The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead

The RIAA's new plan to enlist ISPs in its war on file sharing, once it announced it was calling a halt to new consumer lawsuits, is running into rough sledding. Wired reports on the continuing legal murkiness of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law. And one small ISP in Louisiana asks the recording organization, "You want me to police your intellectual property? What's your billing address?"

Comments

Multiple interpretations

[BadAnalogyGuy]

"What's your billing address?"

That's not exactly an unequivocal rejection.

Where would all you music sharers be if the RIAA responds with a valid billing address? It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Thanshin]

It's worse than that; it's a new justification for the RIAA to ask for money.

RIAA: "Pirates are generating losses of millions of dollars. They force us to pay large amounts to every ISP so they enforce our demands."

"Now when we catch a pirate we'll of course ask for compensation of all those millions."

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

I can see the prison conversations.
"What are you here for?"
"Eating babies. And you?"
"Whistling a song in public."
"Friking depraved garbage! I hope you rot in hell."

Re:Multiple interpretations

[johndmartiniii]

Of course this is how the statement should be interpreted. It does, however, indicate that the ISP in question might be pretty realistic about the reality of the RIAA interpretation of copyright law: that it is not tenable in the long run and that everyone cannot simply be expected to jump on board. While it is not an unequivocal "no," it does indicate a reluctance to simply comply: though, that reluctance might indeed be assuaged by a little cash (probably a lot of cash.

Maybe the ISP's will charge RIAA so exorbitantly that they it will be a deterrent to their seeking compliance in the first place.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[MRe_nl]

"It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating."

From the article;

"First, when a media company demands he kick a customer off the network, there is very little in the way of proof offered that the person in question has committed a crime, according to Scroggin. Yet, entertainment companies want Scroggin to simply wave goodbye to a customer who might have signed up for a three-year plan. At $40 per month, that customer is potentially worth $1,440 to Scroggin over the life of the plan. That, says the ISP owner, is unreasonable.
Next, it's expensive and time consuming to ask highly paid technicians to chase down IP logs and customer IDs, Scroggin said, noting that it's especially difficult nowadays because it's extremely easy to spoof IP addresses.
And then there are the letters Scroggin receives from Hollywood that demand he act or else.
Scroggin warns that the film and music industries must try a new tack if they want cooperation from ISPs."

It seems it's not just a matter of money, it's a question of proof, technical feasability, willingness on the part of the ISP's and quite a lot of money.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Thanshin]

If it was only one gun, rather than 99.999/100 of the weapon production on the world, I would see your point. As a sword fight practicioner, I really hate all the gun buying going on. I'd bet that's the reason we don't see another grand master sword forge is due to gunfights.

i.e.: Your personal feelings and/or situation don't make reality right or wrong.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[drsmithy]

As a legal user of P2P, and as a PC gamer (linux only, though), I really hate all the copyright infringements going on.

If copyright law were a more reasonable reflection of reality, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much copyright infringement going on.

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

And you'd be wrong.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[FinchWorld]

You can forge IP packets so that the reciever of the packet is given a fake sender IP. Im not entirely sure how the packets of most P2P programs work, but it could be possible they will accept a packet with a spoofed IP under the correct circumstances. In this way you could possibly make it look like 76.74.24.143 was distributing music (riaa.com).

Re:Multiple interpretations

[OneSmartFellow]

Your personal feelings and/or situation don't make reality right or wrong

Oh, contrair, his/her personal feelings and/or situation is reality as he/she is experiencing it.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[VorlonFog]

From the background article of the same source: "In regards to billing, we fail to understand what you mean with that!" Apparently, that question is far too complex and foreign a question for these money-hungry scum to comprehend.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[troll8901]

I cannot understand why his post is rated "Score:0, Troll". He is merely stating his personal opinion.

Isn't Slashdot all about reading the articles and discussing them in a civilised manner?

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Kjella]

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

The fines are already at the level where it doesn't matter. The median household income in the US is about 50k$, and at 150k$/song you're being sued for your life earnings for sharing a CD with 15 songs. If you're sharing your music collection with your friends, say 200 CDs * 15 songs then even at a 750$ statutory minimum you're also looking at the same. It's the point where it just doesn't matter - if I owed 2 milion dollars or 200 million dollars or 200 trillion dollars it wouldn't matter. It's a "life" sentence for sharing music files...

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Bert64]

Piracy was already rampant when monkey island came out. It came on floppies which were easily copied.
But the fact is, making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, contrair

Here here, it's a doggy-dog world.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Ephemeriis]

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

That is not true. Adventure games, like Monkey Island, have been deemed not popular/profitable enough to make. The big publishers only want to turn out shooters, war sims, and the occasional fantasy/RPG title. It isn't just adventure games either...when is the last time you saw a decent flight sim? Or, more specifically my personal favorite - space flight sims.

Piracy is being used as a digital bogeyman to explain anything and everything that publishers dislike.

Music/Game sales slipping? Must be piracy, there's no way people don't like what we're selling or how we're selling it. Find new talent? Embrace on-line distribution? Why do that when we can just prosecute?!

Producing games is expensive. Nobody wants to just break-even these days, they all want the next ginormous hit. So everyone is trying to copy the leader... That's why you get eleventy-billion Halo clones and GTA-alikes. MMORPGs, similarly, were seen as a cash cow. For a while there we had new MMORPGs being announced weekly.

My hope is that someday it will be feasible to simply host the game on some server and deliver all the content over the net

It already is, and in such a way that it's actually a boon to both the producers and the players.

Steam is good for producers because you've got centralized tracking of game registration/authorization. And people are hesitant to mess around too much with a game on Steam because it can get their entire Steam Account (and all their Steam games) banned. Sure, it can be cracked/bypassed... But it works at least as well as SecuROM does, and it's less invasive to the player. Plus you can distribute your game digitally, so you save on packaging.

Steam is good for players because all you need is your username and password to re-install anything you've ever purchased on Steam. Lose the CD? No problem! Reformat your entire computer? No problem! Just log in to Steam, kick off the download, and wait. You also get all your game updates distributed automatically, built-in profile/achievement/friends/community support, and a very simple and easy-to-use on-line store.

But distribution methods like Steam don't fix the problem. It doesn't matter how you distribute your games/music or how you protect them - if people don't feel that they're worth the price you're asking, they won't buy.

Some people are going to pirate no matter what. There's no way they'll ever pay a cent. It might be the thrill of doing something "illegal"... It might be some kind of weird political statement... But they're just never going to pay.

But then you also have folks who are just unwilling to pay $60 for yet-another-scifi-shooter that is a crappy imitation of Halo with only 5 hours of gameplay. They may be willing to pirate a copy of it just to see what everyone is talking about. They may be bored enough to play around with it for a few hours. But they aren't willing to shell out $60 for a piece of crap.

You aren't the only person who likes adventure games. If EA was willing to put the time and resources into turning out a decent adventure title it would sell. But you (and the other adventure fans out there) can't buy what they aren't making.

Similarly I would buy a decent space flight sim, if they'd make it.

Hopefully recent titles like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge mean that EA is finally willing to try something new... But I'll believe it when I see more than one or two interesting titles.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[BAKup]

As a result I feel it's necessary to "test drive" media before purchase. With CDs I can get legal samples online, but with TV shows on DVD there is no method except to download it and see if it's any good. It's illegal, but I do it because I don't want to get stuck wasting thousands of dollars on trash.

Other options.

1. Netflix. They even happen to have Galactica 1980 on watch it now.
2. Reading reviews online.
3. Reading reviews in magazines.
4. Netflix.
5. Asking friends about shows.
6. Hulu.
7. Youtube (Ok, this one isn't fully legal)
8. Blockbuster.
9. All the other video rental stores.
10. Did I mention Netflix?

I know not everything would be on all the options listed, so there's up to 8 other options, unless you don't have any friends, then there's only up to 7 options.

So don't say the only option you have is to download.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Shakrai]

Here is a similar quote: "The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

Some other interesting ones on the same page: "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

Re:Multiple interpretations

[tompaulco]

Welcome to Slashdot, where your opinion matters.
Here are your opinions:
Music should be free
Software should be free (except the software written by the developers in slashdot)
Obama is awesome
McCain sucks
America sucks
The war in Iraq is bad
Homosexuality is awesome
There is no God
Criminals should receive a stern talking to, and having learned their lesson, be put back on the street
Guns are evil
Microsoft is evil
Google is awesome (but stay tuned for further updates)
Linux is awesome
Apple is awesome
We will keep you informed as you form other opinions or your opinion changes. Enjoy your discussion on slashdot!

Re:Multiple interpretations

[OneSmartFellow]

savoir faire is everywhere

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Hatta]

Doom and Quake were gorgeous compared to the standards of the day.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[AGMW]

Here comes the french grammar nazi

Interestingly, not in France it wouldn't, as anything 'Nazi' is banned in France under French law ... indeed they could, using popular jargon, be referred to as Nazi nazis.

Do I win a t-shirt?

Re:Multiple interpretations

[MartinSchou]

Consider this one.
From that site:
On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama's limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States.

Let's look at these by themselves:

*limited experience
True, from what I hear, Obama's not very experienced. On the other hand, having seen what experience did in the hands of George W. Bush I'm not sure experience is a good way to judge someone's competence. And while I'm not an expert on that subject, I don't think someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. had a lot of political experience before his rise to fame. After all - what we look for in a leader is not always that they're experienced, it's that they inspire us.

*extreme liberal positions
Which ones are they? Granted, I'm European, so a lot of the ideas that we have over here are quite radical in the US. Like the right to abortion (least up here in the civilized countries in Northern Europe), socialized medicine (personally I'd skip socialized road works over medicine), free educations for everyone (up to and including university). They don't say what these dangerous and "extreme liberal positions are" so we're left to guess. Maybe it's his idea that you should be able to vote when you're 18?

*radical political alliances
And again - which ones are they? Joe Biden as VP? That's hardly any worse than Sarah Palin for VP. And if experience is a requisite for being president, then how the hell can you elect Sarah Palin as the VP candidate? She had less experience than Obama to begin with. And being a mayor of a city with 8,000 people is hardly indicative of ones ability to lead a nation. I'm not judging, just curious about why "these people" don't settle for one standard instead of two

But, in the end I think Obama was elected because he presented himself of much more of a change away from Bush' policies than McCain. The Daily Show (the horrorible embodiment of liberal media bias) had a nice segment where they contrasted McCain's campain comments with Bush' from 2000, and it certainly sounded like they had the same speech writer. Of course the nice clip where they contrast Karl Rove's ridicule of a potential VP candidate for Obama for only having been the mayor of a city with 200,000 people followed by the same Rove's grandstanding and overstating Palin's work as mayor for Wasilla, a city with less than 6,000 people (according to the 2000 survey).

Maybe the public in general figured "New guy or the guy who wasn't as good a candidate as Bush was in 2000? Fuck it, I'm not going for the guy that'll be even worse than Bush!"

Re:Multiple interpretations

[IndustrialComplex]

I agree with you in principle, but I have to disagree with you on your analysis.

While you say that copyright was fine, until the public became aware of it, I would argue that copyright was not fine. It has morphed from the original concept of protecting works for a long enough time so that the creator could gather compensation to something that exists for such a long duration that copyrights today are effectively granted in perpetuity.

The life of the author plus 50/70 years is a damned long time. And it has now placed copyrights beyond the lives of human beings. That has made them the currency of corporations, and are no longer within the means of trade for us mere mortals.

I disagree entirely with how copyrights have become the currency for corporations.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Kjella]

But the fact is, making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics.

It's a lot simpler than that - games with crappy graphics don't sell. Period. That doesn't mean it has to be state of the art, but people don't want games that look bad. If you bought say a board game then maybe the gameplay is good but if it was flimsy, tacky and of generally poor quality you wouldn't like it either right? People expect more as a base minimum and that means fewer and bigger games, I don't think the crap to good ratio has gotten any worse, there was plenty crap and there is plenty crap. And the good games have gotten bigger and longer when you find them.

I used to play Civilization, but it doesn't hold a candle to Civilization 4 in so incredbly many ways. I used to play Dune 2, but it doesn't hold a candle to modern RTS games with lousy queue management, no formations and whatnot. I used to play Test Drive, but it doesn't hold a candle to any modern driving game when it comes to realism and immersion. When you take off the rose-colored glasses a lot of the old games lack features you'd expect today. A lot of the time the AI is quite pathetic. A lot of the genres liks MMORPGs or Sims-style games didn't exist. A lot is that you're not 15 anymore and demand different things from games.

There are a few gems that survive the test of time, but it's a bit like comparing the very, very best of the last 50 years of music against last years hits. They don't "compare" as 90% of that will be forgotten, but then we've already forgotten the crappy 90% of the past. To each his own, but every so often I find a game that makes me go "Wow, we're really made progress here". I think that if you can't see it, you're a bit too blinded by presumption to look.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[cpt kangarooski]

here is a hypothetical: I am an artist. I spent most of my adult life poor, my family is also poor because of this. Right around the age of 50 I make a hit. It is going to sell and I am going to get paid like a rockstar. I tragically die. Should my family not get the money from my hardwork?

Sure. This is a good argument for flat copyright terms, instead of terms based on the life of an author. Let's have copyright terms that last for, say, 5 years, renewable in similarly short increments, for as long as, say, 25 years. (Most works make most of the money they'll ever be worth within no more than 15 years, and often very much less time) Then it doesn't matter when you die; the term lasts as long as it lasts. This is traditionally how copyright terms in the US have worked, and it's worked pretty well.

Or, what if I spent years working on something but it takes it a while to come to fruition. So I may not make a million bucks in a year, but it may take time - a slow trickle of funds. A few thousand dollars every year. Why should I not enjoy that money I worked for.

Are you saying that the work takes a long time to finish, but makes money upon publication, or that the work is published and takes a long time to make money after publication?

In the first case, who cares? Copyrights should last a long time for unpublished works, to deter people pirating manuscripts, but not so long that authors have an incentive to sit on a manuscript; copyright is interested in getting works published and ultimately in the public domain, not merely protecting them merely to make a do-nothing author happy.

In the second case, I have no problem with authors seeking long copyright terms, so long as it's not automatic; the author should have to seek a copyright in the first case, and deliberately renew it frequently, to indicate continuing interest. Ultimately, though, the term will need to expire. If the author couldn't turn a profit after a couple of decades, then the odds are that he never will. Exceptions are rare enough so as to not be worthwhile in setting policy, for the same reason that people who miraculously survive in a tornado out in the open are not extolled as reasons to not take shelter in a proper basement.

There is no monopoly on games, music and movies.

The monopoly is on a specific game, or piece of music, or movie. The reason piracy appeals, is because one copy is as good as another, at least so far as copyright goes. I could go to a bookstore and buy any of a dozen different copies of Shakespeare, from different publishers; they're interchangeable commodities. A copyright is a monopoly on a commodity, i.e. that specific work, identical copies of which could otherwise be made by anyone.

The content is theres not yours.

Nonsense. We have a right of free speech, and this encompasses the right to repeat the speech of others; that's why the state can't prevent me from reciting Shakespeare, though I didn't write it.

The government has no power not ultimately granted to it by the people. Copyright is the people willingly giving up a little bit of our free speech. No one would ever do this just because; we expect to get a greater benefit out of it than it costs us. In particular we want to encourage authors to create works, to publish those works, and for those works to be as unprotected as possible, and to enter the public domain as fast as possible. We want the greatest public benefit for the least cost to ourselves. It's great if authors benefit from it as well, but only to the minimal extent necessary to get them to create and publish. Why would it be in the public's interest to give them more?

But the current copyright laws are probably not providing the greatest possible public benefit. And increasing them probably wouldn't increase the public benefit. So it seems likely that the best way to serve the public interest -- the only interest that counts -- is to reduce the length and breadth of copyright.

Legal?

[houghi]

What is the legality of this? RIAA tells them that they represent Metallica and I have a rar file called metalica. This would mean that the provider opens my rar file and looks into it. They should not be allowed to do so. Privacy and such, you know.

In Belgium what happens is that a letter is send to the provider that user X with IP Y at time Z was downloading a file that they believe to contain copyrighted material. The provider then could do several things. Basicaly 1) forward the letter or 2) ignore it.

No information could go to the local RIAA. This is called privacy. So the only thing they could do was try to sue. However the courts said that they would not follow up unless people where making money out of it.

So copying songs and selling them: burn in hell.
Downloading them and sharing with friends or strangers: nothing happens.

The fact that I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded does not mean they lost money. I stopped buying long before the internet made it possible to download. I shared music with friends on casette. Hey, that is a good casette, can you make me a copy? How did you get it?
Well, I got copies from friends and using my dual-cassette player copied the different numbers so I had my own music, minus the crap.

When I think since when this has been going on, I am getting old.

Re:Legal?

[meringuoid]

I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded

Is there that much recorded music in the world?

Re:Legal?

[Donkey_Hotey]

I have 60 petabyte of songs downloaded

Is there that much recorded music in the world?

Maybe not by itself, but if you added rap and pop there might be...

But...

[davester666]

why does the RIAA have to pay this ISP? Part of the value that the ISP provides to customers is the ability to pirate music. Therefore, the ISP should be paying for this.

And the ISP should send the RIAA a pony.

And a cute little puppy.

Whups, sorry about that. I channeled the RIAA there for a second.

Re:But...

[Sique]

Hey! This screams for a car analogy ;)

1. Part of the value that the car manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to use the road. So car manufacturers should be paying for roadbuilding :)
2. Part of the value that light bulb manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to travel at night with your car, so the light bulb manufacturers should be paying for car building.
3. Part of the value that roadbuilding provides to the road users is the ability to get away from a crime scene very fast, so road builders should sponsor the local police.

Any more ideas? :)

Viable business model?

[tsa]

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good. I have a very hard time understanding the people who work for the RIAA and sue people for a living.

Re:Viable business model?

[meringuoid]

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good.

It's a terror campaign. The idea is to intimidate the public so that they're afraid to pirate. It doesn't matter if they lose money suing one victim, if a thousand others are thereby frightened away from piracy.

Re:Viable business model?

[gzunk]

It isn't a viable business model, it doesn't need to be, because the RIAA isn't a business. It's a business association made up of record labels, such as Sony, Warner et al - see Link, and it does the bidding of the member companies.

http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=aboutus_members

It's funded through dues, which all the member companies pay. It doesn't need to make a profit because it's not a business.

Re:Viable business model?

[tsa]

All those members are commercial companies. They will eventually stop funding the RIAA because the RIAA wastes their money on futile attempts to eradicate illegal copying.

Re:Viable business model?

[Ephemeriis]

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good. I have a very hard time understanding the people who work for the RIAA and sue people for a living.

It isn't. Suing people is not the RIAA's business model.

They're used to making money by being the gatekeepers of music. Traditionally, if you wanted to be a musician, it was expensive to get your music heard. You had to get it recorded onto a record/tape/CD... Get it packaged and distributed to retailers... Get it played on the radio... Get tours booked... This is what the RIAA did. They discovered people, provided the means for them to distribute their music, and profited from the whole thing.

These days it is easy to distribute music. Anyone with a microphone and a MySpace page can make their music available to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it. You can easily collect payments directly through something like PayPal. You can even use Cafe Press to turn out promotional materials yourself. The RIAA, in short, is no longer needed.

These lawsuits aren't intended to make money, they're intended to scare people. The RIAA wants to convince people that on-line distribution in general is bad. They want people to be terrified of downloading anything, regardless of where it comes from. Then they can go back to selling CD's and being the gatekeepers that they used to be.

Re:Viable business model?

[theaveng]

>>>It's a terror campaign

And what do we do with terrorists? Shoot 'em.

Forget sueing grandma . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . it looks to me like they are ramping up to sue ISPs. They are probably lobbying right now to get laws requiring ISP enforcement.

There is more money to squeeze out of them, compared to grandma.

Viable business model? More like a dieing business model. I would prefer to see a music industry in the future, that is comprised of artists and consumers, where the artists are payed fair prices for their work.

And no big record labels.

They wont win

[johnsie]

This whole story bores the crap out of me... It's been going on pretty much since the mp3 was invented. I remember it being an issue back when the original mp3.com was founded in the 90's. The RIAA cant ever stop people recording or distributing sound. Maybe they have some influence in the US, but there are billions of people on the web who don't live in the US and will continue to copy and share music/videos. I've heard that there are chinese p2p programs like ppstream that allow you to watch hundresds of recent movies on demand and there's nothing the Americans can do about it.

Not perfect, but

[Dachannien]

The RIAA's new strategy isn't perfect, but it's a helluva lot better than trying to sue their customers into lifelong financial ruin.

When it comes right down to it, you're not supposed to share their music, and the content industry is well within their rights to tell you to stop if they see you doing it. And if ISPs agree to block you for repeat offenses, then you're pretty much out of luck if you don't heed those warnings.

There are two things still shady about this plan, though, and both have to do with reducing the RIAA's liability. One has to do with MediaSentry not being licensed as a private investigator. It's possible that the new plan will prevent them from having to get a license in each state where they operate or investigate. Most likely, MediaSentry will never get taken to task for their alleged illegal actions in most states, even though their activities won't change.

And two, the RIAA lawsuits have had a lot of missed targets, each carrying the possibility of backfiring in a big way. The RIAA reduces this liability once they're sending nastygrams to ISPs instead. Under the new plan, they can pretty much send letters complaining about Intartubes users at random, and they never have to worry about countersuits or heinously large legal expenses. Of course, this also means that there's little avenue for protest - if your ISP cuts you off, how are you going to convince them of your innocence (aside from paying a jacked-up reconnection fee, of course)?

Re:Not perfect, but

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Not to be overly optimistic, but I would guess that if/when they put this plan into action and start disconnecting innocent people, the ISPs will be the ones to start getting taken to court. I have a sneaking suspicion that if (hopefully before) that happens, ISPs will be very reluctant to go along with their plans.

so linear

[Technopaladin]

Only if you listen to 1 song at a time.
the trick is play 500 songs at 4x speed...then you are done in in like 55 years
or if you will 4 songs at 500X speed.