RIAA Victory Over Usenet.com In Copyright Case

ozydingo writes "The RIAA has scored a victory in a decision on a copyright case that they filed back in 2007. US District Judge Harold Baer ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most important for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com can't claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision stating that companies can't be held liable of contributory infringement if the device is 'capable of significant non-infringing uses.' Bear noted that Usenet.com differed from Sony in that the sale of a Betamax recorder was a one-time deal, while Usenet.com's interaction with its users was an ongoing relationship. The RIAA stated in a brief note, 'We're pleased that the court recognized not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies' copyrights but also took action against the defendants for their egregious litigation misconduct.'"

Comments

Any good news lately?

[Locklin]

I think we may be losing.

Re:Any good news lately?

[Locke2005]

What do you mean "we", you copyright infringer?

Re:Any good news lately?

[Phoenixlol]

my wife's a copyright infinger you insensitive clod!

Re:Any good news lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

He could mean that, or he could mean fair-use advocates.

It seems that the judge's ruling that the Beta-max precedent didn't hold because of the 'on-going relationship' could strike a blow for any and all P2P networks.

Re:Any good news lately?

[houstonbofh]

And we will until enough people get upset at the abuses and stand up. Until the average person knows that he is caught in the RIAA net too, he won't care, and nothing will change.

This also applies to encroaching state policies. And yes, they are related.

Re:Any good news lately?

[Locklin]

If you say you have never infringed copyright (at least how the RIAA sees copyright), you are either a lier or a fool. Ever sang happy birthday in a "public venue?" Ever emailed a colleague a recent news clip, journal article or comic? For that matter, are any of those comic posted up in your office? Do you loan or give away books to friends? do you want to do that with e-books when they become ubiquitous? are you an artist that learned your trade by emulating others? perhaps in public venues?

Like it or not, these people want to make the world a less free place, where only money guarantees freedom and permission is king. File sharing just happens to be the current edge case where the battle is being fought. If they haven't made your life more difficult yet, they will once they have locked up the file sharers and can concentrate more energy on your pet infringement.

Re:Any good news lately?

[Locklin]

I'm curious of when that will happen. When bill C-61 (the Canadian DMCA) was introduced, there was way more noise from the general public than I expected. I think the average (younger) citizen is starting to understand what's going on, even if they don't seem to care yet.

Re:Any good news lately?

[BlackSnake112]

You can have a backyard pool and not have a fence around it? It is a law everywhere I have lived. If you have a pool you must have a 4 foot (or higher) fence around the yard or pool.

It may be different in other countries. The 6 US states that I have lived in all have had that law.

Was the RIAA around back in the days of the cassette tapes? Why did they not go after people copying those tapes? Did the RIAA know that the cassette would at some point break or wear out so it was not an issue? MP3s last a long time but not forever. I have copied my collection to a few different computers now and I have had to re-rip a lot of it. The songs started to sound wrong. They had pops and squeals and scratches that were not there before. If the RIAA left people copying cassettes alone since the cassettes would go bad for some reason, they same can be said for MP3s. At least for me anyway. It may take a longer time for the 'damage' to happen.

If this is for distribution, again why did the RIAA not go after the cassette people? I remember seeing one cassette player playing and 15-20 others recording the music while I was in college. There was a room setup for it. I really doubt that I was alone. Yet I never heard of the RIAA going after college students back then.

Re:Any good news lately?

[guruevi]

We have been losing since the beginning of the widespread use of the Internet. The state (which is ran by such enterprises) wants to keep tight control over this (originally free and open) medium because they want to turn it into a sales channel for their products.

And then the populace votes for these enterprises while feeling good that they had a choice and made the right one.

Re:Any good news lately?

[Travelsonic]

ince the average person probably isn't sharing copyrighted material, he probably won't have anything to fear from the RIAA.

I am having a hard time telling if this sarcasm or not. If it isn't you might want to read up on some of the recent MPAA/RIAA related cases.

Re:Any good news lately?

[spidercoz]

Yeah, music sales were still on the upswing at that point. After video games and dvds starting making a dent in their bottom line, the RIAA turned on the internet as a scapegoat to blame for their loss of sales, willfully ignoring the fact that the overall quality of their product has been dropping for years and their obstinate refusal to adapt and adopt new technologies and methods. The writing is on the fucking wall, RIAA isn't just fighting progress, it's fighting evolution.

Re:Any good news lately?

[hoggoth]

> MP3s last a long time but not forever. I have copied my collection to a few different computers now and I have had to re-rip a lot of it. The songs started to sound wrong. They had pops and squeals and scratches that were not there before.

You are suffering from bit-rot. Your computer needs more voltage. Try attaching raw A/C power directly to your motherboard. That should give your bits the extra juice they need.

I hope you are not responsible for any important data.

Re:Any good news lately?

[toriver]

My wife's an insensitive clod, you ignorant buffoon!

Re:Any good news lately?

[Bonker]

That assumes that the average American cares. Our population is currently massively bloated from top to bottom with those who neither understand, enjoy, or particularly want the freedoms they could have if they stood up for them.

I'm having difficulty finding the quote, but not long after our invasion of Iraq some very senior general was quoted as saying that he thought that the United States constitution would not survive another attack on the scale of the September 11th bombings and that our 'Experiment with freedom' would have failed.

That smacks of Mussolini-type fascism to me. Here's one of our most ranking military leaders indicating he thinks its about time to declare nation-wide martial law.

On the lower end of the personal power meter, Joe Midwest Sixpack has a very few things he cares about. He wants to be treated well at work and home. He wants his family to do what he tells them. He wants to feel like he's part of a larger animal that's going generally in the right direction. Those desires are met entirely by church and the kind of neo-conservative ramblings that pass for 'news' on cable television these days. He gets a sense of superiority that's entirely fictitious. (Another facet of old-school fascism. Mussolini had the farmer class eating out of the same hand all the WWI vets did.)

If he thinks about freedom at all, it's in the context of 'Obama better not take my guns!' without ever thinking about why the 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights at all. In the land of the 'Free and the Brave', this individual is neither free nor brave enough to stand up for his freedoms. He would, frankly, be happier with a absolute monarchy or theocracy.

Re:Any good news lately?

[houstonbofh]

Until the average person knows that he is caught in the RIAA net too, he won't care, and nothing will change. Since the average person probably isn't sharing copyrighted material, he probably won't have anything to fear from the RIAA.

It was not pirates caught with the Sony Rootkit. The non-technical grandfather, and the dead grandmother were not pirates. The license fee for the DRM on every BD disk sold is not payed by Pirates. The criminalization of p2p, even for legal purposes, is payed by more than pirates. Everyone is forced to watch that damned "Do not pirate me" add on legally purchased DVDs. (But not pirates)

Re:Any good news lately?

[TitusC3v5]

I think the 'younger' portion of your statement should have been bolded for emphasis. A large part of the problem is that for the most part, all three of our branches of government are filled with 40+ folks, a large portion of which simply don't understand current technologies and how they've changed the game. They understand only the spin that the lobbyists have memorized, and you can imagine where that comes from.

Even if public outrage is evident, I think we're going to see any significant and positive changes until today's 20-30 generation are the ones in office and sitting on the judicial bench.

Re:Any good news lately?

[Matheus]

BZZT! Incorrect sir.

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp

Re:Any good news lately?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Since the average person probably isn't sharing copyrighted material, he probably won't have anything to fear from the RIAA.

Maybe not from the RIAA as such, but there's something else to consider.

Up until recently, the RIAA and its member corporations had much to fear from pirates. They did not only compete on price, but also on quality of the product itself: in many cases pirate sites offer a superior product that has not been encumbered with DRM. And the industry has taken note and is responding, with legal download sites for music, soon perhaps even movies, and by removing DRM in some cases like the songs sold on the iTunes store.

Now imagine that the RIAA and MPAA actually win against pirates, in a way that makes it almost impossible for John Q Public to find and download pirated works. They would no longer have an incentive to offer a competitive product at a competitive price. DRM would return in a big way, I expect. Plans for legal movie downloads would likely be shelved.

What does that mean for the man in the street? The return of DRM is the most notable effect, one that will have an ever increasing impact. DRM didn't matter much for upstanding citizens when it was just a region code on DVDs. But with many people downloading music from legal sources, proliferation of "media tanks" (why are they called that anyway?), more and more gadgets being capable of playing audio or video, and more of these gadgets being internet-capable, DRM and online verification of licenses will potentially have a great impact on consumers. DRM does not affect you? Hmm... Want to buy a movie abroad, one perhaps that is not even sold in your own country? Sorry, wrong region. Want to rip your Bluray to a central hard disk so you can stream it to any TV in the house? Not possible... and under the DMCA, potentially a crime. Play a movie on the go on your iPhone? You can't, unless you buy a separate copy for that phone. Borrow a CD from a friend? It won't play since the license for it has been tied to his equipment. Oh, and those movies you purchased online a while ago, they are not playing anymore, how odd. Oh yes, the company that sold them went out of business and the certificate servers are offline. Oh, and if your iPod breaks and you decide to get something else instead of an Apple product, you may have to buy all of your songs all over again. That is potentially the future of DRM, and is what gives every honest-to-goodness media exec a hard-on just by thinking about it.

I am all for paying for whatever I get. But when I pay for it, I want to own it in perpetuity, be able to sell or lend it, be able to play it on any compatible device, and be allowed to convert it to suit other devices. A Dutch parliamentary commission recently recommended something along these lines, and I think it is something wonderful (for once) that the EU could accomplish: set down what our fair use rights are (more or less the above), and then forbid the sale of equipment that actively prevents the exercise of those rights, i.e. any DRM or copy protection. If we have our fair-use rights, the RIAA can have their fair-sue rights, and be as tough on pirates as they want.

Re:Any good news lately?

[jedidiah]

n00bs casually break copyright laws.

The idea that copying something is "wrong" is just not something
that occurs to the common man with a classical medieval notion of
what is moral or what is legal.

The law is inherently complex and the media moguls constantly seek
to increase their power and make more things illegal. The tech is
inherently complex and already bound to be out of the control of
the typical n00b.

The law is already at the point where the common man is going to
be somewhat bothered. The media moguls will likely not be
satisfied until the common man is generally criminalized for
mundane petty acts of infringement.

Their own lack of restraint may be their undoing.

Tell Suzie Homemaker that it's illegal for her to copy
the baby portraits and see how she reacts to that...

Re:Any good news lately?

[tsa]

What has this got to do with fair use?

Re:Any good news lately?

[masterzora]

I'm glad nobody's saying anything to the contrary, then. If you continued reading, you would have noted that it actually says:

Do you loan or give away books to friends? do you want to do that with e-books when they become ubiquitous?

Reading comprehension HO!

If you ever go to court...

[pieterh]

...do not piss off the judge! It really is batshit stupid to do things like destroy evidence and make witnesses vanish (even temporarily). Why not go to court naked except for a t-shirt that says "Guilty as Hell" on the front and "Kiss my hairy butt" on the back?

The only way to handle such things is to find a way to be the victim of the situation, to prove that you did what you could to help, and that the case is unfair, aggressive, and misplaced.

And, if you don't like the law, work to change it, don't sell ways to get around it. Bad laws exist because people pretend they are helpless to change them.

Re:If you ever go to court...

[funkatron]

Downloading copywriten works is not your right nor do you have some special privilege to it.

Getting paid when someone copies some content you once worked on is not your right nor do you have some special priviledge to it.

That was too easy

Re:If you ever go to court...

[causality]

You're not the victim. Downloading copywriten works is not your right nor do you have some special privilege to it.

I think the real problem is that people who don't download copywritten (copyrighted?) works are also being affected. Just look at the legions of users, particularly of PC games, who find to their dismay that the people who pirated the game have an easier time using it than the people who purchased the game. That's just one side-effect of DRM. Look at some of the other side-effects of DRM, such as the possibility of killing off the first sale doctrine (this is properly called a power grab) and the generally unfriendly practice of telling you what you may do with media after you purchase it and use it legally.

As the OP said, if you don't like the system, change the system.

Do you have millions of dollars that you're willing to part with, a small army of lawyers and lobbyists, and perhaps also the ability to run a national media campaign? Because that's what it would take to even have a chance.

I know that these facts aren't going to stop a single download but an artist should have some limited rights to the use and distribution of their works.

Sure. That was once twelve years, and at a time when the mechanical printing press was the most technologically advanced method of distribution available. Just think of how many more copies of a work we can produce and sell in twelve years with modern technology and digital distribution. That would be a system that people can respect once again because it represents a good balance between the artists' temporary monopoly on their works and the public-domain benefit of society for being willing to grant that monopoly. When you make something respectable, people have a much higher chance of respecting it.

That's much better than making something unworthy of respect and grossly out of balance and then threatening people into going along with it. That's what the system is doing today, and gee, I just can't imagine why it's not working out ...

If you want to get an idea of what kind of people you're dealing with and why there is increasing resistance against them, try this link.

Re:If you ever go to court...

[Travelsonic]

You're not the victim.

Tell that to the deceased, those without a computer, and those who were mis-identified (IP address)and were targeted by the RIAA.

Re:If you ever go to court...

[RedK]

It might have been easy, but the privilege is afforded by the Copyright Act, so it's just false. The law is what it is, if you don't like it, change it.

Re:If you ever go to court...

[causality]

DRM is a side effect of people who feel that theft is a valid response to copyright. It can be argued how effective it is but do you really think media producers enjoy producing DRM for their own amusement? And again, I agree that some aspects of copyright need redone, so let's redo it.

No, DRM is one way to deal with the problem of piracy and it's adversarial towards the paying customers. Revamping your business model so that instead of being based on control, it is instead based on catering to your customers, giving them what they want the way they want it, at a reasonable price, and being a real joy to do business with, is another way to deal with the problem of piracy. That's how I feel about the issue as I refuse to limit myself to "pro-DRM versus pro-infringement."

That's why I call for copyright reform and not the full abolition of all copyright. I think most of your response reflects that this did not occur to you. You really seem to be lumping me together with other people who make different arguments that superficially sound like mine, hence your repeated suggestions that my goal is to say that infringement ("theft") is fine and good. I have never claimed that copyright infringement is some kind of impeccably right or correct thing to do, only that it was quite predictable and that one need not be a student of human nature to recognize this.

I am not saying you are or are not doing this, but just that generally this is how I feel about these discussions. When someone denies that there is a connection between being a needlessly adversarial, universally reviled asshole on the one hand, and having people feel that it is justifiable to rip you off on the other hand, I feel that I am dealing with either a deluded person or an intellectually dishonest person. Just as soon as the media companies quit being their own worst enemies, then and only then is it reasonable to talk about whether the government should create new laws to help them out.

And don't give me this crap about respect. It has nothing to do with the issue. The issue is much simpler than that but people confuse the issue by bringing all kinds of false pretense to it. Respect for the customer is just one of those false pretenses. I know that if I feel a company doesn't respect me as a customer I stop buying from them. It's that simple and respect shouldn't be another crutch of defense for breaking the law.

I clearly indicated that the respect I was talking about was for copyright law. Y'know, as an institution. Whether or not I want to buy a CD from Sony won't rewrite copyright law. Whether our collective political priorities and goals change because enough people decide that the status quo isn't working very well for anyone, including the media companies, now that might do the trick. I'll say the same thing about this that I said about the companies themselves: anyone who denies that there is a connection between whether or not the average person respects copyright law because he can see that it is right and good (i.e. balanced) on the one hand, and the rate of infringement on the other, is either deluded or intellectually dishonest. If you think you can change this or make it go away by calling it crap, well, good luck with that.

If you think it's so offensive why do you deal with them or their product in the first place?

I don't think it's offensive. I think it's wrong. I generally do not deal with them or their products. However, what they are doing is wrong whether they do it to me or to someone else. So, I don't see the point in bringing up what I personally do or don't do.

The only people I feel bad for in all of this is the honest citizen who abides by the law but gets caught up in it all.

You have now identified the one and only subject of my entire post, the part that I consider to be wrong and not merely "offensive".

Re:If you ever go to court...

[mrrudge]

And if the legal system is compromised ?

If the laws are written by, and in favour of, one side of the argument, who then these laws to appropriate more power, and more laws, and who also inflict massive permanent, unwarranted damage on small infringing members of the public ?

What then ?

I'm not trying to defend copyright infringement, but your concept of society seems far from pragmatic. This debate may have become stale, but as it's unresolved and affects a large ( and increasing ) volume of the population and comes very close to ( and is possibly an intended attack on ) Free speech, it's very, very far from pathetic.

I'd say we're getting into civil disobedience territory, copyright was broken by the advent of the Internet. Many, many people have a perfect copying machine ( apart from the guy above who gets scratches in his mp3's ), and the people chosen by this society to create a system which benefits and encourages the creation of artworks via copyright is not doing it's job.

If the majority of a society is uncivil, that society should adjust it's idea of civility. Please don't think there isn't a price for being civil also.

Re:If you ever go to court...

[Endo13]

When copyright is so messed up that a company is making $2 million per year on five minutes of work "composing" a 6-note tune ripped off from someone else, written by someone back in the 1890's who's been dead for over 60 years, with words written by no-one-knows-who, then it's no surprise that the public blatantly disregards it.

FURIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't that cover about anything on the internet, ftp, http, ssh.... Gee they could sue just on a grounds that the technology "maybe" used for illegal activity.

Hmmm.. sue the founders of tcpip because they allow for the "transport" of such illegal activities...

Re:FURIAA

[causality]

Doesn't that cover about anything on the internet, ftp, http, ssh.... Gee they could sue just on a grounds that the technology "maybe" used for illegal activity.

Hmmm.. sue the founders of tcpip because they allow for the "transport" of such illegal activities...

That would be the logically consistent position, yes.

Re:FURIAA

[91degrees]

They sued usenet.com. Not usenet itself. This was because the company was contributing to copyright infringement, not because the technology was.

Re:In other news . . .

[The Pirou]

When people are paying subscription fees to binary aggregators like Newzbin and Giganews to get 90% of their daily media (music, movies, etc) content it's understandable why the RIAA is taking such steps. Of course this isn't the trading of copyrighted files - it's a simple download and doesn't behave the same way as P2P networks.

Re:In other news . . .

[iammani]

This is Usenet with a capital 'U'. Some crap upload and share service that got hold of the domain www.usenet.com

Thank goodness

[MyLongNickName]

This legal decision has restored my faith in the legal system. A small group of people were able to fight for their rights against a huge behemoth corporation and win. ~

So can you sue Google for finding my ISO files?

[iCantSpell]

So does this mean Google is in the same boat? Technically google can do the same thing with filetype.

filetype:iso has been one of my greatest search modifiers when looking for my pirated copies.

Re:So can you sue Google for finding my ISO files?

[zwei2stein]

Nope.

a) Google actually reacts to DMCA-like request and does remove search results if companies ask them to. see: http://www.google.com/dmca.html

b) Their business model is not build around enabling piracy, very much unlike sites that depends on it to exists and make profit, hence a) works and there is no reason nor legal grounds to sue them.

Compared to cookie cutter pirate site where a) will not ever work because b) they will be out of business if they complied and removed copyrighted material as they would be out of content and ad revenue fast. At best they will post childish reaction on their site.

Re:So can you sue Google for finding my ISO files?

[thesp]

I really hate to have to point this out, but almost everything on the internet is copyrighted, in some aspect or another, at least. In fact, nearly everything has some copyrighted component.

I refer you to the US copyright office, with similar provisions applying in almost every other Berne-convention country (including my very own UK).

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork

"When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created."

Copyright is not acquired, it is merely asserted.

Google cannot possibly have a policy that it only indexes works in which no copyright subsists. I suspect the real policy is that Google removes items from the index if there is a reasonable case that they are infringing copies of a copyright work, or that accessing them is likely to constitute infringement of copyright.

Re:So can you sue Google for finding my ISO files?

[noidentity]

filetype:iso has been one of my greatest search modifiers when looking for my pirated copies.

Isn't it simpler to just use a local file search to find your own files? To each his own I guess...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:In other news . . .

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Usenet is still being used? I didn't think anybody posted there anymore.

Yes! You are correct. Nobody is using Usenet. Nobody. I can definitely say with complete cromulence that Usenet is a ghost service of no great importance. Whatsoever. At all. Now or ever, in fact.

Re:RIP Usenet

[Gizzmonic]

Sir, do you realize that this has nothing to do with Usenet (NNTP)? The courts just found against a file sharing site called usenet.com. Still, it's a nice little tribute anyway.

Bear noted that Usenet.com differed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bear noted that Usenet.com differed from Sony in that... ...they weren't a multibillion dollar multinational corporation with deep pockets and more lawyers than law school reunions.

Re:Bear noted that Usenet.com differed...

[mea37]

Actually, what he seems to be saying is: If you sell someone a thing, your rseponsibility for how they use that thing after the sale is less than your responsibility for how someone uses a service you are actively providing. Given the nature of secondary infringement, it certainly seems like a plausible distinction. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good cynical punchline.

(Now, whether I agree with his conclusion I couldn't say without digging quite a bit deeper into the issues.)

a new age in file-sharing is born

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids, forget the internets.. I've got a whole NEW way of file-sharing with no pesky lawyers, no judges, no colluding ISPs, no Orwellian gubment "oversight".
It's called a "flash drive".

1. Put a song or movie onto your flash drive and give it to a friend.
2. They give it back to you with some of their songs or movies on it.
3. ???
4. We both haz profits!!!!

Re:a new age in file-sharing is born

[Kabuthunk]

Except that goes contrary to the primary benifit (in my eyes) of music over the internet. The capability of listening to music that's NOT local and/or sold locally. A few of my favourite genres I'd have never encountered in my entire life if it hadn't been for the internet.

How Many Separate Cases?

[quangdog]

I'm curious - we frequently hear of the RIAA suing this, that, and the other thing. Is there somewhere we can go to see just how many concurrent ongoing cases involve the RIAA on a global scale?

I'm guessing no.

Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.

Re:How Many Separate Cases?

[causality]

I'm curious - we frequently hear of the RIAA suing this, that, and the other thing. Is there somewhere we can go to see just how many concurrent ongoing cases involve the RIAA on a global scale? I'm guessing no. Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.

Makes me wonder one thing. Do you think it would benefit the general population or harm the general population if we simply outlawed all trade organizations and forced all companies in an industry to act as completely independent entities? Because personally, I have never seen them do anything that I found to be desirable though I admit that such things probably don't make the news.

Back in my day....

[zepo1a]

Back in my day (I'm 48)....

When I was a young whipper snapper in the 70's-80's. I'd buy an album and copy it to tape for my car. If asked by a friend for a copy, I'd take a blank cassette tape and make a copy in my cassette recorder with the high speed dub feature.

I'd also ask friends the same, and they'd make me a tape of an album I didn't have.

I'd also buy cassette tapes of music at the store.

Now my 69 Dodge Dart back then is carting around 150-200 cassette tapes, some my own made copies, some a friend made copies for me and other store bought tapes.

The music industry and RIAA seemed to live through that era. If one friend bought an album, all his friends would get a cassette copy if they wanted it.

I don't ever recall the cops ever asking me if I got pulled over for speeding or something..."BTW son, Do you have a license for all those home recorded cassette tapes back there."

Seriously, what are the RIAA trying to prove here. I just can't wrap my head around all this frivolous suing.

Now get off my lawn, etc...

Re:Back in my day....

[Robin47]

They want more power. Money is portable power. They don't care how they get it as long as they get it.

Re:Back in my day....

[cil1mia]

Here! Here! Also living through the 70's, 80's AND 90's when this was all the norm! Even recording TV shows on your VCR to loan to a friend who missed that episode of Dallas! HAHAHAHA!

The only reason I can figure is mainly because most of the "mainstream" music that has been coming out sucks horribly! So the recording industry had to figure out a way to make up for lost revenue seeing they couldn't figure out a better business model or find/make better bands!

Lets not forget the whining of Lars Ulrich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS6udST6lbE that really started all this mess! And now he see's his mistake and downloads his own music off the internet! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Ulrich

You also never really hear of the actual BANDS out there complaining about file sharing. They know the truth that the more people that get a taste, the more they will actually go out and buy the whole album/cd/what ever, the more people that will come out to see them live! I can't tell you how many albums I bought when I was younger after hearing a song on a "mix tape" at a party or something!

Which brings me to another thought. What the hell ever happened to making music for the pure joy of it? Oh that's right, greed!

Re:In other news . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Usenet is a useless service these days. So much so in fact that it's not even worth looking at or mentioning ever again. Please, stay away. Let the trolls post and download in peace. They like their happy little home.

Re:RIP Usenet

[L4t3r4lu5]

You have forgotten the first rule.

Re:In other news . . .

[cayenne8]

"Of course this isn't the trading of copyrighted files - it's a simple download and doesn't behave the same way as P2P networks."

Someone HAS to upload those file my friend. That content doesn't just magically appear there by itself.

usenet.com's own fault

[seekret]

They shouldn't have been advertising the availability of illegal material, they dug there own grave by literally saying "come here to download any copyright material you want and we will help you get away with it". Usenet is useful for many things that are perfectly legal, I feel no remorse for usenet.com because their own arrogance brought this on them.

Re:In other news . . .

[IbnSlash]

This is Usenet with a capital 'U'. Some crap upload and share service that got hold of the domain www.usenet.com

Before you go down further and start panicking please make note of what he said, it's really important. usenet and Usenet are two very different things.

And always remember:

[Hurricane78]

This has nothing to do with the rights of the artists. It's purely about the copyright.

May they live forever, only wishing they could finally die from the horrors.

I Find This Troubling

[Slashdot Parent]

Maybe it's because I'm not really involved in the legal system, but I find the way the jduge sanctioned usenet.com to be very troubling.

If you'll read the article, you'll see that usenet.com destroyed evidence and arranged for witnesses against it to be out of the country for the trial. For this, usenet.com absolutely deserves to be sanctioned.

But the judge's sanction was effectively to rewrite the DMCA. Lawmakers inserted a Safe Harbor provision into the DMCA that shielded service providers from responsibility for criminal activity of their users. When Judge Baer sanctioned usenet.com by preventing them from raising the Safe Harbor defense, he effectively rewrote the DMCA in a way that lawmakers never intended!

Without the Safe Harbor defense, usenet.com's case was lost. I'm not sure what the appropriate sanction should be for usenet.com's blatant discovery violations, but a judge rewriting a law as it applies to just one company seems wrong to me.

Re:I Find This Troubling

[taustin]

Actually, generally speaking, when a litigant is caught falsifying or destroying evidence, or otherwise interfering with the other side's case, it isn't uncommon for the judge to deny them to opportunity to present any defense. This is, in many people's opinion, entirely appropriate. It's the punishment for obstructing justice. This happened in one of the lawsuits over the University of California fertility clinic scandal, when the state's lawyers were caught falsifying evidence. The judge just issued a summary ruling for over $100 million, and that was that.

The key concept here is, if you don't want to lose automatically, don't break the rules (and the law).

Re:In other news . . .

[computational super]

Well, I sure wish I could figure out which service provider the people not using Usenet are not using, because the ones I've been not using sure don't have anything worth not downloading to not download these days.

Digital Changed The Game

[Slashdot Parent]

The music industry and RIAA seemed to live through that era. If one friend bought an album, all his friends would get a cassette copy if they wanted it.

But what happened if the friend tried to make a copy for his friend, and that other friend tried to make a copy for his other friend. Surely you remember that, don't you? The quality stank so badly nobody wanted to listen to that copy, thanks to lossy analog dubbing.

With digital media, each copy is lossless, so if a friend copies a song for a friend, who copies it for another friend... even 10, 20, 1000 friends down the chain, and the music still has its original quality.

So I don't think your Dodge Dart comparison is particularly apt here. The game has changed.

Now mow your fucking lawn, pops.

Re:In other news . . .

[suso]

I see a lot of new faces here tonight, which means that a lot of you have been breaking the first two rules or fight club.

Well from what i can understand...

[pjr.cc]

No one gets usenet versus Usenet.com (nor I really). But it certainly has some interesting implications, for example, almost every ISP in Australia has a usenet feed and a full alt.binaries tree. That could make for some "fun times" and i cant only imagine what will happen if the RIAA equivalent in AU gets to mess with our little comunist firewall... err, i mean saviour of our childrens minds.

Given there are already cases against the ISP's in court already.

But, does it really matter? Yeah, usenet was good while it lasted and if this is about to spell it's final "for whom the bell tolls", then so be it. One of the big problems with usenet in the modern era was lack of knowledge of its existence. For example, in my day I sold and bought things on Aus.ads.forsale and now everyone uses ebay cause they know it exists.

But, some of that "social fabric" is changing as well (to more modern things I mean). Take twitter and facebook as a semi-evolutionary step, sure you probably cant easily share copywritten (?) work on them easily, but how long until the google wave becomes a simple, all-access protocol capable of doing the same?

The internet does route around the damage that people do to it, and techo's come up with better tech for avoiding rediculous litigation - but more importantly, they get better at quickly making things that are hard to blame on any one person or organisation while people like the RIAA are struggling to grapple with putting together a case based on incomplete evidence from yesterdays protocols.

Block Bittorrent in AU? go for it, we'll get something else (we had kazaa, napster, emule, etc etc already and we learnt from the various mistakes present in those protocols). In short, techno-people move quick, bit corp's move slow and we're always going to be ahead.

Personally when it comes to all these things all I know is that it puts me off watching movies or listening to music because if I happen to have an MP3 of a song from a CD that was later stolen, chances are I could be possibly in trouble. In alot of industries thats called shooting yourself in the foot.

Oh, and did anyone see that little news report in AU about how movie piracy was funding terrorism? I wonder how much the RIAA payed to have that little piece put on the air (in all fairness, it was physical media piracy as opposed to sharing on the internet, but still)...

Re:In other news . . .

[arclyte]

I just checked. What he said is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Usenet is completely dead. Full of spam. Entirely worthless. Nothing to see here, people, so just move along... I wouldn't even bother checking it out for yourself as there's just nothing there worth looking for.

So...

[frozentier]

So, this means if a guy bootlegging movies were to record those movies onto Memorex blank DVD's, then Memorex would be liable for copyright infringement, right?

Bzzt back at you

[pjt33]

The Snopes article you reference and that statement that the copyright on Happy Birthday expired some time ago everywhere except America are in no way mutually incompatible. In fact, based on the information given by the Snopes article I would have to conclude that in the EU it expired in 1991, 75 years after the death of Mildred Hill.

Re:In other news . . .

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Depends on the country. In Europe, the former is mostly fine. It is absolutely legally clean where I live, in fact, regardless of the source of the material in question (the only ones who disagree with this are the employees of the local equivalent to RIAA, but they never answer when you ask on what do they base theif opinion, different from the opinion of 99+ percent of local lawyers). I guess the latter is almost universally illegal.