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Music Industry 'trying to hijack EU data laws'
sebFlyte writes "The recording industry is trying to hijack the EU's data retention directive, which is being brought in to fight terrorism, to try and get their copyright battles fought for them. As previously reported, the EU may be making copyright infringement a criminal offence, and the Creative Media Business Alliance is lobbying hard to stop the European laws on data retention being restricted to cover terrorism and organized crime (as is currently proposed). In essence, they want to be able to get police to search through newly extended records from ISPs to look for evidence of illegal filesharing. In the words of the executive director of the Open Rights group, 'the music industry's attempt to hijack this legislation is a travesty and a gross affront to civil liberties and human rights.'"
Mabye people will start to realise the absurdity going on.
Happy Thanksgiving, Slashdot!
For some reason neither zdnet nor the submitter give a link to the site and article they are talking about:
an openrights.org blog entry.
The page has a cool link to WriteToThem where UK readers at least can quickly find out who their MEP is and how to contact them.
I honestly firmly don't care about music, songs, movies and enterntainment in general. But I do care about things like biological/technical/scientific advances. But for those advances I am against patents, not copyrights. In fact I am pro-copyrights because they let me control how my work is distributed. So for me what music industry is doing sounds reasonable.
You can't handle the truth.
Just when the petition from http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/ closed.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
They think they can force everybody to use technology that will only benefit them (remember the hard-drives that were supposed to check if the data they copy is copyrighted?).
This arrogance only warrants one thing: that "industry" shall be pirated to the croporate death penalty. The slow one: diminishing into irrelevence and oblivion through gradually diminishing sales.
FreeBSD at about 80 my resignation tangle 0f fatal charnel house. head s4inning conversation and bring your own
...insofar as corporations don't *always* manage to bully or bribe their way to getting legislation passed in their interest and against those of consumers, or citizens in general.
:)
Here in Europe, the success rate for such capers is only about 50%
So let's see what happens this time. Remember, if the EU Parliament doesn't immediately give in, it's still a feasible tactic to target individual countries, bring about some division and then see if the Überparliament has meanwhile changed their tune.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
For Canadians who aren't sure if the new Wiretap legislation or Copyright Act amendment Bill C-60 are good bills, we'll end up with the same push from the CRIA to obtain ISP logs that are supposed to be only available to the police in criminal investigations where they've obtained a warrant.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/
'nuff said.
Havoc Video
"...the Army's attorney general, Joseph Welch, rebuked McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
"McCarthyism took place during a period of intense suspicion in the United States primarily from 1950 to 1954, when the U.S. government was actively countering American Communist Party subversion, its leadership, and others suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. During this period people from all walks of life became the subject of aggressive "witch-hunts," often based on inconclusive or questionable evidence. It grew out of the Second Red Scare that began in the late 1940s and is named after the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican of Wisconsin."
It's ironic that, especially Hollywood, and, the recording industry, so much a target of Joe McCarthy should now be at the forefront of an hysterical witchhunt intent on making criminals of all and sundry.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Who cares? All the copyright cartel needs to do is donate a bunch of CD's to the ISPs, then they can just go in and take whatever they want! I heard Sony is recalling a whole bunch of them (possibly just for this purpose?)
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
When you're done giving them an earful for the winter election, remember to give them an earful about this too. Canada has a tradition of "sane" copyright policy, and let those who want your vote know you have no interest in this insanity being perpetuated here.
..don't panic
After close to 100 years, the music industry is still just is a one-trick pony, isn't it?
don't buy their content!
But you will, won't you. You attention-deficit, attention-seeking, aspirational, apple-loving, consumer media whores.
Also, in case the message wasn't clear, don't steal/borrow/"share" it either.
You wouldn't eat battery farmed eggs, even if they were free, would you! (would you? urgh).
Go back to riding your litle silver scooters, ipods and turtle-necks. You people make me sick.
In the spirit of the story topic, I'm gonna hijack this first post to make my point. Governments are concerned with politics and their constituents. The MP/RIAA are natural enemies to a lot of tax paying voters, plus they've made some major screw ups. For example, the recent Sony screw-up of course, and those false-positives in sending out mass subpoenas. I see governments, particularly on the local level (where there's less lobbying), siding with the people (IE the pirates).
So, in the spirit of the story topic, I'm gonna hijack this first post to make my point. Governments are concerned with politics and their constituents. The MP/RIAA are natural enemies to a lot of tax paying voters, plus they've made some major screw ups. For example, the recent Sony screw-up of course, and those false-positives in sending out mass subpoenas. I see governments, particularly on the local level (where there's less lobbying), siding with the people (IE the pirates) and legislating appropriately.
the industry bullies tech companies (who oddly enough make as much money in a day as the RIAA makes in a week) and keeps down and/or lockes any new tech innovations and somehoe gets to dictate exactly how they work.
The RIAA could litteraly stop all analog radio, CD sales, net streaming, napser, itunes and so on, and offer a propriatery DRM as the ONLY way to get music, and the consumers would just take it accept for the 2% that go rouge, one of which will get a 60 minutes interview from prison just to scare the rest.
We have NO power as long as consumers continue to suck the Industry conglomerates' collective tits, and as long as they are the only place to get the milk...
You say that as if Hollywood is the first group ever to suffer persecution, and then turn around and do it to someone else.
**AA is trying to change the laws in Sweden so they can go after Bittorrent users and thepiratebay admins. Something to be aware of.
Copyright infringement should be an offense punishable by law. Even Creative Commons relies on the basic idea of Copyright. Read this from the Collective Commons Legal Text:
"License THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED. BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR GRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS. "
So even Creative Commons is bound by the idea of Copyright Law.
This is not a bad thing
What is the bad is abuse of Copyright law on both sides.
Either record labels are going to have to get a clue about the digital universe that is expanding and growing around us, or continue to persue Draconian methods of enforcement, and strict Copyright legalities on thier IP.
If they do so, i imagine that the online world will continue its move in another direction, that being more Creative Commons artists, and contributers across a wide spectrum.Releasing works under lisences with terms that we can sleep with at night.
So undermining Copyright law is not a good idea. What is is releasing works that don't punish the consumer/listener for wanting to share.
Thats the labels problem. Not ours.
IANAL,
D
Anyway, insofar as there is any hope for the future (of America or of the world?), the solution is a new and improved legal principle. The default case for data retention should be "No", with an occasional "Hell, no" thrown in. The basic principle is not really all that new, but we need to make it explicit that "we, the people," should own our own personal data, and no one, and especially not private companies like the members of the RIAA should have ANY right to retain our personal information without OUR permission and without telling us what they want to know and what they are going to do with that information.
The natural solution is for the information, even including our personal business records, to be stored on OUR own computers. They can encrypt it and sign it and whatever to protect it, but possession is nine points of the law, and if they have possession, we have nothing to defend. If we are to have any semblance of privacy in the future, we better start thinking NOW about where it is going to be defended.
The next part needs a bit more thinking, but I suspect there is some intrinsic link between privacy and human dignity... However, regardless of those complexities, I'm certain I don't want the RIAA and f[r]iends meddling in my personal life.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If you disagree with this, e-mail the EU representatives (MEPs). Complaining at slashdot won't help. Here's a list of all the email addresses from http://www.europarl.eu.int/ .
List of emails
I have already e-mailed and called my countries. You should do the same.
Sounds odd but that's where I think they're headed.
The music industry needs new artists to keep making money but how to promote this new talent? Spitzer and other AGs are watching over their payola schemes making it harder to get radio airtime. Concerts are good, but getting to be very expensive undertakings. So how does the public get to hear the next great bands?
One way, even though they don't want to admit it, is by P2P networks. It is easy to listen to a song by some new artist you heard about. Very few people have enough money to just go out and buy CDs all the time and the risk of a lot of duds is too great, but downloading has much less adjusted risk, even with the much-publicized lawsuits.
There is a balance that must be achieved: all P2P downloading and no buying means no income for the publishers and artists, yet no downloading cuts off a very vital marketing channel.
With draconian copyright laws it is becomming a more serious offense to make a digital copy than to steal the CD from a store. Worse yet, governments seem all too willing to abdicate enforcement and police powers to these corporations. When the government and RIAA/MPAA have control of our computers and own all our data, it will be too late, the battle will have been lost, and we will enter a new historical period of information slavery.
All attempts to equate P2P with international terrorism must be soundly rebuffed. A threat to failing business models is *NOT* the same as the threat of killing innocent people. How bad to these proposals have to get before the RIAA/MPAA are kicked the hell out of these legal processes?
I guess you're right about the idiots who voted for Dubya...
I think that you are putting words in his mouth. It is reasonable to expect the music industry to try to make what they see as theft illegal. It is not reasonable for them to impose restrictions on the hardware of their legitimate buyers, but I doubt that that was what the gpp was suggesting, and certainly there is no reason to *assume* that that was his intent.
It would be good to stop putting words in people's mouths.
This may sound a little off topic but whenever some other country is trying to manipulate your laws or your reputation and have sent liaison/lawyers/hijackers to make you see things their way, don't back down! Get up and fight!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
50% of the population can't support the other 50% in prison.
The totalitarian UK Government already has unlimited access to ISP records, courtesy of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
RIPA also can force ISPs to install mass surveillance equipment.
I mentioned some of the Govt's other totalitarian laws earlier today.
This is nothing more than an opinion. Period. Factually, piracy is not stealing, but either infringement of copyrights or the sea related kind, which I am too arsed to pull up right now. Piracy = copyright infringement = COPYING and DUPLICATING against the wishes of the copyright holder copyrighted works. Unless you can prove otherwise through coherent reasoning and logical arguments, you are only a RIAA parroting troll.
Hmmm... talk about black and white reasoning... so by your logic, if I pirate something and then buy it later (Don't give me the "buy why would you buy it if you have it for free already..." Fuck you I bought it anyways, sorry it bursts your narrow RIAA logic... ^_^), I am not a consumer by definition just because of the pirating? I consumed the product, so how am I not a sconsumer given the example of what I do?P>
You are only saying this and haven't backed it up with reasoning... you are starting to sound like a troll, and I think you should go to back up your opinion with reasoning right about now.
I don't even know how to properly rebute this one it is quite lame (granted my attempted rebute would be even lamer). Take VS copy arguments anybody? Especially since you apply physically limitative statements to "objects: (1's and 0's, DATA) that can be copied infinitely without property loss to that person.
Not only do you make parritive statements that are unbacked up by fact or otherwise wrong, but you also make sweeping statements that don't accurately portray a good proportion of those posting in this topic. I do not think that most people (except for the DIE-HARDS) think that all copyrights should be abolished.. As for your reasoning about it happening to those who don't live in your fantacy world... How does copying something illegally strip somebody of their rights when they have the powers ("rights") to stop it or try to control it? If you ask me, it is those who are sitting on their asses whining that are loosing their rights because they are not using them.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
The truth is that the copyright system incentivizes a media system that promotes hype over substance. Terrorists exploit that hype to gain dominance and attention in a way they wouldn't be able to otherwise. By themselves, terrorists have no possibility of military dominance, but with the copyright system - they at least have the chance of political dominance.
So in truth, the copyright industry reeks with blazing hypocracy and I wouldn't be supprised if some were doing this simply to hide their own dark role in the matter.
As usual (like all the other steps RIAA/MPAA has taken in the US and abroad) most people won't give a crap, it'll be under-publicized, and politicians will keep worrying about their job as opposed to the will of the people.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
If they want to stop looking like a bunch of greedy fools once in a while they might try donating some of their excess cash to a "good cause" in the last month cnn.com has had: " EBay founder gives $100 million to university" and " Gates loses 'top philanthropist' title" On the list of the top 50 people who have donated the most, not one is connected to the MPAA or RIAA, either they don't have that much donatable cash laying around or they really are that greedy. Now they're even lazier, first they wanted the government to pick up the tab for their "people(RIAA) v possibly suspected music pirate" lawsuits, now they want governments to spend the money, time and effort investigating, prosecuting and imprisoning/executing people who they don't like. That's hundreds to thousands in legal fees a day for the trial and a few hundred for the prison, the governments probably prefer fines so they can get some money out of it, but the industry likes the sound of up to 5 years in federal prison. Even when they were forced to "donate" CDs to public libraries they sent dozens to hundreds of copies of the same unpopular disk.
Here's another one against "Intelligent Design" if the word was intellegently designed the RIAA wouldn't exist or wouldn't be as greedy.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
For some reason neither zdnet nor the submitter give a link to the site and article they are talking about:
:)
an openrights.org blog entry.
Hello. You must be new here.
Did you think somebody would actually RTFA and notice that the submitter posted the wrong link?
This space left intentionally blank.
If "piracy" should be a criminal offence, then infecting hundreds of thousands of computers with rootkits/trojans should be worth a death sentence. SONY/BMG and 1st 4Internet CEOs report to the nearest wall & bring your own blindfold. Virus writers, ditto. How about life sentences for spammers and those who contract for their services? Too expensive, send them to the wall, too. Corporate assholes are quick to demand their customers be jailed, but how they lie and whine when they get caught.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
At least, that's what I thought..
What's more, the european commission and the council of the EU are considering to make patent infringement a criminal offense, too.
Since the european patents office granted 173000 applications last year, it means we basically get 474 new laws each day. This does not take into account the national patent offices.
sales and so on, obligated to care has been my 0nly morning. Now I have website. Mr. de 5how that *BSD has progress. Any the developer fueling internal
ok 1. The EC cannot define criminal offenses only the members can do that. 2. In germany the Supreme Court is currently deciding if the log files of ISPs and carriers can be used at all (apart from investigations into criminal organizations ) if the court decides that all communication logs are specially protected, which is likely ... it doesn't matter what the EC does.
german article:
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,3865 15,00.html
*an infinite number of monkeys wrote this sig
Would that bring the punishements into a sensible alignment and the enforcement into sensible hands? At the moment seeing the big sign in the cinema "Copying this film is worth a 10 million pound fine or 10 years in prison" it's just a joke. You think "How much does the average bank robber get? Is this really in proportion to the crime? Something's wrong here". (In fact many people start whispering to each other obviously loudly things like "Have you remembered to switch the camcorder on" and "Save me a copy will you.")
If it was government enforced then the fines would have to drop to something sensible, and the enforcement would have to fit into the normal priorities of things. Given the amount of minor driving offences and similar that are ignored because there are bigger criminals to go for - perhaps things like breaking the copy protection on CDs would be just ignored. If the police started doing raids on ordinary people for such minor offences then the politicians would see no end of bad press.
The other thing to wonder is how long will it be before they try to pass a bill requiring all record labels to back them or something similar. They've already tried to make analog content illegal, how long before they assert rights over music that isn't their own? How long before we have each label using their own DRM program that eats 5% of your CPU. So i'd want one for my ipod, i'd have to have the apple version. Then i'd want one for my media center, i'd need the microsoft version. Then i'd want a copy i could play on my sony stereo system that only supports ATRAC, well that would require a sony system. Thats 15% of my cpu before we even go into what i'd need to play it in my car etc. It's ridiculous and people have to see it. And if you don't want to get rootkitted, you download the track through p2p and the industry comes chasing after you even if you bought the DRMed CD already.
you can't win under this system, but you can put up a good fight to stop it taking over
~HTP~ Hug that tux
"But ... a group of media companies .. has lobbied the EU to allow this data to be used to investigate all crimes, not just serious offences such as terrorism."
... Oh look, we can use it to enforce parking tickets too, let's make it. standard operating procedure".
Yes, that seems about right: "We need this extreme measure to fight terrorism. OK, you agreed to that out of fear.
Can you say "erosion of liberty"?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Ok, since most visitors of /. are in the US, a couple of things need to be cleared up. I'm American but live in Hamburg Germany.
The EU, as an establishment, have very little power over the member countries. It's much like the UN, which is a totally lame organization and always has been, but that's not the point.
The EU can recommend all they want but can't "enforce" anything unless the member states choose to do so. The EU does not have any enforcement branch whatsoever.
All the activist documents and webpages say that the European Parliament will be voting on this on the 13th of December.
However, I just had a look at the parliament's own pages, dealing with the plenary session in question (12th to 15th December 2005), and it looks to me like the matter will be up for voting already on the 12th. I'm no great genius at figuring out the (deliberately?) Byzantine structure of the EU's documentation, but that's what it looks like to me.
Draft agenda for the plenary session, 12 December 2005
- Peter Ravn Rasmussen
ASSOCIATION = Appropriate recording industry association, such as RIAA, BPI, IFPI, SDMI, ARIA, ETC.
Indies need to label their albums specifically stating that they are not $ASSOCIATION members.
This sort of labeling was done in the US in the early 20th century to indicate non-membership in the various Trusts and cartels of the era.
I was disgusted when I watched a movie in the cinema and before it started they showed that copyright notice that said 'copyright theft helps terrorism'. I was so, so disgusted. Can we have enough of this bullshit?! It's becoming the norm that anyone with an unreasonable case to make only has to come up with a bullshit statement like "helps terrorism" or "hates America" for them to think that they've made the point without needing a proof. I can't have much respect for a rich organisation which propaganda resembles that of a stupid usenet troll. I'm also starting to feel a wish to shoot everyone who makes this "helps terrorism" bullshit to push their case.
The ORG are having a public meeting in London next week, so RSVP if you can make it.
The pledge drive is getting close to completion, so if you want to be one of the thousand founding donors, you need to hurry as there are 39 places left.
...it seems that the RIAA and co. have hijacked the term 'piracy' to mean 'the creation/distribution of bootleg copies'. They are either uncaring or forgetful the original meaning of the word, even though reminders continue to make themselves known...
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
...but it's a small price to pay to know that out there, many idiots like you are ruining their liver over false problems such as this one. Here's hoping that you smarten the fuck up, get over yourself and start looking around and seeing the _real_ problems around you. HTH, HAND.
Also, you're certainly nowhere near "insightful". Fucking mods better go back watch Hardball if this is your idea of well-expressed insight.
RIAA has just announce the successful conviction using the new law. Mary Elizabeth Johansen was just sentances to 135,439 years to be served consecutively after she "left a new peer to peer program running" over her Christmas break while traveling to to see family. Her father was hoping that she would not be charged as an adult, but the judge said his hands were tied and the law required it. RIAA helped out by sending a group to help talk about the new law to her 3rd grade class.
Typical shite for brains moderation, eh? An "off topic" mod would be justified by the focus of the article on the European aspects of the same problems. THe "troll" and "flamebait" mods are just "I disagree" mods from typical Bushevik maroons.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The http://digital-copyright.ca/ will be helping people to find their candidates as well as other people who are interested in these areas of policy.
While the SonyBMG RootKit scandal that the current Government wishes to legally protect won't be as well known as the Sponsorship Scandal, we should still do what we can to expose the problems.
Digital Copyright Canada forum