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Napster Being Sued by RIAA
Jason R was the first to write with legal battle news that the RIAA [?] has filed a lawsuit against the company that makes the Napster. They are seeking damages of up to $100,000 per pirated song - Napster says that their software exchanges no files, and that they are not legally responsible for any pirating done.
RIAA refers to Napster as "burglar's tools". But what is a burglar's tools? a crowbar? these are not illegal to make. Glasscutters? Perfectly legal. What's next... outlawing penises for being a rapist's tool?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The point isn't whether or not Napster is pirating songs. The RIAA knows this, Napster knows this, and from the comments posted, most of the people on Slashdot seem to know this.
There are more than one reason to initiate a lawsuit. If Napster doesn't have the resources to fight a challenge by the RIAA, then the RIAA wins -- by default!
The RIAA has nothing to lose with this lawsuit. If Napster has good legal representation, then the RIAA will notice this and will probably back down, or come up with some sort of "settlement" that neither party will be able to divulge to anybody else.
This is just a classic case of the big corporation stepping on a little guy: look at all the money and legal resources the RIAA has... it's only reason to be is to initiate these heavy handed lawsuits to protect their member companies.
This is exactly like the etoys.com action against etoy.com; there's no hope for etoys.com to win in an evenly matched legal fight. But if the other party doesn't have the $$$ to fight it, then "I'm sorry. The suit was invalid, but you still lose."
Whatever happens, I hope that Napster doesn't try to make a deal with the RIAA. Look at how the RIAA managed to get the Lyrics Archive to "get back up" -- but at the cost that it now has virtually no lyrics whatever. Any deals with the RIAA means that RIAA wins, and everybody else loses.
I wonder if there will be a legal defense fund set up...
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I don't think that the RIAA suit tells that much about music as it tells about the status of US law. Apparently, to us stupid Europeans, if you've got a good enough lawyer you can get anything done, legal or not. The US system of suing everyone and everything is causing this storm. It's a hysteric reacton to an insane system and all these lawsuits happend because the legel system in the US favours suing.
What do you think would have happend if the RIAA would simply have called the Napster people and asked them; 'hey, could you implement some kind of copy protection scheme for those who want to use it?'. I bet that they'd have gotten their way, and much faster than by suing. Besides, as has been pointed out, there are a lot of other ways to get MP3's that are just as easy. So maybe the RIAA is only trying to set a precedent by attacking a small part of what they percieve as a problem? If they'd succeed in taking on a weak opponent they could move on to stronger ones with another weapon in their legal arsenal.
But what can you do if you have a system that let's a kid sue her parents for refusing to give her candy? (I still refuse to believe in that one, the thought of a country alowing things like that to happend and armed with nukes is way to scary.) Not to say that our law is perfect, one just has to look at the case where two thieves beat an 70 year old man to death with a frying pan and got out free by blaming eachother to see that, but at least people over here don't sue eachother all the time.
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
Sony sells its minidisc almost completely on the basis of its ability to make copies. Every single commercial i've seen for the minidisc consists of nothing but the people making copies of minidiscs. They put a heavy emphasis on "mix tapes". Mix tapes.. riiiight. I'm sure that's really it. :P If the attraction is really in being able to make legal copies of things you own for the purpose of putting all of your good music in one, convenient place.. isn't that exactly the same idea as mp3? Isn't that what SDMI is designed to prevent? But the RIAA has no problem with the minidisc.
Phillips is currently selling a standalone CD writer that makes exact copies of CDs, and does nothing else. They boast about this in their commercials. Unlike conventional computer CD-R drives, which _can_ be used for completely legal purposes, or for making mixtapes of the cds you already own a la minidisc, the CD writer they're selling makes an exact copy of a CD you have already. There is NO POSSIBLE PURPOSE for this device except for making copies and then distributing them illegally. But the RIAA has no problem with it.
None of this is about copyright violation at _all_. (If it were, they'd go after copyright violations.) It's about the RIAA maintaining a monopoly; it's about elitism; it's about keeping anyone outside of the small group of ultrarich megacorporations from operating without going through the ultrarich corporations, or keeping small groups from gaining cultural power.
It's about destroying anyone who can't afford a lawyer.
(p.s. this is offtopic, but doesn't Phillips own some of the patents on mp3 or something? if so, where are they now? Not helping napster, apparently..)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Napsters tools are no more inherently tools for pircacy than ftp is. Yes, it provides a mechanism for people to exchange information. Music happens to be information, so yes, it, too, can be exchanged. Illegally, if both parties are unscrupulous enough to do so. So what?
The "cp" command allows one to do the same (copy to disk and distribute at will). rcp and scp are even worse -- they do the same thing across a network. The venerable ftp protocol allows users to download information in binary format at will. Oh shit! So does http, come to think of it! Then there is IRQ, the most evil of evils. Poeple speaking freely with one another in realtime. Good Lord! Not just a piracy tool, but a conspiricy tool as well! Call the FBI stat!
The RIAA, in even filing this lawsuit, is effectively proposing the banning of the entire internet and all of the utilities and protocols which make it a usable medium for any type of information exchange. This is an attempt to do two things: (1) intimidate a small company with a large legal fist and (2), if they should be so lucky as to find a judge with sufficient sympathy (or a great deal of Sony stock in his portfolio), to effectively ban any tool that lets users exchange binary information of any kind ('cuz it just might be music).
If this doesn't make the absurdity of their lawsuit clear, nothing will.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The last time a manufacturer was meaningfully alleged to be responsible for piracy resulting from the use of new technology was the famous Betamax case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that a defendant CANNOT be guilty for contributing to the infringement by a third party, whenever the apparatus being sold is capable of a substantial non-infringing use -- even if he has knowledge that the piracy might occur. In Betamax case, the Supes held that "time-shifting" broadcast TV by a consumer is fair use, and thus, there existed substantial non-infringing uses.
Of course, Sony lost to the Supreme Court of the Marketplace in the long run, but they set a virtually unassailable precedent for those who follow: if the thing can be used for non-infringing purposes, there won't be responsibility unless the defendant, itself, is actually doing the piracy.