I don't think copyrights should exist beyond the death of the creator.
I'm iffy on this bit. While 70 years after death is eggregious it would also be horrible to have an author or artist's family lose all royalties on a work because their husband/father died in a car accident two days before release. I can honestly see the record and movie industry going hit-man on it's artists when it smells a huge success coming if this were the case. I think something like 15 years once renewable, or ten years after death whichever is shorter would be good.. something in that area.
And I don't think that non-individuals should be able to hold copyrights. Seeing someones descendents profit off of work they had nothing to do with irritates me to no end.
Suggest away. Then get that worded into the contract. Otherwise, deal with the contract that you signed. Or were you proposing the gummint come in and nullify the contracts somehow?
This is where all those Oligopoly and Payola issues come into play. When the artists has little to no chance of getting a non-riaa member contract there is a problem.
Of course this is in some ways debatable but it is, at the very least, an issue that needs some serious looking into.
I believe one of the problems in the industry is that multi-year deals are actually kind of out of flavour. Labels used to look for career musicians. Now they rent you for an album; if you sell, you might get one more album. Rince, lather, repeat.
Read the article.. it's actually much worse than 'multi-year' right now. It's multi-[b]album[/b]. You sign to do say, 6 albums. If you don't sell well they can shelve you. No studio time, no advertising, nada. And you can't go anywhere else until you give them 5 more "releasable" albums. The company, of course, is the sole arbiter of what is "releasable" or not. Joan Osborn, after her first hit "What if God Was One of US", turned in two complete and finished albums both of which were rejected by the labels. That means she spent nearly 3 years working, owes them money on it, and of course the label still owns those songs even though they don't want them.
Yeah, they might not release any more albums after the first. They might just "rent" you for an album. But they make damn sure the contract keeps you out of anyone elses hands for the duration just in case.
The only way the common people can fight big business is with their wallets. .. at which point the RIAA & MPAA point to their decreasing sales and say "Look, see! We [b]told[/b] you the DMCA wasn't enough!" and buy even more restrictive laws.
This problem only exists because they try to hype the market with a product that they cant have, but can hear bits of on the radio and see reviews of.
No, not always. Real world publishing doesn't work like the net. Magazines often go to press 2-3 months head of when they'll hit stores. So, if you want a magazine to have a review of your album in it when the album comes out that means you'll probably need to have the CD in the reviewers hand at least 2 1/2 months ahead of the release date and probably more like 4 months. Giving copies two days before works great for online music reviews, but not for print mags.
So the artists would have to fight the p2p folks instead of the RIAA to get paid? How are they going to fight if they have no revenue to pay the lawyers? RIAA or P2P, it sounds like the artist is still getting screwed--just different orifice.
You're still missing the point. Artists had to fight to get paid by the record industry toom wya back when. Same with composers and player piano reals. Every new technology required a meeting-of-the-minds to figure out how creators get paid. This is fine and dandy.
This isn't what the RIAA is trying to do. They are simply trying to stamp out a new distribution method wholesale. If they were doing these using market forces it would be fine. That's a level playing field and the users choosing. Instead they are using our courts and our congress to do it. That is the problem. Believe me, if the RIAA could get away with not paying the artists they would in a heartbeat. Look at a modern record contract.. see Albini's breakdown of one. Look at the deals they have struck for online use by the few companies they have worked with and how much the artist gets of that. Look at how many 'accounting errors' in their royalty books end up in their favor.
Trust me, the users of a p2p network, not every one but most, are much more concerned with the artists than the RIAA is. There is simply no useful method to provide financial feedback as of yet. And since the RIAA loses if one gets setup they are doing their best to prevent that.
Hmmm.. I can understand the ideal, but it leads to another question. If the judge is sitting for a trial such as this which involves something he most probably does not understand very deeply (the internet, p2p technology, etc) he is not allowed to seek background information from a non-involved third party? Seems like that would result in a lot of cases wherein a judge is forced to decide cases based on two sets of diametrically opposed gross exaggerations while being specifically barred from exploring what the truth of the matter was.
Would the RIAA actually take the time to seek out and destroy these companies if they didn't flaunt the ability to share and download files?
*sigh* It's sad to see people falling for the RIAAs line so hard. Lemme bold this so it'll sink in:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing and downloading files. You are doing right now.
If the end user decides to use the system to transmit illegal files, that is their responsiblity, not the systems. If this is not found to be the case, the entirety of the internet is illegal, as are computers, xerox machines, and most other modern machines.
What's I'm surprised at is the number of people over 30 who make it their profession to make our laws and yet are completely ignorant of the actual content and rationalle of our constitution. This wouldn't even be a debate if our legislators would have read and understood the actual basis for copyright laws and their given place granted by the founding fathers in the first place.
This should show you that language is not static, it is fluid. The fact that you don't think it should be called theft is your problem. 'Theft' is now used to indicate copyright infringement. Cope.
Yes, indeed language is a fluid amorphous thing. This means that your enemies can redefine the language in their favor. If you let them do so they are already most of the way to beating you. If you swallow the RIAA/MPAAs definitions of property and theft wholesale than they've already won, go home. If however you want to have some chance to beat them at this game, you have to fight them on the fronts of language as well as legal and legislative.
"... maybe the artists would have fought the Napsters such that they could pay proper royalties and such,"
Just because the system isn't in place now doesn't invalidate the whole method of transfer. As the above noted, even when these new companies approach the RIAA to reach some kind of agreement whereby everyone can make profit (mp3.com did this, napster did this, etc) the RIAA demants royalties to the tune of several times the total revenue of the starting company. Their only purpose is to produce profit for the member companies.
His point has nothing to do with p2p paying royaltis. It has to do with the fact that in a free market you do bot protect someones business model with legislation. The whole point of having a market is to allow consumers to choose what works for them. If some consumers are choosing to behave in an illegal manner prosecute those consumers, not the business model.
The RIAA does nothing to deserve a governmental mandate to insure their profts. That's exactly what they've been getting for nearly 50 years now and it has to stop.
The few that are willing to put up the effort likely are not RIAA's better customers anyways.
Actually, most informations point to the exact opposite being true. The people doing the most downloading/trading are the biggest music fans. These are the people that spend large amounts of their free time in obtaining and listening to music. They buy a lot of CDs, usually as many as they can afford. If they find a way to get more music, they use it. These customers are the bread&butter of the RIAA. This is why letting them download music helps so much - they are the very people who are most likely to be going out and buying what they like instead of just consuming a radio stream. '
Re:Good.. we need Ideas, not just complaints
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"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 1
Actually, luckily, the TV survived. Good TV. But anyway..
The issue with demanding the backups is not something I expect in a general case. What makes me want to go that route with my music and movies is the fact that the media companies are taking active measures to make it very difficult to create the backups that I have a legal right to make. Then, on top of that, they have passed legislation making it a felony for me to obtain the tools necessary to overcome that difficulty. If they are going to make backups made by anyone other than their approved agents punishable by years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines then, yes, I feel they should then shoulder the burden of providing free (or at least trivialy cheap) replacements.
The "buying the physical media that happens to contain data" doesn't wash with me. The media costs pennies to produce. The average music CD costs something like 60 or 70 cents to physically produce (in the quantities of a major label release) and most of that is the case and the booklet. If that's what I'm buying it shouldn't cost 20 bucks.
How would they know that Bob got it from you? The fingerprint only tells them that the mp3 was encoded by some artist/studio - and if your friend bob starts sharing it with the world and violating that artist/studio's copyright, he is the one that is going to be prosecuted, not you.
If you are the one who encoded the MP3, say from a CD you bought, then it has your print on it. I'm also confident that if you download a file from somewhere it will be stamped with your print. Having their print on it does nothing. They already know who owns the copyright. What this is designed to do is track down the few users who are archiving the huge stores of files that feed 90% of the p2p system.
If you gave your pal Bob a copy of any song that he didn't have a legal right to have, it would not be covered under the fair use laws. I don't know what "specific provisions" of the Audio Home Recording act you are referring to but I don't believe that any of them include giving away other peoples IP with out their consent.
I havn't read the act in a while, but yes it covers exactly this type of thing. In exchange for some other restrictions and royalty crap the industry wanted they were forbidden to interfer with consumers making digital copies for home use. As I said, I don't know the full legal jargon offhand, but that was the gist of it.
Re:Good.. we need Ideas, not just complaints
on
"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 1
How is this logical? I fully appreciate the fact that if the media itself has a limited life under normal circumstances, then that should either be disclosed to the consumer, or the supplier should be somehow responsible for replacing damaged media provided the media is within its expected lifetime, and the customer has taken reasonable measures to protect it.
The point sort-of is that it's not logical for them to provide backups for me. Thus they need to leave me alone to do so.
If you know that you have an hyper child and violent cat, then adequate measures should be taken to protect your valuables. This isn't the supplier's role!
Truly spoken like one who has neither children nor a determined cat. Short of having them literaly under (heavy) lock and key there is no way to completely protect stuff. Shit happens. As a 2 year old my step-son somehow managed to tip over a 250 pound + tv. Thank the gods he didn't end up under it. We don't know how he managed that. My cat almost daily gets places that seem outright impossible for a 8 inch tall quadraped to get to.
Instead of being able to make a "completely functional" backup, I think you have to look at a "reasonably functional" backup. For a DVD, you could then argue that the menu is important, for a CD, the quality has to still be there... but that doesn't mean they will replace broken jewel boxes!
I'm not asking for jewel boxes here. When something gets knocked off a 4 foot high shelf it usually pops open (particularly 4 dvd box sets) and often a disk or two pops out with it and thus gets damaged.
The whole general idea is that it seems rather undoable for companies to provide continual backups for their customers. Given that we're not buying the medium but a licence to use the content (at least, that's their argument) then we should have a resonable way to protect the licence should the physical medium be damaged. The obvious, even trivial, way to do this is to simply allow backups and prosecute those who abuse that ability.
This is the way our system of law and order works with innumerable other items that can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. Why should items that can kill you be under less restrictions than something that might cost some megacorp 10 bucks?
And really, you don't lose privacy unless you're "sharing" with 50,000 of your best friends via Gnutella or something. I could live with a system like this; it seems to be one of the few cases where "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to fear" is actually true.
Sorry, but this is incorrect. I'll use the same example I did earlier:
I give my pal bob a single copy of one of the fingerprinted mp3s in a mix CD. This is legal through a couple of ways (ARHA primarily). Then, without my knowledge, he shares that SuperMP3 with the world. I did nothing illegal but the RIAA & their FBI pals just kicked in my door and are dragging me off.
And would you like to take bets as to how long it will take a utility to change that fingerprint to come out? Sounds like a darn tootin' way to frame somebody.
This is not really a good system once you dig into the possibilities. It's nice on the surface, but (as with my rights issues) the larger implications are not good at all.
Re:How do we distance ourselves from the thieves
on
"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The real problem with the whole DRM debate is that people steal music. The words download or p2p and the phrase fair use have no place in the same breath.
Actually.. there are a number of arguments for them existing quite nicely together. First, and strongest, the provisions assuring personal digital copies under the Audio Home Recording Act. There are a few other as well, may favorite being a neat corner that hasn't been explored much. If a copyright holder wields their copyrights in an anti-competative manor they lose the monoply distrobution right that copyright law grants (i.e. you get a monopoly on the item, if you turn that into an industry monopoly, we step on you). Given that the record industry has been slapped by the FTC for price fixing at least twice in the past ten years or so, it could be said that they really don't have right to copyright protection currently.
These types of arguments do make a reasonable argument for consumer rights and advocacy, but are still stealing and don't fall under the purview of fair use.
Until we can argue against DRM without bringing up these types of arguments, redefining fair use to what we'd like it to be, then we as a downloading, file sharing community will have a hard time being taken seriously, let alone winning the argument.
VCRs can be used to infringe as can cassete tapes. I can kill you with a butter knife, a fork, a pencil, or a rock. You can quickly bypass the ignition key on quite a few models of car using a skate key. A photocopier has potential infringement in it's very name. Yet none of these things are outlawed. Why? Because they have uses that are legal. I feel fairly safe in guessing that the amount of legal p2p activity is in the same ballpark as the amount of legal use of the copy function in a dual-deck GoVideo vcr. The courts have already said that these facts do not warrent a ban on VCRs so why am I still having to defend my ability to make copies of my music?
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I don't think copyrights should exist beyond the death of the creator.
I'm iffy on this bit. While 70 years after death is eggregious it would also be horrible to have an author or artist's family lose all royalties on a work because their husband/father died in a car accident two days before release. I can honestly see the record and movie industry going hit-man on it's artists when it smells a huge success coming if this were the case. I think something like 15 years once renewable, or ten years after death whichever is shorter would be good.. something in that area.
And I don't think that non-individuals should be able to hold copyrights. Seeing someones descendents profit off of work they had nothing to do with irritates me to no end.
Now this I'm all for.
... because she never would have had a music career at all as no label at the time would have singed a contract otherwise.
Suggest away. Then get that worded into the contract. Otherwise, deal with the contract that you signed. Or were you proposing the gummint come in and nullify the contracts somehow?
This is where all those Oligopoly and Payola issues come into play. When the artists has little to no chance of getting a non-riaa member contract there is a problem.
Of course this is in some ways debatable but it is, at the very least, an issue that needs some serious looking into.
I believe one of the problems in the industry is that multi-year deals are actually kind of out of flavour. Labels used to look for career musicians. Now they rent you for an album; if you sell, you might get one more album. Rince, lather, repeat.
Read the article.. it's actually much worse than 'multi-year' right now. It's multi-[b]album[/b]. You sign to do say, 6 albums. If you don't sell well they can shelve you. No studio time, no advertising, nada. And you can't go anywhere else until you give them 5 more "releasable" albums. The company, of course, is the sole arbiter of what is "releasable" or not. Joan Osborn, after her first hit "What if God Was One of US", turned in two complete and finished albums both of which were rejected by the labels. That means she spent nearly 3 years working, owes them money on it, and of course the label still owns those songs even though they don't want them.
Yeah, they might not release any more albums after the first. They might just "rent" you for an album. But they make damn sure the contract keeps you out of anyone elses hands for the duration just in case.
The only way the common people can fight big business is with their wallets.
.. at which point the RIAA & MPAA point to their decreasing sales and say "Look, see! We [b]told[/b] you the DMCA wasn't enough!" and buy even more restrictive laws.
This problem only exists because they try to hype the market with a product that they cant have, but can hear bits of on the radio and see reviews of.
No, not always. Real world publishing doesn't work like the net. Magazines often go to press 2-3 months head of when they'll hit stores. So, if you want a magazine to have a review of your album in it when the album comes out that means you'll probably need to have the CD in the reviewers hand at least 2 1/2 months ahead of the release date and probably more like 4 months. Giving copies two days before works great for online music reviews, but not for print mags.
So the artists would have to fight the p2p folks instead of the RIAA to get paid? How are they going to fight if they have no revenue to pay the lawyers? RIAA or P2P, it sounds like the artist is still getting screwed--just different orifice.
You're still missing the point. Artists had to fight to get paid by the record industry toom wya back when. Same with composers and player piano reals. Every new technology required a meeting-of-the-minds to figure out how creators get paid. This is fine and dandy.
This isn't what the RIAA is trying to do. They are simply trying to stamp out a new distribution method wholesale. If they were doing these using market forces it would be fine. That's a level playing field and the users choosing. Instead they are using our courts and our congress to do it. That is the problem. Believe me, if the RIAA could get away with not paying the artists they would in a heartbeat. Look at a modern record contract.. see Albini's breakdown of one. Look at the deals they have struck for online use by the few companies they have worked with and how much the artist gets of that. Look at how many 'accounting errors' in their royalty books end up in their favor.
Trust me, the users of a p2p network, not every one but most, are much more concerned with the artists than the RIAA is. There is simply no useful method to provide financial feedback as of yet. And since the RIAA loses if one gets setup they are doing their best to prevent that.
Actually.. I just remembered the way around this. Can't just about anyone with the desire to do so submit a "friends of the court" brief?
Hmmm.. I can understand the ideal, but it leads to another question. If the judge is sitting for a trial such as this which involves something he most probably does not understand very deeply (the internet, p2p technology, etc) he is not allowed to seek background information from a non-involved third party? Seems like that would result in a lot of cases wherein a judge is forced to decide cases based on two sets of diametrically opposed gross exaggerations while being specifically barred from exploring what the truth of the matter was.
Would the RIAA actually take the time to seek out and destroy these companies if they didn't flaunt the ability to share and download files?
*sigh* It's sad to see people falling for the RIAAs line so hard. Lemme bold this so it'll sink in:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing and downloading files. You are doing right now.
If the end user decides to use the system to transmit illegal files, that is their responsiblity, not the systems. If this is not found to be the case, the entirety of the internet is illegal, as are computers, xerox machines, and most other modern machines.
My only question I guess is EXACTLy what part of the "song" is owned by the label/artist/whatever.
Well.. I can answer a part of that. With the RIAA member companies the "artist" and the "whatever" own exactly no part of it.
I'd love to give the judge a call and tell him not to grant the motion, but that would be unethical.
Honest query: How would providing the judge with and honest, informed opinion (keeping personal bias and rhetoric out of it) be unethical?
What's I'm surprised at is the number of people over 30 who make it their profession to make our laws and yet are completely ignorant of the actual content and rationalle of our constitution. This wouldn't even be a debate if our legislators would have read and understood the actual basis for copyright laws and their given place granted by the founding fathers in the first place.
This should show you that language is not static, it is fluid. The fact that you don't think it should be called theft is your problem. 'Theft' is now used to indicate copyright infringement. Cope.
Yes, indeed language is a fluid amorphous thing. This means that your enemies can redefine the language in their favor. If you let them do so they are already most of the way to beating you. If you swallow the RIAA/MPAAs definitions of property and theft wholesale than they've already won, go home. If however you want to have some chance to beat them at this game, you have to fight them on the fronts of language as well as legal and legislative.
Did you actually read the whole post?
"... maybe the artists would have fought the Napsters such that they could pay proper royalties and such,"
Just because the system isn't in place now doesn't invalidate the whole method of transfer. As the above noted, even when these new companies approach the RIAA to reach some kind of agreement whereby everyone can make profit (mp3.com did this, napster did this, etc) the RIAA demants royalties to the tune of several times the total revenue of the starting company. Their only purpose is to produce profit for the member companies.
His point has nothing to do with p2p paying royaltis. It has to do with the fact that in a free market you do bot protect someones business model with legislation. The whole point of having a market is to allow consumers to choose what works for them. If some consumers are choosing to behave in an illegal manner prosecute those consumers, not the business model.
The RIAA does nothing to deserve a governmental mandate to insure their profts. That's exactly what they've been getting for nearly 50 years now and it has to stop.
The few that are willing to put up the effort likely are not RIAA's better customers anyways.
Actually, most informations point to the exact opposite being true. The people doing the most downloading/trading are the biggest music fans. These are the people that spend large amounts of their free time in obtaining and listening to music. They buy a lot of CDs, usually as many as they can afford. If they find a way to get more music, they use it. These customers are the bread&butter of the RIAA. This is why letting them download music helps so much - they are the very people who are most likely to be going out and buying what they like instead of just consuming a radio stream.
'
Actually, luckily, the TV survived. Good TV. But anyway..
The issue with demanding the backups is not something I expect in a general case. What makes me want to go that route with my music and movies is the fact that the media companies are taking active measures to make it very difficult to create the backups that I have a legal right to make. Then, on top of that, they have passed legislation making it a felony for me to obtain the tools necessary to overcome that difficulty.
If they are going to make backups made by anyone other than their approved agents punishable by years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines then, yes, I feel they should then shoulder the burden of providing free (or at least trivialy cheap) replacements.
The "buying the physical media that happens to contain data" doesn't wash with me. The media costs pennies to produce. The average music CD costs something like 60 or 70 cents to physically produce (in the quantities of a major label release) and most of that is the case and the booklet. If that's what I'm buying it shouldn't cost 20 bucks.
As others and myself have pointed out, no it most probably is not due to provisions in the Audio Home Recording Act.
How would they know that Bob got it from you? The fingerprint only tells them that the mp3 was encoded by some artist/studio - and if your friend bob starts sharing it with the world and violating that artist/studio's copyright, he is the one that is going to be prosecuted, not you.
If you are the one who encoded the MP3, say from a CD you bought, then it has your print on it. I'm also confident that if you download a file from somewhere it will be stamped with your print. Having their print on it does nothing. They already know who owns the copyright. What this is designed to do is track down the few users who are archiving the huge stores of files that feed 90% of the p2p system.
If you gave your pal Bob a copy of any song that he didn't have a legal right to have, it would not be covered under the fair use laws. I don't know what "specific provisions" of the Audio Home Recording act you are referring to but I don't believe that any of them include giving away other peoples IP with out their consent.
I havn't read the act in a while, but yes it covers exactly this type of thing. In exchange for some other restrictions and royalty crap the industry wanted they were forbidden to interfer with consumers making digital copies for home use. As I said, I don't know the full legal jargon offhand, but that was the gist of it.
How is this logical? I fully appreciate the fact that if the media itself has a limited life under normal circumstances, then that should either be disclosed to the consumer, or the supplier should be somehow responsible for replacing damaged media provided the media is within its expected lifetime, and the customer has taken reasonable measures to protect it.
The point sort-of is that it's not logical for them to provide backups for me. Thus they need to leave me alone to do so.
If you know that you have an hyper child and violent cat, then adequate measures should be taken to protect your valuables. This isn't the supplier's role!
Truly spoken like one who has neither children nor a determined cat. Short of having them literaly under (heavy) lock and key there is no way to completely protect stuff. Shit happens. As a 2 year old my step-son somehow managed to tip over a 250 pound + tv. Thank the gods he didn't end up under it. We don't know how he managed that. My cat almost daily gets places that seem outright impossible for a 8 inch tall quadraped to get to.
Instead of being able to make a "completely functional" backup, I think you have to look at a "reasonably functional" backup. For a DVD, you could then argue that the menu is important, for a CD, the quality has to still be there... but that doesn't mean they will replace broken jewel boxes!
I'm not asking for jewel boxes here. When something gets knocked off a 4 foot high shelf it usually pops open (particularly 4 dvd box sets) and often a disk or two pops out with it and thus gets damaged.
The whole general idea is that it seems rather undoable for companies to provide continual backups for their customers. Given that we're not buying the medium but a licence to use the content (at least, that's their argument) then we should have a resonable way to protect the licence should the physical medium be damaged. The obvious, even trivial, way to do this is to simply allow backups and prosecute those who abuse that ability.
This is the way our system of law and order works with innumerable other items that can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. Why should items that can kill you be under less restrictions than something that might cost some megacorp 10 bucks?
Yes, the other replys are correct. Typo. Should read - AHRA: Audio Home Recording Act.
The problem is, how are they going to enforce watermarking? Afai can see, it can only be done by wresting control over their PCs from users.
You mean sorta like Palladium?
And really, you don't lose privacy unless you're "sharing" with 50,000 of your best friends via Gnutella or something. I could live with a system like this; it seems to be one of the few cases where "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to fear" is actually true.
Sorry, but this is incorrect. I'll use the same example I did earlier:
I give my pal bob a single copy of one of the fingerprinted mp3s in a mix CD. This is legal through a couple of ways (ARHA primarily). Then, without my knowledge, he shares that SuperMP3 with the world. I did nothing illegal but the RIAA & their FBI pals just kicked in my door and are dragging me off.
And would you like to take bets as to how long it will take a utility to change that fingerprint to come out? Sounds like a darn tootin' way to frame somebody.
This is not really a good system once you dig into the possibilities. It's nice on the surface, but (as with my rights issues) the larger implications are not good at all.
The real problem with the whole DRM debate is that people steal music. The words download or p2p and the phrase fair use have no place in the same breath.
Actually.. there are a number of arguments for them existing quite nicely together. First, and strongest, the provisions assuring personal digital copies under the Audio Home Recording Act. There are a few other as well, may favorite being a neat corner that hasn't been explored much. If a copyright holder wields their copyrights in an anti-competative manor they lose the monoply distrobution right that copyright law grants (i.e. you get a monopoly on the item, if you turn that into an industry monopoly, we step on you). Given that the record industry has been slapped by the FTC for price fixing at least twice in the past ten years or so, it could be said that they really don't have right to copyright protection currently.
These types of arguments do make a reasonable argument for consumer rights and advocacy, but are still stealing and don't fall under the purview of fair use.
Until we can argue against DRM without bringing up these types of arguments, redefining fair use to what we'd like it to be, then we as a downloading, file sharing community will have a hard time being taken seriously, let alone winning the argument.
VCRs can be used to infringe as can cassete tapes. I can kill you with a butter knife, a fork, a pencil, or a rock. You can quickly bypass the ignition key on quite a few models of car using a skate key. A photocopier has potential infringement in it's very name. Yet none of these things are outlawed. Why? Because they have uses that are legal. I feel fairly safe in guessing that the amount of legal p2p activity is in the same ballpark as the amount of legal use of the copy function in a dual-deck GoVideo vcr. The courts have already said that these facts do not warrent a ban on VCRs so why am I still having to defend my ability to make copies of my music?