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The Music Man
HellSpam writes "MacNETv2 interviewed a man who is claiming the title of "King of the Pirates". The man has over 900,000 songs, a collection that rivals even the iTunes music store(!). From the article:"I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple's iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it's the journey not the destination.""
.. he's got all of ours ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:-7B7abphgzIJ: www.macnet2.com/more.php%3Fid%3D536_0_10_0+&hl =en
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
From Google Cache ( http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3 A%2F%2Fwww.macnet2.com%2Fmore.php%3Fid%3D536_0_10_ 0&btnG=Google+Search&meta= ):
The Music Man - King Of The Pirates Has A Goal - Own It All!
"I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple's iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it's the journey not the destination."
What do you say to someone who has a digital music collection that exceeds 900,000 songs? This was the question I was pondering during my long drive to interview the man who claims he is on a quest to own a copy of ever song ever recorded. What do you say? I think the only way to begin such an interview would be to ask "why?"...
When I pulled into the driveway of the King of the Pirates, an upper middle class neighborhood of stylish homes and SUV's, Infiniti's, and more Mini-Coopers than necessary, I was surprised by the normalcy of it all. His home was nothing short of spectacular, his wife a mid-30's ex-underwear model (honest!), and his two kids well groomed, apparently intelligent, and very wired. (As in technology-wise, not ADD) This is not the home I would have thought would be the enclave of someone out to pirate the hell out of the music industry. This was going to be very interesting...
Our man, let's call him Doug, greeted me with a huge hug, a broad smile on his face, drink in hand (Grand Mariner of all things), and invited me in to his den. He was absolutely thrilled to finally be able to talk to someone who was actually interested in what he was doing. Seems that 'the wife' as he calls her, was bored to tears hearing about his latest collections, or the latest Bit Torrent site he found; a treasure trove of hard to find music all ripped at 256-bits. The wife wants to know why he doesn't play more golf, like his friends. "Golf is the most boring game in the world, what I am doing is much more fun."
His Pirate Room - A MacGeek's Heaven on Earth
Doug has devoted one of the extra bedrooms (he has 7 of them) into what could only be described as The War Room. He owns three Power Mac G5's, and just added two iMac G5's. Several external 250GB firewire drives are attached to the iMacs, and sitting in the corner are a stack of at least 6 other external drives, all 300GB, brand new, boxed, and just waiting to go online.
He has two cable modems and one DSL. One cable modem is "for the family", the other dedicated to his quest. The DSL line is a backup and is sometimes used when he had discovered a new site that offers a slew of new torrents he wants to mine. The wife, and the kids are all connected to the Internet through an Airport network, with multiple Airport Express base stations scattered among the house.
All the Macs in his command and control room have JBL Creature speaker systems, some white, some blue, and a burgundy one that I have never seen before. The entire room is lit with indirect 'rope' lights, giving the room a feel of living in the Star Trek universe. There are a couple of rich soft brown leather chairs and one long, very plush, baby-butt soft leather sofa that just screams comfort. I took a seat on the sofa and never felt more pampered or more comfortable. I made a mental note that once our pets' pass on this was going to be the sofa in MY house. For all I cared this interview could go for days, once ensconced in this incredible piece of furniture I didn't want to leave...ever.
The Wife bought us a pot of coffee (Jamaican Blue Mountain), two cups, and cream and a small bowl of 'equal'. With the coffee was a plate of fresh (fresh!) Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Sticks. The interaction between The Wife and Doug showed that these two were a happy couple. The seemed to really like each other, and that, my friends, is more rare than you might think.
Once I got through ogling the various M
About 4.4 Terrabytes
Average MP3 is about 5MB
900,000 songs * 5MB = 4,500,000 MB
4,500,000 MB / 1024 MB in a gigabyte = 4394.53125 GB
Musicbrainz is a great way to fill in all the missing mp3 information and there is even an Amazon cover art grabber available if you search. I renamed about 4000 mp3's in the space of about two days doing this. ~S
Lisa: Who's playing that music?
Marge: And where's all that liquor coming from?
Homer: It's a party, Marge. Doesn't have to make sense.
[a Hawaiian lei falls from out of the sky onto Homer's neck]
[Homer's handed a drink]
Homer: Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Oh, yeah!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, it has been the practice of the RIAA only to go after the people sharing their music with others.
That doesn't really mean anything. The law is pretty clear that downloading is infringing, and the courts have uniformly agreed whenever the issue has come before them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Actually, read the article. he does not consider himself a pirate at all, and makes no claim to the title. Here's the quote from the article.
"There are people that know about what I am doing and believe in it. I just want to be an historian, a gatekeeper. Anything but a pirate. I don't consider myself a pirate."
Dowloading files that play what sounds like music is not illegal and niether is burning those files to a CDR.
I'm sorry, but that's simply wrong. If the music and sounds are copyrighted and you don't have permission to download them, however they're expressed, it's infringing.
"piracy" relates only to the selling of other peoples works, not the copying of files.
Meh. It's a slang term, not a legal one. It can probably encompass both. Me, I try to avoid using it altogether.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
He uses Filemaker Pro.
Since he claims to get a lot of music off of Bittorrent, this guy is definitely giving it to others to get a decent download speed--and at 900000 songs, plenty of others have acquired other music thanks to his "hobby."
That's the nature of the protocol--you can't take without giving back. Even if somehow downloading but not sharing the music were legal, he'd still be breaking the law.
Sharing an MP3 music file ... without charge: This is LEGAL unless your doing this as part of a business plan or promotion. You can have a website full of MP3's as long as it is not a business site, you are not selling ad space etc. If you can afford it, have fun.
Yeah, see, that's the part that is simply wrong, at least with regards to US law.
Copyright infringement occurs, per 17 USC 501, whenever someone violates one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder. Two of those exclusive rights are set out in 17 USC 106.
One of them is the exclusive right to reproduce the work. Another is the exclusive right to distribute the work.
When you download a work, reproduction necessarily occurs. When you provide a work on a server for people to download, distribution occurs.
Thus, sharing anything, if it is copyrighted, and if you are not authorized by the relevant copyright holders to do so, is illegal. There are various exemptions. In the case of ordinary people sharing mp3s in an otherwise infringing manner, even if not for charge, no exemptions apply.
There is, actually, an exemption for sharing certain sound recordings and music via certain media such as analog cassette tapes. But that's not applicable to mp3s via websites and filesharing networks.
If you have a cite to a case or a statute, I'd love to see it. But you pretty certainly don't, at least not one that is valid or that you have read properly. (People invariably seem to misread 17 USC 1008 -- it annoys me. Read 1001, and read RIAA v. Diamond for what 1008 actually means, if you're going to cite it.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Says you. New York Fair use (now The New York Association of Copyright Stakeholders) say different:
I will quote again, for your benefit:
Quoting bad caselaw doesnt make your case by the way.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Says you.
Well, says the law, actually. The exemptions are all right there. None of them covers what you're talking about.
As for the people you cite, they lie somewhere in the range from being misinformed to being crackpots with only a tenuous hold on reality.
You can only own a limited license called a Copyright or patent to exploit your idea for comercial purposes, or not to exploit it if you choose to.
See, that's very wrong. A copyright is a right to prevent other people from doing certain things with regards to creative works. It is not a right to do those things itself. And no one needs a right to not do any of those things. You can not do those things anyway; you don't need a copyright to refrain. In fact, if someone else has a pertinent copyright, you're expected to refrain since he has the right to exclude.
FBI Warning on Video Tapes. The FBI Warning about copying a video tape is a lie. Owners of Copyrighted material are allowed to copy the VHS Tape for their personal use. Copying is not a crime.
There is no broad exemption for reproduction for personal use. It is illegal unless a real exemption applies. Sometimes one might, sometimes one might not. Depends on the circumstances and the nature of the work and the parties, basically.
Oh, and infringement of the reproduction right may indeed be a crime. Again, refer to 17 USC 506, and there are some provisions in Title 18 I don't recall the precise section numbers of. You can google for 'em easily enough.
Ripping CD's to MP3 files. This is LEGAL. Copying legally purchased Copyrighted material is a protected act under the Constitution.
Ditto. Also note that the Supreme Court, in Eldred, pretty much destroyed any sort of first amendment argument you can make. You might want to do yourself a favor and read it.
Copying software in a business. Illegal - Don't do it.
Copying software you own for personal use. Legal if no money is passing hands.
Wrong on both counts. Some reproduction of software if you own a lawful copy of it is allowed regardless of who's making the copy. This falls under 17 USC 117. It doesn't permit for just any sort of reproduction, however. Money isn't a factor.
Sell copies of software you own and no longer use. Legal as a second sale.
This is surprisingly accurate, but misleading. 17 USC 109 (the First Sale doctrine) applies just fine to software. But you have to own the software, so licenses can interfere with this. And if you own it but have agreed not to do so as a term of the sale, you might not be lawfully able to either. Copyright doesn't command that you can do so. It just permits it. Restrictions can arise from other places.
Quoting bad caselaw doesnt make your case by the way.
I didn't cite a single bad case in the post you were referring to. The only cites were to statutes, other than one to RIAA v. Diamond, which is a good case as far as it goes. (RIAA lost, and mp3 software and hardware remains cheap and useful)
As for you, I'd strongly advise you to stop citing morons. You want to know what the copyright law is? Read Title 17 and read the relevant cases. There are numerous good casebooks about copyright written for law students -- you might find them useful too. But given what you've been writing, I wonder if Dick and Jane Explain Copyright Law might be over your head.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I understand that, I was just relating it to the RIAA's efforts, which have (up to this point) targeted the sharers, not the downloaders.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
I think it only counts as sharing when you share a complete copy. Most of the time BitTorrent downloads are complete from many different sources at once so you never get a complete copy off any 1 person unless they are the only seed.
Have you metaroderated recently?
Don't necessarily have to upload with a torrent. Most of the newer torrent clients you can limit upload speed to 0.
:)
You also wont have to upload if you're the only leecher
It is quite arguable that ripping one's own CD's to mp3's in order to make them more convenient to play is perfectly legal.
I direct your attention to American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, a case involving copying scientific journals by a for-profit corporation.
The court noted that if the scientists in question were merely copying articles for reference in the lab so they would have a less bulky object to deal with then the entire journal and so they wouldn't have to expose the journal to chemicals, they would have a very strong fair use argument. Note that because the research lab was for-profit, the court considered any copying done to have a commercial use element.
Similarly, if I copy songs from a CD that I own so I can play them in the car without having to bring multiple discs and without exposing my collection to theft, I think I have a very good fair use argument.
First, I'm posting AC here, for obvious reasons. Hope someone sees fit to mod me up.
I'd like to offer a little first-person perspective as a collector who has amassed a fairly large amount of music. I don't have 900,000 "songs," but I'm probably getting within one or two binary orders of magnitude thereof. I think my approach is fairly different from that of the guy profiled in the article, though.
I don't collect "songs," actually. The vast majority of what I have is in the form of complete albums (CDs, LPs, whatever). I have about 16,000 entries in my "Music" catalogue. An entry can be a single CD or a set -- mostly double, triple, and quad-CD sets, but there are plenty of 6-, 8-, 9-, 10-, 12-, 20-, and even 60- and 80-CD sets scattered around the list. All in all, and including several thousand albums of spoken-word and comedy material (both of which I catalogue separately), it's well over 20,000 CD's worth of material. Which I guess amounts to 200-400K "songs" if you measure that way. Of course, I've been doing this for five years; the guy in the FA said he's been at it for about 10 months, so he's probably devoting a lot more time to it than I am!
I should add that my vinyl collection is also pretty large (haven't counted in a long time, but it's probably at least 2000-2500 records). Those I still play on occasion, although I've made a lot of inroads in getting this material (much of it rare) in digitized form, either by ripping it myself or by downloading it. And I have close to 1000 CDs, which I rarely listen to anymore since I've ripped them all.
For those who believe that all this is more than one could listen to in a lifetime, I should point out that -- assuming you listen to music 8 hours a day, which is probably accurate on average for me -- this collection would "last" less than ten years. I have everything online here at home (more about how, below) and I rotate my car and work MP3 players' "stash" periodically, and I'm usually listening to music in a sort of semi-random way. Specifically, I listen to tracks chosen completely at random from the entire list. When I hear something that fits my mood at the time, I often stop to listen to the whole album. So I do get a lot of mileage out of this wide-ranging collection.
The vast majority of this music, by the way, is world/ethnic/folk, jazz, and serious "art" music (classical, etc.) That's just my taste in music. Pop/rock music is only a tiny percentage of my collection although numerically it still accounts for several hundred CD's worth. I'm sure that this has helped to keep me under the RIAA's "radar" so far, because -- unlike the guy profiled in the FA, I do share my music. I spend a fair amount of time on netnews (abs.music.classical, absm.world-music, absm.jazz especially) and SoulSeek. I post regularly on netnews (often my own rips) and am fairly active on SoulSeek, sharing a lot of hard-to-find ethnic music and dl'ing from other discriminating collectors there.
The contacts and friends I've made have meant a lot to me. Most are in different countries, and I get to practice my languages (last night I was chattting in 5 languages to 5 different people in 5 different countries on SoulSeek) while expanding my musical horizons. I have visited several on trips abroad, and of course done some offline sharing (basically, mailing stacks of CD-R's -- or nowadays DVD-R's) too.
Like many others, however, I have curtailed my P2P activities somewhat because of the more negative atmosphere. I used to use DC hubs and would go online with my entire collection. I was usually pretty conspicuous, sharing almost 2 terabytes -- frequently the most of anyone in the hub. I don't deny that it gave me somewhat of an "ego-boost" at the time. But I haven't used DC in about a year and I was glad not to be involved when a few semi-private hubs -- not the ones I used -- got "busted" (for movie trading, I think) a few months ago. My watchword in the past year has been inconspi
Your father was wrong.
There have been several precedents of this.
Name one.
ps: IAAL, but this post is intended merely as public education about copyright law and does not create an attorney/client relationship with djdavetrouble, or anyone else who reads it. Please consult with an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you have any questions about the law as it applies to you.