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130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany
Flo writes "Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement."
I invoke Godwin. Thread closed.
But noone mentioned the Nazis... aw shoot, I guess I just did. :/
Thread closed, sorry folks.
Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files.
I hereby invoke my Triple-S Rule which stats: Sharing Shit (they) Shouldn't
News flash: Break the law, and you might get caught.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Law enforcement officials ARE running servers. I think this has been mentioned on Slashdot before... at least I think someone traced a server group to Sony or the RIAA or something.
If you're american, just shut off all peer connections from your comrades in the states.. connect to japanese/canadians/europeans.. I'm sure they'll be happy to share files with you.
Last week I was sitting around, screwing around on fark.com, when there was a knock at the door. My mom awnsered it, and it was an individual claiming to be from the RIAA, along with two county sheriff's deputies. My mom (stupidly) let them in, and the deputies came into my room and proceeded to throw me to the ground while the RIAA guy started looking around on my computer. I demanded to see a warrant and informed them that they did not have permission to search my belongings, but they said that they didn't need one due to some new state law (I live in Missouri). Anyway, they eventually found my stash of MP3s and my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your auntie and your uncle to Bel-Air" I whistled for a cab and when it came near the licensplate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to Bel-Air! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight, and I yelled to the cabby yo, home smell you later. Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to settle my throne as the prince of Bel-Air.
I'm officially Godwining all "Filesharing isn't theft" threads.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This is excellent news. The IP rights-holders appear to be responsibly investigating the actions of people violating copyright law.
I'd rather have a million more Jane Doe lawsuits and investigations like this one before DRM achieves greater legal backing than (in the United States, anyway) the DMCA already gives it.
Copyright holders have always had the right to take legal action against copyright violators, but they made a tactical error when they chose to fight Napster instead of the users, and when they attempt to pass laws instead of civilly enforcing existing laws.
It looks a lot of filesharing is going back to sneakernet like it was in the 1970's.
I wonder if they raided any homes with a wireless AP being leached by a neighbor. That could be fun when they can't find evidance.
The truth shall set you free!
Unfortunately you're confusing stealing, where the property owner actually loses something, and copyright infringement, which, arguably, is quite a different thing.
Tired of blaming Disney and the US government for extending copyright protections? You had the wrong target anyway... the US and the rest of the world usually falls right behind Germany's lead in extending their terms to reach back until 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property, and they've been fierce in protections ever since. International trade agreements means that everyone has to play by aproximately the same rules in this space, and decent copyright terms are now long dead.
Copyright Infringement in this case is stealing, though I believe there is equal fault in both sides because the insane markup by the RIAA is tantamount to Grand Larceny, if the artists marketed the songs direct and you shared them, however, that shouldn't be legal, as the author deserves some proceeds from their work.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1196
Huh?? I thought the Godwin law was all about comparisons to Hitler and the 3rd Reich?
You just got troll'd!
(from what I could understand of the poorly translated article) the police were involved because there was illegal/criminal material being shared (kiddie-pr0n), and the people sharing music were just a bonus.
I couldnt see where in the article that the server was being run by RIAA(or similar organisation) as another poster suggested.
Is copying music a criminal or civil offense in Germany? And do their police get involved in catching breakers of civil laws as well as the breakers of criminal laws?
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
I fail to see how it's equal to stealing in this case, in ANY meaningful way, when the people who are downloading copies of the music probably weren't going to buy it in the first place.
I suppose I agree with you, I was just thinking out loud. It isn't right for the artists to get no compensation, and I guess I feel that if its made entirely legal people will download even if they would've bought otherwise sometime, there has to be a system whereby the artist gets compensated for their work but we can still abandon the cruel world of DRM and lawsuits, and I just don't know how to create that for music. For software its alot easier, corporations need to buy corporate licenses, but corporate software should be available to everyone else for free, since people would obviously never buy $1,000 software, there should at least be a way for them to learn it and try it out, and since corporations have the money to pay for licenses and would rather that than paying lawyers in lawsuits, they pay for licensing, in that case I think there is a solution, but i just don't know about music.
Eigo igai no gengo wa dame da yo!
...are? (x_x)
And you're 100% correct, it isn't right for the artists to get no compensation, but I don't think they get very much from CD sales. Granted, it gets their name out there, but I think that most of their money comes from live touring (although I'm not an expert by far). If that's true, which it may or may not be, it seems like the only way the current model helps the artists is by getting their name out there. But I'm probably wrong and look like a jackass.
I don't know the answer, but I think they deserve compensation for the song still. I think they deserve all the compensation people give them in fact, and I think the record companies should be completely cut out. Technology has gotten to the point that artists could publish their own music, I don't see why more people don't do that and keep the profits from selling it downloaded online. Or even make a new association to distribute music that benefits the artists, not record companies, something nonprofit.
Hmmmm yes, raiding people's homes is clearly a fair and balanced response to allegations of copyright infringement.
Yes, but likewise you don't hear about Germany applying pressures to the USA for copyright extensions. Though they might be worse nationally, the extention propositions have always come from internal corporate lobbying pressures; and not a sense to "catch up with the rest of the world."
It's sad really, as its meant the death of one of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements: the public domain. I equate it to the extermination of public libraries; sacrificing the bettering of society for the sake of saturating the corporate coffers. Of course, when politicians in charge of copyright reforms in the US are themselves bribed (via election funds) $300,000 by entertainment conglomerates, how can we expect any differently.
I'm not saying that corporate concerns should have no say in law-making; I'm saying that the laws that are being designed right now should have more of a balance.
> I'm as liberal as the next guy, but people who steal things understand the risks involved, or if they don't, they deserve what they get simply out of ignorance.
;)
People who use the law to defend industries for which there is no longer any need are enemies of the people.
The recording industry should just die. File sharing is the best thing to happen to music since the invention of the LP (it completely rekindled my interest in popular music after years of apathy, and the same goes for many of my friends). Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer. Well, it's quite clear that the interests of the consumer are served better by the free exchange of music than by having to financially support an industry.
People will still make and distribute music if they aren't being paid (for all sorts of reasons). If you don't want to, you don't have to. But don't crap on the listeners who have no need to support an outmoded business model. No one has any moral right to make money from music, just as no one has any moral right to make other people pay every time they tell a story you told them.
File sharing is like marijuana - you just aren't going to be able to stop people from doing it.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Godwin's law is an analogy about inevitability. As in, it's inevitable that these stories start a long flamewar about the meaning of "stealing" or "theft".
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
How do they prove you were sharing the whole file? As far as I know p2p works by downloading from multiple connections and unless they dedicated a single connection to each of the 3500 or so people they charged can you still get charged if you don't deliver the whole shared file? I know some p2p apps check for junk data, so what if you insert N amount of junk data into what you are sharing which makes it unusable on its own? One situation I can think of is if you were sharing JPEG images have 90% of people sharing portions of the image data as well as ALL the data in between the JPEG markers (I picked the majority sharing this data since its the majority of the data) and 10% of people only sharing the markers and offsets to the next markers with the rest of the data in between being junk random data. You could use some other flag to indicate which of the two types of data the people are actually sharing so the application wouldn't download too much known junk data. Either data downloaded from a single peer on its own is basically unusable and on its own could not be used to render an image, could something similar be done for MP3s and does anyone know the legality of it?
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I fail to see how it's equal to stealing in this case, in ANY meaningful way, when the people who are downloading copies of the music probably weren't going to buy it in the first place.
I don't think the guy who stole my car battery was planning on buying one for himself. That doesn't make sense.
Anyway, the "Probably weren't going to buy it" standard is ridclously low, because why would anyone buy something if they could get it for free? (and with almost no chance of legal reprecussions.) I'll happliy admit that I've bought music only after a fruitless search on the P2P networks and not all of us pirates are poor starving students oppressed by the high cost of CDs.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
What I meant was that, saying something is being stolen in this case is saying that the artist is losing money they wouldn't have made in the first place. They certainly aren't losing music, since it's copied for free anyway. I can't see that the artist is losing anything, so I don't consider it atealing.
Those who argue "Serves them right, they knew it was a crime" don't realize just how bizarre this whole situation is. You have police come to your house, take your computer away, and you'll get fined with thousands of Euros for something which is utterly trivial. If this is taken to an extreme, it's even worse than the "war on drugs": You don't even have to leave your house to be labeled a criminal.
The music industry has this funny idea that they can scare consumers into using iTunes and similar networks. This will work -- for a while. But when you have all the technologies mentioned, copyright infringement that is undetectable will become prevalent -- because you just download 1 GB from your friend via IM, or swap DVDs (or soon HDDVDs), or use IRC and FTP. And it's not like you have to be a technology savvy guy to do these things. My mom can use IM, when she gets broadband, she can swap files.
So, what you are left with is completely arbitrary enforcement on some services, scare tactics that work against some, while the underlying "problem" keeps getting "worse" because of technology (hardware, software). Just wait until the next file sharing application with a built in "how anonymous do you want to be?" slider comes along.
The problem will only go away when those who make music embrace sharing as a way to popularize it. Those who like it, will pay. What will work better in the long run -- scaring people into paying? Or letting them choose to? If the industry doesn't realize the answer and tries to criminalize society instead, it's time for people to force them to. I really hope that initiatives like the Swedish "Pirate Party" are successful in working towards the decriminalization of non-commercial copying.
Marijuana is legal in quite a few countries. It can happen.
ya, yeongeo malgo darun woegukeo haji mara juo! muo ung? o_O
This may seem rather archaic, but the IT department is so paranoid about getting in trouble with the **IA that they busted a 5-person DC++ network last year.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
nanda omae? boke!
Big assumption on your part. Of course they lose money. But who cares?
I'm sick of all the moral justification BS around here. Piracy is great because you can get free stuff by ripping off an abstract wealthy corporate entity, and there's a very low likelyhood of getting caught. Despite all the "Rage against the RIAA" and "Copyright is Immoral" hysterics you here around here, that's the bottom line that most of us pirates agree with.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Well then may the force be with him.
I'm not an expert, either, but I have heard that that's true. What I've heard is that artists have to pay the labels back for the cost of producing, packaging, distributing, and marketing their albums (arguably could easily reach millions of dollars for all this). I've also heard that it takes two to three platinum albums for the artist to finally break even and start making money from CD sales.
The reason I say "I've heard" is because I don't always believe everything I read, and especially what people tell me, because it really bugs me when people start spouting off like they know something when really they only "heard" something from somewhere else.
What you reap is what you sow
Anyhow, Nazis/Godwin aside, the term "steal" implies that it was removed from someone's posession (i.e. they no longer have it any more). But "Infringing upon Stuff they Shouldn't" (ISS) sounds too much like a space station.
He said "sharing".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
No, in no case is copyright infringement stealing. They are two completely different things. (If you broke into my house, took the masters of the songs I'm working, and copied the stolen data, that would be both copyright infringement and stealing, but still two seperate acts.)
Perhaps. That doesn't means that a state-created artifical monopoly on the act of making copies is, or ever was, a good way to see that authors and creators get paid; any more than making people sing royalties for singing in the shower would be pratical, moral, or just.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ah, the very articulate "I don't like paying for it so therefore it should be free" argument. Which is just "I don't like paying for it so I don't" plus a heap of bullshit to help one stay a "good boy" and sleep better at night.
Well, I prefer my hedonism straight-up, thanks. Fuck the interests of the consumer -- file sharing is great because you can get free stuff!
As for the RIAA's, your 1998-era "business model" argument needs some work. They do offer all you can eat plans for $10/month or whatever, which is probably reasonable for law-abiding citizens. The consumer interest point they fucked up the most was not mandating some sort of device interoperability for this stuff.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm as liberal as the next guy,
Well I'm the next guy and I say your not that liberal.
First off, copyright infringement is neither stealing nor piracy.
I think the RIAA is stealing from us as much as we from them but unfortunately their stealing is legal, and in any case two wrongs don't make a right. That's not saying that I disapprove of piracy, just that if people get caught its not like they can make a case that what they're doing doesn't deserve punishment.
This logic is retarded. Basically your opinion is:
It's illegal, therefore they deserve to be punished, regardless of whether what they did was morally wrong, but the big guys can do whatever they want. (Price fixing is NOT legal BTW, nor are Sony's recent acts of computer crime.) That view is ANYTHING but liberal. You're about as conservative as they come buddy. You haven't said a single liberal thing here.
You're literally saying, "Go against the establishment and you don't deserve my sympathy."
Here's a question for you:
How many homes were raided when they found out that the RIAA was illegally price fixing? How many people went to jail?
Life is too short to proofread.
Well I'm the next guy and I say your not that liberal.
Well I'm the guy next to him, and I say you can't spell.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So this must mean that Germany has solved all of their problems with child porn, identity theft, extortion, and all of the other shady activities that can happen online, right?
Because there's no way that they'd place corporate trademark and copyright issues ahead of the safety and security of their citizens, would they? On the taxpayer's dime, too?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I don't know about you but I've met quite a few people who would otherwise have bought many CDs and DVDs but decided they'd rather download everything instead. Hell, these days my father will demand an explanation when I buy something legally that I could download instead. WTF?
Sure, not everyone would have bought stuff instead and probably nobody would have bought EVERYTHING they downloaded but there are people who download things they used to buy.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Technology has gotten to the point that artists could publish their own music, I don't see why more people don't do that and keep the profits from selling it downloaded online.
Probably because record labels love to make contracts that say they own the songs and the band is not allowed to distribute them without paying money to the label.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
2 wrongs dont make a right, but what makes 'our' stealing wrong?
The law? The set of rules the people agreed upon as the universal standard of right and wrong?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Fuck you and your RIAA buddies. If you give me the choice between P2P retrieval of legitimate content and my RIAA music collection, I'll wipe my non free music in a heartbeat. It's crap like this that tightens my resolve to avoid non free music. I can get all I want from archive.org, magnatune.com, others like them, artist CDs bought at the club and etunes. You pigopolists and your old commercial shit are on the bottom of my list.
We can debate the morality of surrendering to government sponsored ownership of culture, but the practical path is to not help by sharing non free material. Government mandated broadcast monopolies and many other bogus laws lead directly to the creation of the big three music publishers. As the owners of the previous convenient means of sharing music, radio, the publishers have co-opted a large part of our culture. No one really won that one, least of all artists and those actually making the music. The best way to fight it is not to purchase or share RIAA shit.
Lack of hassle is another reason to delete it all. The accused should be presumed innocent, despite having their doors kicked in. As I pointed out, there's plenty of free content out there by people who want you to share. Much of it is easiest to get by bit torrent and other P2P services. If possesion of RIAA shit is the incriminating evidence, you might be better off without it. That way, I won't have some dickhead like you tut tuting in my face about how I'm getting what I deserved.
That's kind of what they want - RIAA only or nothing RIAA for you. They are forcing you to chose. If everyone gave them what they wanted, the world would be a better place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sometimes I wonder what will the MPAA/RIAA/GEMA/etc. do, when all file-sharers are locked up in prison, all music and film is DRM-restricted, CD sales are still declining and nobody goes to see blockbuster movies anymore...
People who use the law to defend industries for which there is no longer any need are enemies of the people. ;)
No, they just follow the rules the people have defined. If the people don't agree with the laws they made they should change them.
Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer. Well, it's quite clear that the interests of the consumer are served better by the free exchange of music than by having to financially support an industry.
I don't think people consider all short and long term implications of every action they take. In this case the thinking is "I get something for free". I don't think these people would agree with abolishing copyright law if they realized what that meant.
People will still make and distribute music if they aren't being paid (for all sorts of reasons). If you don't want to, you don't have to. But don't crap on the listeners who have no need to support an outmoded business model. No one has any moral right to make money from music, just as no one has any moral right to make other people pay every time they tell a story you told them.
If you want to contribute free music people can share, feel free to do so. Noone's stopping you and noone's stopping those who share that music. Just don't "liberate" music from people that DON'T want to contribute to this.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Copyright is supposed to be about the interests of the consumer.
Actually, it's quite the opposite; copyright is about the interests of the artist. The point is to give an artist the ability to make money on what they create, so that artists have an incentive to go on creating, thus encouraging the progression of the arts. The individual consumer's interests are not central to the idea of copyright at all.
I don't think the guy who stole my car battery was planning on buying one for himself. That doesn't make sense.
Neither does your analogy. If I steal your car battery, you no longer have it. On the other hand, if I can make a copy identical to the one you have, you've still got yours and I've got one too.
Hasn't this been gone over frequently enough? Copyright infringement may be illegal in many countries (whether or not it should be), but that doesn't make it theft, any more then the widespread prohibitions against drunk driving make that theft.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
If you STILL feel inclined to hold your misguided, fanciful, but NOT-thought-out *beliefs* after reading this, and choose to reply... I don't know if you're more stupid or brave...
(Is it "brave" to be steadfastly wrong?
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
"First off, copyright infringement is neither stealing nor piracy."
I'll avoid the "stealing" issue here (lest we get into "stolen thunder," "theft of service," and other colorful but inaccurate phrases) but "piracy" is what's known as a homonym, or what some call a homophone. I think you're thinking of piracy in the sense of "piracy on the high seas" but it has a separate definition relating to unauthorized copying of copyrighted material (type "dict piracy" into the Firefox URL window if you don't believe me -- and amazingly enough, this definition goes back some 300 years). Slashdotters aren't confused by the fact that "bark" is both a tree covering and the sound a dog makes, but lots of Slashdotters are tripped up by "piracy" -- so you're not alone.
"How many homes were raided when they found out that the RIAA was illegally price fixing? How many people went to jail?"
The price-fixing settlement is not what you think it was. I believe you're of the understanding that it was record companies colluding to keep their prices in line with each other. The reality is that it was Universal (not the RIAA -- the RIAA is a trade group to which Universal belongs) that was caught attempting to set the price of their product at the retail level. Here's how it went down:
When Universal was running the MAP programs, it only affected you, the consumer, if you had bought CDs at Tower or TWE during that period.
The winners here are Best Buy and Wal-Mart. The losers are the dedicated music chains like Tower, and the indie record stores that must fight to stay in business in the wake of Best Buy and Wal-Mart, who don't need to worry about making a profit when they set their pricing on CDs. The price-fixing settlement was good news for you if you subscribe to the "What's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" theory, or if you're a fan of the homgenous music that the big box retailers sell. It was bad news for you if, like me, you're a fan of indie record stores. The lesson here is "don't piss off Wal-Mart or Best Buy."
Universal admitted no wrongdoing when they agreed to the settlement. Since I work in the computer peripherals industry, where we still use MAPs, I've got to agree with them here.
I wish I could tell you that the price-fixing settlement was what you thought it was; it would fit in with the whole "record companies are evil" thing. But you're off-base here.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Maybe you should read the whole thread, I was reacting to cution's point about moral justifications, not equating infringement with theft.
Hasn't this been gone over frequently enough?
Yes, and you've reiterated a boring discussion for no good reason.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
> Ah, the very articulate "I don't like paying for it so therefore it should be free" argument. Which is just "I don't like paying for it so I don't" plus a heap of bullshit to help one stay a "good boy" and sleep better at night.
You're missing the point. The greatest thing about the internet is that it makes the distribution of content virtually free. I can sit their and just absorb as much information as I want to (I am one of those addicts who endlessly surfs Wikipedia). Who among us could honestly say that this vast amount of free information has not enriched their lives? It's the worlds biggest and most easily navigable book and deals with virtually every topic known to humankind (from sites about Aristotle to sites about breast aesthetics (ratemyjugs or whatever that site is called).
Before the internet, information was often a pain to get. With the internet I, as an information junkie, can mainline it. And what's better is that I don't have to do this alone, but I can share it and talk about it with other people who have the same interests (whether that interest be Aristotle or breasts).
The same goes for music. I own well over a thousand CDs (closer to 2 thousand I think). But filesharing exposed me to all sorts of wonderful music I had never heard, and enabled me to get rare stuff without having to wait for a CD to arrive in the mail. Excluding the fact that it was free, Napster was still the best thing that's happened to music in years. But the fact is that it has to be free for people to extract the maximum benefit. Information wants to be free, and it is alawys much better for everyone if it is.
The RIAA and their ilk are deliberately trying to control the distribution of music, which no one person or organization should be allowed to control. They are directly attacking the freedom that makes being a music lover right now much better than it ever was before. They have no right to ruin this just to support an industry that we don't need.
We don't need them to record music. Artists can do that themselves, and release it for free if they want to. They've always made more money from concerts, belly-button rings and T-shirts anyway. For the artist, a recording is basically a form of advertising live performance. If the record companies get off their backs, then they won't have to worry about being screwed and can record music on their own terms. Besides, with current computer technology the price of recording a decent album is low. Indpendent filmakers spend more on their pet projects.
We don't need record companies to distribute music. If I am an artist I can put it on my site and let the public decide. If people like it, it will spread virally. It will cost me virtually nothing.
We don't need record companies to "find" artists for us. Anyone who wants to can release their music and the public will decide who makes it. That is vastly more efficient than getting some idiot like Simon from American Idolatry to decide for us.
We don't need record companies to publicize music. The internet is incredibly efficient at spreading ideas. Look at some of the viral memes that have spread just because of the internet.
What else is left for record company employees to do, other than support the cocaine industry?
Nothing. They are vampires, and the stakes are being sharpened.
Why destroy the ability to freely access and share music if there is no need?
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
They own the airwaves,they own the big venues.You either bend over or you don't get to play anything bigger than your local club.They are plenty of bands out there that are selling out 300-700 seat venues every night and selling their cds as fast as they can print them but because they won't take .35 an album (I've known guys that signed and yes,That is how bad they screw new acts) you will most likely never hear from them.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
too little, too late.
Free as in mason.
This series of raids is the outcome of a joint operation of several different nations. 60'000 people were caught sharing illegally in a period of 2 months. 3500 of those were germans. 130 of those were heavy users and got raided.
And I think you miss the point that us Average Pirates don't give a crap about your hippie perfect society BS. We don't need to imagine an alternate future to live with ourselves for downloading MP3s -- much like we don't need a moral framework to justify exceeding the speed limit on the freeway.
In fact, most of us pirates rather like the RIAA, MPAA, and proprietary software companies because their marketing can help inform us what stuff to download. So, no, despite Your Magical Internet, information doesn't necessarily want to be free, it wants to be packaged and marketed to consumers, and ripped off by us cheap bastards.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
1) You talk to her, she thinks you're funny, you go home and have sex.
2) You zap her with a stun gun, drag her behind a dumpster in an alley, pull down her panties, tell her to shut up or you'll kill her, and have sex.
You probably don't see the difference there, either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You raise some interesting points. You also raise some additional questions:
"We don't need them to record music. Artists can do that themselves, and release it for free if they want to."
You're actually referring to the subset of artists who have the either the means or the talent to record, mix, engineer and produce their own stuff, right? Do you have a suggestion for musicians who don't happen to have the cash or the skills? Are they SOL in the future world where record companies don't exist?
"They've always made more money from concerts, belly-button rings and T-shirts anyway. For the artist, a recording is basically a form of advertising live performance."
Here, you're excluding the artists who, for whatever reason, can't or won't tour or perform live, right?
I get a big kick out of Zero 7, D'Nell and Ultra Nate, but the odds are basically nill that I'll ever be able to see them in concert, and I certainly won't buy a t-shirt. So, I supported them by buying their stuff on the iTMS. And the only reason I was able to learn about them was because a record company gave them a chance and got their stuff produced and got it out there. If I'd subscribed to your viewpoint and simply helped myself to their stuff for free, would this have benefited them?
"We don't need record companies to distribute music. If I am an artist I can put it on my site and let the public decide. If people like it, it will spread virally. It will cost me virtually nothing."
You're not the first to claim that the Internet eliminates the need to do sales or marketing. Do you believe this holds true for other industries? For example, would you advise, say, the Ford Motor Company to cease all marketing and advertising, and just rely on word of mouth?
"What else is left for record company employees to do, other than support the cocaine industry?"
I don't understand what you mean here. I haven't met very many people who worked in the record industry, but I've met a few. One was a graphics designer who did freelance stuff for a few tiny indie labels in the bay area. Another was a guy who ran his own ten-person label. He paid himself something like $20K a year. Neither of them used cocaine. Do you believe that they are in the minority as far as folks who are in the music business? For example, do you think the guy who runs Magnatunes does coke?
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
If a law is unjust, then we should break it.
No, if a law is unjust you should change it. If enough people try to do so it will happen. But if most people think it is just you won't and shouldn't succeed (what with this being a democracy and all). Breaking a law signifies that YOU don't like it (or that you don't care about the result of breaking it). That does NOT mean that most people disagree with it.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'm sorry. For a moment I thought you were something more than a shortsighted, selfish cretin. My mistake.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
the RIAA oligopoly keeps on violating every anti-trust law on the planet :s
... Those crazy Europeans paid VAT taxes on all blank media because people just kind of assumed it would be used for piracy. (I hope thats not the real reason, I really, really do.)
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
For practical purposes, the term "piracy", as applies to copyright, should be left to its older, but less romantic usage: large scale duplication and sale in lieu of the real article. The reason this is illegal is the original intent of copyright (speaking as an American about our Constitutional notion of copyright): it's a protection of business, sure, but for the more important goal of disseminating information and increasing the collective wealth, both figuratively - as in "mental" wealth - and literally. Protect the business interests of copyright holders, sure, but, along with trade mark law - which, contrary to popular myth, is about protecting the PURCHASER, -not- (especially) the seller - PROTECT THE END PURCHASER, THE CITIZEN.
But file sharing is hardly "piracy". Regardless of how worry-warts of Media Giants would puff up about.
The vast majority of people are "normal"; we have "normal" wealth, which means it's LIMITED. We have limited discretionary funds. We must therefore be selective in how we use it.
Blanket-labeling of file-sharers as "thieves" belies this.
We have only so much money to spend on life's fluff: movies, the theater, dining, gas, rentals, live performances/concerts, museums, books, pre-recorded items, cable TV, software, video games, etc.
It's convenient to believe the world is so simple that "if people have to pay for something, they will." It's a logical fallacy. You moral-superiority types must get along great with the doomsdayers of Big Media. Yes, I said "Big Media" - they're the only ones beating this tired, dead horse.
It's a simple mind-game you can play at home: if you have limited funds to spend, and something drops off the list of priorities for you, would you still buy that thing that you can't afford that's no longer on your priority list?
Honest truth is that many hoard. They'd never buy all they have if they "had" to. They download all the movies/CD's/video games just for bragging rights. MANY of them will OFTEN actually BUY something that they truly value.
Painting all file-sharers as cheapskates also ignores another truth in the argument: people are either "collector" types, or not. Are either "I do it the 'right' way because it's more convenient", or not. I mean this: if you're not prone to buying item X in the first place, you're not stealing it in the second place if you download it. You're decidedly NOT in the "loss" column. Similarly, if you typically purchase movies/CD's/games in stores, even if you -could- download it for free, you're still typically going to purchase what you truly value anyway.
And by value, this means different things to different people. Some of us prefer/like the cover art, liner notes, "extras", and/or the mere convenience of having separate media that's in a convenient package which I may place upon my shelf when not in use. These are all valid reasons why some us PREFER to buy CD's, DVD's, and/or video games.
Media Giants, with regards to music groups specifically, have gone to great lengths over the years to hearken back to the days of yesteryear when bands/singers were a dime a dozen; where it was their one-hit wonder that mattered, not The Group. This is better in their eyes in that it keeps artists at a negotiating disadvantage. Unfortunately, their shortsightedness breeds another outcome that they DON'T like: disposable, generic music/artists have no value. Silly boys...
Sorry, I started to get off target. The point is, no, gentle reader, people don't "always" get for free what they -can-, but what they choose to. And most of us supplant one form of frivolous purchase for another, so that the sum total of our purchases are STILL going to Big Media. They complain we're stealing their movies. Okay, but I'm still buying CD's, and/or more of those. Or vice versa. They can't get blood from a stone, nor money from an empty piggy bank: if I don't have i
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
War aber vorhersehbar. Sonst hätten se ja nicht diesen Urheberrecht Zusatz gebaut. Macht die natürlich nicht weniger 'nen Haufen Arschlöcher die hier dauernd die Gesetze für so'nen Scheiß verschärfen. Das alte Urheberrecht war vollkommen ausreichend, alles danach is reine Korruption.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Maybe you should read the whole thread, I was reacting to cution's point about moral justifications, not equating infringement with theft.
And I did. If you had read carefully, you'd note I was stating your analogy was inaccurate and meaningless. Just because something would not be a justification for theft does not mean it might not be a justification for copyright infringement.
Yes, and you've reiterated a boring discussion for no good reason.
Actually, that was intended as a rhetorical question, but I would answer definitively in the negative. There is an ongoing and concerted effort to equate the sharing of information (which has been responsible for all human innovation and advancement) with theft (which is generally a societal drain). Unfortunately, far too many still accept this without question-the cavalier throwing around of the term "theft" in relation to information sharing is very prevalent.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Yes, but likewise you don't hear about Germany applying pressures to the USA for copyright extensions.
Well, indirectly. You may be aware of the tax loophole that allowed Uwe Boll to be profitable. Hollywood has been exploiting that for decades so indirectly the German citizenry funded the MPAA which is applying the pressure for copyright extensions in the US. That hole has been plugged so we're no longer paying for foreign freedom-hating organizations.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The vast majority of pirates are shortsighted, selfish cretins and not utopian IP Warriors such as yourself. However you wouldn't know it reading slashdot. I'm just representing the mainstream, hedonistic viewpoint.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
nice to see the government doing the music industries dirty work. the pople who got busted are probably normal people, i doubt that a big time file downloader would allow all of his files to be exposed to edonkey or any other service which might make him/her a victim of just such an action. so yet again, you will end up getting a grandma going to jail screaming "what has my nice niece done!" Oh well.
Fool me once...shame on you, fool me twice...won't be fooled again (our president)
> You're actually referring to the subset of artists who have the either the means or the talent to record, mix, engineer and produce their own stuff, right? Do you have a suggestion for musicians who don't happen to have the cash or the skills? Are they SOL in the future world where record companies don't exist?
:)
No. There are plenty of people who manage to produce their own films this way. Some of them are even good. But, although signficant, the financial barriers to producing a decent bit of recorded music are not so high that someone who really wants to can't do it. And new technology means that the barriers are lowering as we speak.
I'm saying that recorded music should really be treated as what it in most cases is: advertising for concerts and other sales. Advertising is customarily given away for free to people who don't want it. Free music as advertising will be consumed by those people who do want it, and better still, they won't resent it and it will make them want to buy other stuff. It's not difficult to understand unless you are a music exec whose livelihood is tied to the old system.
Hell, it costs more to make and broadcast a crappy TV ad than it does to record a song and release it for free on the internet (as a form of advertising your gigs). There's no good reason why music production could not be organized this way, and the RIAA and company have not made a convincing case that it would necessarily be bad for the consumer.
If two guys can make a thing called a "personal computer" and get financial backing for what seemed to be an amateur hobbyist's toy, there is no reason why some kid can't record some songs as promo for his gigs and make millions (or even millions licensing the song to other money making enterprises).
> Here, you're excluding the artists who, for whatever reason, can't or won't tour or perform live, right?
That's cool. I don't claim that the new way will be perfect. But I think that overall, the fact that music will be freely swappable by anyone and its attendant benefits far outweighs the fact that a minority of people will no longer be able to make a certain type of music and make money from it.
> You're not the first to claim that the Internet eliminates the need to do sales or marketing. Do you believe this holds true for other industries? For example, would you advise, say, the Ford Motor Company to cease all marketing and advertising, and just rely on word of mouth?
Why? Ford makes large material items which you have to get up and go to purchase. A couch potato can download music instantly. It's just a fact that the viral nature of the internet tends to spread ideas and content very quickly. We don't really need someone to trumpet this at us. A network model of information awareness (where we tell each other) is just different than a broadcast model (where someone else tells us). Both work.
> I don't understand what you mean here. I haven't met very many people who worked in the record industry, but I've met a few.
That wasn't a serious comment. Just a stab at a stereotype.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
I think I see the difference.
Girls who like doing things like (2) and all the other bondage stuff are more fun, right?
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is also bad.
Copying somebody else's work against their wishes is NOT bad. In fact, the purpose of copyright law is exactly to make this happen.
Copyright law was a deal between the public and content producers that gave content producers the right to limit distribution for a limited time, in exchange for the requirement that their works fall into the public domain (i.e., can be copied against their wishes) after that period. The goal was to balance an economic incentive for content producers against the public's right to copy.
What has happened with copyright law is a perversion: content producers effectively have gotten copyright in perpetuity, through numerous technological and legal tricks. And, worse yet, people like you actually wrongly believe that people have some sort of basic right to control information after they have made it public.
If you don't want your ideas to be disseminated, keep them in your head; you have a right to do that, that works, and you need no goons to enforce it. People like you want the adoration and profit that comes along with sharing your ideas with others; if you want that, you should lose your ability to control your ideas after a short while.
I think the RIAA is stealing from us as much as we from them but unfortunately their stealing is legal, and in any case two wrongs don't make a right.
Freeing slaves might be illegal, but it's still the right thing to do. I'm not saying that this situation is analogous, but it illustrates that taking illegal action in response to bad laws can be justifiable.
What widespread sharing really shows you is that the law may be out of step with what society wants, and that's a problem in a democracy.
In any case, I think civil disobedience in this case might consist of sharing something illegal that is obviously ridiculous, like an original recording of Glass's several minutes of silence.
The other way to make this sillines stop is to undermine the music industry's business model, to work on the political front, to set legal precedents, and to make recording companies and their artists simply look uncool (need I say Michael Jackson).
Germany's copyright laws aren't that strict actually. It is still perfectly legal to copy a CD or MP3s from your neighbor or even a DVD you rented for private use. And you can make copys of these copys and share them with your family and friends and it's still legal. Of course the industry is constantly trying to change that. They managed to get an insanly stupid copyright act introduced, which makes it illegal to circumvent "effective technical copyright restriction". To this day, their is no clarifying judgment on what the heck is an effective restriction and what is not. After all, you could argue that as soon as the restriction is cracked, is isn't effective anymore.
I hate feinstein's position, but you have to understand that since hollywood is in her state, as are many music labels, as far as she is concerned, she IS representing her constituency.
This space available.
I am German (says my passport) and I have never ever owned, shared or stolen any music by David Hasselhoff!
Also I don't know anybody here who listens to him, or even knows him. I don't know him. I only had eyes for Pamela and I didn't own a radio when his songs were played several times a day.
Last defence: I got a Luca Turilli CD playing in the background right now!
yeah... The thrill of doing kinky stuff outweighs the fact that she's a skank. Illegally downloading music outweighs the fact that it's britney spears.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
...that means don't download, don't buy.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Some highlights:
So it doesn't exactly look like times are tough in the record industry in Europe at the moment. If the european authorities are worrying about margin erosion for european industry then there are plenty of other targets way ahead in the queue.
Copyright infringement may be illegal in many countries (whether or not it should be), but that doesn't make it theft, any more then the widespread prohibitions against drunk driving make that theft.
It DOES, however, make them all child molestors.
Yeah, but would they admit not finding evidence or would the AP owner have to prove it?
In any case, you can be sure they'd seize all his IT equipment and burned CDs/DVDs and it would be gone for months while the investigation is in process...
I can see that being a big issue with fon.com for example
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
"File sharing is no different than what many people did in the 80's when they made tapes of music and shared it."
I beg to differ here. Making a copy of a tape or record and giving it to a friend is "sharing". Making 10,000 copies and giving them to 10,000 friends [sic] is "publishing".
I guess you don't understand how P2P really works. Nobody is giving out 10,000 copies of a song. Typically, they are "giving out" one or maybe two complete copies of a file.
Also, the file is typically not a "perfect copy" of the original, it is downsampled in some way.
I'm not necessarily advocating either side of this argument, but please, keep to the facts.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Erm, when the politicians that are supposed to represent the people don't set rules that are agreed upon by the people then your point kinda loses it's edge. Many Western democracies are two party systems where both parties are bought and paid for by large industries with effective monopolies. At that point the law is meaningless.
I'm afraid that the world has changed. George Orwell imagined a world in which the law was set up solely for the perpetuation of the state. Aldous Huxley imagined a world in which apathy was the primary tool of control. The modern corporation seems bent on taking the worst of these two worlds and making it our future. And short of revolution, there is not much we can do about it.
It turns out that actually as well as buying politicians it is possible to buy the general public. And once a system is big enough that statistical errors are small, you can make that public elect who you want, and who you want will then give you the laws you want. Modern politics in the West is bought and paid for, you are living in a 60's fantasy that wasn't true then and isn't true now.
But not any inevitability.
If a shoplifter is caught in the act of stealing from shelves, but is then accused of raping the president's wife (or some other unrelated crime), it's quite inevitable that he will say "what the fuck" and that his lawyer will point out that the accusation does have zilch to do with the crime. However, this inevitability doesn't mean that Godwin's law is involved.
Check the size of your shared folder in edonkey, amule or whatever.
If you have more than 500 shared items you are at risk. Unshare (or outright delete, if you're paranoid...) any items over 500, and you should be (relatively) safe, unless they already have your IP.
Last week was Romania, this week was Germany, and next week may be another European country. Play it safe, and stay under 500; in Germany the 130 raided had more than 500 items to share.
(I checked my amule this morning: had 1800+ items. I quickly unshared everything older than 100 days, and now I'm down to 96).
Hopefully you can understand how the OP's usage of "Godwin" is relevant and your example isn't. If not, too bad for you.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
This resource, http://toolz.toolz4schoolz.com/geoip_aggregator.t4 s (I wrote it, please be gentle with it), allows you to compare results so you'll get a good overview of the main free and paid-for ones out there.
The 'free' ones are HostIP, Maxmind, and the IP2Country list. It's easy to download these and use them yourself (actually HostIP is about 300 megs so I haven't installed that at the above url). Then it compares the better services from Geobytes, IP2Location ... and also ShowMyIP and DNSStuff ... using iframes.
Wow that's really great police work, you gotta put it to those German police with their efficiency - Apparently next week they're planning to do a big raid of about 10 major street gangs and they're planing to take 5000 guns off the streets! Oh wait whats that? they're not planning a raid to take guns off the streets? they're going to instead concentrate solely on copyright infringement? oh, well, im sure that's pretty important too, I mean a few people getting shot doesn't really hurt the economy!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"If a law is unjust, then we should break it."
No, if a law is unjust you should change it.
If a law is not being broken there is no reason to change it.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What's this? "Argumentation by insult" or what?
Or just your garden-variety non-sequitur?
So far, no post in this part of the thread has mentioned the dreaded H-word, so Godwin does not apply.
OTOH it is illegal to point to libdvdcss.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"Eine kleine Nachtmusik." Written in Vienna by Mozart, an Austrian. What does it have to do with Germany?
As I said, that is not clear. If a judge finds CSS to be an effective copy protection, then it would be indeed illegal to distribute tools supporting this circumvention. It would even be a criminal offense (up to 1 year in prison).
Because of this uncertainty many linux distributions do not include libdvdcss in Germany. But it is still possible and legal to install it right after installation using an online update site. Novell etc just don't want to get their linux packages seized in stores one day.
This is from the article, read it in a yoda voice: "Today a very important day for the music industry is"... although he has great use of the force, he doesn't make a very good editor!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Where did you get that idea? Care to back it up?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
In America People Share Files
In Soviet Russia Files Share You
But in Nazi Germany...wait...nevermind.
T-X-I
I don't think its a stretch to say that if there were no such things as libraries, anyone who advocated for them would be immediately labeled as a communist pirate who wanted legal sanction to use the creative works of others for free.
And hassle me about my downloads, I'll show them
1000+ LPs
800 CDs
500 DVDs
200 Laserdiscs
5 tapes
And say 'Are you sure it's in your interests to arrest me and stop me buying more stuff?'
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Die!
It's die!
I guess that makes it alright...
That milestone saw Germany lose Asprin and all sorts of intellectual property,
You mean synthetic Aspirin? Aspirin was extracted from Willow trees, how in the fuck can that be IP?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I don't know about you but i just don't have that kind of money lying around.
Remember that these laws are bought. Their not here because "we the people" wanted them.
The government passed these laws regardless of what people think. The only response to oppressive laws is civil disobedience and if you get caught you will be Persecuted.
because why would anyone buy something if they could get it for free?
Two words.
"Bottled Water"
On a side note - when Napster was rocking, I was buying two to three cds a week. Since they shut Napster down I have purchased only 4 cds = All of them from patchouli.net .
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
No wonder the sources for all those David Hasselhoff albums I've been trying to get suddenly vanished.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Mode me offtopic, but I found this offensive. What's the connection between Romanian criminals in Spain and filesharing? How many legal mp3 and divx do YOU have at home, mister? Sheesh, some people...
Hmmm, filing a false police report is a much more serious offense than trading music (or at least, I'd hope it would be... but with the mighty lobbying power of the goons, you never know...). And given the low relatively probability that our country will be raided (too small => too little payoff for the **AA), it would be foolish to manoeuvre into certain trouble just to avoid some very hypothetical problem.
Actually, I consider the probability of a search low enough that I'm even hesitating to spend the effort to burn everything on a DVD and clean my computer.
The research i've been doing in P2P networks (due to my involvement in the okopipi project) has shocked me. In file sharing, we're living in the STONE AGE. Yes, even with bittorrent (which depends on centralized servers, and there's practically no privacy. And anonymous bittorrent like mutorrent is closed source, who knows if they got a backdoor in there).
EDonkey uses MD4 for hashing, it depends on central servers, and has no anonymity at all. And without mentioning queue # 4892 for a popular file.
Unfortunately for filesharers, file sharing networks based on modern P2P architectures is very scarse. The supernodes / ultrapeers approach is obsolete, easy to disrupt both denial of service and eavesdropping attacks.
The future of P2P is Overlay Networks.
From an architectural point of view, I would recommend the KAD p2p network, which bases its architecture on the relatively-new kadelmia network (See Technical paper on Kadlemia, 2002).
Even then, Kadelmia could be improved because it's based on a Pastry network topology - compared to other topologies like De Bruijn Graphs, proposed by a recent paper in 2003.
And more research is being done dealing with load balancing, anonymity, trust, reputation, etc.
As I said, current peer to peer networks are in the stone age. Someone needs to design a file sharing network based on the latest research, and publish it.
This is such an insightful post. The mod who modded this flamebait should be ashamed. Mod, you are not doing your job. You are using your mod points to punish someone for a statement that only expresses the reality of copyright laws. It's just the run of the mill justification (in the true sense of the word) for why they exists. In no way can this even be interpreted as taking a side in this debate.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
First of all, even if everything you said where true, most "pirates" (Yaaarrr) don't share your reasons. For them, downloading is only about not paying money for things they want. Nor is "sharing" as put forth by you a meaningful concept for the larger part of the "file sharing" community. It's not about showing your friends what kinda music you like. I do that with my pandora.com favorties. It's not about discovery or deep discussions. You type in "Finding Nemo" and incidently, while it's downloading, your program also uploads stuff to others, strangers and not friends. Most would turn it off if they could since it messes up your ping in WoW so much.
Also, I totally disagree with what you are saying about artists and record companies. Is anyone forcing artists on record lables? Aren't they free to sell their stuff online and give concerts and sell little button pins already? Why are so few famous artists doing it then? Why does every garage band strive to get on a lable? Has the RIAA death-squats that takes out independant artists?
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
In the end all power comes from the people. Without support from the people no government can exist, not even despotism. Let's think of the US: If 30 million people vocally protested against such a law, would it still remain?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
people use some unpaid copies of multimedia products and go to prison and have to pay a high percentages of their income as compensation
sony writes a rootkit that deliberately destroies hundredthousands of pcs and has to pay an extremely small percentage of their income and noone goes to prison...
anyone else has the feeling that this is out of scale?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Interesting. I'd never heard of Uwe Boll, bizaare stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Boll
If a law is broken that isn't a reason to change it either, else we wouldn't need the Police.
Politicians are elected by the voters. Campaign financing helps but it can't replace the voter. If they receive enough complaints from their representees they have to change their tune. Especially since each representee that is complaining usually represents quite a few representees that are too lazy to tell the politician directly. Demonstrations are a way of telling the politicians that you want a law abolished.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The allies seized and resold the *trademark* Aspirin after WWI.
that caused the Quakers and other groups to move to America in the first place.
Oh, sure, you say, just because 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing, that's not religious persecution.
But, what if your religious beliefs involved the principle that no man can own what we now call Intellectual Property, as the vast majority of religions believed until the mid-20th century?
The very concept that one can "own" an idea, from many viewpoints, can be seen as offensive to God (or Gods, if you are of that nature).
It's time to realize that Bill Gates was wrong when he sent that letter to the open source community that was freely sharing source code for computer programs - he was the lone heretic at the time, and most people believed that code, like speech, should be free.
Most of even the people on slashdot don't grok that you literally do not own, in a legal definition, your very DNA sequence, or have any rights to it, in most states in the USA or other countries around the world. They can pick up some cells from you, and make a wonder drug, and you have literally no say in the matter.
The same goes for file sharing. In the beginning of music recording, the only time an artist got paid was when he actually played, and recording tapes were shared to wide audiences, or played on radios. Then we decided to impose limited music fees for a limited (7 years) time.
Now that period is 70 years after you die, but you can extend it even further by just "re-recording" it while you still hold the license, and claiming a new file date, as Disney and others do periodically.
File-sharing is just the front lines of this fight - the fight to truly make us free - and our silence becomes our complicity. Sure, you think, I might one day go on American Idol and become a rich superstar, so I'll be quiet. But, the cold hard truth is - you're not going to. Very very few people ever will. Those who can actually become rich from this are almost always the middlemen, and virtually all artists never make as much as they can from a normal day job.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Apparently next week they're planning to do a big raid of about 10 major street gangs and they're planing to take 5000 guns off the streets! Oh wait whats that? they're not planning a raid to take guns off the streets? they're going to instead concentrate solely on copyright infringement?
One should point out that, instead of actually arresting and jailing active al-Qaeda cells, which find Germany to be a safe harbor, they're doing this instead.
My brother went to the University of Hamburg, and got an LLD at UBC, and he always found this misallocation of resources to be very puzzling indeed in terms of what they actually investigate in Germany.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, but a right and a wrong don't make a right either...
If a law is broken that isn't a reason to change it either, else we wouldn't need the Police.
True. It is a matter of degree. You would be hard pressed I think to point out instances where a law that had been nearly universally obeyed was repealed.
Demonstrations are a way of telling the politicians that you want a law abolished.
Most successful demonstrations such as burning bras, making salt, consuming alchohol, keeping your seat on the bus, etc, involve civil disobedience.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If there was a P2P network that it could encrypt its messages, the police would have no chance to know what is being shared.
Actually, it's quite the opposite; copyright is about the interests of the artist. The point is to give an artist the ability to make money on what they create
No, the point is to put the artist in a better position to recoup the cost of producing and make some money also. This may sound like hair splitting, but the way you put it sounds a bit too much like an implicit right to make money on a creation, there is no such right.
, so that artists have an incentive to go on creating, thus encouraging the progression of the arts. The individual consumer's interests are not central to the idea of copyright at all.
No, but neither are the interests of the artist according to your own explanation of what the constitution says.
One could argue that while it is not intended to serve the interests 'the consumer' as an individual, it is intended to serve the interests of 'consumers' of works of art as a group
Looking at every law on a case-by-case basis wouldn't work all that well. The court systems are already backed up beyond recognition. The last thing we needs is a million other lawsuits hitting the courts to back things up for the next 20 years.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Thank God. Now I can go to Germany without worrying about all those file-sharers. Way to make the streets safe, guys.
"File sharing is like marijuana - you just aren't going to be able to stop people from doing it."
But on 100 times the scale and much wider popularity.
For [a non disclosed reason] I was sitting in the back of a police car being driven to the police station... The conversation I had went something like this:
Copper: Who was playing on the stereo at your house?Me: Oh, whatsername.. [popular artist]
Copper: Oh neat, I downloaded her new album last week, have you heard it yet?
Me: Yes, I downloaded it but haven't listened to it yet..
Copper: My collection gets like that some times..
and so on..
Now if we'd been talking about marijuana instead, I doubt it'd been like this:
Copper: Is that weed I smell here? Whoah that smells really strong!Me: Yeah, we're all sharing it around school!
Copper: Oh cool, I had some [local favourite weed type] last week, its great
Me: Nice, I bought a few grams of that, but haven't tried it yet
While marijuana is is still considered illegal by many people, sharing and copying music is something which has been is instilled in us all. Just as most people don't keep a pound of hashish and sell it, most people aren't sharing music with thousands of people.
So I guess the [music] 'dealers' of today are relatively similar, but their motivation is either ideological (keeping the music free man) or 'my penis is bigger' syndrome :)
Go figure...
Because then that would be a violation of their civil rights.
Plus, it would mean the terrorists have won.
If you live in the United States, at least, you are absolutely...wrong! But your misconception is very widespread.
United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have power...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; (emphasis added)
Now, couple things to consider here. Firstly, the US Constitution clearly states you're wrong. Copyright is intended to advance the ART, not the ARTIST, nor the corporation who promotes them. If science and the useful arts can be advanced without a bit of copyright protection for the artist or scientist, that purpose is fulfilled (note this is a "Congress may" provision, not a "Congress must", copyright is not a right at all!). If a five-year (or two-year, or two-day) copyright would incentivize creativity as well as a ten-year or a 95-year one, we should use it instead.
Secondly, a span longer than a human lifetime (in the case of copyrights) or a span far longer then the planned-obsolescence cycle (in the case of patents) is not in any meaningful way a limited time-it is the entire useful life of the work and then some.
Copyright is not, in theory or practice, about the interest of the artist.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Copyright law was a deal between the public and content producers that gave content producers the right to limit distribution for a limited time, in exchange for the requirement that their works fall into the public domain (i.e., can be copied against their wishes) after that period.
Fair enough: Classically, intellectual property was protected for about 17 years.
Now here are twenty songs from the Billboard Top 100 for 1989:
How many of those "files" are being actively "shared" 17 years later?For that matter, how many of those "files" are still being listened to 17 years later?
Well, other than in elevators, maybe...
I"ve just reading how in 1934 Hitler and his goons (like SS) invaded the headquoters of SA and shot everyone they could under the pretext of preventing the (what's become known as) "Roehm's putch". Speaking of history repeating itself. Blah...
they will piss them off and deter them even further from buying DRM-enhanced CDs which don't play on their car's stereo.
Bears repeating: it is easy to configure your computer such that even if all your home is raided and even if xxAA knows bit-for-bit what file they want to prove you have - they can not provide any supporting evidence. It is called plausible deniability. See fool-proof software like TrueCrypt. Or just take one big FAT32 partition, put some vacation pictures + Linux iso on it, and make a dm-crypt mapping onto the free space. Have the default, hard-disk based boot os only mount the FAT32 and have some USB key / camera / SDCard / CDrom boot OS mount the encrypted partition. Even with law which force you to reveal secret keys: here you can not prove that there is encrypted data in the first place.
That's it, that's no rocket science, it's trivial, and there is nothing law enforcement will ever be able to do against it.
Once again the business case for creating artificial cash-cow monopolies is being eroded by technology - and there is nothing law can do against it.
Universal admitted no wrongdoing when they agreed to the settlement.
And they settled becuase they did nothing wrong?
What it comes down to is that large corporations can commit crimes that would carry signifcant jail terms for an individual, but get off virtually free and clear as a corporation.
As for piracy, existence in a dictionary does not mean that the term is not a politically motivated mischaracterization. I'm sure you could dig up plenty of 300 year old racial slurs, but that doesn't mean they are the right way to refer to the groups they describe.
The price-fixing settlement is not what you think it was.
It's JUST what I think it is, a company breaking the law and getting off with a slap on the wrist.
Life is too short to proofread.
In point of fact, all of them are being shared except for the Milli Vanilli tracks. Consider the continued popularity of Phil Collins, Madonna, and Janet Jackson. Paula Abdul got a new lease on life thanks to American Idol, and her music is being rediscovered by kids who only know her from that. I'll lay you odds that if you fire up a Gnutella client, you'll find that every one of those songs is being shared by a couple of dozen users.
So don't be facetious, child.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
And most people are pretty stupid and relatively simple to model. They behave in a manner that is predictable and controllable. Our governments are now so big that increasing campaign contributions on a candidate significantly over and above that candidates opponents is usually sufficient to get that candidate elected.
It isn't a matter of if X many million people protested would a law still remain. Our system controls us like cattle so that you are lucky if you can get X many thousand on a big issue.
Heck even if it was 1 million Britons protested against going to war in Iraq, we have a population of 50 million, thats 1/50th. 30 million is about 3/25 of the US population, those two numbers are about the same order of magnitude. Didn't make a blind bit of difference!
What we need is a system that prevents people voting if they don't have requisit levels on knowledge on a subject, and considerably more referendums. Not to mention more local government. The goal of the federal government should be defence and ensuring that entities larger than local government do not interfer with the aforementioned. It's possible you could argue that nationalised services could have funding aportioned at the national level. What you should have is socially restrictive law making at the national level (i.e. the federal government can set taxes, but they cant make things illegal). What you then have enshrined at the national level is protection of citizens rights. Then laws are set locally.
> Everyday I see in the news how many romanians were arrested for mugging and scams.
Because when they do anything criminal it's emphatized that they're from Romania, while if they're not foreign there's nothing said about it so you won't think so much about it.
On-topic:
Blaiming Sony for making piracy illegal is one thing, but they have the ability to do this because of the consumers. As a member of society, you can't choose what laws to follow and not as it pleases you, because you think some laws are unfair. With this logic to back up piracy you can't prosecute anybody because they can claim the law they have violated is unfair.
Some argue that arresting people for piracy is not a good way to use the limited resources the police have, because there are still people out there with guns killing people. While i agree with the argument that there are more important things to focus on, it doesn't mean that they can stop prosecuting peolpe for violating laws that doesn't physicly harm other people. This way you shouldn't prosecute people for theft before every heavy criminal is "off the streets".
Comparing piracy to setting free slaves isn't fair. Where slavery endangered lives and health, piracy does not and cannot be justified in the same way.
I do agree more or less with everything you have said so far but one thing I simply can't let sit as a turd in tonic: "No one has any moral right to make money from music". WTF? So being a musician is not really a job in your definiton as no one have *any* moral right to make money from it? Why are musicians morally wrong in making money from what they do? The guy on the street playing a guitar is morally wrong if he wants people to throw him a dime for his efforts? If then, what about other creative fields? Any moral right to make money from other art-related occupations? Painters, sculptors, architects, graphic designers, comedians, or, race drivers for that matter. Are all creative jobs morally wrong if actual money is made from them? After reading your posts, I get the feeling you are opposed to any kind of "making money". True? Being a musician is a skilled profession like any other. It takes years and years of trainin gto become a good one. Personally, I'm all for artists making any kind of amounts of gazillions if they can. It's honest, hard work. Even for Britney. What I don't like is the so-called "music industry" stealing from artists: A really good record deal will pay the artist arond 20% of CD sales. This deal may include distribution cost beared by the record label (most often it won't). It may also include marketing cost on behalf of the label (most often it won't). It can even include expenses towards mixing, producing the music (most often it won't). If the artist is really big in terms of sales (madonna-big) the deal MAY include costs involved in shooting the MTV-ad (in common terms, the "video"). I imagine how other business would function under that structure: "ok, jack. You can drive a Bus in this city. Just remember, YOU need to buy the seats, gasoline, air, repairs etc..) I believe P2P piracy to be the best thing that WILL happen to not only artist but also to an industry which has worked inself into the moral bracket of pimps, real estate dealers, politicians, coke dealers etc. The industry HAS to reinvent itself from A-Z. It won't stand as is. And along with that reinvention will come better terms for artists as well - its well out there in the future, but for now the discussion has started within the industry. Kicking in people's doors will never, ever, never, ever solve anything for the record labels. Ever. You can fool some people some 'the time...
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Let's see what happens in 30 years from, when these now in power grow old and die.