RIAA Sues More Music Lovers

DominoTree writes "The RIAA, a trade group representing the U.S. music industry has filed a new round of lawsuits against 744 people it alleges used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs, it said on Wednesday."

Comments

A chilling effect on sales?

[erick99]

Yesterday I was taken to task about my comments related to a similar article where I stated that the RIAA was suing more of it's customers. I say this because there are plenty of people who download a song or even an album (I hate to buy an album and find that only one song is any good) in a "try before you buy" spirit. I did this recently and then took advantage of Real's $4.99 price for an album. I know that a great deal of people simply download and do not buy but it cannot be a blanket statement. Anyway, this particular round of suits are, once again, filed against John Does:

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) said the various suits, filed in courts across the country, cover "John Doe" defendants whose true identities are unknown to the group.

From the previous group of John Doe suits more folks have been identified:

Separately, suits covering 152 people who were previously sued anonymously but later identified and offered the chance to settle, were refiled with their true identities after they ignored or declined those offers, an RIAA (news - web sites) spokesman said.

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

Cheers,

Erick

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Pofy]

>I say this because there are plenty of people
>who download a song or even an album

I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading.

As regarding customers allready comiting copyright infringement, I do download music and it is not uncommon that I own such music allready, I just find it more convenient at time than to convert the music myself.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[poofmeisterp]

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

...which will lower their revenue further... which will make them find a scapegoat... which will target more technologies... which will prompt the creation of new technologies... which will prmopt more lawsuits.....

You see where this is going.

Also, wouldn't suing your customers piss them off, making them switch to alternate providers, further lowering sales, prompting you to sue more people in a desperate attempt to preserve your business model, causing them to stop purchasing from you (resume loop)?

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost."

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Monoman]

You should be "taken to task" for using Real. :-)

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[harlows_monkeys]

I say this because there are plenty of people who download a song or even an album (I hate to buy an album and find that only one song is any good) in a "try before you buy" spirit. I did this recently and then took advantage of Real's $4.99 price for an album.

Of course. Numerous studies have shown that file sharing probably overall does more good for the RIAA than harm, and so they should embrace it, at least somewhat.

However, one point that is often overlooked here is that this is their decision to make, not ours.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[jest3r]

I wonder when the RIAA will figure out that they are suing the wrong people ...

For starters the Internet is a global medium. I really don't see how picking on a handful of John Does in the United States will limit the availability of audio on P2P networks as a whole. Even if the RIAA managed to shutdown every computer sharing audio files in the United States people would still be downloading (from the rest of the world) and not buying.

The fact is it doesn't matter where the people sharing are ... because in order to stem to decline in CD sales you have to stop the downloads themselves.

I think the more successful campaign revolved around flooding the networks with low quality audio files. This way they could market CD's as a big step up. In fact even today low quality audio files are a major drawback of using P2P for regular folk.

Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after .binaries newsgroups, torrents or some of the other networks where people have been "sharing" high quality MP3's and lossless audio for years. Torrents have made sharing audio via websites even more accessible than ever before: to the point that Google searches for band name / torrent usually get results.

The RIAA seems to be 2 steps behind what is going on in the real world.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[ack154]

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost."

Somehow, I don't think that will be any time soon...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[glenrm]

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost. It is more likely they will be sitting in the room, and somebody will come in and say "screw you - you lost." They should have let iTunes happen much sooner. Still time, just have to quit fighting reality, they need to make sure several legal music sites have every song that they control and allow independant music as well.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[evil carrot]

Also, wouldn't suing your customers piss them off, making them switch to alternate providers

That's one of the issues here that you won't find in other situations - there's no legal way to acquire this music without the RIAA getting a cut. The RIAA knows this and the organization plays that card with a bit of hostility.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[MikeDX]

Yes but I can see the headline now!

RIAA Sues More Music LAWYERS

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Dan Ost]

Well, plenty of independent artists/labels exist. Perhaps being an
independent artist/label will become a selling point to a greater
demographic than it is now (will it then become uncool to those
currently interested?).

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[JWW]

However, one point that is often overlooked here is that this is their decision to make, not ours.

Yes, you're correct, our only decision is whether to buy stuff from them or not. The real irony of the situation is the harder they try to protect their revenue stream the more of it they will lose.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[SlamMan]

Thats retarted. It's like saying you stole a car from a Honda dealership, liked it, and then went and bought a Civic. (Yeah, I know, real property, not accurate analogy because the song is immaterial, etc). The point is, if its not a try before you by type of deal, or any sort of deal offered by the owner of the property (which is probobly not ther person you got it from), its not legal.

That said, I'm gonna fire up Limewire and get back to downloading.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[sadler121]

Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after .binaries newsgroups, torrents or some of the other networks where people have been "sharing" high quality MP3's and lossless audio for years.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn it man don't give them any ideas!!

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[southpolesammy]

Three reasons:

• P2P clients are much easier to use than torrent or newsgroup clients.
  
• The breadth of coverage available at any given time on P2P networks far exceeds that via torrents or newsgroups.
  
• Many P2P clients automatically setup the user as both a user and a supplier, which allows the RIAA to determine if someone has crossed that line into sharing, not just downloading. Without that ability to monitor for sharing, the RIAA is powerless unless they co-opt the ISP's to allow RIAA drones to monitor their network traffic.
  

Remember, the RIAA is targeting distributors. The fact that some just happen to be users is coincidental.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[halowolf]

Well luckily in Australia music sales revenue has been going up not down... oh, but we don't talk about that... never mind!

It looks like however that the RIAA will need to be taken, kicking and screaming into the new age of music. An age where hopefully more quality music will be produced and less populist blond breast augmented voice modified bimbo' won't be ruling the charts. Oh and a place where they might not be particularly relevant anymore.

I've been finding it harder to do the try before you buy thing as many stores I go to don't let you try before you buy for some bizarre reason. I find it bizarre because I would of thought that music stores would want to encourage people to buy music not make it harder for customers to pick something they would like. And the stores that do usually charge some quite unreasonable prices on their CD's for the priviledge, or simply don't have a good range of music to listen to.

But of course, its all the customers fault that they are demanding more than they are getting, and when they don't get it they then take it. Thats a rather naive however, there are people that will always steal music, software etc because they see it as better than paying. I don't but hey thats just me. Those people, I have no problem with them having to defend their actions in court. However this situation we are in is infact many shades of grey and not just black and white with such simple examples as those I have described. The RIAA members steal from artists too, that is documented in places that I can't be bothered finding.

Bah I can't be bothered wondering if what I've just written makes any sense. I'm going to bed! :)

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[MeanSolutions]

Well, with a car dealership, you at least have the option of taking the car you are thinking about buying out for a spin...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[djlurch]

They aren't "customers" if they steal the product that the record companies are producing. Who else do you suggest suing? Seriously? Who? If you owned a company, and your product was being liberated without your consent, who would you go after? The local fire department? George W. Bush? Circus monkeys?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

Which is presumably why the RIAA is suing people it clearly believes are not "its" (or rather its members') customers. Remember, the RIAA is suing people for "sharing" (mass distribution to anonymous strangers without authorization) the music made by its members, so that those anonymous strangers do not need to visit record stores or the iTMS and actually buy anything. I don't see a customer relationship there, I see a competitive relationship (copyright infringers vs the members of the RIAA), and one where one of those groups, the infringers, are apparently acting illegally.

Back when Napster was having every law in the book thrown at it, many Slashdotters argued that this was morally wrong because it was only Napster's customers who were infringing on copyrights, not Napster itself. In general, the operators and creators of these networks have, quite deliberately, created a tool that makes copyright infringement easy and potentially accidental. Meanwhile the focus has changed to these people.

I'm really wondering who's morally in the wrong here. The RIAA? Music owned by the members of the RIAA (and their suppliers) is, very obviously, being illegally distributed on P2P networks. The users? In many cases, the redistribution is obviously illegal but many still seem to believe in some kind of loophole to protect them, from a belief that they only downloaded the music (not realising that it became automatically "shared" the moment they did, and in any case knowing full well they were encouraging that illegal distribution to begin with), to a belief "fair use" implies any kind of not-for-profit redistribution (it doesn't..)

Sharman networks and their ilk? I'm sure there are a few idealists amongst these groups who envisage millions of garage-based bands turning their music into MP3s and distributing it for free, but, come on, when Shawn Fanning wrote Napster as an alternative to IRC based distribution, what were the majority of MP3s that were being distributed?

Sometimes it's necessary to side with the "bad guys". The entire problem with P2P could have been resolved had anyone been willing to build responsibility into the networks, so that nobody would have thought redistributing music without authorization was something they could do without getting caught to begin with. All this infrastructure has been built instead of building something that would have created a genuine, independent, alternative to the major commercial record labels - I say instead, because as things currently are, the current infrastructure is open to legal attack, and, clearly from the lawsuits, the networks seem to be predominantly used to distribute the music of the major commercial record labels, not the alternatives.

So, what we have here isn't custom, it's competition. It's legally challenged competition. It's not really doing anything the swivel-eyed idealists said P2P would do, because it's not designed to. I don't think the RIAA is suing its (members') customers.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[mayotte]

Please cite the studies.

I am no fan of the RIAA, but it doesn't really help the conversation to mention 'numerous studies' without citing them.

Thanks.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[BoomerSooner]

I would be willing to bet almost 100% of people who download/share music have been a customer in the past and probably will be in the future. I cannot name one person I know that doesn't own at least one cd, 8-track, record, tape, ...

Maybe you should read your own definition.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[antiMStroll]

"It's not really doing anything the swivel-eyed idealists said P2P would do, because it's not designed to."

That puts them on equal footing with the RIAA then because, other than unsubstantiated Chicken Little proclamations, harm from file sharing has never been conclusively established. Trending sales against sharing suggests the opposite, RIAA members were having banner years when Napster was at its peak. These legislative acts and prosecutions aren't doing anything the "swivel-eyed" lawyers running the RIAA claim they're designed to do.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

customer
n : someone who pays for goods or services

Someone who has stopped paying for music, in favor of downloading it from P2P, is no longer the RIAA's customer.

I would go so far to suggest that most down/freeloaders have little intention of paying for music while they can still get it for free.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fakeplasticusername]

I guess my argument would be that i think i shouldn't have to pay for music. I think the ideal would be realized if the artists distributed their music for free, and made their money off of performances. I would compare this to the art world. I can go to google and search for any work of visual art and find an image. Yet there is no uproar from the fine art world. If i want a more immersive experience, i go to the museum.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[shostiru]

Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after .binaries newsgroups

Usenet wasn't intended for file sharing and the RIAA can't make a case to that effect. A lot of Usenet admins also claim common carrier status. I don't know whether this has ever been upheld in court, and it's by no means the case that every Usenet personality agrees this is a good idea (c.f. Karl Denninger, who as I recall was the one who came up with "megabytes and megabytes of copyright violations" as the description for alt.binaries.pictures.erotica).

I expect if the RIAA does anything it will be to go after individual Usenet posters, not Usenet itself. On the other hand, people still post clearly illegal material on Usenet and seem to get away with it. Complicating matters for the RIAA and company, US citizens can use a Usenet server outside of the country, and that server's admins can tell the RIAA to go fuck itself.

torrents

They're certainly aware of it. We just got a DMCA notice for one of our users who was sharing movies using BitTorrent (I don't know the tracker). This has been going on for several months at least.

or some of the other networks where people have been "sharing" high quality MP3's

You mean like Direct Connect? Edonkey? Gnutella2? AFAIK every popular P2P protocol has users who've been hit with DMCAs, and many have been subject to more aggressive action.

To my knowledge outside of Freenet (and others which offer similar protections) there are no P2P networks immune to DMCA and lawsuits.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[bleckywelcky]

When the RIAA sues these people do they provide a list of the songs/albums that they say have been download in an infringing manner (or is this just for uploading)? If so, it might be beneficial to simply buy all of the items on this list. I don't know what the average settlement is, but assuming somewhere around $5000, you could pick up around 300 CDs at $17/CD on average (or perhaps cheaper if you use a CD club or something). And then, at least you have _something_ for your money. You could turn around and sell those CDs (or even return them afterwards, lol) and be better off than straight out settling.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

This is generally true of music too. Most record stores I see usually have listening booths. In addition, visit a band's website and it's very often the case that you can stream that band's music to your browser. Certainly that seems to be true of most bands I know of that aren't overplayed by the Clear Channel/Viacom bloc.

Of course, you can't usually download entire albums and keep them stored on your hard drive without paying for them, but then, a car dealership would balk at you keeping your "test drive" car at home, or driving it several hundred miles, while you wait to decide whether you're going to buy it.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Qzukk]

The entire problem with P2P could have been resolved had anyone been willing to build responsibility into the networks, so that nobody would have thought redistributing music without authorization was something they could do without getting caught to begin with.

How would you propose doing this? Magical Metallica detectors that can identify Sandman no matter how much its compressed or how its encoded? This is what the RIAA wanted earlier in this war on P2P software.

Btw, using the RIAA lawsuits to determine that the predominant use of the networks is illegitimate is somewhat wrong-headed. After all, they would only be suing people sharing music owned by their members, not the stuff that people have granted redistribution for (with the exception of the old granny they sued, who wasn't downloading anything). In fact, "clearly from the lawsuits", comparing the numbers of lawsuits to date by the RIAA vs. users of P2P indicates that either the RIAA is incredibly behind, or the number of p2p users distributing riaa-owned music is a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the other users.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[NoData]

1) I don't think the RIAA is suing its (members') customers

No? Those distributing songs came by their collections by some means. The most likely means is that they bought their CD collections themselves. In fact, I would surmise that the larger the collection for share, the larger the investment the file sharer has made in the RIAA's labels.

2) I'm really wondering who's morally in the wrong here. The RIAA? Music owned by the members of the RIAA (and their suppliers) is, very obviously, being illegally distributed on P2P networks.

The first thing to do is to dissassociate law and morality. A law can be moral or immoral. And, you can be of a stripe that feels it's immoral to break a law, whether or not the law itself is moral.

I think confusing these points is where so much sound and fury comes from in the file sharing debates. You have people yelling that sharing music is wrong. But that can mean one of two things: a) They think it's wrong to acquire music without compensating the entity that produced it. Or b) Regardless of their opinion on whether music ought to be freely shared, they think it's wrong to violate a law which guarantees exclusive distribution rights to the labels.

Most of the the discourse is about what we should do about b), copyright infringers. What constitutes infringement, who is liable, and what sort of punishments are just.

But I, and a lot of the people maybe you call "idealists," want to first challenge a), that these laws are just at all. We think it's a fundamental fallacy to apply the rules that govern physical property to intellectual property. The concepts of ownership, scarcity, reproduction, and distribution are completely different for information than for matter. A lot of the points us "idealists" make are subtle, and non-intuitive, because, frankly, people are not wired, are not evolved, to deal with non-scarce goods. RIAA and the like play on these naive intuitions by calling file sharing "stealing" because that's what it feels like, when in fact nothing is being stolen, because nothing is being lost. Only distribution "rights" are being violated. And these are a wholly artificial construct.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[ravenshrike]

Actually the same is true in the US of actual sales. However while vendors are selling more units they are buying less from RIAA depots and so the RIAA (falsely) reports it as a loss. If I had to take a wild guess at why vendors were buying less I'd say it was because people were stealing less CD's and so stors don't need to buy as much overstock

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

How would you propose doing this? Magical Metallica detectors that can identify Sandman no matter how much its compressed or how its encoded? This is what the RIAA wanted earlier in this war on P2P software.

Rather easily, as a matter of fact. If you want to publish music, you sign it, and you sign it with a verifiable signature.

Or you serve it from your own, tracable, website.

Your solution doesn't create responsibility incidentally, it just traces what music is being published. It says nothing about who is publishing it, and provides no means for the person responsible for ripping and uploading it to be caught. So I'm not sure why you suggested it, other than trying to come up with a randomly technically-unfeasable solution to try to ridicule something entirely appropriate. FWIW, I don't think it would help us create responsibility if we transfered the music only at a speed faster than light either.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[loyalsonofrutgers]

That point rests on the moral equivalency of a corporation and a person. We don't even give all people the full personation in this country (children have many restrictions put on them by society, for their own good), so why should a corporation be considered the equal to you or me?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[wthynot]

The idea is probably to sue for enough to cover the defendant's RIAA "boycott" for a few years. This way, even if the RIAA is only left with $1000 of the settlement money after paying the lawyers, it's still enough to pay for about 70 CDs (retail price). I guess it's probably cheaper to just buy the CDs (unless you never get caught, that is).

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Bodysurf]

"...Complicating matters for the RIAA and company, US citizens can use a Usenet server outside of the country, and that server's admins can tell the RIAA to go fuck itself..."

Thank goodness.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

No? Those distributing songs came by their collections by some means. The most likely means is that they bought their CD collections themselves. In fact, I would surmise that the larger the collection for share, the larger the investment the file sharer has made in the RIAA's labels.

I would suggest precisely the opposite. I would suggest the sheer weight of economics means that those who are sharing the most amount of music probably have the least number of the original albums.

The first thing to do is to dissassociate law and morality. A law can be moral or immoral. And, you can be of a stripe that feels it's immoral to break a law, whether or not the law itself is moral.

Thanks, but if you read my paragraph again you'll see this diversion really has nothing to do with anything I wrote.

But I, and a lot of the people maybe you call "idealists," want to first challenge a), that these laws are just at all. We think it's a fundamental fallacy to apply the rules that govern physical property to intellectual property. The concepts of ownership, scarcity, reproduction, and distribution are completely different for information than for matter. A lot of the points us "idealists" make are subtle, and non-intuitive, because, frankly, people are not wired, are not evolved, to deal with non-scarce goods. RIAA and the like play on these naive intuitions by calling file sharing "stealing" because that's what it feels like, when in fact nothing is being stolen, because nothing is being lost. Only distribution "rights" are being violated. And these are a wholly artificial construct.

You're not what I'm refering to as a swivel-eyed idealist, you're more extreme than that, and yes, I'm aware you exist, and I'm even aware there are people more extreme than that, and there's nothing much I can do to argue because we live on different planes.

I see nothing wrong whatsoever in creating a network where artists can voluntarily distribute their music far and wide to ensure that that music is heard, and if such a network challenged the copyright-kept blocs, then so much the better. The unfettered distribution of art is a beautiful thing.

But that, I'm sure you'll agree, is entirely different to coercing artists who have produced music to have their works distributed far and wide. Which is what anyone who rips music and puts it on a network for mass distribution to anonymous strangers, and anyone who takes those files and also makes it available for mass distribution to anonymous strangers, is doing.

We, society, have a written contract with producers of new and wonderful things that guarantees them the right to restrict redistribution of their works so that they can try to make some money from the people who use those works. The best part of this contract is that it's voluntarily, if you don't want to play a part in it, for the most part you can simply pretend that the music, books, films, etc, never existed. After all, with much of the work, it actually wouldn't.

Copyright is abused, and the current copyright laws are clearly abusive. There needs to be basic restrictions on how far a creator can go in restricting usage of their works (the DVD CSS fiasco is an example.) Copyright terms are excessive, I know very few businesses who would consider anything more than a twenty or thirty year investment a reasonable length of time to get a return. But this doesn't mean there's anything inherently immoral with copyright itself.

In any case, there's little or no excuse for putting the music of RIAA members (or anyone else) onto P2P networks without authorization. They had a right to at least be given a chance to recoup their investment from the people who use their music, we, through our legislators, gave them that right. Their rights do not restrict ours. We can do anything we want with the music we create. The only reason we have this discussion at all is because, obviously, RIAA members appear to produce a great deal of the music we actually like.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[drinkypoo]

No? Those distributing songs came by their collections by some means. The most likely means is that they bought their CD collections themselves. In fact, I would surmise that the larger the collection for share, the larger the investment the file sharer has made in the RIAA's labels.

No. Those distributing songs probably just downloaded them or the majority of them. This is clearly the obvious assumption for several reasons. First, if they are involved in file sharing, it is far easier to download than to purchase. You just do a search and make a little clicky clicky and the songs start downloading, that's way easier than putting in your credit card info or going to the store. Second, if they are willing to send the files to others, they are probably the type who feels they should be able to (or will regardless) download music. Hence, they are probably downloaded.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[drinkypoo]

It is their decision to make because we have made it their decision, and as a nation we [should] have the power to revoke that right. The fact that we haven't yet done so suggests that we are not in control of our nation - the corporations are. (This is not a surprise.) The Sonny Bono copyright act should have been seen as the clear conflict of interest that it is, but sonny met up with an evergreen and now we're going to be stuck with the damn thing probably forever.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[DeusExMalex]

let me get this straight... i can lay down $18 for a cd that probably isn't even worth the disk it's recorded on (where can i sign up?!) or i can, for free, download the same crappy music which will probably only be a waste of my time. mmm... good old "lesser of two evils"

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[LocoMan]

Not condoning the RIAA here (actualy, living outside of the US don't really care much about them), but I think the problem isn't as simple as that (IMHO, at least). Word of mouth isn't really a very effective marketing campaign when used alone. Just name one band that has gotten as famous as, say, Nsync to name one that was the product of lot of marketing, by using word of mouth on the internet alone, and artist can only really expect lots of interest on performances (therefore earning money of them) if they're somewhat famous, and to be famous there needs to be marketing (videos shown on TV, music played on radio, magazine ads, etc) which is expensive, and whoever pays for that wants to earn money in return, and that is a gamble to begin with since few bands get to be famous moneymakers to begin with. As I said, don't suport the RIAA and what are they doing, but I don't think it's as easy either, since the artists do need a huge backing up to have hopes of becoming famous these days and someone needs to pay for that, and hope to get back their expenses and some earnings because of that. Wether they're charging too much or geting too much back is something different, though.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[d34thm0nk3y]

Of course, if everybody started downloading stuff that wouldn't get them sued less people would probably get sued...


...ahem...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

Apparently there's a lot of people who like listening to crappy music, or maybe a lot of people don't think the music is crappy (I do). That doesn't change the fact that they aren't paying for it. I don't think you're making a point here.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Simonetta]

I clearly, openly, and honestly maintain that since the RIAA (and Disney) stole the public domain by indefinitely extending the copyright period, any and all downloading, copying, and sharing of anything, anywhere is morally and ethically justified. By using overwhelming financial resources to destroy the legal balance between copyright and public domain, they have abrograted their legal 'right' to own anything. Their claim to legal ownership is meaningless given their felonious actions. Any act that they do against us is a crime: extorting money from us and stealing our property.
They are the ones who have destroyed the copyright laws, not us. We are only protecting the public domain for future generations. It is right and proper that we do so.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Mard]

Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after .binaries newsgroups

Duh, they aren't going after newsgroups because then they'd have ISPs, with legal defense teams, to fight against instead of penniless college students or 11 year old kids. At this point, they aren't trying to END copyright infringement by suing people into bankruptcy, just deter it.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading.

I may be mistaken, but I am under the impression that simply downloading is not illegal per se. Copyright covers distribution, and downloaders are not distributing the songs, people who share are the distributors here. Of course, with most modern P2P programs practically mandating uploading along with downloading, this distinction gets pretty blurry.

Also, I think that this is how things should work, at the very least. This way, compliance with the law is in the hands of the distributor, who is in the best position to make sure everything is in order. Imagine if everybody who downloaded from a shady but legitimate-looking music store could get hit with a copyright infringement suit!

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

I would go so far as to suggest that most downloaders will probably buy the occasional CD.

Who's right, you or me? We both gave equal amounts of evidence (i.e. none).

Before you jump in with the "my version is more plausible" argument, consider this: lots and lots of people, myself included, have water on tap that is basically free, and yet we still sometimes buy bottled water that is the same or even worse quality than the water that comes out of our faucets. There is plenty of evidence that people will pay for things they can get for free. Whether they do this for music is still up in the air, but I don't think that we should assume the answer is "no".

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[DarkMantle]

Lets review some facts about the Recording industry.

• Fact: The artists on a Platinum selling album breaks even, while the record label makes over $100,000
• Fact: On a typical one ear tour as of the late '90s the band would usually make about $250,000+ to divide between them, while the record label would make a mere 10% of that.
• Fact: Other then rent for the offices, and paying the over paid executives. The record label has no expenses. It is up to the artist to find a studio, rent the studio, and pay for the mixing, mastering, and production of thier albums.
• Fact: Concert sales have increased since "illeagal" music trading. This is good for the artists, and bad for the record industry.

I say we skip the middle man, and use the internet as the "record label" to represent musicians, and watch them be happier for making more money because people will go to see them live.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Robotech_Master]

Actually, that's not quite true. A torrent client is a lot easier--and safer--to use than a P2P client.

All you do is click on the link and tell it where to save the file. How hard is that?

(Oh, sure, you have to install BitTorrent, but it's not like that's hard. Download, run program, boom, it's installed. No confusing configuring of shares directories that may result in you sharing credit card numbers or other undesirable information. You don't even have to worry about spyware if you use the plain vanilla BitTorrent from Bitconjurer.)

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[DeusExMalex]

my point is the same as bono's - "They say that home-taping is killing music, which is bullshit. It isn't home-taping. Bad music is killing the music industry."

replace "home-taping" with "downloading".

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Robotech_Master]

Whether or not there is harm is really just a sideshow. Even if peer-to-peer could be conclusively proven to multiply sales by a factor of ten, it would still be the RIAA's (members') prerogative to say whether they wanted those files traded or not...and if they did not, it would still be illegal to trade them. Having copyright on the works means that they get to decide what (outside of fair use--and P2P the way most people use it is not even remotely fair use) can be done with them.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[cpt kangarooski]

You are mistaken. Downloading is illegal as it constitutes a reproduction of the song, and reproduction is one of the rights which is exclusive to the copyright holder per 17 USC 106. Distribution is another exclusive right, but hardly the only one.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

Has it actually been decided what the legal definition of reproduction is? When I download, the only reproduction I perform is copying bits from the network card to the hard drive.

If you are correct, it seems unfortunate and wrong to put the burden on downloaders. Do I really need to thoroughly check out every place I download something from to ensure that they (and therefore I) have the right to make that copy? Of course, people on P2P networks have no expectation of legitimacy, but there are plenty of (imaginary) situations that do.

Is it then legal to buy a fake DVD from a street vendor, yet illegal to download that same DVD from a pirate internet site?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

"Bad music is killing the music"

Nope, it's more along the lines of "It's good enough to listen to, but not good enough to pay for."

In other words, music downloaders want to have their cake and eat it too.

Your home-taping = downloading argument is the bullshit, for several reasons. Home-taping as a means to acquire music cost both time (to duplicate the tape) and money (cost of a blank tape). For most people, the investment wasn't worth it.

Then P2P came along and eliminated both the time and money cost.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fatcatman]

But then people who are dowloading music instead of buying it aren't the RIAA's customers.

How do you know they aren't buying it, too, you idiot?

I just downloaded "The Girl Next Door". I hadn't heard of the movie before but I saw it while browsing for torrents and decided, "What the hell." It rocked. So much so that the next time I'm at Costco I'm buying the DVD.

If someone hadn't illegally shared that with me, the studio would have sold one less copy.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fatcatman]

I agree with you 100%.

These lawsuits don't matter a bit. I quit downloading music - now I swap entire collections with people in my town. Friends, acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, friends-of-friends-of-friends... "Oh, you're into digital music, too? You say your collection is 10GB? Mine is 60. Do you want a copy? Mind if I make a copy of your stuff while I'm at it?"

Oh, and better yet - this stuff tends to be full albums with higher bitrates. I've tripled my music collection over the past few months. The only problem with this approach is hard drive space - it starts to get expensive after a few rounds of trading.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[evil_tandem]

the real problem still is that these illegal systems are still more customer minded than the legal ones.

if the music industry would just get its head out of its a$$ and sell people the music in unrestricted formats for a reasonable price (reflecting the reduced cost of this medium), there would be no motivation to deal with these services. i mean it's not as if downloading music from kazaa is any way an easy pleasure anymore.

i actually feel that allofmp3.com has got it right. i would pay a little more, say 10 cents per mb. no restrictions, and i can get it at whatever quality i want, because i'm paying for the file size... perfect.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Pausanias]

You're not what I'm refering to as a swivel-eyed idealist, you're more extreme than that, and yes, I'm aware you exist, and I'm even aware there are people more extreme than that, and there's nothing much I can do to argue because we live on different planes.

And why is it that you cannot argue? Maybe it's because the poster actually has got a point. Copyright holders have achieved a coup by making sure that "stealing" (a morally wrong act) becomes synonymous in the general public consciousness with "copyright infringement" (violation of a privilege granted to entities by Congress with the idea that it would advance the public Good).

Let's get it straight: copyright infringement is not stealing. It is just illegal, and I would say unjustly so. People who disagree with digital copyright law are not "extremists," though copyright holders would like to label them as you do. There are many such people, here and elsewhere. They are not freaks of society. They have a voice that will only get louder and more influential with time.

In any case, there's little or no excuse for putting the music of RIAA members (or anyone else) onto P2P networks without authorization. They had a right to at least be given a chance to recoup their investment from the people who use their music, we, through our legislators, gave them that right. Their rights do not restrict ours. We can do anything we want with the music we create. The only reason we have this discussion at all is because, obviously, RIAA members appear to produce a great deal of the music we actually like.

Artists turn to the RIAA because they see it as the "deluxe" means of distributing their work. The marketing, concert bookings, etc. are hard to resist, especially when compared with how daunting it is to go it alone and have any chance of widespread recognition. That's the reason the RIAA makes a "great deal of music we actually like." They are the customs house.

It's very little use attempting to restrict the free flow of information. It may work now, but it won't work in the future. Any business model that relies on such restrictions is on shaky grounds. The RIAA needs to come up with a new way of making money.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

"If someone hadn't illegally shared that with me, the studio would have sold one less copy."

For the sake of consistency, lets substitute movie with CD, since this is the RIAA we're talking about here.

That said, I'm pretty sure the music industry would trade a few hundred potential album sales gained from P2P for the THOUSANDS lost to it. And as copyright holders, that's their decision to make.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[swv3752]

Wrong. It is out decision. We are stakeholders and more importantly, we are citizens of the United States. Stakeholders should influence a company's decisions. (Stakeholder include shareholder, suppliers, employees, and customers.) Citizens grant the right for the company to exist in the first place.

The members of the RIAA were granted corporate charters to promote the public welfare. Suing everyone can be argued to violate thier corporate charter. It could be grounds for thier dissolution.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[NoData]

No. Those distributing songs probably just downloaded them or the majority of them.

You might be right. It's an empirical question.

I just point out one thing. There's a finite regress here. Somebody is providing the tracks ripped from CDs. And I suggest that anyone who's providing MP3s from one CD is probably providing MP3s from most of their CDs.

And those people are the customers that are getting sued.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[jafuser]

It's ridiculous that the RIAA is making it impossible to use the P2P services as a legitimate and reasonable way to preview music, do research, listen to alternate mixes, or save the trouble of ripping music we already own.

Personally, I buy whatever music I come across which I enjoy. I should be able to explore what's out there without having to feel like I'm taking a risk.

Well, at the very least, this news was the catalyst for me to get around to renewing my EFF membership.

BTW, if you call them, they have a monthly donation option, which is good for slackers like me who are lazy about renewing. =)

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[cpt kangarooski]

Has it actually been decided what the legal definition of reproduction is?

Yes. 17 USC 106 sets forth the exclusive right to reproduce like so:

Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

17 USC 101 provides us with numerous definitions:

''Copies'' are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term ''copies'' includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

A ''device'', ''machine'', or ''process'' is one now known or later developed.

A work is ''fixed'' in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is ''fixed'' for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission.

''Phonorecords'' are material objects in which sounds, other than those accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term ''phonorecords'' includes the material object in which the sounds are first fixed.

Furthermore MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993), and the cases that are based on it, such as Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc., 75 F. Supp. 2d 1290 (D. Utah 1999), hold very plainly that due to the fact that most computers necessarily infringe even when displaying information because their architecture is such that the copyrighted work is unauthorizedly and illegally reproduced in RAM, which constitutes a new copy of the work, being a tangible object in which a work may be perceived.

Reproducing bits WITHIN the NIC, as well as to the hard drive, RAM, cache, procesor, etc. are all reproductions capable of infringment. It's a bizarre result, but that's what the law is right now. Please read through those cases and you'll see this.

And, incidentally, provided your DVD player has no memory onboard -- which it almost certainly does, being more complicated than an ancient record player -- while it is not illegal to buy such a DVD, it is illegal to make incidental reproductions in the act of watching it.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[pilgrim23]

I seem to recal from history classes that nameless warrants or as they were called: "lettre de cachet" was one of the major complaints the Founding Fathers had. I also recall that around 1776 this injustice was somewhat...remedied...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Carnildo]

Are you willing to go to prison for this stance?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Carnildo]

A "John Doe" suit is filed when you don't know the name of the defendant, but you believe you do have sufficient other information to identify the person.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

And why is it that you cannot argue? Maybe it's because the poster actually has got a point.

Or maybe you should learn to read or at least, if you're going to pretend it's some other reason, learn not to cut and paste the actual reason when you're quoting me and trying to come up with a "response".

Copyright holders have achieved a coup by making sure that "stealing" (a morally wrong act) becomes synonymous in the general public consciousness with "copyright infringement" (violation of a privilege granted to entities by Congress with the idea that it would advance the public Good).

Copyright holders believe, with some justification, that if someone gains something of value and doesn't pay for it, and that something of value would otherwise have been paid for, that it's tantamount to stealing. It isn't exactly like stealing, but the fact is anyone with even a basic grasp of concepts like amortization can see that (a) the type of material commonly copyrighted usually takes time and effort and resources and hence money to produce, and (b) that if you make it on the understanding that people who use it will pay for it, and instead those people don't pay for it, but they use it anyway, they're obtaining something that cost you without paying for it.

The fact the money's already been spent doesn't change that. And to many people, with some justification, that's stealing.

People who disagree with digital copyright law are not "extremists," though copyright holders would like to label them as you do. There are many such people, here and elsewhere. They are not freaks of society. They have a voice that will only get louder and more influential with time.

Nobody used the word "extremists", I said, and you quoted me as saying, that individuals such as the GGP, were more extreme than the idealists I was refering to. I think that's a reasonable depiction, given the idealists I was refering to, who were people who simply want to create an infrastructure providing a conduit for, and encouragement for the creation of, free art, are certainly less far away from the mainstream than those who argue, as you do, that existing copyrights should be ignored, that someone who's invested in producing music, or literature, or movies, or God-knows whatever, should have their legal rights to claw back their investments from those who exploit their creations curtailed. The attitude of "Fuck the artists" is most definitely more extreme than the idealists I was refering to.

Artists turn to the RIAA because they see it as the "deluxe" means of distributing their work. The marketing, concert bookings, etc. are hard to resist, especially when compared with how daunting it is to go it alone and have any chance of widespread recognition. That's the reason the RIAA makes a "great deal of music we actually like." They are the customs house.

...and, aside from being technically inaccurately worded (the RIAA is an association represents its members, it doesn't publish anything itself and artists most assurably do not try to get the RIAA to publish anything) that means nothing whatsoever. Those artists still choose, as is their right, to require people who exploit their creations to pay towards the costs of making those creations.

The fact is that all of this effort spent on creating a legally challengable network for the coercise redistribution of works by artists so that people didn't have to pay for them could have been spent on creating an infrastructure with a little bit of accountability that allowed artists an alternative way of distributing their music that bypassed copyright control blocs altogether. The RIAA, as proven here, can legally cause immense damage to this system, and the operators of these networks have done everything they can to encourage people to break the law and suffer the consequences. Meanwhile, artists who tried to work within

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[DeusExMalex]

first off - what's wrong with wanting to have your cake and eat it too? everyone loves cake, and what's the use of having it if you can't eat it?

now what's all this about p2p being free? that certainly isn't true. p2p costs both time and money, often times more of both than tape-recording. with tape recording, all you have to buy is a $5 pack of 3 tapes, and all the time it takes is the time for the tape to play through. w/ p2p it costs whatever your internet connection costs - if you're using broadband (which is most likely for people downloading hoards of music) that's much more expensive than buying a set of tapes. and have you ever tried to download an entire album? getting an entire album of songs that are decent in quality is not exactly a one-click procedure

the RIAA is just pissed that money is going to iternet providers instead of them.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

Reproducing bits WITHIN the NIC, as well as to the hard drive, RAM, cache, procesor, etc. are all reproductions capable of infringment. It's a bizarre result, but that's what the law is right now. Please read through those cases and you'll see this.

I'll take your word for it; I don't really understand legalese. Anyway, doesn't this mean that, even if you buy legitimate material (like from iTMS or wherever), every router that it passes through infringes?

How does this all work with fair use? It seems very odd to me that copying a DVD bought from one store is perfectly legal, while copying an identical DVD bought from a different store (which makes its own unlicensed copies in the back) makes you infringe. Of course, as you've shown, the law is often very odd. I guess it boils down to the whole "ignorance is no excuse" thing.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[poofmeisterp]

Don't get me wrong; I totally agree with you on that point. It has to happen SOME day.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

Maybe if someone was using their broadband connection exclusively for downloading music, ya might be on the mark. Of course there's things like games, email, Slashdot, and all sorts of other things that you can do with a broadband connection. P2P downloads is just one of many things people do with their broadband connections.

I haven't tried to download an entire album (I like many on /. believe most of it is crap), but I'm sure there are people who do. What else could account for the GIGABYTES of music people have accumulated? As a direct result of the convenience of P2P, people are amassing huge collections of music that simply was not feasable in the cassette-tape era.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[pilgrim23]

and a lettre de cachet warrant was issued when you don't know the name but you believe you do have sufficient other information to identify the person. looks liek a duck, quacks like a duck. Its a duck.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Qzukk]

Then it becomes a new problem... Who signs it? What keeps me from signing Sandman and distributing it? With a cert with Lars Ulrich's name on it? How much do I have to pay for the priviledge of signing my own music? Can I get it as cheap as an SSL cert? Self-generated like my GPG key? Or is the RIAA going to want to sign music itself so that its "experts" can make sure the music isn't copied from them? At a per-minute charge, of course, experts' time is valued quite highly. And these lyrics are great, glad our writers thought of them! As for serving it from my website, what if I can't afford the bandwidth? What if I want people who don't know about me already to get my music?

I didn't suggest it because it was a random technically-unfeasable solution, I suggested it because thats what RIAA has been working on for some time now: "fingerprinting" the sound of songs so it can figure out if it "sounds like" a song they own.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[GeekZilla]

trade a few hundred potential album sales gained from P2P for the THOUSANDS lost to it.

You are assuming that every one who downloads a song would have purchased the album/single if they had not been able to download it for free. This is not an absolute.

I cannot afford to go out and buy every album that strikes my fancy. Hell, I can't even afford one right now and there are several I would like to own. However, wether or not I choose to download the song/album for free does not change the fact that I cannot afford to pay for the album at this time and therefore I WILL NOT buy that album. I MAY download it, but the record company has not lost anything by me downloading it nor have they gained anything if I choose NOT to download it.

If the album was LESS EXPENSIVE, I would simply go buy it. It is their pricing practices that prevent a lot of people from purchasing their albums-not P2P.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Simonetta]

The only problem with this approach is hard drive space - it starts to get expensive after a few rounds of trading.

Try getting one of those $80 8X DVD writers from PriceWatch or other places.
Many places like Fry's on the west coast have sales on spindles of DVD blanks with each DVD disk selling for fifty cents or so. Each blank DVD holds 4.7 Gig or 7 CDRs worth of music; roughly about 80 albums in highest-quality variable-rate MP3 format.
DVDs can be oriented to certain genres of music, say all of 70's classic Rock on one DVD, the best 80 heavy metal albums on another, or the best 80 orchestral classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart) on another. Then trade by hand or mail genre DVDs. Or offload onto DVDs the stuff on the hard disk that takes lots of space but doesn't get played much.
I'm into collections also. It's far more advanced than downloading. If you live in a large city, don't forget to use the local library to fill any holes in your collections. Don't slack on indexing and cataloging the collections with spreadsheets like Excel or Access also. Perhaps in the future people will use P2P primarily to trade the listing files of their collections and then use parcel post or UPS to trade the actual collection itself on media like hard disk.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[geekee]

"I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales."

A person who is making hundreds of your songs available for download by anyone in the world is not your customer. He is your competitor.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

"...the record company has not lost anything by me downloading it..."

So then there wouldn't be any financial hardship inflicted upon the music industry if EVERYONE downloaded music from P2P instead of buy it, right? They're not losing anything physically, so therefore there is no negative effect. Am I properly following the Slashbot logic?

Or are you saying that the RIAA is hurt only when people who CAN afford an album download? And let me get this straight: you can afford a computer and an internet connection, but not a $15.00 CD?

Oh wait, you have another excuse! You're downloading to PROTEST the high prices of CD's! I got it!

I'm not going to say that the RIAA's business model is good or their prices fair. But that doesn't change the fact that everything you have argued still points back to the basic idea that, for whatever reason, you feel entitled to Shit For Free (tm). Is it that hard to be honest with yourself?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[merdark]

I *was* a customer of the RIAA. In fact, I used to buy quite a lot of CDs. But the RIAA lost me as a customer, due to their tactics and greed. Suing people was only the last straw for me. Why do you think people copy music? Let me outline to you why *I* became vehemently anti-RIAA.

So the internet MP3 music craze hit, I discovered internet radio. At the time, there were TONS of internet radio stations. By listening to these stations, I found huge amounts of new music. I had never heard anything like it before, it was a revelation. I found totaly new genres of music that I liked.

I'd also copy down the song names, and I was buying lots of music as a result. Now, I always preview the music before buying it. One song does not make me go out and buy an album. I have to like most of it to get it. CDNOW and HMV were often not bad for previews. But here is where the problem starts. See, the RIAA like to push only one type of music. Mass market pop drivel. And particularly they like to push RIAA licensed music. The primary genra of music I listen to is downtemp. This is decided *not* a market the RIAA likes to push. The RIAA has a significant influence over CDNOW and HMV, this becomes quite clear later on in this story.

CDNOW and HMV did not have previews for ALL music. Obvously, they want to provide previews for popular music first. Needless to say, much of the stuff I was interested in didn't have previews. So I'd download the album from p2p to preview it. If I liked it, I got the CD. See, I can tell the difference between CD and MP3 quality. Also some of my players don't like burned discs all that much. So I like buying CDs. I was happy with this arrangment of previewing using internet radio and downloading. I was buying record amounts music too.

Then the RIAA started bitching about downloading and calling people thieves. Seeing as how I occasionally downloaded things, this did not make me particularly happy. But it got worse. The RIAA attacted the online radio people first. I was getting more and more pissed off by their tactics at this point. Finally, they managed to pretty much kill most internet radio in the USA. Many of you will remember the likes of SomaFM going down, as well as many other stations. As I saw it, the RIAA tried to kill the one means of finding new music that I had.

Now I could still use european stations, and the one or two US based ones that manged to pay the RIAA tax. So it wasn't the end of the world yet. But BOY was I pissed. I was already buying less in protest of the RIAA. Then they really started targeting downloaders. By that point the online sites had far more previews, and I wasn't downloading nearly as much. But occasionally, I still needed to preview something for which no preview was avaliable. The RIAA started suing p2p users. They were trying to further limit my ability to sample music. Around the same time, more shit hit the fan.

Import albums always cost more than the US based pop drivel albums cost. It was always a sore point. Suddenly, HMV and other stores, start doing two things. If it's an import, it's *double* a regular cd. If it's a non-RIAA artist, YOU CAN'T EVEN BUY IT!! I don't buy any music now. Haven't for the last year or two. And it's the RIAA tactics that did it.

This is the chilling effect. It's very real and their sales figures are evidence of it.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[GeekZilla]

So then there wouldn't be any financial hardship inflicted upon the music industry if EVERYONE downloaded music from P2P instead of buy it, right?

Completely false. I never said they wouldn't be hurt by EVERYONE refusing to buy their music.

...Or are you saying that the RIAA is hurt only when people who CAN afford an album download?

Yes-see original post.

...you can afford a computer and an internet connection, but not a $15.00 CD?

Not exactly. I have a limited amount of money. I choose to spend that money on whatever widgets that I determine are most important to me and my family. What is left over is not enough for me to spend on an overpriced piece of plastic. Also, you are assuming that I have an internet connection and a computer at home and am not using one at work...

Let's draw your logical thinking process out just al little bit farther... just because I have enough money to spend on an internet connection (which might be free) and a computer (which someone might have given to me), then I must have enough money to buy a cd or an external CD burner or a new stereo or a new dining room set or a new computer or a new car. Come on, just because someone has X amount of dollars to spend on Y, does not mean they have ANY money left over to buy anything else. That is High School Logic (tm). That's like telling someone, "Well, because you have enough money to buy food you MUST have enough money to pay for the heating costs of your home." {begin sarcasm} That logic is just spectacular! {end sarcasm}

...you feel entitled to Shit For Free (tm).

I never said I was entitled to ANYTHING for free. I simply said that whether or not I CAN download music for free does not change the FACT that I CANNOT AFFORT TO BUY music and therefore the music industry has lost NOTHING!

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

"I never said they wouldn't be hurt by EVERYONE refusing to buy their music."

Oh I see, they're just not hurt when YOU don't buy it. What if everyone thought that way?

"I choose to spend that money on whatever widgets that I determine are most important to me and my family."

That's right, it's called 'budgeting'. However excluding something from a budget does not entitle you to it. That has been your argument thus far, and it's called a double standard. If your personal situation somehow excuses you from paying for music, who then SHUOLD be forced to pay?

"Also, you are assuming that I have an internet connection and a computer at home and am not using one at work..."

Interesting, I always thought that one should be doing work while at work, not playing on Slashdot. I suppose that paycheck is an entitlement too.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[MeanSolutions]

Yup, I totally agree.

However, from what RIAA is saying and doing, they'd rather you didn't even get that option to listen through an album in the store before purchasing it.

There is a swedish saying (translated verbatim as) "do not buy the pig in the sack" - meaning not to buy something without having looked over its quality first. At the moment, RIAA wants to revoke you that privilege to examine the product before buying it.

I personally believe that if you download an entire album to 'preview' it, that should not be an offence as long as you delete the files if you do not buy the album. That would be the 'common sense' angle.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[cpt kangarooski]

Anyway, doesn't this mean that, even if you buy legitimate material (like from iTMS or wherever), every router that it passes through infringes?

No.

Firstly, you're authorized to download it, and that implicitly would involve it going over the Internet to get to you, so it's sheltered by that authorization.

Secondly, the safe harbor at 17 USC 512 covers a lot of situations like this and can be used to protect those people in the middle, even where there was no authorization. Of course, in such a scenario, you, not being in the middle, are still in some trouble.

Although it kind of runs against the whole concept of downloading -- and therefore merely even looking at -- things via computer, I would advise you to expect that the law is going to follow the contours of common sense.

How does this all work with fair use?

Well, there's two bodies of thought with fair use.

The first is that it is a universal defense of equity that is available for anything that happens under Congress' copyright power (which is the ONLY power that can be used to grant copyrights -- other powers cannot, since it was specified as being in this one).

The other is that it is a defense to copyright infringement, but not to non-infringing acts that are nevertheless prohibited by Congress, whether under the copyright power or via other powers that are being used in a functionally equivalent manner. DMCA anti-circumvention is referred to as a paracopyright, meaning it's of this sort -- if you believe in all this.

In either event, as to downloading, that's traditional copyright law, and so fair use would certainly be a defense. But n.b. that each time you assert fair use, the court has to look at the specific facts and decide if it really is. No use can be said to always be fair or unfair. It depends on the totality of the circumstances each time. Thus some for-profit uses are fair, others are not. Some parodies are fair, others are not. A few trends might be visible, but I'd stick to running through the four-part analysis (see 17 USC 107) each and every time.

It seems very odd to me that copying a DVD bought from one store is perfectly legal, while copying an identical DVD bought from a different store (which makes its own unlicensed copies in the back) makes you infringe.

Well, I'm not sure I understand your example here. Still, I think in the context of the fair use analysis, what you mean is that you're thinking about the fourth factor.

If you make, say, a personal copy of a book (let's set aside DVDs to avoid complicating things with 17 USC 1201), and the master copy of the book you are using was one lawfully made by the copyright holder and lawfully came into your possession, then it has some, but little, economic impact on the copyright holder. After all, you paid once, and few people would pay twice. There's really no harm.

OTOH, if it's a pirated copy of a book, then even though what you're doing is the same, there is a greater economic impact since you didn't pay the copyright holder for the master copy. This could tilt the scales against you.

Remember, fair use is a matter of equity: you are basically appealing to the court's sense of fairness to let you do something that is against the letter of the law, but within the spirit of justice. If you have done something wrong, you're not going to get this kind treatment. It's reserved for people who do the right thing and only unfortunately run into conflict with the law. It might help to remember that the distinction between law and equity dates back to England: law courts did what the letter of a statute said. But you could appeal to equity courts -- basically the king, or his councilors -- who could override it in special cases for people who were sympathetic. In the US, we combined law and equity together into one court, but the latter is still only used in the last resort.

Or, if you like, think of the story of LaGuardia, who at one point was a judge,

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[rizawbone]

(The dictionary is your friend)

One entry found for numerous.
Main Entry: numerous
Pronunciation: 'nüm-r&s, 'nü-m&-; 'nyüm-, 'nyü-m&-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French numereux, from Latin numerosus, from numerus
: consisting of great numbers of units or individuals ; also : MANY
- numerously adverb
- numerousness noun

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[bezuwork's friend]

Just got back from a reception at Dow Lohnes in Washington, D.C. A partner there who does his work in online media was espousing these same ideas.

He was a prior counsel for Apple and just won a lawsuit for Tivo.

I came and went from his group several times during the evening. It seems a favorite statistic of his is that itunes recently sold its 100 millionth song but that p2p generates a billion copies a month. His solution? Have a subscription system - maybe 10 or 15 dollars a month. Everyone can copy p2p from other members - then the RIAA doesn't have to store anything, just have the central servers and maybe fingerprints to verify that songs are good copies. He thinks that would generate several billion a year for the RIAA, not bad compared to their yearly CD sales.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Solosoft]

One Word ... Fuck'em

Why would I buy a CD when I can get it for free ?

No one is going to change my ideas and perceptions on this.

Plus im Canadian !! I pay taxes and shit on my blank media ... so I can steal all I want.

God Bless Canada

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[GeekZilla]

However excluding something from a budget does not entitle you to it. That has been your argument thus far

No. My argument is in direct response to the statement made earlier about why the RIAA is losing sales. Let me re-iterate because apparently you cannot focus on more than one item at a time:

You said: ...trade a few hundred potential album sales gained from P2P for the THOUSANDS lost to it.

My response: You are assuming that every one who downloads a song would have purchased the album/single if they had not been able to download it for free. This is not an absolute.

.

I did not decide to not purchase an album because I can download it. I decided to not purchase an album BECAUSE I CAN'T AFFORD IT. The RIAA is losing record sales because people CAN'T pay for them.

Also, no where did I say that because I cannot afford to pay for an album, that I am entitled to download it for free. Stop putting words in my mouth and focus on the crux of this particular discussion. I will say it again to get it through your thick skull:

I did not decide to not purchase an album because I can download it. I decided to not purchase an album BECAUSE I CAN'T AFFORD IT. The RIAA is losing record sales because people CAN'T pay for them.

And as far as work goes, you ever hear of a break? Or managing your own time? Or perhaps a lunch hour? Now you're just tyring to be a flamer. Stay focused on my argument or don't bother to respond.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Zork the Almighty]

I would, if I thought it would actually affect public opinion. Oddly enough, the media seems to spin all the copyright stories one way... :(

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

I think I'm out of questions.

Thank you very much for responding to all of the stuff I asked.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[BakaHoushi]

But they ARE customers. Well, okay, a vast majority of them, anyway. There are some people out there who download an entire CD simply because they don't want to pay $15 for it. But that's not all people. Some people download a few songs then, if they like it, they buy the CD. That's how I discovered Weird Al. Once I downloaded a few songs, I went out and bought his CDs. The problem is that:
1. The RIAA assumes every download is a lost dollar. Not true. Some people OWN the CD then download the songs into MP3 format (because, I don't know, too lazy to burn it, can't find it, CD-ROM doesn't have burning properties...). Some people download to sample a song. And many... are just from overseas.
2. Suing customers doesn't make any sense at all. I've seen nothing but OUTRAGE at this "tactic." (And I use that term loosely. Generally, a tactic is a semi-possible attempt at helping yourself or others. This is just plain lunacy.)
3. The RIAA seems to blame the loss of sales SOLELY on downloading. Gee, it might not be the fact that CDs are so common now? Or that there's no originality anymore? Or that not everyone is rushing out to buy every CD of every flash-in-the-pan pre-teen boy band.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[djlurch]

Someone that STEALS your product is not a thief.

1) How about putting together a coherent sentence in the first place? Burning and ripping are two different things. Apparently you're confused by that simple concept.

2) You're right. It's just plain lunacy to attempt to enforce a law.

3) Just because you don't like the artists that are at the top of the charts, that gives you the right to steal their product?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fatcatman]

Then trade by hand or mail genre DVDs

Currently we swap using laptops, or just plug a hard drive in (I have a front loading "hot swap" bay - not really hot swap since it's IDE, but "quick swap"). But swapping with DVDs isn't a bad idea.

Don't slack on indexing and cataloging the collections with spreadsheets like Excel or Access also.

Actually, I index everything with directory structures and rely heavily on id3 tags. Everything gets properly renamed & tagged before going into my collection. My iPod requires proper id3 tags to be useful to me, so since I'm already maintaining them there's no need for another database.

Perhaps in the future people will use P2P primarily to trade the listing files of their collections and then use parcel post or UPS to trade the actual collection itself on media like hard disk.

Now THAT is a good idea!

Although, imagine the lawsuit when you send a 400GB drive full of high quality goodness to an RIAA goon playing file trader...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

"I decided to not purchase an album BECAUSE I CAN'T AFFORD IT."

And if that was all people were doing, that's fine. If they can't pay for an album, they don't buy it! But they don't stop there; they go and download it (maybe you do the same, but I won't assume that).

How is that any less wrong than someone walking into a music store, walking out with a CD in their hand, and explaining to the cashier that they're not going to pay for it because they can't afford it?

Aside from the $.02 CD and paper album cover, there is NO difference between downloading an album and stuffing one in your pocket at the music store.

No need to be insulting, just explain to me how downloading an album you can't afford is justified.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[BakaHoushi]

1. Flaming. Very nice. But I digress... I didn't say that burning and ripping are the same thing. Don't put words in my mouth.

2. It's just plain lunacy to sue a few random people by luck of the draw. Don't tell me you believe that the RIAA is doing this for the artists, like they claim.

3. I said that CD sales are down because popular music is becomming less... popular. It's no surprise. Boy bands and other rip offs can only go so far. Wouldn't you expect people would grow TIRED of them after a while? Maybe people aren't even downloading them. Maybe some people just plain are sick of all these flash-in-the-pan groups.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[nyseal]

Wrong. Since when did an American become a stakeholder? I'm not referencing the true definition rather than calling your post bullshit. A "stakeholder" can make decisions about their future; moreso than a shareholder can.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[GeekZilla]

How is that any less wrong than someone walking into a music store, walking out with a CD in their hand, and explaining to the cashier that they're not going to pay for it because they can't afford it?

It's not less wrong.

If they can't pay for an album, they don't buy it! But they don't stop there; they go and download it...

I agree-that would be wrong.

Aside from the $.02 CD and paper album cover, there is NO difference between downloading an album and stuffing one in your pocket at the music store.

I agree-except for the case where I may already own the physical CD, I see no problem with downloading a digital copy of the same album for my sole use (i.e., not sharing with others). I see that as being the same as me personally ripping a digital copy. Now, some people have made the argument that even downloading a copy of a CD you already own is wrong also, but that is a different point and I don't want to get into that discussion right now.

In any case, it seems as if we agree on the main points of the discussion. Funny sometimes how two people that agree can take so long to realize it.

Maybe I could have saved us a lot of time if I had simply stated my original point clearly enough. I just feel that the reason that CD sales may be down (which they aren't), is simply because they cost more money than some people want to pay and for the RIAA to simply blame all their woes on P2P is ...short-sighted? narrow-minded? ridiculous? Something like that.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[goldspider]

Fair enough! To the point of downloading a copy of a song you already own, as well as burning a copy of a CD you own, I have yet to hear of a case of the RIAA going after people for that sort of thing. In fact I recall a Slashdot interview with an RIAA rep who said that that sort of thing was in fact covered under fair use. I think that's one of several "evils" of the RIAA that was entirely made up by tinfoil-hat-wearing Slashdotters.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Lord Kano]

On the other hand, people still post clearly illegal material on Usenet and seem to get away with it. Complicating matters for the RIAA and company,

I'm not ashamed to admin that I download pr0n from the usenet. It takes a little while, but you can get to know who has the good stuff after a while.

Moreover, because a couple of times I downloaded images and looked at them later that appeared to contain underage girls.

I immediately deleted them, naked kids aren't sexy. But because of those experiences I keep all of the usenet pron in a holding directory until I have the chance to check it out. Good stuff gets filed away, bad stuff gets deleted.

LK

Has there ever been an actual court case

[ralf1]

or is the RIAA just using mass-mugging tactics? Seems the ACLU or EFF or someone would want to make a big public test case out of some individuals lawsuit defense.

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[TedCheshireAcad]

First check to see if you are among the accused.

The EFF is helpful :)

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[jmo_jon]

Our database was last updated December 1, and currently has 2,444 subpoenas.

Doesn't seems like the EFF site is of much help to the current suing victims.

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[dubdays]

Not only that, but there haven't been court cases because, quite simply, people just don't have the money to defend themselves against lawyers who don't give a rat's ass about anything except enlarging their own bank accounts. These people know they have no way to defend themselves, because they just don't have the money necessary to do so. And, even if these people did win, it is very unlikely that a judge would give you anything to pay for your own lawyers who are going to cost more than $3k anyway. So, I guess we have to pony-up and take it in the a$$.

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[91degrees]

Firstly - IANAL.

While it is probably true that you can't win (not certain though; It may be possible to claim that you were hacked, or discredit their evidence).

What a defendent may be able to do is argue that the damages are disproportionate. That the actual harm done is insignificant (according to reports that can be submitted as evidence), that the law that they're being sued under is intended for large scale commercial piracy operations, and that digital copies are not perfect (i.e. mp3s are lossy).

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[illuvata]

now move your eyes down two lines. see that paragraph that starts with a big, read IMPORTANT? now, if you'd read that, you'll find that the RIAA changed tactics, and to find the current batch of accused, you should follow this link

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[Mateito]

Wow.

This "John Doe" guy is absolutely fucked.

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[Tarwn]

I'm waiting forthe same thing to occur.
IANAL but even with the move to Felony status for criminal Copyright infringement I would think there would be a gaping hole to argue right aorund the wording of:
'willfully and for purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.'

I mean obviously civil copyright infringement has occurred, but I would expect someone to take it on based on the financial gain angle. I mean would saying that the infringed upon company lost money (not easily proven) even qualify as financial gain for an individual if that individual did not receive money or use it to get ahead while in competition with the copyright holder?

The RICO laws seem to be begging for use in this situation...

Re:Has there ever been an actual court case

[Robmonster]

Hmm, I did originally have fake [Paranoia] tags around it, but they didnt come out.....

Same ol' same o'

[Underholdning]

Film at 11... oh wait, make that puppet theater at 11, since the RIAA has confiscated the film

Re:Same ol' same o'

[Anti Frozt]

I think you have your thuggish, monopolistic cartles confused

Re:Same ol' same o'

[tobechar]

Heh, that would be the MPAA that confiscated the films. Damn them too.

Re:Same ol' same o'

[kfg]

Perhaps the film has a soundtrack? The music industry is rather deeply embedded in the film industry and a contraban film is usually also a contraban audio recording whose rights can be defended seperately.

KFG

This about sums up the story.

[Anti Frozt]

"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

Is it really news that the RIAA is still filling lawsuits against grandmothers and 12 year olds?

Re:This about sums up the story.

[Evil Adrian]

a) People that are old enough to be grandmothers are old enough to know that copyright infringement is illegal
b) If your 12-year-old is pirating music, you aren't doing a good job as a parent and the lesson will be taught one way or another
c) I'm sure most of the people named in the lawsuits are neither grandmothers nor underage, and you are just blowing things out of proportion.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

People that are old enough to be grandmothers are old enough to know that copyright infringement is illegal

That same grandmother wouldn't bat an eyelash if you gave her a CD with old big band music for Christmas. Non-smokers would have no problem if smoking became a felony. People who don't drink have no problem with prohibition.

Your subject group is skewed.

If your 12-year-old is pirating music, you aren't doing a good job as a parent and the lesson will be taught one way or another

There is no theft. This is an artificial crime called "copyright infringement". While the spirit of copyright is a starry-eyed ideal which everyone supports the implementation is flawed and anyone who actually lives under its sway knows that it rarely, if ever, benefits the original author in the way that you think it does.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[JamesKPolk]

Be prepared for those uncontrolled youths reading this site to moderate you to oblivion.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[mabinogi]

All crime is artificial, and most of the implementations of the laws are flawed.
That doesn't mean they're _not_ laws.
Go ahead and practice civil disobediance if you wish, that's up to you, but don't pretend that copyright infringement is any less against the law than any other type of theft.

If obtaining something that is not rightfully yours (and no, it's NOT - a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be) is not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere, then what is it?
The only English word that comes close to fitting is Steal. Which, being a word that comes from Old English originated in a time when the only method of stealing involved physically removing. The world has moved on now, and there are ways of illegally obtaining something from someone without physically removing it.

Also, it is quite acceptable to use steal in the sense where the owner is deprived of something, but you don't actually gain it yourself (stealing someone's life for example) so why not the other way round?

The "it's not stealing/piracy it's copyright infringement", is a straw man argument that misses the point that no matter what you call it it _is_ illegal whether you think it should be or not.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

All crime is artificial

Most crime is real. Intellectual property and copyright are intangible. Can you tell the difference between music which was purchased vs. music downloaded with only your ear? If someone tells you they have a "great idea" can you immediately swear that they didn't hear it from someone else two days earlier?

a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be

A musician's music isn't the musician's anymore. It belongs to some media conglomerate. You're attempting to arouse sympathy for a group of people who aren't even involved anymore.

not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere

It's not stealing. The product was legally sold. Rights of ownership were transferred at the point of sale. Misrepresenting a rental as a sale is a poor way of defending business stupidity. If they feel they are losing profits they should reevaluate the worth of their product.

Take the agricultural industry. They produce genetically engineered crops. They only sell seed which produces sterile crops because they are intelligent and they know that otherwise the product would be EASILY COPIED. The agri industry could have lobbied for federal oversight and DNA testing of crops. They could have run down farmers for "stealing" their intellectual property. Instead they 1) subsidized, out of their own profit margin, engineered crops in order to put them in the marketplace and 2) invested in the research to produce seed which produced sterile crops.

The music industry should take a lesson. Making criminals out of customers is the wrong business model. Why not admit,"We're so stupid that we didn't realize our product was so easily copied."

The product was legally sold. The government is not their personal Guido.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[JWW]

You don't need to teach your kids not to download music. You need to teach them not to download music OR buy CDs.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

You do not have permission to distribute the song. Period. End of story

I bought the CD and I own it. Unless you want to mount a government agent in every home why can't you accept the fact that the product is easily copied? If you don't want people to share it then don't sell it. Move to live performance only.

you do not have the right to give it to 1000 of your closest 'friends'.

I agree that the limits are ridiculous but at what point do we tell the industry to get real? Everyone knows the product is easily copied. The transfer of goods is represented as a sale. Either raise the price or accept the lower profit margin. Hiring government thugs isn't socially responsible.

As far as the theft part is concerned, if you didn't pay it for it, it's theft

The product was legally paid for. Some people choose to obtain the product from a distributor who provides a better distribution model at a significantly reduced charge. This is called shopping around. Distribution rights, while encoded in the law, are grossly unrealistic. The product is easily copied. Deal with it. Refine the business model.

Agri companies had to do it with genetically engineered seed and Hallmark had to do it when people bought printers and greeting card software. Why is the music industry shielded from evolution?

If you don't consider it theft walk into any music store and grab the CD you want and walk out

That's theft. We're talking about unlicensed distribution. Does the supermarket sue people who take their plants home, trim cuttings, and grow new plants? Will they sue you for imitating their particular rye bread? Will the grocer sue you for taking apple seeds and growing your own tree? How about tomato plants or peppers which can be COPIED in less than a year?

Every other industry with a product which is easily copied after sale has had to evolve and refine their business model. Why is the media industry any different?

Re:This about sums up the story.

[StalinsNotDead]

Good point. Murder is different from Theft. In my opinion, copyright infringement is also a seperate entity, although related more closely to theft than murder is.

I think the RIAA wants the theft moniker to be attached so it becomes a "basic crime". There are quite a few that look at the ten commandments as a base line for law. By attaching the word theft to the infringement of copyright, it seems worse to many people.

Until the RIAA releases their version of the Bible and the first commandment would be Thou shalt not infringement upon copyright, they'll want to at least associate the infrignment with one of those commandments that exists.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

There is nothing artificial about the crime of copyright infringement

Agricultural companies subsidized, out of their own pocket, the sale of genetically engineered seed until they could produce seed which turned into sterile plants. They did not lobby for federal oversight and DNA testing because they owned the copyright on that genetically engineered seed.

Hallmark did use the Attorney General's office to hunt down people who would go to the store, study a greeting card they liked, and then go home to produce the same thing for free on their printer using greeting card software.

Your grocer will not sue you if you take the seeds from the peppers or tomatoes and grow your own plants in your backyard.

Every other industry which produces a product which is easily reproduced after the point of sale has faced REALITY and adjusted their business model to accomodate the possibility.

What makes the music industry so holy?

Re:This about sums up the story.

[PainKilleR-CE]

How is it an artifical crime? You do not have permission to distribute the song. Period. End of story.

The term "artificial crime" is a bit loaded, and was made up by the previous poster, so I'm not going to address that. At best, it can be said that copyright has been mutilated beyond its original purpose, and that both sides have been using strawmen to defend their own views.

You can fold, spindle and mutilate the song/album to your hearts content for YOUR use but you do not have the right to give it to 1000 of your closest 'friends'.

If you can physically give it to 1000 of your closest friends, there is some protection available in the form of fair use and the Home Recording Act (but when you get to the point of 1000 people you're going to have problems). Unfortunately, this protection has yet to be enforced on the internet. Furthermore, they are not suing based on the number of downloads you've served up to your 'friends', but rather on the number of songs you make available for download. The two things are not directly related. I can put up my 500+CD library and get only 10 downloads in 6 months. On the other hand, more than half of that library is outside of the RIAA's hands, as well.

As far as the theft part is concerned, if you didn't pay it for it, it's theft. I'm excluding situations where someone buys it for you and gives it to you since it is already paid for. I am also excluding the situation where you give the CD to a friend for them to listen to and then they return it to you. Just like a library.

The crime of theft is not in having something that wasn't paid for (after all, theft and receiving stolen property are two different crimes, as well). The crime is in depriving the previous owner of what they owned, whether that owner is a shop, private person, or record label. The RIAA is using the word theft because it's a term that most people think they understand, and know is wrong. Copyright infringement is a term that is not widely understood, especially as far as what it does and does not pertain to, and therefore the RIAA shies away from it outside of the actual legal documents they file (because they can't file a suit for theft in these cases).

Copyright infringement does not deny the original owner of the item. In fact, the original owner in many cases (though P2P reduces this) is the person doing the infringement (alternatively, the original owner gave it to someone who either infringed on the copyright or gave it to someone that did, which is right along the lines of what happens in P2P networks, where many files come from the same source). What it does deny to the original owner is control of the work. In the end, that's what this is really all about.

This nonsense about 'information wants to be free' is tiring. Someone has to pay for the product or there wouldn't be anyone producing anything. Even free software isn't free since someone has to pay for the hardware to compile and distribute it. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth. Someone has to pay for the electricity. Someone has to pay for all the other equipment involved in producing the software.

But, in the end, software, music, movies, and, more and more, even books share one major thing in common: in electronic form, with technologies like P2P, reproduction and distribution can be free (as in beer), as long as individuals that are already paying for the hard drive space, the computers, the electricity, and the bandwidth are willing to host it. The RIAA represents a group of companies that have controlled distribution of their product for a long time (this is not the case in all media, and especially is not the case with non-RIAA music labels), so, of course, loss of control of the distribution, combined with no method to track and monetize such distribution, scares them, even to the point where they are willing to lose sales to stop the entire method of distribution. This is why they went after the P2P companies first: to stop the dist

Re:This about sums up the story.

[smooth wombat]

If you don't want people to share it then don't sell it.

Specious argument. This same argument could be said about anything; books, knives, clothes.

You own it for your use. As I said previously you can do with it what you want. For your use.

I agree that the limits are ridiculous but at what point do we tell the industry to get real?

Apple seems to have solved that problem. You can copy, fold and spindle the song that you purchased to just about your hearts content AND can give it to a select number of people. Maybe the number is too low for you. If so maybe a campaign should be mounted to ask Apple to increase the nubmer of people you are allowed to give your copy to.

The product is easily copied. Deal with it. Refine the business model.

Another specious argument. Since by its very nature software, whether music or applications, can in some way eventually be copied the owners are simply doing what they can to stem the tide of those who believe it is fine to give away something which they do not have to right to give away.

Again, I go back to Apple. Their business model is exactly what people asked for yet there are those who still whine and bitch about having to even pay .99 cents for a song.

Does the supermarket sue people who take their plants home, trim cuttings, and grow new plants?

No because it is still part of the original plant and they are using it for their own purpose.

Will they sue you for imitating their particular rye bread?

No because you went out and bought all the ingredients and created the bread yourself. You didn't go into the bakery and take some of their dough or steal the actual recipe.

Will the grocer sue you for taking apple seeds and growing your own tree? How about tomato plants or peppers which can be COPIED in less than a year?

Again, you are using the original plant for your own use.

People will use any excuse they can to justify not having to pay for something and claim it is their right to do so or they don't believe in such-and-such law so they'll do what they want.

Things are the way they are because we the people have let things get this bad. Had we actually been paying attention and done our civic duty and voting in people who had two brain cells to rub together things wouldn't be at this point.

The only reason laws are created is because someone did something which they shouldn't have be that murder, rape or copyright infringement. As I said before, you do not have a right to distribute the song/album even if you bought it. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. Just because others are doing it doesn't mean you should. (not you personally, the general you).

Re:This about sums up the story.

[djlurch]

As mentioned by one of the other posters...all crimes are artificial.

Many have made the claim that it is not "theft". Actually, even in the eyes of the law it is "theft". Please see the "No Electronic Theft" act at Department of Justice Website.

Even though I believe the "it's not theft, it's copyright infringement" argument to be bunk, this act clearly defines it as "theft". In a legal sense.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[Kaa]

If obtaining something that is not rightfully yours (and no, it's NOT - a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be) is not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere, then what is it?

Well, for example, photography.

If I take a picture of a stranger or a street, I obtain his likeness fixed to a medium in my camera (film, digital media). I don't think his likeness is "rightfully mine" to start with. Yet it's completely legal and ethical for me to take pictures of strangers...

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

Please see the "No Electronic Theft"

What's in a name? A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. Theft involves a physical loss of property.

If you come up with a sure-fire pickup line and I overhear you using it and decide to use it for myself, is that theft? If you are selling a diet regimen and one of your clients decides to share your diet secrets with their overweight friends, is that theft? If I sell a book on surefire stock market investing and you share the tips contained inside with your friends, is that theft?

As mentioned by one of the other posters...all crimes are artificial

Sure. Whatever. There's a clear line between what people commonly DON'T do (real crime) and what they've been taught to preach against but go ahead and do anyway (sex, filesharing, underage smoking, underage drinking).

Re:This about sums up the story.

[ejort79]

The crime/copyright infringement isn't artificial; it's the scarcity of the property that is artificial. That's what copyright is really. With real property there is scarcity-if your car is stolen you don't have it anymore. With "intellectual property" I can copy your work without depriving anyone of physical property. That's why it's called copyright-it limits one's rights to copy a work giving the owner a monopoly on it, the idea being allow new artists to get foothold. This has been taken advantage of, of course. The benefit is meant to be for the artist creating the work- not the media corp. -even if they claim it allows them to find "new talent". A 95 year copyright doesn't do much for the original artist.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

Specious argument. This same argument could be said about anything; books, knives, clothes

No one is getting sued for sharing books, knives, or clothing. My argument is not specious. If companies want to have a childish pouting fit because "Jimmy promised to keep that a secret! I never said he could tell Joey!" then they should quit selling CDs. Otherwise, refine the business model and evolve. No one else gets a free ride.

Another specious argument. Since by its very nature software, whether music or applications, can in some way eventually be copied the owners are simply doing what they can to stem the tide of those who believe it is fine to give away something which they do not have to right to give away

It's not specious. Have you heard of GNU? They recognize that the material is easily copied and redistributed and they ADVOCATE it. What's even better is their actually giving the intellectual property obsessed proprietary industry a good run.

No because it is still part of the original plant and they are using it for their own purpose

I've sold plenty of my trimmings to friends for nominal fees.

No because you went out and bought all the ingredients and created the bread yourself

And p2p sharers legally purchased all of their own equipment to create their own distribution system.

People will use any excuse they can to justify not having to pay for something

I paid for it. I can share it. Deal with it. Raise the price or quit selling it. Enough of these underhanded backstabbing interpretatios of the terms of sale. They accepted money and I accepted a product. Unless they want to mount a government agent in every house they cannot pretend to dictate the nonviolent use of the product.

Agricultural companies don't lobby for federal criminalization for getting a fertile plant from genetically engineered seed. They subsidize it out of their own pocket, they lobby for federal susubsidy, and they produce seed which, for the most part, is sterile and cannot be copied. The agri industry realizes that there is no point in criminalizing the customer if the product is easily copied.

The Hallmark industry does not attempt to lobby for the criminalization of people who make their own greeting cards. We do not have "greeting card pirates" from people who pattern their homemade cards off of a design seen in the store. At the same time, the home greeting card creators have not sunk Hallmark.

Xerox did not sink paperbacks. Bit copy programs did not sink the software industry. Pirated Photoshop has not bankrupted Adobe.

Yes, copyright infringement is illegal. Sure, licensing agreements and distribution rights do exist in the law. "Let's support more laws which protect the right of the wealthy to criminalize the common citizen." Copyright laws don't do anything to preserve the ownership of the original author/creator/scientist in today's world. FACE REALITY. No more whining about sharing.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[antiMStroll]

"The only English word that comes close to fitting is Steal."

Never heard of Copy? It's the basis of the word Copyright. Apply that to your sculptor's example. You're begging the question by claiming Steal is the only applicable word. True, copying is currently against the law, but those laws were lobbied for over decades (read Bought) by corporate interests, not generally the artist, begging the question again with the sculptor's example. More correct would have been using an art dealer as an example. Finally, you imply all laws all equally just, stand on some moral high ground for having been passed by a political body and only unquestioning obedience is moral. Back of the bus anyone? Though stern and clear you're viewpoint is way too simplistic.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[Builder]

a) People that are old enough to be grandmothers are old enough to know that copyright infringement is illegal

What you're _not_ mentioning though is that one of the people sued in the last batch was a grandmother - but she'd never downloaded or shared an illegal track. She was actually an Apple Mac user, and incapable of running the software that they said she was.

And there's the problem - these people can just run around making citizen's lives miserable at random, without doing proper checks that they're suing the right person!

Re:This about sums up the story.

[An Onerous Coward]

You're a bit slow. Sorry, but it has to be said.

Intellectual "Property" law is by its very nature very different from laws governing physical property. If you understood this, even a little, you wouldn't dare use the "taking a statue" analogy.

Explain to me how I would illegally take possession of your statue without physically removing it? If I want your statue--that is to say, if I want to take ownership of the physical embodiment of an idea--I have to go to you, negotiate a price you deem fair, and give you that money. The same goes for a CD or DVD you might own.

But let us say that I want to take possession of your "music". Not a given embodiment of it, like a page of sheet music or a CD. How do I take possession of the music itself? Does listening to it and playing it back in my head constitute "possession"? Does singing it back into a recorder constitute copying? Is it legal or illegal to make a backup copy of a legally obtained copy of your song?

If I decided to record a cover of any song on the radio, I don't need to negotiate with anybody to do it. The songwriter gets a set fee based on a percentage of my sales. The performer is cut out of the deal entirely. I'm making use of their "property" without their permission, and it's all perfectly legal.

Finally, I'm sure you understand that it is permissible to use multiple words to describe a concept, so your etymological analysis of the word "steal" is rubbish. I have a two word phrase that perfectly embodies what is actually happening here: "copyright infringement". Yes, violation of copyright is illegal. But unlike property rights, which arise naturally from the physical nature of the items being evaluated, intellectual property is a completely artificial phenomenon. We couldn't abandon physical property law without totally rewriting society, but abandoning IP laws would simply lead things back to their natural state: Copying ideas is easy.

That is why copyright infringement seems "less illegal" to many people than breaking other laws. Some laws seem absolutely necessary for the continued existence of society. Others seem pretty arbitrary. A third set of laws appear to be self-serving power grabs by special interest groups. Copyright law is slowly being pushed from the second group to the third.

I'm not saying that abandoning copyright altogether is the best plan, but I do think it would be far better than the current copyright system.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[NanoGator]

"If obtaining something that is not rightfully yours (and no, it's NOT - a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be) is not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere, then what is it?"

Depends on what the situation is, doesn't it? What if I listen to a song, then delete it, and decide I don't want to buy that album. Have I stolen? Yes? Then if I had bought the CD, didn't like it, and couldn't return it, that wouldn't be a form of theft from the recording industry? No? Better chew on that for a sec before flinging the word 'crime' at people.

"The "it's not stealing/piracy it's copyright infringement", is a straw man argument that misses the point"

The proportion of the punishment to the crime is an issue no matter how you go about oversimplifying it. Jaywalking's a crime, but using sting operations to catch these people and sentencing jaywalkers to 20 years in prison will make one argue about the real threat it causes.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[djlurch]

Even when presented with the fact that the crime is LEGALLY defined as theft, there's still the naysayers. I will refer back to dictionary.com's definition:

Main Entry: theft Function: noun Etymology: Old English thiefth : LARCENY; broadly : a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent NOTE: Theft commonly encompasses by statute a variety of forms of stealing formerly treated as distinct crimes.

Copyrighted works could be considered property OR services.

The rationalization on this issue has reached a new height. I can't believe we are actually discussing whether this should be called "theft" or not.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[cliffski]

"Making criminals out of customers is the wrong business model"

bullshit.
these arent customers, they are thieves. I make games, if you like my games buy them, if people stop buying them, ill stop making them, and there will be less for everyone (both legal customers and thieveing scumbags).
Anyone buying music knows that copying it (or allowing it to be freely copied) for others is against the law. If you break the law, you get prosecuted and hopefully fined or imprisoned.
as someone who earns a living creating digital content, any bullshit about "its not really theft" is no help when it comes to me paying my bills, with 70% of my customers not paying for the damned stuff.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[rocknme]

The government is not their personal Guido.

....and Hollywood's lavish lobbying of Sen. Feinstein is just coincidental

Re:This about sums up the story.

[BobTheAtheist]

And then people complain when copy protection is used because it infringes on peoples fair use. Deal with it...

yawn

[welshwaterloo]

Dupe

Oh.. wait..

Fair Sentence

[grunt107]

Why can't these 'illegal downloaders' just repay the RIAA with their purchased CDs, like the RIAA got to do?

Of course, the repayment CDs would be chosen by the defendants, just like the RIAA got to do.

Re:Fair Sentence

[bconway]

I think if the people sharing music were forced to pay for CDs equal to the number of songs/songs from one album that people had pirated through them, it would probably be a lot more expensive than the settlement others have been paying.

Re:Fair Sentence

[kenthorvath]

Of course, the repayment CDs would be chosen by the defendants, just like the RIAA got to do.

Exactly, and they would be blank CD-R's from my mom and pop CD-R shop that I charge $1000/piece for. No I never said I actually had one customer who ever bought a CD-R for such, but I value them at $1000 and I'll give a spindle of 100 of said item for settlement, and I'll even throw the spindle in for free (a $5000 value).

Re:Fair Sentence

[EnsilZah]

Wouldn't a closer analogy be the poeple paying with a bunch of stuff they have around the house that they don't need at the price they got it at?

Re:Fair Sentence

[3terrabyte]

Shoplifting CD's from a store wouldn't get you into a $150,000 per infringement fiasco by the RIAA though. Instead, you can 'settle' by pleading guilty to the misdemeanor crime.

Re:Fair Sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

Write "Hellow RIAA" program
issue them 10 million licenses at $1/license
pay off any fines from the RIAA with software licensing. This allows you to avoid costly physical media.

Re:Fair Sentence

[Fishstick]

but I think the point is to offer a worthless settlement of your crappy used CDs -- similar to the RIAA's settlement where they just coughed up all the crap CDs they had growing moldy in a warehouse somewhere.

RIAA Continues Distributing Dud CDs to Satisfy Settlement

Re:Fair Sentence

[JudgeFurious]

How can I get in touch with you? Your CD-R prices are way lower than I'm used to seeing and with the free spindle offer I just can't pass this up!

Add me to the list!

JudgeFurious@aol.com

This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

You all need to get your butts over to MEDIACHEST.COM http://www.mediachest.com/ and start trading your music, DVDs, CDs, and Books there.

(This is not a plug, I don't work for them or get paid by them)

Basically, you catalog your collection of stuff using their amazon-like lookup functions, and then other people can search your collections (they find you by Groups, by Zip Code, etc) and then you trade with them any way you want (in person, by mail, etc).

This service is excellent because the RIAA and MPAA and FBI and whomever else cannot I repeat CANNOT get you on law breaking. As the 'swapping' happens offline, they have no way to find out about it.

Please give it a shot, if this website takes off the world be a happier place.

Re:This is why...

[stubear]

"This service is excellent because the RIAA and MPAA and FBI and whomever else cannot I repeat CANNOT get you on law breaking. As the 'swapping' happens offline, they have no way to find out about it."

Ummmm...can you say "Sting Operation" boys and girls? How the hell do you think they catch kiddie porn freaks who try to meet up with kids offline? Do you know you're not setting yourself up to illegally distribute songs offline with a cop of FBI agent?

Re:This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

Uhm, excuse ME, but how is it ILLEGAL to GIVE a CD or a book to a 'friend', to let them borrow it for a while, while they in turn let you borrow something of theirs, and then you return the media to eachother after a couple days/weeks?

Fair use, and what you do with that media once it is inside your home and in your possession is beyond the law (for now).

Re:This is why...

[Mordaximus]

Ummmm...can you say "Sting Operation" boys and girls?

But this kind of swap is actually an excellent idea and completely legal in Canada. We have the right to make personal copies. So as long as I bring along my originals, and the other party is copying them for themselves, it's all good. (If I made a copy for the other party, it would be illegale.)

Re:This is why...

[stubear]

If you think people are using this service to swap legit copies of stuff, I've got some beach front property in Arizona to sell you.

Re:This is why...

[the_mad_poster]

Fair use, and what you do with that media once it is inside your home and in your possession is beyond the law (for now).

Oh, good. Now you song-stealing freaks think you're beyond the law once your front door closes.

Newsflash: you're not beyond the law, you're just not getting caught because the RIAA can't kick your door down and drag your ass into court for a nice, fat, well-deserved lawsuit.

What amazes me is the "swappers" keep giving the RIAA more and more reasons to go more and more draconian on their asses, then they have the nerve to whine about it. If that isn't proof of the childish little minds that try to justify STEALING music because they're cheap little bastards with no concept of "consumer responsibility", I don't know what is.

Re:This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

Well, as I actually *AM* a user of it, and actually *HAVE* traded with other people, let me assure you this is legit copies of stuff.

This service is actually helpful for me, as I have about 350 CDs, 80 books, ~75 DVDs, and it lets me catalog them all. You can even use a CueCat Scanner to scan them all in, which makes it much easier.

Basically, if you don't have the original legit copy of the cd, dvd, etc, it's a little bit harder to get it entered in the system (you need to know the UPC number, or exact title, etc...)

And how, praytell, are people swapping illegal BOOKS? Don't tell me you're scanning in your 400+ page tomes of wisdom and trading them on Kazaa?

If the service isn't for you, because you don't like people, and don't want to maybe meet interesting people that have likewise interests in music/movies/books/games, then don't use it. But don't trash talk a great service you obviously know nothing about.

Re:This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

OK, so you have never in your life borrowed a book from someone? You have never listened to someone else's CD? You have never watched a DVD at someone else's house?

The RIAA & MPAA would LOVE for all their media to be pay-per-use or pay-per-view... but it hasn't happened.. yet.. (look at DVD's they sell now at Quickie Marts, that self-destruct after 48 hours upon opening them).

FAIR USE. I bought it. I lent it to someone. I don't have it in my possession, that person does. Maybe they use it, maybe they don't. But if they LIKE it, they can go buy a copy of it. And buy similar products as well. I'm sick of you bunch of 'consumer responsibility' types... what about corporate responsibility!?!? Charging me $18 for a piece of round plastic that cost about 50 cents to manufacture? (IF THAT?!)

Sharing/swapping does nothing but help out these artists. I couldn't give a screw for the RIAA or MPAA, they are ancient beasts like the FCC that need to just go away. If I borrow a CD from a friend, and like it, I am more likely to buy a CD of this artist, buy OTHER CD's from this artist, and go to venues where this artist is performing live. I am MUCH LESS likely to plunk down $18 for a plastic disc that I might not like at all (and cannot return once I've opened it, the pen-ultimate reason the RIAA is doing so well.. -- oh you didn't like the music? Well, you opened it, so it's yours now... sorry bud.)

Re:This is why...

[Bachus9000]

That sounds really interesting. I think, though, that the reason that the RIAA, MPAA, FBI, etc can't get you in relation to this service is that trading stuff isn't illegal...

...yet. :)

Re:This is why...

[JWW]

Reselling/giving away your stuff is not stealing. Back a few years the RIAA DID try to stop CD stores from selling used CDs and failed miserably.

There is a rather old case about reselling books that setup this precedent. Basically the onwer of the book can resell it for any price they want. Of course, this is why computer software is LICENSED and you don't actually own it.

Re:This is why...

[the_mad_poster]

Hmm... so your theory is that by posting a public e-mail address unobfuscated, I'll lose yet another public account to spam, or idiots such as yourself, as if I haven't already gone through a dozen publics by now anyway? And, of course, you're forgetting that if I really want another gmail account, I can use one of my remaining invitations to reinvite myself.

Except, my private address, where anything of any concern goes, which you do not know, will continue to function as it always has...

You're a bit of a moron, aren't you? You must be a conservative. Nobody else could possibly be that stupid.

Re:This is why...

[sadler121]

And how, praytell, are people swapping illegal BOOKS? Don't tell me you're scanning in your 400+ page tomes of wisdom and trading them on Kazaa?

Belive me its being done. I have seen the D&D 3.5 Players Handbook, DM's guide, and Monster manual (all ~300 pages) pefectly reproduced as PDF's, so obviously someone has A LOT of time on their hand.

Re:This is why...

[telemonster]

I just signed up, and the only thing on that site is "Borrow" ... I see no options for offering to trade items.

Re:This is why...

[utexaspunk]

what if we had some sort of protocol for making an online peer-to-peer "music library" where everyone had their CD collection available, and the protocol was made in such a way that the song could only be simultaneously played by as many people as copies of it were available in the library? Then I'd just be "borrowing" the song from you- no different than borrowing the physical album from you. Would that be legal?

Re:This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

OK, so you have never in your life borrowed a book from someone? You have never listened to someone else's CD? You have never watched a DVD at someone else's house?

Funny thing... I read, listened, or watched...

Enough said. MediaChest would be a valuable website for you then. As I stated, what you do behind your closed doors is up to you. This website allows you to borrow books, cds, DVDs, etc and use them for your purposes. So instead of shelling out a ton of money to buy a DVD, you can borrow it for free, and see it. Instead of buying a game, just to try it out, you can borrow it. For free.

No crookery involved. And as a member of MENSA, I can pretty much guarantee you that I not small-minded, impish, or moronic. I'm in the top 2%, so my thoughts/views/ideas are not childlike or idiotic ravings. Many people feel the same way I do.

You probably voted for Bush. Thanks.

Re:This is why...

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

You find people you want to borrow from, and ask to borrow something. They, in turn, will usually browse your collection for something that interests them. You get in contact via email (or however you like to be contacted) and make the swap.

It's worked for me... even across state lines..

Re:This is why...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Of course, this is why computer software is LICENSED and you don't actually own it.

Assuming that EULA's are legal and binding, of course, which hasn't been conclusively proven. And if the seller never agreed to the EULA, then the doctrine of first sale clearly applies.

Of course, software with a proper license which meets all requirements of contract law (agreement, consideration, capacity, legality) would be binding -- but click-through EULAs are not in this category.

/IANAL

Re:This is why...

[tomhudson]

What the idiot failed to realize is that by posting your gmail addy, all he's doing is helping improve gmail's spam filters :-)

So, as a show of solidarity, I'll post mine unobfuscated too: thudson@gmail.com

Spam away, I won't see most of it - and what I do, will just improve the service.

Re:This is why...

[tomhudson]

And as a member of MENSA ...

... gaaak! From their home page:

Today there are some 100,000 Mensans in 100 countries throughout the world

So let's do the math:

• World population: 6 billion
• 2 percent of that (eligible for membership): 120 million
• Actual membership: 100,000 So, looks like more than 99.9% of all the people eligible think MENSA isn't work it. Remember - these (the +99.9%) are also in the top 2% - we just also happen to be street-smart enough to recognize a scam when they see it.

  In other words, MENSAns can be ignored as statistical noise.

Re:This is why...

[maximilln]

There is a rather old case about reselling books that setup this precedent. Basically the onwer of the book can resell it for any price they want. Of course, this is why computer software is LICENSED and you don't actually own it

If piracy and redistribution really were as big of an impending industry decimating problem as the *AA would have us believe, and if licensing content really is a legal alternative to selling a product...

Why didn't book publishers start selling licenses to read books decades ago? Or is this another prime demonstration that the *AA is full of crap and is fleecing the consumer market for everything they can get?

Circumvent the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not pay your favorite artist personally?

Circumvent the managers at the RIAA by letting your software music jukebox manage your favorite artists. This requires a central database listing creative works and the artists who actually made them so that you can donate automatically to your favorite artists.

problem: telling some site what kind of music you have my get you sued as you declare to have illegal music.

solution: give partial hash code (checksum). Site returns say 200 potential hits. You verify for yourself if you have have a copyrighted song 'belonging' to the site. You discard the 199 misses and you use the info about the song to compensate the listed artist directly. This can be done anonymously: "I love your (unspecified) work here is a donation of 20 cents". Artist uses statistics to figure out how to compensate those who helped him with popular creations if the donations rise above thousands of dollars.

So you spend say 300 dollar per year to (automatically) compensate your favorite artists directly without confessing a crime as your jukebox figures out compensation anonymously and you can also donate manually, even though you do not have any works of arts of that artists in your possession, making the system a black box, meaning that donations do not directly indicate illegal possession.

Why pay for distribution? Let's circumvent the RIAA.
--
Dennis SCP

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[xhorder]

Or one could only buy from non-RIAA labels. See RIAA Radar http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ for a cool service to search for independent music. Also... Support metal! \m/

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[tobybuk]

You should pay all the people who have an interest in the song - this includes the record company as well.

By just selecting who you want to pay, you're denying someone their rights. That's against the law!

It's the same as copying an eBook and just paying the artist. What about the people who spent money and time on preparing, promoting and releasing the eBook?

How much do you pay the artist? Do you decide on what they should get? What if the artist wants more than you are prepared to pay? What if the artist wants you to pay all the other people entitled to their money?

You're living in a dream land where you make excuse after excuse as to why your own version of stealing is OK. Its not.

The only really effective form of protest is to not buy the music. Cannot live without your music? Then you just don't feel strongly enough about it, so just stump up the money and but the friggin CD.

Just what gives you the right to do what you please with someone elses property?

You are an arse.

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[Richard_at_work]

If you do this for music from a label under the RIAA then you are STILL COMMITTING COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. In most cases, the 'artist' doesnt own the copyright for the work, the label does, so paying the artist does not settle you with the copyright owner. If you want to do this, then dont do it with mainstream artists.

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[FLEB]

So what about everyone else... you know... The ones who researched and recruited the band in the first place... Those who made the band popular enough to get it on your radar... The people who design the cover art... The accounting department that makes sure everyone gets paid on time... Logistics folks who get things out to the right places at the right times... The heat and water bill at the offices...

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[tobybuk]

>>When a song is forced on to me I may start to like it, I may start to like it so much that I want to hear that original again at my own initiative, I may like it so much that I want it at my disposal whenever I want to hear it for the rest of my life.

So go buy these rights if you want that usage.

>>How should an artist make money on music? I would say with Tax.

Now fuck right off! I don't actually listen to much Music - why should I have to pay for you. You've really not thought this through have you?

>> No, one person made the song and THEY should credit who and what helped them.

They do, when they assign some of their rights to these songs to these people. Duh!

The rest of your comment is just so badly thought out it doesn't deserve comment. It's enough to restate that you are an arse.

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[DroopyStonx]

That suggestion has always been kinda pointless.

The amount of people that support indie labels/artists are in the extreme minority compared to those who purchase big label acts. Chances are, if you support indie artists/labels, you don't really buy many big label CDs to begin with. Likewise, if everyone in the majority listened to indie artists, then there wouldn't be assloads of shitty music.

So, that's not really a solution.

Suggesting "don't support the RIAA, buy indie!" isn't very helpful to those trying to fight them, because if you like some bands on the big labels (and let's be honest, not all of them suck), you can't really help it if you do decide to purchase a CD.

Instead, what you CAN do is download the music anyway, and support the artist by going to the concerts, buying the shirts, etc.. You spend $30 on tix, $15 on a shirt, they get a bigger portion of that even if you spent the equivalent amount ($45) on 3 CDs.

Download a few CDs, if ya like em, go to the concert. Easy!

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[Eythian]

I suggest you have a look at iRATE radio, which downloads music from the many artists who do share their music. It takes your ratings of songs that it sends you, matches them against what other people like, and sends you more that people with similar tastes like (with a touch of randomness to allow you to find totally new genres). You will get stuff you don't like to start with, but the more the system knows about your tastes, the better it gets.

Currently we are looking for more developers/UI designers/bug reporters/users to provide ratings, and so on so that we can make it better. If you do want to try it out, I suggest getting the unstable releases as a lot of features and bugfixes have gone in since the last stable release.

We are currently sorting things out for a new stable release, so bug finding and coding is something that we can't get too much of right now.

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[MrNemesis]

I know it's a bit of a technicality, but some of the data on Magnetbox's RIAA list is a bit screwed. Personally, I'm big into my electronica and funk, and was rather disappointed to see one of my favourite acts (the Aphex Twin) listed as an RIAA confederate.

Of course, those of you familiar with him will know he is signed on Warp Records, one of the world premier electro labels based in the UK. Warp is completely independent, BUT alot of the US releases are published by the big bad RIAA companies. Records bought from Warpmart http://www.warprecords.com/?section=mart will be totally RIAA-free (worldwide shipping) AND you're supporting the artist, and you can also download DRM-free MP3's from Warp's excellent Bleep http://www.bleep.com/ music store (many of the MP3's created by the artists themselves, and they are also selling an awful lot of other UK indie label music thorugh it as well, such as Ninja Tune, another of my fave labels), which also does worldwide "shipping". I downloaded over 500MB of MP3's from them the other day. And no, I'm not an employee of Warp, I just think they have a brilliant and underexposed system going on.

Moral of ths story: Magnetbox's db is too US centric. *Always* check with the band and label first to see if they have their own shop. If it's an indie label or the band are just flogging their own stuff, you're sorted. The label or the artist gets all the cash, and the middleman gets sweet FA.

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[mdwh2]

Whats so special about musisicans, that the rest of us get paid an hourly rate

The rest of us get paid an hourly rate. What's so special about musicians that they get to be paid until seventy years after their death?

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[IndependentVik]

Thank you! I went over to bleep and saw Franz Ferdinand's newest on their front page. Only $10, and I'd been meaning to pick it up anyway, so why not? I'm listening right now, and I'm quite impressed with the sound quality of their files; it sounds as good as my own rips, and this is from a guy who rips all his own stuff with LAME and the R3Mix preset.

And the best part? The RIAA gets nothing!

*supervillainesque laughter ensues*

Kudos.

[Sj0]

Kudos on the inflammatory title. They're not even infringers, they're "Music lovers"! :P

Re:Kudos.

[ultrabot]

Kudos on the inflammatory title. They're not even infringers, they're "Music lovers"!

Anti-RIAA choice of words is hardly inflammatory, at least on slashdot. The first pro-RIAA guy to show up should be bitch-slapped for -20 karma, though I suppose such a mentality would have accumulated any karma at all, or read /. for that matter.

Re:Kudos.

[radja]

they're music loving copyright infringers, who like to share what music they like. sharing music is considered copyright infringement in US law.

happy?

Re:Kudos.

[maximilln]

sharing music is considered copyright infringement in US law

Everyone supports copyrights because they believe it will benefit the artists. It doesn't. The companies own everything the artists produce as soon as a contract is signed.

Copyrights only benefit the corporate tag-alongs and, as such, need to be removed or revised.

"We need to enforce laws to protect the profit of CEOs, VPs, and executives who already have base salaries of multi-millions per year!" Who else agrees?

Re:Kudos.

[Tim C]

It may not be inflammatory exactly, but it's certainly dishonest. The title implies that they were sued because they were music lovers, or perhaps despite being music lovers. It seeks to evoke feelings of pity and empathy - "Hey, I love music too!".

In reality, they were sued for copyright infringement. Whether or not they truly loved the stuff they shared is irrelevant.

Re:Kudos.

[schnell]

Anti-RIAA choice of words is hardly inflammatory, at least on slashdot. The first pro-RIAA guy to show up should be bitch-slapped for -20 karma, though I suppose such a mentality would have accumulated any karma at all, or read /. for that matter.

Okay, I have some karma to burn, so I'll take this on. And for whatever it's worth, I hate the RIAA too, and think their lawsuit plan is the worst PR move in recent corporate history.

The story headline isn't so much a reflection of Slashdot groupthink (although there's plenty of that), but of the editor's personal bias. I'm not naming names, but there is a Slashdot editor or two who are well known for the fact that they like to slant stories with their well known political/social leanings ... nothing wrong with that on a E/N or editorial site, just don't ever expect anyone to take Slashdot seriously as a news source.

Speaking as a former journalist, the problem with the story title (and the reason it would never pass muster at a "real" news source) is that it misdirects the focus of the action. It would be like if McGraw-Hill sued a bunch of people they thought had photocopied the new Bill Clinton autobio and handed the copies out to other people for free, then the story headline was "McGraw hill sues book lovers!" They aren't being sued because they love books (undoubtedly they do), but because of what they did with those books. So the story title is misleading because it doesn't reflect the actual "why" of what happened. And that's what separates Slashdot (or at least some of its editors) from ever being considered a real journalism outfit.

You can go ahead and mod-bomb now. ;)

Re:Kudos.

[zenyu]

They aren't being sued because they love books (undoubtedly they do), but because of what they did with those books. So the story title is misleading because it doesn't reflect the actual "why" of what happened. And that's what separates Slashdot (or at least some of its editors) from ever being considered a real journalism outfit.

I agree wholeheartedly, until that last statement. CNN, Reuters, NYT all slant their stories, usually very heavily on international and on 'niche' subjects they assume they won't be called to task on. I agree this is bad reporting, but they are still considered a real journalism outfits. Not to mention the Guardian, FOX, WSJ and the tabloid journals that wear their bias proudly; some don't consider them serious news outfits, but they do break stories and force the NYT of the world to report on the stories. 'Unbiased reporting' is a modern response to the limited number of TV channels the FCC allowed and the death of most newspapers in America. It has decreased the quality of the news we get, even if each of the few remaining sources is better.

Anyway, Slashdot is also more like a news aggregator than a news source. The interviews and book reviews are an exception. Mostly the stories consist of a small editorial, like in this story, followed by links to a news report or another aggregator of wire service reports. Wire reports are usually biased too, Reuters is intentionally biased 'in favor of globalization' and even wires that try to be unbiased like the AP have one or two reporters covering whole continents so that the coverage of South America, Africa, and Asia (outside of Japan) often include just one side of a large debate going on within the country they stopped in for a day.

Re:Kudos.

[jdreed1024]

It may not be inflammatory exactly, but it's certainly dishonest. The title implies that they were sued because they were music lovers, or perhaps despite being music lovers. It seeks to evoke feelings of pity and empathy - "Hey, I love music too!".

And yet, for some reason, Slashdot was all upset about the INDUCE act, which was originally plugged as a way to save kids from Internet molestation and porn. Slashdot editors (Pot) meet Sen. Hatch (Kettle).

Re:Kudos.

[ConceptJunkie]

You're absolutely right, but given the context (this is the Nth story of this kind to show up on /.) we all "know what they mean".

This topic has been so beat to death that I would imagine everyone who is interested has had his or her say or at least given the topic some consideration.

You also have to consider that /. is far from trying to live up to "journalistic standards" (if such a thing even exists any more), it's just a bunch of guys sitting around venting their opinions.

Perhaps you should focus your criticism on the New York Times. :-)

Re:Kudos.

[antiMStroll]

Do you even read this forum? Look up, there are probably as many +5 Insightful posts reaming the file sharers as supporting them.

Re:Kudos.

[Microlith]

Copyright also benefits all those independent musicians, web comic artists, and other individuals who produce creative works.

Including your dearly beloved GPL, which would be -moot- without it.

The laws need to be revised, not removed. If they were removed the number of creative works being produced would shrink to a trickle.

Re:Kudos.

[That's Unpossible!]

Everyone supports copyrights because they believe it will benefit the artists. It doesn't.

Bullshit, and I'll prove it forthwith.

The companies own everything the artists produce as soon as a contract is signed.

Please note these key words.

Copyrights only benefit the corporate tag-alongs and, as such, need to be removed or revised.

Do you think the artist could sign a contract (and thus benefit) if they did not have the copyrights to sell to this huge evil company?

Copyrights only benefit the corporate tag-alongs and, as such, need to be removed or revised.

I agree that copyright law is out of control. I would support copyrights that last for a certain period of time, up until the death of the ORIGINAL AUTHOR of the work. Perhaps not even that long, but certainly no longer.

"We need to enforce laws to protect the profit of CEOs, VPs, and executives who already have base salaries of multi-millions per year!" Who else agrees?

Sorry, I don't subscribe to the "companies are evil" philosophy that is popular among some of you here.

These companies make money, and that money means they can hire people to work for them, they can pay dividends to their shareholders, and they can continue to sell products to people that want to buy them.

Re:Kudos.

[radja]

it benefits certain specific artists, it doesnt help artists in general.

Re:Kudos.

[jafuser]

What could perhaps improve the situation is if copyright law were changed so that the author or artist cannot legally give up their ownership over their work.

This would allow artists to go to multiple producers / distributors to release their songs, and put them in competition with each other.

As it is, there's really no competition in the music industry. If you like artist X, you have to fork over money to company Y. There's no alternative to get the same thing you want. It's one big mass-monopoly.

That, and copyrights should last no more than 14 years.

Re:Kudos.

[That's Unpossible!]

What could perhaps improve the situation is if copyright law were changed so that the author or artist cannot legally give up their ownership over their work.

Why restrict what someone can do with their own work. If someone WANTS to sign a contract giving full ownership of their creation to someone else, they should be allowed to. However, they should not be allowed to give ownership of a copyrighted work beyond their death, in my opinion.

A person and their family can have a realistic expectation to profit from their creations during the life of the author, but beyond that is crazy.

This would allow artists to go to multiple producers / distributors to release their songs, and put them in competition with each other.

They can do that already if they wish. Why do we need a law forcing them to do this?

As it is, there's really no competition in the music industry. If you like artist X, you have to fork over money to company Y. There's no alternative to get the same thing you want. It's one big mass-monopoly.

There's no alternative? You can turn on the radio or attend one of their concerts. You can buy their CD used.

That artist agreed to let that company distribute their works, they didn't have to agree to it, but they did.

Similarly, I don't feel file sharing should be illegal. The music companies need to figure out a way to make money by offering more bang for your buck and embracing digital music distribution.

Keep it coming

[maximilln]

Dear Mr. Ashcroft,

Please continue turning a blind eye to reality. Please continue to pulverize youngsters for sharing music, which youngsters have done since anyone could copy a tune on a banjo or flute. Please continue to support corporations with broken business models. Please continue to encourage businessmen to neglect the physical realities of their product in favor of government backed enforcement of arbitrary laws.

Some day, all of these evil p2p sharing kiddies will come visit you in the nursing home. Enjoy your power while you've got it. It'll never substitute for intelligence.

Steven

Re:Keep it coming

[the unbeliever]

And Ashcroft has absolutely jack and shit to do with civil lawsuits, but thanks for playing.

Re:Keep it coming

[BridgeBum]

Yes and no. See this article.

Re:Keep it coming

[ultrabot]

Some day, all of these evil p2p sharing kiddies will come visit you in the nursing home.

"Err... what did you say I was leaning on? Let me adjust that IV for you, it seems to be misplaced..."

Re:Keep it coming

[cliffski]

there is a big difference. Years ago you might tape an LP for a freind. Here I can upload an MP3 and share copyrighted music with 10,000 people I have never met, and with no effort on my part.
Are you hnonestly saying that music piracy hasnt gone up since the days of home taping?

Anyone who reckons that freely allowing people to take a product that costs money to make and giving copies to everyone on the internet for free, isnt going to wreck that industry must be smoking some serious drugs.
OF COURSE it hurts the guys who make the digital content. In many cases they are rich superstars, but in a lot of cases they arent, and you are wrecking peoples incomes who might be no better off than you *just because you can*

Re:Keep it coming

[the unbeliever]

That involves criminal charges, much like Operation Cyberstrike in the mid 90's.

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

>Anyone who reckons that freely allowing people to take a product that costs money to make and giving copies to everyone on the internet for free, isnt going to wreck that industry must be smoking some serious drugs.

So? Who cares if an industry that can no longer support itself with an outdated business model stays in business or not? The only reason that the music 'industry' existed in the first place was as a means to distribute music to the people who want it. We've come up with a much better way of getting that music, thank you very much.

>OF COURSE it hurts the guys who make the digital content. In many cases they are rich superstars, but in a lot of cases they arent, and you are wrecking peoples incomes who might be no better off than you *just because you can*

People have been whining about technology taking their jobs away since the invention of the printing press. In the end, the technology *never* goes away and those people find new jobs.

Re:Keep it coming

[jschottm]

-----
We've come up with a much better way of getting that music, thank you very much.
-----

So come up with a "much better way" of paying for it.

-----
People have been whining about technology taking their jobs away since the invention of the printing press. In the end, the technology *never* goes away and those people find new jobs.
-----

So when the good musicians give up and find "new jobs" in something other than music, are you really going to enjoy crappy, lo-fi, amatuer music? Remember MP3.com? The one with the business model of giving away music for free? There were some great gems in there, but far and away, most of it was awful. That's what the future of music without payment sounds like.

Re:Keep it coming

[richieb]

So when the good musicians give up and find "new jobs" in something other than music, are you really going to enjoy crappy, lo-fi, amatuer music? Remember MP3.com? The one with the business model of giving away music for free? There were some great gems in there, but far and away, most of it was awful. That's what the future of music without payment sounds like.

If you want to see real great musicians working go see a symphony orchestra or visit your local jazz club. Here are people who are working at making music.

The stuff being pushed by the RIAA members is mostly amateur crap that has been "productized" by the "music industry" and marketed to death.

Since when is production of music supposed to be an "industry" anyways? I thought music was art?

There was plenty of music before the record industry and there will be plenty of music after.

Re:Keep it coming

[cliffski]

music is art. but that doesnt mean it must be done for free.
How many great songs and works of art were knocked up by people working part-time?
Whats so special about making something creative that means you shouldnt be paid for it?
you would rather everyone in the whole entertainment industry worked for free?
grow up.
If you work in software development, this attitude is gonna bite your ass big time, because as your product shows up on kazaa, so your redundancy letter heads your way.

Re:Keep it coming

[cliffski]

" In the end, the technology *never* goes away and those people find new jobs."

ncie one mate.

Hope you enjoyed whats on Tv and in the theaters tonight because thats the last content that will ever be made with such a destructive attitude as yours.
Who is going to make the next Matrix?
The Next buffy?
Who is going to make a new album?
recording studios cost money, so does film...

hang on...

you think a bunch of linux-loving "information wants to be free" geeks are going to make the next million dollar spiderman movie in their bedrooms?

No.
Grow up. people make stuff, people buy stuff. Deal with it. If you dont want to pay for it, you cant have it. Nobody needs MP3s to stay alive. you have NO rights to digital music, unless you make it, or you buy it.

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

>So come up with a "much better way" of paying for it.

What could be better than free?

>So when the good musicians give up and find "new jobs" in something other than music,

Musicians will make music regardless of how much money they make. This is currently the case for 99% of the bands in existence, the ones who never even come close to making enough money to support themselves at it.

>are you really going to enjoy crappy, lo-fi, amatuer music?

I predict the rise of the small-time recording studio. Anyone with a computer and some talent can get software that allows them to produce near-studio quality music in their bedroom.

>Remember MP3.com?

I remember that it was basically sued out of existence.

>There were some great gems in there, but far and away, most of it was awful. That's what the future of music without payment sounds like.

And it's still an improvement over what we have now.

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

> music is art. but that doesnt mean it must be done for free.

Nobody is saying that it should be, only that the days of selling canned music are almost over. Music is not a product, it's a performance. To be paid for it, you'll have to perform.

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

>ncie one mate.

Thanks. The truth stands on its own.

>Hope you enjoyed whats on Tv and in the theaters tonight because thats the last content that will ever be made with such a destructive attitude as yours.

Doubtful. Television will just start putting their advertisements within the shows themselves, and theatres are not threatened at all by downloadable movies since people actually like going out to a movie.

>Who is going to make the next Matrix?

Hopefully nobody. The last 2 were awful.

>Who is going to make a new album?

Doesn't matter one bit. I go out and see my music live.

>you think a bunch of linux-loving "information wants to be free" geeks are going to make the next million dollar spiderman movie in their bedrooms?

I can't even imagine where you came up with that idea.

>Grow up. people make stuff, people buy stuff.

Why buy something thats intrinsically free?

>If you dont want to pay for it, you cant have it.

But I can, and will continue to.

>you have NO rights to digital music, unless you make it, or you buy it.

Rights, shmights. Nobody owns a song.

Re:Keep it coming

[richieb]

If you work in software development, this attitude is gonna bite your ass big time, because as your product shows up on kazaa, so your redundancy letter heads your way.

I do work in software development. And if my product showed up on Kazaa it wouldn't make much difference. Our customers pay us for new features and for support. Without the support the software is practically useless.

Re:Keep it coming

[cliffski]

you make free software? i guess you wish everyone else worked for nothing too? maybe tim berners lee should have worked in walmart instead, coz he wouldnt want to be paid right?
where would you be then?

Re:Keep it coming

[cliffski]

nobody owns a song? interesting.
nobody owns any creative work i take it?
What are you smoking?
you think every musician in the world should be working in walmart to pay bills?
you think good songwriters should all give up and get shelf stacking jobs.
Ive read some pathetic justifications for theft in my time but this stupidity takes the biscuit.

Re:Keep it coming

[richieb]

you make free software?

I didn't say that. I just said that our customers pay us to get support and regular updates...

Re:Keep it coming

[jschottm]

---
What could be better than free?
---

Quality. Rewarding the people who's hard work you enjoy?

---
Musicians will make music regardless of how much money they make.
---

Some will. Many won't be able to afford to spend as much time on music and what they can make won't be as high quality. I happen to work for many musicians and I've seen them negatively affected by music piracy. I'm not talking about major label artists, I'm talking about small indies like Sugar Hill that exist in small niches.

---
I predict the rise of the small-time recording studio. Anyone with a computer and some talent can get software that allows them to produce near-studio quality music in their bedroom.
---

Let me guess, they can just download from some pirate site too? And no, the software is nowhere close. I've used it all, and there's nothing that can make a bedroom recording of drums sound like a good accoustic room, miced with Neumann and Sennheiser mics, run through API, Neve, etc. mic pres, through LA2s or 1176s or whatever flavour of analog compressor you like.

---
>Remember MP3.com?

I remember that it was basically sued out of existence.
---

Regardless of that, the music selection was awful. Like I said, there was some fantastic music on it (quite a few of my friends), but 90% of it was unlistenable.

---
And it's still an improvement over what we have now.
---

Um... from what perspective? If you think you should get free music from artists, what do YOU offer to the world? I've noticed that those that advocate loudest for "free" music tend to be the ones that don't contribute anything, but merely think that they should get was they want.

Out of curiosity, who are the last 10 musicians/groups that have passed through your CD/mp3/whatever player?

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

> nobody owns a song? interesting.
> nobody owns any creative work i take it?

You own a creative work for exactly as long as you keep it to yourself. As soon as someone else experiences it, they own it too.

>you think every musician in the world should be working in walmart to pay bills?

Most already do. What's a few more?

>you think good songwriters should all give up and get shelf stacking jobs.

Most already do. What's a few more?

>Ive read some pathetic justifications for theft in my time but this stupidity takes the biscuit.

You must not have much of a biscuit then.

If I can steal something from you and there is no chance that you'll ever know it's been stolen, I haven't really stolen anything.

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

>Quality. Rewarding the people who's hard work you enjoy?

But I do. Whenever someone I enjoy comes around, I pay to see them perform.

I do spend money on music, just not on pre-recorded music.

>Some will. Many won't be able to afford to spend as much time on music and what they can make won't be as high quality.

Quality musicians produce quality music. Sure, lots of post-production can make anyone sound great, but that's not really talent.

>Regardless of that, the music selection was awful. Like I said, there was some fantastic music on it (quite a few of my friends), but 90% of it was unlistenable.

Most people who make music simply aren't that good, and it's not a matter of the overall production value as much as lack of musical ability.

>If you think you should get free music from artists, what do YOU offer to the world?

I'm not a musician at all. I am a programmer, and I do give away (GPL) any code I don't write under contract.

>Out of curiosity, who are the last 10 musicians/groups that have passed through your CD/mp3/whatever player?

I mostly listen to net radio, so I can't say exactly what the last 10 were.

Things from my media collection I've listened to in the past week:
Underworld - Born Slippy EP (seen twice live)
Orbital - Orbital 2 (seen once live)
Johnny Cash - Personal Jesus (dead)
Hall and Oates - Greatest Hits (might see later this month)
Dj Sy - Happy Hardcore live set (seen once live)
Portishead - Dummy (never seen)

Re:Keep it coming

[jschottm]

>I do spend money on music, just not on pre-recorded music.

What makes you feel that you have a god-given right to prerecorded music then? Just because you want it? That justifies you? Do you shoplift too? If a quadraplegic wrote beautiful music that made your heart soar, they wouldn't be worthy of getting a dime from you, as they couldn't tour?

>Quality musicians produce quality music.

Take a listen of a major recording artist's demos compared to the final product. Tool is a great example, if you can actually find the demo versions. A good studio recording sounds vastly better.

>I'm not a musician at all.

So, you wouldn't know how much time that being a really good musician takes then, would you? Did you know most professional musicians practice 4-8 hours a day? Kind of hard to hold down a day job and have a life with that kind of schedule isn't it?

You also wouldn't know the economic realities of the music industry. Consider this: a band that I've worked with has sold 50K+ copies of their last two albums as a completely independent group. At roughly $10/profit per disk, that's one million dollars directly into their pocket. Nonetheless, they are considering signing on with a large independent label, which would drop their per unit profit to around $4. Now, if there wasn't some real benefit to all parties involved, would they be considering that?

>I am a programmer, and I do give away (GPL) any code I don't write under contract.

So, you favour intellectual property rights when it serves your given sphere. Why should _you_ be able to choose what license to give your code away under, but musicians should be forced (in your view) to give theirs away? Why should you be able to offer your code through contracts? If everything music should be free, everything software should be free as well, right?

Switch your business model to giving away _every_ bit of code you write for free and charge for support. Do you think that touring is fun and easy? It's not a nice, easy situation like software types deal with.

Would you have fun spending all day in a cramped, crowded van, getting sick constantly from eating low end food/getting exposed to new and interesting sets of bacteria in every new city, staying in cheap hotels who's checkout policy only allowed you to get 4 or 5 hours of sleep? Getting home to find your significant other's left you because you're never home, and your kids don't recognise you as more than a stranger who visits every now and then?

Re:Keep it coming

[EllisDees]

>What makes you feel that you have a god-given right to prerecorded music then? Just because you want it? That justifies you?

I need no justification. I get recorded music because it is available to me whenever I want it - much like air. I would no more pay for that music than I would for the air.

>Do you shoplift too?

Nope, that would be stealing - you know, actually taking something away from someone. I've never stolen anything from anyone.

>If a quadraplegic wrote beautiful music that made your heart soar, they wouldn't be worthy of getting a dime from you, as they couldn't tour?

I'd probably send them some money directly in that case.

>So, you wouldn't know how much time that being a really good musician takes then, would you? Did you know most professional musicians practice 4-8 hours a day? Kind of hard to hold down a day job and have a life with that kind of schedule isn't it?

Hence the vast majority of musicians don't perform as their primary means of income. Nothing new there.

>You also wouldn't know the economic realities of the music industry. Consider this: a band that I've worked with has sold 50K+ copies of their last two albums as a completely independent group. At roughly $10/profit per disk, that's one million dollars directly into their pocket. Nonetheless, they are considering signing on with a large independent label, which would drop their per unit profit to around $4. Now, if there wasn't some real benefit to all parties involved, would they be considering that?

How would I know? Maybe they're just dumb.

>So, you favour intellectual property rights when it serves your given sphere.

Not really. We would all be much better off if they didn't exist at all. I use the GPL as a means to keep my code free (as in freedom). If there were no copyright, I wouldn't have to bother.

>Why should _you_ be able to choose what license to give your code away under, but musicians should be forced (in your view) to give theirs away?

If someone gets away with using my code without releasing the source code, more power to them.

'Intellectual property' is a myth. I can only really 'own' my code only until I release it. After that, it's everyone's.

>Why should you be able to offer your code through contracts?

I offer my work through contracts. The code is the product of my work. If someone needs some code written, they pay me to do it. It's the same as paying someone to paint your house or build your garage. Your question doesn't make a lot of sense.

>If everything music should be free, everything software should be free as well, right?

I have certainly not said that everything music should be free, so you can put that strawman away right now.

>Switch your business model to giving away _every_ bit of code you write for free and charge for support.

Why? If someone wants something special written, why shouldn't I charge to write it?

>Do you think that touring is fun and easy?

Let's cry for the rockstars now. Wah!

Lots of occupations aren't fun and easy. Coal miners and firefighters come to mind. People still chose to do them, and people will continue to make music, even if they can't make millions on selling cds.

When will they learn?

[cecil36]

It was in the article that fans are stating that the decline in CD sales is not due to piracy, but the quality of the music (in terms of performer's talent) being published. It's not mentioned in the article about the cost of CDs being a contributing factor. The RIAA lost a class-action suit for setting CD prices high. When you set a price for something, there is a certain demand for the product at that price level. If there is a significant price increase, the demand will drop off to where only the people who really see value for what they are going to spend will buy.

All the better reason for me not to buy another CD again. Last time I bought one was in '99.

Re:When will they learn?

[Fade_to_Blah]

I agree that there is a huge decline in quality of music. However, the article really only states that "some" people have stated that as the reason they stop buying CD's. This pretty much makes sense. As a generation gets older they seem to stop liking the new culture/music of the up and coming generation. There are still plenty of kids today that like the new emo junk that comes out on a regular basis.

I dont really understand what the RIAA thinks is going to happen with these lawsuits. Just shows you how non-technology savy they are.

Re:When will they learn?

[cliffski]

for all these people bitching about the quality of music, i must ask if its so crap why you all insist on stroing 30 gigs of it on your hard drive.
could it be because you are all taking crap and you just like stealing stuff if you think you will get away with it.
I hope they catch everyone.

Euphemisms

[essdodson]

"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers"
I guess that sounds a little nicer than the truth. "RIAA Sues More People Who Habitually Break the Law"

Re:Euphemisms

[maximilln]

"RIAA Sues More People Who Habitually Break the Law"

We're charged as citizens to disobey laws which are unjust. Perhaps you'd rather people succumbed to Prohibition and slavery?

Re:Euphemisms

[Evil Adrian]

If you don't like the price of something, then don't buy it -- you don't have any right to take it for free.

Taking something offered for sale without rendering payment is UNJUST.

Re:Euphemisms

[t_allardyce]

I think many countries round the world punish people for breaking the law.. often the law includes gems like "not smoking certain plants or else you get jail", "not saying anything bad about the leader or else you get your tounge cut out" and "not having sex outside marrage or you get stoned to death".
Breaking the law is never ok..

Re:Euphemisms

[maximilln]

If you don't like the price of something, then don't buy it

If they feel they're not profitting from their product they can raise the price of the product.

Taking something offered for sale without rendering payment is UNJUST

I'll be sure to send McDonald's representatives to your next cookout.

Re:Euphemisms

[maximilln]

Breaking the law is never ok

In today's world it's impossible _NOT_ to be breaking a law at any given time unless you're already locked in a cave.

In the meantime, it is our civil duty as citizens to disobey laws which we feel are unjust. Examples of Prohibition and slavery and all that...

Re:Euphemisms

[wazzzup]

I can't believe you placed laws against stealing music in the same category as slavery. The suffering you incur buy paying $9.99 for an album doesn't even begin to encroach on the suffering slaves endured.

I'm continually amazed how the average person's sphere of awareness drops off dramatically roughly where his nose ends.

Mod me down now, since I haven't defended stealing music. Where this topic is concerned, opposing thought at Slashdot is quickly quashed.

Re:Euphemisms

[maximilln]

Stealing other's work is wrong

I agree that theft is wrong. This isn't theft. It's not even prosecuted as theft. The warrants are not filled out to recover stolen property.

It's an artificial crime called "copyright infringement."

The greeting card industry did not tank just because greeting card makers appeared on PCs. If, however, stores sold greeting cards which were printed on plain paper, would you support prosecuting everyone that printed out a Christmas card modeled after one they saw in the store?

The agricultural industry produces genetically engineered seed. They did not sell this seed until they had seed which grew into sterile crops. They recognized that their product was EASILY COPIED. They could have saved themselves years of research by lobbying Congress to get federal oversight and DNA testing of crops. They didn't. It wasn't right to prosecute farmers for doing what farmers do: harvesting seed from crops.

It is not theft. Once LEGALLY sold the product is easily copied. Face it and refine the business model or accept that they suck as businessmen.

Re:Euphemisms

[maximilln]

I can't believe you placed laws against stealing music in the same category as Prohibition

I placed the resistance against one set of unjust laws in the same category as resistance against another set of unjust laws.

I'm continually amazed how the average person's sphere of awareness drops off dramatically roughly where his nose ends

Such as the common awareness that copyright laws actually benefit the original author/creator/researcher?

Re:Euphemisms

[t_allardyce]

The law is a massive collection of code - most of it is very very badly written code full of holes, or code that was written to patch over previous code. Lawyers are hackers that either find holes (good hackers) or use known holes/exploits (script kiddies) so they can break their client out of the system. Because of the nature of the system its not possible for everyone to use it at the same time, so some people can get away with not following the rules until they are caught. Once inside the system (court-room) you must follow the rules, find holes, or find a judge that can be 'persuaded' - since the code is run on a highly distributed system the code on some processors can be temporarily altered in your favour. The chief project manager/PHB is the president/prime-minister/royalty - in the case of the US the PHB is Bush and many coders that work for him or are his friends can have their input. Often code submitted to this massive open-source project isn't checked, or the checker is ignored. Updates can take years or hours depending on who is behind them. Sometimes large sections of code that have been operating for decades are ripped out or over-written (sometimes for the better sometimes for worse) We are all screwed.

Re:Euphemisms

[Karn]

I agree that taking something without payment is unjust, but what exactly was taken here? I've checked out the music download scene off and on for a very long time now, and it hasn't changed my buying habits. Calling someone a theif for copying (not taking) a CD they weren't going to buy anyway is also unjust.

I like the idea of file sharing, but I also don't want to break the law, so I just listen to the radio or support Magnatune artists. I think that is more effective than this so-called civil disobedience I read on here.. I suppose I could also legally record tracks from my digital cable if I really wanted mp3s of stuff I hear on the radio, which should be considered stealing by your logic.

Re:Euphemisms

[EllisDees]

>Taking something offered for sale without rendering payment is UNJUST.

Just because something is offered for sale doesn't make getting that same thing for free somehow unjust. Take water for example. If I put a bucket out in my yard to collect rain water, my drinking that isn't being unfair to Evian because they want to sell me the same thing.

Re:Euphemisms

[Call Me Black Cloud]

I'll be sure to send McDonald's representatives to your next cookout.

Please do. I'll be happy to show them the right way to cook a burger. Since I'm not stealing their burgers to give to my friends I don't think they'll have any other interest in my cookouts. Well, I do make a really good potato salad...

In case you missed the point, RIAA is not going after people who create their own music.

Re:Euphemisms

[IncarnadineConor]

No, you only get modded down if you don't go on to make some sort of reference to groupthink. Once you do, you get modded up, wether or not you have a good point, because people want to combat the evils of the group mentality.

Re:Euphemisms

[timmyf2371]

Maybe so, however when the consequences of distributing copyrighted material (Read: Civil Suit) come around then you might very well pay the price of disobeying laws which you feel unjust.

Re:Euphemisms

[numakris]

so? I don't care about slavery. Ah, the suffering of slaves, and the suffering of sea going fisherman, and the suffering my dog with arthritis, and the suffering of me at work, and the suffering of slamming my hand in my car door, and the suffering of getting chigger bites. I have suffered, you have suffered, slaves suffered, who gives a shit?

Re:Euphemisms

[antiMStroll]

Copy != Take. Not in any form of English outside of RIAA double-speak. And, nothing personal, that +5 moderation is pure astroturf.

Re:Euphemisms

[antiMStroll]

"Where this topic is concerned, opposing thought at Slashdot is quickly quashed."

Explain your +5 moderation then.

Re:Euphemisms

[msblack]

I don't care about slavery. . . I have suffered, you have suffered, slaves suffered, who gives a shit?

I'm not sure whether the poster is joking or serious. He has no idea what is suffering and sounds like an idiot for his callous attitude. Have you no compassion, Sir? Comparing inflated CD prices to the life-long suffering of slaves is an injustice. True that both are forms of suffering. The magnitude of one is much greater. I hope the poster never has to face real tragedy or be treated unjustly.

Re:Euphemisms

[numakris]

Joking. Christ, lighten up man. I am poking fun at people see the word slavery and instantly go berzerk about the suffering of slaves.

Re:Euphemisms

[toiletmonster]

i agree. i mean thats certainly true from a moral perspective. but from a practical perspective if you want this behavior to go away, simply passing a law against it isn't going to do any good. something needs to fundamentally change. the fact is, that an artificially high price will always create a black market. see cigarette smuggling between states with low taxes to states with high taxes, drug smuggling, prohibition, countries who are embargoed, etc. market forces are always at work even when laws are passed to eliminate a market or cartels try to artificially put limits on the market.

the problem is that the industry is trying to protect a profit model thats obsolete. almost nothing is stronger than the market forces which at work and i predict they will either fail or adapt.

Re:Euphemisms

[gitreel]

The riaa broke the law as well. Shouldn't we go after them?

Boycott?

[Glock27]

An effective response to this type of behavior would be to boycott RIAA products.

Sadly, this would probably be trumpeted as "yet more evidence that piracy hurts CD sales".

I don't download music, and I haven't bought a CD in years.

BTW, an interesting alternative is to digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3. It's even legal (VCR law). ;-) You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.

Just don't share.

Re:Boycott?

[Kombat]

BTW, an interesting alternative is to digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3. It's even legal (VCR law). ;-) You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.

Except for the annoying, inane chatter of the DJ at the beginning of the song, and breaking back in at the end, as the song is trailing off. "That was 50 Cent's latest, 'Kill all the white ho's and sell drugs to kids,' off his latest album, 'It's fun to pretend you're a pimp.'"

Why do they do that, anyway? On the radio stations around here, the DJ will be introducing a song, talking about whatever, and the song will start while they're still talking. Just the instrumental part though. The DJ always finishes whatever he's saying just before the lyrics of the song actually start (I'm convinced they have some kind of countdown display that tells them exactly how many seconds are left before the lyrics of the song start). Are they just trying to be smooth, or do you think their license agreements for the songs actually requires them to talk over some portion of the song, to try and discourage exactly the kind of activity you described (i.e., taping the songs off the radio)?

Re:Boycott?

[EpsCylonB]

BTW, an interesting alternative is to digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3. It's even legal (VCR law). ;-) You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.

This is why digital radio could potentially be more of headache for the RIAA than p2p. It's not too hard to concieve of a digital radio tuner in you computer that could identify and rip tracks straight off the air.

Re:Boycott?

[cpghost]

digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3.

This is a technical solution to a social problem. What's the real difference to ripping a CD? A legal one?

The point here is that RIAA's business model is coming to an end. They can't sue literally millions of file swappers back into buying their overpriced CDs or DVDs. Their near monopoly is coming to an end; just get over it.

Musicians, singers etc... still have the old and proven way to make money: go on tour, and put up good performance. Add to this some old fashioned but sill effective merchandising, and you're in again. Ah, and use the Net to promote your popularity!

Re:Boycott?

[cpghost]

This is why digital radio could potentially be more of headache for the RIAA than p2p

If the purpose of this is to use a legal loophole, don't count on it for too long. RIAA will soon use their bought congress critters to make this illegal too.

The only solution to this problem would be massive civil disobedience. They can't lock up more than 10% of the juveniles and adult population; and be it only for economic reasons!

Re:Boycott?

[pjt33]

I believe that in the UK at least they are required to render part of the song useless - start a few seconds in, finish a few seconds early, or talk over part of it. Of course, with patience it's theoretically possible to record a song a few times and either get one with the start trashed and the end okay and one the other way round for splicing or use correlation to filter out the voice.

Re:Boycott?

[nkh]

Don't waste your time with mp3 encoding, use streamripper during the night on your favorite Shoutcast servers. It's not legal, but it's efficient and you can suck more than 1Go of music every day.

Re:Boycott?

[Zorilla]

You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.

Well, it's true, as long as you don't consider the background noise, insane amount of dynamic range compression, attenuation of frequencies above 12 kHz, occasional hissing at certain frequencies (clipped hissing "s" sounds during speech always bug me), and the obnoxious DJ talking over the song.

Re:Boycott?

[Glock27]

Except for the annoying, inane chatter of the DJ at the beginning of the song, and breaking back in at the end, as the song is trailing off. "That was 50 Cent's latest, 'Kill all the white ho's and sell drugs to kids,' off his latest album, 'It's fun to pretend you're a pimp.'"

The digital cable channels don't suffer from this at all, and I presume satellite radio doesn't either. FM stations vary quite a bit on this.

Why do they do that, anyway? On the radio stations around here, the DJ will be introducing a song, talking about whatever, and the song will start while they're still talking. Just the instrumental part though. The DJ always finishes whatever he's saying just before the lyrics of the song actually start (I'm convinced they have some kind of countdown display that tells them exactly how many seconds are left before the lyrics of the song start). Are they just trying to be smooth, or do you think their license agreements for the songs actually requires them to talk over some portion of the song, to try and discourage exactly the kind of activity you described (i.e., taping the songs off the radio)?

Like I said, it varies a lot with the station and program. I'm pretty sure in most cases the explanation is that the DJs are idiots that really like the sound of their own voice. ;-)

I'm pretty sure most listeners would prefer that the music be played without annoying voiceovers, sound effects, etc.

Re:Boycott?

[gatzke]

XM is pretty good with tons of channels, but even there you start hearing a couple of repeat songs after listening to your favorite 5-10 channels.

I have thought about ripping hours of XM to mp3, but I would not get the info tags that I have in my collection.

But you would have an hours of commercial free music...

I bet you could hook up a web cam to watch the XM display, image process the camera output to get the text, cut off the mp3 song and insert the song title and artist tags whenever the song changed, but I don't have the time, and your swithching might suck as the overlap the songs a bit, but you could fade in and out.

And you would get stuck with text string limitations of XM. My wife and I still laugh about one incendent. I said "That shounds like the Bosstones," and she said, "No, it is the Mighty Might's"

Re:Boycott?

[jdreed1024]

Are they just trying to be smooth, or do you think their license agreements for the songs actually requires them to talk over some portion of the song, to try and discourage exactly the kind of activity you described (i.e., taping the songs off the radio)?

No, they just like the sound of their voices. Or maybe it helps them squeeze more advertising revenue into an hour - like how the local FOX affiliate cuts off the last 3 seconds of the Simpsons in syndication before every commercial break to have moer commercials.

In fact, it's gotten so bad, I know several radio stations who make a big deal of plugging the fact that they never talk over a song. And it's true, they don't.

Re:Boycott?

[telemonster]

I used to do this years ago. With a service called DMX, or Digital Music Xpress. It was offered thru the cable company. It had a SPDIF output, which I would connect to my R3000 Indigo workstation, dump off the audio into AIFF, then run the 4 hour mp3 compression process against it.

Those were the days...

Re:Boycott?

[TiggsPanther]

The problem is that the RIAA have shot themselves in the foot, but in such a way as reflects badly on everyone else.

People start boycotting music owing to RIAA tactics, or refusing to buy CDs owing to "copy protection" technology. Even if these people don't download a copy instead that's still a lost sale.
But saying that "We aren't buying your CDs because you support anti-copying measures" does little except give the RIAA and associates the (wrong) impression that we're all potential pirates.

I rarely listen to physical CDs anymore, and I know I'm not alone in this. As I use my computer more and more (in the room without the CD player - or space for one) I rip my legally purchased CDs to MP3 or (more recently) Ogg Vorbis. (Switched home PC fully to Linux, decided to change encoder of choice whilst I was at it)
To me this seems perfectly fine. I bought the music. I'm not ripping off the companies involved. But they'd still rather stop this from happening.

I also buy far fewer CDs than I have in the past, as well as downloading less music over P2P. Heck I'm getting enough variety from simply listening to CDs I bought years back and haven't looked at for ages. Plus price-wise i'd rather wait until what I want is on special offer. (Yes, I'm cheap. But these days I at least try to be legally cheap.)

I think that the main problem for the Industry is that there are now several factors in play that simply didn't exist to this extent defore the 1990s. Many of these are to do with the perceived value of buying a CD.

• CDs seem to cost too much. They're often priced higher than what people would prefer to pay. Now in most cases people will grumble but still pay, but in other cases that doesn't always work. For more ethical people they simply don't buy - net result, sales still lost.
  This one is complicated by price-changing. Whether for a seasonal sale, an in-store promotion, or sometimes even a blanket drop of the price you will often be able to find a CD at between a third and a half cheaper within a year of purchase.
• Although to a much lesser extent that in movies instant information versus release-lag is still an issue.
  Even when using the internet purely for research and not even contemplating downloading music the simple fact is that you are now likely to know about things long before their initial release. So by the time the first country gets a release the interest is far beyond and geographical boundaries.
• Ease of use of digital formats means that people have very different expectations.
  CD was (usually) superior to audio cassette. It was also originally rather tricky to back up. So replacing a tape or a damaged CD was seen as a justifiable cost to the customer. Fewer people are needing to replace tapes and it's trivial to back up a CD, so from a customer POV it just seems wrong to be forced to pay several times for replacements or portability.
• Most of the music these days is on heavy-rotation on radio and TV. So although it raises the profile of those songs it means that very little value is perceived, after all you'd hear the song 3 times a day anyway "for free" so what's wrong with downloading?
• Some songs are either hard to track down (either through being out of print, or through being unavailable in a given location) or are the one redeeming light on an otherwise dreadful album.
  In the latter case there is no way you're going to persuade people to spend full album price for one single song. But the companies are obviously unwilling to allow people to play "pick and mix" too easily.

Technically the law is on the side of the companies. But those laws were written around practices that have been long-since obsolete by technological advances. As has been seen several times throughout history people will simply reject laws that they disagree with.
The world has changed, and there's no going back. Unfortunately for the music industry it's changed away form a model in which they had a m

Re:Boycott?

[MrNemesis]

If only it were that easy.

I live in the UK, and sorta stopped downloading music 2 years ago. Why? Because a) I had more music than I could listen to and b) I'd gotten out of uni and into a job, and could actually afford to buy CD's. I've been spending the intervening time legitamising my MP3 collection (well, now I've got the CD's, it's more of an ogg collection ;).

BUT I still download some music. The Radio 1 Essential Mixes. Quite simply some of the best DJ sets I've ever heard. Lately I've started recording my own from the radio, but there are still hundreds knocking about P2P that I haven't heard yet, so I download them pretty religiously. And I share them (there seems to be a whole sub-clas of people out there like me who have gigs and gigs of these things, and we're always swapping them about).

Technically I believe this is illegal under UK law. The mixes contain copyrighted content. But I'm never given an opportunity to buy the CD's (as I don't think the BBC is allowed redistribution rights). So, if I want to hear them again and again, I have to download/record them myself.

I can understand this being legally wrong, but is it ethically wrong? Who loses out? No-one as far as I can tell.

Re:Boycott?

[cpghost]

Isn't that silly? Radio stations who are compelled to act this way probably negotiated cheaper broadcasting licenses from the recording companies. As always, we only get what we pay for. Buy cheap, broadcast trash...

Re:Boycott?

[farble1670]

this type of thing happens throughout our society. we are screwed on gasoline prices. we are screwed on movie ticket prices. we are screwed on CD prices. etc. by "screwed", i mean that we at least perceive that we are being charged an unfair price, and there is no reasonable alternative. yes, "unfair" and "reasonable" are arbitrary, but i'm taking about our intangible perceptions.

why can't we retaliate with a boycott against such items? because these things for better or worse are essential parts of our lives.

music is our culture. for most people, giving up their favorite music isn't an option. deciding that they are going to prefer some independent artist better than those on a major label isn't an option. telling their daughter not to like britney spears isn't an option. i'm not going to give up music.

Misleading headline

[Evil Adrian]

The headline is misleading, and puts an obviously pro-filesharing (pro-piracy?) spin on the whole thing.

It's like if someone was getting mauled by a dog, and another person ran over and killed the dog to save the person, and the headline ran: Man Beats Puppy To Death

A bit misleading, no?

Re:Misleading headline

[lachlan76]

No, more like someone who needs a dog to exist randomly shooting dogs which walk in front of them.

Re:Misleading headline

[Evil Adrian]

You need all different types of cells to exist.

Obviously blood cells and brain cells are good.

Cancer cells are bad.

So you get rid of the cancer cells.

People that are pirating music and not paying for it are obviously not HELPING RIAA, and are not contributing to its survival. They are cancer cells.

Therefore, RIAA goes after the cancer cells.

You know why RIAA hasn't gone and sued me? Because I don't pirate music, I pay for my CD's.

Isn't that odd?

Re:Misleading headline

[Ziffy]

So, you think we're all cells in the RIAA's body?

Re:Misleading headline

[lachlan76]

Not contributing != doing damage

Cancer DOES kill lots of people. But does piracy do a lot of damage to RIAA?

Re:Misleading headline

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Yes, that is not nearly as honest as "RIAA uses lawsuits to break up international piracy ring" when the article (not this article, this is a hypothetical but likely example) then tells about two teens in new york and one in canada who were swapping files. The media will always spin. Without writing the whole story above the story there is no way to avoid a spin.

Re:Misleading headline

[timmyf2371]

Hard to tell - the number of different figures being paraded about these days make it difficult to work out just how much damage is being done to the copyright holders.

Of course, this dosn't make "pirates" any less liable for damages as prescribed by law.

Re:Misleading headline

[antiMStroll]

I'm confused, in your example is the dog the RIAA?

Re:Misleading headline

[jpvlsmv]

It's like if someone was getting mauled by a dog, and another person ran over and killed the dog to save the person, and the headline ran: Man Beats Puppy To Death

On slashdot, that headline would read "Windows User Beats Puppy To Death".

Which would be reposted next week as "Windows Beats Puppy To Death", and next month as "New Independant(TM) Study Says Windows Beats Puppies".

--Joe

Canada

[tobechar]

As a Canadian, I will do these people justice by using my protected rights to share gigabyte after gigabyte of pirated music.

We need more Canadians to have music 'available' for download. We could really cause a ripple effect in which so many of us can legally provide music to p2p apps, that there would be no way to stop the rest of the world.

I'm going home tonight, making a bunch of torrents for my 100 disc collection of mp3, and making all few thousand singles available on gnutella network.

I propose a rally of all Canadians or any other nation that can legally share music. If you can share music, spend the bandwidth and do it. Lets create so much of a problem that the RIAA is defenseless.

Let's show the RIAA that we are in control.

Re:Canada

[Ubergrendle]

I'd like to point out that it has not been proven whether we have the right to legally share copyrighted music. The point proven in a court of law was that the standard of evidence presented for copyright infringement by the CRIA was insufficient to proceed with copyright infringement charges against individuals (basically the John Doe approach was rejected by Canadian courts).

The argument that 'sharing music online was like a photocopier' was in favour of treating the technology as a neutral medium, and that it was the activities of the users that needed to be questioned. ~Another~ A+ for common sense...

However...

I'm glad that our courts are more prudent and careful with judgements, but I'm less confident that our government will pass laws that are more open than the US. Just take a look at the joke called CRTC...

Re:Canada

[Kombat]

Note that Parliament will be stengthening Canada's copyright laws as soon as the MP's return from summer break. So enjoy it while you can, because it will be made explicitly illegal in Canada shortly.

Re:Canada

[optimus2861]

Two additional points:

The judge opined in his ruling that distribution under the Copyright Act required a "positive action", like advertising. Those words appear nowhere in the law and he cited no precedents to back that opinion up. I think that's a fatal flaw with his ruling and I believe it will get overturned eventually.

Shortly after the ruling, the Minister of Canadian Heritage spoke at the Juno awards (our equivalent of the Grammys) of the need to strengthen copyright law to protect the music industry. Yuck.

I don't think this semi-legal sharing situation will last more than a year or two up here.

Re:Canada

[SimplePaul]

While I agree that the RIAA doesn't have the best interests of the average music fan at heart, artists deserve their money.

Simply going gung-ho, trying to swamp the net with "pirated" music available to download and increasing the "problem" is not a solid solution, imho.
A lot more illegal downloading is only going to make things worse for the music industry, providing yet more encouragement to clamp down on those of us who do download music.

What we as customers can do, however, I don't know but this aggressive, unconstructive attitude is one that I personally feel is not helping us.

Re:Canada

[maximilln]

artists deserve their money

When losing a debate always invoke sympathy for people who will not benefit from the proposed plan of action.

CEOs, VPs, and execs may finally feel a pinch to make a real contribution to the product. Performers will continue to tour and perform.

Re:Canada

[CanadianCrackPot]

I personally like the Boycott idea. Heck I'm check out independent artists right now so I can find some good music to listen too.

Not so innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA is suing *distributors*, not mere downloading "music lovers". Distributing copyrighted content has never been legal. It's not fair use to serve up a song for download by others.

If some guy is selling ripped CDs on the side of the road that's illegal, just because you're doing it online for free doesn't make you any better.

If they were suing people for downloading a song we'd have something to be outraged about, but people serving the downloads have brought it on themselves.

Re:Not so innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical slashdot, any comment that doesn't denounce the big companies as totally evil is immediately supressed.

The RIAA are undoubtably bastards who do a lot of bad things, but they are as within their rights to stop *distributors* as any other content makers are. It's not okay to distribute a thousand copies of a new game or software application, or of a new book, so why should it be okay for songs and movies?

It was a short time ago when the RIAA was attacking the p2p companies (napster) and people were screaming "don't attack the application! go after the people who are using it for distribution!".

But then I guess this will get modded flaimbait too.

Re:Not so innocent

[cpghost]

If they were suing people for downloading a song we'd have something to be outraged about, but people serving the downloads have brought it on themselves.

Where do you think do all the wonderful files come from, that you'd be downloading? Isn't it a bit unfair to offload the responsibility onto those who helped you get the files in the first place?

Attacking distributors (and a distributor is everyone participating in a p2p network, including bit torrents) is just easier for RIAA et. al, because: 1. of the typical seeders/leechers ratio, and 2. of legal, formalistic reasons.

So please stop feeling safe and "legal," just because you download files without ever giving anything back to the community from which you got them.

Re:Not so innocent

[cpghost]

The only remedy is for everyone to start using p2p and bleed the Copyright Owners enough to the point that they realize their fight is futile and to switch to working with the internet rather than against it, that is by coming up with a system better than free.

Full ACK!

Now the fact that these suggestions sound like a utopia should tell us just how lost the current system is,

It shows how scared all those little puppies are, when threatened by lawyers. This is no longer the land of the free. It's the land of the Anonymous Cowards. The spirit of rebellion vanished all too quickly. We're again bowing before our new overlords...

Re:Not so innocent

[Togra]

Okay, but ideally people shouldn't leave their cd duplicator and a pile of blanks on the side of the road, and others shouldn't stop and use it.

Content creation and copyright needs to be a balance. If there is no content ownership then it becomes hard for content owners to make a living - an author would release a new book, and within a day a hundred other publishers copy it and release their own versions, while even more would OCR scan it and stick it online. The author ends up making none or little money and has to get another job and can't support himself to write a second book, and other aspiring authors see his situation and get discouraged from writing themselves (no matter how much someone loves their art, they still need to eat, and they could create a lot more art if they didn't have to work a regular 9 to 5 job to support themselves).

So we as society make an agreement not to replicate their content for a limited time so that they can make money, which hopefully they will use to support themselves and make more content and thus enrich all of humanity. In return we stress that the agreement is limited, and that after it the content will revert to its rightful place in the public domain so that it is available and preserved for humanity to benefit from forever.

Admitantly "they" have broken the deal first, by extending copyright to rediculous durations and setting the bar for patents absurdly low. How do we respond to that in a way that will restore the balance? Infringing on the copyright of existing content by distribution is unlikely to achieve that.

The most that's likely to happen is that the industries will continue to fight tooth and nail to keep things their way until new systems start from the ground up (online distribution publishers with no ties to the existing organisations). If you want to accelerate that process don't download or distribute RIAA/etc copyrighted content, but rather download and pay for independant content from online legal distributors. Low sales and high illegal download rates lets the RIAA plead their case, low sales combined with low download rates leaves them with no excuses.

Re:Not so innocent

[cliffski]

i agree 100%. People like to think they are stealing music for some 'higher purpose' but thats just bullshit to cover the fact that they think they can get something for free.

Re:Not so innocent

[sumdumass]

Were is one law that makes it ilegle to download a music file. The fact is that there isn't (yet). Only the distrobution of the file is not legal.

For some reason people like you seem to think there is some imaginary law that say "you cannot download anything i don't agree with" but there isn't. US title 17 covers copyright and there is nothign about recieving a copy of the work. there is however laws regulating the type of duplication, distrobution and use without the consent of the author or copyright holder.

Now if you can show the law-laws that make it ilegal to download somethign i would be impressed. As of now all anyone has ever been able to do is just spout that "it's bad" mkay, or whatever the RIAA, MPAA crownies try to say to get you mom to make it stop in your house. well just because you mom say don't do it, doesn't mean there is a law against it. RIGHT and WRONG is totaly different then law.

BTW if you do think you know of a law making it ilegal to download, then post a reference to it so it can be reviewed. I've been requesting somethign like that for over 3 years now and to date, with the exception of 2 states, noone has ever found a law saying it is not legal to down load music.

Rate of suing

[EpsCylonB]

Including the 744 from Wednesday, the RIAA has sued nearly 4,700 people since last September in its efforts to combat piracy, which the music industry has blamed for a multiyear decline in CD sales. Some music fans have countered that bad music, and not piracy, was to blame for the decline.

My maths might be wrong but 5000 people sued in year, 2.5 million kazaa users divided by 5000 = 500. So in 500 years time they will have sued everybody. Good luck to em.

Re:Rate of suing

[cliffski]

At the current rate file-sharing will have wiped out all digital content providers by then.
You dont expect people to keep making movies and music for nothing do you?
do you?
Why should artists work for free when you and I take an hourly wage?

Re:Rate of suing

[cliffski]

even then people paid minstrels with food. You dont even want that to happen it seems....

TiVo for XM Radio

[rarose]

Those USB connected XM Radios are dirt cheap (~$39 if I remember right)... somebody needs to make a TiVo like recording engine for it.

Just let it record and catalog in the background 24/7.

Re:TiVo for XM Radio

[Didion Sprague]

There is. It's called TimeTrax. It records from the XMPCR. It works *wonderfully*.

Problem? The RIAA is attempting to shut him down.

Info:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040824/bizfeature_radio_ 1. html

Several folks have tried to submit this story to Slashdot, but, alas, it has been rejected.

Re:TiVo for XM Radio

[Didion Sprague]

Whoops:

Linkified for clicking:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040824/bizfeature_radio_1. html

Re:TiVo for XM Radio

[rarose]

I wish I had mod points for you... thanks! That looks like exactly what I was wishing for!

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[man_ls]

Slashdot isn't global. It's globally accessible, but it's a U.S. site.

Dupe

[aussie_a]

Sheeesh, this is pretty much a re-post of the same comment a few days ago. First the stories are duped, now comments are getting duped? What's next?

Re:Dupe

[Danse]

Sheeesh, this is pretty much a re-post of the same comment a few days ago. First the stories are duped, now comments are getting duped?

A few days ago? Several comments virtually identical to this one have been posted to every RIAA-related story for the last few years.

Re:Dupe

[Bachus9000]

What's next?

Uh...Profit?
Sorry, I had to. :)

patterns..

[t_allardyce]

In the UK we have a similar but different thing, every couple of weeks the police arrest about 100 people around the country under our wonderful new terrorism laws (thank you Blunkett) then about 6 months later 99 of them get released without any charges. oddly around the same time about 4 people are released from concentration camp x-ray and are flown back to the UK where they get questioned for about 24 hours and then released.. without charges.. maybe they're actually filesharing or something?

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[log0n]

A good writer knows that you should never assume your audience can read your mind. When in doubt, elaborate. You may know what the RIAA is and find the info redundant, but don't assume everyone else pulls from the same bank of knowledge as you.

boycott

[Eisenfaust]

I no longer listen to music released under RIAA labels. There is plenty of music out there released under different labels, much of which is better anyway.

I don't support corporations that sue their customers on a regular basis.

Re:boycott

[JudgeFurious]

I'd mod you up if I had the points. Short, simple answer and the only one that has any chance of really changing anything.

I'm on my second year of refusing to buy any RIAA label's product. If we all do this they go broke. Period.

Stop buying music. Convince others to stop buying music if possible. watch them starve to death. End of evil asshole monopoly.

Re:boycott

[real_smiff]

roger that. i recently decided to avoid risking my arse and unshared any RIAA-label stuff (using 'RIAA-radar'). i only had to unshare a few folders. So i've moved away from big label music without even realising it.. just by expanding my taste. true story.

Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it illegal to download a digital copy of something that you have already purchased (ie. misplaced it, have on vinyl or on a scratched up CD)?

I am old enough to have 2 large boxes of vinyl. One day I would like to find them online in digital format. And, I have a CD sitting right in front of me that is so scratched that I can not recover the music from it. Am I not entitled to download digital copies of those?

So, if the RIAA comes knocking, where's the burden of proof if you say you already own the music?

Re:Burden of proof

[grunt107]

Sadly, it is illegal to download even in this scenario, according to the RIAA. You could circumvent by having a 'buddy' lend you his CD and you make a backup (which can be claimed as a b/u of your original before it was damaged). Still illegal but untraceable unless your buddy snitches.
The RIAA, however, even wants to outlaw the currently legal backup scenario (copy yours 4 b/u).
If you have the time and patience, route a set of jacks to your PC from your home stereo and burn your vinyl onto your HD. There are several programs that will re-track the audio stream into separate songs - some even have filters to improve the quality. I have a small (50) LP collection and about 12 will never be CD's (2 are from IA radio stations in the 80s).

Re:Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say you own the music, they sue you anyway.

They're suing people for sharing songs, not downloading them.

Re:Burden of proof

[ElDuderino44137]

Hey There,

I would think that if it's legal for you to library what you purchased, that you could grab a copy online. I could also see the argument that if the origional was vinal that the copy should come from a vinal source.

I've always thought that it would be nice if I could buy a liscense to a album or song. That way I could pay a nominal fee to obtain copies in different formats.

But how do you stop folks from grabbing a bunch of copies ... and reselling or trading and what not.

I guess my problem is that I assume everyone is honest. RIAA assumes everyone is dishonest.

Shrug,
--The Dude

Re:Burden of proof

[icylucifer]

I have a CD sitting right in front of me that is so scratched that I can not recover the music from it. Am I not entitled to download digital copies of those?

I have a car in my driveway which is so rusted I can not open its doors. Am I not entitled to take someone else's car so I can drive to the mall?

Re:Can they keep up?

[kzinti]

If they only sue approx 700 people a month and the net population is growing at a faster rate then can they physically keep up with the explosion of P2P and file sharing?

That depends on how many people are deterred by the lawsuits. I'm not sure about the rate of growth or use of the P2P services, but I'd guess that if filing one lawsuit deters 100,000 people, then they probably can keep up with the rate of growth. If it's 1,000 then maybe. If (as is probably the case) it's fewer than 10, then they would seem to be fighting a losing battle.

I'd also guess that the "discouragement rate" was the highest with the first round of lawsuits, and is diminishing steadily each time.

question

[ColonBlow]

Is porn copyrighted? Is that illegal to file-share?

I'm just askin' is all. No reason in particular. None at all.

Re:Question

[HarveyBirdman]

I'm wondering what the legal disposition of those files is?

Finders keepers.

Or if you prefer Real Legalese Latin: Findus Keepus.

Re:question

[identity0]

A dupe story with an obvious bias towards file-sharrers filed under 'Your Rights Online', and a porn joke from a guy named 'ColonBlow'...

Yes folks, we've reached a new low. May Goatse have mercy on our souls.

(And for god's sake, the 'post anonymously' option is there for a reason...)

Re:question

[Coolmoe]

yes it is it was a work of the producing website and most content is usually stamped as such. Almost always on the website itself and many times on the content as well. That being said most don't usually sue over filesharing unless you go to the big players in the game like ALS scan who has even sued newsgroup services over a coulple of binary newsgroups that shared thier content. Many websites don't mess with it as most understand that some filesharing is really good for business. The try it before you buy it really works.

Re:Some Correlation?

[91degrees]

I'd blame the increase in DVD and video game sales, but that's just wild speculation my my part.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dreamworks sues torrent tracker

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what can result when mediacompanies (dreamworks in this case) goes after torrent trackers and warez-traders abroad:

Piratebay response to dreamworks

and how many 9 year olds did they sue this time?

[Jrod5000 at RPI]

kid to teacher: "he stole my lunch money!"
teacher: "who did?"
kid: "that lawyer over there!"

Screw the RIAA. Support Artists Directly

[wackysootroom]

A good way to tell if an album is released by an RIAA member is to use the RIAA Radar website.

It's a good way to boycott the RIAA while still being able to buy CDs.

Re:Screw the RIAA. Support Artists Directly

[MrNemesis]

As I've said above in another post, the Magnetbox DB is pretty US-centric. There's lots of music in there listed as RIAA-unsafe, simply because it's distributed by the RIAA labels in America, whereas elsewhere it may be distributed by the originating (indie) label.

I use Aphex Twin and Warp Records as my prime exmaple. Warp are probably one of the most independent labels around (you can buy and download non-DRM MP3's from their website and buy CD's straight from their store), but in the US they're distributed by all the usual suspects.

If you don't live in the US, take Magnetbox with a pinch of salt - do your research! If you can buy straight from an indie label, do so.

SBC

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I like being an SBC customer, as far as I know they still refuse to cooperate with the RIAA and thier John Doe IP address lawsuits. I feel sorry for any file sharers who use RoadRunner, which is owned by TimeWarner, which is a record company.

Re:SBC

[natron 2.0]

good point. I wonder how many people out there are screaming about boycotting the RIAA and the record companies but still give them money by using RoadRunner.

I am an SBC subscriber as well.

Re:SBC

[The Analog Kid]

Me too, I use to be a Comcast customer, but I switch to Verizon, as they beat the RIAA in appeals court to protect their customers identities. They also are against INDUCE. I put my money where it will benifit me and Comcast sure wasn't benifiting me. Not that I'm a piraters, but fighting to keep my info private for any matter is a cause that is worthy to me.

Simple cure..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

put low quality mp3s for free download (add an advert at the start and the end to hence make money) and let people download them. If they like them then people will goout and buy them.

It's a simple cure AND they get money from selling thr advertising space. Why haven't they tried this yet? They can also track who downloads it, put upa mini survery, whatever is popular they can whore even more.

It's fucking common sense and costs alot less then repeatedly sueing people.. and makes you get a free fans.

Re:Simple cure..

[natron 2.0]

So after you down load them you can load them into any audio editor and remove the adverts but you still have a low quality mp3...hmmm

Re:Simple cure..

[Martix]

Bare Naked Ladys did this a few years ago .... they put there music on line and had inserted part way through the sone.if you like you can buy it....ect...it was funny.

Re:Simple cure..

[nkh]

A few seconds cut from a song is not a problem if it's free. I won't buy a CD again until these 2 conditions are met: lower the prices and remove all the protections that prevent me from listening to my music where I want.

Re:Simple cure..

[jschottm]

Except the people tend not to buy things if they think they can get away with getting it for free. A friend of mine works at a big record label. They took a band that they thought had a great future, and put up a _high_quality_ mp3 with _no_advert_ for people to download and advertised it to promote the album. Had downloads in the hundreds of thousands. The CD barely sold, but the tracks were quite popular on the P2P networks.

They gave the fans a gift with no strings attached and still got spit upon.

Re:Simple cure..

[maximilln]

The CD barely sold, but the tracks were quite popular on the P2P networks

Was the band promoted with equal vigor in all the teenie magazines? You've pointed out how easy it is for media companies to engineer the next superstar or tank a band they don't really like. The p2p effect is minimal. People will take anything for free.

Re:Simple cure..

[djlurch]

Hey that's a good idea. Maybe we could even transmit it over the airwaves so people can receive it in their vehicles. We could call it r...a...d...
Oh wait....

RIAA alternatives - iRATE radio

[Anonymous Coward]

"iRATE radio is a collaborative filtering system for music. You rate the tracks it downloads and the server uses your ratings and other people's to guess what you'll like. The tracks are downloaded from websites which allow free and legal downloads of their music."

Free, open source iRate radio

Basic legal fact.

[Kjella]

Settling is a lot faster than trial. RIAA has no hurry either, it is the press coverage they seek. The settlements are slump change to the RIAA. Don't expect any rulings for quite some time.

Kjella

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[cpghost]

Caveat Canem: If RIAA get subponea the tracker's operator, they can get hold of the IP you were using . Then if they can subponea the ISP to whom the IP belongs, you're in for big trouble.

Perhaps someone would come up with an anonymizing version of the BT protocol soon. The current version is not safe at all.

OMG RIAA bought SCOX!

[linuxislandsucks]

OMG the RIAA just bought SCOX...

suing customers must be the new fangled business strategy

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[maximilln]

the ability to scan their machine for tradable files and then get them for sharing

Filenames are not directly indicative of content.

A suspicious government will imprison its people in the same manner that suspicious parents ground their children.

More rationalizations for being cheap

[CajunArson]

"It's not stealing, only the big evil RIAA loses money!"
I know somebody who is not rich, not an evil RIAA executive, and hell, he doesn't even make music, but he has personally been hurt by P2P file traders who think it's their 'right' to get everything they want for free.
This guy does in depth analysis of political issues and publishes research online that are used by high school and college debate teams. He provides a very valuable service since there would not be enough time to stay abreast of current political issues and also be prepared to debate so his reports act as executive summaries to condense all the garbage floating around on Google.
So what happens to his stuff? Well there are a few people out there who will pay for it, but then P2P kicks in and for every 1 debate team that buys the report there are probably 10 that don't.
"Information wants to be free!" "It's evil to want to get money for your work!" (in which case why do you complain when your job is outsourced?)
This guy is providiing a valuable service, and he does it all on his own, but I'm sure there will be 10 posts rationalizing why stealing his work is OK and he is worse than Bush for daring to charge to make the lives of other people easier.

Re:More rationalizations for being cheap

[maximilln]

This guy is providiing a valuable service, and he does it all on his own, but I'm sure there will be 10 posts rationalizing why stealing his work is OK and he is worse than Bush for daring to charge to make the lives of other people easier

Accept change. Blacksmiths aren't in high demand anymore, keymakers aren't in high demand anymore. People who can sew aren't in high demand anymore.

It's reality. Nobody subsidizes the traditional bakery just because the supermarkets can make a million donuts/hour. Everyone must find their niche and pray because, unless you are wealthy enough to send attorneys screaming like banshees against anyone who can't afford a defense, that's the best life promises.

Re:More rationalizations for being cheap

[wongaboo]

This is an interesting example, but I wonder how your guy knows that file sharing is what is hurting his business. The music industry has complained that P2P has ruined their business but their numbers are going up? I think the recent downturn in music sales might have more to do with the recent dearth of quality pop music. That is just an opinion but so is your friend's opinion that P2P is what is hurting him. And my opinion is also the result found by a harvard study.Any good debater would know that you must back up your opinion with evidence rather than assertion. Does your friend have any evidance directly conecting his drop in business to filesharing?

As a former High School and College debater I am well aware of the usefulness of the type of briefs your friend produces and I recognize that the market is very small. However, I am also well aware that the problems your friend faces existed well before P2P came on the scene. High School and college debate are relatively small communities. These people see each other every weekend and they probably go to camp together over the summer. One of the main activities at summer camps is photo copping useful information. That is the primary motivation for going to camp. We would make sure someone went to camp every summer from our HS team just to be sure we had a copy of all the latest briefs? Did we pay for them? Well the camps are not cheap, but I suppose not. On the other hand no one would go to camp if they didn't come back with two or three decent cases. So maybe it is the camps stealing from your friend rather than the individual debaters (some camps do work very hard to prevent the reproduction of copywriter works but it is very hard to do when you have kids up all night and day at the photocopier).

In short, the photocopier, the word wide web, and plain old sharing (not file sharing) are, in my experience, a greater threat to your friend's livelihood. And I know it to be a fact. Your friend chooses to blame P2P but how does he know?

Re:More rationalizations for being cheap

[GeorgeH]

"It's not stealing, only the big evil RIAA loses money!" ...
"It's evil to want to get money for your work!" ...
This guy is providiing a valuable service, and he does it all on his own, but I'm sure there will be 10 posts rationalizing why stealing his work is OK and he is worse than Bush for daring to charge to make the lives of other people easier.

You might want to ask your friend about straw man arguments some time, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

My Analysis

[Ckwop]

I'm going to use the 5 step approach that Schneier utilises in Beyond Fear to analyse security decisions. Hope you enjoy this analysis. I don't have the book to hand so I'm not sure i've got the steps spot on but it's close enough.

What assets are you trying to protect? The profitability of copyrighted music.

What are the threats to your assets? The biggest threat to profitability is the very large levels of copyright infringement. This is such a massive risk that considering any other threat to profitability is a waste of time at this stage.

What is the proposed countermeasure? Suing random copyright infringers.

How does the countermeasure mitigate the risks? The idea is that by suing random copyright infringers you instill fear in people who are more risk adverse. They don't want to be slapped with a large fine so they'd rather pay for the record. There are a number of questions that need to be asked. Firstly, how many people does this approach really scare off? Secondly, How much revenue is it likely to recover? Let's say for every person sued 10 people decide not to infringe and go out and buy the record and each record brought a record for $3. Then the revenue brought in would be $2232. The cost of the legal action would be more than the revenue recieved. Even if 100 people were dissuaded for every infringer sued this would only increase to $223,320. You'd likely make a profit over the cost of the legal action but it'd be small and you've not really done much damage to the millions of remaining pirates. In light of this analysis, I don't think this counter-measure mitigates the risk.

What side-effects does the proposed counter-measure produce? People generally don't like to buy from a company that likes to sue its user base so public relations may be damaged. A side-effect of particular note is people boycotting your products. In those circumstances you've the lost sales as a direct result of deploying the counter-measure - a very bad situation.

Is the trade-off worth it? This step is always subjective but I think the counter measure is meritless given the damage to public image, the small amount of money recovered from most of the infringers and the small amount of people who actually stop downloading as a result of the legal action. The RIAA should consider other counter-measures.

Simon.

Re:My Analysis

[t_allardyce]

Are there any real-world examples you can gain experience from? International terrorism works in a similar fashion - a sense of fear is created causing pressure on governing bodies which can be enough to sway political decisions. However, there are very few occaisions where this has led to a positive outcome for the terrorists and in most cases it leads to their death.

Re:My Analysis

[Rumor]

Well done, and good job showing just how useful that book can be. :)

Re:My Analysis

[Prien715]

Very nice rational analysis of the music industry that doesn't resort to flaming. I'm thought the same thing myself, but have never seen it expressed so clearly and concisely. Adding you as a friend now.

In other news...

[fafaforza]

Undue persecution of boy lovers continues around the world.

Really, what a loaded and ridiculous headline. If you love music so much, try not to exterminate those that produce it by redistributing it free of charge by violating copyright law.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[B5_geek]

The BT tracker keeps 'track' of all IP's that are connected to it and downloading/uploading a particular file.

BT does not and can not "scan your hard-drive" You only share the active torrents that you have open.

BT is NOT good for warez because if you are downloading or seeding a file, the server has your IP.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[Richard_at_work]

Nope, its been openly stated on slashdot before (and other places) that Bit Torrent is no more safer than Kazaa or Gnutella, due to the fact that you can get a list off of all trackers of who is sharing what file (duh, else how are you going to connect to them?)

Re:Can they keep up?

[gilesjuk]

I did think about that, they do waste a lot of money discouraging instead of advertising online sales. They could very easily flood P2P with junk files and then have adverts promoting how much quicker, safer and faster it is to buy online music.

Of course you only have to look a the popularity of DVD burners, CD writers etc.. to see that people don't really care about these threats.

Not everyone writes music and burns audio CDs containing their own music. Not everyone uses DVD writers to create home movie DVDs. The only other uses are for data backup and given the vast size of hard disks you don't get much on a DVD eaither.

Re:Or....

[Karn]

It's like these people are taking the food directly from the mouth of Madonna's baby. How could they be so cruel?

State of file sharing?

[pimpinmonk]

So what's the current state of file sharing? If I don't share any files but download illegally, will I get sued? Or are they still only pursuing those that share files?

Are there some tools that are safer than others? Bittorrent has always seemed safe to me, since you tend to only share some random bytes. What else is safe? SoulSeek? eDonkey? Gnutella2?

Re:State of file sharing?

[A_Known_Coward]

I'm definately not a lawyer, but here's what I think:

If you download a file over a P2P network, isn't the burden of copyright validation on the supplier? I mean, when I download an iTunes song, Apple provides the DRM and clearly defines what my rights are as the licensee of that piece of copyrighted material.

In the case of P2P, if I download a song, I may not have to worry about the copyright because I assumed the supplier had verified that it was ok for me to download.

OTOH, if I make a decision to redistribute that downloaded song, I better be sure I know the copyright (or lack there of) of what I'm sharing.

Which brings me to another point. If the RIAA shares music as part of a sting, does that mean, since they're the legal copyright holders, that they have waived that right as soon as the allow downloading from their servers? Just a thought.

744... curious number

[Anonymous Coward]

am i the only one that notices that 744 maps to rwx--r--r ? all rights to the owner, read-rights for everyone...

Re:744... curious number

[bonhomme_de_neige]

am i the only one that notices that 744 maps to rwx--r--r ? all rights to the owner, read-rights for everyone... It should be rwxr--r--, and anyway, the only right the RIAA really wants is x, the right to execute everyone downloading their music.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[ravenspear]

No, BitTorrent has been worse for me. This is completely true.

I've used FastTrack/Gnutella/OpenFT for a while now and never had a problem there. I used BitTorrent to download an episode of Star Trek Enterprise, and got a letter from my ISP forwarded from Paramount stating that I was liable for infringement. Ultimately nothing came of it, but they were obviously able to get my IP quite easily.

YRO Bingo

[Stiletto]

With all these YRO articles lately, I think it's time for some...

Your Rights Online BINGO

Download the card, print it out, and play!

Easy and fun: Every time someone comments about something in a box, or somethin g happens that matches an illustration, check off the box. You win if you can c onnect a full row, column or diagonal!

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[nkh]

Bittorrent is safer because the official client is a small program written in Python, and you can see with the source that nothing is put on the network unknowingly.

As for the RIAA, the Azureus client has some kind of plug-in that prevents a list of IPs (those of RIAA spies) from getting the packets from you. It's not the most efficient privacy, but it's still an amusing idea.

Re:Boycott RIAA products

[Zorilla]

Well, I'll give the obvious response to this:

Not buying music -> Lower RIAA sales -> RIAA blames reduction of sales on P2P, instead of being objective about the problem.

"Voting with your wallet" has been covered many, many times.

New administration

[a_nonamiss]

Someone's mention of Ashcroft brought up an interesting question in my mind. Is there any chance that this holy quest to bring down all filesharing activity would be any different if Kerry were elected? Personally, I wish there was a viable third party candidate, but since it's not going to happen in this election, I'm considering voting for Kerry solely on the fact that it will get Bush out of office. This website kind of sums up my thoughts on the election.

Re:New administration

[a_nonamiss]

Since my post contained nothing remotely close to anything contained to Godwin's Law, I deem you a complete troll. Actually, it looks more like you are trying to invoke Freiler's Maxim and I am calling you out.

Settlements & default judgements

[turnstyle]

In addition to the many settlements (for about $3000 each) there have been at least a few default judgements (for more like $5000-$10000).

So, expect trial losses to cost more than settlement.

Unless, of course, the defendent didn't actually share thousands of files -- I mean, does anybody actually do that? ;-)

Re:Settlements & default judgements

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm sympathetic for these people, if I lost $3000+ right now, it would ruin me.

However, people should be a little smarter about trading MP3s, if they insist on doing it.

Then again, I've considered hosting a copy of steamboat willy on my webserver, just for the hell of it. I know that the parasites (lawyers, politicians, FBI directors, judges) wouldn't see it this way, but if the cartoon were produced before the Sonny Bono Act, then how can it get its copyright extended?

Re:Settlements & default judgements

[cpt kangarooski]

Because the CTEA is retroactive in effect, and a challenge as to this point was heard by the Supreme Court and the law was still found constitutional.

You would have absolutely no luck in arguing otherwise, for the time being. You need a change: a change in the composition of the Court, a change in social attitudes sufficient to get them to decide otherwise the next time they hear it, or a change in the law.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[Reapy]

Why is that though? What if you payed for the cable channel that Star Trek is broadcast on. You are able to legally record it from the channel via a vcr or tivo or computer or whatever. Why is it you can not obtain the episode via the internet? Is there some sort of agreement from the cable companies that say "if you forgot to record it when we broadcast it, you can't watch it"?

I don't mind them suing for copyright infringment, but I would just like to see enough evidence to actually prove that the person is doing something illegal.

None of the examples you've given are the same...

[AzrealAO]

people are taking the fruits of his labour.

Blacksmiths are no longer in high demand because technology has left the blacksmiths products behind. Which is substantially different than people simply taking the fruits of the blacksmiths labour without paying for it.

In this guys example, his product is in high demand, (if 10 debate teams use the report for every 1 that actually buys it) people just refuse to pay for it.

Just as music is clearly in high demand if the volume of music trading that goes on on the various P2P networks is any indication, people are just taking the product without paying for it. That's not a change in business model, that's wholesale 'theft' of a product.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[nolife]

ability to scan their machine for tradable files and then get them for sharing.

I really doubt a list of file names would stand up in court. I can name files whatever I want, the RIAA or someone working for the RIAA has acknowlwdged releasing bogus files themselves as a P2P deterent in the past.
Without controlled detailed logs, and after downloading enough of or the complete track to determine if it was legitimate, the RIAA can not prove you actually were offering up a song. Remeber that P2P is shared too so they have to ensure and PROVE they got this file from you and only you. Again, a list of file names is NOT going to get the RIAA some type of multimillion dollar settlement. It appears it is getting them $1000-5000 from people now though.

It may take some time but eventually an accused file swapper will take this defensive route. For all we know, this may have already been attempted and resulted in one of the cases the RIAA "let go".

RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction]

[curtisk]

True enough they may be music lovers, but I doubt thats what the lawsuit states, "you are hearby being charged with loving music"

Talk about overly slanted editing! LMAO

Hey, I love $$ CASH $$, so if I get take to some whenever I want by circumventing laws and protections that are in place, thats cool right, since I just *luv* cash money?!

I think the RIAA is heavy handed, but jesus criminey that headline is piss-poor!

Re:RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction]

[Kethinov]

Copyright infringement != stealing. Somehow I doubt going to a music store and walking out with several albums is going to land you in as much debt as an RIAA lawsuit. The law is being exploited by a company whose business model is failing. It's the same damn thing as what SCO is doing to Linux.

Re:RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction]

[Kethinov]

Going from one extreme to the other != a headline correction.

Re:RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction]

[curtisk]

Copyright infringement != stealing. Somehow I doubt going to a music store and walking out with several albums is going to land you in as much debt as an RIAA lawsuit.

Which is precisely why I had mentioned that the RIAA is heavy handed. And stating that its really just "copyight infringement" just obscures what is going on even worse.

Bi boží (God's whip)

[mutant mouse]

In my country (Slovakia) there is a popoular czech communist propaganda TV series 30 Pípad majora Zemana (30 Cases of major Zeman).
One episode (Mimikry) is about a group of musicians who distribute (politically) illegal songs. State security mixed this episode from several incidents. But the story may sound familiar to Americans these days.
The group distributes illegal songs and drugs. Major Zeman is going after them. And they DO hijack the airliner.... .

Re:Bi boží (God's whip)

[dave420]

You see! A clear link between P2P and terrorism. The B52s are ready to go and bomb every P2P client from here to the middle east...

Countersue the RIAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently devised a plan that would turn the RIAA's methods of searching for copyright infringement against them. Anyone think this would work?

RIAA Honeypot:
1) Create thousands of MP3 files with names of songs of popular bands that are under RIAA labels. However, make these MP3s contain nothing but dead air, or possibly you talking about the song. Make sure the "songs" are the correct time and comparable sizes. Also, if you own any real MP3s, take any media that holds or ever held the data and hide it away, possibly in a safety deposit box or some other long-term storage.
2) Log onto Kazaa and any other services that are being targeted. Stay on for a long time. Try to get sued.
3) When sued, willingly give your computer over as evidence.
4) In court, demand that each of these "songs" be played.
4a) Alternate: When they dismiss the suit once they get their hands on the "evidence", go to step 5.
5) When the suit is dismissed, file a countersuit for barratry, defamation, time lost due to having to deal with court, problems due to lack of a computer, etc. Make the dollar amount large enough that it'll damage them.
6) Profit. Encourage others to repeat.

It'd take a lot of work, but the payoff could be worth it.

Re:Countersue the RIAA?

[ElDuderino44137]

LOL,

Pretty funny.

But this only works if RIAA and gang are simply looking for song titles. I thought they were looking for file checksums and what not?

If they were only looking for file names ... couldn't we come up with some pig latin naming scheme to throw them off the sent?

Cheers,
--The Dude

It is a real shame

[FinalCut]

The sorriest part of this whole thing is the sympathy people continue to show for the folks who are being sued. Look, I'm no fan of the RIAA's strong-arm tactics but if you STEAL, regardless of the logic you use when doing so, you run the risk of getting caught and being punished. I can't believe my eyes everytime I read posts like this on slashdot when even the title is purely sympathetic to the theives. This isn't robin hood and prince john folks. Nobody is stealing from the rich to give to the poor - they are just stealing. If any of these people went into a store and stole a CD or Tape and got caught they wouldn't be the sympathetic "victim". Nobody forced anyone to steal the music; now someone is just forcing them to pay for it.

Re:It is a real shame

[maximilln]

but if you STEAL

Even the law recognizes that it's not stealing. It's "copyright infringement". Yes it's illegal but it's not theft.

Did Hallmark sue the makers of home greeting card software? Do agricultural companies sue farmers if they happen to get a fertile plant from genetically engineered seed? No. These industries accept the FACT that their product may be easily copied and they adjust their business model to account for it. Back in the day desktop graphics software used to sell disks of clip art and were fierce about trying to protect it. Eventually they accepted the FACT that the product (especially in the 8-bit day) was easily copied. I could look at a 64x64 pixel bit of clip art and copy it visually without copying their product. The only people who sell clip art are people with a business model which guarantees they can turn a reasonable profit without suing normal citizens. The media industry cannot expect that level of clientele when they target 9-15 year olds.

The media industry is being stupid, socially irresponsible, greedy, dishonest, or all of the above.

Re:It is a real shame

[FinalCut]

call it what you want, it's still breaking the law. As I said, I don't agree with the tactics used by the RIAA but rationalizing illegality just doesnt' cut it.

and this is a bit different, sorry to say, than the examples you produce. Someone else isn't going into the studio and creating their own music based exactly off of some bands. They are taking the original art, making digital duplicates of it and distributing it for free.

Anyway, as much as I dislike the whole act of defending the right to distribute others work freely (or on the part of those who take the work for free (stealing in my mind)) I'm just as sick of hearing about how the artists aren't making any money because of file sharing. Gimme a break. Has anyone seen that show Cribs on MTV? EVER? Some of these people have spent the GNP of many small countries combined on cars alone.

Live Aid

[azzy]

I know it is fractionally off topic (see, now you can't mod me off topic without feeling as if you are picking on me) but I was watching TV (in the UK) this morning, and they were discussing the legal issues around getting permission from all those that took part in Live Aid so that a DVD of it can be produced and sold. Midge Ure is one of the legal caretakers of the whole Live Aid thing, and he was extolling how much money would be made for the poor/hungry/etc in Africa, and how he was humbled at the thought of this legacy continuing after he was long dead, continually making money for charity.

Now, I didn't mean to think cruel thoughts, but I felt like phoning up and yelling about how copyrights /would/ run out, there was no eternal legacy being left. Predicting the return argument that there should be eternal copyright, otherwise the poor Africans will lose out, I had ready a retort that if the copyright never ran out, all of society would be losing out.

Of course, I didn't phone in, I had to come to work.. and so I have been waiting all day for a RIAA article on /. so I could rant about this anyway.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[soulsteal]

The RIAA and MPAA are finding users on networks by searching for files that are shared and logging the IPs of the people allegedly sharing them.

Where Bit Torrent is concerned, each torrent is its own P2P network and with the right client, you can still access the IPs of all the clients on said torrent that are sharing the file.

So no, Bit Torrent is no greater for protecting your TCP/IP anonymity. The only recourse is non-public torrents that RIAA/MPAA couldn't see because they couldn't access.

If you're gonna let people get stuff from you, you've got to tell them where to get it from. Once the RIAA/MPAA know where to go, the fun begins. :^)

Re:Can they keep up?

[Dan Ost]

Of course you only have to look a the popularity of DVD burners, CD writers etc.. to see that people don't really care about these threats.

This may come as a surprise to you, but lots of people use DVD burners and
CD writers for backups and other non-downloaded-media purposes.

In other news...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Police are now arresting money lovers.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[wackysootroom]

There are blocklists that you can load into iptables or azureus BT client. Obviously these lists do not work with the tracker, but only work to prevent someone on the blacklist from connecting to your machine.

Do these lists help at all, additionaly, does the owner of the copyright have to actually *connect* to your machine to see what you have for evidence or is just the fact that you are connected according to the tracker evidence enough?

I wonder when...

[cmdrwhitewolf]

The people who make energizer batteries are going to start suing the RIAA for making their rabbit marketing campaign to look like an also ran/second best, because the RIAA just keeps GOING and GOING...

Missing the point

[Peter_JS_Blue]

All the time people are copying music that belongs to the RIAA's members, those same people are breaking the law ( such as it is ) and run the risk of being sued. The real solution is to effectively bypass the RIAA without breaking any laws like :-

• Bypass CD & DVDs altogether
• Buy music from labels not linked with the RIAA
• Buy all your music legally from Internet based sources
• Swap with friends, family, via web sites, etc - I'm sure thats still legal.
• Support your local unsigned band by creating / promoting their web site with their music (NOT pirated music) - I'm in the process of doing this with some bands here.

Re:Missing the point

[east coast]

Swap with friends, family, via web sites, etc - I'm sure thats still legal.

Not as much legal but rather it's a practice that is winked at by the RIAA. Keeping 20 songs on Kazaa isn't going to get you sued. They're looking twords larger enterprise-sized traders.

Support your local unsigned band by creating / promoting their web site with their music (NOT pirated music) - I'm in the process of doing this with some bands here.

While it is a really decent thing to do there are a couple of problems with this: The first being that the RIAA artists already have a large fan base. If I want to listen to Tangerine Dream or Rush I'm not going to find that same type or quality of music out of a band playing at Joe's Bar and Grill. While I do not believe that Tangerine Dream is currently on a RIAA label any longer Rush certainly is. And a large part of Tangerine Dream's back catalog is still on RIAA labels. Anyway... Secondly, most people are not into music exploration. Most people want what's on the radio because it's easy to find. I'm sure once the internet becomes more media friendly people will find local music more appealing but for right now the easiest way to discover these bands is local clubs and bars. Most people simply don't do this. Besides, speaking from the Joe Sixpack prospective; how good can they be if there is a 3 dollar cover in a bar that holds a maximum of 125 patrons?

All Bow to Fat Manny the Stuntman !!

[gelfling]

Why doesn't the RIfuckingAA just interrupt all their CD tracks with commercials for Coke and/or aginst piracy?

Re:When will they learn? AC9

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't buy new music.
They want the same as they have always listened to, the same chord sequences and arrangements, with slight changes. Do anything 'difficult' that stretches that, even harmonicly simple additions and time signatures beyond 4/4 that modern composers have been doing since the 20's, and it won't sell.

So, we have a catch 22.
People want new music, but they are not prepared to make the effort to listen to anything challenging, so pop music has stayed very similar since the 50's. The song lengths, chord structures and melodys remain almost identical, only the choice of timbres has changed.

The public is happy with it's old records, they fulfill the need for mindless pop, so why do they need any more to add to the pile?

Remember, it's not your fault there is no new 'good' music, you put the effort in to find and learn to appreciate music that you initially find hard or upsetting, don't you? .... Don't you?

the problem with these suits...

[m2bord]

the biggest problem with these suits is that the riaa is trying its best to coerce people into settling, even if the defendants have done nothing wrong.

folks are being steamrolled into forking over several thousand dollars to the riaa because it's cheaper than going to court to declare their innocence.

if a group of defendants could get together, hire a high dollar law firm, and do some honest to goodness discovery, i'd be willing to bet that a court would start throwing out a number of these suits.

right now, this has become a windfall for the riaa because it's like pushing over dominoes and they have no reason to stop doing it.

"Music Lovers?"

[dynayellow]

Is that going to be their defense? I can see the Lifetime movie now:

Sensitive attorney, probably played by Ken Olin: ...for as the jury can plainly see, my clients just loved music too much!

(spontaneous, riotous applause from the court, the jury, the judge. The RIAA's lawyer stabs himself with his car keys).

RIAA & SCO strategy...

[SCO_Shill]

1. Sue customers 2. ??? 3. Profit!!

Another attempt...

[mhollis]

To increase profits through litigation, rather than development of new and more compelling music.

I respectfully resubmit my previous comment.

good point

[zogger]

I think it could be argued that the original WAV file on the CD or whatever it was released as is the base starting point to determine if in fact a "copy" had been made. Law is exact a lot of times, words have meanings in the law. I think it could be argued that a lossy mp3 is merely a representation, and *not* a copy.

Re:good point

[91degrees]

Not quite my point. I'm assuming that you would be pretty much stuck with losing, and that argument probably won't wash simply because the RIAA's lawyer is probably a lot better at splitting legal hairs than you.

My aim would be to reduce the damages. The plaintiff would no doubt insist that digital copies are perfect, and use that as part of the rationale for such high damages. Since these are lossy copies, this argument doesn't stand.

I think we need some clarification here...

[EmagGeek]

The RIAA is filing these lawsuits against people whom they allege traded songs copyrighted by RIAA **MEMBER LABELS**...

There are plenty of copyrighted songs floating around out there by people who are not RIAA members, or don't even care that it is happening, or in fact encourage it.

There are lots of taper-friendly bands who, while owning the copyright for their own songs, love it when fans trade recordings of live shows, etc...

I think it's time to start grouping these RIAA-member artists with the RIAA. I dislike the generalization that the RIAA somehow has legal authority over ALL copyrighted content, whether or not they represent the artist in questions, and whether or not the artist even cares.

Re:I think we need some clarification here...

[east coast]

There are lots of taper-friendly bands who, while owning the copyright for their own songs, love it when fans trade recordings of live shows

Perhaps but at the same time the music industry also has a very popular contract standard that doesn't give an artist a right to decide on the free distribution of music. Bands like The Dead had their own business going. Most bands sign over the rights to a label and have no real control over their music even in a live venue. I believe this is one of the issues that caused so many problems in the U2/NegativLand incident. U2 didn't have a problem with NegativLand's use of the U2 trademark or song samples but Island records sure as hell did. This sunk NegativLand and SST Records financially. U2 didn't have much of a say as to the direction of the lawsuit because while they could play their own songs live they didn't have any legal right to let other artists sample.

Re:I think we need some clarification here...

[prshaw]

>> Perhaps but at the same time the music industry also has a very popular contract standard that doesn't give an artist a right to decide on the free distribution of music.

I believe the ONLY distribution that the RIAA can have any say over is with music they have a contract with. If the rights have not been signed over to them you may distribute it any way you want.

This really has nothing to do with the RIAA. If you want to control the way your music (or films) are distributed then don't sign the rights to them over to ANYONE.

Re:I think we need some clarification here...

[east coast]

I believe the ONLY distribution that the RIAA can have any say over is with music they have a contract with.

The RIAA has no contracts with individual musicians. They have contracts with labels and labels certainly do have a say so. The labels aren't new to the business. They're not a charity and they don't take pity on clueless artists new to the business. Tons of artists have been royally screwed out of royalties via the almighty contract.

This really has nothing to do with the RIAA.

You are correct as the RIAA is only the organization that represents record labels and music professionals. They're pretty much the lobby group for muscians and the business they're in.

If you want to control the way your music (or films) are distributed then don't sign the rights to them over to ANYONE.

That's really great in ideaology but the fact is that few individuals or creative groups have the ability to produce and market their own material. This is the same reason there are a thousand new bar bands every year but about 2 per year make it anywhere. Private entities simply do not have the resources. And when you've just made about 300 dollars after your last gig and just got done breaking your back loading your equipment and some guy offers you a bigger chance with the potential payout of 20 or 30 thousand for your first recording you're going to sit up and listen.

trampling creators rights/ who they should sue

[acomj]

This is exactly who they should sue, those making copyrighted works available to the public for free.

This is obviously better than having law enforcement become involved. (as started to happen yesterday)

They shouldn't sue the pnp software makers either.

If you make others copyrighted works available to the public without the consent of the copyright holders its a crime. Period. Your walking all over the rights of the creators.

Don't like it don't buy RIAA music. It doesn't make it right to take it and not pay for it.

This is to protect content producers. If the content producers want to give there stuff away for free, thats their right too (see GNU license).If they want to sign a record deal, thats there business. Its about the rights of those that created the music to do what they want with it.

It used to be called bootlegging. Now its a right?

Copyrights do eventually expire. (although it seems to take longer and longer but that is another story..)

Re:"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers"

[east coast]

I was under the impression that the RIAA was only suing people that pirate music, not people who love music enough to actually pay for it instead of stealing it.

Yeah, the people who paid thousands to build a decent collection and, as part of a price fixing law suit, got less than the cost of a CD in return. That sounds pretty fair to me. Not to say that justifies piracy but I feel the public is more sympathetic towords Joe Sixpack than a multi-million (if not billion) dollar organization that produces nothing but lawsuits and sales charts. What a racket. The RIAA should have spent more time examining fair business practices and educating record labels to the dark side of price gouging. Anytime you make something so expensive you're going to create a black market.

Perhaps piracy wouldn't be such an issue if the music industry played on a level playing field all along. Too bad, the cat's out of the bag now and neither side is going to stop. If anything the RIAA has more of a chance of being taken down for shady practices. It's millions versus one.

ask Thoreau about injustice!

[mojoNYC]

funny you should bring up the concept of the 'Just'-- perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the writings of Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience

basically, he said citizens have a duty to oppose unjust laws by breaking them...

not to intrude on your idealism, but there are degrees of injustice, and i'd contend that the injustice done to the public good by the Sonny Bono Act is magnitudes greater than the injustice done to the record cartel's bottom line!

Re:ask Thoreau about injustice!

[thebobster]

funny you should bring up the concept of the 'Just'-- perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the writings of Henry David Thoreau on Civil Disobedience

basically, he said citizens have a duty to oppose unjust laws by breaking them...

I'm gonna sneak around and get something for nothing! I'm just like Henry David Thoreau and Ghandi!

Re:ask Thoreau about injustice!

[westlake]

Thoreau refused spent a quiet night in a village jail as a protest against slavery, a gesture that seems less than magnificent in retrospect. There were others, black and white, who risked far more. But I doubt that he would respect those whose Civil Disobedience is measured by the number of mp3 downloads on their hard drive.

that doesn't quite seem right...

[nial-in-a-box]

i though that we wanted to chmod 740 NOT 744 with that damn RIAA. wait, this doesn't even make sense.

How did they know your IP; you were d/l'ing!

[Cryofan]

How did they know your IP? How did they know what you were downloading? I have never used BT, but I thought you did not have to give up your IP to the server if you were only downloading.

Re:How did they know your IP; you were d/l'ing!

[ravenspear]

You cannot "only download" with BitTorrent. You have to upload at the same time.

Re:How did they know your IP; you were d/l'ing!

[DeepRedux]

If you are downloading, the server is sending you packets. To do this the server needs to have your IP address to put into the destination slot in the header of each IP packet.

The analogy is trying to get a letter without giving the sender an address. In IP there is not really an end-to-end circuit, just a lot of packets (letters) going back and forth. Each packet has a source and destination address.

In the real world you can somewhat hide by going through a PO box. The internet equivalent is a proxy. I do not think that BT itself makes any attempt to hide by using a proxy.

Re:How did they know your IP; you were d/l'ing!

[Jungle guy]

It is REALLY easy. Using Bit Tornado, an improved version of the original Bit Torrent client, you only have to click on "Advanced" and get a list of EVERYONE that is connected to a particular torrent.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[B5_geek]

IANAL..... ....but the fact that you are activly downloading AND uploading data, (the lawyers would have to d'load the file themselves to "prove" that it is indeed copyrighted material.

Here is an interesting idea: If the lawyers are indeed uploading the file are they not condoning or giving permission for others to do the same?

Black-lisitng is fine but you have no way of knowing who is on the other end of that IP, It's probably a valid user like yourself.

Music Lovers?

[hipster_doofus]

Ok, I think the title was stretching it a bit, but that's beside the point.

While the people being arrested may think of themselves as "music lovers," their practice of sharing music makes them anything but music lovers. Usually when I love a product, I pay for it. I don't use it without a license and then distribute it to thousands of strangers without a license. That's why I had a Napster premium subscription and now I buy from iTunes.

For all of the people that claim that they only share/download music that they would never buy, I think that's a total load of crap. If you care enough about a song or album to download it from a P2P service, I think you'd pay $0.99/$9.99 for it on iTunes, if you weren't so cheap. If you honestly can't afford it, that's no excuse either. All of us have to make sacrifices when we're under a budget crunch - that's just part of being a fiscally responsible person.

I will probably get the obligitory "I download songs that I already own on disk." My comments here aren't directed at those people, and I don't think they should be subjected to any litigation for their actions.

Mod me down as as troll or flamebait if you wish, but I've seen one too many of these stories and all of the related whining to keep my mouth shut any longer.

</rant>

Re:Music Lovers?

[A_Known_Coward]

What about music I "licensed" in the past? I have never been able to find that Led Zeppelin III LP I bought in 1983?

I mean, since I DID license the music when I bought the record, shouldn't I be able to download those songs legally?

It's not like I'm asking the record company to incur any additional distribution costs since I'd be downloading it via KaZaa.

Re:Music Lovers?

[prshaw]

>> What about music I "licensed" in the past?

Just follow the license that you purchased it under. If it says you can copy it, then copy it. If it says you are not allowed to copy it, then don't.

If you don't like the terms of it, then read the license better next time BEFORE you buy the product.

Re: uh... linux?

[bludstone]

Like linux distributions? ..wait a second!

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[kryptkpr]

I'm going to debunk this once and for all..

Disclaimer: IAABCA (I _AM_ A BitTorrent Client Author)

It is -trivially- easy for the *AA to get
a) your IP
b) what files you're downloading
c) how much you've downloaded
d) how much you've uploaded

And they can do all this without ever connecting to your computer ... IP blockers are -USELESS- in this case, the Azerus people are wasting their time creating a false sense of security for their users.

All the above information is gained from the tracker level. Many even have a nice web-based interface to this information. (See, for example, here, login may be required)

If you're in a country where P2P is illegal (I'm in Canada, all my development and downloading goes on here, and so far the consumer is winning the war here) then don't download illegal material with BT, they're watching, and there's nothing you can do.

Regarding the guy who said "just don't upload and they can't do anything".. BT works on tit-for-tat. You send a block, you get (usually) 3 back. Sometimes a client will take pity on you, and send you a free block (to test how fast it can send to you, and if you will send back or not). In other words.. no uploading == very, very slow downloading, if any at all, which negates the purpose of BT.

BitTorrent is NOT a protocl for spreading w4r3z. It is for spreading large legitimate files in a situation where the author doesn't have access to the resources to spread the files himself.

"...for the people, by the people"

[Cryofan]

WE, the PEOPLE, define property rights here in the USA. Some of us think that the enTITLEments given to the wealthy and the corporations by the government (i.e., copyrights) are OUT OF LINE, INAPPROPRIATE, etc.

So if this is indeed a country run for the people and by the people, then we are right and you are wrong. That process of deciding what is the will of the people is an ongoing one.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[ravenspear]

Why is that though? What if you payed for the cable channel that Star Trek is broadcast on. You are able to legally record it from the channel via a vcr or tivo or computer or whatever. Why is it you can not obtain the episode via the internet?

That was exactly my thinking. I wasn't even going to keep a copy of it, just watch it once.

The only other possible case I could see where this could be harmful to the content creator is if that episode was available on DVD (like the other ST series) and they suspected file sharing would hurt DVD sales. But that wasn't the case here.

Make music not love

[smcd]

Or am I confused?

Question

[scottennis]

I don't use P2P anymore for sharing songs. However, in the last few months I have recovered 2 PCs from the dumpster at my apartment.

Because the previous owners of these PCs did not wipe their hard drives, I have been able to recover over 5 Gigs of mp3 files.

On one machine the files were in the Program Files/KaZaA/My Shared Files folder. On the other machine they were just in the My Documents/My Music folder.

I'm wondering what the legal disposition of those files is?

Re:Boycott RIAA products

[Zorilla]

Of course RIAA products aren't related to P2P. That is my point exactly when it comes to blaming P2P for lost sales being a little bit illogical.

Whatever little logic remains, their blaming of losses on P2P may not directly increase their sales, but it's their first step in making sure they at least hold on to their market share, with the most optimistic outcome in their perspective being that they restore their CD sales to something they accept.

Who gets sued?

[Thieron]

Out of curiosity, who (other than 14 year old girls) is getting sued? Anyone here?

Back in the day, like everyone, I used apps like Napster, Kazaa, etc to get and share files. Since then, I've stopped, because in part, of the RIAA. Has anyone here been sued? How far back do they look and how small time do they go for people that shared?

It seems like a lot of time and money to go after someone sharing even a few thousand files while there are much bigger pirating operations out there now. Personally, their law suits did in a way work, as I don't share much, but that is more because of the spy ware than anything. I avoid Kazaa, but I will ocassionally use other P2P applications to get various files.

But while I don't download mp3s anymore, I also don't buy more CDs. In general, I always bought CDs from my favorite groups, even if I could get the mp3s and I downloaded music only when I had some interest in it, but not enough to pay $18 for a CD. If they sold CDs at $10 or less, I'd be more likely to buy more marginal ones I'd never spend my money on. I think that is the key thing they are missing. Otherwise, how would they still be selling millions of CDs?

It boils down to...

[bob670]

steal little, steal big, you are still stealing. But please, carry on with the usual justifications.

definitions

[zogger]

Is there a legally defined definition that has a percentage of original work tied to it? I am just wondering how far you could introduce fair use into it. Take written material. AFAIK, there is no actual percentage, just something under 100%. If it's a derivative, I don't see how any new music could be released, every note possible has been hit and recorded so far you would think. If representations of the original are disallowed, that would affect fine visual art as well. Example- "picture of a woman", sorry, already been done, even if yours is different in certain aspects by the arrangement and quantity of pixels, it's still a representation of previously copyrighted work. See? If that doesn't fly in the visual world, and it obviously doesn't, why is it acceptable for audio? Shouldn't the law be equally applied?

Is it the arrangement of notes, the notes themselves, or what? If it's *both* that would tend to validate that no new music would be allowed, because if you separate it, that means the concept is ambiguous and unclear and could be argued in court. Maybe, don't know, just guessing.

I know it's a fine line, but court cases all the time are determined by a fine line and exact word meanings, it's lawyers bread and butter.

To me, this is probably a gray area that might be re explored.

Re:definitions

[squiggleslash]

If I recall correctly, there have been successful prosecutions of copyright infringements on the basis of four musical notes. On a more recent subject, sampling lead to some major (and successful) prosecutions too.

If it's a derivative, I don't see how any new music could be released, every note possible has been hit and recorded so far you would think.

You're confusing copyrights and patents. For you to breach copyright, you must have copied something. If you were on a Desert Island from birth, and started singing "Happy Birthday" to the copyright lawyer who just rescued you at the age of 25, a song identical to "Happy Birthday" but that you'd composed yourself by sheer coincidence, then you'd not be in violation of any kind of copyright.

Additionally, while the bulk of already composed music and produced sentences may mean everything's been composed and written, it's also the case that this works for you in that all these little sentence fragments et al you think are copyrighted are actually public domain by now.

Sharing

[goobie123]

I used to get in trouble as a kid for not sharing.

Selfishness is back in style, baby!

Not So Sure About the Headline

[voodoo_bluesman]

This reminds me of George Bush vs. the Freedom Haters and Evil Doers.

I have a serious question

[drdanny_orig]

I frequently use P2P software (specifically BitTorrent clients) to swap fan tapes with other folks. That is, we don't trade commercially released music, rather tapes of bands made with or without their permission. Some of those bands have official releases on RIAA-member labels, some have them on non-RIAA-member labels. In either case, those aren't what's being traded.

Is this considered "illegal" trading? Thanks, and I'll take the answer off the air.

I download music... alot

[rinkjustice]

Yeah, that's right RIAA. But I'll also buy what mp3's I dig. Take for instance Breaking Benjamin. I pulled down a crapload of their songs via Kazaa and, apon realising they rock out, rushed down to Future Shop to gets me a copy just yesterday. The fact that my cd burner isn't working is beside the point.

The point is you greedy bastards at RIAA got your money. You have a great advertising and distribution mechanism working for you and you won't even admit it.

A Safer America!

[Perlguy]

I know I'll feel MUCH safer and be able to allow my kids back outside once these scourge are off the streets! Let's all push for the death-penalty for these lawless hooligans! I know I won't rest until I know that the record companies are safely making billions per year.

perlguy

But you will always share what you download...

[Penguinisto]

"I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading."

Just one prblem - while you download a song, you are also sharing it.Even if you download it and immediately remove it from your shared folder/directory, you're still sharng the thing while downloading, even if only from the temp directory where the file is being stored for assembly.

Some P2P systems, such as BitTorrent, in fact rely on this very thing to exist at all.

/P

Re:But you will always share what you download...

[That's Unpossible!]

Just one prblem - while you download a song, you are also sharing it

Not if you disable sharing entirely.

Then again, you wouldn't be downloading in the first place if everyone did that.

Then again, I buy my music at iTunes, so wtf do I care.

Re:But you will always share what you download...

[Pofy]

That would depend on if you share the folder you download too. I don't for example.

Well guess what

[DSLAMngu]

File sharing is illegal, and if your taste in music a good enough, whatever you pay for your music would be worth it, wouldn't it? For Chrissake, you can download songs for $1 these days from any among a growing number of competing services. And it's faster than combing the web for decent, complete copies of songs.

I'm a recovering filesharer and I've been on iTunes for about six months. Usually, I find that people who share their music are either totally oblivious to the fact that it's illegal and there's a war going on over it, or they just resent the cost and inconvenience of going out and buying a CD.

Excuses for stealing:

• Lack of alternatives (taken care of, already lots of services and competition)
• Cost (negated, only $1 per song or $10 per album)
• Try before you buy (services tend to have preview clips)
• Convenience (services are more convenient)
• Online music stores won't work because things will get stolen anyway (terrible argument, laws work because of a societal agreement to follow the laws of the society, stopping piracy "should" lower prices (well, maybe, we can hope))
• Selection (admittedly, many stores are lacking in rare genres, but then the record companies would be at fault for not offering the goods and thus stealing would not cut too drastically into profits. This would be stealing no one would care about)

Really, at this point in time, the only people stealing are the apathetic, the stingy, and the pretending revolutionaries. (And if you're using file-sharing to get rare files the RIAA doesn't allow selling over OMS, is it really stealing?) Supporting the legality of a bare-faced crime defies logic. Considering other things like the disorganization of the effort, the utter apathy of much of the rank-and-file, and the rhetoric without action, this is a losing effort.

By the way, I'm a paying EFF member, so I'm doing more for your effort than any one of you who is just spouting rhetoric. (Though I'm in it for the overall EFF cause of protecting valid digital rights; my position on file sharing versus RIAA is to stop the slippery slope of the RIAA litigating against legal uses.) If you want to fight the good fight, put your money where your mouth is, then we can talk.

Re:Well guess what

[CashCarSTAR]

Dude, it's the Selection aspect that they're FOCUSED on.

They're in the process of doing two things. They are protecting against an independant artist becoming the next big thing. As well, they are consolodating their acts in order to make more money.

The only way to do this is to maintain absolute control over the promotion side of things. The consolodation of radio allows this to happen.

P2P is an end run around this.

Their motives are not so pure.

Possible scenarios....

[Cryofan]

I understand packets.

But my point is, did the person who get the letter dl from the riaa itself? Or did the riaa get the ip from the server logs.

Or was the riaa downloading a song itself from multiple sources? I wonder if what happened was the poster who got the letter downloaded the Star Trek episode, and because BT forces you to become an uploader of the file you are downloading, the riaa downloaded the same star trek episode and got his ip directly from the operating system.

So, I would say that BT is NOT as safe as kazaa.

All you have to do to avoid legal entanglements is use kazaa, but don't share, or only share files that are noncopywrited. So, American file traders must leech off of Europeans, Canadians, South Americans, Asians, Australians.

Why is this the case? It always comes back to this: contrary to the Preamble to the American Constitution, America is NOT "for the people, by the people". OTHER countries, such as those on listed above, are MORE "for the people, by the people" than is America.

But what puzzles me is, WHY, WHY, do Americans fail to face this fact?

Is it that we have been bamboozled, propagandized by the teevee? After all, the teevee is the preeminent American babysitter. Is this the price we pay for our lifestyle? Thought-slavery by propaganda?

Re:Possible scenarios....

[DeepRedux]

The RIAA (really firms working for it) just search for their songs to download. When they find one they download it and note the time and IP address of the server from which they downloaded it.

It is interesting to note that the largest members of the RIAA are controlled by non-US interests: Warner Music (recently sold by Time Warner to Edgar Bronfman from Canada), Bertelsmann (Germany), EMI (UK), Sony (Japan) and Vivendi Universal (France).

what if you're behind a router?

[ShakuniMama]

Hey so what happens if there are a whole bunch of people sharing the same IP behind a router. Do all of them get sued?

Re:what if you're behind a router?

[Hassman]

Nope. Just the guy who's name appears on the Cable or DSL bill.

besides being lossy

[zogger]

These alleged copies aren't on the media they were originally released on either, so in that aspect they aren't a copy either. Now just to me, if it's a copy, it would have to be on a CD and in the original form.

But who knows, the industry has been busted for monopolistic practices before,including conspiracy-RICO- to set prices artificially high and to insure that only their pet projects get universal airplay from payola to stations and DJs, and instead of those corporations being dissolved,lose their corporate charters in other words, they are allowed to continue. That's an even bigger crime, IMO.

Excellent Post.

[KrisHolland]

Really a good post, but the pest part is this, I laughted out loud.

"The government is not their personal Guido."

I also agree that copyright infrindgement is an artifical crime. Copyright property is a state-sponsored temporary monopoly which creates a scarcity which does not correspond to any state in reality. An *artifical* scarcity which does not exist or would exist except as created by law.

Re:Excellent Post.

[jafuser]

Copyright property is a state-sponsored temporary monopoly

You misspelled permanent.

woohoo!

[N3wsByt3]

744 people sued!

Only 4.326.849 P2P users to go!

What;'s so great about this music?

[msblack]

For all those /. readers who complain about albums containing only one good track I pose this question: why are you buying/stealing music from no-talent artists who produce only one hit out of twelve? Most of the hundreds of albums in my collection contain tracks that are good all around. It appears to me that those who only want the one "good" track from an album have fallen pray to the music marketing machines that push that one hit on radio, music videos, or MPAA advertising (read movies). Either that, or they have very narrow tastes. I guess that's why Top-40 Radio is so popular.

Before you MOD me down, ask yourself this: are you mad because my opinions upset you with a different point of view or am I writing nonsense?

Re:What;'s so great about this music?

[CashCarSTAR]

Actually because you miss the forest for the trees. (Although I havn't modded you down).

The power of P2P isn't about the people just wanting the "one good track"...sometimes it is..but have you ever thought of why? Because they might listen to the radio on the way home from work, and hear a song, and they want to lazy-ass format shift it.

That's what that is..

But no, the real danger to the RIAA about P2P has nothing to do with that. What it DOES have to do with, is people discovering new music, you know, things that every song on the CD are good? The REAL danger, is that the next big thing will come up without them and decide to stay independent. That will motivate other people to do exactly the same thing. Through controlling the levers of promotion, the RIAA can do a good job of preventing that. However, P2P does an end run about that. Oops.

The other side of the coin, is that the RIAA are trying to consolidate their acts. They want to sell more CDs of less artists. However, P2P are introducing people to the music of the non-promoted artists, giving them more bargining power.

They were allowed to take over something that's a core part of our culture, and now people are doing an end run around them.

Tough luck guys. Try competing next time.

Re:What;'s so great about this music?

[prshaw]

While you make a good arguement, it just doesn't hold water.

They are worried about someone hearing something new? But they are only going after people sharing the music they already control. They don't sue you for sharing an independent's music. They are telling you to ONLY share music of the independent that want's their music shared.

If you want people to find new music you need to support the RIAA and tell people to stop sharing music controlled by the RIAA and only share music of independent musicians.

Steps for profit

[noidentity]

Boss, I still can't figure out why this isn't working. We followed the steps exactly:

1) Sue customers
2) ???
3) Profit

What you say? That's supposed to be "Don't sue customers"?

In related news ...

[LizardKing]

Sweet lovers are bemoaning the latest legal action by Nestle, manufacturer of popular sweet mixtures such as "Quality Street" and "Roses". In recent years, many sweet lovers have been acquiring sweets without paying for them, an activity which the industry is now trying to stamp down on.

One "sweet sharer" whined: I got taken to court for allegedly stealing toffee whirls, which is totally out of order. I like the toffee whirls and believe I should be able to have them without paying for the pack."

To all you file sharers - quit whining. The RIAA is acting within the law. If you don't want to pay for your music then listen to the fucking radio. If you do "share" copyrighted music, then be prepared to face up to the penalty.

RIAA has to perform or it serves no Purpose.

[CygnusXII]

I think that everyone is missing the point entirely.
The RIAA has become a Juggernaught, and like any other Organisation or being want to continue in its' existence. It has created jobs for like minded people, and employs quite a few I imagine. So in these trying employment times, they are going to continue this fight for one simple reason. $$$ I imagine they make quite a nice little salary out of all this. It's the same as Governmental employment, once you're in you're in. I bet alot of these are figuring on using the RIAA to springboard them into something else, never realizing themselves for the carrion that they really are. It's nice and Dandy that the Music Industry doesn't go after Price fixing, gouging and racketeering as well or they would have to exercise their tactics on themselves. The difference between the Music Industry and a regular thief? The Music Industry has a SteamRoller for a legal Team,aand the Regular Joe File Swapper is swinging in the breeze all by thier lonesome. In the end the RIAA will do what it does, because everytime it launches a case and gets press coverage, it ensures that someone is keeping a JOB.

You are wrong about the agriculture industry.

[cat_jesus]

Take the agricultural industry. They produce genetically engineered crops. They only sell seed which produces sterile crops because they are intelligent and they know that otherwise the product would be EASILY COPIED. The agri industry could have lobbied for federal oversight and DNA testing of crops. They could have run down farmers for "stealing" their intellectual property. Instead they 1) subsidized, out of their own profit margin, engineered crops in order to put them in the marketplace and 2) invested in the research to produce seed which produced sterile crops.

Monsanto and ADM have been waging war against farmers for years using tactics that the RIAA would be proud of. They will inject their copyrighted genes into unsuspecting farmers crops and then sue them into oblivion for copyright and patent violations. see http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

RIAA to sue everyone off P2P to move elsewhere?

[Proz512]

When the RIAA gets done with suing everyone on the P2P clients, will they set their eyes on other means to force people to buy their monopolistic music? I've moved away from using P2P in favor of just getting good continuous music from shoutcast stations.

After I got into using StationRipper which Slashdot once covered, I don't even need to worry about using P2P to get music that I enjoy listening to. However, will I need to worry that the RIAA will track my use since I'm saving the music I listen to then worry that a lawsuit will fall on my door step for doing this?

Thanks for your girlfriend!

[djlurch]

I would like to thank you for letting me use your girlfriend. I like this new world order where everything that's mine is mine, and everything that's your's is mine.

Oh, and thanks for letting me use your car, bank account, dog, printer, and monkey.

Re: FBI Sting Operation

[nusratt]

"Mediachest is excellent because the RIAA and MPAA and FBI and whomever else cannot I repeat CANNOT get you on law breaking. As the 'swapping' happens offline, they have no way to find out about it."

"can you say "Sting Operation" boys and girls? How the hell do you think they catch kiddie porn freaks who try to meet up with kids offline? Do you know you're not setting yourself up to illegally distribute songs offline with a cop of FBI agent?"

I meet you online, then arrange to ship to you, or hand to you, my ORIGINAL legal media.
How is THAT illegal?
And how are YOU caught if you make a copy?

What I don't get...

[Robotech_Master]

...is why there's even anybody left for them to sue in the first place. I stopped sharing files when the RIAA first announced they were going to sue, and that was months ago. Anyone with half a brain should have stopped after they sued the first couple of thousand. Anyone with one quarter brain...etc. etc.

I would think that by this time, the peer-to-peer networks would be just about empty, at least of sharers in the USA.

Which Networks?

[havoc]

We should turn this discussion towards a more proactive topic... Does anyone know which networks were targeted by the RIAA? Was any one network targeted more than the others? Which P2P is best for sharing with the least chance of getting caught? Are there any tools, services, or procedures one can use to reduce the chance of being caught? These are all good questions that we should be discussing.

Just Say No

[Exousia]

If these guys don't want to get sued, they should just stop unlawfully copying music. It's simple really.

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[DominoTree]

About RIAA:
RIAA (RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GREEDY BASTARDS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GREEDY BASTARDS.

Are you GREEDY ?
Are you a BASTARD ?
Are you a GREEDY BASTARD ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then RIAA (RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join RIAA (RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time RIAA member.
RIAA (RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GREEDY BASTARD community with THOUSANDS of talentless members all over United States of America and the World! You, too, can be a part of RIAA if you join today!

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

• First, you have to obtain a copy of HOW TO CREATE SHIT CONTENT AND SELL IT FOR LOTS OF MONEY and read it.
• Second, you need to succeed in creating an album (quality is not important)
• Third, you need to apply to the official RIAA membership council and wait for approval.

Uh, got a problem there

[nurb432]

No one is advocating stealing music anyway.. The advocacy is for violating copy right laws, not theft, since no theft occurred during the act of downloading..

Unlike going to the store and shoplifting a CD...

So where does your 'sphere of awareness' end? It's apparently not as large as you believe...

Re:Uh, got a problem there

[wazzzup]

So theft is limited to the realm of the physical?

When Ken Lay transferred all of that money from one account to another, it was done electronically so no actual paper dollars were involved. In your world, that wasn't theft apparently.

Copyright laws are there to protect thievery of non-tangibles such as music, graphic designs, an author's story, etc. Ideas when it comes down to it. Just because you can't hold it, doesn't mean you can't steal it. If you would have copyright laws go away, then the effects would go well beyond the RIAA - it would destroy advertising agencies, the film industry and book and magazine publishing to name just a few.

I guess you have to limit your sphere of awareness in order to feel your violation of copyright laws is justified.

Don't talk to me about some high-falutin' ideal that "copyright should be abolished because information should be free" crap. It's about getting music you don't have to pay for and that's that.

use Kazaa, leech & don't share copywrited file

[Cryofan]

If you use kazaa and do not share, how could you get sued?

It would entail being a leech, but I would not share copyrighted files. People in other countries could share, countries where the govt puts the people ahead of the corporation, at least to a greater degree than here in Amerikkka.

and get an isp like sbc dsl, which does not give up your IP to the RIAA/MPAA/BSA. (I know that the mpaa is planning on starting to sue people, but is the BSA suing people?).

We can fight back against the MPAA lawsuits: they are vulnerable to grassroots protests. Much of their revenue is derived from large cineplexes which are reaching by driving along busy roads. Often they sit on a freeway access road. Several well placed protest signs near many of those cineplexes could knock down their dollar take every day.

See for example the freeway blogger.

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[sweetwayne]

I know this was meant to be funny, but the RIAA itself does not create the content of any albums. They're just a bunch of lawyers who represent the financial "interests" of the big name record labels that belong to the organization. But yes, they are a bunch of greedy bastards.

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[DominoTree]

I was referring to the artists who are members of the RIAA.

Advances in technology will bypass Record Industry

[t35t0r]

..ownership of copyrights. Today most copyrights are owned by the record industry and not the artists themselves. As more and more people across the world gain access to computers, a new type of artist/musician/producer will be born who will bypass large conglomerates such as the RIAA and MPAA. No longer will music be held captive in the hands of greedy capitalists, but they will truly belong to the artists themselves.

No,

[nurb432]

The theft of electronic money is something tangible. As it represents actual currency.

The redistribution of 'content' is not tangible. There is a difference. It doesn't represent actual product. You don't even buy the music when you get the CD.. you get an intangible 'right to use data' license.. ( now if you try to resell a 'right to use data' license THEN we have a problem.. )

And no, its not all about getting 'music for free'.. contrary to what you may believe. ( in my case I have purchased rights to 99% of what I have to listen too, as do feel that when an artist has done a job of value, they should be compensated for their efforts )

Its about the true definition of theft and loss, copyrights, fair use, and the ludicrous things that are going on because of the disagreements....

Disclamer, I'm only speaking from MY point of view.. others may disagree and *are* in it to just get 'content for free'

Re:A chilling effect on [decisions]?

[JWW]

Maybe, but the point still stands. Besides is it really a wise policy to try to control others decisions? Good or bad? "Hey! JWW you're making a bad decision. Here, let society set you on the correct path."

The only thing is, its not society that is trying to set the RIAA on the correct path, its the market. And by definition the market should control their actions. Of course it isn't controlling their actions, which is why their tactics seem so strange and inneffective.

Book Analogy

[Long-EZ]

I haven't seen this analogy in the many RIAA stories I've read, but given the petabytes of online RIAA discussions, this is probably not new.

Computers have made it an easy matter to scan books and redistribute them. There are high speed scanners, good optical character recognition software, and plenty of bandwidth to simply distribute an entire book as a collection of graphics instead of rendering them back into text.

But book copyrights are seldom violated in the US, and almost never violated using PC technology. Why? Readers are more law abiding than music enthusiasts? Readers are too lazy to scan a book? Or is it because people resent the record companies' graft, corruption and excessive profiteering?

The abuses of the RIAA companies are well known. They include payola (paying radio DJs and station managers cash or coccaine to play their records), addicting artists to drugs to control them, and charging $20 for a CD that costs them $1 for the plastic, paper and distribution. The only place this sort of weasel behavior is remotely close to book publishing is the textbook marketing racket, which could teach the Mafia a thing or two about profit margins and market share.

The RIAA and John Ashcroft are legally in the right on this, even if it is difficult to agree with them on general principles, and it's difficult to respect a law that protects such weasels. I'll throw my lot in with the others who say, "Vote with your wallet. Don't buy RIAA products. Lobby your favorite bands to leave RIAA companies and make it financially viable for them to do so."

Geeks continue to compare SCO and the RIAA. At first, they seem like completely different issues, but there are some definite similarities. Both have outdated business models, both are weasels who prefer to fight in court than embrace new technology and profit from it, and both are making a lot of noise right now but will soon be insignificant footnotes in the history of technology.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[Richard_at_work]

Neither means anything. The RIAA 'spies' can get the fact that you are advertising the content for download from the trackers. Your 'IP blocker' and the source code do not mitigate this fact.

Re:Euphemisms-Social Terrorism.

[toiletmonster]

"And if they fail, will music and the other fruits of artists suddenly be free?"

no, competitors will replace them by providing a cheaper, better product.

the riaa has for a long time been trying to limit distribution of music to cd's only. its only recently they allowed some content to be distributed online. online distribution is extremely cheap. and therefore the price of music should fall accordingly. however, the riaa has not lowered their prices and changed their distribution model. they haven't responded to changes in the market the way a normal company should. technology has changed the market forever and they will never be able to go back in time to the old model. instead of recognizing that, they have resisted the change. they have tried to get laws passed to make online distributon illegal and have refused to license their music to online distributers. but using their oligopoly power to prevent a cheap good at an artificially high price won't work prevent a black market. the only reason this black market hasn't become violent or a part of organized crime is that music distribution is so cheap (in the US where everyone has a computer anyway) that individuals are willing to do the distribution for free.

i don't think that any of this justifies the moral issue of taking something that you didn't pay for. however, ignoring the realities of the market doesn't do anyone any good either. and the fact is, its not just p2p users who are behaving immorally. its the music industry who is using its political clout and oligopoly position to keep down competition in the market place.

i'm a little confused when you try to link this issue to terrorism so i'll just ignore that.

recordings, not songs

[brre]

> copyrighted songs

You mean copyrighted recordings.

If the claim was violation of copyright on the song, we would be talking about someone else performing the song.

What we are talking about insatead is a particular recording of a particular performance of the song. That's also copyrighted. The two copyrights are not the same, just as the song is not the same as a performance of it.

A chilling effect on sales?-"Stick" mentality.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any act that they do against us is a crime: extorting money from us and stealing our property."

Since you and your coherts have never actually produced any of this "property" . What else but arrogance makes you think it's yours. All you do is "consume" this property for your own enjoyment.

Quite frankly as mean as it may be to say. I do hope every artist on the planet stops producing "property" for your enjoyment. "Public Domain" exists in part because some of the "public" chooses to contribute. Instead of telling the other half that they better or "else". Oh no, wait. There's no "else". There's no "stick", but just "carrots" and rather withered looking ones at that. So tell me "music lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms? All you "book lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms?

Maybe the "imbalance" here is that one side feels they don't need the other. Anyone care to test the reality? Hey we're "starving artists" already. What do we have to loose?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?-"Stick" mentality.

[cliffski]

i couldnt agree more. the poster is obviosuly some lame ass without a creative bone in his body. Those that do create new original work expect to be paid for it.
YOU DO NOT HAVE A HUMAN RIGHT TO OWN ALL MUSIC OTHERS HAVE CREATED.
its not like food or water, you want it, you buy it, or make your fucking own music.

It will just drive the practice "underground".

[zerofoo]

The RIAA thinks by using scare tactics on a few people it will stop the millions of people that trade files online. This is stupid for two reasons:

1. The "long arm of the US law" doesn't extend beyond US borders. Good luck trying to sue file traders in Iran.

2. Tech savy people will stop using file trading software and operate their own FTP servers. I've already done this. My friends and I login to my FTP site and upload and download the newest stuff we aquire (VPN and login required). It's alot like trading tapes back in the day. If the RIAA tries to crack my server, i'll sue the hell out of them for unlawful search and seizure, trespassing, and any other terrorist technicality my attorney can find for breaking into my private server.

I used to actually buy CDs. I no longer want to thanks to the strongarm tactics of the RIAA (I buy only used CDs now). The RIAA can go f themselves.

-ted

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[EMIce]

I also thought bittorrent was safe, until I received a letter from my ISP, Optimum Online. Paramount wanted them to warn me. Subsequently I installed an IP blocker (Blocklist Manager + Protowall) and I thought I'd be safe till I saw your posting.

So I got to thinking, this download information that the tracker gives, is it necessary? Would there be a way to seed that list with random cable modem ip addresses and torrents, without screwing up the bittorrent network too much? Then the people using IP blockers couldn't be distinguised from some grandpa who randomly ended up on the list.

This thread condensed here:

[slappyjack]

Headline: The RIAA sued people again. Those dicks.

Comment 1: FIRST POST!

Comment 2: Man, the music industry sucks.

Comment 3: Its illegal. period

Comment 3a: STFU, dink.

Comment 4: if albums didn't suck, people would buy them instead of downloading the songs thay like

Comment 4a: can someone send me the new Modest Mouse album?

Comment 5: I hate rich musicians, because they're rich

Comment 6: [ something about gay niggers that ususally gets modded out of existence ]

Comment 7: its all the fault of the government, because theyre clueless

Comment 8: You cannot stop technology. Technology is legion.

- - - -

You can now go read another article.

enough of the lawsuit count, guys.

Re:This thread condensed here:

[Pantero Blanco]

Doesn't someone usually post a similar list, too? :D

Re:Advances in technology will bypass Record Indus

[prshaw]

And at that point we will be distributing copyrighted work that belongs to someone with less money. We still won't pay for it.

And this is better how?

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[kryptkpr]

So I got to thinking, this download information that the tracker gives, is it necessary?

No, it's not necessary for the tracker to report this information publically. The stock (official) tracker does NOT do this.

Would there be a way to seed that list with random cable modem ip addresses and torrents, without screwing up the bittorrent network too much?

This would greatly decrease the effectiveness of torrents.. the RIAA are a peer like any other peer. If you hurt their ability to gather IPs, you also hurt everyone else's.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[Kethinov]

Bit Torrent IS NOT SAFE.

Take this story.

My ISP operates behind a router. All people who use the ISP do not have a public IP. A few months ago, my ISP got a call from the RIAA about their IP sharing "large amounts of music" using bit torrent. My ISP did a bandwidth usage test on all their private interal IPs to find out who was uploading the most data w/bit torrent.

Now I'm not entirely innocent, but at the time I was seeding Knoppix 3.4 and I was uploading the most data. My Windows machine was off; my Linux machine was out of commission. All I had online was my iBook and it didn't have any music on it whatsoever, much less libraries of thousands of pirated songs. All I was doing was seeding Knoppix.

Despite this, my ISP accused me of illegal usage of bit torrent and my service was cut. I would have been sued if I had not proven that my activity was 100% legal. My service was later restored.

VERY GOOD POST; d/l only using kazaa shareza etc

[Cryofan]

Yes, that is exactly right.

THe only safe thing to do is LEECH. You cannot share copyrighted files. And if you download using bittorrent even one time, you can be caught. There are several posters here on this thread that had that very thing happen to them.

So, it seems that the only safe way is to just use kazaa, and either turn off sharing for all files, or do not share individual copyrighted files.

Re:Rofl...biased article title

[rd_syringe]

Two things:

1.) Point out where I wrote the word "theft."

2.) Explain to me how taking the work of an artist without paying for it and without their permission is somehow not inethical.

Try harder next time.

that sig

[andyrut]

In C++, friends can touch each other's private parts.

That reminds me of my first Comp Sci class, where the professor taught us the basics of C++. When explaining the nature of private, protected, and public functions, she tried to explain it by saying "you'd let everyone have access to your public members, but you only want your friends messing with your privates." Only after she said it did she realize how perverted it sounded.

This is the same professor who also mispronounced the word "unary" as "urinary". Oops.

Re: meh... you're forgetting love of the art

[JaxGator75]

Maybe we could just enjoy the works of those who create for the love of the creation... Or are you insinuating that "artists" only produce "content" for reimbursement?

How did they become your favorite artist?

[uqbar]

Odds are someone (not the artist) spent money marketing them.

While I'd love to see the complete collapse of the Major Labels, this ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Artists are unlikely to ditch the majors for your service - they can already get their music out there on an indie label, iTunes, etc if they want to go without the massive promotional and distro mechanisms of the majors. To enter into a legal deal with you (which is the only practical way if they want to accept money and still have legal rights when they believe your service is doing what music companies have always done - rip off their artists) they would have to pretty much pass on a Major or Indy contracts and finance all promotion themselves (this is not cheap). And in the end their music sees the world as crappy sounding MP3's with little in the way of proper cover art, credits, etc. etc. Serious players (i.e. most people's favorite artists) ain't generally gonna wanna play this way.

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[Moocowsia]

Retarded Idiots Annoying America.

Music and Wedding Receptions

[L1TH10N]

The typical amount of infringment that occurs when someone uses a p2p network would probably be about the same of infringment that would occur in a unauthorised public performance at a wedding reception, birthday party, etc. I don't see music from 70+ years ago being played, so that music must be all copyrighted works.

So are we to expect the RIAA to sue a number of people who hold large parties or weddings? I'm sure that would do wonders for their music sales.

How about calling any person who holds a party of some sort a thief>?!

How about the RIAA making agreements with a university so that they can incorporate licensing costs of public broadcasts of music at university parties in to student fees?!

Copying is fine

[BobTheAtheist]

I like to take GPL code and convert it to a BSD licence, compile it up and release it without the source code. I mean the BSD licence has no problems with me doing this, so GPL folks should get with the times. Copyright laws and all that stuff are just artificial laws. GPL is an outdated licence and should move with the times. BSD all the way!

Re:RIAA sues COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS (real correction

[curtisk]

Your version is just as slanted, claiming to do "correction" while doing the same error in another direction is even more stupid than the one of Slashdot editors, which was stupid enough.

Why all the AC posting? LOL

It's called irony with a bit of sarcasm. BTW. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re:meh... you're forgetting love of the art-Nope.

[JaxGator75]

OK then, if you don't want to share, keep it to yourself. The world has enough sad songs about the cool kids in school beating you up anyway...

Re:Declining Sales

[RodRandom]

Whoever modded this comment is a fucking imbecile.