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The Courts Government News

MP3.com Loses In Court 427

Posted by timothy from the the-ligitious-society-keeps-on-eating dept.
The Code Hog was among the first to write with the news that "CNBC is reporting that MP3.com lost its court case with RIAA; the court finding that MP3.com is infringing on 'thousands' of artists property." Alert readers like Szyzyg and SethJohnson contributed links to coverage on zdnet and on yahoo respectively.
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MP3.com Loses In Court More

MP3.com Loses In Court

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  • Why does everyone seem to hate mp3.com? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just scrolling through the posts, the attitude is that mp3.com got what they deserved. I don't know, it seems they're really the most legit and prominent mp3 based service on the Internet.

    my.mp3.com is a lot better than napster morally, people are listening to songs they already own. Yet napster, which is basically only for illegal songs (how do you find an unknown artist's song on napster with title search?) gets defended to the death by most of these posts just because regulating is impractical.

    my.mp3.com was trying to do something good with mp3s, even though maybe it was a little shaky on legal grounds. Basically you tell them what cds you have, they run out and buy them and rip it to mp3, and you can access those songs wherever you are. Now what's so bad about that?

    Its like if you had a stereo with a cd player, but used your walkman most of the time. So you get a friend with the same cd to record some of the tracks on a tape(maybe he has some high speed dubbing equipment or something). Sure it would have been more legal if you did it yourself, but what's the real difference? Nothing, just some convienience to you. That's what my.mp3.com was doing, I don't know why people are so happy it got ruled against. Kinda sad actually, it just decreases the legitimacy of mp3s.

  • Good (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So they finally sued someone who deserved to be sued and won. Mp3.com was just asking for it, but Napster is just a data access program and has no control over content. Unless RIAA comes up with some means to notify a Napster server that a song is illegal I don't see what kind of grounds they would have against them.

  • Good (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now if we can just get the porn, warez, and guns off the internet, it will be safe for upstanding, God-fearing, hard-working American citizens.

    No offense to you foreigners -- some of you are ok, too.

  • It was stupid of them to even think about trying to get away with that service without consulting anyone in the industry first

    OTOH, ZicoKnows always consults someone "in the industry" before posting here.

  • MP3 is, by nature, a modification of the original content. RIAA can argue that taking the latest Britney song and encoding it at 56kbit/s, 16-bit stereo is a *modification* of their original material, and thus constitutes a copyright violation.

    About the only workaround I see for this is if MP3.COM made ISO's of their CD database for people to download, but that's ludicrous.

    Ironic, isn't it, that the very same thing that is *keeping* the majors from entering the online distribution arena (high-bit depth, large quantities of data in their existing PCM-based audio encoding scheme used for CD's) is also now being used as a *defense* against other's taking that material and putting it on the 'net in compressed, highly workable form (MP3).

    Drats.

    How bizaare.
  • That's interesting. I was under the impression they weren't ASCAP licensed, for some reason.

    If that's the case, then my argument has no value, unless their ASCAP license only permits radio wave-transmission, not Internet.
  • Well to be fair, this is being filtered as you say through a media organizations lackeys... so who can really tell by this report exactly what the problem is with the creation of their database.

    I'm willing to bet its not really the *Creation* of the database that's the problem, but the distribution of items from that database to 3rd parties (thus violating the non-transferrable single-use backup copy provision of copyright law).

    This is definitely an interesting study in heuristics, if nothing else... :)
  • Certainly yours is one of the better explanations for what the case is here for the RIAA's success, thanks for clearing that up.

    So in effect, the fact that my.mp3.com made some money from distributing their fair-use backups of copyrighted material (indirectly - advertising/banner revenues mostly, I would assume) is where they violated the law.

    In that case, MP3.COM broke the law. It's not necessarily a favourite law, but they broke it nevertheless.

    Will be interesting to see this one go through the appeals process... I wonder if MP3.COM had *any* plans for how to handle this sort of stuff at all? I think this has the potential to bankrupt them.

  • *If*. (Score:2)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    The RIAA could feasibly ask for huge damages on this. 80,000 albums worth of profit is a *lot* of money, and its not inconceivable that they could prove they 'lost profit' from this action by MP3.COM.

    It ain't over yet, anyway, but this is a case to keep a close eye on.
  • I'll master your stuff, if you want, because you're another mp3 musician like I am. I don't have that much reinassance-like music to demo for you but "Tiger" [mp3.com] off the 'anima' album includes synthesized piano that sounds better than soundfonts. I'm a High End audio guy using a lot of homebrew analog equipment for this sort of thing, I could certainly do just as good a job on organ music- if you want to do a bit of networking, drop me an email and we'll talk about it. I won't charge you anything because it's easy for me to do- let's work together and get some great music out there- while we still can :P
  • Radio stations are exempt from record royalties.

    No, they absolutely are NOT exempt. They either work out a blanket payment or pay per play. Either way, the radio station holds a license to retransmit the record. Check ASCAP or BMI.


    ...phil

  • I paid for a license to use software, (listen to music, read a book, whatever) and I own something that should be bit-for-bit (dot-for-dot, word-for-word...) identical, so if I get that, *however* I get that, it shouldn't be a violation of that license.

    It isn't. However, MP3.COM does not have a license to redistribute the music, and that's the difference.


    ...phil

  • That's fine. But by god, if they think for one second that I will sit by and tolerate their futile attempts to halt piracy at the expense of restricting my right to make use of my legal music, they are wrong.

    Unfortunately for your analysis, the RIAA is not preventing you from using your music. They are preventing mp3.com from being the agent of your use, because mp3.com is not licensed as a music distributor. Like it or not, the record companies control the distribution, and mp3.com was doing distribution without the record company's permission. Of course they were going to get sat on.


    ...phil

  • In your example, it would have been illegal for her to give you the orignal while she kept the backup. Otherwise, you're exactly right. If she kept the copy and gave you a copy, then she's engaged in illegal distribution.


    ...phil
  • Does anything change if you consider My.MP3.com as a shared-dictionary compression scheme? Dictionary-based compression is a rather old idea and there are examples where programs on both sides of a slow communications link exchange only references to entries in a much larger dictionary stored locally.

    The MP3s are completely identical and, had the MP3.com done a rip/upload of those identical files, it would have avoided the legal issue. I find it disturbing that something which is completely legal becomes illegal because the software avoids repeating the transfer of data it already has. If MP3.com had required users to upload the same files, this legal loophole wouldn't have existed.
    __

  • It looks like mp3.com was doing something illegal by using the method described. I don't think this sets a precident by which MP3 files get criminalized.

    Owning MP3s, MDs, tapes or burned CDs without owning a licenced copy of the original work has always been illegal. Owning duplicate copies while owning an original licenced copy (in same or different format) has always been legal. I don't think that will change.

    The only issue here is distribution, as the site possibly had unlicenced copies of the audio sitting on their servers and even if it was licenced, they had no agreement with the licence owners to be allowed to 'beam' or 'stream' the data.

    There is nothing new here with copyright law, it is simply that the technology to make, copy and use audio has changed.
  • I haven't bought a music cd or tape in almost 6 years. But just yesterday I was telling my friend that because mp3.com makes it so easy to listen to all my music at work or anywhere I go, I'm going to have to go out and buy more albums so that I can beam them to mp3.com.

    My.mp3.com isn't doing anything more than speeding up the ripping and distribution process for users. If they just distributed a cd ripper program and a mysql/perl server suite would anyone be complaining?
    Joseph Elwell.
  • If my.mp3.com was a separate corporate entity, then they could be sacrificed and the parent could survive. This is not the case. mp3.com is liable for the punitive damages (the RIAA's ambit claim is $6bn, and the actual sum is likely to be in 9 digits), which are likely to break its back.

    Hopefully when mp3.com goes into liquidation, someone who supports the open mp3 format will buy up the independent-artist side of things and keep it going. Hmmm; perhaps Andover would be interested in expanding its line of business?
  • MP3.com is nothing more than a smart domain
    squatter with a couple of obvious ideas.

    It's also an example, which could have a profound chilling effect. After mp3.com has been crucified in public (which has begun; its stock is freefalling into oblivion), others will be very careful not to risk being sued.

    Under the DMCA, tools or systems dealing in unencrypted MP3s may (given enough well-paid lawyers) be construed to be a circumvention mechanism around SDMI. As such, once SDMI is out and endorsed by the RIAA, chances are that even using mp3 may be dangerous to a company's stock price.
  • The lawsuit has to do with them streaming copyrighted CDs (using the Beam-It feature) without a license.

    As for mp3.com itself not being illegal, those are shifting sands. Under the DMCA and the WIPO provisions, the unencrypted MP3 format and tools for supporting it may be deemed a "circumvention device", and thus illegal, if it can be shown that there exist copyright-enforcing alternatives. And SDMI is on the way.

    MP3 files as we know them will be criminalised in a few years maximum.
  • But they are the same company, which means that if the $6bn punitive damages figure is upheld, we can probably say goodbye to mp3.com altogether.

    Oh well, there are still rivals, like BMG's riffage.com.
  • According to the WIRED article, the judge's hands are tied when setting the fine, and the lowest fine he could impose is $600 million; which is still enough to destroy mp3.com.
  • The RIAA are alleged to have manipulated mp3.com's stock price by selling it short, in order to destroy it.

    If there is any truth in this, you can bet that they will push very hard for a death sentence.
  • A great idea... it may change the RIAA's mind just like the DVD boycott made the MPAA abolish zoning and legalise DeCSS.
  • Riffage (which, as it happens, is run by BMG, one of the Big Four labels) is likely to come out a winner from the exodus. And isn't the IUMA still around?

    Chances are, if mp3.com goes out of business, someone may buy the independent business. Or the RIAA may allow them leniency, as long as they replace MP3s with a proprietary, encrypted format (we can see it now: downloads coming encapsulated in a serialised Windows player EXE).
  • If you haven't done so already, it's probably too late. Chances are MPPP stock is worth about as much as confederate dollars right now.
  • According to this article [wired.com], the judge has no leeway in determining the minimum damages; the absolute minimum figure is said to be $800 million.

    Unless this is overturned, or mp3.com settles with the RIAA (unlikely; the RIAA wants them annihilated and their tarred corpse hung up in a gibbet as a warning to others), mp3.com is kaput.
  • Riffage is owned by BMG, one of the Big 4 record companies. Sure, its terms and conditions are amenable now, but once mp3.com is no more and they have no competition, you can bet they'll tighten up.

    For one, don't expect non-proprietary formats such as MP3 to stay around above ground if mp3.com goes to the wall.
  • Um. because MP3 is the only format not dependent (by design) on closed-source players?

    It sounds better than RealAudio, and the other high-quality formats (LiquidAudio, SDMI, &c) will not support Linux (because of economies of scale and the inability to ensure that decoded audio is not intercepted).
  • If it was, say, General Electric or Sun or someone with a guaranteed, concrete revenue stream, they'd be guaranteed to stay around. mp3.com, however, doesn't have the ability to pay $800m+ of damages and ensure profitability.

    Don't waste your money on MPPP; chances are it's finished.

  • It's been running through my mind the past week or so...

    2. ...And Justice For All (9:44)
    (Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett)

    Halls of justice painted green
    Money talking
    Power wolves beset your door
    Hear them stalking
    Soon you'll please their appetite
    They devour
    Hammer of justice crushes you
    Overpower


    • The ultimate in vanity
      Exploiting their supremacy
      I can't believe the things you say
      I can't believe
      I can't believe the price you pay
      Nothing can save you
      • Justice is lost
        Justice is raped
        Justice is gone Pulling your strings
      Justice is done
      • Seeking no truth

      • Winning is all
        Find it so grim

        So true
        So real

    Apathy their stepping stone
    So unfeeling
    Hidden deep animosity
    So deceiving
    Through your eyes their light burns
    Hoping to find
    Inquisition sinking you
    With prying minds
    • The ultimate in vanity

    • Exploiting their supremacy
      I can't believe the things you say
      I can't believe
      I can't believe the price you pay
      Nothing can save you
      • Justice is lost

      • Justice is raped
        Justice is gone Pulling your strings
      Justice is done
      • Seeking no truth

      • Winning is all
        Find it so grim

        So true
        So real

    Lady justice has been raped
    Truth assassin
    Rolls of red tape seal your lips
    Now you're done in
    Their money tips her scales again
    Make your deal
    Just what is truth? I cannot tell
    Cannot feel
    • The ultimate in vanity

    • Exploiting their supremacy
      I can't believe the things you say
      I can't believe
      I can't believe the price you pay
      Nothing can save us
      • Justice is lost

      • Justice is raped
        Justice is gone Pulling your strings
      Justice is done
      • Seeking no truth

      • Winning is all
        Find it so grim

        So true
        So real

        Seeking no truth
        Winning is all
        Find it so grim

        So true
        So real

    Posted without permission, Copyright Metallica and the label which owns their souls and feeds their families.

    75 years ago, modern commerce was new and fresh. Commercials were live, radio was interesting and formats were unique. Now we have giant uninspiring powerhouses which act as barriers to entry, who dictate what we listen to. Systems of "payola" well rooted in powerful radio stations. It all works into a simple and rather horrible equation.

    Maybe if the system is flipped on its head, top bands won't make millions while bottom bands finance them with the levy they pay on recording media. Maybe albums won't be so shiny and pretty, but gritty, there might not be top-notch producers working out wicked sounds for talented mucicians. But I don't care. I want my tiny little bar-bands and little independant theatres.

    To hell with mega-media.

  • Actually mp3.com owned those CDs. If you attempt to beam a CD to them that they don't already own it doesn't work, so this argument is invalid.
  • Haha the newbie is exposed! If you think HTTP, FTP, IRC were invented 6 fscking years ago, then you are the clueless luser, not me. That you have the gall to admonish me and then make just stupid suppositions like that, you arrogant little fuck... well, let's just say you're lucky I'm dignifying it with a response.

    Napster is not doing anything illegal. Get that through your think, trogolodyte skull and we'll all be a little better off. Did you even read the threads before you posted (no). There are legitimate MP3s on Napster. Ones that artists have released to the public domain, and don't care if they are traded. Furthermore, Napster is not distributing MP3s. That's illegal. They are not doing it. They are just telling you where to find them. If I tell you where to find drugs, assault rifles, or any other sort of contraband, is that illegal? /NO/ - not in the correct context. It doesn't fucking matter if Napster is an open protocol or not, you jargon-regurgitating moron. That's a moot point. It doesn't matter if a single company distributes it. It doesn't matter if its sole function is to find MP3s. It wouldn't even matter if they had a mechanism in place to only find pirated MP3s and tell you where to find them. That information is not illegal. That information is not illegal. (Repeated for your benefit, since I've said it about 6 times in previous posts and you have yet to understand this most basic concept. My dog fucking gets it).

    PLEASE - why don't you think about it. How do you think magazines like High Times can get away with telling you where to buy pot seeds, telling you how to grow pot, telling you what kind of pot is best? Because they aren't selling pot. Just providing the framework for an illegal activity is not illegal. This has been proven again and again. Linking to it is legal. What is illegal is physically giving someone MP3s. Only the users of Napster do that.

    I pray to god that you understand what I say. If you don't, e-mail me and I will personally sit down and draw it out in big, vibrantly-colored pictures for you and send them as an EPS. Otherwise, shut up.

    --
  • MP3.com has a market cap of almost $500 million dollars. See for yourself [yahoo.com]. And this is after losing almost 40% on news of the ruling. If there's one thing - the only thing - I think these insane .com market (over)valuations are good for, it's be able to compete financially with entities that traditionally have been able to spend their way to favorable court rulings. Viz. AOL suing AT&T for open access to cable lines, this, Napster standing up to fight against all the artists (not sure how they works, since they have no visible source of income), etc.

    --
  • Exactly. Try to define just what Napster is without coming up with a blanket definition for pretty much the whole Internet. Just try it! I did, and I couldn't. Napster is no different from HTTP, FTP, or SMTP, except in implementation. Any attempt to outlaw Napster will either be so far-reaching and thereforce stifling to legitimate progress on the Internet that it will be immediately struck down, or it will encompass minute differences between Napster and other services, in which case the Napster client could be altered the same day as a way around the ruling. Mark my words, Napster will never be outlawed functionally. It's impossible.

    --
  • That's not a sound, legal argument. You just can't go throwing around ambiguities like "generalized purpose" and expect any sort of law to stick. Napster does have a generalized purpose: to share MP3s. To that end, HTTP, FTP, IRC are just as guilty; I can get MP3s over every single one of those. The fact that they have alternate, legal uses makes no difference whatsoever. So does Napster - transferring public domain MP3s.

    Think about all the angles. You can't outlaw MP3 trading programs because there are a lot of legitimate MP3s out there. Such a blanket ruling would be tossed out faster than you can say "appeal".

    You can't outlaw programs that only trade MP3s, as you mentioned, because within the day Napster would be coded to trade any sort of file. Hell, people have already hacked the client to do this based on binary patches. Napster proper could do it fast, and Napster would instantly become legal again.

    You can't outlaw anything that allows you to trade MP3s, period. Oh, what a clusterfuck that would be. SMTP, FTP, IRC, HTTP, Usenet - all guilty. That's another ruling that would get tossed in a heartbeat.

    I take exception to your "If napster could share any kind of file" theory, by the way. The reason Napster was so popular is because it was first to market. Had it not been for the fact that Napster was literally Shawn Fanning's first Win32 programming project, that ability probably would exist. What makes him a smart guy is not that he coded Napster - a lot of us here could have done that, some better - but that he knew the timing, knew it was better to release a crappily-coded version of Napster and build a user base rather than sit back and add features to the client. The latest client, Napster 2.0 beta 5, still blows, but that doesn't matter, because there are so many users of it that people are willing to put up with a shoddy interface for the added selection. Meanwhile, there are Napster clones which are infinitely better, have the ability to share all types of files, tons more features, that are floundering because they came to late into the game. Just download GlobalScape's CuteMX [globalscape.com], which is free, to see what I mean.



    --
  • Functionally, that's all Napster is too. Get your facts straight. I suggest you toodle on over to freshmeat.net and type in the word "Napster". You will find more than ten clients available. Functionally, Napster is a protocol. Although the client is not open, for all intents and purposes the protocol is. It has been reverse engineered many times over.

    And you are just flat wrong about company X and whatever else you say. Company X and or Napster aren't doing anything illegal. They are merely providing a search function. No copyrighted material resides on their server. None. Do we sue Altavista for telling us where to find child porn? Google for telling kids how to make bombs? Of couse not. What Napster is doing is no different, except for the packaging.

    --
  • ALL OF YOU have mp3s.. even you morons complaining about how "Illegal" they all are..

    ALL of you have them.. ALL of you.. even in the RIAA.

    The nature of mp3s is that once you find out what they are.. you want them.. they're miserably easy to obtain, before you know it, and illegal or not, suddenly you find you have a formidable collection.. END OF STORY.

    Information isn't like spaghetti.. if I cook a pot of spaghetti and you take half, I'm left with 50% less speghetti.. If I have a piece of information, which you duplicate... I have NO LESS information than I started with.

    THOSE are the New Rules(tm).. Right or wrong, that's what they are. If existing Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law doesn't FIT into the New Rules(tm).. GUESS which is GOING to HAVE to change.. I'll give you a hint.. It won't be Information Theory.

    Have A Nice Day(tm)
  • Actually, I did vote for McCain.

    Didn't work. Was worth a shot, though.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.

    Unfortunately for MP3.com, it was a very LARGE portion of their buisness model. MP3.com needed a hook to get repeat visitors and a mailing list of customers (the kinds of things that Wall St. values in a advertising-based 'net company). My.mp3.com as a portal was their mechanism. The key attraction for my.mp3.com was for users to be able to hear music they own anywhere they are, thus, they keep coming back to the site to listen to their music and the advertising dollars keep rolling in.

    Kill the music downloads, and you kill the reason for daily visits to the site. You strangle their primary income. By the time the final effects of this reach Wall Street tomorrow, the company might not even be worth the $6billion that the RIAA is asking for damages.

  • Free music is always going to be available for those with sufficiently low ethics that they'll want to steal it, but I'm going to really savor the upcoming bankruptcies of MP3.com and Napster.

    So this is what a troll looks like, eh?

    Ok, I'll bite. I use mp3.com to listen to my cd's@work. Nothing illegal about it. They're just saving me trouble, and space. I own all the disks that have been registered in my name (but then ZicoKnows I have low ethics). Shutting down mp3.com just pisses me off. Now I have to bring disks in, or MP3'em myself. And incidently, as of right now (4:20 EST) they're still streaming audio, 'cause I'm still listening.

    --locust

  • Under current IP law, they are doing something illegal by distributing copyrighted work that they do not have the rights to distribute. Whether you own a copy or not is irrelevant, they still don't have the right to distribute it.

    Ah, so if I asked you to bring my CDs to work for me, then are you doing something illegal?

    In my view, what I've bought from the record company in the form of a CD is a copy of some information and one license to use it. As long as I don't use the information twice at the same time, it should be legal (like a number of seats in a SW license). I didn't see a shrinkwrap license that said I couldn't ask MP3.com to bring it to work for me every day. But then I'm not a lawyer.

    On a related note... Strictly speaking as I play a CD (especially in a player with anti-skip) I make a copy of the disk. Is this copy illegal? If I am running a program then are the copies made for caching and virtual memory purposes illegal as well?

    --locust

  • How does myplay.com make it's money?
    Advertising?

    Wasn't there some article where it was suggested that the only viable media model in the future will be to sell advertising using the media.

    So - is myplay.com an early adopter of this concept?
  • Basically myplay goves you the online storage space for nothing, and the extra facilities (i.e. public playlists AKA icecast streams) are thrown into the service.

    Shame there's no official unix dropbox yet ....
  • It;s interesting to look at the differences between my.mp3.com and it's competitor myplay.com [myplay.com].

    my.mp3.com is basically requiring you to present evidence that you own a CD and then they are giving you mp3's of that CD so that yuou can play them.

    Myplay.com instead lets you upload mp3's, so intead of 'beaming' your CD, you're ripping the CD (at whatever quality you like) and adding them to your myplay locaker.

    Now - in the end the results are the same, but legally there's enough of a difference that mp3.com was breaking the law while myplay wasn't. If myplay were breaking the law then I presume that they'd have been taken to court first since they've been offering their locker service for a lot longer than my.mp3.com.

    But then again - maybe I'm jsut defending them because I like the way I can put up tracks by obscure artists which mp3.com would never acquire (e.g. for vinyl only tracks). Or maybe it's they way they support linux and use software like icecast for streaming.....

    or maybe it's because you can go there and listen to my current playlist. Downtempo, Leftfield and other words [myplay.com] - go on - you know it deservers to be number 1.

    :-)


  • Only a consumer can make a copy of their music

    Playing Angel's Advocate here, bear with me. What if I purchased a used CD from another consumer? Legal. What if she'd made a backup copy for personal use? Legal. What if she gave me the backup copy along with the CD? Super legal.

    What if I listened to the backup copy she made? Not legal? Must I make my own backup copy myself for it to be legal, or can I copy or otherwise obtain a backup copy from another consumer who made it, legally, himself?

    It seems to me that the fair use principle isn't in place so that we can spend our time ripping CDDA and encoding MP3s, but that, having purchased a license to listen to the music, we can listen to it in other formats.

    --

  • Your comment is based on a flawed, second-hand understanding of how BeamIt works.

    My observation is not entirely second hand. I saw this stuff in its early stages, and heard rumblings of it well before it was official. Also, I used this software last night, nothing is truely inconsistent with what I said...

    "fake CD device, with all the data mp3.com's is looking to verify" - the algorithm makes random checks of a CDs data. Spoofing would require some other technique than simply saving and delivering only the expected data.

    How do you know it is cryptographic? Even if you do "know", how do you know it is sufficiently cryptographic? I highly doubt they store the entire CD in its original form. In fact, I suspect they store just a few cryptographic checksums for the sake of bandwidth, database design, storage space, speed, and reliability. Knowing mp3.com, I strongly doubt they're greatly concerned with the actual security; so long as they can say they took "reasonable precautions", or what have you, they feel they can get away with this. [In fact, I suspect the slashdot communitity and other Net Zealots would rally behind mp3.com even if it is proven to be trivial to pirate from it, and that the vast majority of the service's traffic is piracy (This is certainly true with napster)] Thus, I think it is highly probable that all the data the service is looking for could be captured and sufficiently described in a couple bytes (a fraction of the actual mp3 album's size in any case). Furthermore, there is not one product that comes to mind that claims cryptographic security that has actually withstood hackers efforts--certainly none where the interests in actual security do not lie with the creator.

    "you then have access to those mp3s from anywhere you go (or you can just download the mp3s)." - Once authenticated, you have access to the streaming MP3 file of that particular CD. You are not empowered to download tracks in MP3 format that are suitable for redistribution. Of course, there are ways to save the streamed file, but there are much easier ways to get those files than spoofing the CD checker and saving the streamed MP3. MyMP3 didn't make that any easier than what was already possible -- in fact it was less convenient to use as a piracy tool.

    I must disagree with you here. It is a trivial matter to convert these streams into mp3 files. The hackers could also distribute a program to automate it, not that it is really necessary. In addition, I've been around IRC and warez pups long enough to know that the most limiting factor of piracy distribution is bandwidth and storage space. If hackers could enable users to download from mp3.com's multihoned fiber optic site with essentially infinite bandwidth (it will naturally scale with demand) with only a mere 100bytes per CD out of their pipes and harddrives, it would be very easy for them, and the user. It would also be next to impossible to stop. Think about it for a minute, one ~5 megabyte upload to a newsgroups (or many of them) and the group could give access to anyone with access to that newsgroup to my.mp3.com's entire CD collection (assuming 50k CDs with 100 bytes per CD representation). Very very trivial. It'd would beat the pants off of napster for 99.99% of its traffic (e.g., all the popular 50k CDs mp3.com has archived)--much improved bandwidth, easier searching, better presentation, reliable download sites, and a huge collection of CDs at your finger tips in an organized fashion. I'd bet dollars to pesos that someone figures out a way to make it happen too. (assuming this service doesnt get shut down too rapidly)

    The more likely threat, from the view of the RIAA, was simply the sharing of CDs to gain access to streaming MP3s rather than buying the music. Lost sale? So they say, but I don't buy it. The truth is, regardless of profit loss or gain, RIAA wanted to enforce its licensing rights, as the representative of the industry (which includes the artists) and ensure it received its fair share of profits.

    RIAA may or may not be motivated by more self-centered concerns as well, but this does not automatically rule out the possibility of a serious threat to their revenues as I described. Even though this tool does not yet exist, these things can take years on appeal, and they might never get an injunction against them (atleast a timely one).

    "As unfair as it might seem, I'm not so sure that RIAA is necessarily being greedy or overzealous here." - blasphemy for a Slashdotter where "music wants to be free" but I agree with this. Vilifying an industry that's trying to maintain its tried and true (and legal) revenue stream isn't logical. They are in the business of making money...making it for their investors, their executives, their engineers, producers, public relations, promoters, agents, distributors, and...oh yeah...the performers and writers too.

    I'm not your typical slashdotter. In fact, I'm not your typical anything. I don't walk lockstep with any group, be they capitalist or communist, or what have you. That being said, I think this "information wants to be free" line is a line of idealistic bullshit. Also, I'd like to remind you, that despite the "net" and all the much acclaimed innovations by Net advocates, the artists still choose to sign with these major labels of their own volition, even though they only get of a small fraction of the revenues from each sale. Nobody is pointing a gun to the artists' heads and forcing them to sign. This means that the labels are providing more value to the artists through distribution, marketing, sound engineers, etc. than if they tried to go it alone. It may be true that the labels enjoy an unfair percentage of the revenues, but even here I have doubts. If you look at these publically owned corporations, their profitability is not all that high. Yes, it is lucrative, but not much more so than any other business. It a lot costs money to promote, market, distribute, etc. Thus, even though they enjoy a large share of the profits of a sucessfull CD, they must plow it back into their operations so they can continue to be sucessfull and provide greater value to the artists.

    A few decades ago, the "music industry" feared the sale of recorded music thinking it would kill the primary source of revenue -- the live performance. Today that seems laughable. Not that long ago, the industry fought to keep analog recording out of the consumers' bill of rights because of its perceived impact on unit sales. Eventually, and with the help of the Audio Home Recording Act, the RIAA gave up its opposition to analog copying since the method degrades each generation and, uh, they get a royalty for blank media sold to compensate them (now THAT chaps my ass).

    Yes, this is often cited. I would never claim the industry is infallible. However, there is a world of difference between this and the internet with unopposed piracy. My.mp3.com with the piracy i've described makes it entirely too trivial to obtain songs. Given the growing presence of broadband (which makes my.mp3.com a joy to use, I know from experience), and the plethora of mp3 devices (have you seen the Nomad Jukebox), I can see a real threat if internet piracy goes unchecked. Pirating mp3s through this service may very well be easier than running out to the store or ordering it onlinem, atleast amongst users who are sufficiently intelligent, broadband computer users, and owners of sophisticated mp3 devices.

    The bottom line is that the industry may be myopic and stupid and greedy sometimes, but that does not automatically invalidate rational criticisms of my.mp3.com's service in regards to piracy.

  • Before you jump on me about them having full CDs, when I said "checksum", I really meant they might have some kind of cryptographic hash (e.g., MD5 as is believed), but this is not entirely equivelent to possessing a full CD to check the data against, especially since the client presumably allows for a certain number of bad challenge responses (e.g., scratched CDs). Unless mp3.com publishes the protocol they use to authenticate the challenge replies against the CD or the representation of it (e.g., hash), we really can't know with any certainty what method they are using, nor how secure it is (even the implimentation of the same protocols can make or break its security). Given the fact that the burden of having their service effectively cracked is not on them (at most they have to replace it with a better method), I could easily see them underestimating the threat from hackers, or simply not caring (figuring instead that they can battle it in the courts and absorb whatever costs...and given the history of the CEO and what not, I wouldn't put that past them)

    ..gotta bolt.
  • Without getting too involved in the legal issues and what not...

    Did anyone ever consider the possibility of this my.mp3.com service really trivializing mp3 piracy? I mean mp3.com writes some trivial piece of software that reads the CD. This might be OK, if it really works as claimed. However, I have little doubt that it wouldn't take a hacker long to write a hack to "fool" mp3.com's software. It would something like fakeCD.exe (or was it .com), only you punch in a code representing the CD, which then creates a fake CD device, with all the data mp3.com's is looking to verify (and _nothing_ more). Once mp3.com's software has scanned your "fake CD" for a few seconds, if my understanding is correct, you then have access to those mp3s from anywhere you go (or you can just download the mp3s). Then all the little warez groups can effectively distribute mp3s at people with a mere 20 bytes or so of data (a compressed representation of whatever the software is looking for).

    The point being that this has the possibility to really trivialize the pirating of mp3s. Based on my years on IRC and what not, the primary limiting factor for the distribution of warez is the lack of bandwidth on the part of the groups, not the lack of willing parties. Certainly if #cracks on efnet, for example, can maintain a large database of serial numbers (a few bytes a piece) on a bunch of different bots, the same could, and would, be done for my.mp3.com. Or, just create a single "official" warez file, which contains the codes for all popular CDs...if each CD representation (e.g., artist name, album name, cd identifier, etc.) takes 100bytes, that'd be about 10k CDs in a 1 meg CSV file. Very trivial to distribute and virtually impossible to stop that, plus it's only one download, so it'd be harder for all involved parties to get busted.

    I think this is dooable, and I think it would be trivial enough to have a profound impact on RIAA's collective earnings. As unfair as it might seem, I'm not so sure that RIAA is necessarily being greedy or overzealous here.

  • A lot of Internet caching is doing something very similar: caching takes the original content, stores it once on a central server, and delivers it on request. It saves network bandwidth. ISPs, corporate gateways, and home users with multiple machines do that sort of thing.

    If MyMP3.com is found to be infringing copyright because of this, the same argument can be made for caching without the copyright owner's explicit consent.

  • If you look at your music CDs, you won't find a license, and it's doubtful that companies could put a license on there if they wanted to (shrink wrap does not yet apply to things other than software).

    So, commercial music (CDs) isn't covered by "licenses", it's covered by copyright law. Copyright law is most definitely transferrable, and it isn't single use. You can time shift, space shift, and copy for personal use as much as you want. The question in this case is whether MyMP3 can cache the mp3 versions of songs on behalf of the users. Keep in mind that MP3.com presumably bought at least one copy of each CD.

    This decision is troubling, and its implications are yet to be understood. We'll have to read the legal opinion and comentary.

  • Gun companies and tobacco companies are getting their asses sued off because they supposedly aren't acting responsibly in keeping their products from being used inappropriately. Lawyers won't even think twice about suing Napster on the same grounds.

    I disagree with all three -- if you're going to go after someone, go after the person who's actually using the products illegally. However, I have no sympathy for Napster because the success of the product is due precisely to the fact that it can be used for music piracy. That's why they haven't kept their word about trying to keep people from using Napster illegally -- because they know that almost nobody would care about Napster if it weren't for all the illegal content there for the taking.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • First of all, the concept of Napster is so simple that anyone can do an end run around it and roll their own. This will probably start happening when the Feds start cracking down on music pirates on Napster next month (see article [pcworld.com]). The pirates will drop in numbers, as many decide they don't want to face the risk of prosecution, and many will start using alternative programs, to stay a step ahead of the feds who are cracking down on Napster. Add these factors to Napster's rising legal costs to defend its existence, and you're looking at major trouble for Napster's survival.

    And having rolled my eyes enough times at a barely-coherent Sean (Shawn?) Fanning (Napster's creator) blurting out "The technology can't be stopped!" I say good riddance to the both of 'em.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I'd bet the
    RIAA is more excited about the possibility
    of bankrupting mp3.com and cutting off all the
    legitimate independent artists who use it for
    distribution than they are about shutting down
    my.mp3.com (which was a really stupid thing for
    mp3.com to get involved in in the first place).

    *sigh*

  • Yes. This poster understands the legal issue.

    The irony of this is that MP3's service works (and is, in my opinion, legal) because the music industry is selling exact copies of digital information to users. I buy a bunch of bits on CD from a music store. MP3.com buys the same bits. MP3.com is arguing that if we both have the bits, it is legal for them to send me a copy of their bits, since I am gaining no new information. Information theory is on their side. If I already own the bits, then they aren't giving me any new information.

    The whole idea of a "copy" in a digital world is nonsense. The only concept that makes sense is whether someone is gaining access to information they didn't previously have available. When you buy a CD, you have to be buying the right to listen access the bits, not buying the information itself. Everybody has exactly the same information on their CD. You can't sell the same thing to multiple people; you can only license access to it. The music industry is trying to confuse information with the storage medium.

    The only valid legal argument I see against MP3.com is that they are making it easier for others to infringe copyrights because it is easier to borrow a friend's CD and register with MP3.com than it is to burn your own CD of it. I'd disagree with this, but that is the only argument I find reasonable here.

    magic


  • Ok, I'll bite. I use mp3.com to listen to my cd's@work. Nothing illegal about it.

    Actually, seeing as the job of the justice department is to determine whether law is valid or not, and they have just said that this is not legal, I would say you are quite incorrect here. Under current IP law, they are doing something illegal by distributing copyrighted work that they do not have the rights to distribute. Whether you own a copy or not is irrelevant, they still don't have the right to distribute it. Now I'm not saying I agree with the law's current stance on this issue, but under current law I do agree that what they did was illegal.

  • Under current law, it is not legal to distribute a copyrighted work just because you legally obtained it. It doesn't matter if the customers own a copy or not, it's illegal for them to distribute it period. Like it or not, that is the current stance of the law.

  • Why? It's faster (15 seconds to beam it vs 30-45 minutes on my machine to burn). It takes none of my disk space (vs 3-4 megs per mp3). It's streamed, I can listen to an mp3 or playlist on demand (unlike shoutcast). It's free...

    Take my cd collection, it took me many weeks to encode all my 300 and some cd's using about 13 gigs of disk space. my.mp3.com let's me do it in a fraction of the time using no disk space and I can still play it a cd quality sound provided I have a fast enough connection.
  • I just got an announcement from SDSU that Mike Robertson (MP3.com CEO) will be speaking at San Diego State on Monday. If you want to see the announcement, its at: my web page [sdsu.edu]

    This was sent out for students looking to interview, but if I were interested in working for them this lawsuit is the first thing that I would be asking about!

    __________________________

  • Appeal? (Score:2)

    by Kaa ( 21510 )
    This is a normal civil suit, right? So it should be appealable. Generally, Circuit Courts tend to show less cluelessness than lower courts. So there is still (some) hope.

    Does anybody know if MP3.com plans to appeal? Of course, barring settlement, they don't have much choice -- the decision, if upheld, will bankrupt them and close them down...

    Kaa
  • As I understand it, RIAA sued mp3.com for the act of copying the CD's to storage.

    Well, MP3 could switch to an alternate method doing almost exactly what they do already that might be different enough to be legal.

    Acording to an old article (too lazy to dig up link, sorry) every time you "beam" a CD to mp3.com it polls for random blocks of data from your CD. You send them up, and after enough tries it is satisfied you own the real CD.

    Well, couldn't you just store these randomly polled blocks until you have a whole image? Then requests could dynamically pull mp3's from these images. Indeed you could simply store hash blocks of CD's on the server, and have the client side figure out which blocks belonged to a CD and ask for a series of blocks to be MP3 encoded and streamed out to the user.

    I think you could argue that the whole system was a giant hashtable for storing individual CD's - for storage concerns you simply wouldn't have to store a part of a CD if you already had that part in memory, thus you could claim that the cd they pulled from the site was the one stored from each users own computer, with really great hashing! To help that argument along, you could have the client attempt to send every block of the CD - the first person to transmit might be annoyed and give up after some time, but the second user would be able to skip over all the cache hits until the whole image was attained.

    You could also have a per user index of stored blocks stored on the server to indicate which CD's were held - I think you'd have to stay away from any reading of the stored data unless requested by a client.

    It's even a little better than MP3.com is one respect - if mp3.com does not have a CD loaded, they ask you for the UPC code on the back of the CD. Sometimes the CD's do not have UPC codes (Tempest 2000 soundtrack, for instance). Sometimes (often) you have a CD they are simply not going to be able to find (Muppet Movie soundtrack, many others). This system would load them all, after enough attempts to beam them up the server would have the whole CD and you'd be set.

    As a sidenote, I have many of my CD's (and only my CD's) stored on my.mp3.com and love it for listening to music at work.
  • Actually, napster has plenty of control over content, they own the main directory servers no?

    Anyway, the DCMA does make some noises about the responsibility of the connection provider, and I wouldn't be surprised if the record industry tried to make a anit-napster/gnutella law. And given the, uh, flexibility of the US government, I wouldn't be surprised if it passed.

    It will never be hard for intelligent people to find illegal MP3s. I know someone who is so anti software piracy that they'll ban people from IRC channels for mentioning it. But they've got 9gigs of mp3s on there hard drive, on a web shared directory.

    People just don't care, and most of them never will. What stuff like thisis going to hurt is the distribution channels for indi groups and bands that can't/don't want to sign with Labels.
  • IANAL (but you knew that :)

    When I hand over $20 for a CD, what am I paying for?

    A disc that happens to have copyrighted works on it.

    You are not limited by what you do with that disc (it's yours) except if you want to make a copy of the copyrighted works on it.

    The copyrighted works on CD's come with no license, so the only rights you get are those set by Fair Use precedence (and precedence is the only thing that defines Fair Use - check the United States Code for copyright law, it explicitly avoids defining Fair Use).

    So, if you want to copy the copyrighted works on your CD onto tape, or mp3's, or whatever, then that action has to be covered by a Fair Use precedent to be considered legal. Previously, I was of the opinion that this was fair use, but this court decision contradicts me, and frankly I'm rather worried about this.

    why do CDs cost so much more than cassettes of the same album?

    Capitalists price things at whatever people are willing to pay for them. Otherwise they get sued by their shareholders. If it costs you $0.60 to make something, and you're selling it at $5.00, but people will pay $18.00, you're either generous or stupid.

    If only society would value the former :)

  • How long is it going to be before we get a real MP3 broadcasting radio statio playing MP3's of mainstream artists?

    Negative six months [shoutcast.com]

    --
  • Hear, hear!

    Know where you stand, why you stand there, and don't let anybody push you around. Pirates killed people on the open seas, they don't trade art on the Net.

    --
  • For one, don't expect non-proprietary formats such as MP3 to stay around above ground if mp3.com goes to the wall.

    you're smoking $3 crack if you think mp3.com has any significant effect on the use (above or below ground) of mp3's. MP3.com is nothing more than a smart domain squatter with a couple of obvious ideas.

    --
  • Poor RIAA - the dinosaurs just don't get it.

    I've got 10X more use out of my CD collection with my.mp3.com/BeamIt than I ever did with they physical discs. I have about 1400 tracs registered with mp3.com so far (about half of my ALL LEGAL CD's). Good job RIAA - push me away from legally buying your music....

    This case has *NOTHING* to do with copyright. It has *EVERYTHING* to do with CONTROL.

    I really hope this can be appealed. Look out dinosaurs - here comes the comet....
  • Hmm... my hands could be tools of thievery too.
  • ... which is where MP3.COM is getting in trouble.

    The license which allows you to make a single copy of a piece of music for your own uses is a double-edged sword. You can make your own copy, but you can't give that copy to anyone else - *EVEN IF* they also have the same CD. The license is non-transferrable.

    So MP3.COM's massive database of songs is cool and kosher, and they're allowed to build it - they're just not allowed to let anyone else access it, under the single-use non-transfer license clause by which most commercial music is covered.

    I think that's the crux of the issue. It sucks, but it's going to be interesting to see how this one progresses ...

    (Please note, I'm not a proponent of the RIAA - I'm all for free music, I'm just trying to get my head around the differing viewpoints in this case)

  • Re:How bad is this going to get? (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:21AM (#1103292) Homepage
    When will big business realize one very key point of our world: YOU CAN'T UN-INVENT SOMETHING!

    But you can criminalise it, which is what is slowly but surely happening.

  • As a result, MPPP down 40% (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:18AM (#1103293) Homepage
    Ouch... MP3.com (MPPP) is down 40% today. That's gotta hurt...

    ---

  • Re:Why should they lose (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:31AM (#1103294) Homepage Journal

    There seems to be a lot of confusion over this.

    Mp3.com provides two (actually more) completely different services. The service you are referring to is where musicians make MP3s freely available through mp3.com. And they can also use it as a store, where people can, after listening to a song, buy a CD from mp3.com's musicians. You are right that there is nothing illegal about this, and I am totally confident that RIAA will never be able to stop this sort of activity from happening (in general; it remains to be seen if mp3.com itself survives).

    This case is about something completely different. A few months ago, mp3.com started to offer a new service, where they transmit MP3s that they did not receive from the musicians, without even getting the musicians' permission. It is pretty much blatant piracy, except for one catch.

    The catch is that they use a challenge/response protocol to verify that you already own the CD that the music was ripped from. Their argument seems to be that sharing copyrighted materials (without the permission of the owner) is Ok, as long as the receiver proves that they already have that material (and therefore, the copyright owner is not getting ripped off). It's a very loose and liberal interpretation of Fair Use. (It kinda makes sense to me, but sheesh, they're really splitting hairs.)

    It was a gamble. All I can think of is that mp3.com expected to get sued, and was hoping that their gamble succeeded, so they could set a precedent that would cause their idea of Fair Use to become a new convention.


    ---

  • I'm tempted to feel put out.. but... (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @12:32PM (#1103295)
    See.. though it made sense in a certain way... that if you already own the CD, you have the right to listen to the music, therefore, you can d/l it from mp3.com. This may be true.. YOU can't be charged for 'piracy'. However.......
    This does not change the fact that mp3.com does not have the right to profit (and in the web, hits=profit) from others work without permission, and that is exactly what they were doing.

  • Well.. (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:07AM (#1103296)
    ...I guess information doesn't want to be as free as some people think.

  • Quotes from MP3.com's official press release (Score:3)

    by / ( 33804 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @12:32PM (#1103297)
    (http://news.mp3.com/news/liststory?topic_id=276&c ategory_id=1001&month=200004)

    NEW YORK, April 28, 2000 -- MP3.com (NASDAQ: MPPP) had its day in court against the major record labels today, as U.S. District Court Justice Jed Rakoff granted a summary judgment on behalf of the labels in their suit filed over MP3.com's My.MP3.com service.

    "This is not a victory for the record labels--it's a loss," MP3.com Chairman/CEO Michael Robertson said in response to the decision. "New technologies for delivering music are here to stay, and the technology trend is moving in only one direction: forward.

    "The record companies are at a crossroads and are required to make a decision about the technology that they choose to embrace. My.MP3.com is a system which requires the purchase of CDs in order to function, as opposed to other services like Napster that do not require users to first purchase a CD before accessing music. The labels made the decision to challenge a technology that will protect their intellectual property interests and grow their business. They will be left with copyright chaos, as we're witnessing today."

    Despite the recording industry's claims that online music services are damaging their business, music sales figures in the United States were up approximately 8 percent in the first quarter of 2000 over 1999's first quarter, according to music sales authority Soundscan, which tracks music sales at points of purchase throughout the United States.

    "By standing against the My.MP3.com technology, the recording industry is standing against increased revenues for its members and damaging the chances of a responsible music delivery system to counter the unregulated systems like Napster and Gnutella. These systems do not compensate artists and rights owners," Robertson said. "When pioneering new technologies designed to grow their businesses are attacked, it leaves a vacuum which will be filled with technologies unfriendly to artists and their existing revenue streams." Since its inception, MP3.com has been a champion of artist's rights. We'll continue this mission."

  • They were distributing copyrighted material without a license.

    MP3.com is lisenced with the ASCAP (see here [ascap.com]).

    • Following last week's announcement by ASCAP of its historic and unique strategic relationship with MP3.com., the reaction from ASCAP members has been uniformly positive, with many expressions of support. Among the most prominent of ASCAP members to issue statements praising the agreement are pop/rock superstar Alanis Morissette and Desmond Child, the writer and producer behind a long string of pop, rock and Latin hits.
    The ASCAP is "a membership association of over 80,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers. ASCAP's function is to protect the rights of its members by licensing and paying royalties for the public performances of their copyrighted works.".

    So MP3.com was definitely allowed to "publicly perform" the MP3's. I don't know how close that is to digitally reproducing them, but it at least allows radio stations to broadcast the songs.

    If you check the RIAA's filing [mp3.com] on the lawsuit, you'll see that they are suing MP3.com for copying the data from the CD to MP3.com's computers, not for actually distributing the data. It seems like quite a stretch to me.
    --

  • Re:But wait, they're *NOT* the same bits!!! (Score:3)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @01:16PM (#1103299) Homepage
    Erm, that's not how I understand it.

    A ZDNet article (here [zdnet.com]) mentions all the laws associated with webcasting MP3's via shoutcast or somesuch.

    One of the issues is "ephemeral recordings", which is a temporary recording used to make transmission easier (eg. ripping from CD to MP3). It's generally not allowed, but it is allowed under some restrictions that I haven't figured out yet.

    • Exemption for Ephemeral Recordings. For example, the phonorecord of a musical work created for use as a master server copy may be entitled to exemption from licensing as an "ephemeral recording" under 17 U.S.C. 112(a). Under this provision, an entity entitled to transmit to the public a performance of the musical work (e.g., under authorization from one of the performing rights societies, as discussed below), may make one phonorecord of a particular "transmission program" embodying the performance if the phonorecord (a) is not distributed or further reproduced, (b) is used solely for the Web broadcaster's transmissions or archival or security purposes, and (c) is destroyed within six months, unless preserved solely for archival purposes. (The Copyright Act defines "transmission program" as "a body of material that, as an aggregate, has been produced for the sole purpose of transmission to the public in sequence and as a unit." ) (quoted from here [cov.com])
    In other words, the only people who are allowed to rip CDs are those who have special license and are going to publicly webcast it. And even then, they can't keep the copy around afterwards.

    In other words, you're not allowed to rip CDs at home? I'm not sure, I can't make sense of the legal babble. Slashdot really needs to hire a lawyer or two to help with the discussions.
    --

  • Terse order? (Score:3)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:27AM (#1103300) Homepage
    • Judge Jed Rakoff of U.S. District Court for the Sourthern District of New York issued a terse order holding MP3.com "liable for copyright infringement."
    Does anyone know if/where the full text of the "terse order" is available online? As fun as it is to speculate wildly about the facts, I'd like to see what exactly influenced the judge to make this decision.

    The only thing I was able to find was the website for the court mentioned above. (click here [uscourts.gov]) But I couldn't find anything more. It's too bad I don't live in New York or I'd get a copy of the thing and type it up myself...
    --

  • local bands != internet bands (Score:3)

    by Weezul ( 52464 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @01:33PM (#1103301)
    But the fact is, the record company has invested in marketing and promoting - are you saying they don't deserve to reap some rewards from that investment?

    If they market crap so they should not be compensated for marketing crap. If they market a good band then I'm just rewarding them for rewarding the artist. Why shouldn't I just reward the artist directly?

    You could claim that I should be rewarding them for picking a good band to market, so that they will pick a good band in the future, but I do not buy this argument. The marketing a good band was a fluke. They will just market more crap in the future because there is more money in marketing crap.

    Now it's reasonable to say, "I won't support any RIAA label bands (I will just pirate their shit and not send them any money), but I will send money to local/internet bands." since the RIAA label bands are making most of their money from the system, but the independent artists can really be influenced by recieving 5 grad of donations from their fans.

    My solution: support local, independent artists. Go to your local clubs, see some of these up-and-coming bands (if you're in Saskatoon, SK go see Old Guard Road). Buy one of their CDs if you like them. If you don't like them, hey, you're in a club - keep drinking until the music sounds better. :-) Don't buy major label CDs, turn the radio off (or at least change to a community or college station). Change is coming, slowly but surely.

    Clearly, these are good things to do (clubs & live music are fun), but remember "local bands != internet bands." that local band you support by going to the concerts may sell you out by getting a recording contract and suing Napster (or the next new technology). You should really support artists who seem commited to internet/mp3 marketing and promotion (like Sunscream, Negitiveland, etc.). We want the bands who hate the RIAA more then we do, to be the ones to mkae it big. Local artists are importent because they can become internet bands, but they are not necissarily the good guys yet.

  • The Cause is not yet lost (or won)... (Score:3)

    by iElucidate ( 67873 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @01:32PM (#1103302) Homepage
    What many people seem to miss is that this case was decided through summary judgement, a legal process used when the suit or it's defense has no merit. In short, no actual testimony was heard in court. MP3.com will obviouly appeal, and they will win the appeal - the summary judgement in so complex a case was not valid, and was probably made by a judge either intimidated by the RIAA or unfarmiliar with the fundamental issues of the case. We will be hearing much more about this, and debating the facts now is stupid since the facts were much ignored, so much so that MP3.com was denied a real trial.
  • Well, I am not particularly fond of shelling out bags of money for CD's (especially since the artists get a puny percentage), but the fact that I am able to listen to a CD seconds after I have bought it online made me buy at least six CD's over the last two months. Assuming I am not the only sucker to do so, it makes you wonder how long the recording companies will be in business with this kind of stupidity...

  • Aarrrggghhh. This was pointed out before, in an article a month or two ago. I guess it wasn't moderated high enough fast enough soon enough to educate everyone... I saw it, but it seems like most people did not.

    This seems like a pretty clear case of '3rd party helping me excercise my fair use rights' to all of us. HOWEVER, that exact circumstance, having a 3rd party help you utilize your fair use rights which involves them physcially replicating copyright works in your name, was specifically made illegal (excluded from the tecnical definition of fair use) a long time ago, in a cassette-tape / something-or-other type case.

    Basically, it was along the lines of the DMCA. They slipped one by you in the legislative system, you're screwed, I'm screwed, and so is MP3.com.

    Of course I am not intimately familiar with the details, I just remember reading the post I mentioned above a month or two ago.

    Can someone else please dig up the exact reference, or can someone who knows the real details that I am painfully trying to explain without the details myself, post them, and some nice people will moderate you all the way to the top?

  • Remember, kids (Score:3)

    by lance_link ( 97462 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:42AM (#1103305)
    The music industry wants you to believe that it's fighting to keep things the way they've always been. But it ain't true: from the rise of vinyl singles, to albums, to 8-tracks, to changes in radio markets, to CDs, to the growth of touring and merchandising, all this stuff is new. God didn't give any company the right to make profits obscene enough to support these fat-cat trade organizations: they made it by screwing people who listen to music. That's what profits are: extra money.

    The music industry's complaints are just the new, improved white-collar version of what's been happening to blue-collar workers, small farmers, and mom-n-pop shops. They'll lose this fight. But it's up to you to help them lose, by whatever means you consider to be ethical. If women, African-Americans, or immigrant groups had listened to what The Man said was Right, they'd still be on their knees working for pennies if they were lucky. They didn't - and the world's a better place for all of us because they fought for what they thought was right. Oh my! And sometimes they even broke the law by doing so!

    The music industry is trying to take control of the oldest tradition humanity has of a shared, free, and open experience. And how do they make all theri money? Exploiting technical innovations. Oh, I see - MP3s are "different." Yeah, right: do the math and tell me please, who are the real pirates?

    Just make sure, if you decide to break the rules, that you can and do explain why you made that choice. And that, beyond just "profiting" from breaking those rules, you've done everything you can to change those rules through established political processes.

    Laws can be wrong, and if enough people oppose them they can be changed. No one ever said opposing them was fun or easy or even safe, though. But sometimes you have to do what you think is right. As always, the most important aspect of doing so is teaching others to think the issues through, instead of just snapping to attention because The Man told them to.

  • IANALBISAAHIELN (Score:3)

    by ggeezz ( 100957 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:48AM (#1103306)
    I am not a lawyer, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Too bad mp3.com's lawyers didn't stay there as well.

  • Re:But wait, they're *NOT* the same bits!!! (Score:3)

    by Rick2D2 ( 139687 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @01:57PM (#1103307)
    I'm amazed that so few people seem to get the following fact:

    The intellectual property being protected has nothing to do with bits. The bits are just a representation
    of the actual IP, the music. When you buy ANY copywrited material, you are buying one
    represetation of the material and the right to enjoy that representation of the material.

    Current fair use policies allow you to make a limited number of copies of the IP for your own use, but
    you certainly can't make money off those copies and still have it considered fair use. What form those
    copies take (tape, CD, mp3, etc) is largely irrelevant. What mp3.com did was made copies of music and
    then made money (even if indirectly) from those copies.

    If I buy a book, make 50 copies of that book, then sell those copies only to people who already own
    the book because the loose leaf binders I've distributed them in are more convenient, then I've
    broken the law. Even if I give the copies away in order to attract people to my store, I've still broken
    the law.

  • The Crux of the Matter... (Score:3)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @12:13PM (#1103308) Homepage Journal
    Quoth the poster:
    You bought a CD. If you want to listen to it elsewhere, you carry it with you. If you want to sell it, you go right ahead. If you step on it, you are not entitled to a free replacement copy, anymore than you'd get a book replaced if you dropped it in the bathtub.
    And this raises, to my mind, the real issue: When I hand over $20 for a CD, what am I paying for? Am I purchasing a physical object (the CD), which happens to have music encoded on it? Am I licensing the disc with rights to play but not copy the disc? Am I purchasing the songs, retaining the right to listen to them via any medium I choose?

    A lot of people think it's blank-and-white but I'm not so sure. It's not just the physical object. I expect that anyone would object if they purchased, say, Beethoven's 9th but instead received a blank disc. The encoding of the music obviously adds value.

    I think it's clear that in fact, when you purchase a CD, you are really buying both a physical object and a "license" to play the music. After all, why do CDs cost so much more than cassettes of the same album? It is not production costs -- I believe the CD is actually cheaper to manufacture -- and it'd be ludicrous to pretend that it reflect the difference in "up-front" money and marketing expended by the company. But of course a CD lasts longer and is tremendously more convenient than a tape, and some of the cost reflects that added value.

    But in the end, is "Bridge Over Troubled Water" a different song when recorded on CD than on cassette? To what extent am I purchasing a particular medium, and to what extent am I trying to hear Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel regardless of medium?

    I have the intution that, eventually, we'll realize that it's the information that matters -- that the music, not the medium, is what one buys. But I don't see the path from here to there, and until we find it, the legal system will get twisted further in knots.

  • Lawsuit workaround (Score:3)

    by zTTTz ( 176815 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:09AM (#1103309)
    Mp3.com electronically duplicated 1,000's of artists music and through it up on their website. They asked for trouble and trouble is what they got. A better method for mp3.com would have been to use their "Scanning" software to verify ownership of an mp3, and then allow the user to enter an href to the verified mp3. The amount of investors' money that went into purchasing, scanning, inventorying, and developing the databases and software must have been enormous. Delete the server side mp3's, donate the CD's to charities (tax relief), and modify the software they've already developed to allow for href's and they will just be another ASP (application service provider), and will be a lot harder to touch.
  • The URL linked to just above is an mp3.com account. In that account is more than 200 megs of music I composed, recorded, mixed and mastered all myself, using a huge amount of very Hacker Ethic-style gear (all rewired and hotrodded, in other words, for better performance). I own the copyright to all of this stuff and mp3.com asked only _nonexclusive_ rights (to share the rights) in order to host this huge amount of data that would break me to host it on my personal site, airwindows.com- mp3.com also came up with the first ever truly large-scale press-to-order system I've ever heard of, for pressing ARTIST CDs, and did all of this before myMP3.com was a glitter in Mad Michael's eye.

    I have five albums up for sale at mp3.com:

    • anima is rock instrumentals on animal themes, eclectic, with some fine performances
    • Extended Play is long-format rock instrumental music- hot, guitar-based jams with some Mothers influences
    • Hard Vacuum is a dedicated Noise album that revells in raw sound-as-sound
    • The Room Full Of Windows [mp3.com] is vocal indie pop/rock from the heart
    • The RFW Demos [mp3.com] are songs that didn't make the RFW album, but something about them seemed cool enough to put together a demos reel
    All of these are $5.99- through mp3.com's impressively fast CD-to-order facility, you could buy any of these CDs and have 'em within a couple of days, pretty CD cover and all.

    If anyone had entertained thoughts of maybe getting one of these someday, or for that matter of ever picking up a CD to support some other mp3.com artist, or even downloading stuff...

    ...could you please do it now, considering the possibility that this entire resource may be destroyed and taken away from the people who have done nothing wrong, all to satisfy the RIAA? :(

  • damages: $0.00 (Score:4)

    by Big Jojo ( 50231 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @11:15AM (#1103311)

    didn't it say damages were yet to be awarded?

    the interesting judgement would be to conclude (fact of law) that while MP3.com did something wrong, that since no harm was done (no CD sale was lost by action of MP3.com), no damages are due.

    that'd be justice: all wrongs made right, and yet not endorsing further extortion by the record industries.

  • I've read in several news peices that the RIAA is suing MP3.com for building the database.

    See RIAA's filed complaint here [mp3.com]. Paragraph 26:

    • In order to create and offer this service, defendant copied every track from 45,000 commercial audio CDs onto its computer services. All or virtually all of these audio CDs are marked as copyrighted and contain explicit notices prohibiting unauthorized copying. ... Included among these infringing reproductions are copies of thousands of copyrighted sound recordings owned by plaintiffs, none of whom has authorized defendant to make any such reproductions.
    Also, paragraph 34:
    • Defendant has willfully and with full knowledge of plaintiffs' copyrights made infringing reproductions of thousands of plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings for the purpose of operating its commercial My.MP3 interactive service.
    In fact, if you look through the actual allegation of copyright infringment (the 1st and only count alleged against mp3.com, paragraphs 31-36), the only copying really mentioned is copying from the physical CD to MP3.com's computers.

    They also allege that MP3.com is distributing these "infringing reproductions", but that's not in the actual count itself.

    Unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems that this could be a huge precedent that could prevent home users from making MP3 copies from CDs that they legally own.
    --

  • I don't agree with the SuSE anaglogy here. MP3.com came up with a very clever way of determining ownership (or at leats posession of) the actual CD that isn't easy to fake. Random samples of sections of the CDs are sent back to the MP3.com servers for verification (dropping every other 16-bit word, and retrying until a match comes up). To defeat this scheme, you'd have to have access to every other 16-bit word of the ENTIRE CD! If you have that much, you probably could've copied the whole CD anyways.

    Which brings up the point of an exact copy. Yes, you could defeat it with an exact copy. But who is at fault there? The person who copied the CD? The person who copied the CD? Or the person wop accepted the fake? Who got in trouble in school for copying a paper? The teacher who accepted the fake as real?

  • They were distributing copyrighted material without a license. Even if they were sure that the users alreay owned the CD's, the legality is still very questionable. And with the availability of free ripping software, the usefulness of such a service is also rather questionable.

    I wasn't aware it was that black and white - from what I heard it was distinctly grey. MP3 own copies of all the CDs you get beamed. In order to get a CD beamed you have to physically have it at some point - most people will own the CDs rather than nick their friends collections. MP3.com allows to to access MP3's of your CDs once these conditions are met. Now maybe they need a radio playing license or something similar to be able to provide a directed broadcast to your authenticated browser, but in principle it sounds reasonable. Whether this constitutes fair use, which I suspect is MP3's defence, is another matter - the courts don't appear to think so.

    How long is it going to be before we get a real MP3 broadcasting radio statio playing MP3's of mainstream artists? With the increase of digital broadcasting over the air (i.e. the UK is going towards digital broadcasts as the BBC ramps up it's transmitters, and satellites have broadcast NICAM digital radio for a while), I see no possible justification to stop some website broadcasting MP3s if they can get a license. Why do I get the feeling that RIAA really don't want that sort of license to arrive?

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • MP3.com broke the law (Score:4)

    by jathos ( 170499 ) <help@NOsPaM.help2go.com> on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:17AM (#1103315) Homepage
    As I understand the law, and as was written on Slashdot when this suit was first announced, it seems that MP3.com DID in fact break the law. Only a consumer can make a copy of their music -- the fact that MP3.com was the one making the copies opened it up to this lawsuit.

    I don't understand why they risked the future of their company (which was doing quite well and has one of the best domain names on the 'net) without thoroughly researching how this would affect them in the future. Heads are going to roll at MP3.com: their entire legal counsel team should be fired, not for losing the case, but for allowing the company to get in this mess in the first place.

    Maybe if MP3.com has gotten themselves licensed by the recording companies first...

  • The crux of this case (I believe) is not whether or not its legal for an end-user to listen to an MP3 of a CD that they own, but whether its legal for a company (such as MP3.COM) to *make* MP3's for redistribution to end-users, from original CD's.

    It's not a case over whether or not you have a right to listen to MP3's of your own CD's. You *do* have a right to do that.

    It's a case over whether or not MP3.COM can 'steal' (RIAA's terms, not mine) music from other CD manufacturers, for re-distribution. When you sign up for their service you are downloading MP3's of CD's you already own, but which were *made* by MP3.COM. This is the crux of the legal wrangling that RIAA is using to try to bring down the bull of MP3.COM, so to speak...

    What this is more similar to, as a case, is radio stations. RIAA's clientele already have vast quantities of precedent for radio stations retransmitting their material, and there's a thing called a 'license agreement' that a radio network must agree to before it can broadcast the latest Britney song... RIAA is arguing that MP3.COM have violated copyrights, much the same way that a Pirate Radio station would have done, by broadcasting material for which they (MP3) haven't obtained a right to use from RIAA's clientele...

    Now, it could be that after all of this, MP3 and RIAA go into some sort of licensing agreement which allows MP3 to make MP3's of RIAA's clientele's CD's, but more than likely this won't happen - RIAA is too bloodthirsty, and the music industry already full of hyena's, that this will probably just result in MP3.COM's downfall, sadly. It could be a simple matter, but alas - greedy pigs in the music industry don't see it that way, if they can't control it.

    That's just my understanding of this lawsuit, so don't quote me, and please correct me if I'm wrong in assessing this.

  • My new pledge (join in you want) (Score:5)

    by Pfhreakaz0id ( 82141 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:48AM (#1103317)
    Why should I bother trying to buy music if something as legitimate as my.mp3.com is getting sued. F*ck 'em. The record companies get most of the money anyways. Any new albums I wish to buy, I'm gonna go straight to IRC/Napster/Hotline/USENET whatever and download the whole thing, burn it, stick a US$5 bill in an unmarked envelope and mail it straight to the band with a note that says:

    "I pirated your new album and really liked it. Here's five bucks. This is way more of a cut than you would have gotten from the record company. See how this could work? Now go tell your label they're moronic dinasaurs and your're sick of them picking at your and your fans' carcasses!"


    ---

  • They were distributing copyrighted material without a license. Even if they were sure that the users alreay owned the CD's, the legality is still very questionable. And with the availability of free ripping software, the usefulness of such a service is also rather questionable.

    ------

  • MP3.com lost here--and rightfully so, I hate to say--because they were offering downloads of songs to customers who already owned the CDs of those songs. Well, that's providing a service based on distributing copies of someone else's IP. That's a service which, given the current tenor of copyright law in this country, only the owner of the IP would be entitled to offer. It's rather like, if a company were to offer free downloads of the full 6-disc SuSE distro including all the non-freeware programs, for anyone running that edition of SuSE. SuSE and the companies whose non-free programs are included would probably get very upset and sue, concerned about their ability to keep track of their IP since there are ways to fool the server into thinking you're running full SuSE whyen you're really not.

    I don't think it's at all unfair to close this service down, since MP3.com can keep offering downloads of songs it *does* have a right to offer, such as from artists who've given permission, have contracts with them for downloads, etc. This was a very limited part of MP3.com's services which was ruled a violation.

    Napster is an entirely different issue. Napster is a network, which allows users of the network to connect to each other and download stuff. Napster itself doesn't host songs on its own "site" like MP3.com's MP3 Anywhere or whatever it was called, was doing. So, it's very likely that Napster will be ruled some form of "common carrier" and therefore not liable for what its users do amongst themselves, since its network has a legitimate use in allowing users to distribute non-copyrighted sound files. To make Napster police its network to decide what is and is not copyright infringement would put an undue burden on Napster and similar networks, and is not what a judge would order. In fact, if a network does police itself, then it would become liable--but if it just provides an open service, it can be considered a common carrier. Just my 2 pence...

  • Reminds me of when ... (Score:5)

    by NaughtyEddie ( 140998 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:20AM (#1103320)
    Back in the mid-80s when I was 16 years old, I ran a little software house and a fanzine for the old Dragon 32 microcomputer (this was a Tandy CoCo clone, and although all the other kids had C64s or ZX Spectrums [Timex 2000] I was very happy with it).

    The market for games then was so small that one company - Microdeal of St Austell, Cornwall - published virtually all the games on the platform. They were all "ports" of Tandy CoCo games from the states. "ports" means they just patched some ROM addresses, since the machine really was a clone apart from some keyboard lines being switched and having a new ROM (written by a tiny little software company called Microsoft).

    Now, anyone still using the Dragon 32 in 1986 was a real enthusiast. A lot of us had bought the disk drive expansion unit, at a cost of around $600, in order to speed up loading and saving our little BASIC programs.

    The problem was, Microdeal wouldn't release their games on floppy disk. The market was "too small" - it was tape, or nothing.

    I was a hacker, though, so I was capable of hacking the little games and putting them onto disk. Wow. I could fit 26 games onto a single 720K floppy. That was cool. But not everyone had my patience and experience cracking the "protection" they put on these games.

    So little me, with my little fanzine, decided to offer a service to people. "Send me your tapes," I said, "and I shall put them onto disk for you, at a cost of only 50p per game." You see, I wasn't in it for the money, I just wanted to help people out. I was just a kid. Anyway, I already had 90% of the games on disk already so those jobs would be easy ;) In fact, it seemed silly to ask for actual tapes, so I just said "send your original inlays, to prove you own the game, and I shall send you a disk with the game on it."

    Quite similar to MyMP3.com, really.

    Well, Microdeal had a fit. Their President wrote me a very indignant letter, saying I was pirating the games and would I really check people had the games before sending them, and claiming that I was being immoral in offering this service.

    Me?! Immoral?! All you guys have to do is write the things onto disk and upgrade people for a couple of pounds ($3.20) but you don't bother; you expect people to use these old-fashioned tapes forever.

    (My legal sophistication was a little lacking in those days).

    Anyway, I wasn't about to go up against some huge monolithic company like Microdeal, so I withdrew the service, with a tear in my eye.

    I guess the point is that this service seems fine and dandy and reasonable, but legally it's on thin ice. I'm a little saddened, but not entirely surprised, at this court decision.

  • Doesn't make sense (Score:5)

    by MadDreamer ( 143443 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @10:18AM (#1103321)
    I guess I must not be as smart as a lawyer, cuz I just don't get it! How could a service that allows you to listen to an mp3 of music that you already own be infringing copyright? my.mp3 only lets you hear what you've already shown it that you own, or am I getting something wrong here?

    Sure, you could borrow a friend's CD and add that I suppose, but you could also make a tape of it and play it in your car. That doesn't make tapes illegal, just the act of dubbing. I don't know of anyway to get music that you didn't pay for through my.mp3.

    But hell, let's all keep heading down this road and keep fighting technology we don't understand. Maybe we should stick to something simple like banging two rocks together to make music. Of course then someone would copyright rocks, and if you tried to play the same rocks in a different place you'd get sued.

    -MadDreamer


    -Mad Dreamer

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