ISP Sued By Irish RIAA 191
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees."
fight it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:fight it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:fight it (Score:5, Insightful)
Extorsion, maybe?
Re:fight it (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I would probably classify Eircom as vastly more evil than the Irish version of the RIAA (IRMA - Irish Recorded Music Association).
Let me guess... (Score:2)
Here's the only two things you need to know (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISP has no obligation and the *AA can't seem to "educate" themselves out of their problem.
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Dilbert: Sanity? Reality? The laws of physics?
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Seriously though this one just isn't a runner, the various record label umbrella groups have realised they can't go after every 12 year old with computer access (or in the US case suing indigent men for their shopping trolleys) so they will try to tackle the access, however any company that put th
And things you need to know about Eircom... (Score:3, Insightful)
What does that mean? Well, if a normal business needs to handle a business crisis they will create new products, modify their business model, reduce their costs etc etc.
When Eircom was a semi-state the solution was: write a cheque for the amount you need, put in the post (also a semi-state body) to the respective minister. Minister signs cheque, problem solved.
This mentality didn't necessarily wash when the company was privatized, but it certainly prevailed for a lon
Re:Here's the only two things you need to know (Score:4, Interesting)
This is Ireland. We don't so much have laws here as we have sort of "tribal customs". Over here, even if a law is struck down as unconstitutional, the supreme court has ruled that you can still be imprisoned under it [village.ie]. It used to be illegal for Irish ISPs to hold certain types of data for more than about six months, I believe. It was at one time discovered that Eircom, the ISP mentioned in this article (effectively the Irish AT&T), was retaining this information for three years, the government passed a bill making it mandatory to store it for at least three years.
That's how things work in this country. We're kind of a one party state meets banana republic meets laissez faire capitalism. Basically, laws here are universally subject to interpretation and arbitrary revision. That's when they're not being ignored outright. If Eircom agrees to the censoring and monitoring, then it will become legal. If it doesn't, it won't. I doubt the IRMA is anywhere near as well connected or influential as Eircom representatives, so unless they're willing to pay up, in either bribes or in financing the system, this surveillance simply isn't happening. Anyway, we're all under surveillance anyway [siliconrepublic.com], so this entire issue is rather moot.
Honda car used to steal my parking spot! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Honda car used to steal my parking spot! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parents of child porn victims sue camera manufacturers for allowing pedophiles to make child porn.
Corporate hacking victims sue computer manufacturers for providing hackers tools to break into their systems.
Violent crime victims sue weapons manufacturers for enabling criminals to harm them.
China sues Western democracies for giving its citizens subversive ideas of freedom and civil liberties.
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Corporate hacking victims sue computer manufacturers for providing hackers tools to break into their systems.
It's much like banning hammers because someone decides to beat a person to death with it.
How about we eliminate hard objects altogether, then nobody can steal cars!
Lets burn our public libraries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets burn our public libraries (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a very apt comparison.
Books from the library are read there, or borrowed to be returned later. The number of copies in existence remains the same (unless people go to a copy machine to copy the book - a non-trivial and fairly costly operation, probably more costly than going to the book shop and buy yourself a copy).
Libraries can be compared to music/video rental shops (many book libraries also do this). Those disks are rent or lent, and are returned a week or so later.
Music and video downloads (and e-books) however DO increase the number of copies. And copying is as good as free in effort and cost.
Of course the publishers also complain about libraries (not so much, they are considered a given due to their long historical existence), and video rentals. They claim it also lowers sales. Just like reselling used copies of books/CDs/DVDs. But no matter what, on-line file sharing is in a league on its own.
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One book or DVD in a public library can be read by hundreds of people.
Most people who watch a movie after downloading it will delete the movie or delete the ebook after reading it.
File sharing is very similar to a public library. For popular items, the file maybe in simultaneous use. When the item is not very popular but under non-zero use, it is very likely that the probability of simultaneous use is close to zero. At this point, the public library and file sharing have almost the same characteristics
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I'd be fairly happy even if they allowed some sort of digital public library to be set up...
Golgafrinchans (Score:2)
And a certain western superpower wants to base its economy on "intellectual property" that can be copied and transmitted free. The same western superpower that has convinced its population that "free" equals "worthless".
Maybe I shouldn't try to talk my kids into giving me grandkids. They'll grow up in a third world country if the US continues to let the plutocrats run America.
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So the solution is to send two bucks direct to the author!
I guess, though, that the author will have difficulty in getting a new edition published or in getting a contract for another book if the first one didn't appear to be popular - which is how it will appear if one copy is bought and then Xeroxed twenty times. So you're damaging the author's ability to do his job in the future, as well as depriving him of current royalties.
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I'll give you a real example here, that happened to me when I went to university.
In order to get promoted and be able to earn titles like "Doctor Honoris Causa", a teacher is required to have some works of his published, the minimum being at least three books printed and about 10-15 articles in different magazines.
So, the teacher talks to a printing house, which says th
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Book authors have the same problems that musicians do.
Not only may they be in debt to the publisher for an advance that never
matches the expected royalties, lesser known authors have to go out and
market the book on their own dime and be their own salesmen.
Writers will gladly tell you how thankless it is to not be Stephen King.
Re:Lets burn our public libraries (Score:5, Informative)
The materials in the libraries are all duly licensed for lending, through a combination of statutory exceptions in the US Code, and, where applicable or gapped, through licensing with the copyright holders permitting such use.
The copyright holders have indeed been compensated, both through license payments from libraries (often on DVDs and CDs and similar materials by acquiring the more-expensive rental copies [which often include media replacement]) and through the inherent copyright law bargain.
Incidentally, many library collections include video and audio content licensed for commercial use, which is a great way for a community organization (say, a church or club) to put on such a performance without having to buy a license or negotiate one with the rightsholders. You just check out the video with the commercial license and you're good to go. Your tax dollars at work, literally.
Oops. "commercial use" -- "public performance" (Score:2)
Libraries often have content licensed for public performance, for churches, school teachers, and clubs to use.
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There is no such thing as "licensed for lending" and you don't have to be a public library to lend a book. I can loan any of my books to anybody I want. I can loan my CDs to anybody I want. They are mine - I own them.
The entire concept of copyright has been turned upside down since the advent of computers. A license is a license to copy and distribute - the author licenses the work to the publisher, who pays the author for each copy made and so
Re:Lets burn our public libraries (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know I certainly would. It would be incredibly stupid to just buy some random book from some random author that the odds are you won't get through the first chapter on. But if I've borrowed a book and found it enjoyable, I'll buy books by that author.
This is actually why the RIAA labels let radio play their music and want to kill P2P and why indie bands usually have free MP3s on their websites.
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born. Some of us here have probably been borrowing music from public
libraries since before you were born.
It's been done, just not digitally.
Although it would be pretty trivial to go into a library listening booth
with a headphone splitter and a digital recording device.
"Obvious ways"? (Score:5, Interesting)
This technology is not foolproof, but it does require filesharers to jump through additional hoops to distribute files. Hardcore filesharers will no doubt toil obsessively to workaround the issue, but some casual downloaders may conclude that the hassle and risks associated with filesharing is becoming greater than the costs of paying $0.89 to get the song from Amazon, etc.
Eliminating %100 of copyright infringement is not a requirement for the RIAA to regard its strategy as successful. Simply making the process risky and aggravating enough that most people will switch to paying for music is enough. Each generation of this cat and mouse game between the "pirates" and the RIAA has resulted in an increased compartmentalization of p2p networks. Sure the "hydra" will grow more heads and live on, but it's hard to ignore that something that could immediately be located and downloaded on Napster in the Year 2000 now frequently takes time to hunt down and leech via bittorent.
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first step is to encrypt, when you encrypt something it's not possible to tell it's encrypted, you just can't read whats there. the only way to tell it's encrypted is to monitor a port. this is where you could introduce port hoping, where you use a standard https port to do a handshake where you and the tracker make a randomised set of port changes every 1 hour.
now i know what your going to say - the isp's softw
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I half agree with you, but something like %30-50 of traffic on the internet is bittorrent, and a big chunk of bittorrent traffic is regarded as illegal activity (in most jurisdictions) by a good many folks. If there was a highway where %30-50 of the vehicles were widely known to be transporting something illegal, would you be surprised if the local authorities took an increased interest in that particular road and b
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... but something like %30-50 of traffic on the internet is bittorrent, and a big chunk of bittorrent traffic is regarded as illegal activity (in most jurisdictions) by a good many folks. If there was a highway where %30-50 of the vehicles were widely known to be transporting something illegal, would you be surprised if the local authorities took an increased interest in that particular road and began to watch things a bit more closely?
Using the logic at hand if the road was a toll road the government would be filing charges against the operator of the toll road for not making sure that all of the traffic on the road was in fact not transporting anything illegal.
Clearly in that particular case the onus would be on some level of government to ensure that the illegal transportation of goods was stopped not the operator of the toll road.
Since copyright is something granted to the copyright owner it should be up to the owner to enforce t
Road analogy (Score:2)
Roads: Internet
Road owners (local government): ISPs
Illegal goods: dodgy song downloads
So, the equivelant of Audible Magic's CopySense to detect infringers is, I guess roadblocks and vehicle checks set up, manned and paid for by the road owners. That does not seem right to me, especially the part about who has to pay.
We don't prosecute the postal service for aiding and abbetting those who send letter bombs. We don't prosecute road owners or car companies for
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If that many people were breaking transportation law, I'd question the rationality of the existance of those laws.
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lastly, why should it be up to the isp's to monitor this? how the hell is it their problem?
My take... because some recent litigation has mopped the courtroom floor with the RIAA over their John Doe "discovery" tactics. This is just a different vector for the same kind of attack and Ireland is small enough for a test case... or so they thought. It's time for ISPs, the EFF, Music stores of all kinds, Universities, The EU and State Attorney Generals in the U.S. to bring suit to disband the RIAA. This is extortion, plain and simple.
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lastly, why should it be up to the isp's to monitor this? how the hell is it their problem? only luddites suggest isp's are responsible to people browsing kiddie porn or other sick shit, yet somehow it's different when it's the RIAA.
ISP's want to oppose this to their dieing breath, for exactly the reason you just listed.
As long as they do their 'common carrier' thing where they are simply providing a service and not trying to moderate that service they can't be held liable.
As soon as they start trying they open them selves up to potential liability, if they do this for the RIAA, soccer moms will go 'so why is there still kiddy porn on the net?' and then somebody will jump in and sue the ISP for not filtering the kiddy porn out, after
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Re:"Obvious ways"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Consider this:
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So what? There is absolutely nothing about the protocol (and consequentially, traffic shape) that actually suggests copyright infringement. Using BT is not criminal.
The GP actually said this a number of times, but it seemed to fly right over your head.
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There is no inherent reason in P2P to open 40 connections. You can do P2P will 2 or 5 or 10 connections.
If the number of opened connections gets you into trouble, it's no problem changing it.
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Ya, good thing that's my only choice...
But seriously, how many additional hoops do you think ticking the SSL button is? And hey, it's conceivable that most popular torrent clients in the near future come defaulting to SSL. What do you think the result would be? Do you think the software developers would have to explain when SSL traffic begins to be shaped en mass or would people be more in
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I wouldn't be surprised to see SSL throttled down to the point where transferring large files becomes painfully slow
Why would the ISPs want to do that? They can plausibly claim that they have no idea what exactly is contained in those encrypted packets and thus no legal obligation to do anything. I am not sure about the precedents (IANAL) but I seem to recall that the courts have already ruled substantially in favor of the ISPs as NOT being responsible for the activities of their individual users provided that they can meet the low bar of reasonable steps such as complying with subpoenas, responding to takedown letters,
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Garbage. Historically what happens is that a tool is created to automate getting past the file sharing restrictions which requires no mo
Re:Internet TV will Kill ISP Tracking (Score:2, Interesting)
If large numbers of filesharers begin to send huge transfers amounts of data over SSL, it's going to be pretty noticeable.
All web pages must send data to be viewed. All content whatsoever must send data to be viewed. File sizes are going to increases *exponentially*! There will be absolutely no way for the isp to distinguish between phone traffic, "illegal" p2p traffic, and even the isp's own "movie" file offerings.
It will become nearly impossible for anyone to know the contents of any file by merely looking at size, distribution, origination, etc. ISPs will lose a helluva lot more money with their free speech violations that
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Seriously man, screw that.
Sued for not buying something? (Score:3, Insightful)
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extortion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:extortion. (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm seeing enough to wish there were more RICO suits filed against the whole lot of them.
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The slashdot summary does. TFA says that they are being sued for allowing file sharing on their infrastructure. The fact that they don't use filtering products such as (but not limited to) CopySense is evidence that they are complicit with file sharers.
I'm not saying they're not a pack of F**king idiots who are sure to lose in any justice system where the 'just' part of justice is meaningful, just pointing out that this is not exactly extortion.
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Right (Score:5, Interesting)
Greedy bastards
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Just because they can get it for free does not mean this will work. Imagine the level of traffic that has to run through it. Who is going to pay for that hardware? They should give them a turnkey box that does all the monitoring, one for each DSLAM.
For free? (Score:5, Funny)
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I think that about sums it up. It is after all not in the network operator's interest to do this, nor is it a legal obligation for them to monitor th
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That's nothing, my house was robbed... (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA wants someone else to do the dirty work: (Score:5, Interesting)
In Australia in recent years there has been a push to stop selling cigarettes to under 18's. There are harsh fines and so forth to both the business and to the individuals who would do the selling.
One smart (or lazy/tricky depending on what way you look at it) cookie decided that as a shop owner who sold tabacco products, he was being asked to do regulatory work on behalf of the state government here who said that he shouldn't sell to minors. He took the government to court - and amazingly won the case. (I couldn't find anything on google though).
THe basic premise is the same here though, the RIAA and governments are imposing rules about what can and can't be done by users of something else, but they want someone else to do all the dirty work imposing the law. It's a bloody great way not to do any work if you ask me - by getting someone else to do it, and pay for it.
While I support copyright, I think that they should stop trying to get ISP's to do all the dirty work.
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It's illegal in the UK for kids to walk into a store and buy alcohol. And amazingly, the checkout workers are trained to not sell it to them. I'm sure they would find their job easier if they could operate like total drones and not bother looking at the customer, or asking for ID, but they have to do so.
Pretty
Fighting Back (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that a good way to fight the RIAA is to turn their whole numbers game on its head. Hit them with so many lawsuits that their legal strategy collapses.
Would it be possible for law schools in various countries to assemble "how to" kits that would allow average people to harass the big labels, individually or collectively, in this way? I'm not sure what grounds would be best to surpass the "nuisance" threshold and protect the litigants from charges of malicious prosecution (or whatever it might be called), but something must surely exist.
Can you imagine the drain on their financial and manpower resources if the RIAA suddenly found itself on the receiving end of 15,000 suits in 20 countries?
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Can you imagine the drain on their financial and manpower resources if the RIAA suddenly found itself on the receiving end of 15,000 suits in 20 countries?
Another way to financially harm the RIAA is to stop purchasing music from the labels that comprise them. Sadly, for all the 'outrage' over the actions of groups like this, who actually gets off their butt and boycotts the parent labels?
Don't just stop there - do everything you can to reduce exposure for their artists. Shut off television sets playing music videos. Unplug radios playing their music. Flip over their CDs in music stores, or hide them behind other discs. Get your friends hooked on independent
In other news.... (Score:2)
1) Write software to protect your copyrights
2) sue ISPs when they call shenanigans
3) PROFIT!!
makers of grammophones to sue too (Score:2)
The Irish market for sound recordings suffered a decline in total sales form 146m in 2001 to 102m last year, a fall of 30%, and a substantial portion of that decline was due to illegal peer-to-peer downloading services and the increasing availability of broadband internet access here, he said.
i wonder what dvd recordings did at the same time? is it possible that the average person has a certain budget for entertainment and just spends the money buying what they want? maybe the record companies should instead consider suing the film companies.
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Most people don't work on a commission or have an unlimited amount of funds. Normal people have a certain FIXED INCOME* (salary, wages, retirement, etc). I don't know about Ireland but we're paying a hell of a lot more for gasoline here in the US. Every dollar I spend at the gas station is a dollar I can't spend on a CD.
-mcgrew
*If it's a fixed income how come I'm always broke?
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where i live, the price of a packet of pasta has gone up from 29c to 55c in one year. maybe the riaa should sue my supermarket for depriving them of revenue.
The real deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Irish RIAA? (Score:2)
How exactly does CopySense work ? (Score:2, Interesting)
How exactly does CopySense work ? I just read a PDF [audiblemagic.com] of their propaganda. Apparently an artist wishing to "protect his copyrighted works" registers in their database. Then CopySense makes a "media fingerprint" of the files - what do they mean by that ?
If they mean an actual audio fingerprint like MusicBrainz does, wouldn't the entire file need to be downloaded first ? So they're scanning the entire P2P traffic for relevant packets and recomposing the file on their own systems (including compressed files, s
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Take that, Audible Magic!
Packet Shaping (Score:3, Interesting)
What about false positives? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose the question is, how do you detect false positives, and when they happen who do I sue?
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And this is exactly how the MAFIAA wants it. You are their competetion. The RIAA wants to keep your music out of my ears, not keep Metallica's music out of my ears (or they wouldn't play it on the radio).
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad Title (Score:5, Funny)
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"Noy ya lissen ta me ba, thur's ten poynds o' saimtex under yer carr, an' it's gonna fockin' bloe ya ta kingdom come!" ~ Oscar Wilde
Re:Bad Title (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Smells like standard record company BS (Score:4, Interesting)
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That the idea of file sniffing software is sheer idiocy, prima facie. Why? Because all you have to do is "compress" the mp3 into a zip file, and bingo: no more mp3, just a zip, and if they start opening up every zip that's emailed or set up in the net, the entire interweb thingie would grind to an instant halt.
All of this was dealt with at Napster (I used to work there) and we scenario-ised all different combinations of spoofing and clamping etc. We thought of goi
Re:Smells like standard record company BS (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be too sure - the infrastructure needed for Phorm's 'targeted advertising' could easily be adapted to inspect more of the data - it already intercepts HTTP requests, and it's not a great step from there to data inspection (though the lookups are going to cost a lot of latency).
Once the ISPs allow themselves to be corrupted by Phorm, expect to see packet inspection proliferate massively.
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I'm sure the software has a list of legal download sites. Those would get a pass. And most of those downloads won't be using a P2P sharing protocol, so that's another way around. It doesn't have to be perfect (e.g. get 100% of all illegal downloading). It just has to do enough to discourage people from continuing the practice. Of course the die-hards will figure out how to fool it or bypass it, or crack into the machines running it and change it around to do something else like block certain pro-corpor
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And I'm just as sure that the list can't be comprehensive. What if ten new sites pop up tomorrow? What of sites selling non-IRMA indie music, which is the RIAA/IRMA's real enemy and the one they really want destroyed?
The fight against file sharing isn't to keep you from hearing Britney Spears, all you have to do to hear her is turn on the radio. And that radio stream is easily sampled. The fight against file sharing is a fight against their commercial
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I spent 3 days trying to get past their support line to someone who had a clue.
Seriously each time I had to explain to a numpty that it wasn't a problem with my Outlook settings as I used mutt and could I talk to their manager, everytime they resisted and everytime when I eventually got thro
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is just as screwed up in many of the same ways Eircom is, for the same reasons. Not a customer directly with them? Too bad. That broken
line of yours will just stay broken. Have a nice life!
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