RIAA Warns Individual Swappers 511
Joey Patterson writes "CNET News.com reports that the RIAA has sent cease-and-desist letters to four individuals for allegedly pirating its music on P2P networks." They have yet to publicly release the names of who they have contacted, but 4 of the 5 were Verizon subscribers involved with their previous high profile case.
Just Wondering... (Score:2, Interesting)
And people stay with them.... why?
I mean, isnt it time to get a new provider? If everyone left, then maybe they'd fight the fight again...
The usual scare tactics (Score:4, Interesting)
As usual the RIAA is resorting to the use of FUD to stop people swapping music. College Students, High School Kids and Lone P2P Users are very easy targets for a massive corporate body.
It may even be working to a certain degree.
Verizon now hosts RIAA website (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't buy CDs (Score:5, Interesting)
Just my $0.02 .
Re:Wow actually going against people who broke the (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if these people were totally innocent of any civil or criminal wrongdoing (which I doubt) the cost of successfully defending themselves would bankrupt them -- not, of course, that innocence is any guaranteee of victory.
And, if they were in fact guilty of some civil tort, they would face paying for, not the actual damage that they may have caused, but rather huge *statutory* damages.
Great system: Cause some RIAA member $1.25 in damage, and face $1.25 million in costs. Nothing like equal justice under law.
C&D for 1 file! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ARE YOU AN IDIOT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow actually going against people who broke the (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the quote marks, dude? They *did* break the law. You may not like the law, anymore than you like the speed limit, but it's still the law. Going after the P2P software guys was like going after the auto manufacturers because they enable speeding violations. And logic bombing an alleged transgressor's PC is just plain wrong. Going after the individual -- speeder or downloader -- is the right and fair way to do it.
If you don't like the law -- speed limit or copyright -- you can break it, and hope you don't get caught, obey it grudgingly, or speak out to your legislators to get it repealed.
The "Napster Era" is over, friend. We wanted to be able to sample and acquire music online at a fair price, and it is now available. We wanted the Powers That Be to lay off the P2P technology itself, and now that's happening, it seems.
Time to move on. You want to do 90 in a 55 MPH zone, that is your prerogative. I do it myself occasionally. It's just not a news story, or a movement, or a cause celebre, any more, and that's fine.
Re:The usual scare tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure they are going to try to make examples out of some folks, but they are just going to be playing whack-a-mole.
Now, do I personally like that people distribute copyrighted material on p2p networks? No. I think the practice is wrong. (Then again, so is xeroxing sheet music for the chuch choir.)
The Music industry is perfectly legally correct. The problem is the same as if I was legally correct in proceeding through a green light while a Mac truck was blowing the red in the other direction. I end up in traction regardless of how many tickets the truck got.
Re:Yeah....and? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's currently illegal for me to drive 80 mph on I-696 in Michigan. In fact, if I get caught, it'll cost me at least $100 or so. That's a lot of money. Speeding to work every morning saves me -- what? 5 minutes? If I'm late to work by 5 minutes, I don't make so much an hour that it's going to cost me $100. It would be much more sensible economically to be 5 minutes (and receive a resulting 15-minute dock in pay) than to pay $100 in fines (or spend half a day to a full day off of work fighting it in court)
Does that stop me? Does that stop the other thousands of drivers on I-696? The *average* speed on I-696 is 80 MPH, while the speed limit on I-696 is 65. I'd say that despite the fact that penalty generally greatly exceeds the benefits (in nearly all cases as I-696 is pretty much a commuter's freeway so speeding is not going to save the average traveller much time really), most people still speed.
See my point?
Re:What so special (Score:1, Interesting)
'Clerks' was right, honesty through paranoia works.
Correct and untampered log files still worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
As it happens, the file is named "Metallica_Enter_Sandman.mp3" on most of the clients, and the "hicksville.mp3" was renamed such by another user who wanted to hide it. You still have no idea that it's a Metallica song you download, as you searched for hicksville.mp3.
The logs of those you download from, and who might be RIAA agents, might well show that you're downloading a Metallica song, but in this case there was no intent to do so. During the download process, others can also download parts of the file from you -- before you've had a chance to check it out. Logs from the outside will show that when someone searches for "Sandman.mp3", yours is one of the hosts that share it out. So you're also sharing it out -- thing is that you might not know, and it might not be your intent!
Summing up: There's no guarantee that the file name on the sending side is the same file name as on the receiving side, or that the file-sharing user even knows that there's a discrepancy. The file name on the remote side must be dismissed as evidence.
Regards,
--
*Art
How much is too much? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is downloading a catchy tune I heard on the local Clear Channel station gonna get me busted? What if I share it after downloading?
Will I have the RIAA coming after me for downloading (and then sharing) the latest Billboard Top 20 Dance/Club tracks?
Or does it take me downloading Blender's "500 albums I must own before I die" and then sharing those to the world?
Exactly how much can I get away with?
It seems these kids must be doing something incredibly stupid to get the RIAA coming down on them when there must be many millions of people sharing at a given moment.
What a great world (Score:3, Interesting)
Ive never ripped a CD in my life, my biggest crime is downloading mp3's and allowing my P2P software to share them with others. Ive never speeded, commited murder, rape, genocide, ive never mugged or assulted anyone, or shoplifted or burgled. Im not a pedophile or an international terrorist, and ive never held power in a government while doing dodgy financial dealings for my own gain.
I've paid my Starbucks and McDonalds tax, and i even watch commercials sometimes.
But, i could still be raided at 6am and have my computer confiscated and get a criminal record and loose everything just for downloading music. FFS ive never even intended to buy a CD, if i didnt download things i would only listen to the radio.
What a great world were everyone gets their prioritys right.
No seriously... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What so special (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing is that no one would want to share content like that voluntarily.
Re:What so special (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Send them thretening letters.
3. Make Crappy Music. Release it on "crippled" CDs
4. ?????
5. Profit!!
What I know about this whole situation is if I were sent a letter I would probably oblige and never download another file ever again. But I already know I will never buy another CD again.
C'mon RIAA, keep it up, keep hitting the customer (not consumer, consumer assumes that your customers will actually buy your crap) with a bigger and bigger stick, I'm sure they'll come around and give you your money.
Re:What so special (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:lol (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if I download music over the net and get a letter from the RIAA, the only thing I would really have to do is delete some files and destroy some burned CDs. I do not have to buy their stuff.
Only through the granting of the right to do so by the king could Sun Tzu kill the concubines. Sun also says that the king must grant his generals this type of control.
There is nothing in marketplace capitalism that grants the RIAA the right for their stuff to be purchased. They have the right to pursue people who steal their product, but not to make you buy it.
Re:ARE YOU AN IDIOT (Score:3, Interesting)
What exactly are they covering for? It's fair to say that Wal-Mart would have to raise prices substantially if, say, 5% of their inventory was routinely shoplifted. The people who bought the other 95% would have to absorb the costs.
But how does digitally copying a song inflate the prices of CDs? I never understood that. If all the music stealers were going to the brick-and-mortar music stores and literally stealing the CDs, yes, it would be cause to raise CD prices to force honest consumers to absorb the cost of the theft.
But -- really, tell me, because I don't get it -- how does copying a file from one machine to another COST them money? At most it's money they won't earn (so they aren't having money TAKEN from them, they just aren't having money GIVEN to them). Lots of people copy songs they would never buy anyway so the RIAA has lost NOTHING. Lots of people copy songs and still buy the album so the RIAA has GAINED something. I'd be willing to bet that the RIAA doesn't lose NEARLY as much due to song copying as they'd like us to believe -- not even close. The truth is, the RIAA isn't actively LOSING money to regular home users with an illicit MP3 collection, they simply see each and every song as $12-20 they didn't GET, and whether they'd have gotten the money (in the absence of file copying) or not is irrelevant. Saying it is "lost money" lets them turn the screws on the artists and the consumers. It's a sham, it's a racket, it's disgusting and it makes me thankful I don't much give a damn about music. I don't have any MP3s, I don't have any CDs. Whatever is on the radio (if I even bother to turn it on) is good enough for me.
When a country has laws that arbitrarily criminalize a vast swath of its population at the behest of a single industry (or entity), something is wrong. Isn't the law supposed to be representative of the wishes of society in general? How can a law representative of a people criminalize the actions of MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of those same people? If music trading is so damned evil and so damned widespread what does that say about us as a society? It says that we're obviously letting the wrong people define "evil".
p2p is old school. (Score:4, Interesting)
These days, I use streamripper [sourceforge.net]. To snag shoutcast streams. I set it to download a stream, queue songs up for an hour, then start listening to them. As I listen I delete the ones I don't want.
I've found a lot of new music this way, and the network admins don't really mind because I'm not using one of the banned p2p clients anyway.
On a side note... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mickey Mouse (Score:1, Interesting)
NIV Ecclesiastes 1:9
"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."
Ask yourself do the creators of great works get what they worked for in America?
I believe the Fascist Tyranny benefits from having the power to control a citizenâ(TM)s creativity through the law.
I believe the Corporate/Government slaves ultimately lose out under the current system.
I believe foreign nations that don't protect our IP rights benefit from the government control of IP.
RIAA won't do what it needs to do.. (Score:3, Interesting)
What should the RIAA do? Quietly acknowledge that they are powerless against p2p 'sharing', that new laws are not needed, but that they will continue lawsuits against large p2p 'sharing' users. At the same time
- sabotage the p2p networks by setting up a couple hundred servers in the US (and abroad) with their library spread through-out. Each song on their servers would be specially modified after the first thirty- to sixty-seconds by application of special filters to render the remaining content to noise. Servers would log IP addresses of downloaders and other servers would investigate quantity & type of files being 'shared' by the downloader for possible later legal actions.
- introduce legal downloads using non-DRM format (mp3, ogg, etc). Downloads would be priced according to quality of encoding (ie $.25 for "92", $.50 for "128", $.75 for "192", $1 for "256"). Download would be bound by license, with ample 'fair-use' rights, and some FUD against 'sharing' (ie download has been watermarked, we will prosecute if you 'share', etc). After maybe 3 months if the service is popular then the price starts dropping by $.10 every 6-9 months.
These are examples of what I would do if I were in charge of the RIAA. If anybody at the RIAA is reading - please feel free to use these ideas.
Re:Gripe/Rant About RIAA Posts (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't it? I've read the article too and while that isn't their stated aim, it's certainly the result of the DMCA, which is the RIAA's baby. On the last page of the article, the interviewee avoids the question altogether and suggests that not being able to make copies of your disks is somehow good for you!
Of home 'fair use copying, they say:
You should feel free to copy it onto other formats, such as .mp3, so that you can listen to it on your computer.
But if they will only sell you a copy-protected disk, which under the DMCA, it is illegal to crack, then how do you make your fair use copy? Answer: you can't. That's the problem with the RIAA and the DMCA.
I needn't even go into the massive lobbying for copyright extension so they can keep charging for stuff that should now be publicly owned; the heavy-handed threats; the pursuit of people who hadn't done anything; and finally their incredibly stupid assertion that their cartel keeping CD prices high has nothing to do with declining CD sales.
J.
Re:Wow actually going against people who broke the (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, not quite. It may be the way you interpret copyright and fair use law, and it certainly is the way the RIAA interprets it, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you may think. Other legal viewpoints say that fair use is still being invoked in many P2P cases, and P2P can be used for obviously non-infringing files. Ultimately things will be decided by conclusive court cases, at which point you may be able to say definitively they broke the law. Right now it's just a point-of-view that is being propagandized to the masses, and to the courts.
And to your point, the propaganda is mostly working.
-----------
GOODNIGHT EVERYONE (Score:3, Interesting)
If you all need me, I'll be on one of those "free independent music" sites downloading music made by people who are concerned about making good music rather than creating overexaggerated legal cases that cost them more money than any revenue they may have lost from a few college kids buying their worthless crap only to have it not work in their brand new cd players they spent two week's worth of food allowance on.
Re:Cease and... (Score:2, Interesting)
If there is sufficient evidence of illegal activity a search warrant would be required to look at the actual content of a file.
Absolutely, and this isn't just a situation where we really do know that a person is guilty, but have to pretend we don't because of something in the Bill of Rights. What if that 10,303,334mb file named "Metallica_Enter_Sandman.mp3" was one of the hordes of fake files put out by the RIAA to confound swappers? You know, the ones with 30 seconds of music followed by static, or periodics beeps and tones, or something else intended to annoy. For that matter, it could be a porn file some joker renamed. In that case, one would only be guilty of attempting to violate copyright law. Like the parent said, the name of the file is a far cry from proof of criminal conduct.
Alas, what happened to the gold old days? (Score:3, Interesting)
WMA is the culprit (Score:5, Interesting)
I am here to tell you that I recieved a threatening letter from the RIAA, accompanied by a "comply or we'll cut you off" letter from my ISP, Comcast. And I know exactly why
I don't have any illegal shared files in my limewire shared folder. what I do have there is a number of original tracks that I have recorded over the last year, for people to check out. I was innocently poking around on limewire, when i found a small (50k or so) WMA or ASF file ( i just know it was an MS format) titled "must have - hilarious.WMA" so i clicked, and downloaded, when i opened the file, Windows media player fired up my browser, and directed me to a website telling me that the RIAA caught me, and my isp had been notified. it had my IP address and some file names (the ones it chose to display were some tracks from my single "the family guy", which i guess they think should be incriminating evidence.
what i do know is that they even admitted that they copied files from my computer. hear me now, RIAA: Immediately delete my files, get your hands off of my hard drive, and you better believe i will be watching you for derivative works.
The Crime is Sharing, not Stealing? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a problem, though, in that people do not realize that the digital format that makes sharing music so easy is exactly what makes it protected material, and that's what makes anyone who downloads it potentially vulnerable to being charged for criminal conduct. It isn't likely to get you or me simply because there is no money in going after individual downloaders. However, there can be loads of money in going after kids running even small warez servers... Where one CD can cost as much as $600 (and more, depending on the product), allowing multiple downloads of multiple files could quickly result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal copies.
Of couse, if one CD didn't cost $600 in the first place, it wouldn't be such a problem. College professors assume that everyone on the planet uses Microsoft Office, but they fail to consider how many of us use a pirated copy. Even better, how many of us use pirated software specifically because we must have it for school or work and can not afford to buy it? The problem, in this case, is that some schools literally will not tolerate other software, and some inane professors actually require students to use particular software.
Software piracy is a problem... Piracy is a result of expensive alternatives, and the alternatives' prices increase because of piracy. What do we do? Well, we can only move in one of two directions:
As technology becomes more advanced, I can hardly imagine restricting information any more without morphing the United States into a sort of prison-state where no move can be made without Big Brother's watchful eye carefully monitoring your every move. Is that what we want? Or would we rather have the freedom to trust each other?
I choose choice.
Re:What so special (Score:2, Interesting)
Me I get all my CD's a cheepo (A used CD place in uptown Minneapolis) 2.50-6.00 a CD is worth it for me. Occasionally youll get one too scuffed to rip well but they take returns.
I can think of very few CD's worth 20$ Hybird Theory and Infest come to mind but I got those used as well.
Actually p2p has really helped people like me because some people will buy the CD rip it and then take it to cheepo for cash(note: they are stealing)
Re:Obligatory Star Wars quote (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I work out every morning at the gym or at the park. I take my Rio S30S with me every morning so I can have some good workout music to keep me going. Now, I cannot easly rip the tracks off the CD and put them on my Rio. Why? According to some little program I downloaded, there is something called Cactus protecting the CD. Now, some people do whatever they do on Kazaa, but I don't. Because thouse people participate in copyright infringment, I lose the ablility to copy music I purchased to another device, for my own use.
Basically, what I'm saying is that people will keep on downloading. Sure, I could have gone to kazaa and downloaded these songs, but I didnt. So now, I have a CD that I can only use in my CD player. They (the music indiustry) put copy protection on a CD because, as they see it, criminals copy and distribute their music. With the copy protection on this CD, I am being treated like a criminal, though I have committed no crime.
Disclaimer 1: All my music are ripped from my own CD collection to 128 WMA. Disclaimer 2: I stilled copied the music using LAME. I dont want to lose my 31337ness with the
Earthlink (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Cease and... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WMA is the culprit (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In other news... dead horse beating spreads (Score:3, Interesting)
I only get scared and offended when a copyright holder attempts to ban entire technologies, or attempts to bypass the existing and sufficient legal options which are currently in place.
Do you get scared and offended when the FSF attempts to enforce the GPL when someone violates it? How is this any different?
Re:17 USC 506 (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, for most casual file traders, Sec.506(a)(1) doesn't apply, so let's look at (2). It looks like you have to download $1000 (retail) worth of music in a 180 day period--about six months. At about a buck of retail value per track, that's 1000 songs in six months. Some people do collect music at that rate--but I suspect it's a small fraction of the population. Maybe it should be a Slashdot poll.
It certainly means that it is inappropriate to describe individuals with moderate file collections 'criminals'. Heck, mp3s have been readily available for what, about five years now? If you download steadily, you could have acquired a ten thousand song music library without committing a criminal act. It may also be difficult in a criminal case to prove that the requisite amount of music was downloaded within the 180 day time frame. It might be difficult to find a prosecutor who wanted to go to the trouble of charging you, even if you asked very nicely. Civil proceedings still make more sense.
Re:ARE YOU AN IDIOT (Score:1, Interesting)
Music is Art (Score:2, Interesting)
They are crooks themselves. (Score:1, Interesting)
The RIAA loves to trot out this independant record shop owner in Syracuse NY named Charlie Robbins as proof they are losing sales because his business is down since the advent of P2P. He has even testified in the case against Napster, I believe.
I knew Charlie when he opened his store; I worked for a record company at that time, as a local promotions guy -- and as a result I had thousands of promotional copies (which the label charges the artist for) at my disposal. Charlie called me and asked to buy all my promo albums to sell in his shop. This is, of course, against the rules and immoral (I can't be certain if it qualifies as illegal), and piracy against the artist and the label. I declined his offer (I never sold a promo album ever -- even though it was done all the time). So one of their key witnesses is, well, a crook himself.
These folks are all such crooks and hypocrites themselves it is preposterous. For all the souls of artists they have broken over the years (and even a plebe like me saw more than a few in his short time) they should roast in a special circle of hell.
A little bit of Trivia: Charlie was also in a band whose lead singer was comedian Tom Kenney, the voice of SpongeBob. They were called The Tearjerkers and they were pretty good.