Germany's RIAA Sues Rapidshare - YouTube Next? 144
Hermel writes "The GEMA (Germany's RIAA) obtained a temporary injunction against 'one-click-hoster' Rapidshare.com. If their lawsuit is successful, the GEMA intends to use it as a beachhead against their next targets, including Youtube and MySpace. From the article: 'According to GEMA, the service ... has at times boasted of making some 15 million files available to its users. The operator had however failed to obtain from GEMA a license for making copyright protected files available ... Through its injunctions the District Court in Cologne had now made it clear to the company that the fact that it was the users and not the operator of the services that uploaded the content onto the sites did not, from a legal point of view, lessen the operator's liability for copyright infringements that occurred within the context of the services, the spokesman added.'"
New business model (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Upload my crappy copyrighted material to every website that allows anonymous posting
3) Sue every website uploaded to
4) Profit!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rapidshare are an obvious target (Score:4, Insightful)
Rapidshare can remove content on a whim, it's no use for anything thats really vital. Webspace is now trivially cheap, and so is bandwidth. If you need to share big binary files, setting up an ftp server or a website is trivial. The only real market for rapidshare that I can think of is illegal content, and it's no suprise to find so much of it there. Every software, movie and game site that is trading illegal software has dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of rapidshare links.
This was inevitable.
I like the way whether or not you win a lawsuit... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rapidshare should not be the exception... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hard to mod someone down when they make such great games.
Think about this though; I bought democracy after playing a demo version. That was a smart move on your part, making a playable demo.
However, I have done the same thing with companies that do not make demos available; I've grabbed a copy off of P2P to see if it was worth having, then bought the game if it was.
I do the exact same thing with Video & Music; If I can not find a place to hear a decent example of the music, there is no chance in hell I'll buy it; if a band is cool enough to release a free version, i'm almost certain to buy it even if I just sort of like it; I like to support people not being idiots with my $$$.
GEMA is not the German equivalent of the RIAA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Before I explain the difference, I should acknowledge that many Slashdotters have equal disdain for anybody in the music business who tries to assert their rights. For example, we normally state that we're in favor of the artists and that we think artists should have more rights, money, and respect, but when the BMI or ASCAP (US performing rights agencies run by and for artists and wholly unrelated to the RIAA) sue businesses for playing music without a royalty, Slashdotters bring out the hatred equal to that of the RIAA. So, if "RIAA" is shorthand for "anybody in the music industry who tries to interfere with the free (as in beer AND speech) distribution of music", then yeah, GEMA is like the RIAA, but it's still important to understand the difference.
Here's what GEMA is about [www.gema.de], in English. Like BMI and ASCAP, they're a society of composers, lyricists and music publishers.
I believe (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) that the actual German equivalent of the RIAA -- that is, the trade group representing record companies -- is the IFPA.
With all the ire at GEMA's actions, I think the message here is clear: as covered above, we all respect the musicians, and we want them to have more money, rights, and respect. But only on our terms. If they take legal actions or otherwise demand more money, rights, or respect -- in other words, if they simply get too uppity -- then they're on equal moral grounds as the RIAA et al.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Rapidshare are an obvious target (Score:1, Insightful)
A service provided by your ISP is different. They know who you are. They can easily identify who it was who uploaded illegal content.
Re:Not exactly the German RIAA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which essentially says that a few determine which 10% of the members get 70% of the bucks.
CC.
Back to reality (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I'm in a hardware store, and I use a chainsaw to cut someone in half. Am I guilty of murder, or is the hardware store guilty of allowing me to misuse its goods and services ?
What if I'm on some website, and I use its resources to commit criminal acts. Am I guilty of said act, or is the website guilty of allowing its resources ?
I don't give a flying toaster about how lawyers will try to bend the facts... it seems pretty obvious to me. Does Lexus get named in lawsuits involving drug busts ? Because their cars seem to be quite loved by high-end coke runners, and it could be argued that having a vehicle facilitates the couriering of illicit substances, just like a file backup web site facilitates the couriering of illicit data.
Hell, sue the post office while you're at it. Last I heard, you could buy weed online and have it shipped across the continent right to your mailbox. What the hell?
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor are they starving.
Perhaps we can all agree that infringement hurts content providers. But the so-called industry needs to face reality. 1) The Internet is a great distribution system. It's light years ahead of the old 'put it on plastic disks and distribute it by plane and truck' method. 2) No matter how many of these sites you shut down, others will pop up in accordance with the principle of supply and demand. (Shutting down Napster was an example of that.)
Perhaps GEMA needs to beat these sites at their own game by distributing the content themselves first and making their money by either pay-per-download or by selling advertising on content hosting sites.
Let's be real, the Internet is the best content distribution system ever. At some point there's going to be a realization that lawsuits are not the answer. All moral arguments aside, that's just a fact.
Re:In Germany... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rapidshare should not be the exception... (Score:3, Insightful)
We should require storage warehouse owners to personally search and scan every warehouse daily, looking inside all containers to be sure nothing illegal is in them.
Re:Back to reality (Score:3, Insightful)
GEMA even cashs up their own artists (Score:3, Insightful)
(Disclaimer: I'm German).
Re:GEMA is not the German equivalent of the RIAA. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some may be that way, but not all.
Look, if an artists signs up with a lot of these rights organisations, they will have to pay them when performing their own music in public. And these organisations use methods more akin to actuarial methods than accounting methods so that the money you pay them for performing your own works may end up going to big-pop star instead.
Also, from what I understand, unlike ASCAP and BMI, many European agencies refuse to let you sign up and then represent you on a work by work basis, they insist on the rights to all of your works or they will not accept you. And on top of that, it seems many are government mandated monopolies in their respective countries (if people have explained things correctly to me) so that you sign with them or no one.
Artists rights indeed.
My big beefs are the undue length of copyrights, back-dating protection lengths, statutory damages, criminal penalties instead of civil, automatic copyright protection without the need for at least a copyright notice on the work, making copyrighted versions or derivatives of public domain works without requiring a sensible notice, lack of a register of copyrighted and public domain works, penalties out of all proportion to the offence intended to terrorise and not to bring justice. (off the top of my head - there may be more.)
all the best,
drew
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
A "stream" *is* a download. It is a download plus.. It is a download plus the ability to start playing before the download is complete. It is a download where the file format is arranged in a way compatible with starting playing an incomplete download, a file potentially with some extra information added inside to assist in playing the incomplete download.
Technologically and physically, sending a stream is absolutely identical to sending a download. The only difference in "sending a stream" is that you are assuming the the person receiving the file is has a player with the extra ability to play incomplete data, and that he does not *need* so save a copy before playing it.
The copyright lobby, the RIAA&MPAA&friends, are fixated on and pushing this physically and technologically invalid notion of "streaming". The idea that sending a stream is physically or technologically different than sending a download, the idea that a stream is a *lesser* i entity than a download, the idea that if you send a stream then the recipient does not (!cannot!) get a copy when you send the content for him to view. That is all backwards. A stream is physically and technolocially equal to or *more* than a download. The recipient does not need to (!but can!) save it as a copy before viewing it.
Sending content as a "stream" in order to prevent it from being a download-copy is like delivering water in a cup in order to prevent it from being wet. The cup of water is "water-plus", not "water minus". If the recipient ignores/discards the cup, the water is still just as wet.
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