eDonkey Pays the Recording Industry $30M 270
ColinPL writes, "MetaMachine Inc., the firm behind online file-sharing software eDonkey, has agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry. The company also agreed to take measures to prevent file sharing by people using previously downloaded versions of the eDonkey software. The eDonkey application now displays the message, 'The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available. Please see eDonkey.com for more details.' After that message is displayed the uninstaller is launched automatically." If you visit edonkey.com, it logs your IP address. How much will the demise of eDonkey matter, given that most who access that P2P network do so using the open-source eMule?
recording industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Go away. Please.
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Go away. Please."
even if the current RIAA is gone, there will always be some type of recording industry around. It's just too lucrative.
also, most artists have no experience marketing, selling, or dealing with the right people that will get them the high-paying gigs they need to continue performing and feed their family and or make the rent.
Re:recording industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, presumably artists will still need outside help to help them finance, organise and arrange large live gigs. However, I think there's less of a need for recording companies to market and distribute music from artists. Distributing music via the Internet is obviously cheap enough not to need financial backing; I need hardly go into the details of that on Slashdot. But marketing music is also a industry I expect to decline in the next few years. Music is an odd thing, in that one cannot 'sell' a piece of music in the same way one would sell a car. The customer either likes the piece of music he hears, or he does not. No amount of salesmanship will get him to change his mind, as it boils down to personal preference.
Because of this, marketing music consists largely of getting people to listen to it. Unfortunately, people have limited time on their hands, and cannot listen to every piece of music, so recording companies market selectively, using bands they know have a wide appeal. It's a broad, scattergun approach, and I can't help but think that one could do a far better job with a large database and some social networking software.
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Are you suggesting GoogleMusic?
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Re:recording industry? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with this fundamentally. A lot of people, especially young people, buy music for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the actual music but have more to do with a certain image or subculture. I grew up listening to punk, and while some of it actually does qualify as good music, much of it is less about the content and more about expressing an opinion on the culture (Kind of like /. ;-) Rap/Hip-hop music too is often about an image - the clothes, the cars, the attitude, etc. - and not about the quality of the music. All of these things are expressed outside of the music as well. e.g. by the artists appearances, actions, and speech on radio/television, live concerts, etc. This "artistic image" is a kind of marketing and has always been exploited and/or manipulated by the recording industry. In this regard, there is quite a bit of salesmanship in the industry, and the artists are to a large degree dependent on the industry to get that image out via appearances in other media.
Re:recording industry? (Score:5, Funny)
You misspelled shallow.
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I hope you know that the type of rap and hip-hop you talk about here is the kind which is foisted upon the airwaves by the recording industry, put on by the likes of 50 Cent, Chingy, etc. I used to dislike this genre myself for this reason.
Then a friend turned me on to good hip-hop. Like Common, Hieroglyphics, and Mos Def to name a few, real hip-hip artists who you rarel
your sig (Score:3, Funny)
factor 92219: 92219
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factor 581445: 3 3 3 5 59 73
defeated....
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$ factor 14827
14827: 14827
Do I win a prize now?
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[1] http://primes.utm.edu/howmany.shtml [utm.edu]
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I checked my UID at this website:
http://primes.utm.edu/curios/includes/file.php?fi
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factor 11893: 1699 7
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742381: 742381
Huzzah, I'm a member of a meaningless subgroup!
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Re:recording industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"I don't know if they should go away, but for crying out loud adapt to the Internet. This is the new format. They all need to work together and remarket their products. They still expect people to buy their CD's by the billions as if CD's are still new technology. They still think they can put out 1-2 songs and then throw in 8 other songs to fill up a disc. The market is changing, so they need to change with it."
Check out the iTunes Music Store sometime. Most of the major record labels are on board, an
Re:recording industry? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials. Other people would hop on that bandwagon, realize it's easier to promote people if they work together, and they'd call it the WMIA, World Music Industry Association, claiming rights throughout the world as an "international" (ie internet-based) company.
You'd think the way people talk that big industries are just a bunch of small people being greedy. Well, you'd be right.
Music magically appears, for free (Score:2)
The problem is not that music is easy to pirate and therefore copyright is meaningless and music should be free. Please stop insisting on that, it
Good thing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
For some reason you got modded down, but really, I have to wonder about the legality of this...
"eDonkey, has agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry". Not damages awarded by a court, not even to settle a pending suit - To avoid a potential lawsuit!
If that doesn't meet the textbook definition of extortion, I don't know what would.
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Not saying that it's right, just that it does seem to be the status quo.
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I got called into jury duty a few months ago and when I showed up I was assigned to a case. But they had all of the potential jurors just stand out in the hallway for what seemed like an hour. The whole time there was this nervous looking group of people down the hallway from us.
Eventually the judge called just the jurors into his chamber and gave us a very friendly talk about how we had just
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You must not be very good at poker (Score:2)
This is more like YOU were bluffing, and I just raised you big time, and you know that all you hold is a pair of deuces, so you fold to my bet. It's not that they can't afford to fight it--christ, they have at least $30,000,000--it's that they know that they don't have a case.
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its called a settlement.... (Score:2)
It happens all the time. Big company with mean lawyer informs small company that if they dont' pay up we will litigte you to all hell. Even if we lose you will still be paying $30mil in lawyers fee and lost revinue so save yourself the trouble and pay us now. It's called legal blackmail.
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Morte d' Robertson (Score:4, Interesting)
The media congloms win lots of battles while losing the war.
Re:Morte d' Robertson (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's almost as impractical as SCO's lawsuit(s)
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I don't see how. Right now the industry has to compete on price with FREE. If they successfully eliminate that competition, why would they lower the prices?
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I've got a bridge to sell you...
Here's my thoughts on stopping that.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell em Leia (Score:2)
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time to cash out (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like they've made their fortune, and have made the decision to pay the piper and cash out. I have no doubt that MetaMachine's profits were far in excess of $30 million.
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It logs your IP address. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Assuming that this is correct, even a 486 or so on a single T1 could probably handle over 100 hits per second.
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innocent until proven guilty (Score:2)
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I logged onto every one of our servers and lynx'ed to it. just so if someone is actually reading the logs can wonder why they get XX.XX.XX.130,131,132,133,....152.
Vertical
Never ending gravy train (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to put in place controls to limit copying, good on them.
They then give all their money to the bullys, bad move.
Paying of the artists might seem like a prudent course of action, but once you pay of one group, what about the next?
Theres the RIAA, MPAA and the BSA.
The guitar tab people and the knitting pattern folks and all the other American groups.
Thats not including all the individual software companies who want a piece of the pie, nor does it include all the groups from other countries (like FACT(Federation Against Copyright Theft) or CAAST(Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft)).
What happens when I find software from my company is available on limewire, where do I get my piece of the pie from, or is mine not big enough and is simply enough to get it added to the list of banned searches without any financial payback?
What makes my company different to the RIAA groups?
Let the copyright owners prove blatant infringement, let them show the service is doing illegal things and let the service fix itself.
Don't give into threats.
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Re:Never ending gravy train (Score:4, Informative)
It seems funny I was reading the Sept. 2006 edition of Reader's Digest this morning, and was drawn to an column "Turning Point" featuring Bob Newhart this month and he had something along those lines to say also.
The article is titled "Finding My Funny Bone", by Bob Newhart.
He was talking about two of his recordings : "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart", and it's sequel, "The Button-Down Mid Strikes Back". The first went to #1 on the Billboard charts, and got between the two recordings, got him three Grammy's that year. He goes on to say that he just recently started getting royalties on the recordings (they came out in 1960), and:
"Lately I have begun to receive royalties on the albums on a quarterly basis. Even as a trained accountant, I'm no exactly sure how they calculate these royalties without all of the financial records and contracts that burned up in The Great Warner's Office Fire of '73. But they apparently have a formula. Just last week, I received a check for $1.18."
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To make good music, you don't need a multi-million dollar budget or massive amounts of bling. The RIAA could disappear from the face of the planet and music would, if anything, improve as we are exposed to a more diverse selection.
Movies, on the other hand, often need a high budget. You can't make the Matrix or LotR or Star Wars or 90% of the other movies that slashdotters love without HUGE budgets. The MPAA needs movie tickets and DVD sales to survive. Granted, the
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it's only natural everybody uses eMule (Score:5, Funny)
Ducking Fisgusting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead of threats of violence or interference, there's threats of lawsuits to extract cash and force the death of anything that threatens a well-financed-enough organization. Yay. (as /me shakes head)...
It's almost as if the RIAA can now go after any company who sells products with any sort of file-transfer technology... I wonder why they haven't gone after any web browser that supports FTP, or anyone who makes/distributes an NNTP reader? Hell, FTP and NNTP were passing copyrighted files around long bef
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Oh? How about all those years that people used Agent Pro, or Netscape News Reader, or ...? software writers turned a decent profit from those items for quite awhile.
And, umm, "NNTP", not "HTTP". You know, like "USENET". Will no one rid me of these troublesome newbs!?
Or were you referring to proprietary vs. open standards for transferr
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"Customer motivations have nothing to do with sales intent, otherwise gun and knife makers would be civilly liable for every murder committed with their products. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good parallel (and a reason why most lawsuits against gun makers have failed utterly on such premises...)"
Napster tried that argument what, five years ago? They were laughed out of court.
Make no mistake: Sam and Jed know damn well that their software is used primarily for piracy. Jed told me so himself,
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Ah - I should've been more clear: a company's officially stated intent, so long as it is incontrovertable (that is, as long as someone can't prove otherwise w/ solid evidence), cannot b
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"The Napster case - wasn't their defense destroyed because Fanning basically admitted to his intent in an interview?"
My understanding is that it was due to some internal emails, but yeah, your understanding is correct. There was hard evidence that they knew what they were doing.
The record labels are going after the P2P companies based not on the Napster ruling, but on a later case, known as the Morpheus ruling, or MGM vs. Grokster. You can read about it on the EFF site [eff.org]. It gave the record companies th
I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
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I have a question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Has another company gone broke because the RIAA are a bunch of assholes?
Re:I have a question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Where did eDonkey GET $30M to pay RIAA? Or is this a hyped-up announcement of a "settlement" that is never really collected?"
From advertising.
Many people mistakenly see the big players in the P2P game as "white knights" because they make it so easy to get so much music for free. But, make no mistake: they are not in it because "information wants to be free." They are not in it to "stick it to the man." They do it to make money. They are in the business of helping people pirate music, and business is goooood.
It's funny that many of us justify our P2P usage by imagining some record executive in a $3,000 suit. The reality is usually different. The only record company owner I've met ran a ten-person label and paid himself $25K a year. Sam and Jed, the folks who brought you eDonkey so countless teens can "stick it to the man," likely made about $25K every week. The executives at Sharman are also multi-millionaires.
So why are Sam and Jed rich, while my friend the indie record label owner could only afford to pay himself $25K a year? Because my friend paid artists, paid employees, and paid for the production of the music.
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"I hate to say it, but it could also be that your friend isn't very good at his job. It's not a flame or anything, it's just that I run my own business too and I've seen as many people go bust because they aren't any good as I've seen people become millionaires and not have a clue what they're doing."
Could be... I don't know, either. But the point I'm making is that your average indie label is likely a lot smaller than the typical Slashdotter imagines. Five or ten-person labels are quite common, and p
Logged IP? (Score:3, Insightful)
"You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material. Your IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and has been logged."
Great, I only go to the site, they chastise me for 'stealing' music and then write down my IP address. How long until the RIAA sends me a letter regarding my visit to eDonkey.com and requests to view my harddrive to find 'stolen' files?
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visiting the site after reading the news story is normal legal behaviour, not evidence that you have shared anything or grounds to investigate further.
of course if your running ubuntu you wouldnt have any reason to visit the site even if you did wa
Let's not forget aMule... (Score:4, Informative)
Where does all this money come from? (Score:3, Interesting)
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The investors in eDonkey?
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"Where does all this money come from? Weren't they distributing a free program to allow the free swapping of digital files? Where does the $30M show up from?"
Giving something away for free, which helps people get free music, does not necessarily mean that you are a philanthropist. Sam and Jed were very much in it for the money. And they did very well. They are millionaires. So are the principals of Sharman Networks, the folks behind Kazaa.
It's ironic, because many people justify their piracy becau
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FUD! (Score:5, Funny)
I went there JUST so they would log my IP address. There! Sue me RIAA. I visited a public website. Boo friggin hoo..
Next they'll be sending secret police to my house to @(*$fiu$#(NO CARRIER)
cool! (Score:5, Funny)
Pay the RIAA? Are you kidding me? (Score:2)
Gnapster vs. OpenNap all over again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Let them keep attacking, because we will always have someone out there out-innovating the money-hungry RIAA and MPAA.
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summary: (Score:2)
Ohnoes! (Score:2)
IP logging? (Score:2)
Heh I had no idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
The goal of this is probably to prevent the equity shareholders from getting any return on their dime.
I doubt that eDonkey had greater than 30 mil in cash on hand, and I doubt they even had that in total assets. This is based on my knowledge of the workings of other similar P2P developers and of small tech firms in general.
If I am wrong and they have sold hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and were sitting on a huge nest egg, I'd be very surprised.
thanks for the reminder, RIAA (Score:2, Funny)
How much it matter? (Score:2)
Just a teeny little bit?
Viewing a webpage is not a copyright infrightment (Score:2, Informative)
------
The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available.
If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law.
Courts around the world -- including the United States Supreme Court --
have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal
downloading.
You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material.
Your IP address is -removed- and has been lo
What a shame (Score:2)
Welcome your new Robber Overlords - the RIAA (Score:2)
- Extorthion
- Bridge trolling and tolling
- Forcing every household's firstborn male into service
- Claiming each and every newlywed bride for the first night
quick, everyone go to edonkey.com! (Score:2)
They agreed to pay? But will they pay? Horseshit! (Score:4, Funny)
Most likely they agreed to 'pay' some absurd amount of money knowing full well that barely more than a few thousand dollars would ever be passed to the RIAA under any circumstances. They agree to some sum that they would never have (after all they aren't any different from you and me, gentle Slashdaughters) if there was any posssiblity that they would actually have to come up with the cash. I would guess that 'E-Donkey incorporated' owes $3,000,000,000,000,000 dollars for their 'crime', and the people and programmers who actually were eating all the pizza at E-Donkey's parties don't have to pay anything. As long as they agree to 'be good in the future'.
If the actual people had to pay even 1/1000th of the this absurd amount for their 'crime', then I'll bet that they would be planning serious mayhem on the RIAA lawyers that were personally involved with this bullshit lawsuit.
Look, I'm against violence and horror as much as the next girl, but, in the real world, when you're up against real assholes like the RIAA, then violence and horror goes a long way to 'equalizing' the legal chessboard. Sooner or later the RIAA is going to figure this out. Probably each lawyer will, individually, as they watch their guts drip out onto the floor of their BMW just after winning another extortion lawsuit for downloading 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy' against that one wrong person.
Keep your fingers crossed.
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Daaammn, take a chill pill dude! Why do you have a problem with him using the word "aforementioned"? He used it and spelled it correctly and it is shorter to write "aforementioned" instead of "previously mentioned" so whats the big deal?
Re:Slashdot is all for copyright protection, right (Score:2)
That'll be because Copyright infringement is a Civil, not a Crimminal offence in most of the western world.
Governments can't prosecute it.
Funny, that, because they do prosecute people who sell pirated DVDs.. anyone care to explain the difference for me? Damned if I can spot it..
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"That'll be because Copyright infringement is a Civil, not a Crimminal offence in most of the western world. Governments can't prosecute it."
FYI, here in the USA, it falls under both civil and criminal law, depending on the volume. If you would like the specifics, see Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 506 [copyright.gov]. In a nutshell, you're allowed to pirate up to $1,000 worth of stuff in 180 days before you run afoul of the feds.
"Funny, that, because they do prosecute people who sell pirated DVDs.. anyone care to exp
Great Rational (Score:2)
Oh, dont forget the internet backbone carriers for providing the bandwidth, dell for the computer, seagate for the drives that allow them to store the illegal content.
Moron.
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"Since they were busted for *indirectly* being responsible, lets also go after microsoft. If it wasnt for them being an enabler, then ed2k wouldnt exist. Oh, dont forget the internet backbone carriers for providing the bandwidth, dell for the computer, seagate for the drives that allow them to store the illegal content.
"
If you're confused about why P2P companies have been held liable, and backbone carriers, PC makers, OS makers, etc. aren't, you can read some of the court decisions (Napster tried an arg
vast majority of P2P traffic (Score:2)
I dont care if the Judge made a statement, its wrong to penalize a company beacuse their product CAN be used for illegal purposes.