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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.
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
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..
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?
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.
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.
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)
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)
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