I'm still obsessive; this item is back. Napster the corporation has been destroyed, but the Napster paradigm continues. This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property, freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it. Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3 conferences. Linked between the Agora and Music conferences.154 responses total.
The RIAA has sued four college students: two at RPI, one at Princeton and one at Michigan Tech. The complaint is that the students ran a program to make indexes of what was available on their local networks through Microsoft Windows filesharing -- essentially automating the process of looking up this public information. The RIAA compares this to Napster; the Cnet story points out that the students are not providing the software which exchanges the files, as Napster did. Any file trading is done on through the standard Windows software. http://news.com.com/2100-1027-995429.html
So, essentially, the RIAA needs to sue Microsoft for writing the Server
Message Block protocol?
Sweet.
The Norwegian government is appealing the aquittal of DeCSS writer Jon Lech Johansen. This is thought to be due to pressure from the MPAA; they really need this legal precident to go the "right way". Prosecution is apparently complicated a bit by Norway's lack of anything like the US's DMCA. I'm not clear on exactly what the formal charges are, mostly because I can't read Norwegian. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30062.html Also, an article on Security Focus about the FBI lobbying for "plug and play" wiretapping capability on VoIP services and broadband Internet connections, much like phone companies are currently legally required to supply for ordinary phone service: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/3466
I have been meaning to ask this for a long time now .. I use kazaa .. will it put me in any trouble ?
*shrug* From all the long discussion, that's really difficult to say, although it looks like the RIAA will try anything it can. resp:2 yes, two heavyweights going into the ring.. this could be interesting. Really, the trend that I seem to consistently see is that the teenagers and young adults are doing the heavy p2p file sharing, and the middle-aged adults are the ones who are still buying music. I really don't see too many exceptions. I am among the pirates. I can't afford to buy many CDs nowadays and really not at today's prices. I don't figure to be a large threat-- most of my clips are more than 3 years old, quite a few are much older than that, and I know a few are out of publication as far as I know. That's not meant to be a justification, but my tastes are pretty electic and not at all in line with what is currently considered mainstream, period. They're not unusual-- most were popular at one point-- but they don't fit into neat patterns.
The Detroit Free Press ran an article in which they attempted to calculate the value of the damages being demanded of the Michigan Tech student sued by the RIAA (resp:1): http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman5_20030405.htm "Recording Industry has warning: File-sharers have to face the music" Slashdot writers claim that the Freep columnist botched the math: the correct value, they say, is 97.8 Billion dollars. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/05/1931233 A quote from an RIAA spokesman indicates that the RIAA remains totally clueless about the technology involved: "I wouldn't think there was a university in the country that wouldn't notice this kind of activity on their servers." -- Matthew Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president for business and legal affairs. This comes back to something I wrote in one of the earliest items in this "napster" series; I argued that copyright law was never intended to apply to the behavior of private individuals, but rather was business law.
According to /. this student wasn't even sharing files, just created a program to index files on a network....the RIAA is full of idiots.
All they have to do is select the right idiots for the jury to get a legal precident set, though. I did the math and I got about $90 billion, too -- I think Heather Newman botched her math. Either way, it's ridiculous. The RIAA is trying to make an example of these students, obviously. They figure people will see what's happening to them, say "oh, shit", and get rid of their file sharing software for fear of being sued next.
Incidentally, when I was at Tech the most common way to find movies and songs on the dorm network was just to take a walk through Network Neighborhood. It wasn't always a beautiful day in the Neighborhood -- MS Windows networking is incredibly unstable when you have a several hundred machines on one subnet -- but you usually found some pretty good caches of stuff. I wonder if the University could be sued for running a WINS server, since it facilitated this kind of thing?
Oh, the same Heather Newman who guests on Todd Mundt for tech stuff? She doesn't come across as especially bright. I remember her telling Todd that Windows 2000 was much faster than Windows 95 - the MS party line, but laughable to anybody who knows anything about OS bloat.
Re 8. A jury verdict may be a precedent operationally, but juries do not have the power to set legal precedent.
Re #10: She's one of the two tech columnists the Free Press has. I think the other one is better. I don't think I can comment on her intelligence, but her knowledge seems lacking sometimes.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure how it compares to Windows 98, but Windows 2000 is definately faster than NT 4.0, which is what it was intended to replace.)
Yeah, but on the same hardware was 95? There's a reason 2000 requires much bigger/faster hardware.
I didn't say it was faster than 95. My experience is that it's faster than NT 4 on the same hardware, though. 95 is pretty fast until it chews itself up, which it does with amazing regularity.
I just bought (yes, legally) a software program from MS. On the CD-ROM is printed this pathetically hopeful notice: "Do Not Make Illegal Copies of This Disc."
"Do Not Make Illegal Copies Of This Product From An Illegal Monopoly."
The Free Press printed a correction today that Heather Newman's column should have said 'billion', not 'trillion'.
Did you like the 80s band The Smithereens? Do you want to be a
patron of the arts? Then Smithereens bandleader Pat DiNizio has
an offer for you!
DiNizio is seeking 100 subscribers, at $1200 each, for a series of
limited edition CD releases. Subscribers will get quantities to
share with families and friends.
Each patron will also get a private house concert by DiNizio to
benefit a favorite charity.
In the article, DiNizio says this is an attempt to build a new
business model for the current file-sharing environment.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=185906
6
http://www.patdinizio.com/
DiNizio's own website goes on at length about his new business model.
(I'm not willing to go to $1200 for anybody, but I can see this
tempting me if the numbers shift -- say $100 from 1000 people.
But divided among members of a band, it's not that much, is it?)
someone should help Mr. Pat Dinizio with the formatting on his web page. It sounds like a cool idea though. I hope it works out for him.
I seem to remember a similar story a few years back. Momus got sued for making fun of Wendy Carlos and asked people to help subsidize his court costs. Wasn't the reward having a track on his next album named after you? I'm curious whether that $1200 would count as tax-deductible, since it's going to fund a concert whose proceeds go to charity. If it does, then this seems like a win/win situation for the donors: the same tax writeoff they'd get by donating the $1200 straight to charity, plus entertainment and a whole shitload of CDs. (The ideal scenario, I guess, would be if the $1200 was tax-deductible _and_ the house concert netted more than a $1200 profit to give away. Then the donor, the band _and_ the charity all come out better off. I have no idea if that's realistic or not, but it's probably not. If you can fit 50 people in your living room, you'd still need to make $240 off of each of them to "break even.") But I digress. It's a cool idea regardless, and I would definitely like to see it work, if only out of curiousity. It would be interesting to see how it would change the music business if this sort of scheme caught on.
50 x 240 = 12,000 50 x 24 = 1,200
A federal judge has dismissed Ben Edelman's application for permission to reverse-engineer the list of blocked websites from N2H2's filtering software. The software is often used to comply with government requirements that libraries filter Internet content, and Ben (a Harvard Law student and online activist) had wanted to investigate its accuracy. N2H2 claimed this would violate their rights under the DMCA, and U.S. District Judge Richard Sterns upheld their claim, saying "There is no plausibly protected constitutional interest Edelman can assert that outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an invasive and destructive trespass." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30196.html
That's scary on two levels.
One, clean-room reverse engineering should be legal, period.
Two, there's a clear constitutional interest. Freedom of speech
*might* be being infringed, but nobody knows.
Right, the intersection of this ruling on the DMCA and the rules on
library/school internet filtering goes like this:
1) Schools and libraries are required to install this product to
restrict what may be read on the internet.
2) It is illegal to determine what you are not being allowed to read.
Back to music: News items flying everywhere report that Apple (the computer company, not the Beatles' corporation) is negotiating to buy Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. The rumored price would be $6 billion. Universal is currently owned by the giant conglomerate Vivendi, which is choking on the debt it piled up in its 1990s acquisition spree. Vivendi is trying to sell off its entertainment assets, and reports have been that there has been little serious interest in buying its music division because investors see little future in the business of selling music CDs. Apple may see its future in music: it already makes the iPod, generally regarded as the best MP3 player on the market, and it is bringing an online music delivery system to market sometime soon; there has been much speculation that Apple might manage to do it better than the MusicNet and Pressplay offerings from the established recording industry. Owning a huge music division could give Apple a good base of desirable music to feed this growing music operation. One article says that Universal accounts for about 25% of CD sales. Major label imprints of Universal include: MCA, Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Def Jam, Lost Highway, and also possibly the largest remaining big-label classical music operation, with Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca.
re #23: "invasive and destructive trespass"?
Hopefully, he'll appeal. The constitutional implications are one important area, but reverse-engineering is vital to innovation, and when combined with due diligence regarding patents, poses no risk of infringement.
OK, my understanding is that the DMCA pretty much bars most or all reverse engineering -- maybe only in a case where a copyright is claimed. But since most computer code is copyrighted, that would pretty much cover most of what we're interested in. My understanding is that what Eric/other is asking for would require the court to overturn the clear language of the DMCA on reverse engineering. In the recent case, the plaintiff sought to get the judge to give him a first amendment harbor to do research on the filter behavior which is clearly prohibited by the DMCA, and the judge wouldn't even see the basis for a first amendment claim in this limited case. Enlighten me if I'm wrong on this.
My point is that understanding a mechanism is essential to improving on it, and being forced by a law like this to reinvent the wheel for each improvement is an example of the worst kind of market protectionism. And that's not even considering the critical 1st amendment implications.
Will this alcogol leak calcium from my blood?
I hope so.
This is more patent law than copyright law. Patent law is being reinterpreted to mean that anything incorporating ideas from an existing patent is part of that patent in its entirety. This did not use to be so. If the new regime had always been in operation, anything with a round moving part would still be paying royalties to the heirs of Ukamagook, who invented the wheel.
Music again. Slashdot points to this article from the
Christian Science Monitor, which reports that independent labels
are continuing to see boom times, even while the major record
labels are in a deep, 3-year slide.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0411/p13s02-almp.html
"Independents' day"
Quote:
"Paul Foley, general manager of the biggest independent label
Rounder Records of Cambridge, Mass., happily brags,
'2002 was actually Rounder's best year in history. We were
up 50 percent over 2001.'"
The article says that independent labels generally control costs
better; in particular, they shun the pay-for-promotion game now needed
to get a song into pop radio.
((KRJ here. I'd seen the 1990s as the golden age of independent music,
and I had not heard how independents were doing with the huge slump
in the RIAA-reported sales, and with the crash in CD retailing.
Needless to say, the figure from Rounder -- a major folk/roots
label -- cheers me tremendously.))
Although they weren't directly involved, I'd think Rounder in particular received a big boost from the "O Brother" phenomenon, which may account for their striking increase in the past few years..
True, true. All three labels cited in the Christian Science Monitor article -- the others are Bloodshot, and another one specializing in roots/country-oriented singer songwriters -- could be benefitting from this trend. Which is interesting in itself: The "O Brother" soundtrack sold 7 million copies over two years, for a major label, and yet the majors seem completely unable to see this as a market opportunity. The only significant "Americana"/alt.country/whatever project from the majors is Universal's "Lost Highway" imprint, home of Lucinda Williams among others. Am I missing any others? ----- News item: rapper Ice-T becomes "one of the first name-brand artists" to offer legitimate downloads through Kazaa. One can download his new album for $4.99. One can order a physical CD from Ice-T's web site for the same price. Conventional retail distribution is to follow later this year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11037-2003Apr11.html The Post also includes an unfavorable review of a new authorized download service, still encumbered with balky rights management restrictions and limited selection. This operation is called MusicNow: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11042-2003Apr11.html Quote: "... any real-world store that, say, offered a total of one song by The Rolling Stones would quickly find itself put down by the competition."
More news quickies from the portals: There's a new book on the rise and fall of Napster: "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster" by Joseph Menn. Two short reviews: http://www.msnbc.com/news/899012.asp http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/103/business/How_to_take_on_the_recording _industry_and_lose+.shtml Also, the Boston Globe has an overview report on how Kazaa has been structured to evade the legal destruction brought down on Napster: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/103/business/Unlike_Napster_Kazaa_can_run_and_it_CAN_hide+.shtml
Another "chilling effect" story. Michigan's "Super DMCA" legislation, which doesn't include the "intent to defraud" clause that's in legislation being considered in other states, has forced a U of M grad student to move his research overseas: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/3912
I hope all his colleagues follow suit, until there is not a domestic producer of quality products left, if that's what it takes to drive home the utter idiocy of this kind of legislation.
resp:38: It looks like posturing to me.
It may be in part -- he's one of Peter Honeyman's grad students, and they're all very aware of the political issues -- but he's got a genuine point behind it. The Michigan "Super DMCA" is way, way too broad. It needs to be drastically limited, or knocked down.
And given the big money at stake in some of these cases, I wouldn't risk it either.
I agree the law is horrid. I wouldn't think there's much chance it'll survive a court challenge. Pass on the chance to make political comments... is there really any chance this law is going to be used in any way at all?
(I have blithely re-connected my home network, and am not worried at all that I'll be prosecuted for doing so.)
I agree that the law is a bad one, but I'm not particularly convinced that it will be struck down. But then I'm generally dismayed by the "sure it sucks, but it'll never make it past the courts" attitude that many have when deciding what to do about these laws. Putting the responsibility on the courts, rather than the legislature, give grandstanding legislators a free pass even when the pass profoundly consumer-unfriendly laws. Do I hope the courts will overturn stuff like this? Of course I do, but it should *never* have been passed in the first place and it's important to remember that when you vote..
Repeat after me: "Just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean it's unconstitutional." Strongly, strongly agreed with #45.
You're preaching to the choir.
I don't think it's likely to be used on its own. I could easily imagine it being used as a threat to make people cooperate with investigations, or to extract deals, though.
Re#40: It doesn't seem like posturing to me, quite; it just seems like a very easy and mostly meaningless gesture. Judging from the article, he's just moved some files from one server to another.
Good review currently on Salon, of Menn's book on Napster, arguing that internal executive incompetence, more than anything else, brought Napster low.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30337.html The U.S. Department of Justice has come in on the RIAA's side in their case against Verizon. "RIAA lawyers are arguing that a simple subpoena obtained from a court clerk, which any fool can file against anyone suspected of copyright violation, should afford adequate protection of due process, as the dreaded Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides. "A district court ruled in favor of the RIAA in January; Verizon appealed the decision, and asks that the suspect's name not be revealed until the matter is decided. The RIAA, on the other hand, would like to get on with the business of persecuting the alleged malefactor as soon as possible. "Raising the Constitutional issues gave the civil-rights fanatics in Ashcroft's DoJ an opportunity to weigh in. They argue that due process is indeed safe, for they can find nothing in the Constitution expressly forbidding searches and seizures on the basis of quick-and-dirty, self-service subpoenas."
Widely reported: The Federal trial court judge has thrown out "most" of the RIAA and MPAA lawsuit against Streamcast, the parent of Morpheus, and Grokster. In gross oversimplification, the judge compared these file swapping programs to VCRs and applied the Betamax precedent, which held that a technology could not be banned if it had substantial non-infringing uses. This is probably the biggest loss the copyright industry has had, in the USA, in the file-swapping wars. The judge did leave the way clear for the copyright industry to pursue infringement claims against individual users of these systems. Here's one story from Cnet, and most news sources on the net have similar stories. http://news.com.com/2100-1027-998363.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed
The RIAA's latest Napster lawsuit is against the venture capitalistss who funded Napster. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-04-30-lawsuit-venture-capitalists_x. htm "The music industry's latest legal assault would push the boundaries of blame by holding investors liable for the actions of a company and its management.... If the music labels prevail, 'it could destroy the whole venture capital industry,' said J. William Gurley, a general partner at Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park." The idea that an investor's losses are limited to the amount of the investment is pretty fundamental to the working of western-style capitalism. The record industry's attack on this bedrock principle should produce some interesting reactions. In this case, the record industry is asking for the statutory $150,000 per song, so the damages would likely exceed the $95 billion sought in the Michigan Tech case -- possibly by orders of magnitude.
Well, they might be able to do this if they can show the investors "knowingly" invested in a criminal enterprise. But I think RIAA is going to work itself down to the NRA level of credibility if they pursue such a case. I suppose they still have a ways to go; the "Moral Majority" is definitely an even lower tier.
Wait. Even if they do, that means Bush can be sued for his Enron
investments ... awesome. Okay, well, I know that wouldn't really work out,
but it's a great thought.
According to this story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30522.html the RIAA has offered a settlement in the college student cases. The tab comes to $12,000 for one of the students, $15,000 for two of them, and $17,500 for the last. The money would be paid in installments over the next three years. It wasn't entirely clear to me from the story whether the settlement had been accepted or not, but given the fines that *could* be imposed on the students if they lose their cases I imagine they'll probably take it.
This morning's NY Times made it sound like the students had accepted the settlement.
That's too bad.
The New York Times carries an incindiary article in Sunday's editions:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/business/04MUSI.html
"Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy"
Or, as Slashdot titled it: "RIAA Plans Cyberwar Effort"
"Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant
online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing
of software programs that would sabotage the computer and
Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according
to industry executives."
...
"The covert campaign, parts of which may never be carried out because
they could be illegal under state and federal wiretap laws, is being
developed and tested by a cadre of small technology companies, the
executives said."
((Isn't the planning itself a criminal conspiracy?))
Techniques discussed include forcing PCs to lock themselves, deleting
user files, and denial-of-service network attacks.
The story is probably a leak from a record industry source who thinks
this program is a really, really bad idea.
but velly velly interesting
I think it was an article about KaZaa, a month ago, which got me to try it. Pretty interesting WWW site, there. I think I can find just about anything I'd want. Any software package (including operating systems), any song (except they didn't have any "Katie Geddes and the Usual Suspects" when I looked); I haven't looked for movies but I imagine they're out there, too. I really hadn't realized how easy it is to pirate stuff. KaZaa gives you points for letting other people download stuff from your computer. Is that how the kids at those colleges got into trouble, or were they actively going out and selling pirated stuff? The articles I've seen have been very vague about what they did.
Hah! The student at MTU, Joe Nievelt, admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay $12,000 anyway. So, to find out what he did, I googled his name. The #1 hit: http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/breaking/2002/codewin.html HOUGHTON--Michigan Tech undergraduate Joe Nievelt finished in the money last weekend at the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, held April 19-20 at MIT. The computer science sophomore took home $5,000 of the $150,000 purse for his fourth-place finish in his first visit to the national computer- code-writing contest. The competition began in February, with hundreds of college contestants participating at the regional level.
According to Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58351,00.html The students allegedly set up sites using the programs Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect, that, like the now-defunct Napster, indexed and executed searches for copyrighted songs on the closed networks. The RIAA charges that one network operator distributed 27,000 music files, while the other three students ran networks offering 500,000 music files, 650,000 files and over 1 million files.
re #61 - I haven't had any luck finding Katie Geddes either, nor George Bedard and the Kingpins ... I did manage to find some songs by Big Dave & the Ultrasonics once
John, you quote the Wired article: "The RIAA charges that one network operator distributed 27,000 music files...." If you run an index of files available through Microsoft file sharing on your local network, are you thus "distributing" those files?
Here's an ideological perspective on the filesharing wars: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-miller050603.asp The author believes that intellectual property rights must be protected and he raises the spectre of Communism.
re resp:65: I haven't asserted anything, one way or the other. I have tried to find out if any of those 4 college students were making money from what they're doing. There's not much information about that, it seems. There's really not much information at all.
More followup on JEP's resp:63:
I thought I'd find some stuff on the Phynd, Flatlan and Direct Connect
indexing programs on Google. The Phynd sites are gone,
though Google still has a cache of them.
The Flatlan site appears to have been seized by the RIAA.
It now contains the text:
"this site is no longer available. for more information on
respecting creativity, the copyright laws, and how to get
music legally go to http://www.musicunited.org"
(which is a record industry project)
The U.Maryland campus paper ran a story on Phynd about a year ago:
http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/2002/04/30/news9.html
Direct Connect's site is still up at http://www.neo-modus.com
Re #66: That's an interesting perspective, but I think it misses the point that the record lables drove people to this, in some ways. If you look at the file sharing networks, they started out as hard to use and they've only sort of gotten easier. They're still only at all feasible if you're on broadband, and even then getting what you want is usually pretty painful. Yes, some people will always use them because they're free, but I think a lot of people use them just because there's no reasonable alternative. If the record labels would stop being so stubborn about hanging on to their current distribution method of selling overpriced CDs and set up a credible online service, I think people would flock to it. To be credible, it would have to contain all of their catalog, or at least a large part of it, including "out of print works"; it would have to allow purchase of individual songs for a reasonable fee; and it would have to avoid using DRM schemes that prevent people from exercising their fair use rights. If I could get any music I wanted for, say, $0.99 per song, I'd never touch WinMX again.
"The record labels drove people to this." I'm afraid that seems to me like nonsense. What it really comes down to, is that it's cheaper and more convenient for people to download music from Kazaa than to buy it. As long as it's either cheaper, or more convenient, some people aren't going to pay. If it were cheaper and more convenient to steal Oldsmobiles, then people would do that. They'd justify it by saying that cars are too expensive, and car manufacturers ought to change the way they sell them, and anyway, "everyone else is doing it". I'm not pointing any fingers. As I said earlier, I've become very much fascinated by Kazaa over the past few weeks. I've downloaded much music, and much software. I wouldn't have bought any of it. I can say I'm not costing anyone any money. In two or three cases, I expect to go and find what I've downloaded and buy it, and without Kazaa I wouldn't have done so. I can even say Kazaa has made money for some of the people who produced what I've downloaded. It doesn't have anything to do with it at all. Someone produced some stuff for money, I obtained it without paying for it and without the consent of those who own the rights to it. Who knows? Maybe if I took a Mustang for a few weeks, I'd buy one of those. It's no justification. It's no justification, even if I think Mustangs are overpriced, or badly distributed.
I'm not saying it justifies it, but that the stubbornness of the record companies in sticking to an outmoded way of distributing music is part of the problem. I'm genuinely frustrated that I have to resort to pirating music because the record labels won't sell me some of what I want. Trying to make a profit off inetellectual property is one thing, but hoarding it and refusing to produce legitimate copies is another.
The problem is that I can buy music, and do. But what happens when I only want one song? If they still sold singles, I would buy those. I have piles of 45 records because I only wanted one song. I even have some cd/cassette singles in my collection because I wanted one song. But why should I buy a whole Tina Turner album just to get her version of "We don't need another hero" (which is unavailable, actually, on any of the albums I've seen for sale, and that's another problem... if the record company doesn't HAVE the album in print, even if I wanted to buy it, how can I find a copy?)
So while I can't actually download songs (my computer at work, which has the T1 connection, is firewalled so it's impossible to do that/my home computer is far far too slow to make it viable), I would LIKE to.
Part of the problem is that it's very easy to justify illegal copying, when the people you're hurting are really really big companies that sell a massively overpriced product and give a tiny percentage of the revenue to the artists. The record companies suck. They're not sympathetic victims. Hell, Microsoft is more sympathetic, because at least they treat their employees well.
Technology changes, and the music industry needs to change with it. I would also think some individual artists would start selling their music online.
They have been, actually.
... or giving it away, which they do too. In fact, several smaller
bands that I know of have given away all of their recorded material for
free, and some bigger artists have made internet-only albums which are also
free.
I have gotten artist-only things online (Dougie Maclean had some neat recordings of in-concert songs, but only did it the once, as far as I know), and of course, mp3.com has some nice things too.
Re #72: Twila, try getting a copy of the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack. It has Tina's version of the song, plus some other song she did for the movie.
This response has been erased.
Concerning the justification of illegal copying - long before the filesharing wars ever came up, I would photocopy entire books that I wanted but were out of print and unavailable used at other than extortionist prices, and considered myself fully justified in doing so, especially as I have always replaced them with legitimate copies if they've come back into print. Concerning the proposition that absence of copyright protection is "communist", it's been pointed out that perpetual copyright laws make the folk process illegal.
And folk music and communism are intimately related: the Weavers' blacklisting, the refusal of Republican administrations to allow Dick Gaughan into the USA, the founding of Topic Records as an outreach operation of the British Communist Party.
why blame republicans and not democrats?
I probably blame them about equally. Happy?
Bruce: Dick Gaughan was allowed into the US under the Carter and Clinton administrations; I saw him on tours in those years. He was not allowed in during the Reagan and Bush I years, and right now it looks like the Bush II administration doesn't want him in either. Gaughan is up front about his Communist political beliefs.
(I realize I should elaborate further for many of our readers. Dick Gaughan, mentioned in resp:83 & resp:85, is Scotland's finest man with a guitar, an active folk music performer for about 30 years. Gaughan's own comment on his barring from the US during the Reagan-Bush years: "The only time I'm a danger to America is when I forget what side of the road to drive on!")
I thought we had seen him during Bush II's presidency? (Gaughan, that is.)
Our democracy is so fragile, and communism is so powerful, that one communist folk singer could bring democracy crashing down?
I didnt know foreign performers were being banned because of their political beliefs.
I was cruising around the Internet, looking for marching music. I found a few CDs on http://www.sonymusicstore.com, adn so to find out how much one of them was, I clicked on the "Buy Now" icon. It took me to a screen full of new classical music. I stumbled around on that for a while, but was unable to find the label of the CD in which I'd been interested, let alone how to buy it. So there's one for the Napster/Kazaa users side, or at least for the argument that the music companies have to become a little easier to do business with. I was fully repelled by their system. Having found something I wanted, ready to reach for my credit card and get it right now, I was unable to place my order. They won't lose much if this sort of experience is confined to niche buyers like those who want marching music, but I'll bet it's a more general problem than that.
BTW, I bought MusicMatch Jukebox on recommendation from various people on M-Net. What a pleasure to use! I just got a new computer at work, and am putting all my marching music CDs on it. I play marching music as a noise buffer. With Real Jukebox a couple of years ago, I had to type in every song title, every composer, every album name. MusicMatch has all that information on-line for most of my CDs. I put in the disk, tell the program to record, and it saves it all to disk for me.
News clippings: Universal Music Group is piling on to a lawsuit against Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG); one of the five major labels in the RIAA is suing another, whee! Universal charges that by loaning money to Napster, BMG acquires liability for Napster's copyright violations, to the tune of $150,000 per song infringed, the statutory amount. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1001190.html?tag=fd_top As I mentioned in the previous link to an article about Universal and EMI suing Napster's venture capitalist investors, the copyright industry is now threatening fundamental principles of American capitalism by seeking to hold investors, and now those who loan money, liable for vast sums beyond the amount they have chosen to place at risk through investment and loans. Cnet's article says that Sony declined to join in the suit against BMG because Sony felt it would not go anywhere. ---- http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1000673.html "Hold technology creators liable?" by Declan McCullagh This is sort of a rambling piece, but McCullagh argues that in the recent decision on the file sharing networks Grokster and Morpheus, the courts seem to be backing away from the idea of holding the inventors of technology responsible for its uses. McCullagh also expects the copyright industry to start to push Congress to make the development or operation of P2P networks a crime. ((Can we put Bill Gates in jail? :) ))
Jon Newton's news & advocacy website http://www.p2pnet.net is back in business; updates to the site had stopped for several months while the owner relocated his family to Canada's Pacific coast. He's got a flurry of reports of legal action. The Ohio State University police department has seized five computers from dorm residents as part of an investigation of a file sharing system using Direct Connect, one of the software packages named in the recent RIAA civil actions: http://www.p2pnet.net/may03/bust.html German police raid the home of an individual alleged to be running an OpenNap "clone" of Napster. (I *think* OpenNap is a reverse- engineered version of the original Napster system.) The raid was requested by the IFPI, the international version of the RIAA. http://www.p2pnet.net/may03/openap.html Three college students in Sydney, Australia, have won the prosecution lottery. They have been accused of running "a Napster-like website" and this is a criminal case, not a civil one. The students face up to five years in jail, plus fines. Australia is also still contemplating legal action against the universities whose networks are used in file sharing. http://www.p2pnet.net/may03/aus.html http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591788418.html And one last one from fatchucks.com: The legal case against two young Koreans who ran a Napster-like file-trading system called Soribada have had their case thrown out by the court on procedural grounds. The court ruled that the prosecution had not adequately specified what the defendants did which was illegal. (Soribada means "Sea of Sound." I always liked that name.) http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200305/kt2003051517490512020.htm
All this is starting to sound like something out of "Fahrenheit 451."
Yep, and it's bound to get worse....:-(
Widely reported this weekend: Roxio, who bought the assets of Napster in the bankruptcy sale, are planning to buy Pressplay, one of the two music-industry-owned download sites, and rebrand it as Napster. ((Unless they convert to a licensing policy like Apple's, this will go nowhere fast, I predict. I suspect Roxio is way overestimating the value of the Napster brand, especially after it's been shut down for two years.))
Tower Records is in trouble again. The newspaper for their corporate hometown reports that they almost (?) missed a $5.2 million interest payment at the end of May, and an investment banker has been hired to try to sell the company, which is still owned by the family which founded it. Tower may be in jeopardy of a bond default which would trigger a bankruptcy filing; it has dodged bankruptcy three times in the last few years. A sale of Tower would probably mean a radical restructuring in how it works as a business. Tower's main market niche -- "we carry almost everything, especially in classical" -- has been pounded by the triple threat of Napster, Amazon, and the collapse of the demand for classical music CDs. One analyst seems to envision Tower becoming a clone of Borders. Others aren't sure that there is any future for any free-standing music retailer. http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/6693887p-7645325c.html I have to say that I was surprised (and sad) at how empty the two large Tower stores in New York were when I visited them last month. I also learned that Tower's freebie magazine PULSE has been terminated.
A NY Post business columnist speculates that MusicNet, the major label
download service which Roxio did NOT buy, is a good candidate to be
shut down by its owners. MusicNet has fewer customers than
the 50,000 attributed to PressPlay (soon to be named Napster), and its
software and licensing rules are considered more annoying.
Quote: "Pressplay is expected to relaunch under the Napster brand
sometime before next March, according to Roxio's CEO Chris
Gorog."
An early 2004 launch for Pay Napster would give Apple a bit more time
to set up iTunes for Windows.
> http://www.nypost.com/business/76099.htm
-----
Despite an 11% decline in their sales, the record company EMI had a
huge upturn in their profits: last year EMI reported a loss of 200 million
UK pounds, and this year they made a profit of 230 million pounds.
Converted to dollars, that's an improvement of well over $600 million.
To get back in the black, EMI dumped 400 artists and 1900 staffers.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/05/20/emi/index.html
from the last AP release I read, the media seems to be somewhat positive over Roxio's acquistion and the for pay Napster.
Kazaa expected that on Friday its software would become the most popular free download program in history, surpassing ICQ. Kazaa has been downloaded 230 million times, with 366,000 new downloads every *day*. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1009418.html
Borders is only semi-pathetic in classical, so a fate like that wouldn't be too terrible. But I'd be sad to see Tower get diminished. I just can't browse online retailers the way I can physical ones, and my CD-buying would likely diminish to things I _knew_ I was looking for. (Speaking of knowing what I'm looking for, has or has not Richard Thompson released a CD version of his "1000 years of popular music" show? I thought I'd read he had, but I can't find it on Amazon.)
((Digression which belongs in the "British Folk" item: "1000 Years" is going to be in the "fan club," self-released series, so it will not be available in conventional retail channels. The website http://www.richardthompson-music.com says "1000 Years" is available now at gigs and "soon" at the website.)) It's been interesting watching Thompson's new career moves. After his "Mock Tudor" album three years ago, he chose not to renew his deal with EMI/Capitol, explaining that a major-label deal was only worthwhile if the label could get your music played on the radio, and that just wasn't going to happen for him. In 2003, his new studio album "The Old Kit Bag" is marked as copyrighted by Richard Thompson, licensed to the labels Cooking Vinyl & SpinArt; and, at the same time, he's come out with *two* self-released fan-club albums.
News roundup after the holiday weekend: ZDnet.uk ran a story about relatively new & lesser known P2P systems eDonkey and BitTorrent. Some discussion of their technical tweaks. BitTorrent in particular is optimized for the distribution of large files, such as free Unix distributions, or movies. BayTSP, which looks at the Internet for the copyright holders, says eDonkey is passing Gnutella in popularity and is closing on KaZaa & the rest of the FastTrack system. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2135249,00.html Here's another summary story, somewhat amateurish but with some interesting links, about the BitTorrent system: http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/bittorrent.html ZDnet again: with a story about ISPs complaining about the bandwidth & costs of their file-sharing users. 60% of traffic at large ISPs is file sharing traffic, costing the ISPs a projected $1.3 billion for 2003. On the other hand, the file-sharing systems are what motivates most broadband customers. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-1009456.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/2940270.stm this is an article about how Matrix Reloaded is available via BitTorrent. This greatly increases the profile os BitTorrent.
"Digital piracy has become a real menace," he said. Despite the availability of pirate copies, The Matrix Reloaded has made more than $363.5m at the box office worldwide so far. " ..poor poor MPAA
... despite studies that show that Napster users bought MORE music than
non-Napster users ...
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I agree, anyone stealing porches probably has a house and a place to store the car. I would not steal porches if I had no house to attach them to.
Car theft doesn't pay well on the low end of the totem pole.
It just galls me, though, when people manage their business badly and
then blame something unrelated for the loss. Napster and it's clones isn't
the problem, and never has been.
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That's nuttin'. I just read an article that said Greese has outlawed ANY electronic games, including PC games! Their reasoning is that they can't control the contents of the games and that they're worried that games--any games--can be converted to gambling games.
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Re #111: I think that's a little out of date. I remember reading that they
backed it off to gambling games.
Start off with what seems like good news. The RIAA and some group of webcasters have negotiated new royalty rates for non-profit webcasters. All the articles say that payments should run between $200 and $500 per year, which should be managable for most small webcasters, and which is a huge improvement over the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars owed under the previous CARP scheme. My view is that the RIAA is finally waking up to the idea that killing off independent webcasting is a really bad idea. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59102,00.html ----- Appeals court declines to intervene in the RIAA vs. Verizon case. Verizon appears to have to give up the names of anyone the RIAA asks for, without any standard -of-evidence review. This is the latest installment in a long running case. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=2878846
Not to break the flow of of Ken's newsy posts, but I'd like to note something annoying I've seen in p2p file sharing: inaccurate, sometimes GROSSLY inaccurate naming of files, songs, and genres. Genres sometimes are debatable, but you see some really weird labels on some of the files, really. I've been on some Net radio stations and the DJ will name a song and just list the wrong artist because they were quoting the idiot they got it from on Kazaa. Copyright law can't possibly cover this, but it's got to be really frustrating to some well-known artists when file sharers can't even match them to their songs. Why get this information correct? Well, I think if you do, at least with RealOne player, you can pull up discographies and biographies on the artist. It would seem to me like a good case that file sharing could promote future sales. On to the usual programming-- this may be a blip on the radar screen...
With CDDB, there's little excuse for not naming your MP3 files properly when you rip them from CD.
I've heard that one reason for misnaming them is to hide them from the copyright owner.
I read or heard that also
Yep. One of my kids downloaded a bunch of essentally classic rock songs and all the titles were correct, but the artists name was not correct. I'm sure the reverse happens too.
When I downloaded "Harper Valley PTA" from Kazaa, I saw versions labeled as being by Dolly Parton and other prominent female country singers. It was really sung by Jeannie C. Riley, and I don't think it was ever done by anyone else.
Well, maybe not the original lyrics.
Re mislabeling artists, some years ago there was a fly-by-night classical label called Aries, which issued bootlegs of BBC house orchestra broadcast tapes, attributing the performances to fictitious conductors and ensembles, of which my favorite was the "Wales Symphony Orchestra" conducted by Colin Wilson. As most of the label's repertoire was contemporary works which had never been performed in public more than once, nobody was really fooled by this.
ReplayTV to forbid ad skipping By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 11/06/2003 at 08:48 GMT The single most distinguishing feature of ReplayTV, namely its ability to skip commercial propaganda automatically, will be dropped from the next line of DVR boxes, Reuters reports. "Due in August, the new ReplayTV 5500 series will remove the 'Commercial Advance' and 'Send Show' options present in models that are currently for sale," the wire service says. An impoverished US television broadcast industry had sued ReplayTV's former owner, SonicBlue, with piteous claims that allowing viewers to skip adverts would siphon off the media colossus' lifeblood and so destroy the artistic creativity for which it is so justly famous. The suit also decried the 'send show' feature, which broadcasters likened to a mechanism of mass piracy, though it is configured to allow ReplayTV users to send shows only to other ReplayTV users, and only one at a time. ReplayTV's new owner, Japanese outfit D&M Holdings, will not be altering the 'pause and resume' feature or preventing users from manually fast-forwarding through commercials. For now, the broadcast industry seems content to allow consumers to skip ads manually or, if they prefer, to leave the room while they're playing, though for how long is anyone's guess. (from http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31126.html)
Yeah but isnt that one of the main reasons to buy a replay TV or a Tivo or whatever?
There'll be a ROM upgrade out soon, I'm sure, that allows you to once
again skip commercials. If you buy black-market chips, that is.
I mentioned in an earlier piece that the previous owners of Replay TV, the Sonicblue company, had been much more willing to fight legal battles to defend innovative products. In the short term, expect to see the copyright industry with much more veto control on new products.
hacking tivo made one of the weekly news-mags recently.
If TiVo doesn't fall for this, they're going to run ReplayTV into the ground. One of these days the industry is going to take one of these concepts too far, and it's going to backfire, and the public is going to revolt with their wallets. This would have had such potential if hard-disk television was more popular.
Another article I've seen has suggested that stand-alone TiVo style boxes are dying anyway. They were never terribly popular because retail salespeople weren't good at articulating what the product was about, and now the same technology is being integrated into other products, like digital cable and satellite set-top boxes
Today we know what a chain of CD stores -- the largest in the country,
I think -- is worth: zero. Nothing. Nada.
"Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. said Monday it has shed its
troubled Musicland Group, turning it over to Sun Capital
Partners, a Florida-based private investment company...
"Sun Capital Partners PAID NO CASH but assumed all of Musicland's
liabilities including its lease obligations.
"Richfield-based Best Buy paid nearly $700 million for Minnetonka-
based Musicland two years ago, but the group failed to meet
Best Buy's expectations..."
((emphasis KRJ))
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?oldflok=FF-APO-1700&idq=/ff/
story/0001%2F20030616%2F110427528.htm&sc=1700&floc=NW_5-L7
(Sorry about the ugly URL, I'll look for a tidier one.)
Jeez. A $700 million investment wiped out in two years.
After this deal, I'll be surprised if the Tower Records chain, which
is also for sale, doesn't proceed to bankruptcy liquidation.
(I forgot this: "Musicland operates around 1,100 Media Play, Sam Goody and Suncoast stores around the country.")
Hadn't realised Media Play was owned by Best Buy. I wonder how this affects Best Buy's in-house CD operation.
Wow. That really does screw up even more possible in-store music buying for the public.
I wonder the same thing. Best Buy is miles ahead of places like WalMart for music selection, and strong on prices. It sounds like they might just feel that they can do fine in music on their own without extra market penetration. When you think about it, they owned a lot of their competition--they just weren't doing well enough to justify them to continue to own it, because Best Buy probably does fairly well on its own.
It occurs to me that TiVo might be the salvation of broadcast TV. If cable etc. gets "piracy protection" so that viewers cannot stream shows from one PVR to another, it will increase the audience for less-restricted fare. PVRs are already cutting into the potential market for video-on-demand, which is good; the fewer opportunities there are for distributors to get monopolies on ancillary services, the more they'll have to concentrate on content that people want.
I almost never shop at chain music stores these days because they rarely have the music I'm looking for. If I'm going to have to ask them to special-order something anyway, I might as well just buy it online and get it delivered to my doorstep.
As I have noted here before -- I occasionally buy CDs directly from musicians at concerts. Other than that, I don't think I've bought a new CD for myself in years. Prices like $18 just don't make any sense to me.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/5865 Senator endorses destroying computers of illegal downloaders By Ted Bridis, The Associated Press Jun 17 2003 3:04PM The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. The surprise remarks by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads. During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws. "No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't. "I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights." The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer." "If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said. "There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," said Hatch, who has earned royalties for composing music. A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, Jonathan Lamy, said Hatch was "apparently making a metaphorical point that if peer-to-peer networks don't take reasonable steps to prevent massive copyright infringement on the systems they create, Congress may be forced to consider stronger measures." The RIAA represents major music labels.
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How do they plan to 'damage' computers without invading the homes of the owners?
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And what ever happened to due process?
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Maybe less people are buying into TiVo because, with little thought, TiVo will think you are gay. (ps. don't TiVo King of Queens).
It took me several tries to figure out what #144 was talking about, but if I did manage to get it, that's pretty funny. :)
There have been articles about it. If you can find them, they're hysterical (like what happens when you try to convince your TiVo you aren't gay).
?
Sometimes it overcompensates. Here's the story: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1038261936872356908,00.html
It strikes me that these people care far too much what guesses a computer algorithm is making about what they'd like to see. They're acting as if it's another person they're trying to convince, instead of a mindless computer.
This should be about as popular as death: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31434.html Line'em up! RIAA to sue thousands By Ashlee Vance in San Francisco Posted: 25/06/2003 at 21:10 GMT The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has issued the biggest threat to date against online file-traders, saying it will sue thousands of individuals into submission. Starting Thursday, pigopolist grunts will begin combing P2P networks in search of industrious file traders. Once the RIAA has targeted a large store of copyrighted files, it will serve a subpoena on the user's ISP, grab his/her name and address, and fire off a lawsuit. "The RIAA expects to use the data it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement," the RIAA said in a statement. "The first round of suits could take place as early as mid-August." A pair of recent court rulings opened up this means of attack on file-traders. First, a Los Angeles judge in April said P2P service operators could not be held responsible for their users' actions. This decision blocked the RIAA from shutting down large chunks of the P2P community in one go - think Napster - and pushed them toward nailing individuals. More recently, the RIAA won another decision over Verizon, which gave it permission to see the name and address of the ISP's customers. Users face civil lawsuits, thousands of dollars in fines and even criminal prosecution. At least the legal action is a more civilized way of conducting business. Sending out fake files and having musicians swear at users are puerile forms of protest. For now, file traders should swap with caution. The RIAA plans to inject network scanning software out into the vast P2P world and track what files users are looking for and what they trade. If the RIAA bot spots an infringing song, it marks the date and time the file is accessed. It's unfortunate the government did not have such sophisticated tools when it was examining the music labels' pricing fixing scheme that pushed CD prices higher throughout the 1990s. Maybe then, the labels would been hit with something harder than a slap on the wrist. Time, perhaps, for a good old-fashioned consumer boycott?
Another, longer article about the same thing: http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman26_20030626.htm
Re #150, last sentence: Yes.
Oops, sorry, I duplicated the gist of David/gull's resp:150 when I rolled in the new quarterly incarnation of this item. I believe that there is a widespread misunderstanding of the Verizon case, including its citation in The Register's item above. It was not disputed that the RIAA could get the subscriber ID information of the Verizon customers who the RIAA believed to be infringing its copyrights; the dispute was over the mechanism to be used. Verizon wanted the RIAA to file a "John Doe" lawsuit against the user at the given IP address; this satisfied Verizon's desire to slow down the process to something it can afford, and offered judicial review of the case for privacy advocates. What the RIAA wanted (and got) was access to the "expedited subpoena" process spelled out in the DMCA. This doesn't make it any easier for the RIAA to file suit against P2P sharers; it does make it possible for the RIAA to send threatening letters to the users without suing them. The Verizon ruling may also allow the RIAA to shop for particularly unattractive defendants, and avoid the embarassment of suing cute 12-year-old girls, but that's not directly the issue.
Re #153: It's okay. More people will read the info in the new Agora.
You have several choices: