response 81 of 163:

Jan 30 15:44 UTC 2003

More published rumblings suggesting that prosecutions for peer-to-peer 
filesharing users are looming.   The last such rumblings promised 
prosecutions last year; my own feeling is that the Feds have enough 
on their plate, with the FBI closing numerous scattered office to 
try to gather manpower to use against suspected terrorists. 
 
Declan McCullagh writes about the possibility that someone is going
to "win" the prosecution lottery.  He writes that the No Electronic
Theft act has yet to be used against file-sharers, despite the fact
that it was crafted for precisely this sort of situation.
Declan cites just two convictions under this act so far, both 
for posting software or movies to web sites.  He says the copyright 
industry is continuing to increase pressure on the government to 
prosecute some people.
 
   "The New Jailbird Jingle"
   http://news.com.com/2010-1071-982121.html

Business Week writes about the threat of such prosecutions.
They point out that it would really piss off a lot of consumers.

   http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2003/nf20030127_9897.htm

Finally, a short detour into paranoid speculation land.  
Hilary Rosen, the departing RIAA leader and spokesperson, was a 
favorite target for vilification over the last three years.  Press reports
say she did not expect this and was hurt by it, since business lobbyists 
are usually invisible and the Napster war had not erupted when Rosen took
the RIAA job.

Some of the profiles written on Rosen's departure paint
her as a moderate, trying to drag her employers, the major music companies,
into the Internet Age.  So here's my paranoid speculation: Did Rosen 
quit now because she knew prosecutions were coming up fast, and she 
didn't want to be at the center of the firestorm?

response 83 of 163:

Jan 30 22:13 UTC 2003

As can M-net user postings before 1 March 1989...  Hmmm.  bet that would piss
off a few people...

response 85 of 163:

Jan 31 03:49 UTC 2003

Well, it was specified that only those items lacking copyright notices were
affected.

response 87 of 163:

Feb 2 18:13 UTC 2003

Salon runs an essay by a board member of NARAS, the National Association
of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization which gives out the 
Grammy Awards.   The author, John Snyder, is president of a small
record label I have never heard of before, and the intro says he 
has been nominated for a Grammy Award 32 times.
 
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/01/file_trading_manifesto/?x
"Embrace File Sharing or Die"

This is a long essay which was written to convince the NARAS board that
it needs to stop supporting the RIAA positions on file sharing.
Much of this will be familiar from this series of web log items.
 
From the introduction:
   "The statistic discussed in the December meeting that there were 3 billion
downloads the previous month shows that the law is goign to have to be 
changed, unless you take the position that downloaded music is stealing
and THEREBY CRIMINALIZE THE SOCIETY ((emphasis KRJ)).  But how can 
50 million people (over 200 million worldwide) be wrong?"

from the middle...
   "Why is it that record companies pay dearly for radio play and 
fight Internet play? ... If we look at the Internet as analogous 
to radio, the problem becomes one of performance rights, not one of
unlawful exploitation of intellectual property."

   "If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble.
If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it.  Daniel Bedingfeld
recently had a Top 3 song on the radio, with "Gotta Get Thru This."
However, his music was hardly available on any of the P2P networks.
His record lasted on the Billboard Top 200 for less than a month, even
though the single had been on radio playlists all over the country 
for several months."  The authors compare this with Eminem, whose 
2002 was both widely downloaded, and the top selling album of the year.
"This seems to indicated the opposite of what the RIAA would have yhou 
believe.  When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less."

and from the Conclusion:
   "((The RIAA)) is leading us over a cliff.  The RIAA has staked out a
position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist.
Their interests and the interests of NARAS are not the same. ...
They cling unsuccessfully to the past rather than embrace the stunning 
opportunities offered by the future. ...  It is one thing to be unsuccessful,
it's one thing to argue a bad position, but it's quite another to be 
silly and laughed at, and that's where the RIAA has ended up.
They appear to be totally irrelevant except as bagmen."

response 89 of 163:

Feb 2 21:17 UTC 2003

((I misspelled the name of the artist cited in resp:87; it's 
Daniel Bedingfield.  He's the guy who the Snyders say had radio chart 
action for  months, though his CD sank right off the Billboard 200.
The Snyders say you can hardly find his stuff on P2P networks.
 
I ran a Google search on him, and it looks like his major label 
gotten him stuffed into every music portal site they could find.
But press coverage is minimal, and there is no sign that he has
any fans....   So from here it looks like his record company bought
his radio exposure, but no listeners seem to give a hoot about him,
which is why his music isn't being traded, and why his CD sank rapidly
after release.))
 
((Of course sales aren't everything: Richard Thompson's 1971 debut
solo album was cited as the lowest selling release in the history
of his record company...))

response 91 of 163:

Feb 2 22:21 UTC 2003

  That's the contention..  It's almost certainly possible to buy your way
  to the top of the singles charts these days, though it takes a very large
  amount of money to do so..

response 93 of 163:

Feb 7 05:24 UTC 2003

It looks like the copyright holders have ratcheted up the legal
arm-twisting on IRC networks.  DALnet (the IRC network where I 
used to hang out in #ecto and #indigo-girls) has announced that 
it will start squashing channels whose primary purpose is to 
facilitate file trading.

The DALnet news coverage didn't say anything about what motivated
DALnet's new policy.  Slashdot points to a statement from 
irc-chat.net (a network I haven't heard of) which says that
(krj's interpretation) after serious legal threats from the MPAA, 
the network operators will now comply with expedited DMCA subpoenas
and hand over contact info on IRC users to the copyright holders. 

   http://chat.irc-chat.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26

The timing makes me guess that the MPAA is citing the Verizon
ruling as precedent when it approaches the IRC network operators.

response 95 of 163:

Feb 18 18:12 UTC 2003

The RIAA and MPAA are making threatening noises towards large corporations
 -- specifically the Fortune 1000.  They have sent a mailing warning
corporations of their legal liabilities if the corporations do not
suppress the use and trading of unauthorized copies of songs and 
movies on their computers and networks,
and they are suggesting that the corporations begin auditing staff 
computers and disciplining employees.    The unspoken threat is that
corporations which do not adopt such policies will face whopping 
copyright infringement suits.
 
This story was widely reported, here's a few links:

http://www.billboard.com/billboard/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id
=1817612
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984548.html

-----

Meanwhile, in Australia, the music industry has moved to direct action 
against two students who appear to have had a web page offering MP3
files, and the industry is in court demanding access to the students'
email accounts as evidence.
 
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/Sci_Tech/story_46014.asp

response 97 of 163:

Feb 21 05:45 UTC 2003

I had thought this was a mis-reporting of the case against two
Australian students which I cited in resp:95 :: however, the 
followup discussion on Slashdot indicates that no, the 
story is written correctly. 
 
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/18/1045330603596.html
 
"Recording companies have asked the Federal Court to allow 
their computer experts to scan all computers at the 
University of Melbourne for sound files and email accounts, so
they can gather evidence of claimed widespread breaches of 
copyright."
 
In the followup discussion, an employee of another Australian
computer reported that their machine was scanned as part 
of a dragnet for MP3 files.

response 99 of 163:

Feb 24 07:42 UTC 2003

This isn't attributed to a verifiable industry source, but it's
the first printed report I've seen on CD sales so far in 2003:
down 14.5% for the year-to-date so far compared with last year's
sales.   If that number is accurate, it says that the falloff 
in CD sales is accelerating.

The source is the Seattle Times Grammy awards preview:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/134638870_grammys23
.html

response 101 of 163:

Feb 24 22:33 UTC 2003

One hopes that the decline is largely the likes of NSync and Britney.
It might prompt the business to find some good music for a change.

response 103 of 163:

Feb 25 07:21 UTC 2003

More campus news, not exactly music but certainly appropriate - 
Stanford's on-campus video rental store is closing down.  So many 
students own DVDs now, informal lending among them is so high, and 
they're so easy to rip and burn copies of - seniors report a complete 
change from when they were freshmen - that the video store is obsolete.

Not being plugged into the student trading market, and having 
absolutely no patience (or bandwidth) for online downloading, I wonder 
how I'll see movies at home if rental outlets continue to disappear.

response 105 of 163:

Feb 25 14:25 UTC 2003

I thought it was fairly easy to copy a video casette.  Maybe the students are
just so rich now that they are all buying their movies instead of renting.