have a damn thing to do with distributing it besides writing their lame ass software full of spyware and adware. Whoever at that company thinks this will work smoked far too much crack before coming up with this brilliant plan.
It's really useless for pre-paid dial-up connections. Here in our country, we have a few dozen pre-paid ISPs. This is where you buy a card and scratch the silver thing on the back to get the user name and password. How can they bill you when you're almost anonymous.
Take-off every
I know, Hotline Communications went broke, but people may be still using the software. If i remember correctly there was also a Unix/Linux/OSX hotline clone, is it still popular?
"..but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill"
Finally, the 1-900 number of the internet emerges.
RIAA try to convince people to give up Kaaza
They can start charging P2P downloaders as soon as they start paying the P2P hosts for wasting their bandwidth. If you are going to charge someone for downloading a file, you better host your own damn file. Also, like others have said, what do they plan to do about downloads that don't work, or they just were encoded with a crappy codec. I also don't see how music artists think their stupid CDs are worth over $10 (US). Compare the production costs of a DVD movie to music CD. I would say a DVD probably costs roughly 200 times more to make, so a CD should cost roughly 200 times less. Yep about a dollar, maybe 2 dollars after manufacturing expenses. The music industry fails to see what the real problem is, their product isn't worth the cost, and that is why people aren't willing to pay. If the music industry put out downloads for 25 cents per track (which is still way more than they should be, that is generous IMO) in a non-DRM format (haven't they ever heard of MP3), people would pay just so they don't have to hassle with the P2P network. And seriously, get rid of this DRM shit already. Compare the number of MP3 players to WMV/iTunes format players there are.
In the spirit of the RIAA Seems to me that if I purchase the CD and provide the burning/source storage for the music, I should have a piece of the money pie. What's my cut?
Oh yeah, and since most people cannot afford to pay $100 or $200 per bit of information transmitted to them, the government would simply pay it, and collect the money in the form of higher taxes on the rich.
I don't use Kazaa. Quite frankly, their interface pissed me off. More importantly, Gnutella is an open standard and works quite well thank you. Kazaa has already been worked around. Too bad for them.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Saw this CNN article today about a kid in England who claims his computer was hijacked and used to perform attacks without his knowledge. Can you even imagine the uproar and lawsuits that will happen if people start getting charged for songs from wireless leechers? Hell, I worked in a grocery store when I was in high school and people bitched about pennies. If something like this ever went through, it'd be a total mess.
So if I don't download an MP3, then I don't get billed right?
So what's to stop anyone from uploading a file, say:
xyzzy.abc
Then setting up a web site that handles the mapping of xyzzy.abc -> Brittney's Latest Crap.mp3 ?
I'm sure it could be something XML based, that would work on-the-fly to do the translation...
So as far as Kazza knows, I didn't download an mp3...
When will these morons learn?
" Seeing as how the Music Companies own the music, not the artists (songs created under contract are s unfortunately considered "works for hire") and the RIAA is a construct of the Music Companies, compensating the artists does nothing to absolve you from proscecution; you're still violating copyright." So let the consumers own the music and then give the money to the artists. Problem solved.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
i can imagine brainstorming this idea with that loveable bunch of luddites "of course billing kazaa will work! who cares about the x number of other p2p clients out there, i'm sure like, 3 people use them, on their pinko lunix systems. maybe we should ask Dell to install this on everybodies computer, and AOL to add this exciting new feature to its internet!"
Well, I 'have' six or eight big boxes full of old Jazz, Classical, and popular LPs and 78's that I've accumulated recently. I haven't gotten around to playing much of it at all yet, but I know that I 'have' it and it won't go away because some 'service' ceases to exist or I decide I don't need an ISP bill any longer.
Go ahead and be a 'consumer' if that's what you're into. I'm glad somebody in the past 'had' all these records. Some of it is damn fine music to listen to, and it wouldn't have made it's way to me if they'd just listened to the radio.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Naaa... I don't think so. License servers DON'T work... Can't Work... Won't work...
It's just another form of copy protection, and as the Apple ][ protection wars proved - whatever scheme was concocted, could be cracked...
Setting up licensing - in whatever form won't work after I listen to it the first time, because I guarantee you that I'm not going to waste my bandwidth connecting to some half-assed license server just to "authenticate" myself as being allowed to listen to the music. I will capture the stream, re-encode it without the licensing requirements or bits or whatever, and release it from its boundries...
If I'm off-line, then what? I suppose I can't listen to my music?! WTF is that... If I can listen to it, then there's a nice exploitable hole...
What if the license server crashes?
What if someone hacks it and screws with the licenses?
What's to stop some genius lawyer or government official from subpoenaing the information and using it against me somehow?
The only way that the whole online music thing will work is for it to be sold unlicensed, unprotected, and on the cheap (less than 50 cents per song...). Who want's to steal some song that only costs 50 cents?
I thought it was just for pr0n!
As long as you can legally own the music this way, this is a good thing.
The major problem with the RIAAs action in recent years is that they've offered no reasonable alternative, other than, "get in your car, drive to the store and purchase our product on physical media," which is, of course, no longer needed. If this succeeds, it would be the first time the record companies will have acknowledged the fact that their product isn't the medium, it's the content.
Kazaa is feeling the burn from the RIAA. As P2P networks wake up to the realities, and problems, of non-anonymous transfers better anonymous P2P clients will take their place.
One such client is Freenet and is starting to get to the point where I think it is useful, especially the new 'unstable' build that has many new routing features that make it faster. (After installing, stop freenet, and save the unstable jar file over freenet.jar and restart to use the unstable (often better) build.)
Another benefit is that this project is GPL open source, so anyone can take a look at the code, to help avoid another JAP or EarthStation 5 like situation.
Everyone in the Freenet community knows it's slow at the moment - it's making a transition to a whole new routing scheme.
Within 1-5 weeks, it'll be kicking it better than ever.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Great Idea , especially the last point I love the idea of someone else paying for my music, can you imagine the chaos at card companies? Yes sir thats $2000 for downloads this month,... But i didn't d/l anything ... yes you did .... no I didn't... yes you did .... prove it then!
No one in their right mind would pay money on a per-download basis for peer-to-peer access. The cost of developing a client-server system, in which you know you're getting some standard of quality, is fairly low when amortized over the millions upon millions of downloads that you'd have, so the fee would be only slightly higher for the same royalties. If the labels were smart, they'd read the writing that's been on the wall for the past few years and actually do this. The only possible justification for allowing a fee-based pay-per-download would be that people who get crappy downloads would end up paying again, which is not something the labels want, since customer frustration over pricing is what got them into this mess in the first place.
Of course, it is possible they're just stupid.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
will be launching soon for a free non P2P service as soon as our lawyers are done finishing up the documents. will be worth checking out, but a new approach.
Walk with Music;
... but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill.
hahahha. Sorry, but am I the only one that just completely fell over laughing after reading that? Its NOT going to happen.
1. People wont allow this to happen. Never. Not in a million years. People wont accept an ISP that just charges them for certain things on the internet. People will have the service turned off if possible. Then what? Will the isp stop them from sharing files?
2. They wont be able to organize every internet service provider in the world to accept their charges
3. Open proxies and hacked boxes. When you see people with tens of thousands of botnets of hacked boxes and lists of thousands of open proxies, this billing system wont work.
4. Why should kazaa get money? They arent really providing the networking power or files, the people are. Real p2p networks like gnutella just cut out the middle man and will always be free.
bah
How is this any better than buying your music straight from a web-based service like the iTunes Music Store, PressPlay, etc.? At least with those services, you have some assurance that you're getting what you pay for. With Kazaa and other P2P services, you don't really have any idea what you're getting or even who you're getting it from. Nobody cares much right now specifically because you're not paying for the stuff you download, but that'll change when the download costs you a buck and the quality turns out to be crappy, or when the file ends up being something completely different from what you wanted.
Anonymous P2P file swapping cannot support a pay model unless there's some way to trust the people you're swapping with. I can think of two ways to do that: 1) something like PGP's web of trust concept; 2) some sort of centralized system for rating users the way eBay does. But PGP's web of trust doesn't really seem to have taken off in any big way, and a centralized authority negates a lot of the advantages of P2P in the first place.
Frankly, I don't think that the record companies will go for this either, since there's no mention of DRM, and they have no assurace that you'll actually get what they produce instead of some modified version which they can't control and which might make them look bad.
How are others P2P software like Gnutella based clients doing (Bearshare, Limewire)? Last I used them about a couple of years back, they were fine. They are free and open protocol based.
They should figure out a way to bill for popular transfers (i.e.: commercial music), and keep _free_ music _freely_ available.
I don't give a fuck who owns the copyright. IP law is so fucked up as to be irrelevant. I would like to give a reasonable amount of money to my favorite artists, so I go to concerts. I wouldn't mind giving a bit to the artists for the digital music I listen to, but FUCK THE RIAA!
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Leave my ISP billing alone. I know what my Internet access costs each month and that is the way it should stay. As soon as one charge hits the bill, everybody is going to want in and Internet ISP billing begins to look like the mess that is our phone bill today. --No thanks.
Mp3 music is crap at all but the highest quality. Most of the encodes you find on Kazaa are poor. Downloads are iffy as well. Add this up and what do we find? Millions of people downloading bunches of crap music.
Go back a few years ago. FM is crap, unless you take the time to really make the most of it. This is a lot like spending tons of time on Kazaa looking for only the best encodes. People all have tape decks. Add it up and you have millions of people making crappy copies of music.
Didn't hurt things then, does not now.
Just for the record, I no longer use P2P for music. (I will still get other things however.) Got tired of the crap. Funny, I got tired of the crap taping FM as well.
How to trade? With friends via SSH. Nice and private, not too much distribution. In fact, this form of distribution is not too much different from people trading discs.
I would be more inclined to encourage this, but I am not sure we can put a centralized payment scheme on a decentralized service in a fair manner. These jokers should have taken the first Napster deal. They would be making a lot of money right now and would own a popular name. It's too late now.
So will all mp3 downloads be taxed? How? What if the creator wants to provide the content? Do I still need to pay for it? If I am paying for one kind of download, why not others? If downloads begin to be charged according to their type at the ISP, what exactly am I paying for? Will general Internet access get cheaper? Who pays for the new ISP billing systems? Me --you?
This is not the answer. At this point, the answer is marketing. Clean honest marketing of music with added value services and content attached.
Basically, these folks need to earn their keep. Since we all know distribution is cheap, why do they need to make the money they do? Hell, it was cheap with CD media. As far as I am concerned, they have been making far too much already.
They could link music downloads with all sorts of things to make plenty of money. They could make the downloads worth downloading as Apple clearly shows.
What to do with Kazaa? Not sure, but I don't want to pay for something I do not use.
Blogging because I can...
Wouldn't that violate the "no internet taxes" law?
No more than paying your ISP for access is a "tax." Or paying for things you buy from Amazon is a "tax."
This isn't a tax or "use fee" type plan. It's a straight purchase.
You can very simply avoid the "tax" by using other means to obtain your music, just as you can swap books and CDs with friends instead of buying them new from stores.
KFG
Who the hell uses this shit anyway? You'd have to be an idiot to choose Kazaa from among the other choices out there - why would you want to use software from a company that knowingly installs malware & snoopware on your machine? Kazaa is crap.
Does this mean I'm going to be billed for downloading the free software song?
of all the Kazaa users figuring out this "opennap" thing...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
He sure sucks a mean dick. :(
Uhoh, someone to scared to post with their account so they have to post AC, boohoo
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill.
Yeah, that's gonna happen. Dipshits have been trying that with email, to stop spam, for years, and spam is a real problem.
how will they gaurantee files are what they say they are? Or will they just charge for the copyrighted files and let the viruses etc go for free
Unfortunately, no one can be told what my sig is...
It's pretty god damned sad that you've posted almost 300 comments and still haven't got the Excellent karma you so desire. Fuck, man, I did it in less than 50 posts.
If I were you, I'd start a new account, too many people know what a whore you are.
Besides the obvious user reaction about this, I think it should be pointed out that they do not understand the record industry's position at all. The execs at Sharman Networks believe that the RIAA and their contributors only want to legitimize music distribution on the Internet.
They could not be more wrong. The record industry does not care if the artists get paid. It cares if it occupies the lucrative middle-man position in music distribution. If they were to do this deal with Kazaa, they would be sharing their monopoly rents with another greedy group of execs whould could completely usurp their power over their golden egg laying hen. The music industry wants to be the only distributor of music on and offline and in any alternate universe that remains to be discovered.
Therefore, this plan, however wicked and evil to any reasonable person concerned with freedom, is twice as unpalatable to the monopolists working in the offices of the RIAA or any organization that actively contributes money to it.
Obviously, this also means that the execs at Sharman Networks are an untrustworthy ally in the struggle for freedom against the tyranny of ignorance created by copyright law. While that should not have been a surprise, it sounds like more alternative and easy to use clients for serverless P2P networks need to be created (and fast) as insurance from the potential loss of such an important information distribution system.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Wouldn't that be just the same as if microsoft said "hey if you pay us a monthly fee for using the internet explorer, all soiftware you download with it no matter where from is legally yours then"...
'nuff said.
[L]
And:
4) A clean conscience.
Whatever the legal issues, for those that believe in "sin" at least, it must be a sin to download music without paying the rights holders, so this sort of system allows one to download without constantly having to visit the confessional.
If napster couldn't filter copyrighted material, how is a million different ISPs going to manage to detect copyrighted material. There are tons of p2p networks, tons of ports that will be needed to be monitored. What happens if the infringing files are zipped up. What happens if I zip up my entire 300gigs of mp3s? Does downloading that 1 file count as 1 mp3? What about the thousands of open proxys. There plan is just rediculus.
I have downloaded free music that is offered free by artists often uninterested in composing for profit, and I now listen almost exclusively to free and/or libre music. I like that mentality or context- of creating and creation and sharing for its own sake- for the pure joy of it without the problems- including psychological- that money can bring. In some ways doing away with the profit-motive seems to immediately make the music better to me, and that's how I want to listen to it, including, ultimately, how I want to offer my own compositions. I suppose that could be Open Source (OS) or GPL Music or be placed under one of those licenses, and I also suppose that the RIAA companies' music and the music of artists that compose for profit will be competing with those like me who offer it Libre and/or for Free. Kind of like Windows vis-a-vis Linux I guess. I also imagine that OS or GPL'd music would conflict with networks charging for their download, or, for that matter, with the apparent Canadian music CD tax. In any case, I refuse in principle to give a cent to someone's bottom line without getting anything I consider worthwhile for it in return. FWIW, we're bigger than the RIAA, the record companies and the crappy commercial music composing artists combined. "...nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight... Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight..." --Bruce Cockburn
"I live in a small town so trying to get my favorite bands is too much of a hassle because of long order times. "
Yeah...Amazon doesn't deliver to small towns, and it takes what...2 days to get there.
I don't know how you've survived this long. My goodness.
I will not pay for flawed downloads.
Do you know how many fucked-up songs I've downloaded from KaZaA? (If you use KaZaA, you know). From mislabeled songs to incomplete songs to the real kicker: songs with ripping/encoding errors.
Imagine the outcry and attempts at support calls/emails that will follow. Of course, this could be eliminated by hosting good rips on a central server, but that's exactly what they DON'T want to do. So how do you manage the vast sea of no-quality-control? Track down the users hosting bad files and notify them, using the back side of a shovel? (something I've always wanted to do.... "hey fucknut, didja notice that the track goes "bloop-bloop-bleep" throughout the whole intro, and the song ends in the middle of a chorus? *THWACK!!*). Maybe even locate the ripper/encoder of the bad track(s) and expose him/her to radioactive materials?
Actually, this might be a good way to raise the per capita intelligence level of the general populace...
Right, so will I get guaranteed high-quality files (160+ kbps for MP3, 96+ for Ogg) and consistent fast downloads? I doubt it.
If I download a file, say 'Pulsedriver - Galaxy.mp3' and it turned out to be 3 and a half minutes of static would I still get charged? Probably.
If I make my own music and people download it from the service, will I get a share of the profits? Can you see it? Nah, didn't think so.
This idea is DOA. Plus the fact that hosting a 4Mb MP3 these days costs very little, and the provider gets much better control over the downloads. What's the point?
It is totally within the power of your ISP to create these types of business relationships and inform you on your billing statement of new "optional" charges.
So long as they inform you, they have no liability. It becomes your problem. If they can show logs that trace transactable actions to your IP address, you will be liable.
I have been anticipating this happening for years. We are lucky that we have been able to avoid it for this long. But make no mistake, this e-commerce approach is absolutely inevitable.
On a positive note, technology countermeasures will spring into existance, and the new "source" of revenue will generate many innovative and cool services that are actually worthwhile.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
The problem with P2P has always been the asymmetry between people willing to share and those willing to download. Downloading is far less risky because it does not require you to present yourself to others on an extended basis. You are thus are less likely to be discovered by the enforcers of the copyright laws and to be subjected to litigation. You also do not have to give up your bandwidth to others as an alturistic gesture.
Ultimately this leads to the classic "Tragedy of the Commons" in which a few are exploited by the many.
The only cure it to come up with some sort of compensation system that rewards those willing to share. The MoJo Nation project was an attempt at this.
For Gnutella, obviously.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hopefully this will kill off Kazzaa's aged and insecure network, and make way for a new killer app, one that's Secure, Fast, and Reliable.
How in the world would Sharman convince every ISP in the world to go allong with their proposed billing structure? Do they really think consumers are going to accept such a radical change in their service contracts just to make Sharman's or the RIAA's lawyers happy?
..... to use this encrypted, cross-platform P2P file sharing software instead!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
To be truly effective, this system would also have to keep track of which files you've already downloaded, so that users don't just download and "preview" songs whenever they want to hear them. It would also mean that the Kazaa folks would have to work to make sure that only one "official" copy (preferably high quality) of a song exists, because otherwise it would be easy for a user to just keep grabbing different rips of the same song and "previewing" them.
--- Bwah?
Yeah, that's how you tell a p2p network's health right there. Just search for a popular file, and see how many "popular" (i.e. multi-sourced) files are there by that name. The more popular files going by the same name (but with different sizes/md5's), the bigger chance that some of those will be fake, or perhaps very crappy.
Now do the same for BT!
I have never seen fake files on BT (I use good BT sites like voracity and suprnova). I think this is because people just don't like to go through the process of seeding huge fake games or movies (in kazaa this might improve their rating by having people download the "fake file" a lot). In BT, there is no rating or point system, so fake files are useless. Even if anti-piracy groups or the RIAA try to seed fake files, I think they won't succeed for 2 reasons:
1) If people download a fake file, they try it out, notice it's fake, and delete it. Boom, one less client to connect to for that torrent. Eventually the torrent dies automatically.
2) Seeder IP's can be blacklisted by trackers to block fake seeders from RIAA, Overpeer, etc. This would be easy to do (you could even use KazaaLiteK++'s already existing list)
In short, BT is the future!
I'm sure they really believe this plan will work. They have to believe there's a future for commercial p2p. They have to believe commercial p2p can outcompete free alternatives. They have to, because their entire livelihood depends on making Kazaa profitable and ignoring the hints from actual reality that it never can or will be.
It's sad, really. I don't feel anger, just pity.
Check that one out, linux winderz and mac. It gets you on ALL the p2p networks not just one.
This sounds right up Microsoft's alley. DRM'd to the hilt, authorization from a central server before you can download from anywhere, and paying for everything, etc....
I'm just wondering (as I didn't read the article)... if Kazaa starts charging... will it remain a P2P network? Or will it become THE source for music? I'm thinking, it will be good to start charging for Kazaa... as long as the source of the music is reliable (a central server). This way, what I pay for and download will be, theoretically, perfect. If Kazaa remains P2P, then it doesn't make sense. What is someone starts sharing a slightly corrupted file? Then what? I get a lousy copy. That's like buying a scratched CD of some top band that someone made from their garage with their own CD burner. What if there are multiple shares, and I was dumb enough to first download a wma file at 64kbps? Then I realize how lousy the sound is, and download another copy that's an MP3 at 160kbps. I get charged twice! Like I said... paying for a P2P network doesn't make sense if I'm paying for what other people share. Make it a reliable centralized server, then maybe I'll pay.
First eMusic shitcans unlimited downloads, now Kazaa expects me to pay for downloads? What if I download a file that has been glitched, or is cut off at the end, or turns out to be a trojan? Do I get my money back?
I never thought I'd see the competition actively trying to drive people to use the iTunes Music Store when it debuts for Windows this coming Thursday, but that's what it looks like is happening here.
The bill gets added to the ISP bill? How stupid of an idea is that? How difficult would it be for somebody to introduce a trojan onto the MS OS that downloads - adding the charge to the zombie's bill - then pump the file elsewhere?
> They havent had a chance to do that in ten years.
Sure they have, they've just been looking for talent in a very very small search space. "Things that sound/look like Britney", "things that take the good bits of hip hop and make it hip pop", and "things that sound like punk, but are really just boy bands with an overdrive pedal". This is the shit that sells, and most labels are there to make money, not to make innovative music.
But the "sponsorship" idea is rather worrying. It could start out a nice relationship, but what happens if the band does something that the sponsor perceives to be "bad" for their buisness? What happens if the sponsor does something that the members of the band consider bad?
Sponsorship might work in sport because really, you're not trying to innovate, you're playing a game to win it, and really there's no "artistic" talent required. When corporate sponsors are the major way to make money, then the art will suffer because it will be limited to what the sponsor says is okay and sanitised.
KaZaA exec #1: We'll charge money just like Scour did.
KaZaA exec #2: Then we'll be meeeellionares!
1. These companies start charging.
2. The open source community creates a new protocol and clients for free.
3. People start using those clients.
4. Government steps in and regulates it under the auspices of terrorism or child pornography prevention.
5. New protocol created.
6. GOTO 2.
Sheesh.
Why not just be free? There's a perfectly simple model for this, just give your music away! I do, and its real simple when you think about it - most bands will never collect a royalty check from their record label, but will make their money though touring and merchandising. So why not cut out the record label? Its not like you need their money to record and manufacture a CD these days - the process is so cheap and accessible that my grandmother could put out a CD on her own dime if she wanted to. With the global distribution that is the internet, the only hurdle is getting your publicity covered, which if your actually talented will come by good old word of mouth after some hard touring.
So please, why are we still relying on record labels???
Sound waves should be free!
so kazaa is taking the route of "pay to download" when will RIAA & friends learn that as soon this is implemented some other P2P software using a different protocol will be released thus allowing to download music and other media for free once again. This is a loosing battle and i find it a shame that kazaa is caving in. Hopefully the people that bring us kazaa lite k++ will find a way to circumvent payment. /me begins writing new P2P program.
sig censored by america
Its Animal Farm (George Orwell) all over again. A system starts well and slowly merges into a pointless corruption devoired by endless new ammendments. It happened with Napster (sell out) and its starting to happen with Kazaa. Its even happening with the Bill of Rights, you have free speech anymore? well yeah you can still say fuck.. but you cant say "shift key" and dont even try saying "im going to kill George Bush"! If Kazaa gets out of hand it will be time to start a new system (or switch to Gnutella) and then that will start to fade too (yes Gnutella) it will become the new target of the RIAA and slowly things will fall apart.
;) And if we're all still alive by then and the police havnt raided us for non-DRM'd computer hardware and un-licensed daemons we might still be able to download some bloody music.
This is all a side track before the real target of corporations and governments around the world gets full attention: the internet. And once thats bogged down with so many laws you need 10 licenses from the government and MS to run a web-server, the computer itself will be targeted (TCPA etc.) and people will have to start building their own computers (hopefully chip fab will be availiable to the masses by then
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The problems that I see with that model is that it is LEGAL for me to download a song I already own, so why would I be charged again for the same song?
Also, how will songs that are not copyrighted or are free to trade on P2P networks going to differ from those that aren't?
Personally, I think that more services like Emusic need to open up. I mean, we are the Internet generation, so why not market it to us like that?
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
If you didn't see this one coming, you've been staring at the sun too long.
This is the business model that the RIAA should have come up with in the first place! How many times have you been online, heard an artist, liekd them and wanted to get thier songs right then and there? In the Internet Age, why the hell would you wait for a CD to arrive??
The ability to legitamately purchase whatever music from whatever country via P2P is long overdue. I support this idea wholeheartedly.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
I guess Im clueless, because Kazaa is the best, most reliable thing Ive found. What are the better warez, then? Please help us cluebies out.
If Kazaa started charging fees, 99.9% of its users would immediately abandon it for other programs (most of the hardcore users have already abandoned it because it sucks anyhow) Bit torrent and IRC are where it's at. With no central servers and no method of automated searching they'll never catch mainstream leechers.
Repeal the DMCA!
Other networks have already supplanted kazaa. Months to years ago. Gnutella has been superior to kazaa for years now, and bit torrent is great for some of the more underground stuff like high quality movie releases. 95% of the shit on n00b networks like Kazaa and gnutella are TMD's piss-poor mpeg2 reencodes of other groups' releases. Sure, there's also Direct Connect, but that has a high proportion of fake crap to fill the insane 40GB share requirements of a lot of servers.
Repeal the DMCA!
Like hell im going to let them autobill me.
Even if i was going to accept a micropayment situation, ( and i wont ) they arent trutable in the first place.
" oh sorry, we didnt mean to clean you bank account out.. "
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't click the link, it's goatse.cx
Repeal the DMCA!
I get the feeling that Kazaa Lite probably will not implement this "new" feature.... :-)
Not to mention the fact that I am not about to pay for a music company spoof song. How many versions of the same song do you need to download before you get a working one? dang people you need to delete that stuff when it doesnt work.
They want me to pay for the right to have someone else use my computer as a server and my CD collection as their content.
To quote from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back:
"F*ck them in their stupid asses"
I am not going to pay to download songs ripped off of scratched CD's using Musicmatch and a 10 year old buggy codec (FhG 128k just plain sucks).
Sounds like a good plan to get the RIAA lots of money if it even works. So lets say it does work and people on p2p have to pay to play, whos getting paid? ISPs and the RIAA, lawyers, agents and a list of IT/white colar comapnies along the way, all with their hand out, all getting a cut. You can bet the artist sees little to nothing of that dough. It still blows my mind why more artists havent followed the likes of Prince, Tori Amos, etc. Make your own website, sell your music exclusively there. Yeah, your music gets on to p2p that way, but at least the artist makes 100% profit, and you dont have to drive your ass to the mall to buy the album, so that should increase sales ( assuming *everyone* has internet access ). Distribution is basically limitless / very cheap, which was the silver bullet for the RIAA since the begining, now the RIAA doesnt hold all the cards on this one, so why sign a deal to get your CDs on to semi-trucks and into best buy/tower music stores? People like Sting and Dr. Dre make 5 cents on the dollar. I would have no problem actually paying for my music if i knew the arist was actually making a decent cut like 35-40% - like I'd like to see 50cent actually make 50 cents on the dollar. The game as is stinks and ill do anything i can to help shift the power back to the artists who make the stuff we all fuss over in the first place. =)
...Kazaa..
R.I.P.
-Valiss
I really have .zip to say about this matter...
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The only cure it to come up with some sort of compensation system that rewards those willing to share.
Off the top of my head I can think of the following:
!) Kazaa user rating (though that has been hacked to hell)
2) Direct Connect minimum shares (though there are a lot of fakers/slot cheaters etc.)
3) BitTorrent download choking
True, they're not perfect solutions but they are working. It worked back with Napster, and the methods keep improving. And since Napster, broadband has been spreading, more and more people have 24/7 connections with "idle" bandwidth.
True, in theory and in a pre-Napster era I might have expected to hear that argument about why it wouldn't work. But reality makes a pretty convincing counter-example...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Lower quality? I didn't think it was possible for popular music to suck even worse, but maybe I'm wrong. Music that sucks is a big reason people don't buy CDs.
...the less of the music you hear, the better. Hell, if you hear little enough you might even be convinced to buy it ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What about people out there (like the EFF, which publishes all its stuff on p2p networks) that use these services for legitimate purposes... sounds like they'll be charged as well... how is this going to discriminate legit file-sharing from non?
Also has Mac & Windows clients, check the gift page for more info.
The giFT client for Windows is currently broken. Without a working Windows client, there won't be a large user base, and without a large user base, there won't be many obscure works available to download. Most casual computer users aren't willing to "just install Linux" because either GNU/Linux won't autodetect their hardware as well as OEM Windows did, they don't have space for a Linux partition nor money for another hard drive, or they frequently use Wine-incompatible programs that have no direct Linux compatible replacement to which they want instant access. I have fallen victim to all three.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have downloaded free music that is offered free by artists often uninterested in composing for profit, and I now listen almost exclusively to free and/or libre music.
How is this possible? Yes, I know that some people write songs and publish them under a Creative Commons license, but how do they keep themselves from making the same mistake George Harrison made in subconsciously copying an existing song and thereby infringing its copyright?
Will I retire or break 10K?
They don't actualy own the servers. YOUR computer is doing the work for them. That is why it is called P2P and not Apache or ISS.
It's more like the sports model, where Shaq and Tiger make more money from Reebok and Buick than they do from their team/winnings.
Tiger doesn't spend any of the money he makes from Buik, Nike, or any of his other endorsement contracts. Every dollar of it is invested and saved for his retirement. He says that it is his way of keeping himself "hungry". 12 million dollars per year is a huge incentive to get complacent.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Here are just some of the unanswered questions I have about this:
The whole thing sounds like a complete non-starter to me.
OpenFT will become more popular. Everybody bust out their copies of giFTd.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
And with this.. Kazza is going to go the way of Napster.
We still have Direct Connect, Bittorrent, Gnutella.. and a few others. Use mldonkey, you get to use more then one network at a time, just have to remember to disable kazza when this all starts.
That's funny, I don't pay an ISP bill on my campus's T3 line... FFA!
Open Source licenses, unlike closed source, encourage copying, modification, sharing and redistribution. That's the whole point.
Pirating "closed source" music seems to just cause problems for everyone and might even help the RIAA et al.'s causes.
Open Source music seems to ignore or sidestep the RIAA completely in favour of free and/or freely copyable, distributable and modifyable music. Ultimately, perhaps like OS software, that might be better for the quality of music and for everyone involved
Both options would push users from Kazaa to other apps on the same network, such as K++ or Kazaa lite (who wants spyware anyway?)
30 characters are fine for a s
The ISP would also need a cut from Kazaa, since they're taking a portion of the bandwidth hit.
As I post this, slashdot is using bandwidth it hasn't payed for! And slashdot is making money hand over fist because of it. Won't someone think of the ISPs?
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
Even if it was a good idea (which it isn't), the RIAA would never go for it. It's the same old story, losing control of the distribution channels threatens their monopoly. Sure since they would be getting fees from all music shared whether they had anything to d with it or not they could coast along for a few years. But then the new players in the game will bribe the US government (sorry, I meant donate to election campaign *snicker*) to have laws changed to prevent the RIAA recieving payment for music they didn't create. The much reduced RIAA doesn't have the cash to pervert the course of justice (sorry, I meant overturn the decision *snicker*) and have their payments reinstated.
If jews can outlaw kazaa can we outlaw jews?
they won the fact that free p2p has its uses in court now they pull this. there 5 million user base will go down to 0 users if anyone got charged for anything. if i got a song on my hd and i send it to someone and they have topay the riaa for downloading my mp3 i defently whont share anything or download anything or buy anything at least using kazza. they seems to think napster and itunes will be a big hit but relly napster just came back and itunes isnt out yet. but they probly wouldent be any bigger then any normelmusic company selling cds. the only reasion kazza has 5 million users is couse its free as soon as it when pay it would go from 5 million to 10 users.
Dude, you are wrong. I worked at Visa and a couple of banks as an e-commerce consultant. The only reasons that these systems haven't been rolled out before is they couldn't get the ISPs to cooperate. The banks could give a flying f*ck less about these issues, they will just build a new security profile and auto-detect abuses and/or auto-rollback transactions when complaints are issued since it is digital media. And yes, Visa and/or the banks will partner with the ISPs on this, guaranteed. Why? Because any way you shake it, this is banking. ISPs may try it alone at first, but the moment the government starts asking questions (think regulation) or security issues hit, you need a bank to deal with it. The tech to detect hacking abuses generally already exists - start doing transactions out of your profile and port 80 will start redirecting to a confirmation page... shit like that...
The fact that ISPs are now willing to move on this means the banks will be all over this mess. I agree, it is going to be a nasty friggen mess for a while, but you are wrong - this is going to happen and it will happen in a big friggen way. There is simply too much cash to be made for too many big companies for this not to eventually happen. ISPs could double their profits and triple or quadruple their revenue by rolling these services out, for instance.
We are probably 1 year out from having our ISPs be the collection point for all sorts of digital media and microtransactions. There is a good side to this, though. Part of the reason, I believe, that we had a dot-com-collapse a few years ago was that no reasonable means for microtransaction collection or digital media collection existed. It was talked about, bounced around, hell - even designed and built. But never rolled out. Without a way to charge, every 4-out-of-5 dot-com business plans fell apart and it had a chilling effect on the tech economy. Want to see those engines revv up again, this time for real? They will, once this happens.
thus was born "Kazaa Lite", which is a completely reverse-engineered version of the offical Kazaa client, effectively removing all forms of spyware and adware, and actually adding features and making improvements.
Free is irrelevant. Pay-for-play is irrelevant. What is at issue here is a matter of principle. All the window dressing in the world isn't going to change some hard facts.
... but not anymore.
Napster may have gone down in flames, but it wasn't in vain. Shawn Fanning's legacy is the bright and public light shone onto heretofore secretive practices of the music monopoly. Even Judge Patel stated, on the record, that while Napster's hands are dirty, so are those of the recording industry.
As a result of all this, the buying public has slowly begun to realize that music from the major players is a BAD DEAL. For a whole raft of good reasons. From a purely pragmatic perspective, buying music from these people (at any price) simply gives them more ammunition to sue us and buy more bad law from Congress. And ethically, it is simply wrong to give vast sums of money to entities that we now know use those resources to abuse others in turn. That is akin to buying so-called "blood diamonds", whose profits you know will be used to hurt others. Up 'til now, most of us outside the music industry could claim "I didn't know!"
None of this is going to change simply because the Big Five are selling tracks for a buck each off of some Web site. Sure it sounds good up front, and perhaps we save a little money (for now.) But we would be foolish to believe that these fledgling online efforts indicate any basic change-of-heart. In the long run the same people will still be running the show, with the same motives (.i.e. monopolism and the greatest income for the least effort) and they will continue to extort music from their artists and money from the rest of us.
Frankly, I don't see any of the online operations run by the majors as a significant improvement over what we had before. Once the novelty wears off, consumers will realize that they are still supporting the same tired old cartel. And when that cartel has exerted total control of the online marketplace and we're suddenly paying $18 per track, how foolish will we feel then?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why does this sound like an FCC internet tax, ie taxing blank cassettes, and black CD's to illegally give money to a private corporation? In a few years I can see the same disgusting individuals, yet to be defeated, giving the same argument about 'blank' internet access.
It's sad to see what private monopoly in the copyright/trademark area has wrought, when it was intended originally as a public good. Now we have radio payallo, political corruption, control of news, control of the media which ends up being social control, every year an entrenched elite arguing against technology in the arms of the common man, such as dat, sattelight dishes, cd's, computers, &ct &ct &ct. And the number of media companies gets fewer and fewer and larger and larger, and the copyright laws get extended more and more years, violating several different fundamental principles of law.
Wake up folks, this is a more serious problem than you realize, and yes, I'm telling this to slashdot! Drastic measures are going to have to be taken before they'll get better.
This could potentially work out quite well if each user was credited a certain percentage for each file they upload to another user - it's their bandwidth this system is reliant upon, afterall.
If this kind of incentive program were setup, it would pay for itself if you only download a song once in a while, but leave a node running all the time - thereby making the network more useful to others. Gotta pay the peers in a peer-to-peer network, if you expect them to pay you.
sir, i think you're an idiot. maybe you just don't know how to use google? maybe you're just the "average" user? Which by the way, i don't think i know 1 person that hasn't heard of google.
of course, i don't know any def people.
htty://referral.kazaa.suck/join?user=blammo
REALLY! I didn't believe this when i first saw it. But it is true, my dear friend. Now you, too can make $2000-$3000 each month while sleeping, fishing, whatever!
htty://referral.kazaa.suck/join?user=blammo
Start sharing today and get ROCKSTAR-RICH like me! It's easy! Forward this to all your friends and everyone you ever heard of and even to complete strangers. It will make us all fucking rich. Nobody will have to work ever again. Believe me!
htty://referral.kazaa.suck/join?user=blammo
Check out the copyright clearance center which provides licenses for copying magazine and journal article copies. And its existence has been addressed already by the courts in a famous Second Circuit case involving Texaco.
Most of the problems mentioned here apply, with equal force, to the on-line situation. I am simply suggesting that solutions be directed in a practical solution, using the benefits of modern encryption and communication protocols.
There is no such thing as a "licence to use". Doesn't exist.
/s infringement /s download." Examples about, and of course the several -sterr opinions refer to downloading and uploading both as infringing acts, but how about DSC Communications corp. v. DGI Technologies, Inc., 898 F. Supp. 1183 (N.D. Tex. 1995) (granting preliminary injunction, holding, inter alia, that downloading copies of software from sustomer site constitutes copyright infringement)
Read Eulas much?
US title 17 section 106 defines six exclusive rights a copyright holder may licence, but they really only amount to three different rights. The right to make copies (including derivatives), the right to distrubute them, and the right to public performance (including display and digital audio).
Alas for your perspective, the cases are clear -- the reading from disk and execution of code into RAM constitutes a reproduction within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. s. 106(a). The downloading of code and reproduction onto fixed media is, a fortiori, a reproduction.
Anyone who buys copy is the owner of that copy. He has every right to "use" it.
Except, of ourse, when he is not the owner of that copy. There are always implied licenses of course, but they exist only where they can be so understood. At any rate, I concur that in the context of music, I can certainly play the music in virtually any medium, either under an implied license or fair use, and under the AHRA, can probably change media with impunity. This gives me no right to transmit to you, unless of course, you have a license to receive it.
No one has ever sued a downloader because they can't. I invite you to find a single case of anyone ever sued for receiving a file.
It took about 10 seconds on Westlaw. Quick search for "copyright
There is also the Montgomery Ass'n of Realtors, Inc. v. Realty Photo Master Corp., 878 F. Supp. 804 (D. Md. 1995) (which holds, in dicta, that downloading copyrighted subject matter would constitute infringement).
Of course, uploading information to a resource operated by third parties in a swap meet where the information can be downloaded by others constitutes infringement, and cases are found whereby the analysis is on contribution grounds. Of course, there could be no contribution unless the receiving party was a direct infringer.
I haven't studied the many current RIAA cases to see if they are transmssion or reception cases, or both. Clearly, the RIAA Sample Complaint alleges both.
Ok, that's a minute or so of research on my part. Where is your authority for the contrary proposition?
It is impossible for the recipent to create a copy. You can't duplicate something you don't have. Only the uploader is in posession of a copy, only he is capable of creating another copy.
You say the recipient is not in possession of a copy, although on his disk there is a byte-for-byte identical
If the recipient demonstrates a license to use, I am safe to transmit
Incorrect. Without a licence you can't distribute to anyone. The proposal would have to be modified such that the copyright holder gives the uploader a licence to create and distribute a copy.
it doesn't address my proposal.
Even aside from the complexity of person A paying and B receiving the required licencing, it simply isn't worth involving P2P at all. Once you've already spent the money setting up a business and the servers and the internet pipe to run the website and send the licenses, the bandwith cost of sending the actual files is insignifigant.
With modification your proposal could be done, but you are involving P2P to solve a non-existant problem. Music sales aren't being held up by distribution issues. The actual issues are (1) no one wan
Read Eulas much?
Yes, I've read quite a lot of EULA's, quite a bit of copyright law, and a number of court rulings. Someone can print up an EULA saying anything they like.
There is no such thing as a "right to use" or a "licence to use" in US law. It doesn't exist. I invite you to prove me wrong by finding it.
the cases are clear -- the reading from disk and execution of code into RAM constitutes a reproduction within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. s. 106(a).
Incorrect.
Sec. 117. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
Section 117 directly answers section 106. It clarifies that this is NOT an infringment of the reproduction right. You are not making a reproduction during the normal course of installing and running software. It is a single functional copy.
>Anyone who buys copy is the owner of that copy. He has every right to "use" it.
Except, of ourse, when he is not the owner of that copy.
Copyright law says the owner of an object is the owner of the particular copy stored on it.
If you commit reproduction infringment then (1) you are the owner of that copy and (2) you owe damages to the copyright holder to compensate him for the creation of that copy.
in the context of music, I can certainly play the music [] either under an implied license...
You don't need a licence to play music because the copyright holder cannot grant a licence to play music.
(1) You can infringe the copyright holder's exclusive reproduction right by making a copy. He can licence you the reproduction right.
(2) You can infringe the copyright holder's exclusive distribution right by distributing copies. He can licence you the distribution right.
(3) You can infringe the copyright holder's performance right by making a public performance. He can licence you the performance right.
Section 106 makes it perfectly clear that these are the only exclusive rights the copyright holder has. You cannot infringe any right that is not listed in 106. He cannot licence any right that is not listed in 106.
I can certainly play the music [] or fair use
Fair use doesn't even come into the picture here. Fair use applies to reproduction, distribution, or public performance activities that would otherwise be infringing.
It took about 10 seconds on Westlaw.
Drats, Westlaw is a password site. I'll do my best researching them with google.
DSC Communications corp. v. DGI Technologies
I found this:
"DGI had approached a DSC customer to test various products at the customer's location, and while there had surreptitiously downloaded copies of DSC's operating system software programs."
It's completely off-point, they went in and took (temporary) posession of the "original" to make the duplicate. They uploaded it to themselves.
Montgomery Ass'n of Realtors, Inc. v. Realty Photo Master Corp
I had to peice this together from several sources, but the case appears to have no relation to downloads as we are discussing them. Perhaps in the dicta the judge said something unrelated to the case that would be relevant here, but I couldn't find the dicta. Besides, dicta has low weight as precedent.
I still invite you to find a case of person A commiting infingment by sending a file and
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Your legal services are worth what I have paid for them. Suffice it to say, we disagree. I'd be pleased to face off your arguments in court, anytime, but I have limited time to spend on it here. I have been practicing law in this arena for more than a decade, now, and with all due respect for your clear efforts to self-educate and your clear learning of what you did learn, it is equally clear that you don't know what you don't know.
"Right to use." Your argument appears to be that because the phrase "use" does not appear in Section 106, this cannot be the subject of a license. Your analysis, if true, would reverse decades of entertainment law, which uses countless phrases such as "mechanical license," "synchronization license," "transmission license" and the like." Two things are possible: (1) you are correct, and all current practice of law is wrong; or (2) you don't get it, and refuse to listen.
I will state our point of agreement. Section 106 establishes the only exclusive rights granted under the Copyright Act (although DMCA provides relief and remedies for related sets of rights that are different in kind, in particular, a right to sue against traficking and engaging in circumvention). Further, we agree that Sections 107-120 establish limtiations on those rights to the extent they are applicable.
Use Rights. Here is where we diverge. You state that there can be no license to a right to use, because the word "use" does not appear in Section 106. You are mistaken. The reproduction distribution and derivation rights you cannot deny are quite expansive, and cover a broad range of activity. An owner of a copyright is not required to gran plenary rights to reproduce, rights to make derivative works or to distribute the work -- if she wants, she may grant more restricted versions of the same, little bits and pieces of all the righs under a copyright derive. This is where things like, mechanical, syncrhonization and use rights derive -- they are placeholder terms of art for permitting some, but not plenary rights as set forth in Section 106.
You deny, citing to Section 117, the proposition that loading code into RAM for execution constitutes a form of reproduction. You miss the point: (1) Section 117 is limited to owners of a copy, and does not apply to licensees, except in certain limited circumstances; (2) it does not operate to permit plenary execution of code. The MAI, Southeastern and Apple cases settled this proposition in the 80s and 90s.
Downloading constitutes infringement. You asked me to cite cases. I did. You didn't read them, but criticized their applicability by citing comments from a web site out of context. Once again, you don't know what you don't know. You insist I am applying mere dicta from a judicial opinion. I am not, but even if I am, it is far more reliable authority than your unsupported and ipse dixit gainsay.
As a threshold matter, you seem to suggest that the reduction to a receiving party's hard disk is not a copy of the original, despite being byte for byte identical thereto, is one that will face serious scrutiny by any court who has heard it. Odd, how you seem to feel that a person who uses his eyes to draw a mental image of a work, and then paints from memory what he saw has made a copy, but somehow the digital rendition of the same is not a reproduction. Anyway, we will have to agree to disagree.
All that being said, there actually are fun, interesting and intellectually promising arguments that some sort of digital transmission right might be useful and interesting to "fill the gaps." You didn't make any of them, however. The law has been working fine, and time will tell if you are right and I am wrong.
I've got $10 saying that not one single RIAA complaint will be dismissed on the grounds you suggest. If you are right, the argument was slam dunk. Maybe the truth is more interesting than your simplistic, uninformed view of the law?