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LimeWire Sues RIAA for Antitrust Violations
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes to tell us that in a recent court battle, Arista v. LimeWire, LimeWire has filed counterclaims against the RIAA for 'antitrust violations, consumer fraud, and other misconduct.' From the article: "LimeWire alleged that the RIAA's 'goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers.'"
Still, it's the P2P services pushing back. The P2P services don't offer music, they offer files.
It's high time that a P2P service fight back in a meaningful way.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'm just not sure a borderline-frivolous lawsuit is a "meaningful way" of pushing back.
Given the number of frivolous lawsuits that the RIAA puts out?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
... a borderline-frivolous lawsuit in your humble opinion. Obviously not for some lawyers representing Limewire.
stay off my side? I agree with that LimeWire is saying, and I like LimeWire, but their business model is based off illegally downloading music, for the most part. I don't feel like I want this business model fighting fo rour rights. It doesn't give legitimacy to our side.
Perhaps not meaningful pushing. But - it is something that *we* are talking about. Publicity = good here.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Yeah man... the like revolution is like on its way man. You just wait dude, Americans of all types are going to put down their sushi, SUVs, and Bed Bath and Beyond discount cards like fight the man... man.
Please. If Americans (and I say this as an American) can't be bothered to go vote in numbers greater than 50%, I am pretty damn sure that the revolution over fucking music copyright infringement is probably not on its way. You can't even get Americans to vote yet you think that they are going to go into the streets or pick up weapons? Ahaha. Please.
The US already has a perfectly effective way of changing the rules that makes the notion of a revolution laughable. Just because Americans don't bother to use their democracy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Hell if anyone can remember past 6 years ago, Ross Periot of all people came damn close to becoming president. The system works. We just don't use it. If there is anything wrong with the system is that it requires American citizens in order for it to run properly.
Calling for the murder of a certain group of individuals is actually a joke.
Don't attempt to call these "individuals" a "group", and try to characterize them as if they are anything more than a malevolent cabal out to subvert the intent of our forefathers in founding the us and writing the US constitution.
We're not arguing about ethnic cleansing here, we're arguing about extreme sanction against what is nothing less than a group of domestic terrorists and racketeers with their talons in the government.. not all that dissimilar from hezbollah, just using different methods under color of law.
Vigilantism worked quite well in the old west. Granted it can get a little overboard, but I don't think anyone in the general public would weep the passing of these corrupt scumbags.
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not really, a judge's duties are to interpret existing laws and weigh evidence to determine the guilt or innocence of a party.
That should involve examining the evidence backing up a claim and rendering a judgment, not simply dismissing the claim because the judge thinks the defendant should be granted the priviledge of not having a trial.
if this rule applied to murder.. you'd have a judge saying
"you know.. that OJ is just such a good football player and such a beloved public figure.. i just don't believe he could have murdered anyone.. therefore I'm tossing out the prosecution's case without even scrutinizing the facts"
That would be the whole point of the judiciary.. accusations are supposed to be adequately weighed and the defendant proven guilty/found not guilty following a fair trial.. not the defendant having a free ride because the plaintiff just seems a bit too shady to the judge's subjective view.
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At least as I see things. That is the hope that in the 'exploitation' of this countersuit, the judge sees some evidence of wrong-doing by the RIAA, and that judge, in some way, agrees they are using anticompetative practices. If that is all that is firmly established in this court case, it is enough to let other lawyers build upon, or I hope that it is.
One thing is sure, as my grandpa used to say, there is no smoke without fire. The trouble is often seeing through the smoke to find the fire. I for one hope that Limewire and their lawyers at least make it more than slightly noticable to John Q. Public that the RIAA is anti-competative and anti-consumer. I hope they are able to blow aside the smoke so we all can see the smoldering fire of the RIAA's business model.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Whatever they claim just doesn't sound right because, you know... That whole Napster thing... And, you know, those napster users were probably smoking teh pot too. Criminals. All of them.
The judge is thinking there's no way files can be legitimately shared... Who makes their own music? Why would they want to give it away? Smells like some kind of crazy thing my weird liberal parents might have done.
Let's not forget the judge has a windows desktop using totally proprietary software with antivirus and antispyware and anti-this and anti-that run by a system administrator who babysits the judge when the computer has a hic-up.
The judge experiences it all as working and working well, so where's the crime here?
End of LimeWire.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So this is why 2 american presidential candidates were arrested trying to gain entry to the 2004 debates?
The green and Badnark got arrested for trespassing. You can get yourself arrested too without much trouble; that doesn't make this Soviet America. You can't even put the US and a solid half of the world nations on the same scale when it comes to political freedom. Suggesting that you can simply shows deep ignorance about the state of the rest of the world.
oh please!.. the 2 reigning parties have essentially made it impossible for new parties to form.
I don't disagree in the slightest. You miss the larger point though which we shall get to in just a moment.
ross perot had 2 billion dollars at his disposal. Unless everyone else has that kind of money no.. the system does not work, and how dare you try to pretend otherwise
Ahh, now we are getting closer to the "problem" with American politics...
And this is why the majority of americans dont vote.. they know it's essentially communist china here with a little potpurri on the grungier and more totalitarian aspects.
And this is where the point flies right over your head. The Americans could have made Ross Perot president if they wanted to. Nazi storm troopers didn't drag Perot off in handcuffs. No evil corporate death squads showed up to prevent people from voting. Americans just didn't vote for him. They could have and they didn't. End of story.
Ask yourself why Ross Perot did so well. To give you a little history, this man for a brief time actually was LEADING in the polls. He only started to get trounced after his somewhat defective personality was brought to light by his public appearances. Ross Perot almost won because of marketing. Don't get me wrong, he had a message too, but what made him different from the Greens and Libertarians that loose each year is that not only was his message centrist enough to appeal (lets face it, the Greens and the Libertarians are extremist), but he had enough money drive his message like a spike through every single American's head.
This is the heart and the root of the problem with American democracy. Americans are too fucking lazy to learn about politics. You need to practically beat the American public in voting. You need to blast the airwaves and the TVs. You need to shove your message down their throat and send out armies of volunteers. The problem isn't that the poor oppressed masses of Americans don't have an alternative. They do have an alternative; they just either don't know about it because they don't bother to look. Even when they do have the alternative (as was the case with Perot), they further fail to not just vote for the alternative, but the majority simply fail to vote. The Americans are not the poor oppressed people whose will have been broken as you make them out to be. They are just flat out lazy and/or stupid. America's lack of choice is American's fault. Pure and simple.
If Americans were not so complicate and easily swayed by corporate sponsored political marketing campaigns, corporations would have no power. If Americans spent 5 minutes on the Internet, found an alternative, then voted for the alternative, the democins and republicrats would be out within a week. The Gestapo isn't going to stop them from voting or rig the election. No one is going to be sent to the Gulag for failing to vote for one of the two established parties. If they simply voted differently, the established parties would vanish.
Any political failures in the American political system are not the fault of evil corporations and politicians. The blame lies completely and ONLY on the shoulders of the voting (and more importantly) non-voting public. The failures of our political system stem directly from a failure to exercise the political power that all Americans over the age of 18 have.
So can it with the inane talk of revolutions and evil corporations. If you think the system is so corrupt, do this
The RIAA wants you to pay for that single, not download it for free. And while I agree that it may suck that you would have to go to Tower to indulge in your obsessive love for all things Britney, it's not as if the RIAA is trying to steal or throw out your vote, or kill your grandmother.
There are SO many things in the world that are way more likely to "subvert" our culture than this. Get some damn perspective.
The whole point of copyright is temporary exclusivity.
There is a world of difference between temporary exclusivity on a single piece of music and ongoing long term exclusivity on a controlling percentage of the market.
If the law doesn't recognise that then the law is an ass.
---
Don't be fooled, slashdot has many lying astroturfers fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as third party opinion. FUD too.
"The whole point of copyright is temporary exclusivity"
It's temporary in the sense that Earth is temporary - we're gonna get swallowed by the sun or "Big Crush"ed or something, but the fact is that there's no real reason to believe, given current trends, that copyrights are gonna expire, just like there's no reason to believe the sun won't rise tomorrow. Copyrights have been extended so many times now that it's silly to believe that they'll end without massive changes in Congress.
The RIAA wants you to pay for that single, not download it for free. And while I agree that it may suck that you would have to go to Tower to indulge in your obsessive love for all things Britney, it's not as if the RIAA is trying to steal or throw out your vote, or kill your grandmother.
Exactly.. they sell you something then insist you're not allowed to do as you please with it, which is direct impediment of the individual right to personal property in the civilized world. This itself is not the most damning manifestation of this attitude though.. they now insist on slapping DRM all over everything... This would be like me selling you a house but denying you the right to open any exterior or bedroom doors, it is a spit in the face to the democratic concept of self determination and the capitalistic concept of individual property. You essentially become a serf.. you're not allowed to own what you buy.. you have to pay taxes on it though!
In order to prop up this regime they make sure EVERY political candidate is under their thumb. They do this by a carrot(bribery) and stick(threats of bad press.. their holding companies own the main stream press) approach.
Then when they can't properly keep a lid on it.. and keep up with technology, consumer demand, and the times, they extort random people into bankruptcy via manipulated laws.. threatening to "sue".. but if they simply don't challenge it they'll "only" have to pay 4 to 10 grand.. isn't that nice of them..
They are also campaigning and engaging in "re-education" of the populace.. isn't a representative democracy supposed to reflect the will of the people? I thought "re-education" only occurred in orwellian dystopias and totalitarian regimes.
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Now that I think about it, I suspect that Limewire's counterclaims are not as frivolous as we think
IANAL, and while in law terms it might be frivolous, in simple common sense terms, the counter claim isn't frivolous, it's just stating the plain facts. IMO that IS the RIAA's game. The fact they're able to target people who are breaking laws that the RIAA have helped buy merely allows them to have some aura of legitimacy. If these people were using p2p legally, they'd find other ways to try to crush p2p.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
well.. then for tens of thousands of citizens of this country.. rule 11 has failed to protect them from abusive RIAA litigation ^^
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Not quite: "abusive" means without a basis in existing law or fact, or that there are no reasonable arguments to extend existing law. A law is not "abusive" just because one dislikes it. So for example, if a person violates another's copyright, the content-owner may sue the infringing-user for damages.
An example of abusive litigation would be if the RIAA intentionally sued someone when it absolutely knew he/she had not violtaed their copyrights. It is not likely to be considered abusive for the RIAA to sue someone if they have a reasonable factual basis to believe a violation took place. Note, a "reasonable factual basis" is not the same as an "ironclad case". So linking an IP address "owner" with shared music files is probably a strong enough basis to start a case. Other facts might change this during the discovery process but at least intially, it certainly wouldn't be "abusive" in the sense used here. For example, if in discovery it came out that the IP address "owner" didn't actually buy the network service, but someone else did after stealing his credit card, the RIAA would really need to drop the suit.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I have no problems with the concept of paying for a true license, but the concept of a true license has sparked a very very tired argument so i'll forgo delving further into that concept..
My real beef is that the conditions of the sale are now subject to completely different enforcement dynamics with the introduction of (legally protected*) DRM.
what DRM basically is is unilateral enforcement of contract terms without judicial oversight.
Judicial review and oversight of copyright is what gives flexibility to copyright law, giving rise to the amorphous and (what used to be a) continuously evolving concept of fair use.
It also gave rise to something which many people term as "fair use" but it was really a very necessary byproduct of the cost of waging a legal battle, that is unregulated uses.
Lessig does a good job covering this, but basically.. any use which people put a copyrighted work to which was not of significant commercial impact was generally neglected and left open to end users because the cost of putting it to a betamax type trial would be worth less than the potential gain.
DRM turned this concept on it's head. Whereas the default practice was that any nonsignificant use was allowed unless it could be considered significantly impactful, now it is denied unilaterally, and there is no process by which the end consumer can attempt to recover those uses.
Considering the significant number of uses covered in this category-- including personal editing and remixing, format shifting for compatibility (this is apparently not considered the same as time/space shifting by the judiciary) , or other such customization to fill market niches which would otherwise go unfilled-- There is now a significant sociocultural desire which is being surpressed, but which is fundamental to the human condition.
This is where property rights overlap.. the courts used to provide compromise both by mediating disputes when they arise between the two sides and by imposing costs and deterrants to both sides to create a balance. This is no longer being provided.. these companies are being given unilateral power to act which has, through one level of indirection, legislative force but no accountability.
In other words.. a totalitarian oligarchy is being imposed in an important sector of our daily lives and on an invasive and individual basis.
Sure it's not quite up there with the right to live, speak, or sleep without undue fear of persecution, but it's still a fundamental sociocultural "right" which is no longer protected from very real threats, and ironically one which at least the english speaking community has not adequately defined because it didn't need definition before.
*Note: without legal protection DRM has no real weight.. since DRM is nothing more than security through obscurity, if firms were allowed to develop and market workarounds they would and it would correct any undue restriction.
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How can anyone with brains defend Limewire?
Read the countersuit completely. They attempted to 1 filter the material using a hash of the copyrighted songs provided by the RIAA, and 2 attempted to lisence the copyrighted material. The RIAA and labels would neither provide a license or hash of the copyrighted songs to use as a filter. The cartel failed to prevent damages and only decided to SUE SUE SUE. Limewire responded with We asked, begged and pleaded for both material to use in a filter, and license to sell DRM'ed legal audio files.
It's like back in the 1980's. Lucas films said they would never release Star Wars to the video market. There was no way possible to obtain a legal copy. Due to piracy they changed their mind. However by then I had a copy for over 4 years. Limewire is playing the same game. Please License, provide filter hashes, as we want to also open an online store. Now that the RIAA has opened the can of worms, the defense is there is no legal avenue to compete with price fixing of the cartel in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust act. They tried and begged at the door. They cite every new dirstrubition method has been met the exact way from Player Piano rolls, to Radio, to the Betamax case, to the Rio MP3 player, Online stores, and now Peer to Peer.
Please read the countersuit. I think it has some merit.
The truth shall set you free!
So what? The recording industries model is based on owning content they do not make. They are surplus to requirements nowadays as the artists themselves (or their agents) can handle distribution just fine.
You talk like it's one man one vote, or like voting registration and counting weren't been cheated in the last two presidential elections.
I turned 18 in September of 2000, and I have only had ability to vote in the last two presidential elections. Both times it has been obvious to even a lot of non-tin-hat-wearing Americans that forces outside of America's voting power control, to some extent, the outcome of the election.
It's easy to place the blaim squarly and singly on the shoulders of the public, declaring them/us "too fucking lazy to learn about politics", and saying that:
But so many Americans rely on major corporate news outlets for their education on public issues. I mean, they are journalists right? They're on TV, it's the news, it can be trusted, right? But even if you don't believe in corporate conspiracies, it's hard to ignore the claims against Fox News (News Corp) and yet it remains the highest rated news channel (even despite a recent decline in viewership).
So the uneducated Americans are uneducated why? Not because of a corporate plot? How about because of a lack of corporate responsibility, or governmental responsibility to educate the masses.
Mass media was created to reach the masses, because it's hard to get information to 300 million people who are busy trying to work and live and such, as I'm sure even you are. If the mass media outlets are not providing the people with truly "Fair and Balanced" information on the issues, how can the American people be expected to know, or even care, about what goes on?
Americans apathetic and uneducated about voting? Yes, but the system doesn't exactly tender an educated voting culture.
Almost all social problems can be viewed as either indivual problems or stuctural problems. To err solely on either side is to admit to being one of the uneducated voters.
"And this is where the point flies right over your head. The Americans could have made Ross Perot president if they wanted to. Nazi storm troopers didn't drag Perot off in handcuffs. No evil corporate death squads showed up to prevent people from voting. Americans just didn't vote for him. They could have and they didn't. End of story."
I agree 100%. American's often have the problem of following the masses. Not that I thought that Perot was the best candidate for the job, he was probably the best candidate available at the time just because he hadn't been part of the political machine. His experience and reputation as a cut-throat business man was contrary to the status quo and most Americans were not really ready for that. The major parties used that against him and Perot had no clue how to combat that type of machine.
America doesn't need a revolution, only candidates with charisma and a lack of extreemist views in order to be a viable candidate. I agree with you that the Grren's and the Libratarians tend to have too far left or right a message. The green's would have us all believe that corporations are inherantly evil (which as an entity with no true values this isn't really possible, some of the directors and CEO's are evil, but the corporation itself can't be as it has no heart, soul, or brain) and the libratarians would argue that we should eliminate al social programs and take the government out of all roles other than foreign policy. Although I probably lean toward the Libratarin point of view every since I watch a family use food stamps to buy food in front of me, then went out to my 8 year olf wreck of a Honda civic to watch them hop into a brand new decked out Toyota 4-Runner that had to have cost $45,000-$50,000. (This is just my opinion on social welfare programs and their poor management... and you are all entitled to your own... don't try and change mine.)
If you don't like the current candidates or system you have more of an ability to change it today than ever before. With the Internet it is easy to voice your opinion. Write to the editorials... it isn't that hard to get published. Go and start your own voter registration drive. Use your ability to communicate and spread the message you want heard. If you just sit back and complain about the system it is your own fault. I can't stand it when people rant about how messed up the system is yet they have no plan on how to solve it. It sounds like the same thing that everyone complains about politicians doing. You are no better than the system if you don't make your voice heard.
Slashdot is a great place to start but your audience is very limited. Write to the Wall Street Journal, the Ney York Times, The Washington Post, or any other publication with a national audience, not the geek audience that is here. Try running for a local office, the local government has a great deal of power in this country, it just doesn't make headlines. A majority of your taxes go to the local government anyway, even if you don't realize it (Schools, roads, and local services comprise much more of the tax revenue than defense or national programs.) Don't complain, try to make your own impact rather than complaining about what everyone else does1!!!
LimeWire is free to produce their own music and sell it through their own store. Instead they want to force the RIAA to sell the RIAA's music through LimeWire's store, and the RIAA doesn't want to deal with thieves.
No, it's more like Zerox could not get a publishers lisence to sell books, so they distributed a Photocopy machine instead that had non-infringing use as well as the ability to copy pages in a copyrighted book without a filter. Don't confuse Limewire with the end user's application of the product.
The truth shall set you free!
This sort of logic-chopping will earn you a humiliating put-down in the classroom. Here it gets modded up to +5.
You cannot communicate any information between individuals distant in time or space without first converting it into a "file" -- a form -- that can be conveniently stored and transmitted.
Shouted into the air. Scratched into a clay tablet. Mechanically cut into a wax cylinder.
perhaps it is hypocracy..
Or perhaps it is hypocrisy
Follow me
Actually, prohibition was a prime example that you can't enforce a law that the people aren't willing to obey.
The proponents of that law were in the extreme minority with little to gain by the population obeying it. For a law to succeed there has to be some resulting benefit desireable by the majority of the population. Murder is illegal because the majority of us desire to live in peace and without fear.
The RIAA on the other hand has a lot to gain and more resources to effectively make a dent in the enforcement. Copyright law no longer serves to protect the interest of the majority. Anymore it protects only those with deep pockets who want to keep it that way, so the majority don't hold it to high regard anymore. The RIAA will continue to stink the place up. Hopefully we will eventually see reform. Copyright law must be reshaped to represent its original intent: To assimilate content (art,music,literature,etc...) into culture with _limited_ protection on the copyright holder.
Yes, that's right folks, it was originally _limited_ protection, not _infinite_!
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
If these people were using p2p legally, they'd find other ways to try to crush p2p.
Why would they? Legal P2P doesn't involve their interests. If there weren't a single RIAA song ever transferred over P2P you think that the RIAA would care?
I'm no big fan of the RIAA, but to say that they'd attempt to squelch technology which doesn't harm ( or can be perceived to harm) their business in any way is a bit ridiculous.
Yes, they would care.
The Record Companies and by extention the RIAA are just like the Agents in "The Matrix". "They hold all the keys, and they guard all the doors" If you are going to distribute music in a big way, you MUST go to the Lables. If you, as a retailer, want to sell popular music, you MUST go to the Lables.
The Lables, take most of the risk, putting out hundreds of albums a year, with only a few proving to be hits. But the ones that really are hits, make the Lables lots of money. Today, some of the best selling ablums, day in, day out, are Pink Floyd, and The Beattles. This back catalog, costs them nothing, but rakes in big money, day after day after day.
Why? Because in the indentured servitude of artist to the record lable. The lable owns the music forever and makes the big money off of anything that sells. If it is not fair, why then does the artist not sign the unfair contract and sell it themselves? Because the reality is, without a lable, you cant sell on a large scale or get airplay, for a large enough audience to hear your music.
P2P is one of the ways the internet changes that. And if ANY artist, any garage band, via there website sells their album, and via P2P, have people discover there music, and then there website. The record labels, see NONE of that money. They can't claim the lions share for taking the risk for the artist of putting the album out. They can't take the lions share for the burden of adverising. They can't take the lionss share for being the source of music that sells.
For the lables to continue to make the kind of money they are used to, being what, 80% or more of the acutal profit from record sales, they have to be THE SOURCE for music. P2P has the power to cut them out of that loop and reduce them to having to play fair with artits and retailers. Taking their fair share for the work they do, and the service they actually provide artits.
They may squeel like a stuck pig right now, over piracy, and how much they are loosing, even with them making more now than they ever did before. But in the shell game of what is real, and what is spin, follow the money. The shell with the money under it, the one they keep in motion, the one they are trying to distract you from. Is the one where P2P destroys their stronghold on both the artist and retailer.
vi +
Since most judges have decided to twist the role of the jury by not explaining - and prohibiting counsel from mentioning - that the juror is the final arbiter of both fact and law, I took it upon myself to conceal my stance.
You can call this civil disobedience, dishonesty, gross malfeasance of duty - I don't particularly care.
Jury nullification has a long tradition with much debate on both sides.
The law is a set of guidelines left to men to interpret in any given situation. It isn't always a good fit - and sometimes it's flat out wrong.
The role of the judge is to ensure a level playing field.
Opposing counsels' job is to present the legal positions of their respective clients in a form understandable and accessible to the jury.
It is the jury's job to determine facts, law and fairness.
I feel no more obligated to enforce a drug prohibition law than I would enforcing a fugitive slave law.
Some crackhead gets busted for theft - sure - I'll convict in a heartbeat if the evidence supports it.
But I'm not sending him to the state sponsored school for criminals for a $20 rock.