Posted on 12/19/2008 8:26:38 AM PST by Stoat
After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.
(edit)
Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers
(edit)
If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is another move to protect the current delivery system (hard media like CDs). There are legitimate uses for file sharing.
1. To share files. Not all files are music files.
2. Most musicians make $0 from their album sales (has been true for a long time. They make money from live shows. There is a growing movement in the music business for bands to totally bypass the record companies. They are producing the songs themselves, and putting the songs up on file sharing sites. This is the real target of this move, as it will eventually put an end to record companies.
I support the record companies from one standpoint. They own the copyright on the music they sell, and only they have the right to sell it (or give it away via file sharing.)
However, that right extends to everyone that produces music. If I form an independent band, record songs on my own, and want to give away copies of my songs via file sharing to promote my band, that is also my right.
The fact that someone is sharing an mp3 file DOES NOT mean they are sharing it illegally. The record companies are trying to shut down their biggest future competitor: independent artists that CHOOSE to give away their music via mp3 & file sharing.
Awww. How can you not love that face! </jk>
—The fact that someone is sharing an mp3 file DOES NOT mean they are sharing it illegally.—
How would the ISP even know it was a copyrighted mp3 file. It could be an mp3 of my kid singing at a recital, for all they’d know.
RIAA= useless sack of shiite lawyers & money grubbers.
I’m not affected because the most I ever do is once or twice a year rip a CD I check out from the library. Windows media player is always happy to do this. Then I make my own CD from it and/or put a few tunes on my cheapo MP3 player to hear when taking a walk
Your expectation is a false one.
Remember- the internet is a loosely coupled collection of government and corporate zones of control. You pay a private entity that provides you access and in return gives you a traceable number, where they record all your activity. These private corporations are possibly liable for your activities.
You frequent sites that generally have a terms of use that says your activity will be monitored. Every file you touch is associated with your ip address - and is thus traceable back to you - both on the website’s logs, and on your isp’s logs.
Cookies are planted on your computer to track what sites you frequent - third parties provide weather, desktop searching, screensavers and other tools that covertly analyze your computer use and directs advertisers to your likes and dislikes so that they can more accurately target you with ads.
In short - you can expect privacy all you want. It doesn’t exist on the internet. Your ISP is already required to monitor you and keeps logs X number on behalf of the government or any person who wants to serve them with a subpeona. Just as you shouldn’t expect privacy when selling drugs on a street corner or murdering someone in full view of a survellliance camera, you shouldn’t expect privacy when you are stealing, hacking, distributing child pornography or download music on the internet.
Welcome to the real world.
I didn’t get the impression they were trying to kill the MP3 format. I think they are trying to protect music they own that is uploaded to the net and downloaded by third parties.
lol
Your argument is that people don’t own the music they write, create, produce, etc. That is, of course, a slap in the face of everyone who works for a living - but as long as you get free stuff, you’ll probably be happy.
Of course downloading MP3s is theft, as well as software, movies, etc. By your argument, child porn would be legal, since JPGs don’t have “corporeal existance”.
Good luck with that.
Anonymizing software will get you only so far. There are several remedies to stop their use on a single server, or at the isp level.
—By your argument, child porn would be legal, since JPGs don’t have “corporeal existance”.—
The child who is being exploited in child porn DOES have a corporeal existence; laws against child porn, are, quite properly, aimed at punishing those individuals who would sexually exploit minors—thus their intent is, ultimately, to protect children, certainly not to protect the IP rights of pornographers.
“I didn’t get the impression they were trying to kill the MP3 format. I think they are trying to protect music they own that is uploaded to the net and downloaded by third parties.”
I’m sure they are trying to protect their intellecutal property, and I don’t blame them for that. Their biggest long term threat though, doesn’t come from illegal sharing of mp3s, but from legal sharing of mp3s.
This solution is like eliminating free speach, because there is a rash of people yelling fire in crowed theatres.
Record compaines developed because: 1. the cost to record a song was high, 2. the cost to produce physical media to distribute the music was high, 3. promotion costs were high, 4. the distribution channel was expensive (and came to be dominated by a few big companies.)
Recording costs have dropped through the floor. Computers have brought the ability to record and edit music to the basement level.
There is no cost for the physical (mp3) media anymore.
The internet has made it possible for even the smallest band to promote themselves.
The only thing the record companies have left is domination of the distribution channel. Whether it is hard media like CDs, or soft media like iTunes. As long as record companies can force consumers into channels they dominate, they will exist. When people get comfortable getting music from non-record company dominated channels (from file sharing to independent band web sites), the record companies business model will fail.
IMHO, if the record companies want to survive, they need to get away from the $1 a song model for downloads. It can actually cost more to download an entire album than to buy the physical CD. They would eliminate tons of filesharing just by dropping the cost (I’m guessing abuot 20 cents a song.) What they lost on each song would be gained by more songs being downloaded (considering there is zero additonal marginal cost for each downloaded.)
Anyway, I think they are fighting a losing battle with this approach. The ISPs don’t get paid by the record companies,they get paid by the users. The smart ISPs aren’t going to punish their customers to help the record companies (unless they want to lose customers to their competiton.)
They could do what they did under Clinton, put a homosexual copyright lawyer who’s their guy in charge of the PTO, and, while wrecking the patent system further, focus only preventing folks in the hinterlands of places like Peru and Indonesia from using technology.
Who needs more Edisons when we have Babs Streisand?
—The smart ISPs aren’t going to punish their customers to help the record companies (unless they want to lose customers to their competiton.)—
Exactamundo. That approach works mostly with universities and colleges (who set up firewalls making hard to use p2p software) because:
1. They are afraid of lawsuits
2. Those darn kids are hogging valuable bandwith by file-sharing.
“To: (use semi-colons to separate multiple recipients)
seatrout
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In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits (will enlist help of ISP’s instead), seatrout wrote:
—The smart ISPs aren’t going to punish their customers to help the record companies (unless they want to lose customers to their competiton.)—
Exactamundo. That approach works mostly with universities and colleges (who set up firewalls making hard to use p2p software) because:
1. They are afraid of lawsuits
2. Those darn kids are hogging valuable bandwith by file-sharing.”
Those darned kids are also the ones doing most of the illegal file sharing (ruining it for everyone else who wants to use it for a legitimate purpose.)
The crooks like the college kids doing illegal file sharing should be cracked down on.
I think I copied some extra stuff into my last reply accidently (and here I thought someone was posting something witty till I saw I had posted it.) ;)
“will start using software which blocks their IP address.”
Those schemes have not been proven to work so well. Anonymous routers have been set up by the RIAA in some cases to get the IP addresses anyway.
At any rate this is the last gasp of a dying industry.
“Your ISP is already required to monitor you and keeps logs X number on behalf of the government or any person who wants to serve them with a subpeona.”
There is no law that requires ISPs to keep logs for any certain length of time. They are only required to monitor a specific user after they are served with a subpoena, as is required of the phone companies under wiretap laws.
Most ISPs keep logs for maintenance purposes and dump the logs periodically. It used to be they would keep the data for about a month, I don’t know what it is now.
Sounds like the industry is hoping to bribe ISP's to cooperate with them.
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