That's a good point. It should also be taken into consideration that if ICQ really wanted to contact him, they would have done it through a system message and not with a message from a regular user.
I'm not sure why they even bother to offer the opportunity to counter Metallica's claims. If a company that would get support like Napster is afraid to counter Metallica's claims, what makes them think that individual users are going to be able to handle Metallica's army of attourneys. It's also a pointless to do that when you can create a new user name for much cheaper.
An army of 300k+. From a legal standpoint those 300K+ are _guilty_ of copyright violations.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that these trials would take place in the U.S.A where you are innocent until proven guilty. As for their counter-suit Metallica would have the burden of proof and I highly doubt that they would have much evidence to go by. They might have fared better if they had taken the time to investigate before simply accusing all of these people of piracy knowing exactly nothing about them other than their user name on napster and maybe their IPA. Not to mention the fact that they have no idea what any of these files contained other than than a name pertaining to Metallica.
If you can afford and 800mhz CPU, 256mb of ram and a large hard drive, you can spring for the $39.95 CD ROM drive. Pretty weak argument.
That was just a hypothetical situation that would explain something similar to what the originator was talking about. There are many other situations that could occur that would be similar to this but I won't go into all of them because there are too many and I'm not trying to start a flame war. I was just trying to say that situations like this can happen that would justify the use of Napster to get Metallica songs without it being piracy.
That is all true but the problem is they have NO way of knowing who is a "bad" user. I'm sure that NetPD's program didn't listen to each file that it found the entire way through to check and make sure that it was an actual Metallica song. You are misunderstanding where I am coming from. I'm not pissed at Metallica at all. I just think it's pretty naive of them to think that they will find all these people with Metallica songs on their hard drive and to assume that all of them are stolen or even Metallica songs to begin with. They should just do a little more investigation before they start slandering people who could very well be innocent and getting them banned from a service that they may use legitimately.
You already have the CDs and (I assume) a CD player. Problem solved.
This is not always the case. I used to have a cd player and therefore own cd's. Unfortunately it broke leaving me with all these cd's and no way to listen to them.
If you machine is so old that it can't rip CDs, it most likely can't play MP3s very effectively.
What does the fact that you can or can't rip cd's have to do with the age or quality of your computer? What if you like to build your own computers and simply haven't gotten a cd-rom for it yet? That doesn't mean that you can't have an 800mhz Athlon, 256mb sdram, and plenty of hard drive space.
Once you have purchased the music, you have the right to make copies for your personal use.
You're absolutely right and it doesn't matter how you get these copies. It's your right to have them.
Go ahead and try to take legal action against Metallica. Unless you've got some seriously deep pockets and a great deal of time to waste, I wouldn't bother.
Unfortunately you're probably right about this. As a single person you are more than likely completely powerless against Metallica and their team of lawyers. However with a team of 300,000+ more people not to mention the many other organizations that would be more than happy to help out like the EFF or the Cyber Army, I'm sure you could raise enough money to be pretty formidable yourself.
It's not the fact that Metallica want to get paid for the music that's wrong. As a musician myself I totally respect that. Where Metallica went wrong was that they invaded the privacy of Napster users, and accused hundreds of thousands of people of being pirates without having any proof of it at all. Let's face it, they really don't have a right to call anyone a pirate until they launch an investigation and find out if any of these people actually has the right to have these mp3's. For all we know this stupid little bot that NetPD is so proud of could just find file names with the word Metallica in it and from there take down the name an IP of the user no questions asked. What does that prove? For all they know these could be mp3's of metallica interviews or concert bootlegs or Lars Ulrich farting into a megaphone. I can understand them wanting to get paid for their work but there are much more intelligent ways to go about this.
It's very interesting that you would get the names of 335,000 users who have your music available for trading online and you automatically assume that they are all pirates. How is it that you can jump to such an accusation having done absolutely no investigation and having no idea whether any of these 335,000 people do own the cd's and have the right to have an mp3 copy of the music? It's important to remember that all Napster users are under an agreement that obeying copyright laws is the responsiblity of the downloader. They commit no piracy by simply having your music available.
I was sleeping through one of my more boring school classes when one of my fellow students heard me saying "Down with Big Brother" in my sleep. Can you believe that? Luckily he had the insight and courage to report my actions anonymously to the Pinkerton Thought Police. I'm just glad they got me before it was too late.
I don't know if you've thought about it but my.mp3.com isn't giving anything away for free. Their idea is for users that own the albums to be able to listen to them anywhere they have computer access. You have to have the cd in your possesion in order to put it on your account. How many other ways is there to get this music if you have the cd already in your possession. I don't see anyone filing a law suit on sony for their recordable cassette tapes or for their stereos that will dub these tapes. As far as music goes it has always worked off the honor system. There is just too many ways to pirate it.
I think that they do realize this but as of now, our government is run by corporations, and whoever can buy the most votes, and when a large, important corporation like the MPAA starts throwing their weight around, our goverment is going to listen.
I don't want to start an OS war since I have no big problems with windows. As far as w2k being the best OS MS has ever had, I really have to disagree. I've never had personal experience with it but from what I've read it is their worst attempt at security yet. This article explains these problems a little more thorougly.
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That's a good point. It should also be taken into consideration that if ICQ really wanted to contact him, they would have done it through a system message and not with a message from a regular user.
I'm not sure why they even bother to offer the opportunity to counter Metallica's claims. If a company that would get support like Napster is afraid to counter Metallica's claims, what makes them think that individual users are going to be able to handle Metallica's army of attourneys. It's also a pointless to do that when you can create a new user name for much cheaper.
An army of 300k+. From a legal standpoint those 300K+ are _guilty_ of copyright violations.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that these trials would take place in the U.S.A where you are innocent until proven guilty. As for their counter-suit Metallica would have the burden of proof and I highly doubt that they would have much evidence to go by. They might have fared better if they had taken the time to investigate before simply accusing all of these people of piracy knowing exactly nothing about them other than their user name on napster and maybe their IPA. Not to mention the fact that they have no idea what any of these files contained other than than a name pertaining to Metallica.
If you can afford and 800mhz CPU, 256mb of ram and a large hard drive, you can spring for the $39.95 CD ROM drive. Pretty weak argument.
That was just a hypothetical situation that would explain something similar to what the originator was talking about. There are many other situations that could occur that would be similar to this but I won't go into all of them because there are too many and I'm not trying to start a flame war. I was just trying to say that situations like this can happen that would justify the use of Napster to get Metallica songs without it being piracy.
That is all true but the problem is they have NO way of knowing who is a "bad" user. I'm sure that NetPD's program didn't listen to each file that it found the entire way through to check and make sure that it was an actual Metallica song. You are misunderstanding where I am coming from. I'm not pissed at Metallica at all. I just think it's pretty naive of them to think that they will find all these people with Metallica songs on their hard drive and to assume that all of them are stolen or even Metallica songs to begin with. They should just do a little more investigation before they start slandering people who could very well be innocent and getting them banned from a service that they may use legitimately.
You already have the CDs and (I assume) a CD player. Problem solved.
This is not always the case. I used to have a cd player and therefore own cd's. Unfortunately it broke leaving me with all these cd's and no way to listen to them.
If you machine is so old that it can't rip CDs, it most likely can't play MP3s very effectively.
What does the fact that you can or can't rip cd's have to do with the age or quality of your computer? What if you like to build your own computers and simply haven't gotten a cd-rom for it yet? That doesn't mean that you can't have an 800mhz Athlon, 256mb sdram, and plenty of hard drive space.
Once you have purchased the music, you have the right to make copies for your personal use.
You're absolutely right and it doesn't matter how you get these copies. It's your right to have them.
Go ahead and try to take legal action against Metallica. Unless you've got some seriously deep pockets and a great deal of time to waste, I wouldn't bother.
Unfortunately you're probably right about this. As a single person you are more than likely completely powerless against Metallica and their team of lawyers. However with a team of 300,000+ more people not to mention the many other organizations that would be more than happy to help out like the EFF or the Cyber Army, I'm sure you could raise enough money to be pretty formidable yourself.
It's not the fact that Metallica want to get paid for the music that's wrong. As a musician myself I totally respect that. Where Metallica went wrong was that they invaded the privacy of Napster users, and accused hundreds of thousands of people of being pirates without having any proof of it at all. Let's face it, they really don't have a right to call anyone a pirate until they launch an investigation and find out if any of these people actually has the right to have these mp3's. For all we know this stupid little bot that NetPD is so proud of could just find file names with the word Metallica in it and from there take down the name an IP of the user no questions asked. What does that prove? For all they know these could be mp3's of metallica interviews or concert bootlegs or Lars Ulrich farting into a megaphone. I can understand them wanting to get paid for their work but there are much more intelligent ways to go about this.
It's very interesting that you would get the names of 335,000 users who have your music available for trading online and you automatically assume that they are all pirates. How is it that you can jump to such an accusation having done absolutely no investigation and having no idea whether any of these 335,000 people do own the cd's and have the right to have an mp3 copy of the music? It's important to remember that all Napster users are under an agreement that obeying copyright laws is the responsiblity of the downloader. They commit no piracy by simply having your music available.
I was sleeping through one of my more boring school classes when one of my fellow students heard me saying "Down with Big Brother" in my sleep. Can you believe that? Luckily he had the insight and courage to report my actions anonymously to the Pinkerton Thought Police. I'm just glad they got me before it was too late.
I don't know if you've thought about it but my.mp3.com isn't giving anything away for free. Their idea is for users that own the albums to be able to listen to them anywhere they have computer access. You have to have the cd in your possesion in order to put it on your account. How many other ways is there to get this music if you have the cd already in your possession. I don't see anyone filing a law suit on sony for their recordable cassette tapes or for their stereos that will dub these tapes. As far as music goes it has always worked off the honor system. There is just too many ways to pirate it.
I think that they do realize this but as of now, our government is run by corporations, and whoever can buy the most votes, and when a large, important corporation like the MPAA starts throwing their weight around, our goverment is going to listen.
I don't want to start an OS war since I have no big problems with windows. As far as w2k being the best OS MS has ever had, I really have to disagree. I've never had personal experience with it but from what I've read it is their worst attempt at security yet. This article explains these problems a little more thorougly.