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Music Media Your Rights Online

RIAA Seeks Summary Judgement Against P2P Services 638

Posted by timothy from the this-hammer-is-for-evil dept.
kanad writes: "RIAA seeks summary judgement against Musiccity , Kazaa and Grokster. In other words they want the above to be banned even before the trial. RIAA accuses them as Napster clones. Read the official statement here BTW does anybody knows of 'Leonard Kleinrock' described as "one of the original founders of the Internet" in the article and an expert witness ?" I wonder whether the mimeograph machine would survive if it was invented today.
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RIAA Seeks Summary Judgement Against P2P Services More

RIAA Seeks Summary Judgement Against P2P Services

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  • Kleinrock (Score:5, Informative)

    by Amazing Quantum Man ( 458715 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:18PM (#4252932) Homepage
    Leonard Kleinrock [ucla.edu].

    Unfortunately the RIAA page is /.'ed. Great way to use that Berman-Coble DOS self-help!

    • Re:Kleinrock (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Quote from his UCLA bio:
      He first became interested in electronics while reading a comic book at the age of six. The centerfold described how to build a crystal radio. He managed to collect the parts, make it work, and was amazed to hear music from this simple device;
      So the witness admits he listened to the music without paying for it!

      • Re:Kleinrock (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HughsOnFirst ( 174255 )
        What happened to the "I'm feeling lucky" button on Google ?
        ...anyway

        At age 6 he was stealing hardware

        "In addition, he needed an earphone which he promptly appropriated

        from a public telephone booth."


        to listen to free music

        ""free" music came through the earphones - no batteries, no power,

        all free! An engineer was born. "


        Nice story [ucla.edu]if you haven't seen it before, a little overblown though

    • Re:Kleinrock (Score:2, Funny)

      by Guiri ( 522079 )
      Unfortunately the RIAA page is /.'ed. Great way to use that Berman-Coble DOS self-help!

      I opened 10 tabs of the page in Mozilla just in case.

    • Re:Interesting thoughts... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here are a couple of interesting thoughts.... 1) In one example in the dedacted version from the RIAA website, the document actually mentionsWindows Media Player. So, since that is so obviously being used to infringe upon copyrights, why are they not named in the suit? 2) According to the press release on the RIAA site, it sounds like I would be infringing copyrights if I rented/bought a movie and thn invited all my friends over to watch it, or worse yet, loaned it out to them, or geve them the movie after I watched it... Whew!! Time for a reality break..... At the rate things are going, the RIAA apparently won't be happy until you have to pay them each and every time you listen to a song (I am refering to one you purchased).

  • it's typical today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Clay Mitchell ( 43630 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:18PM (#4252935) Homepage
    sue if you're not happy with something, and everybody's guilty until proven innocent. well, nobody's innocent anymore, are they?

    it is rather unfortunate that the RIAA's product is less talented than it's lawyers :|

    • Re:it's typical today (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:21PM (#4252972) Journal
      it is rather unfortunate that the RIAA's product is less talented than it's lawyers :|

      It is unfortunate, but a quality product is not what makes money in this day and age, it's having lawyers that can twist the crap out of your product to make it look good, and make everything else look evil (aka Microsoft), and marketing crap well (again, Microsoft)... All the RIAA needs to learn to do is market their crap WELL, and we're all doomed!
    • I don't think that the RIAA is bleeding money at this point. Usually when a company does this, they either have a signifigant chance of losing the trial (a prior judgement in their favour would look really good for the actual court case) or they are planning something else and using this as a smokescreen.

  • blah! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:18PM (#4252940) Journal
    I don't know what it does, so I'll claim it's a napster clone...

    It can be used to cut into our profits, stop it...

    With this logic, PC's should be banned, as they can copy music, MSN and AOL should be shut down, since they provide access to the internet, which has illegal copies of music, and hell, XM radio should be shutdown as well, since it is hackable and can have music ripped off of it...

    BLAH! Put the RIAA out of their missery, and MINE!
    • With this logic, PC's should be banned,

      Don't worry, they're working on that [politechbot.com], too.

    • "With this logic, PC's should be banned as they can copy music"

      They're already trying to do something like that, but instead of banning PCs and services, they want to turn them into devices that they can control. For example, check out Palladium [cam.ac.uk]. Last time I checked, both AMD and Intel had bought in to this [slashdot.org].

    • Re:blah! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lonath ( 249354 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:39PM (#4253127)
      With this logic, PC's should be banned,

      *DING* You win the prize. You now understand why you need to never give them any more money ever again. They DO want to take away computers and they won't stop with any halfway methods (because those methods will always be beaten) and they will work their way toward a world where there are no computers (Except for *_approved_* *_trusted_* minions of the copyright industry. To do your part, stop giving them any resources they can use to destroy freedom. That means no more money for the copyright industry forever.

      • Re:blah! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @06:08PM (#4254477)
        I used to take a more moderate position on copyright, but the entertainment industry has changed my mind. I look at it this way:

        Option #1: Retain copyright. Result: vital political liberties are demolished to control the flow of information for the benefit a few massive corporations. 99% of artists work day jobs.

        Option #2: Abolish copyright. Result: political liberties survive and massive corporations continue to be massive corporations. 99% of artists work day jobs.

        The common themes are rich corporate pigs and starving artists, and the only variable is political liberty. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
    • The MPAA and the RIAA want everyone to have a video *player* and a CD *player*. They want you to have a computer w/an Internet connection and an MP3 *player*. They want to charge for per/use fees on the Net and they want to rake you for your CD purchases.

      I think we should get the TV ads that have been running recently about having Church in the basement of houses, having a person pulled over for newspapers.

      I think everyone is beginning to catch on. Someday they all will and we won't have to listen to the bullshit anymore.
  • In other words they want the above to be banned even before the trial

    RIAA is slashdotted... but... from Alice...

    "Sentence First. Verdict After!"

  • History... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by toupsie ( 88295 )
    I wonder whether the mimeograph machine would survive if it was invented today.

    I wonder if the mass distribution of music for a profit would survive if Napster, Kazaa and Grokster would have been around during the 1920s.

    • Re:History... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by BigASS ( 153722 )
      I think mass distribution of music for profit would be around today.. it's just a question of which party would be making the profit.

    • Re:History... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:28PM (#4253044) Homepage
      Well, *obviously not*. I mean, major record labels didn't turn a profit while Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, Aimster, FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, The Internet exi - oh wait, yes they did.

      Does that answer your question?

      • Well, *obviously not*. I mean, major record labels didn't turn a profit while Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, Aimster, FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP, The Internet exi - oh wait, yes they did.

        But these companies were already in business before these technologies came into effect. The record industry had decades on time to build up before the onslaught of "p2p traders". What if the technology and the record companies grew up simultaneously instead of decades apart? Would the record companies be able to sell into a meat-space distribution network?

        • Re:History... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:53PM (#4253230) Homepage
          > Would the record companies be able to sell into a meat-space distribution network?

          No, but correct me if I'm wrong in stating thats the whole point of the market. There would not have been a need for them. Mind you, there may have been a need to regulate or mandate these distribution networks such that artists had to get paid, but the way the RIAA conducts business (shelfspace, adspace, and no space left over for anybody else) .. there would not be a need for their business model.

          But thats okay, see? I can't link the intrinsic need for the Big Label business model to the existance and development of music ... maybe the artists would have fought the Napsters such that they could pay proper royalties and such, but the whole point is there is no intrinsic need for the RIAA/Big label style business model for artists to earn a profit. Thats all. There isn't. Its no use wondering if the RIAA wouldn't have existed had they come in at the same time as Napster, because in that case, we'd give RIAA none of our business (I have to go to the store to buy the CD? But these other guys, I can do it from home! And make my own mix CDs! And they take less of a cut off the profits! And I dont have to buy 15 songs all at once!) and Napster all of our business. And then youd simply have the artists ensure that they were getting paid for making music. They wouldn't kill off the most innovative, competative, exciting and practically unlimited shelf-space model of p2p networks, they'd just make sure that they were in the loop.

          We're so used to the RIAA approach that we think its required for artists to earn a living. So who cares if the RIAA's members could have survived with their approach had Napster been around at their birth? Its not like the RIAA are royalty-giving saints and p2p networks are all socialist devils. P2P networks can't pay the artists for copyrights mostly because the labels own the copyrights and dont want the p2p networks to be able to pay so that they can own all the parts of the music industry. (IE, they want to own the entire vertical market, and use the limited shelf and ad space available to artificially control who gets to profit off the music industry.)

          Sorry for all the italics and bold. The only way to progress is to rip down what already exists, if you get my drift. Humans find a system that works, in the end. Any one group that becomes very powerful, such as the RIAA, simply injects unnatural market forces and distorts the perception of 'need' in a market. Its not that p2p networks dont want to be able to support royalty payments, its that the RIAA doesn't want anybody else to participate in the very market it was created to own.

          The worst part is, the RIAA represents a group of labels that supposedly reps the entire music industry and yet represents itself like one company that needs to maximize all potential sources of profit. If that isn't cartel, I'm not sure what is.
          • No, but correct me if I'm wrong in stating thats the whole point of the market. There would not have been a need for them. Mind you, there may have been a need to regulate or mandate these distribution networks such that artists had to get paid, but the way the RIAA conducts business (shelfspace, adspace, and no space left over for anybody else) .. there would not be a need for their business model.

            Interesting read, your post (Yoda speak). Lets say meat-space was nuked as a distribution method. How can music artists make money with p2p? Its not like Kazaa or Napster required you to swipe a credit card before the download started. None of the current p2p trading models seem to benefit the artist directly -- at least the record label kicks a couple of pennies their way. I know artist are supposively getting ripped off by the labels but it doesn't seem to stop them from seeking a label instead of starting their own Internet Music Publishing Empire.

      • Re:History... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:39PM (#4253121) Homepage
        Would the mimeograph machine have survived...?

        History is an great thing to bring up, actually, because this pre-emptory banning of P2P services is ridiculous. When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not . So in the US Constitution, it says:
        Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
        The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:
        If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
        His assumptions are based on the fact that you can not control what people do with information that you give to them. If you hand someone a book, they can transcribe it. If you give someone a physical invention, they can disassemble it. But if you give them a new form of media, say, a song on a copy-protected CD, and they can no longer listen to it except on approved devices that they cannot copy from, why should the government provide the same protection to you? The record companies and movie studios want to have their cake and eat it too. They want traditional copyright protection, technological copyright protection, and a government guarantee of technological copyright protection. They want to deprive all those bearded Linux hippies their DeCSS, so they can't watch bootleg Buffy the Vanpire Slayer DVDs in their parents' basement. But if they have technological protection, then why should the government give them traditional protection? It was only there because information was hard to protect as property.

        How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

        • Re:History... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @03:04PM (#4253314) Homepage
          Great post. Clearly you are in tune with the mechanics of this situation.

          I always found it funny that, armed with the DMCA, you can pretty much 'invent' your own copyright terms, since circumventing protections that violate the law of copyright (notably that the work must return into the public domain after some-odd yeats) is itself against the law.

          Basically, we've arrived in a situation where the copyright holders can write their own blank cheques of ownership, which was one of the reasons copyright law was enacted in the first place (yes, to mandate ownership and royalties to the author, but also to break the monopoly that the Royal Family-approved publishing houses had on the social culture at the time.)
    • Perhaps it would have, perhaps it wouldn't have, but it certainly wouldn't exist in it's current incarnation. The middle men would never have gotten so much power, money, and influence.

      The world is changing, and it's eliminating a lot of the need for the studios. Just because they don't like it doesn't mean they get to legislate reality to fit them.

      Insert obligatory Heinlein quote here.

  • Leonard Kleinrock (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Target Drone ( 546651 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:21PM (#4252962)
    Here's his home page [ucla.edu] where he does claim to have invented the Internet.

    • Re:Leonard Kleinrock (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sdjunky ( 586961 )
      Having this guy testify as to the purpose of Kazaa, MusicCity and such is like having the wright brothers testify to the uses and legitimacy of the Stealth Bomber.

      it says on his site he "supposedly" made the first message, packet switching, internet node and such. Even if that WERE te case, so what? I mean. What can he say?

      • I can say that it's mine, all mine. I am the king of the Internet, and you are my beautiful peasants! Or something like that.

      • Re:Leonard Kleinrock (Score:4, Interesting)

        by joe_bruin ( 266648 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:45PM (#4253172) Homepage Journal
        the IMP (Interface Message Processor) is a big green refrigerator sized box, and can be found on in the engineering library in ucla's boelter hall. it was the first node of the packet switching network (the second being at stanford university, connected via a leased 56k line) now known as The Internet. and kleinrock set it up (and the packet switching theory behind it). more than anyone else (well, maybe vint cerf), he can be called the father of the internet.

        having said that, this has absolutely no relevance to this case.

  • How does that have any effect? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rhadamanthus ( 200665 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:21PM (#4252963)
    Ok, say that this worked, and the were "banned". Would ISPs have to shut down P2P users on their networks then since the companies cannot? If so, who picks up that expense? How do you stop P2P in other countries?

    Going further, what's to stop IRC and a number of FTP servers? I still host a ton of content on my FTP server, and it is NOT anonymous (yeah-yeah, insecure blahblah). Or, I could burn info to a CD and send it wherever to whomever, or even just email a MP3 if its small enough...

    ineffective at best, i say.

    ----rhad

    • Re:How does that have any effect? (Score:4, Informative)

      by billstr78 ( 535271 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:32PM (#4253077) Homepage
      If P2P networks is the method that 90% of the music traded (illegaly) uses, than shutting them down would effectivly wipe out sharing for non-motivated individuals. BTW, shutting down KaZaA and grokster would not be difficult, they would just sue the $hit out of them, like they did with napster.

      Of course, where there is a will there is a way, and many motivated individuals could find alternate means to distribute music and such. As they say on /., information wants to be free.

    • I disagree, you neglect the transaction costs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FallLine ( 12211 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:43PM (#4253158)
      The reason that Napster was extremely successful and these P2P apps have been somewhat successful is because they lowered the transaction costs for successfully downloading, i.e., for every CHOSEN file they made it quicker (searching), easier (less work to download), faster (downloading...more servers...higher probability of finding a fast server), and require far less technical ability (the users skill). If you force the users back to IRC, FTP, and such you're going to:

      A) Cut out 95% of the users because they won't have the necessary skills to complete most of the downloads they desire.

      B) Cut out most of the people that have (or acquire) the skills because finding the files, the sites, and acquiring the trust or the ratios (maybe not necessary in this system, but that is the status quo and human nature). The few that are willing to put up the effort likely are not RIAA's better customers anyways.

      C) Reduce the # of downloads of said users, by virtue of the fact that each one simply takes them longer.

      Very effective.
      • The few that are willing to put up the effort likely are not RIAA's better customers anyways.

        Actually, most informations point to the exact opposite being true. The people doing the most downloading/trading are the biggest music fans. These are the people that spend large amounts of their free time in obtaining and listening to music. They buy a lot of CDs, usually as many as they can afford. If they find a way to get more music, they use it. These customers are the bread&butter of the RIAA. This is why letting them download music helps so much - they are the very people who are most likely to be going out and buying what they like instead of just consuming a radio stream.
        '
      • That's great, the internet has become a pigsty since it became easy to get on. This counts double (or perhaps triple) for USENET.

        Consider the fact that there was a time before MAKE MONEY FAST. A time in which the only spam that occurred was people flaming rstevew on alt.sex. Now I get many times more spam than actual content whether I go to the web, USENET, my email, et cetera.

        Anyone remember what getting on line was like back in those days? When's the last time anyone actually has to write scripts by hand to parse their SLIP IP from the output of the Annex server? (Yes, people do this today with pppd, but if you search you can find a prewrritten script, and there are numerous pppd config tools.) Or how about setting up UUCP, before it was so easy to get a ppp or slip connection? Or, fer chrissakes, plug and play broadband internet.

        Make it harder and maybe I'll get better download speeds, and I'll be able to find actually interesting music, rather than people doing Whitney Houston and Nelly floods on USENET. What crap.

  • Leonard Kleinrock (Score:2, Informative)

    by DonJefe68 ( 533739 )
    I believe he was one of the engineers at BBN that helped on the development of the Net through a grant from DARPA. If you want more data, try Nerds 2.0.1 or Where Wizards Stay Up Late, both available from your favorite bookseller.
  • His home page:
    http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/

  • Ive said it before.. and ill say it again. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:21PM (#4252973)
    The RIAA has seen what the people want, and refuse to offer them that service. Because of this, people are going to take an alternate method of getting what they want.

    All of this litigation is, frankly, nonsense.

    If the goverment is for the people, (i know it really isnt) and the people want to be able to download mp3s. Then this should be reflected in the law of the land.

    Maybe we could vote on it? :)
    • What the people want is free music. Why is it odd that the RIAA wouldn't want to offer them that service?

      • Re:Ive said it before.. and ill say it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by schon ( 31600 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:29PM (#4253053)
        What the people want is free music

        Uhh, no.

        What the people want is easy access to music, and the ability to sample.

      • Re:Ive said it before.. and ill say it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Clay Mitchell ( 43630 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:35PM (#4253095) Homepage
        People want the SONGS they want, at a low price, delivered through a digital medium.

        What they DON'T want is inflated CD prices full of crap they don't want to listen to.

        The whole music industry is based on the idea that "we can get one catchy song, pay ClearChannel to play it over and over on their station, and all the suckers will buy the whole album" - That's why singles have all but disappeared as of late.

        That's why they are so pissed. They put up this big front of how morally objectionable trading songs over the net is, when the true motivation is that P2P apps let people get the one song off that craptastic album they actualyl want instead of going out and dropping $16 on a CD that they'll never listen to, aside from that one song.

        • Re:Ive said it before.. and i'll say it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:53PM (#4253232) Homepage Journal
          <blockquote>"People want the SONGS they want, at a low price, delivered through a digital medium."</blockquote>

          Here is what I want:

          The ability to download a low quality version of a song to see if I like it. If i like it, i am given the option to buy that track at a reasonable cost (I'd pay ~$1 USD, but demand a bulk discount for a whole CD): I want this track that I buy to be available NOW, in many popular formats including a lossless format suitable for burning. I want the right to copy this track to kingdom come, from my car to my home and portable.

          The record companies will say that then users will take this files and exchange them all over with their friends but think about this: I have money and my time is worth money -- it it technically "cheaper" for me to pay $1 for a high-quality song and have it NOW than to spend 5 hours finding a low-quality and corrupted copy off some P2P service. As an extension of this, those who can't afford to pay for digital music cannot afford to buy the CD anyway, so no one is loosing a sale anyway.
      • It doesn't matter. With napster I downloaded music I liked and listened to it. I did not buy CD's.

        Without Napster I don't download new music (I know there's replacements, they're just too much hassle, and I haven't kept up). I also still don't buy CD's.

        Did the RIAA lose money from me? No

        How do they make money. Well, they could lower their prices. I'm not exactly being truthful about not buying CD's, in the past two years I did buy one Sting CD with some live songs on it ... for $2. At that price I couldn't pass it up.

        Lower the prices, I'll buy CD's. Artificially inflate them, I won't. Given the choice between a $16 CD and $16 DVD, I'll buy the DVD every time.

        I also have noticed that at least the MPAA (while still evil) will sell their product DVD's on sale, whereas the RIAA basically never lowers the price from the initial price (in fact some times it goes up for older CD's).

  • You don't see the pr0n stars complaining... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by billstr78 ( 535271 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:21PM (#4252979) Homepage
    ... and thier, um stuff, get's traded more heavily than the copywritten music on KaZaA.

    • Re:You don't see the pr0n stars complaining... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @04:06PM (#4253802)

      You don't see the pr0n stars complaining and thier, um stuff, get's traded more heavily than the copywritten music on KaZaA.

      No, not the stars, but the copyright holders on all that pr0n care. I don't know how this has eluded the like of /. yet, but read the CNN/Money piece entitled "Porn outfit bids for Napster" [cnn.com] from yesterday:

      Private Media Group Inc., a publicly traded adult entertainment site based in Spain, offered 1 million shares for Napster's assets. [...] In a statement, Private Media said it plans to use the Napster trademark to offer millions of adults worldwide the ability to swap adult-oriented content for free and at the same time gain access to "top-quality" content at a reasonable price. [...] "Along with Hollywood and the recording industry, we have become increasingly concerned about the level of copyright infringement inherent in the free peer-to-peer file-swapping services," [Private Media CEO Charles] Prast said.

      HAND

  • In other news, a porn company is trying to buy the trademark and URL of Napster (source [wsj.com]).

    Now what about all the porn being traded online. We're talking 200 MB files of people gettin it on. Has Vivid been suing?

  • Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Your_Mom ( 94238 ) <slashdot@@@innismir...net> on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:22PM (#4252991) Homepage
    [P2P Services...] are earning millions of dollars from the service.
    Huh? Then why are so many going down teh tubes? I swear, when you sue somebody, they should get the facts right.

  • Straight from "the man" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by synx ( 29979 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:23PM (#4252998)
    Here is a quote from the RIAA about the purpose of the RIAA:

    "Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. "

    Note that the RIAA's goal is to change the business and legal climate in order for its members to make money. Considering that their "members" are companies not actual artists, I'd say that the "creative" is just a throw-away red herring.

    Basically the RIAA's job is to muscle other businesses, bribe politicians and anything else that it can do to make sure that its member companies are "financially viable."

    All this from such a short phrase.

    I'd have to say that even though what the RIAA does is technically legal in most respects, their actions do not live up to the spirit of the free market and the spirit of a democracy that represents the _people_.

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NetRanger ( 5584 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:23PM (#4253001) Homepage
    The RIAA has won an injuction against speaker manufacturers JBL, KLH, and Bose today in a long-standing copyright infringement suit. RIAA Spokesperson Hillary Rosen was quoted as saying:

    "Today is a victory against those manufacturers who create loudspeaker products that allow just anyone standing around to listen to our music products, instead of singling out those who have legitimately purchased them."

    When asked if they were going to pursue other speaker manufacturers, Rosen stated: "Of course! I want my lawsuit commission to top last year... uh... I mean, we need to defend the rights of our slavewriters, uh, songwriters."

    No songwriters could be reached for comment because they have to go work at McDonalds to afford new speakers to playback their recordings.
    • Wow, that might be funny if it wasn't true [weekly.org].

    • Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ftobin ( 48814 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @04:57PM (#4254099) Homepage
      It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that history has shown that they would be for that sort of restriction. I quote Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world", beginning of Chapter 13:

      In the 1970's RCA was experimenting with a new technology for distributing film
      on magnetic tape--what we would come to call vide. Researchers were keen not only
      to find a technology that could reproduce film with high fidelity; they were also
      keen to find a way to control the use of the technology. Their aim was a
      technology that could control the use of film distributed on video, so that the
      owner of the film could maximize the return from the distribution.

      The technology eventually chosen was relatively simple. A video would play once,
      and when finished, the film would lock into place. If a renter of the video
      wanted to play the video again, he or she would have to return the video to the
      store and have the tape unlocked. In this way, the onwer of the film could
      assure it was being compensated for every use of the copyrighted material.

      RCA presented this technology to the Disney Corporation in the early 1970's. In a
      room with just five of the senior executives from Disney, a young RCA executive,
      Pat Feely, demonstrated RCA's device. The executives were horrified. They would
      "never", Feely reports their saying, permit their content to be distributed in
      this form. For the content, however clever the self-locking tape player was, was
      still insufficiently controlled. "How could they know," a Disney executive asked
      Feely, "how many people are going to be sitting there watching" a film? "What's
      to stop someone else coming in and watching it for free?"
  • I wonder whether the mimeograph machine would survive if it was invented today.

    Idunno, but the fresh pages sure smelled good!

  • RIAA & Theft (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonym1ty ( 534715 )

    The RIAA just doesn't have a clue what reality is.

    Theft

    The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.

    Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief.

    In order for something to be stolen, it must be taken AWAY from the possession of the owner. You can argue copyrights and such, but it isn't theft.

    Copying is not theft. you havent removed anything. It may not be ethical to copy, but it isn't theft.

    • You left out the second part of the definition from Webster's definition, Sparky:

      b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

      Embezzlement is a *lot* closer to copyright infringement than the other definition suggests.

      However, note that this is from a dictionary from 1913, where there is still a noun 'theft' that means a stolen property. Note that the m-w.com site labels it obsolete. And there is also a definition as of stealing a base (in baseball).

      This should show you that language is not static, it is fluid. The fact that you don't think it should be called theft is your problem. 'Theft' is now used to indicate copyright infringement. Cope.
  • "This is a case about choice -- creators should not be forced to give away the results of their effort for free. They should have the choice of whether to give it away or sell it."

    It seems that the majority of creators aren't getting the chance to make that decision. The RIAA with its arrogant presumption is making the decision for everyone by pursuing these services.

    • Here is what I reall hear every time I read an article about the RIAA complaining about pirates:

      "Waaah! We're the only ones allowed to rip the artists off!

  • Summary judgement .... (Score:3, Informative)

    by taniwha ( 70410 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:26PM (#4253022) Homepage Journal
    For the non-US readers - very simply (nothing really is in law) the idea is that the court has two things to decide - "findings of fact" and "findings of law" - if there is disagreement on the facts you go to trial, witnesses etc, to figure what's "true". If you agree on the facts then the judge can just rule on the law "is what's happening, based on the facts, illegal".

    It's a great way to short-circuit an expensive long trial .... if you win ...

    IANAL etc

  • The RIAA accusses a shadowy hacker's organization, known only as "slashdot", of a massive distributed Denial of Service attack on its web site...

  • I'm waiting for publishing companies to seek an immediately injunction against Xerox and the rest of the copy machine companies pending trial. Copy machines and scanners definitely allow people to STEAL their property.

    Next will come Kodak...how DARE you reproduce images without expressed written consent of all parties involved?!?!?

    </sarcasm>
  • From the article:

    RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

    That might be FUD, but damn. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was THAT bad. :(

    Triv
    • Legitimate means they arbitrarily decide if its legitimate.

      The stuff the kid down the block records in his garage and gives to anyone who will listen, is in their minds illegitimate. If he sells a billion copies, he doesnt get a platinum disc, unless of course, he signs up with an RIAA approved label.

      My take is this. 90%? So what? What about the other 10%? The RIAA, by their own admission, don't speak for everyone. We don't have a "majority rules" democracy in the US. 90% doesn't mean any more than 2%.

  • No, it wouldn't... (Score:3, Funny)

    by slow_flight ( 518010 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:27PM (#4253031)
    I wonder whether the mimeograph machine would survive if it was invented today.

    No, but not for the reason you're thinking. It would be immediately banned as thousands upon thousands of school kids catch a buzz from sniffing the freshly printed sheets.
  • An interesting quote from the man himself:

    ...Kleinrock built the crystal radio and was totally hooked when 'free' music came through the earphones...

  • Would the Kazaa network be effected? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:28PM (#4253047)
    Do Kazaa, or the other people making the clients have *anything* to do with the actual network anymore? If say all of these companies were shut down, would the Kazaa/Morpheus/Kazaalite/whatever clients still talk to each other? Is it really as decentralized as it's touted to be?

  • Summary Judgement (Score:5, Informative)

    by victim ( 30647 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:29PM (#4253060)
    For the 10,000th time...

    This is just a summary judgement request. I've never been involved in a case (thankfully few) where both sides didn't file requests for summary judgement. Its just lawyer chest thumping. The lawyers says "My case is so strong there is no possible defense." Then the judge whips out his denied stamp, whacks both summary judegment requests and the case proceeds.

    Now, if the judge grants this, then that would be newsworthy.

    If a lawyer filing a summary judgement request is news, then you probably ought to cover every time they take a leak too.

  • Maybe file-sharing software has a chance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:34PM (#4253089) Journal
    Putting aside the technical difficulty of shutting down a P2P network, some of this software may stand a chance in court. They are very much geared to 'file'-sharing rather than music sharing. That improves the chances that some court might see them as substantially non-infringing. Moreover, they are software programs, rather than centralized server, making the case for "the users are responsible for their own actions" stronger.

    None of it matters in the end, though. There are three types of people out there: 1) There are those people who don't understand computer technology. 2) There are those people who understand it a little because they've used it. But they don't really understand it. They think that the icon is the program. They think of electronic mail as 'mail, but electronic.' And they have a fuzzy perception of information ownership. They think of people who alter the information on their computers in ways that were not intended as 'hackers' and slightly nefarious. 3) There are people who understand how computers work, and have a good idea what is happening with the 1's and 0's at any given time. Sure, they couldn't build their own OS, but they understand how it works to some degree. (Like someone who couldn't fix his car, but understands the basic concept of an internal combustion engine.)

    Unfortunately, it is highly probable that the judge will belong to category 1 or 2.
  • It wasn't much of a problem before. Most pirates wouldn't have paid the money for it anyway. But now they've drug the rest of us into it and now we are all criminals!

    I've gotten so fed up with this crap. I really quit buying CDs now. I download the songs I wanna hear. Not because I want to steal them but because I don't want to give the RIAA any more money they can use to get me, or the rest of us, up our respective a$$es. I support my favorite artists by going to concerts (yeah I know the RIAA gets a cut but what can you do?) and buying merchandise like the concert T's. God, I can't wait to see Disturbed and Korn next month! :-)

    Really, this wouldn't be such an issue if they were not a$$ raping us $20 for a CD. We all know now, how much it really cost to burn one! :-) and it sure isn't $20!

    If they'd charge a reasonable price and quit a$$ raping their customers and a$$ raping the bands they are pretending to protect (what is it, most bands get $.50 - $1 per CD sold? more? less?), they wouldn't have this problem in the first place!

  • Proud of himself, isn't he? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:39PM (#4253124) Homepage Journal
    He claims to have single-handedly created the Internet:

    the birth of the Internet which occurred when his Host computer at UCLA became the first node of the Internet

    Out of curiosity, what was the point of having the first host, as opposed to the first pair of hosts? "Hey, look at me! I'm networking with myself!"

    In about thirty years I'll tell you how I was the first host on Internet 3. :)

    • Out of curiosity, what was the point of having the first host, as opposed to the first pair of hosts? "Hey, look at me! I'm networking with myself!"

      Actually, there really was only one host on the Internet, my Internet, at the time. It was a little like masturbation. A simulation, but a pretty good one.

      Your irony skillz are amazing, in that you said I created the Internet single-handedly. Twas true, twas true. Curled my hair, it did.
    • He claims to have single-handedly created the Internet:

      He is obviously lying. As we all know, Al Gore "took the initiative in creating the Internet".

  • What if... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CaffeineAddict2001 ( 518485 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:39PM (#4253126)
    You create an arbitrarily sized table of randomly placed 1's and 0's... Then what you trade is files that reference where in the table the bytes for your file located in sequence... Would this still be considered piracy or intellectual property?

  • I'll say it again. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:47PM (#4253185)
    I _could_ download the Sopranos off the internet. I could have my friends tape it for me, or Replay it over to a VCD, but I don't, because HBO is easily available to me at a reasonable price.

    Charge me $40-$60/month (which is more than i'm paying for CD every month these days), give me access to every song I want, and you'll make a killing.

    Its a new era, you need a new billing scheme. Look at cable companies. Does anyone think that stealing cable is justified? They don't charge by the show, and conversely, nobody says "I'm not really stealing cable, because there's no way i'd watch 200 channels anyway." or "Yeah, i'll watch Showtime because I can, but if I couldn't get it for free, I wouldn't watch it."

    It'll never happen though. They'll charge $18.99 for a highly restrictive format download of a shitty CD, then moan that nobody is buying it because of piracy.
  • Morpheus also asked for summary judgement, but they wanted all of the charges dismissed. Their argument is that there are too many uses for the service for it to be shut down because of the illegal users. This was reported on Monday on news.com [com.com].
  • He's known as "the Father of Modern Data Networking." Says so right here [ucla.edu] on his site.

  • memeograph question.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @02:52PM (#4253222) Homepage Journal

    Interesting point. The historical answer is quite revealing. The invention in question is not the memeograph, but the printing press. The printing press so threatened those in control of information at the time (the Catholic church), that the entire reformation resulted. Let's just hope this go-round is not as bloody.

  • Leonard Kleinrock (Score:2, Informative)

    by chunkwhite86 ( 593696 )
    Dr. Leonard Kleinrock is known as the Inventor of the Internet Technology, having created the basic principles of packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet, while a graduate student at MIT. This was a decade before the birth of the Internet which occurred when his Host computer at UCLA became the first node of the Internet in September 1969. He wrote the first paper and published the first book on the subject; he also directed the transmission of the first message ever to pass over the Internet.
    http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/
  • If I took the novel Moby Dick and shifted every letter one to the right, could I publish that? Probably. But if the technology existed to conveniently shift them all back so someone could easily extract the original, then what? Does the copyright holder own the actual pattern of words, plus any method that exists or that could ever exist to produce that pattern?

    By the same token, do music copyright holders have the copyright to any technique that could produce air vibrations similar to the air vibrations that happened when the artist performed the song? And another thing, do they actually own the original vibrations, by which I mean, I'm not allowed to measure those vibrations and report to anyone else the results of my measurements, even if I make the measurements from a distance? They actually own the rights to what the air is doing?

    What if I had a method to describe the complete pattern space of waveforms that the original music was not? That is, I have some sort of mathematical description of every possible wave form except the original music, I can't tell anyone what that is either, I suppose because that would allow you to derive the original. Even though I'm explicitly and rigourously not giving you the original.

  • What are we going to do about it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by klund ( 53347 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @03:09PM (#4253354)
    I gave $1000 to the EFF last month.

    What have you done?
  • Interesting...seems a substantial part of RIAA's propaganda against the peer to peer companies is predicated on the fact that they're making a profit.

    I wonder if this means their case would be weaker against giFT [sourceforge.net].

  • How to prevent infringement? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beej ( 82035 ) on Friday September 13, 2002 @03:57PM (#4253745) Homepage Journal
    From the RIAA release:

    Also included in the filing is the testimony of several expert witnesses, including Leonard Kleinrock, widely regarded as one of the original founders of the Internet. Kleinrock describes how the defendant's file sharing system works and how they could easily control and prevent the massive copyright infringement from occurring.

    Can someone help me locate the testimony in which Kleinrock describes how they could easily control and prevent massive copyright infringement?

    I mean, I'm dying of curiosity. Every solution I can think of is either trivial to circumvent, or non-trivial to implement. Nothing falls in the classification of "easy".

    Then again, I'm not Dr. Internet with a PhD from MIT.

  • They always ask for Summary Judgement (Score:3, Informative)

    by parliboy ( 233658 ) <[parliboy] [at] [gmail.com]> on Friday September 13, 2002 @03:59PM (#4253757) Homepage
    This article is a non-starter, as far as Summary Judgement goes. SJ is a request made with pretty much every case, whether or not there is merit.

    There are two basic kinds of findings to be made: Findings of Fact, and Findings of Law. The first of those are derived by the jury, and the second are derived by the judge. If RIAA can demonstrate that, for all facts in dispute between the parties, if the judge took the P2P's position yet was would be required by law to find for the RIAA, then there is no jury trial.

    Basically, the defendants here need to demonstrate how the facts in this case from past similar cases on which there is precedent. Otherwise, the judge can say, "you're hosed, boys" and shut them down without jury trial, because there's literally nothing for the jury to decide.

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