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Grokster Decision Won't Stop RIAA, MPAA Suits
akahige writes "According to this Reuters article, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the operators of Grokster and StreamCast are not liable for copyright infringement. On the other hand the *AA is appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, and has no intention of ceasing litigation against these or other P2P services. Next up, eDonkey. If ever there was a case where voting with your dollar made sense it was this one -- but too many people just can't get enough of Britney." We mentioned the court's decision a few days ago; this article stresses that the industry is gung ho to overturn it, and that this decision covers only part of the case.
Yeah, like that would work. Every boycotted sale is another that is claimed the result of piracy.
According to this Reuters article, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the operators of Grokster and StreamCast are not liable for copyright infringement. On the other hand the *AA is appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, and has no intention of ceasing litigation against these or other P2P services.
These rulings may weaken the case of the MPAA and RIAA if they get to the point of getting to a court, but I suspect their whole idea of litigation is much like the threats against individuals - no matter if they had a solid case against the MPAA/RIAA, just going through those motions would cost more than settling, so they'll push operators into a settlement under *AA terms.
As far as I know, none of the individuals that the RIAA/MPAA have "sued" ended up actually being sued, just settling due to the threats.
Is this what the MPAA/RIAA are doing now, despite the court's decision that p2p operators are not liable for copyright infringement?
You'd almost think these two associations would rather spend money figuring out how to intice people to pay money for something through a new business model instead of futilely throwing it away sueing your customers and not really putting much of a dent in peoples P2P ways. Besides, the question isn't did you break the law today but rather how many laws did you break today?
Nothing to worry! When one P2P goes down, there'll always be another. People get busted for drugs all the time, and yet I am always well supplied with pot. Thats the way the black market works :D
The real path to male liberation
I have no sympathy for companies that are "P2P" but connect back to a single ad server. I also claim bull shit that these companies have no clue as to what is going on on their networks. All you need is to run one Supernode in debug mode and due a traffic/search analysis. "Britney, MP3, metallica...etc"
Sure, **AA is evil. But don't get your hand caught in their pocket stealing their money.
-Electrawn
Chances are that the appeal to SCOTUS has a relatively low probability of success, but you can't fault the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/IDSA/Insert_Copyright_Fascist_Group_ Here from trying. Unlike the average joe, the trade associations are not crippled by throwing another lawyer or two towards their political agenda. And considering the stakes, and that they really have nothing to lose, an appeal to the Supreme Court is practically a certainty.
The INDUCE act is a far larger threat. The very existence of this act, and the fact that it has influential support amongst key senators, shows how true the statement "political representation is isomorphic to money" actually is. The INDUCE act is designed to overturn the Sony Betamax case-- the very case that the Grokster decision was based upon. It would be a big mistake if this major decision was overturned-- Innovation in technology and culture will simply occur outside the United States and its draconian Copyright regime-- if such events have not started to occur already.
Am I the only one who thinks that the subpoena powers granted to the RIAA are too broad? If a crime has been committed, fine. Then let the F.B.I. handle it and let the courts issue subpoenas where necessary. How in hell did private citizens come to be a the mercy of a trade group? I don't download files off Kazaa or anything, but nor do I like the idea of the RIAA being able to spy on people at its leisure. If there's need of an electronic wiretap, then let the Feds get a warrant for it. But this business of them serving subpoenas to whomever they like makes a complete mockery of the right to privacy. We have police agencies to investigate alleged criminal offenses. Since when did we start bypassing them for the convenience of big business?
Seeing as how most of the commercial P2P software developers' "ad revenue" seems to come from installing spyware and trojans on unwitting folks' machines, I can't say I will be sad to see them go.
"Yeah, like that would work. Every boycotted sale is another that is claimed the result of piracy."
And why wouldn't it work. Have you actually tried it? Did you tell them in a written letter why you were boycotting their products. Or were you doing what legions of Slashdotters do? Simply come here and complain. Then wonder why you're getting no results.
How about using that "other" vote. Or are we going to have to put up with another "I'm weak and defenseless. Will someone be my white knight?"
It's already happening: you buy or download a copy of your sleek new OS and the first step is to configure the downoad manager to connect to some ftp mirror in one of the free countries of the world. Do I care that mp3s or css are "protected technologies?" Fuck no - and neither do the people I've helped free themselves from the redmond overlord.
Let'em sue. Won't make a damn bit of difference either way - you think ho-town is going to ignore a few Billion chinese who adopt different technological platforms than those of us in the "civilized" west? You really think Russia or Ukraine or even Poland are going to change their copyright system because the screaming brat in the west says so? Fucking christ, have none of you ever ordered online from an overseas vendor?
Already these nations are becoming less vocal about their EU intents: they've already seen one empire crumble this last century, it doesn't take a genius to see we're legislating ourselves into global irrelevance.
Instead of going out and attacking something new and different that you don't understand, like you did with the cassete tape, and how mix tapes off the radio would ruin you, accomodate.
Make a new liscence upon which a file share system can purchace and then share. Make it of a reasonable cost, then hunt down the radicals. Its radio OVER a packet-switched network with a device analagous to the cassete recorder at the end. The entire economy is in a slump, and you are offering what is at times an inferior product. Filesharing may have contributed, but so have you. People might take you seriously if you had more than one reason for the slump, some of which were internal.
Go Mr *AA man and sue to your hearts content. The precedent is there now, and its not in your favor. Find a new way.
Noble stance. However, buying used still benefits the *AA. Every used copy you buy reduces the supply of used copies and can thus boost *AA profits on new copies--either because there are fewer used ones availible (and thus some people buy new instead), or because the used copies are more expensive and therefore new ones can also be sold at a higher price, etc.
It's basic supply/demand economics. If you want to really want to accelerate the *AA's inevitable demise, stop buying their products altogether.
""Mr. Congressman, here's a briefcase full of campaign contributions. Those Evil Content Pirates(tm) are costing us even MORE money! Please fix it for us.""
<rant>
Oh lovely. The pity plea. Waaa those bullies are picking on me. Someone make em stop.
Just think if most of humanity pulled the copout you just did. We would have never had the olympics to begin with because we would all be sitting around. Telling ourselves waa but I'm all flabby and weak, and that sports stuff is too hard.
We would have never gone to the moon because we would all be back here telling ourselves. Waa but the moons too far, and those russians are better than us.
We would have never dived to the deepest part of the ocean, because we would all be sitting around and. Waa but the oceans too deep and I'm scared of the water.
Quite frankly you and your ilk are your own worst enemy. You don't even try, but just sit around all day telling others and yourself just how damn pitiful you are.
Organizations like NOW, and Greenpeace, and Sierra's Club, and even unions amoung many have all shown that the common man can have an influence if they want to.
They however are most certainly guarenteed to fail if all they do is sit around telling everyone what they can't do.
</rant>
Yeah it's over. Go back to whatever you were doing before.
"You can even produce a lot of data to turn heads, i'm sure 99.9% of all illegal software distributed around the world in the past 10 years was sent via FTP "...
That's a really poor assumption, and statistically, I'm sure it's way off the mark. Not trying take away from your point (there's other basis to do that), but then again, I've heard much worse. At the very least, IE's support for the FTP protocol is horrendous, far worse than what most pirates of 99.9% of illegally distributed software would realistically put up with. Then, there's the vast quantities of illegal software, music, and video making the rounds via CD-R in many eastern countries.... No reason to bother with downloading out there.
The problem is that it isn't just Britney. You, presumably, are part of the problem, and your attempt to disavow any personal responsibility by pointing to "Britney" fans, is indicative of the prevailing, pathetic attitude.
It's not just the "lame" artists. All artists who have signed contracts with RIAA member studios are guilty, and financially supporting any of them, implicates you too.
I have not and never will knowingly financially support proprietary music. By proprietary, I mean any music for which it is not granted at least those freedoms guarunteed by the GNU GPL for software.
I will not be the fan of any man. But I will gladly partake amongst any as a fellow.
Don't buy into the fan/artist power structure. The only free society is a horizontal society.
If they vote against what the corporations want, then they get fewer donations to their re-election campaigns. Less money means less advertising. And since not all voters will find the same issues to be of equal importance to them, it is much more effective for your politicians to pander to the corporations, get the money and use negative advertising to blast their opponent(s).
1 vote, 100 votes, 1,000 votes lost on this issue? How many more votes can be gained or at least taken away from their rivals with advertising? It's the money they fear losing, because enough people stay uninformed enough that advertising works on them.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
I don't think you have much of an idea about how the warez scene has worked over the last 10 years. Before the days of widespread napster use FTP was king. The most effective way to send large files was to send via FTP. Email couldn't cut it. Scripting HTML was a time waster. Newsgroups required to much computing power and setup time. FTP required a server and a client, simple. Nearly everything was sent via FTP as it was the most effective way of doing things. Pubs are sitll used, windows boxes that are not secure are great for pub dumps. I'm sure a semi-log scale of warez transfered on a vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis would be very interesting.
Does it go on forever?
Please do yourself a favor and pull your head out of your ass. In case you haven't noticed just about every movie and record album available in the US is published by RIAA or MPAA member companies. Sales of Britney Spears records alone aren't filling the coffers of *AA member companies. This meme is a logical fallasy and a completely ludicrous preposition.
Unfortunately I see this meme perpetuated more and more, people want to equate what is in their opinion bad music with the ridiculous actions of the RIAA. The bands that are cool to like are signed with the same labels as the pop favorites. The same is true of cool movies, they're made and published by the same studios that are responsible for films like Gigli and Kazaam.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is why I support campaign finance reform when that reform includes provisions making corporate political contributions illegal. Corporations have the right to free speech but they do not have the right to fund campaigns because Corporations do not vote. Only voters should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Also the time period used to collect contributions should be cut down significantly to say no earlier than 6 months before the election. This will stop the outright bribery of incumbents who collect contributions that are basically bribes since they are probably in a solid district anyways. We do not allow foriegners to donate to campaigns in the U.S. and for-profit corporations should be similarly forbidden.
The majority of the people just don't care much about this issue. They know downloading songs and movies is illegal but will keep doing it as long as they feel they can get away with it. When they no longer can they'll stop or find another way of getting the content. Right or wrong, this issue just isn't that big a deal outside of the libertarian /. crowd. Ask a few people outside of your normal crowd. Most of them will probably yawn.
By the way we must find a new form of distribution to promote real culture over the world again. I'm thinking of a non-profit organisation that will help artists to sell their creations (music, video, ...) over Internet P2P sharing or anything similar. If the price for an album were about 5$ or less, there will be a lot more legal listeners. And you know how much an artist earn on an album today ? It's totally crazy and current scheme only promote commercial songs, that are exactly the opposite of culture and art !!! I'm totally bored by the RIAA and their financial investors...
Well, then they're pretty much screwed even if they can shut down the peer-to-peer networks, then, unless we're going to have DMCA death squads machine gunning face-to-face traders.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Every one of the anti-consumer rulings so far has violated the civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution.
Would this be the "right to free warez and MP3s" amendment?
Last time I checked, you can still make backups of your CDs. However, it's the "sharing them with millions of my closest 'friends'" part that's illegal...
They may say what they want but it is still less money to them and it hits their bottom line.
Support independent artists - there are fantastic ones out there, ones whose music speaks to YOU, but you need to get off your butt and seek them out.
One of the main (if not THE main) reasons RIAA wants to kill P2P is that it offers musicians a way around them and their recording companies.
When you download one of the RIAA affiliated songs you are helping them by spreading their artists over independents. Don't give them the mindshare.