Technically, "just having them stored on your computer" is a crime, but the only penalty is you can get sued for damages (which are not likely to be enough for anybody to bother you about unless you accidentally make the contents of your computer visible by running Napster).
What makes you think that people will pay 50 cents for an MP3 file when they can get it free on Napster? You are being naive.
I just checked out the top 10 artists on mp3.com and all but one of them is also being traded on Napster:
303infinity The Cynic Project Bassic Raveing Lunatics
are all being traded on Napster.
[Note that several of these acts had multiple songs in the top ten -- the above list represents 8 of the top ten songs at the time I looked.]
At least some of these are free downloads on mp3.com, BUT mp3.com does pay royalties on the free downloads (from the advertising). True, the royalties are chump change, but here is an example of the Napster community ripping off artists who are providing MP3s on the net at way below 50 cents a copy (free is about as far below 50 cents as you can get).
What kind of twisted morality do you think they will they come up with to justify that?
Check out how many of those MP3s are being traded freely on Napster. I got many screenfuls of hits.
This a band that is not on a label and probably isn't making spit and they are getting ripped off. You people are just plain leaches. Admit it.
Here's a list of more bands that I know are working for chump change that are being ripped off on Napster:
The Love Dogs Chucklehead Babaloo Allstonians
That's four out of the eight Boston area bands I checked on. None of these groups have major label contracts (two are on indie labels and two appear to be self released).
I don't own any of their stuff; so, I can say that Apogee sucks bullets and they can't do a thing about it. UCITA or no UCITA. The reason they suck bullets is because they have lawyers who write rediculous shrinkwrap licenses. DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.
This comment was composed under the jurisdiction of the state of Massachusetts where they have SLAPP laws.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Your little yuppie nose rings are so tied onto the leash of the major label marketing campaigns that you don't realize there are already about half a million artists out there doing exactly what you suggest. You don't even realize that you want those Metallica MP3s because the RIAA is paying to make you want them. They pay the radio stations and they buy adds in the news media. The biggest cost of producing an album that sells at those levels is the marketing. If you don't spend money (and a lot of it) on marketing nobody will even listen.
You bitch about expensive CD prices. My partner and I tried putting out a CD that listed at $10 and actually sells for around $7. Nobody bought it. Amazon.com and Riffage.com took two CDs each on consignment over a year ago and nobody has bought them. Brick and mortar stores (mostly) wouldn't carry it because they could "make more money per square inch of display space" on a full priced unit (this is from one of the same retailers who is always railing in public about the the high cost of CDs being such a travesty, incidentally).
OK, so CD retailers are really all a bunch of fascist pigs. MP3 is going to be the savior which lets unsigned artists bypass the machine and make an independent living. We created a web site, put some of our tunes on it in MP3 format. We uploaded MP3s to all of the MP3 sites (the list is too big to list here). Nothing happened. Eventually the rhythm section quit because nobody was coming to gigs and the band folded. Basically, we couldn't get anybody to even listen to find out if they liked us... At least that's what I thought... Well, I never took down the web site and eventually moved it to another ISP that gave us stats: It turns out that people have been downloading our MP3s at the rate of several hundred per month. No one has even sent an e-mail thanking us for putting out the material and it did NOTHING in terms of getting people to gigs.
Now, some more reality about the music industry: Club gigs pay $30 to $50 per person, per night. And playing the gig is only about 20% of the work. Concert gigs don't even pay opening acts that much. Performance fees for headliners on tour don't cover the costs of traveling to the gigs unless you are a band in Metallica's class (or you are a solo performer). The only gigs that actually make money are private parties and weddings. Why is that? The same sucker who will pay $60 to see Metallica in a venue so big that it's impossible to hear or see the act will bitch like a stuck pig if asked to pay a $5 cover to see a better band up close and personal in a small club where you can actually hear what they are playing and even talk to the performers in person between sets!
So,... You want to prove that the RIAA knows exactly what they are doing -- Keep right on prattling about not being able to freely download Metallica MP3s and keep right on being the good little consumers they want you do be. If you really want to do something about it, say FU to the RIAA [and say FU to Napster, because Napster is just another leach...]. You don't need any pile of cash: Just go out and check out some of the half million bands that are out on the net, pick a few favorites and tell your friends about them. Here are some places to look:
http://www.iuma.com/ http://www.ubl.com/ http://www.francemp3.com/ http://www.riffage.com/ http://www.vinyltrade.com/ (no mp3s here, but he supports indie artists) http://www.mp3.com/
The following are mostly major label territory, but they let independent musicians play, too.
Want another way to help. Figure out some automated way to hook up people with music they will like, but haven't heard, yet. There is an audience out there for just about anything you might call music, but connecting the audience with what they want to hear is not easy.
Circuit city sells CDs at a loss or a most break even to sucker you into the store to buy other stuff that they make money on (the term is "loss leader"). They don't stock anything but major label current hit artists and they don't do anything to promote new artists.
What kind of media do you think it worse than MP3? CDs are way better and cassettes are usually a little bit better. [At least if you are talking about 128K MP3 -- 256K MP3 is better than cassette.] It does depend on the file, too, but MP3 just goes nuts on some material (Hammond organs have behaved really screwy some times).
The bulk of the money spent has never been spent on production or manufacturing. Most of it is spent on promotion. A really decent album can be made for $10,000 these days, but you won't sell at Metallica's level unless you spend millions of dollars and years of hard work promoting it. If Metallica and their label hadn't spent the last ten years working and touring to promote the group, nobody would be downloading Metallica MP3 files. You believe the system is corrupt, but you let them lead you around by the nose! If you want thumb your nose at the RIAA go to http://www.iuma.com/, http://www.ubl.com/, http://www.francemp3.com/, or even http://www.mp3.com/. Between them, you can find half a million artists who WANT you to download thier MP3s. From the samplings I have made, I would say that at least 10% of those artists are also better musicians than Metallica. To some degree or another, those sites are trying to promote small unsigned acts and promote diversity on the internet... They are making a buck, too, but from the looks of it the only one making more than rent money is mp3.com...
That's the general idea. I would imagine they wrote a program to do something similar. Once they identified potential violations, they should have downloaded the first 15 to 30 seconds of the files and compared them to Metallica's released songs to make sure it was really the same material. I beleive they could have done this over the weekend with a T3 line fairly easily. The technology used to compress MP3s can also be used to compare audio reliably even if it isn't a digital clone. It probably wouldn't match live performances because the tempo would make things radically different (unless they play along with tape in their live performances -- then it might match).
I beleive you are correct about DMCA. Also, they might be able to do more than sue: They might be able to file criminal charges. The EU is stricter on intellectual property protection than the US. They have a concept of author's rights and there is no such thing as fair use in the EU.
Something else to ponder. If they are sharing MP3 files you didn't authorize them to share with the world, how do you know they aren't sharing other things? Like say, private emails which have certain four letter words in them. If you value your privacy highly, downloading servers (or any other software) from tiny little startup companies is not a smart thing to do.
You got something totally wrong here. Metallica (did I spell it right -- I'm not exactly a fan?) didn't invade anybody's privacy. It's Napster that is broadcasting the contents of the users' hard drives to the world. Running Napster on your machine is the equivalent of putting a small classified ad for free MP3s in half the newspapers around the world. It's debateable whether Napster is invading privacy (the user does choose to run it, but Napster is way less than clear about how much they broadcast, too). Metallica is not invading anybody's privacy, they are just collecting publicly broadcast information.
If Napster really does this, it's more than a bug, it makes Napster a Trojan Horse. I believe Trojan Horses are a violation of The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (18 USC 1030). This is potential felony territory and extremely unethical for a software developer to do (especially if it was done intentionally and/or if no effort was made to correct the problem).
There is still one Y2K crisis coming that nobody talks about. What does the date "01/02" mean: Feb 2001 or Jan 2002? Up until Feb 01, 2001, it's been possible to disambiguate such things based on the numbers...
This is much worse, because it's a human factors issue and because the convention (if you can even say there is one) is region specific.
I'm still getting occasional e-mail from tightwads with the year set back in their PCs. It works against them, because there is so much junk in my in box that I don't see it for a long time...
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, "just having them stored on your computer" is a crime, but the only penalty is you can get sued for damages (which are not likely to be enough for anybody to bother you about unless you accidentally make the contents of your computer visible by running Napster).
What makes you think that people will pay 50 cents for an MP3 file when they can get it free on Napster? You are being naive.
I just checked out the top 10 artists on mp3.com and all but one of them is also being traded on Napster:
303infinity
The Cynic Project
Bassic
Raveing Lunatics
are all being traded on Napster.
[Note that several of these acts had multiple songs in the top ten -- the above list represents 8 of the top ten songs at the time I looked.]
At least some of these are free downloads on mp3.com, BUT mp3.com does pay royalties on the free downloads (from the advertising). True, the royalties are chump change, but here is an example of the Napster community ripping off artists who are providing MP3s on the net at way below 50 cents a copy (free is about as far below 50 cents as you can get).
What kind of twisted morality do you think they will they come up with to justify that?
Check out how many of those MP3s are being traded freely on Napster. I got many screenfuls of hits.
This a band that is not on a label and probably isn't making spit and they are getting ripped off. You people are just plain leaches. Admit it.
Here's a list of more bands that I know are working for chump change that are being ripped off on Napster:
The Love Dogs
Chucklehead
Babaloo
Allstonians
That's four out of the eight Boston area bands I checked on. None of these groups have major label contracts (two are on indie labels and two appear to be self released).
I don't own any of their stuff; so, I can say that Apogee sucks bullets and they can't do a thing about it. UCITA or no UCITA. The reason they suck bullets is because they have lawyers who write rediculous shrinkwrap licenses. DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.
This comment was composed under the jurisdiction of the state of Massachusetts where they have SLAPP laws.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Your little yuppie nose rings are so tied onto the leash of the major label marketing campaigns that you don't realize there are already about half a million artists out there doing exactly what you suggest. You don't even realize that you want those Metallica MP3s because the RIAA is paying to make you want them. They pay the radio stations and they buy adds in the news media. The biggest cost of producing an album that sells at those levels is the marketing. If you don't spend money (and a lot of it) on marketing nobody will even listen.
You bitch about expensive CD prices. My partner and I tried putting out a CD that listed at $10 and actually sells for around $7. Nobody bought it. Amazon.com and Riffage.com took two CDs each on consignment over a year ago and nobody has bought them. Brick and mortar stores (mostly) wouldn't carry it because they could "make more money per square inch of display space" on a full priced unit (this is from one of the same retailers who is always railing in public about the the high cost of CDs being such a travesty, incidentally).
OK, so CD retailers are really all a bunch of fascist pigs. MP3 is going to be the savior which lets unsigned artists bypass the machine and make an independent living. We created a web site, put some of our tunes on it in MP3 format. We uploaded MP3s to all of the MP3 sites (the list is too big to list here). Nothing happened. Eventually the rhythm section quit because nobody was coming to gigs and the band folded. Basically, we couldn't get anybody to even listen to find out if they liked us... At least that's what I thought... Well, I never took down the web site and eventually moved it to another ISP that gave us stats: It turns out that people have been downloading our MP3s at the rate of several hundred per month. No one has even sent an e-mail thanking us for putting out the material and it did NOTHING in terms of getting people to gigs.
Now, some more reality about the music industry: Club gigs pay $30 to $50 per person, per night. And playing the gig is only about 20% of the work. Concert gigs don't even pay opening acts that much. Performance fees for headliners on tour don't cover the costs of traveling to the gigs unless you are a band in Metallica's class (or you are a solo performer). The only gigs that actually make money are private parties and weddings. Why is that? The same sucker who will pay $60 to see Metallica in a venue so big that it's impossible to hear or see the act will bitch like a stuck pig if asked to pay a $5 cover to see a better band up close and personal in a small club where you can actually hear what they are playing and even talk to the performers in person between sets!
So,... You want to prove that the RIAA knows exactly what they are doing -- Keep right on prattling about not being able to freely download Metallica MP3s and keep right on being the good little consumers they want you do be. If you really want to do something about it, say FU to the RIAA [and say FU to Napster, because Napster is just another leach...]. You don't need any pile of cash: Just go out and check out some of the half million bands that are out on the net, pick a few favorites and tell your friends about them. Here are some places to look:
http://www.iuma.com/
http://www.ubl.com/
http://www.francemp3.com/
http://www.riffage.com/
http://www.vinyltrade.com/ (no mp3s here, but he supports indie artists)
http://www.mp3.com/
The following are mostly major label territory, but they let independent musicians play, too.
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.rollingstone.com/
Want another way to help. Figure out some automated way to hook up people with music they will like, but haven't heard, yet. There is an audience out there for just about anything you might call music, but connecting the audience with what they want to hear is not easy.
Circuit city sells CDs at a loss or a most break even to sucker you into the store to buy other stuff that they make money on (the term is "loss leader"). They don't stock anything but major label current hit artists and they don't do anything to promote new artists.
What kind of media do you think it worse than MP3? CDs are way better and cassettes are usually a little bit better. [At least if you are talking about 128K MP3 -- 256K MP3 is better than cassette.] It does depend on the file, too, but MP3 just goes nuts on some material (Hammond organs have behaved really screwy some times).
The bulk of the money spent has never been spent on production or manufacturing. Most of it is spent on promotion. A really decent album can be made for $10,000 these days, but you won't sell at Metallica's level unless you spend millions of dollars and years of hard work promoting it. If Metallica and their label hadn't spent the last ten years working and touring to promote the group, nobody would be downloading Metallica MP3 files. You believe the system is corrupt, but you let them lead you around by the nose! If you want thumb your nose at the RIAA go to http://www.iuma.com/, http://www.ubl.com/, http://www.francemp3.com/, or even http://www.mp3.com/. Between them, you can find half a million artists who WANT you to download thier MP3s. From the samplings I have made, I would say that at least 10% of those artists are also better musicians than Metallica. To some degree or another, those sites are trying to promote small unsigned acts and promote diversity on the internet... They are making a buck, too, but from the looks of it the only one making more than rent money is mp3.com...
That's the general idea. I would imagine they wrote a program to do something similar. Once they identified potential violations, they should have downloaded the first 15 to 30 seconds of the files and compared them to Metallica's released songs to make sure it was really the same material. I beleive they could have done this over the weekend with a T3 line fairly easily. The technology used to compress MP3s can also be used to compare audio reliably even if it isn't a digital clone. It probably wouldn't match live performances because the tempo would make things radically different (unless they play along with tape in their live performances -- then it might match).
I beleive you are correct about DMCA. Also, they might be able to do more than sue: They might be able to file criminal charges. The EU is stricter on intellectual property protection than the US. They have a concept of author's rights and there is no such thing as fair use in the EU.
Something else to ponder. If they are sharing MP3 files you didn't authorize them to share with the world, how do you know they aren't sharing other things? Like say, private emails which have certain four letter words in them. If you value your privacy highly, downloading servers (or any other software) from tiny little startup companies is not a smart thing to do.
You got something totally wrong here. Metallica (did I spell it right -- I'm not exactly a fan?) didn't invade anybody's privacy. It's Napster that is broadcasting the contents of the users' hard drives to the world. Running Napster on your machine is the equivalent of putting a small classified ad for free MP3s in half the newspapers around the world. It's debateable whether Napster is invading privacy (the user does choose to run it, but Napster is way less than clear about how much they broadcast, too). Metallica is not invading anybody's privacy, they are just collecting publicly broadcast information.
If Napster really does this, it's more than a bug, it makes Napster a Trojan Horse. I believe Trojan Horses are a violation of The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (18 USC 1030). This is potential felony territory and extremely unethical for a software developer to do (especially if it was done intentionally and/or if no effort was made to correct the problem).
There is still one Y2K crisis coming that nobody talks about. What does the date "01/02" mean: Feb 2001 or Jan 2002? Up until Feb 01, 2001, it's been possible to disambiguate such things based on the numbers...
This is much worse, because it's a human factors issue and because the convention (if you can even say there is one) is region specific.
I'm still getting occasional e-mail from tightwads with the year set back in their PCs. It works against them, because there is so much junk in my in box that I don't see it for a long time...