Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Drafts Code of Conduct for ISPs
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is running a story about how the music industry is trying to get ISPs to sign 'code of conduct' agreements to cut people off for excessive bandwidth usage, to turn over details of users on demand, and to block certain 'illegal' websites." From the article: "According to the draft, the duo want ISPs and network operators to 'enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server, or from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities.'"
From TFA:
The idea of blocking access where someone is using a lot of bandwidth just doesn't work. What if they're using a webcam? Or voice over internet? They all use similar ports as some of the file-sharing systems. There's no real way of determining whether just because someone's using a lot of bandwidth that they're contravening copyright.
They can have my bandwidth when they pry it out of my COLD DEAD HANDS. I only have 768k upstream right now, and there will be hell to pay if they want to remove accounts for actually using the allotted amount.
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
And there I was thinking it was the porn industry that was the driving force on the internet
Who is drafting a 'code of conduct' for
the record companies that sign 15 year olds
to lifetime exclusive contracts?
It's suicide for broadband suppliers to try weeding out filesharers, unless the contracts become federally mandated I doubt anyone would sign them. I know I sure as hell would find another subscriber who hadn't signed the damn thing immediately, if my provider were to abide by it.
I can understand the record companies from their perspective thinking that this is a good idea, but to what I hope to be the majority of outsiders, it seems a lot like asking ISPs to censor what their customers are trying to view.
Regardless of how you view file sharing, I think it's quite obvious that the record companies seriously need to update their business model before they are totally overtaken. Trying to censor the web, or suing people left, right and centre will just lead to negative publicity
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
It really shortens the list.
Deep down, ISPs know that widespread consumer adoption of high speed internet is ONLY fueled by three things: video, music, and games. Yes there's lots of legitimate uses for high speed, but tech-savy folks do not make up the lion's share of the consuming public.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Seriously, these folks need to be laughed out of court.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
They won't be a public carrier which is what has shielded them from litigation. They arn't morons, and nobody will sign it. A website is NOT illegal, the content may be, but if they filter by content, they loose their protections. The RIAA just wants to be able to go after the big fish instead of the little fish with this move.
Beyond that, ISPs are simply carriers of data. If the music industry has evidence of a user committing a crime, then by all means drop off a court order and ISPs will be happy to comply.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Music is Driving Growth in Digital Commerce"
That's pretty hilarious just in its title. Music may be popular, but the restrictions on growth have come entirely from the music industry. Digital commerce tried to take off by itself as soon as MP3 appeared and bandwidth allowed, and it was very forcefully blocked.
The title is disingenuous in that it implies kudos to the wrong party altogether. It should have tacked "Despite Music Industry" on the end.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Who'd really be stupid enough to fake a judge's signature?
It appears that the ISP's get nothing from this. The music industry might give them amnesty from lawsuits because they facilitate infringement, but so far ISP's have been in the clear. It appears the ISP gain nothing, at all.
IANAL, but it looks like they might even pick up a ton of liability signing on to something like this. What if they accidently didn't shut down a file sharing server, or do any number of things in their lovely new contract? Does this give the music industry a new avenue for lawsuits?
The only way I can see any ISP signing this is if there is some threat made by the music industry, be it lawsuits, publicity, something. Otherwise, it seems entirely farfetched.
Its worth keeping an eye on though. I can't believe they'd put something this blatantly outlandish together unless they thought they could do something with it.
I'd says porn and games are interchangeably #1 and #2. And the rest is clearly and unquestionable and overwhelmingly illegal downloading of copyrighted material.
Remember - just because YOU and YOUR FRIENDS buy what you download, most people do not.
Regardless, they're not going to win this way.
Before refridgeration was a household technology, people who needed ice had it delivered. There were lots of companies that provided this service. There were also lots of dairy-delivery companies too. My grandfather used to deliver milk.
Anyway, enough people had refridgeration in their homes at a certain point that the death of dairy and ice delivery was inevitable. Some companies tried to fight this. Some tried to point out the flaws in home-made ice. Some tried to point out the expense. Some even appealed to consumers on the grounds that good hard-working men were losing jobs because the evil consumer was making his own ice rather than buying it from a good ol' fashioned American company.
It all fell on deaf ears. Only one ice company survived the collapse of their market. It was the company that opened a new type of store - a combination service station/grocery. You could buy ice there, sure. In blocks or bags. You still can. They became 7-11, and not only did they survive the death of the ice market, they went on to insane profits that were never possible in the ice industry.
Now, making ice in your home isn't illegal. Downloading copyrighted music that you haven't purchased is. So the analogy falls apart there. However, the RIAA's approach to solving his is akin to the ice delivery services trying to get in-home freezers banned because it's screwing up their business model.
Well, tough shit. Agile companies that spot trends and capitalize on them survive. Bloated bureaucracies of self-serving directors eventually die. That's capitalism, and that's how it ought to work. It's a shame that their business model is failing because of massive copyright infringement, and not because of a legitimate new business. It's even more of a shame that stuff like iTunes came along as a solution to the piracy problem, when it should have predated it.
They missed the boat on the Internet. Napster was there before iTunes, and the idea of free music is now forever ingrained into the social consciousness of on-line culture. Sometimes companies can divorce a culture of this link, but usually not. All photocopiers are the "Xerox" machine, all tissue is "Kleenex", all flying discs are "Frisbies" all adhesive bandages are "Band-Aids". Even RollerBlade was only partially successful in protecting their brand from being synonymous with the product. These companies would be foolish to spend money on a campaign to break this association.
And that's why the RIAA is foolish. It's too late to stop this. It can't be stopped through legislation, legeal threats, copy protection schemes, the DMCA, or anything else. The only thing that can stop it is for them to find a way to make it more convenient for people to get the music they want at a cost so marginal that paying for the added convenience is worthwhile.
Until and unless you run a very significant risk of getting caught and prosecuted, it won't stop. And people will suffer the eroding of their rights only so much in an effort to protect the revenue streams of millionaires.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Okay, so I only skimmed the article, but it seems like John Kennedy is trying to guilt-trip ISPs into signing an agreement. He's saying "We spend nearly 66% of our income on research and development, so we're the reason that people have high bandwidth now. So, help us police the internet and we'll keep dumping money into R&D."
Then he goes on to say (and has the audacity to title this argument "Music is Driving the Digital Revolution") "Selling digital music is a good market". Okay, how is the success of the iTunes Music store "Driving the Digital Revolution"? Really? I'm waiting... That's what I thought. It isn't. In fact, he doesn't even have an argument for this. All he can say is "Selling songs online is getting us money again." That's hardly revolutionizing. Revolutional would be "Musicians sell their own music online." No, this is just the old business model with new technology, the same technology they're trying to stagnate and police.
I've had 9-10 half hour outages in the last two days.
Because of excessive usage or something? This is totally unacceptable. If my connection starts going down that often for any reason I'm going ISP shopping.
On that note, I think we should also draft up a "Music Quality Standards" sheet and push them to sign and elminate all of the bad music they're pushing through. If they want to try and police a medium that doesn't belong to them, let's police their medium back!
Flagging people for high bandwidth use is rediculous. I don't want my ISP to snoop at what I'm doing everytime I do an
#apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade
It's rediculous. I wouldn't be surprised if they use their snooping to sell my information so they can target ads to me. If only advertisers knew that I have no money and thus am not interested.
And if they are not going to let us make a backup copy of the media, they should provide a lifetime warranty on the media. This includes cd's, dvd's that are out of print.
:q!
1. I downloaded several GB of data over as short of period as my bandwidth would allow.
2. I'm running a server, which we all know must be used for some illicit purpose. And not for:
- SPAM control, I have 50 or so aliases, any one starts getting too much SPAM, just axe the line out in the aliases file.
- Hosting my own wedding web site
- Transfering files between work and home as needed
- Remote Desktop (on a windows XP box), so that I can test router configuration from outside my work network (Yes, I work in the ITS department).
So, basically, I'm a horrible person, who doesn't deserve internet access because I want to learn a new OS, and have a web presence. The authors of this "code of conduct" need to have their computers taken away, and never be let near any insturment by which the insanity inside their skulls will be allowed to leak out into the rest of the world and bother us.Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
You meant it as a joke, but I think we all know that they would if they could. Like some other industries that have already been decimated*, and some others that are yet to come (e.g. broadcast TV)...
These are the same folk that tried to ban the VCR; the problem with the internet was that it was too rooted by the time it started to cause them problems.
* travel agents, postal services and so on
A great summation of the issues.
This sort of heavy-handed stupidity is why I am currently refusing to buy music except from indies. If they're at all in bed with these morons, I just won't buy.
Yeah, it stinks. There are at least 20 CDs I would *love* to have bought since this crap started. And a dozen or so DVDs. Ah, well.
Boycott. Tell them what you're doing and why. Hit them in their pocketbook again.
For the record, I don't download music or vidoes illegally. I occasionally download free indie songs or other free music, but that's it.
I don't traffic with thugs any more than with spammers.
If I pay for 1.5Mb/1.5Mb, I want to get the bandwidth that I pay for; it'd be completely unfair otherwise. If the ISP is overselling their capacity, that's *their* problem, not mine.
Awww, that so cute. Terribly naive, but cute. Oversubscription is the name of the game. I would guess that somewhere around 100% of ISP's are oversubscribed in one sense or another. If all of your ISP's customers started trying to use a full 1.5Mbps 24/7 your ISP's network would melt down. But that's OK because that (almost) never happens. Far from being "unfair", this oversubscription is what allows your ISP to offer you a reasonable price for service. Your ISP is probably paying at least $75-$100/month to buy 1.5Mbps from a backbone carrier at bulk prices I would guess. I'm also guessing that you are paying less than that, and that your ISP actually has some overhead of their own. It isn't like 100% of your bill is paying for their bandwidth alone.
I can usually download on my DSL at pretty much 100% of what I'm paying for. But usually for an hour or so in the evening, it slows down. Right when everybody gets home from work it seems like. Is this unfair? Maybe. Am I willing to pay significantly more for service so that my ISP can sustain that one hour burst and have tons of excess service the other 23 hours? Not really.
ISPs are like highway departments; they each maintain a stretch of highway (internet), which is used in common by a lot of drivers (users).
And the fact that you happen to be driving home from robbing a bank (downloading naughtyware) IS NOT THE BUSINESS OF THE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT (ISP), nor of the Society For the Prevention of Road Noise (the **AA and their kin), nor of the bank that got robbed (the infringed artist).
Crime is the business of the *police* (gee, it's STILL the business of the *police* in cyberspace, imagine that), not of any common carrier, business association, or individual.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I personally would drop any ISP that signed this agreement (or that even followed these ideas). I'm already pretty pissed off at most ISPs and have dropped several for misbehavior. I think what we need is a user union that can teach companies who screw with us who is the paying their bills. Something akin to a large religious group or parent group but with a non-religious freedom-oriented set of goals.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
This is really capitalism at its dirtiest. A need was identified (cheaper access to music), filled (via piracy), and capitalized upon (via ad-supported P2P apps). The music industry is now having to compete. Yes, the competition is illegal, but only because of government interference in the market.
This is an interesting point. I wonder why all the Randians here aren't complaining about this government interference, and claiming we should all be able to pirate to our hearts' content, just like they all complain every time someone promotes laws restricting the rights and abilities of monopolies.