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RIAA Gets Nervous, Brings In Big Gun
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."
Those RIAA people are pretty sneaky
I think they're just bringing in the best hired gun that they can. No different from any other company or organization in that respect. This case is absolutely huge to them. Of course they're going to get the best counsel they can. Wouldn't they be foolish if they didn't?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
They'd sue the hell out of McDonalds if McDonalds offered Starbucks coffee without a license.
Yeah, that Ray Beckerman, what a poser. *facepalm*
Mod parent down pls, kthx.
Ummm... Isn't that practically what McDonalds is doing with the new "McCafe" or whatever it is called? Sure it isn't the same recipe, but it could be argued that the torrents on the site because they are MP3s and not the original CDs, are different.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Sounds pretty epic! Do they allow people to take pop-corn into the court?
You just got troll'd!
Don't forget to tag this article (and all articles relating to the RIAA, MPAA and anyone similar) with the tag "bastards".
And, this seems like a good stopping point. As of 1976 we had 2 26 year terms for a copyright, the act was amended that year and has been amended so many times since that whole treatises exist just to explain the changes in the law over a 32 year period.
What is particularly outrageous is the Sonny Bono extension - or, Save Mickey from the Public Domain Act. That crazy amendment brought material that was in the public domain back into copyright!
The great argument was that the authors would be more motivated to create with longer royalty periods - the only problem: I haven't heard any new creations from George and Ira Gershwin - the lazy bastards (ok, they're dead). The real reason to extend and extend these terms is to allow the corporate assignees to continue to profit. Disney was a strong backer because Mickey was about to become public domain - and that mouse is worth millions to its corporate masters.
The RIAA has been raking in the loot for 10-15 years now - and it is about time to put a stop to this kind of bs. I think that Monday will be the beginning of the end of the RIAA's tactics.
1. Using a crappy law firms
2. Using unlicensed PI's to supposedly download songs
3. Using a business model from 50 years ago in a post Y2K world
4. Not figuring out for years how to make money off of music the old fashioned way- by earning it through new ways of distribution, not by suing people.
5. By potentially generating so much case law that even the MPAA will have to give up as well
knew this was gonna happen eventually when 1 person fights and finds a flaw its not long before more start and the cracks in their "concrete solid" case start to be found and people start hittin on them with the hammers.
Well, I didn't know the phrase amicus curiae before, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and... I can't help it, it sounds a tad bit like "lobbying for courtrooms".
How do courts keep this from happening? Or do they, actually?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And if this was about people actually selling pirated DVDs, it'd be a different story.
This is closer to suing one person for over $10k per cup of coffee they stole.
I'm going to stick with that for the moment, as it's equally unfair to both sides -- stealing a cup of coffee actually deprives someone of potential revenue, whereas stealing a song is just a copy. But stealing a cup of coffee only feeds you (or your caffeine addiction) for a day -- you'll be back later, either to steal or to buy -- whereas stealing a song means you can listen to that same song again, as many times as you like.
But no matter how you want to spin it, stealing a cup of coffee does not carry a $10k fine. Stealing a song shouldn't, either.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Having good lawyers on both sides can really cut through a lot of the fluff and the misery in a case like this. Of course, if the lawyers deliberately want to exacerbate the problem and the judge isn't on the ball, they can make things worse. But otherwise, why would the RIAA not want the best lawyer it can get?
They've already had their expert "ambushed" with Daubert in the previous UMG vs. Lindor deposition that Ray Beckerman posted. This is 100% a rookie mistake. A competent firm would have briefed the expert and all related parties extensively on Daubert to ensure this doesn't happen. The downside for the opposition is that a better lawyer has a better chance of avoiding these rookie mistakes, so you have to actually argue facts rather than procedure.
Do all of you who rail against the RIAA really want them defeated because they hired crappy lawyers, or do you want them defeated on the merits? I fear that the answer from the Slashdot crowd at large is "either way, doesn't matter" but I think that's a little intellectually dishonest.
In P2P file sharing, copyright infringement is taking place. It is almost certainly NOT fair use. If you don't like it, you really need to be writing your members of Congress to change Copyright law. An issue like Capitol v. Thomas, where the issue seems to have shifted toward the magnitude of damages, is something that can be fought in the courts. And if it is to be fought in the courts, let it be fought on the essence of the issues and not on accidental factors such as the quality of the attorneys involved.
Actually stealing a CD doesn't get you into that, it's copying that does.
...and here is his unique game plan.
1) Ban reporters from courtroom
2) Turn off the lights
3) Win!!!
That's right. A transcoding is not a "copy." It bears no relation whatever to the sound or video recording alleged to be infringed. At most the misleading title is a trademark violation. A sufficiently engineered codec could take as input the source code to the Linux kernel and produce as output Britney Spears' latest single too. That doesn't mean that linux is a copy of a computer simulated tonally corrected mixture of a woman's voice with bad background music.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let's face it, the penalties levelled were never going to stand up in court in the long run. They were never meant to. They're a threat designed to scare people into settling. If a few of the RIAA's actual court victories are overturned, so what? Their main revenue stream is out-of court. Until a judge puts down an injunction forbidding them from sending out threatening letters to the populace, they'll still have that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The first guy to cook a piece of cow loves the way you think.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is going to be a good one.
Excuse me, got to get some popcorn.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Back before the Internet, copying a song from a record onto a cassette might deprive the RIAA member of a single sale. If that was what we were talking about, you would be correct.
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download - potentially at least thousands or tens of thousands of people. So comparing it to stealing a single cup of coffee isn't quite correct. It is a lot closer to stealing hundreds of cups of coffee, maybe more.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
> Arguably, I think the briefs are misfiled and that the process of the amicus curiae is being abused; A good amicus brief should, in my opinion, not be filed in support of any particular side, but in defense if a particular argument of law or explanation of fact.
Will they throw out the "amicus" brief from the RIAA-owned organization, or just ignore it?
Please...think of the grandmothers.
Can we keep and bear his arms after we cut them off?
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download
I was going by TFS, which says, and I quote:
This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs
Furthermore, "making available" has, in fact, failed in court, at least once -- which means that they would have to show that he was actually distributing it.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out.
Not strictly true. Depends what kind of logs the filesharing program kept, or her ISP.
According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing.
I like to call it "innocent until proven guilty", but apparently, this doesn't apply to civil cases.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Analog 'copies' have long been considered copies, even thought they really aren't. Dancing around and pretending that you could possibly engineer an encoder that does what you state without ever referring to the original slutmix is just silly non-sense.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Technically, it's closer to getting fined $14,000 for drinking coffee you found in the McDonald's dumpster. The company wasn't going to get any money from you anyway, but you still managed a caffeine buzz and a thirst quenchings. Meanwhile, dumpster diving means that you won't have to be asked "Do you want fries with that?" but it's questionable as to the quality of food you'll get, or whether you'll end up with a virus once you've finished getting what you're looking for.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Their main revenue stream is out-of court.
Really? Is that true anymore? I haven't bought a single RIAA CD in 10 years and I don't think anyone I know has either.
My blog
When you take a file, it is binary. Be it the source code to Linux, the newest hit song, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. When you convert an audio file from CD format, to MP3, the bits change. Rather than the first few bits being 00101010001010, they might be 1101010001.
And when you throw in fair use, the same string of bits that might be used for 3 different things. Face it, our laws were meant for an analog world, when you use them in a digital context they just are plain stupid
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Suppose they do. Do you have enough energy to be angry, or shall we skip the effort and just wilt?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually... he's an incredibly respectable lawyer who is incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, and writes the entire story based off good, solid facts. His only fault is for using a good lead-in sentence to get you hooked.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
but it could be argued that the torrents on the site because they are MP3s and not the original CDs, are different.
No, it couldn't. Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Or, to put it another way, if the listener can identify it as the same song, it's the same song. The actual order of 1s and 0s is irrelevant, because they're only a storage medium that has to be translated back to something you can hear. CD and MP3 differ only in the accuracy of reproduction; if encoding to MP3 changed the fundamental nature of the music it would be an utterly useless format.
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Sadly (or gladly) enough people do still buy CDs. I know if it is a band I like, that I do.
The problem is, if (assuming) CD sales are declining, it's just more ammo for the RIAA to push for more legislation to "combat" their flawed sales model.
One thing that always gets a laugh out of me are all the people who claim they refuse to buy RIAA member released CDs thinking that will somehow stop the RIAA - when the truth is, as evidenced by too many statements made by the RIAA, they blame every decline in CD sales on piracy and use it as a lobbying effort for more intrusive laws and less consumer rights.
It's not like their money will run out tomorrow... thus, not buying from RIAA labels because they are RIAA labels, only helps them to change the legal landscape in a fashion that hurts consumers even more.
In that, the Bush Administration has already chimed in (on this very case) trying to convince the judge to not do what he is currently doing and to uphold/allow the judgement that currently stands.
When it's a matter of money or business in this country (especially with so many lobbyists helping craft these laws) who do you think is going to win?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
to go to their level and start to use the Chewbacca defense.
.
Granny is not the victim - the incontinent - drooling - rocking-chair stereotype the Geek chooses to project.
These days Granny is sitting on the Bench.
Little Red Riding Hood has got herself a Wii and is whooping it up in the basement with the Big Bad Wolf - and don't think for a moment she doesn't know it.
The appellate judge is quite deliberately from the removed from the pumped-up moral outrage and melodrama of the courtroom. It is perhaps just as well, because he has every reason to be cynical.
Oh please. I challenge you to come up with a string of 1000 bits that has 3 different (meaningful!) meanings, let alone a string of 4 million bits, which is much more representative of mp3 compressed audio. If you manage to accomplish that, I challenge you to find 9 more.
(Note that there are [301 digit number starting with 1 that the lameness filter will not accept] different 1000 bit numbers...)
Copyright terms and so forth do not fit current technology, but the digital/analog divergence that you are arguing is the worst kind of logical contortion (the kind where you simply ignore inconvenient facts and information).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
.
Money is strictly short-term, precedents affect the long-term.
The RIAA want precedents to be set such that they can continue to harass innocent people without regard for the consequences of their mistakes.
No, this is actually like buying the newspaper and then leaving it on a bench in the park, for (potential) people to read.
You don't get sued if you leave the newspaper now, do you?
Not all people that see the newspaper will read it (download but never play or not download at all).
One person may actually take the newspaper and throw it in the trash (download and delete right away).
Other person may take it from the bench simply because he spilled coffee on his copy and he wants a better newspaper (download for backup or improvement over original copy).
Also, just because the song is available for others to download, it doesn't mean the owner intended to have other steal it (in some cases).
Yes, all that and even if it wasn't, an MP3 would certainly be a derivative work of the CD.
Right, but even if for the sake of argument one wishes to consider the MP3 different than the original recording that doesn't change anything.
An MP3 file would then be a derivative work and as such could only be made legally by the original copyright holder or somebody licensed the the holder to do the work.
You'd still have to demonstrate that the particular use was qualified for a fair use defense. You've gained nothing at all from the exercise. You'd still be banned from distributing the files without permission.
Now we know they're almost done!
From video game experience, we all know that the boss brings out his most dangerous and powerful weapon right before you win.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Right, because telling the courts how to do their jobs really worked well for his gitmo problems.
Judges are not perfect and in cases where they set aside laws they face a significant amount of backlash from people with no legal knowledge accusing them of judicial activism. Yes, sometimes the rulings absolutely boggle the mind such as whenever the SCOTUS chooses not to set or affirm precedence, but like it or not they do have the right to set aside laws that they deem to be in violation of the constitution.
Don't be an idiot. Copyright holds the concept of a derived work, and you cannot distribute a work that is derived from a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder. An encoded version of a music track is clearly derived from the original music track, and as such distributing it without permission is against the law.
Programmers tend to think that any law which can't be expressed in Perl (or Python or whatever) is too ambiguous to be useful. This is, however, not how things actually work.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs
RTFA. RIAA downloaded 24 songs from her.
Not strictly true. Depends what kind of logs the filesharing program kept, or her ISP.
And you are giving the RIAA the logs from your computer? Her ISP is not logging her file sharing activities.
I like to call it "innocent until proven guilty", but apparently, this doesn't apply to civil cases.
No, it does not. You are correct. One example of Oranthal, who was found innocent of double murder in a criminal trial, but guilty in a civil trial. At a civil trial the burden is not on the prosecutor to prove guilt. The court tries to determine what the most likely thing to happen was, then applies what they feel are the appropriate damages.
Engineers arn't boring people, we just get excited about boring things.
Innocent until proven guilty does apply to civil cases in the sense that jurors are not to come to a conclusion about the case until the end after the judge's instructions have been given and closing statements made. If you serve on a trial of any length you'd hear the judge say that to keep an open mind at least twice daily.
It does not apply in the sense that it's not beyond the shadow of a doubt and the outcomes are often about liability rather than anything that could reasonably be considered guilt.
Sometimes for one reason or another a summary judgment will be entered on a particular issue, but as far as juries go who is found to be responsible or at fault is held to the end.
I'm just posting this AC style because I'm on the jury for a current case and I'd rather not have the one off chance of this screwing with things.
Just a pedantic correction to help make the task even harder. It's actually closer to 48 million bits for the "average 3.5 minute song". Almost no one uses 128kbit mp3s anymore with storage so cheap, 192kbit is more the norm. I just looked at an album here and average per track was over 70 million bits, but those were extended length remixes.
Yeah, thanks, I left out at least one 8 in there. Yay beer.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
And you are giving the RIAA the logs from your computer?
If subpoena'd, I think I'd kind of have to, right? My impulse is to destroy them, but that would be tampering with evidence.
Her ISP is not logging her file sharing activities.
And you know this how?
ISPs are starting to do deep packet inspection, which means some will have exactly these kinds of logs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Use of "fixed that for you" shall be considered proof that the user is a complete tool.
There, fixed that for you.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I like to call it "innocent until proven guilty", but apparently, this doesn't apply to civil cases.
Unlike criminal cases where guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in civil cases it only require a preponderance of evidence or some such. That's why OJ won his criminal case but lost the civil case.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Remember to drink those in multiples of 8 as well. That should help your Slashdot experience.
Aye, there's the rub. Prove how many people downloaded the share. Otherwise it should be considered a broadcast, and it is not the RIAA who should be mitigating the offense, but ASCAP and BMI.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
The post you replied to was not saying their main revenue stream is selling CDs, it was saying their main revenue stream is getting people to settle out of court rather than going to court and possible having to pay more plus waste a bunch of time.
The republican party is prioritizing business interests over consumers any time the have a chance.
And the democrats are all cozy and in bed with the Hollywood elite.
Expect RIAA, Viacom, Hollywood and all other companiers with IP content to consistently get everything they want from Wahington. As a consumer, dont even try to get your hopes up. You will continue to get screwed.
Just as a reminder: After entertainment became a big business with lobbyists around 1920, *no* new copyrighted work have expired. Every 10 years or so, it has been extended by at least 10 years, and is now about two lifetimes.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
No, it couldn't. Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Take out the lyrics of Ice Ice Baby and that is clearly infringement of Under Pressure.
Strange, the copyright holders charge a different price for vinyl, 8 track, phonograph, MP3 or radio. I guess that is their right, but there is clearly a difference.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download - potentially at least thousands or tens of thousands of people.
Unless I'm missing something, it's not about that either. If that was the case wouldn't it be more prudent to go after the really 'bad boys' who post to usenet? IMHO, this has been nothing more than your typical 3rd rate asshat elites who needed some easy money - whats easier than taking candy from baby? Taking money from college kids and the like. They are just kids after all (relatively speaking) and they are just breaking into the real world, and have no clue what to do when a (supposedly) legitimate organization, let alone a bunch of attorneys, starts threatening them and demanding money - I sure as hell didn't 20 years ago, and I've learned a hell of a lot since about how things work around here...
I worked for a very prominent hosting corp that had a lot of this going on everywhere - movies, songs, software, you name it. If they were serious about this crap, they would have nailed them to the wall and been set for life - they had what they needed to show cause after all and plenty of it, although all that happened was a warning or some such... In the end, it didn't change much of anything but still no big bad wolf knocking down the door which is what happens to those who can barely afford the settlement in the first place.
My point is simply that this isn't about stopping anything, this is all about money and getting rich easily - or rather richer ... How much money goes back to the artists again?
Yep, the difference is demand, unit production costs, and in the case of radio bulk licensing. None of that changes the fact that copyright still exists on a given piece of music regardless of what format it's copied to.
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This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs
RTFA. RIAA downloaded 24 songs from her.
And they were authorized by the copyright holders to download them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Why 1000 bits? I wasn't aware copyright has any restrictions on length. Why does it have to be "meaningful" in any human context? In the digital world, every single bit is "meaningful."
I hereby copyright "1110100100101000." In the music word, even a sample of a work is considered infringement so any file that has that binary sequence in it is infringing.
I can guarantee it appears in every single GIF image ever made.
Therefore, all GIF images - or at the very least all images created or copied after this moment - are violating my copyright. Pay me.
=Smidge=
And therein lies the bug in the jury system. People are people and can't just dump what they hear or see to /dev/null. Once something is spoken or shown in court, no matter if it was on purpose or not, it is out there impossible to retract. People will be swayed by it even if instructed to ignore it. Add to that the lower bar of "preponderance of the evidence" and it is a recipe for wacky verdicts.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Correct.
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Unfortunately a Jeffersonian America no longer exists.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
When judges, who are so rich they probably have people use computers for them but never actually touched one
I don't think judges are as rich as you make them out to be. According to Wiki "As of January 2008, federal trial judges were paid $169,300 a year, appellate judges $179,500, associate Supreme Court justices $208,100 and the chief justice $217,400. All were permitted to earn an additional $21,000 a year for teaching." That may seems like a lot but I bet those capable of being judges who are in private practice make a lot more, like those lawyers who argue before judges.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Sorry, no. In order to qualify as a "derivative work" according to the accepted definition it must be significantly different from the original, but still contain recognisable elements.
Example: the theme for Men In Black is a derivative work because it used a portion of K.C & the Sunshine Band's "Forget Me Nots". An MP3 of "Forget Me Nots" is still "Forget Me Nots", it just sounds a little worse than an uncompressed PCM file.
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I hereby copyright "1110100100101000." In the music word, even a sample of a work is considered infringement so any file that has that binary sequence in it is infringing.
I can guarantee it appears in every single GIF image ever made.
Since when is GIF an audio format?
1000 bits because that's the number that the other fella spoke (it also happens to be hilariously small and enormously variable).
As far as why it has to be meaningful in a human context, the reason is because the digital world is a whole lot less relevant than various judges are, and they tend to be human and stubborn.
Also, "I hereby copyright" doesn't actually mean anything. I can say "I hereby copyright 'Smidge'" until I turn pink and grow roses out of my ears, but that doesn't actually have any impact on your ability to use the word.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
And these concepts mean what we say they mean. That's the slippery thing about a symbolset, a referent set, and the law. Let's have some sanity for a change. A transcoding is a new work.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Uhh...
Steganography?
Oops, the other guy didn't say 1000 bits. My bad. That leaves hilariously small and enormously variable (which would be the reason I chose it). Yay beer.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Just as you wouldn't want a lawyer barging into your office and telling you what an "object" is in your Java app, maybe you should stop pretending that you know the law and actually listen to what the lawyers say.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C.
Who is it -- is it Perry Mason?
I'll listen to Ray. You - I don't know what side you're on. Listening to an opposing lawyer is dangerous and dumb.
Copyrights and software patents are headed for the ash heap of history. Maybe you should consider a new specialty.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The US Constitution guarantees the exclusive rights to authors and inventors for a limited period.
Actually there is NO guarantee to copyrights or patents in the USA Constitution. What it does say is that congress can create them to encourage in the arts and sciences.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Because this isn't argument before the Supreme Court. It's not even before the Appeals Court. This is the original trial court this guy's being brought in for.
Regarding an MP3 as a derivative work, see my reply to stinerman.Otherwise, you'd be absolutely correct.
The real point here I suppose is that trying to get around the accepted, well tested legal definitions is a quick and easy way to convince a judge that you're a time-wasting idiot...a strategy that rarely turns out well.
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So if I *know* you killed someone, probably even thousands of people, but I can't actually pin any single murder or crime on you, you should sit in jail the rest of your life? I'm not sure that makes sense...
Lawyers in these cases have argued that "making available is the same as distributing," that a single shared song is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and a great many things that are far more absurd than my statement. The law is an ass and the lawyers in these cases are abusing the ignorance of the courts and the rights of the people.
It's time to take back ownership of our network, our computers, our rights to fair use and our right to "progress of science and useful arts" by taking back ownership of the related symbols. All of them. Where the constitution reads "securing for limited times" the framers did not intend for it to extend to over 100 years. 3 years is more like it. I could go with 30 days, or none.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well,I personally can't wait to see them argue the "making available" bit,since the German RIAA is suing someone using a leecher mod. Lets be honest here:they aren't actually bothering to see if anything IS available,they are just looking for files in a "share" folder. I could put .flv files of dogs taking a dump in a share folder and relabel them "Oops I did it again.mp3" but that don't suddenly turn rover into Britney.
The problem is their "evidence" sucks and they know it. If it were any other industry they'd be laughed out of court. Sadly with the kind of money and pull that the *.A.A groups have when it looks like the courts might start having too much common sense I'm sure that they'll just pass the "Sonny Bono II pay us protection money for breathing" act. After all,these guys are the same ones that say ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing. So don't worry,even if you don't use P2P I'm sure that by the time they get done changing the laws to suit them you'll be a pirate just like everybody else. Welcome to the club,coffee and donuts are on the table in the back. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Then, if I've purchased a copy on vinyl, or otherwise legally obtained a copy (perhaps through taping from the radio), I'm legally entitled to replace it with another copy, of whatever format? At no cost (if it doesn't cost anyone else) since I already own it. After all, that's the same copy as far as copyright is concerned. Over my life I've owned a lot of tracks that I no longer have. I don't think I have transferred ownership, so I still own them, even if that vinyl or CD or tape has deteriorated or disappeared or been destroyed. But it's reassuring to know that they're still mine, I can replace them by download without hindrance.
Oh, wait,the CopyCartel says it doesn't work that way.
Programmers tend to think that any law which can't be expressed in Perl (or Python or whatever) is too ambiguous to be useful. This is, however, not how things actually work.
No. It's just that we're acutely aware of how freakin' hard it is to explain exactly what you want without making any mistakes. When programmers forget a detail, we call it a bug. When politicians do the same, we call it a loophole.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm not saying it is going to work (obviously the judge ignored the recommendation)... but the related fact is, the judiciary does not make the laws... therein lies the problem. The judges may ignore such pressure (which they should ignore) put on them by Congress or the Bush Administration... but will be stuck enforcing new laws if either/both of those two manage to push them through.
Sorry if you misunderstood the relationship I was trying to point out...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Thanks Ray!
http://perl.plover.com/obfuscated/bestever.pl it doesn't have three meanings specifically, but its a program that can run as a perl script, OR a postscript document, and produces different output as each.
Programmers tend to think that any law which can't be expressed in Perl is too ambiguous to be useful.
Anything expressed in Perl is too ambiguous to be useful except to the person who wrote it. Sometimes it's too ambiguous even for that person a few days after it was written.
(gotta post anon because I already applied mod points...)
Windshield wiper delay circuit. Oh my, what an innovation, NOT. 17 years monopoly for that? Fuck the patent system.
That's not innovation. That's "hmm I need to walk to X, looks like I should move one of my feet forward, WOW I just made an innovation".
Firstly patents aren't the same as copyrights (as someone has already told you).
Secondly, the patent system is so broken it isn't funny.
The geniuses who come up with real innovations are typically so far ahead of their time that people only "get it" years later. Way after the patents have expired, or at least near the expiry. Google for "Douglas Engelbart" and the "mother of all demos". Check out the _whole_ system they built 40 years ago, now that's what I call innovation. This is: "Hey guys let's walk to Y instead, and here's a whole system that can get us there".
Long terms would benefit the lame brains who come up with "one click" crap and think it's so innovative, and the patent office's overworked lame brains will just rubber stamp it.
There more lame brains than geniuses. So therefore the patent system as is will cause more harm than good.
Prizes for Innovation that are awarded in hindsight might be better. Get people to pay a fee to register their inventions to be eligible for the prizes, the registration helps in figuring out who was first which is quite important[1].
In my opinion it'll be more likely that lame brains in charge of awarding the prizes can figure out that something was innovative in _hingsight_ than lame brains in charge of reading a patent application can figure out whether the "invention" is innovative or not.
It is clear that patents as is are currently being used by companies as an anticompetitive tool, and they are not actually improving the pace of progress. They are in fact impeding progress in many cases.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasys#Patent_dispute_with_Panasonic_EV_Energy
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINBNG11177720080630
Read the second link and simulate the likely future, guess what happens to the little guy?
Eventually you might have one patent, but for you to even move your little finger to implement it you would be infringing on thousands of patents owned by Allied Security Trust.
So guess what happens you try to do stuff and their lawyers meet your lawyers?
Or guess what some people might do instead: they don't actually implement stuff! Can't get sued that way. They sit and wait for the Allied Security Trust bunch to do stuff, and when the time is ripe they sue the relevant Allied Security Trust member and get $$$$$$$.
Tell me how this would improve the pace of progress and benefit society?
I'd take the rampant mutual copying ala China over this thank you very much.
I've got a Made in China 15g remote controlled heli that's rather cheap (about USD20 retail). Not amazingly innovative, but that's why it should be cheap, just the way I like it. Go figure out how many patents it infringes on from the infrared controller to the helicopter. It'll probably cost a fair bit to figure it out and you might never really be sure given how vague people write patent apps.
Yes inventors are going to cry that they aren't being rewarded, they're collateral damage. I will take great comfort in the _FACT_ that most of those "inventors" aren't real inventors and a great proportion of them are quacks who just think they're innovative. So only a very few will be hurt.
If my suggestion is done, some of those few might win a Prize for Innovation years later.
[1] A real inventor usually gets a fair bit of satisfaction from seeing his idea getting implemented, even if it's by others, AS LONG people know he was _first_. Sitting on it = not much satisfaction. In fact if lots of people implement his idea, that increases his odds of winning a Prize for Innovation (if his idea was indeed nonobvious and inventive).
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Can you say, "burden of proof"? Should we start convicting people based on the possibility of a crime potentially occuring?
4. Not figuring out for years how to make money off of music the old fashioned way- by earning it through new ways of distribution, not by suing people.
There is no revenue in recorded music anymore. I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any.
Just because you don't buy music doesn't mean others don't. Currently I don't, the last CD I bought I did about 4 years ago, but except when I drive I don't listen to music much anymore. And all I have in my car is a radio, there's no tape, CD, or mpg player. However I want to get a turntable, then I would buy vinyl records. In the past few years I've seen more and more stores selling turntables. Even Best Buy carry them, and they may start carrying the records too. Amazon already carries them. I'm still looking for a good one that plays 78rpm as well as 33s and 45s, all I've seen so far don't play 78s. Though only a small part of the market, vinyl record sales are increasing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Ok, so you freely admit no one knows how many downloaded from Ms. Thomas. The number is between zero and everyone on the internet. Suppose you lived in a country where you're "innocent until proven guilty". A country where it was considered better to let a guilty man go free than to wrongly convict an innocent man. Would it not be correct to say the number used in court should be zero?
it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday.
Hey, I know the author is just a simple ol' country lawyer, but this sentence makes no sense. If the RIAA is bringing in "the big gun" then they are not bringing in "cannon fodder."
The phrase cannon fodder is defined as "soldiers regarded merely as material to be expended in war." The term is usually used to describe a large force of poorly trained and poorly armed soldiers whose tactical value is that their slaughter consumes enemy resources. A good example of this is Zapp Brannigan's troops vesus the Killbots in Futurama.
As I constantly telling 12 year olds on Xbox Live, please don't use words if you are not sure what they mean.
they're just bringing in the best hired gun that they can
OK, so then why didn't they bring this guy in for the other parts of the trial?
Of course they're nervous.
In P2P file sharing, copyright infringement is taking place. It is almost certainly NOT fair use. If you don't like it, you really need to be writing your members of Congress to change Copyright law.
Going to congress isn't the only way to change laws. Probably the most important part of citizenship is on a jury and when on a jury the citizen has the most power. If a juror believes a law is wrong, and don't let any judge tell you otherwise, it's their duty to vote innocent and send the message the law is bad. This is called jury nullification. Thomas Jefferson, in support for jury nullification, once said (also on the wiki page) "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." I've been called up twice for jury duty though I was not picked to sit on a jury and I was hoping to be picked to sit on a drug trial, so I could say drugs laws are wrong, but now I'd love to be picked to sit on one for one of these trials.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
on the battle.
Even the absolute best, most elite, and well-equipped soldiers can become cannon fodder when they are ordered to march into an artillery barrage. This applies to artillery crews manning huge guns too.
Well, he would probably have more reasonable arguments than the asshats they are using now.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
More to the point... many songs that currently have certain note sequences copyrighted probably share note sequences with earlier songs.
We need to build a database of melody sequences which are in the public domain and use that to pry any modern melody that uses those sequences into the public domain. We don't need any more musicians suing other musicians who "stole their song" when we can probably show their melodies occur in many old folk songs (which they may well have heard growing up).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Who said it was?
I thought about that as I was walking out of a store last night, past a rack of CDs and DVDs for sale. If I were to swipe a DVD on my way past, and got caught, the consequences for shoplifting would be absolutely trivial, compared to getting caught downloading the same movie over the Internet, which takes longer, doesn't include the bonus features, and would probably require me to burn it to a DVD-R to free up space on my file server. And yet, stealing a DVD actually deprives the store of physical property that they paid for, while downloading via BitTorrent doesn't harm anyone.
How many people are going to switch from downloading to shoplifting because they're concerned about the possible repercussions?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Then, if I've purchased a copy on vinyl, or otherwise legally obtained a copy (perhaps through taping from the radio), I'm legally entitled to replace it with another copy, of whatever format?
Nothing I said implied that. If you purchased a song on vinyl, you are entitled to one copy of that song: the one you bought on vinyl. Buying one copy does not entitle you to make more copies, except under certain conditions specified by the doctrine of fair use.
After all, that's the same copy as far as copyright is concerned.
It's the same song, but not the same copy of the song. The distinction is actually very easy to comprehend, but if you need help it's spelled out in the list of definitions which you will find here (you might need to substitute the word "song" for "work").
Over my life I've owned a lot of tracks that I no longer have. I don't think I have transferred ownership, so I still own them, even if that vinyl or CD or tape has deteriorated or disappeared or been destroyed.
No, you destroyed/lost/failed to adequately care for the one copy you paid for. If you wanted to keep those tracks you should have taken better care of the physical media. Nobody owes you anything for your carelessness.
But it's reassuring to know that they're still mine, I can replace them by download without hindrance.
Did I say that? No, it's a strawman. If you can point to an error in anything that I wrote, as opposed to what you made up, please do.
Oh, wait,the CopyCartel says it doesn't work that way.
And they're right, which means you deliberately misunderstood what I wrote in order to prove absolutely nothing with a sarcastic bitching session. And in that spirit, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourself, since you're being both a dick and a twat.
Blank until
Very true. And according to the GP, the "uncompressed PCM file" you speak of would actually be a derivative work because the original was recorded on analog equipment and the PCM is just a sampling of that sound.
(I agree with you, and not the GP)
Actually... he's an incredibly respectable lawyer who is incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, and writes the entire story based off good, solid facts. His only fault is for using a good lead-in sentence to get you hooked.
Well, I wouldn't say that's my only fault.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
While we are discussing that genre of "rap". Who could forget MC Hammer "Can't Touch This" versus Rick James "Superfreak"? I think the only original instrumentation is when he Breaks it down..
Stop!
Hammer time.
I think we should all aspire to be someone who's only fault in a summary is using a good lead-in sentence. Thanks Ray!
I wish that were my only fault, but I have many others. Actually, I'm not even that good with lead-in sentences; I think I just got lucky on this one.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
We need to build a database of melody sequences which are in the public domain and use that to pry any modern melody that uses those sequences into the public domain.
The fact that a song contains elements from the public domain does not place that song in the public domain. It just means that the elements that were already in the public domain can be freely reused -- the rest of the copyrighted song is still copyrighted.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
he would probably have more reasonable arguments than the asshats they are using now
There are no reasonable arguments that can be made on behalf of an absurd and frivolous legal theory. The RIAA has so little confidence in it they themselves began leaving it out of their complaints last October.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Nothing I said implied that. If you purchased a song on vinyl, you are entitled to one copy of that song: the one you bought on vinyl.
What you said was:
Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
So what you said was, an MP3 version, a CD version, a cassette version, an 8 track version, a vinyl version, or an Edison cylinder, they're all identical as far as copyright is concerned. "It's the same as far as copyright is concerned." That sure as hell implies that what I bought was (a copy of) the song as performed, not some particular media reproduction of it.
That's an interesting point: if the record companies could claim that a digital master of an analog mix is a derivative work, and so cut down the royalties they have to pay the artists, they probably would have been doing it for years. But on the other hand, since doing that would allow others to circumvent copyright in the same manner and deny the possibility of exclusive distribution (which would actually benefit the artists, as it would force the record companies to bid for rights), it's probably territory they didn't want to explore.
I've always regarded exclusive distribution rights as one of the millstones of the current copyright regime, and you've given me some food for thought. Tasty, too :)
Blank until
Isn't is a matter of perspective? The RIAA sees this guy as a "big gun", but the legal scholars' briefs may make him cannon fodder. The shades of meaning were clear to this reader.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
We can put an upper bound on it. At the time of the alleged infringement Comcast would have capped her upload rate at 256kbps or 512kbps depending on her subscription level. A typical song is compressed down to a 3MByte MP3. That comes out to 25Mbits. At 512kbps it would take 48 seconds to upload one song. Over a two year period she could upload 1.3 million copies. That assumes her connection is saturated 24/7 with 100% efficiency, no network overhead, no activity for other purposes, and no down time.
That sure as hell implies that what I bought was (a copy of) the song as performed, not some particular media reproduction of it.[Emphasis mine]
Precisely: a copy of, that's what you keep adding. I did not say that; I said a song, meaning a musical work and all rights pertaining to it. Everyone else understood the usage of the word in this context, so clearly the failing here isn't on my part.
And since it's obvious that we both know how it really works, you're still being a dick.
Blank until
Hammer time.
No thanks, never touch the stuff.
Blank until
I was under the impression that attempts to enforce copyright between derivative works containing elements of the same original were not allowed- am I mistaken?
Just to be annoyingly literal, *any* integer of *any* size can be expressed by an infinite number of functions on the set of integers, which is a handy way of saying that your challenge can be completed trivially. It is also worth saying that any binary integer can be interpreted as a valid number in any higher base or base phi.
I can "derive" tiny pieces out of a massive attack AAC file and use them to encode the text in the library of congress.
I hereby demand the government shutter the library of congress because it's infringing on massive attack's copyrights!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
When it's a matter of money or business in this country (especially with so many lobbyists helping craft these laws) who do you think is going to win?
The customers, because in business the customers are always right, and in the end economic forces trump even the greatest military machines.
They tried it with booze, it failed, they admitted their mistake and repealed the law.
They tried it with drugs, but this time the baby boomers, in their petulance, refuse to repeal the laws. This ruins the lives of select numbers, but the majority keep right on toking.
Now they're trying it with MP3's, and this time they don't even have a prayer. They can't argue it's poisonous like they could with drugs or booze, and they can't argue it's corrupting our children because they're demanding you pay for them.
It's not going to happen. For every mother you scare into "shielding" her child from the nasty filesharing networks, there will be 4 more enlightened parents who lived through napster and teach their kids how to circumvent the controls.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download - potentially at least thousands or tens of thousands of people.
How many tens of millions of dual cassette decks were sold? blank audio/video tapes?
The truth is this "point" is nothing more than a straw man. The implication that the numbers are somehow different in digital than in analogue is utter bunk.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It seems that in the new Slashdot regime the default is to not show sigs. It surprised me, too.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)
Here you go. Follow the links at the bottom for numerous examples of strings that are well over a thousand bits long, and represent programs in different computer languages.
I think he meant settlements.
Ummm... Isn't that practically what McDonalds is doing with the new "McCafe" or whatever it is called? Sure it isn't the same recipe
Hot water, ground coffee, optional milk/cream (depending on where you are in the world).
Sounds like the same recipe to me.
I turn pink and grow roses out of my ears
You should join a circus.
Why 1000 bits? I wasn't aware copyright has any restrictions on length. Why does it have to be "meaningful" in any human context? In the digital world, every single bit is "meaningful."
And in the human world, the word "the" is meaningful. It doesn't mean that you or I can claim that we hold a copyright on it and sue every other author who writes in English.
Since when is GIF an audio format?
Well, if it can be a Java applet, why not audio too?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And they were authorized by the copyright holders to download them.
Unfortunately she wasn't authorised to upload them. All this means is that in this particular transaction the RIAA can't be sued for their part.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
For any mp3 you give me, I can show you that it's mp3 encoding is a prime. Song data not a prime number? Corrupt some bits so that it becomes one, but the song is still decodable as such. Better yet, add arbitrary length metadata to do so.
Obviously the data isn't meaningful. However, the number is now illegal since it could be decoded as a song. Or video. Or whatever else you wish.
Would you care to explain how a song is worth $9,000+ to anyone?
For that matter, would you care to actually be man enough to state your name for the record? It's not like it requires you to not post as an AC...
You are forgetting that Fair Use allows you to make a backup. If the DVD-A and cassette tape copies are the same for the purpose of copyright, then you can have a copy of the DVD-A version as a backup of your ageing cassette tape. As I recall, copyright law in the US says nothing about how the backup has to be made - getting it from a different master seems valid.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
One thing that always gets a laugh out of me are all the people who claim they refuse to buy RIAA member released CDs thinking that will somehow stop the RIAA
I don't buy RIAA CDs, but I do buy quite a few other CDs. If more people did the same, then the non-RIAA labels would be able to say 'our sales are up' whenever the RIAA says 'CD sales are down!'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
One example of Oranthal, who was found innocent of double murder in a criminal trial, but guilty in a civil trial. At a civil trial the burden is not on the prosecutor to prove guilt
Not true on two counts. First, courts never find you innocent, they find you 'not guilty' meaning 'not enough evidence was presented to find guilty.' Secondly, it is up to the prosecutor to show guilt in guilt in both cases. The difference is that in a criminal court you must show guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt' while in a civil court you must show guilt 'in the balance of probability.'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Shortly after posting I remembered a site that claimed copyright on each of 10,000,000 "melodies" generated by the DTMF tones when dialing 7-digit phone numbers. In other words, if you consider a phone to be an instrument, you technically violated their copyright every time you called someone in the US with a touchtone phone.
Hilarious.
=Smidge=
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out.
We can put an upper bound on it. At the time of the alleged infringement Comcast would have capped her upload rate at 256kbps or 512kbps depending on her subscription level. A typical song is compressed down to a 3MByte MP3. That comes out to 25Mbits. At 512kbps it would take 48 seconds to upload one song. Over a two year period she could upload 1.3 million copies. That assumes her connection is saturated 24/7 with 100% efficiency, no network overhead, no activity for other purposes, and no down time.
According to the technical people with whom I've spoken, under the software that was allegedly used, it would have been impossible for it to have been more than a couple of hundred, and even a number would have been highly improbable.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"Smidge" would have to be a trademark, not a copyright, since there is precedence for trademarking common English vocabulary. (See: Microsoft "Windows," "Apple," etc)
However, my bit string holds no other pre-established meaning in any known language. I fact, trying to convert it to ASCII text yields an unprintable character (0xE9 0x28).
The entire *point* of this discussion is that copyrights in the digital age don't work like they're supposed to. I'm glad we at least agree on that... but if I had the money to waste I probably (and sadly) could get my "1110100100101000 copyright" enforced in a court. Especially if I strong-arm the defendant like the RIAA does.
=Smidge=
Sorry, no. In order to qualify as a "derivative work" according to the accepted definition it must be significantly different from the original, but still contain recognisable elements.
Could you tell me where you got that from? The definition is pretty much:
A derivative work is a work based upon one or more preexisting works,
Since it says later that:
The terms including and such as are illustrative and not limitative.
There's nothing to require that the derivate to be "significantly different", nor do I remember where it would be significant. The copyright holder has exclusive rights in his works and all derivates, and I can't remember the penalties being any different so I don't see how it matters.
Among musicians, anything that sounds the same is the same.
Among computer scientists, only the same bits are the same.
Among lawyers, if it came from a copyrighted work it's the same.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Actually I think that if the exact number of distributions of hte said song could not be found it would be quite fair to use the mean value.
The mean value is quite easily calculated and applies for all p2p-tecnologies I am familiar with.
The formula is (number of times the file have been transfered)/(number of persons involved)
The mean value can never be larger than 1.0 unless persons deliberatly dowloads the said file more than once. (This is not entierly true, the value can temporary be larger, but it will eventually become stable at 1.0)
If the actual number of distributions a person have made is not known, anything above 2 would be quite a claim. (More than 100% above the average of all persons involved.)
This got modded insightful?
This hardly even warrants detailed analysis, but first, that string of digits is probably too short to copyright. Second, since it is apparently a core requirement to the GIF format, it is merely functional, and therefore probably lacks the creativity necessary to be a copyrightable work. Third, even if it were copyrightable, the fact that it appears in every single GIF ever made is wholly irrelevant to your copyright unless the authors of those GIFS copied it from your copyrighted work. If they wrote it themselves, it is not a problem. For example, at least in theory, I could be living on a cave in Mars, and write a book called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," and it could contain the exact same words in the exact same order as J.K. Rowling's book, and it would not infringe Rowling's copyright (in reality, if you're planning on making this argument, good luck getting past the summary judgment stage on infringement).
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I'm not prepared to confuse and conflate "you can build an arbitrary mathematical construct featuring it" with "meaning".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Actually I think that if the exact number of distributions of the said song could not be found it would be quite fair to use the mean value.
The mean value is quite easily calculated and applies for all p2p-tecnologies I am familiar with.
The formula is (number of times the file have been transfered)/(number of persons involved)
The mean value can never be larger than 1.0 unless persons deliberatly dowloads the said file more than once. (This is not entierly true, the value can temporary be larger, but it will eventually become stable at 1.0)
If the actual number of distributions a person have made is not known, anything above 2 would be quite a claim. (More than 100% above the average of all persons involved.)
I hereby copyright "1110100100101000."...
Sorry, but Bill beat you to it: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130
I can make a program that does completely different things depending on what compiler is used. Just google the language whitespace.
Is that so? Surely if an authorised representative of the record company comes to me and says 'Hey, could I take a copy of your 'Sgt Pepper' CD?', then I'm doing nothing wrong in allowing him to do so. He's a record company rep, after all. It's their copyright, they're allowed to make all the copies they want, and I'm happy enough to help them do so by letting them copy from my CD if that's what they want to do. And the same reasoning goes for music on my hard disk.
What they need to do is prove that she let others copy from her computer, people not authorised by the record company. Preferably by providing the names of the unauthorised people she uploaded to, and the dates and times at which she did it.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
And here we go again.
The reason you don't write laws in Perl (or Python or...) is because laws are not interpreted by interpreters. They are interpreted by judges. Human beings who are (usually) experts in the law and also understand people. If you try to play this sort of idiotic game in front of a judge, you will get smacked down so hard your head will spin.
It's really not that difficult to grasp. Human reason gets applied to the law. It's the whole reason it's there. If you come up with a "clever" game that gets past some ridiculous, twisted reading of the law, it's simply not going to work.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Certainly the best end-around my statement. Do the majority of the characters have an actual meaning in each representation, or is there a significant amount of gobbledygook hidden in comments?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
but because this is the internet someone else would have done that if she didn't. It's very hard to find something you can't download if you look hard enough and know the right places. So effectively the uploads are blameless as distribution will happen without them. Humanity has already declared copyrights null and void, they are just waiting for the people in charge to catch up.
A digital picture is also just encoded binary data or just a bunch of little dots printed out. But if your picture is of a $20 bill and you try to use it like a real $20 bill, you're going to jail.
I can name that song in 16 bits or less! Seriously I've heard that 7 notes are the minimum for copyright "Infringement"; but the truth is with the duration of copyright protection, and the number of combinations of notes that will sound correct together are going to run out faster than addresses in IPv4.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
yes you are wrong, I think the lower limit is 7 notes for some reason. In fact with a 150 year duration on copyright song writers are either going to be licensing musical phrases to other song writers or we are going to run out of new music.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Indeed. Felony theft usually requires theft of something valued over 100 dollars, so theft of any CD or DVD would be misdemeanor theft.
Which almost never results in any jail time, and often has no fines beyond having to return or pay for what you took. Sometimes you'll get slapped with a $100 fine or so on top of that. (At least on the first offense.)
However, take a CD, rip it to your computer, put it on P2P, and not have anyone even download it, and suddenly it's $10,000.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You seem to be missing the point: your test is stupidly easy to meet even if you add the condition that every element be an operational construct. If you remove that, you are essentially running headfirst into steganography, polymorphic viruses, and executable ZIPs.
For every mother you scare into "shielding" her child from the nasty filesharing networks, there will be 4 more enlightened parents who lived through napster and teach their kids how to circumvent the controls.
No shit. Things might get more draconian with copyright law for the next decade...but people have been trading MP3s for more than a decade at this point. And it started at colleges.
That means that all those college kids in the late 90s are 'responsible' adults now. They probably do buy their music, now that they have money, but they sure as hell aren't going to support fining people who are, in essence, them a decade ago, ten thousand dollars. They remember being broke, and their music collection, even if now they have a huge legal CD or iTunes collection.
The sole advantage the music industry has at this point is that there isn't anyone speaking for 'the pirates'. Just wait...within a decade laxer punishments for copyright infringement will be a campaign issue.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Here are 125 characters, post the stupid, trivial solution (shouldn't take you long, right?) somewhere so that I have a better chance of understanding it:
"You seem to be missing the point: your test is stupidly easy to meet even if you add the condition that every element be an o"
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I don't know about that, but if you download via p2p then you are also distributing and you definitely don't have rights to do that.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What's always stick in my throat is that you've purchased the rights to posses a copy in addition to the physical media, if the media becomes damaged you shouldn't have to repurchase the rights but only the media. Many MPAA distributers honor this to some extent I've yet to see any RIAA member do the same.
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I'd like to hear about a business model whereby the artists produce the music and put it out on the Internet for free.
Music artists make a lot more money out of shows than from selling CDs. Nowadays you can find top artists distributing free CDs, providing full albums under Creative Commons license, and even refusing to record new albums since 1990. And you can be sure these groups are still making huge profits from their shows, thank you very much!
This is not even something new. Here in Brazil, music artists have been complaining for decades that record labels quite often pay them peanuts by "cheating" on sale numbers or simply ignoring contract agreements -- even the big labels such as EMI. But they continued recording CDs anyway, simply because the sustained publicity help promote their live shows, which is the part that really matters.
There is no revenue in recorded music anymore. I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any.
Even before the time of MP3s and pirated CDs, everybody I know used to spend even more money buying show tickets than vinyls. From what I can tell, live shows became an even larger business now than decades ago.
I think the "business" of music is pretty much over.
For record labels, obviously. But for artists? Not at all!
the RIAA's revenue stream I assume, is the dues from it's member labels and a percentage of the settlements for the litigations.
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More likely he's some musician who just figured out that he got screwed by his studio contract and doesn't want to admit it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Funny, I never said I was a lawyer.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
In a criminal case guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and the lawyers will drone on and on about what reasonable doubt is and isn't, but basically the jury has to be 100% convinced it's reasonable. DNA evidence may statistically show a person is matched to a probability of 1 in 100 million and a jury except that expecting two people in 100 million to have their DNA match in one case to be an unreasonable occurrence, but when testing the entire population it would be expected. In a civil case the standard is a preponderance of the evidence, the jury has to be convinced more than 50%
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Yes you are, you are not allowed to distribute period; you have to secure those rights before you distribute, even back to the original distributor.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Would you care to explain what right a thief has to dictate to his victims the value of the items he steals? What part of the US Constitution or other founding document for any country in the world does that "right" fall under?
My name is none of your business because I don't give personal information to thieves and hackers nor do I post it in places like Slashdot where thieves and hackers congregate. Why don't you post YOUR real name if you're so concerned about openness?
--
Don't steal the dream - don't steal music.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
Well, that's not technically true. You can at least put an upper bound to this value since you know how many bits were uploaded. If it comes to, say, 30 TB, then maybe the penalty wasn't so harsh after all. My guess is it is quite a few order of magnitude below that.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Would you care to explain how you continually misrepresent the terms "pirate" and "theft" in the context of individual copyright infringement?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
if you download via p2p then you are also distributing and you definitely don't have rights to do that.
No, if you upload it via p2p then you are also distributing it.
If you download it, somebody else is distributing it. Some p2p networks require you to be willing to upload it to others, and some don't. If you do in fact upload it to others, then you are also distributing it.
I read it the same way you do, but perhaps there is case law that Farmer Tim knows about that I don't.
When you listen to your MP3s you don't listen to 1s and 0s, you listen to the music. When you watch movies, you don't see it like you're watching the green Matrix screen. If you change a note in a song it doesn't make it a whole new one. If you completely change the bits in a song by converting it from MP3 to WAV you're not really doing anything...
/. and if you change a couple of bits out of a few million in a file, it's a whole new file but WAKE UP!
Copyright laws suck most of the time, both for the listeners and the singers (because we all know that the recording studios get most of the money) but your argument sucks even more.
Face it, our laws were meant for an analog world, when you use them in a digital context they just are plain stupid The laws aren't stupid, but I'm not really sure how smart you are. The analog output is about the same and for the untrained ear there is really no difference between a 256 kbit/s MP3 and a 1,411.2 kbit/s CD. Hell, I can't find a difference between 192 kb/s mp3 and a CD.
I know this is
Grow up.
According to the law, those individuals who deprive artists of the fruits of the artist's labor commit an act called "theft". The term used to describe this small subset of humanity is "thieves". And the colloquial term used for those thieves who use the Internet to do this is "pirate". So naturally I use the correct terms to describe individuals who engage in the behavior I described. They are not terms that I created but I happily use them because they are accurate. Take it up with Mr. Webster if you don't agree, ScrewMaster.
So how about it mdenham - did I scare you off? Simply throwing out questions then running away and hiding when somebody tries to answer them is the mark of a coward. I answered your questions, so are you going to come back and answer my lone question in response in this thread? Or are you simply another scared little girl who plays keyboard commando like so many on Slashdot? Grow a pair, mdenham - let's discuss this if for no other reason but for the benefit of onlookers who might have a conscience and not want to steal.
--
Don't steal the dream - don't steal music.
and yet blizzard outlawed generics by pulling "this sort of idiotic game".
printer manufacturers got the same thing done with ink cartridges, and console manufacturers have outlawed the electronics equivalent of "building out a hot-rod".
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Just go get stegdetect and go to mozaiq.org, then go to http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ to demonstrate alternate expansions (can't find base phi, but I'm sure you can figure that out), and there was a presentation recently (not sure if I saw it here or on hackaday...) that talks about valid jar/gif's containing arbitrary code. Look it up, this isn't hard stuff.
Take it up with Mr. Webster if you don't agree, ScrewMaster.
Webster is irrelevant. Word usage as defined by a dictionary bears no intrinsic relationship to the same word used in a legal context, you should know that. What I'm referring to, of course, is how individual acts of copyright infringement are considered by the relevant statutes. Perhaps some copyright attorneys could comment on this in a bit more detail.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You're almost certainly correct, I was just clarifying what I believe the grandparent to my previous post was getting at as far as I can tell since the parent post to my last one seemed to think it was suggesting that the RIAA got most of their money from CD sales.
No but it does prevent the copyright holder from suing another songwriter from suing another songwriter for using the same sequence of 7 notes.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
> A law that tries to control the right to copy makes no sense in a
> world where everyone has every day access to copying machines
So if I invent a cheap machine with a red button which when pressed kills everyone except me within a 1 mile radius, and publish the plans on the Internet so everyone has access to one, the use of these machines should be legalized?
That particular part of your argument sounds stupid to me.
As for the rest, I do believe there is a place for copyright in a much more limited form than now exists --- much shorter time spans, much smaller civil and criminal (or possibly no criminal) penalties for violations. Probably a stance close to that of the poster you replied to.
but if he is authorised to make copies then does his copy imply the rights in that case only.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
A song generally 'means something' as a whole. If you fire some text into that site you link, the other representations don't offer alternative meanings, they offer alternative representations.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Sadly, that is irrelevant as the non-RIAA labels do not have the lobbying power or tie-ins to the media that the RIAA labels have, thus making it "irrelevant" (regardless of being a worthwhile comparison).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Right, but unless you are extraordinarily good at it, substantial portions of the text are going to mean absolutely nothing on the left or absolutely nothing on the right. I don't think it is particularly unreasonable to require that each of the 1000 bits contribute to each of the meanings (or at least more than some arbitrary percentage of them, say 60 or 70 percent).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Only if the sequence is from a public-domain work. If part of the sequence was added by the copyright holder, then the copyright holder may have a case.
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Yes. That is what I was saying up top.
Identify 150 year old folks song.
Identify note sequences in it and build a database of such note sequences plus known public domain songs.
Melody creator ("thief") is sued, they can use the database to point out their song is a unique composition but composed of public domain sequences.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Just stop. Please, just stop. A transcoding doesn't have to be a copy to infringe upon copyright. The Copyright Act has laws that state derivative works are also infringing material. 17 USC 101 defines "derivative work" as
The bullshit you spread helps us lose the arguments by making us look like fools instead of coming up with better arguments.
Read 17 USC (protip: it's free and online in multiple places; here's one) and then come back and argue with the RIAA. Until then, you're not going to help one bit: If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. If you teach a man a lie about fishing, he will starve.
But somehow the fact that the same wavelength might be used for three different things didn't obviate copyright laws once we had FM radio?
Copyright law isn't concerned with short strings of information, and it is black letter law that short bits of information cannot be copyrighted (or very easily fall under fair use if you're literally just making a copy of some larger, copyrighted work). This is why choreographies are copyrightable, but I cannot copyright a 3-move dance step.
Thus, your argument about 13 bits of data means nothing. However, 5 MILLION bits of information that show up in two different places bears a strong likelihood of copying (not independent creation). There are, after all, 2^(5,000,000) combinations of that many bits.
Waving your arms around and throwing out buzzwords about "digital context" and "analog world" doesn't make your arguments any stronger.
I'm not asking you to give up the fight. I'm partially on your side (although I don't demand a complete rewrite of copyright laws for the digital age, as I think that's a recipe for the RIAA and MPAA to gain victories).
However, it is axiomatic that to speak intelligently about a subject one must first be intelligent regarding the subject.
You can't copyright short strings of information. Period. You can't copyright sentences (unless they're really long), you can't copyright a combination of five notes of music, and you can't copyright a three-step choreography.
If I buy an audio tape and make a copy of it at twice the speed, is this a derivative work or a copy? Just curious, because I don't think a rational, educated-in-the-law person would argue that it's a non-infringing work.
It has to be either a derivative work or a copy.
And whatever your answer may be, I don't see how performing a mathematical or mechanical algorithm to compress audio data is any different than performing a mathematical or mechanical algorithm to make a song play at twice the speed.
you have to secure those rights before you distribute, even back to the original distributor.
If Apple records said to me "'Hey, could I take a copy of your 'Sgt Pepper', we lost our copy and know you have it on vinyl." I'd have to say "I could make a copy for you but I don't have distribution rights so sorry about your luck". At that point they'd either assign me limited distribution rights and a reasonable coping fee or they'd have to eat shit and bark at the moon PERIOD. Considering that they sue people for outrageous amounts of money on tenuous and bully children, single mothers, and people in wheelchairs my reasonable coping fee would be considerable.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This. The RIAA's gains from these cases are cash from out-of-court settlements, to a small degree, and public terror about daring to challenge them on intellectual property law, to a much larger degree.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If I buy an audio tape and make a copy of it at twice the speed, is this a derivative work or a copy?
Serious answer: Couldn't say which. See below.
Silly answer: if it's a blank audio tape, it's infringing on the works of John Cage at any speed.
I don't see how performing a mathematical or mechanical algorithm to compress audio data is any different than performing a mathematical or mechanical algorithm to make a song play at twice the speed.
When you play a song at twice normal speed you alter the pitch, tempo and harmonic content; it's musical characteristics. It is no longer the exact original, but since it couldn't exist except fot the original, it could be a derivative work. A court may decide it isn't different enough to qualify, though.
If the song plays back at the correct speed, it has the recognisable musical characteristics of the original, so it's a copy.
In either case, the method used to play back the sound is irrelevant. That's the part needs to be understood: these decisions are made by humans, in courts, using their ears.
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And when you compress a CD track to an MP3, you are similarly, through psychoacoustic principles, altering its musical characteristics.
This seems to cut through your argument (I think it was you, but I apologize if it was someone else) that creating/possessing/distributing compressed music (for which you do not own the original copyright) is not copyright infringement.
If you did not say this, then we have no quarrel, as I've found you to be pretty damn informed and eloquent regarding copyright law
No, according to the law, they commit an act called "copyright infringement." It has never legally been theft in all the years of the common law's existence.
The typical common law definition of theft requires "intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use."
Seeing as how making a copy does not deprive you of your copyright, it's not theft.
You are forgetting that Fair Use allows you to make a backup.
No, I'm simply omitting it as irrelevant to what I was saying.
As I recall, copyright law in the US says nothing about how the backup has to be made - getting it from a different master seems valid.
I'd agree that appears to be true, provided you have proof you owned a legitimate copy in the first place (and that could include an old second hand vinyl LP as far as I can see). Where it's hazy, and this is where the RIAA thinks it has an argument, is someone providing copies for other people. Unless you count the odd imibillic statement about ripping CDs to portable players, which isn't so much "fair use" as "the industry's lifeblood".
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Okay, but doing that wouldn't "pry any modern melody that uses those sequences into the public domain", unless the modern melody consisted of nothing but the public domain sequences. Any additional expression added in the modern song is copyrightable. Even then, if you made a new song that consisted of sequences of notes from folk songs, but arranged in a novel way, the novel arrangement is copyrightable. Even a new arrangement of a single old song is copyrightable, which is why much orchestral sheet music is copyrighted, even through the original version was written long before copyright was even dreamed up.
In addition to all of that, performance and recording copyrights still apply, so samplers could still be sued even if the melody, song and arrangement were all purely public domain.
Your idea is a good one, I just don't think it accomplishes quite as much as you'd like. Not under the current law, anyway.
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To clarify, my position is that distortions inherent in imperfect reproduction methods don't change the copyrightable elements of a song enough for it to be considered anything but a copy. I base this on the fact that poor quality copies, including MP3s, are routinely accepted as copies for the purposes of litigation.
Psychoacoustics refers to the qualities of sound on or below the threshold of conscious human perception. I think it's fairly predictable that any court being asked to make a determination based on that which is barely perceptible would find the differences so minute as to be inconsequential (especially when they're a direct result of the copying process). Besides, the use of psychoacoustic techniques in MP3 is designed to minimise the noticeable compression artefacts, so the (usual) purpose of making an MP3 is to create a reproduction as close as possible to the original within the constraints imposed by a limited data rate; I really don't see how anyone could successfully argue to a court that this isn't copying either in intent or result, but they're welcome to try if they haven't got a problem with losing.
I wasn't trying to comment on the legality of making or possessing MP3s, since that's not really relevant to the original point, and old territory besides. The distribution question will be answered by the current round of the RIAA's drive-by self-pedicures, and though I claim a working knowledge of copyright I don't pretend to be psychic.
If you did not say this, then we have no quarrel, as I've found you to be pretty damn informed and eloquent regarding copyright law
I maintain that it is copyright infringement, so I don't think we do have a quarrel (other than with the way I've said it, perhaps).
Thanks for the kind words; I try to share what I've learned as a published songwriter, audio engineer and television producer. I also try to keep it specific to a particular question rather than attempt to describe the complete workings of copyright in a single post, which is why I get short with people who read things into my comments that I'm not saying on topics I'm not discussing.
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What's always stick in my throat is that you've purchased the rights to posses a copy in addition to the physical media
It's more accurate to say that you've purchased the rights to a copy on the physical media, not in addition to. It's arguable in court that backups and format shifting are fair use exemptions to restrictions on copying, but it's not explicitly guaranteed by either license or law (I'd rather it was, to be honest).
That's why I agree with you about replacement media, but logically it would have to be tied to some kind of proof of purchase.
I don't really have any strong views about obsolete media being replaced, and I'm yet to see MPAA members do this, but I'm inclined to think that if a title is still being commercially exploited it probably should be.
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I would hope that the damaged media would be enough proof for a replacement of the same artist/title. say for about half price.
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Naturally the damaged media would be proof, I was thinking a receipt or credit card statement could also qualify.
Half price is too much, IMO. The warehouse price of a disc is roughly 2/3 of the RRP, and that includes the record company's take and artist's payment. While I think covering costs is fair, I don't think they* should be allowed to profit twice for what is effectively one sale, otherwise the average life expectancy of CDs could decline dramatically.
*that should be "we", if I'm being honest.
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And they were authorized by the copyright holders to download them.
Unfortunately she wasn't authorised to upload them. All this means is that in this particular transaction the RIAA can't be sued for their part.
However making them available itself isn't breaking the law, that's just what the MafiAA is trying to get people to believe.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It is theft...theft of revenue.
You are not depriving the owner of property, but you are wrongfully gaining. It's not right for you to steal, because you're screwing the seller out of the royalties they could have gotten from you had you paid for them fair and square.
It has to be worth something to you (otherwise you wouldn't steal it), so the fact that you're not willing to pay doesn't make it worthless.
Mind you, I think that copyright (aka "patent") law is a crock of shit. But that does not make it right to steal.
I still think the RIAA is a crock of shit. But two wrongs do not make a right.
I believe it's wrong to infringe copyright. But I will quite readily assert and admit that the RIAA is the greater of two evils.
Besides...why give them ammunition?
The law doesn't care about your re-definitions of terms that are already defined in the law. Have you ever seen someone charged with theft for downloading an MP3? Hell no. You know why? Because it's not theft.
Did you just knowingly conflate two completely different titles in the US Code?
Then it's not theft. End of story. It's black-letter law that you MUST deprive someone of property in order for it to be "theft."
First, we've already gone over this: it's not stealing. Read the law.
And as for screwing the seller out of potential (recall that not everyone who infringes is a lost sale) royalties, sure, I'll give you that. But just because someone's income is a little less doesn't mean you legally stole from them. "Copyright infringement" as a term of legal art exists because we need a legal term for what people are doing. "Theft" doesn't cover it because it's not "theft." The mere existence of the term "copyright infringement" is proof that it's not "theft," because otherwise the law would just call it theft.
And if you think copyright or patent laws are a "crock of shit," you would do well to educate yourself and fight the laws without making crap up. It makes you look like a fool, wastes everyone's time, and hurts the copyfighters' cause.
Note this post originates from a record store.
The last, well all really, turntables I had only had one needle on one arm and they all played 33, 45, and 78rpm records, I played all three though not many 45s. Now 78s might of sounded better using a special needle but they all were able to play on the same one. But maybe that's why I haven't found any new ones that play 78s, I do like some Classical songs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I didn't check these very closely but they may be useful.
Thanks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Why don't you post YOUR real name if you're so concerned about openness?
Ah, but I do - at least, my first initial and last name.
Call it either a stunning lack of originality in forum/site logins or just a belief that anonymity is best left for imageboards with no redeeming value, but it's what I use everywhere (unless it's already taken).
By the way, if you're accusing us of theft, hacking, conspiracy to commit theft, or conspiracy to commit hacking (all of which you've implied), we have a right to confront our accuser, and so you must provide us with at least your name so we can perform proper research.