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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!
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.
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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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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!