Making Files Available Breaking the Law? 538
lordhathor2001 writes "The RIAA has argued in one of their cases that simply "making files available for distribution" violates copyright laws. This means that regardless of the legality of a file somebody has on their computer, just putting it in a shared files folder that can be accessed by other people is illegal. Although it's asinine, it really shouldn't come as any surprise given the RIAA's legal campaign that's more about what it believes than what the law actually says."
Distinction (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh bloody hell (Score:5, Insightful)
First Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
Great sources, guys. (Score:5, Insightful)
Could Slashdot at least wait until there's actually some proof before posting this crap?
Slippery Slope (Score:2, Insightful)
You can probably guess what the answer is.
Re:Thoughtcrime? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. I mean, just look at the instant SlashThink(TM) reaction around here. From the venhemence, you'd think the judge had actually accepted the argument.
I'd better cover my windows (Score:2, Insightful)
So now here's one for you. Say I beak into someones car/house and I get busted with their cd collection. Can the record companies now sue me for stealing music? I didnt pay for it.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thoughtcrime? (Score:5, Insightful)
His work was a metaphor or a possiblity. We could already be living it, it just looks different.
Instead of the ominous TV screen, we have cable Sport, Xbox and DVDs.
Instead of a "father figure" telling our kids how to behave we have Britney(TM) or, more correctly, RIAA & MPAA?
Instead of factories where the poor go to work and large, souless offices for the rich we have....oh wait...
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Slashdot turning into Digg? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, putting copyright or bootleg content in a shared directory is intent to break the law.
- Would you argue that B&E isn't a crime until you pick something up and leave the property?
- Is pointing a gun at somebody not a crime if you don't shoot them (or say you had no intention to)?
- How about having kiddie porn on your PC, is that ok as long as you don't have any kids tied up in your basement being filmed? What about if you are a "journalist doing research on child abuse"?
What's wrong with society when ANYONE who is caught doing anything is suddenly a victim?
And what argument is there to support distributing content that is not yours to distribute? Is it hard to discern the difference between putting bootleg stuff in a shared folder, and having a shared folder? Or serving up stuff that is not bootleg? Jesus what idiocy!
What we really need is clearly codified user 'bill of rights' that spell out (and defend) exactly what fair use rights are. Until then, childish arguments that suggest that illegal bootlegging and mass distribution of copyright material is somehow a "free speech" or "privacy" issue is just hurting the cause of people who want FAIR use, not piracy disguised under a layer of self righteous ignorance.
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
By their logic wouldn't any website containing copyrighted material be breaking the law?
Bizarre.
Re:Is Slashdot turning into Digg? (Score:4, Insightful)
1a. There are plenty of people who give away their own copyrighted material, free of charge. As a matter of fact, they would encourage you to do the same. The same thing goes for Bootlegs of Bands.
2. Just because a directory is shared, does not mean the files are accessible. Even if they are accessible, there is no law against putting them somewhere 'shared'.
What is against civil law is distributing material without the copyright owners permission. Your argument is wacked, because you compare a bunch of criminal matters, with a civil one.
Re:Distinction (Score:3, Insightful)
None of what I'm going to say applies to bittorrent, but from what I've gathered of their tactics, all they do is list the files your P2P prog has shared & that they claim copyright to.
That should not and will not stand up in court. Even civil law has minimal standards of evidence and a list of files + your I.P. address doesn't prove anything.
All the files you're 'sharing' could be fakes.
The RIAA would have to prove otherwise and by the time legal arguments are being made, they won't be able to, since they don't have your computer and they didn't download anything when they had the chance.
I'll say it again: An IP + list of files = nothing
They aren't stopping any trade or interstate com (Score:3, Insightful)
If you author a file and the content within it, you can do anything you like with it.
If you make a fair use copy of a song, then put the song in a shared location, they are arguing it's the same as burning a whole stack of "fair use" copies of a CD to CD-R and then leaving them on your doorstep for anyone to take. Yes, you have a right to fair use copies - you don't have a right to "oops, how careless of me" allow others to take copies.
Re:Lying assholes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh bloody hell (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize the blog doesn't explicitly state that, but come on. You're just choosing the most outlandish interpretation of a vague statement so you can ridicule it. Or do you really think they're arguing copyright holders can't distribute their own files?
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
Essentially, what the RIAA is trying to do is eliminate the line between making something available for distribution, and actually distributing it. That is, right now there's a distinction between offering something that's not yours, and actually going through with it and transferring the property-that's-not-yours to somebody else. At least as I understand it, currently no crime is committed until the transfer actually occurs. I could have ten million MP3s on an FTP site, and as long as all anyone does is browse the directories, no harm done. When somebody downloads one, I'm in trouble.
What's new is that they want to make putting a copyrighted file into a shared folder (or FTP site, whatever) an act of distribution, in and of itself, regardless of whether anyone actually takes you up on the offer and downloads/transfers the copyrighted file.
It makes a certain twisted kind of sense, since putting the file into the folder is the only action that the sharer actually takes -- therefore, it's demonstrative of their intent (to redistribute).
I'm not sure that I agree with this, but I'm willing to play along for a moment, because I think this line of thinking could lead to strange places. I tend to wonder, if this actually became accepted, whether it wouldn't move the liability for copyright infringement from the downloader, to the sharer/provider. I.e., if you downloaded something from somebody else's shared folder, you'd begin to have a bit of a defense that you thought it was legal, because it would be illegal for them to put anything in the shared folder that wasn't authorized. It's basically a movement of responsibility.
And this, I think, is why the RIAA is so interested. It's difficult to track down the myriad individuals that download content, but it's relatively easy to track down the people that are sharing or seeding content. By moving the legal burden onto them, rather than on the downloaders, it gives them a much stronger hand. It's no longer necessary for the RIAA to prove that somebody downloaded a particular file from your computer, just that you offered it up for that purpose.
Like I said, it makes a twisted kind of sense.
Re:So what tactics *should* they use? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you go dig around google for the "whitehead declaration", the guy describes what their investigative procedures are. They don't do anything that could result as evidence in a civil case, much less a criminal one.
Having files available is not a crime. Serving up fake files with popular names is not a crime. They don't know if they have the copyright, because they haven't actually listened to any of the files the claim are theirs.
As for the rest of your post, you took my words waaaaaaay off course.
Re:Look... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Let me make this simple for you: I learned on Sesame Street that sharing is GOOD."
Looks like that took precedent over the Golden Rule in your household. For the uninformed, that's "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." It's in the Bible but it's a sentiment shared across lots of cultures and you don't need to be a Christian or even religious to understand its value.
The golden rule applies to music sharing thusly: if you know that the artist is cool with you sharing their stuff, and they have the right to let you share it (ie. the artist owns the copyright on the recording as well as the words and music), then go ahead and do it. There are plenty of artists who independently produce their work and allow it to be freely distributed. More power to them, and we should support them.
If you suspect that the artist would not want you distributing their stuff, or helping yourself to a copy without paying it, then DON'T. Why? The golden rule. You would not want the artist to ignore your wishes.
This seems simple enough, but lots of people who don't quite get ths spirit of the golden rule still justify music piracy with a statement like "if I were a musician, I'd self-produce all my stuff and give it away for free" or "well, I write software that I give away, and I wouldn't mind the artist making a copy of my software for free. So, I'll copy their music for free, since I wouldn't mind them doing the same to me." The former is just a bit too hypothetical (what you think you would do if you were trying to make a living with your music, and what you would do if you were actually in that situation are worlds apart), and the latter simply indicates a lack of respect for other people's wishes.
Mod story as troll (Score:4, Insightful)
The story makes it sound like if you put *any* files into a shared folder, you're breaking the law. This is not the case.
What the RIAA is really arguing is that if you place files into a shared folder that, if distributed, would constitute illegal distribution.. the act of making these files (which would be illegal if distributed) available for distribution by placing them in a shared folder is illegal.
Now, I don't see how they'd be able to actually prove the files were, in fact, files that would be illegal for the person to distribute unless the RIAA downloaded them (meaning the files were distributed).
Just remember kiddies,
if you distort something to make it more absurd than it really is..
OF COURSE it's going to sound absurd!
Re:First Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder about that because, after all, copyright's purpose is to prevent unauthorized transfer from one person to another. It would seem that by exposing a work to a network that is built soley for transferring information, you are reasonably breaking copyright law.
To put it another way, take away your dislike for copyright law itself, and imagine the work is something that you really would like to keep from being transferred without authorization (say, images of yourself that are private). Would you still agree that putting them on a file transfer network is reasonable, yet handing the same images to someone else is not ok (as normal copyright law goes)?
Re:First Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Norman Rockwell in illustrating FDR's Four Freedoms [nrm.org] chose a New England town meeting to symbolize "Freedom of Speech."
The primary meaning of free speech in the American mind has always been defined as open political debate without fear of governmental interference or retaliation.
You are responsible for the files you share. That goes beyond the law of copyright. Libel is not protected speech. Obscenity is not protected speech. The whole of the law of torts, of contracts, of criminal law does not magically fade away when you invoke the words "free speech."
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no parallel to the digital world, because (that I know of) there's no protocol that provides for the transfer of information without a copy being made at the same time. So if there was some kind of "digital library" protocol, which simultaneously deleted the bits of a file from my hard drive, as those bits were being sent down the wire and written to your hard drive, then I think you'd have a defense that you were only "lending" the file. But since such a protocol doesn't exist, and because it's commonly known that computers make copies when they exchange data, the "library defense" doesn't fly.
Re:Oh bloody hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: lawyers never, ever do this. Ever. Because that would just be unethical.
do you really think they're arguing copyright holders can't distribute their own files?
Let me explain this because you have apparently spent the last century in a cave... on Mars... with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears.
Yes. You see, thanks to the way our legal system is constructed, many things that most people would consider absurd or, at the very least, counterintuitive, are in fact true in a legal sense. For instance, you don't actually own any CDs or DVDs, you have, in fact, leased the content on them when you paid for them.
In other news, you can be legally innocent of a crime but still, somehow, civilly liable for it.
Somewhere in this country, at this very moment, a lawyer is arguing that black is, in fact, a shade of gray... that ketchup is a vegetable... that pulling your fingernails out with pliers isn't torture...
Now you think about what you said.
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
Such as the fact XP has default "admin shares" of the local drives, so that copying the music anyware on your hard drive could technically be construed as "making available for distribution". This leads to some really bad places if the interpretation is that general.
Re:So what tactics *should* they use? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the use you're stating (profit from ads) would be an industrial, for-profit motive, just as would be republication in a newspaper or magazine, and even -my- proposed restrictions would apply. On the other hand, if I think the article's interesting, and want to print it out to show a friend who doesn't have net access, or email it to a friend that accepts only text emails (no links), that shouldn't be illegal (even technically) for me to do-I'm not profiting. I'd also have no trouble with an attribution requirement, but that's not normally a problem on filesharing networks-the sharers aren't generally claiming that they filmed the movie or wrote the song.
Plagiarism is a different story, but you don't even need copyright to prevent that. Copying without citation is an implicit claim that that's your original work. If it's not, that's fraud, and defamation of the original writer-and we've got plenty of very good laws against fraud and defamation.
Re:Oh bloody hell (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think for one -minute- that if the RIAA had the power make it illegal for people to distribute their own music on their own, they wouldn't create those restrictions in a heartbeat without a second thought, you're nuts. Just watch. I figure it won't be long before they try to pass laws that say things like:
It's just a matter of time. Make no mistake. These suits were never about piracy. They were about control. They are losing control, and they are grasping at every last little bit of grass at the edge of the cliff trying to avoid falling over it. Won't help. The end is near.Re:But understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
It is very hard to tell the difference between works in the public domain and copyrighted works without a notice.
No, it isn't. Anything released after the first Micket Mouse movie = copyrighted.
I don't know if this is supposed to be funny or just sad, but that's more or less the essence of copyright these days.
Does this mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, any creative work is copyrighted. If I write some code, is it illegal for me to put it into a shared folder? What if I write it, like most employed coders, as work for hire, such that my employer owns it? Have I broken the law by putting in a shared folder? Have I broken the law by uploading it to a publicly read-able CVS repository?
Hey, my briefcase has a copyrighted book in it. I accidently left my briefcase open, next to copy machine, where anybody could have made copies of that book. Am I guilty of illegal negligence, or am I just a straight up "thief"?
I own a bunch of copyrighted books. There's a Kinkos down the street. Is it illegal for me to leave my front door open? Can I put my books on the porch? Can I lend one to my next door neighbor, or is any of that illegal too?
This is a bizarre criminalization of mundane, innocent, and customary activities, solely intended to create a climate of fear.
More and more, our every-day right to "pursue happiness" is being taken away by those who profit by making us fear.
Look, I agree, the record companies have a right to copyright. But Americans have a right not to live in fear. We've got thousands of people living in fear in order to provide fancy cars and three houses each for a few record company execs. It goes too far.
It's time for all of us to draw a line in the sand, and say we won't live in fear anymore. America's turning into Orwell's worst nightmare, the dirty drab gray life of a rat hiding in the shadows to avoid the stomping jackboots.
If this bullshit is "safety" from "the terrorists" I don't want to be safe anymore.
If living in fear is the cost of listing to the latest boy band from Sony, it's not worth it anymore.
It's time for Americans to get up on our hind legs like men and tell the fear-mongers that we've had it with them.
Re:Look... (Score:3, Insightful)
Very well, now let's apply the Golden Rule to sharing of toys as per Sesame Street:
Cool Toy Co. would very much prefer it if every kid who wanted to play with Cool Toy bought their own. Therefore you shouldn't share your Cool Toy; only you are licensed to play with it, and your friends should buy their own. You would not want Cool Toy Co. to ignore your wishes, would you?
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This article is hysteria (Score:1, Insightful)