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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."
meeples. yeah.
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?
Every day there's a new lawsuit. I can't see why people continue to steal music that they don't rightfully own just because they think that $8.99 is too much to pay for a compact disc.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
RTFA first. If you do, you'll see this /. post is not telling the whole tale. While the DMCA is the root of much evil, companies still have the right to protect their copyrights. Not all information deserves to be free. (But most of it does :) )
"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."
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?
Northpointe Community Church
Lewis Center
...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.
FUCKING A HOT BAGEL (BLUEBERRY)
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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"
Northpointe Church
Richardson, TX
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"
First, I deplore the actions of the music industry with regard to their heavy-handed dealings with purveyors of online music like mp3s4free.com. It is time for the RIAA, Sony, BMI, ASCAP, DRUF, AUXPC and NORML to get it through their thick heads that it's not working anymore! Consumers are simply not interested in shelling out their hard-earned dollars for the latest pop tripe like Britney Spears or Julie Arhoolian (big in Australia, where the ISP hosted mp3s4free.com). They need to be stopped now, or this won't end in society's backwaters like Australia; next we'll see lawsuits against Napster 2 and iTunes.
I fully understand that the recording industry has the right to stop the theft of their music. We all agree that stealing is wrong. Regardless, if their music is so bad, and the prices fixed for this terrible music is so high, then theft is a reasonable alternative. You wouldn't condemn a man for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, would you? Then please, before you throw the first bird, look inside and ask if you've ever stolen a CD? That's what I thought. e tu, brute.
Finally, I can't say that I'm too sorry to see 'mp3s4free.com' go, because the proprietary mp3 format is just as bad as DRMed WMA garbage. I can't stand the lossy, scratchy hissing garbage I find in these Mp3s off 'mp3s4free.com' and the like. Until og vorbus (OVS) is accepted as the universal music standard, I may have to go on a hunger strike.
how the fuck is that funny it's fucking another example of how slashdot moderators are so FUCKING STUPID FUCKERS! GO FUCK A COW
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.
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.
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."
FUCK!
They are criminals and criminals need to be punished. These criminals need to be put into a prison where they will be brutally raped every day of their lives. The USA is a socialist country where you will do as you are told by your masters. There is no room for argument. You're not a patriotic American if you don't want to see "Wacos" and "Ruby Ridges" everyday. Only terrorists believe in the Constitution or liberty. Your stealing of music does not serve the State and thus it is illegal. They need to hurry up and imprison the middle and lower class of this country in slave camps.
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
Julie Arhoolian? NORML? Who modded this shit up?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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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
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.)
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.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7 655
Go listen to a new artist that's not in bed with the RIAA.
Tom Wehrle
fuck these corporate scumbags.
Man there is nothing like taken a big dump... I wish someone would make a toilet in the shape of Bill Gate's mouth... That way I could shit down his throat everyday... That would so ROCK....
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
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...
Actually it's more like arresting the landlord because the tenants told people where they can buy pot ... think about it!
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.
Of course. What ISP in their right mind is going to go to bat for the segment of it's customers doing something illegal? Should they stick up for the pedophilles hosting out of their home sites? Or the people showing snuff films.
They're a business, not an institution that sticks up for morality. That's the churches job. Don't expect them to protect your ass, especially when I doubt that most here would stick up for theirs (and no, talk isn't enough. Show some green).
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.
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.
Free Tommy Chong !!
zeke
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!!!
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.
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
I will inform the music industry to go fuck themselves.
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.
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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.
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
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!
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!
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.