EFF Warns Against RIAA Amnesty Program 444
kpogoda writes "Check out the latest warnings from the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding the recent actions from the RIAA. If you or anyone you know was contemplating handing over information to the RIAA, you may think twice."
Re:EFF can butt out (Score:3, Insightful)
Anonymous? (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
to sum... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty much the sum of it. That, and the fact that they're not promising to
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, they were doing some decent things.
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Then Metallica sues you.
It's a sucker deal. Not to mention that you're also agreeing to refrain from engaging in lawful behavior as well!
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:4, Insightful)
Beyond Captain Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Only thing is I wish more non-techy people even know the EFF existed. I told my mom about this as she had heard all about the RIAA and this new amesty thing from the local news, she had no idea who the EFF was. Apparently the news is only running the RIAA's side of the story. No great suprise here but it kind of limits the impact of their statment now doesnt it?
Not trying to troll (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll say it one time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Boycott [boycot-riaa.com].
And it needs to be directed not just towards the RIAA, which is a lobbying industry group meant to be considered separately in the mind of the public from the actual companies [riaa.com].
I think maybe a targetted boycott campaign against not the RIAA blanket company, but a particular member (chosen randomly) would wake them all up. Put some direct pressure on one pillar, somethign that will hurt, and maybe they'll start to get the message.
A month-long focused boycott of a single RIAA member company-- recording division only-- Internet-wide. Think of the media attention that would get! Then the next month, a new company...
Just a thought. Anyone wanna pick up the ball?
The frustration of current "IP" stuff. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the right to exchange information is holy or somehow a human right which you're suggesting here. Consider slander, spam, or malicious information. Malicious information is for instance a virus, or even something as simple as telling a very gullible person that to cure his headache he merely needs to jump off that tower there...
Given the obvious advantages of free information flow (it is for instance the underpinning of a free market, and necessary also for a "democratic" society), I'ld say information should not be needlessly restricted unless there is a very good reason for it.
Supposedly, copyrights/patents are a required to encourage the production of new knowledge.
I would say it's clear that they do encourage some creation of knowledge. By their very nature, however, they also limit it's applicability and extension, therefore also discouraging the creation of such knowledge. Furthermore, I think a better system could be instituted.
Given that copyrights use market dynamics to encourage creation, whilst those dynamics work only in situations of scarcity, and that information itself (not the distribution thereof!) is not scarce, we can conclude that a system that tries to encourage new knowledge without enforcing scarcity would be optimal, as doing so would bring encouragement without destroying the actual point of the knowledge in the first place.
People regularly comment on the fact that communism (specifically in Russia) collapsed because it (it being the abstract administrative process that is communism) is a fundamentally bad match in the real world (in which resources are scarce). Generally it's not so widely noted that the same could be said of our current Intellectual Property mess.
Fortunately, we already have a mechanism to support non-scarce goods (aka social goods) in our society! Subsidizing knowledge production is a far superior solution... and we already do it to some extent with schools, art grants, universities, etc etc etc.
The question then becomes: how to divide such grants? I don't have an easy answer to that but a model ala de references by academic papers (or for that matter hyperlinks in the net) comes to mind.
To draw an analogy: in our current situation, knowledge is exclusively controlled by it's creator, which is comparable to how a completely "closed" internet portal would control its content and display information and news depending mostly on how much it can pay to create or buy that information from some news service or equivalent. The subsidized model which supports knowledge creation is more like the net at large with hyperlinks forming the votes for who's cool and who's not. Even without a framework specifically designed to support it, google seems capable to extract useful information from those votes
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be dubious of giving anything to anyone who said they didn't have to honor the law.
Re:I always thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
In essense, this amnesty would assemble the evidence list for the RIAA enabling them to go before a court (or congress via their lobbyists) with documented and notarized numbers...can't argue that unless you're Johnny Cochran.
- AC
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what amazes me the most ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would a drowning man clutch at a straw?
The RIAA is fighting a losing battle and they know it. They are desparate, stabbing around in the dark, hoping to find something, anything, that will stick. Why else would they attempt to link P2P to child pornography?
You'd almost think the RIAA and Gray Davis have the same advisors.
Re:I'll say it one time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Continuing to share files and getting caught could be construed by the RIAA to show that you don't really care about whats "right" and that you just want free stuff. This would kill all of the positive publicity and could taint the whole group in the eyes of the public at large (see Greenpeace and some of their more fringe actions.) For this to be effective, the participants will need to show that what they are doing is unquestionably "right". Just look at (a grossly oversimplified) history in the US. Cop punches protester unprovoked = public sympathy and outcry = laws get changed, constitution gets amendments. Cop beats the sh*t out of protester after getting hit with a bottle = no sympathy = public becomes entrenched AGAINST said cause.
I'd participate under those conditions.
Re:Beyond Captain Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Follow the money.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of the major media outlets are either RIAA and/or MPAA members, or subsidiaries of members. And even without that, whose side do you think they'd pick? The EFF?
Re:Beyond Captain Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Well who runs the news.. let's see here there's CNN (owned by AOL TW), ABC (owned by Disney), and probably several other companies that also own record labels.
Do you know anyone NOT on slashdot that heard of the price fixing scandal by the record labels? There aren't many, and that's because the conventional TV news sources didn't cover the story, even though it accounted for more than $60million in losses for the record companies that year.. And the news was (and is) refering to the drop in revenues to be the fault of piracy.. every. stinking. time.
Sorry, won't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. Dubya can only sign such stuff for criminal cases, not civil.
And if he DID do something like that, the RIAA could then bill the GOVERNMENT, claiming they "took private property for a public purpose". Fifth Amendment.
Re:what amazes me the most ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Protecting their stuff is not the issue. People would share mp3s on Kazaa even if CDs weren't so easy to rip to mp3 and share. And the RIAA is under no obligation to try and protect their stuff (although there's nothing preventing them from doing so if they wish).
And as far as why they're suing people, that's simple. People are illegally downloading music, and as the copyright holders, the RIAA (or specifically, the labels represented by the RIAA) have the right to sue them for it. I'll leave the discussion of their attitude and tactics regarding the whole file-sharing phenomenon for another discussion.
Final Quote (Score:2, Insightful)
Gee, it sure is nice to know that the individuals behind the recent destruction of our privacy rights at least understand the issue. Matt clearly point out here why privacy is not an issue: the RIAA has already decided that these individuals are indeed sharing files. No evidence, no due process, just hand over the personal information so we can slap them with a lawsuit they can't possibly afford to defend themselves against. Thank God for the DMCA.
Re:Interesting Quote (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not trying to troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the way power groups remove one of your rights is by FIRST going after some scumbag who is using that right for some icky purpose that NOBODY approves of. Then, once they have the precedent set, they go after someone less scummy.
After a few steps they have the machine builit and greased. THEN they go after the people using the right for innocent purposes. (See the Martin Niemoller "First they came for the Communists
Classic example: Going after Kiddie Pornographers as the first step of shutting down free speech and the free press.
So the time to stop them is when the go after that first scumbag.
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:4, Insightful)
No their not evil, just misguided and shortsighted.
On their homepage, for example, is a call to sign a petition to "Stop The Slaughter Now!" in the Congo. But rest assured if some western democracy decided to take the bull by the horns and do exactly that by sending in troops they would accuse that democracy of interfering with the locals right of self determination.
Re:Hand over your enemies... (Score:1, Insightful)
Car accident (Score:5, Insightful)
It's good advice, period. Illegal or not.
Ever been in a car accident? Doesn't matter if it's your fault or not, what's the last thing you say to the cop?
"It was my fault."
Because if you do, you've just thrown out any hopes of a successful defense. You WILL be reamed to the full extent of the law. NEVER admit to anything if the law is involved. Your fault or not. Illegal or not. Let the prosecuting attorney earn his keep.
Weaselmancer
Re:True colo(u)rs (Score:2, Insightful)
Now we have RIAA flexing its hugely wealthy legal muscle, forcing ISPs to cough up their customers information, suing people a gazillion dollars per IP-infringing song and trampling fair-use in the process, and you're suggesting that an organization like the EFF, generally concerned with watching out for the little guy, tell people to hand themselves over? Would you go running to them?
Hmpf, you're either extremely right-wing or, well, I don't want to get modded into obscurity for being needlessly rude.
And now that I've previewed my glorious write-up, I noticed that you've been moderated into obscurity yourself. Good for you. I didn't want to waste my last point as a moderator on this, and it felt good to rant.
For the love of Dog... (Score:1, Insightful)
it's the individual members of the RIAA whose content you've stolen
Christ. IT'S COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, NOT THEFT! [oreillynet.com]
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't that tend to imply that they have no right to conduct a search in the first place?
I have signed no contracts granting the RIAA the right to conduct a search of myself, my property, my history, or even for my car keys that I keep misplacing.
Baring some official status, or a contract... Why should it matter that normal proceedural limitations do not apply to them? My neighbors don't need to observe due process in considering me annoying, but if they decide to search my house to prove it, the police will get a call right after the use of deadly force in self defense.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not 100% clear that's true. The Fourth Amendment says:
It doesn't say that the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated by the government, but that it shall not be violated. That at least suggests that private entities shouldn't be able engage in unreasonable searches and seizures, either.
Even if it applies only the government, you have to remember that the courts are also part of the government. That means that private entities should not be able to use government power in the form of court orders to perform searches that would be rejected were a government agency to try them. That may leave it open for private agencies to snoop in ways that the government isn't allowed to, so long as they don't use court orders to do so and they obey relevant laws against trespass, unauthorized computer access, etc.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
It may have been tampered with, falsified etc. I was under the impression that there were rules of evidence, or is that strictly criminal cases?
I may be watching too many crime dramas.
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote Top Dollar [imdb.com]:
Because you've had some bad experience with a (perhaps) misguided person who is part of the institution does not make the institution as a whole worthless. Nor does it make the ideas behind that institution bad. Because you disagree with their ideas that killing murderers is barbaric doesn't make either viewpoint invalid. See, there's this fun thing about philosophy, where two completely opposed opinions can be right at the same time! Life isn't boolean, true or false, black or white.
The fact is that Amnesty International's goal is to help others, and to improve living conditions for the human race. The success and steps to make that happen, you can disagree with, but to discredit the whole thing based on one bad experience with a teacher (hey, I got news for you: 90% of Humanities teachers are fucking assholes who'll flunk you if you don't act like a good brainwashed idiot) isn't very nice of you.
But then again, I guess forgiveness and giving second chances aren't your strong points, seeing as how you're pro death penalty and all.
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying I agree with the RIAA position, however I think the contract would be legally binding from a consideration standpoint - your objection probably wouldn't hold up. You might try other lines of reasoning though (the RIAA was deceptive, or that you shouldn't be able to waive fair use, etc.). Overall, I think you'd have more legal standing if you didn't sign the affidavit than if you did - and apparently the EFF agrees.
Re:Hand over your enemies... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:4, Insightful)
So tell me this. What kind of a nutbar bases his opinion of an entire international organization on the basis of one unpleasant individual's actions?
Where's the logic? The murderer whose execution you were celebrating was male. Does that mean that all men are murdering animals? Why not?
You might want to entertain the notion that judging a large group of people by the actions of one is pretty much the definition of brainless bigotry.
No wonder the world is so screwed up.
Re:Is file sharing over.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who to hate more (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Phyiscal Evidence (Score:2, Insightful)
How admissible is this kind of evidence? Could you successfully argue that while you acknowledge that the nick and IP belong to you, you've never seen that list of files before? It would be different if they had your hard drive. Any legal types care to comment?
Re:word "amnesty" (Score:2, Insightful)
Does Amnesty International believe that giving lower college marks to people who hold differing viewpoints is a fair system? If not, then they should replace the officer of their organization that is violating people's right of free speech. Since they most likely haven't, they should be judged accordingly.
As for judging men by the actions of the executed murder/rapist -- did we elect him or appoint him to the position of Representative Of All Males? No. Rather than give him a position of honor, he was punished for his actions.