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eDonkey Pays the Recording Industry $30M
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Sep 12, 2006 04:11 PM
from the sound-of-falling-dominos dept.
from the sound-of-falling-dominos dept.
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?
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recording industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Go away. Please.
Re:recording industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:recording industry? (Score:5, Funny)
You misspelled shallow.
Parent
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.
Parent
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)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
It logs your IP address. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get this... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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.
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."
Parent
it's only natural everybody uses eMule (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 $25K a year? Because my friend paid artists, paid employees, and paid for the production of the music.
Parent
Logged IP? (Score:3, Insightful)
"You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material. Your IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and has been logged."
Great, I only go to the site, they chastise me for 'stealing' music and then write down my IP address. How long until the RIAA sends me a letter regarding my visit to eDonkey.com and requests to view my harddrive to find 'stolen' files?
Let's not forget aMule... (Score:4, Informative)
FUD! (Score:5, Funny)
I went there JUST so they would log my IP address. There! Sue me RIAA. I visited a public website. Boo friggin hoo..
Next they'll be sending secret police to my house to @(*$fiu$#(NO CARRIER)
cool! (Score:5, Funny)
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.