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EMI Says Online File Storage Is Illegal
WiglyWorm writes "MP3tunes CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service."
> As a record store owner, My business faces ruin.
Tough. The pervasive use of automotive vehicles has put a lot of blacksmiths out of business. But would the world really be a better place if we had stuck to using horse drawn carts?
An oldie, but a goodie.
>>>"People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago."
Well then, supplement your CDs with sales of MP3 singles. The singles market is going through the roof, and if you provided your customers with a place to buy and download MP3 singles, you'd probably be a popular stop for the teen and 20-something market.
ADJUST to the needs of your customers.
If they are demanding singles, don't hand them CDs.
Give them singles; give them what they want.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
I don't even understand how they can say this. If there isn't a copyright infringement going on here (I'd understand that), then what's the problem? By saying this, they're illegalizing the entire online music business? Some holding EMI's own music, like iTunes.
Or is this about some obscure difference between online storage and online storage?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Your analogy doesn't hold.
While I don't care if record stores go out of business, since it's clear that online downloads has won as the successor to the CD format, I do care about copyright. Online distribution without compensating the copyright holder will cause the arts to suffer. Yes, artists are getting ripped off by music companies, that will change as online downloads dramatically decreases the cost of distributing the work to the people. There are already companies that will list you on iTunes while leaving the copyright in your possession. The artists still get compensated in a way they find meaningful. Just because you don't like how they are treated doesn't mean you have the right to give their works away for free, thus removing all revenue they would generate for the work. An artist who finds a way to give their works away for free while still earning money on those works is making the choice, which is well within their rights, but it is NOT within your rights to make that choice for them.
Copyright serves a purpose, yes it's misused, yes the way works is sent out to the masses can be improved, but artists need to know they can earn a living worthy enough to create works. Yes, they can earn a great deal of money playing live shows, but do you honestly realize how hard it is on a person to tour? People have left bands that were earning them millions of dollars because they missed their wives! These are human beings, not some commodity to be used at your discretion.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Seems troll-feeders are still thriving. Seriously, have you never seen this one before?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
The problem is run into in the nature of the service being offered. This isn't merely storage, they are distributing the works.
... no plurals involved.
:-( You really don't get it do you ?
... a URL with "mp3" in it does not automatically equate to "file sharing".
They are NOT distributing it !!!
Distribute - verb (used with object), -uted, -uting.
1. to divide and give out in shares; deal out; allot.
2. to disperse through a space or over an area; spread; scatter.
3. to promote, sell, and ship or deliver (an item or line of merchandise) to individual customers, esp. in a specified region or area.
4. to pass out or deliver (mail, newspapers, etc.) to intended recipients.
5. to divide into distinct phases: The process was distributed into three stages.
6. to divide into classes: These plants are distributed into 22 classes.
They are not dividing the file into pieces, nor sharing it amongst any other parties. They are merely serving it back to the original owner when requested. I would imagine that definitions 3 and 4 could apply, but ONLY in the context of the original owner
Your argument is like accusing a bank of "distributing" your money when you pay a cheque into the bank and then use an ATM at a different branch to withdraw the SAME money that BELONGS TO YOU !!!
The way it seems to run, this isn't a common carrier thing that is being run in good faith, like say any random hosting company, this is a company that is advertising that it will distribute copies of music that you bought from someone else to you on any device you want.
There's that word again
That changes the rules, they can't do that without a license, even if you have 5000 copies at home.
When I purchase a CD, fair use says I may make backup copies for my own personal use. It does not dictate that those backup copies MUST remain within my own home, otherwise anyone with a cassette tape in their car that they copied from a CD they own would also be "breaking the law" everytime the car left the driveway.
If I choose to put my copies in a bank, they remain my property, and the bank does not "distribute" them to ANY third party. Likewise if I choose to store my data in an online file storage repository, and said repository ONLY returns that data to me when I supply MY username and password, it is exactly the same thing.
Don't let your shortsightedness blind you to the reality
As a record store owner, My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
The product has become dangerous. We used to buy 12 inch LP's, cut tapes for the car, play them with slides, etc. They have gotten the word out that most of these activities are now a legal liability that can cost you thousands of dollars. My peak piracy days 30 years ago was my peak purchasing days. The average then for the population was 2 LP purchases / year per capita in the USA.
My kids have grown up with iPods and the like. The music prices haven't changed. They have 30 Gig players and you still charge dribble prices for content. If the petrolium industry sold gas like you sell music, we would be arriving with empty 16 gallon tanks and finding the stuff in pretty packages that will fit nicely in your shirt pocket. Alternative fuel is the order of the day just like alternative distribution. The players have changed. The product value has changed. Back catalog is sold at full retail. There is no exchange or upgrade path for worn media. Care to exchange some 8 track tapes and Compact Cassette tapes? I have the full license to play them, but you don't back the license to ensure I am able to enjoy it.
Why is no one buying CDs?
That one is simple. I'm supprised you had to ask, but in no paticular order...
1 The loudness war
2 High prices for little content
3 Competition for the entertainment dollar (pay TV, satelite radio, cell phones, computer games, MP3 players, and others that had no or little presense 30 years ago.)
4 Retaliation for the industry's nukes on student's finances.
5 DRM on CD's makes them incompatible and dangerous to use. I don't keep a list of safe to play CD's. The lack of the Philip's Compact Disc logo on the good bad and ugly makes shopping by the cover very difficult.
6 Free music online (not piracy)
7 Piracy (fueled by all of the above)
8 Restrictions on use... Can't leagaly do the Carson Williams light show legaly unless you buy one of the approved for use licenses from Lights-o-Rama or play it in public at a reception, etc. No weekend DJ'ing for me.
8 ?? did I miss anything?
In summary, the product is compressed, possibly won't be transferrable to the kids iPod, can't be used with a Power Point Slideshow for a wedding, can't be used for the reception dance, super expensive to keep a current library for the above, and is a very expensive legal liability if your kids post it. The product is expensive, may be defective with no recourse, and a legal liability.
"When the kids went to bed, my wife asked me, "Will we be able to keep the house, David?""
I used to work in the VCR and TV repair business. When 20 inch color TV's were $400 and VHS VCR's were $600, people would pay the rate for a couple hours it took to repair them. Now purchase prices are near what a repair used to cost. I kept my house, but found a new line of work. Your field isn't the only one hit by distribution channels providing a cheaper product.
As long as your supplier is stuck on dribbling out product and sitting on back catalog and fighting hard to keep the ASP high, the demand in going to be small. Get used to it.
If your supplier was smart, they could sell compilation CD's of high quality MP3's of back catalog. They would be iPod, Zen, Zune ready, high quality and affordable. I would pay good money for high quality collections of Chicago, Pink Floyd, Styx, Led Zepplin, etc. Toss the restrictions on use and sell collections of 50's, 60's, & 70's dance music with permission to DJ the stuff may sell a bunch more. Many DJ consoles now play MP3's instead of CD's. Make loading the MP3's on the device hard drive legal instead of a legal liability.
See any trend here. Piracy i
The truth shall set you free!
The world changes. The market's demand shifts. And you, and people like you, continue to blame the customer base for wanting the product how they want it.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
EMI wants to gain access to copies of files that users have on their MP3tunes accounts. Now, I'm assuming that you can't just go in and browse the list of files that a user has, otherwise they'd have shot themselves in the foot by arguing on privacy grounds.
So I'm assuming that EMI came along and said, "We want all the MP3s stored in user X's account." As it's unlikely that any user has an account filled 100% with EMI music, EMI would be given access to a significant amount of music from other labels, without the consent of the copyright holders. Which seems very hypocritical, even if it's legitimised by a court order.
Do. Not. Feed. The. Trolls.
C'mon, you're aren't new here. You must have seen this one copy 'n pasted on every MP3 story?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
> Making copies of works that you didn't create is illegal unless you are doing it for personal use (fair use, there's a whole set up things that fall in this catagory).
No. Making copies of works that you are not the copyright holder of is illegal, unless you have a license to do so (for example, creative commons license, or the license a record company holds for a musicians work) or unless you don't need a license for other reasons. (There are quite a few reasons. Fair use is one example. See the laws for more)
The points you have listed are not "things you need to know about copyright." but more like "things you need to know about how the old fashioned greedy corporations choose to use copyright in many cases"
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
actually, lately i am seeing more and more new music created. authors place it for free download, because, well, they want people to hear it. as a result, people tend to go more to gigs and so on. :)
i'm not interested in those sweet boybands that some old producer with weird sexual preferences creates one after another, as those can't adapt to such an environment. so, if we get less "music" like that and more of 'underground' one... hey, go for it
Rich
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Not to mention the military, far from home months on end. And don't get me started on the average wage here.
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry.
Their own product?
Oh how many musicians sell their own music out of their own store?
Please. Music store owners don't make the music they sell; they are a retailer of another person's product.
The smart ones diversify or change to a different product.
How many butchers went out of business when the ability for frozen pre-cut meat came on the market?
Seriously. Look at the number of butchers in your town and then figure out the numbers there were years ago before refrigeration.
People want to listen to the music and are willing to pay for their own copy of that music. The only fact that has changed is that we no longer need the bits of plastic to physically carry the copy.
Then not only are you an old-fashioned developer, you're a lousy old-fashioned developer with no knowledge of the wider world your software is operating within. Security and legal concerns (especially legal concerns) trump the $0.00078 savings, by your estimated storage price, per copy of "Toxic". This is especially true when the architecture you're discussing would cost more time and money to implement than the safer version, what with the necessity of acoustic fingerprinting or some other technology to make sure that User1's "Britney Spears - Toxic.mp3" is the same as User2's "Toxic - Britney Spears (ub3r h0t ch1ck).mp3" is the same as User3's "251 - BS - TOXIC.mp3".
Please, by all that's holy, tell me you're just over-simplifying for the masses. Actually, don't tell me that, because there's only two options here:
- 1. You're over simplifying a complicated technology, just like the idiots at EMI/SonyBMG/ do to confuse the non-technical people judging a case, or
- 2. You're not even a developer (or are someone who's written a half-dozen PHP scripts for their buddy's website and thinks they're a developer) and are just blowing smoke on this topic.
Either way, this absurd and technically inappropriate answer isn't doing anything except to muddy the waters. Please leave that to the professionals at EMI.