"One exception to the above: a subsidary of the RIAA, whose name temporarily escapes me, is responsible for collecting the fees and redistributing them for all music played on radio where the station operator hasn't negotiated directly with the copyright holders. That's the only place the RIAA could be said to have a "monopoly" in any meaningful sense of the word. But that's barely relevent here."
Your post was otherwise excellent but the above absolutely needs to be corrected.
Radio royalties are collected by two non-profit agencies, BMI and ASCAP. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers, songwriters, and publishers. And they are not part of the RIAA.
As there are two independent agencies that handle this in the US, I guess one could call it an oligarchy, but if one is of the "RIAA is bad" mindset, then BMI and ASCAP are definitely the good guys. Again: they are non-profit agencies run by and for songwriters, composers and publishers for the purpose of getting radio royalties to the composers, songwriters and publishers.
Collecting radio royalties is one of many things that they do in support of the individuals who work hard to create the music (royalties based on public performance, such as in bars and restaurants with live bands or jukeboxes, is just one other thing they do). These royalties, too, go to songwriters, composers and publishers, not the RIAA.
In anticipation of the next question, "aren't the publishers the record companies, so doesn't that mean that the RIAA gets more money, RIAA DIE DIE DIE DIE," the answer is: typically not. In this context, publishing refers not to the actual recording of a piece of music, but the rights to the music and lyrics. This includes, but is not limited to, printing the lyrics in the liner notes, quoting them in a book, covering a song, and using an original song in a commercial (for which multiple rights holders may have to be consulted -- including the owner of the recording, which is often a record company). Nowadays, the publisher is a smallish company, often just one or two people. One can sell or transfer their publishing rights; perhaps the most famous example is Michael Jackson's buying of much of the Beatles catalog. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. Here's more info.
By the way, typically for a song to be available on a legal download service, approval must be acquired from both the owner of the recording (the record company) as well as the music publisher. This is why you might see eight out of ten of an album's ten tracks available on buymusic or itunes -- for the other two, perhaps the songwriter or the composer simply did not give permission. This is one reason why getting legal services with large catalogs has been so tough... all those permissions to obtain. This is precisely why many folks have advocated extending the concept of compulsory royalties for downloads -- under such a system, the download service would not need to seek the composer's permission before making the song available for download, as long as the composer was paid a fixed fee set by law.
"DMCA explicitly gives this right ONLY to the actual copyright holder."
Not true at all; the text includes verbage about the copyright holder or their agent. The RIAA is, as you correctly pointed out, a trade group working on behalf of the labels, who generally own or share ownership of the sound recordings.
You're also correct that the settlement money they're collecting is going to lawyers; in fact, they're probably losing money on this. This is because the entire point of this exercise is to educate the populace at large that they are serious about protecting their clients' property. The rationale is that investing the legal bucks now will gradually erode unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials, and drive consumers to legitimate venues like CDs and legal download services like iTunes. And that, in turn, will generate the income for the labels and the artists. This is the Logic 101, Business 101 and Math 101 of which you speak.
"Why did the RIAA refuse to negotiate with the P2P software vendors so that they could profit from downloads rather than just whining about how bad they are and spending millions of dollars in subpoenas, litigation and press coverage?"
There's a common perception that businesses such as the RIAA are expected to be more altruistic than mere mortals. It's no secret that Napster, Kazaa, etc. knew exactly what they're doing, and that their businesses are fundamentally based on copyright infringement. In your personal dealings, if you find that somebody is actively trying to fuck you over, are you going to make nice nice with them, even if you think that it ultimately might be in your best interests? It's much more satisfying to fuck them right back. As you would behave in your personal life, so do many businesses. RIAA's response can be summarized as "Fuck you; we'll put you out of business and work on launching our own download services." I would do the same.
"According to the RIAA, since their terror campaign started, downloads have fallen over 15% yet CD sales have dropped almost double that. They still claim that the additional drop in sales is due to an "Increase in illegal downloads."
Your dates are a bit off here. Despite a recent drop due to their campaign, file sharing is at an all-time high. The 31% drop in CD sales is over the past couple of years, not in the recent few weeks when there's been a slight drop in file trading. Occam's Razor suggests that if, over the past few years, file sharing has exploded while CD sales have dropped by almost a third, that the two are linked, but many people insist that this is a coincidence that one rarely finds outside of Dickens novels.
I don't think I've seen it mentioned that the recent launch of AOL Journals significantly changed the blogging competitive landscape. This news surely affected Pyra's forecast for the paid version of Blogger.
Either way, I prefer journalspace. They use the 'try before you buy' model, have more features than Blogger, and the content has an average intelligence level that's roughly three metric notches above LiveJournal.
"The RIAA wants people to believe that the act of filesharing itself is illegal in order to protect its outdated business model, just like how they want people to equate copyright violations with theft."
Interesting, I can't believe they'd try something like that. Do you have a citation for that? A link to an article where a representative of the RIAA states something that implies that file sharing is intrinsically illegal?
I think this is largely theoretical, as the P2P networks and copyright violation are fundamentally linked. If, magically, all unauthorized copyrighted files disappeared from the world's P2P networks, the content offered would probably drop to a microscopic percentage of its current size, and so would its usage. Unsigned musicians would still use it to actively get their tunes heard, and/.ers would use it to share GPL and shareware stuff, but Joe and Jane Average Teenager would quickly flee. Companies like Kazaa which have built businesses around P2P would their business model radically changed. Does anybody disagree?
You do have a good point. A 3" x 5" card in each CD which went into more details in an easy-to-follow manner on what one can do and one cannot would be an important element in their education campaign. I can't guess how effective it would actually be, though.
As I said, a little less hyperbole, please. The RIAA suing pirates does not mean that you can break into my house. And, yeah, I'd heard of the bill submitted which would allow hacking into and disabling PCs, but it wasn't passed. Your post reads as if you're trying to make think that the RIAA broke into people's PCs to get this information, but this simply is not so.
In short, we need to address unfair copyright laws in productive, intelligent ways. Self-pity and spreading misinformation isn't the way to do it. I've read too many letters to congress here on the/. boards which start with "Dear Congressperson," and quickly delve into such utter bullshit that I fear that the recipient will simply cast it off as the missive of an idiot rather than a voice of reason.
I don't know how many songs this family was sharing, and neither do you, so I'm not more qualified than you to guess what was "fair." I do know that although they're described as living in government housing, it's in the Upper West Side (this was reported in the media), so the "destroying this girl's bloodline financially for more than ten generations" comment is a bit off the beam. This is another example where intelligent discourse, not hyperbole, is best.
Au contraire. The USA's intellectual property is one of its biggest exports, adding billions of dollars to our economy each year. One can argue that the USA's strong intellectual property laws are one of the reasons why we're one of the richest countries in the world, and have a relatively good way of life. This family in the projects still managed to have a computer with an Internet connection. The poorest 20% of many, many countries don't even have anything close to that.
It's all economics. Those countries which rely on producing and exporting intellectual property -- for example, the USA and Canda -- tend to have strong copyright enforcement. Countries which do not -- Iran comes to mind -- often have lax copyright enforcement, because it is not in their best economic interest to bother.
Copyright enforcement is capitalism in its purest form, and the USA is a capitalist country.
Lastly, if this truly is the most apalling thing you have ever heard, you should read the news more often. Our men and women are dying in Iraq. I find this to be much more serious than somebody being nailed for illegally sharing more than a thousand copyrighted songs.
Indiscriminately? They're only going after the egregious pirates, the ones sharing more than 1,000 songs. And they are not hacking computers. When you run Kazaa, anybody can find your IP.
A little less hyperbole is called for, in exchange for a little more personal responsibility. If you don't want to be nailed, don't use your PC for massive copyright violation.
I also dispute that "most sane people" would equate massive copyright violation with jaywalking. If you're gleefully sharing more than 1,000 songs, there is the chance that you are adversely affecting people's livelihoods.
They don't word it in the same way that videos do, perhaps due to space, but a CD from my collection which I just grabbed randomly states:
"Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution."
That would make me think twice.
"Taking $2,000 from a 12 year old girl who couldn't possibly have known better?"
In case it hasn't been made clear, the names on the list were provided to the RIAA by the ISPs as a result of being subpoenaed.. If the child's name was provided by the ISP, that means that the Internet service was signed for in the child's name. The money was not taken from the 12-year-old. I think we're all taking this ball and running with it a bit too much. If the family had decided to be wacky and signed up for Internet service in their dog's name, would people be shrieking "They took $2,00 from a poor dog!" ? Okay, that was a rhetorical question. On/., we would. But it would be just as disingenuous.
What do you mean by no evidence? I think it's been established pretty clearly that the RIAA has been collecting the IP addresses of folks who are sharing more than 1,000 copyrighted song. After the whole "Usher" incident, I think it's safe to say that they're crossing their i's and dotting their t's with regard to gathering evidence before filing the suits.
To answer your question, I am quite positive that the quotes were supplied by some PR person working for the RIAA. Pretty sloppily done; they look exceedingly fake.
Interesting that you mention a Mercedes Benz. Do you think areas of law like copyright violation should be subjective based on how rich or poor the copyright holder is? For example, once somebody reaches, say, a certain yearly income level, they no longer have the ability to hold a copyright?
At any rate, remember that for every talentless one-hit-wonder you see on MTV Cribs, there are another 1,000 songwriters, background singers, and session musicians who are considerably less well off. When somebody downloads a CD instead of purchasing it, these people lose money as well. CD sales are down 31 percent in the US over the past couple of years while file sharing is at an all-time high. Of course, no self-respecting/.-er would ever insinuate that there could possibly be a connection, but with those kinds of numbers, it's not just a matter of fewer German luxury cars; it's a matter of survival for some people. If you're not sure where I'm getting at, imagine if your salary were cut 31%.
If the music files are copyrighted by somebody else and you don't have permission from the copyright holder to share them, yeah, it's illegal. See Title 17 of the US code for details.
On the contrary, there are plenty of artists who've spoken out against the record companies. Courtney Love is a famous example.
Some copyright holders might not mind if you download their music, some might. One might feel that one side or the other is misguided, and that's one's prerogative, but it's also a copyright holder's prerogative to have an opinion on whether it's best for them to have their works distributed without their permission. Artists, composers, and other copyright holders should not be considered second-class citizens whose rights we may freely violate because we know what's best for them. If we don't respect others' rights, we should not expect them to respect ours'.
For what it's worth, a publishing company typically is a composer. When you see "published by so-and-so music, Ltd." in the liner notes, that's usually a one person company (or a two person company, in cases of writing teams like Lennon and McCartney) formed for the benefit of collecting royalties.
"Now, are you saying that RIAA should sue Kazaa for providing software that can be used for illegal purposes? Should we also sue concrete companies for allowing mobsters to make unusually heavy shoes? Maybe we should also register fist-sized rocks (they break windows!) and big sticks (they break bones!) too."
Oh, please. Everybody already understands that Kazaa is in business to facilitate copyright violation. That's what people largely use it for. You know it, I know it, and Kazaa knows it.
I find their nudge-nudge, wink-wink "oh, we would NEVER condone such acts" attitude amusing as well, but I sure don't buy into it, nor do I try to promote this lie. Surely you don't, either.
The directory didn't just "happen" to be be shared by Kazaa or whatever; you installed Kazaa and willfully put copyrighted material into that directory. Your only defense here might be that you didn't know how Kazaa works, but as you said that you access files on your home PC from your office, that wouldn't hold up. There's a deliberate chain of events which you caused. You're no victom or bystander. If you don't want to be liable for copyright violation, don't "share" copyrighted material to which you do not have the rights to reproduce.
Please, guys, the case for sensible copyright laws isn't helped by posting deliberately stupid things like the above. If it wouldn't pass the laugh test among your friends, it certainly wouldn't work in a court.
Many people without direct legal experience aren't familiar with what lawyers call "the laugh test." If you couldn't float a defense to a judge or an attorney without them laughing, saying "sheeyeah, right," or something similar, it is said to have failed the laugh test. The defense you've suggested would fail for a number of obvious reasons, the first one being that you don't even believe it yourself.
"Copyright Infringement is NOT A CRIMINAL ACTIVITY that is why they are bringing up lawsuits as that is the only way to defend a copyright."
And you got five mod points for this?
Kerry Gonzalez might disagree with you. He's the fellow who's up for sentencing on September 26th for pirating the pre-release copy of The Hulk a few months ago. He faces up to three years in prison.
Kerry Gonzalez' case is a criminal, not civil proceeding. He was nabbed by the FBI and the complaint was filed by an attorney for the United States. There were no lawsuits. This is a criminal case.
"But, the world does not take your view of the law. There are exceptions. The major one is radio. Did you know that radio is not obligated to pay for the music it plays. (And actually, it gets paid to play the music it plays!)."
In the United States, radio stations do indeed pay for the priveledge of playing music. Two non-profit organizations, BMI and ASCAP, handle the collection of these airplay royalties. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers and musicians, and the money collected goes to them, not the RIAA.
"Did you know you that's it's perfectly legal to make music complications to share with friends and family? Obviously not. You think that every copy demands a lawsuit."
There's no law which explicitly makes this legal; ie. there's no "friends and family" clause. However, this sort of casual copying is so far off the radar that nobody really cares.
Lots of people who break laws find a way to justify them. Many people steal because they need to feed their family. Or perhaps one might speed to the hospital to save a life. For every law on the book, there is probably a good argument for breaking that law on a situational basis. But, nonetheless, laws are laws. Because you can think of justification to break one -- in this case, we're talking about Title 17 -- may not be the best evidence that it needs to be changed.
"The RIAA finally does what geeks have asked for years by going after the offenders instead of after P2P technology itself. And geeks still object. Film at 11."
And the progression continues: now we're seeing "If the RIAA says that these people are sharing a sufficient quantity to cross the line between civil and criminal behavior, why not have the government prosecute them?"
With the way things have gone, I think that will be next. Then what will the/. community say?
Not true. There is no law stating that you can't give your WSJ issue to somebody else when you're done with it, or even leave it in the laundromat for a random stranger to read.
You may not, as the poster said, scan it and put it on your web site for all to read. This is unauthorized duplication and is not allowed.
The reason that one is illegal and the other is not is related to the economic damage to WSJ that each method can cause. If I scan it and put it on my web site, it might be read by hundreds or thousands of people, and there's a decent change that some are reading it as a substitute for buying their own copy.
While giving my read copy to a friend may also cause him to not buy it, the actual damage I can do by loaning (but not duplicating) a single copy is limited due to the mechanics of the situation. A WSJ issue is only really useful for a day, and how many people could I give that one copy to in a day? Eight? Ten? Big difference in scale than scanning it in and placing it on the web.
I've seen lots of straw man arguments to the effect of "there should be no difference between loaning my friend a CD and putting the CD on a P2P network!", but there clearly is. The law works like this in other areas as well: selling a joint is seen as different as selling ten kilos. Stealing a $5 bill is seen as different as stealing $50,000.00. I am not trying to equate copyright violation with drug dealing or stealing cash, but the same principle of the economy of scale applies.
I don't think the subpoenas are much of a threat to you and other musicians who are opting to forgo the label route and instead distributing their music themselves via P2P.
The RIAA is only looking for tracks released by record companies under their wing. If you've got your own music out there on the P2P networks, you're off the RIAA's radar and I doubt that anybody will be subpoenaed based on their sharing of your music or any other music that's not distributed by an RIAA member.
If you were to believe Kazaa's angle, they only intend their service to be used to trade copyrighted materials for which there's permission from the holder to be traded -- in other words, your stuff and the work of similarly minded unsigned musicians. Of course, we know they are lying, and that their success depends on piracy. But if, magically, all the unauthorized P2P sharing stopped, all that would be left on the P2P networks is stuff distributed with the copyright holder's intent -- exactly what you, and (the way they tell it) Kazaa have always had in mind.
I understand that you were being ironic, but the United States does consider copyright protection to be a huge issue.
This is entirely due to economics: intellectual property created by US citizens and companies that do business in the United States is one of our largest exports and, at least as far as some people see it, the billions upon billions of dollars that flow into this country yearly through our exporting of movies, music, software, and literature go a long way toward making the USA one of the richest countries in the world and maintaining the way of life that we expect. Insert patriotic background music here.
That's why the laws protect copyright holders at home, too: if Microsoft sells a million CDs, they pay taxes on the profits. If a guy sets up a space in a warehouse to make counterfiet Microsoft software, thus depriving Microsoft of sales, the US is less likely to see income tax from the software pirate than from Microsoft. Thus, when Microsoft goes to congress asking for stronger copyright laws, or for assistance from the feds in nailing that guy in the warehouse, they tend to willingly go along.
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"One exception to the above: a subsidary of the RIAA, whose name temporarily escapes me, is responsible for collecting the fees and redistributing them for all music played on radio where the station operator hasn't negotiated directly with the copyright holders. That's the only place the RIAA could be said to have a "monopoly" in any meaningful sense of the word. But that's barely relevent here."
Your post was otherwise excellent but the above absolutely needs to be corrected.
Radio royalties are collected by two non-profit agencies, BMI and ASCAP. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers, songwriters, and publishers. And they are not part of the RIAA.
As there are two independent agencies that handle this in the US, I guess one could call it an oligarchy, but if one is of the "RIAA is bad" mindset, then BMI and ASCAP are definitely the good guys. Again: they are non-profit agencies run by and for songwriters, composers and publishers for the purpose of getting radio royalties to the composers, songwriters and publishers.
Collecting radio royalties is one of many things that they do in support of the individuals who work hard to create the music (royalties based on public performance, such as in bars and restaurants with live bands or jukeboxes, is just one other thing they do). These royalties, too, go to songwriters, composers and publishers, not the RIAA.
In anticipation of the next question, "aren't the publishers the record companies, so doesn't that mean that the RIAA gets more money, RIAA DIE DIE DIE DIE," the answer is: typically not. In this context, publishing refers not to the actual recording of a piece of music, but the rights to the music and lyrics. This includes, but is not limited to, printing the lyrics in the liner notes, quoting them in a book, covering a song, and using an original song in a commercial (for which multiple rights holders may have to be consulted -- including the owner of the recording, which is often a record company). Nowadays, the publisher is a smallish company, often just one or two people. One can sell or transfer their publishing rights; perhaps the most famous example is Michael Jackson's buying of much of the Beatles catalog. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. Here's more info.
By the way, typically for a song to be available on a legal download service, approval must be acquired from both the owner of the recording (the record company) as well as the music publisher. This is why you might see eight out of ten of an album's ten tracks available on buymusic or itunes -- for the other two, perhaps the songwriter or the composer simply did not give permission. This is one reason why getting legal services with large catalogs has been so tough... all those permissions to obtain. This is precisely why many folks have advocated extending the concept of compulsory royalties for downloads -- under such a system, the download service would not need to seek the composer's permission before making the song available for download, as long as the composer was paid a fixed fee set by law.
Even more information is here and here.
Not true at all; the text includes verbage about the copyright holder or their agent. The RIAA is, as you correctly pointed out, a trade group working on behalf of the labels, who generally own or share ownership of the sound recordings.
You're also correct that the settlement money they're collecting is going to lawyers; in fact, they're probably losing money on this. This is because the entire point of this exercise is to educate the populace at large that they are serious about protecting their clients' property. The rationale is that investing the legal bucks now will gradually erode unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials, and drive consumers to legitimate venues like CDs and legal download services like iTunes. And that, in turn, will generate the income for the labels and the artists. This is the Logic 101, Business 101 and Math 101 of which you speak.
"Why did the RIAA refuse to negotiate with the P2P software vendors so that they could profit from downloads rather than just whining about how bad they are and spending millions of dollars in subpoenas, litigation and press coverage?"
There's a common perception that businesses such as the RIAA are expected to be more altruistic than mere mortals. It's no secret that Napster, Kazaa, etc. knew exactly what they're doing, and that their businesses are fundamentally based on copyright infringement. In your personal dealings, if you find that somebody is actively trying to fuck you over, are you going to make nice nice with them, even if you think that it ultimately might be in your best interests? It's much more satisfying to fuck them right back. As you would behave in your personal life, so do many businesses. RIAA's response can be summarized as "Fuck you; we'll put you out of business and work on launching our own download services." I would do the same.
"According to the RIAA, since their terror campaign started, downloads have fallen over 15% yet CD sales have dropped almost double that. They still claim that the additional drop in sales is due to an "Increase in illegal downloads."
Your dates are a bit off here. Despite a recent drop due to their campaign, file sharing is at an all-time high. The 31% drop in CD sales is over the past couple of years, not in the recent few weeks when there's been a slight drop in file trading. Occam's Razor suggests that if, over the past few years, file sharing has exploded while CD sales have dropped by almost a third, that the two are linked, but many people insist that this is a coincidence that one rarely finds outside of Dickens novels.
Well, $200 is $2,000 in dog dollars. I certainly think this is fair. I only give my dog a $10 weekly allowance, after all.
I don't think I've seen it mentioned that the recent launch of AOL Journals significantly changed the blogging competitive landscape. This news surely affected Pyra's forecast for the paid version of Blogger.
Either way, I prefer journalspace. They use the 'try before you buy' model, have more features than Blogger, and the content has an average intelligence level that's roughly three metric notches above LiveJournal.
"The RIAA wants people to believe that the act of filesharing itself is illegal in order to protect its outdated business model, just like how they want people to equate copyright violations with theft."
Interesting, I can't believe they'd try something like that. Do you have a citation for that? A link to an article where a representative of the RIAA states something that implies that file sharing is intrinsically illegal?
I think this is largely theoretical, as the P2P networks and copyright violation are fundamentally linked. If, magically, all unauthorized copyrighted files disappeared from the world's P2P networks, the content offered would probably drop to a microscopic percentage of its current size, and so would its usage. Unsigned musicians would still use it to actively get their tunes heard, and /.ers would use it to share GPL and shareware stuff, but Joe and Jane Average Teenager would quickly flee. Companies like Kazaa which have built businesses around P2P would their business model radically changed. Does anybody disagree?
You do have a good point. A 3" x 5" card in each CD which went into more details in an easy-to-follow manner on what one can do and one cannot would be an important element in their education campaign. I can't guess how effective it would actually be, though.
I'm not sure if that was a hindrance to her before -- buymusic.com is PC-friendly and has a similar catalog of music.
As I said, a little less hyperbole, please. The RIAA suing pirates does not mean that you can break into my house. And, yeah, I'd heard of the bill submitted which would allow hacking into and disabling PCs, but it wasn't passed. Your post reads as if you're trying to make think that the RIAA broke into people's PCs to get this information, but this simply is not so.
In short, we need to address unfair copyright laws in productive, intelligent ways. Self-pity and spreading misinformation isn't the way to do it. I've read too many letters to congress here on the /. boards which start with "Dear Congressperson," and quickly delve into such utter bullshit that I fear that the recipient will simply cast it off as the missive of an idiot rather than a voice of reason.
I don't know how many songs this family was sharing, and neither do you, so I'm not more qualified than you to guess what was "fair." I do know that although they're described as living in government housing, it's in the Upper West Side (this was reported in the media), so the "destroying this girl's bloodline financially for more than ten generations" comment is a bit off the beam. This is another example where intelligent discourse, not hyperbole, is best.
Au contraire. The USA's intellectual property is one of its biggest exports, adding billions of dollars to our economy each year. One can argue that the USA's strong intellectual property laws are one of the reasons why we're one of the richest countries in the world, and have a relatively good way of life. This family in the projects still managed to have a computer with an Internet connection. The poorest 20% of many, many countries don't even have anything close to that.
It's all economics. Those countries which rely on producing and exporting intellectual property -- for example, the USA and Canda -- tend to have strong copyright enforcement. Countries which do not -- Iran comes to mind -- often have lax copyright enforcement, because it is not in their best economic interest to bother.
Copyright enforcement is capitalism in its purest form, and the USA is a capitalist country.
Lastly, if this truly is the most apalling thing you have ever heard, you should read the news more often. Our men and women are dying in Iraq. I find this to be much more serious than somebody being nailed for illegally sharing more than a thousand copyrighted songs.
Indiscriminately? They're only going after the egregious pirates, the ones sharing more than 1,000 songs. And they are not hacking computers. When you run Kazaa, anybody can find your IP.
A little less hyperbole is called for, in exchange for a little more personal responsibility. If you don't want to be nailed, don't use your PC for massive copyright violation.
I also dispute that "most sane people" would equate massive copyright violation with jaywalking. If you're gleefully sharing more than 1,000 songs, there is the chance that you are adversely affecting people's livelihoods.
"CD's have no such warning."
They don't word it in the same way that videos do, perhaps due to space, but a CD from my collection which I just grabbed randomly states:
"Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution."
That would make me think twice.
"Taking $2,000 from a 12 year old girl who couldn't possibly have known better?"
In case it hasn't been made clear, the names on the list were provided to the RIAA by the ISPs as a result of being subpoenaed.. If the child's name was provided by the ISP, that means that the Internet service was signed for in the child's name. The money was not taken from the 12-year-old. I think we're all taking this ball and running with it a bit too much. If the family had decided to be wacky and signed up for Internet service in their dog's name, would people be shrieking "They took $2,00 from a poor dog!" ? Okay, that was a rhetorical question. On /., we would. But it would be just as disingenuous.
What do you mean by no evidence? I think it's been established pretty clearly that the RIAA has been collecting the IP addresses of folks who are sharing more than 1,000 copyrighted song. After the whole "Usher" incident, I think it's safe to say that they're crossing their i's and dotting their t's with regard to gathering evidence before filing the suits.
To answer your question, I am quite positive that the quotes were supplied by some PR person working for the RIAA. Pretty sloppily done; they look exceedingly fake.
Interesting that you mention a Mercedes Benz. Do you think areas of law like copyright violation should be subjective based on how rich or poor the copyright holder is? For example, once somebody reaches, say, a certain yearly income level, they no longer have the ability to hold a copyright?
At any rate, remember that for every talentless one-hit-wonder you see on MTV Cribs, there are another 1,000 songwriters, background singers, and session musicians who are considerably less well off. When somebody downloads a CD instead of purchasing it, these people lose money as well. CD sales are down 31 percent in the US over the past couple of years while file sharing is at an all-time high. Of course, no self-respecting /.-er would ever insinuate that there could possibly be a connection, but with those kinds of numbers, it's not just a matter of fewer German luxury cars; it's a matter of survival for some people. If you're not sure where I'm getting at, imagine if your salary were cut 31%.
If the music files are copyrighted by somebody else and you don't have permission from the copyright holder to share them, yeah, it's illegal. See Title 17 of the US code for details.
On the contrary, there are plenty of artists who've spoken out against the record companies. Courtney Love is a famous example.
Some copyright holders might not mind if you download their music, some might. One might feel that one side or the other is misguided, and that's one's prerogative, but it's also a copyright holder's prerogative to have an opinion on whether it's best for them to have their works distributed without their permission. Artists, composers, and other copyright holders should not be considered second-class citizens whose rights we may freely violate because we know what's best for them. If we don't respect others' rights, we should not expect them to respect ours'.
For what it's worth, a publishing company typically is a composer. When you see "published by so-and-so music, Ltd." in the liner notes, that's usually a one person company (or a two person company, in cases of writing teams like Lennon and McCartney) formed for the benefit of collecting royalties.
"Now, are you saying that RIAA should sue Kazaa for providing software that can be used for illegal purposes? Should we also sue concrete companies for allowing mobsters to make unusually heavy shoes? Maybe we should also register fist-sized rocks (they break windows!) and big sticks (they break bones!) too."
Oh, please. Everybody already understands that Kazaa is in business to facilitate copyright violation. That's what people largely use it for. You know it, I know it, and Kazaa knows it.
I find their nudge-nudge, wink-wink "oh, we would NEVER condone such acts" attitude amusing as well, but I sure don't buy into it, nor do I try to promote this lie. Surely you don't, either.
The directory didn't just "happen" to be be shared by Kazaa or whatever; you installed Kazaa and willfully put copyrighted material into that directory. Your only defense here might be that you didn't know how Kazaa works, but as you said that you access files on your home PC from your office, that wouldn't hold up. There's a deliberate chain of events which you caused. You're no victom or bystander. If you don't want to be liable for copyright violation, don't "share" copyrighted material to which you do not have the rights to reproduce.
Please, guys, the case for sensible copyright laws isn't helped by posting deliberately stupid things like the above. If it wouldn't pass the laugh test among your friends, it certainly wouldn't work in a court.
Are you stating that anything broadcast over the airwaves enters the public domain? That's not even close to being correct.
How many times have you heard that "...without the express permission of Major League Baseball" spiel during a game?
Many people without direct legal experience aren't familiar with what lawyers call "the laugh test." If you couldn't float a defense to a judge or an attorney without them laughing, saying "sheeyeah, right," or something similar, it is said to have failed the laugh test. The defense you've suggested would fail for a number of obvious reasons, the first one being that you don't even believe it yourself.
"Copyright Infringement is NOT A CRIMINAL ACTIVITY that is why they are bringing up lawsuits as that is the only way to defend a copyright."
And you got five mod points for this?
Kerry Gonzalez might disagree with you. He's the fellow who's up for sentencing on September 26th for pirating the pre-release copy of The Hulk a few months ago. He faces up to three years in prison.
Kerry Gonzalez' case is a criminal, not civil proceeding. He was nabbed by the FBI and the complaint was filed by an attorney for the United States. There were no lawsuits. This is a criminal case.
And here's another fella in Florida who faces up to five years for criminal copyright infringement. And another guy in San Jose who was indicted and arrested for criminal copyright infringement for pirating software.
"But, the world does not take your view of the law. There are exceptions. The major one is radio. Did you know that radio is not obligated to pay for the music it plays. (And actually, it gets paid to play the music it plays!)."
In the United States, radio stations do indeed pay for the priveledge of playing music. Two non-profit organizations, BMI and ASCAP, handle the collection of these airplay royalties. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers and musicians, and the money collected goes to them, not the RIAA.
"Did you know you that's it's perfectly legal to make music complications to share with friends and family? Obviously not. You think that every copy demands a lawsuit."
There's no law which explicitly makes this legal; ie. there's no "friends and family" clause. However, this sort of casual copying is so far off the radar that nobody really cares.
Lots of people who break laws find a way to justify them. Many people steal because they need to feed their family. Or perhaps one might speed to the hospital to save a life. For every law on the book, there is probably a good argument for breaking that law on a situational basis. But, nonetheless, laws are laws. Because you can think of justification to break one -- in this case, we're talking about Title 17 -- may not be the best evidence that it needs to be changed.
"The RIAA finally does what geeks have asked for years by going after the offenders instead of after P2P technology itself. And geeks still object. Film at 11."
And the progression continues: now we're seeing "If the RIAA says that these people are sharing a sufficient quantity to cross the line between civil and criminal behavior, why not have the government prosecute them?"
With the way things have gone, I think that will be next. Then what will the /. community say?
Not true. There is no law stating that you can't give your WSJ issue to somebody else when you're done with it, or even leave it in the laundromat for a random stranger to read.
You may not, as the poster said, scan it and put it on your web site for all to read. This is unauthorized duplication and is not allowed.
The reason that one is illegal and the other is not is related to the economic damage to WSJ that each method can cause. If I scan it and put it on my web site, it might be read by hundreds or thousands of people, and there's a decent change that some are reading it as a substitute for buying their own copy.
While giving my read copy to a friend may also cause him to not buy it, the actual damage I can do by loaning (but not duplicating) a single copy is limited due to the mechanics of the situation. A WSJ issue is only really useful for a day, and how many people could I give that one copy to in a day? Eight? Ten? Big difference in scale than scanning it in and placing it on the web.
I've seen lots of straw man arguments to the effect of "there should be no difference between loaning my friend a CD and putting the CD on a P2P network!", but there clearly is. The law works like this in other areas as well: selling a joint is seen as different as selling ten kilos. Stealing a $5 bill is seen as different as stealing $50,000.00. I am not trying to equate copyright violation with drug dealing or stealing cash, but the same principle of the economy of scale applies.
I don't think the subpoenas are much of a threat to you and other musicians who are opting to forgo the label route and instead distributing their music themselves via P2P.
The RIAA is only looking for tracks released by record companies under their wing. If you've got your own music out there on the P2P networks, you're off the RIAA's radar and I doubt that anybody will be subpoenaed based on their sharing of your music or any other music that's not distributed by an RIAA member.
If you were to believe Kazaa's angle, they only intend their service to be used to trade copyrighted materials for which there's permission from the holder to be traded -- in other words, your stuff and the work of similarly minded unsigned musicians. Of course, we know they are lying, and that their success depends on piracy. But if, magically, all the unauthorized P2P sharing stopped, all that would be left on the P2P networks is stuff distributed with the copyright holder's intent -- exactly what you, and (the way they tell it) Kazaa have always had in mind.
I understand that you were being ironic, but the United States does consider copyright protection to be a huge issue.
This is entirely due to economics: intellectual property created by US citizens and companies that do business in the United States is one of our largest exports and, at least as far as some people see it, the billions upon billions of dollars that flow into this country yearly through our exporting of movies, music, software, and literature go a long way toward making the USA one of the richest countries in the world and maintaining the way of life that we expect. Insert patriotic background music here.
That's why the laws protect copyright holders at home, too: if Microsoft sells a million CDs, they pay taxes on the profits. If a guy sets up a space in a warehouse to make counterfiet Microsoft software, thus depriving Microsoft of sales, the US is less likely to see income tax from the software pirate than from Microsoft. Thus, when Microsoft goes to congress asking for stronger copyright laws, or for assistance from the feds in nailing that guy in the warehouse, they tend to willingly go along.