eDonkey Pays the Recording Industry $30M

ColinPL writes, "MetaMachine Inc., the firm behind online file-sharing software eDonkey, has agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry. The company also agreed to take measures to prevent file sharing by people using previously downloaded versions of the eDonkey software. The eDonkey application now displays the message, 'The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available. Please see eDonkey.com for more details.' After that message is displayed the uninstaller is launched automatically." If you visit edonkey.com, it logs your IP address. How much will the demise of eDonkey matter, given that most who access that P2P network do so using the open-source eMule?

Comments

recording industry?

[doti]

The so called "recording industry" is just not needed anymore. Just get your fortune and invest in another productive area, and get over it.

Go away. Please.

Re:recording industry?

[kz45]

"The so called "recording industry" is just not needed anymore. Just get your fortune and invest in another productive area, and get over it.

Go away. Please."

even if the current RIAA is gone, there will always be some type of recording industry around. It's just too lucrative.

also, most artists have no experience marketing, selling, or dealing with the right people that will get them the high-paying gigs they need to continue performing and feed their family and or make the rent.

Re:recording industry?

[no_opinion]

You are right. Clearly the number of people still interested in getting a recording contract for large sums of money has diminished, as illustrated by the shrinking number of American Idol applicants and spin-off shows. /sacrcasm

Re:recording industry?

[aplusjimages]

I don't know if they should go away, but for crying out loud adapt to the Internet. This is the new format. They all need to work together and remarket their products. They still expect people to buy their CD's by the billions as if CD's are still new technology. They still think they can put out 1-2 songs and then throw in 8 other songs to fill up a disc. The market is changing, so they need to change with it.

Re:recording industry?

[lymond01]

Their tactics could use some updating certainly, but there's a lot of money to be made in creating the next big star. Recorded music is still a commodity, and what drives the price up of concert tickets? A: Who is most famous. How do they get famous? A: Recording industry promotes them.

What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials. Other people would hop on that bandwagon, realize it's easier to promote people if they work together, and they'd call it the WMIA, World Music Industry Association, claiming rights throughout the world as an "international" (ie internet-based) company.

You'd think the way people talk that big industries are just a bunch of small people being greedy. Well, you'd be right.

Re:recording industry?

[arevos]

also, most artists have no experience marketing, selling, or dealing with the right people that will get them the high-paying gigs they need to continue performing and feed their family and or make the rent.

Yep, presumably artists will still need outside help to help them finance, organise and arrange large live gigs. However, I think there's less of a need for recording companies to market and distribute music from artists. Distributing music via the Internet is obviously cheap enough not to need financial backing; I need hardly go into the details of that on Slashdot. But marketing music is also a industry I expect to decline in the next few years. Music is an odd thing, in that one cannot 'sell' a piece of music in the same way one would sell a car. The customer either likes the piece of music he hears, or he does not. No amount of salesmanship will get him to change his mind, as it boils down to personal preference.

Because of this, marketing music consists largely of getting people to listen to it. Unfortunately, people have limited time on their hands, and cannot listen to every piece of music, so recording companies market selectively, using bands they know have a wide appeal. It's a broad, scattergun approach, and I can't help but think that one could do a far better job with a large database and some social networking software.

Re:recording industry?

[yaphadam097]

Music is an odd thing, in that one cannot 'sell' a piece of music in the same way one would sell a car. The customer either likes the piece of music he hears, or he does not. No amount of salesmanship will get him to change his mind, as it boils down to personal preference.

I disagree with this fundamentally. A lot of people, especially young people, buy music for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the actual music but have more to do with a certain image or subculture. I grew up listening to punk, and while some of it actually does qualify as good music, much of it is less about the content and more about expressing an opinion on the culture (Kind of like /. ;-) Rap/Hip-hop music too is often about an image - the clothes, the cars, the attitude, etc. - and not about the quality of the music. All of these things are expressed outside of the music as well. e.g. by the artists appearances, actions, and speech on radio/television, live concerts, etc. This "artistic image" is a kind of marketing and has always been exploited and/or manipulated by the recording industry. In this regard, there is quite a bit of salesmanship in the industry, and the artists are to a large degree dependent on the industry to get that image out via appearances in other media.

Re:recording industry?

[Sj0]

Video killed the radio star....and marketing killed the video star. Oops!

Re:recording industry?

[Kiaser Zohsay]

It's a broad, scattergun approach, and I can't help but think that one could do a far better job with a large database and some social networking software.

Are you suggesting GoogleMusic? :P

Or Pandora?

It logs your IP address.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

If you visit edonkey.com, it logs your IP address

If you visit one my my sites, I'll log your IP address too. So what - are they following up on each one to see if they are potential pirates?

Re:Morte d' Robertson

[X0563511]

They call that a war of attrition. And they are indeed loosing (big lawsuits against few people wont work, they need small lawsuits against teeming crowds).

But that's almost as impractical as SCO's lawsuit(s)

Never ending gravy train

[LiquidCoooled]

So, eDonkey wants to stay legit, good on them.
They want to put in place controls to limit copying, good on them.
They then give all their money to the bullys, bad move.
Paying of the artists might seem like a prudent course of action, but once you pay of one group, what about the next?

Theres the RIAA, MPAA and the BSA.
The guitar tab people and the knitting pattern folks and all the other American groups.
Thats not including all the individual software companies who want a piece of the pie, nor does it include all the groups from other countries (like FACT(Federation Against Copyright Theft) or CAAST(Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft)).

What happens when I find software from my company is available on limewire, where do I get my piece of the pie from, or is mine not big enough and is simply enough to get it added to the list of banned searches without any financial payback?

What makes my company different to the RIAA groups?

Let the copyright owners prove blatant infringement, let them show the service is doing illegal things and let the service fix itself.

Don't give into threats.

Re:Never ending gravy train

[sane?]

Paying of the artists might seem like a prudent course of action, but once you pay of one group, what about the next?

I'd have less problem with them paying the artists directly, rather than the industry which includes all the other hangers on and parasites. I somehow doubt any of this money actually goes to the artists at all - it just inflates the profit lines of the various companies.

Ducking Fisgusting.

[Penguinisto]

Instead of threats of violence or interference, there's threats of lawsuits to extract cash and force the death of anything that threatens a well-financed-enough organization. Yay. (as /me shakes head)...

It's almost as if the RIAA can now go after any company who sells products with any sort of file-transfer technology... I wonder why they haven't gone after any web browser that supports FTP, or anyone who makes/distributes an NNTP reader? Hell, FTP and NNTP were passing copyrighted files around long before AOL even reared it's head... Ah, but the answer is pretty obvious in thsoe cases, no?

N.B. how much money does a grassroots organization have to scrape together and put in the politicians' pockets before we can get some sort of copyright law reforms, anyway?

/P

Re:Ducking Fisgusting.

[Penguinisto]

"The difference between FTP/HTTP and eDonkey is that eDonkey while providing a mechanism for sharing files, PROFITED from the copyrighted intellectual property of others"

Oh? How about all those years that people used Agent Pro, or Netscape News Reader, or ...? software writers turned a decent profit from those items for quite awhile.

And, umm, "NNTP", not "HTTP". You know, like "USENET". Will no one rid me of these troublesome newbs!?

Or were you referring to proprietary vs. open standards for transferring files? Shouldn't matter either way, there - unless it's suddenly illegal to write and sell proprietary software that uses proprietary communications protocols ('course, you could try and sue Novell for doing that... they've been at it for years! ;) )

Ah, wait - nevermind... your premise is flawed in another way entirely, which means that I don't have to keep guessing at WTF you were attempting to talk about: eDonkey made money from sales of their "Pro" software, not from pirating everyone else's stuff. Customer motivations have nothing to do with sales intent, otherwise gun and knife makers would be civilly liable for every murder committed with their products. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good parallel (and a reason why most lawsuits against gun makers have failed utterly on such premises...)

...unless of course you're going to assert that they made their cash from actially selling pirated stuff online - you aren't dumb enough to assert that, are you AC? Didn't think so.

I wonder...

[GmAz]

So, does the $30 million go to the 'starving' artists or will the RIAA soak up the money?

Logged IP?

[im_mac]

Everyone who clicks on the eDonkey link gets this friendly message:

"You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material. Your IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and has been logged."

Great, I only go to the site, they chastise me for 'stealing' music and then write down my IP address. How long until the RIAA sends me a letter regarding my visit to eDonkey.com and requests to view my harddrive to find 'stolen' files?

Re:Morte d' Robertson

[smilindog2000]

I believe the powerful music and movie industries will succeed in forcing the US government to crack down on ISPs (not just individuals and web-sites). Then, eMule and it's network will go away, at least for us in the US. The ISPs will be happy to comply, since this will eliminate much of their traffic. It probably would have already happened had these industries not POed the GOP by donating generously to Democrats for years, and if the government weren't working so hard to be budy-budy with backbone carriers so they can get their secret data taps, and if the baby Bells weren't such grand GOP supporters.

One the bright side: legal digital music and video distribution should get cheaper. Those of us who actually pay for our stuff will see a benefit.

Re:I have a question....

[shark72]

"I hate to say it, but it could also be that your friend isn't very good at his job. It's not a flame or anything, it's just that I run my own business too and I've seen as many people go bust because they aren't any good as I've seen people become millionaires and not have a clue what they're doing."

Could be... I don't know, either. But the point I'm making is that your average indie label is likely a lot smaller than the typical Slashdotter imagines. Five or ten-person labels are quite common, and pay in the record industry is not high. It has its millionares, sure, but so does the software industry and pretty much every other industry of significant size.

"This isn't about pirates putting independant record labels out of business. Hell, indie labels are least affected by this sort of thing and in some cases have used the technology themselves to help generate interest in their artists."

When Napster really exploded, my friend had to lay off some of his employees. People were using Napster to get his bands' stuff for free. Not "free but they ended up buying it" or "free but they bought a t-shirt." Free as in "I don't have to pay the band or record company in any way, shape or form." If he'd been a larger company, he might have been a bit more resilient, but because he was pretty small and paying his bands much higher than the contract rate of the big record labels, P2P hit him hard.

That was several years ago. Nowadays, the reality is that indie labels without big bank accounts must be able to cope with the force of P2P; or better yet, use it to their advantage. It's economic darwinism. But I've no doubt that the P2P explosion caused many indie labels to go extinct, as it were.

Re:What "matter"?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, this isn't the way it works. You need to build up credit first, by sharing. ed2k works best if your client is online 24/7.

Second, eMule is not a network, just an application that uses (and expands) the same protocol. OK, it has its own serverless Kademlia network now, plus source exchange so you needn't ever connect to a server. But even then you're still indirectly using the ed2k network.

Third, non sequitur.

Fourth, server-client does not equal centralized. Anybody with some upload bandwidth can be a server. There are no superservers.

Fifth, try finding non-mainstream or old(er than 2 weeks) stuff on BitTorrent that is still being seeded. Or try sharing many files. BitTorrent's credit system of instant gratification just doesn't allow keeping downloaded files in your share.