The idea of intellectual property evolved as a legal concept to protect the creative efforts of individuals.
The legal justification of the copyright clause is not to protect the creative efforts of individuals. The justification, and purpose of the copyright clause is to provide incentive for creative individuals to produce, not to protect their work. A very crucial difference of philosophy.
Copyright law provides for many different uses which might be incompatable with maximizing the "protection of creative efforts" of an individual, if that were the purpose of copyright law.
For instance, you have the fair use provisions.
Also, there is a Constitutional mandate that copyrights expire. Terms of copyright must be limited.
As another example, you have the right to record and publish your own performances of other people's songs, once they have been initially published, even if they don't want you to. In this case, you would pay a fixed fee. See this reference for more information on how compulsory mechanical licensing works, especially the link to 17 USC Sec 115. The purpose of compulsory mechanical licensing was originally to break up the player-piano-roll monopoly, which isn't much of an issue anymore. These days, it's what allows your band to include a Bob Dylan cover on your album, for instance, even if Bob Dylan happens to hate your band.
The MPAA and RIAA are heavily promoting propaganda that misrepresents the nature and purpose of copyright law. Please don't take their explanations of things at face value.
The whole thing looks like a bunch of back and forth bickering, and to a certain extent it is. Once you understand what is really going on, things become more clear and the exercise becomes more useful.
The purpose (for the defense) of a deposition such as this serves two purposes. First, you try and find out what the potential expert witness knows and has witnessed.
Secondly, and more importantly in the case of this particular expert witness, Mr. Garbus has placed into the record a long list of what Mr. Schumann does not know and does not have knowledge of. For instance, among the hundreds of factoids teased out by Mr. Garbus, it came out that Mr. Schumann has no knowledge of anyone ever using DeCSS to create a pirate DVD disk that was then sold.
This limits the value of the witness to the MPAA at trial. He can't claim that he has seen or heard of anyone using DeCSS to burn a pirate DVD and sell it, because he testified that he hasn't in his deposition. This also gives Mr. Schumann about a hundred different chances to blow his credibility on the stand by contradicting his deposition.
Think of it as seeding the minefield.
This is how the game is played, and you have a front row seat. Enjoy!
Although my opinion is obviously biased, I was disappointed that there was no mention of Free Software or some other not-for-profit projects that benefit everyone. I find that many of the corporate ties within the Free Software community are very much along the lines of Klein's notion of an ideal balance between corporations and communities. It should be noted, however, that the most recent example in the book is dated June 1999, so it's possible that the word "Linux" hadn't reached Klein's ears by that time (except for some of the IPO hype).
I see open source as less of a fight against corporatism, although many people support open source for many different reasons. Instead, I see open source as a grass-roots replacement for the lost concept of the public domain. Since copyrights have been overwhelmingly extended (95 years), and since as of 1978 all work is considered copyrighted, there is now simply no chance that any person will live long enough to freely build and expand on any non-open source software written within their lifetime without permission, which is typically not granted.
The lack of a public domain is felt acutely in the software field. This was discussed in the "Systems Research is Dead?" thread. New research has always been based on the idea that you can build on old research. Otherwise, you spend all of your time reinventing the wheel, and never get to do anything original. This "old research" used to be the public domain, and still is for patents, which have a reasonable duration.
Basing new research on the shoulders of Linux or BSD is functionally similar to developing new public domain works based on previous public domain works. The GPL and BSD license work as incentives for "the promotion of science and useful arts", just as the copyright laws are supposed to.
As corporations lobby for more and more restrictive copyright laws for their own benefit, it is worth noticing that the issue is not one sided. Many people are looking for, and embracing an alternative to restrictive, proprietary intellectual property law, and the success of open source is in that it is successfully providing, using existing copyright law, a functional replacement for the lost Public Domain.
- John
The Internet has interpreted the DMCA as damage and is routing around it
Our IBM 3090 mainframe had a neat system for eliminating external RF interference and power glitches. The power from the electric company was used to turn a motor, which in turn drove a generator, which supplied nice, clean AC power for the computer. A large, heavy flywheel was also attached to the common drive shaft to keep the AC nice and smooth.
I think that Microsoft deserves a strong measure of blame for a dearth of systems research.
I'm 32 years old. I started programming in high school on a PDP/11 at the age of 16. The operating system came with a BASIC interpreter, but more importantly, an assembler and linker. I was able to start writing machine language programs. I moved on to the Apple II. The core features of the Apple II were the monitor, assembler, disassembler, and BASIC interpreter. Using an Apple II was an open invitation to begin programming, and the manual contained a disassembly of the monitor, illustrating what machine language looked like.
Later, in college, I started programming on the campus mainframe. The operating system was fully documented, included assemblers and compilers, and included the source code to the operating system.
When I bought my first DOS/Windows PC, I immediately looked for the familiar tools. They were not there. There was no assembler, no disassembler, no monitor, no API documentation, no program listing. As an end user, the only thing the PC was capable of doing was running pre-packaged applications. I never learned x86 assembler, I never learned to program to the DOS or Windows APIs; I never learned to program PCs. The PC was and is a very hostile environment for the amateur programmer.
If my only experience was with DOS/Windows PCs, I doubt I would have ever become a programmer. I feel very lucky that I happened to discover computers in the narrow window when they came with useful programming tools.
The most important feature of Linux, from the standpoint of future operating systems research, is that for the first time since the Apple II, a mass-market end-user operating system contains all of the tools necessary for an end user to also become a programmer.
The new generation of Linux users is learning how to program. No surprise that the generation that grew up on Microsoft isn't contributing to systems research... Microsoft never provided any useful tools.
In short, to a large extent Linux is a catch-up operation. The Linux community is filling the enormous intellectual void caused by years of Microsoft dominance of home computers.
To answer the article, we are at a very low point. I believe that things will get better. The teenagers who are hacking the Linux kernel are going to have ideas of their own, and for the first time since the early 1980s they will have the ability to implement them.
I'm not saying that the Internet improves people -- makes them more critical, more involved, more interested in learning, better judges of argument
I think that the Internet does all of those things. Once a person leaves school, unless that person becomes a professional writer, he or she will probably never have the opportunity or desire to write a critical essay again. Since I started posting to BITNET groups, mailing lists, and now internet sites like Slashdot, I've posted hundreds of messages here and on other groups, and enjoyed countless interesting postings, while wading through thousands of postings containing logical fallacies. Reents says that,... on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users. He's right, and I think that the reason is mostly because on a group like slashdot, you just can't get away with the sort of logical fallacies that are the foundation of most political speech.
Try this. If you've never seen the list, go to the link above and study all of the different kinds of logical fallacies and errors. Next time you hear a political speech, by any candidate, pick out all of the fallacies. You'll be amazed by how many you'll find. Political speech, as it is practiced through the mass media, is not the art of producing rational, coherent arguments. Political speech, as practiced through the mass media, is about creating a vague, content-free comforting image. That doesn't translate well to the internet. On the internet, if someone uses those sorts of arguments on a newsgroup, their arguments are quickly ripped to shreds by followup posts and are discredited... which is the main difference between a forum like Slashdot, and a forum like a televised debate, where the candidates are deferred to and allowed to change the subject, make fallacious arguments, and ignore the questions, without ever being questioned.
No one is immune to it. One of my recent posts had a really poorly thought out transition into an unrelated topic. Someone called me on it, and he was right. I've called other people on things like that. There's nothing that makes you want to be a better writer then having your posting roundly ripped to shreds by someone with a better sense of argument then you. It's a learning experience, and the Internet is the only place I've found this learning experience to be available. When you write a class essay, only the teacher and you read your work. Only the internet provides a large enough audience for a non-professional writer to be truly humiliated in front of his or her peers... a valuable, if painful learning experience.
On the internet, either your ideas are sound, or they are not. If you are writing like an idiot, people will tell you.
This is the reason not to email hate mail/threats to the MPAA or RIAA. The people who did that gave the MPAA ammunition in their effort to keep the lawsuit out of the public eye and out of the press.
The constitution was written at a time when firearms were hand-made and unreliable. The term "well-regulated" referred to the firearms themselves, not to the militia. A well-regulated firearm is one that is kept in good working order, like a "well-regulated clock."
The militia was, at the time, defined as the available pool of adult, male citizens who possessed firearms -- NOT a standing army like the military or the national guard.
The founders abhorred the concept of a standing army. In fact, the constitution does not allow for a standing army. The authors of the constitution had just overthrown their own government -- the British government, and were well aware of the danger of having a standing army. The founders intended that the ordinary citizens possess the power to defend themselves, not only against foreign enemies, but against their own government if necessary.
A modern translation of the amendment would be, "Because it is necessary that the citizens be able to personally defend their freedom, and because it is necessary to ensure that the citizens have working weapons to do so, the government may not interfere with private gun ownership.
Saying that the 2nd amendment provides for gun control completely turns the intent of the amendment on its head.
The reason our society is violent isn't because of the guns. It's mostly because we are living under drug prohibition -- which has progressed farther and destroyed more of our freedom then alcohol prohibition ever did, and because the government is actively waging a civil war -- the drug war -- against its own people. Violence is the natural result of prohibition and the black markets it creates.
Wow... I might have been interested in exploring that web site, but after reading their "terms of use", I just closed the window and will never go back... or buy any of their games.
I also noticed that there was no "I Agree" clickthrough box. Isn't there supposed to be one, or are they claiming that I gave up all of my fair use rights just by loading their homepage?
I sent eBay a polite note about this, and received the following response.
On Wed, 31 May 2000 12:57:51 eBay Customer Support wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to write us with your concern about our feedback policy. I will be happy to address your concerns. First the feedback for msoft@buddy.ebay.com hasn't been altered and our policies haven't been changed for this member.
About three months ago we changed our feedback policy. Before members could leave neutral comments to any other member at any time. Negative comments had to be transaction related, so when members were upset with another member even if it wasn't in regards to a transaction they had completed with that member they could leave neutral comments.
To answer your first question the feedback wasn't altered from negative to neutral. All of the comments that are neutral were originally left as neutral comments.
Many alternatives to curb misuse of the Feedback Forum while still maintaining a non-transactional feedback option were considered. However, the input that we received from the community was overwhelmingly in favor of linking every comment to an actual transaction on the site.
Based on that, we decided to change the past system to make all feedback transaction related. I hope that this information helps explain why this member has so many neutral comments. If you have any other questions or concerns feel free to contact us.
So that answers the question. The comments were neutral because that was the only option available to the people who posted the feedback.
Most published interviews are cleaned up. This one was obviously not. I think he made his point clear.
A sidenote -- Historians are pretty sure that the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858 have been preserved nearly word for word. The debates were published by both pro-Lincoln papers and pro-Douglas papers. The pro-Lincoln papers would edit Lincoln's speeches to tighten them up, while deliberately quoting Douglas word-for-word, leaving in all of his incomplete sentences and errors to make him appear to be less coherent. The pro-Douglas papers did the exact opposite. Put the two together, and a complete transcript emerges!
Not that I'm drawing any comparisons. Trust me, I'm not!:-)
The record companies have traditionally relied on radio play to expose potential customers to new music. People are now looking to the internet to find new music, because they can download what they want, and don't have to listen to DJ chatter and commercials.
These statistics show that the entire strategy of the RIAA is doomed. If they are successful in their campaign to convince college students that "downloading OUR music is stealing", then college students will stop downloading their music.
If college students stop downloading MP3s of major label songs, and don't listen to the radio because they are listening to internet-label MP3s instead, then the major labels will have completely cut themselves off from their market. Disasterous!
This survey is important because it is the first documentation of this effect.
There are plenty of bands, and new distribution channels, like mp3.com, who are, at the same time, saying, "Go ahead and download OUR music -- we give you permission and it isn't stealing at all!" They sell their CDs for a lower price also, which college students appreciate.
The current strategy of the RIAA is completely self destructive. You can see the early results in the article -- College students are buying less music from the major labels anyway. Without Napster, they are buying MUCH less major label music. If the RIAA was hoping that by eliminating Napster, the hordes of pissed-off college students would come back and open their wallets again, then they figured wrong.
The only way for the RIAA to save themselves is to authorize MP3 trading, and begin a campaign to convince consumers that MP3s are a low-quality, preview format, like FM radio, and that if they want the top-quality, real thing, it is waiting for them at their local record store. The fact that they can't bear to do this will accelerate their demise.
One possible explanation of this odd statistic could be that since these college students no longer have access to Napster to preview RIAA-produced music, they are buying less of it. Without Napster, the major labels have fallen off their radar.
Most college students I know seem to be listening to bands from on-line distributors like mp3.com, instead of wasting their money on overpriced RIAA albums that are loaded with filler anyway.
The best thing the DOJ could do would be to require Microsoft to openly publish each and every interal and external API, and each and every file format in all of their software.
I could care a rats ass about splitting up the company -- That won't help anyone, but forcing them to openly document all of their APIs would stop the practices of deliberately breaking other companies' software, and of using "secret" APIs so that their software integrates better then other companies'.
It's always a good thing when a company undertakes a major port of Linux to a new architecture. Remember, more eyes find more bugs, and these are VERY talented eyes that are going to be adapting and scrutinizing the kernel for the sorts of multiprocessing bugs that only show up in configurations with large numbers of CPUs.
What source code? Many of those early games were written using the Apple II disassembler. You would write your code, then type in the opcodes, which you had all memorized, then list back the code and fix up all of your branch instructions.
Abandoned software is just the tip of the iceberg. Modern-day copyright law bears little resemblance to the original intent of copyright.
Congress is authorized by the Constitution:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
The purpose of copyright is not "to provide for the welfare of artists," or "to secure the intellectual property of artists." The constitutional authorizes copyright strictly to promote the creation of more creative speech. The fact that some people and companies can get rich from copyright is a side effect of copyright, not its purpose.
Copyright doesn't come for free, and more isn't necessarily better. Copyrights are a restriction of free speech. They are a constitutional compromise. Copyright temporarily trades away part of the natural right of free speech -- the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech -- in exchange for what is hopefully a public benefit -- the creation of more speech by artists.
The original copyright laws reflected this. Up until 1978, if you published something, but neglected to include a correct copyright notice, your work immediately entered the public domain. This forced artists to identify the works that they considered valuable, and provided protection for those specific works. Furthermore, after 28 years had passed, the work would revert to the public domain unless the copyright had been renewed. This took care of the abandoned-works problem. Works that were abandoned would enter the public domain faster.
The idea that everything you create is automatically your property protected by copyright is a very, very new idea. 1978 exactly.
In 1978, the law was changed so that everything that anyone creates is automatically copyrighted. This was a great deal for publishers, because instead of having to keep track of all of their copyrighted works, and renew them when necessarily, their copyrights would just take care of themselves.
What was lost was the public domain. Prior to 1978, vast amounts of material were published without copyright notice, or even registration, and immediately entered the public domain.
This was 22 years ago; which probably corresponds to the age of the average slashdotter. This is the first generation to come of age in a world with no contemporary public domain of ideas -- where all ideas are someone's private property, and will remain so long past all of our lifetimes.
It isn't surprising that the new generation is philosophically rejecting the theory of "near-perpetual copyright on everything ever published." There is no moral or ethical basis for functionally perpetual copyright on anything and everything. The copyright terms and conditions are, at this point, simply out of proportion to any possible public benefit to be gained by them. No surprise that many people are very dissatisfied with copyright law. Right now, it mostly exists to benefit the large media monopolies, and is being used to destroy our culture as fast as it is created. The DMCA makes it illegal to make a preservation copy of a copy protected diskette. Most old Apple II games are on copy protected diskettes. In a few decades, as those disks decay, the only records of the early days of home computers will be illegal records. Same for DVDs, and anything else that is distributed on encrypted media.
How can you preserve history and learn from it, when the very act of preservation and dissemination of abandoned historical material is illegal?
The destructive effects of the DMCA will be most acutely felt when future generations seek to study our era, and discover that most of our contemporary culture no longer exists in any form because our Congress outlawed its private preservation at the request of the RIAA and MPAA. At that time, our grandchildren will be awash in a sea of deteriorated, encrypted media from the early 21st Century, unable to read any of it, and the "benefits gained" from the DMCA will seem very small indeed. The only traces of our culture that will remain will be the few works that were continually preserved and restored by their copyright owners, and those works that have been illegally decrypted and preserved, using programs like DeCSS.
That is why the copyright problem is the most important issue of our generation.
It is designed explicitly as a music exchange service
Actually, it's a music indexing service, much like a search engine is a web-page indexing service.
This makes a difference. Under the proposed law, someone could search Google for "microsoft warez", then turn around and sue Google, because under the new law, Google would not be allowed to add pages to their index, or allow people to search their index, without first having "identifying information" on file. In short, the proposal strikes right at the heart of the one thing that makes the web useful -- search engines.
Of course, what 2nd amendment debate would be complete without mentioning that in 18th century English, 'Well-Regulated' would basically mean in modern English 'Competent.' A militia that didn't know how to shoot is not all that necessary to the security of a free state. One that can, is. No significant command structure is needed, and none is implied.
In the 18th century, the expression "well-regulated" meant "properly maintained", and it referred to the firearms, not the "militia", which was, after all, at the time, comprised of all the adult citizens possessing firearms. A "well-regulated" firearm was one that had been correctly machined, was properly maintained by its owner, and could be relied upon to fire with precision and accuracy. A "well-regulated militia" was a militia that possessed well-regulated firearms.
What the 2nd Amendment meant to the authors was that because that the citizens are, in the end, responsible for their own defense, it is vital that they possess their own firearms, so that they may practice with them and keep them in good working order, in case they must defend themselves against a tyrannical government -- Again.
These people had just fought a revolution. They had just overthrown their own British government with a volunteer, citizen army. With the 2nd amendment, they were just trying to provide a measure of protection, in case the new government that they were establishing got out of hand and needed to be put down by the people.
The modern interpretation that the 2nd Amendment authorizes the formation of the National Guard -- basically a civilian branch of the National armed forces -- completely turns the entire idea of the 2nd Amendment on its head.
Intentionally ignoring criminal activity is immoral and unethical.
There's a guy down the hall playing an MP3 right now. Am I obligated to pick up the phone and call the RIAA? I go to the library, and I see someone photocopying an entire magazine. Am I supposed to call the police to have him arrested? I drive home from work, and notice that I'm the only one not speeding. Should I be on the phone to the police, reading off lists of license plates? If I see someone shoot someone else with a gun, I'll be right on the phone, but there's infringements of various laws going on every second of the day, and honestly, the ones that don't hurt anyone, I don't necessarily care about. Maybe you're different.
Metallica is completely capable of detecting copyright infringement on Napster without any help from Napster. They proved it by doing exactly that. The law places the burden on the copyright holder to identify copyright infringement, and Metallica has done so. So what's the problem? Metallica has proved that they are fully capable of protecting their own self interests on Napster.
Again, it isn't Napster's job to do Metallica's work for them. If Metallica wants Napster to perform a service for them, identifying copyright infringement, that the law clearly says is the responsibility of Metallica, then they should pay them for their services, just like Metallica paid the third party that identified the copyright infringement in the first place.
If there is a filename called "Metallica - Fade to Black.mp3", you can assume that it's a Metallica song.
That would be possible evidence of a copyright infringement, but proving that it was a copyright infringement would require downloading the song to make sure. I say that it's immoral to perform censorship based on assumptions.
If the person denies it, Napster could simply check the file itself. I said this in my last post, which you pointly ignored. More dishonesty.
Actually, I directly addressed this point. Yes, Napster could, if they wanted to, download every song. That would defeat the entire point of Napster. The point of Napster is to serve as an index. They don't have the bandwidth required to download millions and millions of MP3s, they don't have the personnel to listen to them and identify the copyrighted ones, and they shouldn't have to.
Metallica identified over 300,000 users that they claimed had Metallica songs. What would be the bandwidth costs of downloading 300,000 servers x N files per server? How many staff members would be required just to sit there and play back the first few seconds of 300,000 x N MP3s to determine what they are? That's just one band out of thousands. How can you seriously claim that your proposal is realistic?
Now, of course, we find why you are against this. You don't believe in copyrights.
You completely misunderstand me. It isn't that I don't believe in copyright. The point that I was trying to make is that the only moral obligation with regard to copyright is to follow the law, and only to the limited general extent that following the law is moral. Copyright law in and of itself does not perform the moral purpose of protecting a natural right. If you maliciously wack someone over the head with a 2x4, then successfully find some twist of law to justify your actions, even though you are unpunishable under the law, you are morally in the wrong, because you have infringed upon that person's right to walk down the street without being assaulted, which most people would recognize as a natural right.
The purpose of copyright is not to protect people's rights. The purpose of copyright, as explicitly spelled out in the constitution is:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
The authors of the constitution recognized that copyrights and patents were special -- that copyright was NOT a natural right, like life, liberty, and dispite your claim to the contrary, property. They felt it necessary to not only enumerate Congress' authority to pass copyright and patent laws, but also to justify the creation of them -- something that occurs nowhere else in the Constitution.
Copyrights are a restriction of free speech. The only possible justification for patents and copyrights is their constitutional purpose -- to promote the creation of more inventions and more speech. Not to "benefit artists." Not to "benefit consumers." To promote the creation of more speech. Copyright has nothing to do with morals. It has nothing to do with ethics. It is a constitutional compromise, created for a specific purpose. It trades away part of the natural right of free speech -- the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech -- in exchange for what is hopefully a public benefit.
I especially disagree with your statement that copyright law is "for the benefit of the consumer", which implies that copyright is only intended to benefit people who pay for copyrighted material. Copyright law is for the benefit of all persons, whether they are a paid consumer of the copyrighted material or not. That's what fair use is for -- to allow all persons to benefit from copyrighted materials, not just paid "consumers". Otherwise, one could argue that giving someone your newspaper after you're finished with it would be immoral. Letting your friend borrow your CD would be immoral. Founding a public library would be especially immoral, and a gross violation of thousands of authors rights, because all that a library does is make copyrighted materials available to the public without payment to the authors.
How is it moral, and considered a highly upright act to found a public library, but immoral to do the same thing on your computer?
I also said I never expected Napster to do what I said, because it's clear that they wouldn't have a userbase if they did. You dishonestly ignored that as well.
I just didn't think that it was worth addressing.
You said:
The fact is that they don't want to stop these people because they know that very few people would bother using their service if they prevented people from sharing copyrighted material.
You seem convinced that Napster was created for no other reason then to exist as an ongoing criminal enterprise. That's what the RIAA wants you to think, and apparently they have succeeded. If Napster was created for this reason, then why would they set themselves up as a huge, public target?
Ok. I said this before, but again, if Napster were to start regulating content, it would legally become responsible for the content. Napster does not want to become legally responsible for content that they cannot control. Would you? If you had two choices of action, one of which would make you legally responsible for OTHER people's illegal activity, would you do it? Napster would probably LOVE it if people were to stop using it to trade major-label artists, and use it soley to trade songs by artists who approve of free digital distribution. That would get the record companies off their back.
You seem to think that Napster has a moral obligation to destroy their service, and I disagree.
There is a fundamental change occurring right now in the way young people find and choose their music. Up until now, most young people would pick and choose their music by listening to radio stations. Record companies were so anxious to get their songs on the radio that they even went so far as to illegally pay DJs to favor their songs, because radio play meant everything. Without radio, your records would not be heard, and if they were not heard, they would not sell.
Now, more and more young people are turning to the net instead to pick and choose their music. If the record companies had been smart, they would have been on the ball -- creating web sites where fans could listen to their songs. Instead, they dug in their heels, refused to embrace digital music distribution, and now they are screaming bloody murder when new companies are doing exactly what they didn't do.
I believe that as time goes on, more and more bands and record labels will discover that MP3 distribution improves their record sales, and authorize trading of their MP3s. At the same time, fewer and fewer bands and record labels will maintain a "no mp3" policy, once it becomes unprofitable, and as the amount of legally available material goes up, the amount of material legally hosted on Napster will also go up. The fact that online mp3 distribution is still in its infancy should not be held against Napster.
Just because the record companies have successfully maintained a stranglehold monopoly on music distribution for nearly a century does not give them any intrinsic right to continue their monopoly in the face of changing conditions.
Napster didn't create the rules, but they are following them. Actually, given that the DMCA was drafted by the RIAA, MPAA, and other corporate special interest groups, and rubber-stamped by congress, one could reasonably say that the record companies DID write the rules. However, now that this asinine law is in effect, they have to follow the law, and they have just realized that the law applies to them, and they don't like it. They want the law to just apply to other people. They want their companies to be protected from lawsuits by the burdensome notification/removal legal mechanism, but they don't want to have to be bothered with having to follow the law themselves. That's what this is about. Napster IS following the law, and they are not in the wrong.
Besides, for Napster to proactively identify Dr. Dre or Metallica songs would be expensive and bandwidth intensive. It would require additional bandwidth to actually download the songs, and personnel to listen to the songs to determine whether or not they were actual Dr. Dre songs, or other songs that happened to have the same title.
Dr. Dre just hired the same outside contractor as Metallica to identify his on-line fans so he can have them banned from Napster. I doubt that this contractor did the work for free for either of them, yet Metallica and Dr. Dre want the courts to force Napster to do the identical work without compensation.
They just want a free handout. The law clearly says that it is their responsibility to identify copyright infringement, yet they want to force Napster to do their work for them, and they don't want to pay for it.
From a legal standpoint, you're right. But ethically, it's not right.
I disagree. The enforcement of Metallica's copyrights is not the job of Napster. Napster has no legal or ethical obligation to perform copyright enforcement services on Metallica's behalf without compensation from Metallica.
The DMCA says so. The RIAA, and all of the record companies paid a lot of money for the law, and they must abide by it. The law clearly places the responsibility for notification infringement on the copyright holder. Napster has complied completely with both the letter and spirit of the DMCA in every way.
Whether the DMCA is an ethical law is another question.
But to continue...
Microsoft includes a "Network Neighborhood" feature with Windows that allows two people to play MP3s from each other's computers. This creates no ethical imperative on the part of Microsoft to develop a "blacklist" of filenames that may not be shared in the Network Neighborhood. The FTP program can be used to transfer MP3s back and forth, but the various companies that provide network software have no ethical imperative to employ elaborate content checking on the part of third party copyright holders who do not pay them.
In fact, Napster can be and is used for completely legitimate, authorized trading of copyrighted songs. Many bands, including Metallica, have authorized the free trading of concert recordings by their fans. Other bands have made studio recordings available freely as MP3s for promotional purposes -- just as the entrenched record industry uses promotional records and other materials for exactly the same purpose. The purpose of Napster is to facilitate legal activity, just like the purpose of the Network Neighborhood is to facilitate the legal activity of authorized data transfer and file sharing. The actions of Napsters' users no more reflect on Napster then the actions of someone who robs a bank and uses a Ford as a getaway car reflect on the Ford Motor Company.
Napster knows there are copyright songs on there. It knows the law is being violated. They just don't care because they rely on users sharing copyrighted songs for the majority of their userbase.
Well, that's your opinion on Napster's motivation. My opinion is that Napster is probably resisting demands to regulate content because the law says that once you start regulating content, you become responsible for that content. This seems more likely to me then your theory that their primary motivation is to facilitate criminal activity.
Did I say song titles? I said SONGS. You even quoted me saying songs and not song titles. You're looking for a technical loophole, and that's dishonest. First of all, the majority of mp3s list the artist in the filename (for the exact reason you state above). Second, most people share multiple files from the same artist, so that could be a secondary check. Finally, a person could simply download the file and check it manually as a last resort.
I'm not being dishonest. I'm simply one step ahead of your argument. It isn't a technical loophole. Your theory is fundamentally flawed.
You can't identify a song without listening to it.
MP3s are, as you said, identified by their filename -- presumably their song title, possibly including the name of the artist. For Metallica to demand that Napster ban a song title that they happened to use is Metallica claiming an intellectual property right that they simply do not have. Metallica simply has no legal authority to prohibit the distribution of songs containing the word "Metallica" in their titles.
Also, Metallica has stated that they have absolutely no problem with people sharing MP3s of their live concert recordings. Banning the use of certain filenames would have the effect of stopping the distribution of live Metallica MP3s as well as studio recordings.
Finally, for Napster to simply ban, for instance, songs with the word "Metallica" in them, would result in people deliberately misspelling song titles, like "Meta11ica." All this would accomplish would be to pollute the Napster namespace, with no benefit to Napster, Napster's users, or third party copyright holders. Also, the notion, advanced by others, that checksums can be used to identify copyright infringement is not useful. All that a checksum can verify is the integrity of a file transfer. Anyone who has ever ripped a CD knows that bit errors happen all the time. The odds are that if two people rip the same track, they will end up with at least one random bit error in the audio file, which will result in a different checksum. If Napster were to start examining checksums, the result would simply be that people would simply use a utility to change one or two bits before creating the MP3, which would result in a different checksum.
And finally, for Napster to outlaw, for instance, the sharing of any file with the word "Metallica" in it would have the side effect of silencing criticism. If I were to write, perform, and record a song called "Metallica sucks" and put it on a Napster server, title-based censorship would effectively censor my song.
Fact is, the only practical way to positively identify a Metallica song is to incur the bandwidth expense of actually downloading the song, and the expense of hiring a human to listen to it and decide what the file contains. The bandwidth and staff requirements of your proposal would be extremely expensive.
What Metallica wants is for Napster to implement an expensive, labor and resource intensive program of proactive copyright enforcement services on their behalf. When Metallica went to an outside consultant to identify some 300,000+ users with files matching the names of Metallica songs, I doubt that the outside consultant did the work for free. I'm sure that they were compensated for their work.
Why should Napster be required to perform essentially the same service on behalf of Metallica for free?
You wouldn't have to get every single copyrighted song. Just make it a big enough pain in the ass to share copyrighted songs that people stop bothering.
Your proposals constitute a technically workable method for a copyright holder to identify specific instances of probable copyright infringement, but nothing in the law requires Napster to do this work on behalf of any copyright holder. Remember, copyright is an entirely synthetic right. Copyright did not legally exist until it was invented, and the justification of copyright is not based on natural law, it is a Constitutional restriction on free speech, for the sole purpose of promoting the arts, that is based on statute and regulated by the copyright acts, the DMCA among them. Nothing in the law creates a legal imperative on the part of Napster to "make it a pain in the ass" for their own customers to use their product, and there is no moral imperative to do so either. The only moral imperative on the part of Napster is to follow the DMCA to the letter, which is exactly what they have done.
Again, if Metallica wants Napster to proactively enforce Metallica's copyrights, which would be expensive and labor intensive, then Metallica should take the ethical approach and offer to compensate Napster for the work done on behalf of them and their record label, rather then take them to court to try and force Napster to perform ongoing, expensive work for them for free.
Forget the browser. They should sue Microsoft for their "Network Neighborhood" piracy software. As we all know, the only purpose of the Network Neighborhood is to allow people to access files on each other's computers, including MP3s of copyrighted songs.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of intellectual property evolved as a legal concept to protect the creative efforts of individuals.
The legal justification of the copyright clause is not to protect the creative efforts of individuals. The justification, and purpose of the copyright clause is to provide incentive for creative individuals to produce, not to protect their work. A very crucial difference of philosophy.
Copyright law provides for many different uses which might be incompatable with maximizing the "protection of creative efforts" of an individual, if that were the purpose of copyright law.
For instance, you have the fair use provisions.
Also, there is a Constitutional mandate that copyrights expire. Terms of copyright must be limited.
As another example, you have the right to record and publish your own performances of other people's songs, once they have been initially published, even if they don't want you to. In this case, you would pay a fixed fee. See this reference for more information on how compulsory mechanical licensing works, especially the link to 17 USC Sec 115. The purpose of compulsory mechanical licensing was originally to break up the player-piano-roll monopoly, which isn't much of an issue anymore. These days, it's what allows your band to include a Bob Dylan cover on your album, for instance, even if Bob Dylan happens to hate your band.
The MPAA and RIAA are heavily promoting propaganda that misrepresents the nature and purpose of copyright law. Please don't take their explanations of things at face value.
The whole thing looks like a bunch of back and forth bickering, and to a certain extent it is. Once you understand what is really going on, things become more clear and the exercise becomes more useful.
The purpose (for the defense) of a deposition such as this serves two purposes. First, you try and find out what the potential expert witness knows and has witnessed.
Secondly, and more importantly in the case of this particular expert witness, Mr. Garbus has placed into the record a long list of what Mr. Schumann does not know and does not have knowledge of. For instance, among the hundreds of factoids teased out by Mr. Garbus, it came out that Mr. Schumann has no knowledge of anyone ever using DeCSS to create a pirate DVD disk that was then sold.
This limits the value of the witness to the MPAA at trial. He can't claim that he has seen or heard of anyone using DeCSS to burn a pirate DVD and sell it, because he testified that he hasn't in his deposition. This also gives Mr. Schumann about a hundred different chances to blow his credibility on the stand by contradicting his deposition.
Think of it as seeding the minefield.
This is how the game is played, and you have a front row seat. Enjoy!
Although my opinion is obviously biased, I was disappointed that there was no mention of Free Software or some other not-for-profit projects that benefit everyone. I find that many of the corporate ties within the Free Software community are very much along the lines of Klein's notion of an ideal balance between corporations and communities. It should be noted, however, that the most recent example in the book is dated June 1999, so it's possible that the word "Linux" hadn't reached Klein's ears by that time (except for some of the IPO hype).
I see open source as less of a fight against corporatism, although many people support open source for many different reasons. Instead, I see open source as a grass-roots replacement for the lost concept of the public domain. Since copyrights have been overwhelmingly extended (95 years), and since as of 1978 all work is considered copyrighted, there is now simply no chance that any person will live long enough to freely build and expand on any non-open source software written within their lifetime without permission, which is typically not granted.
The lack of a public domain is felt acutely in the software field. This was discussed in the "Systems Research is Dead?" thread. New research has always been based on the idea that you can build on old research. Otherwise, you spend all of your time reinventing the wheel, and never get to do anything original. This "old research" used to be the public domain, and still is for patents, which have a reasonable duration.
Basing new research on the shoulders of Linux or BSD is functionally similar to developing new public domain works based on previous public domain works. The GPL and BSD license work as incentives for "the promotion of science and useful arts", just as the copyright laws are supposed to.
As corporations lobby for more and more restrictive copyright laws for their own benefit, it is worth noticing that the issue is not one sided. Many people are looking for, and embracing an alternative to restrictive, proprietary intellectual property law, and the success of open source is in that it is successfully providing, using existing copyright law, a functional replacement for the lost Public Domain.
- John
The Internet has interpreted the DMCA as damage and is routing around it
Our IBM 3090 mainframe had a neat system for eliminating external RF interference and power glitches. The power from the electric company was used to turn a motor, which in turn drove a generator, which supplied nice, clean AC power for the computer. A large, heavy flywheel was also attached to the common drive shaft to keep the AC nice and smooth.
Gotta love mainframe technology overkill!
I think that Microsoft deserves a strong measure of blame for a dearth of systems research.
... Microsoft never provided any useful tools.
I'm 32 years old. I started programming in high school on a PDP/11 at the age of 16. The operating system came with a BASIC interpreter, but more importantly, an assembler and linker. I was able to start writing machine language programs. I moved on to the Apple II. The core features of the Apple II were the monitor, assembler, disassembler, and BASIC interpreter. Using an Apple II was an open invitation to begin programming, and the manual contained a disassembly of the monitor, illustrating what machine language looked like.
Later, in college, I started programming on the campus mainframe. The operating system was fully documented, included assemblers and compilers, and included the source code to the operating system.
When I bought my first DOS/Windows PC, I immediately looked for the familiar tools. They were not there. There was no assembler, no disassembler, no monitor, no API documentation, no program listing. As an end user, the only thing the PC was capable of doing was running pre-packaged applications. I never learned x86 assembler, I never learned to program to the DOS or Windows APIs; I never learned to program PCs. The PC was and is a very hostile environment for the amateur programmer.
If my only experience was with DOS/Windows PCs, I doubt I would have ever become a programmer. I feel very lucky that I happened to discover computers in the narrow window when they came with useful programming tools.
The most important feature of Linux, from the standpoint of future operating systems research, is that for the first time since the Apple II, a mass-market end-user operating system contains all of the tools necessary for an end user to also become a programmer.
The new generation of Linux users is learning how to program. No surprise that the generation that grew up on Microsoft isn't contributing to systems research
In short, to a large extent Linux is a catch-up operation. The Linux community is filling the enormous intellectual void caused by years of Microsoft dominance of home computers.
To answer the article, we are at a very low point. I believe that things will get better. The teenagers who are hacking the Linux kernel are going to have ideas of their own, and for the first time since the early 1980s they will have the ability to implement them.
I'm not saying that the Internet improves people -- makes them more critical, more involved, more interested in learning, better judges of argument
... on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users. He's right, and I think that the reason is mostly because on a group like slashdot, you just can't get away with the sort of logical fallacies that are the foundation of most political speech.
... which is the main difference between a forum like Slashdot, and a forum like a televised debate, where the candidates are deferred to and allowed to change the subject, make fallacious arguments, and ignore the questions, without ever being questioned.
... a valuable, if painful learning experience.
I think that the Internet does all of those things. Once a person leaves school, unless that person becomes a professional writer, he or she will probably never have the opportunity or desire to write a critical essay again. Since I started posting to BITNET groups, mailing lists, and now internet sites like Slashdot, I've posted hundreds of messages here and on other groups, and enjoyed countless interesting postings, while wading through thousands of postings containing logical fallacies. Reents says that,
Try this. If you've never seen the list, go to the link above and study all of the different kinds of logical fallacies and errors. Next time you hear a political speech, by any candidate, pick out all of the fallacies. You'll be amazed by how many you'll find. Political speech, as it is practiced through the mass media, is not the art of producing rational, coherent arguments. Political speech, as practiced through the mass media, is about creating a vague, content-free comforting image. That doesn't translate well to the internet. On the internet, if someone uses those sorts of arguments on a newsgroup, their arguments are quickly ripped to shreds by followup posts and are discredited
No one is immune to it. One of my recent posts had a really poorly thought out transition into an unrelated topic. Someone called me on it, and he was right. I've called other people on things like that. There's nothing that makes you want to be a better writer then having your posting roundly ripped to shreds by someone with a better sense of argument then you. It's a learning experience, and the Internet is the only place I've found this learning experience to be available. When you write a class essay, only the teacher and you read your work. Only the internet provides a large enough audience for a non-professional writer to be truly humiliated in front of his or her peers
On the internet, either your ideas are sound, or they are not. If you are writing like an idiot, people will tell you.
This is the reason not to email hate mail/threats to the MPAA or RIAA. The people who did that gave the MPAA ammunition in their effort to keep the lawsuit out of the public eye and out of the press.
The constitution was written at a time when firearms were hand-made and unreliable. The term "well-regulated" referred to the firearms themselves, not to the militia. A well-regulated firearm is one that is kept in good working order, like a "well-regulated clock."
The militia was, at the time, defined as the available pool of adult, male citizens who possessed firearms -- NOT a standing army like the military or the national guard.
The founders abhorred the concept of a standing army. In fact, the constitution does not allow for a standing army. The authors of the constitution had just overthrown their own government -- the British government, and were well aware of the danger of having a standing army. The founders intended that the ordinary citizens possess the power to defend themselves, not only against foreign enemies, but against their own government if necessary.
A modern translation of the amendment would be, "Because it is necessary that the citizens be able to personally defend their freedom, and because it is necessary to ensure that the citizens have working weapons to do so, the government may not interfere with private gun ownership.
Saying that the 2nd amendment provides for gun control completely turns the intent of the amendment on its head.
The reason our society is violent isn't because of the guns. It's mostly because we are living under drug prohibition -- which has progressed farther and destroyed more of our freedom then alcohol prohibition ever did, and because the government is actively waging a civil war -- the drug war -- against its own people. Violence is the natural result of prohibition and the black markets it creates.
Ah! I see ... I always use the search function, and never go directly into the catagories, so I never see the "featured" section and forgot about it.
Wow ... I might have been interested in exploring that web site, but after reading their "terms of use", I just closed the window and will never go back ... or buy any of their games.
I also noticed that there was no "I Agree" clickthrough box. Isn't there supposed to be one, or are they claiming that I gave up all of my fair use rights just by loading their homepage?
Very evil.
I sent eBay a polite note about this, and received the following response.
On Wed, 31 May 2000 12:57:51 eBay Customer Support wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to write us with your concern about our feedback policy. I will be happy to address your concerns. First the feedback for msoft@buddy.ebay.com hasn't been altered and our policies haven't been changed for this member.
About three months ago we changed our feedback policy. Before members could leave neutral comments to any other member at any time. Negative
comments had to be transaction related, so when members were upset with another member even if it wasn't in regards to a transaction they had
completed with that member they could leave neutral comments.
To answer your first question the feedback wasn't altered from negative to neutral. All of the comments that are neutral were originally left as
neutral comments.
Many alternatives to curb misuse of the Feedback Forum while still maintaining a non-transactional feedback option were considered. However, the input that we received from the community was overwhelmingly in favor of linking every comment to an actual transaction on the site.
Based on that, we decided to change the past system to make all feedback transaction related. I hope that this information helps explain why this
member has so many neutral comments. If you have any other questions or concerns feel free to contact us.
So that answers the question. The comments were neutral because that was the only option available to the people who posted the feedback.
Most published interviews are cleaned up. This one was obviously not. I think he made his point clear.
:-)
A sidenote -- Historians are pretty sure that the Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858 have been preserved nearly word for word. The debates were published by both pro-Lincoln papers and pro-Douglas papers. The pro-Lincoln papers would edit Lincoln's speeches to tighten them up, while deliberately quoting Douglas word-for-word, leaving in all of his incomplete sentences and errors to make him appear to be less coherent. The pro-Douglas papers did the exact opposite. Put the two together, and a complete transcript emerges!
Not that I'm drawing any comparisons. Trust me, I'm not!
Nice theory, however, eBay's pages have no advertising. Go check for yourself.
The record companies have traditionally relied on radio play to expose potential customers to new music. People are now looking to the internet to find new music, because they can download what they want, and don't have to listen to DJ chatter and commercials.
These statistics show that the entire strategy of the RIAA is doomed. If they are successful in their campaign to convince college students that "downloading OUR music is stealing", then college students will stop downloading their music.
If college students stop downloading MP3s of major label songs, and don't listen to the radio because they are listening to internet-label MP3s instead, then the major labels will have completely cut themselves off from their market. Disasterous!
This survey is important because it is the first documentation of this effect.
There are plenty of bands, and new distribution channels, like mp3.com, who are, at the same time, saying, "Go ahead and download OUR music -- we give you permission and it isn't stealing at all!" They sell their CDs for a lower price also, which college students appreciate.
The current strategy of the RIAA is completely self destructive. You can see the early results in the article -- College students are buying less music from the major labels anyway. Without Napster, they are buying MUCH less major label music. If the RIAA was hoping that by eliminating Napster, the hordes of pissed-off college students would come back and open their wallets again, then they figured wrong.
The only way for the RIAA to save themselves is to authorize MP3 trading, and begin a campaign to convince consumers that MP3s are a low-quality, preview format, like FM radio, and that if they want the top-quality, real thing, it is waiting for them at their local record store. The fact that they can't bear to do this will accelerate their demise.
One possible explanation of this odd statistic could be that since these college students no longer have access to Napster to preview RIAA-produced music, they are buying less of it. Without Napster, the major labels have fallen off their radar.
Most college students I know seem to be listening to bands from on-line distributors like mp3.com, instead of wasting their money on overpriced RIAA albums that are loaded with filler anyway.
The best thing the DOJ could do would be to require Microsoft to openly publish each and every interal and external API, and each and every file format in all of their software.
I could care a rats ass about splitting up the company -- That won't help anyone, but forcing them to openly document all of their APIs would stop the practices of deliberately breaking other companies' software, and of using "secret" APIs so that their software integrates better then other companies'.
It's always a good thing when a company undertakes a major port of Linux to a new architecture. Remember, more eyes find more bugs, and these are VERY talented eyes that are going to be adapting and scrutinizing the kernel for the sorts of multiprocessing bugs that only show up in configurations with large numbers of CPUs.
Everyone wins.
What source code? Many of those early games were written using the Apple II disassembler. You would write your code, then type in the opcodes, which you had all memorized, then list back the code and fix up all of your branch instructions.
Abandoned software is just the tip of the iceberg. Modern-day copyright law bears little resemblance to the original intent of copyright.
Congress is authorized by the Constitution:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
The purpose of copyright is not "to provide for the welfare of artists," or "to secure the intellectual property of artists." The constitutional authorizes copyright strictly to promote the creation of more creative speech. The fact that some people and companies can get rich from copyright is a side effect of copyright, not its purpose.
Copyright doesn't come for free, and more isn't necessarily better. Copyrights are a restriction of free speech. They are a constitutional compromise. Copyright temporarily trades away part of the natural right of free speech -- the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech -- in exchange for what is hopefully a public benefit -- the creation of more speech by artists.
The original copyright laws reflected this. Up until 1978, if you published something, but neglected to include a correct copyright notice, your work immediately entered the public domain. This forced artists to identify the works that they considered valuable, and provided protection for those specific works. Furthermore, after 28 years had passed, the work would revert to the public domain unless the copyright had been renewed. This took care of the abandoned-works problem. Works that were abandoned would enter the public domain faster.
The idea that everything you create is automatically your property protected by copyright is a very, very new idea. 1978 exactly.
In 1978, the law was changed so that everything that anyone creates is automatically copyrighted. This was a great deal for publishers, because instead of having to keep track of all of their copyrighted works, and renew them when necessarily, their copyrights would just take care of themselves.
What was lost was the public domain. Prior to 1978, vast amounts of material were published without copyright notice, or even registration, and immediately entered the public domain.
This was 22 years ago; which probably corresponds to the age of the average slashdotter. This is the first generation to come of age in a world with no contemporary public domain of ideas -- where all ideas are someone's private property, and will remain so long past all of our lifetimes.
It isn't surprising that the new generation is philosophically rejecting the theory of "near-perpetual copyright on everything ever published." There is no moral or ethical basis for functionally perpetual copyright on anything and everything. The copyright terms and conditions are, at this point, simply out of proportion to any possible public benefit to be gained by them. No surprise that many people are very dissatisfied with copyright law. Right now, it mostly exists to benefit the large media monopolies, and is being used to destroy our culture as fast as it is created. The DMCA makes it illegal to make a preservation copy of a copy protected diskette. Most old Apple II games are on copy protected diskettes. In a few decades, as those disks decay, the only records of the early days of home computers will be illegal records. Same for DVDs, and anything else that is distributed on encrypted media.
How can you preserve history and learn from it, when the very act of preservation and dissemination of abandoned historical material is illegal?
The destructive effects of the DMCA will be most acutely felt when future generations seek to study our era, and discover that most of our contemporary culture no longer exists in any form because our Congress outlawed its private preservation at the request of the RIAA and MPAA. At that time, our grandchildren will be awash in a sea of deteriorated, encrypted media from the early 21st Century, unable to read any of it, and the "benefits gained" from the DMCA will seem very small indeed. The only traces of our culture that will remain will be the few works that were continually preserved and restored by their copyright owners, and those works that have been illegally decrypted and preserved, using programs like DeCSS.
That is why the copyright problem is the most important issue of our generation.
It is designed explicitly as a music exchange service
Actually, it's a music indexing service, much like a search engine is a web-page indexing service.
This makes a difference. Under the proposed law, someone could search Google for "microsoft warez", then turn around and sue Google, because under the new law, Google would not be allowed to add pages to their index, or allow people to search their index, without first having "identifying information" on file. In short, the proposal strikes right at the heart of the one thing that makes the web useful -- search engines.
Of course, what 2nd amendment debate would be complete without mentioning that in 18th century English, 'Well-Regulated' would basically mean in modern English 'Competent.' A militia that didn't know how to shoot is not all that necessary to the security of a free state. One that can, is. No significant command structure is needed, and none is implied.
In the 18th century, the expression "well-regulated" meant "properly maintained", and it referred to the firearms, not the "militia", which was, after all, at the time, comprised of all the adult citizens possessing firearms. A "well-regulated" firearm was one that had been correctly machined, was properly maintained by its owner, and could be relied upon to fire with precision and accuracy. A "well-regulated militia" was a militia that possessed well-regulated firearms.
What the 2nd Amendment meant to the authors was that because that the citizens are, in the end, responsible for their own defense, it is vital that they possess their own firearms, so that they may practice with them and keep them in good working order, in case they must defend themselves against a tyrannical government -- Again.
These people had just fought a revolution. They had just overthrown their own British government with a volunteer, citizen army. With the 2nd amendment, they were just trying to provide a measure of protection, in case the new government that they were establishing got out of hand and needed to be put down by the people.
The modern interpretation that the 2nd Amendment authorizes the formation of the National Guard -- basically a civilian branch of the National armed forces -- completely turns the entire idea of the 2nd Amendment on its head.
There's a guy down the hall playing an MP3 right now. Am I obligated to pick up the phone and call the RIAA? I go to the library, and I see someone photocopying an entire magazine. Am I supposed to call the police to have him arrested? I drive home from work, and notice that I'm the only one not speeding. Should I be on the phone to the police, reading off lists of license plates? If I see someone shoot someone else with a gun, I'll be right on the phone, but there's infringements of various laws going on every second of the day, and honestly, the ones that don't hurt anyone, I don't necessarily care about. Maybe you're different.
Metallica is completely capable of detecting copyright infringement on Napster without any help from Napster. They proved it by doing exactly that. The law places the burden on the copyright holder to identify copyright infringement, and Metallica has done so. So what's the problem? Metallica has proved that they are fully capable of protecting their own self interests on Napster.
Again, it isn't Napster's job to do Metallica's work for them. If Metallica wants Napster to perform a service for them, identifying copyright infringement, that the law clearly says is the responsibility of Metallica, then they should pay them for their services, just like Metallica paid the third party that identified the copyright infringement in the first place.
If there is a filename called "Metallica - Fade to Black.mp3", you can assume that it's a Metallica song.
That would be possible evidence of a copyright infringement, but proving that it was a copyright infringement would require downloading the song to make sure. I say that it's immoral to perform censorship based on assumptions.
If the person denies it, Napster could simply check the file itself. I said this in my last post, which you pointly ignored. More dishonesty.
Actually, I directly addressed this point. Yes, Napster could, if they wanted to, download every song. That would defeat the entire point of Napster. The point of Napster is to serve as an index. They don't have the bandwidth required to download millions and millions of MP3s, they don't have the personnel to listen to them and identify the copyrighted ones, and they shouldn't have to.
Metallica identified over 300,000 users that they claimed had Metallica songs. What would be the bandwidth costs of downloading 300,000 servers x N files per server? How many staff members would be required just to sit there and play back the first few seconds of 300,000 x N MP3s to determine what they are? That's just one band out of thousands. How can you seriously claim that your proposal is realistic?
Now, of course, we find why you are against this. You don't believe in copyrights.
You completely misunderstand me. It isn't that I don't believe in copyright. The point that I was trying to make is that the only moral obligation with regard to copyright is to follow the law, and only to the limited general extent that following the law is moral. Copyright law in and of itself does not perform the moral purpose of protecting a natural right. If you maliciously wack someone over the head with a 2x4, then successfully find some twist of law to justify your actions, even though you are unpunishable under the law, you are morally in the wrong, because you have infringed upon that person's right to walk down the street without being assaulted, which most people would recognize as a natural right.
The purpose of copyright is not to protect people's rights. The purpose of copyright, as explicitly spelled out in the constitution is:
The authors of the constitution recognized that copyrights and patents were special -- that copyright was NOT a natural right, like life, liberty, and dispite your claim to the contrary, property. They felt it necessary to not only enumerate Congress' authority to pass copyright and patent laws, but also to justify the creation of them -- something that occurs nowhere else in the Constitution.
Copyrights are a restriction of free speech. The only possible justification for patents and copyrights is their constitutional purpose -- to promote the creation of more inventions and more speech. Not to "benefit artists." Not to "benefit consumers." To promote the creation of more speech. Copyright has nothing to do with morals. It has nothing to do with ethics. It is a constitutional compromise, created for a specific purpose. It trades away part of the natural right of free speech -- the right to repeat and build upon other people's speech -- in exchange for what is hopefully a public benefit.
I especially disagree with your statement that copyright law is "for the benefit of the consumer", which implies that copyright is only intended to benefit people who pay for copyrighted material. Copyright law is for the benefit of all persons, whether they are a paid consumer of the copyrighted material or not. That's what fair use is for -- to allow all persons to benefit from copyrighted materials, not just paid "consumers". Otherwise, one could argue that giving someone your newspaper after you're finished with it would be immoral. Letting your friend borrow your CD would be immoral. Founding a public library would be especially immoral, and a gross violation of thousands of authors rights, because all that a library does is make copyrighted materials available to the public without payment to the authors.
How is it moral, and considered a highly upright act to found a public library, but immoral to do the same thing on your computer?
I also said I never expected Napster to do what I said, because it's clear that they wouldn't have a userbase if they did. You dishonestly ignored that as well.
I just didn't think that it was worth addressing.
You said:
The fact is that they don't want to stop these people because they know that very few people would bother using their service if they prevented people from sharing copyrighted material.
You seem convinced that Napster was created for no other reason then to exist as an ongoing criminal enterprise. That's what the RIAA wants you to think, and apparently they have succeeded. If Napster was created for this reason, then why would they set themselves up as a huge, public target?
Ok. I said this before, but again, if Napster were to start regulating content, it would legally become responsible for the content. Napster does not want to become legally responsible for content that they cannot control. Would you? If you had two choices of action, one of which would make you legally responsible for OTHER people's illegal activity, would you do it? Napster would probably LOVE it if people were to stop using it to trade major-label artists, and use it soley to trade songs by artists who approve of free digital distribution. That would get the record companies off their back.
You seem to think that Napster has a moral obligation to destroy their service, and I disagree.
There is a fundamental change occurring right now in the way young people find and choose their music. Up until now, most young people would pick and choose their music by listening to radio stations. Record companies were so anxious to get their songs on the radio that they even went so far as to illegally pay DJs to favor their songs, because radio play meant everything. Without radio, your records would not be heard, and if they were not heard, they would not sell.
Now, more and more young people are turning to the net instead to pick and choose their music. If the record companies had been smart, they would have been on the ball -- creating web sites where fans could listen to their songs. Instead, they dug in their heels, refused to embrace digital music distribution, and now they are screaming bloody murder when new companies are doing exactly what they didn't do.
I believe that as time goes on, more and more bands and record labels will discover that MP3 distribution improves their record sales, and authorize trading of their MP3s. At the same time, fewer and fewer bands and record labels will maintain a "no mp3" policy, once it becomes unprofitable, and as the amount of legally available material goes up, the amount of material legally hosted on Napster will also go up. The fact that online mp3 distribution is still in its infancy should not be held against Napster.
Just because the record companies have successfully maintained a stranglehold monopoly on music distribution for nearly a century does not give them any intrinsic right to continue their monopoly in the face of changing conditions.
Napster didn't create the rules, but they are following them. Actually, given that the DMCA was drafted by the RIAA, MPAA, and other corporate special interest groups, and rubber-stamped by congress, one could reasonably say that the record companies DID write the rules. However, now that this asinine law is in effect, they have to follow the law, and they have just realized that the law applies to them, and they don't like it. They want the law to just apply to other people. They want their companies to be protected from lawsuits by the burdensome notification/removal legal mechanism, but they don't want to have to be bothered with having to follow the law themselves. That's what this is about. Napster IS following the law, and they are not in the wrong.
Besides, for Napster to proactively identify Dr. Dre or Metallica songs would be expensive and bandwidth intensive. It would require additional bandwidth to actually download the songs, and personnel to listen to the songs to determine whether or not they were actual Dr. Dre songs, or other songs that happened to have the same title.
Dr. Dre just hired the same outside contractor as Metallica to identify his on-line fans so he can have them banned from Napster. I doubt that this contractor did the work for free for either of them, yet Metallica and Dr. Dre want the courts to force Napster to do the identical work without compensation.
They just want a free handout. The law clearly says that it is their responsibility to identify copyright infringement, yet they want to force Napster to do their work for them, and they don't want to pay for it.
That makes them THIEVES.
From a legal standpoint, you're right. But ethically, it's not right.
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I disagree. The enforcement of Metallica's copyrights is not the job of Napster. Napster has no legal or ethical obligation to perform copyright enforcement services on Metallica's behalf without compensation from Metallica.
The DMCA says so. The RIAA, and all of the record companies paid a lot of money for the law, and they must abide by it. The law clearly places the responsibility for notification infringement on the copyright holder. Napster has complied completely with both the letter and spirit of the DMCA in every way.
Whether the DMCA is an ethical law is another question.
But to continue
Microsoft includes a "Network Neighborhood" feature with Windows that allows two people to play MP3s from each other's computers. This creates no ethical imperative on the part of Microsoft to develop a "blacklist" of filenames that may not be shared in the Network Neighborhood. The FTP program can be used to transfer MP3s back and forth, but the various companies that provide network software have no ethical imperative to employ elaborate content checking on the part of third party copyright holders who do not pay them.
In fact, Napster can be and is used for completely legitimate, authorized trading of copyrighted songs. Many bands, including Metallica, have authorized the free trading of concert recordings by their fans. Other bands have made studio recordings available freely as MP3s for promotional purposes -- just as the entrenched record industry uses promotional records and other materials for exactly the same purpose. The purpose of Napster is to facilitate legal activity, just like the purpose of the Network Neighborhood is to facilitate the legal activity of authorized data transfer and file sharing. The actions of Napsters' users no more reflect on Napster then the actions of someone who robs a bank and uses a Ford as a getaway car reflect on the Ford Motor Company.
Napster knows there are copyright songs on there. It knows the law is being violated. They just don't care because they rely on users sharing copyrighted songs for the majority of their userbase.
Well, that's your opinion on Napster's motivation. My opinion is that Napster is probably resisting demands to regulate content because the law says that once you start regulating content, you become responsible for that content. This seems more likely to me then your theory that their primary motivation is to facilitate criminal activity.
Did I say song titles? I said SONGS. You even quoted me saying songs and not song titles. You're looking for a technical loophole, and that's dishonest. First of all, the majority of mp3s list the artist in the filename (for the exact reason you state above). Second, most people share multiple files from the same artist, so that could be a secondary check. Finally, a person could simply download the file and check it manually as a last resort.
I'm not being dishonest. I'm simply one step ahead of your argument. It isn't a technical loophole. Your theory is fundamentally flawed.
You can't identify a song without listening to it.
MP3s are, as you said, identified by their filename -- presumably their song title, possibly including the name of the artist. For Metallica to demand that Napster ban a song title that they happened to use is Metallica claiming an intellectual property right that they simply do not have. Metallica simply has no legal authority to prohibit the distribution of songs containing the word "Metallica" in their titles.
Also, Metallica has stated that they have absolutely no problem with people sharing MP3s of their live concert recordings. Banning the use of certain filenames would have the effect of stopping the distribution of live Metallica MP3s as well as studio recordings.
Finally, for Napster to simply ban, for instance, songs with the word "Metallica" in them, would result in people deliberately misspelling song titles, like "Meta11ica." All this would accomplish would be to pollute the Napster namespace, with no benefit to Napster, Napster's users, or third party copyright holders.
Also, the notion, advanced by others, that checksums can be used to identify copyright infringement is not useful. All that a checksum can verify is the integrity of a file transfer. Anyone who has ever ripped a CD knows that bit errors happen all the time. The odds are that if two people rip the same track, they will end up with at least one random bit error in the audio file, which will result in a different checksum. If Napster were to start examining checksums, the result would simply be that people would simply use a utility to change one or two bits before creating the MP3, which would result in a different checksum.
And finally, for Napster to outlaw, for instance, the sharing of any file with the word "Metallica" in it would have the side effect of silencing criticism. If I were to write, perform, and record a song called "Metallica sucks" and put it on a Napster server, title-based censorship would effectively censor my song.
Fact is, the only practical way to positively identify a Metallica song is to incur the bandwidth expense of actually downloading the song, and the expense of hiring a human to listen to it and decide what the file contains. The bandwidth and staff requirements of your proposal would be extremely expensive.
What Metallica wants is for Napster to implement an expensive, labor and resource intensive program of proactive copyright enforcement services on their behalf. When Metallica went to an outside consultant to identify some 300,000+ users with files matching the names of Metallica songs, I doubt that the outside consultant did the work for free. I'm sure that they were compensated for their work.
Why should Napster be required to perform essentially the same service on behalf of Metallica for free?
You wouldn't have to get every single copyrighted song. Just make it a big enough pain in the ass to share copyrighted songs that people stop bothering.
Your proposals constitute a technically workable method for a copyright holder to identify specific instances of probable copyright infringement, but nothing in the law requires Napster to do this work on behalf of any copyright holder. Remember, copyright is an entirely synthetic right. Copyright did not legally exist until it was invented, and the justification of copyright is not based on natural law, it is a Constitutional restriction on free speech, for the sole purpose of promoting the arts, that is based on statute and regulated by the copyright acts, the DMCA among them. Nothing in the law creates a legal imperative on the part of Napster to "make it a pain in the ass" for their own customers to use their product, and there is no moral imperative to do so either. The only moral imperative on the part of Napster is to follow the DMCA to the letter, which is exactly what they have done.
Again, if Metallica wants Napster to proactively enforce Metallica's copyrights, which would be expensive and labor intensive, then Metallica should take the ethical approach and offer to compensate Napster for the work done on behalf of them and their record label, rather then take them to court to try and force Napster to perform ongoing, expensive work for them for free.
I call that stealing.
Forget the browser. They should sue Microsoft for their "Network Neighborhood" piracy software. As we all know, the only purpose of the Network Neighborhood is to allow people to access files on each other's computers, including MP3s of copyrighted songs.