Aussie Music Industry Sues ISP Over Filesharing

An anonymous reader writes "In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the Australian music industry has listed an Internet service provider (ISP) as a respondent in a court case involving music piracy. The ISP is being sued for 'profiting' (by hosting it) from a site which distributes copyright-infringing material."

Comments

And here I was...

[cgranade]

And here I was thinking that only in the US did we have asinine shit like this being flung... I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged to see that we aren't alone.

Re:And here I was...

[mcbridematt]

Well, suing a ISP might be the only line of defense here, as we are lucky enough to not have any DMCA sh*t.

However, a few music piracy sites have been shutdown by the police here.

Re:And here I was...

[CavemanKiwi]

Well I suspect it had something to do with free trade agreement with the US. There is always a price to pay, I guess the Aussie government thought access to the biggest market was worth it.

Re:And here I was...

[cfuse]

Here in Australia, we have a longstanding tradition of bending over to be bumfucked by the US.

We've even got little Bush here at the moment, giving our prime minister his pat on the head.

Slashdotted

[Sir Haxalot]

Google Cache

Re:Slashdotted

[cgranade]

Small server... slashdotted before the (my) first post.

DMCA

[Avsen]

We don't see that because the DMCA limit's ISPs of liability.

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

And before the DMCA, this kind of thing did happen. My ISP was served papers becasue somebody was sharing MP3s from their webspace in 1997 or so.

Re:DMCA

[fearlezz]

psst... DMCA is american.

We're talking about an australian ISP, not an american.

Re:DMCA

[Zebbers]

psst... thats why he said we dont see this sort of thing

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

The citizens of the United States are refered to as Americans. We always have been. You don't mention where you are from, but someone should have taught you this by now. Maybe they tried, but you are too stupid to understand, I can only speculate.

Re:DMCA

[poot_rootbeer]

Yeah, that's why the parent post said "We don't see that". He was explaining a key difference between American and Australian law.

I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a record store owner, My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.

I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.

The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.

Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.

A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.

"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."

"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."

I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.

"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.

"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.

So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.

I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?

Thi

Re:I own a record store.

[Unominous Coward]

The primary reason why CD sales has dropped is not about cost. I'm sure even teenagers would be prepared to spring the $1 or two to buy the few songs that they really like.

It comes down to convenience. They want instant gratification, and P2P file sharing lets them have it.

Online music services will change this in the near future, though.

Re:I own a record store.

[future assassin]

Well the reason why I stoped buying new cd's is that I can get new release cd at half the price in used cd stores and older cd for dirt cheap at pawn shops. I went from buying about 30-40 new cd per year (full retail price) to about 100+ used cd per year. I personally would rather buy a cd and have an actual item then to have pay for some ones and zeros that I will delete.

Re:I own a record store.

[Rallion]

I don't know....I know a few of the smaller record stores around my own home are doing just fine. (We don't have any really small stores around here, they're all part of chains of at least a couple stores, and as far as I can tell it's because there have been no attempts, there is no need.)

Of course, they don't restrict themselves to those genres which are declining in popularity anyway. I'm not a fan of the rap myself, but its popularity continues to skyrocket. Manson and similar is doing pretty well itself. (If you really listened to the music instead of the image, you might find there's some meaning in there...but this is not the place for that discussion.)

All I'm really saying is that while many stores like your own are suffering (I do certainly acknowledge that), there isn't really any proof that it's from sharing at all. I'm not saying it definitely isn't the cause, but there are other possible reasons. I'm finding that I personally can't stand a lot of the new stuff coming out, though I don't know how much of the stuff in your family-type store I would have heard anyway, that's not really the stuff that gets played and promoted, so I can't say I know for sure. I know lots of people who will get songs online, but if they like them they WILL buy the CD. They want to support the artists they like in any way they can, even if only by adding to their sales, and they also want to avoid inadvertantly supporting bands they think suck. There are probably more people like that than you think--but the number is decreasing as the RIAA continues to soil its name with its business practices. A year ago I actually had a fantastic MP3 collection myself (I never cost the industry a dime, though, from my own point of view, since I never shared and honestly didn't have the cash to spend on a CD -- so I did recieve product without pay, but the pay wasn't forthcoming whether I could get the product for free or not.) but I've since then become disgusted with the industry in general. Most of the music is crap these days and it's not worth sifting through. I have maybe 40 or so MP3's on my hard drive, and only three I didn't legally rip from my own CDs, only because I downloaded them to see if I thought a bands' music was worth it. Now that I see that I still have those, I'll delete them after I finish this post -- my lack of MP3s isn't because I can't get them, it's because I don't want the music anymore, even if I don't have to pay for it. The blank hard drive space itself is more valuable to me.

I think it's very narrow-minded, and perhaps even thoughtless, to blame piracy alone for your store's problems. There are many other reasons for lack of demand these days.

Still, aside from all that, I am sorry about your situation and wish you the best of luck.

About the bookstore...books are better than CD's. That's all there is to it. Much better value. Also, I've downloaded far more books than I ever did songs. More than I could read in my life. I'll still buy books on occasion, though. Unlike music,they don't seem to suck these days.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as we're going to copy/paste conversations from previous discussions, here goes...

Dude, if you were half a man you'd go get a real job and sell that lame-ass christian rock store to some twenty-something loser who can afford to live in a studio apartment and eat generic macaroni and cheese. Get a real job, pay your mortgage, buy your kids some clothes that won't get them beaten up, and stop whining. If you were a true business person, you'd know that you don't sell what is right, you sell what is hot.

*sigh* rookies

Re:I own a record store.

[Kindaian]

The reason why P2P is good to music industry is because it allows the ones with the money to buy the music they want in the stores AFTER making something that is LEGAL in the store... an AUDITION.

Of course, if everyone that used P2P to that effect started to go to the store to listen to music non-stop the whole days just to find the right new band to buy a CD from, the profits of all stores would hit the bottom!

In my view P2P isn't replacing CD sales... it is replacing CD auditions in the stores... (at least that was how i used it, but some may use it in other ways...).

It isn't the gun that is the killer... it's the personne that pulls the trigger...

Re:I own a record store.

[narkotix]

lemme guess...your from nigeria right?

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fact religion is fading from our society, hallelujah!, is the reason why your christian rock music is not selling anymore. It sucks ass!

Open a muslim rock store in Iraq, that should be fun. If you don't get shot as American capitalist pig :)

Re:I own a record store.

[Channard]

It's satire - albeit it's relatively subtle so it seems to have sneaked under the comedy radars of a few people, but the more you read it, the funnier it gets.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard someone say something, and you quote it with a [sic] tag, i.e. Spelling Is Correct. How on earth do you know how he spelled something he SAID?

If what you described had happened in real life (and not just in your mind), you would not have made a mistake like that. Noone comments on the spelling of people they have only heard talking.

The one mistake that destroyed the credibility of your story. Better make up a new one.

Re:I own a record store.

[Ledora]

National pirate list? too late, I'm a card carrying member *argh*!

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what the problem is.
It is your customers. All of them. They are pirates. Oh sure now they are just copying CDs to the internet, but sooner or later they will start to don eye patches, and start saying "Arrrrr" between sentances.

You know what you have to do. Kill them. Kill them all. All of your customers are pirates. Everyone who listens to music are pirates. It's up to you. Remember, Jesus is on your side. Whenever someone buys something from your store it is just to pirate it. Follow them home, and kill them. Kill them! KILL THEM!!!!!!!

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

And people have proven time and time again that they should not be trusted with guns. Which is why I support gun restrictions and the RIAA.

Please tell me you arn't actually dumb enough to belive what you just said.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the artists who produce the stuff that your so-called "industry" makes an absolute killing out of start getting their fair share of the profits, I'll start being concerned about the other parties elsewhere in the industry.

Give us a break.

Re:I own a record store.

[Zocalo]

I don't know....I know a few of the smaller record stores around my own home are doing just fine.

Not round here. In the three towns nearest me there are *zero* independent music shops left, off the top of my head I can think of seven we used to have, there may have been more. Now we just have the big music chains and supermarkets, plus one of music/game exchange type places.

It's not P2P that was to blame though; it's low margins when you can only buy a dozen copies of the latest pap instead of the thousands a chain (or Amazon) buys, but still have to compete on price. Friendly service and a willingness to spend half and hour helping you track down an obscure indie CD on import apparently don't matter a damn if the big store up the street is selling Britney for 50p less.

We got a major book retailer arrive in our town late last year. Admittedly, it's quite nice and you can get a coffee and danish, but one of our "mom & pop" bookstores has gone already and the other is clearly struggling. I suspect it'll either be a coffee shop or mobile phone store by next summer. Survival of the fittest isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Re:I own a record store.

[LiquidCoooled]

In other news, parrot sellers are having their most profitable year on record.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whaah, let's ban all people that once stole a bread from buying any more food, that way they certainly won't steal food anymore ....

can't you see just how idiotic reasoning is ....

Re:I own a record store.

[$javamaniac]

Actually, "sic" is not an acronym for "spelling is correct." This interpretation is merely a mnemonic for people who don't know any Latin.

"Sic" translates to English as "so" or "thus" and in the context in which he uses it is not inappropriate, although it is more usual to annotate reported speech using quotation marks (").

Re:I own a record store.

[$javamaniac]

Reality check!

1. Need does not beget entitlement.
2. Neither you nor the record companies have any moral right to force your way between the music and the people. You are selling a service - distribution - and your complaint is essentially that you want a legally enforced opportunity to charge people your price for a service they can get much cheaper in a free market.
3. One necessary thing the recording labels do is promotion. However, if they didn't exist then it would be a lot easier for independents to get airplay simply because all would be inpedendent. Oh no, not a genuinely free market!

I've been thinking about the dynamics of music distribution. Most tours make a loss; they are subsidised by the record companies to promote the bands' latest albums. In the absence of record companies, who would organise and promote band tours? One credible possibility is radio stations. Tickets as prizes already happens. Like any other variety of sponsorship, the sponsor profits by reflected glory, and it is cost-effective for radio stations to promote upcoming performances for their localities. It also strikes me that radio stations have studios...

As to the revenue model of a record-company-free industry, it seems to me that the simplest thing to do is encourage the sharing of mediocre quality MP3s and make high quality CD recordings available for online purchase from the band's website, CD arriving by snailmail. This suits the medium very well; the heavy compression necessary for online delivery degrades recording until it cannot compete with a hi-fi recording on CD - never underestimate the bandwidth of a Fedex full of CDs.

Some people will no doubt settle for mediocre recordings rather than pay. This is true but irrelevant: most artists are lucky to see $1 for every CD sold. Most of the loot goes to supply-chain middlemen such as record store owners and record companies. If sales drop by 90% and artists make $5 a CD from online sales then from the artist's point of view profits are up 500%.

Of course the record companies and record store owners won't be too thrilled, but they do not have a right to govern the relationship between a musician and his audience. They are not entitled to my money.

Re:I own a record store.

[Pogue Mahone]

As a fully paid-up member of the Pirates, Buccaneers and Allied Trades union, I object you labelling these P2P users as Pirates. Demarcation, that is. You're not allowed to be called a Pirate until you've served a full 5-year apprenticeship as a cabin-boy, learned to say "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" without falling over, and are able to find the stolen treasure thet you buried after consuming said rum, using only a very crude map that you don't even remember drawing.

Pesky blighters have probably never even *seen* a rottle of bum ... bobble of tum ... blubble blumblo ..... [distant crash]

Re:I own a record store.

[nattt]

Tough luck! Sell up and move on to a new career. The general population has been told for long enough that they "own" the music they buy.

"Sorry Son, you scratched the record, you'll have to buy it again for full price - no discounts for scratches or breaks"

"Sorry Son, you may have bought the vinyl twice, the cassette and the 8 track, but that doesn't entitle you to a discount on the CD"

"Sorry Son, you melted the CD when you left it on the dash of your car, you'll have to buy it again for full price - no discounts for melted CDs. "

If we had bought a media licence then a new physical copy should come at a massive discount. You just try getting a new media for your melted CD!!

Next they are told that music is free - because it doesn't cost anything to listen to the radio (to the end user anyway).

And finally they know music is free because it costs them nothing (practically nothing - they pay for their internet connection and blank media) to download over the internet.

People are saying that they don't rightly care if it puts musicians out of jobs, or that they get no new music because there's no profit motive to make it. They just don't give a shit.

There's no "profit motive" for many jobs that people do. There are plenty of jobs that give a living wage, but put the worker under great stress and even danger to their own lives. Nobody gets filthy rich being a public school teacher, but they do it anyway.

Who want's to work hard all day and sit down to some relaxing music and see the frivolent lifestyle of the person who made it. To ignore the "class" issue behind the copying of music is wrong.

And best of all, nusic now costs practically nothing to make! A home studio can be bought for little more than the computer it runs on, and the abundance of free music distributed over the internet by such creative people who go this route shows that there doesn't need to be a profit motive to make music.

Basically - music is free, it costs bugger all to make, doesn't need a profit motive, and who wants to support the lifestyles of the rich and famous anyway?

Re:I own a record store.

[mrsev]

Few comments:

1- Funny very funny.
2- You are probably going bust because you threaten your customers and then throw them out of the store.
3- You are probably going bust because you sell family/christian rock.
4- You have to change with the times. Do not cry and blame others for your failure.
5- Tell me you have never photocopied anthing that was copyright.
6- Like it or not the law is not about being fair, the law is about accepted behavoiur. If everybody does something then it is not going to be illegal for too long. In europe at least we have a tradition of civil disobediance. When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought in a poll tax (each person pays the same amount regardless of income) there were riots, people smashed things up and many millions of people refused to pay. The result the government took them to court one by one, each person had their lawyer stall and waste time. The result the government gave up.
7- There is no way that there is anywhere like 15 EUR/USD worth of music on a CD. It takes a bunch of artists and a recording stuidio to make an album. The publicity / promotion / hype is all shit. If the record companies focused on the music and not on hype then maybe the prices would go down and people would buy more.
8- Nobody seems to complain that I can record music from the radio.
9- The record companies have been consistenly been found price fixing. It is very hypocritical of them to now start to complain about the law being broken.
10- I for one would be so traumatised by being blacklisted from all record shops. Please dont ... boo hoo hoo.
11- I download things because I cannot get them any other way. The selection in a record shop is soo small. Try and find a old verion of Derek and Clive in a shop.
12- There are less book piracies because people like to read books in strange places and not infornt of a screen.
13- You are on drugs if you think the war on drugs is working. The US locks up more of its population than any other.
14- How will your blacklist system work? .... Hi Id like to buy this album please!.... Sure thing sir , can I see some form of ID please?.

Re:I own a record store.

[dubious9]

Errr... I agree with the subject of most of your post, but your math is a little, um, dubious. If sales drop by 90% thats only, say, 100000 CDs instead of one million. Thus the artist sees $1mil vs. $500000 at the lower distribution rates even at $5 per cd, a 50% decline in revenue.

I do believe, however, that the music industry is outdated. The CD rush was brought on by a lot of people buying music they already had but wanted in CD form. People rebought and reestablished their entire music libraries.

The problem is that once market saturation occurs, sales are going to drop significantly. The RIAA would argue that even new music sales are taking a hit, and I would respond that it still isn't piracy that hold the majority of the responsibility. Why spend $17 for a soundtrack, when you can buy the DVD of the movie (which alot include the soundtrack) for only $3 more? When the industrialized pop stars fail to pump out innovative material and the whole boy band/diva girl/rap-rock thing is getting old cd sales of new music are going to go down.

The solution is to introduce tons of new and different music (and don't say alternative because alternative rock is mainstream). Music companies don't like this option because it wouldn't be profitable for them. They make all of their money from a small-set of over-hyped mega stars. So let the RIAA companies die, I won't miss them and their death won't be the end of music.

It shouldn't cost a million dollars to record a CD. $100000 buys a lot of studio time and post work ($100/hr is still 1000 hrs or six months full time). Only need to sell 10000 copies at $10 dollars a pop to break even. $100000 too expensive? Build your own in-home studio for $10000 dollars. Produce it yourself or pay another $10000 for a professional. Most music doesn't require teams of sound engineers or producers. Now we are talking 4000 (at $5) copies to break even. Say you sell your own CDs at gigs you have. You can take 100% of the profit. Charge $10 and sell 2000 and you've broken even, not to mention gig money. Sell 50 cds at every gig and you'll break even after 40 gigs.

Don't throw RIAA type arguments at me, there are too many hands in the pot. Do what other companies do and reestablish your profit model. Gas companies took a tremendous hit at the advent of electric light. Did they try to ban electricity? No, they found another profit model in something else. Cars. Now I'm not saying that pirating is moral, just nobody can ever stop it. Adapt. Move on.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, you have a huge Christian Music Section? Did you happen to think that the sheer crappiness of the christian music is driving customers away?

Re:I own a record store.

[Casualposter]

Notice to humor impaired: What follows is sarcasm.

What about cars? Have you any idea just how many people are KILLED by cars every single day? Thousands. Even more than guns, people have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted with cars. So we need to ban cars.

And then alcohol. Thousands of people are killed and mained every day because alcohol is used. We must ban alcohol.

So no alcohol and no cars. But that doesn't stop the harm caused by LEAVING your house. Thosands of people are killed every day with in miles of there homes. So no more travel. Ever.

But the worst is that the number one cause of murder is people. All murders are caused by people. So that's it. No more cars, alcohol, travel or people.

A peaceful world is just a few laws away.

Re:I own a record store.

[Glonoinha]

-"Sic" translates to English as "so" or "thus" and in the context in which he uses it is not inappropriate,[sic]

I always thought it meant 'I am quoting some other illiterate bastard that spelled / used this word / sentence incorrectly and since I am quoting him exactly I need to let you know that he, not I, totally thrashed the rules of the English language in the afore mentioned quote.

Re:I own a record store.

[Glonoinha]

I just remembered that QED means something to that effect, however.

Latin. quod erat demonstrandum (which was to be demonstrated).

QED was explained to me as '... and thus it follows that ...' or '... which makes it obvious that ...'

Re:I own a record store.

[kayen_telva]

yeah right.
pipe dream.
this whole nonsense about people switching
from free p2p to paying for each song is ludicrous.
why ? why would anybody who can download
free music, pay for it. The p2p copies are higher
quality too. You are in a dream world if you think that
is going to stop the filesharing.
Also, for people who like to use the word pirate
(as popularized by the RIAA), pirates board ships and
take them by force, usually involving bloodshed.
Copying a digital file is not quite that bad. Its not stealing
either, no matter how much they say it is.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

u are a moron. you will be shunned now. dont you know that there is a cd boycott going on now. too bad you are in the crossfire. this will filter out most sukkas (too bad not the riaa). this is capatolism, if you dont like it move to a diffrent country, and take that shit christian rock with you! since we do not have reprensetives that that represent the citizans that elected them, we have to vote with our pocket book. too bad you are nieve, and use the blanket remark. internet piracy is killing me. you deserve to go out of business

Re:I own a record store.

[mini me]

I can't afford anything better for them right now.

If you have no money, what makes you think everyone else does? I know that CDs would be the last thing I'd buy on a tight budget.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

or could it be that christian rock has gotten worse?

Re:I own a record store.

[Greventls]

This has been posted how many times before. It seems like everytime a post related to P2P is here, someone replies with this exact response. I wouldn't be suprised if this was some form of astroturfing from the RIAA.

Re:I own a record store.

[prozac79]

I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.

"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.

"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked.

Yeah, that sounds like a great place to take a family. You can't get buy songs with offensive lyrics, but you can get roughed-up by the store owner.

But seriously, I don't see how a blacklist could possibly work. You threw out someone who was going to buy a CD from you store. If that person is blacklisted, your store and any other music store will never see a penny from him again. Now how is that going to help your business? And guess what? That CD will still find its way onto the internet. So, when all is said and done, the CD is out there for download and you're out the $15 the kid was going to pay you before being tossed out. Good plan.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

SIC is 'Said in Context' usally used when quoting someone to show it was the person's speech contained the bad grammer or whatever, and not your writing.

Re:I own a record store.

[phreaqhopp]

Ok first of all you do not own a record store. You only wish you owned a record store. You should be sued for what little money you have for putting your hands on a minor. How would you like it if someone grabbed your daughters and called them "little shits". Posts like yours do not belong on /. and BTW you are a little off topic here. Also there is no reason someone can not copy and distribute music to others provided both parties have "legitimately" purchased the music that is being shared. I think you should look at the hi $$ record execs and your 20 to 50% markup on the merchandise that you sell as reasons people seek music elsewhere. We are in a capitalist society. Price rules and ingenuity flourishes. Get over it. Perhaps you might be better off selling widgets or collecting welfare. So take a chill pill Lars...

Re:I own a record store.

[xchino]

Stupid troll, your ridiculous idea has one gaping flaw. I don't have to give you my name. In fact, if you had talked to me that way, not only would you have not gotten a name, I would have bitchslapped you straight across the Christian Music isle.

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

HAaaahahahahahaha motherfucker, I hope you lose the house! Your story inspired me to put up all of my madonna mp3s on kazaa... download away everybody!
MUSIC IS NOW FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:I own a record store.

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm .. the music that the industry keeps putting out in the last couple of years... sucks. that may explain why i don't buy cd's anymore. I listen to the same cd's i had from 3 years ago. so, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Re:I own a record store.

[Blue Stone]

CD sales are up in the UK (once again bucking the trend shown elsewhere.) Maybe people (like me) are using P2P as a sampling "radio" service, before buying the stuff they like (in its non-lossy format... if it's priced right.)

I used to buy a fair amount of CDs when I was a teenager/erly 20's. Then my buying tailed off. Now, primarily because I can easily sample music risk-free (no cash involved) my music buying has picked up again.

There's too much hot-air talked about p2p, with no-one quite understanding it's impact.

Re:I own a record store.

[GoingNow]

When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt.

So let me get this straight. Your shop is going down the drain. Less and less people are going there. It's so bad you can't afford clothes for your children.

So someone comes into your store to buy something, even though you don't have much in your store that's very popular now, and instead of taking his money, you abuse him and send him and his money (and his friend's money) down the road to another store.

Did you ever stop to think that there might be a better way?

Sounds like what My old isp was doing.

[headbulb]

But they had it in the Private IP address space... Yes they natted me. (wisp) They never advertised That They did have it. They had divx movies, divx tv shows, and Mp3's. They even had software, I got msn office off it.. (Yes I warezed it, Now I don't have it installed I use OpenOffice. In fact I deleted it)

Did this isp advertise they had it?

I can't read the article since It seems to be slashdoted.. (ZDnet?)

Does anyone else's isp Do such a thing. Just wondering.

Re:Sounds like what My old isp was doing.

[pvt_medic]

Aust ISP in 'world first' music industry court case

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia 21 October 2003

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the Australian music industry has listed an Internet service provider (ISP) as a respondent in a court case involving alleged music piracy.

E-Talk Communications, trading as Comcen Internet Services found itself in Federal Court in front of Justice Brian Tamberlin in Sydney this afternoon charged with making money from the provision of copyright-infringing music files. This is the first time the music industry has accused an ISP of being directly involved in piracy by allowing its infrastructure to be used for file-trading activities, according to Michael Speck, the manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who led the industry's investigation.

However, lawyers representing E-Talk Communications claimed in court today that the music industry, in acting against its subsidiary, Comcen, were pursuing the wrong entity. They argued the industry should be pursuing another entity associated with E-Talk Communications. In response, lawyers for the music industry applicants -- which include Universal Music Australia, EMI Music Australia, Sony Music Entertainment (Australia), Warner Music Australia, BMG Australia and Festival Records -- claimed they had the right entity, and would simply add the other entity to the proceedings.

The tactic marks an escalation in the simmering battle between the music industry and the ISPs over how much responsibility the latter should take for any copyright infringing behaviour of their subscribers. Around the world the music industry is attempting to force ISPs to hand over the details of specific customers, and the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) pulled out of negotiations with the Internet Industry Association (IIA) over differences on this issue.

"This case proves what the music industry has been saying about the Internet industry for many years, that music piracy is an integral part of the ISP business model," Speck told ZDNet Australia . He added that the evidence uncovered in this case proves that ISPs know how much illegal file sharing is happening on their networks, and they embrace it for the revenue.

"If things don't change we'll be going after more ISPs," said Speck.

The charge is the result of an 11-month investigation into the Web site http://www.mp3s4free.net, culminating in raids over Friday and Saturday last week. The registrant of the domain name, Australian Stephen Cooper, was also charged but failed to appear in court today, prompting an adjournment of proceedings until Tuesday 28 October.

"In my experience investigating the revenue structure of Web sites such as [mp3s4free.net] the ISP hosting the Web site, [Com-cen], stands to benefit economically from the increased consumption of bandwidth that would result from an increase in the flow of traffic to the Web site and an increase in the number of sound recordings downloaded by visitors to the Web site due to the large size of music files," Speck's affadavit.

"The Web site appears to me to be highly organised," said Speck. "It provides a whole user interface to encourage Internet users to find digital music files and to assist them in the download process."

Lawyers for the music industry claim the Web site received 7 million unique visitors from around the world over the past 12 months.

"In my experience investigating Internet piracy and other piracy, this Web site is one of the largest sites of its kind, providing thousands of infringing recordings and continuously providing very recent releases based on top local and international charts for free download, under a highly accessible domain name and using obvious metatags," read the affidavit.

Speck also noted the Web site had disguised some music files by relabelling them as jpg files, "so as to avoid detection by persons or organisations, such as MI

RIAA?

[Xpilot]

Whom does the Australian "RIAA" represent? Is Kylie Minogue under the Aussie RIAA or the one we know and hate (which represents all the major labels).

Re:RIAA?

[darnok]

RIAA = Recording Industry Association of Australia

Re:RIAA?

[B747SP]

ARIA = Australian Recording Industry Association (or words to that effect)

Re:RIAA?

[krumms]

ARIA

My god - it's just the RIAA with the letters changed around! I knew I smelt conspiracy.

... I'm going to have to trade in my tin hat for an all-out saucepan at this rate.

Re:RIAA?

[t0qer]

Mmmmm,

Aria

Me licks my lips in anticipation of being arrested.

Re:RIAA?

[TeknoHog]

So... it represents the ARIAn Nation of white supremacists?

Question

[ArbiterOne]

If the ISP hosts, say, an Al Qaeda site, can they then be held responsible for "profiting" from terrorism?

Re:Question

[JohnDoe.Slashed]

And what if the ISP just has a proxy and using that proxy I download mp3s (practically from the ISP)? What does this mean legally speaking?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

About a week before 9/11, an ISP in Texas was shutdown for having "terrorist connections". Big uproar that everyone forgot.

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/07/0048215.shtml

Re:Question

[Zocalo]

According to ARIA's line of reasoning, then I'd say that yes they could. Of course, this has yet to be established in the court room, and there are a lot of grey areas, even if you accept ARIA's argument. What is the webspace is provided for "free" as part of a standard package, or operating costs are funded through advertising like with some of the freebie hosting companies? That leads to another issue; either way, for the ISP to be found guilty, I would have thought that ARIA would have to show, beyond reasonable doubt, that the ISP was well aware of what was going on. In other words, to escape prosecution, all the ISP needs to do is establish reasonable doubt that it had no direct knowledge of what the site was hosting; "we provided a few servers of co-lo for web services, but had no idea what those services were".

Who is surprised?

[jam244]

With all the publicity pumped up by the RIAA and the MPAA, is it any surprise that media companies around the world would start to do the same?

Still, I'm not sure I agree that the ISP is "profiting" from the hosting of copyrighted material on one of its user's homepages. It may be allowing it, but there's no commercial gain whatsoever.

Re:Who is surprised?

[andih8u]

Guess it depends on if its on a user's homepage or if its hosting that someone has paid for. Guess it would be cleared up if the article worked.

Re:Who is surprised?

[cgranade]

I hate to do this, but I'm biting the bait...
WTF does that have to do with this case? I mean, the ISP isn't actively going to pirates and saying "check out my MP3s!," but rather passively host the content without any regard for it. In contrast, Ford would have had to have actively worked to sell to that specific group of customers. Besides, isn't the ISP better off if the site remains unpopular, and consumes less bandwitdth?

Re:Who is surprised?

[Sneftel]

You're missing the point of the parent post. If ISP X allows people to post copyrighted material through lax enforcement of its EULA, it will get a reputation as an infringement-friendly ISP, and thus will profit from other potential customers who don't want their warez sites shut down by the ISP.

Re:Who is surprised?

[gnu-generation-one]

"Still, I'm not sure I agree that the ISP is "profiting" from the hosting of copyrighted material on one of its user's homepages. It may be allowing it, but there's no commercial gain whatsoever."

Next up, suing the government for "profiting" (through taxes) from the hosting of terrorists...

Re:Who is surprised?

[Rotten168]

America exports the best and worst to everyone.

Partial Text of Article

[serps]

for those who haven't RTFA:

E-Talk Communications, trading as Comcen Internet Services, found itself in Federal Court in front of Justice Brian Tamberlin in Sydney, charged with making money from the provision of copyright-infringing music files. This is the first time the music industry has accused an ISP of being directly involved in piracy by allowing its infrastructure to be used for file-trading activities, according to Michael Speck, the manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who led the industry's investigation.

Read the rest online.

Re:Partial Text of Article

[jam244]

But look: "[Com-cen] stands to benefit economically from the increased consumption of bandwidth that would result from an increase in the flow of traffic to the Web site and an increase in the number of sound recordings downloaded by visitors to the Web site due to the large size of music files" Does that sound like direct profitability to you? IMHO, this sounds more like an attempt by Aussie media giants to sue left and right, not unlike similar examples we have seen in the US (case: suing 12 year olds who live in housing projects)

In another news

[future assassin]

I'm sueing my city for building a road that allowed the thief who stole my car to get away.

Re:In another news

[Anonymous Coward]

Im suing YOU for reporting to the insurance agency the theft of YOUR car which caused MY insurance rates to go up.

Im suing the people of the city as well since they elected the officials that contracted for the road to be built which alowed the thief to steal the car which you reported that caused my insurance rates to go up.

Im suing the butterlfy which flapped it's wing which caused a draft, which led to a storm which turned into a hurricane which . .. Uhh oh I'm the RIAA

Re:In another news

[HiThere]

I think a tax probably counts. Or possibly economic gain to the tax base. Whateve, I'm sure you could "prove" that the city profits from the road. (Or at least attempts to profit from it, and expected to profit from it, which is probably sufficient to qualify under "for commercial gain".)

Re:In another news

[Ieshan]

No no. You'd sue the city for building a toll that collected money from the thief who stole your car, claiming that in doing so, it was providing road maintenence to him.

Frivolous Lawsuit Number 58909081792873987123 has just been recorded...

RMS said it best

[little1973]

I have read many comments on /. about copyright, pro and contra, but I think RMS hit the nail on its head with his Reevaluating Copyright:

The copyright system developed along with the printing press. In the age of the printing press, it was unfeasible for an ordinary reader to copy a book. Copying a book required a printing press, and ordinary readers did not have one. What's more, copying in this way was absurdly expensive unless many copies were made--which means, in effect, that only a publisher could copy a book economically.

So when the public traded to publishers the freedom to copy books, they were selling something which they *could not use*. Trading something you cannot use for something useful and helpful is always good deal. Therefore, copyright was uncontroversial in the age of the printing press, precisely because it did not restrict anything the reading public might commonly do.

But the age of the printing press is gradually ending. The xerox machine and the audio and video tape began the change; digital information technology brings it to fruition. These advances make it possible for ordinary people, not just publishers with specialized equipment, to copy. And they do!

I think the musicians have to perform live as they had to do a hundred years ago and as many musicians have to do now (except the so called stars). The era to become rich by selling millions of CDs without any real work is over.

Re:RMS said it best

[ejito]

Amen.

Getting lucky or just plain selling your soul to get kids to buy your horrible record -- well, that shouldn't even be an industry.

People argue that the industry will die without ripping off people... well, that's plain BS. Like the parent posted, an industry survives on using new technology that people are not able to reproduce themselves.

Sticking with 18 dollar CDs is like sticking with overpriced vinyl lps and casettes. The technology has a use, but trying to sell outdated technology for tremendous amounts of money has passed. Why don't they try to offer something new so they actually produce more technology instead of milking something 20 years old?

The recording industry could survive off of billions of electronic song payments instead of forcing people to buy millions of overpriced CDs. Perhaps record stores could become burning shops where they'll burn very high quality individual recording tracks themselves in wav format (ie the guitar and voices on seperate highqual wavs) onto a dvd, and the compressed mp3 version will be given with it on a normal CD -- you get to personally choose which songs to add to your discs and only pay per song.

Paying 18 dollars just to listen to one song I like from a whole CD is superfluous. Paying 10 dollars to get highqual split tracks from a song so I can create my own remixes would be awesome.

Consumers have passed up RIAA in technology. So what exactly are they doing with all those millions? Why can't they think of anything better than suing families?

Re:RMS said it best

[sir_cello]

That's what _you_ think - ever tried asking the musicians ?

This is a bad argument anyway. It's an undisputed fact that digital age makes it easier to copy, but that's not the point. Copyright is protecting the action of whether to copy or not (irrespective of how easy it is to make that copy), and therefore also protecting the investment placed in the creating the world.

Just because it's digital doesn't mean that there was no time and effort gone into its production. The fact that it's digital just changes the economics of distribution, not the economics of production.

Re:RMS said it best

[Yiliar]

This is my belief as well. Consider that for most musicians the motivation to make music is to make money. High school and colledge kids make bands to play gigs and get a label interested and get rich and famous. This is all wrong, and 40 some odd years of this process have proven it false.

It is common opinion that the major labels produce music according to formula that they believe will make hit records. Its all about the money. Its also true that many many record labels have come and gone trying to focus on the music. There is usually just not enough money available to promote as successfully as the big labels can.

It is also common understanding that for many bands now days that even after they get noticed by a large label, the large label will BILL THEM for recording time. Many bands end up in debt to the studios for their first album(s), thus further permitting preasure from the producers to make whatever music the label wants them to.

Isn't it about time that the public at large begins to seek music as art and not as commodity products? I sure hope so. And I personally see the Internet as the opportunity to deliver what the public wants, rather than what the industry wants us to have.

Let me buy singles! I hate paying $20.00 for one song and 10 fillers!

Let me preview any and all music -- This is starting to happen. I went to a large new Border book store and found a device in the back of the room that let me sample (small low rez 30 second clips) any song from any current published work!

And let me buy it in the form I want it in. MP3s may be fine for sampling, but when I want to listen to music, I want lossless formats.

All of the technology exists to make it happen, from home with broadband, or from a store like location if I don't have great broadband. Go there, select the tunes I want by sampling, put in my CD/DVD/SD/MC/etc.,swipe my credit card, choose a format (MP3,Ogg,Lossless, etc.), and boom, I have what I want.

Would I pay for that? You bet! Will it ever happen? Not until the RIAA goes away and the major labels understand what killed them, and that means never. :(

Re:RMS said it best

[SweenyTod]

I think the musicians have to perform live as they had to do a hundred years ago and as many musicians have to do now (except the so called stars). The era to become rich by selling millions of CDs without any real work is over.

Is it really over or has the general public started to fully seize on the idea that they don't have to pay for music, videos and e-books, and have basically decided not to?

Just because 50 million people decide that what they're doing is right and justifiable doesn't mean that they're right and justified.

Re:RMS said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS is right. I found it very easy to copy GNU source code into my company's $10K/CPU product.

Re:RMS said it best

[gfody]

Just because 50 million people decide that what they're doing is right and justifiable doesn't mean that they're right and justified.

and what do you think determines right and wrong.. god? a billion people don't have a moral dilema stealing music, why? maybe its because deep down we KNOW that $3million/year is TOO MUCH fucking money for a 17yr old girl no matter how hot she is and no matter how good she sings.

Re:RMS said it best

[Aussie]

Consider that for most musicians the motivation to make music is to make money.

Well that explains the shit music, I prefer music written for the love of music. Sorta like code.

Re:RMS said it best

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"Just because 50 million people decide that what they're doing is right and justifiable doesn't mean that they're right and justified."

Yes, It does.

What defines 'right' and 'justified'? Its all objective, so the only thing you have to go by is either personal oppinion or majority, and if the majority is doing something because they think its right and justified, it becomes so.

The boston tea party wasnt 'right' or 'justified' in the eyes of brittain. Neither was Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. Whats Right and Justified is constantly evolving, and this is just one of the fronts.

Re:RMS said it best

[thogard]

All of the bands that have songs on www.ozmp3.com don't make much money at all selling CDs. They make their money by doing live gigs. The only band that moves a large number of CD's gives 1/2 of the money to the local eye hospital. Some of the others have recovered the costs of getting the CDs made. Some haven't.

Most of the musicians I've talked to lately are just doing covers and will be the next target by the RIAA. Its a copyright violation to do covers in most most cases and few places are paying for the rights. I only know of one band that has paid for the copyright rights to do the songs.

Re:RMS said it best

[thogard]

What are the odds that a high school band will make it big? Its far less than the odds of making it as a NFL player (There are about 2000 NFL players, about 100 top 40 bands a year).

The record industry doesn't sell music, they sell small plastic things which they have to produce and get into stores. They don't want too many songs out there because it confuses their customers (who are the record store). Their business model is messed up and they aren't about to fix it. Until someone comes along and breaks the RIAA, I don't expect to even hear much new good music.

Re:RMS said it best

[pubjames]

Just because 50 million people decide that what they're doing is right and justifiable doesn't mean that they're right and justified.

That is a remarkable statement. Has a certain ring to it. I think I'm going to print it out and pin it to my wall.

What do you think makes something "right and justified"? Even if you're religious, it doesn't mean you don't have to make these decisions for yourself. As far as I am aware Jesus never said anything about the morality of downloading Madonna's greatest hits off the 'net.

Re:RMS said it best

[pubjames]

Consider that for most musicians the motivation to make music is to make money.

Is it? I doubt it. I know quite a few musicians, and I can't think of a single one that does it "for the money". Most off them would almost certainly be better off financially doing something else.

However, I expect many people in "the music industry", i.e. record company executives, do do it just "for the money". Which is sad.

Re:RMS said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because 50 million people decide that what they're doing is right and justifiable doesn't mean that they're right and justified.

What is "right and justfiable" other than what is generally held to be right and justifiable? It is impossible for everybody to be wrong about some matter of value.

Re:RMS said it best

[Pogue Mahone]

"Thou shalt not rip and burn" ...
"Thou shalt not download" ...

I think those must have been on the tablet that Moses dropped ... can't seem to find them in the Good Bok anywhere. ;-)

Re:RMS said it best

[Glonoinha]

-Consider that for most musicians the motivation to make music is to make money.

No, the motivation behind most musicians is getting lots of ass. Mick Jagger is about the ugliest moose lips rascal I have ever seen and his latest girlfriend was a model in Brazil - he was tapping it like a keg and for all I know still is.

Money is a nice side effect, but sex makes the world go round.

Re:RMS said it best

[poot_rootbeer]

RMS: What's more, copying in this way was absurdly expensive unless many copies were made--which means, in effect, that only a publisher could copy a book economically.

This still doesn't justify copyright. There was more than one company that owned a printing press, and without copyright rules a popular text would be typeset and printed by many of them at the same time, and the publishers would have no obligation to pay the author or even make sure that the printed words were accurate to the author's Urtext.

In other words, copyright is a device to ensure that authors have some form of compensation and quality control over published works that bear their names. The "public exchanged their freedom" argument is a red herring.

I think the musicians have to perform live as they had to do a hundred years ago

One hundred years ago Claude Debussy was writing many of the world's great works for piano, yet he rarely performed thim in public himself. He just wasn't that good a pianist.

You misunderstand what the basis of creating music is. The core of music is COMPOSITION, not performance. Asking musicians to forego phonographic royalties and make a living off performance alone is like asking novelists to make all their money by selling tickets to watch them sit at a typewriter.

Re:RMS said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a musician. Are you asking me?

I make music because I love to. I'd make music if I didn't get paid a cent. I'd be less prolific, of course, because I'd need a day job.

Re:RMS said it best

[Stu Charlton]

"It is impossible for everybody to be wrong about some matter of value."

There were times when slavery was generally held to be right and justifiable.

As I said in a prior post, might does not make right. Yet, there's no way any human can know if what they believe is "right" or "true", hence why we need carefully regulated democractic or market structures to bring an approximation of freedom (not correctness!) to our decisions.

Or, if they're impatient, a group can revolt. That seems to be what the filesharing trend is, in political terms: a revolt against the prevailing system. This doesn't mean they subscribe to the RMS party line that all copyright is bad; I'd be quite surprised if that were the case. But certainly many people recognize that today's system is driven by an oligopoly. Indie labels have made inroads, but they can't change the rules of the game. Music is not driven by a flexible market system where things can actually change if enough dollars want it to change. And hence they're going around the system.

Re:RMS said it best

[LionMage]

What defines 'right' and 'justified'? Its all objective, so the only thing you have to go by is either personal oppinion or majority, and if the majority is doing something because they think its right and justified, it becomes so.

No, it's all subjective, not objective. Wrong word, wrong thought process, wrong everything.

Different cultures have different standards for what is right and justified. All you've done is use half-baked logic to try to justify the classic "might makes right" viewpoint. That's how the Holocaust started. But then, you might very well be one of those people who thinks the Holocaust was AOK.

And although I am an American, I recognize that the Boston Tea Party was a nasty bit of civil disobedience that was more vandalism than anything else (not to mention the racist overtones of white men dressing up as aboriginals). How you can mention this event in the same breath as Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of the bus is beyond me.

How you got modded +2 Insightful is beyond me; where are the moderators' critical thinking skills?

Just because a majority thinks it's OK to oppress a minority, such as myself (a religious minority), doesn't mean I have to be OK with their thought process. Especially if it's predicated on flawed logic and flawed morals or ethics.

Re:I remember when rock was young

[Rick and Roll]

Oh it's still all about the music on VH1 baby.

Re:Wow, they're right!

[fishbowl]

"Seriously, what does the music industry hope to accomplish through action like this?"

At first, control of who listens to what, when, how often, on what equipment.

Ultimately, control of who is able to produce entertainment at the quality expectations of the current state of the art.

The music industry folks really like it when everyone in an entire country has tastes that fall into one of a few precisely defined categories. You're doing a fine job of this, good work citizens!

They don't care much for a situation where people have regional tastes, or where they make their own music.

I would personally like to see the plan backfire. Instead of building a system of control under which everyone is a good consumer and buys what the industry allows to be produced, I'd like to see millions of people say, the hell with the industry and the music they want me to listen to, and we can return to regional styles. I have a piano, and much skill for playing it, so I make music for my own enjoyment. If that spirit were widespread, like it used to be, there would again be different styles of music for different places, instead of everybody listening to the same thing, stuff becoming popular, BECAUSE it's popular, that sort of thing.

THAT was incredibly funny

[danny256]

I really liked this part:

This evening, my daughters asked me. "Why do the other kids laugh at us?"
I wanted to tell them the truth - it's because they wear old clothes and have cheap haircuts. I can't afford anything better for them right now.
"It's because they are idiots, kids", I told them. "Don't listen to them."

Your post was great, I was laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes. You are the reason I read comments at -1.

Re:THAT was incredibly funny

[jhunsake]

This is funny, very funny. But on the serious side, all schools should have school-supplied uniforms through 12th grade.

Re:THAT was incredibly funny

[danny256]

But on the serious side, all schools should have school-supplied uniforms through 12th grade.

That's fine, but what about the hair cuts?

Re:THAT was incredibly funny

[RevSmiley]

Hair cut. All you need is a bowl and some shears.

Re:THAT was incredibly funny

[danny256]

The guy has girls, should they still get the bowl cut?

Re:THAT was incredibly funny

[Anonymous Coward]

The pageboy cut is really sexy...

Common Carrier Status

[Pendersempai]

The ISP is being sued for 'profiting' (by hosting it) from a site which distributes copyright-infringing material.

Auto manufacturers profit when their cars are bought by drug dealers for the purpose of smuggling drugs. Handgun makers profit when someone buys their gun and uses it in a murder. Gardening stores profit when a customer buys large quantities of fertilizer, makes a bomb, and blows up large federal buildings in Oklahoma City.

Should the auto manufacturer, handgun maker, and gardening store be legally liable for the crimes of their customers? Should they even be responsible for following their customers around to make sure they do nothing illegal?

Re:Common Carrier Status

[jhunsake]

It depends if they have any knowledge of the intended use of their product. Of course the article isn't available, so I don't know if the ISP was given notice to remove the stuff or not.

Re:Common Carrier Status

[Ledora]

uhh yeah that would prevent crime! wait...

Re:Common Carrier Status

[danila]

But continuing the analogies, ISP should not be responsible for removing the content, just like Ford is not responsible for taking back the car from the drug dealers when it becomes known what they do. In the rational world where the spirit of the laws is followed, the copyright owner would contact the site owner and ask to remove the offending material. If the webmaster refuses, the copyright owner should sue. If he wins, the court would order the ISP to take down the site. But it no longer happens the right way, alas!

Re:Common Carrier Status

[hackstraw]

And the drug dealers are not on the auto manufacturer's property. The drug dealers did not agree to some kind of EULA or TOS saying that they would not deal drugs. The auto manufacturer did not have full knowledge that the drug dealers were using their cars for dealing drugs. The drug dealer can pick any car to deal drugs from, there is nothing special about any particular car.

There is a big difference between your examples and the ISP. And as far as the fertilizer goes, that is a controlled product, and yeah if the seller of the fertilizer had any idea of what the fertilizer was to be used for, like the ISP knew what was being hosted from their company, the seller of the fertilizer would have faced many federal charges.

Re:Common Carrier Status

[kabocox]

Notice: This was an attempt at sarcasm. I hope it will be modded as funny.

From the department of "we are here to help you":
Of course, the auto manufacturers, handgun makers, and gardening stores should be legally liable for the crimes of their customers! We absolutely demand that the auto manufacturers build in GPS recorders with cabin microphones to spy on the driver and other occupants. The government should randomly scanning all the conversations in cars, the cars should automatic fine the drivers for going any speed over the speed limit. There should be built in drug scanners in "every" vechile. How else can the government protect me?

Handgun Makers should be legally liable for making a product that could be fired at a living human and deprive a citizen of his or her life. All handguns should be replaced now with built in eletronics to allow shooting at only targets and non protected animals. All guns should be able to detect that they are aimed at a human and prevent the gun from firing. All guns are liable to be aimed at me and fired if not, or used for illegal poaching of protected animals. I want to prevent a public saftey meneace.

Gardening Stores should perform a background check on everyone that buys any fertilizer! All garden stores should be required to perform a terrorist check on everyone and get results back before approving the sale. The government needs to track every milligram of fertilizer sold from now on! In fact the government needs to track the current owners of every pontential bomb making chemical. Those that are on terrorist watch list need to be prevented from buying these items and removed from society as quietly as possible. How else can the government protect me?

Notice: This was an attempt at sarcasm. I hope it will be modded as funny.

Re:Common Carrier Status

[poot_rootbeer]

Auto manufacturers profit when their cars are bought by drug dealers for the purpose of smuggling drugs.

But no more profit than if their cars are bought by little old ladies for the purpose of driving to church once a week. (Less, actually, because drug traffickers will more often pay a lump sum in case and little old ladies will more often arrange long-term financing through the dealer.)

Handgun makers profit when someone buys their gun and uses it in a murder.

But no more profit than if the handgun is used only for target practice at a licensed shooting range. (Less, actually, since frivolous lawsuits against the handgun mfrs are more likely when it is used in a murder.)

Gardening stores profit when a customer buys large quantities of fertilizer, makes a bomb, and blows up large federal buildings in Oklahoma City.

But no more profit than if a customer buys large quantities of fertilizer and uses it to cultivate a large garden with. (Less, actually, since the bomber will not be a repeat customer like the gardener likely will.)

The Australian ISP is not profiting any more from having an illegal file sharing site hosted on their service than from a simple informational family home page hosted on their service. Less, actually, since the file sharers will use more than their share of available bandwidth.)

Re:Common Carrier Status

[danila]

Incorrect. The ISP didn't have a site, they hosted it. That's what ISPs do - they host sites. It seems to me from the article that it wasn't owned by the ISP. So the ISP is no more involved by providing hosting than Ford by providing a car.

proves...

[mantera]

that's it's one thing to be an individual downloading music and stuff, and another being a commercial entity profitting from piracy.

This will seriously effect Aussie Culture!

[ratfynk]

If Aussie ISPs stop file sharing does this mean now I will have to pay for all the beautiful Rolf Harris tunes? Or will I need to order my Didgerydoodoo music through A&B sound? Mate its gettin' hard to get good music anymore!

How far can it go?

[Fishd]

I once bought a pirated CD in a pub, can the landlord be sued?

Actually, thinking further... if I didn't work then I couldn't afford to buy the pirate CD so surely my employer is ultimately responsible, after all they gave me the money to commit this foul act... I'm going to sue my employer for making me a criminal!!!

Or, should I quit my job, become unemployed, claim state benefits, buy a pirate CD and then sue the government?!?!?

When will people learn, the internet is neither inherently good nor evil... it's just a new medium... if kids weren't inside on their PC's pirating CD's they'd be out in the playground trading CDR's stuffed full of music... you gonna sue the school at that point?

Re:How far can it go?

[hackstraw]

I once bought a pirated CD in a pub, can the landlord be sued?

Yes, if the landlord knowingly had a corner of the pub designated for the selling of pirated CDs.

Actually, thinking further... if I didn't work then I couldn't afford to buy the pirate CD so surely my employer is ultimately responsible, after all they gave me the money to commit this foul act... I'm going to sue my employer for making me a criminal!!!

And the government printed the money, so all crimes that involve the exchange of money are caused by the government.

Or, should I quit my job, become unemployed, claim state benefits, buy a pirate CD and then sue the government?!?!?

Sounds like a plan!

When will people learn, the internet is neither inherently good nor evil... it's just a new medium... if kids weren't inside on their PC's pirating CD's they'd be out in the playground trading CDR's stuffed full of music... you gonna sue the school at that point?

I've never found anything that is inherently evil. Many say that everything is good and that evil is just "less good" just like darkness is the absense of light, there really isn't darkness.

Wouldn't you sue an ISP that was hosting some of your copyrighted material without your consent? For example, Tom's hardware sight was being ripped off as someone else's original work, Tom went to the ISP and took down the site. If the ISP didn't behave this way, I would imagine that Tom would have taken them to court. I would have.

Re:How far can it go?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can be shown that the lanlord established his quarters to assist in the trafficing of pirated CDs, then yes, he can be sued.

You have been paid by your employer for carrying out a particular task. How you decide to 'invest' your money outside his business is entirely your own problem -you are an adult.

No where's that stupid fuck that gave you +3? Probably one of the piracy-master EFF's crew.

Free speech! Fair Use! W4r3z 4 all 'litt mo-fos!

Mmm - Telstra

[tqft]

I want ARIA to try and sue Telstra/BigPond for profiting from supply of the underlying capacity, and knowingly allowing their users to file swap.

Who would win? (Googlefight predicts aria, but maybe becuase fo their big award ceremony last night)

PS: Telstra has been close to "busted" before for tapping phones of customers who complained about them. So don't think they are a bunch of wimps who woould not fight.

Re:Mmm - Telstra

[UoNTidal]

Actually, E-Talk's bandwidth is provided by NTT Australia:

traceroute www.comcen.com.au
1 cisco-eng-fe0.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.96.250) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
2 134.148.250.242 (134.148.250.242) 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
3 callaghan-gw.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.24.251) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
4 nswrno2-atm4-0-ultimo.nswrno.net.au (203.15.123.37) 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms
5 ATM9-0-0-3.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.18.113) 9 ms 13 ms 6 ms
6 NTTAustraliaIP.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.138.134) 137 ms 165 ms 219 ms
7 fa1-4.dc1-core3.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.38) 12 ms 8 ms 9 ms
8 fa4-0.dc1-acc7.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.234) 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms
9 etalk-cust.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.96.206) 16 ms 13 ms 31 ms
10 www.comcen.com.au (203.29.124.1) 17 ms (ttl=55!) 14 ms (ttl=55!) 22 ms (t tl=55!)

On that one, googlefight has NTT absolutely trouncing ARIA...

Re:Mmm - Telstra

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"Who would win? (Googlefight predicts aria, but maybe becuase fo their big award ceremony last night)"

I think aria wins for Other reasons(nsfw)

Re:Mmm - Telstra

[angle_mark]

Oh come on, this is Telstra you are talking about. Aria would be flattened.

Re:Mmm - Telstra

[Anonymous Coward]

ARIA has already, been there, done that with Telstra (and won!). They have also been there, tried hard, but lost with ISP's.

Years ago ARIA took Telstra to court over copyright infringement of material in the form of "music on hold". Some companies with PABX systems that provided the feature of "music on hold" did not negotiate the appropriate licensing through ARIA. As a result of this ARIA, rather than chasing up those "offenders", chose instead to target Telstra. The argument went that since Telstra provided most business and residential access in Australia, they were allowing the use of copyrighted material and were responsible rather than the companies that owned the PABX systems.

Quite unbelievably, ARIA won the case. In my opinion, the Telstra lawyer defending must have been asleep.

Subsequently (about 6 years ago) ARIA took a major ISP to court over copyright infringement of music. Same logic as the previous case, target a conduit not the offender (after all, lawyers are expensive so use them once rather thousands of times).

I was brought in as one of the advisors to the defense team for this case.

Much of the prelimary work involved coaching the legal team so they could describe to the judge how routers and the internet worked. From that they were going to convince the judge it was impractical to police.

Through the course of this work, after many frustrating conversations, I went off and researched what the Australian copyright act actually said (btw, I believe it has been ammended since that time). Australian copyright law had provisions regarding broadcast. The intention was probably that it was to cover radio and television broadcasters, but unfortunately the wording wasn't that precise. ARIA interpreted this section for their argument as any provider of infrastructure that can reach multiple people. Presumeably this was how they convinced the judge in the music on hold case (Telstra was a broadcaster by their argument, despite the fact that they had no editorial control and weren't actually the originator of the material).

The same argument was being used against ISP's, that they were a broadcaster.

Another interesting paragraph in Australian copyright law (at least at the time) was the inclusion of a provision that prevented "double dipping" (my words). Essentially what the intention was is that you can't extract license fees for the same material multiple times. In the music on hold case, Telstra ended up have to pay a annual license to ARIA for the estimated copyright infringements of the users of their "broadcast" network (i.e. most of the population of Australia).

My position was that rather than fight the rediculous interpration of "broadcaster", we should focus on the double dip provision. If ARIA's argument was valid, then ISP's were using the "broadcast" service provided by Telstra (it's hard for copyright offenders to avoid the monopoly infrastructure provider), so it has nothing to do with the ISP and Telstra were already paying an annual license fee to ARIA to cover such material (as a result of the previous case).

I'm not aware of what the final position proposed by the defense was, but ARIA did lose.

One last recollection on how absurd this case was is one of the copyright music download examples ARIA used. The demonstration involved how it was possible to download a track from a US web site. The track downloaded was from the artists own website promoting his current album at the time (I'm pretty sure it was Sting). It apparently didn't matter that the artist had permitted the download of the material, ARIA wasn't getting a cut on it and they were p**sed.

My personal opinion from this is that ARIA is in these sort of actions to their own end, nothing to do with the interest of musicians. I suspect it would be very interesting to see ARIA's financials.

ISP Culpability

[child_of_mercy]

A few months ago I looked into running a peercast strem of local original music from my city (Canberra, Australia).

One thing that struck me when I put out a call for interest was the willingness of local ISP's to host nodes.

Bear in mind the project was intended to be totally legit and din't proceed because too many of the local artists were already signed up by the copyright agency APRA.

Anything that makes people download more is in the ISP's interest if they've worked their cost base out properly.

Having said that the ones I spoke to were entirely conditional on the feed being unencumbered.

I've had no dealings with this mob so can't comment on their motivations.

Wrong Solution, Wrong (But Better) Target

[Bloodmoon1]

Well, the solution of sueing to stop piracy is still the wrong avenue to take, but at least now the music industry is sueing someone that can afford (to the extent of ability to pay, not ability to survive through, as I imagine a several million $ judgement would bankrupt most companies) the insane award they'll probably be granted. Even though ISPs cannot be expected to restrict and monitor their users as the industry would like, since it would raise about a million free speech/privacy/etc concerns. But hey, that's where the money is, right guys?

Now, in my opinion, the way to curtail piracy is by giving the customer something. And by something, I don't mean 9 shitty songs with the same beat, different lyrics, all of which rhyme with love or fire, and that lasts for half an hour, for $20. I mean truly adding value to a purchase. For example, Marilyn Manson's The Golden Age Of Grotesque and ATB's Addicted to Music. I ripped the MP3's from a friend, listened, and once I got some money, bought the CDs. I could have very well just never got the CD's, but I did. First, while I know it won't make a difference to these two groups, I do feel they are worth supporting. I do the same with NIN and Zombie and a few others. Like the music or not, at least it's not the same recycled shit for the 143853092847th time. Secondly, the actual value of these CDs. Both CD's cost something around $16-20 when I got them. Both have 13 songs, so about a $1.25 or so a song. Both last at least an hour (1.2 in ATB's case). Both include lyrics (for songs that need it), which is an absolute rarity these days. Jesus, for $20, I at least expect to be able to get lyrics, but most groups/"artists" just give me a picture and some credits thanking god, their boyfriend, producers, etc. Both CD's also have some decent pictoral work. And, both come with a DVD that has videos/documentries on it. So good music, LYRICS (I really, really hate no lyrics), A DVD!!!, and some pretty pictures, for less then the cost of the latest from Britany (your prices/milage may vary).

So, what did we learn today class?

1. If you can't get blood from a turnip, might as well sue the ground the turnip grows in for its delicious, abundent neutrients.
2. To avoid piracy, give us something worth buying. Yeah, piracy is technically wrong, but so fucking what? We refuse to pay $20 for a shitty CD to get 2 songs that aren't available on a single. (Which is why iTunes does so well, but that's another post).
3. Lyrics, at least give us lyric inserts. And a DVD with some videos or something never hurt.

Class is over. Now get the hell out and do something productive.

Re:Wrong Solution, Wrong (But Better) Target

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose much like the troll mod, no one here knows exactly what redundent means, or what a real set of b00bs looks like in person. Fags.

Re:mod parent down

[56ker]

It's the Australian site (.com.au) which may not be able to withstand the bandwidth required. I'm sure that zdnet would though.

What if I play a song over the phone?

[reynolds_john]

I was just wondering... based on the logic being presented by the plaintiffs, would AT&T be held responsible in court if I played my MP3s to friends over the phone while they listened in a giant conference call?

The site isn't even hosting MP3s

[wilko11]

I actually went to the site that is the cause of all this: www.mp3s4free.net and found that it doesn't even appear to be hosting pirated music. It is simply searchable database of mp3 files that are hosted elsewhere on the Internet. It looks primarily like the site is profiting from capturing email addresses and advertising rather than from the music itself.
What I was quite impressed about was that the site is still up. Many ISPs would have killed the site straight away - assuming guilt rather than innocence. My site is also hosted with Comcen and they seem to be a good bunch.

Who the hell is paying for this?

[JoeShmoe]

"In my experience investigating the revenue structure of Web sites such as [mp3s4free.net] the ISP hosting the Web site, [Com-cen], stands to benefit economically from the increased consumption of bandwidth that would result from an increase in the flow of traffic to the Web site and an increase in the number of sound recordings downloaded by visitors to the Web site due to the large size of music files," Speck's affadavit.

The way this dumbass words it, it sounds like he's saying the ISP is making big bucks because of all the increase in traffic the illegal files generate. No, that would cost them big bucks. The only way an ISP would be making a profit in this situation is if they were getting paid by the website. In which case, how is this different than any other ISP customer using his connection to upload warez or music or whatever?

I mean, either the ISP is benefitting from all the downloads, which makes them part of this, or they are just providing a service to a customer who can then use it for good or bad like anyone else.

To put it another way, it's like suing Comcast because they know that the only people who pay for broadband are the people who want to illegally download music and movies. If they didn't want illegal downloads, they wouln't need broadband. And god knows, anyone who pays for increased upload speed is surely a pirate!

Seriously, this is the stupidest case argument I've heard in quite some time. Even if Australia doesn't have any kind of DMCA ISP-shield or (highly unlikely) common-carrier regulations, then this is either the ISP is running the free MP3s and thus costing themselves a crapload in bandwidth, or it's the ISP's customer to blame, in which case the ISP has nothing to do with it.

I don't get it.

- JoeShmoe
.

Re:Who the hell is paying for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

They ARE benefiting from it if subscribers pay for actual data moved, or pay if they go over some threshold.

Many countries do *not* have the flat rate, all-you-can-eat model that is typical of US ISPs, and Australia and NZ in particular have been known for ISPs that impose limits/charges on high data traffic.

Re:Who the hell is paying for this?

[JoeShmoe]

Right...in which case the customer goes up to the ISP and says "I need 50GB of bandwidth, here is $X"...what is the ISP supposed to do? "Oh, no I can't sell you that. The only reason you would need 50GB is to do something illegal." If the ISP did that, then the customer would just go to another ISP that would sell that to them. Either there's a law preventing people from selling X (like spray paint to minors) or the ISP has a right to operate in the marketplace.

This is a clear example of a shotgun lawsuit. I'm surprised they didn't sue Microsoft too.

- JoeShmoe
.

this works in all sorts of cases...

[grosa]

this is kind of like suing property owners for "profiting" by charging rent to people who grow pot in their closets

don't most ISPs make the user sign a release or disclaimer saying the ISP isn't responsible if the user gets himself in trouble for content?

Implicit marketing of piracy?

[Empiric]

I was a little taken aback earlier tonight when I was shopping in a Target, and among their selection of CD-R and writable media, was an image of a teenage girl, with a quiet smile on her face, with the caption "They call me Mixtape Molly".

Presumably, Target understands that these mixtapes are most likely to be mixes of copyrighted material. It was a little odd seeing what seemed like a subtle marketing piece for a substantial market for CD-R's, but which presumably had illegal activity underpinning it, presented by one of the biggest and most highly-regarded retail chains.

I think the collision between companies purportedly harmed by piracy and those benefitting from it is going to be a lot more widespread than the mentioned case, soon. It has become a mainstream cultural phenomenon.

Re:Implicit marketing of piracy?

[toddestan]

Well on the other hand, there is nothing illegal about making mix-tapes (or mix-CDs) for one's own use. It's all covered in fair use. That is, unless you need to break some copy protection in order to copy the track to make the mix tape. In which case you violate the DMCA so you get to go to prison.

Great system, eh?

Re:Implicit marketing of piracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google on the "AHRA" -- The RIAA gets a cut off every audio tape and "audio CD-R" sold. Making personal tapes is 100% legal.

stopRIAAlawsuits.com

[chatooya]

The American backlash against the filesharing suits seems to be gaining steam (Stop RIAA Lawsuits Coalition), I wonder if the same will start happening down under as they crack down.

At some point, there needs to be a global citizen response to a global entertainment industry. The corporations are using all the tactics they have available in each country and consumers should do the same. The laws they're trying to cram into the FTAA are on a new level.

"The draft intellectual property rights chapter in the FTAA Agreement vastly expands criminal procedures and penalties against intellectual property infringements throughout the Americas... One clause would require countries to send non-commercial infringers such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharers to prison. It is estimated that 60 million Americans use file-sharing software in the US alone." -From a new report by ipjustice.org.

Re:Wow, they're right!

[Kris_J]

The RIAA et al will eventually fail or change so much as to be unrecognisable. It's just that companies this big, so long as they don't do anything illegal, fail in slow motion -- sort of like falling down an up escalator.

Imagine if they do actually manage to get all P2P music sharing stopped. I see the weekend music video shows -- all the music sucks (over-broad, I'm sure some people truely like the stuff). If people don't have any opportunity to sample anything other than the pre-defined top-50, they're simply going to stop buying music even faster. I think my music collection consists of no more than 2% of music that's ever made it into the top 50. That's about 50 tracks that have snuck onto my iPod -- sounds about right. I don't think a top-50 track has made it into the rotation today...

Mind you, I don't use any P2P software either and I bought a few CDs last week despite myself. High profile acts like Mike Oldfield, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre :)

Not first case of its kind

[miu]

I think Harlan Ellison did it first. Harlan sued AOL over posts of his copyrighted material to Usenet.

Re:I don't think this is a troll

[B747SP]

It appears to be the original posting of this story

You reckon? Fourth or fifth comment down the page says this... You ultra-suck, you copy-pasting foo'. Seen it, dumped it.

Common Sense Takes a Holiday

[Mulletproof]

As long as we're going after ISP's, lets sue Google! After all, they directly help in providing access to pirated software, illegal MP3s and movies to boot! But screw the minor offenses. Let's get some of that child porn action going!

I mean really, how screwy is this? Last I saw, police ticketed the lawbreakers on the roadway, not the roadway itself or the owners of the roadway. Now wouldn't that be great? "Well Govenor, since we caught people speeding on the state roadway, we're going to fine you, not them." Riiiiiiigt. But since we're fining the owners of the roadway, wouldn't it be even more logical to bust the people who put the huge signs up that say "CRACK HOUSE HERE! TWO FOR ONE SALE!" or "HALF PRICE JOINT SALE NEXT RIGHT"???

While we're sueing the ISP's and Search Engines, lets sue the makers of the monitors you're using now! That's right, they should be preventing you from even seing that stuff. And does your computer have a NIC? They're facilitating a crime right there, baby! Illegal transfer of files! AND DAMN MAXTOR for allowing those files to reside on your harddrive! Screw personal responsibility! I'VE GOT A CASE! I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!!!

Or not.

sue'em

[Alkonaut]

What is all the ranting about "suing an ISP is like suing car manufacturers for making cars which are used for bank robbing" etc.?

I agree that supplying tools or infrastructure cannot be considered a crime, but what if the supplier knows about the illegal activities? I don't think ISP:s could be held financially responsible directly for the losses of, say, a record company, but I do think that knowingly providing infrastructure for illegal activities should be criminal. Since australia has those strange copyright laws that make all copies of copyrighted material illegal, the page is obviously illegal.

What I don't understand is this: If the contents of a website is illegal, isn't an ISP in almost any country obliged to shut the site down, or face charges? No need for a lawsuit then? If they shut it down when prompted, they can't be asked to pay any damages, right?

If the site isn't illegal, then noone would have any grounds for a lawsuit, and there is no problem?

Re:sue'em

[defishguy]

I can't agree. Ford does KNOW that their cars are GOING to be used in crimes. So do refrigerator makers know that at least some of their refrigerators will be used in crack labs. Claiming that anyone who has knowledge that some of their products will be used in a crime should be sued is silly. How about Palm? They know that some of their products will be used by illegal dealers of guns or drugs. Your logic will have all of these manufacturers sued out of existence.

We have too many lawsuits because too many people want to extend the reach of the blame gun.

Blame begins and ends with the person commiting the crime and those that helped them.

Re:sue'em

[Alkonaut]

I don't agree, Ford has no chance of knowing exactly what sold car is being used in criminal activity. All they know is their marketshare and statistics of car models used in crimes etc. The "know" in the Ford case is "know" by the laws statistics, not "know" by actually seeing the crime, and being able to stop it, but not doing so.

If they knew before a sale the car was going to be used in a bankrobbery it would be different.

Not stopping a crime (or not trying) if you have the possibility is equal to accessory where I come from. Seeing it that way, the ISP is responsible once they can be shown to know about the site's activities. This of course leads to a whole new debate on "not knowing and not wanting to know" which of course would lead down the usual "willfully blind" alley.

Re:sue'em

[HiThere]

And you will, of course, know the full implications of every particular law that you might be asked about? It's public record, so if you don't know aren't you being willfully blind?

The ISP may have some fault, if, for example, they advertised on the basis that you could host warez. But that has to be shown. To assume guilt is definitely excessive.

I don't know that the ARIA has engaged in the same vile corruption of the legal system that the RIAA has, so it seems unfair to automatically tar them with the same brush...but the similarities are haunting. They would need to prove their honesty before I would assume it. If they were the RIAA I would say that the ISP was totally correct, even if it had advertized specifically "Host your music warez with us!". But that's because I fee that the RIAA has no legitimate grounds for existence...that by suborning the legislature they have committed crimes for which the fit legal penalty is corporate disolution with forfiture of all assets, and jail terms for the upper management. The term that comes to mind is treason, though I believe that technically a corporation can't commit treason.

I must keep remembering that ARIA isn't necessarily the same as the RIAA, even though they are in the same business, and use many of the same tactics. I don't know that they are the same kind of "green shit"*.

* From the Chimpanzee dialect of AmSlan.."a disgusting person" (or possibly entity, as it can refer to another chimpanzee as well as to an experimenter).

Not guilty, but...

[StoneCrusher]

While I don't agree that ISP's are responsible for what their subscribers do, they don't exactly discourage piracy.

Sure there are clauses in the Terms and Conditions when you sign up, but some ISP's will advertise how many MP3's you can download in there usage caps. Sure it could be for legitimate MP3s, but really, what do you expect a user to do if there told they could download 300 MP3's a month! on the [X] plan.

Re:Not guilty, but...

[TeknoHog]

This relates to another annoyance with many ISPs, in that they seem to dislike outgoing traffic. For example, by banning servers. This makes it harder for me to distribute my own creations, while it's perfectly OK to leech anything I can find off the net.

Re:Not guilty, but...

[kayen_telva]

show me one instance where an ISP uses mp3s
as a selling point.

They are right and you are wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy writes and trade marks play an important role in society if everything is copied (lets say apply it to drugs which cure an illness) then the companies will no longer pursue research in these areas, as it will no longer be profitable.

And we can already see that music is begining to suck because of the falling profits and companies taking less risks with non produced music.

What I'm saying is, hop off that high horse and stop being so greedy and selfish. Your verging on communism and and it has been proven time and time again that that does not work.

And don't say that you don't want to support the people who you see and having unfavorable qualities, because despite all that they still make your lives slightly more enriched, or else why would you download their music. Just stop trying to justify your greed.

Re:They are right and you are wrong...

[devilspgd]

"Copy Writes"?

Re:They are right and you are wrong...

[HiThere]

Have you noticed the rather haphazard way in which life-saving drugs are created? Only if they are expected to make a lot of money do the companies put much effort into it.

This means that many diseases aren't treated, and drugs to treat them aren't developed. This means that vaccines tend to be ignored, or even actively dropped. People don't have to keep taking them, so they aren't as profitable as "treatments" that don't cure.

The government has, occasionally, had to step in and say "You WILL make this vaccine!". More commonly, it will guarantee the payment of a certain amount whether the vaccine is needed or not. But this means that except when the government is paying attention, development will stop ("Hey, noboy will notice. And this other thing might make more money."). And then when the emergency arrives, the government has to *pay more* to get the company to make the vaccine that it's already agreed to make.

Profit is not a universal solution for allocating resources...at least not if you want to live. Profit is nearly as blind as evolution (thanks to the Harvard School of "Business and shortsightedness").

Now you can argue that a long term view of profit would give the correct answer, but that's not the one that corporations are using. Managers are judged on the performance during the most recent quarter. This practically guarantees that no long term planning will be done...and that managers will try to skip ship before the crows come home to roost (and pick over the cracass).

I can envision a system where good long-term planning was rewarded...and even under such a system small groups would get the short shrift, though nowhere near as badly. But it isn't to the benefit of the drug companies to cure diseases. Not short or long term. It's to their benefit to *treat* diseases. With something that requires continued purchases. In such a situation, I don't trust a free market of any stripe to come to the socially most beneficial result. It may come to the result most beneficial to the drug companies, but I see no reason that *that* should be my preference.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong

[ghostrider_one]

The body of this article is completely wrong.

The site in question does not host infringing content, it is merely a bunch of links to other sites where allegedly infringing content can allegedly be had. It's bad enough they're suing the operator of the site, it's worse that they're suing his ISP. If the music industry succeeds in criminalising this type of activity, you could be sued simply for linking to kazaalite.com or napster.com

I guess I can't interest you in any Beatles music.

[ex-songwriter]

So I suppose you wouldn't support the Beatles, who stopped performing in 1965-66 to focus solely on recording, producing such masterpieces as Sgt. Pepper's. It's great to have an opinion, but it would be even better to recognise that the same model doesn't work for every artist. And anyway, I might ask, who are you to tell artists how they are supposed to make their living?

L'ADISQ in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

L'ADISQ are in supreme court with ISP too, they blame them for everything, and ask something like 1000$ for each song downloaded since 1995.

Re:GOOD RIDDANCE - Here's the future for you!

[krystal_blade]

What kind of crack are you smoking?

You obviously have no idea what extremes people will go through to get something for "free".

In your perfect world, movies will suck, and be done only by people with no commercial motivation. (Hint: The Matrix movie was done because the people making it felt there was money to be had in doing so.) I.E. Non-mainstream movies will become THE mainstream. Which, of course means that the only movies you'll see will have some kind of "message" in them.

Music will not follow any of the normal rules of what is, and is not a hit. Which means that the basic building blocks for what we call music today will erode into something that sounds like Nine Inch Nails mixed with Sarah Maclaughlan. Horrible. And that'll just be the start. Do you like "acid techno"? It'll sound like that. Artists will not have any commercial motivation to create a song that is audibly pleasing, and will make what they want, without the studio time and budget that they would normally have. Have you actually heard garage music? It ain't clean sounding, I'll tell you that.

And as far as donations are concerned, If people don't have to pay for it, they usually won't. Which means if a movie or a song finds a billion pairs of eyes or ears, maybe 1000 people will donate a couple bucks. So artists will not do it "for the people". They will do it for themselves. The human race is generally not charitable unless confroted physically. Do you intend to have starving artists prowling the countryside looking for money?

So certainly, you can keep your idyllic world to yourself, thank you. My eyes, and ears will thank you for it.

krystal_blade

DigitalMusic

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry could change to this:

*Keep the music shops (but make them smaller)
*Distribute the music in a digialway to the shops
*Let customers, listen and choose, and the shop burns them a audioCD.

Whynot? Your normal seven-eleven could have a machine keeping alot of albums and burning them when you want one.

Re:GOOD RIDDANCE - Here's the future for you!

[Thanatiel]

In your perfect world, movies will suck, and be done only by people with no commercial motivation.

You mean : "good movies" then.
Lowly commercial movies are crap.
Actually, most of the commercial "art" is crap.

Postal service

[PurpleWizard]

And in a follow up action they are suing the postal service for conspiracy to distribute illegal copies of copyrighted works.

The transport union has called out all its workers as they are at risk of being involved in the transport of illegal and/or prohibited materials. One worker has been heard to mutter "My god I could have been helping the spread of poor quality pre-release knock offs of massive blockbuster movies! I'll never haul again".

Re:I guess I can't interest you in any Beatles mus

[Anonymous Coward]

And anyway, I might ask, who are you to tell artists how they are supposed to make their living?

Who are artists to tell me that I can't share with my friends?

in other news: the US sues forest owners

[Anonymous Coward]

of course the owners of forest, the producers of paper and their subcontractors are all reaping the profits of the money forging "business".

Took long enough

[nurb432]

I had expected the RIAA to pull that stunt from the beginning.

Im suprised it was somewhere else first..

It's not valid, but still expected. ISP's should ( do? ) have common carrier status.. So unless the feds are looking, they shouldnt be held liable for their customers actions.

P2P is ISP lifeline

[Anonymous Coward]

lets face it, without P2P and illegal filesharing going on, what exactly is the massmarket appeal of the internet and broadband that the ISP's offer?

tons of unwanted spam email and porn pop-ups?
for the average consumer, the free music and films makes up for the downsides of the net.

without P2P apps, broadband is dead in the water.

always on narrowband is what most people only need.

australian record industry?

[bsDaemon]

so, does mean that no one can download the Men at Work 'land down under' song anymore? their one song is hardly something to get uppity about.

Want to know the truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to www.googlefight.com and key in the terms 'RIAA' versus 'sanity'.

Actually, your arguments are wrong

[Quizo69]

Let's use your example of drugs being copied. You state that if everyone could copy them indiscriminately there would be no incentive to make them because there would be no profit. Your statement fails to take account of one glaring fact though - perhaps making life saving drugs is NOT ABOUT PROFIT. It is about saving lives. Therefore you would find that with money taken out of the equation, governments or concerned citizens would still develop these drugs because it is in the national interest to do so. In fact, this is the classic role of government in the first place - provide the essential services required by the community without favouring one group over another.

Now let's look at your comments about communism. TRUE communism is just that; community based government in which all citizens are given equal share of the resources and all citizens contibute back equally. Communism as practiced in China, the USSR etc is NOT communism because it has been perverted to favour a ruling elite above the rest with the GUISE that they are all equal. "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." - George Orwell.

The overriding problem is that greed and profit over people is destroying the nature of true capitalism in favour of corporatism. Your remarks show this quite well.

The concept of copyright has been so corrupted as to have lost its original meaning long ago in favour of maintaining the status quo for dinosaur industries based on the artificial scarcity model. We as civilised society need to do away with the notion of copyright entirely in an age where digital information can be shared with little to no cost. Don't worry; artists would still be paid for their work, just in a different manner. Live performances, donations (as in the shareware concept but applied to music) and many other avenues. No, they won't make millions. But then again, why should they? Why should a musician who sings a few songs earn millions, while a doctor or nurse who actually saves lives, or a research scientist, makes but a fraction of that salary yet performs a much more important function in society?

Musicians and the record industry have had their days of being mega-rich. We will look back on this time in the future as an aberration, nothing more. A quaint time when musicians and actors were paid a ridiculous amount of money purely for entertaining people. Civilised society will have moved on to more community based living and the realisation that monetary inequality was largely responsible for the worst problems of the past.

Quizo69

Re:GOOD RIDDANCE - Here's the future for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

what we call music today will erode into something that sounds like Nine Inch Nails mixed with Sarah Maclaughlan

that's funny. when i read that i thought "heck yea! that'd be friggin sweet!" plus, i happen to LOVE "acid techno". just because YOU dont happen to like a particular style of music doesnt mean that no one else does either. for every style of music you dont like there is probably 10000000 people that do.

also, you got your story wrong on the Wachowski brothers. they had the script and idea for the Matrix looooooong before anyone decided to give them some money for it.

I don't know how many times I've seen this posted

[Anonymous Coward]

here on Slashdot, but it always make me laugh!

Only half the story:

[BrokenHalo]

From the parent post: It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to

I suspect this is the poster's problem. If he wants to play around with distributing stuff that is available at every other record shop, then he is bound to lose sales as p2p takes hold.

I have yet to see many specialist CD shops go down the gurgler. More off-the-beaten-track recordings simply aren't available via p2p, and only rarely (with a fair degree of effort) via IRC.

Perhaps that poster should have stayed with the original business model. Let's face it, who needs to encourage the likes of Celine Dion?

Re:Only half the story:

[BrokenHalo]

OK, I admit I stopped reading the grandparent post after the first 3 sentences. Disregard the above and mod me -1: Moron

:-)

Re:ARIA?

[Glonoinha]

I think Pavlov needs to run a few new experiments. Forget ringing a bell and checking a dog's jowls - this one has some potential.

Apples and Oranges

[thales]

Copying songs isn't the subject of the music industry law suits. Distrubiting copyrighted material by allowing others to make a coppies of material that you are offering is.

You people make me sick

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of piracy, many people may lose their jobs or their businesses. All you do is laugh and say that they have no right to defend their jobs by stoping piracy. They have done nothing wrong and are getting pissed on for it. Piracy is illegal. Plain and simple. No reason you give can justify your actions. You are pathetic excuses for human beings.

Next Step:

[El]

Sue the syringe manufactures for "profiting from the proliferation of drugs." Then sue prisons for "profiting from the proliferation of crime." Next, sue abortion clinics for "profiting from the proliferation of rape." Later, sue CDROM manufacturers, CD burner manufacturers, and MP3 player manufacturers for "profiting from the proliferation of online music"! Where does it all stop?

no big loss

[danger42]

You mean I can't get Men At Work singles any more? Damnit.

Different cycles of motivation to make music

[KnarfO]

I've been in and out of bands for 15 years or so, and for me, the motivation to make music has changed over time. First, I was in it for the chicks (the ass). Then, it dawned on me I could make some money, so that was a driving factor for a while.

Although I've never got rich from music, it seems to me that the rich rock stars that continue to perform are in it less for the money than for things like fame, and yes, for the pure sake of creating great music.

For me, an arguably "failed musician" (failed rock star?) money certainly is no longer the motivation, yet I still pour a ton of time and effort into making music with my friends (much to the chagrin of my wife). Why do I do it?

Music is a way I can discover connections with other people, be they members of the band I play with, or in the audience listening. And thanks to modern digital communication technology, I can capture that music and re-live it indefinitely. If someone were to make that kind of recording cumbersome, or worse, illegal, whatever innovation I might come up with would most likely never come about (or at least never get captured), because it would be just too hard at that point.

why not sell music like amway or something

[Anonymous Coward]

all the kids swapping music with their friends, could be clipping the ticket on the way through - if they were licensed and had to return wholesale rates to artists, they could recommend music to friends, and make some money by sharing it round.

sure it takes a bit of a market away from the giants, but since anyone can provide digital copying these days, and word of mouth marketting is valid, so why not allow small consumers to sell licensed copies?

absolutely not

[Stu Charlton]

"if the majority is doing something because they think its right and justified, it becomes so."

Majorities do not need to better decisions. This is a "might makes right" argument, and the United States founding fathers were actually quite obsessed with limiting the power of the majority, because freedom and liberty require protections for the minority as well.

This is a common misnomer of democracies, one that political scientists have tried to point out for years. Democratic processes do not lead to good governments or better decisions, nor are they more efficient than dictatorships. They're actually rather inefficient.

Democracies are freer than other forms of government because, they give legitmacy to rulers through a process that allows us to throw the bums out. That doesn't mean we'll choose good leaders, GW Bush being a case in point.

I believe RMS is (partially) wrong.

[Stu Charlton]

I think the musicians have to perform live as they had to do a hundred years ago and as many musicians have to do now

So, in your opinion, there is no artistic merit to recording art; only performance art? What about written art, is it not the same as recording art? Should only lecturers get paid, now?

The era to become rich by selling millions of CDs without any real work is over.

The number of musicians that get rich by selling millions of CDs is rather small. And I think you might want to revise your view about how much work goes into promoting their art. It is "real work".

Ditto for authors.

Copyright is about a system that allows remuneration for artists so that society gets the benefits of their work. It's something that many people in this society accept, and will fight for. Many companies have distorted copyright as an attempt to make unlimited profits off of something that was once considered creative. Similar for software companies. This needs to be changed.

Music recordings could be viewed as a service, just like software development could be viewed as a service. The question becomes, what's the easiest and most equitable way to fund such efforts? Today, it's through productization. Perhaps there can be a better, different model, such as flexible DRM as in the iTunes Music Store.

RMS has often suggested that there should be no freedom restrictions for such efforts. RMS' only indication of funding was the charging of a "small fee" for the redistribution of works. He does not seem to want to attribute any economic value to artistic works, such as software development.

I think that's against the interests of society at large. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with viewing artistic works as an economic good ("Wow, that was a great song, I'll pay you to write another one!"), but of course one can take it to extremes, as the prevailing system has.

Also note, composers made money in the old days

[Stu Charlton]

You seem miss that in the old days, composers were commissioned by kings and queens to write music; that was how they stayed alive, not through performance art.

Perhaps we can create a market-oriented commission system. But that still would require a form of copyright.

It's all about skull thickness...

[Genda]

Why don't these clowns just cut to the chase and sue the whole freakin' planet. Obviously earth spins like a CD and by virtue of having ears, all human beings must be guilty of hearing the industry's music somewhere, someplace, in a manner that must have been illegal... and should therefore pay the music industry billions of dollars for the indignity of it all.

We should all just bow our thieving heads and spend the rest of our pathetic lives paying them every cent we earn from now until our pointless demise...

I mean, if I were to have a moment of clarity I might think "Hey, by this logic we need to sue the mail service... because mail bombers buy stamps!" Of course, clarity, sanity, logic, legality, or even morality are not the point. The point is entitlement. These men have had a long run getting fat and disgusting by raping artists and screwing their customers. They've gotten very used to a world that owed them a living and they don't want to have to work to maintain that. Rather than coming up with new models for selling music that accommodate a changing world, or providing value added, or even just trying to keep pace with changing society, they feel entitled (in their piggy little minds), to buy laws and lawyers to enforce the existence of a world that channels the money directly into their bank accounts.

In the end, our bitching and pissing and moaning won't kill these turkeys. Their own draconian acts will do what we couldn't. In the end people will find ways to work around them and they'll simply become the undisputed masters of their sinking little boat... what a pity...

Genda

Music industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of the music industrie's antics I refuse to buy music anymore. I support live music, but recorded stuff is easily obtained by borrowing CDs from libraries and then, using digital speaker output, create a near perfect copy.
Up yours profiteers!

NEWSFLASH

[alexcampbell]

And in other news, the RIAA has sued ARIA in the Australian Federal Court. The USA based RIAA is suing its Australian counterpart, claiming that ARIA violated its copyrighted idea of filing fucking stupid lawsuits. SCO is reportedly also considering taking similar action.

MP3 Site Just a Search Engine

[redwolfoz]

ConCen are claiming that the site was a search engine and no music was actually hosted on their servers:

The Internet company targeted by the music industry over alleged copyright breaches, ComCen, has denied it hosted any copyright-infringing MP3 files on its servers and claims the Web site cited in the civil action brought against it acted only as a search engine.