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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 134 responses total. |
krj
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response 107 of 134:
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Feb 23 19:44 UTC 2001 |
News item: "Next on record industry's hit list -- Napster clones"
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2689187,00.html
(or find it at http://www.mp3.com/news)
With the Court of Appeals ruling against Napster as a precedent,
the RIAA has fired off 60 legal notices to the ISPs of people who
are running "Open Napster" servers. Presumably this is the
DMCA "notice and take down" form letter, in which the ISP has to cut
off the user to protect its own immunity from copyright lawsuit.
What's not mentioned in the story, but what I think I remember from
the Scientology cases, is that the copyright holder has to follow
up with a lawsuit against the user within a short period of time,
or else the ISP and the user are free to continue as before.
The story mentions the difficulties with Open Napster servers located
outside the USA.
The RIAA's lawyer says they have ideas about how to attack Gnutella,
but he declined to discuss them.
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danr
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response 108 of 134:
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Feb 24 04:01 UTC 2001 |
Sounds like a losing battle to me. As soon as one program or service is
beaten down, two will spring up to take its place. And that's not even
taking into account websites outside the US.
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krj
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response 109 of 134:
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Mar 1 21:04 UTC 2001 |
Napster's next court date with Judge Marilyn Patel is tomorrow.
She's supposed to be working on the injunction to force Napster to
cease exchanging copyrighted material, under the direction she was
given by the appeals court panel. Does this mean Napster will shut
down tomorrow? Seems iffy, since Napster would probably appeal the
ruling just to play out the string. But don't be surprised if the
survival of Napster-as-we-know-it is measured in days or weeks.
Watch online news media for breaking reports of whatever happens.
Napster has urged its users to take its cause to Congress, and
in response the RIAA has been stocking up on Republican lobbyists.
Their most prominent signing is Bob Dole, and this one brings warmth
to my heart: I can think of no better Republican representative
of the Old Regime, the pre-Internet years, than Bob Dole, Yesterday's
Man.
The RIAA has also signed up Governor Marc Racicot, who is quoted in
a wide variety of news stories that he sees his role as
educating Congress as to the role of intellectual property.
He specifically names Sen. Orrin Hatch as someone who needs to be
educated; I hope Hatch, who co-authored the last major revision of
copyright law and who is also a independent songwriter in his spare
time, bops Racicot on the head. :)
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krj
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response 110 of 134:
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Mar 1 23:41 UTC 2001 |
This isn't directly a Napster-related news item but I'll stick it
in here anyway, since some of the players and arguments have figured
in the Napster arguments:
http://www.latimes.com/business/updates/lat_love010228.htm
Lead paragraphs: "Just as actress Olivia de Havilland brought down
the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s and outfielder Curt Flood
fought for free agency in baseball in the 1970s, rock star Courtney
Love is determined to radically redefine the nature of the music
recording business for the next century.
"Love is seeking to break her contract with Vivendi Universal, the
world's largest record conglomerate, and expose what she calls the
'unconscionable and unlawful' tactics of the major record labels."
Summarizing:
The basic argument seems to be that the standard record label
contract is a servitude-for-life kind of deal, and courts have
held those to be unreasonable.
California has a law which limits entertainment contracts to seven years,
but the law has never been tested in the music business.
The record companies have settled similar suits with other artists,
but Love has strong financial resources, since she controls the
Kurt Cobain estate, and she has already fired her previous attorney
for trying to settle the suit.
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mcnally
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response 111 of 134:
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Mar 2 00:23 UTC 2001 |
She may have a point. It's entirely possible that seven years exceeds
Courtney Love's life expectancy..
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krj
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response 112 of 134:
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Mar 2 01:23 UTC 2001 |
There was a similar suit filed within the last six months or so, and
my mind has gone vague on the details. It was by the leader/songwriter
of Foreigner, or some similar hard rock hair band of days gone by.
The plaintiff's argument went like this. Under the contract, he still owes
two albums to the record label. However, the label has lost all interest
in his style of music, which he admits is now out of fashion, and
so the label won't accept or release anything he turns in.
There is still a minority interest in his music,
and he would like to be free to look for an independent boutique
label or maybe market himself;
but the label refuses to release him.
So essentially he is in permanent bondage and can never earn money
through recording music again. He asks the court to terminate the
contract because it cannot be fulfilled. I've heard nothing further
about this.
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aaron
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response 113 of 134:
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Mar 2 16:55 UTC 2001 |
He should change his name to a symbol, and wait out his record contract.
It worked for Prince, sort of....
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krj
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response 114 of 134:
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Mar 2 21:00 UTC 2001 |
Breaking news items on today's court hearing: Judge Patel
"concluded the hearing by saying she will rule at an undisclosed
time." Napster says it will block one million songs from being
traded, starting this weekend, in an attempt to pacify the
record companies. (from www.sfgate.com)
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aaron
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response 115 of 134:
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Mar 2 21:19 UTC 2001 |
According to Britney Spears, there are nine million wonderful songs in
the world, so that doesn't seem too bad for Napster. <cough>
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scott
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response 116 of 134:
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Mar 2 22:21 UTC 2001 |
Aaron, do you have a cite for that "statistic"?
Seriously, it sounds like something which would be a pretty funny read. :)
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aaron
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response 117 of 134:
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Mar 2 22:38 UTC 2001 |
http://www.mtv.com/sendme.tin?page=/news/gallery/s/spears00_2/index3.htm
l
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aaron
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response 118 of 134:
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Mar 2 22:39 UTC 2001 |
(the "l" wrapped)
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scott
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response 119 of 134:
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Mar 2 23:01 UTC 2001 |
Amusing little interview:
"MTV: People always think, "Oh, this whole teen pop craze is
only going to last five minutes." How is it important
for you to show that that won't happen to you?
Britney: I think it really boils down to good music.
If you do that, I think you'll be around for a while."
Hee hee. :)
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krj
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response 120 of 134:
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Mar 3 02:23 UTC 2001 |
News media reports differ on whether Napster is going to block
"one million songs" or "one million file names;" the RIAA says that
one million file names could be as few as 100 songs, since the users
pick and mispell the file names as they wish.
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remmers
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response 121 of 134:
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Mar 3 18:19 UTC 2001 |
So presumably users could get around any blocking based on
file names, simply by renaming files. Is such an approach
likely to satisfy the court?
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scott
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response 122 of 134:
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Mar 3 18:28 UTC 2001 |
Dude! Heard the latest mp3 from Meta11ica? ;)
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krj
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response 123 of 134:
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Mar 3 22:12 UTC 2001 |
In the original preliminary injunction order from Judge Patel
last July, Napster was directed to halt all trading of copyrighted
material involving their service, even if it required Napster to
shut down.
In contrast, the directions of the appeals court seem to be saying
(this is based on press reports and fallible memory, remember)
that Napster has to stop the exchanging of copyrighted files to the
extent that their technology allows them to do so, while not
unreasonably hampering lawful file transfers. All Napster HQ
ever sees is the file names; the actual transfers of binary song
files take place directly between the users. So the file names
are all Napster Inc. has to work with.
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remmers
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response 124 of 134:
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Mar 4 14:38 UTC 2001 |
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
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mwg
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response 125 of 134:
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Mar 6 03:40 UTC 2001 |
Napster was supposedly going to install filters this weekend to cut down
on the copyrighted song traffic, statistics right now are: 2075980 songs
10350 users 8874GB of data.
So much for filtering.
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krj
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response 126 of 134:
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Mar 6 18:32 UTC 2001 |
Judge Patel's new injunction came out this morning. Reports on it
are in most online media sources. The New York Times and inside.com
have pretty opposite analyses of it.
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mcnally
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response 127 of 134:
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Mar 6 20:48 UTC 2001 |
regarding Napster song blocking, a friend sent me this..
> I love this idea, from a headline blurb on Slashdot. It can't see it
> holding up, but it's a truly inspired idea. :-)
>
>> AIMster is offering a Pig Latin encoder that will encrypt your mp3 titles.
>> They state that, under the DMCA, it would be illegal for the RIAA to
>> reverse engineer their encoding scheme and try and filter the encrypted
>> filenames from Napster.
I have to concur with his assessment that it's unlikely to prevent much of
an impediment to the RIAA, but I love the ironic angle..
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krj
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response 128 of 134:
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Mar 7 21:18 UTC 2001 |
remmers in resp:124 :: a good article on the injunction and what it
requires of Napster is at the Washington Post:
http://www.washtech.com/news/media/8141-1.html
My guess is that what happens is that the RIAA goes back before
Judge Patel in a week or two and says, this is not working.
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krj
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response 129 of 134:
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Mar 10 06:03 UTC 2001 |
"The Music Business Thinks Like Napster:"
Found at Borders tonight is a sampler from the Verve label's new
reissue program of old jazz classics: Ella, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie,
Antonio Carlos Jobim, and so forth. It's supposed to be free if
you buy one album from the series: but if you want to buy it on its
own, Borders will sell it to you for a penny.
So far, pretty standard promotional stuff. The twist: for your penny,
you get two identical CDs. "Music so good we made it twice,"
reads the package. "Keep one and pass it on!"
This is actually the second time I've heard of this gimmick, though
the first I've seen it in the store.
(Note to Twila: the package also says there is a bonus new Diana Krall
track in here, so you might want to scoop this up.)
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sspan
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response 130 of 134:
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Mar 14 02:07 UTC 2001 |
a penny for a new Diana Krall song? I'm there..:)
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krj
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response 131 of 134:
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Mar 14 17:41 UTC 2001 |
resp:128 :: I lost the news story where the record labels are complaining
that Napster is still allowing many song files to be traded.
The LA Times reports that Napster is asking Judge Patel to appoint
a technically competent monitor to verify that Napster is doing
everything possible to comply with the injunction crafted under the
guidance of the 9th circuit appeals panel.
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