SBC Fights RIAA Over DMCA Subpoenas 455
NaDrew writes "SFGate.com is running an AP article about Pac Bell's Internet arm suing music industry over file-sharer IDs. 'The suit also called to question some sections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law the RIAA contends supports its latest legal actions. A spokesman for SBC said the RIAA's use of the DMCA in its legal quest for online song-sharers butts up against the privacy rights of SBC's customers.
"The action taken by SBC Internet Services is intended to protect the privacy of our customers," said SBC spokesman Larry Meyer.'" So SBC, like Verizon, is concerned about the cost/hassle of complying with all the subpoenas it has been receiving.
Re:What chance do they have of winning this? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was inevitable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Joyce's Law [faqs.org]: As a US lawsuit goes on longer, the probability of its constitutionality being challenged approaches one.
Just the big ISPs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know the RIAA is playing this close to the vest so they won't tip their hand, but it would be nice to have a hint that "smaller (and dial-up) is better."
What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Friday, December 3, 1999
In its first major ruling on privacy and defamation in
cyberspace, the Court of Appeals on Thursday held that an
Internet Service Provider (ISP) is merely a conduit for
information, as opposed to a publisher, and consequently
is no more responsible than a telephone company for
defamatory materials transmitted over its lines.
The Court unanimously upheld an Appellate Division,
Second Department, decision that dismissed a defamation
lawsuit brought against Prodigy Services Co., by the
father of a Boy Scout whose identity was usurped by an
unknown imposter. The imposter posted vulgar messages in
the boy's name on an electronic bulletin board and e-
mailed abusive, threatening and sexually explicit
messages, also in the name of the boy, to the local
scoutmaster.
If they aren't responsible for defamation, why file sharing?
Re:postive light? (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the ISP's know what is happening on their networks. Especially those providing broadband services, know that if the RIAA is successful in shutting down the P2P networks, it will remove a lot of the incentive for customers to pay for broadband. The cost of complying is probably minor compared to the cost of lost revenue from customers leaving those services.
Re:postive light? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it. The ISPs who are challenging are mostly broadband providers. Do people need broadband to check email or surf the web a bit? Nope. People need broadband for filesharing. If filesharing is completely shutdown the need for higher bandwidth comes into question. I have known average users who say things like "$40/month for broadband isn't too bad b/c I can get free music."
Re:postive light? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of two things:
1) It costs them money to comply with the RIAA demands. They need to have staff looking up ip addresses, cross referencing them with billing records, etc etc. If the RIAA starts tacking more and more requests into a single envelope that starts to get expensive.
2) Marketing. If you have a lot of broadband customers and the money to play legal games, then this is a great way to get some good publicity amongst a very attractive target demographic.
I guess i should throw in a third option:
3) They're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and their belief that a consumer's rights to privacy outweigh a company's *right* to profit.
Re:Illegal search & seizure (Score:4, Insightful)
Um...wife no, children yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, SBC is fighting that (which is not unlawful) but they still do have "obligations under the law" to turn that information over.
The fact that we don't agree with the law has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Re:postive light? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about respect and loyalty from customers.
Re:This is logical (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you paranoid? This and the following quote from the story writeup:
really make me wonder about people. These P2P users are paying customers. Sure, they may take up a decent chunk of bandwidth (and the worst of them the ISPs probably do want to kick off, but they can do that or throttle them without the RIAA's help), but if there's any legal way an ISP can get away with not disclosing this information to the RIAA, they're going to do it. I mean, their goal is to make a profit, and this is a significant selling point. If you want to use KaZaA or whatever, would you rather go with an ISP that rolls over when the RIAA even breathes in their direction, or one that will fight as hard as they reasonably can to not have to tell the RIAA who you are?
Re:postive light? (Score:2, Insightful)
You think that ISPs want to let their users suck 100% of their bandwith 100% of the day on P2P? Why do you think that quite a few Universities have gone to throttling/closing those ports?
Do you think that download caps and per MB charges over that cap are not to curb people from using P2P?
Re:Illegal search & seizure (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is the real reason the RIAA is scared of P2P. What your friends REALLY do, is listen to some of the other songs on the album, which are never played on the radio. When they figure out there's only one good song on the CD, then they don't buy it.
The RIAA survives by tricking people into buying 15 songs, of which only one is worth having.
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without people to stand up to such pathetic excuses of legal bindings, where would the United States be today?
I can only imagine the very faint glimmer of hope trapped in the minds of the people enslaved in that future society. But alas, that "future" is not yet here, and we can all rest easy. Perhaps.
The DMCA and its ilk are tools driven to bring about a reality that no one wants to live in. If no one challenges the various aspects pertinent to how broadly the DMCA reaches into society, then there is no point in even discussing it here in this forum at all. Might as well just enjoy your coffee, shuffle along with the crowd to your nine-to-five job, and clock in another boring day.
Innovation? Deliberation? Thought? These concepts are unknown to most of the corporate figureheads who control the very media we rely on. Why play into their hands?
I want to provide a relevant url for anyone interested in seeing how a media system should act like:
http://www.indymedia.org/ [indymedia.org]
Food for thought. Have a nice day.
Re:Illegal search & seizure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:postive light? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no. Why get broadband at all if I can't use the bandwidth? ISPs aren't stupid. They know one of the main drivers of Joe Blow getting broadband is p2p. If you remove that driver, then why should the average consumer buy broadband?
Why do you think that quite a few Universities have gone to throttling/closing those ports?
This has nothing to do with pay/month ISPs. Most college broadband is wrapped up in the tuition costs. My guess is that the tuition is not covering all the bandwidth that students were using.
Do you think that download caps and per MB charges over that cap are not to curb people from using P2P?
No it is not to curb people from using it, but to make more money on people using it. To the guy downloading it is still a good deal for him to pay $1/100MB(or whatever they charge) and get free songs for that price. ISPs in essence become a quasi-distributor of music without having to pay for the rights. They are making tons of money off people who p2p and don't want it to go away.
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised some corporation hasnt pulled out some patent or copyright and hit the RIAA with stipulations of the DMCA. It can be done easily, I'm sure an audit of their computers would reveal that they have "pirated" software.
Why is it that when a (smaller) corporation decides to stand up for their customers' rights against a (larger) corporation, it's always spun as being unlawful?
Remember, Pac Bell is one company and its not small compared to other baby bells. RIAA is multiple record companies.
It's time the DMCA was given a hard look at by the people who have a clue in the legal community, and who have the power to affect change.
Yes but those politicians love their campaign funds. They dont want to give up those donations just to repel a questionable law.
What really irks me a lot is they are using a generic term as "pirate" to describe file sharers. Last time I checked no one wears an eye patch, has a parrot on their shoulder, privateer, and says "Walk the plank!".
Re:Great, if only... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:postive light? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:At least someone is fighting (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad reality: It is unlikely that charging less per album or paying artists more will do anything to affect the problem of "piracy" because there are plenty of people who will copy music for free just because they can. Ergo RIAA literally has no choice but to pursue infringers if they hope to preserve their business.
It just occured to me that the problem RIAA faces with widespread copying of their products is similar in a roles-reversed way to the spam problem for email users.
Because the cost of spam to the spammer is essentially 0 and the tech allows for massive mail distribution rates, you have a case where one user has to delete hundreds of spams a day, and as more spammers enter the market it scales up and up. The spammers pay next to nothing, and the recipients pay dearly, either with their time scanning and deleting the mail or by purchasing/configuring spam filtration tech.
In the RIAA case, RIAA pays to produce recordings and profits by controlling its distribution. Introduce millions of computer users paying essentially nothing to copy and redistribute their products, and now the industry loses their income potential.
Interesting implications for people who hate spammers with one breath and RIAA with the next...
Size has nothing to do with profit (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL Time Warner, Sony, etc etc have far far more lobby groups, and own far more politicians.
Possible Loophole (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the DMCA has been ruled on by the US Supreme Court, it's Constitutionality is still open for question.
So far, no DMCA case has made it past the low levels of the Federal court system.
Now, don't be TOO optimistic... This court upheld the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act. BUT, that perpetual copyright coupled with the insane powers the DMCA grats a copyright holder may sway them...
IMHO, I wouldn't have that big a problem with the DMCA if copyright terms were short (say 10-20 years). The way I see it, the LONGER they extend the terms, the more liberal the terms would have to be in order to meet the Constitution's requirement for limits on copyrights...
One method of attack here would be a "due process" argument, that the DMCA's subpoena power violates the Constitution's prohibition of search and seizure, without "due process".
If the RIAA had to file actual lawsuits to get to discovery, before they could subpoena, that would stop this thing cold, as it would increase the hassle and expense 1,000x.
AFAIK, the DMCA has to be the only, if not one of very VERY few laws that allows a PRIVATE entity to curcumvent the requirement to go through courts in a lawsuit to get subpoenas... I don't think the Constitution allows for this.
Subpoena power is very scary. It should be supervised by a court.
So SBC, like Verizon, is concerned about the cost. (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd think this would be happy news, something that should be noted and considered in a thankful tone in the write-up. But as always, Michael, you show yourself to be a thankless and simplistic fool. To turn your nose up at SBC for operating in congruence with public interest, no matter what their motivation in the matter, is just sending the message that "no matter what you do we'll resent you, you evil company!". You are basically putting them into a position of 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' with your editorial powers. such a shame.
People can we step back a second. (Score:5, Insightful)
p2p in itself is an awesome technology. BitTorrent is one of my favorites, it solves that problem of things like Fileplanet that make yous sit through 70 ads for 30 min while you wait to download the latest 50MB patch to fix a game you like that wasn't released finished, but half finished because the hype machine kept it going for 2 years before it was ready (1.5 before it was released)
but Kazaa, Napster, Grokster, and any other method of distributing music that was taken from a CD that was distributed as a copyrighted material is just as bad as the guys that scan in the playboy centerfolds and post them to usenet. It's theft of property/right to make money.
Just because we think RIAA is screwing the artists, and RIAA is keeping CD prices artifically high, or whatever justification of the week is tossed out, you're still stealing the music.
It's not like Napster/Kazaa negotiated contracts with the artists that allowed you the user to download music seperate and outside the distribution structure. Its not like the artists are fighting RIAA by not signing contracts for music, heck they're jumping at the chance for a record deal with 'the industry' and are happy they get the $0.08 per CD or whatever measly amount it is.
When you download a song off of kazaa or whatever the p2p du jour is, you're stealing. There isn't a justification for this other than some made up BS. You aren't 'fighting the man' because 'the man' is someone that is out to make a buck. they're not 'trampling your rights' in an attempt to enforce their valid and legal copyrights.
If half the energy was put into going after our lawmakers to get things like Copyright lenghts, patents, and all the things that have been legally approved by our legally elected representatives and making them change this, we'd get something done.
Instead we're going to make a bunch of lawyers rich, a bunch of parents whos 12 year old kids are downloading and hosting millions of songs turn off the internet because it corrupted poor johnn and jane, and we're going to get it so that anything outside of port 80 requests to certified websites will be reported as piracy activity and they'll use the PATRIOT act to hunt us down.
73 iTunes Music Store songs purchased and counting.
Re:postive light? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently, I'm the only one who says $40/month for broadband isn't too bad b/c I can get free pr0n.
Seriously, though, the reason why I got broadband was not because of free music or even pr0n. I got it because I game, I work from home occassionally, and I like having a reliable, stable, fast connection. As a matter of fact, I just recommended broadband to a friend of mine (a newbie user even) because he wanted something faster, always-on, and more reliable than a modem (plus, he can talk on the phone while surfing), for the exact same reasons as me (i.e., not music sharing or pr0n).
Re:postive light? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at it in a slightly different light - and ignore RIAA for the moment. If RIAA manages to coerce the bigger ISPs into turning over records of their customers, the smaller ISP's are going to follow suit. Why? Legal Precedence.
Now, assume RIAA has pulled this off, and sues the hell out of all the P2P filesharers in the USA. (Hey Pres. Bush - RIAA is out to really screw up your economy - there suing 25% of the US population into poverty.) By getting the information from the ISP's under the DMCA, you can bet it wont be long thereafter until other companies start tossing out subpoenas for other "violations." SCO? Microsoft? The way is paved, thanks to RIAA.
Then, it gets worse. The government starts, and other businesses get involved to. And soon - an individuals right to privacy is gone, and the ISP's of the US have become nothing expect a research faciltity at the mercy of courts and lawsuits.
I helped build an ISP some years back. We did it for 2 reasons - money (of course) and to give the people in the area which we lived access to information on the Internet, anonymously if they wanted. And I suspect a fair number of the smaller ISPs out there were started by people who remember back when the net was anonymous and you didnt get your life poked and prodded by marketing agencies, sales companies, RIAA, and who knows who else, because you felt like finding a tip on how to set up Slackware!
Broadband Bad! (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't need a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose they don't have any chance of winning. Which do you think is a better PR move -- simply rolling over, as some ISPs did, or dragging their heels in favor of their customers publically every step of the way?
If you like trading music and are about to get broadband, which company would *you* sign up with?
Economic impact of P2P (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidently, while P2P may produce losses for the music industry (seems pretty reasonable to assume so), I'm not entirely certain that as an absolute value, it's not causing people to spend more, if on other industries. It drove the broadband revolution -- a massive change in the telcos. It produced a huge boom in demand for storage -- Maxtor and WD enjoyed a massive surge in demand for hard drives. CD burners, which had seen only lackluster appeal (and high prices) before P2P sold like hotcakes. I remember walking into Office Depot and seeing fully half of the computer peripheral section being CDR-related.
Of course, while people may be spending less per album going to the music industry, they're listening to a lot more -- the average P2P sharer has far more music than in the old days.
Re:What about me? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SnowBalls Chance in Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? That breakup, 20 years ago, was targetted at AT&T. Even if one buys into the notion that "the government" can somehow manage to hold a grudge for two decades, why would they hold it against SBC? Their beef was specifically with AT&T. They forced AT&T to spin off a bunch of smaller, autonomous companies to conduct local operations-- the baby bells. Additionally, SBC is a consolidation of a whole mess of former baby bells and NON-bell operating companies, so they have little relation to a court action from back then.
Does "the government" despise Chevron? Exxon? Any of the other former Standard Oil companies? Same thing there. The government really doesn't care!
People need to quit thinking of the government as an entity with human feelings and sensibilities. It may be full of humans, but it's just a faceless, mindless machine.
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA would be a terrible law even if copyright lasted only one day. Here's the issue: the DMCA criminalizes "circumvention devices" -- things designed to break past copy protection or access restrictions. Selling, trading, donating, or even talking about such is considered "trafficking". And this provision does not expire.
Thus, even if a work is in public domain, if someone has put it behind any sort of access control -- say, a dumb ROT13 password scheme -- it is illegal to access the mateial (despite your legal right to copy it). Under the DMCA, copyright has been superseded by something far more insidious and far more immortal. This is of course the wet dream of both magecorporations and totalitarians.
Re:You are responsible for your childrens useage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you. But the whole situation is very much a result of the record companies themselves. Overcharging for CDs creates the demand for other business models.
I was directly exposed to their marketing strategies during the 90's. Remember those CD clubs where you'd get the first 5 CDs for a dollar. Most people thought they made their profit off of the other CDs you were obligated to purchase. The truth was that without the costs of shipping, they often made a profit from the 5 CDs for $1. You can guess from there how much made it back to the artist.
Now that iTunes has finally had a chance to set an example, perhaps the record companies will relax. But it has taken almost a decade to get them to do this. I personally know people who were working on almost a business model nearly identical to iTunes beginning in the early 90's. ZERO record companies went for it because they had their profits locked up already via overpriced CDs.
"73 iTunes Music Store songs purchased and counting."
If it weren't for the pressure generated by fileswapping, your iTunes store would not exist.
What it comes down to is most people (like you apparently) are willing go with "easy and cheap". But they've effectively had two choices up till now: expensive or free.
Re:postive light? (Score:3, Insightful)
to SBC this is about more than Users Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
The DMCA has no penalties for making an unfounded accusation. As a copyright holder I can accuse anyone I want of pirating my wares. Here are some ways it can be abused.
1 ) I get into a flame war with some bastard and go batshit crazy. I get his IP. I send a letter to his provider accusing him of piracy and demand his contact information. In accordance with their obligations under the law, SBC complies and sends me his address. I then call John Ashcroft and give him the name and address of a known AlQuaida sympathiser. Mere moments later a Homeland security SWAT team servs a no-knock search warant on his ass and shoots him for threatening them with a plastic cup. SBC doesn't particularly care about this one.
2) I am a competitor to SBC. I get a list of the IP addresses served by SBC. I send the list if IP addrressed attached to SBC and attach a letter accusing the people on that list of pirating my wares. In accordance with their obligations under the law, SBC complies and sends me all of the contact information for it's customers. I add that contact information to my list of people to send my new Ultra Low Priced Broadband advertisement. SBC is concerned about this, but it's so brazen that they can stop it in court.
2) In a variation of scenario 2 I simply buy the contact info from third parties as they persue claims against SBD clients. I then sell the compiled list to mass marketers and deprive SBC of the ability to do so. I also sell the list to SBC competitors for direct marketing compaigns. SBC is concerned about this.
4) I and a billion other copyright holders innundate SBC with accusations that their customers are pirates and demand contact info. SBC has to open a whole new department of people to answer these accusations. They spend a fortune attempting to comply with their obligations under the law. SBC is really concerned about this.
Re:Illegal search & seizure (Score:2, Insightful)
Before P2P, you had to be a relatively unconservative type to want to plonk down actual hard cash to hear music from an artist who you'd only vaguely heard of, but whose music wasn't played 24/7 on the usual corporate media. It was a safer option to simply buy the latest hit album; you at least knew there was one catchy tune on it, even if the rest was a dud.
Now, when you download a track to try it out, there's no marketing bull. You can easily discover that the hyped artist's albums consists of rubbish, and also find that the relatively unknown artist is simply wonderful.
I imagine this levelling of the playing field is terrifying to record company marketing managers.
P.
Refreshing honesty (Score:3, Insightful)
I've posted before that I'm tired of all of the justifications that people use for piracy. They usually fall into one of two areas.....downloading this music is my right (because it's all about me)or, the record
companies are corrupt (the civil disobidience for fun and profit motive).
Let's get something straight here. NOBODY likes the record companies. Not the consumers. Not the Artists. Not the middlemen. But I don't like car dealers either, and you don't see me hotwiring cars off of their lot because I think they're in a corrupt business. The point is that THEIR corruption doesn't justify MY corrupt actions. Or as your mother undoubtedly told you, two wrongs doesn't make a right.
Want to change things? You do have rights. You do have options. Stop buying cd's. Completely. Zero revenue will get their attention quickly. That doesn't mean steal the music and not buy cd's to protest "the man", that means ignore their product completely.
"Oh...nevermind...that would actually require some measure of sacrifice on our parts. Well, fuck that. I don't care about it if I have to give something up myself. It is, after all, all about ME."
And you people complaing about the use of the word "steal".....that's what it is. When you take something that isn't yours, whether it's physical or bits of data over the internet, that's stealing, folks. Saying otherwise is just splitting hairs, the Slashdot equivilant of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman".
It may be legally called copyright infringment, but deep down, you KNOW what you're doing.
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:2, Insightful)
Artists don't make very much money on CD sales -- only the largest acts cover the spread on their advances and start to collect royalties based on sales. Filesharing takes money out of these folks' pockets, it's true. Most acts, though, don't achieve that level of sales. An advance generally pays for recording an album, but most of their real revenue comes from touring. I think it's reasonable to say that P2P is likely to increase live show attendance, if anything, by fueling interest in bands through easy access to their music.
So who loses out? Not the artists particularly; mostly it's the industry middlemen. Don't they deserve to make a living? Well... sort of. What function do they serve? It basically boils down to four services: critical filtering (discovering new acts), marketing, venture capital (to help smaller acts break by bankrolling tours and albums), and distribution.
P2P itself has proven that distribution is no longer a valuable service. Albums can be distributed digitally for almost no cost. If people want archival copies or artwork there's no reason a band can't contract this particular service to a third party and sell it through their website.
Critical filtering/artist development is of debatable merit -- I think you could argue that the music industry really hit bottom in terms of variety and quality immediately before Napster hit. Various industry observers pointed to this as a reason for declining sales before P2P was settled on as the "real" reason. When it comes down to it, I'll stick to music critics and my own judgment. P2P helps in this area, too -- various services exist to help people discover new music they might like based on what others are listening to.
Marketing: nobody likes marketing. It's designed to manipulate the public to increase profits for others. It may help a given band, but generally this only applies to the process of manufacturing the largest acts -- nobody gets a billboard in times square bought for them because an A&R exec was really moved by their album. Smaller acts increasingly use their fan clubs as street teams to put up fliers. Raising awareness about your band is fundamentally a problem of information dissemination -- making it another area the net can take care of without the recording industry.
So we're left with the venture capital argument as a justification for the continued existence of the music industry. And it's not a bad one: the alternative seems to be a couple more years' worth of overtime at the DQ before a struggling band can take their music to the masses -- or at least some harebrained scheme like fans buying bonds from their favorite bands. But the digital revolution behind P2P is also making recording an album a lot easier and cheaper. The average band already owns the instruments they need, and probably a PA. Throw a $300 sound card in a PC -- and maybe an open-source ProTools equivalent (admittedly a stumbling block -- does anything even approaching this exist?) -- and you can make something that sounds pretty damn good. Professional quality audio will soon be within everybody's reach.
I think the practical impact of this will be the death of the superstar. If the music industry collapses it will be a lot harder for an act to afford touring with a huge light show, pyrotechnic display or giant inflatable devil. And cand
Re:What chance do they have of winning this? (Score:4, Insightful)
The baby bells have been playing the political game longer than the RIAA has even existed.
The telecom industry is heavily regulated. Believe me these boys know how to play political games.
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Refreshing honesty (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's suppose that car dealers, the middlemen, screwed the car manufacturers and also screwed the consumers. Suppose they charged a very high price for a car, and also severely squeezed the car manufacturer at the same time.
In this case, you very well might see people stealing cars off the lot. In large numbers.
When the dictators of Romania were overthrown, people invaded the palace and looted everything. Ditto in Iraq. For what reason did people feel some right, or at least enraged enough, to do this?
But, I'll agree in principal about piracy. It is wrong. Just like looting is wrong. But are what these regimes did okay? Is it okay that the RIAA is trying to own all of our culture? Forever?
As for two wrongs don't make a right, I would say this. Sometimes, you have no other choice. You can just lay down and take it, or you can do something about it. Is it right to kick a bully in the balls? No, I suppose not.
Back to your car dealer example. Having cars, at least in the US, is almost necessary. (I also should have mentioned earlier, let's suppose that the car dealers have a cartel or a monopoly arrangement to artificially control supply and prices.) Would people begin to feel justified in stealing cars. As the prices and control got ever worse, would larger segments of the popoulation feel this way? Would this seem analogy apply to software and piracy?
Re:I'm a little consfused here . (Score:3, Insightful)
one way or another, you're screwed.
This was the RIAA's real intent.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad dog! Play dead. (Score:1, Insightful)
Do keep in mind that the Supreme Court also ruled in 1984 that VCR's could be used to record TV shows and watch them later under the fair use clause of copyright law (Source: http://www.techreview.com/articles/garfinkel0701.
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:3, Insightful)
My goal is to buy music that I like, and support the artist. Unfortunately under the current system, if I buy music from the major labels I'm not supporting the artist substantially more than if I downloaded (stole, yes I agree that it's morally stealing) the song. Consider that out of the roughly ten thousand dollars I've spent on CDs, the combined artists would have received a total of $75. (I say would have, because MANY of those CDs were purchased directly from the artists.) Whee. I'm certainly helping them out.
The problme here, as I see it, is that the RIAA and the record labels are so utterly corrupt that people just don't see any advantage to the artist to buying their music, other than to support the Industry.
Re:Refreshing honesty (Score:3, Insightful)
What you have to realize though is that semantics are entirely relevant with this issue. You see, this battle used to be fought technologically. Then it was fine to call it whatever you wanted. Stealing, piracy, sharing, whatever. Now it has turned into a legal battle. A very big, very gory legal battle that will have many casualties. The courtroom is the one place where the difference between 'stealing' and 'copyright infringement' makes a major difference.
Normally, I would agree that it is petty to argue over the semantics of it, but the reason so many people on here get aggravated over the misuse of the word is that this time its not just nitpicking, misuse of the word has legal consequences. While the court would very likely recognize it for what it is (copyright infringement) you have to remember that unfortunately, half of a legal battle is always PR. And right now the RIAA is getting a big upperhand on us PR-wise by teaching everybody in america that copyright infringement, is in fact, stealing.
So please use the correct terms, and don't put down the people who argue over the semantics, because legally, it matters, and this is a legal issue now.
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:1, Insightful)
Where in the constitution does it say someone has the right to make money?
And no, I don't download music to preview it before buying the cd. Why would I want to give money to a company that's doing everything it can to control: how I listen to music, what kind of music I listen to, my own personal computer? Also, I listen to artists who don't mind people sharing their music. In fact, they appreciate the fact that people have an interest in their work.
The RIAA and its friends have done quite a bit of sneaky underhanded things to prevent non-members from being heard. They have been killing music. It is because of them (and groups like them) that I never hear even ONE decent new song through any mainstream media outlet. I relish the fact that my actions could in some way hurt them.
Re:People can we step back a second. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a right granted by the people in exchange for something. It's not a "natural right". The people have a natural right to use any and all ideas and information as they see fit, but they made a deal with the people making and compiling the ideas. That deal is, sure, you can "profit" from your ideas and information, but only for a limited amout of time, and then you have to give it us, the "true" owners of the information.
The RIAA is breaking that deal. The works that are ebign created today will never be given back to the people. They will be stored in locked vaults for 170 years and then, when it's time to open them, they will have crumbled to dust, forgotten.
That, my friend, is the real theft that's going on.