You can go to the police and report the evidence you have regarding an alleged crime. The police should then go and investigate the evidence and, in case enough evidence is found, justice should have it's cause and a judge should decide wether or not to punish the offender. That should be possible in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement, including the US and the UK (see below). Article 61 states:
Members shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale. Remedies available shall include imprisonment and/or monetary fines sufficient to provide a deterrent, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity. In appropriate cases, remedies available shall also include the seizure, forfeiture and destruction of the infringing goods and of any materials and implements the predominant use of which has been in the commission of the offence. Members may provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied in other cases of infringement of intellectual property rights, in particular where they are committed wilfully and on a commercial scale.
-+-
It seems that at least the UK and the US have implemented this in their laws, so I think one could go to the police over this in both the UK and the US:
But from 31st October, the new regime introduces a new threat for P2P fans: prison. "There's no suggestion that this is what the new law is intended to catch, and it's not something that the European Directive demands; but the wording could be interpreted this way," says Robertson.
The relevant provision states:
"A person who infringes copyright in a work by communicating the work to the public -
(a) in the course of a business, or
(b) otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright,
commits an offence if he knows or has reason to believe that, by doing so, he is infringing copyright in that work."
Robertson said: "It could be interpreted under these new Regulations that you are now committing a criminal offence when you use KaZaA or other P2P services. You may not be acting in the course of a business; but by making a music file available for download for any other users of your chosen P2P network, you are communicating the work - potentially at least - to millions, i.e. to an extent that the music industry could say is prejudicing its rights."
-:-
Judging on this, in the UK -- the base of first4internet -- one can also be sent to prison over copyright infringement.
"PPL applied for an order to commit Mr Tierney for contempt of court in respect of his failure to comply with the court order. It had reportedly made seven previous applications of this nature against Mr Tierney.
PPL succeeded in its application. Mr Tierney had been warned of the consequences of further breaches of the court order only six months previously. The court imposed a term of imprisonment of 35 days. In order that the sentence had the effect of ensuring future compliance, the court suspended the sentence for 40 months."
Note that, in general, signing a treaty does NOT, by itself, make anything illegal in the US. It DOES put pressure on the congress to pass laws to implement the treaty's terms but doesn't require it.
You're absolutely right. I should have written "Copyright infringement *should be* a criminal offence in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement".
However, as I pointed out in this post, the US actually *did* implement this legislation in the Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004, which seems to be in act right now:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113 > 2318 Trafficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords, copies of computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging, and copies of motion pictures or other audio visual works, and trafficking in counterfeit computer program documentation or packaging
Release date: 2005-08-03
(a) Whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in a counterfeit label affixed or designed to be affixed to a phonorecord, or a copy of a computer program or documentation or packaging for a computer program, or a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, and whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in counterfeit documentation or packaging for a computer program, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
Actually, that is not just the case in the UK. Copyright infringement is a criminal offence in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement, includeing the US, FR, DE and NL, for example.
Members shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale. Remedies available shall include imprisonment and/or monetary fines sufficient to provide a deterrent, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity. In appropriate cases, remedies available shall also include the seizure, forfeiture and destruction of the infringing goods and of any materials and implements the predominant use of which has been in the commission of the offence. Members may provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied in other cases of infringement of intellectual property rights, in particular where they are committed wilfully and on a commercial scale.
--
So, commercial copyright infringement, as is obviously the case here, is to be regarded a criminal offence in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement. And if it is a criminal offence, the government is responsible to take the offender to court and throw him in jail should he be found quilty!
All you gotta do is go to the police and hand over all evidence you can find regarding this alleged crime. Then the police should start investigating in order to bring these criminals to justice!
This is great! This is the key to enforcing the GPL globally without having to be the author or copyright owner of the code of which the copyright has been violated. That's the beauty of criminal offences. These are prosecuted by the government on behalf of the public.
Let's take a look at what I could find on this in the US law, since these disks have been sold in the US, haven't they?
What I found out is that -- for me -- over the ocean, they have the "Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004":
"Provides penalties and jail sentences for trafficking in "counterfeit labels, illicit labels or counterfeit documentation or packaging" of records, software, movies, etc. The original bill also provided penalties for filing false information with Internet registrars, but that portion wasn't picked up in the omnibus. Passed the House Sept. 21, 2004."
As far as I can see, this is the law text that applies and apparantly is in act:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113 > 2318 Trafficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords, copies of computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging, and copies of motion pictures or other audio visual works, and trafficking in counterfeit computer program documentation or packaging
Release date: 2005-08-03
(a) Whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in a counterfeit label affixed or designed to be affixed to a phonorecord, or a copy of a computer program or documentation or packaging for a computer program, or a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, and whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in counterfeit documentation or packaging for a computer program, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
--
"or a copy of a computer program"
Looks like those criminals copying GPLed software can be sent to jail!
"I'm sure you've been waiting for updates that prove what we're talking about. Here it comes. I want to talk about the file ECDPlayerControl.ocx which the fanstastic muzzy found yesterday while I had nothing better to do than to listen to my pillow. It uses LAME code (and code from at least one other LGPL library)."
For starters, you have to indicate you are using a LGPLed library and you have to give the sources to the library or make these available by some other means.
Beside that, you have to make sure anyone can re-link the software with a newer version of the LGPLed library. In the case of dlls, this is no problem. In the case of static linking, which is the case here, you have to provide object code of your program, so anyone can re-link the program with a newer version of the LGPLed library.
"For example, if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."
The point is that DRM punishes the people who *are* paying for their CDs. And of course it's true that virtuall any mp3 on the web originated from some CD, I don't think a considerable percentage of CD buying consumers actually rips the CDs and puts them on the web, even though I must admit that is more a guess then something I have any numbers for.
And if I read Janis' articles, I get the feeling that it is not in the artists interests to ban downloading, because with every download there is a benefit for the artist: exposure -- his song is played, and if the listener likes it, he just might get interested in buying a CD or coming to a concert.
Janis also posted a follow up article, where she mentions some numbers:
"Winner of the Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is award: Me. We began putting up free downloads around a week after the article came out. We will attempt to put up one free download a week for as long as we can - and leave them all up. Change in merchandise sales after article posting (previous sales averaged over one year): Up 25% Change in merchandise sales after beginning free downloads: Up 300%"
After Janis put some of her music for free on the net, she saw a 300% increase in sales. Real money for a real artist *because* of downloading.
Another interesting quote from that article, which is actually a quote from Steven Levy:
"So why are the record labels taking such a hard line? My guess is that it's all about protecting their internet-challenged business model. Their profit comes from blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels and artists would thrive - to the detriment of the labels... The smoking gun comes from testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel that a dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is 'inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation'." ("Labels to Net Radio: Die Now", Steven Levy in Newsweek, July 15, 2002.)
The bottomline is that downloading seems to quite bad for the industry, but not for the artists and certainly not for the more "underdog" artists, because these actually make their money by performing and not by their CDs, which is more like a tip then actually providing income. Janis puts it this way:
"in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've *never once* received a royalty check that didn't show I owed *them* money."
"Go and check it yourself, and compare to lame sources. The data from tables.c is included in the executable in identical form (several large tables), also all the version strings are included, which the DRM system doesn't check.
The data is there, the big question is if it was linked accidently, or if it actually uses LAME code as well."
He's talking about the *data* of several large tables being in there.
Further more, the theory that the DRM software would be using these strings in order to look for "incompatible" programs does not look very plausable, because the DRM kit seems to look for program names rather than scanning the executables, judging from the strings posted here:
"I am currently writing an MP3 player with lots of bells and whistles including a wave editor, fades, reverbs etc. What I now need is to be able to protect the files it creates. I have already written the routine to convert the MP3 into a WMA file. Does someone have some simple C++ code which can write Microsofts DRM v1 properties that the user whishes to set(i.e. 3plays 4 copies etc) over the unprotected file to make it protected. There may be some cash on offer here if its easy to use! All I need is a procedure that performs this"
Taking things togeter, to me it looks unlikely that they are looking for a specific version of LAME by scanning trough executables, while for other mp3 playing software they simply look for the name of the executable.
I think it is very well possible they use of have used LAME in their mp3 player. Then the strings and tables either indicate that Lame is indeed being used by the bundled player to play mp3s, or they mistakenly linked the Lame library because they did use it in other parts of their software and somehow did not realise they were linking the Lame lib.
They seem to have based themselves on an article
(Dutch) by the well known Dutch internet journalist Herbert
Blankesteijn, which contains the following line:
"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be
introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."
The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the
Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately.
However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam
after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal
software:
"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and
time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony
BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns
out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony
MBG's privacy
policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing
lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this
link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will
make this way of handling illegal in many countries."
"A computerexpert, whose name is known by the redaction, discovered that the cd "Get Right With The Man" by "Van Zant" contains strings from the library version.c of Lame. This can be conluded from the string: "http://www.mp3dev.org/", "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 ".
But the expert has more proof. For example, the executable program go.exe contains a so called array largetbl. This is a part used in the module tables.c of libmp3lame."
"DRM punishes honest people!"... "Without DRM, people will steal and artists won't get paid!"... Usage of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been hotly debated since a college student threatened to put an entire industry out of business with a little application he built in his spare time, Napster. In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft's campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn't work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft.
Using Sony and Apple as examples of companies that are using DRM to *punish* consumers, he suggests Microsoft use the opportunity to once again champion users' rights. To follow our current path, Cory argues, is to stifle innovation and contradict the purpose of American copyright law: to promote the useful arts and sciences."
I always find it very remarkable that the content industry treats the people who pay for their products -- in other industries also known as customers -- as criminals. People don't buy cd's because they want to screw the people who made them and make a zillion copies. Those people buy the damn things because they do *not* want to wast their time on copying!
And I also don't think the way customers are treated is in the interest of the artists, in whose name this whole mess is being created. Take a look at an excellent article by Janis Ian, a respectable musician:
"They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".
Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet...and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing."
For what it's worth: this is a women who made more then 25 albums and wrote some very well known songs for other artists. One of her most known songs is "At seventeen", which can be downloaded for free, just like some other songs of her:
Maybe the word of a well-established artist can show you that there really is no problem with downloading and private copying, because that gives free exposure to an artist. The real problem is that most of the money goes into the pockets of the greedy industry, instead of to the artists that make the music in the first place:
"in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've *never once* received a royalty check that didn't show I owed *them* money."
More then 25 albums and still owing *them* money...
"I am not saying copyrights are meaningless. I am objecting to the RIAA spin that they are doing this to protect "the artists", and make us more money. I am annoyed that so many records I once owned are out of print, and the only place I could find them was Napster. Most of all, I'd like to see an end to the hysteria that causes a group like RIAA to spend over 45 million dollars in 2001 lobbying "on our behalf", when every record company out there is complaining that they have no money."
And, not unimportant
"Additionally, we've started putting our money where my mouth is. We will be offering one song a week in mp3 format for free downloading..."
It's just one line in a article
(Dutch) by the well known Dutch internet journalist Herbert
Blankesteijn, but a very disturbing one:
"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be
introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."
The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the
Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately.
However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam
after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal
software:
"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and
time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony
BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns
out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony
MBG's privacy
policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing
lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this
link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will
make this way of handling illegal in many countries."
Another interesting Dutch headline involves the discovery that the
rootkit contains parts of LAME, a
LGPLed mp3 encoder. A translation can be found here.
After re-reading the Reg article, this is the most relevant part:
"But from what the court said when delivering its verdict, the implications of the ruling seem rather wider. The court feels that you can only exercise your rights of authorship once, which presumably means that you can place restrictions on the initial sale, but not on secondary sales. If that's the case it possibly means it's legal for OEMs to sell on copies of Windows they've already paid for (or even to sell licences, without shrinkwrap), and it's certainly legal for you to sell your copy of Windows after you've finished playing with it. In Germany."
As far as I remember, there has been a German court ruling some time ago in a case between Microsoft and a German secondhand software shop about this. However, all I can find that comes close, is this article, which handles about selling OEM licenses separately:
"A German appeal court has ruled that Microsoft can't stop dealers selling software it intends should ship only with new PCs separately."
So, in Germany, it's allowed to re-sell OEM licenses and basically de-couple them from a computer. More about this here (German). A press release from the court (German) about the case can be found here
There also is a German online shop, 2ndsoft, that offers used windows licenses.
"You're smart people. I'm sure you can extrapolate. Microsoft lost its patent argument with this judge, because he wasn't clear that their patents covered the technology it has been ordered to share, as you can see in paragraphs 178 and 179, which raises the question, what might happen if a judge was convinced that the technology was covered by a patent? And, um, if Europe has no software patents currently, how is Microsoft applying for and being granted European software patents?
To all those still thinking that "introducing" software patents in Europe will do no harm, this is your wake-up call. You will be handing a convicted monopolist the tools to become an even greater and more powerful monopoly, and this case shows they absolutely will try to use patents to maintain that monopoly status. Patents are, after all, a monopoly grant. How desirable does that sound?"
Brussels, 2 February 2005 - The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for a renewed referral of the software patents directive. With only two or three votes against and one abstention, the resolution had overwhelming support from the committee, and all-party backing.
The decision is a powerful statement from MEPs that the current Council text, and the logjam of concern it has caused, is simply not a sustainable way forward. It is now up to the Commission to submit a new, or the same, proposal to the Parliament. Parliament will then hold a new first reading, this time under the guidance of Michel Rocard MEP as rapporteur.
The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Charlie McCreevy, had in the morning assured the JURI Committee that the Council would finally adopt its beleaguered Common Position text. He announced that "the Luxembourg Presidency has now received written assurances concerning the re-instatement of this issue as an A point at a forthcoming Council". Given that A points are to be adopted without discussion, this left no possibilities for renewed negotiations in the Council. Apparently, the Members of Parliament concluded that a restart was the best solution.
Former french prime minister Michel Rocard MEP, PES (FR/PS), gave a very strong speech at the meeting with the Commissioner. Apart from noting several "inelegancies" by the Commission, such as not taking into account any of the Parliament's substantive amendments in its recommendation to the Council, he also took issue with the Dutch and German governments ignoring their respective parliaments and the attempted ratifications of the political (dis)agreement at several fishery Council meetings. He furthermore mentioned that at a meeting with the Polish government, the industry players had confirmed that the Council text allowed pure software patents, and he wondered how the Commission could continue claiming the reverse. He was also curious about how the Commission's perfectly tautological definition of the concept "technical" could help in any way to distinguish between what is patentable and what is not.
Despite his own abstention when voting on the restart later that day, the fact that almost everyone else supported it is probably his personal achievement.
The Commissioner made clear that "any agreement will need to strike a fair balance between different interests", and that "a constructive dialogue between the Council and Parliament will be vital for an agreement". He does have the option to deny a new first reading. But given the strength of feeling in the Parliament and the concerns of so many member states in the Council, the Parliament request looks like the best way to achieve a clean way forward for this Directive that everyone has been looking for. Comments
Jonas Maebe, board member of FFII:
The Commissioner can jumpstart the constructive dialogue by submitting a new and more balanced proposal to the European Parliament this time. By taking into account the countless new facts that have surfaced since the start of this procedure in 2002, the Commission has a great opportunity to reinvigorate the Lisbon strategy.
Dieter Van Uytvanck, president FFII Belgium:
We owe this victory for democracy to the members of the European parliament. Today they have shown once again that they really care about the concerns of the European citizens. And of course we would like to thank those as well. I'm sure that without their impressive support for an innovative climate that is freed of software patents, this step would not have been possible.
André Rebentisch, FFII Media
The Commissioner was not prepared to take blame for Bolkestein's policy. Charlie McCreevy is a very straightforward Irish politician. But unfortunately he adopted a pathetic phrase style. Today at JURI he 'read poems' while JURI members
Because as an *author* of software I have certain rights. Copyright gives me certain privileges that I as an author of *my* work can expect to enjoy, like any other author.
These privileges are taken away by software patents. Actually, some people go that far as to say software patents are
illegal, because they breach international treaties:
Article 10 WIPO, "Contracting Parties may, in their national legislation, provide for limitations of or exceptions to the rights granted to authors of literary and artistic works under this Treaty in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
Software patents *do* "conflict with a normal exploitation" of your work as an author of a program, so Beauprez certainly has a point.
Well, it's not exactly "legalized". It's "gedoogd", which means that it's actually illegal but they won't do anything about it.
In practice, it's about the same for the end-user, but you've got the strange situation that on one hand you *can* buy weed at a coffeeshop, because that's "allowed". On the other hand, the coffeeshop has nowhere to buy its weed, because *that* is illegal.
A visit to your local MP followed by the offering of a petition signed by over 340.000 people at the right moment at the right place works even better;)
"Does it mean that at any moment some heavy lobbying can change any vote?"
It means that something went really wrong. In our case, the Minister said to the Dutch Parliament that there was agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which was absolutely not the case.
In our communications with politicians, it became clear that they had no idea what was going on. Because of the clear case of misinformation, we were able to get the attention of the Parliament, so we could inform them of the situation.
What was really important was that we had the European Parliament on our hand.
What hopefully happens now is that the Dutch decision triggers the attention in the other European Countries, so they start talking to their people in the European Parliament and to local representatives of the FFII and other organisations.
In case you're interested: read all about our efforts at: osnews.com
Slashdot Mirror
"Agreed but what can we do about it."
You can go to the police and report the evidence you have regarding an alleged crime. The police should then go and investigate the evidence and, in case enough evidence is found, justice should have it's cause and a judge should decide wether or not to punish the offender. That should be possible in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement, including the US and the UK (see below). Article 61 states:
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm4 _e.htm
-+-
SECTION 5: CRIMINAL PROCEDURES
Article 61
Members shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale. Remedies available shall include imprisonment and/or monetary fines sufficient to provide a deterrent, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity. In appropriate cases, remedies available shall also include the seizure, forfeiture and destruction of the infringing goods and of any materials and implements the predominant use of which has been in the commission of the offence. Members may provide for criminal
procedures and penalties to be applied in other cases of infringement of intellectual property rights, in particular where they are committed wilfully and on a commercial scale.
-+-
It seems that at least the UK and the US have implemented this in their laws, so I think one could go to the police over this in both the UK and the US:
====
UK
====
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/07/prison_for _using_kazaa_surely/
-:-
But from 31st October, the new regime introduces a new threat for P2P fans: prison. "There's no suggestion that this is what the new law is intended to catch, and it's not something that the European Directive demands; but the wording could be interpreted this way," says Robertson.
The relevant provision states:
"A person who infringes copyright in a work by communicating the work to the public -
(a) in the course of a business, or
(b) otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright,
commits an offence if he knows or has reason to believe that, by doing so, he is infringing copyright in that work."
Robertson said: "It could be interpreted under these new Regulations that you are now committing a criminal offence when you use KaZaA or other P2P services. You may not be acting in the course of a business; but by making a music file available for download for any other users of your chosen P2P network, you are communicating the work - potentially at least - to millions, i.e. to an extent that the music industry could say is prejudicing its rights."
-:-
Judging on this, in the UK -- the base of first4internet -- one can also be sent to prison over copyright infringement.
Some more or less relevant case law:
http://www.legalday.co.uk/lexnex/simkins03/simkins q403/simkins141003.htm
"PPL applied for an order to commit Mr Tierney for contempt of court in respect of his failure to comply with the court order. It had reportedly made seven previous applications of this nature against Mr Tierney.
PPL succeeded in its application. Mr Tierney had been warned of the consequences of further breaches of the court order only six months previously. The court imposed a term of imprisonment of 35 days. In order that the sentence had the effect of ensuring future compliance, the court suspended the sentence for 40 months."
====
US
====
You're absolutely right. I should have written "Copyright infringement *should be* a criminal offence in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement".
However, as I pointed out in this post, the US actually *did* implement this legislation in the Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004, which seems to be in act right now:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113 > 2318 Trafficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords, copies of computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging, and copies of motion pictures or other audio visual works, and trafficking in counterfeit computer program documentation or packaging
Release date: 2005-08-03
(a) Whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in a counterfeit label affixed or designed to be affixed to a phonorecord, or a copy of a computer program or documentation or packaging for a computer program, or a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, and whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in counterfeit documentation or packaging for a computer program, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
Well, I think it's a matter of four simple steps, basically:
:-D
1) put up a website
2) have n people go to the police in their country, file a report, scan it and publish it on said website.
3) story on slashdot
4) enjoy the ride
Any volunteers for setting up a website?
See my earlier post
Did you know copyright infringement is a crime?
4 _e.htm
s c_sec_18_00002318----000-.html
Well, it is.
Or at least, it should be in all countries that singed the TRIPs agreement. It says so in article 61:
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm
--
SECTION 5: CRIMINAL PROCEDURES
Article 61
Members shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale. Remedies available shall include imprisonment and/or monetary fines sufficient to provide a deterrent, consistently with the level of penalties applied for crimes of a corresponding gravity. In appropriate cases, remedies available shall also include the seizure, forfeiture and destruction of the infringing goods and of any materials and implements the predominant use of which has been in the commission of the offence. Members may provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied in other cases of infringement of
intellectual property rights, in particular where they are committed wilfully and on a commercial scale.
--
So, commercial copyright infringement, as is obviously the case here, is to be regarded a criminal offence in all countries that signed the TRIPs agreement. And if it is a criminal offence, the government is responsible to take the offender to court and throw him in jail should he be found quilty!
All you gotta do is go to the police and hand over all evidence you can find regarding this alleged crime. Then the police should start investigating in order to bring these criminals to justice!
This is great! This is the key to enforcing the GPL globally without having to be the author or copyright owner of the code of which the copyright has been violated. That's the beauty of criminal offences. These are prosecuted by the government on behalf of the public.
Let's take a look at what I could find on this in the US law, since these disks have been sold in the US, haven't they?
What I found out is that -- for me -- over the ocean, they have the "Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004":
http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr2391
"Provides penalties and jail sentences for trafficking in "counterfeit labels, illicit labels or counterfeit documentation or packaging" of records, software, movies, etc. The original bill also provided penalties for filing false information with Internet registrars, but that portion wasn't picked up in the omnibus. Passed the House Sept. 21, 2004."
As far as I can see, this is the law text that applies and apparantly is in act:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/u
--
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113 > 2318 Trafficking in counterfeit labels for phonorecords, copies of computer programs or computer program documentation or packaging, and copies of motion pictures or other audio visual works, and trafficking in counterfeit computer program documentation or packaging
Release date: 2005-08-03
(a) Whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in a counterfeit label affixed or designed to be affixed to a phonorecord, or a copy of a computer program or documentation or packaging for a computer program, or a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, and whoever, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (c) of this section, knowingly traffics in counterfeit documentation or packaging for a computer program, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
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"or a copy of a computer program"
Looks like those criminals copying GPLed software can be sent to jail!
"I'm sure you've been waiting for updates that prove what we're talking about. Here it comes. I want to talk about the file ECDPlayerControl.ocx which the fanstastic muzzy found yesterday while I had nothing better to do than to listen to my pillow. It uses LAME code (and code from at least one other LGPL library)."
The kit contains a player, which apparantly supports mp3 playback. And since LAME can also de-code mp3, I assume they've used LAME for that task...
That is correct, but there are some conditions.
For starters, you have to indicate you are using a LGPLed library and you have to give the sources to the library or make these available by some other means.
Beside that, you have to make sure anyone can re-link the software with a newer version of the LGPLed library. In the case of dlls, this is no problem. In the case of static linking, which is the case here, you have to provide object code of your program, so anyone can re-link the program with a newer version of the LGPLed library.
Alse see:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
"For example, if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."
The point is that DRM punishes the people who *are* paying for their CDs. And of course it's true that virtuall any mp3 on the web originated from some CD, I don't think a considerable percentage of CD buying consumers actually rips the CDs and puts them on the web, even though I must admit that is more a guess then something I have any numbers for.
And if I read Janis' articles, I get the feeling that it is not in the artists interests to ban downloading, because with every download there is a benefit for the artist: exposure -- his song is played, and if the listener likes it, he just might get interested in buying a CD or coming to a concert.
Janis also posted a follow up article, where she mentions some numbers:
http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html
"Winner of the Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is award: Me. We began putting up free downloads around a week after the article came out. We will attempt to put up one free download a week for as long as we can - and leave them all up.
Change in merchandise sales after article posting (previous sales averaged over one year): Up 25%
Change in merchandise sales after beginning free downloads: Up 300%"
After Janis put some of her music for free on the net, she saw a 300% increase in sales. Real money for a real artist *because* of downloading.
Another interesting quote from that article, which is actually a quote from Steven Levy:
"So why are the record labels taking such a hard line? My guess is that it's all about protecting their internet-challenged business model. Their profit comes from blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels and artists would thrive - to the detriment of the labels... The smoking gun comes from testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel that a dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is 'inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation'." ("Labels to Net Radio: Die Now", Steven Levy in Newsweek, July 15, 2002.)
The bottomline is that downloading seems to quite bad for the industry, but not for the artists and certainly not for the more "underdog" artists, because these actually make their money by performing and not by their CDs, which is more like a tip then actually providing income. Janis puts it this way:
"in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've *never once* received a royalty check that didn't show I owed *them* money."
If that were true, it is strange that strings like "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 " -- indicating a specific version -- are in there.
9 69409
i ndowsmedia.drm/browse_frm/thread/8270cbc85f8e9cb8/ 7cb5c4ad49fa206e?lnk=st&q=FIRST4INTERNET&rnum=44&h l=en#7cb5c4ad49fa206e"
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I mean, why would they look for a *specific* version of LAME if they want to rule out mp3 encoding software running on the machine?
Also check this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167537&cid=13
"Go and check it yourself, and compare to lame sources. The data from tables.c is included in the executable in identical form (several large tables), also all the version strings are included, which the DRM system doesn't check.
The data is there, the big question is if it was linked accidently, or if it actually uses LAME code as well."
He's talking about the *data* of several large tables being in there.
Further more, the theory that the DRM software would be using these strings in order to look for "incompatible" programs does not look very plausable, because the DRM kit seems to look for program names rather than scanning the executables, judging from the strings posted here:
http://hack.fi/~muzzy/sony-drm-magic-list.txt
Besides, that does not explains the date from the tables being in there.
Further, we have a post by a F4I employee on usenet talking about an mp3 player he wrote:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.w
"I am currently writing an MP3 player with lots of bells and whistles including a wave editor, fades, reverbs etc.
What I now need is to be able to protect the files it creates. I have already written the routine to convert the MP3 into a WMA file.
Does someone have some simple C++ code which can write Microsofts DRM v1 properties that the user whishes to set(i.e. 3plays 4 copies etc) over the unprotected file to make it protected. There may be some cash on offer here if its easy to use! All I need is a procedure that performs this"
And, another thing is that LAME also seems to be cabable of decoding: http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_lame.htm
Taking things togeter, to me it looks unlikely that they are looking for a specific version of LAME by scanning trough executables, while for other mp3 playing software they simply look for the name of the executable.
I think it is very well possible they use of have used LAME in their mp3 player. Then the strings and tables either indicate that Lame is indeed being used by the bundled player to play mp3s, or they mistakenly linked the Lame library because they did use it in other parts of their software and somehow did not realise they were linking the Lame lib.
"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."
The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately. However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal software:
"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony MBG's privacy policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will make this way of handling illegal in many countries."
English translation att icle&sid=215
http://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=ar
"A computerexpert, whose name is known by the redaction, discovered that the cd "Get Right With The Man" by "Van Zant" contains strings from the library version.c of Lame. This can be conluded from the string: "http://www.mp3dev.org/", "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 ".
But the expert has more proof. For example, the executable program go.exe contains a so called array largetbl. This is a part used in the module tables.c of libmp3lame."
An interesting read at: http://www.changethis.com/4.drm :
... "Without DRM, people will steal and artists won't get paid!" ... Usage of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been hotly debated since a college student threatened to put an entire industry out of business with a little application he built in his spare time, Napster. In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft's campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn't work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft.
h tml
n isian_atseventeen.zip
"DRM punishes honest people!"
Using Sony and Apple as examples of companies that are using DRM to *punish* consumers, he suggests Microsoft use the opportunity to once again champion users' rights. To follow our current path, Cory argues, is to stifle innovation and contradict the purpose of American copyright law: to promote the useful arts and sciences."
I always find it very remarkable that the content industry treats the people who pay for their products -- in other industries also known as customers -- as criminals. People don't buy cd's because they want to screw the people who made them and make a zillion copies. Those people buy the damn things because they do *not* want to wast their time on copying!
And I also don't think the way customers are treated is in the interest of the artists, in whose name this whole mess is being created. Take a look at an excellent article by Janis Ian, a respectable musician:
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.
"They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money".
Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet...and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing."
For what it's worth: this is a women who made more then 25 albums and wrote some very well known songs for other artists. One of her most known songs is "At seventeen", which can be downloaded for free, just like some other songs of her:
http://www.individualidade.com.br/janisian/mp3/ja
http://www.janisian.com/mp3_downloads.html
Maybe the word of a well-established artist can show you that there really is no problem with downloading and private copying, because that gives free exposure to an artist. The real problem is that most of the money goes into the pockets of the greedy industry, instead of to the artists that make the music in the first place:
h tml
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.
"in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've *never once* received a royalty check that didn't show I owed *them* money."
More then 25 albums and still owing *them* money...
"I am not saying copyrights are meaningless. I am objecting to the RIAA spin that they are doing this to protect "the artists", and make us more money. I am annoyed that so many records I once owned are out of print, and the only place I could find them was Napster. Most of all, I'd like to see an end to the hysteria that causes a group like RIAA to spend over 45 million dollars in 2001 lobbying "on our behalf", when every record company out there is complaining that they have no money."
And, not unimportant
"Additionally, we've started putting our money where my mouth is. We will be offering one song a week in mp3 format for free downloading..."
http://www.janisian.com/mp3_downloads.html
"Nonetheless, the spokesmen of Sony BMG Nederland says that Xcp will be introduced in Europe, and therefore also in the Netherlands, in 2006."
The article further contains no less then 17 dubious features of the Sony software, basically the same ones as circulated the news lately. However, number 15 is interesting. Blankesteijn claims he received spam after entering his e-mail adres in the request form for the Xcp removal software:
"15. Not only is this [filling in a form] in-necessary complicated and time consuming, Beet (the magazine) immediately received spam from Sony BMG containing an advertisement for their multimedia software. It turns out somewhere along the road you could have clicked on a link to Sony MBG's privacy policy. There it says your mail address can be added to marketing lists. But is very well possible that the user will not notice this link. In any way, nowhere is asked for permission to do this, which will make this way of handling illegal in many countries."
Another interesting Dutch headline involves the discovery that the rootkit contains parts of LAME, a LGPLed mp3 encoder. A translation can be found here.
Worse:
"Open source is great for debugging, but it's crucial not to touch [the code]," said Agassi.
If it's "crucial" not to touch the code, what kind of a hous-of-cards are we dealing with here?
After re-reading the Reg article, this is the most relevant part:
"But from what the court said when delivering its verdict, the implications of the ruling seem rather wider. The court feels that you can only exercise your rights of authorship once, which presumably means that you can place restrictions on the initial sale, but not on secondary sales. If that's the case it possibly means it's legal for OEMs to sell on copies of Windows they've already paid for (or even to sell licences, without shrinkwrap), and it's certainly legal for you to sell your copy of Windows after you've finished playing with it. In Germany."
"A German appeal court has ruled that Microsoft can't stop dealers selling software it intends should ship only with new PCs separately."
So, in Germany, it's allowed to re-sell OEM licenses and basically de-couple them from a computer. More about this here (German). A press release from the court (German) about the case can be found here
There also is a German online shop, 2ndsoft, that offers used windows licenses.
According to the ffii newspage http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn, there is a European equivalent to this patent: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP04 74717+&F=8, which has been expired.
7 4717+&F=8&QPN=EP0474717), it also says opposition has been filed by Philips and that it has been expired because the patent owner failed to pay it's yearly fees.
In the legal status document (http://v3.espacenet.com/legal?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP04
This is is just as frightning:
2 05501273 :
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041222
"You're smart people. I'm sure you can extrapolate. Microsoft lost its patent argument with this judge, because he wasn't clear that their patents covered the technology it has been ordered to share, as you can see in paragraphs 178 and 179, which raises the question, what might happen if a judge was convinced that the technology was covered by a patent? And, um, if Europe has no software patents currently, how is Microsoft applying for and being granted European software patents?
To all those still thinking that "introducing" software patents in Europe will do no harm, this is your wake-up call. You will be handing a convicted monopolist the tools to become an even greater and more powerful monopoly, and this case shows they absolutely will try to use patents to maintain that monopoly status. Patents are, after all, a monopoly grant. How desirable does that sound?"
http://kwiki.ffii.org/Restart050202En
Brussels, 2 February 2005 - The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for a renewed referral of the software patents directive. With only two or three votes against and one abstention, the resolution had overwhelming support from the committee, and all-party backing.
The decision is a powerful statement from MEPs that the current Council text, and the logjam of concern it has caused, is simply not a sustainable way forward. It is now up to the Commission to submit a new, or the same, proposal to the Parliament. Parliament will then hold a new first reading, this time under the guidance of Michel Rocard MEP as rapporteur.
The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Charlie McCreevy, had in the morning assured the JURI Committee that the Council would finally adopt its beleaguered Common Position text. He announced that "the Luxembourg Presidency has now received written assurances concerning the re-instatement of this issue as an A point at a forthcoming Council". Given that A points are to be adopted without discussion, this left no possibilities for renewed negotiations in the Council. Apparently, the Members of Parliament concluded that a restart was the best solution.
Former french prime minister Michel Rocard MEP, PES (FR/PS), gave a very strong speech at the meeting with the Commissioner. Apart from noting several "inelegancies" by the Commission, such as not taking into account any of the Parliament's substantive amendments in its recommendation to the Council, he also took issue with the Dutch and German governments ignoring their respective parliaments and the attempted ratifications of the political (dis)agreement at several fishery Council meetings. He furthermore mentioned that at a meeting with the Polish government, the industry players had confirmed that the Council text allowed pure software patents, and he wondered how the Commission could continue claiming the reverse. He was also curious about how the Commission's perfectly tautological definition of the concept "technical" could help in any way to distinguish between what is patentable and what is not.
Despite his own abstention when voting on the restart later that day, the fact that almost everyone else supported it is probably his personal achievement.
The Commissioner made clear that "any agreement will need to strike a fair balance between different interests", and that "a constructive dialogue between the Council and Parliament will be vital for an agreement". He does have the option to deny a new first reading. But given the strength of feeling in the Parliament and the concerns of so many member states in the Council, the Parliament request looks like the best way to achieve a clean way forward for this Directive that everyone has been looking for.
Comments
Jonas Maebe, board member of FFII:
The Commissioner can jumpstart the constructive dialogue by submitting
a new and more balanced proposal to the European Parliament this time. By
taking into account the countless new facts that have surfaced since the
start of this procedure in 2002, the Commission has a great opportunity to
reinvigorate the Lisbon strategy.
Dieter Van Uytvanck, president FFII Belgium:
We owe this victory for democracy to the members of the European
parliament. Today they have shown once again that they really care
about the concerns of the European citizens. And of course we would
like to thank those as well. I'm sure that without their impressive
support for an innovative climate that is freed of software patents,
this step would not have been possible.
André Rebentisch, FFII Media
The Commissioner was not prepared to take blame for Bolkestein's policy.
Charlie McCreevy is a very straightforward Irish politician.
But unfortunately he adopted a pathetic phrase style. Today at JURI
he 'read poems' while JURI members
These privileges are taken away by software patents. Actually, some people go that far as to say software patents are illegal, because they breach international treaties:
Article 10 WIPO, "Contracting Parties may, in their national legislation, provide for limitations of or exceptions to the rights granted to authors of literary and artistic works under this Treaty in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
Software patents *do* "conflict with a normal exploitation" of your work as an author of a program, so Beauprez certainly has a point.
Well, it's not exactly "legalized". It's "gedoogd", which means that it's actually illegal but they won't do anything about it.
In practice, it's about the same for the end-user, but you've got the strange situation that on one hand you *can* buy weed at a coffeeshop, because that's "allowed". On the other hand, the coffeeshop has nowhere to buy its weed, because *that* is illegal.
But it works, sort of.
A visit to your local MP followed by the offering of a petition signed by over 340.000 people at the right moment at the right place works even better ;)
It means that something went really wrong. In our case, the Minister said to the Dutch Parliament that there was agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which was absolutely not the case.
In our communications with politicians, it became clear that they had no idea what was going on. Because of the clear case of misinformation, we were able to get the attention of the Parliament, so we could inform them of the situation.
What was really important was that we had the European Parliament on our hand.
What hopefully happens now is that the Dutch decision triggers the attention in the other European Countries, so they start talking to their people in the European Parliament and to local representatives of the FFII and other organisations.
In case you're interested: read all about our efforts at: osnews.com