Internal MP3 Server? 1 Million Dollars Please 749
nkruse pointed out that our pals as the RIAA are breaking new ground. According to this Reuters Article, the RIAA has succeeded in collecting 1 million US dollars from Arizona based Integrated Information Systems. IIS apparently had a corporate MP3 repository on it's network. This is the first time I've heard about the RIAA doing this kind of thing. Looks like they're taking a page from the BSA handbook.
More, more, more! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More, more, more! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I sound like a broken record with this, but there isn't a market solution (i.e., boycott) for this. With cops and courts at the RIAA's beck and call, there's not much of a technological solution, either. There has to be a political solution.
Re:More, more, more! (Score:4, Insightful)
There has to be a political solution.
Poltics is the art of compromise. Do you think it's a lost art? It's the art that's in the Constitution with regards to IP, and it's an art that can be redisovered. Maybe teachers are too busy teaching kids how to put on condoms to rediscover the Constitution. Why do you believe the outcome is going to be one-sided? Why do the RIAA or the AIP movement have to "win". If either side wins, everybody loses. It's just a different kind of loss.
I'm not so sure if we need a political solution anyway. If the RIAA really needs money to do things, and if they really can't stop people from stealing their music, then they will eventually run out of money and logicly, no longer be able to do things. If, in the mean time, they start punishing people who haven't done anything wrong, this will only accelerate the process. Why? Because I know that I, if punished for having done no crime, will be converted to the pirate camp. I suspect others will jump ship too, thus accelerating the process. If I have to deal with clunky built-in copy protection that makes it hard to work, that might easily be enough to push me over the line. It just depends on how much they are punishing me for having DONE NOTHING WRONG. It's only fair--if I have to do the time, I might as well do the crime.
OTOH, if someone can come up with a successful business model that's an alternative to what the RIAA offers, that will work too. Or, maybe the RIAA will actually do some kind of customer survey and discover that they really are losing customers because they are being dicks. That would tend to create non-extreme reform also.
Re:More, more, more! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm the oddball here by actually boycotting something, but we all do our little bit.
Spanish lesson (Score:4, Funny)
we hand over our cajones to the RIAA and its ilk
Why would they want our large boxes?
I think you meant "cojones". The word "caja" means "box" and adding the "ón" ending indicates "large", so "cajón" means "large box", and "cajones" is the plural, "large boxes".
The word "cojón" means "testicle", so "cojones" is "testicles", which, I suspect, is what you really meant.
Correct spelling is often important, but when you're using words from another language it can be really important.
Duh-huh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see. The threat of a long costly litigation, with a decent chance of losing and having to pay even more exorbiant court-ordered fines -- a threat backed up by the judicial power of the United States -- had absolutely nothing to do with IIS' decision to settle? Ah, the scales fell from their eyes; they saw the error of their ways; and they gratefully shelled out $1M as a voluntary penace along with the admonition to go and sin no more? All on their own, in a conversion experience that might as well have happened on the road to Damascus?
Just how is the weather on your planet, anyway?
If the courts were not enthusiastically subscribing to the RIAA's view of reality, then the RIAA would not have the giant bludgeon they currently wield. Coypright infringement is a matter of law; it is settled in the courts, ultimately; and any out-of-court settlement certainly derives from the potential mediation of the courts. The legal climate is the prime mover here, too, even if the formal process isn't followed.
Re:More, more, more! (Score:3, Interesting)
More than likely, the RIAA et al. are hoping that prosecution of individual people will become unnecessary, save for a couple good example-setters.
Re:More, more, more! (Score:3, Funny)
The more they do this the more enemies they will get and the less sympathy they will get from the public!!
Also known as:
The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
~z
Re:More, more, more! (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is wrong why? (Score:2, Troll)
A company promoting piracy is even worse than the individual person who feels it's OK to shoplift or steal music.
What type of "fair use" could possibly apply here?
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Interesting)
What if you're using your CD in your car, and someone at your work is listening to the same CD's mp3's? You got two people using the same disc, essentially.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Funny)
You got two people using the same disc, essentially.
And..... and what? The universe explodes? Time starts moving backwards? Giant marshmallow-men roam the streets? Somewhere, a musican you don't know dies?
Copyright law is really starting to smell, if you ask me. Somebody better drag it out of the room before it really stinks up the place.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you're playing copyright material to an office of people, it would most likely be public performance.
you cannot take a projector and a dvd/vcr or whatever and play any movie up on the side a building at night time for anyone to watch. you need permission from the copyright holders to do that.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:3, Informative)
If you are listening to music on the street or in the office and people overhear it, no infringement. If you rent a flick and invite 20 people over to watch it, that's not infringement.
If you charge people for the above, that is infringement.
If you disseminate the material, ala storing MP3s on a server, or display a movie in a public venue like the side of a building or in Central Park, then you are infringing.
Re:Not fair use.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if I play my CD's at a party I throw at my house, does the RIAA expect me to compensate for that? How about if a friend is in my car, and we listen to my CD's, is that a public performance? How about if 8 friends are in my Suburban?
Or maybe I go out to the pool with my boombox and throw on a CD. Do the other pool-goers constitute the public? Do I now need to wear headphones to avoid licensing fees?
When I invite a friend over to watch a movie, do I have to buy a copy of the movie for each visitor? Do I need to obtain permission from the MPAA before watching a movie with friends? How about with my cats? They like to watch tv as well, you know.
Sure, you could argue that all these are indeed a public performance. Of course, my argument would be that were the RIAA/MPAA/etc. to try and enforce any of them, they would be (a)laughed out of court, and (b)bankrupt and pennyless in a matter of weeks. Why should this case be that different?
Re:Not fair use.... (Score:3, Informative)
If you set up in Central Park and played a bunch of music on a big rig (something more than just a boombox that someone may overhear) and then show a couple of movies from a projector on a bed sheet, that is a public performance.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Piracy is when you take music that didn't belong to you (or your immediate family). We're not talking the distribution of music.. We're talking the playing of music threw a digital loud-speaker. It's at most no different than a company playing a CD throw a real loud-speaker, getting caught by the immorally abusive RIAA. I can not believe such an offence is worth $1 million in back-pay (ignoring for a moment, that I believe that such activity is illegal).
If individuals pirate the music off the mp3 server, then they are individually responsible for piracy.
The whole question of napster is still unresolved as far as I'm concerned, so my chief argument is that it's not a cut and dry bad company.
-Michael
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:2)
Not that I agree with it. *mutter*
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually we are talking about that, "post and share"
If individuals pirate the music off the mp3 server, then they are individually responsible for piracy
It seems that is not what happened, "server dedicated solely"
From the article:
Piracy? Arrrgh! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, actually piracy is when you take over a ship on the high seas. What you are talking about is copyright infringement. I don't mean to be rude, but please don't do their work for them by helping them mangle the language like that.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:2)
I personally am disgusted that loud-speakers are illegal to use on owned media, but I understand that courts currently rule that way.
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:3, Funny)
That reminds me of a copy program for the Amiga. "Illegal copies? No, sir, it's for backups..." And when you start it up, it has a (nauseating) animated gold background with the repeating song, "Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A Pirate's life for me!".
:-)
Re:And this is wrong why? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) the amount of money involved... a million dollars would buy a lot of CD's, I can't imagine the employees swapped THAT much music; and it's not clear that the "company promoted privacy," from the article, it could have been something that some IT guys set up on an old piece of hardware.
2) usually, when an out of court settlement is reached, the parties agree to confidentiality. Presumably, the RIAA wanted to use it for publicity... but you'd think that permission to publicize the amount must have reduced the settlement amount. So the settlement was for a million dollars PLUS permission to drag IIS's name in the mud.
This makes it clear to me that IIS settled to avoid legal expenses... unless this was an especially egregious violation, a million dollars far exceeds any real damages. You'd have to be pretty unlucky to have a jury award that much for a business-to-business violation (most of those huge "punitive damage" awards occur in individual or class-action suits)
So, what's distressing about this is the legal scare tactics... the lawyers of the RIAA member companies vs. legal counsel of a single IT company. These people are out to do damge to anybody who steps on their toes, and they don't care whether they do it by winning a judgement or by running up their targets' legal expenses. It's a common tactic, but a pretty slimy one.
Not that I expected any better from those people.
Defend the "protection" please. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's kind of a demanding stance for someone who's trying to screw me out of money. Rather than me justify my like of music to you, why don't you justify your desire to keep me from listening to my friend's music and take $1,000,000 from my company's retirement fund?
It's hard to tell what you are thinking. So, does an internal MP3 archive constitute a republication? How about the company library? Look at all those bad people sharing books and drawings without paying for it each time! I watch people at work swap CDs all day. The company here encouraged and institutionalized the practice, tell me what's wrong with that. Tell me how that is remotly related to killing people at sea to steal their cargos, "piracy", or walking out of a store with something you did not pay for, "shoplifting".
Once again, the RIAA has screwed the pooch. If anything, the central MP3 player constitutes a big advertisment. Expect music sales to go down in the area, and elsewhere. This latest bonehead move has convinced me to never buy another new major lable recording again. I refuse to give my money to an organization that would violate my rights this way. DMCA, and other legislation was general and incompetent. Taking money from people for personal listening goes beyond suing the Girl Scouts for singing "America the Beautiful". This is personal. Fuck you RIAA.
Re:Defend the "protection" please. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the best way to help artists out - going to live performances (it's good to get away from the computer and enjoy some culture every now and then) and actually buying the band's CD. That way they get to see your support because you showed up and applauded and because you forked out 15 or 20 bucks for their CD.
The other good way to do it is to hire the band to play at functions you organise. A lot of good bands will play for a reasonably low cost and if you get friends to chip in $5/$10 it gets covered pretty easily - plus you get a live band instead of mp3s/CDs. Even better though is that you don't have to worry about the music during the night and can concentrate on having a good time while the band selects the music and handles requests.
And yes, I am in a band [soulpurpose.com.au]. If you're in the Brisbane area do check out the site, we have set up a professional recording studio that bands might be interested in as well.
Who's the Rat? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Who's the Rat? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bloody typical (Score:5, Insightful)
One of these days, the record companies are going to find themselves out of a job - artists will realise how useless the labels actually are, recording equipment will become too cheap for the record companies to justify their (huge) slice of the revenue, and we will finally see the end of this rubbish.
That would NOT be legal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:3, Informative)
According to the xxAA, yes. Feel free to replace "xx" with "RI" and you have the music mafia. Or replace "xx" with "MP" and "music" with "movie" and you have the movie mafia. Either way, the answer stays the same. DIVX (not the codec) was the MPAA's dream. Pay for the movie every time you watch it. If you want to watch it at a friend's place, pay for it again. If you want to watch it upstairs, pay for it again.
The RIAA is trying to do that exact same thing with music. I hope that it will fail as badly and that someone (anyone) pimp slaps some sense into them. If not, I'll switch to classical music. I'll have an easier time adjusting my taste in music than adjusting to the "pay-to-play" model the xxAA is trying to force down our throats.
Noisy neighbors downstairs (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:5, Informative)
The hills are alive, with the sound of MUZAK.
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That would NOT be legal (Score:3, Informative)
That's why companies like Muzak have sprung up, with public performance licensing. Even MP3.com has gotten into the act, with audio streams meant for business use -- and the service is NOT free.
Radios are policed (Score:3, Funny)
The list of conditions is pretty exhaustive, I half expect to see a fee schedule for "humming tune whilst walking down public street" or, "singing whilst engaged in aqueous hygene activities".
Xix.
Re:What about a jukebox? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, in the US, if you are a bar or restaurant with a jukebox, you have to do the ASCAP/BMI license thing but the upshot is that you can also legally play music over your PA in the restaurant, have a cover band play other bands' songs, etc. The licensing organizations do a survey at certain intervals to determine average usage of the jukebox and charge royalties based on that.
Re:Bloody typical (Score:3, Interesting)
They control the format in which artists may distribute their work, the format in which we (the customer, who is apparently always right) may store the product we purchased. They offer the artist the option of enforcement, seeing to it that life is as inconvenient for the consumer as humanly possible.
Seriously though, I'd like to see a serious list of the services the record companies provide - advertising for music is almost nonexistent (I hardly ever see a poster or TV commercial that is specifically advertising an album or single, unless it's one of those compilation CD's). Face it - the ultimate form of advertising for music is wide distribution. The more times you hear their songs, the more likely you are to buy the CD. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a song on the radio, at work, or at home in MP3 format and gone out and purchased the entire album.
Sure, you can download the whole thing. But people like actually holding the product.
So since I'm a moron, how 'bout you elaborate on your flame - some details on these services would surely shed some light on this topic for myself (and all the other morons out here).
messages sent: (Score:5, Interesting)
"""
This sends a clear message that there are
consequences if companies allow their resources
to further copyright infringement,'' said
Matt Oppenheim, RIAA Senior Vice President,
Business and Legal Affairs.
"""
The message I heard:
Large, money-laden industry group can use a
broken legal system to easily take even more
money from others by leveraging antiquated
and ridiculous idea-ownership laws that need
sorely to be changed.
Re:messages sent: (Score:4, Informative)
Yet here, its not even clear that anyone actually bought the damn CDs in the first place. We've reached a point where we're so aggravated about the stranglehold that Hollywood and the labels have that at first utterance of mp3 we're spouting the same old 'information-wants-to-be-free' rhetoric.
Those "antiquated" ideas of copyright ownership were a contract between creators and the public that worked since the Statute of Anne. Calling them "antiquated" just plays into the hands of the content-producers who would just as happily grind us inexorably toward pay-per-use purgatory.
Copyright worked. The DMCA doesn't. Confusing the two is like confusing pedophilia with Catholicism.
Re:messages sent: (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why, of course, it is absurd to call intellectual output "property". Of course, originally it wasn't considered "property" -- that is why the Framers saw fit to put in a specific Copyright Clause in the first place. Since the sanctity of (actual) property was already well-established, if intellectual output had been property, they wouldn't have needed a separate clause to protect it. (A major premise of constitutional law is the economy of words.)
So, I agree that the "antiquated" laws are not the problem. It's the newfangled ones that are mucking us up
Who does the RIAA think they are? (Score:2)
Now, if IIS was offering access to the server to its customers as part of their service fees, then I can see how that would be a problem.
Cryptnotic
How did the RIAA find out? (Score:2)
Re:How did the RIAA find out? (Score:2)
Hidden Feature (Score:5, Funny)
Is this an undocumented feature of IIS 5.0? And is it a good enough reason to switch from apache?
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed that Integrated Information Systems had a dedicated server to serve up MP3's. Would the settlement reached $1M if it had just been some directories on NFS or Samba.
This kind of stuff will scare the business community in a serious way. You can be sure the software police will be given new gestapo powers real soon in a corporation near you.
Have to admit, IIS sounds very stupid in this. But $1M would buy a big stack of CD's (especially considering the discount you could get for volume)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
For $1,000,000, a great many legal arguments could have been explored and may have helped the restrictive entertainment laws we have. Sounds like someone made a private win-win deal to me.
So, as a result of this, its legal to listen to the radio at work, but illegal to play a rack of CD's. Fine with those laws? Uh huh... They were either without principle and spineless, or accepting a deal. No one caves in like that without taking a kickback.
Next thing you know... (Score:2)
seriously, what's the difference between this and having a stack of CD and connect a very powerful AMP to all the speakers in the company?
is it illegal to share the music between your left and right ears?
Artists (Score:2)
Tomorrow's Headlines should read RIAA steals 1 million from Artists.
Time to get modded down ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is *not* the same as making MP3's of all your CD's to listen to from your PC while you're at work. The only way this would have been "ok" would be if every single employee owned all of those CD's.
I think the RIAA's policies stink, but in this case they had the right. Not liking them doesn't give you the right to steal from them.
Bryan
(who's going to do a scan of his networks tomorrow for MP3's to delete - if the users don't want me to find them they'd better stick them on the C: drive)
Re:Time to get modded down ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that it's illegal for you and your spouse (or other live-in companion) to listen to the same CD? You both have to own a copy? Or that you can't lend a CD out to a friend and let them listen to it? Or plop it on a tape to have an alternate storage location? Or even lend that tape out to a friend?
A lot of these activities which are now claimed to be illegal are permitted under the Home Audio Recording Act.
Yes - here is a potential work around? Comments? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the server software limited connections so any particular album could only be played by one client at a time, then IIS may have been able to escape liability. Of course they would have had to buy all those CD's too, I'll assume they did.
Think of the CD as a book, you can buy it and lend it out - thanks to those who fought the publishers earlier - but you can't lend out copies if more than one copy or any copy and the original will be used at the same time. If only one client were able to listen to any particular album at once, the company would have been in the clear. IANAL, but from my reading I believe this to be true.
There are some additional problems I've thought of that arise from this - what if I were to rip a book into chapters, and lend them out individually? Would that be legal? I wouldn't think so. Based on my reasoning above, what if I were to allow different people to listen to different tracks, with no more than one person listening to a track at the same time? This sounds just as legal as ripping a book into chapters and lending those out. But now think of multiple people listening to the same track, but different parts of the track. User #1 could say be "borrowing" offset 0:32 of a track but will have returned it by the time User #2 gets to it. This raises some problems, I haven't seen it discussed so far though. Technically, it seems ok as long as the same part of a song isn't sent to two users at once, it would appear that two people can listen to the same track at once. The server could simply wait a second to begin additional streams, in the unlikely event the same song is called for by separate clients at the same exact time. Can someone clarify on this?
Re:Time to get modded down ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?? If I bring a CD to work and play it, does every person who hears it have to own the CD? How is it different just because the music is on a server and not a CD?
Standard Practice for the industry (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't all that different from what the various (c) organizations have been doing for some time. Most infamous was the 1996 effort by BMI/ASCAP to slap fines on the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the fireplace -- an effort that backfired in terms of the PR (and led Congress to specifically exempt the Boy / Girl Scouts).
(This article [gigalaw.com] at GigaLaw provides some useful background).
I've heard IP attorneys compare these guys to the Mafia -- they basically go around extorting companies to pay them hush money and keep their attack dogs at bay. For large companies, the price of buying them off is cheaper than the price of hiring defense attorneys.
It kinda makes sense doesn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even us
Now I'll watch as my karma goes to -\infty
What's really disturbing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Read between the lines... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of people will see this article and freak out. However, I believe that this strategy is going to backfire on them and they will look more out of touch with the relationship between technology and society than they already are.
Cryptnotic
how big is enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Though not enforced, theoretically, the only use is to allow individual listening to their own music on a storage facility greater than that of their own computer. It was more cost effective to have one big large hard drive then have a dozen large hard drives (not to mention the company was SCSI, so it would have been an administrative nightmare to upgrade all the machines this way).. Not to mention that the individuals worked on several UNIX machines, and could easily mount their drives as necessary in the different labs.
To make this legit, they could have restricted access to each mount, and thus no sharing would occur.. As I said, this wasn't enforced however.
How can a networked computer be allowed to legally space-shift legitamit media without fear of the RIAA / SS?
The real question here is that in a small company, does the RIAA really have jurisdiction. With a company that small, people would ahve lent each other CDs from time to time anyway (often duplicating onto cassette tapes, which has never been really refuted).
Should such a company be worried? Or is the gistapo getting closer to getting it's power stripped?
-Michael
Re:how big is enough (Score:4, Funny)
But I don't have the CD because I just downlo... ooohhh!
Re:how big is enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone at that company must have had broadband at home. Set up the server there and presto bingo! The likelyhood of it being the company's fault rather than your own just plummeted.
You're missing the point. You _are_ allowed to put your purchased CD in the CD-ROM drive-tray at work last I checked. From that, it's trivial to rip the CD and save the files locally so you don't have to bring your entire CD collection back and forth from home. It is beyond immoral for a company to tell you how to live your life (e.g. that you must carry your original CDs with you as you would an ID card (which so far is only enforced for visa's and drivers licences in special circumstances)).
Assuming that you agree with me thus far, then it is not too far of a stretch to fathom a personal archive of music at work on a work machine (much like you'd install your own background image, or heaven forbid, your own OS).
While company policy might restrict such use of a computer (e.g. a bank that disallows entry/departure of data/files), most aren't this strict.
A company that encourages a "happy" work environment might be more than willing to facilitate personal audio archives, and my concern is this is completely legal. BUT, as we all know, this doesn't stop interested parties in thwarting such use for their own profit. They could very easily loby congress to make such specific use illegal... And that's my beef.. That just because there is a law, doesn't mean it's the end of the story. There are millions of horrible and immoral laws. I personally feel strongly that such media restrictions fit into this category.
-Michael
Link to primary-source RIAA statement (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.riaa.com/PR_Story.cfm?id=505 [riaa.com]
The RIAA's News [riaa.com] section is definitely worth a look, in a know-your-enemy sense.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
Star Trek Moment (Score:2)
Oh Shit.
Now these people have means and precedent to do this to any corp where they can pay off someone to squeal.
RIAA sues Technicolor (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a little interesting part of the article, the RIAA is stepping on some major dollars here by screwing with Hollywood's connections. Maybe they aren't working for the same goal after all....
Hearing TAX (Score:5, Funny)
During your life you might accidentally overhear music that you haven't paid for and thus rip off "the artists".
Thus, the TAX will be an innitial fee on birth, based on your preliminary hearing tests. If found to have the ability to hear, you will be charged the TAX as an annual % of your income. Should you have no income within the first 10 years of your life, the record labels will render your hearing useless to stop your criminal activities...
This should address all those MP3 and other music piracy problems at the source..
Explain something to me... (Score:2)
Just because a library is a public resource does not exempt it from copyright law. They facilitate [hell - they exist solely for the purpose of] sharing books, music, magazines, whatever. And I think it is important to note that this company was not selling copyrighted material - it was only allowing its employees to exchange music.
So what is the distinction?
Re:Explain something to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
But you are right, libraries are irking the so called "media publishers" more and more, I think they just aren't feeling in a strong enough position to eliminate them - it's a big undertaking, might take some time, but will definitely help revenues.
Re:Explain something to me... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a big difference that you're missing. Libraries allow patrons to borrow copyrighted material on the condition that said material will be returned and not illegally copied. If libraries were like MP3 servers as you claim they are, they would have printing presses in them, and you would take whatever books you want to the operator and have them make you a copy of the book. They would also have CD replication stations so that you could make copies of their CD collection at will.
research labs are next? (Score:2)
Such RIAA actions send a chilling message to the world. It is hard to see how such non-profit-making activity as employees sharing music at work would constitute "piracy". But perhaps sending a chilling message is just what they want: if computer science professionals can't do anything interesting with media, then they won't have to deal with new developments like MP3 or Napster.
BSA Handbook? (Score:5, Funny)
For the optimists out there (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, this is like putting drunk drivers in jail for killing a person in an accident, instead of suing the crap out of Ford for making the car that has the potential to kill people if used incorrectly.
let's get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:let's get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how this constitutes "piracy". (Score:4, Insightful)
dedicated (Score:4, Insightful)
So the bigger question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
So who was the employee that got so ticked off at the company that he ratted out his employer to the RIAA? Is there a bounty now on piracy?
Ka-Ching.
$1M dollars can buy alot of CDs (Score:4, Informative)
I worked for starcd which recognises music from the radio. We got a quote to buy every album that a song had been played from on the radio in the last five years five or more times. It was just over $100k.
How can they possible justify a settlement of this size. This is the most unvelievable abuse the RIAA has demonstrated of it's corporate massivity. I have an mp3 repository, and I own every CD that I have a recording of. I would like someone to explain to me how this doesn't constitute fair use?
I bet they only settled because RIAA is too large to fight. So much for the American justice system.
-
this is not such a light shade of grey IMHO (Score:4, Insightful)
I do think the $1M figure is pretty much insane though.
My beef with RIAA and MPAA is NOT with their opposition to Napster-ish music distribution; It's their repeated attempts to legislate mandatory crippling of consumer electronics (and outlawing of certain kinds of programming) to protect their interests at the expense of my rights.
I would MUCH rather see RIAA taking the kind of action described in the story - going after actual "pirates" - instead of presuming before the fact that every consumer is a thief who cannot be trusted with uncrippled hardware.
High speed CD brokerage house (Score:4, Interesting)
Just thought of a way around this.
Let's say we set up an economy within our office. We buy and sell CDs on demand. At the beginning of the month, you bring in whatever CDs you want to sell. You deposit them into the office trust, where they're "converted" to a more economically liquid form, onto a digital hard drive.
Now all we need is some simple software that "trades" CDs. Whenever you want to listen to one of the many volumes in the repository, you buy it on demand. You real-time trade one of the CDs you deposited in exchange for the ownership of the one you want to listen to.
The only hitch is when multiple people want to buy a CD that no one wants to sell, or when no one wants to buy any of the CDs you brought in so that you don't have any purchasing/exchange power to buy any of the others.
Obviously, in a small office, there's not a large enough "economy" to make this work, but for a 1,000 person corporation, it's unlikely that you'd ever have to wait more than a few minutes. Especially if everybody brought in enough CDs. The redundancy along would keep things rolling. Now what if it were multi-corporation?
IANAL, but this seems like a perfectly legal brokerage-type method to share music without breaking the law.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Hahaha! Reuters has the same problem! (Score:3, Funny)
Disappointing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't fair use. They didn't let a friend borrow the CD. They ripped the CD and put the files on a server for everyone to get. Fair use may have a case should there have been software on the software to let a user "check out" a song and while it was checked out, no one else could access it. But I really don't think that was the case, do you?
I've known companies that had MP3 servers, but they were always known by the users. They weren't ever really recognized by management. I bet many of those go away tomorrow morning when word of this gets out.
What about the artists? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems reasonable to me (Score:4, Insightful)
1) An employee putting an MP3 on employer owned equipment
2) An employee putting up a MP3 server without the employers knowledge
3) An employer sponsoring and condoning the spread of MP3 music throughout their corprate network
The first two are the employees problem, the third it is time to go after the employer.
I worked at a company where it was a firing offense to put up a shared MP3 repository... They had rather deep pockets and didn't want anyone to get their grubby hands on it
Re:Seems reasonable to me (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if an employee were to forward around a racist joke. [Let's just say for this scenario it's about Green People]. A employee that is offended by the joke doesn't sue the people that is forwarding it, but rather the employer for creating a "unsafe" [I know that's not the right term..but there's another legal term] condition in the workplace. [Check Here for Other Related Situations [epolicyinstitute.com]]
Scenario 2: If an employee installs a piece of software that the employer doesn't own the license to, the person that is responsible is the employer even if he is not aware of it. [Read More Here [epolicyinstitute.com]]
Scenario 3: If a hacker sets up a warez site on one of your server, you are not technically liable, but the FBI can come in with an warrant and confiscate the server without giving you an opportunity backup all the data that you need from that server. [Operation Bandwidth [com.com]]
Basically my point is this, the employer is ultimately responsible for all employees and equipment onsite. 1) If they are taking IP claims to all the work that you do on the office computers, they should also be liable for all the bad things that you do. 2) Ultimately, the employer owns all the equipment and must be actively enforcing the rules.
Libraries anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as this isn't a hoax, the word really needs to get out about this.
Try a real company (Score:4, Interesting)
Next time try fucking around with a real company. You'll be laughed at if you ever go after an mp3 server in an engineering department at General Electric, or Chemistry lab at SmithKleinGlaxo. Real companies wouldn't give you the time of day, let alone answer your phone calls or sign for your registered letters. You're pathetic.
Cheers,
JB
...or was this the cheap way out for IISX? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whichever is the real story, the RIAA has just handed the fair-use activists the small businesses of America as allies.
Credits to David of Noisebox for pointing out the IISX finance picture.
In other news, RIAA hopes to ban non-RIAA works (Score:4, Funny)
The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen [riaa.org], President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."
When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."
Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:
A new file-sharing program called Phynd is burrowing in at a handful of universities...
...Phynd limits its searches and its users to computers on the network on which the program is running.
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/04/2002040402t.h
Re:In other news (Score:2)
Re:Where's da money go? (Score:4, Funny)
(yeah, off-topic, flamebait, troll - what else you got?)
Re:Future Immunity? (Score:2)
Re:It's about time... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:2 + 2 together.... (Score:2)
Re:Utterly stupid company (Score:2)
Re:One word, wow.... (Score:4, Informative)
They're not. Especially since they're not law enforcement. If the BSA or the RIAA shows up at your door, turn them away. They can't do a damn thing about it without law enforcement present AND a search warrant, which you are entitled to look at (so if the cops do accompany them, simply ask to see the search warrant).