EMI Sues Beatles Usurper Off the Net 358
blackest_k sends along a Wired piece on EMI's successful suit to get Beatles music off the Net. Here is the judge's ruling (PDF). "A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' A Los Angeles federal judge set aside arguments from Hank Risan, owner of BlueBeat and other companies named as defendants in the lawsuit EMI filed on Tuesday. His novel defense to allegations he was unlawfully selling the entire stereo Beatles catalog without permission was that he — and not EMI or the Beatles' Apple Corp — owns these sound recordings, because he re-recorded new versions of the songs using what he termed 'psycho-acoustic simulation.' Risan faces perhaps millions of dollars in damages under the Copyright Act. And copyright attorneys said his defense was laughable and carries no weight."
Re:Piracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironically, those Bluebeat guys are the ones arguing for mandatory DRM [arstechnica.com] and suing all the music stores for using "inadequate DRM". A judge finds a company trying to promote their "unbreakable" DRM for copyright infringement.
MRT's History (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy posting Beatles songs was clearly in the wrong.
I just wrote about this in my journal last night [slashdot.org] and would like to point out that Media Rights Technology (MRT, owners of BlueBeat.com) has a long history of neurosis when it comes to the legal system. Although not cross referenced above, you may recognize MRT as the very same people who sued everyone in 2007 for not implementing DRM [slashdot.org]. If you're Hank Risan, you've probably been asking yourself "How can I twist the law in a bizarre way to get rich quick?" And here we are.
Re:Maybes its a good time for them to get on iTune (Score:1, Interesting)
If we had sane copyright laws (like the original 1790 act with a 28 year limit), the Beatles catalog would be in public domain for the enrichment of all 6,000,000,000 humans, rather than just the 2(?) remaining band members.
Re:Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
THIS is the sort of piracy that I think any intelligent human being opposes.
Except for those of us who think that songs over 30 years old have already been STOLEN from the public domain. Or are you talking about the post-'79 Beatles?
Re:What is PAS? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would guess that what was done was one of two things:
Mechanical production of a cover through some device that, on "hearing" a tune, would attempt to duplicate it in some analogue way, thus producing what would be, under some definitional frameworks, a cover rather than a reproduction.
Computer-driven replication of a file through means that are not exactly copying, e.g. churning over random generation of bits of data and comparison with the original (either direct or medium-specific, e.g. audio). Done with high enough granularity a file that's either identical or acoustically practically identical to the original is produced (akin to how re-encoding a song in a different format can leave it essentially sounding the same).
With either of these, one might claim that no true procedural copying took place, just something that is functionally copying.
I would guess this because I occasionally thought about such things myself when I was much younger (and of the over-logicy libertarian mental flavour).
Re:I wouldn't listen to the naysayers (Score:2, Interesting)
The $2 million dollar fines that RIAA has imposed upon several college students == a life sentence. That's how long it would take to earn the money to pay it off. So no, the previous poster was neither generalizing or exaggerating.
How about this concept... (Score:1, Interesting)
The strange twists of what is and is not an original.
I don't know if this concept is technically possible but interesting either way.
Your band makes a cover of "Hard Day's Night". You have some software that compares your cover song to the original and creates a diff based on pitch changes, speed, attack, decay of the notes etc .. Once completed, this sound "diff" applied to your cover song generates an ouput that is something very close in sound to the original copy from the Beatles. What part of this process would the current laws for copyright enfringment apply to? The diff, the cover song (assume it was made legally), the software used to make the diff or the software used to apply the diff? How far away from the original recording is considered legally to close that it is no longer considered a cover but a copy of the original? What if you distribute a diff that makes it closer to the original but some completely unrelated third party provides yet another diff that makes it even closer if both are applied? Most importantly for the RIAA, who is in the wrong and who can be sued for the copyright infringement?
Another situation taking it a step further..
Someone uses the mp3 in binary form of the Metallica song "Master of Puppets" to hash other Metallica songs they own to generate a unique output and distributes those diffs. All you would need to generate your own Metallica collection of songs would be to buy the original "Master of Puppets" mp3 and download those hashes. The hashes distributed are not copyrighted and you are not distributing the songs, how would the RIAA handle this and what would be the illegal file? What instead of using "Master of Puppets" for the source, you used notepad.exe as the source? What if your hashes contained a disclaimer that those files were encrypted and any attempt to defeat any encryption would violate the DMCA?
The world of copyright is riddled with potholes.
Re:Santa Cruz, California (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Newark, NJ. I got you all beat on crazies.
I actually had a guy attempt to attack me with a canteen. A frickin' canteen!
Re:For Profit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lucy in the Sky with Patents (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Maybes its a good time for them to get on iTune (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>So listen up: don't proclaim the 1790 act was "sane"
Last time I checked I'm neither a slave nor a serf, which means my mouth is not your property. And I'm not obligated to follow your orders, creamwobbly. I can say whatever I want, thank you very much, and in MY opinion the original 28 year span was a reasonable length of time. Furthermore...
None of us engineers, programmers, or other laborers get a multi-decade monopoly over our creations.... we get paid an hourly rate, then we get laidoff, and that's it. No more money. I'm not entitled to a lifetime of free cash for a schematic I created at age 25, so why should an artist be entitled to a lifelong cash payment either? Fair treatment dictates they should get an hourly wage same as us engineers/laborers, and that's it. The 28 year monopoly is just a generous extra, and not required.
Re:I wouldn't listen to the naysayers (Score:4, Interesting)
Aren't college students stereotypically poor already? Don't they have bad credit histories already? I don't see the point.
This might hold true for "poor" college students, but not college students in general. I went to college in my mid-to-late twenties, and had pretty good credit, a lot of my friends back then were also older than normal, and had decent pre-established credit (a lot of them being ex-military/GI Bill students). A lot of the younger college kids didn't qualify as poor either, the ones who were poor, were poor by bad spending and budgeting ("I need $x in loans because I can't eat, but I just went to see Radiohead on tour in London (from Arizona)")
Now, if they can't just erase the fines with a bankruptcy, that gives them less incentive than ever to stop file sharing. If they already have a life sentence, what more do they have to lose?
This isn't about the file sharers who get caught, this is about deterring the file sharers who didn't get caught. I doubt that the **AA really cares about the damages they receive from the people who are caught, they just want ALL file sharers to know "we will destroy you".
Think about it, if your a normal middle class American, and get stuck with a million dollar fine, how long would it take for you to realistically even pay off a fraction of it? I know people in their 40s (solidly middle class) who are still paying off student loans from the 70s, and these loans were vastly less than what the **AA is demanding.
Re:Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, stolen by living authors! (Note the lack of ironic quotation - I mean stolen, quite literally).
What's been stolen are the extensions, not the original ownership.
The public had a deal, under the Constitution itself. We protect the person's copyright for X years. Not just by not violating it, but by paying costs to enforce protection as part of our taxes. After that, the work goes public, to benefit us, or at least our children, and their children and so on. Every time congress extended, they piled more benefits on one side of that deal, and took from the other. Stealing applies quite literally to that act. Note, this applies to rewriting the law so it covers works that were under the older social contract when they became protected. It's not stealing to write a law so new works will have longer protection in the future. (It's not automatically just law either, but it's not a taking without compensation)
The original right to copy was a physical or natural right (as in Nature or nature's God). A person could sit down with pen and paper, or a press if they owned one, and make a copy, for as long as they lived (and not a second longer). Technically, the moment Congress passed a law that had a rule like Life+50 years, they said copyright wasn't based on the transfer of a natural right any more, but of a right that exists only because of the government creating it. (You can't have a right to do something, by nature, after you are dead, after all.). That means congress is claiming the authority to manufacture or withhold a right as it chooses in this case, so technically, if they took back all copyright and claimed to be able to sell the works themselves and put the money in the government's kitty, they could do it, under modern copyright law. Ex-post-facto limits didn't apply to the extensions and don't apply if they seize all works, because it's only a government created priviledge, not a 'real' right anymore. If that's not more stealing, it's at least laying the groundwork for being able to steal better in the future.
And any break for living authors is a penalty to dead ones. Why should a person who started writing professionally at 15 (i.e. Michael Moorcock, now 70-something and still alive), have more protection than a late in life author such as Frank McCourt (already deceased in his late seventies)? 'Life plus' rewards long lived authors who start writing early, and you can't do that without penalising authors who die young or don't find their voices until they are older. If special treatment for being still living is right, how about special treatment for dying with heirs? Should authors with children have more rights than ones who don't? What would this do if it became a general principle in law? Would the length of a work's copyright depend on just what clauses the author put in the pre-nup he signed with his widow? Should authors with only one child need to worry that the death of that child without heirs would affect their copyright, as well as all the other problems it might entail?
Psycho-acoustics (Score:1, Interesting)
Psycho-acoustics doesn't have anything to do with compression. It is a methodology of making something sound like it's coming from somewhere other than where its really coming from, such as surround sound from two speakers. This is usually done by delaying and attenuating different frequency components of a sound to fool the brain that the sound has been delayed and attenuated by reflection off the outer ear by coming in from a particular direction that it otherwise is not coming from.
This is most effective when done during live recording where each sound component can be treated discreetly, placing them in any direction in a sphere around the listener. Singer in front, drummer in back, horn above, bass below, guitar left, keyboard right, etc.
Changing the format through file compression actually is detremental to Psycho-acoustics. It works better the higher the resolution (Sample depth, rate)and is optimal in analog.coming from somewhere other than where its really coming from, such as surround sound from two speakers. This is usually done by delaying and attenuating different frequency components of a sound to fool the brain that the sound has been delayed and attenuated by reflection off the outer ear by coming in from a particular direction that it otherwise is not coming from.
This is most effective when done during live recording where each sound component can be treated discreetly, placing them in any direction in a sphere around the listener. Singer in front, drummer in back, horn above, bass below, guitar left, keyboard right, etc.
Changing the format through file compression actually is detremental to Psycho-acoustics. It works better the higher the resolution (Sample depth, rate)and is optimal in analog.
Re:Santa Cruz, California (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Newark, NJ. I got you all beat on crazies.
I actually had a guy attempt to attack me with a canteen. A frickin' canteen!
Could've been worse. Could've been so much worse. [youtube.com] (My favorite "holy sh--!" moment in anime.)
Reverse Engineering? (Score:2, Interesting)
This story makes me wonder if something more complicated might be going on.
Imagine if you had a library of standard sounds (notes, chords etc. from different instruments)
and the various voice clips, and modifiers (echo, distortion etc...) needed to create an equivalent sound recording.
In effect an method for creating a virtual cover band.
So imagine you buy OMG_Famous_Track, ran it through some sort of computer program, which selects the best samples from your library in order to stitch together an equivalent sound recording. Then an human comes along and touches things up until its virtually indistinguishable from the original recording.
You then proceed to sell THE [ARTIST]'S - [TRACK] by [Company]. That is you sell the equivalent recording made up of all your properly owned samples, with a name that indicates that it should sound like the famous [ARTIST]s [TRACK].
Hell for all that work, I'd probably just start a site for cover bands.
Click on the track you want, we'll give you a list of cover's that we sell.