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RIAA Backs Down In Austin, Texas
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In November, 2004, several judges in the federal court in Austin, Texas, got together and ordered the RIAA to cease and desist from its practice of joining multiple 'John Does' in a single case. The RIAA blithely ignored the order, and continued the illegal practice for the next four years, but steering clear of Austin. In 2008, however, circumstances conspired to force the record companies back to that venue. In Arista v. Does 1-22, in Providence, Rhode Island, they were hoping to get the student identities from Rhode Island College. After the first round, however, they learned that the College was not the ISP; rather, the ISP was an Austin-based company, Apogee Telecom Inc., meaning the RIAA would have to serve its subpoena in Austin. The RIAA did just that, but Apogee — unlike so many other ISP's — did not turn over its subscribers' identities in response to the subpoena, instead filing objections. This meant the RIAA would have to go to court, to try to get the Court to overrule Apogee's objections. Instead, it opted to withdraw the subpoena and drop its case."
Kid: "Mommy, can I go to the store by myself?"
Mom: "No, son."
5 minutes later
Kid: "Daddy, can I go to the store by myself?"
Dad: "Sure, son. Here's a dollar. Get a candy bar".
1 minute later
Mom: "SO I HEARD YOU WENT BEHIND MY BACK AND ASKED YOUR FATHER TO GO TO THE STORE"
Kid: "I just mentioned it to him. I don't want to go anymore. Thanks, bye!"
Mom: *Result Pending*
Once again, they back down, meaning that they performed the legal equivalent of "Ha Ha Ha, just kidding, can't you take a joke?" At some point, they're going to get slapped down hard for these tactics and on that day, there will be much cheering from Slashdot.
RETREAT!!!! lol
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
I wish we could just take all the lawyers that flagrantly violate court orders like that and put them in jail for contempt. Alas, our judicial system is such that these violations either go unnoticed or at least barely noticed by the district attorneys. They've got bigger fish to fry. But, man, once just once, one of them should teach these guys a lesson.
My blog
The good folk at Ninnle Labs have implemented something in the latest NinnleBSD that prevents the RIAA from finding out anything about peer to peer downloads on systems running it. Currently, they're working on the same implementation for Ninnle Linux.
As a RI resident, I can pretty confidently say that there no "College of Rhode Island".
While it is a good thing to see more of these ludicrous John Doe cases dismissed, it could have been rather comical to see RIAA go up before a judge that had told them to stop the bundling. I mean come on, it always works out for you when you ignore the order of several judges.
Government - If you think the problems we create are bad, you should see our solutions!
Probably not. I expect they'll continue with their bullshit in other states while lawyers who haven't done their homework will not be able to help their clients.
That's just what I expect, though, because I know that it's better to expect the worst and hope for the best.
No, it was entirely my fault. I was working from memory. The correct name is "Rhode Island College".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
So can we expect ISPs to start incorporating in Texas the way that credit card companies like to incorporate in Delaware? Granted, the former would be for protection from industry harassment and the latter is for protection from usury laws, but if I were an ISP I'd certainly look on Texas as a nice place to call "home" for legal purposes.
They do this because they're all cases that would work so poorly in a court for them.
And still get away with it, despite consistent abuse of the legal system like this.
No longer a laughing matter... :-(
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The RIAA cannot be forgiven for the things they try and pull, or the extortion they have forced onto many people. But it drives me nuts the people that still continue to grab their music illegally which just helps prolong and reinforce the idea that the RIAA is needed (to record companies). Buy a CD, buy from iTunes, buy from Amazon, I don't care. I know people who can absolutely afford to purchase their music legally, but don't. Not because of any stance against record companies or compensation for artists. They just do it, 'because'. It's free after all. BLARG.
/RANT
Sorry. Just had to say it.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I love how this is tagged with 'hahahahaha' 'riaasucks' and 'bastards'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Content
Down with all of these cartels.
How can they keep doing this? I'm amazed that nobody from the RIAA has been slapped with contempt of court or some other law.
Free Martian Whores!
That's a pretty egregious example of forum-shopping.
Seriously...where the hell are their accountants at? Anyone who actually has gone through the required business classes would be well aware of how insane their imaginary losses are. Now, that is not the same as using those insane numbers to further a media blitz, but internally that nonsense does not stand up to any kind of sanity test. So...with a more realistic number on "lost sales" I can't imagine that there is a terribly high real return on their lawsuit happy nonsense. I imagine the costs of these constant legal battles take a pretty huge chunk of change.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I see a very bright outlook for Apogee Telecom's ISP business this year.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Piracy is not as impactful to the overall performance of record labels as much as just not listening to the fans and adjusting to the changes in the market.
Honestly, I wish a large "sit-out" could be organized among all file-sharers. I would love to see a majority of those who do download music without consent from the copyright owner put a hault to it for say a month or two. Then I would like to see the rationalization for why album sales are still down.
Again, pipe dream. No way to organize something like this.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Stop apologising Ray, if you can't blame the editors, who can you blame?
Well, we could blame the RIAA, but I don't think they edited the article.
I feel very sad today.
For trolling that badly you should feel terrible. Go back under your bridge.
Free Martian Whores!
It actually is closer to infringing on copyrighted goods, because that's exactly what it is.
Stealing means what was taken was against the owner's consent, and that the owner is now deprived of that good. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, means that you have made an unauthorized copy of a work and are selling it/giving it away/making more copys, which is the case here.
Go back under your bridge.
Yeah! Maybe he can find a couple of your prostitute friends / family members to fuck in exchange for a couple of quarters while he is down there. Cheaper than a song off of iTunes.
or something
That has to be one of the best summaries I've ever read on slashdot. I didn't even have to RTFA and I am up to speed on the story.
Ok, even though the comparison with stealing is a poor one it's good enough to draw some paralells.
Shoplifting happens. bad thing, yada yada.
Now to combat that walmart pushes through some ridiculous legislation and then hires companies to spy on shoplifters,people who might be shoplifters and people who live near possible shoplifters.
Normal customers who pay for their goods start getting patted down regularly, denied entry or exit from the store and called criminals and threatened with legal action if they tried to sell things second hand.
When they catch some 13year old stuffing a 5 dollar item into his coat they take him to court and sue him and his family for $100,000 .
In their crusade to catch the shoplifters they extort records out of local organisaitons with threats of legal action and generally abuse the legal system to find the home addresses of people who might be shoplifters.
They threaten tens of thousands of families with similar suits and offer a shoplifter settlement where you can pay a few thousand in exchange for a promise of not being sued.
Some of the people who get accused of being shoplifters are of course innocent and were simply falsely identified as shoplifters but since there's still a chance of losing absolutely everything and the weight of evidence is not the same as a criminal case those families can't take the chance of losing all their worldly goods and have to pay out of fear.
Imagine a world where walmart acted like that.
Now imagine where the public sympathy would lie, with the kids who are shoplifting or with walmart?
Sure violating copyright is wrong but violating privacy laws and generally abusing the legal system is much much worse.
http://www.apogeenet.net/contact/
I did!
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
In November, 2004, several judges in the federal court in Austin, Texas, got together and ordered the RIAA to cease and desist from its practice of joining multiple 'John Does' in a single case. The RIAA blithely ignored the order, and continued the illegal practice for the next four years, but steering clear of Austin.
Am I missing something? So what made this illegal? If they didn't do the act in Austin then they didn't do anything illegal. I am no fan of RIAA but to call something illegal when it is not is wrong. They complied with the judges wishes and stopped doing what they were doing in the Judge's jurisdiction.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
It's not the lawsuits that cost the RIAA a ton of money. It's all because of pirates. Y'see, if it weren't for pirates, then they wouldn't have to spend all this money on lawyers in the first place! So there ya have it... even the legal costs are a direct result of piracy. It makes PERFECT sense!
Oh hey, and on a random note, I've got this really awesome bridge for sale out in London, if you're looking to buy.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
I am superman (Yes I am) (Yes, I tell you, I am) (I am superman) (Yes, I am) ...
No, doesn't seem to become true even after saying it many times. Does it work for you?
Honestly, I wish a large "sit-out" could be organized among all file-sharers. I would love to see a majority of those who do download music without consent from the copyright owner put a hault to it for say a month or two. Then I would like to see the rationalization for why album sales are still down.
Taking into account they create the data from thin air, after such a sitout they could perfectly say: "Sales have improved 154% that month. Which finally proves that we were right".
Nothing wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property.
I have not seen any one saying there is something "wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Stealing of information by copying has been punishable by law for many years - way before the Internet.
No, infringing copyright by copying is punishable by law. Stealing by copying isn't, because you can't steal something by copying it.
It is a flawed argument to think stealing information is not a bad thing.
No one said that is wasn't a bad thing. The point was that is isn't stealing. An action isn't automatically stealing just because it is bad - if I beat you up, I won't get convicted for stealing, but I will get convicted for assault.
Many companies have their entire business model setup on proprietary information - the people here a /. may not like this - but guess what - the people here at /. were not the ones investing tons of money/time into those soft-products.
There is nothing wrong with having your business model set up on proprietary information. What _is_ wrong is abusing the legal system to catch people who may or may not be breaking the law at the expense of a large number of innocent people.
Also, that nice new fancy drug that you or your family/loved ones are taking to save their lives...that formula is most likely (for new drugs) a closely held secret by a company that spent many millions in R&D. Without these copyright protections said companies would have no reason to create life-saving medicines.
You seem to be confused. You can't copyright a physical object such as a drug - you have to patent it. You can't keep patented IP a secret, since the whole point of a patent is that it is published.
The patent system has a lot of problems, but it has nothing to do with copyright, is not the matter under discussion and last I heard the drug industry didn't go around suing random people without any credible evidence that those people have done anything wrong.
Just like drug makers have to protect their recipies from international infringements so do people who want to profit from their music.
Nothing wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property.
So what has this got to do with stealing?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Commander Keen to the rescue!
Ray, something I've heard a lot is that copyright infringement is not theft because theft would imply that the original owners had been deprived of their copy. Is that true, and if so, where could I have gone to look this up for myself without having to pester a lawyer? Second, is theft the same as stealing?
I ask because a lot of people have authoritative-sounding but conflicting opinions on the issue, and it seems like this should be explicitly defined somewhere or another.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Don't worry about it - Oxford likes to be either "Oxford University", or "University of Oxford" but I can never remember which, and I bloody studied there.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Most of us have no problem with WHY the RIAA is doing the things it does -- our problem is the 'how'.
Most of us have no problem with WHY the RIAA is doing the things it does -- our problem is the 'how'.
Then why do a lof of /.'ers justify their reasoning for d/ling stuff without paying for it? Why do a lot of /.'ers talk about it is not wrong to take music without paying for it because it doesn't deprive the creator (or ip owners) with a "physical" copy?
/. crew has as much problem with the WHY and the HOW. BTW, if the RIAA was that flagrant about judges rulings then more judges would be throwing down the gauntlet...they aren't though. So while we may get up in arms apparantly those judges are not...and judges tend to get really annoyed when people do not obey their decrees.
No the
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
the /. crew
So you are attempting to lump together everybody on Slashdot who is not you as "the /. crew"? Strange.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Pirating is not stealing because stealing has it's own definition.
Such definitions are relevant and important and have real moral consequences.
I'm always amused how the morally pompous have no problem being LIARS in order to make their point.
Also, "before the internet" is a weak metric for ethics. Human society is far older than that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Anybody know of a Southern California ISP based in Austin, TX?
...this is another example of the moral bankruptcy of the self-righteous.
Not all of us are "justifying personal acts of piracy". Some of us just
realize that there is more to this issue than the plush lifestyles of
A&R men or their victims.
A lot of work is still subject to "ownership" that should no longer be.
Some works are no longer even available and may be lost permanently.
Creativity is threatened by effectively perpetual copyright and the social
costs of allowing publishers to lock away works that are older than any
participant of this forum are absurd. The consequences are rediculous
when compared to genuine acts of theft that would have been
acknowledged as such by Hammurabi himself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No one said that is wasn't a bad thing. The point was that is isn't stealing. An action isn't automatically stealing just because it is bad - if I beat you up, I won't get convicted for stealing, but I will get convicted for assault.
Well, since we're being nitpicky over definitions... you wouldn't be arrested for assault for beating him up. You'd be arrested for battery, or possibly assault and battery. Assault is the threat or attempt to hurt someone. Battery is when you actually land the punch.
Perhaps now you can see that lots of people may have difficulty differentiating between similar but separate crimes.
Theft is a synonym for stealing.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it.
The RIAA uses the terms "piracy" and "stealing" in referring to copyright infringement, but do so inaccurately, as part of their propaganda.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
your wasting your time at slashdot. this is just a place where people who pirate stuff slap each other on the back and convince each other its just fine because the people losing out aren't them.
Sad isn't it?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
It's Oxford University, and to be different Cambridge went with University of Cambridge :)
Nothing to see here.
Indeed. Stealing, which you are very well aware of, is not a synonym for copyright infringement. It is just a more generic: although not all theft is done through copyright infringement, all copyright infringement is stealing. The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully . A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Although a commonly mentioned other requirement — that the original owner be deprived of something — is not, in fact, part of the above quoted Princeton WordNet definition, it is dishonest to claim, that copyright infringement is a "victimless crime" — the copyright-holder's property does lose value. Thus the term "stealing" is, in fact, quite accurate.
Anyway, would you condemn copyright infringement — for the record?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So you subscribe to the same dishonest debate tactic.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Anyway, would you condemn copyright infringement -- for the record?
Yes I am opposed to copyright infringement.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I haven't even bothered to download music in years... maybe they should stop signing every single "artist" and promote some individuals with integrity for once and not a bunch of loser musicians that come up with one good song and a stupid dance to go with it
Given their history, they shouldn't be free to just withdraw from a lawsuit without prejudice just because they can't force the suit through in the right court.
The meaning of object "A" does not depend upon the fact that object "B" is uniquely defined. Object "B" can be defined in such a way that object "B" will always include every object "A" and will also include different objects "B", "C", and "D." In the law, this concept is the concept of lesser included offenses.
Your ipse dixit: "Such definitions are relevant and important and have real moral consequences." Without explaining the relevance, importance, or moral consequence of your semantic distinctions, your semantic distinctions are meaningless.
You argue like a poorly trained hyper-didactic elementary school teacher.
When somebody says that they were robbed when they were in fact burglarized or stolen from, I'm not going to jump their shit over meaningless semantics.
God I love living in Austin! We're an island of blue surrounded by a sea of red. :-/ But at least we're the best part of the entire state! :-D
Perhaps, you need to post in more than one-liners to be well understood?
Also, try to use punctuation...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sorry, but I don't see how you can go from this:
the act of taking something from someone unlawfully
To this:
A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Because the definition you provided clearly states "taking [..] from someone". And I'm not being pedantic, instead I'm trying to point out that the definition is at least ambiguous when applied to the case of infinite effortless replication.
it is dishonest to claim, that copyright infringement is a "victimless crime" — the copyright-holder's property does lose value
No, at most it loses marketing potential. That is a fictive amount, so it is impossible to quantify how much is really lost. "Value" implies a determinable amount. This is where I'm being pedantic.
As an aside: most /.ers would assert that most commercial music does not have any intrinsic value, so nothing is lost.
Thus the term "stealing" is, in fact, quite accurate
Only if you also accept that corporate espionage is stealing, and phishing is stealing, and murder is stealing.
Yeah I said it first, and having become superman I can say it many times a second, faster than anyone erlse on earth so Superman I shall remain.
When someone copies something without authorization what do they "take".
As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination. Even if it were zero, the act of taking something illegally is defined as "stealing", whether or not the original owner has lost anything. From Princeton WordNet, once again: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing — the act of taking something from someone unlawfully.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Again, you seem to have a problem with the definition of "taking".
I have frequently borrowed audio CDs from my local public library and ripped them onto my home PC. (Often, those CDs are shipped from other libraries that are part of the local network). Am I infringing on any copyrights? I do not upload those mp3s using any file-sharing software. Its strictly for my personal use. If I'm not infringing on any copyrights, why doesn't everyone do the same thing - borrow CDs from your local public library and rip them.
I would argue that by ripping those CDs to my home computer, I can avoid requesting those CDs from other libraries in the neighborhood (every-time I want to hear the same CD) thereby saving the library (and hence the taxpayer) money on transportation costs. Additionally, it reduces the amount of processing the library has to do.
cheers, http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
I believe that your definition is faulty. Theft is better described as depriving someone of the object. In this case, the copyright owner has not been deprived of his song.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes, continue to redefine legal terms to mean what you want them to mean. I'm sure that will work out perfectly for you.
"No, officer, I wasn't speeding! I was using advanced velocity techniques!"
They're infringing copyright, not stealing. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll gain credibility in discussing the law.
You're trying to make a point, and I understand what you mean, but you're really arguing something that's irrelevant. You are also making people focus on the wrong thing, dragging what point you were trying to make off into the weeds. When someone says "pirating is not stealing", they are not talking about what you're talking about when you say "pirating is stealing".
If you would drop the semantics and make your point without using the words "pirate" or "steal" and instead use "copyright infringement" you would start to see how your arguments actually aren't that different from the ones you're arguing against.
Also, note that US copyright law considers the financial impact of any potential infringement, among other things.
"Piracy" has generally been when someone copies something and sells it, like the Chinese DVDs or Windows for a dollar. Clearly you are reducing the market value, if people no longer have to pay full price. More recently, "piracy" is being used in the sense of simple copying for personal use, for situations like downloading music that you already own so you don't have to convert it to FLAC/MP3/AAC. This could be considered fair use because there is no financial benefit to you and no financial loss to the vendor (ignoring the uploading part, since those parts would be available regardless of whether you were uploading them because you got them from somewhere, so your actions are not materially contributing). So even talking about "piracy" is a muddy conversation if you don't clearly define what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft
http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/basics/fairuse_rules.html
And if anyone wants to copy this the next time someone like this pops up, i release any copyright claim on this comment and it is public domain. Copy, paste, improve.
You should read some of my posts, because I actually have said it. Here's the executive summary:
(Please try to consider the following from a layperson's or "common-sense" perspective, rather than a lawyer's one.)
Because of this, I have to conclude that copyright is not, in fact, a property right. Therefore, I take issue with your use of "owner" and "property" in the quotation above.
Now, if you rephrased that to say "I have not seen any one saying there is something 'wrong with a copyright music holder protecting their government-granted monopoly'" then that would be different.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I am personally starting to lean towards if you do not want your music or Ideas out there for people to do with as they please keep them to your self. As soon as your work is out there for the masses there is no control. People are always gonna steal. People are always gonna cheat. The removal of DRM from I tunes will help significantly but when you take people like college students to have a hard enough time paying for books with unlimited internet and cheap MP3 players What else is gonna happen?
MACs are vista with good hardware. Spend the same amount of $$ on a PC as you do on a MAC you will have the same end result. I am waiting for the day a nice worm wipes the smug off of mac users. For those who haven't seen it check out youtube "Happy Nowhere" mac parody.
(yes, their action is closer to stealing of tangible goods, than "information superhighway" is to an autobahn).
That's OK, your so called 'typing' is a lot closer to baby rape, and fortunately under your own personal rules (IE claiming one thing is similar to something else that is clearly 100% different), you've shown it's OK for me to go around saying you are a baby rapist. Thanks!
Theft is a synonym for stealing.
I thought so, but the law holds many subtle surprises for this layman.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it.
Well, I guess a more direct form of my question is this: does "theft" require that the owner be deprived of their property as many people on Slashdot (like "whoever57" below) claim? If I steal your car, then you no longer have your car. If I "steal" your song, you still have it.
I don't mean this as a trap or anything. It's just that a lot of people (like "mi" below) say that copyright infringement is a form of stealing, and others say that nothing was stolen because the owner still possesses the item in question. While I believe you completely that infringement is not stealing, I don't know where to find the legal definition of stealing (or theft) so I can read it for myself. As it's being used as a term of legal jargon in this context, Webster isn't exactly authoritative.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Stealing of information by copying has been punishable by law for many years - way before the Internet.
Yes, it has. Do you know why these laws were established? (Hint: The reason had nothing to do with compensating creators for their efforts). That's a prerequisite for understanding how they should be applied with the existence of a world-changing technology like the Internet?
It is a flawed argument to think stealing information is not a bad thing.
You're the one arguing that information, which by it's very nature is infinitely reproducible and has no inherent scarcity, unlike physical objects, should be arbitrarily restricted, at great expense to society. The burden is on you to show why it is bad to copy information.
Many companies have their entire business model setup on proprietary information
True, and in fact I make my living that way. But irrelevant. Buggy whip makers had their entire business model set up on producing implements for controlling horses. Times change, businesses must change with them.
Without these copyright protections said companies would have no reason to create life-saving medicines.
Copyrights have nothing to do with medicines. You're thinking of patents. They're different, and have a completely different purpose.
BTW, I'm a big fan of copyright law, done right. Our copyright law is screwed up, and what the record labels have been trying to do is even more screwed up than the law, but it's still a very good idea if done correctly.
Oh, and I don't infringe on copyrights per the law, even though I think the law is wrong to the point of evil.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Although a commonly mentioned other requirement â" that the original owner be deprived of something â" is not, in fact, part of the above quoted Princeton WordNet definition [...]
Is Princeton WordNet a legal dictionary? If not, its definition is only a layman's paraphrase. For example, WordNet's definitions of "generator" are:
You can't use a non-domain-specific dictionary to define technical jargon. It simply doesn't work.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ugh. I snipped this sentence after giving the definition:
"However, none of those apply when discussing 'generators' in the context of Python where they are something else entirely."
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Media Access Controls are pleasing views with good hardware?
I am waiting for the day a nice worm wipes the smug off of mac users.
That would suck...think of all the innocent frames that would be destroyed!
looks like the pro-piracy dorks are out in force with their mod points. *rolls eyes*
keep justifying your actions kids. If it helps you sleep at night. Just dont expect any fucking sympathy when the software company you work for lays you off...
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I debated modding you up instead of posting since i think your downmod was unfair.
But I wanted to address your points more, and folks can see your post by looking at the reply posts parent.
1) Stealing is not Piracy is not Copyright Infringement.
2) The laws surrounding stealing (or many other crimes) have not been adjusted for inflation resulting in "felonies" for what should be misdemeanors. When the laws were passed, you would have to steal half a year's earnings to qualify for a felony-- now I earn more in a day.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement
3) The United States has the most people imprisoned in the entire world. It's reaching a level that we can't even afford to incarcerate everyone. Mostly because of drugs and the felony issue.
4) Copyright has been distorted by corporations from 28 years to basically forever (not yet but they are shooting for it 10 years at a time).
So where do I stand.
1) Infringing up to 20 albums (240 songs) within a 28 year period should be a misdemeanor subject to a $500 fine.
2) Infringing more than that should be a felony.
3) Infringement after 28 years should be a misdemeanor unless you are selling them for profit.
4) Devices used directly to infringe can be confiscated tho unrelated data should be returned to you as soon as possible (so yup, you lose your computer and maybe your CD burners)
5) Where the material and the laws seem unreasonable, I'll infringe and I will suffer the consequences when caught. I have little respect for this body of laws, which I mainly see as against the original intent of the copyright laws. The intent was to create properties which would rapidly enter the public domain where it would be used to make other new creations. The intent was not to provide an income stream for life and lock up melody and word sequences for multiple generations (and soon "forever less one day")
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'll attach the definition of theft from a legal dictionary below. I leave it to you to decide whether it still meets GPs argument
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale).
Now define "appropriate".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm Italian. I read as far as the part about the bread having a so-so crust and then I skipped to the end.
I don't know what the rest of your post says.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Grrr. "within the 28 year period" I.e. New songs. The penalty for infringing songs from 1965 would be a lot less.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This meant the RIAA would have to go to court, to try to get the Court to overrule Apogee's objections. Instead, it opted to withdraw the subpoena and drop its case."
I'd consider freeloading to be a synonym of copyright infringement. Perhaps if you infringe someone's copyright by selling their works and making a profit that they never see it could be considered theft. That's probably why in the days before the internet infringement for private purposes was pretty much left alone while large for-profit piracy attracted massive fines and/or jail time.
I have not seen any one saying there is something "wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property".
I'll say it then. Once I've paid my money to get their work in my possession, they should have no say over what I do with it from then on. Only laws passed by Congress should have any say, not some program written by the copyright holder deciding what additional restrictions not granted to them by law they want to impose.
No program should be able to encode new restrictions and have the power of law without ratification, and no law should exist that grants legislative power to non-legislative entities as this denies review by The People by way of their representatives. (DMCA is a usurping of legislative power directly to private entities. Digital Rights Management are shackles on an enslaved culture.)
If the code of law followed the law of code, it would be impossible to do anything.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why do a lot of /.'ers talk about it is not wrong to take music without paying for it because it doesn't deprive the creator (or ip owners) with a "physical" copy?
Actually I don't think I've ever seen someone make that argument. I have seen people saying that copyright infringement isn't stealing because you're not depriving the owner of anything, however it is still illegal as it's copyright infringement.
No the /. crew has as much problem with the WHY and the HOW. BTW, if the RIAA was that flagrant about judges rulings then more judges would be throwing down the gauntlet...they aren't though. So while we may get up in arms apparantly those judges are not...and judges tend to get really annoyed when people do not obey their decrees.
Actually they are rather flagrantly ignoring the spirit of the judges ruling, but not the letter. Simply put the RIAA has pulled up stakes and no longer brings suit in the district the ruling was passed in thereby avoiding any challenge of the ruling. They aren't violating the ruling because it only applies in the district it was issued in, although if it makes it to the Supreme Court that would be another matter. Of course the RIAA knows this and will do everything in their power to prevent a case from going that high, going as far as dropping with prejudice (if need be) any case they think might be headed that way.
On the topic of the "WHY and the HOW", a great many people do not object entirely to the "WHY", but do object to parts of it. The most commonly heard complaint is that the copyright system, originally designed to provide a short term monopoly on a creative work has been bastardized instead into a sort of perpetual monopoly which is clearly against the spirit and intent of copyright which is to encourage new creative works by providing a temporary incentive, while not needlessly depriving the public of a work for a prolonged period of time.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Here's why I download all the hell I want:
If the RIAA were to obtain my hard drive, they'd find that I have HUNDREDS of full albums that they gave away FOR FREE.
I can point out EVERY site that I downloaded a song from, and most of them just happen to be directly from the artist's site.
So tell me, how the fuck can they justify suing for shit they're giving out for FREE? I've got 80+ gigs of 192-320kbit MP3s, EVERY LAST ONE LEGIT.
What we need to do to put a stop to this is file a collective lawsuit, millions of people against this conglomeration of assholes. Make the justice system listen to our voices until they go DEAF from it. Maybe then we'll put an end to this nonsense.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully . A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Herein lies the rub: You define stealing as the act of taking something from someone unlawfully, then you indicate that copying is stealing.
Copying and taking are not synonymous. I'm either making a copy of something, or I am taking something.
Stealing is the act of unlawfully taking property from someone else, from which if I take the property from the owner means the owner no longer has possession of the property. To steal something the original owner must be deprived of the property, because a requirement of stealing is to take.
If I make a copy of the property, be it a car, a piece of furniture, a chapter in a book, a photograph, or bits of information, the original owner still has possession of the property as I have taken nothing. Therefore it is not theft or stealing, it is copyright infringement.
This is why copyright infringement is not prosecuted under criminal theft laws, they are not the same.
I however, am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Creativity is threatened by effectively perpetual copyright and the social
costs of allowing publishers to lock away works that are older than any
participant of this forum are absurd.
I'm the ghost of Ada Lovelace, you insensitive clod!
As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination.
"Impossible to quantify" does not rule out the quantity "zero", so your claim is false. Alternate universes where certain things may or may not have happened cannot be used as evidence of loss. Copyright infringement is no more "stealing" based on loss of potential sales than is using deceptive advertising to pull in more sales at a store. Deceptive advertising is illegal, but a competing store has no claim on the profit made via that deception.
Seriously, it's no more difficult than looking at the relevant sections of law. "Theft" or "stealing" is defined by law as the unlawful taking of real property. Songs and other such fruits of our common culture are not real property. That's why copyright law is covered by its own section in the US Code--- because it isn't covered by the sections on "stealing".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And with that, a million voices on Slashdot suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
First I want to be sure you know that I agree with what you wrote here. I wish people would be much more clear and refer to copyright infringement as copyright infringement because that is what it is. Doing so, like you say, does not say in any way whether you think it is "good, moral, legal, or should be done/not done".
However, you are not the first person I have seen replying on this article to attempt to clarify that copyright infringement is not stealing, and then in the same post use the term piracy to refer to copyright infringement. I think this speaks volumes about what the RIAA and the like are doing. They take something that is relatively new and until recently a foreign concept (copyright law and the concept of intellectual property) and equated breaching such laws as being the same as things that have been universally hated for as long as man has existed. They like to muddy the waters. It is in their favor to do so. First, they get some people to really think they are the same things. Then they get those people to label people like you and I - who are merely trying to correct - as supporters of these heinous acts.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
It implies the quantity being non-zero (because otherwise the GGP would've said so), and it certainly is non-zero in our case. If 1000 people found a song worthy of downloading, certainly one of them (likely — more) would've found it worthy of paying some amount (X being above zero) of money for it. That X/1000 (still above zero) is the perfectly tangible amount stolen from the song's owner, be they the original author, or whoever the author sold their rights to.
But, once again, the loss of value is not, in fact, a requirement for the dictionary definition of theft, so let's stop splitting hairs.
Law? So a plain dictionary is no longer sufficient?
I'd be curious, which law that is — would you oblige with the chapter and verse, please? A link would do...
Yes, "larceny" is also a separate thing in law, and so is "grand larceny". In plain English it is still theft, though, covered by that age-old maxim at the Subject of this (sub)thread: "Though shall not steal".
Now, why is the opposition to my use of the word "theft" so vociferous? Are you really under an impression, that once you prove, that copyright infringement is not exactly like theft, there is nothing morally wrong with it?
Why don't you state — for the record — that copyright infringement is wrong and whoever willfully engages in it deserves some sort of non-trivial punishment? We will then be able to move on to discussing, what such non-trivial punishment (beyond compensating the victims) ought to be...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Although a commonly mentioned other requirement â" that the original owner be deprived of something â" is not, in fact, part of the above quoted Princeton WordNet definition
You do understand that a dictionary definition and a legal definition are not always the same thing?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it.
Well, Ray, after referring to my handy RIAA pocket Thesaurus, I've discovered that there are, in fact, a number of synonyms for copyright infringement. Here is a representative sample:
The Internet, The World Wide Web, Web Site, Hyperlink, IP Address, Personal Computer, Peer-To-Peer, Bit Torrent, Grokster, Morpheus, Gnutella, FTP, File Server, Web Server, Broadband, DSL/Cable, Personal Video Recorder, Router, Network, Google, Youtube, Grandmother, 11 Year-old Girl, Dead Person, College Student, iPod, MP3 Player, Sony Walkman, Cassette Tape, Digital Audio Tape, CD-R/CD-RW, DVD-R/RW, Reel-to-Reel Tape, Player Piano, Satellite Radio, Hard Drive, Floppy Drive, Thumb Drive, RAM, Human Ear, Human Brain, Papyrus, Paper, Pen and Pencil.
It goes on in that vein for quite a while. Apparently, a significant number of technological advances made over the past 120 years directly correlate to copyright infringement in their lexicon.
You learn something new every day.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Well down in Texas we don't call it stealing, we call it baiting lawyers. I mean deer season is over and paper targets just aren't any fun.
Which is about a psyco record industry executive A&R guy who - a bit like Ellis American Psyco - kills his competing executives to get ahead.
Great read - and i get the feeling that more than a little bit of the book is similar to the real world.
Let's face it - right or wrong is secondary to money, and might makes right. There is no chance in
hell that the recording industry is going to changes it's lifestyle willingly. The question is: how can they be made to?
It's funny how you selectively pick the easy part to reply to, even conceded by me: the section you quoted is followed by "I'm being pedantic". The original point of contention still stands:
the definition you provided clearly states "taking [..] from someone"
Repeating your exact statement without even acknowledging the real point of my rebuttal does not make it more true.
And before you try to twist this sentence construct by using creative grammar, "from someone" can only be interpreted as a specification of "taking". If it was meant as a qualification of "something" instead, the preposition "from" would have to be replaced by "of" or even "belonging to".
Corporate espionage is, indeed, commonly referred to a "stealing secrets", phishing is known as "theft of private data"
Amazing, ins't it, how many redundant words exist in the English language. But even this similarity will not help your argument about distributing music online: "private data" and "secrets" share a minor commonality that separates them from the arts: they are not meant to be published. Besides, have you ever heard of an employee that published internal memos being prosecuted for larceny? Can you name one single case where a user was tried for larceny committed through P2P software?
murder - the premeditated taking of life - can be viewed as a (particularly disgusting and reprehensible) form of stealing too
Lol. If we go on like this, I bet I can get you to admit that the act of telling a bedtime story to a child is stealing too.
I am opposed to copyright infringement.
And with that, a million voices on Slashdot suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The only voices that would be silenced would be those of the very few who might think that a man who's devoted the past 34 years of his life to the rule of law would be in favor of infringing upon someone's legal rights. In fact, it is hard for me to imagine anyone on Slashdot who would sincerely have believed anything else.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If 1000 people found a song worthy of downloading, certainly one of them (likely -- more) would've found it worthy of paying some amount (X being above zero) of money for it. That X/1000 (still above zero) is the perfectly tangible amount
Wow, you suck at these calculations.
Lets try for the real figures.
If 1000 people 1000 people found a song worthy of downloading, certainly one of them (likely -- more) would've found it worthy of paying some amount - call that X, certainly one of them (likely most of them) would not have ever bought it had it not been available from torrent sites- call that Y, certainly one of Y (likely -- more) will as a result either buy a retail copy or buy another item from the same artist which they would never have bought otherwise call that Z, certainly one of them (likely -- more) will turn a casual hobby of collecting music into an obsession since the availability of music allows them to permiate their lives with it and among them and their friends owning genuine pretty printed CD's becomes a status symbol, their music collection ends up a thousand times the size it would have been without pirated music but their collection of store bought and signed CD's ends up ten times the size it ever would have been had this not absorbed their lives. Lets call that group C
x/1000 + (Y*0) - Z - C*10
So If you want to call x/1000 a "theft" should we start calling (Z - C*10) a "Donation"?
What's the term for giving someone something they haven't asked for?
If X/1000 is "taking" or "theft" then equally would you like to put your own name to (Z - C*10)?
You sure you know what a synonym is?
Ex.
Man, the RIAA just sued me for copyright infringement.
or
Man, the RIAA just sued me for router.
Man, the RIAA just sued me for grandmother.
Man, the RIAA just sued me for human ear.
Man, the RIAA just sued me for Google.
Man, the RIAA just sued me for dead person.
Just because something is associated with another thing does not automatically make them synonyms.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synonym