RIAA Sues More Music Lovers 626
DominoTree writes "The RIAA, a trade group representing the U.S. music industry has filed a new round of lawsuits against 744 people it alleges used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs, it said on Wednesday."
Fair Sentence (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the repayment CDs would be chosen by the defendants, just like the RIAA got to do.
Circumvent the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Circumvent the managers at the RIAA by letting your software music jukebox manage your favorite artists. This requires a central database listing creative works and the artists who actually made them so that you can donate automatically to your favorite artists.
problem: telling some site what kind of music you have my get you sued as you declare to have illegal music.
solution: give partial hash code (checksum). Site returns say 200 potential hits. You verify for yourself if you have have a copyrighted song 'belonging' to the site. You discard the 199 misses and you use the info about the song to compensate the listed artist directly. This can be done anonymously: "I love your (unspecified) work here is a donation of 20 cents". Artist uses statistics to figure out how to compensate those who helped him with popular creations if the donations rise above thousands of dollars.
So you spend say 300 dollar per year to (automatically) compensate your favorite artists directly without confessing a crime as your jukebox figures out compensation anonymously and you can also donate manually, even though you do not have any works of arts of that artists in your possession, making the system a black box, meaning that donations do not directly indicate illegal possession.
Why pay for distribution? Let's circumvent the RIAA.
--
Dennis SCP
Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Canadian, I will do these people justice by using my protected rights to share gigabyte after gigabyte of pirated music.
We need more Canadians to have music 'available' for download. We could really cause a ripple effect in which so many of us can legally provide music to p2p apps, that there would be no way to stop the rest of the world.
I'm going home tonight, making a bunch of torrents for my 100 disc collection of mp3, and making all few thousand singles available on gnutella network.
I propose a rally of all Canadians or any other nation that can legally share music. If you can share music, spend the bandwidth and do it. Lets create so much of a problem that the RIAA is defenseless.
Let's show the RIAA that we are in control.
Rate of suing (Score:4, Interesting)
My maths might be wrong but 5000 people sued in year, 2.5 million kazaa users divided by 5000 = 500. So in 500 years time they will have sued everybody. Good luck to em.
patterns.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
>who download a song or even an album
I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading.
As regarding customers allready comiting copyright infringement, I do download music and it is not uncommon that I own such music allready, I just find it more convenient at time than to convert the music myself.
Re:Boycott? (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for the annoying, inane chatter of the DJ at the beginning of the song, and breaking back in at the end, as the song is trailing off. "That was 50 Cent's latest, 'Kill all the white ho's and sell drugs to kids,' off his latest album, 'It's fun to pretend you're a pimp.'"
Why do they do that, anyway? On the radio stations around here, the DJ will be introducing a song, talking about whatever, and the song will start while they're still talking. Just the instrumental part though. The DJ always finishes whatever he's saying just before the lyrics of the song actually start (I'm convinced they have some kind of countdown display that tells them exactly how many seconds are left before the lyrics of the song start). Are they just trying to be smooth, or do you think their license agreements for the songs actually requires them to talk over some portion of the song, to try and discourage exactly the kind of activity you described (i.e., taping the songs off the radio)?
Burden of proof (Score:3, Interesting)
I am old enough to have 2 large boxes of vinyl. One day I would like to find them online in digital format. And, I have a CD sitting right in front of me that is so scratched that I can not recover the music from it. Am I not entitled to download digital copies of those?
So, if the RIAA comes knocking, where's the burden of proof if you say you already own the music?
Re:Can they keep up? (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends on how many people are deterred by the lawsuits. I'm not sure about the rate of growth or use of the P2P services, but I'd guess that if filing one lawsuit deters 100,000 people, then they probably can keep up with the rate of growth. If it's 1,000 then maybe. If (as is probably the case) it's fewer than 10, then they would seem to be fighting a losing battle.
I'd also guess that the "discouragement rate" was the highest with the first round of lawsuits, and is diminishing steadily each time.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This about sums up the story. (Score:5, Interesting)
That same grandmother wouldn't bat an eyelash if you gave her a CD with old big band music for Christmas. Non-smokers would have no problem if smoking became a felony. People who don't drink have no problem with prohibition.
Your subject group is skewed.
If your 12-year-old is pirating music, you aren't doing a good job as a parent and the lesson will be taught one way or another
There is no theft. This is an artificial crime called "copyright infringement". While the spirit of copyright is a starry-eyed ideal which everyone supports the implementation is flawed and anyone who actually lives under its sway knows that it rarely, if ever, benefits the original author in the way that you think it does.
Re:Fair Sentence (Score:4, Interesting)
My Analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to use the 5 step approach that Schneier utilises in Beyond Fear to analyse security decisions. Hope you enjoy this analysis. I don't have the book to hand so I'm not sure i've got the steps spot on but it's close enough.
What assets are you trying to protect? The profitability of copyrighted music.
What are the threats to your assets? The biggest threat to profitability is the very large levels of copyright infringement. This is such a massive risk that considering any other threat to profitability is a waste of time at this stage.
What is the proposed countermeasure? Suing random copyright infringers.
How does the countermeasure mitigate the risks? The idea is that by suing random copyright infringers you instill fear in people who are more risk adverse. They don't want to be slapped with a large fine so they'd rather pay for the record. There are a number of questions that need to be asked. Firstly, how many people does this approach really scare off? Secondly, How much revenue is it likely to recover? Let's say for every person sued 10 people decide not to infringe and go out and buy the record and each record brought a record for $3. Then the revenue brought in would be $2232. The cost of the legal action would be more than the revenue recieved. Even if 100 people were dissuaded for every infringer sued this would only increase to $223,320. You'd likely make a profit over the cost of the legal action but it'd be small and you've not really done much damage to the millions of remaining pirates. In light of this analysis, I don't think this counter-measure mitigates the risk.
What side-effects does the proposed counter-measure produce? People generally don't like to buy from a company that likes to sue its user base so public relations may be damaged. A side-effect of particular note is people boycotting your products. In those circumstances you've the lost sales as a direct result of deploying the counter-measure - a very bad situation.
Is the trade-off worth it? This step is always subjective but I think the counter measure is meritless given the damage to public image, the small amount of money recovered from most of the infringers and the small amount of people who actually stop downloading as a result of the legal action. The RIAA should consider other counter-measures.
Simon.
Re:Kudos. (Score:3, Interesting)
In reality, they were sued for copyright infringement. Whether or not they truly loved the stuff they shared is irrelevant.
Re:Not so innocent (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were suing people for downloading a song we'd have something to be outraged about, but people serving the downloads have brought it on themselves.
Where do you think do all the wonderful files come from, that you'd be downloading? Isn't it a bit unfair to offload the responsibility onto those who helped you get the files in the first place?
Attacking distributors (and a distributor is everyone participating in a p2p network, including bit torrents) is just easier for RIAA et. al, because: 1. of the typical seeders/leechers ratio, and 2. of legal, formalistic reasons.
So please stop feeling safe and "legal," just because you download files without ever giving anything back to the community from which you got them.
Countersue the RIAA? (Score:2, Interesting)
RIAA Honeypot:
1) Create thousands of MP3 files with names of songs of popular bands that are under RIAA labels. However, make these MP3s contain nothing but dead air, or possibly you talking about the song. Make sure the "songs" are the correct time and comparable sizes. Also, if you own any real MP3s, take any media that holds or ever held the data and hide it away, possibly in a safety deposit box or some other long-term storage.
2) Log onto Kazaa and any other services that are being targeted. Stay on for a long time. Try to get sued.
3) When sued, willingly give your computer over as evidence.
4) In court, demand that each of these "songs" be played.
4a) Alternate: When they dismiss the suit once they get their hands on the "evidence", go to step 5.
5) When the suit is dismissed, file a countersuit for barratry, defamation, time lost due to having to deal with court, problems due to lack of a computer, etc. Make the dollar amount large enough that it'll damage them.
6) Profit. Encourage others to repeat.
It'd take a lot of work, but the payoff could be worth it.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
independent artist/label will become a selling point to a greater
demographic than it is now (will it then become uncool to those
currently interested?).
Re:Music Lovers? (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean, since I DID license the music when I bought the record, shouldn't I be able to download those songs legally?
It's not like I'm asking the record company to incur any additional distribution costs since I'd be downloading it via KaZaa.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
Usenet wasn't intended for file sharing and the RIAA can't make a case to that effect. A lot of Usenet admins also claim common carrier status. I don't know whether this has ever been upheld in court, and it's by no means the case that every Usenet personality agrees this is a good idea (c.f. Karl Denninger, who as I recall was the one who came up with "megabytes and megabytes of copyright violations" as the description for alt.binaries.pictures.erotica).
I expect if the RIAA does anything it will be to go after individual Usenet posters, not Usenet itself. On the other hand, people still post clearly illegal material on Usenet and seem to get away with it. Complicating matters for the RIAA and company, US citizens can use a Usenet server outside of the country, and that server's admins can tell the RIAA to go fuck itself.
torrents
They're certainly aware of it. We just got a DMCA notice for one of our users who was sharing movies using BitTorrent (I don't know the tracker). This has been going on for several months at least.
or some of the other networks where people have been "sharing" high quality MP3's
You mean like Direct Connect? Edonkey? Gnutella2? AFAIK every popular P2P protocol has users who've been hit with DMCAs, and many have been subject to more aggressive action.
To my knowledge outside of Freenet (and others which offer similar protections) there are no P2P networks immune to DMCA and lawsuits.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets review some facts about the Recording industry.
I say we skip the middle man, and use the internet as the "record label" to represent musicians, and watch them be happier for making more money because people will go to see them live.
Which Networks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
The members of the RIAA were granted corporate charters to promote the public welfare. Suing everyone can be argued to violate thier corporate charter. It could be grounds for thier dissolution.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
You might be right. It's an empirical question.
I just point out one thing. There's a finite regress here. Somebody is providing the tracks ripped from CDs. And I suggest that anyone who's providing MP3s from one CD is probably providing MP3s from most of their CDs.
And those people are the customers that are getting sued.
Book Analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers have made it an easy matter to scan books and redistribute them. There are high speed scanners, good optical character recognition software, and plenty of bandwidth to simply distribute an entire book as a collection of graphics instead of rendering them back into text.
But book copyrights are seldom violated in the US, and almost never violated using PC technology. Why? Readers are more law abiding than music enthusiasts? Readers are too lazy to scan a book? Or is it because people resent the record companies' graft, corruption and excessive profiteering?
The abuses of the RIAA companies are well known. They include payola (paying radio DJs and station managers cash or coccaine to play their records), addicting artists to drugs to control them, and charging $20 for a CD that costs them $1 for the plastic, paper and distribution. The only place this sort of weasel behavior is remotely close to book publishing is the textbook marketing racket, which could teach the Mafia a thing or two about profit margins and market share.
The RIAA and John Ashcroft are legally in the right on this, even if it is difficult to agree with them on general principles, and it's difficult to respect a law that protects such weasels. I'll throw my lot in with the others who say, "Vote with your wallet. Don't buy RIAA products. Lobby your favorite bands to leave RIAA companies and make it financially viable for them to do so."
Geeks continue to compare SCO and the RIAA. At first, they seem like completely different issues, but there are some definite similarities. Both have outdated business models, both are weasels who prefer to fight in court than embrace new technology and profit from it, and both are making a lot of noise right now but will soon be insignificant footnotes in the history of technology.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll take your word for it; I don't really understand legalese. Anyway, doesn't this mean that, even if you buy legitimate material (like from iTMS or wherever), every router that it passes through infringes?
How does this all work with fair use? It seems very odd to me that copying a DVD bought from one store is perfectly legal, while copying an identical DVD bought from a different store (which makes its own unlicensed copies in the back) makes you infringe. Of course, as you've shown, the law is often very odd. I guess it boils down to the whole "ignorance is no excuse" thing.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
No.
Firstly, you're authorized to download it, and that implicitly would involve it going over the Internet to get to you, so it's sheltered by that authorization.
Secondly, the safe harbor at 17 USC 512 covers a lot of situations like this and can be used to protect those people in the middle, even where there was no authorization. Of course, in such a scenario, you, not being in the middle, are still in some trouble.
Although it kind of runs against the whole concept of downloading -- and therefore merely even looking at -- things via computer, I would advise you to expect that the law is going to follow the contours of common sense.
How does this all work with fair use?
Well, there's two bodies of thought with fair use.
The first is that it is a universal defense of equity that is available for anything that happens under Congress' copyright power (which is the ONLY power that can be used to grant copyrights -- other powers cannot, since it was specified as being in this one).
The other is that it is a defense to copyright infringement, but not to non-infringing acts that are nevertheless prohibited by Congress, whether under the copyright power or via other powers that are being used in a functionally equivalent manner. DMCA anti-circumvention is referred to as a paracopyright, meaning it's of this sort -- if you believe in all this.
In either event, as to downloading, that's traditional copyright law, and so fair use would certainly be a defense. But n.b. that each time you assert fair use, the court has to look at the specific facts and decide if it really is. No use can be said to always be fair or unfair. It depends on the totality of the circumstances each time. Thus some for-profit uses are fair, others are not. Some parodies are fair, others are not. A few trends might be visible, but I'd stick to running through the four-part analysis (see 17 USC 107) each and every time.
It seems very odd to me that copying a DVD bought from one store is perfectly legal, while copying an identical DVD bought from a different store (which makes its own unlicensed copies in the back) makes you infringe.
Well, I'm not sure I understand your example here. Still, I think in the context of the fair use analysis, what you mean is that you're thinking about the fourth factor.
If you make, say, a personal copy of a book (let's set aside DVDs to avoid complicating things with 17 USC 1201), and the master copy of the book you are using was one lawfully made by the copyright holder and lawfully came into your possession, then it has some, but little, economic impact on the copyright holder. After all, you paid once, and few people would pay twice. There's really no harm.
OTOH, if it's a pirated copy of a book, then even though what you're doing is the same, there is a greater economic impact since you didn't pay the copyright holder for the master copy. This could tilt the scales against you.
Remember, fair use is a matter of equity: you are basically appealing to the court's sense of fairness to let you do something that is against the letter of the law, but within the spirit of justice. If you have done something wrong, you're not going to get this kind treatment. It's reserved for people who do the right thing and only unfortunately run into conflict with the law. It might help to remember that the distinction between law and equity dates back to England: law courts did what the letter of a statute said. But you could appeal to equity courts -- basically the king, or his councilors -- who could override it in special cases for people who were sympathetic. In the US, we combined law and equity together into one court, but the latter is still only used in the last resort.
Or, if you like, think of the story of LaGuardia, who at one point was a judge,
Re:This is why... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, as a show of solidarity, I'll post mine unobfuscated too: thudson@gmail.com
Spam away, I won't see most of it - and what I do, will just improve the service.