RIAA To Stop Prosecuting Individual File Sharers 619
debatem1 writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign." An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
File sharing isn't illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is absolutely nothing "illegal" about using bittorrent to download the latest linux distro or open office release.
But they want to tar every use with the same brush so they can stamp it out completely because it CAN be used in a naughty manner.
A bread knife CAN be used to kill someone but that's not what it was designed for.
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which leads me to ask - what would entice an ISP to follow the RIAA's 'suggestions'? Very few of them have anything to do with the entertainment industry directly. And I believe the DMCA renders immunity to anyone acting as an ISP/gateway IIRC. On the other hand, you have a paying customer.
It would help to know what weapon an opponent such as this is going to use.
Still targetting individuals? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Single song downloads (Score:5, Interesting)
500 million albums
844 million singles
==================
1344 million sales in 2007 >>> 656 million in 2003. Someone at RIAA needs help with math. Yes more singles sold mean less money, but it also means more happy customers which builds long-term income over the next decade.
Re:Single song downloads (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't panic. (Score:5, Interesting)
So the RIAA is offering to "work with ISPs." From the sound of it, what they want is for the ISPs to do a lot of work monitoring users, and take a serious public-relations risk for banning them. If I ran an ISP, I would not exactly be falling over myself to embrace those new headaches.
What's in it for the ISPs? If the RIAA is offering a carrot, then the size of the carrot is limited by the ever-diminishing money the RIAA has to offer. If they're trying to threaten with a stick, they're relying on either regulation, lobbying, or lawsuits -- in all three arenas, ISPs are more than a match for them in terms of money and influence.
The more I think about it, the more I realize this is just a face-saving tactic, and the "cooperative relationship" can't last because it's contrary to the ISPs best interests.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Interesting)
What's in it for the ISPs? If the RIAA is offering a carrot, then the size of the carrot is limited by the ever-diminishing money the RIAA has to offer.
Not necessarily.
The carrot could be the ISP's right to manipulate their user's traffic in other ways that make them money. If the RIAA can help them legitimize selective traffic management, then ISPs can start signing agreements with content providers.
Given the reputation that the RIAA has built themselves with the lawsuits, I'm a little skeptical of their ability to help the ISPs legitimize anything, but if it succeeded it could be a big moneymaker for the ISPs.
There may be other, less obvious, benefits to ISPs as well.
We need net neutrality legislation to ensure that the ISPs can't do any of this.
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but music files are relatively extremely small these day compared to video.
But I would be willing to bet that a majority of movie pirates also pirate music. It doesn't matter to the ISP why they kick them off; it reduces bandwidth consumed either way.
ISPs won't bite (Score:3, Interesting)
"You failed to notify your customers that we knew they're stealing. So now, it's your fault."
I'm willing to bet more than a few ISPs will worry about this possible outcome.
Re:More misinformation. (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't really care if you share that AC-DC file, you can sample it from the radio (they've been pushing the hell out of AC-DCs latest album). It's their competetion's tunes, the indies, who don't have access to the radio that they don't want you to share.
It's not about piracy, it's about crushing the competetion.
affect on universities? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:4, Interesting)
And as more and more users become interested in mass streaming media, a less restrictive ISP will suddenly show up and steal all their customers away.
It's bandwidth. Bandwidth is relatively cheap - what Comcast users are allocated in a month, most servers push out in a single day, yet my cable bill costs more than any one of my servers.
The infrastructure is already there, and much of it was built with government funds anyway. With deregulation and all that fun stuff, there is a lot of room for a new player to join the game, with a slightly less greedy image and a whole lotta more intertube goodness. In reality, these cheap alternatives already exist in many areas, they just don't advertise because, well, I don't expect the cable company to give good ad rates to its competitors... but they exist, and while some of them suck, a lot of them are far more generous than their colossal adversaries.
It's worse than that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did they finally get some legal advice? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, their current methods have apparently atleast been in breach of investigative laws in several states and they may still end up in mess because of it, but ending the thing will atleast lessen the exposure..
Alternative explanation is that they have actually understood that extortion is bad.. nah.. not likely.
No -- look at the actual wording: "...working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users"
Note that's not "repeated illegal downloaders", it's repeated users of file-sharing services, whether legal or not. It means that they've learned that they can't get their way via the courts, so now they want the right to get their way without having to go through the courts. This is a bad development.
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
And as more and more users become interested in mass streaming media, a less restrictive ISP will suddenly show up and steal all their customers away.
It's bandwidth. Bandwidth is relatively cheap - what Comcast users are allocated in a month, most servers push out in a single day, yet my cable bill costs more than any one of my servers.
The infrastructure is already there, and much of it was built with government funds anyway.
... and completely controlled (largely) by a duopoly: either the telephone or cable company.
There is no real competition in most areas. I hate Comcast (my local cable company) and Qwest (my local phone company) with a passion. Where I live, there are exactly three choices: those two companies and Clearwire's WiMAX (who.. guess what? Comcast has a small stake in).
This is exactly why the "network neutrality" crowd is yelling. The vast majority of customers have no choice.
Unless you believe "choice" in the context of most former Soviet voting system's "choices".
Mod parent UP (Score:3, Interesting)
The RIAA is not stupid.
I repeat: the RIAA is not stupid.
Their assault on technology is not the result of misguided or clueless decision makers.
Their assault on technology has gone beyond being attributed to ignorance. Too many people have explained (publically and, privately, to them) what's up.
This is malice. I believe malice is an acceptable response.
Re:Film and TV producers also call for action (Score:5, Interesting)
I know four languages, and I found that every language has its own nuances of meanings that you simply can't express in other languages. Air in French does not mean the same as air in English. It has other associations to it. The nice thing about everybody in Luxemburg speaking at least four languages, is that you can use them all in conversation. This greatly enhances the depth and detail of it. Which is a very beautiful thing. You should try it.
So the only reason you expect it to be English, is that you are arrogant. Wanna know who else behaves like this? The french.
And the Germans would be too, if not for the fear of still being called a Nazi, when it was not them but their grandparents who did it.
Did you know that the USA nearly voted for German as their main language? And now Spanish becomes more and more dominant too. From your point (USA I guess) nearly everybody south of you speaks Spanish. In Africa tons of people speak French. In the middle east, Arabic is an international language too. And don't let me get started about China owning the USA and them being able to quickly assimilate other cultures. I already have to go to Chinese (eg. tudou.com) sites for some stuff.
If you come to my country, learn my fuckin' language! What would you think, if I came to the USA or UK, and *expected* you to speak German (or Luxemburgish, which happens to be my mother's tongue)?
Your arrogance disgusts me. It's always English, English, English!
P.S.: I just found out a nice way to turn a seemingly trollish post into a more nice post: Put the first invert the order of the paragraphs. That way those with the most anger come last. ;) Oh, and my reaction is the reaction you could expect from a large part of the Europeans. You not liking it does not make it a troll. You're supposed to not like it. ;)
Re:Outside (Score:5, Interesting)
So, they're going to try running their extortions entirely outside the courts now? This'll be a good test of the ISPs.
Test Case: Subscriber gets cut off and sues the RIAA for tortious interference with contract.
The RIAA is now forced to prove, in front of a Judge, that they are not making "false claims and accusations" in order to induce your ISP to breach your contract. Now the RIAA is right back where they've started: in a civil trial with the same quality of evidence that isn't worth jack diddly in court.
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
Use the Macrovision technology where the audio is distorted in a way which is not detectable by the human ear, but by which trying to feed the audio out signal into a CD record/computer results in a useless copy.
That's not how Macrovision works, and I don't think what you describe is possible.
Re:NewYorkCountyLawyer (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering how our friend NewYorkCountyLawyer feels, waking up to discover the legal war is over? Or is it? We're all suspicious of the RIAA but my mind harkens back to the pictures of the liberation of Paris in World War II. Wonder if NYCL feels that way?
Well my initial reaction is this:
If it's true... it's about time. Meanwhile, what about the unfortunates who are presently entangled already in these unjust lawsuits? Why won't the RIAA drop those cases too? If it was bad business to start them, why isn't it bad business to keep on throwing good money after bad? I hope consumers will remember this 5 1/2-year reign of terror, and will shun RIAA products, and I hope the legal profession will place a black mark next to the names of those "lawyers" who participated in this foul calumny.
If I have any additional thoughts I'll be appending them here [blogspot.com] in my "Editor's note".
Re:3-Strike Law coming soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you believe "choice" in the context of most former Soviet voting system's "choices".
I dunno. Your description of the situation where you hate all 3 (Comcast/Quest/Comcast Jr) seems to mirror the AMERICAN voting system's choices...
Re:Don't panic. (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't even have to be sharing anything, since an IP on a tracker means nothing: [torrentfreak.com]
However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.
Gagh! "Raising Public Awareness" My Butt! (Score:4, Interesting)
What's really happened is a happy confluence of internal corporate reality, legal reverses, new political calculations, technological innovation, and irreversible shifts in consumer behavior.
The internal corporate reality is that the old, hard-liner Baby Boomers have seen the writing on the wall and taken early retirement to spend more time with their families and write their memoirs, or they have been sacked for year after year of plummeting revenues. They have been replaced with Gen X or near-Gen X people and younger who are not deaf to the scorn of their peers nor to the trends in technology and music consumption.
The legal reverses include losing individual cases and having entire methodologies banned by the courts, but what's perhaps worse is that defeating the RIAA has become a teaching exercise for entire law schools. When future generations of lawyers are being trained to fight evil with your organization as the EVIL, you know this particular strategy is in trouble.
The new political calculations are what others have mentioned and discussed here, that they're now pinning their hopes on winning the debate over net neutrality. But they don't have a good shot at that because too many other players' interests, players who are much bigger and richer than the RIAA, are aligned against them. Never mind the consumers, since they never count for the people like those in the RIAA who like to play like they're Masters of the Universe.
Technological innovation continues, well, at least in the forms in which people use it to access music. iTunes is the model now for how people get new music. CDs? Please. Downloads in all their forms are the way anyone under 35 now gets their music. Artists may be in the music business, but the RIAA is in the CD business. The RIAA would have as much luck trying to force everyone to go back to 8-track as trying to force them to go back to CDs.
Consumer behavior has irreversibly shifted against the RIAA. As others have pointed out, the cartel made sense when it was hard to produce professional sounding music and difficult to distribute it. Both those barriers have been almost totally eliminated. Musicians can do it all themselves now, and fans can find them through so many channels like Facebook, etc. that are outside the control of the cartel. But it's not just the How and Where that have escaped the cartel's control, it's also the What. The average band and average fan have a wealth of indy music to sample and find influences in that is beyond the wildest dreams of those brought up under the tyranny of the old cartel system. And they have found the quality of the stuff out there to be much higher than the synth-pop that cartel-produced music ultimately devolved into.
So the RIAA is the walking dead. The record stores like Tower Records have already gone. The parlor game now is to guess how much longer the RIAA needs to bleed before they implode entirely. Their abandonment of the legal strategy is a strong indication that we don't have much longer to wait. If this recession/depression lasts longer than 6 months, the RIAA will not survive the year.
Re:Did they finally get some legal advice? (Score:3, Interesting)
I prefer it. I am in my 40's and grew up in the 80's. Piracy was rampant among the geeks then. In the 90's more so. Then the kids that only remember a world of the Internet. Do you really believe that they consider making a digital copy of a file is a crime? That it robs somebody? Remember these kids will be Judges and Lawmakers someday. No matter how much money the RIAA throws at it, it won't help in the long run.
Button makers had a monopoly at one time. Can you imagine that, buttons that go for 5 cents each now. Can you see someone approaching a Senator now and offering a suitcase full of money to write legislation protecting Taylors and button makers? I am sure they would love to take the money, but they just could not write the legislation. No one would take it seriously, no one would follow the law, and yes, they would even be voted out of office.
I think the same holds true for trying to make digital copies go away. The price for digital copies wants to be very cheap...or free. No amount of laws that they can buy now will stop that.
Even the older folks are on board with this. I did virus removal for Symantec back in 2004. I can't begin to tell you how many old ladies in their 60's and 70's had Kazaa and Limewire running at startup on their computer. I would ask them to disable it as we were troubleshooting and they would complain that they did not want it stopped. That was how they got their music. I had to explain that it was just temporary till we could isolate the problem. Trust me, the RIAA has an uphill battle. Enough people feel that "steeling music" by downloading MP3's is about as wrong as jaywalking that piracy will not go away. It has taken them a better part of a decade to realize that suing their best customers was NOT a good business decision.
They don't have enough money to give away to keep the politicians happy. Everyone depends on the Internet now. 3 strikes and no Internet will cause problems. To many people NEED the Internet. Piracy will not stop, making ISP cops will not help. Ways to hid traffic will become more sophisticated. It will cost more for ISPs to try and monitor. They will not be making money on it. The old fashioned music media is a dead man walking and their grasp is getting shorter and shorter.
Re:Film and TV producers also call for action (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a linguist myself; I can appreciate the subtleties and nuances implied between different languages. There's nothing quite like cursing in German or having that certain, je ne sais crois... savoire faire of speaking in French. However, I can understand the desire for standardization of language. Do you know how many languages and dialects there are in the world? It would be better if people could understand each other without having to learn every single language, dialect, nuance.... heck, people who speak English can sometimes have a hard enough time understanding each other (Louisiana, anyone?).
The reason people consider English to be a good language for standardization does have to do with it being widespread, and sure, some people are Anglocentric, but more particularly, English has the largest lexicon of any language. Hence, it is the best language and most common language for law, because it can be so much more specific than other languages like Japanese where up to 80% of the meaning of a sentence has to be derived from what isn't expressed. English is also the language of business, for similar reasons. It's tremendously difficult to learn, but it is considered to be the best way to express specific concepts and ideas because of our large lexicon. You might claim "air" in English doesn't have the same meanings that it does in French (which I would disagree - Oxford English Dictionary provides over 40 definitions for the word "air" [no citation - subscription required]), but even assuming all 40+ of those definitions don't quite capture the same meaning, you better believe there are a number of other words that would capture that meaning: "countenance", for example. English is a synonymous language, and considering it has the largest vocabulary, it makes it much more suited for universalization than any other language.
Therefore, don't assume everyone is Anglocentric, you insensitive clod!
P.S. - WTF are you talking about, China owning the U.S.? You totally shot all your credibility with that wild accusation, bud. The U.S. would do just fine with its own manufacturing, but isolationism ended back in the '40s. Globalization doesn't imply a country "owns" another one.
Re:Agreed. This is terrible news (Score:4, Interesting)
Won't matter in the long run. They can't stop the sharing no matter what they do. But they can keep making life difficult until the public comes to realize sharing is impossible to control and instantly dismisses these ridiculous attempts to do so. That may be a long time. After more than a century, we're still trying to beat down Creationism.
They've tried technological and legal solutions. They've tried appeals to morals and ethics (think of the starving artists), but they've undercut themselves mightily on that one. You can't outlaw or DRM gravity. It's hard enough to lock things up, let alone ideas. Might as well try to stop thinking from happening. Prohibition is a good example. No matter how tightly the law policed the borders to stop imports of alcohol, patrolled the countryside to stop domestic production or make sure it was being denatured, it was just too easy to rig up a still and make your own. Brewing isn't hard. Sharing data is much, much easier than brewing. Even if they manage to restrict all hardware to that with built in, functioning DRM, it will be like stills: always easy to rig up a bootleg machine without the restrictions. Drinking can be bad for health. It can even be, sometimes, good for health. Sharing is a far healthier and more necessary activity. To progress, we need sharing. That's what the patent system was supposed to encourage. Copyright is a little different-- it focuses on encouraging production rather than the sharing of ideas. Apparently sharing was expected to be so easily accomplished once copyright expired that they didn't think to provide provisions in copyright law to help sharing along, such as funds for public libraries. At least, I'm not aware of any such provisions.
Might as well try to outlaw or control the ultimate in sharing: sex. We already have those ridiculous Monsanto cases over patented varieties of corn just doing what comes naturally and spreading into fields owned by farmers who haven't paid. What happens when we advance to the point we can genetically modify ourselves? Will our modified children have to get permission from and make payments to the biotech company to marry and have children? Would any society submit to such a thing? The RIAA's views don't have a prayer, let alone make sense.
Re:Film and TV producers also call for action (Score:2, Interesting)
Its great fun to be in a location where just being there means you're learning something new. I just love to learn and book my vacations based on that. The upside is that I can now order a beer in a lot of places around the world.
Re:Single song downloads (Score:4, Interesting)
The multimedia corporations are out to destroy a competing system. Otherwise why go to the trouble to alienate your base? Filesharing does a complete endrun around them and they don't like it. And like any major threat those corporations are reacting accordingly. They can't buy or control it themselves so as a group, this time hiding under a shell name RIAA, MPAA, etc (you know conspiracy), have government control or destroy it.
You got it. Unfortunately for them, however, I think they've become obsolete, now that any kid with a video cam can make a film or tv show and get worldwide exposure, and any musician can reach the world with his or her music. So all their attempts at buying or controlling it or otherwise stuffing it back in the bottle, are futile.
Just look for the Chinese restaurants (Score:5, Interesting)
You say,
I say, "Just look for the Chinese restaurants." No, really, I'm being serious -- I've done some globetrotting, and everywhere I've gone, I've found Chinese restaurants. It's kinda funny, really, when even on remote tiny non-touristy islands in the Spanish-speaking part of the Caribbean, or on the tiny islands of the Pacific Northwest, you can find at least one Chinese restaurant somewhere.
This reminds me of a true story of a friend of mine. He's an interesting bloke -- his dad sounds like the punchline to a weird joke, as an Iraqi Jew living in Singapore and running a Cajun pork BBQ restaurant...
But anyway, let's call my friend Andy. He grew up partly in China, and speaks fluent Chinese and English. He was in Mexico City visiting some friends, and was walking across part of town to visit some other friends for a party. Only he'd gotten lost, and didn't speak a lick of Spanish. So what does he do? He finds the local Chinese restaurant. He walked up to the counter and asked, in flawless Chinese, how to get to XYZ address.
The Chinese proprietor and cash register girl just stood their with their mouths wide open for a moment, before finally getting out, "Why are you speaking Chinese to us?" To which Andy replied, "Because I don't speak Spanish." "Oh. Well, you take a right here and a left there..."
So seriously, knowing Chinese could also be extremely useful for international travelers. If you ever get lost, just find the local Chinese restaurant.
Cheers,