RIAA to Sue You Now 831
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC reports that apparently the music industry feels so satisfied with going after file swapping software makers that they want to sue the pants off the file swappers themselves. Of course, you'll need to be a big fish with lots of illegal music to get their attention." This is what they should have done in the first place- go after the people who are actually doing it instead of making P2P seemingly
illegal.
Time + Money = Not bloody likely! (Score:5, Insightful)
So in other words to find most individual users they will have to invest time+money, yeah this'll fly for an association thats primary concern is profit!!
Commentary is completely off. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about an industry that is feeling smug and self-assured...This is a LAST DITCH EFFORT to assert their right to exist. And in the long run, I don't think its going to work.
RIP RIAA -- 2006
Re:Going after users/file sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Theres a TON more out on these networks than just illegal files, but I do agree with you that the majority is such (and it's unfortunate).
This is what they should do, but still won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
So this might be good. Granted, the RIAA won't _stop_ prosecuting P2P networks, but at least they'll be shifting some of the blame to the people who actually use these networks for illegal activity.
But it won't help them. People like free music, and they'll fight tooth and nail when you try to take it away from them. Imagine the public backlash they'll have when they trace some huge fileswapper, have the Feds bust down their doors, only to find that their suspect is a 15-year-old whose father works at a university and whose mother is a nurse. They'll have to arrest someone, and no matter who they do, they'll be setting themselves up for negative publicity. Online file-sharers will be galvanized to the "cause" of free music, and the RIAA's troubles will continue to pile up.
Companies like the RIAA and the MPAA are going to go out of business. Period. When people have the ability to make an infinite number of copies of your product, at virtually no cost, you can't make money anymore. It's as simple as that.
Re:Going after users/file sharing (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wish I could talk to these people... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the endgame (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been waiting for this to happen, as this will push things to a final resolution.
BTW, Why can I buy a movie that has been out for 3-4 months for $15-16 on DVD, with extra features, etc, but a 20 year old album costs more than that? I can buy DVD's of older movies for around $10.
Yet, DVD sales boom. The best anti-piracy protection is reasonable prices. So long as the RIAA engages in illegal, anti-competitive practices (the FTC found them guilty of CD price fixing again), I say they deserve whatever happens to them.
It's a Mexican standoff... Pirates will pirate from P2P networks, the RIAA won't obey the law.
If it can be heard, it can be ripped. If it can be ripped, it can be traded. No amount of lawyering can change this, and indeed, the music industry will only become an even greater villian to the average Joe by the attempt.
Sell CD's for $10. Watch the sales rise. Quit wasting $millions bribing stations to play songs they will play anyway. Watch profits rise...
Re:Where is this illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
As per the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992 (If I remember correctly), you are allowed to make infinite copies of a copyrighted material that you own the rights to for personal use, and, in that case, personal use INCLUDED giving copies to friends, as long as it wasn't for profit.
That's no different than Napster, if you ask me. I'm just giving copies to my friends, and I'm sure as hell not profitting from it.
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA and the authorities will spend exorbitant amounts of money just to find and prosecute one or two people. The hope is that after they make 'an example' out of one person, they can say, "See? We can find you and prosecute you." It's solely for deterrent value, because they're clutching at straws now. Leave the problem alone and it will only get worse. Try a solution, no matter how asinine, and it just may pay off. At least that's what I think. Someone enlighten me.
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Commentary is completely off. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no one challenges their right to exist, what they are trying to protect is their "right" to impose an outdated buisness model on the public. They want complete control on the music, they want their oligopoly to be able to set extravagant prices on low quality products so they can keep getting their 8 digit salaries. And above all, they do not want to either 1-get with the times and adapt to new technology nor 2- give the public what they want.
I used to buy a lot more CDs when I could sample them freely on napster. Now that they've shut it down and called me a thief, I'm boycotting them.
I hope they go bankrupt...at least then N'sync will be forced to go back to being regular male strippers.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just digging themselves deeper into their graves. They're approach should be through sound economics, not through evil lawyers (that's another issue all together!).
Give us an incentive to buy your CDs and we'll buy it. Stop blatently rip us off!
Re:About Time!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Buying the music doesn't give you the right to share it. So the insane freak still could get into trouble.
libraries are also the targets (Score:5, Insightful)
Here and there in the midst of all this discussion, I've occasionally run across an estimate from the publishing industry that each book sold is read on the average four times. One of their interests is cutting this number down and making people pay for the books they read.
Now, I have very few books that I've ever loaded out to anyone, and I doubt if any of my couple hundred books have been read by three other people. So where could all these extra readers be coming from?
Right. Libraries. The publishing industry doesn't make much of a public fuss of it, but one of the goals that they are starting to consider reachable is using the growing copyright restrictions to shut down public libraries. In the eyes of publishers, libraries are nothing but open copyright violations. All the arguments being made about "piracy" apply directly to libraries.
In the 1800's, the development of the public library system was one of the really significant advances in public education. We are seeing an attempt to end this social experiment, and to restrict education to those who can afford the publishers' price.
Re:libraries are also the targets (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the Library is just a terminal room, what's the use in continuing to have it?
Laws are only good when followed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at prohibition as an example. The government tried to make alcohol illegal, but due to the overwhelming amount of people who simply ignored those laws and continued to consume it anyhow, it was eventually repealed when they discovered just how much effort would have to be put into stopping offenders. Similarly, music trading will never be stopped, simply because people will move between media as necessary, even going so far as to design an anonymous program which does not allow the tracking of IPs or other identifying sources.
Oh, and don't forget the good old days of searching through websites for mp3's.
Re:Meh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like the "War on Drugs" (Score:2, Insightful)
The jails are filling, and support is dropping but they keep fighting.
The RIAA is targetting a subset, one that people won't identify with so there is less public support. They don't care what happens to the "thief", cause it won't happen to them. As long as they only target small groups rather then the public at large they'll be okay.
Re:This is what they should do, but still won't wo (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether you like the RIAA or not, this is a pretty acurate description of what most P2P networks are. Log onto Kazaa or Gnutella and see what is there. It seems like a bunch of pirated MP3, some pirated movies, some pirated software, and lots and lots of porn (some of which is priated, the rest is wholesale stolen from porn sites). There is very little "legal" content on P2P networks. Even the few independant artists who have released their work on P2P networks get very little traffic, because P2P is set up mainly to be used by searching, and it's hard to search for new material since you don't know what it is your looking for (yes, you can find some stuff based on looking at a users files, but even then, you need to find the user somehow). The P2P networks are painted as havens for piracy because that is how they are used, and mostly what they were designed for.
Re:Advantage of Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)
As I understand the Gnutella protocol, this is possibly although none of the present clients have such a feature. When Gnutella first came out I toyed with the idea of building a Python-based client which allowed you to limit searches to one host. I might be wrong, but this is how it would be done, assuming your target host has given all their MP3 files a ".mp3" extension:
If this is true, and if it isn't then no doubt someone will correct me, then I am surprised why nobody has implemented this feature.
ian.
Re:Going after users/file sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
That argument doesn't fly with our government when peoples LIVES are at stake, why the hell should it when only some sleazy corps profits are?
Re:well now... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trading mp3's or copying millions of albums where no one profits... that it is okay.
Because that is where theft comes into play. That _is_ money that could go to the RIAA's pit-o-cash.
Re:About time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. You think that CDs are too expensive, therefore the RIAA is ripping you off. So you take music from the publishers (and, indirectly, from the RIAA) without paying for it, and this is okay.
Wait. I must have missed something.
Re:Advantage of Gnutella (Score:3, Insightful)
They only learn of what files you have when they do a specific search for them.
Presumably record companies will only be suing over songs they actually own the copyright to anyway, so I don't see how this is any advantage.
Re:This is the endgame (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually its not so simple as that. It's a matter of game theory: if you as a record company stop giving the record companies payola, none of yor songs will get played, and your competitors' will. Kind of like the prisoners dilemma, If all the record companies stopped shelling out payola they would all be better off. But if one does it it has an advantage. If you could all agree not to break the law you'd be better off. Of course such an agreement depends on the record companies being trustworthy...
As for lowering prices, they have no reason to do that. If you really want Britney Spears there is only ONE label selling her "music". so in effect they have a monopoly, so pricing is not dependent on cost but dependent on what the buyer is willing to pay.
To summarize: The RIAA owns the artists and Clearchannel owns the listeners... music-listeners get screwed twice over. P2P is a loophole to this system. A music listener has to choose between getting screwed or breaking copyright law.
Re:About time (Score:1, Insightful)
It is illegal for me to make an mp3 of a Britney Spear's song and distribute it. Period. End of story. I do not have permission to share the song. With anyone, except for certain Fair Use situations, which are fairly restrictive and certainly do not include anonymous sharing over a worldwide network.
It is not illegal for Slashdot to write articles for the web and "share" the HTML files. They own the copyright for the articles, or have permission/license to share the stuff here.
Finally, in neither case, is the person downloading the file, mp3 or html, going to be committing a crime, because how the hell do they know if the file is illegal or not? We *might* be able to argue that they had a reasonable suspicion that the files were illegal copies, but the primary guilt is still with the person offering them up for download.
Re:Where is this illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
How is offering them over napster servers any more illegal then what a library does?
Libraries distribute, napster sharers copy and distribute.
Law was amended by DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
Burris
Re:Gaaah! FUD from hell (Score:3, Insightful)
John makes music for a living. His record company rips him off with a crappy contract, but it's better than starving or having to work at a regular job full time so he couldn't focus on his music.
But Bob down the street doesn't care to pay for John's music, even though he enjoys it, so he downloads it off a p2p network. Then he "shares" it with everyone else on p2p networks, so they can do likewise.
Except that it's JOHN'S music being "shared" and John never said it was ok to just give away is music against his will, and doesn't see a fucking CENT from the exchange of that music.
Yes, p2p, and the entire digital realm for that matter, is great for avoiding the zero-sum problem of most markets. However, this doesn't mean it's alright to take other peoples work and do what you will with it. (with respects to Fair Use, of course.)
Finally, YES, a handful of artists use p2p to give out their music, but go browse a Kazaa users' shares sometime... tell me how many of those songs you REALLY think were put there by the artist/publisher for legal distribution.
Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... um... yes. If you don't want to listen to free music, and you don't want to (or can't) pay for music, then you don't get any music. That how a capitalist market economy works.
I guess you could make the case that being deprived of music is a moral wrong, and try to get somebody with money to back a charity for people who can't afford music. A church would probably be willing to help you out, but I'm not sure you'd care for their selection.
Your other option is to hum.
Re:Six simple steps to win the lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
8. Point pinky to edge of mouth
9. Laugh evily.
Re:Where is this illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, if memory serves, the Code was at one point modified to explicitly state that public online sharing constitutes public performance, which is a violation unless specifically authorized.
The RIAA could kill itself with this scheme!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
1. This action could bring potentially turn the a current ally, the PC industry, against them. Look at it this way. Before, they'd targeted the P2P networks. Once word of the first lawsuits against individuals starts hitting the news, many other individuals who may be considering getting a new, faster PC so they can have access to "free" music, etc. will be discouraged from buying that PC. Simply, the idea of getting "free stuff" on the internet is a very big reason many people get a PC, these days. Many friends of my mother and even my grandparents have asked how they can get things, such as music, if they were to purchase a PC. The RIAA's action against individuals will certainly discourage a portion of new PC sales in an already slumping market.
HP-Compaq, Dell and even Microsoft will not be very forgiving or encouraging once they begin to feel this impact.
2. Washington and certainly the Bush administration will be forced into some action once word of "those West Coast fat cats suing the average American" goes mainstream. Bush's approval ratings have already taken a big dent because of the public's perception of his being is bed with big business (Enron, WorldCom, et. al.) Something like the RIAA admitting to trying to "sue the pants off" of Joe Public would be a very good way for him to get back into the public's good graces by thwarting the RIAA's meglomaniacal view of itself. Besides, his conservative supporters would fall all over themselves to send truckload's of cash his way to fight "those pink-o, liberal California record weirdos." I bet Limbaugh is drooling over the possibility even now!
3. It takes something substantial to get the American public's attention. And what the RIAA is proposing is very substantial indeed. It's the kind of action that'll cause the average American to take notice, and once more and more people begin taking notice of the RIAA, who they are, what they do, etc., the more the RIAA is going to be in trouble. Most Americans don't like institutions that which operate with the smug, authoritarian abandon of the RIAA, and will happily go out of their way to spit on them given the chance. Well, my friends, the action that the RIAA is proposing is the definitely going to be the chance for more and more Americans to hawk up a big one and spit it right in the face of the RIAA.
Re: ban a tech. due to potential use? (Score:1, Insightful)
yes, its a sad state of affairs that many p2p apps are mostly used for priacy and pr0n. but that doesn't invalidate it as a technology. its just that current legal content distributors have all decided to take the simpler much more expensive distribution route of servers rather than use p2p infrastructure to distribute their content. p2p is still being devloped and explored; reliability and scalibility are increasing.
expect to see p2p technology inside the intranet at corporations doing data archival, backup and computing. general use in appropriate legal circumstances on the net will follow.
Re:About time (Score:2, Insightful)
But as soon as a medium, Kazaa for example, becomes unfeasible to trade files (maybe because it's too much of a risk of getting caught), there will be another medium. Probably more local and underground, but it'll still be there. Like wireless networks. There are projects on the way right now to get entire cities wireless access. People there will be able to share files over the wireless network. There's no way piracy can be stopped. And the RIAA and the record companies are taking the totally wrong approach to this problem. And they will be punished for it, with lower profits.
Re:Gaaah! FUD from hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you could look at it from another viewpoint, that of the record industry. See, the record industry has been bitching and moaning about this big problem that they created due to their own greed. It's called payola. They have to pay so that the music they sell gets exposure to listeners around the country and around the world. They have been doing this forever. First they were paying radio stations to play their songs. Then when that was outlawed, they started paying some middleman to pay radio stations to play their songs. Now they're complaining that it's just too expensive and that the government should put a stop to it, boo hoo hoo. Oh yeah, and in the meantime, they are going to shut down napster and kazaa and anyone else that gets their music out to listeners around the world. Can't have that happening, can we.
Now you might say that people who download songs will just listen to them on their computer and never pay for the CD, but I don't think there's any evidence that that happens on a wide enough scale to really have that much of an impact, and there is a decent amount of evidence that seems to say that Napster and others have had a positive impact on CD sales. I think that what the record industry should really do is work on their public relations problem. Get rid of Rosen and put an artist or several artists in her spot. They don't even have to be Britney-class superstars, and in fact, they shouldn't be. They should represent the vast majority of artists that make something around minimum wage or a little better. Kind of like the artistic middle class. They could help to persuade people that artists really need their support in order to continue to make the music that the fans love. That could probably make a huge impact on people. But if they really want to make it work, then they should knock off all the damn price-fixing crap and lower the price of CDs. They should probably stick an MSRP price on each CD too, so that stores couldn't just double the price without facing some serious questions. I think that the statement to fans would be that the record industry wants to do good by them and help them find the music they like and help artists to make a good living. Oh, and they would save all those millions that they've been flushing down the payola toilet too. Now most of us can't imagine this happening in a million years, but if anyone has the muscle to get a message out to fans, it's the record industry.
Re:Advantage of Gnutella (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the idea is to prevent end users from getting exposed to musicians who don't have contracts with RIAA labels.
That's the reality underlying "concerns about piracy" and artists being enlisted behind industry propaganda and payola, why LP FM radio has been given so much trouble, etc. and why Internet Radio is being shut down in the US.
The RIAA wants a situation where an artist who wants to make a living in music must be signed to an RIAA label. An artist who sells music otherwise isn't contributing towards the lifestyles of the suits at record companies. The RIAA suits consider this immoral and where possible, something to be made illegal.
I'm sure that the record industry knows that the P2P networks can be quite reasonably seen as a group of individuals promoting music for RIAA companies and artists at their own expense. This isn't what they have problems with.
The problem is that since the RIAA has no control over these channels, there's no way to prevent them from presenting the music of musicians not signed to RIAA labels.
Re:FreeNet? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know what your legal background is, however the following quote from an LA Weekly article might shed some light on the situation:
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
(I've already said some of this elsewhere. Apologies to anybody who thinks I'm repeating myself because, basically, I am.)
There are certain basic rules for living in groups that seem to go back 5,000 years or more. These basic rules seem to be common to all cultures and all times, although they're expressed in different ways. Some of these ideas made it into my particular culture via the Bible and the Ten Commandments. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't kill. (Of course, there's some pretty specific Judeo-Christian stuff in there, too, like the ``no false idols'' thing. That's not the sort of thing I'm talking about now.) Other cultures have their own expressions of those basic rules, some explicit, and some merely implicit.
So I believe stealing is wrong because it goes against 5,000 years of cultural tradition. I think of this in Darwinistic terms. Thousands of years ago, the world was covered by little bands of people living together in groups. Some of those groups had the ``don't steal'' rule. Presumably there were some that didn't. The ones with the ``don't steal'' rule lasted, and the others didn't. So, as a society, having a ``don't steal'' rule can be considered to be a survival trait. You don't deliberately fly in the face of thousands of years of natural selection without a really good reason.
So I accept the idea that stealing is wrong, just on its face, with no need for any deeper analysis. In my opinion, it just is.
So then the question becomes whether or not copying somebody else's Britney Spears CD is stealing. As others have said, I can copy my friend's CD without taking it from him (permanently, anyway), so it's a non-zero-sum transaction. They extend this to conclude that copying a CD isn't stealing.
To me this is counter-intuitive. If I walk into a store and shoplift a pack of chewing gum, I've gotten something for nothing. That's stealing. If I copy a friend's CD, I've gotten something for nothing. But is it stealing?
I say it is. I don't believe that I had the right to make a copy of my friend's CD. I believe that the contents of that CD are the property of FooCorp, which owns the rights to all of Britney's music. Only FooCorp has the right to duplicate Britney's music. So when I copied it, I was doing something I had no right to do. I took it without permission. I stole it. The non-zero-sum nature of the transaction is irrelevant, and the question of harm doesn't come into it.
Consider a simple and imperfect analogy. My friend is going to give me a present. He wraps it and puts it in his closet, saving it for my birthday. He has every intention of giving it to me next week. The next day, however, I sneak into his closet and find the present, although I don't know who it's for. I decide that I want it, so I slip it under my coat and walk out with it. That's clearly stealing, despite the fact that my friend intended to give me the present anyway. This analogy shows that circumstance is irrelevant when deciding whether a particular act is stealing or not. Similarly, the fact that my friend still has his Britney Spears CD doesn't change the fact that making a copy for myself was stealing, and therefore wrong.
Lots of people on Slashdot like to play the non-zero-sum card. Even RMS used the non-zero-sum argument in his writings on why software should be free. I don't know if I've adequately explained it, but I hope you see why I think that argument doesn't hold water.
Lots of people on Slashdot also like to claim that intellectual property is a counter-intuitive concept, or that it's not a valid idea. I don't buy that one, either. Intellectual property actually goes back farther than many people seem to realize.
As an example, the cultures of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest included the idea that some stories and songs are the property of certain tribes, families, or groups, and that those stories and songs couldn't be sung by anybody else. The Gitksan and the Haida had this trait, and I think the Tlingit did as well. This is clearly the idea of intellectual property, just as we use it now, but found in a pre-modern culture. (I'd cite a source, but I can't find my college anthro book right now. The best Google can do is this [pbs.org] link, which mentions Tlingit intellectual property traditions in passing.)
So, in summary, I believe two key things. I believe that stealing is wrong. I believe that copying music without permission from its owner is stealing, and is therefore wrong. Furthermore, I also believe that the concept of intellectual property is a much older and more pervasive idea than many people acknowledge, and that it makes more sense than some people think.
This post is copyright (c) 2002 by FooCorp. All rights reserved.
Just kidding.
Position Statement (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Filesharing networks are a tool, as is a car or a firearm or an aircraft. There are legal and illegal uses for all of them. The fact that a majority of users misuse filesharing networks is no more relevant than the fact that a majority of American motorists break the speed limit. Period. End of story.
2. Certain songs are copyright their respective copyright holders, in this case the Recording Industry Association of America. Those songs are their intellectual property. This is not a gray area. Now, should it be demonstrated and upheld in a court of law that they, the RIAA, have abused this copyright, this may change. Hasn't happened yet.
3. End users that have not paid for said music or otherwise acquired a LEGAL license to said music do not have the legal right to possess their own distinct digital copy of said music for any purpose other than parody. In English: If you didn't buy it you don't own it.
4. End users who download music that they do not otherwise own are committing theft, recognized as a crime in most countries. End users who back up their music are not, so long as they have purchased said music.
5. End users who make available copyrighted material that they have paid for but others may not are abetting theft. Analogy: You set up a card table outside a record store. You offer CD's burned with music. You put up a notice stating that you may only take the CD if you already have bought the music legally. You do not attempt to verify whether or not anyone has done so. Right. Sure.
6. Suing someone for engaging in the above practice is indeed legal. That person is willfully distributing something that is not theirs to distribute. This is illegal.
7. To copy-protect a CD to prevent ripping is a violation of fair-use. However, fair-use is not defined in stone. Moreover, to circumvent the copy-protection is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998). Like the law or not (I don't), it is law. It conflicts with fair use, therefore the courts must decide boundaries.
I could go on, but that about sums it up. I dislike the RIAA intensly for the way they treat artists, end-users, et al., but they do have legal standing here. As for CD-ripping, I can only hope they get knocked ass-over-teakettle.
This is not a troll, but what I hope is a clear stating of the matter as I see it.
~Chazzf