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3 New Defendants Named In MP3s4free.net Case
As reported in The Australian, three new respondents have been named in the mp3s4free.net link site case, including an employee of the ISP which is said to have hosted the site. The music industry says that ISP employees will be targeted in the future, but given an amnesty if they "inform the music industry."
Now it's illegal to _LINK_ to websites that have content that _MAY_ infringe on someone's copyrights?
And what law makes that illegal? The DMCA?
"Do you now, or have you ever been a contributer to online music sharing? We'll let you go if you simply provide us with a list of music sharers."
no kidding, it's so much easier just to copy it.
Do they mean, "rat out others?"
And going after the ISP only shows that they aren't trying to protect their artists and only want cash flowing into their pockets. That is the same as arresting a landlord because his tenants had some pot in their apartments.
He said employees of ISPs who were aware of illegal activities being carried out at work would be targeted in future if this case was successful, but would be granted "amnesty" if they informed the music industry.
Yeah, that's a good way to attract new customers - rat out your PAYING CLIENTS to the music industry's Doberman lawyers.
Hey, ISPs - are you listening? The answer to this one is never do anything that could make you aware of illegal activities, OK? It doesn't mean that you should sniff all traffic going over your pipes.
See what really frustrates the hell out of me is that I want artists to succeed. I don't want them to be slaves to the RIAA, and I don't want them getting screwed over by pirates. The problem is that in the RIAA's efforts to protect their profits (they don't give a hoot about artists), they are making it much harder for me to listen to music the way most people want to.
But your honor, I had no idea www.FreeWarez.com/MP3s contained copywritten material! It was simply my duty to the public to let them know it was there. .... yeah right.
on the other hand how many levels can this cover? for instance, what if on my personal homepage i link to another friends personal homepage who in turn ends up linking to a whole bunch of sites that the DMCA doesn't like ? does that make me an infringer?
...This is just another hopelessly idiotic example of the music industry using their coercion tactics to force people into complying with their own rules, not the rules necessarily of the state, the government, nay, the music industry's rules.
I don't even see how this was illegal:
The website, www.mp3s4free.net, was alleged to contain MP3 audio files which infringe upon the copyrights of the record labels, but is in fact a collection of links to other websites on the Internet, and other MP3 files distributed by permission of the Copyright holders.
All this site was doing was referring to other websites, which may have been illegalt themselves, but a links page that refers to them is not illegal!
Hell, there are sites out there that tell you how to build bombs, sites with "art" that is really just child pornography, sites claiming to be legitimate businesses which scam people out of their money for all kinds of items, and they are going after a page of links?
Let me repeat, a links page is not illegal. This is yet another example of the music industry throwing out ridiculous propoganda to spread the word on their "illegal music crackdown". Stupid.
RTFA first
Obviously you didn't as you're mentioning the DMCA which doesn't apply in Australia!
Of course, it might be safer to simply have no music whatsoever in your house.
ARIA have issued several Mark "Chopper" Reid orders (similar to threats). In a prepared statement they said that "full cooperation is expected. I mean, it's very hard to host a website with no fingers."
Electronic Frontiers Australia said "strewth, blimey, look at that little beauty!" before calming themselves down with a Fosters and throwing several prawns on the barby.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
I RTFA and it appeared to be that an ISP and specific employees are being sued because one customer put up links to some files that might breach copyright. Can't say I agree with the music industry on this one.
It's reasonably clear that it's not illegal, to quote the COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (DIGITAL AGENDA) ACT 2000 - SCHEDULE 1--Amendment
of the Copyright Act 1968:
"A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright"
So the RIAA will bring charges against you if you don't squeal?
How about suing the dog of the kid that live's next door to the ISP's employee's mother-in-law's sister's step-son's friend ?
I am sure he is also connected in some way or OTHER to this, no ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
"He said employees of ISPs who were aware of illegal activities being carried out at work would be targeted in future if this case was successful, but would be granted "amnesty" if they informed the music industry. "
Ok, so now you can either be sued by the music industry or you can "inform" them and possibly get fired for doing so. Great choice there.
Website links to sites that link to ways that you can possibly illegaly download music. Employee of ISP that hosts the website gets sued. Next up: a filesharers father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate as the defendant.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
RIAA and it's ilk are as busy screwing the artists as they their customers. Here's a posting by Janis Ian about her experiences as a "represented artist" and why she supports p2p file exchanges.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
Well at this point I feel I need to say this again.
Back a while ago I was ranting about how some ISPs feel the need to aggressively log everything and even pay people to read them all.. sad really. I had mentioned that 'soon' the media companies would try to press into legislation making it mandatory to report the alleged 'copyright violations' of their users. I use quotes as real violations and what the **AA considers to be violations are a set of diverging functions.
Well my warning went unheeded, and look what happens. They now want to grant (presumably non-binding) 'amnesty' for probably breaking NDA, privacy, and perhaps the law, out of coerced self interest.
What does this have to do with my thing about logging? Well mark my words! If the **AA even gets a wiff that extensive traffic logging was going on and the ISP didnt report 'copyright violation' your amnesty is out the window. What? You say there are too many logs to read? Too bad you had the logs in your possession, you should have checked them. You purged the logs? Oops sorry you destroyed evidence you should have kept.
Its about to get a lot more ugly boys and girls.
"ISP employees will be targeted in the future, but given an amnesty if they "inform the music industry." eventhough ISPs should know what there bandwidth is being used for, it will be time consuming and costly to monitor all the user accounts to find out exactly what its use is for. They should not be able to target and penalize employees, it seems wrong for some tech making 8 an hour to be caught in the middle of something of that sort.
It's nice to see the music industry overtly behaving like a real government power. Hey, maybe that means we can start electing their members. Likewise recalling every last one of them.
I don't know why I'm replying to the flamebait of the parent comment, but in the context of the above quote from the story, here goes:
So, in addition to having to lock down the network against outside hackers, maintain the network after it's up and running, fix/replace hardware that fails, deal with uplink provider outages, help every single user who can't use Outlook Express, got infected with the Blaster worm, or has PC problems completely unrelated to the ISP itself, etc etc etc -- ISPs also must (according to this logic) filter what kind of content their subscribers put on their personal webpages?
I'm sorry, they might have a case if they inform the ISP about the alleged infringement that's going on. But going after the employees for not reporting said infringement in the first place? WTF is that? How are they going to know it's going on unless they are informed? I worked for a very small ISP (in the grand scheme of things) with only a few thousand customers and I had better things to do then look at our subscribers websites or monitor what they were doing on Kazaa/Napster.
Also, for the record (although I don't work for an ISP anymore -- got out of the crap finally) if they had told me about alleged infringement, I would have said "That's nice. Come back to me with an injunction or some sort of Court Order. Until then, I'm not doing a damn thing."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Merriam webster's dictionary of extorting:
To obtain from another by coercion or intimidation
So, the industry is saying "give us information or get sued." Sounds like intimidation and coercion to me.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Well then, it's now illegal to link to websites that may contain copyrighted material. Gotcha.
/. mods, editors, hosts, OSDN, etc.:
Well, here's a link to a page about a DeCSS program (no, not the one you're thinking).
Here's another that distributes freeware.
Oh, and a link to Disney just for the hell of it.
A note to
The (RI|MP)AA will not come burn your house down if you "inform them" of me this second! But the instant that you mark me as +1 Funny and click on, they're going to get you, too!
Pass this on to 15 of your friends within the next 1000000 minutes or you'll have bad luck forever and your dog will die, too!
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
I bet the next step is suing people who hum copyrighted material. Then they'll sue people who heard someone humming a copyrighted song unless they nark on the guy. I think the final step will be to sue every person on Earth, dead or alive, deaf or dumb. They'll just claim DMCA.
I download music because it is easy. The free part is just a bonus.
Its been established that they cant sue ISPs, right? But now they're threatening the employees? Theres something very wrong with that. This is like someone not being able to sue the post office for a delivery of something illegal so they sued the individual postal carrier who delivered it. Insanity abounds...(and before anyone flames me, i do understand the difference between transporting illegal materials and civil copyright infringment)
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Hey dumbass, why don't YOU RTFA. If you did, you'd see that the music industry is trying to sue an ISP's employees because some of their customers are illegally sharing music. The RIAA has already tried suing clueless grandmothers in the US, and this appears to be a similar type of situation.
If you see someone get mugged, are you legally bound to report it to the police? If not, then the same legal statute should extend to isp employees. If so, well then following the rules of the real world, he should be accountable.
(I'm honestly not sure what the caselaw is here, if anyone wants to contribute)
Oh and yes, according to recent judgements regarding deccs and stuff, it is illegal to link to illegal content.
if having links that go to sites-that-may-or-may-not-be-naughty is going to be illegal.
Might make a mess of that IPO
Food is a necessity, music isn't. You can listen to the radio, watch MTV, or just go to a live show if you want your music but don't want to buy a CD. Someone steals a loaf of bread to feed their family since they can't afford ANYTHING else. If you have a computer to listen to your MP3's, an iPod, and a nice high speed online connection, don't tell me you're too poor to pay for a CD. Yes, I agree their price for value is rediculous, but don't use that as an excuse.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
Julie Arhoolian? NORML? Who modded this shit up?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Speaking from said backwater: We all know which backwater these litigation crazed reptiles (aka music industry executives) were bred in. Kill them now, before they get a chance to breed.
Remember kids, don't copy that floppy!
Let's hope they don't make it illegal to get songs stuck in our heads. That's about as easy to crack down on.
[c0d3fu]: jwjb62@umr.edu || james@macrohub.com
What the fuck did NORML ever do to be included in a comparison with the RIAA? Give you a choice to be able to smoke pot? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Do you even know what the hell you are talking about?
today is spelling optional day.
I haven't RTFA, but I read something about this last week.
It basically boils down to the fact that a number of the ISPs employees are directly involved in the website.
These people have become defendants not because they work at the hosting ISP, but because they are involved in the hosted site.
Move along people, nothing to see here.
Criminal 1: What are you in jail for?
Criminal 2: Murder. You?
Criminal 1: I worked for guy who ran an ISP who had a customer who set up a site that had some links to another web site that stored some files that may or may not have infringed copyright law.
Criminal 1: You BASTARD!
I should buy some cement.
This "war" between (*IAA) and it's leechers keeps getting worse and worse. What is it going to take to get this issue recognized at the national level, where it may be drilled into denser heads that those content providers are screwing them over in more ways then they could imagine? Or just as important, what methods would it take to get either house of Congress to protect their citizens, not their pocketbooks? I'm really sick of this ****. My message to those who are trying to rape my rights this moment: Eat poop and die!
Anybody know the home address of Hilary Rosen, Jack Valenti, or any of the legions of parasite barristers / lawyers that are so enamored with buggering the public?
Anybody have a supply of roofing tar they would like to donate to the effort?
SERIOUSLY, until these people realize they are not free from the consequences of their extra-legal activities (govt is not supposed to protect businesses, er...racketeering...at the expense of citizens) they will continue to screw people.
People fear the government and many busunesses because of what they can do to them. Maybe it's time for those parasites in government and business to fear the people.
People, when you are screwed into a corner by this corrupt system, fight back. But fight back with your own rules and tactics. If that means feeding an attorney into a wood chipper, sticking a politician with a needle full of AIDS, or building human pyres out of your other opponents, good for you.
The average EU, US or AU/NZ citizen has less to fear from AL Quaida than their own governments.
Yep, you're absolutely on target here, and yet, most employees at ISP's still tell me I'm wrong about this one.
The secret has always been to operate in such a way so you're not snooping on anything your customers are doing. You simply provide the connection to the Internet, and ensure your servers are properly providing the services they're supposed to be providing.
As soon as you start selectively filtering out the "alt.binaries" newsgroups because you're concerned about the "pirated files" going through them, or start sniffing packets looking for customers running p2p file sharing programs, you're illustrating that you do, indeed have the ability to monitor and control the traffic.
IMHO, a smart ISP will not attempt to monitor or log any specific information about the content being sent/received by customers. Then, there's a strong legal defense of claiming "It's unrealistic to expect us to be able to keep track of exactly what our users do when they're online." (And honestly, with the shoestring budgets most smaller ISPs run on - I'd think this would be the complete and utter truth anyway. It blows my mind that some of them still waste time sifting through logs and trying to censor things out, when they can't even seem to answer their phones for tech. support, or call people back in a timely manner.)
You wouldn't condemn a man for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, would you?
I would condemn him for stealing a CD. Which is what he's doing here. Actually, come to think of it, I would condemn him for stealing bread as well (there are lawful ways to feed your family after all).. but that's another debate.
The price of CD's is not an excuse. The quality of the music is not an excuse. The monopolistic control is not an excuse. Stealing is stealing. If you really want to make a statement, visit the bajillion websites for 'alternative' bands on the Internet.. most of whom will gladly give you a track or two for free. Listen, decide if you like it, and support THOSE bands directly. That's the legal alternative.. If this was really about undermining the RIAA, then taking your EARS elsewhere is the way to do it. Alas, I think this is mostly about getting music that you would rather not pay for, for free. You can try to rationalize it however you'd like. That's what it comes down to.
I do not support the 'music industry' at all. I haven't purchased a CD in close to 5 years. I haven't listened to a music radio station in nearly as long. Instead I support the local Dallas bands (the Sparrows are my current favorite), buy their music and attend their shows. I find the music to be better and the terms much more reasonable. The best part is, it's completely legal. I just don't get why everyone feels the need to rationlize stealing, when such great alternatives exist.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Reminds me of that bit on the Simpsons:
I went and took a look at mp3s4free.net and I get a page that looks awfully a lot like my home page? Funny...
:)
Tracing route to mp3s4free.net [127.0.0.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms trident [127.0.0.1]
Go figure...
Oh no, you mean it is going to be that much harder for people to steal things? Even with the popular excuse "I only wanted one song", how many of you are still stealing with the advent of all of these online music stores, where you can buy songs for 1$?
I hate sigs.
Go listen to a new artist that's not in bed with the RIAA.
Tom Wehrle
If the music is so bad, then why are people downloading it? Fact is, they want the music, but if there are two options, one to pay 10 dollars, and one to get it free, guess which one most people choose. Is 10 dollars really that much money to spend on a CD? I just spent 40 dollars on a CD the other day; it had a PC game on it though. So why is it ok for a PC game to cost 40 dollars when it comes on the same medium as an audio CD?? Why don't slashdotters complain about the cost of PC games? Certainly it makes more sense! Oh wait, maybe its because unlike music, they have a sense of how much time and money goes into making a computer game.
There are two potentially disasterous legal precedents that coud be set by this case:
They are both found in this quote from the second article:
It's going be be impossible to prove that he made copies of the music, because he didn't. They're relying on nailing him on distribution charges. So the key element in this case is the definition that the court adopts for "distribution". In my opinion, distribution is the act of actually transmitting the file.
However, if the creation of a link is acknowledged as being considered distribution (and thus copyright infringement), the results for search engines like Google could be disasterous.
The other major point is that they're trying to hold ISP's responsible for the actions of people they host. This, also, could have far-reaching ramifications for the internet community.
IANAL, but isn't there *something* in all those constitutional ammendments or previous rulings, that prevents businesses and individuals from over burdening the courts with frivolous law suits? Possibly could call all this frivolous because of the scale of attacks, and the lack of actual proof of damages alleged by any of the **AA's?
I thought the burden of proof was on the **AA's to provide, not just their words and "studies." Something is just plain wrong here, and it's getting fishier every day. Won't someone in the government put a stop to this crap?? And yes, I have written/phoned/faxed my congress person(s).
--SuperBug
Not all information deserves to be free. Why? Because there would be no incentive to produce it? ...
Yes of course. ... ...
Is Washington even aware of this? What large organizations are opposing the RIAA and the MPAA? How can we fight this BS past hoping that these cases don't stand up in court?
Several students at UMR were targeted by the MPAA recently. From what I have gathered, one of them was not even aware that they were sharing a camcorder recording of Matrix: Revolutions over a P2P network because it was uploaded to them via Windows file sharing. True or not, since all this evidence is so circumstantial, is it not possible to say "someone hacked into my computer and put it there" or "that was uploaded to me", despite how ridiculous it might seem?
When it comes down to it, no matter how much copy protection is involved, no matter how difficult it is to distribute - if it produces sound or video in the end, it can be copied, even if it requires the extreme of a dark room and microphone. The industry will still make money; people will still buy the media. When will they wake up?
[c0d3fu]: jwjb62@umr.edu || james@macrohub.com
Everything is copyrighted implicitly, and everything is copyable. Therefore, any link on the entire Internet is a link to a potential copyright breach.
I hereby request all documents on the Internet have all links removed. Send all these documents to ARIA to let them see that we agree with their point of view.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
"lawyers acting for the music labels raided the house of Stephen Cooper"
Raiding lawyers? Stephen, I hope you had spare change lying around...
It is amazing to me the shortsightedness of the RIAA/MPAA/anyone concerned about P2P. I can't believe that they don't realize that increases in storage technology will make all of these arguments useless. In ten years (guessing)when a Petabyte of storage is not uncommon on home computers it will be quite simple to copy 10,000 movies and 250,000 mp3's (random high number) in an afternoon. Who will care about P2P at that point. It is getting to the point for me that copying is easier the old sneaker method anyway. I can copy 100 movies from a friends harddrive in a half hour and not spend the weeks it would take to do it online. And this gauruntees quality. All industries that rely on IP need to start thinking about these issues and stop alienating the customers they still have. It will be tempting for even the most stalwart to know they can have the "every movie or every song ever made collection" for the cool price of $150 bucks. When resources are no longer scarce the model must change.
I've basically given up hope on the RIAA. I haven't bought a CD in over a year, and don't play to start using itunes or any other of those crap pay to listen services anytime soon. No amount of me posting on /. has seemed to make them change their ways so maybe a couple hundred less dollars a year will work. Then again, probably not.
what the heck are you talking about...? ogg vorbis is as lossy as mp3. if you want a lossless audio compression format, try .FLAC [http://flac.sourceforge.net/]
I'm a lvl25 Artist in the game of Life (tm)
don't forget to stop going to movies. who do you think movie makers pay to get that music in their movies?
Oh yeah, don't use any radio station that play music that is put out by a RIAA member.
Then thre are clubs, don't got to those.
And games with music, don't buy those.
Don't run windows, because Microsoft paid the rolling stones for some of there music.
and elevators, don't use those.
and stores.
don't buy goods that have music during there commercials.
man, you must not do much.
The way the members of the RIAA write there contracts, leaving the muscians as indentured servents who can not own any music they write, is the real crime going on.
I do have a hard time putting bread stealing into the same category as copying a CD one would not have purchased. the latter being copyright infringment. There is a difference. In the US copyright is the will of the people, enacted through congress.
as for the bread, yeah the poster made a stupid comparison. As someone who has had to steal bread to feed my brothers(I was 13, they were much younger, and our mother seemed to have better things to do), I can honestly say stealing made me feel far less worse then knowing my brother were going hungry.
Finally, either learn how to use the damn tabs properly, or learn to use the preview button.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd be happy to pay $10 for a CD. However CD prices in Australia are usually around $30-$35. Hell, I recently saw a SINGLE for $10.
1-Who held the gun to her head, while she signed the contract? I bet they'll get jail time.
2-I bet Janis is doing better than most of us, so I guess being "represented" wasn't all bad.
3-Janis under copyright can OK her work to be released onto P2P networks. But only hers.
FIrst off, if downloading music would be the end of recording industry, they would be gone.
Most people choose to pay.
Game distibution and CD distribution are different.
Games are distributed in a big bok, often with manuals, and to a smaller audiences.
When was the last time a game sold over a million copies in one weekend?
Also game writers are generally paid better then musicians.
Game writer seldom get royalties, unless they have a stake in the company. I would love to get a royalty on software I have written, man I could retire.
If you notice, games are just as available for download as music. yet people still make both.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From the introduction:
The article discusses at some length how you can work to make file sharing legal.It has been Google's #1 hit for the query legal music downloads for about three months now, and recently has been on the second page of hits recently for the much more popular query music downloads.
Traffic to the article has been climbing steadily, especially since the RIAA lawsuits were filed. It's looking like my copy of the article will get about 19,000 page views this month.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
To give a real life analogy.
I see a guy selling bootleg DVD's on the street. I walk up to a random person and point to the guy and say "He's selling bootleg DVD's".
I get arrested for "linking" to him.
Sounds stupid? Thats because it is.
So now the ISP is responsible for the copyright violations of its users. By that same argument, is the Secret Service or the President's chauffer responsible for crimes committed by the President?
~Knautilus
I see piracy as a form of civil disobedience and protest. The more I see what the music, movie, and similar industries are up to, the more I support piracy as a protest vote.
With the DMCA and the latest changes in copyright law pushed through by the music industry and in particular Disney, copyright has been extended from 28 years to 70 years plus the life of the author. This effectively eliminates all forms of public domain. The lawmakers only made it retro-active to 1915 or so but if they hadn't, a works that had been written in the 1880's would still be potentially copywritten -- effectively eliminating much of U.S. History and U.S. culture under the obsurity of copyright law. (For example, people couldn't republish articles from WWII or even WWI without a significant amount of effort tracking down the copyright owner or distant relation if they are dead.)
Piracy as I see it -- especially piracy of works where the copyrights are held by the large music and entertainment industries -- is the primary recourse left open to the public to lay hold on the claim of their rights that they once had.
Personally, I don't engage in piracy of these sorts of things but this is only because I'm not much into music or movies and thus have no real need to do so. This does not prevent me however from sympathizing from those that do and in particular from getting upset when I see that rights that were afforded us (here in the U.S. anyway) by the Founding Fathers have been stripped from us by our representatives in Congress who cared to listen to the lobbyists from the music industry and Disney more than they wanted to protect the rights of their constituants.
Has anybody thought of creating a movement around this? Piracy as a way to make a civil statement and put pressure on our law makers to reinstitute our rights ? If so, it would put a purpose behind the act of piracy and put a political idea behind the frustration that much of us feel.
Just curious.
Well see now. Everytime someone downloads something illegal, they bolster the MPAA/RIAA's argument. It's like a mugger complaining about the police harrasing him all the time. If it truely was innocent citizens downloading material that the artist under copyright said was alright? Then the MPAA/RIAA wouldn't have a leg to stand on (kind of like SCO). But we both know that there are people thumbing their noses at the law, and downloading away. We even had one on Slashdot, come right out and admit it. Are the illegal downloaders hoping that somehow the citizentry will see the light, and say that it is OK to download material they don't have a right to? Sounds like both a long shot, and a slippery slope. First it will be the artist stuff that's "borrowed", then who next? Maybe it'll move to something physical. "Hey! I don't respect the artist's right now. What makes you, "joe citizen" think I will respect yours, when your turn comes?"
I still have the original Napster beta install on my computer, for nostalgia purposes. When file sharing was simple, and nobody was getting sued. I still purchased CD's during the Napster days, but after finding out about price fixing, and all the lawsuits, I decided to give in to my hatred towards greed (even though I realize they are trying to protect their industry). I have not bought ONE cd, aside from demo cd's released by my friend's bands, since Napster was in beta. And I never will.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Kind of subjective, vistors where going to the site for mp3's obviously. Those links could have just as easily lead to a p2p network and it's all pretty much nocontest. The precident it sets with links is spooky but that's why we're suppose to have unbias courts.
The ISP has no more to do with it then me suing my televison provider for something a reporter said on CNN. It's intimidation and far-fetched.
I beleive Warcraft 3 had pre-ordered at a million plus.
There are several fallacies here, and as a member of the game industry I'm more than happy to clear them up.
Also game writers are generally paid better then musicians.
Uhm.. sure. While I make a good salary, it's a fraction of what a commercially published musician generally makes. While they only see pennies on every CD sold.. those pennies add up really quickly. They have to afford all of that 'bling bling' somehow. Fact is, Game writers are generally paid about the going rate for software developers in whatever area they are in.
Game writer seldom get royalties, unless they have a stake in the company. I would love to get a royalty on software I have written, man I could retire.
Most game COMPANIES are paid almost solely in royalties. Most projects I have worked on had 'advances' from the publisher at certain milestones, with a ~9-12% take of the publishers net. That generally comes out to be something like $1.50 a box. So the royalty is pretty small considering the amount of time and effort put into making a game. For companies more closely associated with the publisher (such as Tiburon with EA) the deals are a little bit better.
The fact is, a ton of time and effort goes into making music AND making games. What most people fail to realize is that a lot of hours go into the music production process. It's not as simple as a band getting together over a weekend and recording a few tunes. It involves pre/post production and a lot of people throughout the process. All of these people have to get paid.. I do agree that CD's are over priced, mainly because of the amount of collusion that goes on in the music industry. There is nothing resembling competition, yet when pressed the music industry THEMSELVES will admit that they could easily shave a few bucks off of every CD.
At the same time games are actually probably to cheap. For the millions of dollars that go into a title, the rewards are rarely in line with the effort put forth. Succesful game companies are going under (looking glass springs to mind), even after publishing quality games. I know that a lot of development houses are looking for alternatives, hopefully we will find some.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Certainly, if every copied MP3 or other media is a 1:1 correlation with a lost album sale, and every "shared" MP3 is responsible for hundreds of lost sales, then one city BUS must then be responsible for the loss of the sale of 40-60 automobiles?
And further, for every car not sold, there is also a loss in license plate fees, gasoline sold. toll road fees and parking fees.
Seems like that would be a perfect test case as the names of cars are copyrighted, as are certain design details, and of course, the purchaser must hold a "license" to operate it on the road.
Oh, wait, some bus riders own cars and some car owners ride the bus!
Maybe there is some truth to the idea that the acquisition of shared downloads has an impact on media sales, but it is obviously not of the magnitude the bastards claim.
"Game writer seldom get royalties, unless they have a stake in the company. I would love to get a royalty on software I have written, man I could retire."
Ah, and thus the double standard. We all issue calls to arms about how horribly musicians are treated for getting a royalty that's perhaps only 10% of the wholesale cost of the CD -- or, at the very least, we use this as rationalization to use Kazaa to get our tunes without that nagging guilt. Yet there's no such outrage on behalf of software developers... not even as a means to pretend that software piracy is a similarly noble cause.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I'm sure this is a function of the Australian legal system? Either that, or a mistake on the part of the writer of the article? The article suggests that this is the first case against the mp3 folks, making this even weirder.
In the U.S., we don't "name" respondents. Plaintiffs file claims against defendants. Depending on how the court rules in the first case at bar, one party (or parties) becomes the "petitioner"(s)--the party who appeals--and the other party (or parties) becomes the "respondent"(s).
Do Aussies use different legal terms from we Westerners, or do the writer be ignant?
We are required by law to be able to log sufficient information to associate IPs with customers if informed to do so by authorities. We may well be required (waiting for legal counsel answer) to keep these logs for several years. Not doing so may lead to criminal charges. By the way, incompetence and lack of resources aren't a defense any more than your cheap-ass landlord can get away with "but those smoke detectors are so pricey".
Not logging customer data is ultimately more expensive to us anyway. When AOL emails us up and says "67.32.1.1 is spamming, drop them or we drop you", a hundred bucks for a RADIUS log drive suddenly looks cheap compared to two fscking weeks of losing customers while I call their incompetent support line to get out of their blacklist.
The whole usenet thing is problematic, although the issue isn't piracy, it's kiddy porn. Usenet admins have been arguing about whether a common carrier defense would work for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, thus far no Usenet providers (or ISPs for that matter) have been charged that I know of, the authorities seem much more interested in the people who post this filth than in us. They change newsgroups regularly, and tracking readers isn't as trivial as grepping RADIUS logs, we'd basically have to monitor every newsgroup.
But if advised to do so we'll drop our news server faster than you can blink, and our customers can go to giganews et al where they have deep pockets. I'm not going to prison just so you can read alt.binaries.kinko-the-clown or whatever they're using these days. But beyond that, I don't personally give a rodent's posterior whether you're sharing the entire first season of Gilligan's Island on gnutella and sucking a month's worth of alt.binaries.mp3s.circle-jerks, as long as you don't saturate the DLSAM and we don't get a subpoena.
Don't like it? Use an anonymizer, find an open wireless access point, run freenet, and/or pull a full newsfeed (oh and have you priced OC3s lately? cuz that's what you'll need for a full feed).
BTW, you're largely right about the economics of smaller ISPs, although many of them seem to forget that customer service is ultimately the most important part of the business.
Inform the Music Industry
... weren't people requested to inform on fellow communists durring the "Red Scare" for immunity.
... I didn't quite realize the extent of this witch hunt until now.
That sounds strangely familiar
Wow
We don't need no stinking sig!
A 128K MP3 is the digital equivalent of what comes out of your FM radio. Did you get written permission from the artist's label to listen to each of the Britney Spears songs that comes out of your radio?
Kill yourself, you're a MUSIC thief.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You actually *read* the article? Are you nuts??? Now no one on /. will take you seriously ever again. You freak!!!
Is a new law that gives ISPs the same Common Carrier protection as Telephone Companies get.
i.e. basicly "Internet Service Providers are not responsable for content hosted on or passing through their networks".
Would put an end to a lot of this crap.
Since they are suing employees of the ISP for something the ISP's customer did, does that mean that they themselves as individuals (organization president perhaps) can be sued for the actions of any customer of theirs? All millions(or whatever) of them? Thats alot of liability there, now I know why they need to do anything for money, at any moment the shitstorm could pour down on them and they need to be prepared.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The only contact they list on their website is an e-mail address (aria@aria.com.au), which I bet they do not even read.
But the Australian White Pages lists them. I stongly urge all Australians to call ARIA (+612 8569 1144) and let them know what they think. Alternatively you can post them with snail mail, I suggest sending all of your junk mail to them. Their snail mail address is 19 Harris St Sydney Australia 2000.
I am almost to the point where I will no longer purchase music, unless bought directly from the artist at one of their gigs, cause I do not believe that this monolpistic organisation deserves a cent of my money, so that they can use it to pursue me for ripping the CD's that I legally purchased, so that I can listen to it on my car MP3 player.
I will be leaving multiple calls with them tomorrow, and urge all fellow Australians (and anyone else if you want) to call ARIA, and tell them where to go.
Third of Nine
Well, um, yes.
The music industry says that ISP employees will be targeted in the future, but given an amnesty if they "inform the music industry."
Theo says: I will forgive anyone for working in the music industry as long as they bend over and let me kick their ass.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
You're rigth. And infact clueful service providers are taking this route already. For example Supernews, a comercial nntp-provider purposefully does not keep any logs with the customers ip-adress or other identifying information in it. Because if they don't have the info, it can't be subpoenad.
In my UN-professional opinion, this sounds like an attempt to coerce breach of loyalty. That is, if you're employed by the ISP, you are bound to serve its interests, such as honoring the privacy of users except when established procedures for revealing information are being followed. This puts the ISPs in a rather difficult position, because their only hope for maintaining authority over their employees and control of their customer's private data is to promise to defend any employee sued for following company policy, which can be quite expensive, which certainly plays into the hands of the RIAA and their dump trucks full of $100 bills.
Any lawyers in the crowd know if the ISPs have grounds to pre-emptively sue the RIAA over this threat intended to coerce their employees to betray them?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
What if you inform the music industry that there's an all-you-can-eat special in your colon?
It's been my favourite P2P app for a few months now ;-)
Why just a while ago www.riaa.org was hosting illegal mp3s. Why any good citizen should have called that in immediately!
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
We get this article printed in the Austin-American Statesman. Granted, it's old news if you follow this mess but at least that is reaching mainstream press.
To do a Bernard:
;-)
Wouldn't being in a backwater make them "litigation -crazed amphibians"?
Entirely more fitting too, as reptile is entirely too far up the evolutionary chain.
I would gladly pay $8.99 for a CD. IN the U.K theyre 13 POUNDS 99.
Id also pay that but half the fu&*ing things wont even play on a P.C. I am FORCED by the record companies to copy discs before I can use them. Until I get something that I can use on my computer for my 13:99 and pound of flesh, the record companies can fuck off.
SBC?
_______
2B1ASK1
IF your ISP is an idiot, then they might say something. If they're not idiots, they'll point to the DMCA and say "You didn't serve us a DMCA-compliant notice that your copyright was being infringed, now bugger off."
I'd expect most ISP's will do the latter, if only because they don't want to be burdened with the expense of even trying to report anything to the RIAA.
"Report the copyright infringement we know you're doing or else we'll sue you for the copyright infringement we know you're doing but won't tell you about!" It's just the RIAA version of SCO FUD.
paintball
Not all people download full cd's.
Not all cd's cost 10$ (where I live they range between 16-22$)
I can not speak for anyone else regarding why I download mp3 files from select groups/sources as opposed to purchasing their media in the record store (appart from the fact that most of the cd's are unavailable except for import - which means that you can add another 25$ + another 10-15$ to get it sent here - as well as run the risk that it will be delayed in custsoms for 1 month - AND that it finally may be broken upon receiept due to some incompetent fuck at the post office (who is probably only working there to steal GSM SIM Cards etc..) (to pay off his drug habit). Anyway.
I will not purchase a medium that ASSUMES that I would be a criminal unless they fucked it up with lots of consumer-unfriendly-measures (CUM) (lol).
This includes:
CD's that are not (cd's)
Games that contain Safedisc, Securom, etc.
DVDs with region lock.
But Still, I can hapilly purcahse CD's, Play Games, Watch movies, etc.
Why?
Because I can download it freely from the internet, I can purcahse porno dvd's that are not region coded, I can purchase audio cd's (real cd's) directly from the Artist - at a higher price than a store - but where HE will get most of the money - and I will get a signed CD (www.lynnemusic.com - for example), and there are lots of games out there that do not cost anything.
And, I can also get all the "PROTECTED" CDs, Movies and Games -
They are alienating their customers, who will (some at least.. to bad most consumers are drones from zombie land) as a result:
a) stop purchasing products from the customer-unfriendly-corporations (CUC)
b) aquire them through "friends".
c) be labeled a criminal and risking stupid-ass comments from the "Morally supperiour"-crowd that lurk around slashdot
Argh..
DRM is Death.
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
You could start by removing the stupid "insert-cd-in-drive-you-pirate-son-of-a-bitch" crap you put on all titles, so I could start buying your games again - instead of pirating them.
But i understand, this new anti-piracy-crap you were sold (or forced down your throat from the publisher) was supposed to work with all 3 major cd-drives, only reduce the game performance by 10%, and spin the drive all the time - to ensure that you are not using a pirated cd (or, by god! you criminal bastard) letting a friend try out the game as you play it - on a lan for example (not a 4000 person lan, but a 4-5 friends lan).
Looking Glass did not go under because of piracy.
Does'nt matter what kind of quality products you create - or employees you have - if management is fucked up - or that your game does not fit into "zombie flavour of the month".
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
Is information on the copyright infringement habits of your customers "property"?
paintball
Just STOP BUYING THE FSCKING MUSIC!!!!! The only thing those naziest buttwipes care about is money. When will people stop funding their ability to screw us over? Buy used CDs, copy music from your friends, share CDs legally, etc. Once the money stops rolling in and the stock prices drop, they will cage up their attack dogs and start treating us like real consumers. I have not purchased a new CD for 2 years, and I will NEVER buy a new CD again until these bastards stop the gestapo bullying tactics.
BTW, I don't download illegal musi either. I copy from my friends CDs. That's still legal, and they still dont get money!
the medium on which it comes doesn't matter(after all, it's just so small price of the product in reality when cd's cost 20$, yet it was possible to sell them for profit 7 years ago if you sold them at 5$).
the music industry would like it to matter more though(at least in your head). however, with the big big artists the 'time and money' that goes into the product is largely imaginary as well(as they put so much 'time and money' on it as they can, not how much they need to put or what's it worth.). same with music videos, the guys that do them for big money artists do them with as much money as they can get away with. most local videos from around here have been done with a budget of 2000$ to 4000$, which is the kind of a budget you really need for something you can get volunteers to do for you anyways(how you can put 100 000$+ dollars into something that is shot in 2 days and has no expensive special effects whatsoever is beyond me, except when most of the money goes straight to somebody who doesn't really deserve it).
the big joke is that i really don't think that set artists(that do sets for music videos) should be getting anything as they're basically ripoffs, nor do i think that big name producers should be getting anything as they're ripoffs too and the money they charge for their services doesn't really have any connection into what it costs for them to operate and provide the services they provide for the (sometimes actual) artists. studio time, special effects, editing & etc have all gone down in price in the last 10 years due to massive transit into digital era. many artists already just skip the renting of a studio(for very expensive, quite imaginary price set by their 'partner', their publisher) and record their albums at home, in their own peace, with their own equipment. starting a label is cheaper than ever too, you don't need the big machinery the studios used to provide just to make a simple record. heck, for the music that seems to be on top nowadays all you need is a pc, no need to bother even to buy a good quality mic and instruments(which you pretty much have to have anyways if you're a starting band anyways).
the name of the game for (non-artist)professionals is to get as much money as they can out of it, which is why they're in the game in the first place. they don't make the stuff, they provide the possibilities for the artists to operate(and they're quickly becoming unneeded slack).
look, art would get made even if you didn't have the huge supporting machinery(of ripoffers that the artists 'need') sucking up the money. the system can't work like that forever, it's bound to get shattered down sooner or later. it's not that hard to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that those videos shown on mtv could have been done just as well on a budget 10% of it, or that you don't really need millions for a few weeks of time in a studio.
actually i kind of wish they manage to shoot themselfs in their feet and shutdown all ways to move 'illegal' music, because after that there would be a huge rising of independent artists who let their works to be distributed for free on the net(and which now get lost in the noise of commercial records). i used to listen to free music (.mod's/.xm's/.s3m's & etc) before mp3's, i intend to listen to free music(that the artists _want_ me to listen to) for long after mp3's have died(for the rest of my life).
majority of professional singers & players don't get majority of their income from records anyways (they get it from gigs, being a music teacher & etc).
the only thing you need a big startup money nowadays the studios can provide is ADVERTISING.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Maybe this is what started John Titor's War. I can see crap like this starting a civil war. Keep writing vague laws that oppress the people and the people will pick up a shotgun and create thier own laws.
Mammas don't let your babies grow up to be system admins.
Someone on /. asked how many of us are still stealing music even so we can now buy songs online for a buck. Well, I'm still stealing and the reason why is because if I buy music then some of the money I spent goes to the RIAA and in turn I'm funding what it is they are doing. I do not believe it their tactics so why should I fund them?
We are required by law to be able to log sufficient information to associate IPs with customers if informed to do so by authorities.
You already took steps to look into "how long", good. Beyond "67.32.1.14, MAC:00C0F07A5183 (Jim Brown) connected at 11/05/2003-15:02GMT", you don't need (or want) to know anything more about your customers.
Yes, you need to balance providing a reasonable level of service against protecting your customers privacy and rights. But if your customers can't use Kazaa, have to also pay for a decent usenet feed, and fully expect you to go running to the RIAA every time they download an MP3 (not all of which break the law), you can also expect your customers to migrate to an ISP that has "plausible deniability" as its motto.
Is it even legal for them to threaten to randomly sue employees unless they squeal?
Since when is a employee liable for their companies actions, especially when they may not even know what those actions are?
This smells of illegal extortion to me......
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If someone comes up to you and asks you where he can get some pot(which is illegal) and you tell him, you can get in trouble because you are considered and enabler. You enabled him to get the pot. Same goes for MP3's. If you tell people where they can get illegal mp3's you are once again and enabler!
This Troll Has Been Posted By:
Mr. Christopher Sologuk
2195 Josephine
Sudbury, ON P3A 2N4
(705) 525-1393
We all know which backwater these litigation crazed reptiles (aka music industry executives) were bred in. Kill them now, before they get a chance to breed.
You have to understand: it's not that music industry executives always reproduce at that rate. It's just that Australia doesn't have any natural predators to counter-act the growth of the entertainment industry. Here in America, for example, our high population of lawyers and politicians ensures that there will always be _someone_ who wants to eat a music executive.
If the law says they have to be able to provide records, and if a court tries to subpoena such records, not having them as a matter of policy is going piss off the judge... If they're very lucky, and have a good lawyer, they might get away with apologising and promising to collect logs in future. Chances are, though, the judge will want to slap someone hard.
This ignores the larger issue; are ISP's going to be granted "common carrier" status or not? I think it's absolutely insane to say they're not - when they're in the exact same business as the telcos (except they help push around data instead of voice) ... and these days, even those lines are getting blurry (VoIP).
IMHO, the courts are trying to ignore this issue completely, because it's easier for them to convict people of other crimes (child porn, etc.) if they can twist ISP's arms to hand over records. It's going to take a big court case (probably by a big name nation-wide ISP) to press this *real* issue, and get a determination on "common carrier" status once and for all.
If you think otherwise, feel free to provide a reference.
The law says that if a judge finds reasonable grounds for suspicion, you may have to deliver any info you have on a customer to the parties in a lawsuit. It doesn't follow that you have to keep extra information about all your customers only in case some of them at some future point should be investigated for a crime. You're not required to hand over information that you do not, infact, have.
Do you now, or have you ever been a contributer to online music sharing? We'll let you go if you simply provide us with a list of music sharers."
Variations on that line are the standard procedure when conducting a witch hunt (communist hunt, unionist hunt, etc).
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.