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RIAA, MPAA Ask High Court To Review P2P Decision
The Hobo writes "It's official: Hollywood studios and record companies on Friday asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn a controversial series of recent court decisions that have kept file-swapping software legal." (Previous /. coverage here.)
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
Knives are used to murder people every year, but they are not illegal. **AA needs a grip on reality. Their business model is failing. Quit tinkering with legislation and find a profitable venue.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," federal Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in his 2003 decision. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."
It will be interesting to see what the arguments of the RIAA will be. What fundamentally distinguishes FTP or HTTP servers from other file sharing programs? By what critera can a programmer know if the program he is writing is illegal?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Starving musicians everywhere should file a class action suit against the RIAA for being used as the RIAA's defense in these cases, when we all know that the starving musicians are starving because of the RIAA's monopolistic nature & underhanded treatment of their "talent."
"These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability..."
In other words, they're staying within the law... Oh how dare they...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
So, why don't they, the MPAA/RIAA, just create their own version of Kazaa, charge for advertising rates, and offer all their movies and music for free to the file sharers? Sounds like a win/win to me...even the artist gets at least what they are getting now from radio and television royalties.
It's ridiculous: .html files
If they made file-swapping software illegal, that would mean that:
- Windows Explorer is illegal, since you can swap files with it
- ANY ftp client is illegal
- Firefox/Internet explorer is illegal, because it technically has the capability to swap
I dont get it how people can demand things as "fuzzy" as this. Where do you draw the line?
If enough people with money and influence agree, they'll change.
There is a huge difference.
..but I decided to reply anyway.
As I've heard a starving artist say, "You can give whatever reason you want for downloading mp3s instead of buying CDs, and I'm okay with that. Just don't tell me that you're doing it to help me make a living.
But this is no time to become complacent. Congress has the power to write/rewrite the copyright laws at its discretion, and the Supreme Court has largely decided that it can't (or won't) interfere with that power. Expect the fight to shift to the legislative arena, with all the lobbying ability at the **AA's disposal. The INDUCE act and PIRATE act are just the harbingers of what they might try.
The lesson is that we've got to take P2P mainstream! It's got to be built into important applications that are used on a daily basis, so that lobbyists line up on the other side when the fight comes. It's good that it's already being used to distribute Linux distros, but we need enough uses that it is no longer possible to talk about banning it. There's probably only about a 2-year window before the legislation starts coming, so people who are software developers need to get cracking.
Read the actual copyright notice on your CDs; most will explicitly prohibit even loaning the physical disc to anyone else.
Nope. Not only does that make no sense under the applicible laws, but I just spot-checked several, and none of them say that. Most just say, "unauthorized duplication is prohibited," while a few go on to mention that public performance, broadcast and rental or hire are also forbidden. None of them say that loans are forbidden.
(Actually, most of my CDs are legally redistributable concert recordings from bands that allow such things (mainly, in my case, Hot Tuna, the Radiators, Gov't Mule, They Might Be Giants, the Butthole Surfers and the Flaming Lips) as found at places like the Internet Archive, but I checked my more mainstream CDs, and none had the statement you claim.)
When the VCR first came on the market, most uses were infringing. Prerecorded tapes typically cost around $100, and there weren't any rental outlets. When the MPAA failed to get the technology banned, they did the smart thing, and adapted to it, and now it's a huge source of revenue for them, and most uses of the VCR are not infringing (although there's surely plenty of copyright infringement still occurring). What lesson can we learn from this? Well, if you're the RIAA, apparently none!