The Thirtieth "Napsterization" Item

Oct 3 16:11 UTC 2007

The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use
peer-to-peer technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers
and networks give ordinary people unprecedented control over content,
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, music3
and music4 conferences, covering discussions all the way back to
the initial popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked
between the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

response 2 of 55:

Oct 7 04:39 UTC 2007

Trial over, defendent found liable.  $220,000 in damages.  News
coverage is everywhere so I won't bother with a link.
 
My view is that the trial turned on two things:
1)  The Kazaa user name reported by the record industry plaintiffs, 
    "tereastarr," matched numerous other online IDs used by the 
    defendant.
2)  The judge, after preparing an initial set of jury instructions
    that "making available" did not constitute infringement --
    the record companies needed to show that a copy had been made
    by a third party.   However, for reasons unknown, the judge
    reversed himself the next day and instructed that "making 
    available" would be sufficient to decide the case.  There is 
    fervent legal speculation that the RIAA got the judge to 
    make this switch by citing, as precedent,  a case which was 
    overturned two weeks ago, which dealt with this same 
    "making available" issue.

I had found a good blog posting summarizing the legal arguments over
"making available" but I lost it.  :(  

response 4 of 55:

Oct 8 23:09 UTC 2007

In the mean time, DRM seems to be on its way out in the music industry.
 Amazon.com has announced an online music service that sells tracks
packaged as ordinary 256kbps MP3 files.  And of course iTunes has been
selling some tracks in DRM-free versions for a while now.

Will the movie industry catch on that DRM doesn't prevent piracy and
annoys consumers, or are we in for a decade or so of fun and games
there, as well?  It's already creating difficulty for people who want to
time-shift HDTV programs.

response 6 of 55:

Oct 9 15:39 UTC 2007

The Motorola 6412?  It's among the better solutions currently available
although it has major issues; the software is notoriously buggy, the
capacity is woefully inadequate and cannot be upgraded, and it won't
work for certain types of content (like OnDemand, which is also pathetic
but for different reasons.)  It's also hard to skip commercials with it
(done on purpose) and the options for configuring recording are kinda
lame.  The only way to get content off it onto another storage medium is
Firewire and it's so irritating as to be barely usable and won't work
for protected content.

All of these problems could be solved by an open architecture and open
source software, but of course that can't be allowed.