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Supreme Court Takes Hard Look at P2P
Patrick Mannion writes "Supreme Court justices quizzed attorneys for file-swapping software companies and Hollywood studios Tuesday, in a case that will help determine the future of both the technology and entertainment industries. In their questions, the justices were critical of the entertainment industry's proposal, which would hold companies "predominantly" supported by piracy liable for copyright infringement. However, they showed little sympathy for the file-swapping companies' business model."
What do the "business models" have to do with this? There are file sharing clients out there that are entirely free and have no company behind them to have a "business model". Not everybody's selling something.
P2P says "what are you staring at?"
RIAA: We are getting screwed.
Supreme Court: How?
RIAA: They are giving our product away.
Techie: I got a one line perl script p2p software.
RIAA: Arrest that thief.
Supreme Court: We'll just rule out that script as illegal and take it off the market.
Techie: Sure.
RIAA: WTF, he's got like 20 scripts in 20 languages.
They could only find 18 singer-songwriters in Nashville that were desperate enough to talk / suck up to big-record-industry people that they'd go to DC? Sounds like a pretty weak group of people to me.
I don't hate musicians, or want them to starve, but I hate the slime they have to deal with now to distribute, and I want those people to starve. Twice.
I'm in favor of the entertainment industry having to undergo monstrously painful changes. From what I can see, many people are - the way it is currently designed is destructive to both society and art as a whole. What we hear and see being run by a bunch of profiteering luddites is completely unappealing to me.
Just thought I'd be one of fifty to present this argument in the next ten minutes.
My little site.
They seem to be lumping together the technology used to produce P2P software, and the businesses that use P2P to make profit
This will enable them to make a stronger case in their basic "p2p is bad" argument, when it's not the way it should be. Hopefully they will view the two things differently
Business Voyeur
Unfortunately, the only tool really before the Court is an overturning of the Betamax doctrine, which was decided with a much more sympathetic defendent.
This is one of the few cases I can think of where the appropriate charge should have been conspiracy. It's a crappy bit of law, but it would actually fit. As it is, I'm afraid that the Defendents may have screwed us all.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Darwin, while disputed frequently, did a decent job of proving that which fails to adapt will fade into history. Unfortunately when the times show you have no recourse to stop an action, you will do more damage to yourself to try and hold back the tides.
I anticipate a ruling in favor of file sharing networks. I suspect this ruling primarily because:
Hopefully such a ruling will encourage the RIAA to redefine themselves and evolve into something better
Or at least get rid of a few of the fluff artists.
I agree that the Supreme Court will likely keep things as is and move on, but once this issue gets to Congress, watch out...
Then it becomes entirely about who is lining whose pockets. The RIAA, with the help of some of its friends, has a decent shot at buying what it wants.
Granted there are opponents w/ money, but the RIAA has proven to be very motivated.
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
It seems likely that the Supreme Court will not overturn the lower Court's decision, and that is good for artists and consumers. Good riddance to the big labels, I say.
But the question of compensating artists has not been addressed. We need to create an environment where downloaders want to support musicians they love rather than simply downloading their stuff for free.
Musicians need to start setting up tipjars and consumers need to ask rigorous question about how much of anything they purchase goes to an intermediary.
I recently went to a concert of Kristin Hersh where she sold no CD's but encouraged people to support her by buying mp3's of demos off her website. I bought $20 of mp3's off her website, of which Hersh received a significant percentage. Is that the future?
Here are some other thoughts about how to reward musicians
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Last I checked the Supremes worked for Diana Ross, and they were kind of pissed about it.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
Heh, the sad thing is that what Republicans and Democrats alike call "activism", most normal people call "applying the constitution". Read the majority and opposition opinions of most of their cases. Rarely do any of them read "I'm a Democrat and your Republican law sucked ass so we're cancelling it" or vice versa.
I went to the supreme court this morning in hopes of being able to see the oral arguments for the case (I live in the DC area). Unfortunately, there was a huge line and I and many others didn't get in. I can report on what happened outside, though.
The pro-RIAA/MPAA/MGM protesters showed up first, at maybe 8:45am. They tried to go up on the steps leading to the court building, but police told them they needed to stay on the sidewalk. This group of folks then hung out for a little while with their signs (one which read "Thou shalt not steal. -God"), then some of them took out their guitars and started playing and singing.
Then at around 9am, the protesters from the Consumer Electronics Association showed up, with black shirts reading "Save Betamax" in white letters. They were met with a some cheers from some folks in the waiting lines as they left their bus and assembled on the sidewalk a little ways away from the rival protesters. They had more creative signs compared to the musician protesters. The interesting thing to note were different demographics of the two protesting groups. The musicians were mostly middle-aged white men. The electronics advocates were generally younger, and had more of a mix of genders and races.
The news media started showing up in full force at around 9:30, and took some interviews with various people, including folks from both protest groups, and random people (including a teenager from a school group). I saw cameras from NBC, ABC, Channel One and Reuters. The media seemed to be focusing a lot of attention on the musician protest group, as at least one of their members was always being interviewed. However, that might have had something to do with them having guitars and making music, which got them attention.
The crowd waiting to get in seemed to be either on the side of Grokster or ambivalent. I took some photos, which I'll put up on Flickr (tagged "Grokster" or something like that) or the dc metblog when I get home from work.
"Righteous speed demon and trust fund party darling of justice"