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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."
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.
And what law makes that illegal?
It's the golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules. Historically this has only been countered by popular uprisings, public execution of tyrants and corrupt officials, and running carpetbaggers like the RIAA and their ilk out of town on a rail.
Give lawyers power over policy in YOUR community, and this is what could happen to you!
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.
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?
Hrm.. "As reported in THE AUSTRALIAN". You'd think that might be a hint it's not the DMCA.
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.
...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.
This isn't funny, it's scary. This isn't a joke; it's really happening. I hope to God that this gets thrown out. If this type of activiy becomes standard, we'll have witch hunts all over again.
"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.
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.
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.
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)
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.)
Unfortunately, this makes my office's legal department edgy. We recieved a positive review from USNews and World Reports and wanted to link to their site... but our legal people wouldn't let us link without written permission from USNews. Since when is "Ranked #2 by USNews" and a link to their site something they'd object to?
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
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.
It's been my favourite P2P app for a few months now ;-)