Bearshare Shut Down by RIAA

Pichu0102 writes "According to WebProNews, Bearshare has been shut down by the RIAA." From the article: " Online file-sharing service BearShare, along with operators Free Peers Inc., is packing it up due to a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. The conditions of the settlement were agreed to by the P2P company to avoid further copyright infringement litigation."

Comments

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

who actually uses bear share anyway?

Re:lol

[larry bagina]

currently... no one.

Re:lol

[secolactico]

I remember bearshare vaguely. Wasn't that a gnutella client with built-in spyware?

Re:lol

[linvir]

I think you mean "with advertising support".

Re:lol

[leuk_he]

Well appearantly a lot of people still use it. How else could they have 4.2 million dollars earned with installing spyware?

Don't know is this a reason to laugh.

But gnutella network? not even g2? cry....

And in other news.....

[Anonymous Coward]

...today a new startup called ShareBear P2P was just formed....film at 11.

so what you're saying is...

[larry bagina]

I just heard some sad news on slashdot - P2P/Warez appBearshare was found dead in their New York colo this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss them- even if you didn't enjoy downloading britney spears songs or installing bonzai buddy, there's no denying their contributions to FREE music. Truly a DMCA icon.

Why spare the big fish?

[bogaboga]

The Emule network is bigger. Why spare it? I have just checked it out and find that the available files now are 677.5 million with about 11 million users. Heck, this beast is huge!

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[larry bagina]

Some of the index servers have been seized recently.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do some lookups on the IPs and corresponding owners of some of the most popular eMule servers (Untouchable 2.0, for instance), you'll see that they're owned by anti-piracy firms. They are most likely logging and building evidence for further litigation by the RIAA.

I imagine they see it as being more worthwhile to their cause to moniter these networks and sue users than shut them down and risk a more secure/anonymous service replacing them.

Be very careful what servers you allow your client to connect to; always doublecheck who owns them and their corresponding nameservers.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[TubeSteak]

From TFA:

BearShare was among several P2P service to receive cease-and-desist letters from the RIAA in September of last year. Others include Warez P2P, Limewire, eDonkey, and Soulseek, all of whom have not yet reached a settlement.

Anyways, shutting down these businesses won't actually kill their networks. I can't think of any networks that are centralized like Napster used to be.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[TubeSteak]

When you're logged in, go here: http://yro.slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome

The very first drop down box is: Date/Time Format

You can change that & /. will show whatever variation on day, date, month, year, and/or time that you could want.

and if you do a quick search, you'll find references to 2006 in the thread.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[kimvette]

OMG, the URLs are not Y2.1K compliant. Whatever will Slashdot users do in the 2099/2100 rollover and afterward? They'll be all confoozled when they can't tell whether a DMCA article was posted in 2006 or 2106! The sky will fall, cats will be sleeping with dogs, and men will be marrying men. Oh the horror!

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[alanthenerd]

Mine says "Posted by ScuttleMonkey on 17:11 Wednesday 22 February 2006".
Check your preferences, there are many different date display formats available.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[AnyoneEB]

Or if you want to be really paranoid and still use eMule, just do not connect to any servers. Kad searches usually get a lot more results than global server searches anyway.

Re:Why spare the big fish?

[AnyoneEB]

Traditional eDonkey requires servers, at least. Of course, if every eDonkey server got shut down, then the network would probably improve because then everyone would be connected to Kad.

So ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA guys are paying the Bearshare company 30m right? As a compensation for redtape strongarm tactics?

WebProNews

[larry bagina]

I can't be the only one to notice... WebPronEws.

Re:WebProNews

[HermanAB]

pron ews...

AC/DC: "Dirty deeds, done with sheep..."

RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[unity100]

But different from the times of Teddy Roosevelt, this time they are hiding behind outdated intellectual property laws from the last century - the times when something was reproducable and distributable at great cost. The cost of reproduction and distribution of intellectual property items (mainly songs, text, publications etc) have taken a deep dive, but prices have not. They want to preserve this profit margin, and they are maintaining a rightful face because of the a century old laws.

But in fact, what they are doing is a new style of Robber Baron practice.

We need a new Teddy Roosevelt.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Anonymous Coward]

The loss of Eldred_v._Ashcroft was bad enough. Essentially Congress now has unlimited power.

Having Supreme Court Justicies like Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't help. She and her mother are outspoken attorneys in favor of unlimited IP rights and unlimited congressional powers. Remember kids, if you extend a law for 50 years every 10 years, ad infinitum, that's not "unlimited"!

Now we're seeing things like the JRMI Model Train SDK project getting sued (1/2 pg. down) for $300,000.00 for infringing patents. The impact of this kind of suit on small software developers, whether free or closed, will be devastating.

And the DMCA getting new provisions that treat IP violations like drug crimes...forfiture of property! That's right, if little Bobby downloads a song from the internet, the RIAA can seize your house, car, property, etc.

Yay America! The land of freedom and liberty!

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[the eric conspiracy]

Sorry - but your premise seems rather faulty to me. The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press. With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

No, what we have now is a classic black market situation. With the price of the goods controlled at artificially high levels through taxation or regulation there will always be an underground trade in the goods in question, whether it be in alcohol, drugs or music. There is really no way to prevent it unless you find a strong technological countermeasure.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[ScentCone]

RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

The RIAA (unlike, say, Standard Oil back in the day, etc) is just a trade association, acting on behalf of its member companies, who in turn act on behalf of the people who hired them to handle a portion of their business affairs: the artists who want to publish their music and get paid for it. Your "robber barons" are Bono, KT Tunstall, Celine Dion, Slipknot, 50 Cent, and every other artist that uses an RIAA-member company to deal with the money side of their publishing.

Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

Further, all you have to do is just not consume the music by these artists you obviously hate. After all, they are the ones that expressly chose to have a company handle their publishing, and to make use of their copyrights on the work they produce. OK, so you hate that... great! That means that you must also, if you have any intellectul honesty, have no interest in being entertained by someone who so annoys you with their business decisions. After all, from the tone of so many conversations one hears, there must by thousands of stellar musicians who have no interest in making a living from their recordings, or in protecting their rights... so, surely somewhere in that range of non-profit musicians (or, musicians willing to hope you'll send some money when you download a "free" copy of their work) that will replace, for you, the stupid, annoying, robber-baron musicians you don't really like anyway.

After all, music is a natural resource, just like oil, and it's being controlled by Evil Robber Barons! What? It's up to the musician to decide if they agree with you, and want to give their work away, or sell it through a different pricing model? How likely is it that you're rationally persuading the artist to see things differently when you're ripping them off, contrary to the very business model they've chosen to use to make a living? Don't like the choice your favorite new musician made? Choose another musician to amuse you since you're too cheap to spend a single damn dollar for a song. Really, "Robber Barons." Amazing.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much unless you happened to have the rather large capital investment sitting there in the form of a Linotype machine and a web-fed printing press.

You hit the nail on the head - back when the social compact of copyright was created - we, the people, did not give up much on our end of the bargain. Since, as you said, it wasn't easy to make copies back then, so giving up the inherent natural right to make copies was no big deal.

Now that copying is easy for anyone and everyone, that bargain is no longer so favorable to us, the people and we want to renegotiate.

The problem is, the entrenched copyright cartel thinks they don't have to renegotiate, that they can just dictate terms. That is a severe denial of reality on their part.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

Yes.

Because that trade association is comprised of approximately 5 large companies that together account for over 90% of the market for all media in the western, and most of the eastern, world.

That makes them an oligopoly, who is just as cut-throat and abusive as his neighbor, monopoly.

It's up to the musician to decide if they agree with you, and want to give their work away, or sell it through a different pricing model?

That's tantamount to asking if it is up to Boeing and Airbus to decide if they agree with gravity and want to make planes that work with gravity or if they should purchase a law that makes gravity illegal instead.

It is human nature to make copies of stuff we like. People have been making mix-tapes since they first invented reel-to-reel recorders and people have been making copies of books since pen and ink were first invented.

Now that the tools to make millions of digital copies for effectively no cost at all are in the hands of hundreds of millions of people, trying to outlaw human nature's desire to copy is like outlawing gravity.

These artists need to realize that the market has changed if they don't figure out how to change with it, the new gravity is going to crush them. Just like any other business that has had to deal with revolutionary changes in technology. Keep making buggy-whips and try to outlaw cars, or start building engines instead - their choice.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so.

Putting more precision on it, the effect is to make copyright less enforceable and proportionally more expensive to society at large.

An unenforceable law is a plague and a cancer. It spreads fear and encourages contempt for the law. Attempts to enforce an unenforceable law lead to the DMCA, the War on Drugs Used By Nonwhite People, and the like.

The burden of copyright didn't show up when you needed a press more expensive than a house to publish a book. Suppose it's 1940 and suppose I don't know the real numbers so I gasify that a book costs $2 to print and $.05 in royalties. The royalties don't stop publication. Fast forward to now. What does it cost to move an ebook from New York to Los Angeles? Unmeasurable. What happens when someone demands a fifty-cent royalty? That poor ebook probably doesn't get out on the Internet.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[unity100]

Your "robber barons" are Bono, KT Tunstall, Celine Dion, Slipknot, 50 Cent, and every other artist that uses an RIAA-member company to deal with the money side of their publishing.......Are you really comparing a relative monopoly on, say, energy distribution, mining, or rail transport with a trade association made up of hundreds of publishing companies representing thousands of artists?

Indeed !

The difference in formation/nature of an organisation from another is not much important, if the two entities produce the same negative effect.

It (the monopoly type) is just apparent, obvious and already identified and known as a 'bad effect' in the case of mining, oil or other type of monopolies in already long established fields, but even the very nature of multimedia loaded internet, heck the workings, social aspects of the internet are not known yet. It wont be much to people's surprise when in the future we identify what is exactly doing what, and discover that centuries old concepts are not too valid for application on internet.

Further, all you have to do is just not consume the music by these artists you obviously hate. After all, they are the ones that expressly chose to have a company handle their publishing, and to make use of their copyrights on the work they produce. OK, so you hate that... great! That means that you must also, if you have any intellectul honesty, have no interest in being entertained by someone who so annoys you with their business decisions. After all, from the tone of so many conversations one hears, there must by thousands of stellar musicians who have no interest in making a living from their recordings, or in protecting their rights... so, surely somewhere in that range of non-profit musicians (or, musicians willing to hope you'll send some money when you download a "free" copy of their work) that will replace, for you, the stupid, annoying, robber-baron musicians you don't really like anyway.

I must point out that, i already havent ever made any consumptuion of any products of most of the 'artists' you gave as examples.

The proposition you make seems right in that 'just do not buy then'. But it is not !..

RIAA is setting a trend, it is setting standards on price, proceedings and on how and in which way the products should be consumed, who should sell their products for what price, and who should not even sell.

And they happen not to be conscious moves by the RIAA or participating artists at all ! You set something in motion, somebody does something, and in an unknown field, others take their action as example.

What is the result ? The result is, even though they might be willing to let us use their product in ways different than RIAA enforces, or in prices other than the group setting the trend with RIAA emphasizes, they can not.

Why they can not ? Because the publishing companies will not accept them, instead of 'artists' who are willing to sell their products at a higher price, hence a higher profit for the publisher.

And it is an endless cycle - if you do not provide more profit margin for the publisher - ie you go all 'hip' with the new understanding of 'the people' on the net - the publisher wont help you sell your products. And furthermore, they are actually making it impossible for such 'renegade' artists to distrubute by bypassing them, through RIAA, with various absurd legal proceedings and patents they are chasing.

In short, whatever RIAA does, even though i do not use any, is harming me. Not only in the case of products, but for net neutrality, freedom of speech and privacy too - as RIAA is pushing for medieval measures in many areas related to internet.

Re:RIAA = New entourage of robber barons

[unity100]

You are missing one point here :

The high prices that the products were sold by then were justified - it was an ethical profit on top of the cost. However it is not now. The prices are the same, but the cost is too little.

Its no logic to propose 'it is free market, if you choose so you buy it if not you do not, and invisible hand adjusts the prices' - no !

Its free market when the market is free. And with the publishers, RIAA, their money greedy extravagantly living 'artists', and their purchased senators, market is NOT free, and the invisible hand is in fact the hand of RIAA.

Hence there is not a free market, free price situation here - the public are not willing to pay these exorbitant prices, but IN LIEU of market's wishes, these prices are FORCED upon the public. The result ? Piracy.

As there is monopolisation of a different sort in this case, the exorbitant prices can not be shown as justified and legal - they are just highway robbery.

The invisible hand is still dictating the prices though - for mp3s that cost almost nothing to reproduce, it dictated that its price should be zero, or close to zero. Hence people are either acquiring it 'for free', or they are buying them for only prices in vicinity of 'cents'.

Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[Zaphod2016]

I first learned about BearShare and LimeWire aroud the same time. Mid-2000 if memory serves. Napster had recently "gone down" and I was still in the middle of my "wow- I missed 100's of years worth of awesome music" phase.

Ok, so here come the "RIAA is evil" rants. I can accept that (after all, this is /.). However, please consider:

• One of the major anti-RIAA arguments around these parts is that they don't actually do anything to benefit anyone. I agree 100%. But that said, how can we cry over a company which made ad revenues based on pirated content? Scum versus scam: who cares who wins? We are the losers.

• In six years, I could have downloaded more music than I will ever have the time to listen to. Long before BearShare went down, tons of new p2p services appeared. The RIAA can keep playing "whack-a-mole" for the next 100 years (and I'm sure they intend to) but "Joe User" will *still* be "illegally" downloading and sharing the "Black album" no matter how many times the drummer of Metallica cries about it.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[ScrewMaster]

The reason that the RIAA and the MPAA are so dangerous is not because of a bunch of lawsuits or their gangsterism (although those are bad enough) it's because of the truly bad law for which they've been largely responsible. I couldn't care less if they want to keep distribution rights to crummy modern music ... I do however care when they create laws (and the DMCA didn't just happen because Congress thought it was a good idea, the media companies basically paid for it) that negatively impact everyone, in virtually every industry. That makes them reckless at best, treasonous at worst, and so far as I'm concerned they have no right to lay any claim upon me, or anyone else, when it comes to what they so inaptly term "piracy". I sincerely hope that Jack Valenti, Hilary Rosen and all their successors wake up one day in a giant handbasket on final approach to Hell. It's where they belong.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[Zaphod2016]

The reason that the RIAA and the MPAA are so dangerous is...because of the truly bad law for which they've been largely responsible.

I agree 100%. Let me rephrase "point 2":

The USA (a 90% wonderful place) has quite a few "dumb laws" on the books- most put there by crooked goons with corrupt motives. However, we the people have *always* responded to these laws with passive resistance: we ignore them. See also:

• Casual marijuana smokers.
• Shakira fans downloading her latest single.
• Speeding past that "dead part" of town at 3am.

Let them pass their laws. And let the people ignore them. Remember: they can't afford to keep ALL 300 MILLION of us in jail no matter how much money they print.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[h4rm0ny]

No they can't but when nearly everyone is guilty of something, then they can selectively enforce the laws on those they dislike. Cause enough trouble and the law will be enforced, just for you.

Best fight the new laws every which way you can. That said though, you do have a good point. A law is what certain people think. It isn't something you have to obey.

Re:Why I'm not afraid of the RIAA

[a_nonamiss]

Sorry, man. I love your attitude, and I think you are 100% correct idealogically, but that's not really how it would work. Unless you have a fair amount of money to start off with, (in the tens of thousands or more) you'll have a tough time finding a lawyer that will take this without being paid up front. It's not like you spilled hot coffee on your vagina and are suing McDonald's for $30 million. Many decent lawyers would jump at a case like that, because there is a reasonable chance that they could make bank on it. 25% of $30 million is a nice paycheck. No, in your case, the lawyer knows that the **AA will fight the case tooth and nail, regardless of whether or not they have a case. Chances are, their lawyers, which are not working on contengiency, are very, very good. They can drag it out to take up thousands of hours of your lawyers' time over a couple years. What's more, even if you do win a countersuit, a jury isn't going to award you $30 million out of sympathy. You didn't really lose anything except your time. No deaths or mutilated body parts that will make the jury feel sorry for you. No, at best, you can hope to have your legal fees reimbursed, which isn't going to be even close to 25% of $30 million. Maybe a couple hundred thousand, which your lawyer will gladly take. And there's not even a good chance of that happening.

No, my friend, you would have to pay a large retainer up front. Very large. And chances are, you would not see anything from any of that. Technically, you could win your case, but you will ultimately lose money. Yes, the system is screwed up and unfair, and the **AA knows that. Unfortunately, they are smart, and that's why they use these tactics.

Good ridance to the malware!

[IAmAI]

Nothing against file sharing, but good ridance to that malware infested excuse for a file sharing app.

Re:Good ridance to the malware!

[Motherfucking Shit]

BearShare comes with a bundled copy of SaveNow. The installer explicitly mentions this. Removing it is as simple as killing the process and running the SaveNow uninstaller from Add/Remove Programs, and doing so has no impact on BearShare's usability. I'm no fan of these bundled apps, but this is far from spyware and even malware is a stretch. BearShare is extremely up-front about exactly what is going to be installed, that's a lot more than you can say for many of these apps.

BTW, I haven't RTFA but BearShare is still alive and kicking and you can even still download the installer. As long as people still have the client, the RIAA hasn't "shut down" anything.

Never Never Never give up .....

[leoaugust]

Warez still lives, as it did many years ago .... Drugs still survive despite some high profile victories by the DEA.

It is the same with the RIAA. These and DEA "folks" will keep on busting some high profile targets, but the iceberg like underground trading will forever go on ...

It has always been like this, and will be, even if the "boston strangler" steps in ...

A valuable lesson

[Umbral Blot]

Lesson 1: Don't be centralized.

Re:A valuable lesson

[novus ordo]

I don't know how that is insightful. Gnutella is anything but a centralized network. Are you suggesting running a decentralized corporation to rake in the profits?

Like I said before...

[Red Samurai]

No big deal at all. Bearshare is but a tiny fish in a HUGE ocean.

Nice work...

[Jugalator]

Another company gone thanks to an out-of-court settlement due to RIAA's lawyer army and economical advantage. They've really found out a working model for being right regardless what a boring test in court would say. Your tool can be used to infringe on copyright, therefore it should not exist, and no one has anything to say about the lack of logic in that argument. *AA and all those companies that live on registering, then suing for patent infrigements should merge to form a Coalition of Law Abusing Powers. Now that would be really scary... :-P Corporations that harvest the economy crops on destroying things rather than constructing. Unfortunately for the media business, they need the latter today, not the former, assuming they wish to keep their customers that is. It's a funny world when you're better supported by pirates than iTunes if you wish to use your music.

New Business Plan...

[Chaffar]

1. Create shady online file-sharing service.
2. Attract attention to yourself by any means possible EXCEPT by becoming popular amongst users.
3. Get paid 30M $ to stop your illegal activities.
4. Profit.

Keep this one in mind kids, it's not everyday you get a 4-step solution to easy money with all 4 steps included :)

Re:New Business Plan...

[Zocalo]

Actually, there are a couple of not insignificant flaws with your steps numbered #3 and #4:

3. Pay $30M to prevent further copyright infringement lawsuits.
4. Loss.

Although step 4 could be profit if can you manage to clear more than your settlement in subscription fees, ad revenue and then selling on the personal details of your subscribers once all other operating expenses are taken into account. That probably didn't happen here though, and is unlikely to happen to the next "business" to try using this kind of business model and subsequently attracts the legal wrath of the media industry either.

A more detailed account of this tail.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22181
I have not used Bearshare for years.
it's just another gnutella clients.
Only with spyware the edonkey/emule network is better anyway and its open source.

ummm if they've ceased??? why is their website up?

[atarione]

http://www.bearshare.com/

d/l of bs clinet still active too.. as of 12:37PM PST

a new Teddy Roosevelt

[nurb432]

Dont hold your breath for one. No one has the balls for it. ( and i dont blame them, with the way things work now )

Not in fact true

[GillesL]

Considering that I went to Bearshare website... got the software and got a song "Let it be" by the Beatles... about 1 minute ago, I would say that the story is not exactly true.

Re:Is it centralized?

[ScrewMaster]

This is yet another high-profile "victory" in the RIAA's neverending and largely ineffective propaganda campaign. Will it have any practical effect upon the popularity of file sharing? Probably not, but the RIAA looks good, and it does set a nice precedent when it comes to suing other outfits like Limewire. Too bad there's so many nice open source multi-platform Gnutella clients out there.

If the management of the RIAA's member companies were to take a long, hard look at what the RIAA has actually accomplished (e.g., alienated the customer base, eliminated profitable new recording technologies, and given the whole business a black eye, PR-wise) they might begin to wonder about the RIAA's relevance to the modern world. Although, in truth, companies like Sony have management that is just as sleazy, and are perfectly capable of alienating customers without the RIAA's dubious assistance.

Actually it's easy to stop this illegality

[Colin Smith]

Make it legal. After all, how much of your taxes are going on enforcement?

Oblig Puns

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they couldn't "bear" the legal fees for the case.

It was a "grizzly" trial.

The RIAA really got their fur ruffed by BearShare's actions.

Lets all give "paws" and contemplate this change in the P2P landscape.

This is the end of BearShare's "tail".

The 800lb Gorilla beat the Bear!

Given the spyware and malware...

[jd]

It was closer to flesh-eating bacteria. Piracy, like the poor, will always exist. There are ways to limit the scope, though. In the case of the RIAA, hiring fewer prostitutes and spending less on cocaine would probably be an excellent start. The savings should be enough to maintain the profit margins even after slashing CD prices in half.

Your view depends on your goals.

[twitter]

The fall in cost of reproduction and distribution seems to me to make copyright laws more relevant than less so. When it was expensive to reproduce original works, the incentive to do so is minimal and copyright laws didn't matter very much...With modern technologies reducing such costs, the incentive to copy becomes much greater.

You have completely missunderstood the purpose of copyright and give undue importance to all the wrong things. If the goal of copyright is to make money for publishers, your reasoning is correct. If the goal of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", you are wrong. The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, despite the tremendous cost of publishing at the time. The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money. As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes. The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living. Exclusive franchises were hated then and should be today.

The RIAA are demanding government protection from legitimate competitors and a defacto control of culture. If you don't understand this, you don't understand how the music industry works. It's not so much your ability to get music that matters to them, it's their inability to control what you are exposed to that scares them to death. They seek to perpetuate an empire of control based on the technical limitations of 20th century broadcast and recording technology and a great deal of racketeering. Without RIAA only stores, selling junk sampled on the nations three radio networks, the world's big three music publishers start to look as good or worse than any other music publisher. Musicians and artists would then be able to market themselves freely and keep more of their earnings and the industry would collapse. Make no mistake at the level of control they seek with DRM and broadcast flags. They want the ability to limit what you are exposed to and are willing to pay for and then to squeeze you for every play while paying the artist next to nothing. The riches they earn are based on exclusion and extortion, not on the promotion of excellence and that directly contradicts the purpose of copyright.

In a world of cheap publishing there should be as many publishers as there are artists. Why not? Anyone can set up a web page. There's no longer a technical reason to reject any manuscript and not offer it to the public. The previous legitimate purpose of publishers, to chose and promote excellence, has been also co-opted by web. Copyright laws, based on paper and mechanical copy are insanely restrictive and obsolete.

Re:Your view depends on your goals.

[Haeleth]

The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, despite the tremendous cost of publishing at the time. The goal is to spread information and culture, not to make sure a bunch of greedheads have money. As the cost of that spread declines, the time required to recoup costs diminishes and vanishes.

Diminishes, perhaps. But it will never vanish, because you have to take into account the cost of production as well as the cost of distribution. Music and movies and books do not spring into existence fully formed: somebody needs to sit down and expend a considerable amount of time and effort -- and hence money -- creating them.

Limited copyright is essential as a means of enabling them to recoup that. The GP's point is that as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes easier and easier for society to say "I like that song, but I can copy it for free, so I don't have to pay you for it." And at that point, the incentive to write another great song is gone... and society is the poorer.

Therefore, as the cost of copying diminishes, it becomes necessary either to enforce copyright law more strictly, or to find another means of compensating artists for their work. Right now, however, copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. It's not perfect, any more than capitalism and democracy are perfect; it's just that all the other systems anyone's ever proposed are even worse. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

The spirit of America is that you are free to do what you want but no one owes you a living.

Nobody owes you one, sure. But if society doesn't allow you to make a living doing something, you aren't going to do it. So you could say that society owes it to itself to provide artists with a living...

Re:Your view depends on your goals.

[twitter]

... copyright is the best means we've found to compensate artists. If you have a better idea, of course, do pray share it with us.

No it's not and it's only part of the problem. The current system does not pay artists. Exclusive franchises never pay anyone but themselves and they are entirely clueless. People have been making, sharing and profiting from music long before mass production and insane copyright laws. They will continue to do so. These guys figured out how to make plenty of money and let people share their music a long time ago. You make money doing things for people. The music industry does very little of that but keeps the rewards for itself. Copyright is only one of their tools. Creative Commons is trying to pull something useful from copyright laws. You can be sure they are on the RIAA hit list.

Uh oh, not Yogi Bearshare!

[Orion Blastar]

Bonzi Buddy "Hey Yogi, are you still hosting servers for that P2P filesharing network?"

Yogi Bearshare "Of course, Bonzi Buddy, how else can I afford to keep buying Picnic Baskets full of food? All I have to do is help people pirate music files and show advertising in their faces as they use my malware designed application."

Bonzi Buddy "But Yogi, Ranger RIAA won't like it."

Yogi Bearshare "Forget the Ranger, Bonzi Buddy, we are going to make a fortune."

Spiney Shyster "Excuse me, are you Yogi Bearshare?"

Yogi Bearshare "Of course, are you an advertiser who wants to advertise on my P2P file sharing network?"

Bonzi Buddy "Uh oh, I don't like the sound of this Yogi."

Yogi Bearshare "Nonsense, Bonzi Buddy, so whadda ya want Mack?"

Spiney Shyster "Here is a subpeona to appear in court, Ranger RIAA is suing you for $30 Million."

Re:Someone ought to see Xerox

[Tenebrious1]

Whats the difference between: a) taking a CD, ripping the song to a lower-quality format like an mp3 and then making hundreds of copies of it; and, b) taking copyrighted printed material, and then making hundreds of photocopies of it? Think of the billions of documents illegally photocopied every year. By the Supreme Court's own logic, unless Xerox can find a way to prevent photocopying of copyrighted documents, they must cease and desist selling photocopiers. And since we all know thats not going to happen, I guess someone really needs to sue Xerox.

A good book is 500 pages. If it's a paperback, you can get two pages per photocopy, so that's only 250 pages to photocopy the book. 500 copies of that will cost you $750 in paper. $2000 in toner. $2500 in shipping to send it to people. That comes to about $10.50 per copy, and take at least 80 hours on a high speed copier (not including time to reload paper, change toner, service the machine... and triple that if you want them bound) and who knows how much electricity it would take. Not to mention the cost of the high speed copier, which is thousands of dollars itself. I don't want to even think how long it would take on a personal laserjet.

A CD costs $20. Making an MP3 of the song costs you nothing but a couple minutes of your time. Enabling that MP3 to be downloaded from your machine costs you $39.99 for the internet access, but you're probably already paying for that so it costs you nothing. Having it downloaded from your machine via P2P would cost you nothing.

1000 copies of the book would cost you $10,500 out of your pocket. 1000 copies of the MP3 distributed from your machine would cost you no more than 1 copy.

Yes, a judge has said that p2p is like the photocopier, in that they have legitimate uses but can be used to violate copyright. However, the difference between photocopying books and distributing MP3s is the large amount of resources required to photocopy things, and also the low quality of photocopies. MP3s get copied perfectly each and every time and the costs are negligible. That's the difference.

Artists shouldn't surrender rights

[fishbowl]

If you're an artist, don't surrender your rights to anyone. If that means you need a day job to support your art, so be it. If everyone refused, the media corporations would fall in a day.

Re:Artists shouldn't surrender rights

[Opportunist]

Unfortunately, few "artists" (at least those that sell to the corps) do it for art. They do it for money. They couldn't care less what their music tells or what it stands for, they would sing about the size of their last turd if someone would dish out money for it.

Music is just the vessel. If something else would have to be done to get the big bucks, they'd do that instead.

Sometimes /. freaks me out

[alx5000]

76 replies to the year problem:

• 38 noting you can change date/time format in preferences
• 2 how-to's on doing it.
• 1 freak who actually checked all Feb 22 back to 1995.
• 3 Y2K jokes (I actually laughed at the first one)
• 4 clueless people that wouldn't read any Informative's but still complain about the damn thing
• The other 29 are just ranting about SlashCode

Yeah. It damn feels like home.

So for the millions who already have it?

[Rasio]

What happens if I've had it installed for over a year. . .this reminds me of Kazaa Lite K++, even after it was taken off servers if you had the program already you were still set. What are they really accomplishing?