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Choruss Pitching Bait and Switch On P2P Music Tax
An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, Warner Music Group started pitching universities on the idea of a new program where they would pay a chunk of money to an organization named Choruss to provide 'covenants not to sue' those students for file sharing, leading many in the press to claim that the record labels are looking to license ISPs to let users file share. Even the EFF has called it a 'promising new approach.' However, the details are quite troubling and suggest that the plan is really a bait-and-switch idea." (More below.)
"The industry still plans to demand three strikes and try to shut down file sharing networks, and it's already giving up on lawsuits. So... it's basically going to keep doing everything the same as before, but force your ISP or your university (who in turn will raise your rates) to just hand over a bunch of money. Oh yeah, also, since the 'covenant not to sue' isn't a license and only covers the rights of the record labels, it means that you can still get sued by the publishers or songwriters whose rights aren't covered by the deal at all. Unfortunately, the press is just repeating the claim that this is a 'file sharing license' when the details show it's anything but that. It's just a way to get people and companies to hand over large chunks of money to the record labels."
Sounds to me like a classic mafia protection scheme. /Insert seedy Italian accent/ "You might find your finances in trouble without some.... protection. Pay us and we'll provide that... Else our boss might see to it that you do have an accident."
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
From the article:
[the proposal is] so bad that it can be described accurately as a bait-and-switch program designed to make people (1) pay lots of money (2) believing they're now free to file share and then find out that (3) file sharing systems will still be sued out of existence and (4) the users themselves, despite paying, will still be liable for massive lawsuits. It's basically a plan to give the record labels tons of money, handed over by universities (so users have no chance to opt-out) without actually changing anything.
In fact, this would be the universities giving up-front financing for future legal action against file sharers.
K.
...as far as I can throw a CD and I can throw one pretty far. I just got to remember where I put mine at, I seemed to have "misplaced" them...WAIT, they are on my computer.
Back to topic. I don't trust this at all. Sure, the EFF is a great group but sometimes they get their ideals all in a mess much like this one. I just hope they aren't getting any monetary value from supporting this claim that it is a "promising new approach."
Either way, it sounds like people will still be sued, just by different individuals.
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
You know, it's too bad that both political parties in the U.S. are in these scumbags' back pockets (Democrats because they need that Hollywood cash, Republicans because they need that big corporation cash). It would be nice to have at least ONE politician I could vote for who would tell these legalized extortionists where to shove it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Last I checked, the EFF were in strong favor of collective licensing schemes. In my opinion, that approach is completely misguided - either it will require a big-brother like system in order to track usage so as to fairly apportion the proceeds to the artists, or it will lead to even more stagnation as the little innovative guys, the ones who are ultimately responsible for significant changes in culture many years down the road, will never see a penny and cultural development will become glacial.
Ultimately the entire business model needs to be scrapped. We need something akin to the street-performer protocol or some combination of multiple business models that channel people's natural inclination to share stuff they think is cool rather than attempt to fight against it as the current system does.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Am I naive in thinking that this insanity has to stop at some point? I don't think the **AA can stem the tide of people discovering and using file sharing, so when will they decide to give up, or better yet, focus its efforts on promoting a new business model? It seems like the spend an awful amount of effort trying to subvert the subversives with little or no net gain. I'm not sure that anything they have done thus far as been remotely effective in combating piracy, so assuming we live in a logical world, wouldn't it behoove them to stop pestering people and try something different???
Why don't they try something different like product bundling. Why not pair it with something everyone enjoys like water. Make some deals to include iTunes codes for a 49 cent download of choice when you buy a bottle of Dasani? Or get an album for free when you buy a 24 pack of Pepsi. The subsidy you get from these other product bundlings would surely generate more revenue than some kid downloading it off the net. There are many ways you can give your stuff away for 'free' and still make some hard cash...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The RIAA's bag of dirty tricks has been well-documented. Dealing with them is like negotiating a price for an HIV-positive hooker. There is no price that makes it worth it, not even free. Just tell them where they can go f*ck themselves because you're not going to bother with it. As the fees are likely going to be astronomical one way or the other, I know where I would have wanted my tuition to go -- towards a legal defense fund and not to the RIAA.
Yet another death rattle from an obsolete industry.
Not really even news unless you actually believe the music industry will be a viable entity a couple years from now.
No one wants to pay a middleman anymore.No news there. Obsolete business practices and outright lies don't qualify the industry as a "pay here" cash box anymore.
Music is free. Get over it,get a haircut and get a REAL job. The industries mewling is just like all the Buggywhip manufacturers that cried unfair when the automobile came.
Don't pay for music unless it's live in front of you and the artist gets the money(less any overhead). To the artists rooted into the industry, get out now while you still can. To every artist not in the industry, stay away it's a con game you can never win complete with extortion, swindling and theft.
Lets hear it for the powerful new future of music now that the industry lies bleeding!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
It's the MAFIAA doing all this hard and expensive work. You think running a nationwide/worldwide mob is cheap?
I know you're being sarcastic, but the real problem is that law enforcement is doing all this hard and expensive work. Tying up the courts and sending the police to your door, all to keep a failed business model afloat. Now the RIAA is so confident in their enforcement connections that they're trying to set up an extortion model to get more money. This is a classic example of taxpayer money distributed upward to the deep pockets.
Stop sharing music over P2P networks. If you engage in piracy, you're part of the problem and you're giving organizations like the RIAA justification to do what they do. If you people could simply resist the urge to download music that you haven't paid for, all of the "problems" would go away. If the record labels really suck so much, then stop demanding their products. If you want their products, then pay what they want you to pay. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with the consiquences for not doing so. The "opt out" solution is the best solution. They can't prosecute you if you aren't consuming their content.
That is not a flaw in the Constitution. It is a law of nature. Culture and language change. If one defines a set of ideas at a given point in time, the cultural environment, language and society will change over time changing the context entirely. In addition, you will have wicked people, like the RIAA, trying constantly to find ways to circumvent those ideas for their personal gain.
For an example, look at how effective this "intellectual property" campaign has been. In 1776, if one used the term "intellectual property", the individual would have been laughed out of the English speaking world. These days, however, I have had people claim that they still "own" a copy of a book that I have purchased. I really do not care who the author is. The book is obviously mine, including all the words contained within it.
The results of this assault on the original meaning of the Constitution are obvious. In 1776, if a person published a book and copyrighted it, that person would have no way to restrict access to that book. The author would have no control over access at all whatsoever. In fact, the mere suggestion that the author could restrict access to the book would be considered as ludicrous as charging people to breathe.
Today, however, it is considered totally correct to use copyright restrict people's access to works. It is accepted that "downloading" a book is a violation of copyright by most people. Not only that, but many people believe that this monopoly privilege is a Natural Right, like the Right to Free Speech. In 1776, no one would have thought of restricting access to a work. In fact, copyright only really regulated reproduction and distribution. So, in reality, downloading should never have been a violation of copyright, and if it were not for an obscure computer software lawsuit (Mai v. Peak), it never would have been. Is that when we went from restricting distribution to restricting access to knowledge?
Therefore, the cultural context has changed, and even the Oracle at Delphi could not have predicted these events with sufficient clarity to allow the Founding Fathers to draft a document that would withstand the wicked cunning of generations of lawyers and the unfathomable stupidity of the general public. Oh, and do not forget to add the inability of the French to understand the Freedom that the US introduced into the Western cultural sphere. That misunderstanding led to the creation of the Berne Convention -- the biggest train wreck in the history of Intellectual Freedom.
So, instead of criticising the Constitution, you might consider trying to understand what the Founding Fathers were thinking back then and helping your friends understand. Certain contextual issues cannot be reversed (the fact that copying is now a necessary part of all non-face-to-face communication comes to mind). But understanding that ideas like "intellectual property", "sharing == theft", "downloading == stealing", etcetera, are completely wrong is a step in the right direction.
In short, we are wrong for allowing ourselves to be manipulated into being unable to understand our own Freedom by crooked entities like the RIAA.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Using unlicensed investigators in Texas.
Criminal John Doe suits dropped and the names used in civil suits.
Falsification of evidence.
Lying to the court.
etc.