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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.'"
In the interest of promoting more enlightened discussion, the full text of the "Music is Driving Growth in Digital Commerce" speech, presented by John Kennedy, CEO and Chairman of the IFPI to the ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association) Conference in Brussles, on March 3rd, 2005, can be found here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
And so what do the ISP's get in return?
Customer satisfaction?
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
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.
Why in the world would ISPs sign something like this? It seems to me that from their point of view the only thing it could result in is lower subscription numbers. Is the pressure from their 'peers' is enough?
ISP ads will feature "No RIAA CoC Restrictions!"
Not content with creating a continent-spanning lawsuit-sharing network using special P2P (person to perpetrator) technology, the record companies' consortium, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) now wants your ISP to sign up to a new "code of conduct" that it has helpfully drafted with the help of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). A warning, though: you probably won't like it.
Here's a sampler. Under the new code, ISPs would put in place filtering technology to block services and/or sites that "are substantially dedicated to illegal file sharing or download services". They would retain data beyond what law enforcement agencies require, with the aim of helping track down copyright infringement. They'd hand that data, plus your identity, over to the IFPI or MPA if there was even a complaint - not a court order - against you for, you guessed it, copyright infringement. (And you'd have signed or clicked something agreeing to allow that.)
Want more? 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." A summary of the draft can be found at the Electronic Digital Rights site's latest EDRIgram.
We wondered if it might be some clever hoax, and called the IFPI. "Oh yes, the draft" they said breezily and knowledgeably. The draft is for real.
And to back up their modest proposal, the MPA and IFPI aren't afraid to wave their big stick at the ISPs and network operators. Speaking last month at the invitation of the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) , the head of the IFPI, John Kennedy, said: "Quality digital content is a key driver that makes consumers embrace new services. You invest billions in your pipes and cables and satellites but without content you have empty pipes and boxes. At this stage I am not even asking for much if anything by way of a financial commitment. I am asking for your time your energy your commitment and some social responsibility."
Tony Soprano couldn't have put it better. "Nice content-carrying pipes you've got here. What a shame if anything were to happen to them... now, we've got this little agreement for you to look at..."
Expect an interesting discussion next Monday, when this issue, and the draft code of conduct, will be discussed at a meeting in Geneva of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Which as you know has a stellar record defending the little guys against claims of copyright infringement.
If all that has you fizzing, then you're in good company, along with the UK's Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA). There will be an ISPA representative at next week's meeting, and if they're anything like as annoyed as the spokesman we talked about this with, they're so close to nuclear they already glow in the dark.
"This is obviously something they [IFPI and MPA] have worked on together," ISPA's spokesman almost spat. "They have made proposals like this in the past but that doesn't necessarily mean they have gone anywhere. They should really be going through the established takedown procedure. Some of these proposals contravene current laws and go beyond others. If you take the example of requiring subscribers to allow their identities to be given out - that's something that ISPs take very seriously, and only when required to by law enforcement. And they aren't a law enforcement authority."
But sometimes it seems like the MPA and IFPI feel this latter point is only a minor detail, which could be fixed in time.
France's ISPs seemed to have rolled over already. A version of this code was signed last July by three French ministers, representatives of the music industry, major ISPs and telecoms operators there. It allows collection societies and the like to create files from telecoms traffic data of supposed copyright infringers to "mutual
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.
Good luck with that one is all I'm going to say. Short of them getting a law passed requiring this no ISP in their right mind would turn over information.
We *require* a subpoena signed by a *judge* not a clerk, before we turn over any information.
See http://www.lectlaw.com/def/i084.htm : " Intentional Interference With Prospective Economic Advantage" for more.
there go our linux iso mirrors...
I will instantly move to any ISP that doesn't sign this, assuming my current one does. I suspect that this won't be a very uncommon occurance, or at least, I suspect that a few ISPs in everyplace will always be holdouts.
But man, this is terrible. I hate how everyone wants to make the net into TV. I don't watch TV because it's passive. I hope we'd all put up a good fight for the net.
ISPs are banding together to insist the record labels stop putting out shitty music. :)
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Thank you for your interest in the well-being of our customers. Or perhaps in the well-being of non-customers; specifically, you. Remind us again who pays us? Oh yes ... our subscribers. Thank you for your consideration. Now please go away.
Sincerely,
The ISP industry
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
What a cowinkedink!!!
I am currently trying to get the music industry to sign a code of conduct too! In a nutshell, it says that the music industry will supply us with quality music (down with Britney!) at a resonable price ($5 a cd anyone?) and fair use rights (cd mixes for my *cough* girlfriend!). I'm having trouble getting them to sign. Please advise...
Blarf.
It does no good complaining and protesting this stuff on Slashdot. Please find an official government channel to communicate with to have this kind of thing not enforced.
This is starting to get crazy.
Seriously, these folks need to be laughed out of court.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I think they should ask ISPs to stop people that use the Internet altogether. That way: No Internet piracy!
Wait a minute...
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I was watching a movie about Metallica's history on VH1. (It was late and I couldn't sleep, that's why!)
As you probably remember the drummer for Metallica, Lars Ulrich, came out strong against Napster and P2P. He called it stealing, theft, and other bad words.
But the VH1 show had an early interview with him and he was asked about how the band initially succeeded. He claimed "We made a demo and I gave ten copies to ten friends. They each made ten copies for their friends. As did those friends."
In other words, sharing is great when it helps you. But it's criminal when it hurts you.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
No, actually not. Otherwise you wouldn't be posting anything. Speechless would be a thread like "Linus found dead on Microsoft campus", with zero comments attached for days on end.
If the music industry is serious about controlling how people use the internet then they should take over the ISP industry.
They should buy out all the major ISPs and offer the service for free in order to get millions to sign up for RIAA-ISP. Then they can make these absurd demands on their users.
The pomposity and ridiculousness of the Music Industry is becoming the most entertaining product that they offer. We're going to miss them when they're gone.
More like they can have *their* bandwidth whenever they want. Read your TOS more closely, the liklihood of there *not* being a clause that allows them to change or ammend the TOS at will is extremely low.
ISPs resell bandwidth according to the 80/20 model - that only 20% of their users use 80% ore more of their capacity. As soon as users start skewing those numbers, they begin to lose money, and if they are skewed enough, they can start to be actually selling the bandwidth at a loss.
An ISP is a business. BUsinesses do not like to lose money. As soon as it is not profitable for you to be consuming the bandwidth anymore (say if, for example, projected costs of lawsuits against them outweigh the revenue from you as a customer), they will drop you. And don't pretend they will lose any sleep over it either - if losing a customer amounts to a net gain in profit margin, then they won.
WTF does the entertainment industry think it has the right to tell any other business how to run their operations? Who died and left them in charge?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities.
This is a very bad way to determine if someone is sharing or downloading songs, movies, etc. I pull down patches for my Linux, AIX, OS X, and Windoze boxes on a regular basis. I easily exceed several gigs a month just doing this not to mention web surfing, viewing online videos, animations, NASA TV, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but ISPs are only supposed to provide a way to access the internet. They aren't supposed to provide services for companies that want to snoop on the ISPs users; i.e. they provide bandwidth not Deputy Dawg services. I hope that the ISPs are brave enough to stand up to this and tell RIAA/MPAA where to stick their agreement.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
all along!
According to the draft, the duo want ISPs and network operators to 'enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server...
They're trying to stop all uploading! I love that ruse, "Excessive" bandwidth usage is a good sign of infringement. They want the net to be "client-server". They're the server. You're the client. How sweet. They can feed us all the propa...er...information we should need. That they're trying this doesn't bother me at all. It's to be expected. I'm worried that some dummy is out there believing it. It looks like it's back to solitare for me. Heh, screw that! It's back to the beach!
What?
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.
This makes me appreciate the fact I can get broadband access from a small local ISP (Internet Nebraska) rather than just a corporate ISP. People have said how they will not sign up with any ISP that goes along with this code of conduct agreement, but imagine how limited your choice will be if companies keep getting bought out or merge. Support your local ISPs and sign up with them.
RIAA: "Your service has huge bandwidth and seems to be transmitting a lot of data. Since the only content in that quantity worth transmitting is our copyrighted music, you must be aiding and abetting copyright theft."
ISP: "What our customers send through our service is their business, not ours. And it can't be your stuff, because most of your music sucks. Pigs will not only have to fly before we sign up to this, they'll have to break the sound barrier."
RIAA: "Well, with enough baked beans, anything is possible. Load up the lawyers...er, pigs and let 'em fly!"
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
I recently set up my dad with a computer and a DSL connection. I set up TightVNC so I could take care of any software problems he might have.
But by the time I got home his IP address had already changed. It appears that his ISP (centurynet) changes his IP address every 2 hours. That would sure make it a lot harder to use P2P for sharing your own stuff, running a game server, a webcam, and all the other cool stuff you get broadband for.
I can't help but think that broadband companies are going to kill themselves with this type of behavior. They have to remember that their customers are paying their bills, not the RIAA.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
What the hell is this kind of crap?
I don't know about anyone else, but I am always downloading lots of stuff that are FREE and LEGAL! Whether that constitutes Linux ISO images, Solaris patches, or whatever, there are a ton of things out there that are completely legal and take up gobs of bandwidth! Streaming media (radio or TV stations), game patches, game mods, on-line gaming, and so forth are completely legal and will consume bandwidth! If you leave a high-bitrate, streaming media download running all month, you bet that's going to look like a lot of bandwidth, but that does not infer illegal activities!
Even if many downloads are not legal (*cough*newsgroups*cough*), what makes them assume that the downloads are of MUSIC? A massive download of the latest National Geographic bazillion-CD set will completely spike monthly bandwidth; but it has absolutely nothing to do with music, regardless of it being an illegal download!
Who the f*ck are the RIAA to assume that (excessive_bandwith == piracy || excessive == MUSIC_piracy)?
The arrogance of even drafting such a "code of conduct" is beyond comprehension!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
So I can get a new ISP.
Actually I would love it if the music industry would sign a code of conduct as well.
Lets see.
Any employee caught providing drugs or sexual partners to performers would be fired and turned over to the police for criminal charges. If not the Board of Directors are help criminally responsible. If football players have to take drug tests why not employees of music companies. I would love to see them declared a "drug free workplace". If you want you can let the artists off the hook. I want the A and R men, execs, and producers tested:)
The music industry would provide 401k, medical, and health insurance to performers.
If a record is not publishes and made available for sale for a period of one year all rights are returned to the artist.
Accounting standards and full disclosure of those standards.
If they want to write "codes of conduct" they can start at home.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And very politely started tiptoeing towards bitching me out, asking a bunch of questions about my net usage.
I'm really not a bandwidth hog, I don't run P2P 24-7, once in a blue moon I'll fire up bittorrent for some reason or another.
I do use OpenVPN, I get my email from work, my kid brother connects to my LAN via OpenVPN, mostly so we can play games (much easier than forwarding umpteen billion ports for whatever we feel like playing that day).
Well, the customer service guy calls because they noticed the VPN traffic. Or rather, SSL traffic on port 1194.
It says in the AUP that I can't run a VPN or servers of any sort (does that mean I can't host a two player game of quake?). He started dancing around the issue, and as soon as I saw where he was going we had this exchange:
"Is there a problem with my network usage?"
"Umm, well maybe"
"Am I abusing the network, hogging bandwidth"
"Well no, but we noticed a lot of traffic on a port known for VPNs"
"OK, well go ahead and cancel my account. I've been meaning to go with satellite and DSL for a while now, I just couldn't be arsed to climb up on the roof and install it."
He apologized and hung up. I couldn't believe that I threatened the cable co and they backed down.
Anywho, I'm fully prepared to follow through. SpeakEasy and Dish Network are but a phone call away.
Slashdot, since you're completely in cohoots, will speakeasy be signing this agreement?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...cut people off for excessive bandwidth usage, to turn over details of users on demand, and to block certain 'illegal' websites...
They expect ISPs to:
1. Terminate services for legitimate users. I work at an ISP and one of our customers requires a fair amount of bandwidth for his weather station.
2. Ignore the privacy of the customer. Are we simply to turn over customer information because they said so, and give us no reason as to why?
3. Censorship on sites they don't like. Are they going to determine that any music site, whether legitimate or not, that they don't control is 'illegal'?
What's to say that once ISPs sign up for this, that the music industry doesn't put in a clause that forces ISPs to agree to any changes made down the road, or something that's impossible to back out of?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
The "record" companies just need to go out of business. Believe me, music will survive. I just went to a great house show last friday. Worth every bit of the $5 I spent at the door. The record companies need to be overtaken. Something much better will sprout up.
He wanted me to sign a contract that allowed me to do everything I wanted, as long as it would not lessen the value of his property, nor interfere with his attempts to squeeze more outof it.
... :-)
When I asked him why I would sign such a contract, as there was no benifit in it for me, he muttered something foul and went away
They really only need to get one ISP to sign it. Imagine if AOL or somebody like that should sign it (and they will), then they can run ads that say "The only ISP approved by the RIAA/MPAA!" and the current subscribers who are not technically inclined won't know the difference. They'll get more subscribers who don't know what it means because an important group endorsed/approved it.
Once it starts drawing stupid customers, all the other major ISPs will jump on the bandwagon. Where or not the smaller ISPs will be able to resist remains to be seen.
I'm told all DSL services rent the lines from SBC. So once SBC has signed it, they can make all the ISPs who rent their lines sign it.
But nerds are brilliant, and determined not to be hindered by this sort of thing, so they'll find a workaround. The MPAA/RIAA will try to block that, but the nerds will get around it. That's the way of the internet, and I for one think it's a beautiful thing.
I want them to digitally watermark screener copies and demo CD's and then keep track of who in their organizations have access to these copies so when they hit the internet sites weeks before general release they can go to their own people first for answers/retribution. I think that should be their first step in fighting piracy.
'Same speed C but faster'
"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
The internet as it stands is not going away. They just need to accept it and stop trying to legislate/strong-arm/schmooze it out of existance.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
In order for there to be an 'agreement', both parties must provide something to the other (cash for goods or services, work for food, etc.). What does the music industry provide, in this case?
Sure, the food industry should allocate evreyones food consumption. If you eat too much for healthy consumption, The vendors will stop selling food. You will live longer! At least until the maximium age limit and then you will be cut off...
If I were an ISP considering signing this thing, I think I'd have to take into account the effect of a good-sized chunk of my subscribership running continuous downloads of random crap, just to increase bandwidth usage and screw with the music industry.
Remember, ISPs: Most of us have never gotten an RIAA subpoena, and are still under the impression that it might be a cool souvenir.
So you're a heavy broadband user, you pay for a service, naturally you want to get you're money's worth (maybe it's because I'm a Yorkshireman)
I cannot think of any other service industry that would even discuss doing this. Imagine the conversation with your energy supplier, a slightly more critical need but...
"You seem to be using lots of electricity sir, you aren't perhaps doing something illegal"
Well no, I'm not...
"Not making a bomb, planning a bank raid, growing drugs or the like??"
Certainly not!!
"Well we're cutting you off just to be safe, have a nice day"
Automatically provents you from playing infringing notes. Want to play Voodoo Chile (slight return)? please key in your credit card #.
Why why why is it so difficult to run a server out of my house. I'm not pirating software, music or movies; I just want to host a personal website, or a website on which to showcase current work done on a project to clients, or to host community projects, etc.
People have legitimate server needs, and ISPs make it terribly difficult to meet these needs.
Everytime I call an ISP to ask if they allow server access, I get in a fight with the operator at the other end because she accuses me of software piracy.
All I want is to be able to play with a server in my spare time, without having to fight with my ISP (or pay for a business line).
I have never actually paid all that much attention to the exact amount of bandwidth that I use. I play EQ2 and leave my characters (until recently) logged in all of the time to sell items. This in mind, I hope that my ISP is not wasting resources in tracking my usage, they would find out that I am quite boring. If they did, however, and were to limit my access I would be very upset, there is the term unlimited used to describe my service. I have to wonder though, is the music industry (or anyone that wants monitoring done) going to pay the ISPs to keep track of what we are doing? It will not be cheap to watch all of those packets and much more importantly, there is no way that anyone, save for just stopping usage after "X" amount of bandwidth is used up, to stop the sharing.
I work for a small school that's starting a pilot program on language learning. We use the internet for audio & video, and although we have some lag, it's working quite well. If ISP sign this document, it would mean no more language learning for kids. Nice move, guys.
Here the privacy laws say that a company must not share customer data with any other organisation without consent of the customer. So following the code of conduct would be plain illegal for every ISP. And the Music And Movies Mafia would probably be even suspectible of solicitation.
Exception is, of course, everything the law requires. But last time I checked the Music And Movies Mafia wasn't the law, at least over here. And we won't allow any such law to pass, thanks to direct democracy. A DMCA-style law will probably be discussed in parliament this summer, but you need only 50'000 signatures to trigger a referendum.
And then we're gonna kick their asses!
But I got a better one. You give me my bandwidth and I'll give you the finger.
RIAA is trying to get a bill passed to prevent companies from selling and shipping modems faster than 300 bauds. Anything faster is an indication that the consumer is engaging in piracy. When told that the consumers suffered long waits when accessing websites, the RIAA spokeperson retorted that Lynx was a very good and capable browser.
RIAA is als*#$%(@)(@)^(_!_)~&!@^ NO CARRIER
Isn't this bordering (illegal) restraint of trade? Nobody has a right to impose on a legal contract between two other parties. If they think a crime has been committed, they should go to court and get an order dealing with that specific case.
I know, at this point they're only asking for a "voluntary" agreement. That's why I said "bordering" -- larger ISPs will blow them off since they know the real cost of accepting it. (Hint: it's not a few pissed off customers. It's dealing with the 1,002 other groups with their own "code of conduct" on everything from porn to evolution and "liberalism.")
But smaller ISPs run by chickenshits may worry about the legal costs defending themselves if RIAA plays hardball. Even when, not if, they win they'll still lose because of the expense.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Will they bite the hand that feeds them? We already know that the RIAA will. But will Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast, etc.? I'm not willing to pay $45 a month just so CNN will load faster. I'm also only a couple of phone calls away from switching to Dish, so that would be $105 a month that Time Warner stands to lose from me. I'll be spending less than $100 a year on music CDs with or without the Internet.
1.) Open up accounting record and pricing models to explain current CD costs (Prove to your customers you are not price fixing).
2.) Remove monopolistics barriers in the markets (Allow independent labels to get their music to the market).
3.) Stop producing crap (Please, Stop prducing crap).
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
Most musicians and most bands are NOT members of them, therefore they are only a powerful small segment that leeches off the rest of the music industry.
It's like saying MSFT is the Software Industry. They may want you to think they are - but they are not.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, first of all I'd like to thank the music industry for making them even more satisfying to loathe. You couldn't create a better bad guy in a novel (Well, there's SCO, of course - again, a real life phenomenon, not some bad guy in a book)...
Seems to me like:
(1) There are those who are just opposed to piracy and consider it theft and leave pissed-off messages on forums such as this saying so from time to time. I think they're the minority, but they have an honest viewpoint, and if anyone is making a decent moral case for not ripping off music, it is them.
(2) The largest group of people are people who just really like music, and can easily get it for free. I don't think they spend a lot of time thinking about the music industry, intellectual property, copyrights, or what have you. They just like music. So they download it.
(3) There are people for whom pirating music, like smoking a joint, is a political act. I mean sure, guffaw all you want, but we live in a horriby insular, suburban, gated community world where this is as radical as it gets for most. I'm talking about people who enjoy the fact that pirating music is illegal, and enjoy screwing over very large companies, however much a drop in the bucket downloading a few mp3s is. It's not so much that they're really getting over on anyone, but it feels like it...just enough to make it a rush in and of itself.
(4) I just mention this group for completeness - these are people who are collectors, who like out of print or really obscure stuff that is difficult or impossible to find anyway, or simply is not commercially available.
And I have to wonder if the music industry is driving more of category 2 into category 3. I'm not sure about this though. I don't really buy the argument that "bad publicity" really affects the numbers. I think music piracy is largely an issue of convenience and R0CKING 4 FREE and not much more than that. Consumers are notoriously mushy when it comes to putting up any kind of united front against abusive companies, employers, or institutions, at least here in the States, and I suspect in much of the rest of the world as well. I doubt corporations would own and run as much as they do if consumers really had any moral conscience and really wanted to know what kind of atrocities their spending money was paying for.
Certainly, however, one thing the music industry is doing wonders for is assuaging whatever guilt the typical music trader still feels about piracy. I mean, if there is even the slightest hesitation, or opening for someone to make an argument about piracy, it's evaporating quickly due to the music and movie industry going out of their way to embarass themselves by pretending that they see this as a moral issue, as opposed to a dent in their ability to financially exploit people with actual talent. The moral "oh poor us" crap is pathetic in roughly the same way Jim Bakker's penitential sniveling was pathetic. It might mean something when an artist says so, but the industry just seems to be out to sabotage their own credibility at every turn. Like we don't really know the score. Like we don't all recoil in disgust from MTV, Clear Channel's radio stations, and the complete sewage of the pop music scene. It is this - the product they push the hardest, that lends incredible insight into the industry's supposed "moral" (LOL) conscience.
However one feels about piracy, the music and movie industries are deft black belts when it comes to outright DICKETRY. And one thing that makes the world go 'round is spite, and every time they do something as DELICIOUSLY EVIL as this, countless new "convenience traders" are introduced the sweet, sweet nectar of spite. Now, it's not just R0CKING 4 FREE - now it's R0CKING 4 FREE AGAINST THE MAN. Now there's an affirmative reason above and beyond just having, guiltily, THE COLLECTED WORKS OF MEATLOAF in 128 kbps MP3 format.
Idiots. This is ROCK AND ROLL they're poking with a stick. Of course its part of the same pa
Never mind how stupid, arrogant or evil this. How come it's even possible? If nobody gets to run a server, where will the content come from?
Surely there is some sort of exception to this rule? What defines an "ISP"? What defines an "ISP customer"?
I must be missing something. The proposal reads to me to say "companies providing internet service agree to stop providing internet service to anyone providing internet content". I'm sure that isn't the intent, but can someone explain to me how this doesn't amount to shutting the net down completely?
This isn't intended as humor; I really am missing something here. How do they propose to draw the line between bad running-a-server and okay running-a-server?
mt
"Expect an interesting discussion next Monday, when this issue, and the draft code of conduct, will be discussed at a meeting in Geneva of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Which as you know has a stellar record defending the little guys against claims of copyright infringement."
So it looks like the RIAA and MPAA are trying to by-pass Congress on this one, and take the easy route.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
This is so funny. I work for an ISP, we already have those things in place, called an AUP. Anyone caught abusing their connection for illegal activity is dealt with. Of course, the RIAA just doesn't like the burden of proof being on them.
/dev/urandom let's say, call it "newest_crappy_song_from_jenifer_lopez.mp3", have it just the right size, and send it from myself to myself on several of my colo boxes on my domain(s). Then for the fun of it, null route all of the RIAAs ips from my personal web/mail servers for when they try and contact me. Then when they snailmail me (or call my isp on the phone, again me because I am my isp), I can show them the bogus file and waste plenty of their time and prove to them just how big of asses they really are.
This has always made me want to fill a file with random bytes from
Ya know, kinda like honeynet for the *AAs. Well, maybe not.
FLR
I doubt it. One of their selling points is you are allowed to host your own servers. I have to say, they've made good on that. I have their 6.0/768 DSL (which for me is more like 4.5/768 :/) and on it I host two web servers. They do a fair bit of traffic, probably a minimum of 20GB/month each and usually much more. When one of them really gets going they can have the upstream nearly slammed for days on end.
To this day I haven't heard a peep out of them, and I've been doing it for like 2 years now. So long as they get their money, they seem to be happy to let me use as much bandwidth as I like. Likewise I heard nothing from them when I hosed a drive and downloaded 50GB of backups from work over the course of a couple days.
So I can't see them signing something like this, as it would go against their whole spiel. I'm sure they also know they'd lose a lot of customers. The whole reason I chose Speakeasy is I was told that they wouldn't whine about bandwidth usage due to servers.
You'd need a pretty dumb judge to count that though. If they told CD-R/DVD-R manufacturers to note down or restrict those that bought large volume of media, would it count as goodwill. The internet companies have a business model, and the RIAA is telling them to change it with zero benefit to themselves.
I'm lucky though, as a Canadian I find we're still doing rather well in the fight again RIAA/MPAA/DMCA abuse... and our court system seems to quite often have some good heads behind it when dealing with that type of crap. There are some stupid lobbies going through again right now but I've got reasonable confidence they'll be shot down.
A compromise is a mutually beneficial situation. The RIAA don't want compromise, they want to have their pie and eat it too... I hope they end up with a pie-in-the-face for their BS "efforts"
ISP's should sign this agreement, just as soon as the recording industry signs a code of conduct drafted by musicians. :-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
Alcohol, tobacco and firearms should be a store, not a gov't agency.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
One does not take the name of the Kernel Lord in vain. Thou shalt be whipped for ever more. make all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- Implement filtering technology?
- Limit Bandwidth?
- Retain Records?
and yet "quality digital content is a key driver that makes consumers embrace new services"
The RIAA and MPAA don't seem to want to provide viable alternatives to P2P's infringing uses, but they want a CARRIERS to police it for them? And invade their customer's privacy?
This is soo crazy stupid that is is scary. What kind of out-of-tune whackos would think that this is a good idea?
The bottom line is that Broadband access is a tool. Customers rent the pipe. Just like telephones, electricity, gas. How in the world would it possibly make sense that your local telephone, electric, or gas company would have to make sure you weren't using their product in an illegal fashion?
Orwellian.
I am sooo glad that I don't buy CD's or Movies anymore. And no, I don't download either. These industries are just plain selfish and evil. They don't DESERVE my money.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Though I know this was a joke post, your premises behind it are exactly the problem, and you're not helping at all. Do you want Fair Use Rights, as determined under the copyright act of 1976? Then learn what they actually are, and don't just say "I can redistribute copyrighted material to anyone I wish to, 'cause I paid for my use, and after that it's all Fair Use".
Bullshit. You idiots keep using "Fair Use" as your justification, and you know what Congress will do? They'll take away Fair Use. Thing is, that wouldn't stop your copyright violations, and it will stop those of us who actually use our Fair Use rights: format shift to move CDs to our computers or MP3 players; time shift to watch movies or television shows later in our TiVos; and archive copy our CDs so that when we scratch them or leave them on the dashboards of our cars, we can go back to the original and make a new copy to destroy. That's Fair Use. What's not Fair Use is "I wanna make mixtapes for my *cough* girlfriend". Even if you actually were making mixes for your girlfriend, that wouldn't be Fair Use! Is it a) archive, format or time shifting, b) excerpt use in a satire, parody or review, or c) use by a non-profit for non-public distribution? And no, you don't count under C, since you're giving someone a copy. C means that a church can use a copywritten song in their church play, but they can't videotape it and give out or sell tapes.
So anyways, talk all you want about quality of music or price, but don't ruin Fair Use for those of us who actually use it appropriately.
-T
after reading the article this "code of conduct" only appears to be in europe.. no offence to the european users but does this mean that it will only be in europe or is the RIAA also proposing a bill in the US....?
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.
He he, I love that shit. American's hate the French because they don't agree with them on certain issues. Do you even know what "freedom" means? I'll help you out; it has nothing to do with "follow the leader" or "do what you are told".
The US is becoming a characture of itself, and if it wasn't for the most powerful military empire in the world, it would be funny. Right now, it's downright terrifying. What you are doing in Iraq (and the political techniques used to get your concent) is the complete opposite of freedom. Orwell is truly rolling in his grave...
The RIAA has announced that it has just passed new legislation that governs the use of the Internet. By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions.
The legislation states that ISPs must advertise their broadband services as providing unlimited Internet access, but that all access above 128 kilobytes of bandwidth used within a year should result in extra charges of $1.00 per byte. A separate clause in the new legislation states that by 2007, all ISPs must have technology in place to track certain bandwidth-eating downloads, such as Internet advertisements, popups, and downloaded spam, over which users have no control, so that the RIAA can charge an additional $5.00 for each byte of these downloads.
"We are excited to bring new freedoms to users around the world," stated RIAA house speaker Darl McBride. "Consumers will be glad to know that they are paying more and receiving less."
A third clause in the legislation outlaws the use of Linux, punishing its users with complete lack of Internet access, enforced by technologies that fingerprint the operating system and deny access if it is not the latest version of Microsoft Windows or SCO UNIX. Also, 14% of Internet fees that will accrue under this legislation will be paid to SCO to compensate for the theft of its valuable intellectual property.
Finally, a spokesperson for the RIAA stated that the RIAA will soon phase out Congress, as it provides parallel services to the people, and is therefore an unnecessary duplication of effort.
Those who say "unlimited" but oversubscribe to a large enough degree will either have to ask for more money, cut back on who they take on or be honest that they contection ratio is x.
Ironically, if the corporations would *withhold* content, they'd do us all a favor. It'd be a welcome respite. Plus, it's pretty good copy protection for the recording industry.
It'd also fuel (what I'd guess would be) moderate to explosive growth in the non-corporate controlled media industry. We'd swing back to the idea of computers as a "hobbyist" medium (back in the days of Heathkit, for example) and would give the cycle time to re-start.
Withhold content, please! The "pipes" won't go empty. Just leave us alone. It'd also give the artists some time to really give us what *they* want -- and not a bunch of A&R posers pretending to work on behalf of the artists.
The ISP can already do as you suggest without signing an agreement with **AA. The question is what benefit do they get from signing with the **AA? I think the ISPs presently benefit by charging more to high bandwidth downloaders. Cutting them off would be a net loss unless **AA have something to offer to the ISP.
Just look at the name of the name of the consortium...
"The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI)"
Phonographic? The definition of "Phonograph" is...
A machine that reproduces sound by means of a stylus in contact with a grooved rotating disk.
The music industry needs to drag itself into the 21st century. It's their fault for not keeping up with technology.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
If there is one overriding factor in all these disputes its the function of the Internet in removing middlemen from transactions.
The high number of layers of marketmakers and their proprietary good-old-boy networks are being surfacted like soap does to grease globs.
One of the most profitable of the old-boy networks are the consortiums of (mostly lawyers) that invest and purchase rights to various forms of media copyrights and then live off the residuals.
These consortiums relied on the difficulty of reproducing multimedia privately and the resultant scarcity of the music to make their large profits. Just as musicians once relied on the relative scarcity of musical talent to be able to make a living. Now only the absolute cream-of-the-crop musicians can hope for something other than a weekend job doing weddings.
In the same way, the lawyers are finding that the Internet is making their reproduction consortiums redundant. When it was just the musicians losing their livelihood it was, sorry, too bad, move on with the times. When its the lawyer consortiums loosing their big piles of cash its another thing entirely.
That doesn't mean its "moral" to rip off music, but the reality is that the musicians rarely profit heavily off of the music that gets published.
Fact: If your are a 4 man band and your disc goes gold, that means that you and your buddies can afford the life of a $40K/year junior engineer for one year. That's after promotion fees etc are paid.
This is just the come uppance for the lawyers.
If you want to play the moral high ground you have to start thinking about alternate technologies in the reality of the Internet. Yes, we need to find better ways to reward the excellent creative work of (hopefully) a wider range of musicians. The best way to do that is not to continue to funnel more cash into the RIAA etc.
The best way is to push for better Internet transaction protocols for the creators and investors, such as Street Performer Protocol.
My code of conduct for hot chicks and supermodels is out this morning as well. Chief on the list? 1) Stop by 2) Strip to a bathing suit 3) Bring me cocktails. More details on this exciting, innovative new series of guidelines as they develop! (Okay, exciting for me...)
Tough day? How about a free Mac mini?
What, like a merger between TimeWarner and AOL? ...oh wait.
If they sign into this sort of thing, even the big players, they lose their common carrier status and leave themselves open for all kinds of litigation that they really, really don't want to face.
Common carrier status allows them to afford being in business in the first place.
RIAA is so flippin' stupid... I doubt anyone will sign into this "conduct code" because of this.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No, they see you as a threat because you are their competition. If they can't maintain their near-monopolistic control over the production of music, then they can't make money selling the same crapy year after year. Not that they're going to say this in so many words when they can simply brainwash Joe Public into thinking that any music you didn't buy on a shrinkwrapped CD at BestCircuitMartUSA is illegal.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I'm sure someone has brought up some of this if not all of it but...
I do not pay my ISP to be the RIAA's bitch. I won't be happy to find that my money to Verizon is going to a witch hunt.
I have a ton of legal uses of big bandwidth. So, suppose I end up on the warning list. OK. So Verizon checks me out. What legal right do they have to tell the RIAA if my bandwidth is being used for illegal music downloads or if I'm simply playing streaming audio (legally) or running a mechant on Everquest or downloading pr0n?
And who are they to attempt to enforce this agreement? Frankly I'd not want to deal with a provider of data who lets themselves be beaten around by the likes of the RIAA. The RIAA needs their wings clipped in a real bad sense. They're doubtlessly pushing the limits of legal action into the realms of harassment and misrepresentation.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Then they tried to stop the sale of blank tapes...(some music history: when pink floyd released "the wall" the -original- tape casing was actually 4 tapes, not 2, the extra 2 were blank tapes and had a little scribble at the bottom saying, that they support tape re-recordings, or something to that extent) anyway the (whoever back in those days) stepped in, stopped the distributation and now you can only buy the 2 tape set of the album, and not the 4 tape set as it was originally released.
This move however didnt stop the sale of blank tapes (obviously) and nothing could be done because it was too little to late.
So the point here, as I said, its too little too late. At this very moment the RIAA are spewing so many ideas to companies/the masses such as what this article suggests, limiting bandwidth usage (which i beleive is just against the constitution, on so many levels) but they also tried to make a law to tax the net. They tried to go against all the kids/grown up's that even had there ip on that Napster list that napster released a few months ago...that led nowhere.
Basically, whatever they are doing, its for one reason only. Money, if the rest of the gov. see's the RIAA are doing something, or trying then the income that RIAA employee's gets increased, this is the only reason they do this. No other reason, do you actually think they just sat home one day and said "wow we should get all these guys that are download music, i mean im not a musician, but hell we should just get them anyway"
no...they just in it for the money, and they are as bad as the people that download copyrighted materials.
The DMCA offers a safe harbor clause for ISPs. In order to qualify for safe harbor:
Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 512a:
(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
and Section 512a(d)(1):
(A) does not have actual knowledge that the material or activity is infringing;
Now, if an ISP monitored what user's were doing, and attempted to block access to certain sites, they would violate both of these; voiding their safe harbor offered by the DMCA. Feel free to read the whole text:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/512.html
This proposal effectivly voids an ISP's safe harbor on _every_ _single_ _point_ of the safe harbor clause. Data retention, caching and storage, monitoring and censorship, the whole nine yards. Sort of back handed for the IFPI and MPA to propose that ISP's give up their safe harbor. Perhaps so they can sue the ISPs?
Seems fair. If the RIAA thinks it can tell ISPs how to behave regarding music, the ISPs should be able to tell the RIAA how to behave regarding privacy or perhaps a few other things.
That's a damned good point.
One can foresee an agreement to the effect of "you, the cable-and-ISP company, will be allowed access to this here prime content for television, if and only if you throttle all your cable-modem users down to a point where downloading TV shows takes Way Too Long To Be Practical". So the cable company that also provides cable-ISP access has to choose between video content for their cable-TV business, or happy cable-modem users.
Given the system of protected monopolies that cable and telephone systems are under, this could happen, despite laws regarding illegal leverage of a monopoly and restraint of trade.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Create a website containing a list of all Senators and Congressmen who accept or take donations from these organizations and tell people NOT to vote for these people.
Finally, publicize the hell out of the website. This can be done by cross referencing in blogs, etc. This way Google searches for said Senators and Congressmen will show this site at the top of the list.
Watch how many Senators and Congressmen go anywhere near these organizations or want anything to do with them, especially around election time.