Palm is not perfect, but you're wrong in a couple respects. Palm still dominates the market. They are still the single largest manufacturer in the entire handheld space. Their platform, PalmOS, which they license, also has more than 50% of the market. The pocketPC platform collectively fights over something around 30 to 40%--the remainder occupied by Epoch and other platforms--despite the best efforts of Microsoft who has spent an inordinate amount of money trying to overcome them and has the advantage of controlling MS Outlook/Exchange Server on the desktop (that many people depend on on their PCs).
Palm's success was due largely to their narrow focus, they defined what the modern PDA is and then built it, not by trying to be everything to all people. What you call a failure is not a failure in this vision, but rather it was the result of a good understanding of precisely what a PDA is and what is practical. They didn't produce even more expensive gadgets to compete with PocketPC because the timing was questionable and because their utility was too. There have been dozens of competing platforms that have failed precisely because they tried to do too much while Palm stayed true to their course and continued to optimize their platform (which HAS improved over the years). Look at the early generation PocketPCs, that Palm supposedly lost market share to. Most of them were pretty mediocre devices--most of them were bought by early adopter types that have also bought numerous other PDAs. Yes, a good number of people bought them, but it's hardly been a proven money maker. These devices are still inferior to Palm as PDAs--the battery life still needs work, the usability is significantly worse than Palms, they're still bulkier, and so on.
This fancier concept of a PDA, really handheld computers, is only starting to become economically and technically viable--even if the market for the idea itself is still unproven. If you take a look at what Palm and their licensees have done lately, then you'll see that they're very competitive with PocketPC even in this emerging high end market. Have you tried the new "smart" phones? I have a Tungsten W--I love it--GSM phone, GPRS data, built in keyboard, marginally faster CPU (but generally fast enough for what it is), and a good form factor. How about the Tungsten C? It very very slick too (built in WiFi, fast processor, keyboard, sound, etc). How about the Zire 71? Built in camera (640x480), high res color screen, sound, etc--all priced at less than 300 bucks (with space to drop the price too I'm sure). I don't see anything that really competes, that isn't a total hack, from PocketPC or anything else. I predict that Palm is going to take "back" much of what you think they've lost in the handheld space and even from their PalmOS licensees with their latest generation of hardware, namely the new Zire and their integrated wireless concept.
That doesn't change the fact that his college GPA was in the mid-C to low-B [americanpolitics.com] range...
What is your point? The average GPA at the schools at around the time he attended them was around in fact C, the way they SHOULD be, not the B/B+/A- it is today at most schools these days. In other words, his grades were at least average and probably above the average. What's more, he attained these grades at very good schools, namely, Andover, Yale, and Harvard. Being average at, say, Andover, where 99% of the class goes onto respectable 4 year schools, year after year, and most of those highly selective ones, is a lot different than being average at Podunk public high school, because virtually everyone is competing to some extent. This is especially true when the person in question was not really struggling to attain those grades (there are a lot of people that extend their performance beyond their actual intelligence by working, after a certain fashion, harder than all of their peers). Bush had a social life, other activities, and still managed to attain those grades. It's hardly proof of stupidity. Does it prove he's a real intellect? No, of course not, but it is indicative of a certain level of intelligence.
This is all besides the point though. All I care about is his job performance. I, for one, think he has performed very well, even if not perfectly. I voted for him in 2000 and I will vote for him again in 2004. Academic performance is not the same thing as intelligence and even (allegedly) high intelligence is not sufficient to succeed as a leader. There are many other factors to consider. Case in point: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, two smart people that failed in most important respects as President for different reasons.
not naive, just totally and completely wrong. clearly you've never heard of a file:// or smb:// link and local samba networking, but they allow your machine to access the content over smb directly. the phynd system is exactly like google, it just provides an index of content that people already had access to. he doesn't have logs beyond those of what people search for and he has no way of telling which file people downloaded after searching through his site. get a damn clue before spouting off stupidity like this.
Firstly, I phrased that as a question. There are in fact applications that do just what I described. What's more, I have heard of SMB and use the Windows path method frequently, but there are many probems with that since older versions of windows cannot reliably access fileshares outside of their LAN and/or workgroup, so my question made some sense.
Secondly, even given the fact that it's merely linking, it's not "exactly" like google. In fact, it's very different than google in a number of respects:
A) Most of google's indexed content is not pirated. People publish data of all kinds on webpages--the same cannot be said for these fileshares (few users have actual data files that they wish to share and fewer still have sensible names by which they be reasonably located with).
B) Most of google's searches and search results are not related to piracy--this is a demonstrable fact whereas RIAA, at least, asserted in their complaint that these same student sites kept stats that indicated otherwise.
C) Millions of people use Google every day in distinctly and highly useful ways.
D) The resources that google provides links to are almost always easily browsable by those same users, albeit a little more slowly. Given the slowness of browsing SMB shares over a WAN environment and the lack of crosslinking and the lack of broadcast solicitation and/or domain controller data--the situation is very different. The fact still remains that without Phynd and progams like it, internet users would never have been able to locate more than a handful of those shares without exhaustively bruce forcing IP addresses, probing each SMB share, and then recursing each resource for the desired content. So yeah, they are still the gatekeeper for Internet users in practice. What's more, given the way most university networks are, given the fact that most shares do not contain just any data that the user may happen to have, but mp3s and similar files that the users choose to share with their friends, the maintainers of the site should have been very aware that its use was limited and that it would be used almost exclusively for piracy. In short, they provided near exclusive access to those files for users on the Internet, even if indirectly.
E) Even if you are lucky enough to find actual operating pirated material on Google, the recording industry can normally approach the ISP or host (since few users run their own httpd servers) to remove the content before the problem becomes too large of an issue--and those that cannot normally do not have the bandwidth. Given the schools lax approach these matters, I don't think they left RIAA with much choice.
If as you say, he was sued for running the system he created that allowed people to search other's computers, the is google liable for creating _and_ running a web-site that allows people to search and share content across the net? How is it different from google? He had not the infringing content in his machine, he created a system that allowed other people to search through other people's computers, and that's a crime because you can search for MP3? Why no go against google, or even better, the JPG Group for allowing criminals to save child porn in the JPG format? Why not go after google? I can find illegal information using it, it is their fault?
If google were to become a significant contributor to piracy, if it were reasonable to expect them to know about it, and if they could be reasonably asked to take steps to prevent it, then I would think it reasonable to hold them accountable. This is not the case in practice. The difference, of course, is that the vast majority of Google's use has NOTHING to do this sort of piracy. Most of the content that it indexes is legal, most of the searches are legal, and most of the results are legal--overwhelmingly so. These students' services, on the other hand, were overwhelming used for piracy. The students could have predicted how it would be abused. They certainly would have known after they had the services running for a couple weeks and there is evidence to indicate that they actually did known (their own stats). Furthermore, there are steps the students could have taken to substantially reduce piracy without having much of an impact of what few legitimate uses there were. As an example, they could strip the top 100 artist names (taken from, say, Billboard) from the results that are mp3 files. I also suspect that quality and quantity of the result set provided by the student services far exceeded that of google--where similar queries on google would result in junk, popups, etc--not pure mp3 files and with high availability.
You are wrong; you cannot always trust the media or the alleged criminal. Please read the complaint yourself. He was sued for RUNNING it, not for creating the code. Perhaps his coding played a role in RIAA's motive for filing, but that was not part of the complaint and it does not lessen his responsibility over his own server. What's more, if you read the complaint, you will see that he kept statistics on the kind of content available on his share so he was explicitly aware of what was going on. He choose to settle and inflict punishment on himself because he was afraid of what might happen if he did not; he was not summarily punished. This is how our legal system works. Deal with it.
You can read the complaint here:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/riaa/arcojord an 40303cmp.pdf
I believe everybody that does so should be prosecuted for aiding criminals. What we have here is somebody being prosecuted (or intimidated to be prosecuted) for creating a generic tool that, in some cases, can be used to commit copyrights infringements.
You can kill people with a gun, but I haven't seen any lawsuit against S&W for creating a tool that can be used to commit a crime....
I know that these students don't have the resources to fight this through courts, but boy, how was I hoping for some one of them to figh this.
I am quite sure if you actually read the complaints against these students that you would discover that they were NOT being sued for creating the tool. They were being sued for actually RUNNING them and for the specific INSTANCES of piracy across that INSTANCE. There is a huge difference between creating a tool and using a tool. If I merely create a tool, especially one with an arguable general purpose, then it may well be used in ways that I cannot reasonably be expected to anticipate before it is recieved by users. However, if I RUN the TOOL, then I can see at least see HOW it is being used and take action based on actual OBSERVATION before it gets out of control. I'd say the difference is analogous between that of manufacturing a gun and that of placing a bunch of guns on your doorstep across the street from the local elementary school (which there is strong legal precedent for, btw).
Furthermore, unlike your analogy of the gun manufacturer, I am quite certain that if you were to analyze the usage of these search TOOLS (not to mention the websites run by the same students) that you would discover that the overwhelming majority was used for piracy and not legitimate use. Certainly you won't deny that there are millions of hunters in this country (not to mention people that use them for target practice, collection, and self-defense). Although I am for an outright ban or much stricter controls on guns in the US, even I will make this distinction clear.
Although my allegations may not be proof--the only way to settle them is by going to COURT--you cannot reasonably declare them to be unreasonable assertions before hearing the case and seeing RIAA's evidence.
You can make a photocopy of a book, and while it's true that Xerox and other companies have been threatened I haven't heard yet of any paper company being sued for creating a medium that can be used to infringe copyrights.
Kinkos and others have been sued successfully for copyright infringement.
Is Ford liable for you running your car against a 80 years old man crossing the street?
No, but many people would hold liable the owner of the car if they left their shiny new red Ford Mustang with keys in the ignition and a big sign saying "take me for a spin" in front of some middle school (or especially if they lent their keys to their friend's drunk son).
but technically, was not the data passing through HIS machine? He was not merely indexing and pointing users to the files, he was actually the download point (how else would outside users access smb shares in their web browsers?)--acting as an HTTP proxy to fetch SMB data. I fail to see how he could NOT have performed the basic level of checking for content (e.g., "grep -v N.Sync") given this fact if he really wanted to. It would be very interesting to see his logs--presuming he kept them. I'd bet dollars to donuts that 99% of those downloads were of mp3s and other pirated material. TO make a long story short, he's not like Google or altavista. Google has never been the gate keeper to the data itself nor can anyone seriously attempt to argue that most of the results that they serve up are for pirated material.
It's an illegal denial of service attack. If I put your copyrighted content on my webpage, it's not legal for you to DOS my webserver (or anyone visiting the site). Duh. You could call it self defense if you wanted to, but you would still go to jail.
Nonsense. If you attempt to download property that belongs to me and I reply back with data other than that which is my property, then you are not being denied service and you have no reasonable basis by which you can claim that you've been wronged. The only way you might argue denial of service is if I take something from you that you have a legitimate claim to. You have no claim to someone else's IP and even if you did I'm not actively denying you any sort of service in any of these claims--you could always choose to not download from my hosts and thus make it stop.
Furthermore, even techniques that extend more into so-called DoS territory are not necessarily illegal. For instance, filling the download queues. Show me a law that says this cannot be done or why.
You really are a sucker if you think they would be careful and methodical. They legal threats they bulk email people with certainly aren't. And they have historically shown no respect for any legitimate use of P2P networks.
I don't think these P2P networks deserve respect. Nonetheless, there is a difference between giving, say, Napster the option of filtering out their property or being shut down AND corrupting all downloads on such a network. If they create a situation where they may potentially corrupt legitimate downloads (as far fetched as that is--because we all know how unlikely that is) and one of those corrupted files causes damage to the user, then they get sued.
It's not vigilante action, it's civil disobedience. I don't think you know what a vigilate [reference.com] actually does.
NONSENSE! This claim fails in at least several major respects:
A) Civil disobedience requires openness. These networks are designed in such a way that downloaders escape detection because the files they transfer are not logged and their real identity is certainly not. If you announced to the government and RIAA the files that you downloaded and where and how they can find you, then you might have a slightly stronger argument. You were even recommending encryption for christs sake so that people cannot be traced. Talk about blatant.
B) Civil disobedience only allows action against that which is morally objectionable. Unless your position is against the rightness of intellectual property law itself then you have an obligation to comply with the law. Just because you suspect RIAA is guilty of OTHER crimes does not give you the right to steal their music (especially considering that it's NOT just RIAA that looses) any more than it gives you the right to steal one of RIAA's member trucks.
C) It's extremely questionable when that action that you claim to be civil disobedience enriches you personally.
D) Civil disobedience requires you to willingly accept the consequences of your action. You and other P2P violators have shown no such willingness.
The trouble is that when you violate all of these principles you just create a situation where anyone can invoke "civil disobedience" in their defense (which can ultimately lead to the destruction of the rule of law). That said, both you and I know that you are not doing this for any high minded reasons, you just want fr33 $h1t, so I'm wasting my words on you.
First, vigilanteism is bad. Second, I hope the RIAA disappears from the face of this planet. Pirating their content is fine by me. I just refuse to argue this point with most people, as for many illegal==amoral, and it's not really my point right now.
Haha! The irony. It's bad if RIAA takes vigilante action, but it's fine if users do take their own form of vigilante action by pirating because RIAA = BAD. Is that your argument? Or is your argument that thousands of users can't be wrong but the hundreds of voices behind RIAA are? Ever heard of a lynch mob? Are they right? Are you saying that with a straight face?
Besides, I wouldn't call the kinds of actions that I've suggested vigilante, I'd call it self defense. If you're sharing a file that is confirmed to be pirated, then there's nothing vigilante about taking reasonable means to stop that file from being successfully distributed or that particular servent from operating, especially when other means are not practical. The piraters on the other hand are by definition breaking the law.
Current P2P networks are not simple. They do all kind of non-simple things, like creating ultrapeers. The original version of gnutella was simple, but it did not scale well enough, so it has been made more and more complex to deal with various issues.
Current successful P2P is simple, at least by my standards. FreeNet may not be simple, but FreeNet is a hunk of junk. Please name for me one successful and complex P2P network and what about it is truly complex (especially as related to network structure). In any event, they're all simple in comparison to the chains of trust you're talking about and the spagetti code that would be necessary to prevent tampering in a decentralized environment.
Bullshit. This reasoning is stupid. There is no good reason to allow the RIAA to DOS a network, and protecting yourself from attacks and invasions of privacy does not make you a criminal. Do you think encrypting your email makes you a terrorist too? Do you really think the RIAA will only inconvenince those who it can be proved beyond a doubt that they are infringing? You're a real sucker if you do.
Please explain to me how RIAA's methodical and careful sobotage of download attempts on N'Sync's latest mp3 on P2P matching a specific hash is a violation of your rights, your privacy, or of criminal or civil law. Then explain to me why your garage band (or your other alleged noninfringing uses) would need to go to tremendous lengths to prevent organized frustration of downloads. Please remember that these networks already have checksums to prevent the end result from being corrupted--it'd just force you to redownload. The only people that would need such technology would be those that face an organized and determined enemy--that would be piraters against RIAA and other parties.
RIAA would focus their efforts on their own confirmed IP because it'd be more cost effective for them and because it could avoid the potential for a lawsuit. Someone might actually claim that, say, the EXE shareware program that they attempted to download, that was corrupted by RIAA, caused their computer to crash. Why would they expose themselves to liability needlessly?
Guess you haven't used p2p in a while eh? Apps like eMule do something called ICH (Intelligent Corruption Handling): when you run into a large corrupted chunk (9MB), instead of redownloading the entire thing, your client hashes this corrupted chunk into smaller (180KB) subchunks, and askes other clients (who you probably trust more) to do the same so you can compare and then only redownload the tiny chunks which are invalid.
While I'll confess that I was not aware of that particular development in eMule, I have used it and others recently and I've found them to be mediocre even without RIAA's hijinks. I don't think this scheme would hold up against a concerted effort on all pirated content on the network by numerous hosts--it just involves too much overhead. How do you know which hosts to trust to give you the rolling checksums? How much larger must the network be to accomodate this level of redundancy? What's to stop malicious clients from requesting checksums on pirated material across the whole network? It's CHEAP for them to request and expensive for the servents to provide. If they're not that available, then of course you're going to dramatically slow down this stepping process.
This scheme, when stressed, would probably make an already crappy network totally undesirable for casual piracy.
Like slashdot's distributed moderation is a complicated scheme? True distributed trust needn't be complicated; it can be completely transparent to the user as most emergent systems are.
Umm hello McFly?? Slashdot's servers are fully centralized so this is a worthless comparison. They can have a robust concept of user--even if it's only email address. They can easily tell how old that user's account is. They can run scripts to check for systematic attacks far easier at their servers then you could in a distributed environment. They can regulate and monitor your usage patterns. They can STORE this data in a trusted manner. Decentralized schemes simply can't do this in a robust manner that will work in practice. Besides slashdot's moderation scheme doesn't work that well and it's not working against people with a profit motive by and large. It's not so bad to read a bad comment--a good reader can speed read over the crap relatively easily--a P2P downloader can only download so much so fast.
Oh please. And by using a sealed envelope instead of a plaintext postcard, I'm practically admitting to being an anthrax terrorist too, right? Are you for key-escrow too? And banning guns? And tobacco rolling paper? pfft.
What a poor analogy. Envelopes have practically always been around because people want their privacy. Clearly most people that use them are not using them to send Anthrax. Technology that is specifically designed to avoid RIAA's attempts to protect their IP, which adds no additional value over current P2P (not that that's much), which makes the network more cumbersome, is clearly a single use tool--to be used for piracy. I can definitely see an argument for that (very rare) legitimate content on the network to have a single hash on the whole file to guard against viruses and the occassional malicious agent that attacks indiscriminantly. However, given the fact that, say, your garage band is unlikely to be the victim of a consistent attack and that the worst that can happen is that you are forced to redownload, there is not a credible argument to switch to workarounds designed for piracy.
Besides which, if this system of trust could really be designed in an efficient manner, then I find it very hard to believe that the same developers, presuming they were responsible people, could not impliment a system to allow them to revoke content from the network--to disallow its sharing. For instance, the developers could easily impliment a system to pass RSA-style signed messages asking servents to revoke content matching hashes A..Z. The public key could be hardcoded in each client and a crafty developer could make it difficult to modify this behavior. But of course, this won't happen because everyone knows that P2P is almost exclusively about piracy. If you kill the most popular pirated content, then you kill the networks.
Why do you automatically assume that P2P clients are only used for piracy? Most of their users seem to use them for sharing users, true, but just like not all MP3's are illegal, not all P2P clients are used for piracy
My example, which he was responding to, was that these clients would have been established as piraters because they are sharing files that match MD5 or SHA1 hashes of known RIAA IP. Thus there would be no (well very very very little) doubt that they are pirating music.
That said, I think it's pretty obvious that virtually every transfer on those networks is some form of piracy, whether it's music, movies, software, or porn. The reason is that these existing P2P networks are so much less efficient than the alternatives. except for certain illegal activities (e.g., piracy) that cannot be effectively conducted outside. I've yet to hear of a legitimate of a use for P2P that could not be conducted better in a client-server environment or in a modified P2P environment that is mindful to concerns of IP owners.
The anwser to the first attack is tiger tree hash.
1) basicly hash each small chunk of file. 2) concatunate a group of hashes until the result is of size(sizeof(chunk)) or no hashes left; then hash the result 3) if there is more than one hash go to step 2.
When you download you start with the root hash, then traverse the tree in a (optimal) breath first manner.
While I can see how this would help in theory, I don't believe it'd be very feasible given the bandwidth and computational limitations of these networks. Just how large would each chunk be and how large would the hash be? If the resulting hash is the size of the whole file, then you're going to really cripple the network. If the chunk size is too big (so you can have a reasonably sized hash tree), then you increase the leverage of RIAA's agents to frustate downloaders. If the chunks that are downloaded from a specific entity do not align well with hashed chunk, then you frustate the client's ability to to assign fault to specific servents and thus make it hard to avoid the corrupting servents in further download attempts.
Also, this whole scheme depends on the user targeting the correct parent hash and then obtaining the correct tree. The hash tree that you described would not be worth much if the hash tree is large, because they user would still need to download the whole tree before they could detect that it does not match the root hash (putting them in much the same situation that they were in before). In other words, you'd still be left at risk of RIAA'd meddling and you'd be left with the task of identifying and isolating corruption amongst a large block of data.
Easily. Use SHA1 sums for all files. The gnutella client I use [sourceforge.net] already deals with this. (At least mostly.) I don't know if it computes SHA sums for individual blocks, but it should be possible to make the necessary changes in a day of two if it doesn't.
I thought you said that you don't support piracy. If you don't, then why take such an aggressive stance against actions that would almost entirely be RIAA's and for their own IP? It does not compute.
That said, I know that many clients are using one-way hashes to identify and check the integrity of files. However, they cannot be used to check the download incrementally. P2P networks/clients such as Kazaa depend on multi-source downloads to work efficiently. If just one of these servents inject bad data, then you won't know until the end of the download and then you need to either need to restart the whole download (hoping you don't get hit again) or work out a complex scheme to iterate through and find the source of the corruption. Yes, you probably could do more checksums at more regular intervals, but then this would increase the burden on networks, especially those like GNutella that have a bad enough time with traffic. In short, it'd be a major pain to work around.
There are cool technical means that can make DOSing a gnutella network very difficult. I personally would like to see public/private key encryption & signitures adopted for all inter-node transfers. Besides making it hard to spam nodes, it would allow for the implementation of a "web of trust".
Imagine this: The software autogenerates a public/private key pair for me when I install it. It then hooks into my AIM buddy list, downloading all my buddies keys and giving them a rank of 1. It also makes sure each of my buddies gets the keys of the others, signed by me. Blah, blah blah. I would then have a network where I have a trustworthiness value for every peer. The same strategy could be applied to blacklisting nodes as well.
The beauty of this is that if a rank 10 person tries to mess up my download, it can compare the SHA1 sum with that of someone with higher rank and kick the appropriate person. This kick could be signed by me and auto-propagated to all my buddies.
And so far, all of this has required no more user-intervention than current p2p networks.
Blah blah blah. Convoluted scheme. If you depend on just your buddy list and such a web of trust to start a simple file transfer, then you will reduce your download pool by a factor of 1000. Maybe some other solution could be worked out, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it'd be very complex, it'd require a lot more user-intervention, and it'd expose critical points of failure (e.g., central servers, responsible parties, and so on). Sure, geeks and such won't have too hard of a time adapting, but the average person would.
It's not like software can't just download and install a new version of itself once a week. (Checking the GPG sig of course.)
Well installing applications on Windows is never a sure thing. If the interface of these apps is changed at all, then users will have a hard time adapting to them. If a whole new client has to come out because the existing service can't or won't, then you will have even greater problems. If the clients are forced to come offline periodically, then it will further destabilize networks like GNUtella.
The final trick I'd like to see is random hops for data. Every connection has a probability of being forwarded through an extra host.(And every host doesn't know how many times the connection has been forwarded.) This, combined with encryption would lend some serious deniability to P2P networks. One could even tweak this probability based on the "trust factor" of the destination node plus/minus some random value.
These are only a few of the things that could be done, too
So in summary, what you're saying is, one, that the RIAA has the right to scan a computer for copyrighted material. Two, not verify if that copyrighted material is owned by the person in question whether or not it's on a p2p network and three, physically remove those files from that persons physical disk?
No. If a person is freely sharing a bunch of pirated files and those files are confirmed to be what they are with their published SHA1/MD5 hashes, then there is no doubt that their filesharing service is in fact in violation of copyright law. The user does not have the right, whehter or not they own the CD, to freely distribute those mp3s to everyone. The user is not having their privacy violated because they're sharing those files publically--the user is asking people to search their files and even download them. Thus I think there are certain actions that the industry can and should take, in light of the burden that the legal system currently places on the music industry. Some groupings of legitimate attempts would be to shut down the file sharing of that user (as in some of my examples) -- this does not mean that the user risks damage to their computer (anymore than running such a client in the first place at least), faces the destruction of their mp3s, and what not -- or to currupt attempts to download files matching said hashes.
As for P2P networks there are plenty of legal uses for them, you allude to banning P2P networks because people are using them to infringe on IP easily. I won't justify that with a response, it's too silly to even fathom. Consumers who illegally steal music, no one could ever support but then I can't support the RIAA who's stole from the consumers either. Which leads to the idea that at the end of the day the consumer makes the choice. If they've been abused by a company and then choose to steal rather than supporting that company. Said company/industry/people/persons need to look at the situation and go about fixing it in a manner that doesn't tread on anyone but the thieves. If it affects me as an innocent, my retaliation and outrage will be legal and just.
Well I disagree with that. The noninfringing uses of P2P technically exist but they are very very small, but a drop in comparison to the ocean that is piracy. What's more, most of these noninfringing uses could be better accomodated by other technology, even P2P technology, that respects the rights of IP owners. These existing P2P network's argument for their own legitimacy is sort of like arguing that an AK47 has a non-infringing uses as, say, an item by which you can pound in a nail. Well maybe it can be used as such, but there are many better ways to obtain a better result (e.g., with a hammer) without the much larger problems that such an allowance would create. Whatever legitimate uses there are for existing P2P filesharing is very weak. They would have an even weaker case if they adapt their network to avoid RIAA's surgical strikes. Anyways, this is almost besides the point given that MY discussion is that the attacks would/could be directed against the ACTS (downloads) of piracy, not people, not existing mp3s/files, and not even P2P itself.
There are many people here that explicitly and implicity condone and even support P2P piracy. You yourself are even implying that consumers are justified because CDs are overpriced or something. That's not a moral or legal justification. It's probably not even practical for the industry. If you accept for a minute that maybe RIAA's heavily promoted CDs need to cost more than say 10 dollars, then you're always going to have a large amount of piracy when users can quickly, easily, and cheaply download high quality mp3s off of Napster2 or what have you. Since when does lynch-mob rule make a democracy?
So what if they corrupt half the files? I always grab several copies of whatever it is I'm looking for. If I get 4 versions and each is 50/50, there's still a 94% chance that one of them will be what I'm looking for. And the corrupt versions will not be spread anywhere near as quickly as valid ones; those capable of maintenance of their files would not be keeping them.
Well if you and everyone else downloads 4x as many bytes for every byte you did previously, then you will dramatically slow down average download rates. Keep in mind that most people aren't sharing files. Only 1 in 10 do on average. Of that 1 in 10, only a fraction of them have both the content and the bandwidth to really contribute. In short, the load of the network is truly born by a couple thousand users--not millions. It's not a small request to ask them to spare 300% more bandwidth. Most of these networks are not operating that efficiently/quickly right now.
That is a poor implementation and if that's all you can think of you will not be hired by the RIAA or script kid of the week even. People can set the amount of traffic an upload uses, they can set the amount of download traffic. DOS'n their IP's is illegal and any script kid can write an add on for their favorite p2p client to uses the resources of a determined amount of clients returning the favor 2000 times fold. So you'd have to find a situation where you've got a block of random ip's to choose from.. all from a different block to prevent the last situation from occuring. I've thought about it myself for a while and came to the conclusion that the RIAA can either hire someone to implement stuff that isn't going to work or hire someone to setup their new online service. The only other option is for them to continue to fight a loosing battle. There will always be piracy one way or another, in it's current form and before p2p existed people where selling copied CD's on the street, before that it was tape, before that it was people trading vinyl (all of which still occur). Now that P2P is here it's even worst but the it seems with Apple's new introduction of an online service that the RIAA will no longer exist in the future as the company they are now. I'm not an investor but if I was i'd be looking to other venues to place my money.
With this announcement I can see they are going down the wrong path. I don't trade illegal mp3's but if the RIAA attacks my network, I will defend it, which includes retaliation. It's the same i'd give to anyone else and I don't know any other person that wouldn't do the same.
However, i'd really love to actually hear from you which p2p clients don't already have limits to prevent everything you just said. If you could name just one that would be great; Thanks.
Clearly nothing is going to be bulletproof. While there are countermeasures that can be taken, some more viable than others, the idea is two fold:
A) Force the masses of piraters to be constantly applying updates, installing new software, joining new networks, and learning how to use their interfaces.
B) Make any search or (good) download much harder and time consuming.
So yeah, with RIAA's assault on download queues, you could work around it by either expanding the queue, thereby decreasing the quality/rate of the downloads on average, or by kicking slow users off (though this technique could be expanded and modified to download more files, faster, repeatedly, etc...more patches).
Likewise, if the industry were to engage in SYN flooding (presuming it were legalized in such circumstances), you may have users screw with their registeries or update their OSes so their ports may acknowledge actual attempts, but there's no clean solution to it. Yet more user effort (especially where the user recieves no benefit).
The systematic corruption of swarmed files would actually be highly effective and would be very hard to effectively work-around without exposing the network to many more problems.
What you don't seem to fully grasp is that P2P is unlike all prior forms of piracy. What sets it apart is that it makes it much easier than any prior method for most users to obtain high quality pirated music. This is why P2P is so popular amongst people that have broadband and an inkling of computer skills. Trading tapes, using IRC, and the other numerous methods all demanded either a special set of skills or a large investment of time for few results/low quality results so relatively few people engaged in it. P2P, even with less than 20% of the country being on broadband, is a huge problem. When broadband becomes more accessible and faster...when mp3 audio devices become cheaper and better..the problem will only grow. The reason for its existence is low barriers to entry and expedience. If the industry can make it significantly harder to sign on and take, say, 10x as long to find and actually download the song you want, they they can ef
A central database. It may be illegal to share mp3's, but it isn't illegal to RATE mp3's.
I don't think you quite understand what I mean. Given a hash identifying ANY file, RIAA could corrupt said file relatively easily given enough hosts, especially if swarming (multi-source downloading) is used. In other words, there wouldn't be any "file" to identify. You request the latest and greatest known mp3 put out by some reputable warez group bearing hash X, your client requests partial downloads from the fastest servents claiming to possess file matching X, one or two of those servents just answer back with random data in key segments of their portions of the file claiming to be X. While your client would likely be able to identify that the file that it actually received does not equal X when it presumably finishes the whole download, that hash could not identify what parts of the download were bad nor who specifically corrupted the data. You couldn't meaningfully vote one way or the other against file X--because it's not X that is the problem--it's the servents that are.
What's more, a central site that provided these kinds of ratings of such files would likely be in the same situation that napster was but worse (since they would be uniquely identifying files and they would be able to show popularity). If RIAA identifies that all of the highest rated file identifiers on your central server are their pirated music, then the server should and probably would be legally compelled to remove them.
Each IP address gets ONE vote per file. And you have to have downloaded it first.
Who is going to track all of these IP addresses and where? How can they possibly know in a truely decentralized environment who actually downloaded anything? Even if it's Napsteresque, it wouldn't be too hard to have RIAA client A say that RIAA client B-Z just download file X, and therefore client's B-Z vote some prolific pirate server or file X off the island. Any scheme resembling Napster in order to impliment this sort of trust or "voting" is unlikely to survive in the current legal environment, would add complexity (to "vote"), and would require users to shift yet again (thereby discouraging piracy itself).
Why do you automatically assume that I support piracy because I question the ethics of the RIAA and their cronies? All the mp3's on my computer are ripped from my personal CD collection, and there isn't a single warezed application. I respect IP, but I don't think that you should use unethical tactics to protect it.
That was less directed at you than the frequent attitude here on slashdot that you might possibly have been espousing. If your objection was soley against truly invasive action such as planting viruses, then I'll give you a pass on that. However, if your objection was that RIAA shouldn't be allowed to take any of the sorts of aggressive actions that I suggested, then that'd be a different story.
And yes, what they are proposing would be totally illegal.
Well some of the ideas probably are, but it is not apparent from that article that they are in fact proposing them. My interpretation was that these are third party contractors that are proposing different ideas and are even writing proof of concept code, but that none of these necessarily were even agreed upon conceptually by RIAA and most will probably never be implimented. That said, in certain extreme cases, where you have a rogue ISP or country that refuses to cooperate and the offense is large enough (e.g., lots of content and infinite bandwidth), then I don't necessarily have a problem with, say, potentially crashing that person's computer. It's a question of how and under what circumstances. This is not to suggest that RIAA should be above the law, but that there are cases where the law might be adapted to allow specific sorts of prescribed action in light of this new situation (Internet/P2P/Broadband).
"I question the ethics of the RIAA and their cronies..I wish you or anyone else the worst at such a job (protecting RIAA's IP)"
"The minute they do something in the name of fighting piracy that would normally be considered illegally (sic)...just remember that you are innocent until proven guilty"
While I am pulling this somewhat out of context, the point that I wish to make is that until you prove in a court of law the bulk of RIAA's alleged crimes, in the same manner that you assert RIAA must do instead of taking direct/illegal action against piraters, RIAA is entitled to strongest and most vigorous protection possible under the law.
In other words, if you condone (or merely frown upon) the piraters actions explicitly or implicity because RIAA = BAD, then I fail to see how you can object to even some of the more extreme actions against people that are actually pirating (as opposed to true innocents) and remain morally consistent. Put differently, if RIAA deserves a lesser defence because they are presumed evil, then the exact same arguments can certainly be used against unquestionable piraters (i.e., they are sharing numerous files matching the MD5 or SHA1 hashes of known RIAA files).
Watch the P2P networks add the concept of karma and moderation to the system, so that people can vote (or anti-vote) for a particular contribution. After all, once you are burned by a "what the F*KC are you doing" track you go and mark it.
And who or where exactly holds and distributes this data? Without centralization this is a very tough task. Who gets to vote? What would stop RIAA's clients from simply trying to vote everyone off the island (or just the best "legit" sharers of pirated files if there's a quota)? How do vote against the malcious entities without the concept of a userID (again, hard to maintain in a true P2P environment)? You may attempt to vote against their hostmask I presume, but you need to remember that these malicious clients may be on DHCP on the same ISPs that many legitimate clients are.
With a complicated chain of trust using RSA and like technology this might be sort of technically possible, but whomever the parent(ish) entity in the chain would have a logistically impossible job, not to mention a legally risky one (explicitly SUPPORTING piracy--no no).
What kind of geek in his right mind would actually take a job like this? Seriously, who in good conscience would take a job where you are supposed to crack computers so Hilary Rosen can have her way?
If the RIAA is allowed to follow through on this, I wish nothing but the worst of geek hell to whoever does their bidding. Yes, I mean the worst: having the maintain someone else's Perl code.
I would. While I surely would not support or condone many of the ideas suggested here (e.g., deleting all mp3s, installing trojans, etc) there is a lot more that RIAA can do that I would be happy to help them with. For instance, I think it is totally defensible for RIAA to find the hashes/checksums of their most popular confirmed IP on Kazaa and like networks and then deploy some fake P2P clients around the internet to inject BAD data into any client that attempts to download said files. (Such a scheme might work very well--even if clients ultimately reject the finished download--how do you track down the offender in a decentralized environment? how do you stop further corruption?). Likewise, I could see a strong argument for RIAA's say, attacking the most blatant and productive (fastest/most files/etc) pirated file sharers. Though this may be a legal grey area right now, I believe it could be worked out legally. Such an attack need not be any more invasive than merely preventing further downloads, i.e., it wouldn't consume more bandwidth than a single download, it wouldn't affect other users at that user's ISP, it wouldn't infect the person's computer, and so on. One such way that I might impliment such an attack (though ultimately defeatable) would be to consume all that's person's download queues by slowly downloading with numerous cooperating (fake) clients or maybe an (extremely low volume) SYN attack on that filesharing port or maybe leaching said files as fast as possible to soak up their bandwidth (nothing they're not already offering).
Long story short: I would and I could help, without breaking the law or feeling guilty about it. Say whatever you will about RIAA, but this is about more than just RIAA, this is about intellectual property itself. This is about the right of a person and, by extension, business concerns, to control the product of their own mind. Yes, I recognize that there have always been varying degrees of legal limitations of IP rights, but this sort of P2P recognizes no such compromises. IP owners have every right to fight the good fight. I, as an alleged "geek", am particularly sympathetic to their plight since I myself share in their concerns.
If P2P piracy is carried out to its logical extreme, then I wish on you and those that support it a life of struggling to secure development jobs around businesses that are left with no other option then to pursue profitable business around misguided notions such as the GPL. Good luck.
I think you underestimate RIAA and the differences in the "jobs" that each must do. All RIAA needs to do is make it sufficiently hard for the casual downloader to get their files. If RIAA can do things like: corrupt 1/2 the downloads, shut down the fastest of the filesharers (keeping in mind that only 1/10 actually shares--fewer still have the bandwidth to do it effectively), flood the networks with searches so they're ineffective, and so on--they can make it much more time consuming to find and download good files. Although RIAA themselves may lack the technical know-how, they can sure as hell hire it. It's a mistake to assume that just because RIAA is reluctant to, say, allow DRM-free files of their IP, that they're technically incompetent. When the technology itself is not a potential threat to their IP I suspect you'll find them to be much more nimble (or at least their agents will be).
Please note that there's a lot that they can do short of breaking the law or ethnical guidelines. Many of these suggested technologies will probably never be deployed, but that still leaves quite a few interesting avenues open to RIAA. Furtermore, the mere threat of such viruses or trojan horses being on the network can serve as a detterant for a good number of people.
The hackers, on the other hand,.... what are they going to do? Hack RIAA.org again? WHo cares! Put up more files? What more does RIAA have to lose. Try to make better P2P networks? They probably will, but the delicious irony is that the hackers/developers are now in a much tougher position because of the decentralization of P2P. How do you penalize a client that methodically sets out to corrupt swarmed downloads (each additional download source increases the risk of corruption--since it only takes a few bytes to throw the whole thing off) of RIAA's music? You really can't in a way that can't be tampered with in the other direction--that would create more problems for downloaders. What's more, if you do attempt to defend the piracy of stuff that is explicitly RIAA's IP, you really lack a defensible case. Even if they do find ways to adapt, the constant upgrading of software, switching of networks, and so on will in and of itself be a large barrier to entry for most piraters.
Again, the point is: They're going to have to change their business model, if they want to stay in business.
You spend a lot of time talking about how much money they loose on promotions. Big deal. It's not written in stone somewhere that they have to do this. It's not even as if they've always done this, and it sure doesn't make me feel sorry for them. They make plenty of money, despite their cluelessness, as a result of their unfair contracts.
My point is NOT that it's written in stone, but that the alternatives need to be proven in the marketplace before RIAA can be taken for granted, before you can summarily execute an entire business model on the mere premise that RIAA is irrelevant now. What's more, I find many reasons NOT to believe these alternatives are viable. You have not really described how the new artists are supposed to profitably reach mainstream consumers. The internet may offer a complete solution to distribution, but no such obvious answer exists for the promotion. You merely assert that it's not necessary to spend millions to reach these audiences. How exactly? Even if you do have a theoretical answer, you still lack any substantial empirical evidence. There are hundreds of new major artists in the past, say, 4 years. Name one that has gone it alone. Why should I believe, if RIAA's business model was destroyed, that we'd still see new artists emerging anywhere (except for the fringe)? Why can't you just say, "OK, RIAA is what RIAA was, I'll just no longer buy RIAA, I'll buy the alternatives instead, but I'll respect RIAA's IP because it might offer some unique benefit"?
If the thrust of your argument were merely that you wanted to start your own independent label or release your own art on P2P, then I'd say go for it. But you and I both know that your intent is to justify P2P's massive piracy. The difference between the two is that one is legitimate competition and the other is destructive. One works within the frame of the free markets, the other does not. Guess which one is which.
Bach, Mozart, etc. They are plenty of artists who have achived popularity outside the RIAA's oligopoly. You seem to think the only way that music will ever be created is if the RIAA exists to overpromote it. Here: http://independent-artists.com/
How absurd. While I love Bach and Mozart, you're comparing Apples and Oranges. There were but a handful of people that made a career out of music or reached mass popularity. They were not selling recorded music. Do you think consumers would be happy only being able to buy, say, 1 album a year or, worse, one every 5 years on average, because that's all that was worth it? They're totally different.
That's not what I said. I said they are "failing to satisfy market demand." There is a market for something. They could fill it. They choose not to. It's pretty clear cut in that regard.
Well I'd say it's pretty clear that your implication is that Napster is justified and is only a problem because they're not delivering exactly what you want. Anyways- let's move on....it is not clear that RIAA can deliver what you think the market is demanding. For instance, given the cost structure of their intensive promotions, it is not necessarily true that they can substantially lower the prices of whole CDs or offer singles at reduces prices. Nor is it necessarily true that DRM-free distribution of mp3s and other electronic formats, in lieu of audio CDs, would not lead to an increase in piracy.
Actually, yes it does. You clearly are not very familiar with the terms of your average record contract. Advertisment is at the artist's expense. Studio costs are too. The artists royalties are taken by the record company until they are paid back.
No, I know this and having studied business and grown up around them I understand what it really means. Just because these expenses are theoretically taken out of the royalty checks of the artists does not mean that it is not RIAA that ultimately bears the billions of dollars in marketing and promotion costs. Who do you think pays for the majority of artists that fail who, nonetheles had millions of dollars spent to promote them? RIAA does, certainly not the artists who lack the means to even begin to cover the first 100k of the costs. Only if the artist is very successful do they even start to break even on their own promotions. RIAA is the one that is ultimately left holding the bag for all the artists that fall short and never make it up (the majority). What makes the industry work, what allows them to be profitable, is those few extremely popular artists, who offset the losses of all the others. They, not the artists, are the real risk takers. This is why even many of those widly successful artists seem make so little from their hits.
I'm not saying it's a nice system, but it's unfair to pin the blame on RIAA for it. They're just a mechanism to cope with consumer behavior. If something else works better, then that's great, really. But I don't see any reason to kill the only entity, despite its flaws, that has managed to get people to buy music and thus create a livelyhood for numerous artists.
Yeah, but most of them didn't get their money from the RIAA. The made money via live performance, endorsements, etc.
Actually you're wrong. Live performance is not a money maker for most artists.
First, I think the RIAA is becoming irrelevant, not recording artists. Big difference...Next, not listening to RIAA owned music woundn't prove or disprove the necessity of the RIAA itself.
You're wrong, it is a very significant fact. The trouble with all of your assertions that RIAA is irrelevant is that it's merely conjecture. You assert that RIAA is irrelevant and yet, both you and I know, that almost all the music that you're listening to is owned by RIAA's labels. This is important because all of that RIAA owned music that you're listening to enjoyed millions of dollars of promotion efforts in almost every case. It is reasonable to suspect that RIAA played a key role. If you could point to a truly organic artist, that didn't depend on RIAA's millions, that truly created their popularity through P2P and other sources, that enjoys any sort of mainstream popularity, then you might at least have a scintilla of evidence to back up your case. But you don't, thus I think your case is weak. As for those RIAA artists, you can't just seperate them out from RIAA for your listening purposes, because they're a product of RIAA.
First off, they're failing to offer their songs in any other format than CD. If I want an mp3 of "Enter Sandman" there's no way for me to get it other than pay $17 for a CD. They're failng to satisfy market demand.
Second, they completely rip off those artists whose right they claim to be protecting. Most artists would get more money if I mailed them a quarter, than if I bought their CD.
Umm, the argument was over RIAA's instant messaging copyright violators. I'm not here to defend RIAA per se. That said, you're being foolish. Since when does not offering exactly the service that you want give you the right to steal service? Who says even if RIAA were to deliver the "right" service for the "right" price that this piracy would stop? Or do you just set the price so ridiculously low that your time cannot possible be worth less?
Just because the artist only gets a fraction of each CD sold in royalties does not mean the artist is getting ripped off. It's not like the only other cost is the cost of the CD and the packaging. What you're really paying for are all of RIAA's other services, especially the marketing for the artist you're listening to and the 9 other artists that never quite took off (not to mention talent scouts etc). It's not like the artist is going into the situation blind-folded. Besides there are a lot of rich artists. Yes, there's also a lot of bankrupt artists, but there's also a lot of bankrupt lottery winners (and no one questions the certainty of those annuities)--some people just make really bad decisions with their money, especially when they acquire is suddenly.
None of this is to say that I like the characters behind the recording industry, but that your assertions do not really amount to a meaningful indictment--and certainly not justification of piracy. You think they're irrelevant? Fine, then prove it by not listening to RIAA's pirated music, it's only a very small portion of the music that you could theoretically listen to, right?
The RIAA is sitting on a dying business model. They just aren't needed anymore. I can distribute my music via the internet, or sell CDs off my website. They refuse to accept and embrace new technology, so they will die.
The internet is here to stay. It's a great means of delivering data. They should look into it.
Instead of offering a LEGAL, better alternative to Napster, they sued them out of existence. Then another network popped up. Then they sued it. Then another network popped up. These morons need to get with the program and realize that there's demand out the for electronically distributed music.
If I could legally download music, from a site the fairly compensated the arist, I'd be all over it.
I'm sorry, but I don't accept Napster et. al as a technology to which RIAA should have to adapt to. It's not a technical solution. If it's a technical anything, it's a short circuit. The labels behind RIAA spend billions of dollars a year promoting music so that people will listen and buy new CDs. No matter what you think of the need for this sort of promotion, both you and I know that the vast majority of the music that you're listening to is a product of such a system. Yet you claim don't need RIAA. Pfft. Distribution has not been the primary function of RIAA for some time. The real function that they serve and the function that Napster and all the other P2P services fail at miserably is to get people to buy new music.
You want to prove that RIAA is no longer necessary? You find a mechanism that will get people to listen to new music and then buy it. It's one thing to get that 1% of users that have the time and the care to search out new music, but it's an entirely different deal to get the remaining 99% of users out there that are NOT active music listeners--most users listen passively. They will buy music they like if they hear it, but they
The issue isn't what industry is doing wrong: it's what Governments are letting them do. Companies have no conscience, their sole purpose is profit, and that's fine, I own shares in some myself.
If Government's reactive legislation is based entirely on corporate concerns, courts rubber-stamp companies' legal actions and police forces are hijacked for casual use by the RIAA, both artists and distributors have no incentive to exploit and embrace online distribution.
This is great for them - they can defer the necessary investment to another day, which any company will do given the choice between a paradigm shift and a profitable status quo maintained at the expense of progress and the public interest. This is not a criticism of the nature of business - just an observation.
File sharing may have done more harm than good in that is has precipitated a flashpoint that companies can use to justify their regressive position, but Kazaa et al are not the real issue here.:)
What exactly has the government done here that is wrong or strictly these industry group's benefit? I would not say the government action is based "entirely" on RIAA/MPAA concerns, quite the contrary. The action hinged around the necessity of intellectual property in our society, which affects all intellectual property owners (not just RIAA with their particular model) and consumers themselves. Napster et. al are antithetical to the whole concept of intellectual property and thus they've encountered government roadblocks. However, these roadblocks have not been thrown into the path of the numerous other competitors to RIAA. For instance, mp3.com (excepting my.mp3.com -- which mostly involved RIAA's IP) still exists today and they compete, unmolested.
While you may believe that the RIAA and the MPAA are based obsolete business models, the way to change is not by misappropriating their intellectual property. You cannot reasonably argue that P2P theft is "competition" or that stopping it is merely protectionist. There ARE other ways to compete--that are actually competitive--not just destructive.
I disagree with you that there is no incentive to change. The music industry is reasonably competitive--each company would love to take a larger share of the market from their competition. The artists also would love to get a larger royalty for each CD sold--since they currently get a small sliver of each sale (due to the fundamental economics of the industry)--if an alternative method could deliver the artists more per CD sold with any where near the number of CDs sold, then they'd probably jump at the opportunity. The trick is to find a business model that really works. Too many of you are lulled into the belief that the problem is just distribution. Far from it, in today's market, at least with younger consumers, you can easily deliver CDs online and even to retail stores. The trick is to grab the consumer's attention to get them to hear and listen to new music without radio, MTV, and other mass-media outlets. Where? How? Most consumers, you must realize, are not active music listeners, they don't have the inclination or the time to seek out new music.
Lastly, the actual action that the government has taken has been pretty limited. It took awhile to shutdown Napster and other forms of P2P are still reasonably strong. The government and the courts have done very little to stop this.
Slashdot Mirror
Palm is not perfect, but you're wrong in a couple respects. Palm still dominates the market. They are still the single largest manufacturer in the entire handheld space. Their platform, PalmOS, which they license, also has more than 50% of the market. The pocketPC platform collectively fights over something around 30 to 40%--the remainder occupied by Epoch and other platforms--despite the best efforts of Microsoft who has spent an inordinate amount of money trying to overcome them and has the advantage of controlling MS Outlook/Exchange Server on the desktop (that many people depend on on their PCs).
Palm's success was due largely to their narrow focus, they defined what the modern PDA is and then built it, not by trying to be everything to all people. What you call a failure is not a failure in this vision, but rather it was the result of a good understanding of precisely what a PDA is and what is practical. They didn't produce even more expensive gadgets to compete with PocketPC because the timing was questionable and because their utility was too. There have been dozens of competing platforms that have failed precisely because they tried to do too much while Palm stayed true to their course and continued to optimize their platform (which HAS improved over the years). Look at the early generation PocketPCs, that Palm supposedly lost market share to. Most of them were pretty mediocre devices--most of them were bought by early adopter types that have also bought numerous other PDAs. Yes, a good number of people bought them, but it's hardly been a proven money maker. These devices are still inferior to Palm as PDAs--the battery life still needs work, the usability is significantly worse than Palms, they're still bulkier, and so on.
This fancier concept of a PDA, really handheld computers, is only starting to become economically and technically viable--even if the market for the idea itself is still unproven. If you take a look at what Palm and their licensees have done lately, then you'll see that they're very competitive with PocketPC even in this emerging high end market. Have you tried the new "smart" phones? I have a Tungsten W--I love it--GSM phone, GPRS data, built in keyboard, marginally faster CPU (but generally fast enough for what it is), and a good form factor. How about the Tungsten C? It very very slick too (built in WiFi, fast processor, keyboard, sound, etc). How about the Zire 71? Built in camera (640x480), high res color screen, sound, etc--all priced at less than 300 bucks (with space to drop the price too I'm sure). I don't see anything that really competes, that isn't a total hack, from PocketPC or anything else. I predict that Palm is going to take "back" much of what you think they've lost in the handheld space and even from their PalmOS licensees with their latest generation of hardware, namely the new Zire and their integrated wireless concept.
This is all besides the point though. All I care about is his job performance. I, for one, think he has performed very well, even if not perfectly. I voted for him in 2000 and I will vote for him again in 2004. Academic performance is not the same thing as intelligence and even (allegedly) high intelligence is not sufficient to succeed as a leader. There are many other factors to consider. Case in point: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, two smart people that failed in most important respects as President for different reasons.
Secondly, even given the fact that it's merely linking, it's not "exactly" like google. In fact, it's very different than google in a number of respects:
A) Most of google's indexed content is not pirated. People publish data of all kinds on webpages--the same cannot be said for these fileshares (few users have actual data files that they wish to share and fewer still have sensible names by which they be reasonably located with).
B) Most of google's searches and search results are not related to piracy--this is a demonstrable fact whereas RIAA, at least, asserted in their complaint that these same student sites kept stats that indicated otherwise.
C) Millions of people use Google every day in distinctly and highly useful ways.
D) The resources that google provides links to are almost always easily browsable by those same users, albeit a little more slowly. Given the slowness of browsing SMB shares over a WAN environment and the lack of crosslinking and the lack of broadcast solicitation and/or domain controller data--the situation is very different. The fact still remains that without Phynd and progams like it, internet users would never have been able to locate more than a handful of those shares without exhaustively bruce forcing IP addresses, probing each SMB share, and then recursing each resource for the desired content. So yeah, they are still the gatekeeper for Internet users in practice. What's more, given the way most university networks are, given the fact that most shares do not contain just any data that the user may happen to have, but mp3s and similar files that the users choose to share with their friends, the maintainers of the site should have been very aware that its use was limited and that it would be used almost exclusively for piracy. In short, they provided near exclusive access to those files for users on the Internet, even if indirectly.
E) Even if you are lucky enough to find actual operating pirated material on Google, the recording industry can normally approach the ISP or host (since few users run their own httpd servers) to remove the content before the problem becomes too large of an issue--and those that cannot normally do not have the bandwidth. Given the schools lax approach these matters, I don't think they left RIAA with much choice.
Lastly, there's no need for the attitude.
You are wrong; you cannot always trust the media or the alleged criminal. Please read the complaint yourself. He was sued for RUNNING it, not for creating the code. Perhaps his coding played a role in RIAA's motive for filing, but that was not part of the complaint and it does not lessen his responsibility over his own server. What's more, if you read the complaint, you will see that he kept statistics on the kind of content available on his share so he was explicitly aware of what was going on. He choose to settle and inflict punishment on himself because he was afraid of what might happen if he did not; he was not summarily punished. This is how our legal system works. Deal with it.
d an 40303cmp.pdf
You can read the complaint here:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/riaa/arcojor
Furthermore, unlike your analogy of the gun manufacturer, I am quite certain that if you were to analyze the usage of these search TOOLS (not to mention the websites run by the same students) that you would discover that the overwhelming majority was used for piracy and not legitimate use. Certainly you won't deny that there are millions of hunters in this country (not to mention people that use them for target practice, collection, and self-defense). Although I am for an outright ban or much stricter controls on guns in the US, even I will make this distinction clear.
Although my allegations may not be proof--the only way to settle them is by going to COURT--you cannot reasonably declare them to be unreasonable assertions before hearing the case and seeing RIAA's evidence.
Kinkos and others have been sued successfully for copyright infringement.
No, but many people would hold liable the owner of the car if they left their shiny new red Ford Mustang with keys in the ignition and a big sign saying "take me for a spin" in front of some middle school (or especially if they lent their keys to their friend's drunk son).
but technically, was not the data passing through HIS machine? He was not merely indexing and pointing users to the files, he was actually the download point (how else would outside users access smb shares in their web browsers?)--acting as an HTTP proxy to fetch SMB data. I fail to see how he could NOT have performed the basic level of checking for content (e.g., "grep -v N.Sync") given this fact if he really wanted to. It would be very interesting to see his logs--presuming he kept them. I'd bet dollars to donuts that 99% of those downloads were of mp3s and other pirated material. TO make a long story short, he's not like Google or altavista. Google has never been the gate keeper to the data itself nor can anyone seriously attempt to argue that most of the results that they serve up are for pirated material.
Furthermore, even techniques that extend more into so-called DoS territory are not necessarily illegal. For instance, filling the download queues. Show me a law that says this cannot be done or why.
I don't think these P2P networks deserve respect. Nonetheless, there is a difference between giving, say, Napster the option of filtering out their property or being shut down AND corrupting all downloads on such a network. If they create a situation where they may potentially corrupt legitimate downloads (as far fetched as that is--because we all know how unlikely that is) and one of those corrupted files causes damage to the user, then they get sued.
NONSENSE! This claim fails in at least several major respects:
A) Civil disobedience requires openness. These networks are designed in such a way that downloaders escape detection because the files they transfer are not logged and their real identity is certainly not. If you announced to the government and RIAA the files that you downloaded and where and how they can find you, then you might have a slightly stronger argument. You were even recommending encryption for christs sake so that people cannot be traced. Talk about blatant.
B) Civil disobedience only allows action against that which is morally objectionable. Unless your position is against the rightness of intellectual property law itself then you have an obligation to comply with the law. Just because you suspect RIAA is guilty of OTHER crimes does not give you the right to steal their music (especially considering that it's NOT just RIAA that looses) any more than it gives you the right to steal one of RIAA's member trucks.
C) It's extremely questionable when that action that you claim to be civil disobedience enriches you personally.
D) Civil disobedience requires you to willingly accept the consequences of your action. You and other P2P violators have shown no such willingness.
The trouble is that when you violate all of these principles you just create a situation where anyone can invoke "civil disobedience" in their defense (which can ultimately lead to the destruction of the rule of law). That said, both you and I know that you are not doing this for any high minded reasons, you just want fr33 $h1t, so I'm wasting my words on you.
Besides, I wouldn't call the kinds of actions that I've suggested vigilante, I'd call it self defense. If you're sharing a file that is confirmed to be pirated, then there's nothing vigilante about taking reasonable means to stop that file from being successfully distributed or that particular servent from operating, especially when other means are not practical. The piraters on the other hand are by definition breaking the law.
Current successful P2P is simple, at least by my standards. FreeNet may not be simple, but FreeNet is a hunk of junk. Please name for me one successful and complex P2P network and what about it is truly complex (especially as related to network structure). In any event, they're all simple in comparison to the chains of trust you're talking about and the spagetti code that would be necessary to prevent tampering in a decentralized environment.
Please explain to me how RIAA's methodical and careful sobotage of download attempts on N'Sync's latest mp3 on P2P matching a specific hash is a violation of your rights, your privacy, or of criminal or civil law. Then explain to me why your garage band (or your other alleged noninfringing uses) would need to go to tremendous lengths to prevent organized frustration of downloads. Please remember that these networks already have checksums to prevent the end result from being corrupted--it'd just force you to redownload. The only people that would need such technology would be those that face an organized and determined enemy--that would be piraters against RIAA and other parties.
RIAA would focus their efforts on their own confirmed IP because it'd be more cost effective for them and because it could avoid the potential for a lawsuit. Someone might actually claim that, say, the EXE shareware program that they attempted to download, that was corrupted by RIAA, caused their computer to crash. Why would they expose themselves to liability needlessly?
This scheme, when stressed, would probably make an already crappy network totally undesirable for casual piracy.
Umm hello McFly?? Slashdot's servers are fully centralized so this is a worthless comparison. They can have a robust concept of user--even if it's only email address. They can easily tell how old that user's account is. They can run scripts to check for systematic attacks far easier at their servers then you could in a distributed environment. They can regulate and monitor your usage patterns. They can STORE this data in a trusted manner. Decentralized schemes simply can't do this in a robust manner that will work in practice. Besides slashdot's moderation scheme doesn't work that well and it's not working against people with a profit motive by and large. It's not so bad to read a bad comment--a good reader can speed read over the crap relatively easily--a P2P downloader can only download so much so fast.
What a poor analogy. Envelopes have practically always been around because people want their privacy. Clearly most people that use them are not using them to send Anthrax. Technology that is specifically designed to avoid RIAA's attempts to protect their IP, which adds no additional value over current P2P (not that that's much), which makes the network more cumbersome, is clearly a single use tool--to be used for piracy. I can definitely see an argument for that (very rare) legitimate content on the network to have a single hash on the whole file to guard against viruses and the occassional malicious agent that attacks indiscriminantly. However, given the fact that, say, your garage band is unlikely to be the victim of a consistent attack and that the worst that can happen is that you are forced to redownload, there is not a credible argument to switch to workarounds designed for piracy.
Besides which, if this system of trust could really be designed in an efficient manner, then I find it very hard to believe that the same developers, presuming they were responsible people, could not impliment a system to allow them to revoke content from the network--to disallow its sharing. For instance, the developers could easily impliment a system to pass RSA-style signed messages asking servents to revoke content matching hashes A..Z. The public key could be hardcoded in each client and a crafty developer could make it difficult to modify this behavior. But of course, this won't happen because everyone knows that P2P is almost exclusively about piracy. If you kill the most popular pirated content, then you kill the networks.
That said, I think it's pretty obvious that virtually every transfer on those networks is some form of piracy, whether it's music, movies, software, or porn. The reason is that these existing P2P networks are so much less efficient than the alternatives. except for certain illegal activities (e.g., piracy) that cannot be effectively conducted outside. I've yet to hear of a legitimate of a use for P2P that could not be conducted better in a client-server environment or in a modified P2P environment that is mindful to concerns of IP owners.
Also, this whole scheme depends on the user targeting the correct parent hash and then obtaining the correct tree. The hash tree that you described would not be worth much if the hash tree is large, because they user would still need to download the whole tree before they could detect that it does not match the root hash (putting them in much the same situation that they were in before). In other words, you'd still be left at risk of RIAA'd meddling and you'd be left with the task of identifying and isolating corruption amongst a large block of data.
I thought you said that you don't support piracy. If you don't, then why take such an aggressive stance against actions that would almost entirely be RIAA's and for their own IP? It does not compute.
That said, I know that many clients are using one-way hashes to identify and check the integrity of files. However, they cannot be used to check the download incrementally. P2P networks/clients such as Kazaa depend on multi-source downloads to work efficiently. If just one of these servents inject bad data, then you won't know until the end of the download and then you need to either need to restart the whole download (hoping you don't get hit again) or work out a complex scheme to iterate through and find the source of the corruption. Yes, you probably could do more checksums at more regular intervals, but then this would increase the burden on networks, especially those like GNutella that have a bad enough time with traffic. In short, it'd be a major pain to work around.
Blah blah blah. Convoluted scheme. If you depend on just your buddy list and such a web of trust to start a simple file transfer, then you will reduce your download pool by a factor of 1000. Maybe some other solution could be worked out, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it'd be very complex, it'd require a lot more user-intervention, and it'd expose critical points of failure (e.g., central servers, responsible parties, and so on). Sure, geeks and such won't have too hard of a time adapting, but the average person would.
Well installing applications on Windows is never a sure thing. If the interface of these apps is changed at all, then users will have a hard time adapting to them. If a whole new client has to come out because the existing service can't or won't, then you will have even greater problems. If the clients are forced to come offline periodically, then it will further destabilize networks like GNUtella.
Well I disagree with that. The noninfringing uses of P2P technically exist but they are very very small, but a drop in comparison to the ocean that is piracy. What's more, most of these noninfringing uses could be better accomodated by other technology, even P2P technology, that respects the rights of IP owners. These existing P2P network's argument for their own legitimacy is sort of like arguing that an AK47 has a non-infringing uses as, say, an item by which you can pound in a nail. Well maybe it can be used as such, but there are many better ways to obtain a better result (e.g., with a hammer) without the much larger problems that such an allowance would create. Whatever legitimate uses there are for existing P2P filesharing is very weak. They would have an even weaker case if they adapt their network to avoid RIAA's surgical strikes. Anyways, this is almost besides the point given that MY discussion is that the attacks would/could be directed against the ACTS (downloads) of piracy, not people, not existing mp3s/files, and not even P2P itself.
There are many people here that explicitly and implicity condone and even support P2P piracy. You yourself are even implying that consumers are justified because CDs are overpriced or something. That's not a moral or legal justification. It's probably not even practical for the industry. If you accept for a minute that maybe RIAA's heavily promoted CDs need to cost more than say 10 dollars, then you're always going to have a large amount of piracy when users can quickly, easily, and cheaply download high quality mp3s off of Napster2 or what have you. Since when does lynch-mob rule make a democracy?
Clearly nothing is going to be bulletproof. While there are countermeasures that can be taken, some more viable than others, the idea is two fold:
A) Force the masses of piraters to be constantly applying updates, installing new software, joining new networks, and learning how to use their interfaces.
B) Make any search or (good) download much harder and time consuming.
So yeah, with RIAA's assault on download queues, you could work around it by either expanding the queue, thereby decreasing the quality/rate of the downloads on average, or by kicking slow users off (though this technique could be expanded and modified to download more files, faster, repeatedly, etc...more patches).
Likewise, if the industry were to engage in SYN flooding (presuming it were legalized in such circumstances), you may have users screw with their registeries or update their OSes so their ports may acknowledge actual attempts, but there's no clean solution to it. Yet more user effort (especially where the user recieves no benefit).
The systematic corruption of swarmed files would actually be highly effective and would be very hard to effectively work-around without exposing the network to many more problems.
What you don't seem to fully grasp is that P2P is unlike all prior forms of piracy. What sets it apart is that it makes it much easier than any prior method for most users to obtain high quality pirated music. This is why P2P is so popular amongst people that have broadband and an inkling of computer skills. Trading tapes, using IRC, and the other numerous methods all demanded either a special set of skills or a large investment of time for few results/low quality results so relatively few people engaged in it. P2P, even with less than 20% of the country being on broadband, is a huge problem. When broadband becomes more accessible and faster...when mp3 audio devices become cheaper and better..the problem will only grow. The reason for its existence is low barriers to entry and expedience. If the industry can make it significantly harder to sign on and take, say, 10x as long to find and actually download the song you want, they they can ef
What's more, a central site that provided these kinds of ratings of such files would likely be in the same situation that napster was but worse (since they would be uniquely identifying files and they would be able to show popularity). If RIAA identifies that all of the highest rated file identifiers on your central server are their pirated music, then the server should and probably would be legally compelled to remove them.
Who is going to track all of these IP addresses and where? How can they possibly know in a truely decentralized environment who actually downloaded anything? Even if it's Napsteresque, it wouldn't be too hard to have RIAA client A say that RIAA client B-Z just download file X, and therefore client's B-Z vote some prolific pirate server or file X off the island. Any scheme resembling Napster in order to impliment this sort of trust or "voting" is unlikely to survive in the current legal environment, would add complexity (to "vote"), and would require users to shift yet again (thereby discouraging piracy itself).
Well some of the ideas probably are, but it is not apparent from that article that they are in fact proposing them. My interpretation was that these are third party contractors that are proposing different ideas and are even writing proof of concept code, but that none of these necessarily were even agreed upon conceptually by RIAA and most will probably never be implimented. That said, in certain extreme cases, where you have a rogue ISP or country that refuses to cooperate and the offense is large enough (e.g., lots of content and infinite bandwidth), then I don't necessarily have a problem with, say, potentially crashing that person's computer. It's a question of how and under what circumstances. This is not to suggest that RIAA should be above the law, but that there are cases where the law might be adapted to allow specific sorts of prescribed action in light of this new situation (Internet/P2P/Broadband).
While I am pulling this somewhat out of context, the point that I wish to make is that until you prove in a court of law the bulk of RIAA's alleged crimes, in the same manner that you assert RIAA must do instead of taking direct/illegal action against piraters, RIAA is entitled to strongest and most vigorous protection possible under the law.
In other words, if you condone (or merely frown upon) the piraters actions explicitly or implicity because RIAA = BAD, then I fail to see how you can object to even some of the more extreme actions against people that are actually pirating (as opposed to true innocents) and remain morally consistent. Put differently, if RIAA deserves a lesser defence because they are presumed evil, then the exact same arguments can certainly be used against unquestionable piraters (i.e., they are sharing numerous files matching the MD5 or SHA1 hashes of known RIAA files).
With a complicated chain of trust using RSA and like technology this might be sort of technically possible, but whomever the parent(ish) entity in the chain would have a logistically impossible job, not to mention a legally risky one (explicitly SUPPORTING piracy--no no).
Long story short: I would and I could help, without breaking the law or feeling guilty about it. Say whatever you will about RIAA, but this is about more than just RIAA, this is about intellectual property itself. This is about the right of a person and, by extension, business concerns, to control the product of their own mind. Yes, I recognize that there have always been varying degrees of legal limitations of IP rights, but this sort of P2P recognizes no such compromises. IP owners have every right to fight the good fight. I, as an alleged "geek", am particularly sympathetic to their plight since I myself share in their concerns.
If P2P piracy is carried out to its logical extreme, then I wish on you and those that support it a life of struggling to secure development jobs around businesses that are left with no other option then to pursue profitable business around misguided notions such as the GPL. Good luck.
I think you underestimate RIAA and the differences in the "jobs" that each must do. All RIAA needs to do is make it sufficiently hard for the casual downloader to get their files. If RIAA can do things like: corrupt 1/2 the downloads, shut down the fastest of the filesharers (keeping in mind that only 1/10 actually shares--fewer still have the bandwidth to do it effectively), flood the networks with searches so they're ineffective, and so on--they can make it much more time consuming to find and download good files. Although RIAA themselves may lack the technical know-how, they can sure as hell hire it. It's a mistake to assume that just because RIAA is reluctant to, say, allow DRM-free files of their IP, that they're technically incompetent. When the technology itself is not a potential threat to their IP I suspect you'll find them to be much more nimble (or at least their agents will be).
.... what are they going to do? Hack RIAA.org again? WHo cares! Put up more files? What more does RIAA have to lose. Try to make better P2P networks? They probably will, but the delicious irony is that the hackers/developers are now in a much tougher position because of the decentralization of P2P. How do you penalize a client that methodically sets out to corrupt swarmed downloads (each additional download source increases the risk of corruption--since it only takes a few bytes to throw the whole thing off) of RIAA's music? You really can't in a way that can't be tampered with in the other direction--that would create more problems for downloaders. What's more, if you do attempt to defend the piracy of stuff that is explicitly RIAA's IP, you really lack a defensible case. Even if they do find ways to adapt, the constant upgrading of software, switching of networks, and so on will in and of itself be a large barrier to entry for most piraters.
Please note that there's a lot that they can do short of breaking the law or ethnical guidelines. Many of these suggested technologies will probably never be deployed, but that still leaves quite a few interesting avenues open to RIAA. Furtermore, the mere threat of such viruses or trojan horses being on the network can serve as a detterant for a good number of people.
The hackers, on the other hand,
If the thrust of your argument were merely that you wanted to start your own independent label or release your own art on P2P, then I'd say go for it. But you and I both know that your intent is to justify P2P's massive piracy. The difference between the two is that one is legitimate competition and the other is destructive. One works within the frame of the free markets, the other does not. Guess which one is which.
How absurd. While I love Bach and Mozart, you're comparing Apples and Oranges. There were but a handful of people that made a career out of music or reached mass popularity. They were not selling recorded music. Do you think consumers would be happy only being able to buy, say, 1 album a year or, worse, one every 5 years on average, because that's all that was worth it? They're totally different.
Well I'd say it's pretty clear that your implication is that Napster is justified and is only a problem because they're not delivering exactly what you want. Anyways- let's move on....it is not clear that RIAA can deliver what you think the market is demanding. For instance, given the cost structure of their intensive promotions, it is not necessarily true that they can substantially lower the prices of whole CDs or offer singles at reduces prices. Nor is it necessarily true that DRM-free distribution of mp3s and other electronic formats, in lieu of audio CDs, would not lead to an increase in piracy.
No, I know this and having studied business and grown up around them I understand what it really means. Just because these expenses are theoretically taken out of the royalty checks of the artists does not mean that it is not RIAA that ultimately bears the billions of dollars in marketing and promotion costs. Who do you think pays for the majority of artists that fail who, nonetheles had millions of dollars spent to promote them? RIAA does, certainly not the artists who lack the means to even begin to cover the first 100k of the costs. Only if the artist is very successful do they even start to break even on their own promotions. RIAA is the one that is ultimately left holding the bag for all the artists that fall short and never make it up (the majority). What makes the industry work, what allows them to be profitable, is those few extremely popular artists, who offset the losses of all the others. They, not the artists, are the real risk takers. This is why even many of those widly successful artists seem make so little from their hits.
I'm not saying it's a nice system, but it's unfair to pin the blame on RIAA for it. They're just a mechanism to cope with consumer behavior. If something else works better, then that's great, really. But I don't see any reason to kill the only entity, despite its flaws, that has managed to get people to buy music and thus create a livelyhood for numerous artists.
Actually you're wrong. Live performance is not a money maker for most artists.
You're wrong, it is a very significant fact. The trouble with all of your assertions that RIAA is irrelevant is that it's merely conjecture. You assert that RIAA is irrelevant and yet, both you and I know, that almost all the music that you're listening to is owned by RIAA's labels. This is important because all of that RIAA owned music that you're listening to enjoyed millions of dollars of promotion efforts in almost every case. It is reasonable to suspect that RIAA played a key role. If you could point to a truly organic artist, that didn't depend on RIAA's millions, that truly created their popularity through P2P and other sources, that enjoys any sort of mainstream popularity, then you might at least have a scintilla of evidence to back up your case. But you don't, thus I think your case is weak. As for those RIAA artists, you can't just seperate them out from RIAA for your listening purposes, because they're a product of RIAA.
Umm, the argument was over RIAA's instant messaging copyright violators. I'm not here to defend RIAA per se. That said, you're being foolish. Since when does not offering exactly the service that you want give you the right to steal service? Who says even if RIAA were to deliver the "right" service for the "right" price that this piracy would stop? Or do you just set the price so ridiculously low that your time cannot possible be worth less?
Just because the artist only gets a fraction of each CD sold in royalties does not mean the artist is getting ripped off. It's not like the only other cost is the cost of the CD and the packaging. What you're really paying for are all of RIAA's other services, especially the marketing for the artist you're listening to and the 9 other artists that never quite took off (not to mention talent scouts etc). It's not like the artist is going into the situation blind-folded. Besides there are a lot of rich artists. Yes, there's also a lot of bankrupt artists, but there's also a lot of bankrupt lottery winners (and no one questions the certainty of those annuities)--some people just make really bad decisions with their money, especially when they acquire is suddenly.
None of this is to say that I like the characters behind the recording industry, but that your assertions do not really amount to a meaningful indictment--and certainly not justification of piracy. You think they're irrelevant? Fine, then prove it by not listening to RIAA's pirated music, it's only a very small portion of the music that you could theoretically listen to, right?
I'm sorry, but I don't accept Napster et. al as a technology to which RIAA should have to adapt to. It's not a technical solution. If it's a technical anything, it's a short circuit. The labels behind RIAA spend billions of dollars a year promoting music so that people will listen and buy new CDs. No matter what you think of the need for this sort of promotion, both you and I know that the vast majority of the music that you're listening to is a product of such a system. Yet you claim don't need RIAA. Pfft. Distribution has not been the primary function of RIAA for some time. The real function that they serve and the function that Napster and all the other P2P services fail at miserably is to get people to buy new music.
You want to prove that RIAA is no longer necessary? You find a mechanism that will get people to listen to new music and then buy it. It's one thing to get that 1% of users that have the time and the care to search out new music, but it's an entirely different deal to get the remaining 99% of users out there that are NOT active music listeners--most users listen passively. They will buy music they like if they hear it, but they
While you may believe that the RIAA and the MPAA are based obsolete business models, the way to change is not by misappropriating their intellectual property. You cannot reasonably argue that P2P theft is "competition" or that stopping it is merely protectionist. There ARE other ways to compete--that are actually competitive--not just destructive.
I disagree with you that there is no incentive to change. The music industry is reasonably competitive--each company would love to take a larger share of the market from their competition. The artists also would love to get a larger royalty for each CD sold--since they currently get a small sliver of each sale (due to the fundamental economics of the industry)--if an alternative method could deliver the artists more per CD sold with any where near the number of CDs sold, then they'd probably jump at the opportunity. The trick is to find a business model that really works. Too many of you are lulled into the belief that the problem is just distribution. Far from it, in today's market, at least with younger consumers, you can easily deliver CDs online and even to retail stores. The trick is to grab the consumer's attention to get them to hear and listen to new music without radio, MTV, and other mass-media outlets. Where? How? Most consumers, you must realize, are not active music listeners, they don't have the inclination or the time to seek out new music.
Lastly, the actual action that the government has taken has been pretty limited. It took awhile to shutdown Napster and other forms of P2P are still reasonably strong. The government and the courts have done very little to stop this.