Slashdot Mirror
High Court Agrees to Hear File-Sharing Dispute
stkpogo pastes: "The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies. Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., which came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works." Grokster won in the lower courts, but the studios are appealing. This case, when finally decided, will be equivalent to the Betamax case 20 years ago which ensured that VCRs were legal.
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
This case is very different from the Universal v. Sony "Betamax" decision, and we're not doing ourselves a favor by constantly comparing the two.
In the Betamax case, the central issue was over whether using the technology of a VCR to timeshift broadcast programs violated the copyright law, and the court said it wasn't a violation. If it was a violation, using a VCR to record TV would be illegal, and Sony and other VCR makers would be making devices that would have a primarily use that was illegal.
In this case, however, there's no question about whether the use of the technology is legal. Using P2P to upload and download copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission is illegal. The question is over liabilty... is Grokster liable because people are using their software for an illegal use, when the software can both be used for legal and illegal files.
What's at stake here isn't the legality of P2P, but a dangerous question for software writers. Are the makers of software liable for what their users do with the software? So far they're not and hopefully it's going to stay that way.
Can the same be said for file sharing? (Just a question, I'm not making a judgement here.)
but are phone companies responsable if you use a phone line to commit a crime? Are car and gun compagnies responsable if you rob a bank with a gun and use a car to get away? It's hard to prove that filesharing networks are solely there to exchange copyrighted materials and nothing else.
The difference is that, while a court ruling might have been able to prohibit the widespread importation and sale of VCRs, stamping out filesharing is (I'll go out on a limb here) impossible. The record companies are wasting a lot of money suing companies for the benefit of, having won, having to contend with the Freenets of the world.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
This question may be ridiculous... but should we be happy that this is happening now as opposed to after this administration gets to appoint new flunkies?
Or would that not change anything?
Perhaps the only male feminist on slashdot...
Given the courts' recent rulings, I'm surprised they haven't had congress sending a decision to slashdot, supported by a writ of the court, sent to /. to remove that post due to the graphic nature of its contents.
Video Production Support
This is the same type of reasonaing that the Bell System used to claim millions in losses in the 911 hacker case. The company used a complicated formula to compute losses on a document that they sold copies of for $14. The court's didn't buy it in the 80's and should buy it now...
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I live in the home of the free...
This was decided a long time ago in Canada.
To summarize (and over-simplify) It's no different then a Library having a photocopier in a room full of copyrighted books. What people use it for is up to them.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Wouldn't change anything. Democrats are just as much in the pockets of big business, moreso perhaps in the entertainment and "intellectual property" business.
Page seemed to load slow for me. Here's a cache link.
I heard about this on the radio today. The announcer referred to "Groakster". Who the crap pronounces it "Groakster"? Reminds me of the guy who pronounced "warez" as "war-ezz".
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Whenever I have gtk-gnutella running, you'll find them on the gnutella network. They're mine to share, I'm not violating anyone's copyright.
Sometime soon I'm going to share lossless WAVs over bittorrent. I have to fix a problem with one of the tracks first.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
So, I don't think that filesharing writers should really be prosecutable for the content random people send along their networks. This gets too close to trying to nail ISPs for the content on their networks. That would be A Bad Thing I think, as the ISPs would incur heavy costs in the monitoring of it, and such. However, it amazes me how many people believe that copying various copyrighted works is a 'right', that they are sticking it to 'the man', and so and so forth. First off, you are getting something for nothing, that otherwise costs money. That's kind of the crux of the situation right there. Despite what you might think of those to had a hand in bringing it to market, stealing it is not exactly the most honorable way of going about such a protest. Of course, on the flip side, the numbers that the RIAA/MPAA spout out about losses... well, they should be taken with a large grain a salt. Often times, those who steal things had no way to pay for them in the first place. That's one reason why they did it :P So, counting that as a 'loss' is somewhat misleading.
Anyway, just trying to toss a bit of logic into the situation. Should be an interesting court case I'm sure.
I would strongly encourage everyone reading this to watch CNN's website and if the story reappears and is as slanted as the one I read, write to them and complain.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
One thing I almost never hear in conjunction with the controversy on the record labels losing money due to decreased CD sales is the fact that the economy began to go downhill at around the same time that the CD sales began to fall. True, this coincidentally was also the time when file sharing became popular, but I should think that the bursting of the economic bubble would have more to do with the losses. CDs are a luxury item, basically, and when people have fewer discretionary dollars (as what happens when the economy goes sour) they quit buying as many luxury items. When the economy is up, people might just go out and buy that new CD even though there's probably only two or three good songs on it. When the economy is down, it has to be a damn good album or a person's favorite artist to get that CD sold. Upscale stores saw hits in 2001 (blamed on the economy), upscale restaurants saw hits in 2001 (blamed on the economy), and record companies saw hits in 2001 (not blamed on the economy). The logic doesn't follow.
This case, when finally decided, will be equivalent to the Betamax case 20 years ago which ensured that VCRs were legal.
But how does this help file sharing any? Granted it would be a lot harder to watch movies without a VCR/DVD player, the MPAA still controls most of the industry.
"I've gotta ask you about 'the Penis Mightier'"
Registered Linux User #398602
Now this is a sad state of affairs.... When I read this comment I thought there was a misspelling in it because the word was not spelled "rediculous." I think I may be loosing my mind.
just do not allow for duplication and transmission of copyrighted works on the level that the P2P networks do.
Drawing comparisons between the two is BAD.
And like I said in a previous thread, the tool is the network, not the software. Kazaa/Grokster are nothing without unauthorized materials.
There are no lobbies to protect the rights of people sharing files illegally. Big tobacco has senators in their pockets. So do your car and gun manufacturers, and pharmacuticals do big time. This case could go either way, but in this case the RIAA has all the money.
What the hell was I supposed to be doing? I was going to do something, and now I'm on
They charge me based on how much it costs to produce their stuff, divided by the minimum number of people they expect to see it. If more people show up, they profit.
But you'd be willing to force them to choose between working for free and not working (on creative stuff) at all.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Eyes can be used to commit crime (espionage/treason) therefor they should be outlawed (and hence removed at birth).
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--34
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Car manufacturers will be held liable for people speeding.
Since all cars today are designed with top speeds that exceed the maximum legal limit in any state, manufacturers are inducing people into breaking the law. Ford, GM, Chrysler will be shut down.
Parent seems to have forgotten that arms and legs are deadly weapons and open for abuse, so they too should be removed at birth. Even further, brains are dangerous and unpredictable systems that should be tightly controlled, if not totally disabled, throughout an individual's lifetime.
A-Day
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Copying hurts everyone, only just a little.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution. This is no different today than it was in times past.
There was no way to physically control copying of a book 200 years ago. No one really cared whether their copy of a book was from the rightful publisher, unless the spelling were bad or something.
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument. Copyright is not intended merely to pay people for work they've created. It's intended encourage people to produce works in the hopes that they may profit, and to support them while they are producing more.
In the classic example, Daniel Webster supported his family for 20 years on the proceeds from his speller while he compiled his famous dictionary. In publishing a dictionary, he inspired and aided countless writers and publishers. Probably you and I would not be reading /. were it not for those two works; in fact, they were so important to the early American educational system that without them we might not be reading English.
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
sigs, as if you care.
Way to be heteronormative. I'm gay, you insensitive clod.
Perhaps the only male feminist on slashdot...
The origin of copyright goes back to at least English common law, if not further.
The problem we have is that we have something that is not a physical object - I know it's an unpopular and purely approximate term, but "intellectual property". My point is that "you can't see it, touch it, feel it, etc...", but it is possible to own it. Something that a brain produces via its intellectual capacities or talents, yet there is no physical object to show for it.
That's the very same problem that the "concept" of copyright has been addressing for hundreds of years. The point is that you CAN argue "Nothing is being taken off the shelf". Everyone agrees on that point - it's obvious nothing is being taken off the shelf. It's obvious no physical object is being taken from one person unjustly and given to another. That's what the concept of intellectual property law has been trying to address for the past few hundred years (or longer).
It all revolves around making the not-real real. Pretending that something that does not exist as a physical object is a physical object. Taking something that is purely an invention of the mind and treating it as if it were the labor of one's hands. That's the whole point - it's not that no one understands this, it's that they understand it very well - miles ahead, actually... this is the very problem that copyright is supposed to address (at least in a common law, common sense sort of way). It's not just about encouraging people to create stuff. It goes deeper than that. It's about making intangible objects into tangible objects for the purpose of legislation and addressing injustices. It's always been that way, long before the U.S.A. even existed.
On the other hand, there are other significant problems - you could say, in a way, that the type of music that our society had become filled with prior to the advent of the internet lended itself to what happened to it. The structure of the entertainment conglomerates, the concept of fame and fortune, the drugs, the sex, and the rock and roll... you can't go around pretending that stuff doesn't affect you in some way (just like your parents told you).
The music changed, and evolved into something different, something that can't stand on its own merits and virtues, but needs sex and drugs and fame and fortune to prop it up, like a crutch. If you want people to not file-share, then the music itself should embody that point of view on a deeper, spiritual level. Rock bands don't accept donations from endowments. It's not "about" that. Rather than embrace society, popular music needs to rebel against it, using the fame and the fortune as a vehicle to tell anyone who might disagree to get lost. If popular music teaches you anything, it teaches you that file sharing is good, and that you should do as much of it as possible. It's the best way to empower yourself. It also happens to be the best way to expand your artistic horizons and stop listening to the crap that "they" want to feed you.
It's two things, really. One is that the selection of "legitimate" multimedia is still somewhat limited for lots of people, and it makes it difficult for people to get together in real life and discuss interesting artists, bands, and movies. Electronic "discussions" make this much easier, and trading of files kind of needs to take place for those "discussions" to mean anything. Maybe "forums" is a better word. Any P2P application is really just a way for human beings to get together and share what they think is cool. Sounds like the entertainment conglomerates want this to happen in real life, not electronically - (i.e. have a get together and listen to music and watch DVDs). But this can't happen until the selection gets diverse enough that it makes it interesting enough and worthwhile for everyone involved. And that can't happen because there's no money to be made in such endeavors. The way to make money is to have less choices, more quantity. Everyone watching the same lacking selection of canned, pre-digested bland crap.
It looks like BitTorrent may be next on the list. MPAA spokesman declines to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen. They'd have a harder time proving that BitTorrent is primarily used for copyright infringement though, due to the many legitimate uses.
I was going to post the same, but rather than being redundant, I'll just endorse the parent. FLAC has some good things going for it.
The betamax case had two giants fighting. Sony must have paid more.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If I have to pay for my stuff, why should you get it for free?
0 2dltr0023.html. As you can see, everyone who buys blank media pays for piracy in one way or another, regardless of whether they actually do infringe on anyone's copyrights.
You may or may not know this, but there is a "piracy tax" on blank media that you buy which could be used to make copies of copyrighted material. Check out the section labeled "Audio Home Recording Act" near the bottom of this page: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
On another note, you don't have to pay for your stuff. That is simply a choice you make.
Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?
Your first statement is off the mark and that makes the rest off the mark too...
The public actually owns the work in question.
The copyright law gives the original creator of that work, the excludive right to DISTRIBUTE the work. That creator can the assign or transfer that DISTRIBUTION Right to another.
So in the your first example: It is not the person getting the copy is at fault, it is the person that gave the copy in the first place. That is a competing distributor and if that person does not have the right to distribute then there is loss to owner of distribtion rights.
In your second example: First sale rule holds you up. If I gave you my copy of legally distributed work then all ok. But, if a make a copy and give you copy then I am a distributor. Now there is some rules about private use, like copy a LD to a tape to listen in your car, or to give to friend (limited copies).
In your third point: Copyright is a Distribution Right. You are correct that public (via their goverment) has granted this right, and can take it back. To to also note, there are linsencing issues other than copyright that can get you a foul. Becuase that falls under contract law, not copyright law.
You paying customers are getting screwed by the companies themselves. Even before it was as "rampant" as it is claimed to be today, they were building in copy-protection techniques, which made it harder for the paying customer to use their media their way. This is even truer now, with cds like "Break the Cycle" (classic example cd) unable to work on many players.
I highly reccomend a read of The hard-to-find truth about piracy, which includes excellent parts such as:
Found that nice link in NTK for Sept. 9, 2003. I'd say that as a customer, you're getting screwed over. I'm not saying don't buy what you want, please do, but I'm saying it should also be ok for you to download a "Pirated" version so that you get to use the media your way instead of theirs. No-CD Cracks should be fine, but companies are now making your $50 product useless for using them. Sad, I think.
Roland Piquepaille and slashd
As a Canadian, I 'pay' an ammount to the record industry when I buy CDR's. What if you download 1000's of MP3's and you don't own a cd recorder? If that were the case, than you didn't pay per CDR, so you have not compinsated the canadian record industry for your downloading. The supreme court of Canada says that downloading a copyrighted work is like photocopying a page from a book, however, millions of people didn't photocopy one page from the book. Downloading a song is like downloading the whole book (as far as copyright covering ONE book, and covering ONE song). It is illegal. I download songs, but I inherit the risk with downloading them. That's my choice. I accept the risk involved. Though, I am Canadian, and I buy CDR's, so I've compinsated the record companies (though not anywhere near the ammount considered adequate by the industry).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
or that child porn manufacturers should be held responsible for child molestation.
Well, that should cover the losses then. Problem solved!
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
There are two other major factors:
1) The homogonizing and commoditizing of music. They record industry these days is all about making everything the same. Same types of bands, same sound, same music. I mean it's bad to the point that they generally always have singers go through an autotuner, even if the singer is plenty good enough to hold a pitch without help. This, combine with tactics like releasing one hit track per CD just so they can release more albums is disenchanting people.
2) Video games. Used to be games were just for kids. Guess what? We are the adults now, and we still like to get our game on. What's more, it's developing into an accepted form of entertainment for just about everyone. It's not just the geeky kids/adults, it's everyone that plays. Well, a person only has so much disposible income, unless you are quite rich you can't get everything you want. So you have to ration it between dining out, movies, CDs, games and so on. Increasingly games are winning out, they are adding up to more entertainment for the buck than movies or music.
So it's really not supprising. A temporary bubble that had pushed to the economy to high to fast was collapsing, then a terrorist attack shook consumer confidence, and all the while a new form of entertainment was on the rise. Well no SHIT music sales are going to suffer.
Heteronormative? I mean what the fuck does that mean really. "Expecting what is normal to be the norm"? OH SHIT! How insensitive of him!
This case, when finally decided, will be equivalent to the Betamax case 20 years ago which ensured that VCRs were legal.
Only if they decide for the defendants. If BetaMax had come down in favor of all the studios, media companies and fat-cat moguls that were against it, it would merely have been yet another chapter in the long, sad and ceaseless history of our government siding with its purchasers. Think about it: the only reason we still remember and talk about the BetaMax decision today is because it was anomalous. The fact that it revolutionized home entertainment and the way we think about IP seems is but a product of that anomaly.
There are literally hundreds of fascinating, exciting ideas that get buried every year by our three sellout branches of government. Things that would have radically altered the status quo--things we'd be talking about twenty years later.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Your assumption is that the "public domain" will be better stewards than the original artists.
Speaking as an artist, I can say that this is very often the case. For example, I write plays. For a while I tried hiring actors and directing them myself, but it was just too damn much for me. I would rather be writing something else than trying to make the play into a physical rendition which is so important to the play's success. Now I give my plays over to a dedicated volunteer group who hire the actors, teach their lines, get a venue, etc. My work is not copyright-managed in any way. I don't ask for royalties, and I get paid scratch - usually a donation from the volunteers - but the plays are a big success.
Strangers walk up to me on opening night and pretend to know me. I now have clout that I didn't have when I was directing plays on my own. I have a reputation, all because my plays are run by people who are really invested in performing them. My plays are, in essence, community-supported works of art.
So why have I given my work away for next to nothing, you may ask? Because in a marketplace for talent, having had successful runs of your show is more important than having made money from them personally. Would I want a bigger cut of the profits if my play were being performed on Broadway? Hell yes I would, although I might not get it. I would worry about it more if I wasn't sure that I can continue to make products of that calibur and better for years to come. I already sold the work once for what I thought it was worth - professional credibility.
And even if no big theater puts on my play, there is still the chance that someday, those same volunteers who did it the first time will find my script (they're already keeping an archive) and remember how great they thought it was, and decide to pass it on to others or even perform it again. That's how literature becomes immortal, if not commercially successful.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
In the olden days, people would pay artists room and board (and sometimes much more) out of their own pockets to work on creative stuff. This was called patronage, and it's how Shakespeare survived to write all those plays. Just saying, there are more ways to reward artists than the current system.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
... a little at a time.
The monopoly granted by copyright has its benefits as you so eloquently note. It also has its costs. In particular, because it is a legal monopoly, it encourages 'rent seeking behavior', as existing holders will attempt to extend the range and depth of their monopoly and attempt to exploit it to obtain regular income with no work. A classic example of this is Disney or the Milne family.
Copyright must remain a balance between these two evils.
Personally, I think the current situation with both hugely inflated copyrights and peer-to-peer may be the worst of both worlds. Copyright terms are long and restrictive so that old works cannot be reused, built upon, and reinterpreted in new ways and at the same time P2P filesharing may eventually put a huge dent into copyright revenue. People don't think, socially, p2p is that wrong because they see the insane extent of copyright law.
How about this alternative?
Let the term be, say, 30 years, but with strong enforcement. That means that people who want cheap stuff have a legitimate public domain source. Infringing copyright would become less socially acceptable. Old works that have procurred virtually all of their value (at 30 years) are available to be reinterpreted and built upon.
Sometimes the people who control the flow of things *are* responsible for what is actually flowing.
Outsourcing is driven by technology - without convenient, fast means to communicate across the globe, it wouldn't be practical to shift development to other countries.
Still, this is slashdot, where outsourcing is an evil use of new technology but the **AAs need to accept the use of new technology, and where copyright is evil unless it's being used to protect GPLed and similarly licensed works.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Airports receive federal funding and are subject to governmental regulations regarding safety. In the absence of a law requiring independent entities to go out of their way to enforce the copyright of OTHERS, this is the stupidest analogy I've ever heard.
If you dig deep, the record labels cut CD production by 20% for the statistical time period quoted in RIAA documents. They only tout the 12% reduction in sales during the Napster hayday. Do the math. Cut production by 20%, and see only a 12% loss in sales? That's a net increase. But they don't tell you that. In fact, they've recently reported a net increase during the past several years.
While I don't believe music downloading is right, I also don't believe that the services that provide the capability are responsible. If we think that the filesharing service is responsible, then the USPost, FedEx, and UPS are responsible as well. You know damn well that people are sending CDs and DVDs by mail. Same thing.
-- No sig for you!
I really like your point of view... but who pays your rent?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Clearly The Constitution is at fault. Didn't those people know how to say what they really meant? And I'd always been told they were the smartest people of their time. Now I'm just sooo disappointed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
While some of the BitTorrent sites that host seed files have been forced to shut down, many others escape scrutiny because they're only hosting marker files, not copyrighted material.
How is this different than Napster, which had servers that connected users, but didn't host any files themselves? Is it simply because the BitTorrent people don't also run the sites with the Seed File information? Otherwise I'd expect the Napster decision to apply to them equally well.
And how is BitTorrent that different from other P2P systems that multisource downloads of a single file? Is it just that it is more popular at the moment? (Article says that 50% of P2P traffic is BT now.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Grockster". Or, if you mean 'warez', it's pronounced 'where's'. As in "Where's the warez, d00d?!".
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
since when did filesharing make you an author and not a distrbutor?
But I can do that already! If I wanted to I could take each of the programs you mention and do exactly what you said.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
You're telling me that my simple renaming will make these authors quit writing? Why would they care? Everyone knows the programs by their current names, and my renaming would be insignificant.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
I've actually been writing a law review article on this very topic, so in a way, I'm disappointed, because the court will make anything I say fairly irrelevant. Anyways, my hunch is that the court will most likely side with the software creator on this. As always, Posner wrote a masterful opinion in the Aimster case, deciding against Aimster. What sunk them is the fact that Aimster was way too involved in helping people download copyrighted music, regardless of any legitimate uses. The nail in the coffin was the fact that their website actually posted links to download the most popular songs. It's kind of hard to argue you aren't responsible for your users actions when you're actually helping them do it. Grokster can be distinguished from both Napster and Aimster for this reason. The connection isn't there. The others could say in good faith that they were just providing the software and could stop people from using it illegally. Grokster can. Unless the court decides to make up a new test for looking at this, I don't see how Grokster loses.
The worrying part is that we won in the lower court, and SCOTUS likes to reverse the cases to which it grants cert (e.g. more than half the time they take a case, they reverse or remand it). Granted, there are other reasons for them taking the case ('granting cert'), but that brings me to the next point.
At least from what I've seen (IANAL), the court will be more impressed by the "actual" effects of this. In other words, whose economic arguement holds the most water with them. I haven't seen enough to impress me of the judge's technical knowledge, so I doubt they'll be able to see that, in effect, ALL of the economic arguements leveled against this service could be leveled against the Internet as a whole. Of course, I sincerely hope the lawyers make that case. The ONLY difference here is that the studios think of the Internet as having some use for them--mostly advertising, no doubt, but at least some use--and the filesharing apps as having none.
You want to help with this? Put every single damn public domain work you can on there, and mark it as such. Have the copyright to something? Put it up there with a notice that you, the copyright holder, are allowing distribution of your work. Don't have either? Go out there and look for as many *legal* files as you can. Document them, and do your best to publicise all the legal files available. Find information "pollution" put out there by the studios? Document it--it's a matter of them having "unclean hands."
But above all, show people all the *legitimate* users who would be shafted by arbitrary restrictions on how one might share files which could do no more than foist a legal fiction upon us, that somehow the file sharing programs are less "worthy" to exist than the internet, simply because they lower the bar to copying--a bar which is imaginary. The Internet cannot be controlled by legal fictions unless and until legal fiction can control how we think about the subject. The genie will not return to its bottle quietly.
But I'll provide FLAC.
The problem with my Recursion.mp3 track is that when I digitized it from analog tape, for some reason some clicking artifacts appeared in it. So I need to capture it from the (1994) analog master again, which I expect to go better because I have faster computers now, and better software available.
The only thing stopping me is not having the time to deal with it. But soon.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Business models that revolve around free software *assume* that copying *will* and *does* occur on an *hourly* basis. If the makers of free software really feel like the redistribution of their software hurts them, then tell me why they themselves set up and maintain mirrors of their own software.
I was always saying that one way the way artists do their thing could be like this:
Look at software companies giving out software and then making money from support contracts. Didn't musicians use to do 'gigs' at bars and have concerts or music festivals, where you would buy the ticket to attend? Maybe this is the business model that's inevitable for those musicans who need to make money with the music.
And yes, it would create an environment of a large number of musicians, none of them being really known on a world-wide scale like some of today's musicians. But so what, they will get what they want, i.e. revenue. (Whether they will start bitching that it now actually takes work to live off of music, that's a different story.)
And another thing. People write software and share it without profit motives. And because they realize that they need to survive, they just put a 'send a donation' link in case anyone wants to express their support that way too. So many features were incorporated into some of those programs because a donation freed up the time for the developer - kind of like, software development on demand per donation. There is no reason why this couldn't be one of the viable models for musicians too.
It doesn't matter that software or music can be redistributed/copied easily, what matters is the author and his revenue model (in case he's after money).
It's about realization of reality and adjusting to it instead of staying in denial.
I have to tell ya this semester on /. has been great.
/. has actually helped me study for my exam next week ;-)
I've kept my copyright law notebook next to my computer and for once in my life I can say that reading on a daily basis
Anyway - to the point:
When a court weighs its decision on whether someone is liable for someone else's infringment here are the formulas they use:
Contributory Infringement = knowledge + participation
Vicarious Liability = benefit + control
The case is considered criminal if the infringment is willful for commercial advantage or private financial gain by the sale of 10 or more copies OR if the total retail value is more than $2,500 within a 6 month period.
Anything less is considered civil infringment.
The penalties for criminal infringment?
$250,000 for a person
$500,000 for an entity
AND/OR
Imprisonment - 5 years for first offense
10 years for second offense
A few other points of interest -
Courts weigh the concept of fair use based on the following factors:
1- Charachter of the use
2- Nature of the work
3 - Amount (quantative) and substantiality (qualitative) of the infringment
4 - Effect on the commercial market place
USSC has given more consideration to #4 but it is all a case-by case determination.
Also in Sony v Betamax they decided that recording a broadcasted stream for the purpose of time shifting is fair use. Oddly enough, that means that you should be able to hit "Record" on any streaming radio station on the Net, rip all of the songs to MP3/Ogg/wav/etc and as long as you do not redistribute or use it for commercial use, it should be completely lawful! Free music for everyone just by listening to the radio - wooo hoo.
In case anyone is curious I go to school here:
http://mtsu.edu/~record/ just outside of Nashville.
My major is the Recording Industry Management (RIM) program and I will get a BS within the next 6 months. I am a part time live audio engineer doing sound at concerts and such. My personal website is: http://www.UltraSonicDesigns.com
Libertas in infinitum
People don't think, socially, p2p is that wrong because they see the insane extent of copyright law
Most people think that copyright law means you have no right to copy. I'm talking Joe Sixpack. From a PR point of view the copyright cartels have already won.
People either "don't care" or feel a little guilty about downloading. It's fun, free, easy to do... it's just human nature to hoard 1000s of mp3s. Any law (in a democracy) that goes so thoroughly against human nature is suspect at best.
So even thought the PR battle has been won by *IAA and co., there's no changing human nature, which means that P2P will be huge until there is a technical "solution" for copyright holders.
The *IAA has such good access to our politicians, so much media power and the issues are so poorly understood by the public that I don't think we'll ever see any rational discussion in parliment over the issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Not every artist is out to get paid. Most probably started as hobbyists who made art for it's own sake. Yeah there will probably be less art out there, but it won't be a vacuum.
Don't construe this post as support for copyright violation.