RIAA Files 477 New Filesharing Lawsuits

Fallen Kell writes "According to the CNN story, the RIAA has filed another round of lawsuits against filesharers. This round has many college students who are allegedly sharing music on their university networks. Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses. No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown."

Comments

When will the backlash come?

[Jaywalk]

At what point will this prompt a countersuit? Everyone knows the RIAA is suing music downloaders, so it stands to reason that the music downloaders will take steps to hide their identities, including using other people's accounts. If the RIAA stays true to form, they're going to assume that an IP address definitely identifies the culprit, when that is nowhere near true. When do they become legally liable for the false accusations?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[The Analog Kid]

Some lady in New Jersey is suing the RIAA on racketeering laws, saying that the RIAA is extorting money from filesharers by filing these mass suits and then settling because there is no way these people can legally fight the RIAA.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[LostCluster]

If the RIAA stays true to form, they're going to assume that an IP address definitely identifies the culprit, when that is nowhere near true. When do they become legally liable for the false accusations?

When they make a false one. But nobody's been able to show up and claim that yet.

Remember, the burden of proof in a civil case is a whole lot lower than that in a criminal case. "This other situation may have existed." just isn't going to fly without evidence supporting that theory.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[koganuts]

Yeah here's the info:

RIAA sued under gang laws

Last modified: February 18, 2004, 1:39 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

It's probably not the first time that record company executives have been likened to Al Capone, but this time a judge might have to agree or disagree.

A New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act.

Through her attorneys, Michele Scimeca contends that by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime.

"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting," Scimeca's attorney, Bart Lombardo, wrote in documents filed with a New Jersey federal court. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."

Scimeca is one of a growing number of people fighting the record industry's copyright infringement campaign against file-swappers, although few have used such creative legal strategies.

According to the RIAA, which filed its latest round of lawsuits against 531 as-yet-anonymous individuals on Tuesday, it has settled with 381 people, including some who had not yet actually had suits filed against them yet. A total of nearly 1,500 people have been sued so far.

The industry group says that "a handful" of people have countersued, using a variety of claims.

"If someone prefers not to settle, they of course have the opportunity to raise their objections in court," an RIAA representative said. "We stand by our claims."

Few if any of the cases appear to have progressed far, however. The first RIAA lawsuits against individuals were filed more than five months ago, although the majority of people targeted have been part of the "John Doe" campaigns against anonymous individuals this year.

Several individuals and companies have started by fighting the RIAA attempts to identify music swappers though their Internet service providers (ISPs).

The most prominent, known by the alleged file-swapper's screen name "Nycfashiongirl," resulted in at least a temporary victory for the computer user. A Washington, D.C., court ruled in December that the RIAA's initial legal process for subpoenaing ISP subscriber identities before filing lawsuits was illegal. Because "Nycfashiongirl" had been targeted under this process, the RIAA dropped its request for her identity.

However, that may have provided only a temporary reprieve. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that is closely following the RIAA's campaign, the Internet address used by "Nycfashiongirl" was included in the batch of lawsuits filed on Tuesday against anonymous individuals, raising the likelihood that she will be drawn back into the courts.

Separate attempts to fight subpoenas are ongoing in North Carolina and St. Louis, where the American Civil Liberties Union and ISP Charter Communications are respectively challenging the RIAA's information requests.

In San Francisco, computer user Raymond Maalouf has taken the first steps toward fighting the RIAA's suits. His daughters were the ones that used Kazaa to download music, and one of them even wound up in last month's Super Bowl advertisement for Pepsi's iTunes promotion, which featured a handful of teens caught in the RIAA dragnet.

In documents filed with San Francisco courts, Maalouf's attorneys noted tha

Re:When will the backlash come?

[DAldredge]

Says who?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[bechthros]

false logic again. Just because nobody *has* shown up to claim that yet doesn't mean they haven't been *able* to. There could well be people who've already pleaded out who seriously didn't do it, but were so terrified of fighting an entire industry and the costs of doing so that they figured it would be easier to make the payout. Just as there are lots of women who are raped who never report it, and victims of organized crime who pay protection money, etc etc. Next.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[RickHunter]

Even worse is that its literally impossible to prove your innocence. Any logs you have can be doctored just as easily as the RIAA can doctor their logs, and most courts are going to be a hell of a lot less likely to believe you. If, OTOH, the Judge places a reasonable burden of evidence on the RIAA, it becomes impossible for them to continue their case. (As was done in Canada, and which the Liberal Party has promised to change if they're re-elected.)

Re:When will the backlash come?

[AuMatar]

Yes, you are. Right to a fair and speedy trial, right to due process, innocent until proven guilty, any of these ring a bell?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[The Analog Kid]

I'll clarify what I mean by legally, I meant with a hired lawyer, the lawyer being you legal means.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[squiggleslash]

You can still have those things. However, if you're guilty, you're likely to lose. A fair trial isn't one where you win, regardless of your guilt or innocence.

I don't see any evidence that the RIAA has settled a lawsuit that it wouldn't have won anyway. I know people feel that that's unfair, that the copyright system should be more liberal than it actually is, but, in all honesty, whether it is or it isn't, that's the law, and it isn't racketeering to enforce the law, or to settle against a guilty party out of court.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if you're guilty, you're likely to lose.

What country are you from?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Shakrai]

I don't see any evidence that the RIAA has settled a lawsuit that it wouldn't have won anyway. I know people feel that that's unfair, that the copyright system should be more liberal than it actually is, but, in all honesty, whether it is or it isn't, that's the law, and it isn't racketeering to enforce the law, or to settle against a guilty party out of court.

IANAL but I don't think that having an IP address proves anything. Granted in a civil case you don't need to prove your case beyond all reasonable doubt -- but you do have to show that a preponderance of the evidence proves your case. What evidence are they going to have besides a downloaded song or two and an IP address?

I don't see how the IP address proves anything. Even if they tie it to my computer I could have been running an open WiFi network or had a compromised system. Say they do tie it to my computer -- guess what? The RIAA isn't a law enforcement agency. The jury would basically be relying on their good word that they actually found that IP address -- the classical "he said, she said" case. Do you think neutral non-interested parties are harvesting these addresses for RIAA? Somehow I doubt it.

Of course none of this matters because nobody has the money to actually fight one of these lawsuits. What a pity.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're guilty, you're likely to lose.

If I learned anything from O.J. Simpson, it is that ex-football stars do not do well in the transition to movie actor (see Naked Gun series). This fact was just cemented by Howie Long's Firestorm...

Oh wait, I meant he taught me that just because you are guilty it doesn't mean you are likely to lose.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[geekee]

"Some lady in New Jersey is suing the RIAA on racketeering laws, saying that the RIAA is extorting money from filesharers by filing these mass suits and then settling because there is no way these people can legally fight the RIAA."

This is crap. It's not the RIAA's fault lawyers are so expensive. If you're innocent, no one's denying you your day in court. So if people aren't defending themselves because lawyers cost too much, that's not the RIAA's problem. If this woman can hire a lawyer to sue the RIAA, she can hire a lawyer to defend herself if she's innocent. In summary, another frivolous lawsuit. Saying there is no way to legally fight the RIAA is nonsense propogated by people who can't win their cases because they are guilty.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[engineerErrant]

Using the legal defense of claiming a malicious hacker broke into your system (or, not even that, a virus) has already been successfully used to defend against child pornography charges. By this precedent, if any of these cases ever went to court, they might stand a good chance of demonstrating at least a shadow of a doubt. Sadly, paying the 3 grand in bribe money does still seem like the least risky proposition. Kudos for our legal system!

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Strider-BG]

Except one of the main problems in this country is that anyone can be sued for anything by anyone else with no consequence. The government only provides free legal assistance for criminal defendants, not civil ones so you have no choice but to hire a lawyer when you're sued. We need the system like they have (I believe) in the UK where if you're sued by someone and you win, they have to pay your legal bills. At least then it would incent companies to get their $hit straight straight. As it is there's no deterrent. My parents were bankrupted when they were sued by one of their employees for breach of contract - the guy's brother was an attorney and did it for free. My parents ended up winning but had spent over $100K in legal fees. Their small business couldn't recover from that ordeal and they had to shut it down, dragging themselves into bankruptcy.

So what now? Sue the former employee for a frivolous lawsuit? More legal fees to get what? The guy doesn't have that kind of cash. It's like getting mugged for $100K. They're fsck'd. Mom's working part-time at a doctor's office and Dad is looking for a job.

I hate our current President but the one campaign promise I hoped he'd deliver on is that of tort reform. Don't think that'll happen now though :(

Re:When will the backlash come?

[CAIMLAS]

That's a nice idea. However: how many people do -you- know that don't at least have a couple "illegal" MP3s on their system?

Not many, here.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[zors]

"Yes, you are. Right to a fair and speedy trial, right to due process, innocent until proven guilty, any of these ring a bell?"

Well, thats not entirely true. These are (mostly)civil trials remember, where there is a heavier burden on the accused than in criminal trials. Defendants have less powerful rights; i.e. they can be forced to testify against themselves, proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesnt hold, and neither does "innocent until proven guilty."

Sorry folks.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[macdaddy357]

The backlash would be if everyone stops buying CDs, and the labels have no money to bring frivolous lawsuits. It seems, however that the latest teen pop shiat keeps flying right off the shelves, lining the pockets of the RIAA and affiliated labels' executives. Kids, stop feeding the hand that bites you!

Re:When will the backlash come?

[fustercluck2k3]

RIAA isn't an LE agency per se but they sure do act like one and government has only been too happy to allow it. Maybe you missed it but the entertainment industry is now dictating what gets taught in school.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articl es /2004/04/25/laying_down_the_copyright_law____to_ch ildren?pg=full

http://p2pnet.net/story/1309

Re:When will the backlash come?

[anagama]

• We need the system like they have (I believe) in the UK where if you're sued by someone and you win, they have to pay your legal bills.

There are downsides to this as well. Let's say you are a file-sharer who fights. You then lose. In addition to the ten gazillion in fines, you will have to pay for the RIAA's legal team - a team not likely comprised of small-town lawyers, but rather, of the Armani Suit species at something like $300/hr times 10 attorneys.

In other words, requiring the loser to pay fees for both sides might actually discourage people who have a reasonable defense from pursuing it. Any trial is comprised of evidence, argument, and healthy dose of pure chance. Chance is, not always but not rarely, the major factor in any outcome.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Shakrai]

Are you seriously that daft? They aren't going for the ones that download a song here or there...they're going after the ones with lots of songs available, downloading, uploading...

No, are you seriously that daft? I don't care who they are going after. My point is that even if they catch somebody who was sharing thousands of songs what kind of fucking evidence do they have that they themselves did not obtain?

My whole point (if you had bothered to read it) was that more likely then not any evidence they have they themselves collected. It's hardly impartial third-parties scanning the p2p networks looking for violators.

Picture this:
RIAA Expert Witness: I detected IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx on Kazaa. When I scanned the computer it had X number of copyrighted RIAA songs up for download.
RIAA Lawyer: And you downloaded some of them?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes, I downloaded the latest Dido song and as you all know that song was published by Arista records who holds the copyright.
RIAA Lawyer: So this person was sharing copyrighted music?
RIAA Expert Witness: That's right.
RIAA Lawyer: I have nothing further for this witness.
Defense Attorney: Who do you work for?
RIAA Expert Witness: I work for such-and-such a company.
Defense Attorney: What does your company do?
RIAA Expert Witness: We scan the P2P networks looking for copyrighted material that belongs to our clients
Defense Attorney: Who are your clients?
RIAA Expert Witness: RIAA, MPAA, etc etc
Defense Attorney: Do we have any evidence besides your good word that my client was actually sharing these songs?
RIAA Expert Witness: We have the IP address and we downloaded sever...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): So all this evidence was gathered by your company, correct?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes, you could say that.
Defense Attorney: And your company provides this service to RIAA as a courtsey?
RIAA Expert Witness: No, we are compensenated for it.
Defense Attorney: So it's fair to say that RIAA pays your salary?
RIAA Expert Witness: Well I wouldn't exactly say th...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Right, we'll get back to that. Tell me, what actual evidence do you have that my client was the one sharing those songs? Isn't it possible that you got the wrong address or that someone else was using his computer?
RIAA Expert Witness: It's possible but it's not very...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Thank you. Is it possible for somebody to hack a computer on the Internet and use it to relay copyrighted material to P2P networks?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes it's possible but again...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Yes and if the computer was hacked and used in this manner would it appear to your software that it was my client sharing the copyrighted material or the person who hacked his computer?
RIAA Expert Witness: It would appear to be your client.
Defense Attorney: Thank you. Now, about that IP address -- has your company ever provided the wrong address to RIAA?
RIAA Expert Witness: Not to my knowledge.
Defense Attorney: Really? What about this case [hands him newspaper article about 90 year old woman who was subpenoed] -- would you read that to the jury please?

Blah blah blah. I think you see where I am going. It would be interesting to see. All the power to the people who are fighting these suits. Whether or not file sharing is legal, moral, or whatnot, I won't support an industry that sues broke college students and 13 year old children. I bought my last piece of RIAA music when they filed the first round of lawsuits.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[reality-bytes]

Generally speaking you are correct that in the UK (and much of the EU) winning defence cases have their legal fees charged to the loosing prosecution. This of course is not without its draw-backs (insurance claim systems are silly here too) but it's generally quite fair.

It suprises me that the US hasn't adopted a simmilar system. You do have to wonder when the courts are working for themselves more than for justice or the individual.

I do feel for your parents and their business enterprise; my Father had a simmilar situation at the start of the 80s being frivolously sued over a faulty hard-disk (probably all 2Mb worth back then) - fortunately, the UK legal system is as full of loop-holes as any other and because his company was 'limited' with little or no assets, the case against his company was dropped (no gains to be had) - This, of course, meant that his company would now have to close as any capital gained thereafter could cause a new legal challenge.

It is wrong that people should bring lawsuits 'because they can' when such differences could be settled by simple negotiation.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[crankyspice]

Remember that Johnny Deep (Aimster) is representing himself, pro se.

Also, a breach of contract claim is a contract law claim, not a tort claim. Thus, tort reform wouldn't have mattered.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[zipwow]

I think being liable for your opponent's legal costs (up to some reasonable amount) might help. Consider this:

The two outcomes of fighting in court for a defendant *before* cost sharing in the RIAA case are:

win, and be bankrupt from legal fees
lose, and be bankrupt from charges

*with* cost sharing, the scenario becomes:

win, and be out only your time
lose, and be bankrupt from charges *and* legal fees.

Bankrupt is still bankrupt. Your credit history is ruined, but your debts are absolved, but at least you've got a possibility of a good outcome. I've never been through bankruptcy, so there may be provisions I'm unaware of. The only one I do know is about student loans (bankruptcy doesn't get out of those).

An interesting suggestion for cost sharing I've heard is that if you lose, you have to pay the opponent what you spent on your own defense. It's got problems (your friend does it for free, etc), but I thought it was an interesting suggestion.

-Zipwow

Re:When will the backlash come?

[joeljkp]

"As for the woman suing the RIAA on racketeering laws, well, had she not been pirating, she'd not be thinking of it..."

I don't pirate. I'm thinking of it. Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[joeljkp]

"Using the legal defense of claiming a malicious hacker broke into your system (or, not even that, a virus) has already been successfully used to defend against child pornography charges."

You act like that's a bad thing. Maybe a hacker did break into the system. One of the main purposes of the legal system is to try to weigh one side's evidence against another's. And I don't think you can claim that the courts are light on child pornographers.

All I know is that if I got arrested for downloading child porn because some hacker broke into my system, I'd want the court to recognize it.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[syukton]

Unfortunately, you are wrong about one tiny little thing. You're wrong in that they're suing music downloaders; this is not the case. They are suing people who share their music online--regardless of the source of the music. I'll say that again: they are suing those who share files, not those who download them.

There's a fallacy in their logic, however. Let's say you have a legitimately acquired television in your house, behind your front door. Let's say you leave the front door open to cool the house down while you do gardening out back. Let's say somebody comes into your house and steals your television. Who gets arrested: you for leaving the door open, or them for coming in and taking your teevee?

In a file sharing scenario, (assuming the shared file was created legitimately; ie, mp3 from a CD you own) the file sharer breaks no laws by making his files available--it's the actual act of downloading when you have no "fair use" right to the file which is an act of copyright violation.

The RIAA is indiscriminately suing anybody who is sharing MP3s, regardless of the legitimacy of their having those MP3s. The people they are suing are, in some cases, not even breaking the law. Of course these people don't know that because they don't know the details of the situation, they just wanted to listen to some music. But the RIAA knows what's going on and they're using the ignorance of the people to their advantage; not one case has actually gone to trial yet because of the intimidating front put on by the RIAA.

So your question about "false accusations" is a noteworthy one. The RIAA is suing people for doing something that they don't like, granted, but it isn't implicitly illegal because the RIAA doesn't like it. This flaw will, eventually, be noticed by a decent lawyer who will join with some of the RIAA's prior victims and hopefully win back the money the RIAA illegally received in out of court settlements. (out of court settlements over lawsuits which are invalid strikes me as illegal out of court settlements)

They scare people into thinking that they've got something to lose if the case goes to court. It's really almost enough to make me rip my entire cd collection and put it online in the most obvious way possible just so the RIAA can point their dirty little finger at me and I can bite it off.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[ahodgson]

Unfortunately the Conservatives would be just as likely (or more) to do the same. CRIA will be spreading the payola to all parties I'm sure.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Jim Starx]

I think the loser should pay only if the loser initiated the lawsuit.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[AuMatar]

No, innocent until prooven guilty still holds. The difference is it doesn't have to be proof "beyond a reasonable doubt", but proof "by perponderous of the evidence".

Re:When will the backlash come?

[jp10558]

I agree with your sentiment. I don't like the RIAA nor their actions, however I do have a problem with this:

Whether or not file sharing is legal, moral, or whatnot, I won't support an industry that sues broke college students and 13 year old children. I bought my last piece of RIAA music when they filed the first round of lawsuits.

As anyone trying to be law abiding, it is wrong and unsound to suggest that any segment of the population be exempt from the laws(or exempt from punishment) no matter your personal views on the law. Certainly support fighiting to change the law. But it is dangerous to engender a disrespect for the law. Using hyperbole in an oft use cliche - would you say the same if they were murderers? What about commiting fraud? Identity theft? Where do you draw the line on crimes that are "ok" or "wrong to sue college students over"?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[rock_climbing_guy]

However, if you're guilty, you're likely to lose.

What country are you from?

I'd say he's obviously not from the same country as Bill Clinton, Gary Conditt, and OJ Simpson.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[screwdriver]

As anyone trying to be law abiding, it is wrong and unsound to suggest that any segment of the population be exempt from the laws(or exempt from punishment) no matter your personal views on the law. Certainly support fighiting to change the law. But it is dangerous to engender a disrespect for the law. Using hyperbole in an oft use cliche - would you say the same if they were murderers? What about commiting fraud? Identity theft? Where do you draw the line on crimes that are "ok" or "wrong to sue college students over"?

It's not the fact that they are sueing broke college students and 13 year old children who are, in fact, breaking the law. Rather it's the idea that they are targeting this group specifically since the industry knows these people simply don't have the financial resourses to mount a successful defense. When was the last time you heard of the RIAA sueing a rich lawyer? Never? Wonder why.

To use your analogy, what if the police only apprehended murderers or thieves whom they knew to be unable to afford an adequate defense? The wealthy would be given a free ticket to commit any offense they desire without fear of prosecution.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cpt kangarooski]

What happens then to the little guy that sues justly but can't prevail against a big, well funded wrongdoer? This is not at all uncommon in cases involving huge torts (dumping chemicals and such) some labor disputes, etc.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually, bankruptcy does NOT discharge all debts.

Some debts stick, as you note. One sort are intentional and malicious torts. While copyright infringement isn't necessarily of this type, it could be, and then you're fucked.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[sumdumass]

umm.. Your logic is a little off with this one. let's add to the fact that you invited that person in and incinuated that it was ok to take the tv then called and reported it stollen. Thats basically what is happening when someone installs a program that they Know will make thier files in a certain directory availible to others as a part of the functioning of the program.

Besides there really isn't any copy right law making it ileagle for you to download the material. it is all the distributing of it that has the violations. Of course there are some state and other laws that can used in place but for what RIAA is trying to use it is only the person distributing it. check out title 17 i belive that deals with copy right issues.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/

The fact that people are stealing the songs is actually a play on words. What is right and wrong to be exact. Something like your room mate ate the last frozen waffle that you bought so "he stole it". Were is the major law violation here? There might be one but it is alot more dificult to pursue it.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[roman_mir]

Hahahahahahhahhaaaaa! funny.

You know what is even more funny? This is not how the court proceedings would go.

If I was RIAA I would drain the alleged copyright violator's resources by stalling, calling various witnesses, preparing more and more documentation and making sure that this documentation makes it to the alleged violator's lawyers eating up more and more resources of the alleged violator.

I would destroy them financially before the end of the trial so they would not be able to proceed.

Except for that, I would rely on the internet providor's records to show that there was no inbound hacking activity - this certainly would take time but it would be worth it.

In fact, if I was the RIAA I would find such a case where the inbound and the outbound network traffic for a considerable time period is well recorded and understood and build a case around that violator and bring that case to the court and win that case. Who else would dare to ever go to court against me?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[rodgster]

Two letters.

OJ

Money can buy you a LOT of Justice, Laws, etc.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[dargon]

> Except for that, I would rely on the internet providor's records to show that there was no inbound hacking activity - this certainly would take time but it would be worth it.

Lawyer: Calls ISP to the stand.
Lawyer: Sir, has your service ever been hacked?
ISP: We regularly get hit by DOS..
Lawyer: Thats not the question I asked, has your service ever been hacked?
ISP: yes, but...
Lawyer: then it's entirely possible that the logs were changed, showing that there was no inbound hacking activity to my clients computer when infact their computer was being used to relay spam and to download music and make it look like it's their fault.
ISP: yes, but... :)

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cgenman]

He's from the USA, where if you are opposing the RIAA, and are guilty, you're likely to lose.

What he doesn't say, is that if you are opposing the RIAA, and are innocent, you're still likely to lose.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Technician]

They are picking on schools because getting a fake account is hard to do. It's not as simple as phoning an ISP with a stolen credit card and dialing in. To get a school account needs real ID most of the time. The schools tend to keep better logs most of the time with always connected machines keeping an IP for long periods of time. The trick is to protect against defending yourself if your rogue wireless access point was used by someone else. If you could prove you were running an open wireless access point, it may work somewhat in your defense as the burden is to prove you were the one providing the files.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Bigfishbowl]

Yes but how then do unjust laws change? (Insert civil disobedience here). Just because it is "illegal" doesn't necessarily mean it is correct. That is supposed to be the cool part of democracy - ideally then we could change the law to fit the moral majority.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[msblack]

We need the system like they have (I believe) in the UK where if you're sued by someone and you win, they have to pay your legal bills. At least then it would incent companies to get their $hit straight straight.

So I attempt to sue a large company like Microsoft for some egregious act. I hire the best attorney I can afford on a 5-figure salary. Microsoft sends in their big guns and wins. I have to pay their legal fees.

Your proposed solution means that individuals will not be able to bring suit for fear of paying a large company's legal fees. Ever hear of SLAPP suits?

matthew

Re:When will the backlash come?

[localhost00]

Lawyer: Calls ISP to the stand.
Lawyer: Sir, has your service ever been hacked?
ISP: We regularly get hit by DOS..
Lawyer: Thats not the question I asked, has your service ever been hacked?
ISP: yes, but...
Lawyer: then it's entirely possible that the logs were changed, showing that there was no inbound hacking activity to my clients computer when infact their computer was being used to relay spam and to download music and make it look like it's their fault.
ISP: yes, but... :)

IANAL, but.... Objection!!!!!...... Leading...

Re:When will the backlash come?

[scubacuda]

That's more true than you know.

(Imagine if Saddam hired OJ's dream team.)

Re:When will the backlash come?

[RallyNick]

As anyone trying to be law abiding, it is wrong and unsound to suggest that any segment of the population be exempt from the laws(or exempt from punishment) no matter your personal views on the law. Certainly support fighiting to change the law. But it is dangerous to engender a disrespect for the law. Using hyperbole in an oft use cliche - would you say the same if they were murderers? What about commiting fraud? Identity theft? Where do you draw the line on crimes that are "ok" or "wrong to sue college students over"?

Here's where I draw the line: if RIAA thinks they are defrauded by the broke college students or 13 year olds they should be required to prove that the person they are suing would have bought the songs they downloaded from Kazaa if free downloads weren't available, or in the case of sharing that some of the people who downloaded from them would have paid for those songs.

Compensations should also be limited to 3x the market value of the "proven" songs. Why? Because if a merchant overcharges my credit card (or charges me for a service they didn't provide, like PepBoys) all I can get is a refund, maybe 3x the disputed amount if I sue. Why is RIAA entitled to $150k per song even if the guy wouldn't have ever bought that song if he couldn't get it free?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cheekyboy]

Hah, if I lost and had .5m in fees, id say, "haha" and say, ok, ill pay it back $100/month for 2000 years, or just go bankcrupt and they get nothing.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[trezor]

• Lawyer: Thats not the question I asked, has your service ever been hacked?
  ISP: yes, but...
  Lawyer: then it's entirely possible that the logs were changed

This argument goes all ways.

If anything like this should ever be "accepted" evidence, it can "prove" more or less anything. With a so convincing argument, why don't we slam just about any evil criminal with a netconnection for pedophily, murder, terrorism and treason while we're at it?

Just to make sure they do proper time I mean. We got the legeal means....

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Jim Starx]

Well, there's no way to insure this from being 100% in favor of who's just because you don't know who's just to a 100% certainty. Every law is going to work against someone somehow. Maybe you could cap it when there's such a huge difference between the funding of the parties. I don't really know honestly. I just know that people sue way to fucking easly in this country.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[ethanms]

To use your analogy, what if the police only apprehended murderers or thieves whom they knew to be unable to afford an adequate defense? The wealthy would be given a free ticket to commit any offense they desire without fear of prosecution.

This already happens daily... people who are of a certain ethnic group or who live in a certain area, or who look a certain way ARE treated differently by authorities then people who look wealthy / successful / white...

Now that isn't true in ALL cases... but it does happen...

I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA was researching WHICH college and 13-year old kids they were suing first, just to make sure that Dad isn't Johnny Cochraine or something...

It's bullshit scare tactics to force people to comply.

They make completely outrageous claims as to the amount of damage they received from you sharing songs, and then offer you some "reasonable" settlement that you can probably barely afford to scrape together... but that beats the cost of a lawyer or going through a court battle. AND THAT'S why this is extortion...

From Dictionary.com:

\Ex*tor"tion\, n. [F. extorsion.] 1. The act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge.

They are threatening you with a MASSIVE lawsuit and HUGE fines that might be hundreds or even thousands of times bigger then the settlement they are offering.

They have ZERO proof as to who downloaded what... I could share 5,000 songs, but that doesn't mean that for each song I've shared they lost business... that's their weak point and that's where someone needs to attack this farce.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[91degrees]

RIAA Lawyer: The plaintiff moves to have the defendants computer examined for evidence of hacking, and of file sharing. So, they take it, find that is has a number of mp3s in the kazaa shared folder, show that there are no backdoors or trojans installed, and demonstrate that the default audio player has playlists including files those in the shared folder.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[sejmeister]

As far as I've heard, the lawsuits have been filed against IP addresses, which are then later translated into a person. Maybe most of the idiots who still haven't disabled sharing are college students and 13 year olds. In any case, I'm not pulling for a successful defense until someone innocent is accused, and I'd say it's unlikely that it happened yet.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[jaelle]

According to Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" the very first lawsuit they settled was against a guy who wrote a search engine--not a file-sharer. All it did was catalog mp3's that were in shares on the university net. He settled because even if he won it would bankrupt his family. Many of the others have settled for the same reason. That is not a 'fair trial.'

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cpt kangarooski]

I just know that people sue way to fucking easly in this country.

How do you know that, actually? You've conducted studies? You've looked at the cases that actually come to trial -- as opposed to those that are threatened but never brought, brought but dropped, settled, dismissed, or otherwise never actually get to a judgment -- and found so many of them to be meritless?

I would really caution you against advocating reform based on hearsay and examples that while well known may be extremely unusual.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[3terrabyte]

You're right. The parent poster should be boycotting an industry because it has been found guilty of price fixing (more than once) and has ripped off artists for almost a century.

The obvious lobbying, purchasing of legislation, barratry, privacy invasion, erosion of fair use, and the death of future public domain should be just icing on the cake.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cheekyboy]

AHahaha, one attorney against MS? You can never win.

You will be in court for 50 years!!!

Your suggestion is hopeless in that case.

You can mix both rules tho, in australia, even if the police/DPP arrest you and charge you, and you pay to defend your self, and you win, the govt pays for your lawyers coz they were wrong to arrest you, thats fair. Everything should return to normal to the same state before you got 'fucked'.

In MS's case, spending $ on 10 lawyers is but 0.000001% of their revenue, so in that logic, the law should state, that its insignificant and not fair for an average guy to pay MS. Sure, its not 'fair' on paper, but its fair to the average joe.
One you amas billions of $$$$ in assets/cash, nothing should be on your side, since you should be damn lucky to have that cash and with that all your equalness GOES AWAY, because your VALUE is unequal to the average JOE.

Failing that, the average joe will get pissed off and go postal on the CEOs and in that case, NO ONE WINS. SO be fair, or Jesus will come back to send you to HELL!!!! And this time he will use his FULL FURY of FORCE and no lawyers can stop that ;-)

Re:When will the backlash come?

[3terrabyte]

Nice analogy.

How about:
A company buys legislation that changes shoplifting to be $150,000 fine per incident. They file a civil suit against you, and will gladly settle for about $3,000 to $5,000 instead.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[3terrabyte]

Two letters: OJ
Money can buy you a LOT of Justice, Laws, etc.

Four Letters: RIAA.
Their money has ALREADY bought a lot of justice, laws, etc.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[3terrabyte]

I completely agree, and this is my argument all the time. $150,000 per infringement is ridiculous. However, that being said, that kind of fine will really only be held up in a Criminal Case. And the DoJ interviews have shown that they are only looking at heavy commercial violators when it comes to Criminal Cases of that magnitude. Past incidents are monster factories in Mexico, etc.

However, THAT being said, that fine amount is being used to intimidate the civil suit defendants to force settlements, and that smacks of barratry or extortion to me. Come on... "We could sue you for 24 million dollars, or settle for 3 thousand". It's obvious the penalties are out of whack for the crime committed.

For all the speeding-analogy people out there. OK. Fine me $140 when I get caught trading a file and add 4 points to my interenet-driving record. 12 points and I'm suspended for 6 months and have to take a class to get my internet license back.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[3terrabyte]

Actually, wasn't it a search engine for ALL file types on campus? Documents, papers, etc. Don't get me wrong, wink wink, maybe the ulterior motive was for the purpose of mp3's, but I don't remember it being that way.

I thought the only reason Lycos got in trouble for being a search engine of mp3's was because it was touted as being a search engine of mp3's.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[91degrees]

So? They'll subpoeana your password. If you've "lost" it, you'll have to convince the jury that you genuinely have, and there's a good probability that the RIAA have made a mistake in fingering you.

This is not a criminal trial. The burden of proof is a lot lower.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Jim Starx]

There's a guy in Montanna named Jack Ass, he sued MTV for defaming his good character. He wants 10 million.

A woman in West Virginia got 2 million for injuring her back while opening a pickle jar.

How about the lawsuits against fast food companies for making people fat?

A volenteer little league baseball coach was sued by the catchers father because the team didn't qualify for a tournament in Florida.

A high school pitcher is suing Louisville Slugger because he was hit in the head when.......
.......
wait for it...
.......
The batter hit the ball!! God forbid we design something that makes the sport fucking possible!

Your right, I was completely wrong to assume that those lawsuits were frivolous....

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cpt kangarooski]

And what percentage of all lawsuits are frivolous? It's always possible to find something freakish -- but if there is only a small number of notorious anomolies that doesn't mean that the system overall is broken. It mostly just means that no one bothers to print everyday cases, only really unusual ones.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[aelfwyne]

That is of course why as soon as you got notice that you were the victim of such a suit, you formatted your drive, government wiped it several times with random and nonrandom patterns, and proceded to write lots of new, perfectly legal data over the old. Nothing to find.

Anyone who is the victim of such a lawsuit who does not clear such infringing material off their PC is just stupid. And so far, they haven't gone to the extremes of sending the FBI in to confiscate everything before you even know you've been targetted like they used to do with Warez BBS's back in "the day". Of course, that's probably the next step... Armed raids...

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Grakun]

then it's entirely possible that the logs were changed, showing that there was no inbound hacking activity to my clients computer when infact their computer was being used to relay spam and to download music and make it look like it's their fault.

They are providing proof of their claims. Where is yours? If a defense like that actually worked, you could never be convicted of a crime. ("The evidence room only has 1 key, right? Has a lock ever been picked?", "Has the witness ever told a white lie?", etc)

Why would someone spend that much time and resources obtaining write access to an ISP's logs just to download MP3s? That's pretty irrational behavior for someone who would know how to disable sharing on their own machine. Personally, I think you'd have better luck trying to argue that the lawn gnomes did it.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Jim Starx]

The fact is that you can sue someone without even a hint of a valid reason. And if they can't afford the court costs, too bad they're fucked. That's an obviosly flawed system.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[cpt kangarooski]

The fact is that you can sue someone without even a hint of a valid reason.

Yes, but you'll tend to lose if you don't have a valid reason. Plaintiffs generally bear the burdens of prove and persuasion. If their position is so lame that they cannot even make a prima face case, they can't win.

So what you're really saying is that people are bringing cases that are at least _somewhat_ valid, and although they could be defended against, that's not happening enough. Sound about right?

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Jim Starx]

Your missing the point. Even when cases are completely and totally baseless the plaintiff can still force a trail so the defendant still has to pay for lawyers and court costs. That shit gets expensive. If I have more money to burn then you do, and I don't like you. All I have to do is drag shit out till you can't afford your lawyer anymore.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[syukton]

There's a difference between inviting and allowing. By installing file sharing software and sharing your directories, you are allowing people to download from you--but you don't send out a flyer saying "everyone is invited to come download my stuff please kkthx."

Somebody may very well install the software under the belief that only good people will download from them what they have actual legal rights to. In a court of law, there is a large distinction made between allowance and invitation, and highlighting that difference is the trump card in this case.

Are all of the stores with all of the items just sitting there on the shelves inviting shoplifters to shoplift? By your reasoning, all allowances are implied invitations, so aren't the supermarkets just inviting shoplifters by making the items as accessible as files shared online?

Your files shared online are like the candy bars at the store. They're free for the taking for those that desire to take, but there's no direct invitation to do any taking. The supermarket certainly doesn't invite people to or encourage people to shoplift, but they certainly do ALLOW it to happen--even if they don't want to--as is evidenced by, well, people shoplifting! (much the same as people downloading!)

When somebody downloads a song from you that they don't have rights to download, it's like walking into a supermarket and stealing a candy bar. By making my files available for sharing, I'm allowing people to stroll down the aisles in my virtual supermarket and peruse my selection. The responsibility lies on their end, where they must make the choice to not reach out and snatch a free virtual candybar that they don't have the rights to.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[RickHunter]

Indeed. Though the question of whether it will have any effect still remains. The judgement was so popular here in Canada that it might well be political suicide to go against it. Unfortunately, the Liberals already stepped off that cliff, though you can bet that the media sure as hell didn't report on it. The CA and the NDP haven't yet...

Re:When will the backlash come?

[sumdumass]

-but you don't send out a flyer saying "everyone is invited to come download my stuff please kkthx."

Your wrong on this. There is a search engine built into the program and when you place your files in the shared directory you_are_sending_out_flyers_saying_look at what I have and come get it. There are a few that will say "I'm so stupid I didn't know" but even when you don't know the gun was loaded when it went off and killed your wife, there is acountability and usually a penalty. It just won't hold up.

Are all of the stores with all of the items just sitting there on the shelves inviting shoplifters to shoplift? By your reasoning, all allowances are implied invitations, so aren't the supermarkets just inviting shoplifters by making the items as accessible as files shared online?

Again your off on this. The Whole idea of sharing files is the presumption that you can get somethign without paying for it. In order for you store analogy to even be somewhat corect, you would have to place a sign saying free to good home at the beguining of the isle and then place somethign your charging for in the middle of it. In other words you don't go into a store with the impresion that everythign is shared and free. When you go into a file sharing program you do presume everythign is free. The entire basis of how it works is to distibute files or software with out cost. Thats the reason everyone installs the programs allowing it.(unless there is a fee applied to the service wich doesn't happen with the more popular ones.)

Now the U.S copy right law doesn't deal with people taking posesion of unnauthorized works. it specifically deals with the distrobution and use. In other words, If my search for blackend fish recipies turns up a hit for metallica's AND JUSTICE FOR ALL album and i download it thinking it is a cooking recipe, the person distibuting it is the one with the violation. there might be state and local laws dealing with downloading copyrighted material but as it sits there is know federal.(I have heard there are some n the workings)

You can sugar coat it all you want but you cannot trick someone into breaking the law and then hold them acountable. Downloading files from a free distrobution service beucase someone placed a copy writen file in there, will not and should not carry any penalty. It is the person distributing them that have broken all the laws. The services are free to those that use them, The files are supposed to be free, and if you place a non-free file on it, you have no right to bitch about someone find it in their search (IE: you flyer saying here it is)and downloading it.

New TV show announced:

[Neil Blender]

Law & Order: RIAA

Re:New TV show announced:

[WwWonka]

Law & Order: RIAA

It's more like CSI:RIAA

Re:New TV show announced:

[base3]

Cool--got a .torrent?

Re:New TV show announced:

[eofpi]

Law & Order: RIAA

It's more like CSI: RIAA

It's more like Freedom: RIAA

A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[LostCluster]

None of these lawsuits have gone to trial, but the RIAA has a record of 437 settlements and zero dismissals.

That is to say, nobody's been able to force the RIAA to trial and say that the lawsuit is outright bogus. Some have been sucessful in delay tactics, but everybody facing a trial date settles for their entire life savings rather than risk a bankruptcy-forcing verdict that takes away everything the defendant owns.

The RIAA's lawsuits have thus far been entirely spot-on. They've yet to accuse somebody who "didn't do it". Illegal music filesharers beware... you have a substatial risk of having to pay the piper. Don't do it.

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[phorm]

TOo many RIAA articles to fish it out, but there was a posting about them accidentally sueing a grandmother... who had a mac (no kazaa)

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[senatorpjt]

Couldn't the same be said for people who didn't do it? A lot of people take guilty pleas who were innocent rather than running the risk of receiving a full sentence, especially if the plea is for $3000. It would cost more than $3000 just for a retainer to get a lawyer.

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Quinn_Inuit]

They've yet to accuse somebody who "didn't do it".

Not quite accurate: RIAA Withdraws Piracy Lawsuit Against Mac User

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Jaywalk]

nobody's been able to force the RIAA to trial and say that the lawsuit is outright bogus

While technically accurate, the observation paints an incomplete picture. There have been a number of cases where the RIAA has backed off, like the woman who didn't even own a computer. So we know the RIAA has been accusing innocent people. The question is, when will the accused "filesharers" who haven't been sharing files (stolen accounts or passwords, identity theft, et cetera) push back with a class-action suit against the RIAA for the false accusations?

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[bechthros]

substantial my ass! 437 out of millions... about as substantial as the false morality your specious argument leans on like it ain't had it's v8. I don't have time to go through this again, just see the one entry i have on my blog, it's most of my arguement regards filesharing... open your mind...

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[wyndigo]

So move to Texas put what ever money you can into a house, and then declare yourself bankrupt. Then you get to keep the house, and are debt free.

--wyndigo

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Brobock]

The RIAA has since withdrawn the lawsuit, after Ms. Ward's lawyer demanded that they do so. Part of the reason cited by Ms. Ward's attorneys included the fact that she was accused of downloading music through Kazaa, which doesn't even run on her Mac.

...Ward uses a Macintosh computer at home. Kazaa runs only on Windows-based personal computers.

Unless of course... she was using virtual PC!

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[wo1verin3]

You mean this one

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[j.bellone]

Just wait until they sue someone with cash and the will to just take this shit to trial.

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[strike2867]

Not exactly, thats one person that spoke out. The others may have just seen the regular lawyer bills for a simple civil case. They were put in a position where they lose no matter what. Either they pay 3000 or they pay 50,000 for lawyers. There is no point in fighting if you dont have an infinite supply of money.

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[iotaborg]

You can still access Kazaa on a mac using other programs, such as the [infinitely superior] Poisoned. Doesn't make Mac users any less prone to being sued.

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[AndyL]

If they falsly accused a Mac user, isn't it likely that there's at least ten to twenty Windows users out there who were also falsly accused but weren't lucky enough to have such an easy way to prove it?

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Tazor]

In Denmark we have a organisation called APG (Anti Piracy Group ~ AntiPiratGruppen). They are using the same metodes as RIAA: targeting a lot of people and saying "look, we know that you are guilty, so pay us and we will not go to court and charge you even more money". On a few occasions they just sent people a letter saying "just fill out this form stating what copy-righted things you have on your computer and sign it and then we will send you a bill". And what proof do they have? Screen-dumbs and IP adresses. And of course most people just pay the smaller bill, not wanting to go court and pay more..

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[AndyL]

Even the EFF would want some kind of proof that you weren't just wasting their time.

Oh Canada

[Curtman]

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Re:Oh Canada

[phorm]

Yeah, you keep singing, and don't forgot to pay your tax on every CD-R or MP3 storage device that you buy... nevermind that that probably far exceeds losses by piracy

Re:Oh Canada

[Vargasan]

O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!

Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!

Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

You'll hear no complaints from me. Calgary was incredible. They actually have business "clubs" I guess you would call them, where people meet at coffee shops in the morning and socialize. I got so much work that way that I couldn't keep up with the promises I made. Rent prices really sucked though, and they tried to charge me $3700 to insure a Hyundai for christ sakes. But its a wicked place to live.

Since I've moved back to Winnipeg, I haven't had any trouble either, there just isn't a heck of a lot to do in Winter. Bring on Summer time! Back to the beach!! They don't have any of those in Alberta, except the one at the mall though I don't think.

Re:Oh Canada

[kevlar]

Oh you can buy 10 Candadians for a US Dollar...

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

Hmmmm, let me think.. $50 for 100 CD-R's, or $3000 for an RIAA settlement. Its a tough choice.

Re:Oh Canada

[phorm]

What RIAA settlement? I don't pirate music, I just buy CD's. I don't have a choice as far as paying the tax goes.

Re:Oh Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, you keep singing, and don't forgot to pay your tax on every CD-R or MP3 storage device that you buy"

No, thats why i buy these things from the United States (no levy there :o) ). Also make some good cash buying in bulk down there and reselling it up here.

Thanks USA! :D

Re:Oh Canada

[Mastadex]

At $30 for a pack of 100 CDRs? please thats pocket change even for college students like myself.

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

Well I don't buy CD-R's, so I could care less. But if it was a big problem, I'd just mail order them like everyone else.

Re:Oh Canada

[Jugalator]

We have the same situation here as in Canada (both regarding downloading and taxes), but it's pretty simple to get around the taxes. Just buy the CD's you need through a company (taxes are lifted) or buy from a country that doesn't have taxes. If you buy enough CD's at a time, the shipping charges become neglible.

Re:Oh Canada

[Carnildo]

Babelfish made its typical butchery of that, but am I correct in assuming that's the Quebecois version of "O Canada!"?

Re:Oh Canada

[paganizer]

what, by the hour? I've seen some pretty cute canadian girls, that seems a little cheap.

Re:Oh Canada

[DroopyStonx]

Hmm... 100 CD-Rs vs... 100 CDs @ $15 each? Wow, tough choice.

Piracy tax is very small. Let's just say it's $100. $130 for 100 CDs is still better than outright buying them :)

Re:Oh Canada

[dj245]

Canada doesn't pay taxes on CDr's and mp3 storage devices- they pay levies.

Kinda the same thing, but not. If you must pick nits, get it right at least.

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

Yeah. Bloody French, can't even get the anthem right.

Re:Oh Canada

[The Patient]

Please supply your clearance to reproduce these lyrics in a public forum, or kindly submit your payment within 30 days to avoid legal action.

Sincerely,

Your pals at some vaporous fee-collecting organization

Re:Oh Canada

[The Patient]

S'il vous plaît fournir votre dégagement pour reproduire ces paroles dans un forum public, ou gentillement soumettre votre paiement dans 30 jours pour éviter l'action légale.

Sincèrement,

Vos copains à quelque organisation de frais-recueillant vaporeuse

Je suis, comme, je, comme, comme Ike, comme. -- l33t sk8r, environ 1952

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

Hahah.. Good one. But here you go anyhow:

Commercial use

• "O Canada" and "God Save The Queen" are in the public domain and may be used without having to obtain permission from the Government.

Re:Oh Canada

[isorox]

Times have changed, :-: Our kids are getting worse :-: They won't obey their parents, :-: They just want to fart and curse. Should we blame the government, or blame society, or should we blame the images on tv No! :-: Blame Canada! Blame Canada :-: :-: With all their beady little eyes, :-: their flapping heads so full of lies :-: Blame Canada! :-: Blame Canada! :-: We need to form a full assault, it's Canada's fault! Don't blame me, for my son Stan, He saw the darn cartoon, and now he's off to :-: join the klan!> And my boy eric once, had my picture on his shelf, but now when I see him, he tells me to fuck myself> :-: :-: Well, Blame Canada! :-: :-: It seems that everything's gone wrong since :-: Canada came along :-: Blame Canada! :-: Blame Canada! They're not even a real country anyway. My son could of been a doctor or a lawer, it's a true, Instead he burned up like a piggie on a barbecue> Should we blame the matches? Should we blame the fire, or the doctor who allowed him to expire. Heck no! :-: Blame Canada! :-: Blame Canada! :-: With all their hockey hubaloo and their bitch Auny Marie too. Blame Canada! :-: Shame on Canada! :-: :-: The smut we must stop :-: The trash we must smash :-: Laughter and fun :-: must all be undone :-: We must blame them and cause a fuss :-: Before someone thinks of blaming us!

Re:Oh Canada

[nettdata]

When my company buy's CD-R's, we may get rebated for the provincial taxes, but the stupid levy is still there.

And we're a software firm, buying CDR's for distributing our software. Yeah, that makes me feel REALLY happy and warm and fuzzy towards the music industry up here.

We _DO_ get to write it off, but I'd rather have that cash for other things.

Re:Oh Canada

[issachar]

Babelfish made its typical butchery of that, but am I correct in assuming that's the Quebecois version of "O Canada!"?

except for the last line, but then a little bit of necromancy is exactly what's required to liven up Quebec...

Re:Oh Canada

[pmsyyz]

Is that you, Geddy?

Re:Oh Canada

[zx75]

Oh yes, I will pay my taxes on media... but remember, I can still buy a 50 spindle of brand name CD-R discs at 52x write for 21.50 US at my local bestbuy/futureshop (which may I add, is currently cheaper than the equivalent in the states at regular price of 22 US)

And if I don't care so much about quality, I can pick up a 100 spindle of generics for the same price.

Re:Oh Canada

[Curtman]

You fools don't get it. They're suing uploaders, not downloaders you fools

You're a fool if you foolishly belive that foolishness. You might want to go back and re-visit the story. The quote from the judge was:

• I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service,

Is he talking about downloaders or uploaders there? Fool.

cosmic slashdot reasoning

[eclectro]

RIAA blah blah Copyright BAD blah blah Copyright GOOD blah blah GPL blah blah Linux blah blah hypocrites.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[Stevyn]

M$ and windowz are comming soon as well. Lets throw an ogg reference in there too.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[eclectro]

M$ and windowz are comming soon as well. Lets throw an ogg reference in there too.

Yes. There could be any number of vectors here.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[turnstyle]

"RIAA blah blah Copyright BAD blah blah Copyright GOOD blah blah GPL blah blah Linux blah blah hypocrites."

Spot on, man!

fwiw, I've stared to try and come up with something new. And here's who I am.

Blah.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[Soul-Burn666]

Say, when you throw an ogg, does it *splot* ?

Wow, that was my worst joke in ages!

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[dasmegabyte]

In the set of slasdot users, there are a number of philosophical subsets. This hypocrisy you think you see is based on the intersections of these subsets.

Here are a few:

1) A lot of slashdotters want to protect their right to use content in a digital manner.

2) A lot of them are also "libertarians" who don't like needless laws or nuisance litigation.

3) A lot of slashdotters are consumate do-it-yourselfers.

4) A lot of slashdotters have a strong sense of online community.

5) A lot of slashdotters have a problem with corporations and think they have too much power in society and government.

6) And a lot of slashdotters "still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Combine 1, 2, 3 and 5 and you might think the RIAA enforcing copyright is a bad idea. Combine 1, 4, 5 and 6 and you might think enforcing the the GPL is a good idea. See? Different folks, different positions, and they aren't necessarily diametric.

Of course, i couldn't care less, as I'm securely in set 7 (likes Macintoshes). Which is a subset of group 6.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[eclectro]

Absolutely. I agree with you 100%.

However, you missed the entire point of my post, as a number of others have also.

I admit, I have been reading more slashdot lately. Probably more than the average user.

I actually was parodying the emergence of a new meme common to other threads that have stumbled upon the issue of copyright.

Unfortunately the joke is never funny if you have to explain it. But I thought I owed it to you considering the thoughtfulness of your post.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[dasmegabyte]

Your parody was too accurate. Good job. Assume my set and superset bullshit is a response to those other assholes instead.

Incidentally, I actually am a hypocrite, of the highest, most insidious order. I am the sort of hypocrite who changes his mind based on critical reasoning.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[geekee]

"2) A lot of them are also "libertarians" who don't like needless laws or nuisance litigation."

This is false. Libertarians do not like big govt. getting involved in regulating business. They do believe in the protection of individual rights, however, including copyright. Therefore, laws against copyright infringement are supported, and prosecuting offenders does not amount to nuisance nuisance lawsuits. They do not believe in antitrust laws, also, Therefore the there are not many /.ers that could call themselves libertarians.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[dasmegabyte]

Boy, I'll say. I'm all for government regulating big business, since every industry that the government has regulated so far has seen record profits until they were deregulated. At which point profits fell off big time. Look at the air industry! Look at cable! Look at the telephones!

Face it, man, Adam Smith was only MOSTLY right.

Re:cosmic slashdot reasoning

[russotto]

Copyright is not a basic right, it is an artificial monopoly manufactured by government. Therefore libertarians need not support it.

None to trial?

[lukewarmfusion]

Are we supposed to take it that all of those have been settled (supposedly by paying the RIAA)?

I wonder if there are any instances of the RIAA saying "oh, well you clearly know your rights and have not done anything illegal, so never mind."

There was that Mac user who was accused of sharing over a P2P that isn't available for Mac...

Re:None to trial?

[shark72]

"Are we supposed to take it that all of those have been settled (supposedly by paying the RIAA)?"

Most have. A few have been dismissed (the most famous is the grandmother who has a Mac). At least one has countersued. But for the most part they've been paying up.

A good way to avoid being sued by the RIAA is to not dump 1,000 copyrighted songs into your Kazaa share directory. A good rule of thumb is "if you are not sure if you have the right to redistribute something, don't."

Re:None to trial?

[Dr Caleb]

A good rule of thumb is "if you are not sure if you have the right to redistribute something, don't."

I have thousands of MP3's, named the same as albums, artists and tracks. They are 3k-4k of random noise. eg: "Madonna - Sympathy for the Devil.mp3"

As was pointed out during the original hearing to release names of users here in Canada, the CIRA had no proof of what was actually in the files that people were sharing. No one downloaded the files, then listened to them. There was no trail of evidence, so it was dismissed.

Share junk - let them download it - maintian CD backups of the originals - maintian download and connection logs - and countersue for racketeering. Get rich quick.

Re:None to trial?

[AKnightCowboy]

Most have. A few have been dismissed (the most famous is the grandmother who has a Mac). At least one has countersued. But for the most part they've been paying up.

I guess honestly if you play with fire then expect to get punished. I was speeding, got pulled over and got a speeding ticket. Instead of bitching about it I just paid it. I was clearly in the wrong doing almost 20mph over the limit. People sharing hundreds of songs via the Internet is clearly illegal and they should expect consequences if they lose the gamble that no one will catch them.

Re:None to trial?

[phoneyman]

People sharing hundreds of songs via the Internet is clearly illegal and they should expect consequences if they lose the gamble that no one will catch them.

The biggest problem with the RIAA gambit is that the consequences are so far out of line with the actual damages that the risk of fighting is too high to take. This tends to both strongly encourage people to settle immediately (a $3K settlement, while steep, is a far cry from potentially hundreds of thousands of $), and inflame people against the RIAA.

The basic unfairness is that the law allows the RIAA to assume that each song shared replaces a certain number of songs sold. This is simply untrue. I think this basic fact is the real reason that people just don't see why it's wrong to share songs - they know that the majority of the ones they downloaded they weren't going to buy anyhow. File-sharing is a lot like the radio, but the way people want the radio to be.

IMO, the RIAA would be a lot better served by finding out what people really want from digital media. I'm pretty sure that they'll soon find out that free-as-in-beer is low enough on the priorities list that if they address the issues above it, people will pay for it. ITMS, I think, is proving this point.

And, finally, the RIAA members themselves have helped create this situation by creating a marketing system that exists solely on the basis of disposable content. They create acts from whole cloth, promote the crap out of them, rake in as much cash as they can, then dump them as soon as sales start to fall. They happily buy into a radio system that overplays "singles" in the hopes of promoting some CD sales, but ends up creating tunes that are popular for a few months and despised for years to come.

Pierre

Re:None to trial?

[huchida]

I guess honestly if you play with fire then expect to get punished. I was speeding, got pulled over and got a speeding ticket. Instead of bitching about it I just paid it. I was clearly in the wrong doing almost 20mph over the limit. People sharing hundreds of songs via the Internet is clearly illegal and they should expect consequences if they lose the gamble that no one will catch them.

I'll say it again though it's been said a million times... You're not doing anything "illegal" by downloading, meaning you're not breaking a law. You're infringing on copyright. The comparison to speeding doesn't work because it's not law enforcement prosecuting you, but a corporation suing for damages. Settling the suit isn't paying a fine for a ticket-- it's giving them money to go away, so they don't sue you for a much larger and completely arbitrary amount.

Re:None to trial?

[crankyspice]

Except that there *are* Kazaa-compatible clients that run on the Mac.

Re:None to trial?

[shark72]

"You're not doing anything "illegal" by downloading, meaning you're not breaking a law. You're infringing on copyright."

The suits are aimed at sharers, those who provide the copyrighted material, not downloaders. While those sharers probably downloaded much of the stuff they're sharing, it's the sharing that's the clear no-no.

The legality of downloading aside, if you are "infringing on copyright" you are indeed breaking the law -- copyright law, in this case. Copyright infringement has both civil and criminal flavors.

Re:None to trial?

[huchida]

The legality of downloading aside, if you are "infringing on copyright" you are indeed breaking the law -- copyright law, in this case. Copyright infringement has both civil and criminal flavors.

Right, but you're nit-picking. My point was that these aren't criminal suits, and the, ahem, "sharers" aren't being prosecuted by an arm of law enforcement. Not that they potentially couldn't be, but paying the RIAA to go away isn't the same as a traffic fine.

Re:None to trial?

[Dr Caleb]

If you think the proper size for an MP3 is 3,000 - 4,000 bits, or that Madonna recorded "Sympathy for the Devil" then you're too stupid to be stealing music.

Was it me?

[thebra]

The recording industry filed its latest complaints against "John Doe" defendants, identifying them only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses.

How does the RIAA know who was downloading the song. Most dorm rooms have more than one person. It could have been the roomate that was doing the downloading. Are you automatically guilty because you are the owner of the computer that has the "illegal" files? How do they know that you don't own the cd? I'm sure questions like these have been answered in previous discussions but I would like to know how the RIAA can prove with out doubt that you have no legal rights to the song and that you downloaded it. I guess this is what the courts are for.

Re:Was it me?

[DaHat]

Most universities, like my old one put a clause in the network agreement you signed to get on the network that you were responsible for anything which happened on your computer, even if you are not the one using it.

That clause has been enforced a couple of times when someone blamed their computer being infected with a virus for hacking into the email server and sending campus wide e-mails.

Re:Was it me?

[RandomDesign]

They go after people that are sharing the songs, not people that have just downloaded it.

Re:Was it me?

[rjelks]

I'd like to see a dorm room case where the roommates are using a wireless gateway for laptops. I suppose whoever's name is on the account would be responsible for how it was used. The crappy thing about these lawsuits is that most people can't afford to go up against them in court. I wish some group like EFF would spring to defend one good case so we can get an idea how it would actually go in court. Even for the poor guy with the wireless hub, in the above example, would be settling instead of fighting the RIAA. There has to be cases pending against people that aren't legitimate. No, I am not volunteering.

Re:Was it me?

[E10Reads]

Back in '01, when I was in college, each student was asigned an individual IP address that you had to have entered in your network prefs to access the campus network. Not sure how other campuses run their's but I'd think more than one is opperating under this method.

Re:Was it me?

[harlows_monkeys]

How do they know that you don't own the cd?

They are gambling...if you can call something with odds of about a million to one in their favor gambling.

Re:Was it me?

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, that is what the courts are for, but the courts aren't being given the opportunity to make such discernments. The reason they aren't is because the RIAA knows very well that they can't meet the standards of evidence required even in a civil case. I mean, almost three thousand lawsuits filed and no court time? That's utterly ridiculous, and at some point the Federal Government is going to have to get involved and put some limits on this kind of obnoxious behavior. That applies to other organizations such as Direct-TV and Diebold as well. Congress can make all the noise it wants about Martha Stewart and other non-issues, but thousands of real people are being hurt by the likes of the RIAA and Direct-TV. And, unless some steps are taken to control this, it will only get worse as more companies begin to go down that road.

Re:Was it me?

[Zone-MR]

Ummmm, no. Owning the CD makes no legal difference whatsoever. Not unless you know that everyone whom you are uploading to also has the CD.

Re:Was it me?

[CAIMLAS]

That won't do a lot of good against people that don't sign that network agreement.

SDSU (That's South Dakota State, not San Diego) has connection tracking in their dorms based on DHCP lease. The lease is bound to a specific port in a switch, which then connects to a port in each individual room.

The only problem with this is that it's all but trivial to simply assign yourself a static IP address in the plethoric unused address space and forego paying their connection fee. I know of quite a few people that have done this, most of them share files (or did share files) when they were on the school's network.

So: how is the school, let alone the RIAA, going to ever find out who a given infringer is, if it's not in the DHCP lease pool with the associated room? A task on that order is somewhat more complex and daunting for the simpletons at a school like SDSU. I imagine that there are a lot of schools like SDSU - not enough technical prowess in the school's employees, nor the time to undertake this detection.

So: will the RIAA poney up the money to hire someone to find the information for the school? I'd think they should have to.

Re:Was it me?

[No Such Agency]

That's utterly ridiculous, and at some point the Federal Government is going to have to get involved and put some limits on this kind of obnoxious behavior.

"We the corporations of the United States, in order to ensure more guaranteed profits, establish total control, insure domestic subservience, defend our quarterly earnings, promote the welfare of our shareholders, and secure the blessings of unfettered commerce to ourselves and our wholly-owned subsidiaries, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
(it may not actually SAY that, but it is the current interpretation. Don't expect the US government to slap a muzzle on the RIAA.)

Re:Was it me?

[DaHat]

Your admins should chat with those at DSU (where I went) sometime.

At DSU, your IP address was assigned by a reservation in the DHCP server, I was never quite sure how they did it, but until they created a lease for your MAC address, you could assign yourself an IP, but you could not get outside of the dorm.

Also, they had enough intelligence in the switch and other systems to be able to assign an unchangeable reverse look up name to your connection... regardless of what IP address may be, and even you assigned it yourself or your system was spoofing. This permitted them to be able to identify offending computers by a simple string similar to:

zd323-a.dsu.edu

which said that someone on port A of room 323 of the Zimmermann Hall dorm was doing something.

I spent a fair amount of research time trying to find a way around this... spoofing an IP is easy, beating this reverse look up name with out help from inside of the department is not, thus I didn't conduct any truly evil business on campus, but did just enough to make them think they knew what I was up to (I lost count of how many times I got disconnected from the network for being bad).

Fuck!

[dupper]

This is clearly all Keith J. Winstein's fault!

How many times do people have to be reminded:

DON'T TAUNT THE FUCKING DYNAMITE MONKEY

Defendants are listed only by their ip address

[Anonymous Coward]

Proxy Proxy Proxy Proxy

Re:Defendants are listed only by their ip address

[DaHat]

or... NAT NAT NAT NAT NAT.

Although parking outside of someone's house with a cantenna is far more fun.

Re:Defendants are listed only by their ip address

[irokitt]

...Mushroom Mushroom!

Time to scare your friends

[Brento]

Heh heh heh - time to dust off my fake RIAA lawsuit press release to scare your friends with. It's a press release ripped off Yahoo, but you can fill in your friend's name and occupation to generate an official-looking link. Tell them you saw their name in the press release, and watch 'em drop their coffee. The link to turn themselves down at the end of the article clues them in that they've been had. Generate a personalized link at http://www.brentozar.com/breakingnews/.

Last time I published this on Slashdot, a few people got fooled so badly they sent me threatening emails. Hee hee... Of course, last time, I didn't get near the top of the postings, so my server didn't get much of a load. I can almost hear the DSL line screaming in protest as I click Submit.

Oddly, I only had to change the date and a couple of numbers. The other headlines on the page still ring true as current: rebuilding Iraq, SCO's salvation, and the flash mob craze.

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Jerf]

Cute, but I think your program may have a race condition in the ID assignment; I've tried several times now and I think I'm getting other people's information.

I think you're doing a "SELECT MAX(id) FROM database" when writing the link out onto the screen but you can't do that; other records are being inserted before the link is written. But that is just a guess.

I was able to hack the URL to find the one I want to send to a friend, though, so thanks from me.

Re:Time to scare your friends

[ewithrow]

I tried this on several people, all saying they got either blank or server error pages.

Puzzled I fired up Internet Exploder and sure enough the URLs give "Invalid Syntax errors".

Apparently that recent patch that blocked URL spoofing disallows all addresses with username:password@domain.

I guess I will have to convince all of my gullible friends to upgrade to firefox before I can trick them. :/

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Brento]

Ah, right you are. Fixed that by saving the remote visitor's IP address and grabbing their most recent submission. Never had to deal with 10-15 visitors a second before. Hooah!

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Brento]

Apparently that recent patch that blocked URL spoofing disallows all addresses with username:password@domain.

Doh! I've added new verbage on the link page explaining that, and threw in a new link that's not as official-looking, but will work with IE6 users.

Re:Time to scare your friends

[SmilingBoy]

If you are at work and have to use Outlook (well, I am at the moment, not sure if you can do it with Thunderbird), you can use Word as your e-mail editor and replace the shown text of the hyperlink. So no need for the user@ trick to obfuscate links (unless they look in the browsers title page of course).

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Xaroth]

A couple of minor bits that you can do to improve this:

1) Y! News doesn't use asp. Keen observers will notice this. Don't know what can (easily) be done about that one, though.

2) A more obvious bit is that Y! says "Welcome, Guest" instead of "Welcome, Anonymous" when a user is not logged in.

Otherwise, it's fantastic!

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Brento]

Y! News doesn't use asp. Keen observers will notice this.

Yeah, but keen observers will notice the url spoofing anyway.

A more obvious bit is that Y! says "Welcome, Guest" instead of "Welcome, Anonymous" when a user is not logged in.

I actually copied the entire page from 'em back in September 2003, and that was what it had at the time. I should redo another version of it with a few different news service skins to make it really convincing, but bah.

And as long as we're nit-picking, you really won't like the Google ads I just slapped into there, hahaha. Figured if I'm getting this many hits I should probably bait a hook.

Re:Time to scare your friends

[DickBreath]

Heh heh heh - time to dust off my fake RIAA lawsuit press release to scare your friends with.

Your URL begins like this...

http://68.93.68.105/breakingnews/.....other stuff...

You need to use spamvertising techniques to disguise your link.

Change your link to something like...

http://news.yahoo.com/56837829@68.93.68.105/breaki ngnews/

The idea here is that everything before the "@" sign is ignored. (Although, Slashdot reported sometime back that Microsoft is breaking standards compliance with URL scheme to "fix" this problem in IE.)

Re:Time to scare your friends

[MacDork]

Hey, after using this, you think I could send my 'friend' a settlement letter in the mail? I could open up a mailboxes etc. spot for the return address ;-)

Re:Time to scare your friends

[dracumas]

This is hilarious ah man this is funny nice detail on the letter.

Re:Time to scare your friends

[0x0d0a]

Oh, is *that* what they're up to?

I was listening to a friend being incredibly annoyed that he couldn't use user:pass@host in an URL with IE any more.

It would be nice...

[jobeus]

If someone they happened to sue was an IP lawyer, or someone with a lot of expendable income... =\ It would be so sweet for this technique to backfire on RIAA.

Re:It would be nice...

[fishbowl]

I want them to fuck up like so:

Sue a college music major, whose shared folder contains original works that he or she holds the sole copyright to.

When they cross that that line, they are into Racketeering and Corruption territory, and illegally stifling competition, not to mention infringing on the rights of the individual.

It would only take one fuckup like this, involving the wrong person, to be the total undoing of the RIAA.

Permission mask?

[RobertB-DC]

from the hey-it's-a-nice-number dept.

I was trying to figure out what the editors meant by this, so I'm guessing they're talking about file permissions?

4 7 7 = 100 111 111

Owner has read-only
Group has read-write-execute
World has read-write-execute

The implication is clear. RIAA doesn't have execute access to their own lawsuits, so they don't plan on actually following through. However, the World will probably Execute by deleting their files. If not, then the Group (ie the university or corporate network) will Execute the offending User.

I've probably shown how little I understand both this joke *and* *NIX file permissions, all in one post.

Re:Permission mask?

[LostCluster]

Letters belong to those who they were sent to... so...

The named person can read-it-and-weep...
There's a massive group with power to execute...
and the rest of the world can gang up too...

Re:Permission mask?

[Anthony Boyd]

Maybe the /. editors are just noticing the implication of 477 & permissions: we no longer have control of what we own. Outsiders like the RIAA have gained control through DRM, abuse of laws, etc.

I think I might have been one of them...

[scifience]

I'm really worried. I think I might be one of the people the RIAA sued.

I just got this e-mail a few minutes ago with a subject saying that the RIAA is watching me and that I need to buy something called "KaZaA Gold" to get them off my back.

What should I do??? I'm really nervous!

Re:I think I might have been one of them...

[slimak]

Send me a check for $500, I will take care of everything...

They had better win

[FreeLinux]

IANAL but, the RIAA had better win. If they don't win they will then have files 2,454 frivolous lawsuits. That's something the courts frown upon.

Re:They had better win

[LostCluster]

Yes, but the be truely friviolous you have to force a trial and lose... which hasn't happened once yet.

Re:They had better win

[Laebshade]

I am not a lawyer either, but as far as I know it doesn't matter if the courts frown upon it; it isn't illegal to frivolously sue in the U.S.

Protect your privacy

[fiber0pti]

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/

Re:Protect your privacy

[alienw]

MUTE is a piece of shit made by a complete idiot. Have you even tried using it? My top speed on it was 500 BYTES per second. The retard who programmed it used a text-based protocol that wastes an incredible amount of usable bandwidth (and there isn't that much to begin with because the protocol is inefficient). In short: good idea, incredibly bad implementation.

This is about to lose meaning.

[Geancanach]

The more people they sue, the less meaning the lawsuits have. Realistically, how are they going to go after thousands of people? So their lawsuits will just become small news items that fail to scare anyone. What is the point?

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[fishbowl]

"Do you look forward to doing prison time of ANY duration?"

Only the State can put you in prison. Last time I checked, RIAA was not an arm of the US Government.

How many people have actually had a hearing on a RIAA lawsuit?

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[commodoresloat]

What is the point?

To extort as much money as they possibly can. I'm serious. Lawsuits appear to have become a part of their business model.

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

This happened with Napster. They decided that if they tried to sue then everyone would fight back and they would be stymied. They can't launch lawsuits against millions of people. Now they see that people are still trading music and they have decided that almost nobody will be willing to go to court with them because the public believes (whether they are right is not the question) that the RIAA will throw a nasty lawyer against them and they have no hope of winning. Judging by the number of settlements and the fact that there was almost no backlash (I was predicting there would be a continuous DDoS against their site) they have been absolutely correct.

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the State can put you in prison. Last time I checked, RIAA was not an arm of the US Government.

"You get caught sharing files, you're not going to white-collar resort prison! No, no, no! You're going to Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison!"

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[chachob]

Realistically, how are they going to go after thousands of people?

make that millions (look at the chart on the right hand side)...

text

[senatorpjt]

Is the actual legal filing available anywhere? So anyone who sees their IP mentioned can burn their mp3's to DVD and move them offsite :)

Re:text

[Mattwolf7]

And then since they know what song it is go buy the cd (from a used record store)

What Goes Around, Comes Around

[phunster]

An industry built on piracy sees pirates as their biggest threat. Talk about karma coming back to bite your butt.

I am so fed up with hearing about the the RIAA and the MPAA - how the big bad pirates are ripping them off. These are the same assholes that have ripped off everyone who they've come into contact with over the years. I for one see this piracy as divine justice.(And I'm an atheist)

Best target:

[Atario]

Melinda Gates.

(And an awexome smiting ensues.)

Re:Best target:

[paganizer]

That actually made a chill run through my body.

More lawsuits filed in court...

[Anonymous Coward]

or as it is known around the RIAA....

Wednesday.

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know where we can get a look at the list of IPs? I can't seem to find anything new on the EFF list of subpoened IPs

Re:Who?

[fo0]

Yeah, where can we find the list? I wonder if anyone from my school's IP range will be on there.

Reasonable Doubt

[y86]

If you have a router.... with multiple terminals sharing 1 IP... doesnt that create reasonable doubt or which terminal - or which person was downloading / sharing? So isn't it impossible to prove guilt of any individual? So isn't that like 90% of us users who use a router? The only way to prove it is to get a warrent and search the property... bring it on. I doubt any of those dumbass's from the RIAA knows how to mount a ReiserFS partition...

Re:Reasonable Doubt

[name773]

a ReiserFS partition
c'mon. everybody knows that xfs is way better than reiserFS

Re:Reasonable Doubt

[phoneyman]

Reasonable doubt doesn't apply in a civil case. The standard, IIRC, is a "preponderance of the evidence"; that is, "upon looking at the evidence, is the most likely conclusion that the defendant is liable." Reasonable doubt only applies in criminal trials. It's how OJ was "not guilty" in criminal court but still found responsible for causing the deaths in civil court.

Pierre

If people are named by their IP address...

[jd]

...do people with mobile IP or DHCP have to file for a change of name?

Re:If people are named by their IP address...

[NineNine]

hehehe.... my Net access is from a free, public wireless access point. All the RIAA knows about me is my machine name and the access point. Of course, they'd have to get search warrants for all local homes & businesses to find my machine.
I wish them luck.

Musings

[eclectro]

I can't help but wonder if there is a warehouse in Bangalore with rows of tables and computers, and workers trying to download music off the internet.

Re:Musings

[metlin]

Yes.

Re:Musings

[kryptkpr]

Yes.. except Banglaore is New York.. and the workers call themselves "consultants"..

Awful principle

[lazy_arabica]

I always hated the principle to sue a few people, 'as an example', with in mind the idea that if they are severely punished, nobody else will do it again. It only shows one thing : the RIAA does not care about people. They could destroy one's life, they don't care if it can bring them $$$.

Re:Awful principle

[bonch]

I always hated the principle to sue a few people, 'as an example', with in mind the idea that if they are severely punished, nobody else will do it again.

It's called enforcing the law and showing people that it is being enforced in order to discourage them from doing it. It's a tactic as old as time.

It only shows one thing : the RIAA does not care about people. They could destroy one's life, they don't care if it can bring them $$$.

Huh? How does it "only show one thing", that they don't care about people? Any company suing somebody to protect their copyrights doesn't care about people?

Are you saying nobody should bother protecting their copyrights because, goshdarn it, they put people first?

Does that also mean the copyright of the GPL is invalid? After all, nobody should care if the GPL is violated, because dammit I care about people. Not following the law and protecting the fruits of one's labor.

Note one thing missing in all the discussion following this article--mention the artists. Nobody here gives a shit about the artists--it's all about RIAA, RIAA, RIAA. Nobody cares about what the artists think, nobody's asked them, nobody here knows any. Somehow, they've become the silent voice when it comes to everyone pirating the fuck out of their music, because the RIAA has been painted as as an evil scapegoat in order to distract the issue from the fact that what's going on is immoral and wrong. Artists willingly sign their contracts.

But hey, GPL and P2P good, RIAA bad. Next.

Re:Awful principle

[parliboy]

Insightful my ass. They very much care about money. Their theory is that if they can reduce file trading, they will increase CD sales, which means more money.

If you want to do something about it....

[phaetonic]

This website has a plethora of information regarding the RIAA's current fights, things you can do to fight them, and some anti-RIAA propaganda. Interesting stuff..

Doesn't make sense

[NEOtaku17]

Why is it that digital photos are not legal evidence in a court case but if they have your IP address doing the downloading(or uploading) automatically means you did it? Because computers don't lie? BS! I can think of a hundred ways that they could have false positives(such as IP spoofing and and using stolen remote connection and the like). I don't see how they could get it right everytime and that those people wouldn't fight it.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[H1r0Pr0tag0n1st]

Unfortunately, most people dont fight it because
A) they did it or
B) they dont want to go to the expense of hireing a lawyer to fight it in court. or
C) both
This creates a situation similar to the Direct TV smart card lawsuits where a Extremely rich and pollitically powerful company uses those assets to intimidate and harass common citizens that can't afford to mount a defense. Basically it's extortion.

Support the EFF and hopefully they can put a stop to this kind of harrassment.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[bonch]

Well, they see uploads and downloads coming from an IP address. They sue it, and you can challenge it in court. But, most people just settle because they really were downloading. I mean, come on, if I was accused and I wasn't downloading, I'd fight it and make a big public deal out of it and prove my case and win.

I'm sure someone will reply and somehow paint the RIAA as evil for protecting their copyrights, though, so I'll shut up for now and let the hivemind speak. But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[platipusrc]

If you hate everyone at Slashdot so much and love being a good corporate pawn for the RIAA and Microsoft so much, What the Fuck are you doing on this site trolling? I mean, come on...look at your posting history. You're nothing but a moron. I wish there was an option to mod particular users to -6 (rather than enemy as a class).

Re:Doesn't make sense

[mph]

Why is it that digital photos are not legal evidence in a court case

What makes you think that?

Keep in mind that evidence, photographic or otherwise, does not stand on its own. A witness must testify as to its accuracy, and that witness is subject to cross-examination on the topic. Whether on film or digital, a photograph must be vouched for before it's evidence.

Here is a discussion of some relevant issues. "Some even believe digital photographs are not admissible in court."

Re:Doesn't make sense

[the_mad_poster]

But there is nothing wrong going on here. And yes, piracy is wrong.

It's all I can do to keep from calling you nasty names.... so I'll just assume you haven't considered that maybe you WOULDN'T fight if you really knew what was happening, and I'll make my point.

If the RIAA sues you, and you were making the files available (UPLOADING people.. they're suing people who are making the files available, not necessarily the ones who download them), then settling would be the smart option, yes.

However, if the RIAA comes at ME with a lawsuit, I can't AFFORD to fight them. They can tie me up in court until my pockets are drained, and I didn't do a single goddamn thing wrong. I'm not sharing a fucking thing except code that I wrote myself. Funny thing about big, faceless organizations that can browbeat you with lawyers, huh? Oh, wait. I forgot... you can just walk right into a court and that's that, right? No, wrong. Some people have gotten off because their is no way in Hell they could've been sharing anything. I'm not one of those people. One of the systems on my network is a Windows box, and it's connected. It's also being fed an IP address by a local DHCP server which is picking up an IP address from the ISP's DHCP server. I'd have to show that I'm NOT that IP address, and that would cost me time and money. I can't afford it. If the RIAA decided to try and tie the thing up rather than lose, they could easily keep the case suspended with bullshit filings and amendments for the short period of time it would take me to go into the poorhouse. And then I'd STILL have to settle.

So, why don't you wake up and join the rest of us in the real world? If the RIAA starts filing it's cases on some actual evidence, fine. An IP address is WAY too variable to count as evidence. No, I'm NOT a lawyer. I have been on the nasty end of a civil suit though, and even that simple little proceeding was NOWHERE near as simple as you're painting this.

And yes, piracy IS wrong. Now, if you find any swashbuckling swordsman with parrots on their shoulders stealing crates of CDs, or pressers selling illegitimate copies of discs, let me know. Otherwise, I have no idea why you're bringing up piracy during a discussion of copyright infringement. If you're going to shoot your mouth off about it, you could at least get the situation and the terminology correct.

And this doesn't even bring in the moral objections to using the court system to send miscellaneous J. Does threatening letters talking about potentially enormous fines and lord knows what else in preperation of extending a "settlement".

Re:Doesn't make sense

[platipusrc]

Someone from GT remembers me?! I was only there for 2 quarters before I left...six years ago!

Oh well, the resume is just there for no reason...I should probably take it down. And yeah, it sucks, but I wouldn't submit that one anywhere.
...
Ok, I got rid of it...happy now?

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Laebshade]

can think of a hundred ways that they could have false positives(such as IP spoofing and and using stolen remote connection and the like)

Don't forget the most obvious false positive cause, dynamic IP addresses. Depending on their timing, someone could be downloading a song, then log it and the IP. Then the user of the IP changes when they check again so they sue the current user not knowing there was a change.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[cpt kangarooski]

And yes, piracy is wrong.

Okay, but why?

Re:Doesn't make sense

[spronk]

Your whole rant might actually be meaningful if 1) You could point to anyone so far who's been innocently accused of sharing files. 2) You didn't agrue about a term that's been used to refer to copyright infringment since before you were born and then flaming someone else when you're the one screwing up terminology.

As for the folks being sued... It's really easy to avoid it stop breaking the law.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[spronk]

Because you're breaking the law. And that's the only reason you really need. You don't have to like the laws but you damn sure have to obey them.

Because you're making use of something you haven't paid for that you should have paid for.

Because you're depriving folks of income. I don't care how many folks say "I wouldn't buy the CD anyway" the fact is you WOULD buy more if you couldn't get them all for free.

Because you wouldn't walk up to a jewlery store and take whatever you want. Contrary to what you might think it is the same thing for those of us who make our living off of IP.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[the_mad_poster]

Oh good.. yet another moron for me to play with. You ought to go fight with this dumbass. Maybe you could flame each other to death and spare us all of your presence. He thinks that he's doing some great, wonderful thing for consumers everywhere by ripping off music. You think that everyone that gets subpeonaed is guilty. Go butt heads. You're equally stupid, hopefully you'll take each other out.

PIRACY. That AC that posted wants to talk word games? Let's talk mind games, shall we? Let's talk bullshit propaganda wars, shall we? Let's talk about swashbuckling rapists and 12 year old music listeners, and how they're the same thing, shall we? Or, in short: fuck off, dumbass. You wouldn't know a credible post if it bit your dick off and spit it in your face (here's a hint though: since you're post wasn't one, this one isn't one either).

And, let's talk about stuipd people who don't know what an IP address is, or how they get assigned. Morons like yourself. Let's talk about DHCP, IP spoofing, proxies, wifi hot spots, and the accuracy of logging mechanisms. Let's talk about race conditions while we're at it. Let's not even bother to consider that there is no way in Hell you can actually say that a specific person was sitting at a specific computer with a specific IP address at a specific time unless you're psychic or have witnesses.

Let's also talk about the cost of proving your innocence in a civil suit. First, however, let's talk about dumbasses who don't realize that these are CIVIL suits and not CRIMINAL suits and therefore you DO have to defend yourself from the allegations, even if the person making them has only the most meager of evidence (unlike a criminal suit where you have to PROVE that the accusations are true "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Let's talk about court dockets and filings. Let's talk about the cost of hiring a lawyer and how showing up in court without one is legal suicide no matter how innocent you are. Let's talk about risk/reward ratios and how the risk of losing a suit or getting tied up in a time and money trap with the court is something that RIAA probably takes into consideration when it picks a target, sends a nasty letter, and then offers "relief" in the form of a settlement. Let's talk about how you'd have to be crazy, stupid, or rich to fight them even if you ARE innocent.

And, incidentally, the most famous of the folks who found themselves on the wrong end of the lawsuit was that nice older lady that had a fucking Mac. Even though it was IMPOSSIBLE for her to be the culprit, the RIAA only grudgingly dropped the suit and basically said "we're gonna keep an eye on you anyway." This story is full of references and links to it. Go find one yourself.

Finally, let's talk about dipshits like yourself who think that getting a subpeona based on IP address is proof of guilt. If you weren't such a dipshit, and you actually knew something about IP addresses or the legal process, you'd realize you were a dipshit, and you'd stop being such a dipshit. However, I don't expect this to happen, which is why I'm treating you like a dipshit rather than responding at least somewhat respectably. Before you get all sanctimonious on me and try to discredit me for my "ad hominem" (as if every other fucking slashdotter who sees this post wouldn't realize that themself), bear in mind that you would simply be reiterating what I already said about my own post.

Being that you're a dipshit, I felt the need to point that out to you to save you some time and typing.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[cpt kangarooski]

Because you're breaking the law.

Well, the previous poster said it was wrong, not illegal. Are you saying that all laws are right, all illegal activity is wrong, and that you must always obey the law? I think there are examples that contradict that -- abolitionists helping runaway slaves escape is a good one.

I agree that lawlessness is generally bad, but this should caution us then to only pass laws that are not so oppressive that ordinary people will feel they're doing nothing wrong when they do break the law. Prohibiting acceptable behavior is what leads to lawlessness ofttimes then, and we should not do it either. That way the laws will tend to be obeyed because people don't really have a problem with them.

I suspect that our current copyright laws have gone too far, hence people find themselves running afoul of them without ever doing anything that actually seems bad. It is reminiscent of prohibition, and I expect it'll come to the same end, as the laws are reduced in scope.

At any rate, your point isn't supportable. Let's try another.

Because you're making use of something you haven't paid for that you should have paid for.

Well, you again assume something. Why should you have paid for it? Seriously, I want to know.

Because you're depriving folks of income.

That's never been a very good argument. Suppose I build a replicator and use it to give away limitless supplies of food, water, medicine, fuel, clothes, etc. I will have put countless people out of work -- but also ensured that they will no longer need to work for any of those things.

Is the mere fact that I deprived them of their income wrong? I think not, and so we can dispense with this point too.

Because you wouldn't walk up to a jewlery store and take whatever you want.

Actually I find jewelrey pointless anyway, so I wouldn't bother. I don't even have any.

But again -- perhaps these situations aren't quite the same. After all, there is a finite amount of jewelry; it is rivalrous, it is subject to scarcity. This is not the case when it comes to information.

Contrary to what you might think it is the same thing for those of us who make our living off of IP.

Well, I used to make a living as an artist, so I think I know something about it.

But I think that maybe you should consider a different job, or at least adjust what you have now to accomodate a significant decrease in your fortunes. No one said that you were entitled to make a living doing what you're doing. You might need to do something else, as the buggy whip people found out.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Bartgroks]

Being as none of these cases have actually gone to court yet I think it is safe to say that the value of the RIAA's evidence has yet to be proven. When and if the RIAA actually takes someone to court it would not surprise me at all if a situation similar to Direct TV smart card lawsuits occurs. Where no one who refuses to admit to wrongdoing is convicted.

Do you really think...

[Cyno01]

That they'd be that stupid? No, they're suing college kids (poor) mostly so that sort of thing doesn't happen. Hopefully though an IP lawyer or better yet a congresscritters kid will get sued and all hell will break loose.

Re:Do you really think...

[jobeus]

Last I knew they were suing IP addresses and getting the names of the people later, no?

Re:Do you really think...

[Cyno01]

Straight from the /. posting...

Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses.

They have sued some random IPs on varying providers, but the at least the last 2, maybe 3 rounds of lawsuits have all been targeted mostly at IPs originating from university networks. Unfortunatly not Harvard law yet...

Kazaa users are the RIAA's candy jars

[l0ungeb0y]

This is a great business model for the RIAA.
File lawsuits a few hundred at a time and let the checks roll in.

Too bad no one stands to gain financially by fighting back.
Also too bad (correct me if I'm wrong) they choose to sue people who are either quite young or who are quite old.
Have yet to hear of the RIAA sue someone who is say... 30's to 40's, owns a house and can afford some decent attornies.

Considering the age groups I've seen publicised, it makes me wonder just how random the RIAA's Kazaa user sampling really is. Until someone actively stands up and fights back, no precedent shall be set on this.
Sure, the person might loose and have to pay more than they would have if they just settled... guess what we need is a good samaritan to step forth and martyr his/her self.
I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?

This sue for bags of cash and take a few grand to be "mercifull" crap needs to stop.

Re:Kazaa users are the RIAA's candy jars

[Anonymous Coward]

Have yet to hear of the RIAA sue someone who is say... 30's to 40's, owns a house and can afford some decent attornies.

Maybe there are few such people who rank among the worst of the file swappers because people like that have useful things to do? The typical lawsuit target is young because that's who is doing the swapping.

Re:Kazaa users are the RIAA's candy jars

[MachineShedFred]

It would be interesting to see an age breakdown of the lawsuits, in comparison to an age breakdown of people that download music illegally.

I would guess that illegal downloads are weighted heavily into the 18-26 demographic, and this might be the explanation.

Re:Kazaa users are the RIAA's candy jars

[mnemotronic]

guess what we need is a good samaritan to step forth and martyr his/her self.

TROLL MOD="-99" Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather see a good samaritan step forward and martyr Atty General John Ashcroft & RIAA president Hillary Rosen. /TROLL

Re:Kazaa users are the RIAA's candy jars

[Mattwolf7]

Setting: Mr. RIAA sitting at a computer

(Type) (Type) (Type) AH! '24.214.21.1' he is only 22, he will be some easy money!

I wonder when they'll get ME..

[dustinbarbour]

Whoopety doo.. 437 lawsuits is it? And how many people did I see co nnected to KaZaA the other night? What? A million you say? Let's see. Up to now, I stand a scant 0.0437% chance of being sued. I think I'll take my chances.

Re:I wonder when they'll get ME..

[DroopyStonx]

What kinda fuzzy math you doin?

Don't you mean a 0.000437% chance?

Love,
George W. Bush

Re:I wonder when they'll get ME..

[jesser]

Music can't be virus-infested.

Re:I wonder when they'll get ME..

[dustinbarbour]

437/1,000,000 = 0.000437

0.000437 * 100 = 0.0437%

I do believe my math to be just fine. :-)

Re:I wonder when they'll get ME..

[dustinbarbour]

But other items available on KaZaA can be. But hell.. why not music, too? I mean, you can hide messages inside images (stegonography). Why not music? It's all a stream of bits, no?

Re:I wonder when they'll get ME..

[DroopyStonx]

Yes, *I* know that, YOU know that, but does... HE know that? *points to GWB* ;)

Business 101

[pvt_medic]

What a great business model. You cant sell CD's because there nothing good coming out these days, and they are drastically over priced. So to stay economically viable you sue everyone. This way you dont havet to pay the artist and keep the money for yourself.

I would love to see what percentage of these agregious file sharers are sharing new songs or older songs.

Re:Business 101

[fishbowl]

"I would love to see what percentage of these agregious file sharers are sharing new songs or older songs."

I want to be sued by the RIAA for filesharing my OWN music to which I hold the copyright.

Re:Business 101

[pvt_medic]

i love to see that, you have a really good counter suit there (some nice pocket change).

Re:Business 101

[Brento]

What a great business model. You cant sell CD's because there nothing good coming out these days, and they are drastically over priced. So to stay economically viable you sue everyone. This way you dont havet to pay the artist and keep the money for yourself.

Well, I'm definitely not one to defend the RIAA, but if your argument was really true (that nothing good is coming out these days and the current stuff is overpriced), then I should be allowed to steal Corvettes, right? After all, the new ones are ugly, and they don't make the old ones anymore, so hey, I should be able to steal new ones and old ones alike.

Re:Business 101

[bonch]

What a great business model. You cant sell CD's because there nothing good coming out these days, and they are drastically over priced.

$11.99 a pop at my store. Or, USE ITUNES!! 99 cents a song. Sigh.

I love when someone on Slashdot pipes off about how "nothing good is coming out these days." A bunch of old fogies complaining about today's music--sounds like my parents. Guess what, today's generation LOVES Disturbed, Britney, Maroon 5, etc. etc. But, as usual someone here assumes their little individual niche opinion on music magically represents a verifiable fact that all of society agrees on.

So to stay economically viable you sue everyone.

They are suing to stay economically viable. You are correct. People are pirating the fuck out of everything. Entire discographies are RARed up now and thrown around on eMule. I'm sorry, "sampled" on eMule.

This way you dont havet to pay the artist and keep the money for yourself.

People love to say this, but I'm not feeling sorry for the artists in their big mansions with their classic car collections and gold toilets.

Besides--ARTISTS WILLINGLY SIGN THEIR CONTRACTS. Stop acting like you're some protector of their rights. You've never spoken to one of these artists. You don't know any and have never asked one what they thought, and what their reaction is to people throwing their music around online so that nobody is paying money for them and ripping them off.

Re:Business 101

[shadowbearer]

But... you're missing the big picture.

The RIAA isn't making enough money off of these settlements to make it worth it. They're doing this for publicity; so when they go to their congresscritters and demand stricter laws/death penalties for these filesharers/pirates/terrorists, they can say "But, look, we tried to pursue them, we filed hundreds of lawsuits, and it didn't stop piracy, so we need laws requiring MS^H^H DRM on every new computer, to protect that business that brought you all this great music! Help help!"

The RIAA's lawyers have to know that eventually one of these cases will be challenged and beaten in such a way that will cripple their ability to file any more like them. What they are doing is no different from the FUD tactics that SCO is using. It's public PR that really counts, here. It's Mob tactics gone semi-legit.

Looks like it's backlashing on them at least to some extent, tho - there are whole legions of law firms taking up the cases against them. :)

Hey, I didn't say that that can look any farther ahead than the next dime; just that they're damnably clever and connected...

Bastards.

SB

Re:Business 101

[Saeger]

I should be allowed to steal Corvettes, right?

Your argument is even worse because you've resorted to the bad comparison between physically scarce tangible objects and abundant intangible copies.

But... to humor you: one day molecular manufacturing will allow you to make an exact COPY of a Corvette for almost no cost by using solar energy and locally available molecules.

1) Will the car makers go hungry?! ... No - they can make themselves "free lunches" using the same tech. And so can the former old-tech farmers and old-tech agribiz execs.
2) Will the car makers lose the incentive to design new models if they can't enforce artificial scarcity? ... No - open source will extend to the physical world at this point.

--

Re:Business 101

[orb_fan]

Isn't this SCO's business model as well?

Re:Business 101

[jaelle]

What I'd like to know is why the RIAA is still suing in the face of research that shows file-sharing *increases* cd sales.

Cound it be because the sales that are increasing are of non-RIAA artists? Because it threatens their monopoly over artists and music distribution?

Crackdown

[Caharin]

No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown.

Extra emphasis on the crack.

filled in

[name773]

RIAA using the Copyright is a BAD idea because they don't offer their product for free. When it comes to Copyright being put to GOOD use, it's done by those who license with the GPL, especially the Linux people. The RIAA is made of hypocrites.

RIAA

[perlfu_]

At this rate it seems they may never really put a dent in the file-sharing community!

Re:RIAA

[dustinbarbour]

Of course they won't. Once it has been released into the wild (courtesy of Napster v1), you cannot contain it. Too many people have used it and enjoy being able to download most anything they want. You can shutdown individual services such as Napster, KaZaA, etc., but as soon as you do, another will popup. The demand is simply too great. Those who work in any type of media are going to need to develop new techniques to deal with the digital world. Encryption is not the way to go, either, as anything that can be buil by man can be unbuilt/cracked/hacked/whatever-you've-got. If that means the death of the major record labels, Hollywood, or the like, so be it.

Song of the piracy apologist

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA is doing absolutely nothing wrong here, but I fully expect a bizarre, knee-jerk negative reaction to the RIAA suing copyright infringers (the very thing Slashdotters said they should do back during the Napster lawsuit). Here at Slashdot, only the protection of GPL copyright violations is suddenly a big deal. Everyone else's copyrights can go to hell.

If you agree with any of this, feel free to repost it in the future.

Song of the piracy apologist:

(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.

(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft," but I do believe in emotively abusing words like "information," "sharing," and "Copyright Enforcement Militia."

(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.

(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even though most pirated works are recent releases.

(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free advertising". I don't buy any of the music I download, of course--but lots of other people probably do.

(6) I believe that ripping off the artists is wrong. The record companies always rip off the artists. Artists support P2P, except the ones that don't (like Metallica), and they don't agree with me, hence they're greedy or their opinion doesn't count or something.

(7) I believe that selling CDs is not a business model, but giving away things for free on the internet is.

(8) I believe that artists should be compensated for their work -- preferably by someone else. I mean, they can sell concert tickets (which someone else can buy) or sell t-shirts (to someone else) or something. As long as someone else subsidises my free ride, I'm coooooool with it.

(9) I believe in capitalism but only support music business models which involve giving away the fruits of ones labor for free.

(10) I believe that copying someone elses music, and redistributing it to my 1,000,000 "best friends" on the internet is sharing. Music is made for sharing. It's my right.

(11) I believe that record companies cracking down on piracy is "greed", but a mob demanding free entertainment is not.

(12) I believe that it's not really "piracy" unless you charge money for it, because, receiving money is wrong, but taking a free ride is fine.

(13) I believe that disallowing copying and redistributing music over Napster is the same as humming my favourite song in public. Because when I hum my favourite song in public, everyone likes it so much that they run home, get out their tape
recorders and once they've got a recording of it, they aren't interested in hearing the original any more.

(14) I believe that when illegal behaviour destroys a business, it's "free enterprise at work".

(15) I believe piracy is simply "free advertising." Even though that's what radio is, but with the legal permission of the copyright holder. Basically, what I really want is to be able to choose the songs I want, listen to them whenever I want, but I don't want to have to pay for it. Which essentially means I want the whole thing for free.

What I find amusing is that the pirates seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between creative activity and brainless copying.

Since a lot of the people here are GPL/OSS advocates: the "OSS way" applied to this domain is to learn how to play an instrument. Or how to sing or whatever. Then get together with a bunch of other people who can also play music, and make some noise.

One of the unfortunate things that has happened to the OSS movement is that a lot of the loudmouth advocates for it don't understand what it's really about. They view it primarily as a means to get free stuff, and then they turn

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[shepd]

(16) I live in Canada and pirating music is a right.
(17) I paid the DAT Tax and didn't get the right Canadians got from it.

Oh. Wait. I bursted your bubble, eh?

Sorry. Well, not really.

>What I find amusing is that the pirates seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between creative activity and brainless copying.

They do? If you could point out an example, I'd be happy to discuss it with you. Nothing you mentioned in your rant really worked well for me as an example.

>(10) I believe that copying someone elses music, and redistributing it to my 1,000,000 "best friends" on the internet is sharing. Music is made for sharing. It's my right.

I can't think of a single person who has 5 TB of bandwidth to use per song that pirates. Not a single one. Heck, there's a lot of national ISPs that don't have bandwidth like that to waste. Maybe if I were AT&T...

Or did you mean "10 best friends"? Yeah, sucks to be without friends like yourself, but watch those sour grapes, will ya?

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[bechthros]

well, here's my $.02

"(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement."

Well, I do believe in copying CD's. If they're gonna charge me 19.99 for a crappy album that I couldn't listen to beforehand and is 80% filler to buttress the radio hits, if they're gonna charge me $19.99 in spite of the multiple price-fixing they've been found guilty of, then, when I actually like the CD then yeah, I am gonna copy it for my friends. In my past experience, my friends wind up buying the CD if they like it, and that's with a full 16/44 copy, not some crappy mp3. Though my burner is so old, it's really a pain in the ass so you've gotta be a pretty good friend.

(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft," but I do believe in emotively abusing words like "information," "sharing," and "Copyright Enforcement Militia."

I don't see how anybody is abusing "sharing", that's exactly what we're doing. Giving voice to that which we think is worth other people knowing about. I don't know anybody that shares music that they don't like.

I don't see how anybody is abusing the word "information". Please elaborate.

And this is the first time I've heard "Copyright enforcement militia", and as much as it tugs at my heartstrings I prefer cartel.

"(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years."

Not true. As overpriced as CD have been found repeatedly in courts of law to be, people continue to buy them, and in increasing numbers. I believe that what drives piracy is the ClearChannel takeover of radio coupled with the consolidation of the "record industry" into two or three major monoliths, which led to the overwhelming proliferation of incredibly bad, bland, uninspired, uninteresting, untalented, demographically safe crap being promoted by Corporate Music. All people want is to hear good music again.

"(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even though most pirated works are recent releases."

It's hard to look at the history of copyright law and not see Disney et al's just-one-more-extention policy as a money grab. Copyright law was specifically written to allow copyrights to expire after a reasonable time to allow works of IP to enter into the public domain. These regulations were sound and just and were written for a reason.

"(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free advertising". I don't buy any of the music I download, of course--but lots of other people probably do."

I do believe that showing other people how good a certain artist is could possibly result in that person buying the CD. Sharing crappy, lossy MP3's is one way of showing them how good it is, just like radio used to be.

BUT. I have bought dozens of CD's that I liked the MP3's of. And I don't see why you feel the need to conflate the two unless you're afraid of your own argument's invalidity.

"(6) I believe that ripping off the artists is wrong. The record companies always rip off the artists. Artists support P2P, except the ones that don't (like Metallica), and they don't agree with me, hence they're greedy or their opinion doesn't count or something."

Wow, you really have a poor grasp on the situation. Let me rephrase for you: I believe that ripping off the artists is wrong. The record companies always have and always will rip off the artists. Some artists, usually those whose immediate financial future depends on the gratitude of Corporate Music, support P2P. Some artists, mostly those whose immediate financial furtures *do* depend on Corporate Music, don't support P2P, like

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[dracumas]

What I find amusing is that you are not able to distinguish downloads from filesharing. Two completely different things.

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[Protoslo]

How about, "I live in Canada, and I have a quasi-socialist government which has passed bad laws regarding online piracy, [c.f. (16),(17)]." Just because pirating is government sponsored doesn't make it a good idea...

In China, for example, software piracy is rampant, and all of the top US software is available for barely the cost of its cds on the street. This is fine for China at the moment, after all, they are screwing US software companies. If they expect to have a huge domestic software industry however, they are going to have reign in the pirates, because no software company will be able to remain solvent by selling software when 100% of its software is available just as easily, and nearly as legally, at a fraction of the price.

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[aardvarkjoe]

Y'know, I don't think that I have ever seen better support for the "Song of the Piracy Apologist" than this rebuttal. Whoever reposts that ought to include a link to his post for supporting material.

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[pnutjam]

That was insightful the last 6 times I saw it posted, verbatim.

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[shark72]

"Well, I do believe in copying CD's. If they're gonna charge me 19.99 for a crappy album that I couldn't listen to beforehand and is 80% filler to buttress the radio hits, if they're gonna charge me $19.99 in spite of the multiple price-fixing they've been found guilty of, then, when I actually like the CD then yeah, I am gonna copy it for my friends."

The average price of a new release is down to $13.42. Plenty of stores allow you to listen to tracks before you buy them, as do Amazon.com and iTunes to a limited extent. Frankly, if you're shopping at stores that charge you $19.99 and don't let you listen to it, it's up to you as a consumer to shop at better stores.

I'm not sure what you mean about "multiple price-fixing." Are you exaggerating to make a point? There was a case settled this year where a few labels were giving Tower Records and TWE co-op money to run ads if they advertised at a minimum price (known as MAPs in the industry); this was done to help defend Tower against Best Buy and Wal-Mart, who were (and still are) selling CDs at sub-standard margins and putting higher-quality record stores out of business (Tower later filed for bankrupcty).

"I believe that copying someone elses music that I paid for in a store, and redistributing a lossy MP3-compressed version of it to my 1,000,000 aquaintances on the internet is sharing. Music is made for sharing so that more people can buy it if they like it. Not only is it my right under "fair use", it's beneficial for the artists."

Can you please clarify how redistributing somebody else's copyrighted work to up to 1,000,000 people falls under fair use doctrine? Here's an EFF primer on fair use.

"Anyting I've downloaded that I haven't eventually bought I've erased."

Well, then, you are certainly the exception. Most people I know who use Kazaa do so to build their music collection and to avoid paying for music.

A serious question for you: we are all aware that some artists use P2P as a promotional mechanism. Many of these are unsigned artists, but some of them are signed artists who have contracts with open-license record companies like Magnatunes, or release live tracks or other tracks via P2P that aren't on their CDs. However, many artists do not support P2P. Do you think this latter group is misguided? If so, do you think it's appropriate to make this choice for them -- that is, to make unauthorized copies of their work even though they would not want you to? In short -- are there some people to whom the Golden Rule should not be applied?

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[SnappleMaster]

Well, I do believe in copying CD's. If they're gonna charge me 19.99 for a crappy album that I couldn't listen to beforehand and is 80% filler to buttress the radio hits, if they're gonna charge me $19.99 in spite of the multiple price-fixing they've been found guilty of, then, when I actually like the CD then yeah, I am gonna copy it for my friends. In my past experience, my friends wind up buying the CD if they like it, and that's with a full 16/44 copy, not some crappy mp3.

This is so old and tired... I'm not going to waste my time with an intelligent response. IMHO you deserved to be sued by the RIAA (who I think are a bunch of idiots).

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[cpt kangarooski]

Just because pirating is government sponsored doesn't make it a good idea...

True, but OTOH, just because copyrights are established doesn't make them a good idea either.

We'd probably be better off if we legalized some infringing behaviors that are currently prohibited.

Note, btw, that the US does something similar in the AHRA.

This is fine for China at the moment, after all, they are screwing US software companies.

Well, I have no qualms with China doing what's good for China. I think the US ought to follow a similar (US oriented) policy.

If they expect to have a huge domestic software industry however, they are going to have reign in the pirates, because no software company will be able to remain solvent by selling software when 100% of its software is available just as easily, and nearly as legally, at a fraction of the price.

Again, I agree. When China feels that this is more important, then they should pursue it. Again, they'll be doing what's best for their own people.

The problem with US copyright law now is that while some copyright law is pretty certainly what would be best for us, the current laws are not what's best for us. Instead they're best for (some) artists and publishers, and that's a tiny subset of all Americans. Instead copyright law ought to do what's best for Americans generally. This probably means scaling down copyright laws.

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[jack_csk]

Seriously, a certain number of friends of mine composes and plays music. Some of them record their own pieces and encourage others to distribute them.

I am one of these music OSS person, but I don't think many people will be interested in mine. :)

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[AndyL]

Why is it insightful to say "People I don't like believe this : " and then a list of ridiculous, obviously false, greatly exagerated, or badly out of context statements?

Re:Song of the piracy apologist

[shepd]

In China, for example, software piracy is rampant, and all of the top US software is available for barely the cost of its cds on the street. This is fine for China at the moment, after all, they are screwing US software companies. If they expect to have a huge domestic software industry however, they are going to have reign in the pirates, because no software company will be able to remain solvent by selling software when 100% of its software is available just as easily, and nearly as legally, at a fraction of the price.

Oddly enough, the entire reason Canada has these pro-piracy laws is to promote Canadian artists, since they are the only people paid in this arrangement.

allofmp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Every since I've been able to d/l albums for 60 cents from allofmp3 legally I stopped using p2p clients. :-)

Hey Goober?

[FreeLinux]

None have yet gone to trial because the first batch all settled out of court. That means that the file sharers all paid the RIAA.

If it keeps on going like this the RIAA will never go to court but, they will get even richer than they already are. It doesn't sound like they are being too stupid to me.

Random observations

[boomgopher]

Not sure what exactly I'm trying to say with this post, but these are a few of my random observations on this:

Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong.

The entertainment industry has done more in the past 50 years to promote a youthful recklessness/lawlessness and a 'fuck the man' attitude. Now that it's turning around and hurting their own profits, they're resorting to strongarm tactics to scare kids into line.

This puts a cloud of fear over my and other's perception of the entertainment industry. Entertainment is supposed to be a light distraction from real life - it's not a requirement like food, clothing, and shelter. As such, I feel like people are being treated like cattle, and are being force-fed 'entertainment'.

The percieved value of music and other types of media is dropping. I personally laugh at the idea of buying a $10-$20 CD anymore - it no longer seems worth it. $1 per mp3/aac/whatever is equally laughable. I'd personally be willing to pay about 10 cents a song (with no DRM). I have no idea if this is even economically feasible. But that still doesn't change what I'm willing to pay.

Re:Random observations

[Trurl's Machine]

Not sure what exactly I'm trying to say with this post (...)

It's quite common, actually, these days and maybe that's why...

Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong.

...true, but actually many/most people today do not view DMCA, DRM, DCSS and probably even the RIAA/MPAA actions as wrong. It's a bit like speeding - most people do this at least once in their driving carreer, yet generally accept the idea of speed limits. Consistent? Of course, not, but that's how human psyche works.

Re:Random observations

[bonch]

Not sure what exactly I'm trying to say with this post, but these are a few of my random observations on this:

Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong.

Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.

The entertainment industry has done more in the past 50 years to promote a youthful recklessness/lawlessness and a 'fuck the man' attitude. Now that it's turning around and hurting their own profits, they're resorting to strongarm tactics to scare kids into line.

Haha...good ol' Slashdot propaganda spin. Protecting someone's copyrights by suing the downloader--EXACTLY WHAT SLASHDOTTERS SAID THEY SHOULD DO FOUR YEARS AGO--is somehow "strong arm tactics."

Remind me of that again when some company violates the copyright of the GPL. Is it "strongarm tactics" to enforce the law then?

This puts a cloud of fear over my and other's perception of the entertainment industry. Entertainment is supposed to be a light distraction from real life - it's not a requirement like food, clothing, and shelter. As such, I feel like people are being treated like cattle, and are being force-fed 'entertainment'.

This is where you veer off into bizarre territory. How in the hell are you being force-fed entertainment like cattle because the RIAA is suing some random people online who were sharing copyrighted materials? My god, the emotive propaganda and lack of logic around here is staggering.

The percieved value of music and other types of media is dropping. I personally laugh at the idea of buying a $10-$20 CD anymore - it no longer seems worth it. $1 per mp3/aac/whatever is equally laughable.

If you think a damn dollar a song is "laughable," you'll never be happy.

I'd personally be willing to pay about 10 cents a song (with no DRM).

I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.

I have no idea if this is even economically feasible. But that still doesn't change what I'm willing to pay.

They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral. They don't owe you anything. Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.

Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. Notice nobody mentions the artists--it's all RIAA. The artists are forgotten in this equation, their music ripped off and not paid for by anybody. And people complain about the homogenization of music without realizing they're causing it by making it unsafe to sign riskier acts that aren't guaranteed to bring in a lot of sales in order to recoup expenses.

But go ahead, hivemind. Pirate away.

Re:Random observations

[boomgopher]

Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. Notice nobody mentions the artists--it's all RIAA. The artists are forgotten in this equation, their music ripped off and not paid for by anybody.

Look, I'm just being honest. I'm otherwise a pretty conservative guy (Christian, etc.), but I'm saying that I honestly don't have any internal or moral sense that file-sharing is wrong. I feel somewhat the same about software. The only time morality kicks in is when I'm using someone's software to make money - I feel a strong sense to pay for it then.

While I wouldn't sneak in to a concert since I feel that's wrong, I don't feel the same way about downloading illegal mp3s. Why? I don't know. It's very confusing to live in the modern world, and I don't have a good answer as to why I feel this way about digital 'property', IP, etc.

Re:Random observations

[Deraj DeZine]

Many/most people today (especially young people), do not view file sharing of music and videos as wrong. Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.

How does this not mean anything? The fact that's it's wrong means nothing; people still do it. The fact that's it's wrong isn't what the RIAA claims is losing them money; it's the fact that people are doing it that the RIAA claims is losing them money.

Remind me of that again when some company violates the copyright of the GPL. Is it "strongarm tactics" to enforce the law then?

Exactly like the RIAA lawsuits, if they can prove the case, then no, it's not a strongarm tactic. But keep in mind that an IP address is not much evidence (what if a virus was downloading files? What if someone else was doing the downloading?).

I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.

I would be willing to pay 10 cents per song. Free is better, yes, but 10 cents per song would be ok with me. So basically, you're just wrong on this point.

They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral. They don't owe you anything. Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.

Finally a good point. Luckily, it's been discussed before.

Re:Random observations

[Hatta]

Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong. If this website was made up of musicians and not Linux geeks, the entire opinion of the hivemind would change.

Jon Fishman would disagree with you:

I could fucking care less if everybody downloads our album off the Internet. We're not in a position to be screwed by that at all. We have the one thing the Internet can't touch -- live music. If you can actually go out and play your fucking instruments, you won't be replaced by the Internet. If you're a good live act and you put on a good show, people will buy a ticket to see your show.

They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral.

Why is it immoral? If I can afford to spend $100 a month on music and do so, what does it matter if I listen to the same 10 albums over and over again that month or download some supplementary material once I've used up those albums. It's not taking money out of anyones pocket.

Re:Random observations

[drsmithy]

Doesn't mean anything. It's wrong.

Please explain why downloading a song that plays on the radio a dozen times every day is "wrong".

Then explain why downloading a song is any different to having the the aural equivalent of a photographic memory.

If you think a damn dollar a song is "laughable," you'll never be happy.

I think it's laughable, because for an album full of songs, it costs the same amount as it does today - grossly overpriced.

I don't think you'll be happy unless everything is free.

Probably true, hopefully one day it will happen.

However, he (and I) would be prepared to pay 10c (personally I'd go to about 40c) per song. I doubt that I personally would purchase much more music than I do today (which isn't a great deal, by and large I'm quite happy with the stuff coming out of the radio), but I'm sure some people - particularly children and teens with big disposable incomes - would.

They don't pay for any. But don't pirate it either. That's illegal and immoral.

Only if you consider "copyright" an actual "right", is it immoral to copy music.

They don't owe you anything.

Likewise, I don't owe them anything. They were prepared to create music and play it where I could hear it.

I may be compelled to "donate" something, if I feel I've been sufficiently entertained. But, then again, I might not.

I'm also quite happy to pay for live shows - directly or indirectly - but at (most of) them I'm getting more than a canned, pre-recorded, mass-produced reproduction of sound, so there's added value.

Like you said, music is just entertainment and is not a right. Which means people around here who justify it as some sort of innate right to pirate music because it's too expensive are wrong by your own argument.

I don't consider it a "right" "because it's too expensive", I consider it simply a natural and unavoidable side effect. However, if you're going to try and make me feel guilty for having copies of music that are on the radio several times a day, every day, for months at a time, you'll be fighting an uphill battle.

Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music.

Because it's no different than listening to it from any "free" source.

And people complain about the homogenization of music without realizing they're causing it by making it unsafe to sign riskier acts that aren't guaranteed to bring in a lot of sales in order to recoup expenses.

You misspelled "sustain gross profiteering".

We can but hope the collapse of the RIAA (and co.) happens as soon as possible. The short term pain from job losses will eventually be more than compensated by the resulting market filled with cheaper, more diverse music produced in greater quantities.

Re:Random observations

[jp10558]

You know, I really hate the idea of flat across the board limits on most anything. I always prefer some actual thought on each situation. That however is not practical - case by case evaulation. However, I do think that there needs to be a mandatory re-evaulation of a law if it is shown that a large percentage of the population is breaking it. Laws are (as far as I understand) in place to codify and enforce social mores. If 1/3 of the society is breaking the law, it needs to be evaulated. Yes, this would mean evaulating drug laws, speeds set on speed limits, copyright, and probably a whole bunch of other laws. Laws that many break are probably bad laws in some way. The legislature needs to try again.

Re:Random observations

[jp10558]

You know, interestingly I think at some point the market has to come into play here. A large number of americans are just not willing to pay the old prices for music when there are newer alternatives. As to competing with free - well, many companies do. Dsani, RedHat, Companies that publish public domain works... Of course the price has to take into effect that they are competing for free.

I have seriously considered using the allofmp3.com - if I could know that it was legal. I know that the prices they charge are "laughable" but that is a price that I am willing to pay. Would I be willing to pay more? Maybe.

Am I willing to have to download special software that may mess up my computer and pay 99 cents a song that is restricted in format? No. Would I be willing to pay 99 cents a mp3? Maybe... It's not offered so I haven't thought about it. I just won a free download from iTunes through a pepsi cap. I couldn't give it away on my college campus. No one wanted to deal with special software or extra crap, and no one really cared about legal issues either. For college students iTunes just isn't a value. And the RIAA lawsuits just don't seem to influence anyone I've talked to in regards to changing their fileshareing habits.

Re:Random observations

[jp10558]

You know, I want to second this guy. I'm a more moderate person - don't describe myself as either conservative or liberal, but I just don't have any trouble sleeping at night regarding downloading MP3 or Warez.

Maybe it's the whole lack of face to face contact or whatnot, but where I would never even consider stealing from someone I know, or I can see, I have no fealings about ripping off a coporation, or ever the government. I just have a hard time even at a gut level having morailty apply to orginizations. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's the younger generations. Maybe we really have lost much of the morality of previous generations. I think it does mean that society will change, maybe not in a revolution or a legal battle - but change due to everyone strongly holding to the old ways dying of old age, and then everyone left has less or different morals.

I think many are disinfranchised with the lies and scandles from coporations, tired of the seeming incompetence of government and buracuracy everywhere. We just don't care about the well being of corporations. They certainly don't care about us.

I don't know about society, but at college we all pretty much share all property. People ask before using - but we really have no reason to deny the use of laundry soap, or computer time, or staples or whatever. Many college students really believe in socalism.

I don't have a problem with property rights. But I think that artists need to find a different method to create art and get paid. I personally think that the older patron model worked better - and will work better nowadays. Someone wants some art - pay someone to create it. You want new music? Get a bunch of people together to commission the latest group to do an album, or to come play a concert. I just have a hard time figuring out any way to practically protect non tangible property, and maybe we shouldn't try. Publish for fame if you want, not for money. Trade Secret anything you don't want others using. If it gets out - tough.

Will this diminish the desire for many to get into music or art.. maybe. But I don't think it will really stop that many - they will just work like many scientists do now - for a salary to a company (or rich person) and what they create will be a work for hire and either for the companies eyes only, or benefit all of society.

Re:Random observations

[Darkangael]

"Notice nobody mentions the artists--it's all RIAA"

Are the artists even getting any of the cash from the lawsuits. If they are, it is probably about as insignificant as the cut of their CD sales that they actually receive. There are some artists who believe that the RIAA are the biggest pirates of all, as they take the artists music without paying for it (well they pay, but hardly pay what the music is actually worth) then they sell it to people for profit. There was an interesting article about it by courtney love a while ago ("Courtney love does the math" on salon.com I think).

Re:Random observations

[cheekyboy]

1. Dude, the govt is for the corporates , not the people. It has lost the plot.

2. The govt's have been stealing from us sheaple for 90years + , its time we say, phuckyou, and steal some back. How did they steal stuff? well... 1. fractional reserve banking making money out of thin air, which causes inflation which is it self really pure THEFT (read the bible re weights and measures).
So those phuckers are getting richer with the 30 room mansions and 3 islands and 200 cars, and unlimited money compared to us.
A revolution is coming slowly, nothing is fair any more.

The artists can make money of real work, not spend 2 days writing lyrics (yes some big time songs took 1 day to write). Ill pay for concerts and real WORK, but the music as mp3 should be considered free advertising, if the artists just makes a song in 4hrs and sits back on his ass to reap in the profits, then hes not going to miss a few $ if he has already made 6 figures for 9hrs work.

Re:Why doesn't it just give up now?

[hatrisc]

mr. department of homeland security agent says, "Taco, give me this guys IP address. I'm taking it to court!"

Wow, we're on a roll today!

[DroopyStonx]

An interview with fuckwad Valenti, and now more RIAA lawsuits! Woweee!

They're sure doing a good job into scaring me... scaring me so much that tonight, I'm gonna be downloading more than normal!

Got Movies?
Got Music?

I do NOW, and so can you! Aim your middle fingers at them and grin, because this is the best weapon against 'em.

Great information!

[Anonymous Coward]

"things you can do to fight them"

You mean complaining on Slashdot isn't enough! :)

Great links, spread the word. Also use this as your sig:
Free flow of information: Freenet and/or MUTE.

IPv6 vs IPv4

[M1000]

Oh well, I'm just glad we are not using IPv6 right now, imagine the number of IP addresses they could sue !

Re:IPv6 vs IPv4

[kidgenius]

Yeah, I can't wait for the day I get sued b/c my toaster started downloading music.

Flea Market Pirates are the Real Crooks.

[Peschula]

I am in the independent music/ film industry in Wilmington, NC and couldn't care less about who downloads my music. However if I did have some success and money invested in advertising and one of these people burned it and sold it at the flea market I would sue. I don't think the RIAA gives two sh*ts about downloaders either - just the bootleggers. It goes the same for the alcohol industry and moonshiners. In a capitalist economic system you can't have a business without a license and avoid the ability for your product to be taxed. Also these flea market distributers don't have enough command to know how to do business research on their own - only steal.

Students: Ask your administrator!

[djcatnip]

seriously, other companies are charging institutions for the privelege of offering their draconian DRM laiden music services. iTunes on campus was announced this morning, and it's free for your school! ask your administrators to please sign up for it!

CDs aren't expensive

[amyhughes]

I personally laugh at the idea of buying a $10-$20 CD anymore

I keep reading how expensive CDs are and I don't get it. I've been on a music-buying binge the last six months or so. I've probably bought 300-400 in that time.

I have a CD club membership at amazon.com. It's so unobtrusive I don't remember who runs it, but it's one of those cooperative deals where amazon takes the order and some club sends the discs. The requirement is just to buy three discs in a year, which I did with my first order and have repeated many times since. Perhaps half of what I want is avaialable through the club at $7.50-$10. Most discs are $8.50 or $10.

When the club doesn't have it amazon usually sells it for $10-$13. Perhaps 1 in 5 discs I want cost more than that. Often they are also available through Amazon's "marketplace" of individual sellers. You have to pay $2.50 for shipping but I've almost always found a marketplace seller with a good rating than can sell what I'm looking for, with shipping, for under $12.

I keep my cart full of a couple dozen things I eventually want so that I can always easily find three or more discs to get my total to $25 for free shipping. There's also no sales tax. The same rules apply for club purchases (but for marketplace purchases shipping is always $2.50).

Barnesandnoble is usually more expensive but if I find a disc that seems pricey at amazon I check b&n. Sometimes they are cheaper.

If all that fails there's always secondspin.com or even ebay.

Bottom line, average over hundreds of recent purchases I pay about $10 per CD.

Amy

Re:CDs aren't expensive

[Deraj DeZine]

The parent poster said he'd be willing to pay $1-$2 for a CD, so he considers the current $10 CDs to be overpriced.

As for hundreds of purchases at $10/CD, that's a lot of money. I don't remember the last time I paid more than $8 for a CD and I've decided that even that is more than I'd like to pay.

Re:CDs aren't expensive

[10am-bedtime]

hundreds (lets say 200) multiplied by 10 USD per gives you 2000 USD. that's a nice trip to the bahamas. too bad RIAA execs get to do it and not you.

Re:CDs aren't expensive

[foniksonik]

hmmm yes, apparently you don't get it. You've spent 3 to 4 thousand dollars in the last six months on CDs. How much of that goes to the artist?

You can't tell me that you've also seen videos, promotions or other distribution/marketing materials for those same 300-400 cds as well... there aren't that many cd promotion campaigns around in a six month time span.

Sooo... you've probably paid in excess of $2000 for nothing, or more accurately, to pay for promotion and distribution expenses that were paid for several years ago by previous cd sales.

I'm being very optimistic about how much of your money is going to the music as opposed to the cd/label company.

I'll bet there are tens of thousands of people who instead of paying for obsolete advertising expenses, downloaded the same amount of music for $120, assuming they have a cable modem or DSL account, over a 3 month time span. Then they went out and bought a new car ;-p using the 3 grand they saved as a down payment.

A similar number went over to www.allofmp3.com and got a $15/month unlimited download account to legally download even more music.

I hope you're very happy with your jewelcase liners and plastic disks... probably the most expensive packaging ever.

to note.. this isn't personal Amy, just pointing out a few things you may not have thought of.

Re:CDs aren't expensive

[amyhughes]

How much of that goes to the artist?

Probably more than zero, which is what they get from the p2p networks.

you've ... paid ... for promotion and distribution expenses that were paid for several years ago by previous cd sales.

Older CDs tend to be less expensive.

I'll bet there are tens of thousands of people who instead of paying...

...stole it. And how much time did they spend looking for the same hundreds of CDs? And did they actually find those same hundreds of CDs? And did they get perfect copies?

I can earn money and buy CDs faster than I can find music on p2p networks. And by buying them I get everything I want, I get perfect copies, and the artists get something.

I don't have time to have the slashdot sense of entitlement to FREE STUFF! Someone suggested I could have vacationed in Bermuda with that money. That's just dumb. I'd have spent that time trawling p2p networks.

Amy

Re:CDs aren't expensive

[foniksonik]

Good response. I was more or less playing devil's advocate for the benefit of /.

Uh

[bonch]

You have it completely ass-backwards. Somehow, the more people they sue, the smaller news item it becomes, and the less meaning the lawsuits have?

Maybe at Slashdot.

If they end up suing up to 10,000 people, that'll be a bit of a news item, don't you think? It'll have meaning to people thinking about illegally pirating the new Maroon 5...

Stretching it...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Without commenting on the whole political subject of the RAII and it's tactics... Your argument is pretty thin. I mean, you or your housemates or your juvenile children or other dependents. In the end, if it's your internet conx, you're responsible.

use an anonyminity proxy

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using anonx.com a week ago. It's specifically designed to shield you from these lawsuits. I'm happy with it so far. It's a pay service, but it costs less than buying one CD every two months, and about 1/3000 of the cost of a lawsuit settlement.

(and no, I don't work for them)

Re:use an anonyminity proxy

[user no. 590291]

Two words:

FBI. Honeypot.

File sharing - the best form of marketing

[b0s0z0ku]

Like many of y'all, probably, I was a rather geeky kid in high school. When I started college in 1997, I didn't have much of an idea about interesting recent music. Other people, no doubt hipper than me, posted their collections of music on the network. I downloaded some of that music - listening to it helped me to develop an idea of what I liked and disliked. By the middle of frosh year, I had bought 20 or so CDs from record stores in Philly (some of them were even new). My CD collection kept growing from there. Had I not heard a lot of music that I wasn't familiar with via the campus network, my collection might have been much smaller.

Unfortunately, most of those CDs were in my car when it was stolen soon after I had moved down to DC for a summer. Thanks to the ease of file-sharing, I was able to download much of the music on those CDs (and re-burn some of it for use in my portable player and car).

-b0s0z0ku

Confessions of a past sharer

[davisshaver]

I used to share on Napster and the like- but I do not anymore. Let me tell you why: 1. Our demands have been met, we have iTunes, which is a great program. I do not mind paying a dollar for a song a like, especially when I know how much is going to the artist, and to Apple, and to the record company. 2. If I am low on money for a month, there is an almost unlimited supply of free music on the internet. Try OCRemix or go to LegalTorrents.com. It is really amazing. 3. Has anyone else noticed the dropping CD prices? They are. And it is good. For example, I recently purchased the new Outkast joint release for about $15 from FYE. Fifteen dollars for two cd's of very quality music- one of the first two cd's in a long time where I can honestly say I enjoyed each and every track. The arguments against file sharing are becoming weak and outdated. I do not necessarily agree with the barrage against filesharers that is happening now, but they are losing money, and that is not arguable. However much they are losing might be, but they are losing money, and having bad publicity. In conclusion, iTunes, low prices, good songs, and legal free songs have changed the way I listen to music. I hope we continue to make progress.

Re:Confessions of a past sharer

[nmjon]

Who do you work for? I haven't noticed dropping CD prices (Ijust checked last week) and haven't heard a CD in along time that I loved every track. I don't like iTunes, my demands have not been met. So There!

Re:Confessions of a past sharer

[dracumas]

This is funny, I went to Columbia House like an hour before these past law suits, and they had some sort of sale. Well needless to say I purchased a CD that was $14.99 at sale price, I ended up paying $25 for the damn thing at the end of check out. I still have no idea how the fuck I ended up paying so much, but let me tell you this is my last CD purchase, they can kiss my ass. Price drop my ass, and my demands have not been met, iTunes and Napster both suck, they dont carry half the music I listen to.

Oh.

[plagioclase]

When I first glanced at this headline, I thought it said "RIAA Files 477 New Filesharing Laws".

The scary part is I thought it might be possible: a new strategy where they get their whims written into law by flooding lawmakers with proposals introduced by their congressional and senatorial 'pets'.

I guess the real headline isn't quite as frightening.

Or, use iTunes

[bonch]

I don't mind the RIAA getting *something* for the bits that were downloaded for free, what about 0.99$ US per provably non-fair use download plus court costs for their time?

How about you just not illegally download in the first place and use that 0.99$ US to grab a legal tune off the newly updated iTunes?

My Music Library.

[Biotech9]

Around a week ago i divided my music library into 2 smart playlists, one was 'Songs I own', and the other, 'Songs I don't own'.

Intially there was just around 10 gigs I did own, and 15 i didn't. Then i decided not to add more music unless It was stuff i DID own, and I had to take away correspondingly much from the playlist of music i DIDN'T own.

I now have around 15 gigs I do own, and 10 i don't, which has led me to two points.

(1) Why did I do this, was it because the RIAA are scary? Or am i obsessive compulsive?

(2) The playlist for music i don't own is actually now (now that i've stripped it down to the good stuff), a really good shopping list of music i should buy. And i probably will.

So, does the RIAA tactics work? Am i going to buy new music because of these scary law suits?

(really, i want to know!)

Re:My Music Library.

[smcv]

I know what you mean. Idea: assuming you don't have 10GB of *new* music and a lot of that is older CDs, Ebay them or something - obtain a legal copy cheaply, and don't give the cartel your money.

You could also download some music legally, of course, or buy from non-cartel musicians (I have CDs by two of the artists I linked, and a third one on order).

Not Downloaders....

[vwjeff]

Everyone knows the RIAA is suing music downloaders

The RIAA is suing people who are making music available on P2P networks (sharing). As far as I know they have not come after anyone who is downloading and not sharing.

Free-As-In-Beer/Open Source Music

[OniOid]

It is my contention that art- ie. music- done with the intent to profit is less art. And there is indeed some music offered for free (perhaps composed without an intent to profit), available that is often as good or better than much of what's 'signed' .

That said, in these discussions about the RIAA, I'd like to see more mention/discussion of the kind of music and sites my subject heading refers to, such as perhaps metempsychosis

I'd also like to see any taxes that may be on my CD/DVDs/equipment to help to support, without my consent, 'The Music Industry' promptly removed, lest I infer that these taxes insinuate something about what the industry wants me to do with its "music". Not that I would really want to.

"Beer wants to be free." -- favorite quote from a user hereon apparently

Penny Arcade...

[mog007]

This reminds me of the Penny Arcade strip about the new Tribes game... When is the RIAA just going to let it go?

Uploaders

[nurb432]

I believe they are still only suing UPloaders, not DOWNloaders.

There is still some question about legality of downloading, ( especially proving intent ) and i don't think they want to open that can of worms and have it blow up in their faces...

Also most any ISP ( or large company internally ) tracks IP addresses to accounts ( for billing reasons ) so its pretty easy to connect a person to an IP at a particular point in time.

Re:Uploaders

[cpt kangarooski]

There is no question, and copyright doesn't require intent. It's a strict liability statute -- you infringe, it doesn't matter if your shit smells like roses. All that's required is that you broke the law, however unwittingly. At best the fines will be less, though there's still going to be fines.

They haven't gone after downloaders yet because it's a pain in the ass to sue anyone. So if you're going to do it, you want it to count -- you sue P2P services and shut down millions of people in one blow. You sue uploaders and shut down tens or hundreds of leeches with them. Sue a leech, and you only get one guy. It's wasteful overkill, and they won't bother with it right now.

Re:Uploaders

[Pofy]

>Also most any ISP ( or large company
>internally ) tracks IP addresses to accounts (
>for billing reasons ) so its pretty easy to
>connect a person to an IP at a particular point
>in time.

Not really, I don't think there is any way to see WHO actually used an account. One can have a situation with a family, who used the account? Or a friend comming over using it and so on.

Re:Uploaders

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

Unfortunately you don't need to know that. Whoever the account is billed to(and who has legal responsibility for said account)is liable for actions taken through that account. If I have an internet account and let my friend "bob" over to use it and he hacks into a bank and steals it blind (unrealistic I know) I'm going to be held at least partially responsible for his actions as an enabler. It sucks but like others have said, these are civil suits and the burden of proof is TONS lower than in a criminal court.

Congrats

[bonch]

Congratulations, you're a music pirate. How do you justify it?

If I'm an artist, are you going to tell me you have the right to rip me off because you hate paying for things? That's called being a freeloader.

Here's an idea for a backlash

[Windcatcher]

I'm a Pennsylvania resident. This year, the polling between Bush and Kerry in my state couldn't be closer, and we have a lot of electoral votes. They will be fighting over my state like no other this year. I *always* vote, and until now I've always voted with the party with which I'm registered. I'm registered with one of the two major parties (I'm not saying which one because I want them *both* to squirm).

I say we start a petition in PA: unless the parties DO SOMETHING (as in *ENACT LAW*) about the current situation regarding fair use, reverse engineering, infinite copyright extension, etc. our votes are GOING TO A THIRD PARTY. It doesn't matter which one, as long as it's not one of the two major parties. Let's make our message clear: IF YOU WANT TO RETAIN OUR LOYALTY AND HAVE A SHOT AT GETTING THIS STATE, YOU WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS BEFORE ELECTION DAY. I can't think of any greater kick in the political balls than this. The politicians have made it clear they don't care about us, so let's see how they respond to fear.

Re:Here's an idea for a backlash

[eofpi]

Unfortunately for us slashdotters, few people vote based on IP issues alone.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but there are some issues that are more important than Slashdot's favorite pet peeves. I'm much more likely to vote based on the candidates' attitudes towards a successor of the PATRIOT Act than I am on IP issues. And that's neglecting the fact that we'd have to pull out of a WIPO treaty to do much about the DMCA.

Re:Here's an idea for a backlash

[zerocool^]

here's one take on the presidential race.

~Will

been waiting 3500 years

[Archfeld]

Someone will have to prove the RIAA is not operating in 'Good Faith' based on the facts available at the time. Really hard to do in the US, less of an issue in say GB. I am wondering at what point they will find my anonymous ftp with just the standard disclaimer for private authorized use, and the 20 gb of legally owned music I have placed there for my streaming use at work. Windows Media player is approved for use and streams thru the corporate firewall but MP3's/Ogg's on your machine will trigger an audit flag, so I stream it and it is viewed as a temp file. When did it become the crime to display merchandise vs stealing it ? I can produce a purchased legal copy of every track of music I have on my drive, excluding the Public Domain and artist authorized stuff I have. My question is this, I have a reel-to-reel player and working copies of lots of music I bought many years ago, I've hooked the old dog into my system before but it was a pain, can I download an MP3 copy of that same material legally ? What about the 8 track cassettes I have by the hundreds ? Much of the music is not aquirable anymore even if I wanted to buy it again ? Where does fair use start and end, if it in fact does start in the US anymore...There was no concept of the license to physical media BS that is being disputed today so there is not a question of violating an agreement made at purchase time for the original source. I am sure that there is some sort of imbedded id that can determin that many of the MP3 copies I have are not from the SAME actual source I own but is the same tune from the same MASTER copy/performance recording or some digital descendent of it.
Musicians and Artists deserve a decent living, but the fact that they are getting screwed is NOT NEW, or unique to the technical age. They've been dying penniless or even worse killed off by nobility after producing somthing great to keep them from reproducing it, or over some difference of asthetic opinion. Like the size of the king's nose or the fact that the queen resembles a rodent :)

History,
we are doomed to repeat it because we keep re-writing to fit the view we want rather than deal with the reality we create.

No lawsuit has gone to trial yet...

[huchida]

No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown

I wonder how many of those served have torn up the summons and said "come and get me."

I find it hard to believe they've all settled, especially considering how many are college students (presumably with some arrogance, ideals, and no credit history to lose.)

I'll bet the RIAA isn't going to take a single case to court, at least not yet. They're getting an incredible amount of attention for their scare tactics, are they going to take the chance (however slim) that they might actually go to court and lose?

Advertisers web site has been rendered useless

[ChrisOstmo]

It's more than a little humorous that the web site of the company that claims to have beaten pop-up blockers has been rendered useless by their own technology. The fact that their ad is posted over the top of their content makes it impossible to see what they are trying to sell. :-) BTW, the "pop-up blocker killer" appears to be a Flash animation - boy! those are tough to turn off! If this is for real, this company is staffed by mentally-challenged monkeys.

The Laborer,The Artist,The Music Exec & His Pi

[OniOid]

"If I'm an artist, are you going to tell me you have the right to rip me off because you hate paying for things?"

Natural parasitism exists, bonch. Are tapeworms wrong? ;)
More seriously, if you're an artiste and attempting to sell your works in a world where the internet exists, well, you know, things'll happen.

Personally, I'd just love to oversee some of the RIAA execs trying their hand for a few month's at Labour Ready... or subsurface mining or janitorial services, etc.. :)

The expected "winnings" from Downloading

[CodeBuster]

I thought that it would be interesting if someone from the Slashdot community took it upon themselves to compute the net benefit which the downloaders accrue given that they have some probability 'P' of being selected by the RIAA for a lawsuit which they can settle for a loss of $3000. It should be possible, in principle, to compute for a given probability 'P' of being sued by the RIAA how many songs (at $0.99 per song as per the iTunes rate) one should be willing to risk downloading before the total 'winnings' (the money saved by NOT paying for the songs) exactly balances the expected losses from being sued by the RIAA. We will make a few assumptions in order to simplify our mathematical model...

1. Let us assume that all users on the file sharing networks are equally likely to be targeted by an RIAA lawsuit (in reality this would probably be a function of the number of songs shared, they artists and genres of the songs shared, and the amount of bandwidth devoted to sharing them out). Let this probability equal 'P'.

2. Suppose that the RIAA can sue no more than 1500 people per year (this is probably being generous).

3. Suppose that there are approximately 3.5 million users engaged in file sharing on the various networks at any given second (this is probably a lower bound and the actual number is probably much higher). Now the probability of being sued by the RIAA, assuming that all users are equally likely to be sued, is 1000/3.5 million or approximately 0.003% chance.

Let the expected losses (per year) from continuing to download be P multiplied by 3,000 which is the amount that it will cost to settle in the event that you are sued. Thus the expected losses to the RIAA for each year that you continue to download are only $8.57
which means that if you were planning on downloading more than 8.65 songs per year then your expected savings over paying the $0.99 fee per song on a service like iTunes makes it worth your while.

Now for a few caveats...I do not advocate the steeling of intellectual property music or otherwise and the above should be treated as a simple (and possibly flawed) look at the mathematics of downloading stripped of any moral pretense or consequence. However, even given the crudity of this analysis it is possible to draw a few conclusions...

1. The RIAA lawsuits will probably discourage the small time downloaders and the basically honest people from using the file sharing networks to get free music, but these users are probably in the minority anyway (most people share at about 100 songs).

2. hard core downloaders are not likely to be dissuaded unless the probability of being sued or the amount of the damages or both significantly increase.

3. The RIAA cannot sue everyone so there will always be an equilibrium whereby a user downloads and shares just enough songs not to get noticed so that his expected winnings precisely balance his expected losses.

Um...

[dereklam]

seriously, other companies are charging institutions for the privelege of offering their draconian DRM laiden music services.

I think you may have the wrong idea about iTunes on Campus. iTunes on Campus isn't free music for students, like Napster et al. are trying to peddle. iTunes on Campus just lets sysadmins distribute the iTunes software for free, something the students can do anyway.

The students still have to buy the songs.

IP Address list

[cyberfunk2]

Where can we get a listing from this lastest round of JD suits ? Linkage anyone for being a super-karma-whore ?

Install a root kit on your own machine

[codepunk]

Install a root kit on your own machine and if you get sued you can just claim someone else did it while proxied through your machine. Seriously if you get busted for sharing music and you actually where doing it, I have about as much sympathy for you as I do for the people that pirate commercial software.

CD-Rs & prescription drugs

[jfengel]

Next time you come down to the US, could you bring us some of those cheap prescription drugs? No sense deadheading the trip down.

Re:CD-Rs & prescription drugs

[nettdata]

Can't... already bringing dope and beer.

Re:CD-Rs & prescription drugs

[Curtman]

I'll trade you for some cheap booze. But you'll have to meet me at he border, I'm not risking another cavity search. Thats just not cool.

Law Students

[TejWC]

Why is the RIAA suing Brown and Princeton students? What if they end up suing a law student?

Re:Law Students

[No Such Agency]

They want everyone to know that Ivy-League-ness does not confer immunity. No matter who you are they will get you. Law students may be better armed against these goons than you or I but they still have no hope against the RIAA's teams of bloodseeking attack lawyers. (Q: Can you get pregnant from anal sex? A: Yes, where do you think corporate lawyers come from?)

Re:Law Students

[jhylkema]

Hey genius: Neither Brown nor Princeton has a law school!

Lavy=form of tax

[phorm]

To be fair, I often wondered at the difference. A levy is more-or-less of form of taxation... so it's more a specific type of tax:
Levy (Dict)
Levy (thesaurus)

Levy

Most dictionaries seem to agree that a levy is actual the imposition of a tax (imposing a tax, as opposed to the tax itself). That being said, as a noun it is more-or-less a synonymn to a tax

Suing Downloaders or Uploaders?

[MrSin]

The way I understand it, they go after the uploaders NOT the downloaders right? If you share a bunch of stuff, you are a target. If you are a supernode, you are a target. But what if you bought pre-purchased music? Here in the Phx area we have several places that 'resell' music. You get yer old CDs and sell them to this place, which then resells them. Crap, that's 2 transactions RIGHT THERE that the RIAA didn't get their cut of. Why aren't they goin' after those stores? The stores are 'stealing' from the RIAA too aren't they? So, with this logic, I can go buy a CD at a re-sell shop, copy it, then re-sell it back to the same store. Sure, I'm gonna be out a difference of like $5, but that's sure cheaper than any online music store AND the RIAA gets zip of my cash.

It won't work with winner take all elections

[Simonetta]

If you vote for a third party it still won't make any difference in the USA. Because the election system is set up to be 'winner take all'.
Say there are two parties, evenly split, say 45% blue, 45% red, and 10% green. If some of the reds and blues decide to go green, either red or blue will still win because when the votes are counted (a loose word in Diebold country), it's the party that has one vote more than the other party who wins. Regardless of how psychotic the policies are.

Try another strategy.

Re:It won't work with winner take all elections

[Windcatcher]

That's why it's important to scare them *both*. Am I a Dem or a Rep? The polling is so close here that either party could win, and PA's electoral votes could swing the Presidential election. It would only take a few thousand votes to swing it either way. Which party is willing to take the chance that they might lose PA? I think if we sufficiently scared them both, they just might fall over themselves to do something.

Re:When will the backlash come? TIMED-OUT!

[Nom du Keyboard]

However, that may have provided only a temporary reprieve. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that is closely following the RIAA's campaign, the Internet address used by "Nycfashiongirl" was included in the batch of lawsuits filed on Tuesday against anonymous individuals, raising the likelihood that she will be drawn back into the courts.

Maybe her ISP has erased their log files by now, given the length of time that has passed, and can no longer identify her. Wouldn't that be a w00t!

Only 477?

[Haikiba]

If they REALLY wanted to make a statement, they would've sued 1337.

Hack'em with PG**-1

[Nom du Keyboard]

Someone needs to hack the **AA and their stodges and install Peer Guardian with an invented block list (i.e. they're blocked from contact with the rest of the world and can only talk to each other). They'll be happy because they won't see any filesharing any more -- and the rest of us will be happy too!

It's like that on criminal side, too.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Couldn't the same be said for people who didn't do it? A lot of people take guilty pleas who were innocent rather than running the risk of receiving a full sentence, especially if the plea is for $3000. It would cost more than $3000 just for a retainer to get a lawyer.

Quite.

In fact, that is one of the biggest arguments against the death penalty in criminal cases. It seems a significant number of people who are completely innocent of the murder for which they're accused plead to reduced charges (like second-degree) and do long prison time rather than risking death.

Ditto plea barganing on other crimes with less than the death penalty, but still with major penalties. Plea barganing plus other sentence-lightening factors ("good behavior", overcrowding releases, judges giving light sentences, parolle, "mitigating circumstances", etc.) ended up with bad guys getting miniscule sentences (the "revolving door"). So legislatures inflated the penalties to compensate. But somebody who actually fights typically gets the inflated penalty - and praolle boards don't release people who refuse to "admit responsibility and show remorse", meaning they serve it all unless they continue the lie that they did the crime. And the penalty inflation feeds back into the plea-barganing success rate and feeds the convict-making factory.

This is the legacy of over a century of "drug war". Back in the '60 people thought that civil disobediance would overload the system and they'd have to throw in the towel. The system responded with first the plea-barganing mechanism to unload the courts. Then it created RICO to fund the whole machine (by siezing the assets of the accused), create an incentive for MORE accusations AND stripping the accused of the resources needed to hire a defense.

Thus the criminal justice system has been complelely corrupted by this mechanism.

Why should we expect anything else from the civil side of the law, where large institutions with large resources, such as RIAA, can pull the same self-funding extortionist hack on thousands of little guys?

= = = =

The first bright side I can see is that the initial assault on dual-use technologies (such as peer-to-peer file sharing) is being blunted. So the RIAA is finally moving toward the model they SHOULD have started with: Going after the actual offenders.

Now comes another step: Forcing them to back off from the wholesale extortion approach and stick to provable violations with substantial evidence.

A third step will be to settle the fair-use issues and get them backed off from harassing the fair-users. At that point they might actually have some claim to a moral high ground, going after only real copyright scofflaws. With a legal system that protects the falsely accused, the non-violators can start to breathe easier.

Finally (and not necessarily in that order) will be dealing with the insane extension of copyright terms.

If we succeed on all four steps we can finally reach a reasonable copyright law and enforcement regime.

Black hat solution?

[melikamp]

I suspect it's been suggested before, but anyway: how about writing a file-sharing virus? A user then will be able to claim that her computer was infected at the time of uploading, and that she had no knowledge of the file sharing taking place. It doesn't matter if the virus isn't very successful -- it just has to be out there.

The biggest problem with copyrights, IMHO, is that on P2P networks the information almost distributes itself. Under the current model, pirates are still liable, althogh not nearly as much as people who started their own CD pressing plant (I'm speaking in practical terms here -- it seems that every individual pirate is only hurting RIAA a little, and is much harder to prosecute).A virus-like software would completely remove the liability.

Transformative Uses of an MP3

[blckbllr]

I don't know how many of you speak legalese, but what about a transformative use of an MP3? When determining whether a person has engaged in copyright infringement through the use of a copyrighted material, courts often look at whether the use was a transformative one. In this context, "transformative" can mean "different from."

For those of you with access to law libraries, look at Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 280 F.3d 934 (9th Cir. 2002). The opinion in Kelly has been reissued, but it has not changed with respect to the discussion on transformative uses.

Unfortunately, I do not have the skills to implement the following idea:
What if someone could take an MP3, parse the audio signal into a series of colors and/or symbols, and reproduce that music as a digital image. For example, maybe using this software would reproduce a Korn song or a New Found Glory song into a landscape, artscape, or colorscape. This would probably constitute a transformative use because the music has been converted into a digital image. The next step would be for someone to write software that would take these digital images and re-interpreting them as music. However, the decoding process should work with any images, less a court find that the decoding software is contributing to copyright infringement. I think one tenant of copyright law is that so long as there are legal, noninfringing uses of the device, then the device is generally legal (e.g., a VCR).

Anyone given any thought to making transformative uses of MP3s? This way, one could distribute an "image" of New Found Glory's "Better Off Dead" without technically committing copyright infringement.

Love to hear your thoughts.

-BB

Re:Transformative Uses of an MP3

[shark72]

Excellent post. That is one of the points that lawyers for the original Napster tried to make. The 9th circuit court smacked them around with the clue stick. Here's an good summary. Snip:

In this instance, however, the Court found that there was no such transformative use since the original works (songs and recordings) were merely copied in whole and thus the new work merely replaced the old, citing cases involving the mere retransmission of a copyrighted broadcast or creating an MP3 format from an audio CD).

One concept familiar to members of the legal profession but not to many lay people is the "laugh test." "I'm not pirating this music, I'm transforming it" may sound good to a lay person but would not likely pass the laugh test in court.

Re:Transformative Uses of an MP3

[blckbllr]

Shark72,

As a law student, I feel obligated to respond, if only to make a losing point:

If you have access to a law library or other material, grab a hold of A&M Records v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001). Specifically, turn to page 1015. If you do not have a case report on hand, here is an excerpt from that page regarding transformative uses:

Courts have been reluctant to find fair use when an original work is merely retransmitted in a different medium. See, e.g., Infinity Broadcast Corp. v. Kirkwood, 150 F.3d 104, 108 (2d Cir. 1994) (concluding that retransmission of radio broadcast over telephone lines is not transformative); UMG Recordings, Inc. v. MP3. com, Inc., 92 F. Supp. 2d 349, 351 (S.D.N.Y.) (finding that reproduction of audio CD into MP3 format does not "transform" the work), certification denied...

I believe that the 9th Circuit found that there was not a transformative use in converting an audio CD to its MP3 representation. However, I would agree that converting an audio CD to a pictorial representation (e.g., a .JPG or .GIF file) is a transformative use because it converts from one sensory perception (i.e. auditory) to another sensory perception (i.e. visual). In both Napster and UMG Recordings the courts seem to focus on the fact that transforming an audio CD to a MP3 does not change how that information is perceived. I would argue that by changing how the audio is perceived, that is, by converting it to a visual representation, then the resulting, visual work is a transformative one. There are three other factors to consider under the fair use exception, and we could discuss whether converting an audio CD to MP3 to JPG weighs in favor of the copier or of the copyright holder.

What are your thoughts?

Re:Transformative Uses of an MP3

[RexxFiend]

I'm not talking from a legal standpoint here but isn`t that already what an mp3 file is? What part of the digital data in an mp3 could the artist point to and say "I created that"?

What about divx movies? If I didn`t own the divx codec then does a divx on my machine still represent the original movie?

I know this is largely semantics but if they are going to argue that a representation which can be used to "recreate" the copyrighted works is a breach of said copyright then how about those movie "reviews" which describe each scene in a movie; I could read one of those and recreate the movie in my head. Is that breach of copyright? Is my head infringing the DMCA? Clearly not as I am not creating a perfect reproduction.

But neither do mp3's.

Re:Is it just me...

[Decameron81]

Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music.

Beg you pardon but morality has NOTHING to do with piracy. It may be your personal belief that it's wrong to download a song to sample it, as you've stated, but that doesn't make it morally wrong to others who may have completely different beliefs. Laws are not intrinsecally right, and if you think they are it means you're not being objective.

But from a legal point of view you're right: it's currently illegal to share copyrighted material in most countries. And while I agree that sharing music which took a great effort to compose is not fair, I am not going to silently accept it when a big company tries to scare 13 year old kids and make them pay gold for something that is worth just dimes.

And SCO is evil

To me it is. They're trying to do the same thing the RIAA wants to do with their trials. That is to win money by scaring people.

Because what we're basically seeing here is a big company scaring individuals into paying them money with no real proof whatsoever. In no trial would internet logs or copied IPs be considered as proof. But the RIAA has the power to scare people into paying them money in sight of a trial. And basically there's no way out from there.

Wake up. This is a business model, and by not complaining, you're accepting it. Or are you telling me that if I record a movie from TV and lend it to a friend I should be sued for thousands of dollars too? Because that's no different from sharing songs, you know?

But hey, laws are laws... and you better be careful with what you do, cos next thing you know they will be coming after YOU.

Diego Rey

"But I already PAID to make a copy!"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Yeah, you keep singing, and don't forgot to pay your tax on every CD-R or MP3 storage device that you buy... nevermind that that probably far exceeds losses by piracy

Which brings up a question:

Has anybody tried the defense that they already PAID to make the copy by paying a tax on the medium, so the RIAA is double-dipping?

That might make them think twice about both the tax and the suits. B-)

You want to cops scanning your computer..

[acomj]

Be carefull what you wish for...

Re:Is it just me...

[00420]

The only reason one would be upset is if they're a downloader themselves, and if you are, you must admit what you are doing has no legal or moral basis (or you'd be a hypocrite).

I'm sorry, but would you be so kind as to define my morals for me.

this has got to stop and this is why....

[MoFoQ]

this really has to stop. 2,454 lawsuits, none go through, but it still, it means that the courts have to process not just the initial suits, but also the settlements. That takes time away from more deserving cases including tyco, enron, worldcom, reliant/dynergy (in california), etc. (the civil suits that is). It's a waste of taxpayers money to do this. And using public resources to further one's bottomline is suppose to be a no-no. Of course the old argument that this is a form of extortion; the fact that the whole and sole intent of filing the lawsuit is to intimidate and force those who don't have an army of lawyers at their disposal nor the law-savy to know that they have rights, pretty much get defrauded.

And another, just because they settle the civil suit doesn't mean smooth sailing from that point on. There's still the risk of a criminal suit if an "anonymous informant" gives the feds the info, in which case, the Recording Industry Ass. of America can and might get some more money. Double jeopardy in their favor (or lack there of).

In essence, you can actually categorize the Recording Industry Ass. of America as a terrorist organization. Webster's dictionary defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion." Using a threat of legal action against defenseless, unexpecting individuals with an army of lawyers definitely qualifies as inducing terror as a means to coerce or to extort. Hell, I prefer the mob over the Recording Industry Ass. of America. At least they don't target 12yr-old girls. That's low; lower than Hamas in some ways. (I won't use Michael Jackson to compare and contrast....as the saying goes "innocent until proven guilty* *-Unless you don't have millions for an army of lawyers") To target kids with lawsuits, the old addage, "taking candy from a baby" comes to mind and it's not right.

At least the RIAA has finally shown its true colors. Wait until they sue someone who died while serving their country (or a person in a coma); there will be hell to pay then. I hope that the politicians (especially those facing re-election) finally set up to the plate and condemn them and start passing more strict (or start enforcing existing) laws that prohibit using lawsuits or the threat of such with the sole intent to settle, which amount to a form of extortion.

Over here!#%!!!

[jcuervo]

They missed, damn it.

I got to paint a target on my ass or what?

Music Downloading for the Rest of Us.

[SolvayGuy]

I think that we need to go back to mass f2f (friend to friend) trading of bootlegs and cassette tape copies, you know, get a whole group (like 500 or so.) of people to burn a cd or tape, get off of their computers, and meet in a public place and just trade with each other, or just do it like we did in the early 90s when America discovered Grunge (Nirvana, Perl Jam, etc) from friend to friend through a combination of word of mouth and cassete copies. I think the RIAA wont even touch this with a ten foot pole. Of course, I can sort of imagine little music riots if the RIAA does try to touch it with said pole. P.S. There are plenty of bands who are willing to sell you their music. Try them. Also, for the more daring there is a place to go for some choice tracks.

In the words of John Stewart...

[SnprBoB86]

MAN! that dorm is BUSTED!

Why is it so hard for you to figure out?

[Explodo]

If you don't think the CD is worth the money, don't buy it until you find it for less in a used bin somewhere. It will happen. You might not have the latest music RIGHT FUCKING NOW, but maybe your attention span will grow a little while you wait for it to show up.

UofM responds

[BlackHorse]

Dear Students:

Yesterday (April 28), the Recording Industry Association of America
filed a lawsuit against two unnamed individuals who use the University
of Minnesota computer network. The lawsuit alleges that the unnamed
defendants illegally downloaded or shared copyrighted materials. The
University is not named in the complaint.

The RIAA has begun a series of lawsuits against individuals it believes
have violated the copyrights of its members by illegally downloading
and uploading music via file-sharing programs over the Internet. The
RIAA has targeted specific computer addresses used to access and
transmit such files, and then has issued subpoenas to the service
providers (including universities) in order to find out the names of
those responsible for the file sharing. With the lawsuit it filed
yesterday, the RIAA asked that such a subpoena be issued to the
University.

Under federal law, the identities of students using the University's
computer networks are not public information. Should the RIAA's request
for a subpoena be granted and the individuals involved are students,
the University would be obligated to give the students notice before
their identities were made known. This notification would allow the
students an opportunity to object to the subpoena.

The University of Minnesota expects that students will use University
information technology networks and resources lawfully. It is critical
that all students using the University's network abide by our
Acceptable Use Policy
(http://www.fpd.finop.umn.edu/groups/ppd/d ocuments /policy/
Acceptable_Use.cfm) and standards for use
(http://www.fpd.finop.umn.edu/groups/ppd/docu ments /appendix/
UseGuidelines.cfm).

Students living in residence halls must also abide by the user
agreement prohibiting copyright violations through file sharing.

Any student involved in illegal file sharing could be subject to a
lawsuit. To avoid legal action over inappropriate file sharing, it is
important to understand the proper use of University computing
resources. While some file sharing is completely lawful, some
file-sharing is not. In addition, the programs typically used to
download files from the Internet (e.g., KaZaA, Morpheus and BearShare)
often turn the individual's computer into a file-sharing (uploading)
server. Even unknowingly uploading some copyrighted works may subject
you to additional legal risk. To prevent this, users must specifically
disable the file-sharing features of these programs.

You may find the following information helpful in educating yourself
about the appropriate use of networks and resources.

On disabling file sharing:
http://security.uchicago.edu/peer-to-pee r/no_files hare.shtml

Additional information:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106.html
http://www.cybercrime.gov/iplaws.htm#Xb

Can't resist feeding the troll

[Prof. Pi]

It's not the RIAA's fault lawyers are so expensive.

No, but it is their fault for exploiting that fact. When they go around crying a river about how some evil pirate has cost them millions of dollars, but then they're willing to "settle" for a tiny fraction of their alleged losses, an amount which just happens to be less than the cost of hiring a lawyer, it's clear that they're just adopting the same tactics as organized crime. You know -- pay for protection because "you never know what could happen to a nice joint like dis."

If they really cared about their rights, they'd sue these people for everything they were worth, just to make an example of them. But then the targets would have to fight back. Still, they'd make so much more money that way, if your claim that they're right is true. Their current strategy suggests that they are the ones who can't win, because their cases are weak.

You know, people who tend to defend corporations have complained for years (justifiably) about frivolous cases which force the company to settle because some bean counter has calculated it's cheaper than fighting a contingency-fee lawyer. Too bad we don't hear too many of them criticize the same abuse when it runs in the opposite direction.

Answering your serious question to that other guy.

[AndyL]

However, many artists do not support P2P. Do you think this latter group is misguided?

Only time will tell. I suspect that those of them that have given it any thought are probably not thrilled with the way the recording industry works but they're not idealist enough to think that any other mechanism will work out. They may be right.
I also suspect that there's some sort of gambler's dilemma in action. If some sort of alternative low-cost/free music distribution were to magically replace the current recording industry we'd probably see a lot less richer-than-god rock stars as they're mostly an artifact of advertising. If you believed (correctly or otherwise) that you had a good shot at being that one-in-a-million Big Hit, you wouldn't be eager to adopt anything new. Again, I can't say for sure that this is the wrong attitude to have. They may be right.

"to make unauthorized copies of their work even though they would not want you to? "

By "their work", you mean the record company's property? When you buy a CD the artist's work is only a small fraction of what you're paying for. A large portion of it is the recording industry's PR and advertising, various levels of bureaucratic expenses, congressional lobbies, giant legal departments etc. Admittedly, all that costs money and businesses have to pass their expenses to their customers, but I don't want all that and I think the world would be better off without it, and I'm especially not thrilled at the idea of paying for it. (Whether it is my legal right to make this decision does not particularly interest me. I know I won't get caught. And I know it does not conflict with my morals.)

In short -- are there some people to whom the Golden Rule should not be applied?

"Do unto Others as you would have them do unto you."

It's generally understood that this carries the implication "if the situation were reversed". (No one expects a beggar to immediately give all the spare change he collects to the next person who happens along.)

Given this I feel no problem ripping off the recording industry itself. I've been brought up to understand that if I try to swindle someone(legally or otherwise.) they'll try to swindle me back. Nothing personal that's just the way the world works.

If I were to copy a CD I would feel guilty about ripping off the artists themselves of course, but if they choose (and as you pointed out, it is their choice) to only deal with me through a giant faceless corporation(and not all of them do.) then I'm not going to feel any more guilt about not buying a CD than I do about the overseas sweatshops where my sneakers were undoubtedly manufactured, or the latest injustice by committed by the government I pay taxes to.

MUTE is the way to go!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net

It protects your privacy and makes it hard for anyone to know where a file is coming from. You do sacrifice some speed for privacy, but you can't have everything.

There's versions for Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

And just a suggestion, if you really want your privacy, you better start running Linux.

(and the text based xfer is base 64 so it adds about 1/8 extra data to a file and allows packets to pass through other nodes easily since everything is passed within the network protocol)

Says who?

[trezor]

• But it is dangerous to engender a disrespect for the law.

Says who? Disrespect for unjust laws or unjust lawenforcement is a necessity for a working democracy.

If you allow unjust laws to go by without any fight, you open democracy for abuse. Disrespecting "the right" laws is healthy for a society as whole in the long term.

And, no, I am not a commie-hippie. I'm a so called rational anarchist. That may sound like a self-contradiction, but as long as we got a democracy, I want it working.

Another country, another guise

[Maljin Jolt]

Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses.

In cultures where legality is sane, you cannot sue a number.

What does really interest me, that in corporate America an IP gets its legal personality somewhat magically. Technically, a single IP does not imply identity with one person. What if it is NATed?

The adequate question comes to my mind: Do IP addreses have constitutional rights in U.S.?

Imagine, for example: "Vote 192.168.0.1 for President!"

Quit yer whining

[meadowsp]

It's not actually that confusing really, if you wouldn't do it in real life, then don't do it on the internet.

How difficult is that to understand?

Re:Protect yourself, use MUTE

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous servers aren't the answer. Boycott all of their contents is the answer. When in doubt, don't listen to the music. It's not like your life depends on it.

ID'ing by IP address

[milkmaster]

I thought I had heard that issuing arrest warrants against DNA is not allowed. If this is true, and an ID based on something unique to a person is not allowed, how can ID'ing someone based on something not unique to a person be allowed?

Re:Stop wondering fool. Just share 1000s of mp3s

[Kethinov]

Most people sharing these days operate behind massive community networks. You get as far their community IP address and stop there. There could be as many as thousands of people behind that single IP. Makes it hard for *AA to get a positive lock on who's sharing behind it.

You are correct

[bonch]

The entire post was an unknowing illustration of the very mindsets mocked in the list.