Grokster's President Talks About Court Win 135
An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Morpheus/Grokster trial is over, the heads of the various P2P services are hoisting their glasses in triumph. Ciarán Tannam interviews Grokster President Wayne Rosso to get his two cents on the verdict. Xolox also applauded the ruling and posted this release. Of course, it aint over yet as the RIAA has vowed appeal."
Grokster and stockholders. (Score:1, Interesting)
I have an Alpine CDA-7878 and an Alpine XM unit and a Panasonic Sirius unit, both with Terk antennas. The Alpine unit was connected to the head unit via an AiNet cable and the Sirius unit was connected with an auxiliary RCA adapter available from Alpine (KCA-121B). I had XM since it debuted and Sirius for a few months in the Pacific Northwest.
The bottom line, for those needing a quick answer, is Sirius is superior in sound quality, features(free streaming from their website!), and channel quality(better music, no commercials, better talk). XM has a few more channels that make very little difference to the end result (read on).
After careful review of both systems, Sirius came out the winnner, as I have said. The channels are laid out well, lack commercials, sound great, and are streamed on the internet. The only disadvantage of Sirius was its oft-sited lack of Nascar, which they seem to be trying to remedy. Also, XM has an extra comedy channel (it's boring, and features older, censored comedy), and a few more "experimental" music channels which most will find totally useless. Surfing XM for music is often like surfing the regular (terrestrial) radio in a large city-you get nothing but frustration. It's no wonder XM doesn't stream live on the net so that you can try before you buy. Also, XM's channel layout was unfriendly, in my opinion.
The next step is for the RIAA to start suing users (Score:5, Interesting)
I apologize for sounding selfish and I hope those who will bear the brunt of these lawsuits will forgive me. I must say that this is indeed a good thing. There will be an initial sacrifice on the part of The People in this case, but the long term result will be positive.
This eliminates the single point of failure we've seen with Napster. If these guys are forced to go after the users, it will take them a lot longer to accomplish their goals. Instead of taking a sledge hammer to a P2P network, they will be forced to chizel away, one scrape at a time. But there's still more.
The RIAA/MPAA/IP-Obsessed-Co. will spend bundles of money on these lawsuits. It is not cheap if you're the plaintiff. This increase in their costs will cause them to raise the prices of their product. Consumers will note this increase and more will resort to piracy. It's a feedback loop.
On top of that, the more frivilous lawsuits they engage in, the less favor they will hold with the courts. Like it or not, a judge's decision is influenced by his personal feelings. If you piss off the judge, expect him less likely to rule in your favor unless the letter of the law absolutely dictates it. Otherwise, many things are up to her interpretation. The more of a fuss the RI/MPAA make, they will be perceived more and more as a nuisance.
Of course, I could be totally wrong on this.
I'm happy ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Secondary to that I am also happy to see my favorite networks stay alive and running.
Re:apple music (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, what if the hackers who write exploits for script-kiddies could be prosecuted... er...
P2P systems and OSes are different animals--about as different as you can get when it comes to current-market software. Yes, there are some good uses to P2P--but the vast majority of their use is for copyright infringement. A reasonable case could be made for baning them because of this, and a reasonable case could be made for leaving them legal despite this.
Personally, I'm betting we'll have either a FCC or a Title 17 (copyright law) amendment to deal specifically with makers and users of P2P software. At least, we SHOULD have one, to decide where these buggers fall in the spectrum of legal software.
The RIAA has started a new tact: Targeting users! (Score:3, Interesting)
In otin ihuan in tonáltin nican tzonquíca. (Score:5, Interesting)
The president says, "Yes, now what?"
Oh, just the small detail that the evil entity hasn't been defeated yet and is now heading straight for Earth at a somewhat excessive speed. And you know what? I think the EVIL in that movie symbolized the RIAA. The Fifth Element symbolized freedom. And the whole This is a police alert; Put your hands in the yellow circles. thing symbolized the way WE are gonna live if things don't change... in apartments that look like some Industrial Zone in Doom II, with yellow circles and KEEP CLEAR painted on your wall, and police will look inside your apartment anytime they want and snatch you away in a body bag if someone so much as accuses you of a crime. Only in our REAL future, there won't be any Fifth Element to come along and rescue us. That's how things will be if organizations like the RIAA have their way. See my other posts about sheep, et cetera. It's just like the title of my post says...
Re:The next step is for the RIAA to start suing us (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I hope the rights are just GIVEN back to their rightful owners: the artists that made them!
Sales Figures and the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
The burden on the Apellant (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's get ONE thing perfectly straight here ... there WAS no trial! Grokster won it's case on a Motion for Summary Judgment. Basically, the court looked at the evidence submitted by the parties (who BOTH moved for summary judgment) and said "there are NO material facts in dispute, the only questions to be decided are questions of law, therefore, I can decide this suit WITHOUT a trial.
... Napster DID have control over their network and they COULD ban users engaged in copyright infringement. It is a matter of FACT that Napster turned a blind eye to rampant copyright infringement on their network when they had a (rather blunt-object sort of) means to control it.
... (cf, e.g., Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, many sci-fi fanfic authors). P2P means that people don't have to maintain crappy geocities websites to distribute their creative works for free if that's what floats their boat.
Why is this distinction important, you ask? The lawsuit was in FEDERAL court. The federal courts of appeal in the US are VERY deferential to the District Courts in deciding whether a summary judgment was the proper way to dispose of a case. The Court of Appeals will start from a presumption that the judge was RIGHT and the burden will be on the RIAA to prove that the judge was wrong on the LAW he followed in deciding the case. The burden is on the RIAA to show that the judge's decision was "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to the rule of law." This is an EXTREMELY heavy burden on an appellant, especially since the district judge's "Memorandum and Order" appears to be WELL supported by U.S. Supreme Court case law.
<rant>
To state the matter bluntly, the RIAA has throw a punch and drawn back a bloody stump for their effort. The fact that this has occurred in the entertainment industry's own back yard means that this case, when it is affirmed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, will establish a VERY important precedent (I would estimate that it will be at LEAST as important as the Betamax case) with regard to whether a technology should be suppressed because it CAN be used for copyright infringement. Napster was correct
Grokster, KaZAa, LimeWire, gnutella, etc., are the opening efforts at a very promising internet technology. P2P promises to make the distribution of FLOSS and independently published literature and art a routine matter. It is true that you can't make a profit on your work if you share it by P2P, but true artists often work for the love of the art
It is now and always HAS been my postition that I support strong copyright protection. After all, that's what keeps free (libre) software free. The FSF ACTIVELY enforces the copyrights assigned to it by various FLOSS authors.
Why the HELL isn't Hollywood willing to do the same when their copyrights are MUCH more valuable, from a financial point of view? One possibility is is that these highly profitable companies who, collectively, have more money than Bill Gates, would rather spend that money buying legislators who will pass laws shifting the cost of enforcing their property rights to the general public than spend it directly on legal fees (which are recoverable under copyright law).
A darker thought is that they want criminal penalties attached to any and ALL forms of copyright infringement fot the purpose of invoking the legal doctrin of "liability per se", which would award them a damned near automatic judgment against anyone convicted of a criminal copyright infringement, whether that is shipping MILLIONS of pirated CDs a week from your warehouse in Hong Kong or sharing a ripped mp3 file of a copyrighted work out to the internet.
The media conglomerates want to stomp out peer-to-peer because it threatens their stranglehold on the distribution of entertainment. More
Re:apple music (Score:3, Interesting)
offered != distribute
distribution has not completed until the file is on the receipients machine.
WE need record companies (Score:1, Interesting)
We do. Well, I do.
You can read Project Gutenberg and whatever other publishers agree with your personal vision of copyright protection. You can refuse to go to movies owned by mainstream studios or distributors, you can refuse to buy CDs published by mainstream record labels, and all of that is your choice and the best of luck to you. But I won't follow you in that, because...
Well, I've seen independent movies and mainstream ones, I've heard independent and mainstream music, and I know which one I prefer. And frankly, I've already read all the Project Gutenberg books that interest me for the moment.
So the question for me is, should I allow that preference to be overridden by some ideological feeling that I prefer one distribution model over another? In short: should I allow my own cultural consumption to be determined by something other than my own personal taste?
And the answer to that, the only answer that makes any sense intellectually, culturally or morally, is a heartfelt and full-throated NO.
There's a strange prevailing belief on
But - making culture available to the majority of the world's population who don't live in front of their computers - is that not a useful function? Finding and promoting talent, screening out tens of thousands of frankly untalented artists per year so I don't have to waste my life checking them all for myself - isn't that useful?
And you may not agree with their decisions in terms of what to promote, but the brutal fact is that the record companies live or die by the market, and if they choose to promote bands that nobody likes, they are the losers by it. And you may call J-Lo a "no-talent slutty girl", but several million CD buyers - people, that is, who are willing to back up their opinion with hard cash - say you're wrong.
And you may say their taste is defective and yours is educated, and you may well be right... but at that point I can just call you an elitist prig with no understanding of commerce, and dismiss you. Because in this sense, the market is absolutely democratic: your taste has no more weight than a 14-year-old boy's. In fact, with your stated behaviour, it has less weight. Because you've voluntarily made the quality of the art irrelevant to your "buying" decision: what matters to you is the distribution medium and mechanism. So why should the record companies waste their time considering you at all?
Removing yourself from the market means disenfranchising yourself. That's your decision. I won't follow it.
Central Point of Failure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do Grokster client have to route through the ad server before being allowed to operate normally? If so, then Grokster will lose the appeal as this is a central point of control. This will also demonstrate that, since the Grokster execs know that its service is being used to extensive copyright violations, the service operators can control who is allowed to use the service and eliminate those who violate copyrights.
If the clients are not required to pull ads for the normal course of operation, then the above doesn't apply. However (and I admittedly know nothing about Grokster), if Grokster is a for-profit company and makes money by selling ad space to users, and since the Grokster clients are closed source, I can't help but think that Grokster operates by requiring users to pull down ads from a central server in order to operate correctly.
Of course, the ad and spyware servers may not be hard coded in as a requirement for the P2P software to operate, and the P2P software may merely assume that the ad and spyware servers will not be firewalled off or otherwise blocked. If the operation of the software depends upon the ad and spyware servers being operational, then Grokster has already lost the appeal and will be guilty of contributory infringement just like Napster.