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Court to Hear Landmark P2P Case
CrystalFalcon writes "Wired News reports that a federal appeals court is poised to hear arguments in a landmark case involving Grokster and Morpheus that could decide the future of peer-to-peer services, and may affect whether technology companies can be held liable for their customers' behavior." The appeal against last April's Grokster/Morpheus court win will take a while to shake out, though: "At Tuesday's hearing, each side will have 30 minutes to present its arguments and answer questions from the three judges. The judges will likely take several months to issue an opinion on the matter."
Let's round up not just P2P companies, but the gun makers as well, not to mention knife makers (stabbing), shoe makers (for jaywalking), God (for making rocks that other people used to beat heads in), and pretty much everyone who ever created a product that was ever used in a crime, ever. Idiots.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
How can providers be at fault? One can use any communications medium for piracy: The mail system, telephone companies, FTP, the web, carrier pidgeon - the list is virtually endless. Is the postal system at fault for transporting CDs with pirated software?
the reasoning in the lower-court case is so solid (well reasoned, backed by precedent) that i'd be surprised if the opinion is reversed. either way, i'm sure the RIAA will attempt to take the case all the way to the supreme court.
smd4985
Technology stays a step ahead of the music industries ability to track down people who are downloading and/or distributing copyrighted content throughout the Internet. So, either find a way to communicate, more effectively, that people who make music have to get paid, or, price the products so that it is just not worth it to download what is quite often not-so-great recordings. Have there been experiments to see if you can sell enough CD's at, say, $10 instead of $18 to make up for the price drop?
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
1.) The previous ruling can be upheld and P2P Technology will continue to cause innovation in the technological field.
2.) The previous ruling will be upheld and future P2P Technology will focus anonymity which results in more innovation in the technological field.
While there are other details that will be decided, the overall fate of P2P will not be sealed by either ruling made by this court. P2P itself is here to stay, simply because it is so vast and uncontrollable.
Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
I am writing this as a proposal for the geeks on this board who would like to take action against the **AA's of the world, yet don't want to be just another martyr. What I propose is a new kind of file sharing system that removes the need for the **AA's altogether. Although the system I envision will work nicely with music, it should translate fairly readily with books, movies, and other creative content as well. Done properly, it could be the 'killer app' Napster aspired to be and stand as incontrovertible proof that F/OSS systems pay off in ways other systems cannot. Please bear with me, because this will not be trite post.
1. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
We tried to be nice about it. We really did. We downloaded songs, books, and movies with a 'try before you buy' attitude. Buying what we liked, and declining what we didn't. But they didn't like that idea. Nooooo. God forbid we make an informed purchasing decision. They called us thieves, destroyed our centralized system, fought to strip us of our rights, crap flooded our networks, and took us to court. Well in the words of Bugs Bunny, 'Of course you realize this means war." So we've taken up the fight with new distributed systems, encryption, and plausible deniability. However, in our grand fight of "Us vs. Them" we've casually forgotten one of the 'Us'es. The artists, the creators, the people who produce what we download in the first place. Each and every one of our new distributed systems is just a more elaborate version of the one that came before. What we need is a system that gives the creators an incentive to share their works. We can continue to build better mice while they build better mousetraps, or we can start thinking of a ways to include the artists in our game plan. Kazaa, in a quest for legitimacy, is trying to do this. They are retrofitting a system onto a network that was designed with a single minded devotion to withstanding legal attacks. It wasn't meant to be what they want it to be and, as such, it is failing. As long as we exclude artists, they will continue to view us as the enemy. The entertainment industry is trying to pervert copyright through force of software, rather than law now. With DRM, the tables are turned. They're building mice and we're building mousetraps. Instead of focusing our efforts on breaking those systems, we should instead rectify those perversions by creating a system in the original spirit of copyright. Create a system that provides incentive to artists without stepping on the rights of the public. In doing so, we can create an open system in which the 'Them's can't compete, because the 'Them's aren't competitive anymore. We need the artists. What we don't need is the middleman.
2. Foundation for a new system.
Our new system has to perform three essential functions to supplant our much hated middlemen. Distribution, Marketing, Profit! By replacing the middleman's functionality, we can remove him from the process entirely. We are one third of the way there already. It's pretty obvious that we have distribution down to a science. Step two and three need more work.
3. Marketing
We need a way to 'spread the word' about content creators. I am convinced, as are a handful of others, that collaborative filtering is the way to go. A couple of notable mentions are iRate and AudioScrobbler. If you haven't used one of these systems, allow me to briefly describe iRate. When you launch the program, it downloads 20 'seed' songs. Songs that are popular across various groups of users. You rate these songs on a scale of 1 to 10 and it then tries to guess what songs you are likely to enjoy by comparing your ratings to the ratings of other users. It then sends you a few more songs, rinse, repeat. The longer you use it, the more accurate its guessing becomes. This is far superior
- Used phone to plan crime --> phone companies and phone makers held responsible.
- Threatened bank w/ note about fake bomb --> makers of pencil, paper, and luggage held responsible.
- Used car in getaway --> automaker, oil company held responsible.
- Used gun in shootout w/ police --> gun and ammo maker held responsible. [not far from there now]
Of course, if those businesses were "criminal", then the businesses that sell them tools and supplies are also criminal. [apply recursively]Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade