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Music Media

MP3.com Pays Damages to Sony 126

Posted by Hemos from the the-music-juggernaut-keeps-rolling dept.
Spudley writes "According to this story on the BBC MP3.com have agreed an out-of-court settlement to pay Sony music $20 million in damages for their past copyright infrigements. The deal also covers the future - MP3.com will from now on pay royalties to Sony. However, the judge has ruled that the trial must still take place, in order to make a ruling on other copyright cases against them."
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MP3.com Pays Damages to Sony More

MP3.com Pays Damages to Sony

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  • if this is what you consider "justice"

    i like to call it being a bully

    Adler

  • According to quote.yahoo.com [yahoo.com], MPPP has a market cap of half a *billion* (yes, b-as-in-Bugatti) dollars, and the cited per-share cash value is nothing to sneeze at, either, given the number of shares.
  • Yeah, like tell me, what exactly does the music artist or the music listener benefit out of this.
    I say it's just another deal above our heads. We get to know about it, but we wont get any effect on us from it.
  • But wouldn't they still have to pay the $20 Million even if none of the music was pirated?
  • Not only did they launch their service 3 months after myplay.com [myplay.com], but it's been offline for a while... The only advantage they have is their name and all the PR - but that might be enough to get them more customers..... Maybe myplay isn't on slashdot all the time because they're not doing anything to get sued over.

    Now... If only myplay will support vorbis alongside mp3 and windows media....

    (Oh - and go and listen to my Downtemp/L eftfield Selection [myplay.com] on myplay....)

  • Can you really blame Sony for the VCR? Weren't they peddling betamax?

  • Looking ahead... (Score:4)

    by rjk ( 10763 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @06:32AM (#837177) Homepage

    Looking beyond the specific case to the general question...

    It's surely news to nobody that traditional approaches to copyright don't mix well with the net. What possible solutions to this are there?

    We can abandon the notion of copyright. That raises the question of how creators are to be compensated. Personally I give some of the software and fiction I've created away - but not everyone is happy with this, and I wouldn't be happy if some of my favourite authors (say) had to gave up writing because they couldn't make a living from it.

    The Street Performer Protocol [counterpane.com] will doubtless be familiar. That's one approach that might be useful. Another approaches might be for the state to support artists - this already happens to an extent anyway in some countries, but has the difficulty that you end up with a bias towards whatever the state (or its agents) prefer. (But would that be worse than a bias towards what the record companies prefer?) You have to collect the money, too, and new taxes are rarely popular.

    We could do it through voluntary donations - charity, essentially - but that could be a bit hit-and-miss.

    If we want to keep the notion of copyright, we could enforce it very strictly. But that would be expensive and intrusive even to do badly, and is surely impossible to do well.

    We could all fit hardware-supported digital rights management subsystems to our computers, but that would again be intrusive and may be hard or impossible to do well; it'd only take one "chipped" PCs for the copyrighted cats to get out of the bag.

    One can imagine a system where the content provider distributes (via the net, radio, etc) encrypted content to a tamper-proof player (hifi, TV, walkman, toaster, etc) in your home that they've sold, rented or just given you, and charges micropayments for each performance. The infrastructure costs would be hideous, though, as would be the impact on individual choice of playback equipment, and again once unencrypted versions of the content becomes available the whole systems falls apart.

    We could just ignore the problem, and trust that unauthorized copying isn't such a huge problem after all. This might even be true; I still buy music CDs despite knowing that digital copies are often (illegally) available for nothing, for example.

    Any other suggestions?

  • I pay auto insurance. Does this mean I know driving is wrong/illegal and i will "have to eventually make things right."
  • well, supposedly the labels are backpedaling on that "all music is a work for hire" issue, so ownership should be back in the hands of the songwriters at _some_ point.

    that said, unless you're a top-ten sorta songwriter, i don't think it matters much. the vast majority of musicians don't make much off of royalties.
  • Every piece of music has two copyright holders - the big record labels have settled out of court... but the publishers still haven't made any legal moves yet..

    My guess is mp3.com will have to move away from mp3s.
  • I don't expect this will curtail mp3.com's activities in terms of allowing garage bands and private, non-contracted groups a place to share their music with others and have it heard. This is simply related to the myMP3.com service...which i'm SURE they knew was going to prompt a lawsuit when they set it up.

    Had they set it up so that you actually had to transfer the MP3 files to them yourself, there would not have been a lawsuit. Other companies are utilizing that sort of thing now - including Nullsoft, a division of AOL/Time Warner. The problem is that they brought this one on themselves by using a system which sounds good in theory but is a lawsuit magnet in reality.

    Lest anyone forget, the RIAA's ultimate goal is to eliminate the MP3 format entirely. Remember, they sued Diamond to keep the Rio off the market - a device which simply plays MP3 files. They will ultimately be unsuccessful...but IMHO the MyMP3 service was set up with the full expectation that they would be sued over it.

  • So now you're reverting to calling the only entities producing Entertainment Content That People Enjoy Listening To (you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement) 'fat-but-quickly-becoming-desperate'.

    We know who is fat and quickly becoming desperate, and it's the people hunkered over a keyboard getting a monitor tan, not those in the Entertainment Industry.
  • This analogy is not entirely applicable to MP3's situation.

    We pay for auto insurance to leverage the resources of the insurance company in the event of an accident while using the insured vehicle. Also, the state requires that you insure the vehicle.

    Insurance is protection against something that might happen - not necessary if you have enough money to cover possible expenses.

    The MP3 situation is PAST TENSE. The "accident" had already happened. MP3 already KNEW that they were wrong and simply setup a fund with which to buy their way out of trouble.

  • Re:Sad (Score:5)

    by Lucretius ( 110272 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @06:34AM (#837184)
    Well it's a sad day. Now we're going to have to pay royalties for music that has already been purchased and is being used within fair use guidelines. Shit.

    This is not what this means. The reason that mp3.com got in trouble was that they were giving you their copy of the music without paying royalties to the record companies.

    Here is the rational. Any two rips of a track on a CD will produce different mp3's due to changes in variables beyond our control (unless somehow you find a way to control everything). In this way, the court is able to see an mp3 much like a copy of an old LP onto tape, each copy is a bit different.

    Thus, when mp3.com makes a rip, they have in effect converted the music into another format (this is legal). However, they then give this legal copy away to people who have "proof" that they own the CD already (this is illegal as it is not in fair use to give away a fair use copy to someone else).

    The best analogy I can give to this is that of a radio station. They convert the music they have purchased and convert it to another form, then pass it out over the radio waves. However, they can't do this for free, they must pay a fee to the record companies for the music they play, because they have given their "fair use" copies out for free (even to some people who own copies of the music).

    This is why other places which offer to store mp3's which you rip aren't getting in trouble, because they are offering you a way to store and play your own fair use copies. So mp3.com was not letting you play music within your fair use guidelines and that is why they got in trouble. This is a case that I personally think was decided correctly, in a legal sense. I think its kinda screwed up that this doesn't work, but hey, the law hasn't had time to catch up with the new ideas yet.

  • > I think the VHS tapes were longer too, I have
    > to check the betamax at my parents.

    Yep. Standard Beta tape was only good for 90
    minutes while standard VHS went for 2 hours.
    This made a *big* difference since, at the
    time, almost all movies shown on TV were cut/
    padded with commercials to take two hours.
    People doing home recording could get entire
    movie on one VHS, but not on Beta.

    Chris Mattern
  • I used to use MP3.com. They used to have a really big well-stocked download area where MP3 related utilities were widely available. Now they have a limited number of 'featured' programs that's a feeble subset of what used to be available. So I really have no use for them any longer.

  • The goal is not to let the author gain as much money as possible. The goal is to provide an incentive to create and publish. Why should the question of "how much incentive?" be determined by how much commercial life a published work has?
  • We could just ignore the problem, and trust that unauthorized copying isn't such a huge problem after all. This might even be true; I still buy music CDs despite knowing that digital copies are often (illegally) available for nothing, for example.

    Any other suggestions?

    Yes, I like the last one. You know, the one that's been working for years and years, while the recording industry keeps making record breaking profits every year anyway.

    The truth is, I'd like something to be done, but absolutely nothing should infringe on my right to fair use. I also have not downloaded a single illegal mp3. I have ripped my own CDs, and I like the freedom of the mp3 format.

    I haven't used napster, and I haven't used my-mp3.com (although I've download junk from mp3.com), but I truly believe in their right to exist. The lawsuit is absolutely ridiculous, splitting hairs between whose copy is this and whose copy it was made from. If someone can reasonably prove they own the CD, why can't they download someone elses copy? If you paid for song X on CD Y, why can't I send you my legal mp3 of song X on CD Y? The answer is obvious, and has nothing to do with piracy or legality or fair use, it has to do with greed, plain and simple.

    I say: keep the status-quo. The record companies make more and more money, despite themselves. Screw them if they want to complain about making money hand-over fist while raping the artists for everything they're worth before tossing them aside. I do envision a world in which artists have their own websites and let you pay per song for a download. That download is like a CD - you are entitled to use it in any fair use manner you desire. Yes, lots of people will pirate, but lots of people pirate now. I honestly believe fewer people will pirate if they can download the single song for a dollar, paid directly to the musician, then if they have to buy a $15 CD with eight crappy songs on it to get the one they want.

    This also encourages musicians to not put out crap because, unlike the past, they won't get paid for it.
    ----------

  • Because you ARE giving it away. You may not transfer your "fair use" copy to another person since this deprives the copyright holder of a potential source of revenue.

    This has always been the purpose of copyright -- to make money. It seems that because it is a Big Company making the money; we have a "right" to interfer with that.

  • Re:Why? (Score:2)

    by dirk ( 87083 )
    Well that's not really the point. I don't even play mp3s all that much since my computer is getting a little old. The point is that I don't want the record companies having that much say over what I can and cannot do with a CD that I purchased. The fact that I never even used my.mp3.com has nothing to do with it.


    They really have no say over what you can do with your CD. You can rip it to MP3, put those MP3s elsewhere and play them. You can upload them to your web site, download them at work and play them there. You can do anything you want with your CD except for distribute the music on it. It's the same concept that says I can't buy a book and make photocopies and give them to people. You own what you have bought, which is the CD, you don't own the content, so you aren't free to do anything with the content other than use it for the purpose it was sold for, which is to listen to. Other than in the area of redistribution, the record companies can't tell you what to do with your CD.

  • People all over the world want to kill their boss?

  • I guess I had thought of domain squatting as buying a domain in order to extort money from the current trademark owner. Buying domains to redirect isn't exactly the same thing; cf whitehouse.com. Doubly so since they aren't the exact copyrights - talkcity.com should trademark talk-city.com, IMHO, and then they can complain. It's sleazy, but not illegal since trademarks are exact rather than just "well, it sort of sounds the same".

    Granted, there seems to be a pauacity of real revolutionaries in the online mp3 business; maybe only Freenet and Gnutella are the only ones who weren't planning to make a profit.

  • Because you ARE giving it away. You may not transfer your "fair use" copy to another person since this deprives the copyright holder of a potential source of revenue.

    Another source of income? For what? Buying a song twice? No music company has a right to another stream of revenue from a CD purchaser.

    That is essentially the message sent from the settlement: They want you to not only pay for your music, but pay for it more than once if you want to use it in any "non-standard" way.

    So if mp3 has to start charging for my.mp3.com to recoupe the costs of royalties to the RIAA, I know that I'll have no moral problems with, say, taking a friend's CD and using Beam-It w/o paying for the original. Why? Because I'm already paying for it.

  • sorry, but it is now MINE. I can do w/it what I please. That is the purpose of paying for it. You are buying rights to do w/it as you like. I am not selling it off for a profit, therefore, there is nothing wrong with it. This has nothing to do w/BIG Business, I could give a fuck, I already gave them my money...
  • My point is that Sony doesn't need the money, and they only want the piracy to stop. So it would be in everyone's best interest to just pull all pirated music from the site. It's obvious that they want a part of mp3 future since they want to do this on a royalty basis, so what good does the $20 million do other than corporate greed.

    Don't get me wrong, I believe this is piracy and the people responsible should be punished, but a big fine doesn't realyl accomplish much especially if Sony now wants a role in what mp3.com does.
  • Come on, you didn't expect something like this? The music industry works just like the mafia.. you want in, you pay for it later. Sony is just collecting their 'tribute'.

    I write some music now and then, and while I don't expect to ever make money off of it, I like the idea of my work being protected. Even if most of the bands out there are crap, there are a few that deserve to make money off of their work... even if it is just a few bucks..

    Plus, record labels are good for telling the masses what to buy.

  • So to whom has mp3.com been trying to sell the domain? Can you point to some proof of them being a domain squatter?

  • Hardly. SDMI is crap. MP3 is not crap but is a very useful format. MP3.com used Sony's recordings without permission, so they're being forced to pay royalties for these recordings in the future. The format is unaffected.

  • protecting who? (Score:4)

    by The Queen ( 56621 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @06:02AM (#837199) Homepage
    "This settlement affirms and upholds the right of copyright owners to be paid for the use of their works on the internet,"

    Let us not forget, that means Sony, not Bruce Springsteen.

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Really. Look at all these massive settlements. Obviously mp3.com couldn't come to these settlements unless there were some reasonable expectation of them being able to pay it.

    One thing this shows is that it would have probably been cheaper to come to an agreement BEFORE starting to take in dough using questionable IP policies, but from the amount of money mp3.com is expecting to be able to cough up, there is obviously money to be made in this.

    As for the free beer crowd, I don't see how this handles the numerous decentralized free file sharing utilities out there, or makes Freenet any less viable.

    But if mp3.com expects to rake in huge sums of cash I frankly am not going to weep for them if they forced by a court to cough up the profits, even to scumbags like Sony, RIAA, etc.

  • Unlike mp3.com you store material you can store anything you want - rather than what mp3.com has licensed.....

    I wonder how much disk storage myplay could buy with the huinderds of millions that mp3.com is spending on licensing?
  • Sony Corporation is no more an American citizen than my mousepad is.
  • In our legal system its not about the artist its about the *owner* of the art.

  • Browne is against copyright. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The libertian party stance is something like "I do not support the initation of force to controler others". They do not support IP, only natural property.
  • First, are you sure the CEO is 19? I don't remember ever seeing that. And twenty million dollars is a lot of money even to a multibillion dollar corporation. Twenty million dollars is a lot of money period. I haven't read the article yet, so I'm not sure what exactly mp3.com did to break copyright from Sony (was it mymp3.com). But it must have been something their lawyers thought would be illegal. Also... it makes me crazy when people refer to the McDonalds law suit as this example of a redidiculeous law suit. Did you ever see the pictures of the cup? It actually MELTED the cup. McDonalds DID mess up. Coffee that will melt the styrofoam they served it to you in is TOO hot. Maybe if they had served it in a ceramic cup that would be diferent, but they didn't :)

    Ian
  • Hasn't myplay.com trademarked the term 'digital music locker'?
  • Didn't anyone else pause the recording during commercials with the old tethered remote control that came with the first VCR's and betamax? I think I still have Dark Crystal, 16 candles, etc taped on betamax somewhere in storage and might be able to purchase a betamax player somewhere, sounds like a nice weekend project attempting to crawl back into my cheese-infested 80's youth.
  • that's chutzpah

    Variant(s): also chutzpa /'hut-sp&, '[k]ut-, -(")spä/
    Function: noun
    Etymology: Yiddish khutspe, from Late Hebrew huspAh
    Date: 1892
    : supreme self-confidence : NERVE, GALL
    synonym see TEMERITY
  • Sony Corporation is no more an American citizen than my mousepad is.

    Hey, I never said it was. If a foreign company can come into America (and pay taxes, too) and do well, that just shows there was a market niche there that wasn't properly filled.

    Sony found a market niche (high quality consumer electronics), filled it, and prospered, while increasing the efficiency of the American marketplace.

    This is why the American economy expands so fast.
  • The copyright is *not* just the performance, but also the sheet music. So, yes, we are talking about Bruce Springsteen (as well as Sony.)
  • I think it would work best if everything on the net were treated as shareware/freeware (depending on the creators' preferences). This includes music, movies, software, etc., etc. Music, software, movies distributed on CD/DVD should just be considered more permenant copies. It's no longer practical to attach a license to listen/watch/use to the media something is distributed on.

    All we'd need is for people on both sides to be honest and fair. People should actually pay for whatever they download (or copy from a friend) and use. And musicians/record companies/software companies should ask for reasonable amounts of money.

    No messy encryption, tracking, IDs, whatever. Just be honest and fair. Sheesh.

  • Re:Sad (Score:3)

    by gfxguy ( 98788 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @07:25AM (#837213)
    Thus, when mp3.com makes a rip, they have in effect converted the music into another format (this is legal). However, they then give this legal copy away to people who have "proof" that they own the CD already (this is illegal as it is not in fair use to give away a fair use copy to someone else).
    But you see, I don't believe that, and I don't believe that if this went all the way to the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court would say it's not fair use to obtain a copy of a song that you are entitled to because you have paid the copyright holder for that fair use.

    Minor differences in mp3s of the same song because they were ripped from two diffent copys of the CD, or because of different compression schemes, or whatever, is really quite ridiculous.

    I know what the law says, but in this case it's merely a technicality. I believe the Supreme Court would find this hair splitting as ridiculous as I do. After all, we're not talking about different versions, or remixes, or anything else, and unless quality control at the pressing plant is horrible, their should be no discernable difference in encodings.

    So, again, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that this is the point of contention, and it ultimately takes copyright, which grants fair use, and splits some fine hairs and creates a technicality. It's not in the spirit or intent of copyright law.
    ----------

  • Property by it's nature is not naturual.

    I quote from "Great White Chief" of the northwest in response to the US government's request to purchase the land of his people.

    "For we know that if we do not sell, the White Man may come with guns and take our land. The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the Red Man.... "
  • With the record companies in a state of perpetual whining about the tremendous damage to artists that online music represents, I wonder how much of the 20 million is going to go to the artists? All of it, right?

    Probably not. I suspect it will be too difficult to determine where the money should go, so Sony (or whoever's next) will just keep the whole thing.

  • I still read works by Ray Bradbury, listen to works of Glenn Miller, and enjoy the early Looney Toons, all which have enjoyed periods of revival in the past decade due to one thing or another, and yet are over 30 years old, so they don't make your cut. Should we extend the line to protect these works as well? Corporations want to, but at some point, based on my interpretions and readings of the thoughts of the founding fathers in copyright issues, a work has enjoyed sufficient time to sufficiently saturate the nation and that it should fall into the public domain regardless of any future spurts of popularity. That line that is drawn needs to be a function of the technological means to distribute material and the area it was to be distributed across. In the 1800s, most information had to be printed by presses, and distributed by ground transportation, so a copyright expiry time of 30 years makes sense. Today, information can be gotten in seconds, and anything much more than 5 years seems crazy. If you also consider that on a per population basis, there is more IP around compared to 1800, and the fact that much of it is stagnent due to corporate profits will eventually lead to stagnation in all aspects of life.

  • Their recording quality is sub-standard
    ...dynamic range compressed to a mere 10dB...CLIPPING in digital recordings...
    This ain't HiFi, yet you're paying overinflated prices for their CRAP

    (FUD-o-meter: *.................)

  • Not all cassettes and CDs are identical. There are some that have different songs or intros. For some you have to buy both the CD and the cassette to get everything.

    If you've got a cable modem or dsl you can download an MP3 in 30 seconds, why spend 5 minutes or more to rip and encode the song when you can download it?

    LK
  • Actually, Slashdot did a story on this way back when MyMP3.com started up, and some people reverse-engineered part of the beam-it process.

    Apparently, it was actually quite well designed. The server would request a random assortment of sectors from the CD, and the client had to send them back. This doesn't take long, but if you don't have the CD theres no way to supply the correct information.

    So it was actually quite difficult to dupe the server.

    On the other hand, it would be pretty easy for you and a friend to swap CD collections one afternoon and each add eachother's CD's.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • Sad (Score:1)

    by lizrd ( 69275 )
    Well it's a sad day. Now we're going to have to pay royalties for music that has already been purchased and is being used within fair use guidelines. Shit.
    ________________
    They're - They are
    Their - Belonging to them
  • First, are you sure the CEO is 19?

    Wasn't there an article about his mom having to accompany him to some conference b/c he wasn't over 20? I thought that was MP3.com, if not, my bad.

    It actually MELTED the cup.

    I didn't know that. Thanks for that tidbit.


    ---
    Unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last.
    Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning.
  • The RIAA is not just Sony. Other labels are plaintiffs in this suit, and they still want their share.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • It may be just me, but $20 million seems like a lot of money for a company that doesn't really do anything. Second, this is going to set a VERY bad precendent for all other cases like this; "maybe if we sue enough people, someone will give in and give us some money." Though I guess that's the American Dream now, isn't it?
  • Good for you :) I went and gave all your songs full downloads (except netscape suicided in the middle of the last 9 meg one- note to non mp3.commers, if you download people's full songs it helps them out in the stats and PFP more than streaming listens) and I'm getting a huge kick out of them :) The rhythmic dislocations of 'Pipe' are just outrageous, and I really enjoy your take on the 'trance' genre *evil cackle* much fun, strange music! Plus your bassdrums really kick. Good work :) you've probably already seen my stuff (in my link- everybody but Jon Katz has seen it by _now_) but if not I'd probably direct you to 'Water Dragon' as the only thing that is truly weird enough to sate your appetites, that and 'Bone Dragon' and maybe some of the lead guitar on tracks like 'B17 Flying Fortress' :) damn, it's nice to hear more music that- well, I'll quote Frank Zappa off the cover of Absolutely Free- "This tree is UGLY and it wants to die" no, wait, I meant "kills on contact" no- ah, here, the line I was looking for was, "You must BUY this album now- Top 40 Radio will NEVER EVER PLAY IT (buy this thing)"

    Good advice for us all! ;)

  • I have a bunch of CD's "beamed" to my.mp3.com. Ever since the lawsuit they've been greyed out, and unplayable.

    So, the settlement with Sony should mean that soon, I can play any Sony artist CD's once more from my.mp3.com.

    But since they are licenced to play all of Sony's music library, does that then mean I can essentially play any Sony CD for free from my.mp3.com, or will I still have to "beam" up my own CD's?

    In a side note, I wonder if it would be legal for myplay.com to combine multiple mp3 versions of the same song into one copy (or a few for different bit rates)?

  • And how much did Sony pay to movie cos. for VCR? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @05:45AM (#837226)
    How much "damages" in dollars did Sony pay to movie companies or to the MPAA (before Sony became a move company and bought Columbia Pictures) for its movie piracy device known as the VCR back in the late 70s? Answer Zilch. As usual justice is only for those with deep pockets.
  • Wow, that seems like a double whammy...first they have to pay an out-of-court settlement, AND the trial still goes on? Sucks for mp3.com... :(


    __

  • But Sony promotes MP3 piracy! (Score:4)

    by Mignon ( 34109 ) <satan@programmer.net> on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @06:06AM (#837228)
    A sales flyer in my Sunday paper advertises several Sony MP3 players with the line "Download music from the internet!" OK, so I exaggerated a little - Sony probably didn't write the ad, but they are well aware that they can make tons of money from MP3's - that's why they're making MP3 players.

    For Sony to sue MP3.com is a little like the guy who kills his parents then asks the judge for mercy because he's an orphan.

  • I'm curious as to how MP3.com will make up this kind of dough. I just can't see how they could possibly have that much to start with. 20 mil is a lot, and the article doesn't state how they're paying. I'd have to say they're in debt.
  • It may be just me, but $20 million seems like a lot of money for a company that doesn't really do anything. Second, this is going to set a VERY bad precendent for all other cases like this; "maybe if we sue enough people, someone will give in and give us some money." Though I guess that's the American Dream now, isn't it?

    To be able to work hard, and profit from your hard work, without worrying about thieving governments or malcontents taking your profits.

    But if you think it's alright for people to steal from you, just because they can, please post your VISA number, name, address and expiration date.
  • The point is that I don't want the record companies having that much say over what I can and cannot do with a CD that I purchased. The fact that I never even used my.mp3.com has nothing to do with it.

    I agree on the general issue, however if you look at it they are not really saying you can't do anything with *your* mp3 files, they are saying that mp3.com can not do a nifty market-share grab by using other people's IP.

    If they planned this as a money-making venture they were not smart to avoid even good faith efforts at cutting a deal with someone. It would probably have been cheaper to go *just* to RIAA or one of the associations they could claim they reasonably believed had the rights to cut a deal about it, and agree to a royalties scheme. Then if they still got sued (probable), they'd have that to fall back on and RIAA (or whoever else got a cut) on their side instead of against them.

    It's all still mafia-style tactics in the music industry, especially when you start threatening turf.

    As for how this affects me, well, hell, I'll still do whatever the hell I please, and under whatever name I choose, and with whatever level of accountability I choose.

  • The article stated that MP3.com set aside $150 million for the express purpose of settling the disputes with the various record companies. To me this speaks directly to MP3.com recognizing that what it was/is doing is illegal and that they would have to eventually make things right.
  • to kill your boss.

    "Kill my boss? Dare I live the American dream?" - Homer Simpson
  • the article brings out that mp3.com has set aside $150 million just for legal settlements earlier this year. i think they have more money than most people think.

    Erian


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  • Of course, the actual settlement amount will come down on appeal. It always does. The massive initial awards are just to scare other would be defendants into straightening up and flying right.

    Tobacco companies were fined $50,000,000,000 dollars. They don't have that much. And since you can't fine a company into bankruptcy/non-existance (and this is law in many states. e.g., FL) the amount always comes down later (but the media seldom reports this).

  • Wired News has coverage HERE [wired.com]

    I really don't like these "deals" - you know, if I put *my* music in my digital locker, then why should anyone have to anything? Am I missing something here, or are we *paying* for fair use?

  • Any two rips of a track on a CD should produce exactly the same Waveform data file. It's only when you encode it using a different algorhythm that you end up with a different data file.

    Of course, many people do the rip/encode with the same tool in a single operation. But if Joe Smith uses 'ripper software #1' and Rob Williams uses the same software to rip/encode the same CD on an entirely different continent, the resultant MP3 file should be identical.

    I record vinyl to WAV files and burn that to CD audio, anyway. I didn't pay for a Yamaha integrated amplifier and Klipsch speakers to listen to degraded music that was run through a lossy compression scheme.
  • Actually, it reads from RANDOM AREAS of the CD, so you would essentially have to have the entire CD image.
  • Can you really blame Sony for the VCR? Weren't they peddling betamax?

    Yes, Sony had the Betamax, or better quality than VHS, and still preferred by professionals and studios.

    However, they refused to license it for porn, and thus lost lots of market share.

    I think the VHS tapes were longer too, I have to check the betamax at my parents.

    FWIW, you can still buy blank beta tapes in Rochester, NY, since we were early adopters.
  • Just remember, MP3.com is choosing to license music from Sony.

    Don't feel sorry for MP3.com. They obviously feel that they can make enough money to justify these kinds of deals.
  • IMHO boycotts against superpowerful monopolies are a waste of time. In this case they have the rights of many TV shows and many music artists.

    And they won't ever get paid by any pirate-like distribution.

    Boycott won't work.

  • My idea on copyright fixing is two parts:

    1) Reduce the terms on copyrights to 10 years from public release. There is no reason why it should take more than this time for copyright holders today to rake in the wealth they can get from this given the ease of obtaining legal copies of the work either from brick and morter or from the internet. Of course, this would be retroactive like all other copyright extention bills of late.

    2) Force all copyrights to be held by up to 4 individuals each with at least 25% contribution to the copyrighted work. Prevent corporations from holding any copyrights. This would force people like MPAA, RIAA, publishers, and broadcasters to become clearing houses for information instead of guardians of it. Such a law would probably change the RIAA and others completely, but as with most people, this is probably not a bad thing.

    Sure, I doubt this will ever happen, but I strongly believe that most of the copyright issues that are we dealing with today is a direct result from the fact that corporations can hold copyrights.

  • You make a darn good point here. I wasn't a subscriber of my.mp3.com, but a lot of people loved it.

    Personally, I think we should write to various fair use crusaders from both parties (Orin Hatch of Utah is emerging as one potential champion...), and say the following:

    My.MP3.com was the first widely-used method of simply space-shifting digital music via the net. The purpose was to allow users to access the content of albums
    which they purchaced from anywhere. In many ways, using this service is no different than making a tape of your CD to listen to in the car. As current law exists, such a service can not be performed without paying additional fees to the record companies. It should be clear to you that this violates the spirit of "fair use", and the law should be reformed to reflect the rights of the consumers.

    While I am unconcerned about the fate of specific companies like MP3.com, I am very interested in my own personal rights to make remote archives of music that I buy, and to retain my rights concerning whatever media content I purchace.

    I ask that you take the lead in revisiting copyright laws like the DMCA in the next Congressional session, and keep me posted on your progress. Enclosed find a check for $50 to aid in your future re-election efforts.

  • No, that's merely the nihilist re-interpretation of the American Dream.

    The American Dream is not bound by geography, by the way. People all around the world look at it as an inspiration for how they want to live their lives.
  • Please give proof of this outrageous claim (a specific quote that Browne and/or the Libertarian Party does not support IP). Ayn Rand wasn't a Libertarian, but she was pretty close, and she was in full support of IP, and wrotes quite a few articles about it.
  • No, giving away their copy to someone else who already owned the original was the violation because people weren't getting a copy of their music, they were getting a copy of mp3.com's music.

    It's actually a pretty ridiculous, hair splitting, really teeny-tiny fine line. It's technically true, but realisticly it's bullshit.

    I'd be willing to bet that if went all the way to the supreme court, it would be considered "fair use", since, if you paid for song X on CD Y, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get a copy of that anywhere. I mean, after all, when you buy a CD it's pennies for the CD, the big cost is the advertising and the content, right? I honestly believe the Supreme Court would uphold your right to access that content, once you have legally paid for it. The corporations are obviously splitting hairs, and are not acting accordingly with the spirit of the copyright laws.
    ----------

  • I happen to have a site on mp3.com [mp3.com], and I think this settlement spells a good future for small bands.

    Now that the big bands will cost money, the little guys can release stuff for free and get noticed.

    /d

  • Okay, let me get this straight. If I buy a Bruce Springsteen CD, and then want to listen to it on MP3.com, they have to pay Sony again to allow me that priviledge?

    And if you buy the CD and then later you hear the song on the radio, the radio station still has to pay for the priviledge of broadcasting the song. My.mp3.com is being treated no differently than a radio station.

    And maybe that's the problem. The RIAA (and the law also, I guess) is treating transmission of a copyrighted work as "redistribution" even if the receiver already has the copyrighted work.

    Probably the whole solution to this is to wait a few years until broadband is more available. If you wanna keep your music at home and listen to it at work, just run your own personal server instead of using my.mp3.com. Not feasible for everyone right now, but pretty soon.

    On the plus side, though. If my.mp3.com pays Sony for rights to redistribute music, then does that mean they can transmit music even if the receiver doesn't have it? Can you (legally and rightfully) listen to the Springsteen MP3 from my.mp3.com even if you didn't buy the CD and do the challenge-response check? After all, Sony has been paid for it.


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  • No messy encryption, tracking, IDs, whatever. Just be honest and fair. Sheesh.

    sorry, but that won't ever work. You have to have the power of enforcement or rights will be abused. Personally I think it's very simple. Only people with the copyright may profit from protected materials (or licence to the copyrgiht). Others may traffic in those materials, but only at a net loss.

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  • Sony's Memory Stick players (like the NW-MS7)won't play MP3s. Instead they come with software that merrily converts your MP3 collection into hoplessly restricted, SDMI-compliant music files, encoded with their own proprietary ATRAC3 format [nb: different from the ATRAC that Minidisc uses, except for the newest MDLP decks].

    Using their Win98-only software, you end up with files that can only be played on your (single) PC, and on up to 3 portables that you own.

    Of course, you can't transfer the music files back to the PC. You can't burn a CDR of these files and listen to them at work (they're keyed to your player at home). As it seems to assume that every MP3 is copyrighted and the owners want to have their work subject to SDMI restrictions, any "free" music you have gets screwed if you want to listen to it on your Sony device.

    The GadgetSquad review [gadgetsquad.com] goes into the restrictions with more detail.

    On the other hand, Sony are now starting to release their "Internet Audio" Minidisc packages, which include a USB link to your PC (they're also offering the kit free [minidisc.org] to owners of recent MD recorders). It's still realtime, but way better than the lameass SDMI players, and hopefully will push MD a bit harder to the MP3 market - one that it's very well suited to.

  • it's not really the same as shareware, since that refers to software. This is where you get to the somewhat fuzzy tools vs art distinction for digital media. But even given that, I seem to keep seeing new versions of Winzip, Paint Shop Pro, xftp, game demos, etc., so the concept of shareware is very much alive and well, although the free software meme has recently blown it away from the spotlight.

    Pretending there's no problem won't work, because the people on the other side are busy making laws so their problems become our problems.
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  • This might be a stupid question but.... if the coffee was hot enough to melt the styrofoam cup, how was she able to pay for her coffee and carry it to her car? Is this a magical cup of coffee that gets hotter as it sits?

    "In this house we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics." -Homer Simpson
  • Metaphorically speaking.

    People all over the world want to be promoted over their Boss.

  • But the question in my mind is what MP3.com did redistribution? This same argument can carried out of cyberspace in this way:

    I buy a cd but don't have a cd-player in my car, nor do I have a way to copy cd to tape available to me. Is it then illegal for me to have a friend copy the same album from his cd onto tape and me to use it? Or is it required by law for me to go to his house with my cd and copy the content myself? It really is the same argument, mp3 is just another medium of recording.

    What I am more scared of than audio is this same type of argument being carried over to paper media. If this holds it may well be that we see magazines dissappear from public places, because it would be within the rights of the magazine company to decide that you are only allowed to read the particular copy of the paper media that you purchased.

    Ultimately laws like this will fail because people won't buy into the stupidness of it, but until that time I don't like the idea one bit.

  • What's 'holier than thou' about being able to discern high quality music reproduction?

    I don't listen to AM radio when I want to hear music. I don't listen to MP3's either. How is that snobbery?
  • "Choosing" in the sense that if somebody has a gun to your head and asks for all your money, you "choose" to give them your money rather than die.
  • Let me get this straight: 19-year-old CEO of MP3.com has to pay multinational billion-dollar corporation Sony $20 million because of copyright infringement? (Heh heh, sounds like the opposite of the 80's lawsuit with the woman who burned her crotch on a hot cup of McD's coffee and won multimill$$$)

    Doesn't this seem a bit like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer? MP3.com is wrong, they violated copyrights, but what the fuck... Another attempt by the courts to deter by example a-la Mitnick, perhaps?

    I guess this is reassuring because whenever an enemy strikes with such excessive force, and in such a state of panic, it means they are unsure of themselves and their future.


    ---
    Unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last.
    Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning.
  • I see a lot of bemoaning about the "revolution is over" and "goodbye MP3". This has no effect on MP3 the file format and only affects MP3.com the website. If their name was "Music.com" would we be crying out "now I can't listen to music anymore"? No.

    I have never once downloaded anything from MP3.com or used any of their services but I have many MP3 files (mostly ripped from my own CDs but some obtained from Napster and the like).
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  • Actually, the founder of mp3.com bought the domain for about $1,000 from a man who had bought it because it contained his initials. However, they have been around for a few years, and they're no more a "domain squatter" than news.com, tv.com, computers.com, etc.

  • I have been considering the issues of copyright infringement and what it could mean to the current election. Currently, infringement of copyright is against the law of the United States. But consider what would happen if a political party decided otherwise.

    If any of the third parties come out strongly against the DMCA and for limited copyrights (say 5 years as opposed to life + year-1929), then suddenly there are 20 million people who may just vote for them. It would be interesting to see whether or not Nader [slashdot.org] or Browne [slashdot.org] will come out against copyrights. It would be pleasant if one of the major candidates would do likewise, but with all that money from the movie and record industries out there, I kind of doubt that would occur.

  • MP3.com did not provide a digital locker where you could upload your own MP3's. It would take many hours for Joe AOLuser to upload his collection of Britney Spears music that way. Instead, they provided a service called "Beam It" where you would insert a CD into your drive, and the disc info would be "beamed" to My.MP3.com. This certified that you did indeed own the CD. Once there, MP3.com would then let you listen to digital recordings (from its collection, not yours) of that CD that you say you own.

    Think now about how easy it would be to send bogus packets to dupe My.MP3.com into thinking that you own every CD ever created. You would be able to listen to music you don't own, which as we all know is a Crime Against Humanity.
  • It's your fair use to use MP3.com's system. The problem is, MP3.com had to copy and reencode a whole lot'a music to create their system, and that is the official copyright violation here.
  • yup. [internetnews.com]

    the guy just bought a good domain, he is not in it for the revolution, just the pay-off.


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  • My idea on copyright fixing is two parts:

    1) Reduce the terms on copyrights to 10 years from public release. There is no reason why it should take more than this time for copyright holders today to rake in the wealth they can get from this given the ease of obtaining legal copies of the work either from brick and morter or from the internet. Of course, this would be retroactive like all other copyright extention bills of late.


    This has a lot of bad implications though. Think of all the small hits and one hit wonders in the eighties. Now think of all the eighties compilations that are being sold right now. The only person that would make anything from them would be the people who put together the CDs. I think copyright is definitely too long as it is, but I think that 10 years is too short. Possibly 30 years. By that time any music is considered an "oldie" and would not have much life left in it commercially.

  • Nice quote from the latest issue of Scientific American that just showed up, article about will MP4 do for movies what MP3 does for music???
  • On the plus side, though. If my.mp3.com pays Sony for rights to redistribute music, then does that mean they can transmit music even if the receiver doesn't have it?

    I think that'd be the only acceptable outcome. But think about how that would work. You'd sign up for the album as you used to, and listen to it "because hey, sony got their money!" But you could snag the streaming files and save an excellent-quality copy of the album for free (to you).

    Or, maybe MP3.com will start to charge for the priviledge.

  • Considering that Sony was the defendant in a major lawsuit that Napster, MP3.com, and 2600.com have used for citing precedent. And now they've taken the part of the plaintiff. Isn't that just discouragingly political? Yesterday's revolutionary is today's establishment.

    That's why if I were to ever run for elected office, it would be on the promise that my first official act would be to resign.

  • My guess is mp3.com will have to move away from mp3s.

    No, the MP3 file format isn't the problem. And the legal MP3 files that mp3.com distributes aren't the problem.

    All this fuss came about when mp3.com started offering a service that let you download MP3-encoded versions of songs from CDs that you had purchased. Essentially, they were trying to save you the time and effort of ripping and encoding them yourself. (From my perspective, this would've been a loss of time -- it's faster for me to rip and encode than to download.)

    As I understand it (never having used the service in question), they gave you an MP3 under either of two conditions:

    1. You inserted a CD-ROM that you owned, and special software (Windoze only at first, though I think they may have introduced a Linux version later) did a CDDB-style checksum of the CD and then permitted you to access the MP3 versions of your CD's songs on mp3.com.
    2. You purchased a CD online (through mp3.com maybe -- I'm unclear on this part), but hadn't received it yet; mp3.com allowed you to download the tracks in MP3 format so you could listen to the music you had purchased even though you hadn't received the physical media yet.

    I think this was an extremely gutsy move on mp3.com's part. If I had been them, I wouldn't have dared to try it. But I guess it was one of the ways they were trying to probe the boundaries of the copyright laws and see what could and could not be done.

  • I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

    (you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

    I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

  • Okay, let me get this straight. If I buy a Bruce Springsteen CD, and then want to listen to it on MP3.com, they have to pay Sony again to allow me that priviledge? Oh, sorry, I didn't mean "buy" a CD, I meant "obtain a licence to listen to the music on that CD in whatever way Sony deems appropriate." Give me a break.

    So much for MP3.com being free... how much do you think they'll charge now? Of course, there's already plenty of reasons to boycott Sony [musicweek.co.uk] anyway...

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