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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.)
Can't they just slip the P2P ban into Patriot Act II? It'd be much easier for me; I could concentrate my hatred in one place.
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.
This story needs to disapear again just like the RIAA and MPAA
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!
"This is one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this court," the groups said in papers filed with the court.
Yes, but not for the reason the RIAA may think. The point is that filesharing by P2P, as demonstrated by Bittorrent distribution by many companies, is a solution to a major bandwidth problem, and as such it'd be madness to ban it because it can be used to infringe copyright - there's about as much grounds to do so as there is to ban all net file transfer activity.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
Then it should not be able to be banned because a person uses it for an illegal use.
* standard comment about guns here - people kill, not guns, etc etc *
Some of the software out there is clearly written to share music and video files that will most likely be breaking copyright. Regardless, it is still the people that are doing the music copying that are breaking the law, not the software.
With so much at stake, it's not surprising that this will eventually involve the Supreme Court. However if this is once again ruled against them, they will have serious problem.
In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine obscene profit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H the value of copyrighted work.
It was in the BetaMax case. Very simply, a company cannot be held responsible for illegal activity if the product has legal purposes. I think going after the individual file swappers made a lot more sense (although I have issues with the shotgun approach they are using). In any court case, someone doesn't get their way. The RIAA and MPAA have to decide... are the users at fault or are the tools at fault? They can't have it both ways!
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine the value of copyrighted work.
And I say that the changes to copyright law have made copyrighted works worth more for longer than they should be. It's just as ridiculous.
"These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability, with the full knowledge that over 90 percent of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else," MPAA Chief Executive Dan Glickman said in a statement.
Sounds like any business out there. Being able to avoid getting in trouble when their product fucks up. Isn't that what lawyers are for?
"That case was based on the principles established in the 1984 Betamax case, which has led to the largest and most profitable period of technological innovation in this country's history. Consumers, industry and our country have all benefited as a result."
Exactly. Current law (and the DMCA) have stiffled innovation as everyone is fearful of being sued. Let's end this non-sense and let the corporations realize that they cannot buy everyone.
If P2P is made illegal, then a lot of other tools should be made illegal.
Here is a short list: Guns, hammers, rocks, knives, forks, spoons, sporks, drills, axes, saws, chainsaws, javelins, baseballs, Windows, Linux, Office, pillows, electronic devices, sheets, bath tubs, lawn mowers, mail boxes, etc.
What do they all have in common with P2P? They all have legitimate uses because they are simply tools, but at the same time they can also be used for crime.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
The INDUCE Act is related and should be a concern as well. Check out http://www.eff.org for more info on this bill making its way through the Senate.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
So when's the RIAA/MPAA going to try to sue Al Gore for inventing the Internet, and causing them to lose profits? Let's just litigate some profit back into their business model!!! Yay!!!
"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!
I don't understand how things would change if, somehow, they would win their case. OK, P2P apps are declared illegal. Majority of people who trade on these networks already know it's illegal, and do it anyway. Sure, it'll let them sue the p2p apps developpers... but they should know it's the modern version of Hydra : you cut off a head, it grows up 2 better ones. Do they really think they can get out of this without changing their (failing) business model? At least they seem to get the message lately, with all the online music stores... at last.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
This could really backfire on the music and movie industries. The supreme court might take the betamax decision to a new level. I'm all for this.
At least a couple of moderators hadn't expected your revelation that this is nothing new, and was expected. "What insight!", they cried.
More seriously, I'm not sure what they might do with this, but their recent Mickey Mouse decision doesn't make it look very encouraging.
See what I've been reading.
why does the MPAA - RIAA wake up and get in reality. should we outlaw all cars because some wife runs over her husband on purpose. what world are they from anyway? I guess to them their all important copyrights are more valuable than lives. what a bunch of screwed up people - they need to take a break from counting all their money. lets outlaw forks and knives because someone stabbed someone to death with a fork and knife - then we have to eat with our fingers or chopsticks but then what if someone pokes somebodies eye out with a chopstick. then we are reduced to fingers. but then if you strangle someone - okay that's all I have a headache.
"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!
If you walked up to me and took a COPY of my wallet containing $200 and spent it on drugs and hookers... I really wouldn't give a shit. Idiot.
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.
Start selling the CD's from $3 to $10 at most.
People'll buy them for hundreds.
Then, and ONLY then, they can start persecuting P2P file sharers.
I told it before. The recording industries are NO LONGER NEEDED. They're history, and belong back in the days when making expensive vinyl records was the only way to distribute music.
We've come to a time where new small distributors are wanting to emerge.
Give up. Pass the flag.
This is a terrible analogy, a better analogy is this:
.. and infact, in this case, should the shoe company sue "Wholesale cobbler goods" where I bought the tools to make my copy of your shoes?
I walk up to you in the street, and make an exact replica of your shoes, then go to my friends house and let him make a copy of my copy of your shoes. I haven't stolen anything from you, but have I done something that the shoe company should be worried about?
Not as clear cut as the riaa would like you to think huh?
The courts are ruling correctly.
What's the real reason that everyone flocks to KaZaA and Morpheus, despite the Virus, Worm and other dangers there? Because, MUSIC CDs ARE TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE!
Rather than subvert Copyright Law to their will, these folks ought to look at lowering their level of greed, so that people might be inclined to purchase a CD rather than steal one. Once you've stolen one, what's another 50 or so?
The Movie industry caught on. I think its amazing that a movie DVD costs only twice what a Music CD does. A Music CD involves just a fraction of a fraction of the production costs -- a fraction of a fraction of the investment that a typical movie does.
When Music CDs start selling for $2, the piracy issue will only be a nuisance. I know plenty of people selling downloaded music CDs for $5 each and making a small fortune. How many are they gonna be selling if they can only get 50 cents?
If you're competing in a marketplace, and you don't respond well to competition, the courts can't come to your rescue -- that's not their job.
Let's just hope the Legislators in DC don't get the idea to help ...
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
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?
Actually the RIAA was the one who claimed it was ok to make copies of CDs to give away to your friends. To do so on a scale that Napster was able to make possible made them change their position. The RIAA was the one who changed the rules here.
In any case, no one wants to rip off musicians or the people who are employed by the RIAA. The Internet provides a chance for innovation and new ways to market products, and the RIAA is very slowly getting with the times.
I could copy music, and I can do so legally. Companies exist, such as audiolunchbox.com, that allow me to not only download songs but buy them. If the RIAA actually decided to make use of what its customers would already be willing to use, and didn't gouge them with high prices and lawsuits, perhaps they wouldn't be complaining about "theft".
You can't rob people on the street or commit fraud legally, so your analogy doesn't stand. Your statement makes it sound like copying is immoral by itself, which it is not.
To leave your post as it was is intellectually lazy.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
The Supreme court will most certainly find that any technology allowing the free communication of raw data facilitates piracy and is therefore illegal. This includes web browsers, email, phone lines, the post office, and the like. And so we should arrest or sue the providers of each. Nevermind that the constitution intended for the reach of copyrights and patents to be extremely limited. Not.
The media lobby isn't about fighting piracy. Many P2P providers have offered proposals on how to legitimize P2P, as has happened with past technologies such as audio recording, radio, television, and vcr's. Each time publishers sued and shouted claims of "piracy" and Congress has had to step in to force a solution that doesn't involve the destruction of the new, superior technology.
The media lobby fights to protect their control. Your music doesn't doesn't reach store shelves if they don't get a 97% cut. Yes, recording artists average about 3% in the end. Some even lose money after the hidden fees. All they want to do is get their music out, and gigs pay most of their income. Technologies like P2P offer a way to circumvent the control of the media companies over distribution.
Most P2P traffic is piracy because the media companies have refused to cooperate in working out reasonable licensing plans, as has happened with EVERY new distribution technology that they couldn't control. As was done with radio, Congress will likely need to step in and make it happen.
Now, if you want to change the rules, fine. If enough people agree, they'll change. But stop breaking the rules for and then casting yourself as a persecuted party. It's intellectually lazy and a cop out.
I think Rosa Parks would disagree with you.
Perhaps comparing the civil rights movement with copyright is a bit of a stretch, but I think the example still stands.
I do not feel I am under any obligation to follow 'rules' that I consider wrong. Of course, I consider murder, fraud, and robbery wrong. Most of things on my "that is wrong" index are in agreement with societies. However, I do not think "breaking the rules" when the rules are wrong is intellectually lazy, or a cop out.
If enough people with money and influence agree, they'll change.
There is a huge difference.
That's the point. We don't want them to produce anything.
I'm out of a high paying cush-y tech job and I want everybody to feel my pain. Muhahahaha! What? Some record exec can't feed his family? Guess what! Neither can I! See you at the food bank.
..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.
Will I be sued because I release a program that makes distributing copyrighted media possible for free? What programs *don't* have the potential to facilitate this in some manner, anyway?
I think this slippery slope is the kind of things courts know can not stand up, and I'm hoping they will have the wisdom not to hang the law on this one.
The MPAA and RIAA just want the courts to believe that they just need to stop a few *evil* companies from doing business, and the copyright holders' troubles will be over. I'm hoping that the courts can't be so stupid as to believe them.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Another application I've seen is an article I received the other day, about the BBC using BitTorrent to distribute programming to viewers (http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html).
Store
Retrieve
Burn to CD
and Listen to MP3 files. As well as:
Execute all the P2P programs available
which are likely Written using MS development tools.
There are probably people out there that have only bought computers with MS software on them for the sole purpose of connecting to the Internet to download free music.
None of this would be possible without Microsoft's enabling software. After all, I locate and download my illegal P2P software using Microsoft Internet Explorer, and run it all under Microsoft Windows.
My first point is that these attacks against P2P software companies seem exceptionally selective. If this was a true attack against the enablers of this technology, then Microsoft is the biggest infringer. And they get a complete pass on this.
On the more serious note my second point is, there are certainly a lot of other people who want to determine what you are allowed to write and run on your own d@mn PC (or Mac).
All this violates my overall sense of fairness and individual rights!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
This isn't bad. If the Court refuses to hear the case then the current ruling will work its way through different federal courts until (1) there a consenus on the side of file swappers or (2) there is a disagreemnet where at least one court disagrees with a peer or lower court. At that point the Court will either hear the case, or decline.
The only way this can be bad for fileswapping is if the Court hears the case and reverses the Betamax decision.
Hear Hear! And furthermore, sir, I have GRAVE ISSUES with this so called "postal service," with which, I have it on good authority, nefarious tune-peddlers are exchanging many the Victrola phono-graph via some sort of criminal hotbed called eBay without returning a whit of recompense to the artists in question!
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
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!
The courts (and juries) are perfectly capable of distinguishing between WWW/FTP/Windows/VCRs and Kazaa, in spite of the fact that they serve logically equivilent purposes.
The difference is intent, and the difference is how the software is used, both as perceived by a reasonable person.
The web isn't, by and large, almost entirely composed of attempts to infringe copyrights. Neither is Windows, nor is FTP.
90% of existing P2P is. And I bet you'd have a really hard time convincing a jury that it wasn't designed with that in mind (first of all, all of Slashdot would be subpoena'd as evidence to the contrary).
And, frankly, neither were VCRs. The vastly overwhelming usage of VCRs was and is not to infringe copyright, but to make (at least reasonably) fair use of copyrighted materials. You really don't see (and never have seen) people using VCRs to make 1000s of copies of the 6 O'Clock News and give it to 1000s of people they don't know.
Don't get complacent.
Copyright by the way had a limit of 14 years with a possible additional 14 year extension and was only created to further innovation by allowing artists and authors to profit for a time from their work before it entered into the public domain, which is where any released work went prior to these laws. It had a limited scope in order to foster creativity and the advancement of science.
If the original laws stood unaltered we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. the volumes of information that should be rolling into the public domain and the value that information holds for the advancement of American culture and for the advancement both culturally and technologically of the entire world is immeasurable. That information is ours and it's been stolen for no other reason than to protect Mickey Mouse from imitators.
My keyboads not woking popely.
It's more properly called the Audio Home Recording Act. It is the giant upon whose shoulders the DMCA is perched. At the time it was passed, it did not get nearly the outrage and attention it should have (that does not imply that it didn't get tons of both - it did, but passed anyway). It was the mechanism by which the Rio got hassled (the Rio escaped by the skin of its parallel cable - the fact that it was a computer peripheral was all that spared it). The AHRA, I believe, is every bit as horrible as INDUCE threatens to be today.
"It was. It was called fair use."
Interesting, I haven't heard that. Do you have a citation?
"I think it's still legal to take a cassette tape and copy somebody else's CD , tape or record, but I'm not sure if it's legal to make a copy digitally, like make an mp3 of somebody else's CD (or even tape or record) anymore. I suspect it still is, though I'm sure the RIAA wouldn't agree."
Also interesting. Do you have anything to back that up? If you would like to see what US law says about "fair use" (as opposed to the common Slashdot misunderstandings), Here's the link. Ivan Hoffman also has an excellent article about Napster's failed attempt to defend their actions as fair use. pdinfo.com addresses the specific issue of music and fair use here ; they write "We have attempted to do find specific details and examples of Fair Use of music. The rumors that it is OK to use so many notes or so many bars are just not true. There is little doubt that, other than private in-home listening and playing, Fair Use of music is extremely limited."
So, if you've found a law that makes it okay to copy my friend's CDs onto cassette tapes, please post the links. In either case, there's an important difference between "under the radar" copyright violation (making copies of your friends CDs in small quantities) for which nobody will get on your case, vs. activities which are truly "fair use."
"Of course, the RIAA IS getting paid. If you copy a CD onto an Audio CD, the RIAA gets a cut. (It's called the `DAT tax'. Google is your friend if you've never heard of it.) I guess they're just not getting paid enough ..."
That's counter to the popular understanding of how it works. It's explained here (Google is indeed great for finding instances of that retarded "the RIAA gets a cut" meme, but for stuff like this, just going to the actual law book will save a lot of wasted time). The vast majority of the money goes to artists, composers and musicians -- who, I should add, generally aren't paid enough. A small percentage goes to record companies. None goes directly to the RIAA.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.