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.

Comments

"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like that would work. Every boycotted sale is another that is claimed the result of piracy.

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them claim what they want. They aren't getting my money.

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[Pinkfud]

No, boycotting won't impress the *AA. But the loss of money would impress the recording companies that are members of the *AA. If they felt a big enough crunch in their bottom line, and understood that the *AA actions were the reason, there would be changes.

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[xigxag]

It's well known among activists that an effective boycott requires organization, e.g. contacting the company in question to let them know you are boycotting them. Contacting the press to inform them what's going on. Just an unexplained dropoff in purchases will, as you suggest, be explained by the RIAA in such a manner as to demonize their opponents.

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[red floyd]

Yeah, there would be changes... in copyright law.

"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."

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[h4rm0ny]

Just an unexplained dropoff in purchases will, as you suggest, be explained by the RIAA in such a manner as to demonize their opponents.

The RIAA however, may still realize the truth themselves, irregardless of what they put in their press releases. And more to the point, so may the labels that comprise it.

A boycott comes much more naturally however, when people can move to an alternative. I've started buying music from smaller labels more often. Have a look at Magnatune I also like being able to buy individual songs from iTunes. If the money stays in the public's pockets, that's one thing. If they see it going to someone else they'll change their tune pretty quick.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't spot that pun until I'd hit preview. Honest...

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"

[The Analog Kid]

I still boycott the RIAA but I listen to Rush, Rush is an independent band atleast in Canada(they actually own their own copyrights, besides being great musicians they were smart thinkers back in the day), but in the US their music is distributed by Atlantic and Mercury (now part of Universal). To get around this to make sure Rush will get the most of my money off the sale, I have a friend buy it from Canada, then ship it to me, and I give him the money. Then I get the Anthem label only and the funny British spellings.

It's not about litigation, but threats.

[danamania]

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?

Re:It's not about litigation, but threats.

[Pinkfud]

That's exactly the problem. The RIAA and MPAA are modern day equivalents of the Gestapo. With the law on their side, and enough clout to make sure it stays there, they ride roughshod over anyone they can. It's not about collecting settlements, it's about the publicity. What they want is to make everyone believe they are watching and that they're invincible. And they're doing a damned good job. We need some kind of organized resistance movement, something that gets the same kind of publicity against their tactics. But who has the kind of money and political clout to make it happen?

Re:It's not about litigation, but threats.

[huchida]

If a case has gone to court I'd like to hear about it. I have the feeling the RIAA doesn't want to take the chance of losing, which could happen if a case went before a jury... After all a jury could easily have one or two members with a folder full of mp3s on their computer at home, and worry that they're going to be next.

They could care less about the money. I really don't think they even care about the lawsuits. This is all P.R., pure and simple. It's an ad campaign. And it definitely works-- P2P goes on, but many casual users (or would-be casual users) are being scared away.

Re:It's not about litigation, but threats.

[turnstyle]

"These rulings may weaken the case of the MPAA and RIAA if they get to the point of getting to a court"

Well, no. These rulings should have no bearing on another trial, if it does make it to the Supreme Court. Additionally, it also ensures more end-user lawsuits.

"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."

The evidence is quite good, from what I remember, including stuff like hashes matching files originally recorded back during the Napster days.

"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."

I'm not sure if there have been any full trials, but there have been default judgements issued by judges. Settlement generally goes for about $3000 and default judgements for considerably more.

I think people generally settle, because, you know, they got caught.

Re:It's not about litigation, but threats.

[BillX]

The evidence is quite good, from what I remember, including stuff like hashes matching files originally recorded back during the Napster days.

So you mean, if I rip my copy of Britney's "Baby Slap My Ass With a Trout" and compress it with LAME 2.6, it will be different from everyone else's copy compressed with LAME 2.6?

Big Business still rules all...

[chrispyman]

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?

Gee whiz

[Richard Dick Head]

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

Re:Gee whiz

[JaredOfEuropa]

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

Wouldn't you rather see P2P stay legal? You will probably be able to continue to use P2P when it's outlawed, but you won't be so happy when the police come a'knocking to seize your beloved computers.

Same with pot, by the way. You probably would not enjoy being caught with some. In contrast, over here pot is legal, and I can walk into a store not 3 minutes from my house to buy some.

Re:Gee whiz

[KontinMonet]

Not quite true. It doesn't matter if you're in Holland, Switzerland, Belgium or wherever the rules have been relaxed - growing, importing, supplying, buying etc. strictly speaking are still illegal or very restricted, it's just that the authorities turn a conveniently blind eye to the illegal activities provided they are small enough operations. In Switzerland, for example, in the German areas of the country (Zurich etc.), it is quite normal to see people sitting on public stairs openly smoking. In Holland, this can be frowned upon (especially outside Amsterdam), coffee shops are the place to be, not openly public spaces. On the other hand, coffee shops in Switzerland are far less open about their presence than in Holland but again strictly speaking, in Switzerland, it never was illegal to grow industrial quantities of weed whereas selling the product for smoking and possession is... (although some Cantons might have relaxed the laws lately, I haven't kept up with changes).

The world needs renegade millionaires...

[Anubis333]

Why not just fund your own shitty record company, then find people that have copies of your artists in unprotected ('shared') folders available via ftp, or http. Then sue Microsoft, because they make Internet Explorer, and the DOS FTP client. 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 --It must be stopped!!

Or turn it into another suite based on the same principals. Sue Grokster because they are facilitating in the trade of child pornography, or sue M$ because people use IE for the same..

Re:The world needs renegade millionaires...

[Rahga]

"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.

Re:The world needs renegade millionaires...

[scum-e-bag]

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.

Grokster decision INDUCEs an Appeal...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Grokster decision INDUCEs an Appeal...

[Guppy06]

"Innovation in (...) culture will simply occur outside the United States"

Y'know... if what's being broadcasted into my home is "innovation in culture," the rest of the world can take it away from me with my blessing.

Re:Grokster decision INDUCEs an Appeal...

[VoxCombo]

Actually, the Betamax ruling had relatively little to do with the Grokster case. The two laws in contention were: 1. Contributory infringement 2. Vicarious Infringement for more reading on contributory infringement, check out (Adobe Systems Inc. v. Canus Prods., Inc., 173 F. Supp. 2d 1044, 1048 (C.D. Cal. 2001)) and (A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 114 F. Supp. 2d 1019). and for reading on vicarious infringement have a peek at (Fonovisa, Inc. v. Cherry Auction, Inc., 76 F.3d 262) The Fonovisa decision is particularly interesting. It deals with a swap-meet operator who basically operated a brick-and-mortar version of a P2P network. The precedents in that case are very intriguing when applied to P2P. If you read the judge's ruling in the Grokster case, he does say that there is a loophole in copyright law which allows P2P to operate legally, and he gets in a call-to-action for congress to close this loophole.

Gung ho?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter worth a damn if the MPAA / RIAA think they can buy judges on the Supreme Court to rule in their favor (like Judge "non-recusal-though- I -used-to-work-for-the-movie-industry" Kaplan). Every one of the anti-consumer rulings so far has violated the civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution. We, the people, know this. And we aren't going to take it sitting down. Any ruling is not going to be worth the paper it's written on if it continues the ruse of ruling against fair use, free speech, free assembly and free association. I didn't pay $1,000+ for my personal computer to have some white man in a robe* tell me what software I can or cannot run on it, and what networks I can or cannot connect to. (*with few exceptions)

Re:Gung ho?

[Cereal Box]

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...

Subpoena Powers

[grimharvest]

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?

Re:Subpoena Powers

[kmac06]

This is not insightful. AFAIK, the RIAA cannot subpoena anything, nor can they spy on people at their leisure. What they can do, and you could do as well, is file a civil suit (as the other respodent said). They do not have the power to implement electronic wiretaps. They can, of course, query your computer and ask if you have, say, Matrix 2 shared on KaZaA (something Warner Bros. busted me for :) ), but that's a tap no more than calling someone up on the phone is.

Re:Subpoena Powers

[HolyCoitus]

You're wrong though, which is what is distressing.

Explanation of civil subpoenas and a site about the DMCA

I'd suggest to read it, so you can get an idea of what people are scared of and upset about. They are not wiretapping, but they can monitor you, and then write their own letter to get your information to bring into a civil courtroom to force you to defend yourself.

Rather than voting with your dollar...

[TWX]

...try bugging the crap out of your representatives. Work to get copyright law changed. If enough people bug their senators and representatives they'll be forced to take some kind of action lest they be concerned with losing a re-election bid. As for this current situation, the Court has already ruled in the past that items, devices, and systems that have a legitimate use are legal, even if there are illegal uses for them. This is part of why they can't bust someone for drug paraphernelia unless they have actual drugs on them, because scales, paper, and the like all have legitimate uses. VCRs are legal even though they can be used to record copyrighted TV shows and copyrighted movies because they serve to allow consumers to legally view movies and tape shows for later review. The Court has already given its opinion that since Grokster is a filesharing service, not a specific music service, that it is theoretically allowing anyone to share or exchange any kind of content, and that users who abuse the law are the problem, not the existence of the software that technically as a side effect allows them to do this. P2P might be most heavily used by people downloading that which is copyrighted and not licensed for their use, but people do exchange legitimate stuff, therefore it should pass that test.

Re:Rather than voting with your dollar...

[TheLoneDanger]

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.

Re:Rather than voting with your dollar...

[Facekhan]

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.

Two words: BUY USED

[Windcatcher]

Anymore, whenever I buy a DVD or CD, I make a point to buy it used, from places like Amazon. So far I'be bought several used movies that way and the quality has been all but indistinguishable from new. Just remember, every penny you put into their pockets is another penny that's available to pay their lawyers on this jihad.

Anymore I think of it this way:

- Tickets to Spider-Man 2: MONEY FOR THEIR LAWYERS.

- DVD of xxxxxxxx movie: MONEY FOR THEIR LAWYERS.

- xxxxxxx music CD: MONEY FOR THEIR LAWYERS.

And what galls me the most is that the bastards are probably laughing to themselves that we're so addicted to this stuff that we can't help but pay them to do this. Well I for one have decided, no more. NOT ONE RED CENT.

Is Gnutella in the clear?

[B1gP4P4Smurf]

The INDUCE act only seems to cover cases where the P2P software companies make money from this alleged inducement to infringe. I have yet to see anyone propose legislation that would make, say, gtk-gnutella illegal.

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.

Re:Is Gnutella in the clear?

[Electrawn]

Someone also needs to remind legislators that the US != Internet. Instant Induce act makes law, all the US based P2P companies move to Togo, Nigeria, Trinadad... (and the spyware with it)

Nothing will change except a bunch of Americans losing even more rights.

-Electrawn

"Vote With Your Dollar?"-Lalala can't hear you.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 all relative

[poptones]

Just look at a map of the world. The US is this tiny chunk of land on one side of the globe. Thanks to the greed of the corporations based here, jobs are increasingly moving to those other places that collectively take up about ten times more area. And how many times over do the populations of china and india outnumber us?

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.

Lobbying againh pushing the indust new legislation

[MysteriousMystery]

I know a lot of people agree with this, and many people have started petitions and things like that, but we in the "tech" community really need to organize a continuing and consistant lobbyist group to take on the ridiculous and continuing legislation being pushed by many large corporations and organizations who look out for their own interests over technological innovation. It's time we stand up and make our point realized that it isn't the governments job, to create legislation to protect antiquated business systems such as those in place for some of the parties involved with pushing the induce act. Too many people, not just general consumers but media types fail to understand simple things like fair use with regard to copyrighted materials for example, that would allow even copyrighted material to LEGALLY be transmitted via a peer to peer system for example. Just because something is copyrighted doesn't necessarily make any re-distribution of it criminal or piracy. But the RIAA doesn't want you to know that, and thus most people don't. This link from Groklaw should explain a lot of this. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402050 05057966&query=RIAA+ It's time to take action and start lobbying for ourselves. Let others know the legal truths, and don't allow the rules to be changed around us any longer!

If I'm lucky, there is an RIAA member reading this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Buying Used Still Helps the *AA

[EventHorizon]

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.

"Vote With Your Dollar?"-The Pity defense.

[Anonymous Coward]

""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.

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"-The Pity defense.

[orthogonal]

organizations like NOW and the sierra club are near the pinnacle of human hypocrisy. They are morons if the think they're saving the planet/life. Life has survived long before humans, it will survive long after.

Well yes.

That's exactly the point: the Sierra Club and other organizations to protect the environment are trying to prevent us from destroying the environment to such an extent that human life is put at threat.

Supporting such organizations is almost entirely selfish: global warming and fresh water depletion threaten all human life on this planet. Understand that when the ocean encroaches on Holland and Bangladesh and coastal India, when fresh water depletion brings about famine in Iran and Pakistan, these peoples will not go gently into that good night.

And these peoples who will rage against the dying of their light, all have access to modern military weapons, in some cases including nuclear weapons.

So what do you expect will happen? Faced with starvation or homes inking beneath the waves, millions of people will be looking for new homes and fresh water and food. They won't be humbly petitioning you, "guv'nor can you spare a dime". No, they'll be showing up on your doorstep with machetes, Colt '45s, and cruise missiles to persuade you -- or their neighbors -- to share.

At best, you can expect environmental crashes to mean a greatly reduced standard of living for you as the world adjusts to waves of crop failure and famine. And even as your standard of living declines, as long as your world includes a TV and car and a personal computer and a PS/2 for each person, the guy living in a hut in a village that shares one TV among all inhabitants will look on with envy, and wonder if he's be better off with 72 virgins in Paradise after blowing himself up along with you.

At worst, a nice upstanding Dutch burgher will have to decide between seeing you survive or seeing his kids survive, and six million years of human fratricide bets that, nice as that Dutchman is today, he'll choose for his kids -- just as you'll choose for yours.

Melvin Konner, in the revised (and almost entirely re-written) edition of his classic book subtitled "Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit", The Tangled Wing, explains that (emphasis orthogonal's)

United Nations assessments [at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro environmental summit, 12 years ago!] found a continuing loss of topsoil and productive farmland and a growing scarcity of fresh water. In the late nineties a third of the world's people had inadequate fresh water, and this is expected to double to two-thirds by 2020.

Many future wars will be fought over water.

Like you, I was always somewhat contemptuous of "save the environment" activists, until I read about the numerous deserts created by man throughout prehistory, the Near East, in Americas (as by the Anasazi Indians), in the Pacific on Easter Island. Jared Diamond writes movingly -- even shockingly -- about this in several of his books, and in this article (emphasis orthogonal's)

The fifteenth century marked the end not only for Easter's palm but for the forest itself. Its doom had been approaching as people cleared land to plant gardens; as they felled trees to build canoes, to transport and erect statues, and to burn; as rats devoured seeds; and probably as the native birds died out that had pollinated the trees' flowers and dispersed their fruit. The overall picture is among the most extreme examples of forest destruction anywhere in the world: the whole forest gone, and most of its tree species extinct.

The destruction of the island's animals was as extreme as that of the forest: without exception, every species of native land bird became extinct. Even shellfish were overexploited, until people had to settle for small sea snails instead of larger cowries. Porpoise bones disappeared abru

Re:"Vote With Your Dollar?"-The Pity defense.

[KarmaMB84]

The same Sierra club that will take millions of dollars in exchange for not continuing to file lawsuits against the construction of power plants?

But it's not just Britney; you should know better

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

3Com Megahertz

[Graymalkin]

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.

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.

Starting small

[MysteriousMystery]

Well, I think it would best to start small, I have no artistic talent in the visual sense whatsoever, and while I have a background in journalism, my legalese is severely lacking to adequetely write up goals and agendas. But I have decided to start a Yahoo group, and if enough people are interested in helping from there we can start a site and move on.
When I was writing that post I was thinking about what I could do, but like many of the other people here, I'm just a poor college student with minimal funds and time to spend, however, if enough people put their free time (myself included) towards organizing something we can start a new trend.

Since your suggestion of the name techrally was taken for a Yahoo! Group, I came up with OpenTechnology meaning opening up technology rather than closing it via legal restrictions (this as opposed to the open in open source).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenTechnology/
The group is completely open to anyone with a Yahoo! account who wants to join. Let's try to get organized and see what we can accomplish.

It doesn't matter

[Flavius Stilicho]

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.

2024 in a TV Studio court room somewhere

[azbot]

Next up: RIAA vs. All humans of Sol1 RIAA Claims that afformentioned humans have been using an ancient P2P protocol called the "internet" for some time now to illegally share songs such as: "What its like to be 44 and forgotten" by once famous teen pop idol Brittany Spears. RIAA is suing for imediate cease and desist of all internet usage.

A new form of distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Fair Use

[TheToon]

First, IANAL.

In my country (Norway) we have quite good Fair Use laws (y'all will probably remember the "DVD-Jon" case and its positive outcome).

We can:
1. Copy any media (CD, DVD, LP, MC, VHS, whatever) for our own use as much as we want to.
2. Share with family (parents, siblings... maybe 1. cousins but that's it)
3. Share with close friends, and this is interpreted in a strick sense. Your best friend that you grew up with? Sure! Someone from class or a cow-orker? Nope, not close enough.

This complies with my sense of justice pretty well. After all, is it fair use to share your new CD with music with people you meet on the bus?

As a compensation for this, artists get paid from a fund. It's the same fund that was started when MC copying started and is/was funded by sale of empty music cassettes.

I bet that most audio copying today does not go straight to P2P networks. How many of you rip your CDs to a) play them on your DAP (mp3/ogg) player or b) have a copy in your car, but do not put the ripped files on P2P? I bet there are a lot of you out there. Maybe this can be used to make statistics to counter the RIAA drivel.

Any time I rip a CD with CDex, it does a lookup to freecddb.org. There are other services for this, like gracenote and others. We could assume that the total hits to these pages, minus lets say 10%, are legitimate rips of CDs. Then we would have an estimate of the amount of legal (legal as in fair use) ripping out there.

Re:No tears over eDonkey

[Secrity]

Why are you using MSIE anyway? Google for "IE + security" to see some of the reasons not to use IE.

Re:If I'm lucky, there is an RIAA member reading t

[base3]

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.

Re:Iam returning my Evanescence

[bman08]

Send you 13.88 to your local senator along with a letter asking for help against the RIAA/MPAA. It won't help much, but if a lot of people did it... the industry fills their suitcases of bribe money out of your pocket.

I think it was inevitable

[HangingChad]

That corporate culture would move from treating their customer base as a revenue source to treating them like criminals. What it really demonstrates is how little respect companies have for an individual customer.

And, really, why should they? MSFT knows that they'll lose a certain percentage of companies audited by BSA, but not all of them. And there will be more new ones to take their place. MSFT losing one customer is meaningless but the BSA action would likely boost licensing from a thousand others who heard about it.

RIAA gets a double bonus from their legal action. Not only does it scare away people sharing copyrighted music, but it also taints all downloaded music, even from legal sources. Can't have muscians getting popular outside the major labels, now can we?

The CD music business is hugely profitable and a collalition of five or six companies pretty much own the lift. The whole pipeline is set up to control prices. So the RIAA lawsuits protect that turf while they figure out how to squeeze even fatter profits out of iTunes and other legal download companies. The lawsuits will likely continue because there is no downside for the big labels. Unless you think our spineless Congress will step in and do something for the average citizen...HAHAHAHA! Don't hold your breath.

The only recourse I think consumers will have is to unionize. Consumer unions. Where groups of people band together to negotiate for something like cell service. I do that for some of my customers. Negotiate big software and service purchases. And, let me tell you, vendors would roll over and bark like dog if I asked them to. My customers get a better deal because they're buying in bulk. Consumer unions could do the same thing.

The downside would be, taking an example like cell service, everyone has different needs and wants different features. That's what fragments the union. Another problem is when the union leadership turns into AARP, which started selling its constituency instead of representing them. I personally get some pretty incredible offers from vendors, as would the leadership of a consumer union.

Still it has potential. A consumer union with enough members could pretty much dictate price and service terms, but it's like trying to herd cats keeping them together.

The RIAA is missing the point

[HappyFunnyFoo]

By aggressively targeting unencrypted P2P networks, the RIAA's attempt at halting filesharing, specifically of pirated music, will fail miserably. The reason is simple: more and more users will switch to anonymous and encrypted P2P networks such as bittorrent and WASTE, both of which basically nullify the possibility of lawsuits and make it impossible to track offenders / pirates. I have been at LAN parties where some users have connected to 50-100+ Peer WASTE networks. Unless an insider is present, each user is connected to the network through a PGP style 2048 (or higher) bit key. It is almost impossible without a hell of a lot of, literally, undercover spies (tens of thousands), to break a WASTE network. It's also ridiculously illegal to even attempt to find one. WASTE lets you fill your hard drive with whatever you want without basically any fear of big government or big agencies like the RIAA eavesdropping. By suing users using "lighter" P2P networks, the probability of the RIAA succeeding becomes even lower as more users will simply switch to methods to get files that are untraceable. This is a culmination of the effects of the recording industry first attacking Napster, which used a centralized server method; now users have moved to a decenteralized server method (ALL of the current protocols follow a super-node configuration) which basically means it's impossible, unless a LOT of lawsuits are filed, to halt the network. When the RIAA attempts to stop the third level of file sharing, i.e. completely anonymous and/or encrypted file sharing, it will reach a roadblock that it cannot hurdle over with ANY form of legal action. The RIAA has made two giant mistakes: not embracing Napster, and now not embracing supernode style P2P networks; it is nearing the end of its life and further lawsuits demonstrate that it is only capable of acts of desperation. The end is near for the RIAA as a functional part of the music industry.