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Music Media Government The Courts Your Rights Online News

Investigating the RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims 211

Posted by michael from the gumshoe dept.
zrosener writes "I've put together a site with a lot of information on the cases. I created diagrams and explanations of the file sharing systems these students created that the RIAA is suing them for - and how they are functionally and technically very similar to Microsoft's tools built right into windows, and how they are dissimilar from Napster's." Good detective work.
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Investigating the RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims More

Investigating the RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:03PM (#5705816)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ok, so what. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MousePotato ( 124958 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:04PM (#5705830) Homepage Journal
    The artists will never see even the tiniest bit of the money. Check out this link and tell me how much of that money you think the actual artists are going to get: the problem with music by steve albini [arancidamoeba.com]

    • Re:ok, so what. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mkoby ( 642450 ) <[michael.koby] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:15PM (#5705924) Homepage
      A lot of this is from a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Buisness", which by the way if you're a musician is a GREAT read and point of reference. I think that opening story is actually word for word out the book (I'll have to check my copy at home though to be sure). But Steve Albini, definatly knows a thing or 2 himself.

    • Yeah Look at the article (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MushMouth ( 5650 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:30PM (#5706015)
      There are a lot of problems with Albini's article. One is that he lists a fairly good selling band as example, a poor selling band (and there are much much more of them than ones that are in Albini's words "hits") would end up costing their company money (only 10,000 copies sold, still quite a few, and the company is in the hole $700,000), even though the band ends up with their advance and publishing money (they do get publishing money, in Albini's case the song writers get $.07 per song per album sold minus ascap fees, if we assume 10 songs then the writers are getting $150,000). So really the bottom line assuming entire band write all the songs should read $400,000/(number of members in the band). Another thing that Albini's rant quite starkly portrays is that touring looses money, in this case $875.00. Thats right you go on the road (and work very hard) you end up with less money at the end. Thus the idea that the recordings should be free and people should only be paid to perform simply doesn't fly. What Albini was trying to say here is that Big Record Companies (eg Warner, Sony) are a rip off, and Small Artist Run Places (in this case specifically Touch And Go, I think he was pissed about the Butthole Surfers going to Warner) will make the artist more money. Ask Albini what he thinks of Shawn Fanning or the like getting rich on the backs of Slint, Low, Big Black, The Pixies, or even Bush and he will tell you another story.

      • no money in touring? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GunFodder ( 208805 )
        You should let Phish and other bands like them know about that, if they have any free time from counting their money. Touring can be very lucrative if you do it constantly and you are good.

        Most bands on major labels end up costing money rather than making it. That's what happens when you spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on every album.

        Primus spent five grand on their first album and ten grand on their second; even their third album, which was released on a major label and had a co
        • This is one of the reasons I don't understand the music business...how to make money in the music biz as a performer is by doing just that; performing. Look at any band that makes it really big and stays around for a long time...they did it by touring nonstop. Metallica, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, the Stones. You can make the argument that these groups were all around before copying music was 'easy', but I would make the argument that they were also around before music distribution was easy. The simple fact s

      • they do get publishing money, in Albini's case the song writers get $.07 per song per album sold minus ascap fees, if we assume 10 songs then the writers are getting $150,000

        And they may not even get that. To the best of my knowledte, before a songwriter publishes a song, there is no reliable way to check whether or not that song infringes the copyright in another musical work. George Harrison got burned by this [columbia.edu].

        How do you solve the problem of accidental infringement?

        Ask Albini what he thinks of S

      • Re:Yeah Look at the article (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <slashdot@mo n k e l e c t r ic.com> on Friday April 11, 2003 @02:19AM (#5708699)
        a poor selling band would end up costing their company money

        BULLSHIT. You can't justify stealing with that argument. What they're saying is, "Most of our investments fail." Would you be satisfied with that performance rate as a business? If you accept that premise, why should a successfull artist have to support 99 crappy artists?

        The answer is of course they're lying. They own the studios that record the albums, they own the song writers who write the songs, they own the plants that press the cds. It's called vertical integration. They produce the album as cheap as possible, CLAIM it costs a fortune, and pocket the rest :)

        Do you really think the owners of record labels sit around and say "You know the thing that sucks about this business, we're always loosing cash." If that were the case record companies would go out of business all the time when their income sources (artists) dried up.

  • Site Down (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:04PM (#5705832)
    Wow...thats bright.

    The magnatism of your power lines is out of wack and now you have totaly lost your connection to the net.

    Wish they would fix these silly power lines right so the broadband would give us the 2GB capacity.

    • 2GB? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Dr. Cody ( 554864 )

      Wish they would fix these silly power lines right so the broadband would give us the 2GB capacity.

      You think you've got it bad? Hell, my service only puts out 60 Baud and all I seem to get is 010101010101010101010...

  • RIAA Math... (Score:5, Funny)

    by asparagus ( 29121 ) <koonce&gmail,com> on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:05PM (#5705836) Homepage Journal
    1) /. server.
    2) Claim inflated losses for each potential viewer lost * theoretical maximum recieved from each one.
    3) Sue.
    4) Profit!

    Don't laugh. It's their real-world business model.

  • Tuition's bad enough! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by E. T. Alveron ( 617765 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:05PM (#5705840)
    The recording industry is losing (has lost) its main distribution channel to a much more efficient one.

    Tuition's high enough these days--there's no need for RIAA to go after these kids' with lasers strapped to their lawyers' heads... I wouldn't mind paying for SACD-quality recordings, if only I could buy them easily and efficiently (read: online, one click at a time).

    • Re:Tuition's bad enough! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:17PM (#5705930)
      Read also, dirt cheap. What does what you talked about have to do with tuition price.

      You cheap bastard

      If they offered exactly what you ask for for $1.50/track (still much better than having to buy a $15 CD with 10 sounds just to get the 3 you want), you'd still pirate them and say they're only worth $1. Then if it's $1, you'd say it's only worth 50 cents.
      • we're talking about 2 different things here.
        The tuition price comment was a joke- everyone knows students at Princeton, RPI, etc can afford another few billion added to their debtload :)

        What I'm asking to pay for is a higher quality recording than is available from audio CD or mp3.
        The recording industry has high quality masters for practically all recorded songs, and the RIAA has more choices than just (1) Dying from piracy, or (2) turning against its customers.
        I'll buy higher quality recordings (ye

    • The universities would be more helpful if the RIAA let them in on a cut of the sales! They could set up a shop at the student centers and also on the Uni's network. Drop the price way down per track say Let's face it if online music won't work at schools with massive bandwidth and a captive audiance, then it won't work at all! RIAA--try it out or stop crying and sell records which can't be easily copied [every digital copy would be illegal/ subject to fair use only!]

    • Re:Tuition's bad enough! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sad Loser ( 625938 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:59PM (#5706204)

      The other thing is that now media is so cheap, it may just force people to swap CDs and DVDs with their ripped music.

      While this has always happened, it has not been the mode of choice. At least with the p2p networks, they could monitor them and do something about the worst excesses. Maybe they could even have worked out a way of taxing the university for the amount of fileswapping. This would have made the university admins keep things under control.

      By forcing this activity further underground, they will have even less idea how much is going on
    • with lasers strapped to their lawyers' heads

      s/lawyer/mutated sea bass/g
      Error: 0 Replacements made, search and replacement terms are identical

  • More like the... (Score:4, Funny)

    by c_jonescc ( 528041 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:06PM (#5705845)
    I'll-be-slashdotted-before-5th-post-department.

    I mean really, if you're going to submit your own site, there's no excuse for an instant slashdotting.

  • no mirror=sadist (Score:5, Funny)

    by asscroft ( 610290 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:08PM (#5705873)
    why not establish mirrors before you submit to slashdot, especially if it's a self referral?

    must like the slashdotting effect.

  • A question of intent (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:10PM (#5705884)
    I created diagrams and explanations of the file sharing systems these students created that the RIAA is suing them for - and how they are functionally and technically very similar to Microsoft's tools built right into windows

    As with so many other legal issues, it's a question of intent. With student-written file sharing systems, you are intentionally sharing your files with the whole world. With Windows File Sharing, you are unintentionally sharing your files with the whole world.

    • With Windows File Sharing, you are unintentionally sharing your files with the whole world.

      That's bullshit. Nothing is shared by default when you install windows. You have to share it intentionally. The windows search function can search exactly the way these spiders do. All these kids did is cache the index of file shares on the local network to make the searches faster.
    • Unfortunately, intent cannot be understood just by the actions of people in this matter. Granted many people who put files in globally accessable folders don't mean to, but there are a significant number of "non-stupid" people who do this deliberately. Also, one cannot automatically assume that just because said student wrote a file sharing or searching program that it was written with nefarious intent.

      As has been stated numerous times in various places, in many cases, it is not the tool that infracts

  • Minuis the Diagrams equals the suck. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:11PM (#5705902)
    This site contains information on the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA against 4 college students for contributory and direct copyright infringement seeking damages of up to ninety seven billion eight hundred million dollars.

    $97,800,000,000

    Defendants

    Defendant: Daniel Jonathan Peng

    Princeton University, Sophomore

    Quick Links
    # Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
    # Analysis of the Complaint - written by Joseph Barillari
    # Wake (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Daniel Peng

    Daniel Jonathan Peng maintained and developed an application / website called "wake" that allowed users of the website: http://wake.princeton.edu (cached) to search for files shared on Princeton University's Local Area Network. It appears that Wake was a front end to a SMB file spider that searched and catalouged all "shared" files on computers connected to the Princeton's LAN. SMB, also known as Samba, is a file sharing protocol developed originaly by Microsoft. It is a widely used and established technology for sharing files between computers accross a network. RIAA charges include contributory copyright infringement accusing that Peng "has taken a network created for higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it into an emporium of music piracy where copyright infringement is simplified down to the click of a computer mouse", and of direct copyright infringement for "copying and distributing hundreds of sound recordings over his system without the authorization of the copyright owners". Fred Van Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, volunteered to represent Peng in court.

    Defendant: Jesse Jordan

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Freshman

    Quick Links
    # Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
    # www.chewplastic.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Jesse Jordan

    Jesse Jordan maintained and developed a website called "chewplastic" that allowed users of the website: http://ww.chewplastic.com (cached) to search for files shared on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Local Area Network. It appears that chewplastic.com deployed an application called "Phynd", also an SMB file spider, to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's LAN. RIAA accuses Jesse Jordan of direct and contributory copyright infringement.

    Defendant: Aaron Sherman

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Senior

    Quick Links
    # Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
    # www.flatlan.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Aaron Sherman under the direction of Mukkai Krishnamoorthy, Associate Proffessor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

    Aaron Sherman under the direction of Associate Proffessor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy developed a network application called FlatLan. It is also an SMB file spider, designed to search and catalouge all "shared" files on computers connected a Local Area Network and capable of searching this catalouge through a web interface. The software was distributed for free and deployed on a many different school networks including Bryant College, Lehigh University, Michigan Tech, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Texas, and Western New England College. The RIAA accuses Sherman of direct and contributory copyright infrigement. The complaint also states that Sherman "started a commercial enterprise to further profit from thee acts of infringement". The details to Shermans' "commercial enterprise" are shown a cache www.flatlan.com's "Products" page (cached) where he offers to sell "a complete Flatlan suite with unlimited FlatLan client licenses!". Apparently the RIAA took him up on this offer and through "trade association, have themselves purchased from the Defendant his software for $500".

    Defendant: Joseph Nievelt

    Michigan Technological University, hell of a coder

    Quick Links
    # Complaint - hosted by findlaw.com
    # www.mtu.flatlan.com (Cached / Mirrored) - created by Joseph Ni

    • SMB, also known as Samba, is a file sharing protocol developed originaly (sic) by Microsoft.

      Saying SMB is also known as Samba is like saying HTTP is also known as Apache. SMB is a protocol while Samba is an open source product that uses that protocol.

  • might be useful for the defence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by a7244270 ( 592043 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:13PM (#5705912) Homepage Journal
    Well, I haven't been able to read your site, as the server of course has been slashdotted, but I gather you have collated a list of similarities between the software in questions, and (legal) software which has already been out for a while.

    Given that you made the effort to prepare this work, I suggest that you take it the final step and send it to the lawyers in charge of defending the students against this lawsuit by the RIAA, or if they have none yet, try to get it to their hands.

    Oh, one more thing. You might want to send it anonymously; you never know, you might be sued next. (I'm only half-joking).

  • Been tried before to no effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by infonography ( 566403 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:14PM (#5705914) Homepage
    Pete Wilson, Ex-Gov California claimed a billions for all the Illegal Aliens syphoning off California's wealth before his cronies could get to it. It was tossed, this will be too. However it does tend to make people think twice, while they will win, the RIAA will make them drain their bank accounts for legal fees. Defense funds will form and they too will suffer. The idea is to make everyone in favor of trading suffer somehow. Even if they lose this time the next time there will be fewer willing to donate. The Artists need to understand the the Record companies are not their friends. The make more without the even if they don't have a gold record

  • Partial Mirror (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.massdebate.net/mirror/RIAA_4-10-2003/ [massdebate.net]

    I have a partial mirror. I have not been able to get the images yet.

  • Down after 10 posts! (Score:4, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:19PM (#5705947) Homepage
    I've put together a site with a lot of information on the cases...

    Apparently, you haven't yet heard of the Slashdot Effect. Still, with a Slashdot User ID of 518655, I guess you're still a newbie. No offense, of course! :)

  • Good Detective Work? (Score:3, Informative)

    by jsindell ( 470747 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:20PM (#5705952) Homepage
    I think not:
    SMB!=Samba.
    Likening SMB spiders to Windows' search is a pretty big jump, IMO. I can't get to the demonstration of linked near the bottom of the site, though (http://zacker.no-ip.org/slipperyslope). Was there a good explanation there?
    Also, is there a legend for all of the icons used in the pictures?

    • Likening SMB spiders to Windows' search is a pretty big jump

      It only seems that way since the author left out a single, crucial sentence. "If you point your Windows search at My Network Neighborhood, you will essentially be running a SMB spider." Further explanations would be nice, such as "A SMB spider is just like MS Windows Search functions. It retrieves directory listings and catalogs them." And so forth. All these guys did was add another layer or two on top of software that did the same function

  • SMB Facts (Score:5, Informative)

    by NullProg ( 70833 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:22PM (#5705964) Homepage Journal
    SMB = Server Message Block, Not Samba.

    http://www.ossir.org/ftp/supports/96/netbios-3.h tm l

    I hope the rest of the information in the article was better researched.

    Enjoy,

  • What is this? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:24PM (#5705980)
    What is this? Logic? Examination of the lawsuit and using factual meterial instead of simply pulling a random number out of the air??? Sue him! He's violating the DMCA is some way which we will figure out later after the lawsuit has been prepared and filed! Sue him!

  • Actual Submission (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by DASHSL0T ( 634167 )
    Dear Slashdot,

    Some punk put up a site with information detrimental to the RIAA. It's running on a 286 and he pays by the megabyte - all on his daddy's credit card! Please post a story about his eensie weensie site and turn his server into a smoldering pile of melted goop while bankrupting his papa.

    Smooches Roblimo,
    H. Rosen
  • I've put together a site with a lot of information on the cases.

    Saying that on /. is an invitation to gouge triple your usual bandwidth costs.
  • This won't make any difference. We already know the musicians don't see much (if any) of the money collected, we know the RIAA inflates their reported losses, now we know how similar these file trading systems are to windows.

    So what?

    An online Starcraft RPG? Only at [netnexus.com]
    In soviet Russia, all your us are belong to base!

  • Viewing it out of the corner of my eye, (Score:3, Funny)

    by Absurd Being ( 632190 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:42PM (#5706096) Journal
    I thought it said 'investigating the RIAA's billion dollar crimes.'

  • MIRROR: http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~zrosen/ (Score:3, Funny)

    by zrosener ( 518655 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:51PM (#5706159) Homepage
    AHAHAH i slashdotted myself then took a nap... i was tired! sorry -Zack

  • Billion-Dollar Claims? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Thursday April 10, 2003 @05:52PM (#5706161) Homepage
    RIAA's Billion-Dollar Claims
    I thought it was trillion dollar claims, according to this page [slashdot.org] ... (nice how it says both `billions' and `trillions' ...)

    Oh. Looks like it was a typo ...

    From here [freep.com] --

    Heather Newman's column in Saturday's paper erroneously described the theoretical maximum amount for which the Recording Industry Association of America was suing Michigan Technological University student Joseph Nievelt. The total should have been $97.8 billion.
    Only 98 billion dollars? Carry on!

    (I still wonder if they'll take a check. Or how about PayPal?)

  • /. Effect study (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and my next study is going to be invapor computing.

    This is an experimental study into how to reach the next level of computing called "vapor computing" the idea behind it is to so over stress your sytem that you turn your computer into vapor. Thus reaching the next phase of computing power, vapor computing. Please help me in this by going to my site and constantly hitting refresh. My webserver is only in the liqued phase of computing right now.

  • Rational damage calculation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @06:04PM (#5706241) Homepage

    The basis used by the RIAA for calculating damages in all these cases is fundamentally absurd. They take the number of copies, multiply by the highest recent retail they can find, and draw a big red circle around the result.

    In order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order.

    Recall that for the combination of any given product and any given consumer, there is a price below which the consumer will buy it (sometimes that price will be zero or lower, but there is a price).

    There is also a price below which the seller will not sell it.

    The space between these two prices is where purchase transactions are viable.

    So, in order to calculate the losses, we need two things:

    • The minimum price acceptable to the seller (sometimes called the reserve price)
    • The maximum price acceptable to the potential buyers

    The second of these is naturally much more complicated. Different buyers have different price thresholds. Across a population, the aggregate of these prices can be approximated with a function (I'll spare the math). This function can be estimated by using price elasticity data that sellers accumulate as part of their normal market analysis. Of course, it differs in different demographics so it's important to use a demographic that matches the arena in which the pirated material is distributed.

    Once you have these two things, you can calculate the real losses quite simply. Say there were 1000 copies of something that the seller was willing to discount to $20 and had never sold for more than $30. Say further that the buyer curve for the distribution demographic was nice and simple, ranging from $0 to $50, with 80% below $20. Treating everything higher than $30 as $30 (since that's the highest price the product had been available for), you'd get something like $5000 in actual losses (forgive me, my back-of-the-napkin calculus is not good).

    Meanwhile, the RIAA would claim that the loss was $30000, 6 times higher than reality.

    The difference is explained by copies in the hands of people who would not have otherwise bought the product for a price at which the manufacturer was willing to sell it, and which therefore do not represent a legitimate market.

    • Civil litigation is not based on real monitary value. What is the value of a "wrongful death" suit?

      Basically, the rule of thumb is to sue for about 1/2 of what you can get. And that value is then doubled to be what you can get so the lawyers get their 1/2.


    • in order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order. . .

      The price they can charge for a song is directly related to the supply.
      Dilute the supply, and the optimum selling price goes down.
      It's not likely that you'll hear the RIAA complain that piriacy forces them to lower their prices,
      but it's a real consequence of the economics.
      If you want to do a real analysis of the record companies loss,
      this lower price should be part of calculation.

      -- this is no

    • According to Article 49 of the legal complaint [findlaw.com], the record companies are suing for the maximum statutory damages allowed under the DCMA, which is $150,000 per work infringed. This actually has nothing to do with economics or actual monetary loss that the companies have endured, but rather is the punishment imposed under [cornell.edu]
      17 U.S.C. Section 504(c).

    • Re:Rational damage calculation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @07:35PM (#5706827)
      "In order to accurately estimate the true damages, a little flashback to microeconomics class is in order."

      Why?

      Educated people have chosen not to go into politics during the last four decades. They don't even PARTICIPATE in politics. What makes you think this kind of enlightenment is going to sudennly take over the judges and lawyers?

      It bothers me that they can find a lawyer that will even prosecute a case like this. I think that before you can claim $XX of losses, you should be required to present credible proof that you endured the losses. Where is this on their tax returns? Would it have been fraudulent to claim the capital losses there? I'd like to know why a loss that cannot be claimed for the IRS, can be the basis of a lawsuit. You shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.
      • I'd like to know why a loss that cannot be claimed for the IRS, can be the basis of a lawsuit

        I'm with you in spirit, but not in practice.

        There's a difference here, though, between actual losses (ie, your investments are worth as much as they used to be) and 'theoretical' losses (because of person XYZ's acts, we lost this much revenue). They're claiming it like it was a burglary...someone breaks into your house and steals your Monet, you can bring them before a court but I doubt the IRS will let you clai
    • > The basis used by the RIAA for calculating
      > damages in all these cases is fundamentally
      > absurd.

      True.

      > They take the number of copies, multiply by the
      > highest recent retail they can find, and draw a
      > big red circle around the result.

      False. They take the number of works they claim were infringed and multiply by $150,000, the maximum statutory damages permitted by law. The result is _not_ $97 billion.
    • The basis used by the RIAA for calculating damages in all these cases is fundamentally absurd.

      I'm not sure absurd is strong enough: they alleged that these students caused losses that represent the GDP of some nations!
    • Another quick sanity check. Accordign to RIAA, the students cost them 97.8 billion dollars; this is well within 1% of the total GDP of Columbia. According to the RIAA, if it were not for these students, they would have made enough money to buy the entire economic output of Columbia (or Chile) for a year, or better than 85% of the total economic output of Ireland if you prefer.

  • RPI Student Newspaper Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @06:23PM (#5706342)
    If anybody's interested in checking out the RPI student paper's stance on this mess, check it out here [rpi.edu].
    Lots of letters to the editor and a few articles.
  • I'd just like to point out a misnomer in the linked article that "SMB is a file sharing protocol developed originaly by Microsoft". As alluded to in Samba's History [samba.org], SMB was originally invented by Digital Equipment Corporation.
    • I'm not trying to start a flame war, but as an (80's) network programmer, I disagree.

      SMB was an IBM invention. Do you remember the old DOS Lan requester? Thats when it first appeared, not on a DEC, but DOS. The protocol allowed us to share printers, drives etc. on OS/2 and DOS systems.

      The link you provided in no way states that Digital had anything to do with SMB (I guess the moderators are asleep today). 3Com had more to do with this than anyone.
      Do you have any other references?

      My references are:
      Client/

  • Why hasn't NetIQ been sued? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reverendG ( 602408 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @06:30PM (#5706390) Homepage
    Hello RIAA, are you tired of beating up on little boys in college yet? I'm not trying to insinuate that you're bullies, just that there's some serious meat out there for you.

    NetIQ has had a product called MP3 checker [netiq.com] available for years, which does essentially the same thing as Wake, Phynd, and all the others. It even prints out a pretty list for you so that you don't have to run it over and over again.

    Like I said, I know you're not just a bunch of effeminate bullies, so it won't phase you at all that NetIQ is a partner of Microsoft. Go sue!

  • ChewPlastic Forum (Score:4, Informative)

    by TinoMNYY24 ( 569172 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @06:52PM (#5706541)
    I just wanted to let all /.ers know that one of the defendents in this case, Jesse Jordan of Rensselaer [rpi.edu] has set up a furom for discussion of the lawsuit and whatever else. Find it at http://www.chewplastic.com/bb [chewplastic.com]

  • Important details are missing (Score:3, Informative)

    by frumiousbar ( 587038 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @07:15PM (#5706701)
    Like the fact that Peng's site was lauded in the Princeton newspaper as a great way to get music for free. And like the fact that these guys were making a ton of music available from their own computers.

    *Whoops*
  • Why is my alma mater always at the wrong end of the news?

    It's not like it's anything new... My CS neighbor in Warren Hall back in '95 built a rather comprehensive web-based search engine... but back then, it wasn't taboo to share.

    Without the filesharing on the internal net, I never would have found the Crystal Method, Filter, Moby or Delerium ... all of which are staples of my current CD collection. But that's preaching to the choir here...

  • Damage Reversal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mspring ( 126862 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @09:06PM (#5707262)
    I suggest to introduce into the legal system the notion that in case the plaintiff loses, he has to pay the defendant exactly the amount he is sueing for.
    That would give a natural limit to such amounts.
    -Max

  • Wow. It's the RIAA vs. Progress (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cgreuter ( 82182 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @11:02PM (#5707939)

    What I noticed about the software/services described here is that 1) they could be extremely useful to large organizations (e.g. General Motors) for locating existing resources within the company WAN and 2) they are all to some extent research projects.

    I think this is a pretty clear-cut case of the RIAA attempting to hinder technological progress in defence of its business model.

    They're not going to win, though. This software is useful for all sorts of things, not just music piracy. It infringes as much as Google does.

    This suit is bullying, plain and simple. I just hope the defendants have good lawyers.

    And I hope the RIAA gets busted for barratry over this.

  • No monetary value (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SlimFastForYou ( 578183 ) <konsoleman@yaAUDENhoo.com minus poet> on Friday April 11, 2003 @12:11AM (#5708255) Journal
    I fail to see how RIAA claimed damages could total $90 some billion. In fact, I might venture that a monetary value cannot be assigned to losses because of these reasons:

    (note: I know there are alternatives to MP3 but the desire for simplicity in my explanations prevailed)

    1. The RIAA would have the burdon of proof that all logged transfers of MP3 files in their calculations were copyright violations and not students within fair use (i.e. students owned the CD and didn't want to spend time ripping).

    2. The RIAA would have the burdon of proof that each and every copyright violation (see #1) resulted in a lost sale. Many who download MP3 files never would purchase CDs anyway, whether or not MP3 technology existed. In essence, the RIAA has to prove that the customer in each case would have actually bought a CD, had it not been for the search engine.

    3. The RIAA would have to demonstrate that the purpose of the software was for music trading. It seems to me that this "spider" indexed everything. From the description of the software, it doesnt seem to be exclusively for media files. Media files are indexed along with all other content, as the software doesn't know whether an MP3 file is for a garage band posting their stuff or a video file is of someone dumping soap into a fountain to make it bubbly. Same goes for software - People may very well want to check out what the Computer Science department is chugging out.

    Hopefully whoever presides over this case will throw it out as frivolous. In my opinion, this is similar to somebody suing "Perfect Kitchen Silverware Company", because someone was murdered with a knife manufactured by the company.
  • "This site contains information on the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA against 4 college students for contributory and direct copyright infringement seeking damages of up to ninety seven billion eight hundred million dollars."

    It was much funnier when Dr. Evil said it.
  • Does this mean the RIAA names Microsoft as an accomplice now?

  • So RIAA is now going after people who write and maintain SMB spiders now?!? Is this for real? SMB search spiders have so many uses beyond piracy. Just because they're college kids doesn't mean that they're automatically guilty of piracy. Does that automatically mean that the network was used for cheating and plagiarism? SMB/CIFS comes boxed with just about every major OS (Win, MacOS, Linux, xBSD) and is available for just about every other OS. Just because these guys developed some search software do

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