Slashdot Mirror
Legal Music Sharing Returns To MIT
An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students relaunched MIT's believed-legal music sharing network today, using a Linux-based consumer audio device that also launches today as a commercial product. The 'Library Access to Music Project' (LAMP) system was first launched a year ago, but shut down after its content supplier encountered legal hurdles. The re-incarnated LAMP is based on StreetFire Sound's RBX1600, which network-enables multiple inexpensive consumer audio jukeboxes. So... what do you think? Does the new version look legal?"
They're always so progressive. I love MIT.
Do they have an SCO license for their linux :-)
Notwithstanding the rather unfortunate name this project has a serious potential.
"Does the new version look legal?"
Of course it looks legal, but is it enough to avoid lawsuits? Very unlikely. MIT is the very place where the hacker culture were born, so obviously it is the first place for RIAA to keep an eye on.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
... if it's legal or not? They'll still get mugged by the lawyers. Legality has little to do with issues like this anymore.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Whoever came up with this idea is clever. But, he/she similarly totally misunderstands the point of copyright laws by playing "bright lining" games (as do, in my experience, many slashdot readers).
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
-sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
-photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
-MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.
The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
The core issue is not if this is legal under current legislation or not.
The core issue is how long we will have to wait until supply meets demand. There is a demand for technology like this, but thr RIAA and its peers realize stuff like this empowers consumers... thus they feel threatened.
This will ultimately be legal, regardless of wether it is now. One only has to wonder how much tax money (in god knows how many nations) will have to be spent on pointless lawsuits until we, the consumers, can finally get what we want at a reasonable price.
.: Max Romantschuk
... but the law doesn't seem to matter that much in this case. It's just like getting a cd player (or a bunch) and extending the headphone wire all the way to your friend's house (or houses) right? That's not illegal is it?
Talk about abbreviation collision. Their common linux context makes this a possible source of confusion in the future.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Who cares if it looks legal ... RIAA will sue them anyway!!!
Don't quit your dayjobs, students. Now gimmie that ketchup!
Always remember, a music distribution is legal as long as RIAA gets "mo' money" from it ... everything else is illegal and those people are worse than terrorists, at least according to RIAA ...
NOTE: I think that Al Qaeda or whoever can have a "911 times a hundred" if they just distribute MP3s ...
just my 2 bytes
In the faq of the LAMP site it says : "* Is this really legal? How? We are transmitting music over the non-digital portion of MIT's internal cable television system. Because it is impossible to record exact copies of CDs from a non-digital cable television system, under the copyright law the licensing requirements are less stringent than for over the Internet: similar to the requirements for radio stations." So since when were MP3s transferred over the internet exact copies of the CDs? I appreciate that LAMP have bulk-licenses, but a while back an idea for p2p sharers and peercasters to get radio-licenses was not accepted (by the p2p communities and advocates) as legal, so what's the difference?
The full article clearly stated that MIT *HAS* a license:
LAMP distributes music in analog form, over MIT's cable TV network, which enables it to be covered by licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, in much the same way that the campus radio station is covered.
This means that they pay 2 cents or whatever for each song played. The RIAA *is* getting their money. Everything appears to be legal since its an analogue broadcast over the cable network at MIT. It basically is a radio station using wires instead of wireless.
Since they have a contract, why is this even a question? Why are so many people already claiming that its bordreline or the RIAA will sue even if its legal. The RIAA doesnt go after radio stations, yes they pay to play the music, but they dont do it. Why would they because MIT is doing it on their TV network rather than via RF?
I am ow wondering how many people read the articles before posting replies to /.
All fine words, but MIT licensed it and paid for exactly that: Analogue streams played from CDs to their students, so its not a copyright issue.
No-one, other than you, is claiming that their contract requires "Adverts", "Incomplete songs" & "Unscheduled recordings", "degraded analogue" or any other such condition.
"Fair Use" is NOT a cast-in-stone definition of how many pages it is ok to photocopy or that you can share your Mp3s with your sister but not your aunt. Rather, the idea is a set of INTERPRETED principles intended to balance the interests of varying members of society as a whole, including content producers and content users.
When idiots like these guys at MIT go about making devices built on the misconception that fair use is a cast in stone notion and that are aimed at circumventing the letter rather than the spirit of that imaginary cast-in-stone law, the results are predictable: rightsholders take legal action petitioning that such actions are so clearly contrary to the spirit of the law, the law has no choice but to come down hard, and, long story short, more often than not in the end fair use is eroded.
It will just make them crack down on existing privileges. For example:
"LAMP distributes music in analog form, over MIT's cable TV network, which enables it to be covered by licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, in much the same way that the campus radio station is covered."
Bye-bye to the permissve "licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses". Nice knowin' ya.
Not to mention:
"Copyright restrictions on analog distribution systems are more permissive than those on digital systems, because the lossy nature of analog-to-digital conversion prevents perfect copies from being made."
So long "permissive analog distributions", you're now marked for death also.
This whole MIT thing is a perfect example of the "lalala, I'm not touching you!" approach to the existing laws. These MIT folks are working up to the letter of the law, but raping its spirit. Maybe the laws are too vague, but stunts like this will surely rectify that...
``go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely''
Can you link to some examples? I actually believe that the system could work full well without IP laws. If you want innovation and creativity, you can sponsor them by other means. I would like to see the evidence to the contrary you appear to know about, so I can revise my views.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"Winstein's conclusion was based on the high expense of CD jukeboxes with computer interfaces, because at that time, no solution existed for gluing inexpensive consumer audio jukeboxes to computers -- a situation that changed with the advent of the StreetFire Sound RBX1600."
Guess they never heard of the Slink-e, which has been around for more than 6 years. In fact, it's so old it was just discontinued a couple months ago!
http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm
Sure, it doesn't handle the audio side, but that's pretty trivial to do.
I don't like the RIAA either but just because you don't like them doesn't give you a reason to steal music.
Is it OK to steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family? Should it then be OK to steal music to entertain my boring family?
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
..a technological method to easily make a copy of my loaf of bread, so that you could have one and I would still have mine, sure, go ahead and make a copy of my bread--I would still have mine then, it wouldn't have been stolen.
The "industry" has enthusiastically embraced copying technology-for themselves. They get to "sell" over and over again the same thing. No additional work required. They want to have an exclusive lock on not only content, but on your use of advancing technology. They lobbied and got passed laws that give them an even longer copyright period then what we had before, for no reason other than to continue selling the same content.
In the rest of the world, more money has to come from more work, with the copyright monopolists they want to work once, profit forever and ever and a day and a night and another day. Actually, it's worse than that, the non producers in the copyright monopoly world are the ones making most of the profit, they even screw their own actual content producers most of the time.
They are wickedly over paid middleman skimmers basically, who want to keep a lock on technological and societal progress. We arer at the point now where it is no longer necessary to even have these middleman industries for the most part, they see that, technology has made that rerality, so in order to hang onto their cash cow which has been highly lucrative for them in the past, they seek to further advance the laws only in their favor, no one else, either the actual content providers, nor the various end users, is really well survived by their actions any longer. Back when it took a huge amount of money and machines and expertise to make primitive copies-yes, they served a useful purpose and needed to be *fairly* compensated, but what happened is that while the cost of copying was dropping and the ease of copying was increasing, they kept insisting on the same or even more money for their service. They colluded to create and maintain what is called an industrial cartel, in the process several times running afoul of the law themselves. They did what cartels do, lobby to change the laws in their favor, and they kept on doing their illegal manipulations right along, just assuming (rightly so) that they could bear the cost of getting busted for illegalities as just a part of doing business, being corporations and organizxations, they have always had little to fear of actual human jail time.
In essence, they are just getting a little righteous payback. They know there is little left that reflects the necessity of most of their business existence. they seek to maintain their presence *despite* this. It is contentious now because we reached the obviousness of this, millions daily simply ignore the old paradigm of allowing them to maintain their monopoly on technology. IF they had evolved right along with technology and had continually dropped their prices to a fairer level and had made the obvious advantages of more modern technology equally available to their consumers, I doubt that people would have shoved back in their face as much.
This transition period is liable to continue for a while now, but inevitably they will have to concede that times have changed with their older business model. Those of them that do accept that *now* and evolve will prosper.
The biggest question is, how in the world can you tell if a backup or filesharing service is legal or not? The only way to really be sure is to monitor the network 24x7, which is an invasion of privacy. And even if you monitor for file names, the only way to REALLY be sure that someone isn't changing the name to fool you is to actually read the file. Then I could turn it around and say the file monitors are stealing from me, because if they can read my files, then they can copy them. The biggest problem is you can't gauge the intent of the person making a file backup. Maybe I'm a good little citizen and I'm making a personal backup. Maybe I'm not, and I just told all my friends where my files are so they can access them. Or maybe some people found my file stash accidentally, and are downloading my files without my concent. How do you prove which of these cases is true? You can't. Networks don't care: content is content. There are no physical boundaries to say which files belong to which people. (Unless you're talking about DRMed files, which in any case can be cracked to not point to a specific owner.)
"Is it OK to steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family? "
MIT bought and paid for its license, is fully within its license and is not doing anything outside the scope of what its paid for.
Is it OK for my family to eat the bread I bought?
I think people are overlooking what is really going on here.
There are two parts we need to look at:
1) Is the distribution system legal?
People keep on commenting on whether this is acceptable under copyright laws. This is a moot point. The real question is whether it is allowed under the MIT contract. Since that isn't posted I don't see how anyone can make an argument either way. If it's not allowed under the contract it is clearly infringement.
2) Even if it's acceptable, who cares? All this allows you to do is the equivilent to a radio station that you can make requests. The licence doesn't seem to give the students the right to RECORD these broadcasts on their PCs. That would still be infringement.
Of course as any good Slashdot reader, I only skimmed the article so I could be totally off base here. Oh, IANAL and this isn't legal advice.
She doesn't own the CDs (from the library that she rips into mp3) and can't claim Fair Use.
The rich and powerful throw their weight around to write laws that benefit them, why shouldn't those lacking in money and power use that obscurity to get away with what benefits them and hurts no one? Or maybe you like saying, "Thank you Master, may I have another ?" just cause they bought another Senator with money the last Senator gave them from the public treasury.
Someone actually RTFA. What's going on? This isn't the Slashdot I know! ;)
apterous.org
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=busi nessNews&storyID=6585749
Spitzer is evaluating a lawsuit over the major RI illegally paying radio stations to play their songs.
The poor RIAA is getting burnt on both sides.
This is a great idea and hopefully it will spread, but as always MIT leading the way
Something which occurs to me:
If I buy a CD, I have the right ("first sale") to sell it again, or give it away. [provided that I don't keep a copy] I also have several hundred discs, but I can only listen to one at a time.
How about a system for buying and selling discs in realtime? Two questions need to be addressed:
1)If I physically destroy the original CD, am I allowed to sell the backup? Does this apply to an electronic copy if, as soon as I pass it on, I destroy my original?
2)In order to save bandwidth, is it necessary to destroy the orignal, or is it sufficient to render it unplayable? Obviously, I'd want to re-purchase it at some time, and a 650MB download is a pain. Would some form of cryptographic token suffice?
As far as I can tell, such a system would work effectively if everyone has at least say 10 CDs that they own at any time, so that the requested track would almost always be available from someone. I know it would be legal if I were to pass on the physical disc, but that requires a personal meeting. Is it possible to automate this?
I find it funny that the designers of this project never took the time to ready copright law. Any device that allows the consumer to program a radio station is expressly forbidden in copyright law. In addition, it is illegal for a radio station to say exactly when it will play a song. (They can say that they're going to play a song within the hour, but if they tell you the exact minute, then it's illegal.)
Take some time to read title 17.
And I'm sure that if that happens, RIAA will cry internet lawlessness and use it as an excuse to push through even more draconian regulation of the net.
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscod e17/usc_sup_01_17.html
It occurs in sections 114, 110, 111, 112, 1006, 1202, 401, 407, 106, 101, 108, 107, 118. None of these sections says anything about listeners programming the radio station or radio stations being allowed to announce the broadcast times for a copyrighted work.
"When idiots like these guys at MIT go about making devices built on the misconception that fair use is a cast in stone notion..."
Forgetting for a moment that this is not a fair use issue, please keep in mind that it is the **AA's of the world enforcing their copyrights. It is the **AA's who have extended (seemingly indefinately) copyright law, stifling innovation and expression.
And please, don't speak of the 'spirit' of a law. **AA lawyers know no bounds. Laws need definition because there will always be those on both sides who will challenge them. It's like saying, 'Did G.W. Bush LIE about weapons of mass destruction or was he MISLEAD?' Guess it depends on your belief system, doesn't it?
Do you honestly believe that the original founders or lawmakers intended the 'spirit' of indefinate copyright extensions? Even then they understood what such practices would mean - an unbreakable hegemony of information brokers.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"The person who owns the intellectual property on the process used to create that loaf of bread might have a different opinion on the matter."
I'm all for insightful comments, but this has to be the most obvious statement I've ever seen. "The IP owner may want to more restrictively control their content than you!" So insightful!
no, it's not legal now, that's why I said that I think in my opinion that the law is an ass, and I would like to see it changed, at least back to the point it was before the bono act and before drm schemes and whatnot. And don't worry, I won't copy all your stuff, I only deal with that that is freely shared, and/or I make use of what pitiful remnants remain of "fair use".
Fair notice, if your stuff is ridiculously expensive compared to what I can get as an alternative for free or much cheaper with less restrictions, that's where my custom is headed. Myself and millions and millions of other people, eventually billions, because we "get it" on voluntary sharing. And eventually our POV will "win", too, just watch it happen, it's inevitable now. You canot stifle progress, at best you can merely delay it. Have fun delaying it, eventually you'll be spending more time and energy and resources on that than on actually producing anything worthwhile, to either share freely OR sell, at any price, reasonable fair price to outtasite gouge level price. A *Good* Example = SCO now, an alleged technological implementation and development company who's main business now is trying to scam more money out of obscure references from years ago. they aren't innovators now, all they are is crybabies, want to get paid forever and a day for something they might have done years ago. It's pitiful really.
Those in large universities should check out ourTunes. You can dl anything off an iTunes share.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I love the legal two-steps people have to do nowadays to survive in any business that deals with entertainment content. Check out this defensive buck-pass attempt from Loudeye, when the RIAA was trying to light a fire under their butts:
"We provided content to MIT," Loudeye publicist Stan Raymond said. "We did not provide licenses for them to issue that content."
As in, "Yeah we rented them the car, but we didn't know they were gonna drive it." Do real people really say things like that, or will we one day wake up to find that the whole music copyright fight has been sort of a business version of professional wrestling?
... we can do now is to produce..and share. Ignore the others. Let them put each other into poverty with lawsuits and whatnot.
sounds OK to me.
Hooray! Now those 15 channels are actually doing something instead of just being empty and displaying an apology message.
MIT Cable, channels 63-77.
http://lamp.mit.edu/ to start playing music if you have MIT certificates.
Right now it says "You are welcome to use this beta-test before we re-open."
And it does work beautifully, I've got New World Symphony playing right now on channel 64.
--I really didn't miss the point. The posit was how would I feel if someone took my bread? I replied if they could copy it it would be OK,permission granted, if they stole the *only* copy, the one loaf, that it would be theft. The other posit, well, how about the process? Where I the only one with a recipe or technique to make bread, I would share it, as I think people getting bread is a good idea. I don't want to really profit from it, if it is ridiculously cheap and easy or free to do, to make copies of it. The thought, the theoretical idea of it itself would have come freely to me, so by allowing the public share it has cost me nothing tangible.
I work for a living ( I live and work on a big complex, which is farms and businesses and private residences, I do a lot of the outside maintenance and upkeep here), and believe me, if there was a way to copy endlessly what I do, for cheap or free, I'd be the first in line to get me some of that action, and the first to turn around and give it away, even though it would mean I would then have to go and find new employment, which I would, had a buncha jobs before, you can always find something to do.. My temporary unemployment would be a small price to pay for allowing humanity in general to have what now costs a lot of time and labor and tools and expense to pull off. This small scale terraforming action is what they call "hard work", and in order for me to get paid, I do it once, get check, and if I want another check, I have to do it *again* or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I can't just do it one time and rationally expect to keep getting paid for it over and over and over again. If it was possible to just mash "enter" on some automagical terraforming replicator machine and make a copy of that, cool freeking beans! Here, have you some! Have two, they're cheap!
So, yes, I understand it, yes I see the various differences, and yes I have outlined what my responses are to the various differences. As society and technology advances, I expect a lot of things to get easier and cheaper, and those things that get technologically to the point that they became so cheap as to be theoretically close to free with their replications, I would expect them to be offered at that price or close to it. When they are not, and when I notice that those people have to actually have to pass additional weird "laws" in order to lock in yesterdays profit margins that are no longer based on todays realities of production/replification prices, well, I question the validity and ethics of that situation. I think people who produce IP have the choice, I would hope they get reasonable with it as they take modern advances into consideration and what is not only good for them but what is best for society as a whole.
You see, the more people share, the more *you* get. It is not a one way street, it's a million way street. You don't exist in a vacuum, you actually get more stuff the more everyone shares, you don't get less stuff. I know it's a scary concept,initially it doesn't make sense, it goes against a lot of previous societal mores and business models, but it really does work. Your choice, participate or not.
I look at IP sharing (if we can go back to what this discussion is about now, that which is easily copied now from advances in tech)as an example of computer age "community barn raisings" if I may use an analogy. Back in the olden days it was just too hard, too complex, too costly for every single individual small joe farmer to build his own barn, instead, people shared expertise and materials with the result that everyone got a barn, and it was easy to do and more cost effective and induced a decent feeling of community and neighborliness. It was good for the individual, good for local business, good for the community in general. Everyone involved actually got a good deal out of it. Yes, it was anyones choice back then to take part, or not. Those who decided to share all got a nice spiffy new barn though, without a lot of expense or effort. It