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New RIAA File-swapping Suits Target Students
Fletcher writes "The Recording Industry Association of America filed another round of lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including students on 13 university campuses.
The 750 suits come just a few days after Internet researchers released a study that found peer-to-peer traffic had remained constant or risen up to the early days of 2004, despite the pressure of recording industry lawsuits."
I've been swapping a lot of Japanese "dating sims" in order to improve my social skills with chicks - am I in any danger of being sued, or is this ONLY for music? What about games, bishoujo games in particular?
99% of the whole point of these lawsuits is to get filesharing fearmongering into the news where it can "deter" and influence politicians.
Personally, I don't feel like it's newsworthy any more, and I don't see any reason to actively help RIAA in their fear-spreading mission.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Who's gonna take the heat for the file swapping? the students or the campus/university?
this is an important question because one could say that the universities allowed them to swap files by not-not-allowing (:p) and so the students could use this in there defense (however crooked and twisted a defense it is...).
I own a pump action golf ball cannon. I made it myself.
For one, you can't stop it by going after people that don't have enough money to pay for cds. CDs printing costs are in like the cents (30-70 cents) to make the CD ready for packaging.
They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold. If they ultimately actually lowered the price to a more convient number maybe people will by them.
Or even maybe have them actually good music to purchase. Going after college students who have enough to worry about is a horrible way to get support. Its a negative campaign that'll end up hurting them.
We need to start using only P2P software that allows connecting through anonymous proxies. Those proxies should of course be located in countries that are known to be unwilling to collaborate with US/European authorities. It would make P2P much slower but should put these lawsuits to an end.
Wrong! No matter how you try to spin it, trading copyrighted material over the internet is against the law. Don't like it? Change the LAW.
[sarcasm]
Go RIAA! Way to sue some people who are unlikely to be able to defend themselves. You truly have a gigantic collective business mind.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, when will this business model of suing some of your most interested customers cease? When the weather report in Hell changes?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
.....who not only cannot afford to fight back, but can't really afford to pay their fines in the first place. Since these people are students, it's not as if they can hire Johnny Cochran or someone to defend them...this, I dare say, makes the RIAA's number of 'sucessful suits' more effective, as more of them are settled out of court.
It really is kind of like the schoolyard bully shaking down the smaller kids for their lunch money. Why does the RIAA exist these days, anyway? I haven't heard a single thing about what they've done other than file lawsuits....
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Those Colleges and Universities that haven't agreed to pay tribute to the RIAA by forcing all students to participate in things like the new Napster (participate = include the fee in the student's tuition) will be "strongly urged" to do so at the point of the RIAA's legal gun.
Oh, well, at least it's a good education in the way the outside world "works".
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Good model to get more people buying music. Pissed me off so much I haven't bought a cd in years.
And I will not till they stop this BS. Remember all these losers back in the 60's and 70's I'm sure they copied there buddies music if they liked it.
It's the same shit.
The way to stop this crap is boycott music period. Listen to the radio if you must. A one year boycott and they will crumble like a cracker in a vise.
What's the difference if you get it off the net or get it off FM? I'm sure if they like the music they'll go and buy it to support the band so they can make more for them to enjoy.
Is there a current, up-to-date list of the sued IP addresses? The EFF's doesn't seem to have been updated anytime recently.
This is like the proverbial little dutch boy trying to stop a dike collapse by sticking his finger in the hole of the breach.
You cant stop information freedom, RIAA. The genie IS out of the bottle.
and tell us how we can get the law changed when we have no money and no power?
This makes a whole lot of sense if you think about it. They want to take the money from the people who can least afford it cause they can only afford to buy so many cds a year compared to someone who is out of college and has a job. This is like pro-active gestapo marketing...take all the money you think your customers should have bought. I mean these kids waste all their money on hundreds of dollars worth of books a semester and tens of thousands of dollars on tuition, room and board...they really need to get a piece of that pie! Don't you wish the government was on the peoples side just once where they could actually look at something like this and realize...Hey they aren't on the peoples side! This is not what America wants. I bet things will change when a politian's daughter accidently gets sued because the RIAA forgot to check their list properly just like they didnt care about spyware and spam until their computers started to get effected. Keep on downloading Jenna and Laura Bush!
Trix are for kids!
Major corporations attempt to imprint branding on us when we're young so that we'll be loyal to them later in life because we'll view those brand as canonical.
What the RIAA is doing here is cementing P2P as the way to get music. They think they're creating negative associations with P2P, but what they're really doing is creatin negative associations with the RIAA. It's basic psychology. We hate being told what we can't do by large oppressive corporations, and it only makes us want it more.
"There is no such thing as bad publicity." But what they don't realize is that this is publicity for P2P, not publicity for the RIAA.
Go get 'em RIAA! EEhhhaaa! Those youngsters seem to always cause trouble. Then again, maybe it is you that's ageing?!? Whatever the case, your methods have put me off from purchasing music under the RIAA. Plenty more record companies and bands that I can support without cowboy RIAA shooting me in the ass.
Beta Sucks
If somebody on Slashdot was the target of one of these lawsuits, would the community join together and help raise money for a lawyer to stand against the charges?
Good work RIAA. Keep pissing off and targeting the students today. All your doing is devising your demise in the future.
The university students today will be in the work force in the next few years, and then the main force of the work world not long after, as the baby boomers are getting all to be seniors.
So good work. Keep pissing us off. Keep targeting us. Your end will be tragic, except you can go fuck yourselves because nobody will care.
Yes. Pain of Salvation is an awesome band. I've loved all their albums, though I still haven't been able to get into their latest, Be.
Students are the future of America...
Those people who seek/work to further their knowledge and help refine the various areas of study to futher civilivation.
A few decades ago I'm sure a pardon would have been accepted, for the students, silly old music nuts that they are. I guess somewhere along the line we decided to throw caution to the wind, and primality anyone who comes between business and money.
...Creative Commons?
:( )
(unfortunatly, CC's website is down
The RIAA says that it's only going after people sharing 1000 or more files. Most people probably only use, at the very most, five BitTorrent streams at once. Let's assume that each instance of BitTorrent is a CD with 20 songs. That's at best comes to a user sharing 100 songs at a time, well below the RIAA's threshold.
Will the RIAA change the number of songs shared before legal action is taken or will BitTorrent users get a free ride?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
but most file swappers,I'll put myself on a limb here; would not even know what that means.
Most file swappers are just interested in getting something quick and free, not any social cause.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Well, now that you've commented on it, you're complicit in that too... ;)
Yes, it is absolutely correct that the point of the lawsuits is to get publicity for this issue. And it is correct that Slashdot is participating in that process.
However it is also worth differentiating between "filesharing" and "unauthorized filesharing."
These suits (as opposed to the Napster, Grokster, etc.) are about unauthorized filesharing, and not the technology itself.
Indeed, those that constantly act as apologists for unauthorized filesharing are just as guilty as *IAA for endangering an emerging technology.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
The music on the radio sucks. ;-)
Jeez, hate to sound like an old-timer here, but there is no way you'll get caught sharing files if you take your iPod to your neighbor's dorm room.
Hell, they probably have some original CDs you might want to rip tracks from. Not to mention the library, which probably has thousands of CDs available (my public library sure does). Ya, I know it's illegal, but chances are, no one else is using that CD's track at the moment.
I mean, sure, centralized P2P is convenient, but a lawsuit is pretty inconvenient. Go back 10 years and use SCP to download music. Just trade lists on chat rooms like we used to do. Hell, you can trade lists over SCP as well.
Give up on the whole centralized P2P networks and do some social engineering, you'll never get caught.
Disclaimer: I own *cough* all of my MP3's original media, Really!!!
A little is lost without the show to go with the music.
All I do any more is listen to the radio. Time shifted mostly. I've found stuff on radio (wireless and internet) that I could never find on P2P. P2P is fishing at the trout farm vs radio which is more like fishing in the ocean. Harder to catch on the radio, but there seem to be a greater variety of fish (if you can find the good holes). There's the added enchantment of wireless, but you've got to be pretty old to still appreciate this.
A good radio station streaming 128kbps mp3 uses up about a meg a minute. Same for converted on the fly from wireless broadcasts. This works out to about 10gig/week. It's easy to skim through and cut out my favorite shows. More difficult is marking songs with ID3 for easy indexing and out of sequence time shifting. I suspect this is why most folks who actually listen to the stuff prefer already tagged, from the P2P. The hoarders (accumulate vast collection, brag about it, never listen) I'll never understand.
An application to buffer stuff by 20 seconds or so would be handy. I could listen to the radio live and when I hear something interesting, hit the record button. get the beginning.
This really is getting stupid now. While I am aware that music certainly isnt a necessity the principles must still apply. Anyone with a basic knowledge of economics can see that while there is an ever increasing supply the price will have to drop.
The record companies are completely hypocritical about this position. We are constantly bombarded with repertoire whether it is on the radio, tv, film in their self fullfilling proficy that is the music marketing/charts, so why would i bother buying it?
Not only this but the fact that in some cases (eg Universal) the same company complaining about the piracy seems to keep very quiet about the huge growth in DVD sales which of course is responsible, along with games, for diverting disposable income from music.
The same time these figures are reported to start to drop (99 roughly) is the time that games began to appeal to older age groups and now 50/50 between men and women. This is due to better tech and the generation growing up with games becoming the main holders of disposable income. Yet, of course, this is never mentioned. There is only a certain amount of disposable income for people/families and music has to be effected by the rise of greater choice.
Why is it such a problem to develop subscription services or advertising led strategies to improve the situation. TV companies - in the UK at least - pay a 'blanket fee' to the MCPS, PPL, PRS (collection agencies for the Record companies and artists) to use whatever work they like as many times as they like. This is clearly the way the industry will have to go in the long term.
Or consider TV companies business models. In the UK there was only BBC in the early days who charge a licence p/a for the use. Along came ITV who offered the content and service for free to end users and generated revenue from advertising. Why can this not be applied to music, specifically online distribution?
And anyway, since when has the industry, which evolved in the American market from stolen European works, ever cared about the artist? Untill the price resembles the value the piracy will contine.
That storying is trying to 'hint' that all P2P traffic is for 'piracy'.
P2P is agnostic.. its a concept, not a action... a more accurate study would be the USE of the P2P networks they are 'surveying'.
Just spreading more half truths and misconceptions...
I know personally my P2P usage has gone WAY up in 2004, I now get most of my BSD ( and related ) ISO's via torrents now.. Last I heard that's legal traffic.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Get your copy here. It's an onion-routing network, and open mix-net if you like. It protects your anonimity by using a number of proxies to channel the data, and encrypting the data such that one always knows only the next hop to send it to.
In contrast to, e.g., Ants or MUTE, finding your data scales as log(N) (N: number of nodes in the net), whereas Ants and MUTE scale as N^2. And in contrast to Freenet and friends, this actually works.
Now, you can already just put all your music files in the eepsite/docroot folder of your install, and post your key on forum.i2p. That's enough for anonymous sharing.
Even better: A BitTorrent system that works completely within I2P is in the works ;)
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
"Not to say that artists don't deserve money for their work, but again they are doing it the wrong way."
Funny how everyone's willing to go to a high degree of telling the artist the "right way", but would chafe and complain about their rights being violated when such a degree of attention was focused on their own activities. Plus I don't see any of you setting up the "right way" with your own monies.
"For one, you can't stop it by going after people that don't have enough money to pay for cds. CDs printing costs are in like the cents (30-70 cents) to make the CD ready for packaging."
Gee, everyone knows that the only thing to making music is having a "cheap" pressing and printing plant. Oh and distribution, and marketing are free too. Are you certain you don't work in the music industry?
"They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold. If they ultimately actually lowered the price to a more convient number maybe people will by them."(1)
Look up mooching and vicious cycle.
1) All the people who are paying legitimately for the product are also paying for those who don't (the mooching part).
2) The "vicious cycle" part comes into play when someone complains about the prices (like you just did), and seeks to relieve the pressure by becoming a moocher.
3) Goto 1, lather, rinse, repeat.
Of course there's no such thing as infinate recursion in economics, so eventually everything collapses, and in the end. The moochers have only what they could make out with, and the artists are out of a job. Between now and then lies the wreckage, of laws, and technology were even those who have nothing to do with all this suffer.
(1) Like iTunes, and other such efforts?
"Or even maybe have them actually good music to purchase."
I wasn't aware there was a universal agreement on what constitutes "good music". Maybe what you really ment to say is "I" don't like certain music, and I'll call other people's choice in music "bad". And just to top things off, I'll use it as justification to mooch.
... for a decent iTMS like online-music store that has everything to buy online thats available to buy on CD in stores. Using fair prices and a platform open to all modern operating systems.
I don't like to look for something on iTMS without finding it, like Katie Melua or Vienna Teng.
Walking around to different music stores is ok, but using 10+ different online music stores with different DRM-concepts and players is not.
I can only speak for XM, because that I what I have, but for $9.00/month (on an extended subscription), I get about 60 channels of commercial-free music of more different types than I can listen to, plus all the news, sports, talk, and comedy channels that I could ever imagine. That's about the cost of a single CD every *other* month.
The best part is that I don't have to do *anything* to get the music -- I just turn it on, and someone is already programming it for me. I don't have to download it. It's there whenever I want it, and unlike anything that I might program for myself, it is never repetitive and never boring. I can use the same radio at home, in the car, and at work, and by plugging it into the audio input of my sound card, I can listen to it through my computer's speakers, if I want to do so.
I happen to like the three classical music channels, the 60's channel, and especially the five or so jazz channels that I have programmed on the radio buttons. But there are dozens of other music channels, including channels with about a dozen different kinds of rock music, including uncensored channels that I'm sure would be of interest to people here. Sirius makes a similar offering.
I realize some of the cost of the service goes to RIAA royalties, and that some indoor locations might have trouble them, and that I'm just an old fart compared to most of the people who frequent this forum. But at the absolutely minimal cost for satellite radio services (XM, at least, has family plans so that service to a second radio costs only about $7.00/month) and given the incredible variety and depth of their offerings, I don't understand why people don't get a satellite radio instead of downloading music.
The intellectual property mafia needs our money to criminalize and sue us. Just because we are no longer willing to buy albums with only one or two good tracks.
Let us realize that nobody needs this blown-up industry anymore and let them starve to death. I do not buy music anymore and I ask everyone to follow.
" You're making the common mistake of comparing victimless crime to victim crime. "
And you're making the arrogant statement that humanity is fully capable of knowing what is victimless, and what isn't.
Not only is humanity not omnipotent (and hence not fully cognitive of all their actions and consequences present and future). The historical record is filled to the brim of mans failures to anticipate the consequences (Thalidomide, and DDT are one small example, and global warming could be the next one) of their actions.
a serf being shaken down by the landlord. Granted, it's not food, but it isn't music (art) nearly as important(to human existence and experience)?
Isn't this close to having to buy from the company store?
Look at the average DVD, it's what...about 20 bucks give or take a few bucks plus or minus. OK, some are 30 bucks but most are around the 20-24 dollar point.
Ok...let's take an average hollywood movie that cost today around 50 million give or take to produce. Some cost upwards to 100 million. And that's just from producing the movie itself, not including the marketing for it. Yet the DVD, where they make a ton of cash from, costs only 20 bucks when it hits the stores. 20 bucks.
The RIAA claim that the CD's cost so much because they spend so much on the artists, the promotion, the artwork etc etc so the price point is 17 bucks for a CD with 72 minute of music. Now I KNOW a music CD doesn't cost 50 million dollars to produce and market. No way NEAR that amount.
This is just blatent money-grubbing bastardship in it's prime. I how can they possibly defend themselves with this?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
The boy actually *did* prevent the dike from collapsing. The story is about how the boy's courage and endurance saved the town.
HTH
I'm getting so tired of this kinda stuff by the RIAA. Maybe they could deter copyright-infringers by actually providing a comparable service. And not iTunes selling tracks for USD$0.99. I mean seriously. This seems like a ploy for the RIAA to make more money than with CDs. Now they've dispensed with any physical material, any shipping and distribution - AND they charge the same amount for a CD. Except buying from iTunes versus a regular CD I am limited to where and how I can play it. And the quality is worse, and I don't even have any liner notes.
Seriously, sueing college students is not a good business plan.
Provide a decent service and the people with money to spend on music will mostly use it. And all the students with _no_ money will still continue to download their music for free.
This ill will campaign does nothing but make people even more content to share music now that doing so is a slap in the face to the clueless and tyrannical RIAA.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/29/191521 0&tid=95
someone's lying.
They're using their grammar skills there.
They targetted the apps, and there was an outcry here - "The tool has legitimate uses! Go after the users who misuse it!".
They targetted the companies/people producing the apps, and there was outcry here - "The tool has legitimate uses! Go after the users who misuse it!".
Now, they're targetting the users who misuse it - and yet still there is outcry here. How is this a YRO issue? You have no right to distribute copyrighted works without the copyright holder's permission. That's partly why the GPL exists, to grant you those rights.
Don't like it? Work to change it. But don't admonish the RIAA for upholding their rights, while cheering on others when they go after GPL violators.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I can only presume that by "file-swappers" they mean the tiny sub-set of file-swappers: "Files-of RIAA-owned-Music Swappers" ?
The amount of files exchanged across the internet is HUGE, even compared to the P2P illegally-distributed-music downloads.
e-mail anyone? sounds like file-swapping to me.
Isn;t web-page-surfing file-swapping?
Can we get some consistent terminology?
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
"We need to start using only P2P software that allows connecting through anonymous proxies. "
Gee I can't image were people get the impression that P2P is only for copyright infringement?
".....who not only cannot afford to fight back, but can't really afford to pay their fines in the first place. Since these people are students, it's not as if they can hire Johnny Cochran or someone to defend them...this, I dare say, makes the RIAA's number of 'sucessful suits' more effective, as more of them are settled out of court."
Of course what the OP doesn't say, but implies that if they could hire a well-heeled lawyer. Their copyright infringement will be proven to all be a big misunderstanding, and eventually they ment to buy the product (Honest! Would this face lie to you? *sad puppy dog eyes*).
There are several sites that carry a wide variety of music from independant artists.
There's dmusic.com, Musician MP3, Sound Click, Vitaminic, CNet Music, and even modarchive.com, Just to name a few. There's a bunch of other sites to get music from independant artists so there is no need to even use P2P to share RIAA music let alone purchase it.
This would be the proper way to protest the RIAA. If everyone did this, they would see their profits fall and at the same time, see that file swapping is way down, then they would have no choice but to confirm that they're really the ones to blame for the decreased sales. The biggest challenge is trying to get people that love the "Cookie Cutter Boy/Girl Bands" to switch over.
Well, considering i particpate in FBSD 5.3 testing, it has been quite a few images this year. ( last year, i agree, i hardly fetched anything )
Also, i dont normally do updates across the wire, a lot of the servers i support dont have outside access, for secuirity reasons..
Im also not talking TONS of them, but compared to my normal p2p useage ( almost nill ) a few of gigs via BT IS a big jump...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"It really is kind of like the schoolyard bully shaking down the smaller kids for their lunch money."
Hehe. It's nice to see that politicians aren't the only one's to use the "but think of the children" defense for their actions.
someone should explain to these people the joy of newsgroup binaries
"Those Colleges and Universities that haven't agreed to pay tribute to the RIAA by forcing all students to participate in things like the new Napster (participate = include the fee in the student's tuition) will be "strongly urged" to do so at the point of the RIAA's legal gun."
Gee, who's engaging in fear-mongering? The "legal gun" has no target if there's no copyright infringement going on.
The fact that the colleges and universities have to deal with the consequences of it's charges shows the lie that copyright infringement is a victimless crime.
Why don't all you copyright infringers get your own network and equipment for your activities, and leave the rest of us out of it?
"Oh, well, at least it's a good education in the way the outside world "works"."
Don't do the crime, if you don't want to do the time.
Actually, I need to thank the RIAA, and---of course---ClearChannel. By promoting only mainstream music (Mindless "Pop-40," Mainstream "Alternative," thug-only "Rap," catch-all "Jazz," Balding "Rock," and baroque-only "Classical") I pretty much only listen to indie bands these days. I only listen to the radio to catch NPR/CarTalk. Oh, and I have disposable income to spend too! Too bad I won't be spending it on those over-hyped, culturally-void, no-talent "acts" y'all have sunk so much money into "promoting." Boo-friggin-hoo.
Yeah, right.
The RIAA tried such an argument vs p2p networks, fortunately the judge strongly disagreed.
You wouldn't either want to blame the goverment for crimes which they could prevent or reduce if they only imposed complete surveillance on everybody, would you ?
I, for one, hope they will not even try blaming it on the universities and am confident they won't try, because it would support the RIAA's stance to require more surveillance and control on neutral technologies like the networks in general(internet, p2p, university ones).
"That's what they're doing. Like other posters have said, the best way to change a law is to break it."
I can't wait for the law aginst murder to be broken.
Two Words:
Iraq Invasion.
They used to simply use the catch-22 situation, where if file sharing went up and sales went down after they filed lawsuits they simply said to themselves, "This proves we need to file more lawsuits! What we're doing just isn't enough!" and if file sharing went down (according to now discredited figures, since people were just moving off of Kazaa) and sales went down, they'd say "It works! Now let's keep up the good fight to improve those sales!"
Well, this last period, file sharing has gone up and sales have also gone up. There just isn't any way to justify lawsuits using this information, according to the RIAA's own spurious justifications.
Except to say, that is, that knowing the impending backlash was coming, the RIAA probably steeled themselves against any public pressure--and along with it rationality-- before they began to file lawsuits. Looking at Cary Sherman's statements, for instance, its hard not to notice he never actually addresses the efficacy or goals of the lawsuits. He just parrots "We are within our rights. We can't stand by while thieves are stealing our music. Artists need to be paid," and similar argumentively disconnected soundbites.
Well, news flash, RIAA--copyright is pragmatic. You enforce it to increase sales, not for moral (that is, constitutionally unfounded) rationales. You may have the right but how about a reason? How exactly can you justify enforcing it to a cane-flogging-for-jaywalking extremity, infuriating your customers, while when it is rising your sales are also rising?
You should still buy cds -- just not from the major labels. I've bought all my music (lately) from the artists themselves, either on-line or in person. Cut out the middle-man and everyone will benefit!
Oh, and billy at billyband.com rocks.
They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold.
I don't mind repeating this like a broken record. Eventually everybody will get it. Musicians usually get paid NOTHING for CD sales. Yes, by contract they get a small percentage, but that same contract also lets the record company first deduct all expenses of manufacturing, advertising, distribution, etc, etc, which usually leaves a ZERO net payment. For a more detailed explanation of how this works, read this article by Janis Ian, who has recorded more than 25 albums over nearly 40 years, and has yet to see a record company check with a plus sign on it.
The short version is: Musicians make money primarily from live performances, same as they did for centuries before recording technology was invented. What CD sales do for them is give them exposure, which generates audiences for concerts. They get the same exposure whether you buy a CD, download it, listen to it on the radio or find it lying on the sidewalk. Paying for the CD does not help the musician.
Record companies, on the other hand, make nearly ALL their money from CD sales. They justify all their business practices because they lose money on the songs that don't sell well enough to cover expenses. Essentially record companies are venture capitalists who seize all profits from a company until the startup expenses are covered, and then continue to get most of the profits after that.
Would you finance your startup like that? I didn't think so.
A friend of mine got a C&D from the MPAA for a single torrent. My friend uses Comcast.
Robin Hood was the hero. When did our society stop caring about the poor and the oppressed and become so reverent of wealth and power?
Test 1 2 3 4
Distribution of music without the authors permission is common and legal. It is called mandatory licensing. Radio stations do not have to ask permission to distribute music. Anyone know what the per play cost is for a radio station?
Don't like it? Work to change it.
Oh man, thats a gooood one.
I better get started making my corporation so I can get millions of dollars to buy this 'change'.
But don't admonish the RIAA for upholding their rights, while cheering on others when they go after GPL violators.
Why the hell not?
The reason there is still outcry is because the public doesnt want infinite copyrights.
Do the words "limited time" not make sense to you money grubbing corporate scum?
Hi Jack V.! To say that some alternate universe exists in which the RIAA and like are for P2P apps but against unauthorized use ranks up there with donning Keds and waiting for the comet.
Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric. Do you have any plans to be more international in your scope?
Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.S. and you have news, submit it, and if it looks interesting, we'll post it.
It is worth noting that there is a Japanese Slashdot run by VA Japan. While we helped them a little in their early days, they essentially run their own content without any real involvement from us... none of us can read Kanji! There are currently no plans to do other language or nation specific Slashdot sites.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 10/3/04
You can babble all you want about "unauthorized" file sharing(as if anybody has a right to tell me what I can share), but it looks more and more like the good guys are winning. The tyrany of copyright is coming to an end, and good riddance!
What?
also:
Perhaps you should take a look at magnatune
Album prices start at $5, and you can pay up to $18, knowing that 50% of the sale price will go directly to the artist. You can get the music in any form, from mp3 to ogg to flac, and even the perfect quality wav! Best of all, once you've paid for the music, you can re-download it whenever you like! I've bought some albums myself, and while they may not have the artists you'll see on MTV (no big loss there), they've got some pretty good stuff available. They've even got a business plan that doesn't include pissing off their customer base. You really should check them out if you're looking for a resonable alternative to the RIAA's music.
Copyright is not censorship, it's a short term government supported monopoly. It's meant to stop people from publishing works you created without giving you the creator something of value. To give the creator control over his or her works for a period of time.
The problem is that copying is so easy to do now, and that organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have manipulated current copyright law to favor the big guys. That doesn't mean you throw out the whole copyright concept, just bring it back under reasonable control.
It's not censorship, no one is saying you can't share information. No one is trying to stop artists from playing or selling their works. No one is going after people for creating works they disagree with. They are trying to stop people who are not the artist from giving away copies of the artists works.
There is a big difference between sharing information and sharing a 100% perfect digital copy of a song, movie, or program.
Copyright is the Law, it's written into the constitution. It's very clear that sharing most copyrighted songs IS breaking the current law.
Don't try to cloud the issue with right and wrong like this is the civil rights movement. You have no Right to a free copy of the latest Eminem Mp3.
Please think a little and don't call someone an idiot based on a two sentence response that is in fact true. Sharing copyrighted songs over the internet without permission is copyright violation.
1. What proportion of file sharers are students? What proportion of these lawsuits are against students? Is there a massive mis-match between these two figures? I'm only worried if the answer is "Yes".
/. please decide whether the RIAA produces rubbish, or not? If it is, why does everyone keep downloading it?
2. Could
3. Music is not essential to your existance. If you can't afford it, don't buy it, it won't kill you. In particular, if both sales and piracy drop, maybe they'll finally have to accept they're doing something wrong. I'm sure someone can also point out a site with good legal MP3s? Oh, and I can highly recommend this new-fangled "radio" invention...
4. To the people complaining that they're prosecuting people who can't afford to fight the cases, maybe this is more of a problem with the legal system in general? Are you suggesting instead that people shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes, if they can't afford to hire expensive lawyers? Or maybe we should stop fining students for speeding, because they're poor...
4b. Is anyone actually claiming these people have not been illegally copying music? If so, great, love to hear from you.
If not, is anyone claiming these students didn't know it was illegal? If so, maybe we should stop criticising the RIAA/MPAA's attempts to bring in more widespread copyright education?
5. Now, if anyone needs me I'll be hiding behind this lump of asbestos...
I wish i could figure out how to publish a site though :). I bugged them to put in the GUI and the current GUI is extremely good. I think they're planning to continue their commitment to usability by working on 'MyI2P' which will be a easy to use GUI that will allow someone to put up their sites easily.
The BitTorrent system on I2P will only be publisher anonymous though, which is still good/necessary as the BT system seems to be particularly vunerable via the trackers. (Trackers are open to being attacked, DDOSed, threatened etc.). As well there should be very little speed loss in I2P-BT as the anonymous tracker just coordinates, the heavy lifting is done by the peers.
Ogg Stream
No shit!
What the fuck is this "unauthorized sharing" you speak of?
Nobody has jack shit business in what I freely share.
If I was selling it, that would be different. But freely sharing? No fucking way man. That is nobody's business.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/10/prweb171878. htm
"At issue is the double standard of Univision, one of the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) most prominent members. The RIAA and Univision are quick to bring their financial weight and big-firm legal talent down upon anyone seen to be violating their copyrights, such as music file sharing websites. In fact, both RIAA and Univision have argued in recent court cases that an ISP (website) should have no immunity from a copyright infringement claim on the basis of its asserted 'passive' conduct, and that once an ISP has notice that it is hosting infringing material, it is obligated to police the website for further infringements."
Yo Ive been thinking about a tracking system for a SneakerNet to share movies and TV shows among a group of friends. The idea is to create a decentralized, democratic, free video rental store. The movies would be stored on dvds or cds,
A mysql database records what titles the system has and who has them. You can browse the database through a php scripted web site, members only of course.
When you find a title you want the system tells you who has it and you push a button that sends an e-mail. Somehow you arrange the swap with your friend and when he gets a chance he clicks a link in the e-mail and the database records the new guardian. People can also add titles into the system through the site. I've been thinking about a credit system also to reward those who add, and punish poeple who lose titles.
If anyone wants to help with the project e-mail seatag77@hotmail.com. I am trying to learn mysql and php and come up with some type of prototype site. If anyone knows of anyone else who has done something like this, or of an easy way to go about it please tell me.
My ultimate goal would be to install the system (linux, apache, php and the web site) on older recycled computers and give them away free or for low cost so people can start their own sneakernets all over the place. The swapping among friends will create a nice sense of community I think.
"unauthorized filesharing" is a good description, as the RIAA doesn't know if the filesharing is illegal or not, just that it is unauthorized. Why? Well firstly their bots have in many instances been known to pick up people with perfectly legit songs which just happened to have names similar to RIAA controlled ones.
Secondly, some of the downloaders may - in fact - own the originals to the songs in question. I've got a fairly reliable ripping program myself, but for others who want to duplicate/mp3 their CD's the easiest way is to pick up copies off the net. How does the RIAA know if they're legit or not (hint: they don't).
In a similar way, the MPAA could come after me for several of the titles I have downloading right now. Of course, the original discs are sitting in my DVD-rack right now, but it's just less hassle to download a DivX and burn a backup DVD than find the tools that actually work to rip my own. I'm sure many others find the same with MP3's/CD's.
Students are using these files for educational use and not subject to copyright law. I suggest setting up Paypal accounts for every artist and if you want to send them money, just Paypal them what you think their work is worth. I am sure they will make more money that way. And Prince seems to be doing quite well for himself online...
They can only sue based on copyright infringement. Correct me if I am wrong, but most students are downloading songs for educational use and therefore exempt from copyright law, right?
Like the people who made moon shine endangered alcohol during prohibition? What are we just supposed to shut our mouths and get in line?
When the RIAA stops suing people and makes every track in their catalog available for 30-50 cents online, I'll buy music from them again. Until that day I'm going to download what I want and only purchase indie CD's.
p2p is the invisible hand of capitalism. The RIAA is charging more for their product than the market, or part of the market, is willing to bear and this is the result.
It's not my fault, I didn't come up with their business model, price model, nor did I engineer the human brain.
Meh, I say refrain from buying your 40 cd's, buy a guitar and have infinite free music whenever you want however you want.
I bet one day, they will sue the wrong person, some big time black gang members with lots of oozies and 9mm weapons.
;)
Then we can see if there will be a 'drive by' to some RIAA house hold executives
I'd love to, I just don't have the same budget for lobbyists they do...
I don't find it surprising that the RIAA is going after university students, because that's a demographic whose spending on music has definitely declined.
P2P is not really the reason, however.
When I was in school in the early '90s, very few people had TVs in dorm rooms, and of those only a very small handful had VCRs. Also, I'd guess that by the time I graduated in '96, only about 25 percent of dorm rooms had computers. I never saw a single game console at university until the end of my junior year.
What this means is that the students had a fixed entertainment budget, and when they couldn't get beer, about all they could buy was CDs, or film/concert tickets (or less-than-licit substances).
Back then I copied music like crazy from CDs to tape, but I also bought loads of CDs.
Now, however, pretty much every room has a computer, and pretty much every computer has a DVD player. I don't know the prevalence of consoles, but I reckon PS2s and X-boxen are pretty common.
Eight to ten years ago CDs had the students' entertainment budget line pretty much all to themselves. Now CDs have to compete with DVD and game sales and rentals.
It's not about file sharing, but about more products chasing the same dollar.
The drop in CD sales has less to do with sharing, which I don't think is any more common now than it ever was, and more to do with the fact that the consumer's percieved value of a CD has dropped thanks to competition from other media.
The only possible answer for people trying to sell CDs is to lower the price.
Why hasn't somebody created a service or open-source system to let artists sell their owns CDs via the web?
I imagine the system wouldn't be a terribly hard coding problem, there is already some online store software about. As for offering it as a service, it wouldn't be too hard to cover up for the bandwidth/hosting costs and still allow musical artists to keep much of the profit themselves.
Kind of like how MovableType did things; made a blog application, gave it away for free, and offered to set it up/host it for you for a fee.
With new developments such as FLAC, it wouldn't be hard to distribute replicas of albums online, without the middle man.
It seems to me that this whole music piracy issue stems from the financial inconvenience of legally getting music, and the group attacking us because of it is the one responsible for the problem.
Let's cut him out.
Meh, I say refrain from buying your 40 cd's, buy a guitar and have infinite free music whenever you want however you want.
And that leave you with quite a difficult decision; listen to crappy RIAA music or listen to people practice guitar. * shudders *
If I hear any more people playing shitty Enter Sandman with their amp turned to 15, I'll go nuts.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Out of the estimated 40-50 million p2p users, the RIAA sues a couple thousand a year. My guess is that the people afraid of getting sued are the ones who can't afford to buy CDs because they spend too much on lottery tickets.
Anyway, here is an interesting EFF article about how to avoid being a target.
Yeah, as if I want maddona to be any more richer....
Us poor plebs dont really give a toss, we'll copy all the music we like, perhaps the artists should go back to making music the old way, use live concerts, like REAL people, do REAL work, not sit on your ass and watch 5million sold albums hit the charts while your sit in your malibu 12 bedroom mansion. As the beetles said in the past, the greatest songs can be written in 60minutes on a few sheets of paper, while 50000 hrs of work can product shit songs. The real value in the work done is the live performance, your 14cent pressed CD from china is well worth just that to me, no more than $1. Sell it to me for $1 and if I like it, Ill pay the $80 to see you live.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Looking at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid= 75829
A normal $16 CD, really costs 25% of that, $4, once you remove physical markups/distribution/packaging/store markups.
So the albums should be MAX $5 for online shops, older stuff from the 50s/60s/70s, should be lower.... perhaps $2 or $3 per album at most, since theyve already made back their costs 100x fold.
So why cant they place new single CDs online for $1 (for all 3-6 tracks, not just one)
And reduce the price as it gets older, this scheme/scam/con job of charging the same price for a new U2 single vs an old 60s Beattles song just plain SUX. If they charged 25cents for old 60s stuff, tonnes, i mean tonnes of people would rather buy the digitally restored AAC at 192kpbs, or 192-ac3.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Do0d - If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
$ cat /usual/ slashdot/ copyright/ violation/ rationalizations > /dev/null
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
There is quite a few programs out there right now that allow you "record" songs from streaming radio stations. ie. station ripper, rmbsoft audioripper. etc.. more available here - http://all-streaming-media.com/record-audio-stream /record-winamp-radio.htm
I see this like recording songs from the radio or movies/shows from the tv which im not too sure of but is legal.. right?
How would this be looked at by the RIAA?
"Correct me if I am wrong, but most students are downloading songs for educational use and therefore exempt from copyright law, right?"
Wrong. "Educational use" is when material is used as part of a curriculum, not when used by someone who also happens to be a student (it is not a catch phrase that gets you discounts like a student ID card). The principle is based on demonstrable intent: it is very hard for a chemistry major to argue that they are using a piece of music for educational purposes (and, no, having something to listen to while studying doesn't count).
Example: a teacher/lecturer may legitimately use, say, the Backstreet Boys as an example of homophonic (its a real term) harmony and use a recording in a lecture. The students are not entitled to copies of the recording, because even though the music was used as material in the lecture, removinging the recording from the lecture removes the educational context.
Seriously, this suggestion is as misguided as the "in the style of MP3" concept. Its deliberately misunderstanding the very clearly spelled-out conditions of fair use; you have not found a clever loop-hole.
"Why hasn't somebody created a service or open-source system to let artists sell their owns CDs via the web?"
Selling on the web usually involves some method of payment. Options are: Direct electronic fund transfer (which would involve cooperation from the bank system), credit card (needing cooperation from CC companies), or PayPal (requiring cooperation from a bunch of irresponsible jerks). I very much doubt that a bank would even consider doing business with as loose an outfit as an OSS development team, so its highly unlikely that any form of cash payment system could be centralized in a project like this. In other words, anyone setting up as a distributor would probably still need to jump through all the same business hoops as they would setting up an ordinary e-commerce site. Net gain: nil.
"I imagine the system wouldn't be a terribly hard coding problem, there is already some online store software about."
Existing e-commerce software doesn't care whether you're selling CDs, bicycles or nuclear hand-grenades, it accepts a payment and issues a shipping order for one unit. Most of this can be done in Perl or Java if you like, but if you haven't got that all-important agreement with a banking provider, you have no link to cash in the real world. Without that, all the coding in the world is useless.
"As for offering it as a service, it wouldn't be too hard to cover up for the bandwidth/hosting costs and still allow musical artists to keep much of the profit themselves."
I'm nitpicking here, but "profit" is taken after "expenses", which normally includes things like bandwith and hosting. If you wish to do the calculations, you take your fixed costs (hosting for "X" GB of data/month, advertising budget, staff/consultant costs, warehousing if you're selling physical CDs), estimate your variable costs (bandwidth, payments to artists, shipping, credit service fees) and work from there. Just pulling figures out of my ass: lets say 10GB@$10/month hosting, weelky ads in a local music rag or banners($80?), ignore staff costs for the moment, office is a garage (equivalent to $20/week rent), so your fixed costs (assuming you're donating your time for free) are $410. Here's where we really start guesing: let's say you expect 5,000 downloads in your first month (not with that pathetic advertising budget, but never mind). Free bandwidth isn't exceeded, so no extra charge there; credit services, say, 10 cents/transaction (though it must be said, micropayments are a pain for any financial institution so that figure is probably way too low), which gives us a total cost of 18 cents per song sold. At 5000 sales, each extra employee adds 10 cents/sale, and rent for a devoted premesis adds a whopping 40 cents/sale. So for a very small business keeping one person employed in an office, we're looking at 68 cents COST per sale, before anyone makes a profit. I haven't even counted the musicians' cut, but as you can see there isn't a lot left over from $1; a 50-50 split between distributor and musician gives each 16, which, purely coincidentally, is about what artists make from iTMS. And remember, you don't gain anything through economies of scale like you do with physical CD manufacture, more downloads simply cost more.
And that's without a physical product, which adds warehouse space, shipping costs and wholesale purchase costs (unless we all trust each other enough to do everything on consignment...music business, handshake agreement? Yeah, right...)
"With new developments such as FLAC, it wouldn't be hard to distribute replicas of albums online, without the middle man."
The problem isn't the technology. The problem is convincing enough musicians that this is a viable way of doing business. I'm afraid that won't happen without some kind of DRM option (I'm all for a respect based system; if someone uses DRM, you should respect their wishes that they don't want their work copied, not treat it as a challenge; and if you object to an artist using DRM, find someone else to listen to w
Nevermind that copyright was a priviledge granted on the condition that it should eventually, after a limited time benifit society and culture by release into the public domain. With the new de-facto perputual copyright, the grounds on which the priviledge was granted is gone. So is my respect for copyright.
If you have any difficulty comprehending this simple connection, well I'll bother you again some time later.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
For the bandwidth impaired, streaming content doesn't cut it. It also is incompatible with most all portable players and car systems. Wow, enjoy our content, but only on your cheap PC speakers and 3 watt amp, not on the hi-fi.
For the providers bandwidth limitations, caching a song to play many times is much less bandwidth intensive than streaming it many times to a single user.
The truth shall set you free!
A mysql database records what titles the system has and who has them. You can browse the database through a php scripted web site, members only of course.
Sounds like a central single point of attack like the old Napster. Leave me far away from a central database of traders...
A true SneakerNet does not have any central members list. Remember pre-Internet dorm life? You may have gotten something from your roommate, but do you know his other trading partners? That's true SneakerNet in action. No records, no trails, no central point of failure of the whole net if one member is caught. Each trade is a single transaction between only two parties. The rest of the net has no knowledge of the transaction. A mole in the system is limited to his immediate trading partners only not the extended SneakerNet.
The truth shall set you free!
Yes, it would be illegal to steal a copy from a store. Why, because the store is deprived of a copy.
Now, one thing you'll find is that the RIAA is very vocal on what is illegal about music copying, and very quiet on what is legal. They'll skate the issues of legality by stating all the borderline illegal acts.
So, to go on with this a bit:
You make an MP3 copy of a song because the CD you bought expressly permits you to do so. But then you put your MP3 copy on the Internet, using a file-sharing network, so that millions of other people can download it.
Mp3 copying legal. P2P downloading legal if own the song (on CD, etc). P2P uploading to others is a grey area because you don't know if the other person has an original copy, in cases where they do they're entitled to a digital reproduction of the same original work (IOW you can get an Mp3 copy of a CD if you own a CD, not if you have a cassette I suppose).
Now to further move on, in Canada downloading is legal but uploading supposedly not:
[article]
And of course, laws are subject to change, and it's the people that change them. I personally don't support downloading music if you don't have the rights to it. However, there isn't a proper alternative.
The RIAA will not replace your disc when it becomes a coaster due to normal wear and tear, but they do everything they can to prevent normal users from making duplicates, even personal ones. In fact, the DCMA seems aimed at expressedly blocking even legal duplications, despite fair use - as other laws already made "piracy" illegal the only intent seems to be to put a block between the 'protected' media and the consumer.
That being said, I just bought a bunch of CD's off of garageband.com/cdbaby.com.
They'll probably be seeing more of my business in which case I'll not have to worry about RIAA idiocy anyhow.
You keep acting like Slashdot is this monolithic group with a single point of view--nothing could be further from the truth. But you propound it as if it were the truth, in a lame attempt to further your own stupid political agendas.
Nobody is buying it. So give it a f***ing rest already.