The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead 542
The RIAA's new plan to enlist ISPs in its war on file sharing, once it announced it was calling a halt to new consumer lawsuits, is running into rough sledding. Wired reports on the continuing legal murkiness of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law. And one small ISP in Louisiana asks the recording organization, "You want me to police your intellectual property? What's your billing address?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Viable business model? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good. I have a very hard time understanding the people who work for the RIAA and sue people for a living.
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there that much recorded music in the world?
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:3, Interesting)
Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.
If was only one song, rather than 1/3 - 1/2 of the traffic on the internet, I would see your point. As a legal user of P2P, and as a PC gamer (linux only, though), I really hate all the copyright infringements going on. I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.
The only up is that online games are having a ball, since cracking those are harder. My hope is that someday it will be feasible to simply host the game on some server and deliver all the content over the net, so that we can get rid of the arrrrggghh pirates.
End rant :)
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey! This screams for a car analogy ;)
1. Part of the value that the car manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to use the road. So car manufacturers should be paying for roadbuilding :)
2. Part of the value that light bulb manufacturers provide to customers is the ability to travel at night with your car, so the light bulb manufacturers should be paying for car building.
3. Part of the value that roadbuilding provides to the road users is the ability to get away from a crime scene very fast, so road builders should sponsor the local police.
Any more ideas? :)
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Viable business model? (Score:5, Interesting)
All those members are commercial companies. They will eventually stop funding the RIAA because the RIAA wastes their money on futile attempts to eradicate illegal copying.
Re:Legal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Outsourcing.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It could be the RIAA is getting ready to sue the providers who will in turn sue its customers to recover costs. Essentially outsourcing the individual lawsuits and focusing on those companies who might just have the cash to pay up when they lose.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:2, Interesting)
Very easy to find the value that the ISP will charge,
It is actually very hard, and mostly dependent on the level of competition among ISPs. In areas where people can buy access from one provider only -- or where a well established cartel exists -- ISPs will be happy to partner with RIAA to calm down those bandwidth hogs who demand to actually use the bandwidth they pay for. However, in normal markets RIAA will be asked to cover the losses caused by customer churn; I suspect it will be pretty expensive, especially if you consider that per-year revenues of the whole entertainment system are made in less than one month by the telecommunication industry.
They don't care, so why should their customers? (Score:4, Interesting)
The artists/bands I'm most willing to spend my spare money on are the ones that are able to interact with fans on a somewhat personal level: twitter, blogs, youtube videos, etc. I get to see them as real people and it increases my estimation of the value of their music. I spend money to go to their concerts, buy their merchandise and physical cds.
But the industry seems to be designed to work on quantity not quality. Corporate funded 'artists' like the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus are part of a huge hype machine that is about being 'cool' rather than creating music that really makes an impression or impacts people emotionally. It's about getting as much crap sold to as many people as possible, not putting out the best you can put out there. And so, naturally, people will treat it like the disposable crap that it is. This week my niece OMGLOVES! the Jonas Brothers, next week it'll be some other corporate construct. And she'll never remember any of it past the following year.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:1, Interesting)
Why should he simmer down? What's the appropriate response for literally ruining a person's life? And don't give me a load of shit about "there's more to life than money". Try paying your bills with good will, love, and cheer.
I was a bit disappointed when Enron collapsed and took all of those folks' retirements with them that some grizzled old Vietnam or Korean war vet didn't show up and go cyclic in the boardroom.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg to differ. Officers and board members of organizations, especially for-profit, are *not* legally obliged to maximize profits at all costs, especially when those methods are unethical. The fact that shareholders could possibly sue if they thought that something was done to hurt their earnings is beside the point: Remember from SNL from the 1990's? Transcript follows:
"Woman: I'd love to sue somebody, but don't I need a reason?
"Barry Green: Myth #8: In order to be successful, a lawsuit must have merit. False. At the law firm of Green & Fazio, we know that some of the most lucrative lawsuits are nuisance suits. you see, today's large corporations and wealthy individuals would rather settle out-of-court than deal with the headaches, the harassment, of endless emotionally draining litigation. And no one harasses defendents like Green & Fazio."
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [fightthebias.com] is a similar quote: "The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
Some other interesting ones on the same page: "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."
Shameless plug! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://superawesomebroadband.com/ [superaweso...adband.com]
Unlimited connections on static IPs. Secure VPN exits in Sweden and Switzerland. No download or upload limits. No content filtering. No port blocking. No packet shaping. No transparent web caches. No fair usage policy. No Phorm. No small print. No call centres. No lock in period. No cooperation with the RIAA / MPAA.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:4, Interesting)
Simmer down.
The Premier/Fuhrer of the German Reich is doing what he/she is legally obligated to do: keep the German folk happy by imprisoning the malcontents in deathcamps. Substitute with "Caesar" or "Napoleon" or any other tyrant from history. They ALWAYS justify their acts as just doing their job, or trying to improve things, but it doesn't make their actions moral.
The RIAA CEO's actions to "eat out the substance of the citizens" thorugh million-dollar lawsuits are immoral and tyrannical.
He should refuse to do it & resign. Or face the consequences.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's look at these by themselves:
*limited experience
True, from what I hear, Obama's not very experienced. On the other hand, having seen what experience did in the hands of George W. Bush I'm not sure experience is a good way to judge someone's competence. And while I'm not an expert on that subject, I don't think someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. had a lot of political experience before his rise to fame. After all - what we look for in a leader is not always that they're experienced, it's that they inspire us.
*extreme liberal positions
Which ones are they? Granted, I'm European, so a lot of the ideas that we have over here are quite radical in the US. Like the right to abortion (least up here in the civilized countries in Northern Europe), socialized medicine (personally I'd skip socialized road works over medicine), free educations for everyone (up to and including university). They don't say what these dangerous and "extreme liberal positions are" so we're left to guess. Maybe it's his idea that you should be able to vote when you're 18?
*radical political alliances
And again - which ones are they? Joe Biden as VP? That's hardly any worse than Sarah Palin for VP. And if experience is a requisite for being president, then how the hell can you elect Sarah Palin as the VP candidate? She had less experience than Obama to begin with. And being a mayor of a city with 8,000 people is hardly indicative of ones ability to lead a nation. I'm not judging, just curious about why "these people" don't settle for one standard instead of two
But, in the end I think Obama was elected because he presented himself of much more of a change away from Bush' policies than McCain. The Daily Show (the horrorible embodiment of liberal media bias) had a nice segment where they contrasted McCain's campain comments with Bush' from 2000, and it certainly sounded like they had the same speech writer. Of course the nice clip where they contrast Karl Rove's ridicule of a potential VP candidate for Obama for only having been the mayor of a city with 200,000 people followed by the same Rove's grandstanding and overstating Palin's work as mayor for Wasilla, a city with less than 6,000 people (according to the 2000 survey).
Maybe the public in general figured "New guy or the guy who wasn't as good a candidate as Bush was in 2000? Fuck it, I'm not going for the guy that'll be even worse than Bush!"
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you spoof an IP address?
Short answer: you can't.
Long answer: you can, but only in very limited circumstances.
Even longer answer: One way to do it is to simply alter the IP packets that leave your machine so that they show a different return address. This requires hacking your modem, but it can be done. The problem is that the other end of the connection now has no way of sending data back to you. Which means that TCP won't work at all, since it requires confirmation for each packet. The only time when this is useful is if 1) you're using a UDP-based protocol, and 2) you don't care about the data that may be sent back.
Another way is to take control of your ISP's router. In which case, you can redirect the traffic to anywhere you want, and all bets are off. But I imagine this is pretty damn hard to pull off.
So I don't really know what the guy was talking about when he said that this is "easy". He runs an ISP, so he should (theoretically) know better. Maybe he was just hoping that the lawyers don't know any of this.
When will they understand? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is all free now. Period. No recourse.
Law enforcement? Ha. Nobody gives a damn. Civil suits? Sorry, but we're putting roadblocks in the way to ensure that anonymous users on the Internet STAY anonymous and cannot be sued.
Now the down side to this is pretty clear - if I use the Internet, I can get away with anything. Either the court doesn't understand the technology or there are regulations and customs in place to prevent any real prosecution. Sure, if I run to a cop and say "I did it! Aren't I kewl!" I will find myself in trouble. But if I can contain my glee I have nothing to fear.
But the RIAA isn't going to benefit from the "downside" to this. There isn't any rescue for them - if it is in digital form, then it can be shared. They get to sell one and only one copy so it better be priced right. From then on, it is a free-for-all with everyone with high-speed Internet downloading whatever they want. Don't have a broadband connection? Too bad, you aren't included in the new economy. I guess you still have to pay. Until you wise up or we have a tax payer supported Internet Utility so everyone gets stuff for free.
Recorded music has been forced into being an ad-supported loss-leader. Sure, there are some folks that will pay iTunes to aswage their guilt. Or the latest incarnation of AllOfMP3.com. Whatever. None of this makes for a "business" to the people producing the stuff, and the more people learn about BitTorrent and other P2P tools the less traffic iTunes will have. Guilt? Well, I'm sure the guilty will always be with us, just like the poor. I don't think it will be enough to keep them in business, but there will always be people that find a store to pay 10x as much as somewhere else. Why do these stores stay in business?
But no matter what, the idea of anyone paying for recorded music will be pretty much like the idea of paying for sex from 26-year-old crack whores. Some people do it, but nobody really understands why and everyone thinks it is disgusting.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:3, Interesting)
Guns aren't evil, they're awesome.
Criminals shouldn't be put back on the street, they should be incarcerated in accordance with justice.
America, despite its faults, is still the best and greatest country ever.
Homosexuality is deeply unappealing, but otherwise okay.
Other than that, yeah, you're pretty close.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:3, Interesting)
It is perpetual, every 10 years Congress extends the life of all currently copyright works for 10 years.
Re:Multiple interpretations (Score:3, Interesting)
How can you be free when your neighbors can gain access to your wallet for whatever they desire (new car, new home, food stamps, cover their retirement expenses, ...)? That basically makes you a slave where you work for others' enrichment, not yourself.
Why on earth are you a slave working for other' enrichment?
According to your logic, all you have to do to stop being a slave is to quit working and just access your neighbors wallets for whatever you desire. Freedom is closer than you think. ;)