Posted on 04/29/2003 1:09:02 PM PDT by Mister Magoo
Wednesday April 30, 3:06 AM Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."
About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and at least one million will be getting the message within a week, according to music industry officials.
The copyright infringement warnings, which were sent by the Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of the major record labels, said in part:
"It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. ...When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."
The music industry's campaign for the hearts and minds of Internet song swappers comes four days after a federal judge threw an unexpected roadblock to its efforts to shut down song-swapping services in court.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday ruled that the Grokster and Morpheus services should not be shut down because they cannot control what is traded over their systems. Like a videocassette recorder, the software in question could be used for legitimate purposes as well as illicit ones, he said.
"We're expecting to send at least a million messages or more per week because these users are offering to distribute music on Kazaa or Grokster," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA.
Sherman described the move as an educational effort to inform users that offering copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks is illegal and that they face consequences when they participate in this illegal activity.
It gets worse: the downloader will find that those MP3's are as often or not recorded at very low bit rates, or even filled with unplayable trash. The culprits are both freeloading downloaders and RIAA hacks to discredit the file-trading networks. Compared with this "competition", Apple's buck-a-track scheme starts to look good. You can preview Apple's tracks, so you need pay only for what you really want.
There is a larger issue here. The real problem with file-trading networks is that none of them made any attempt to bring the artists on board by acknowledging their rights by, say, cutting them on on the adware revenue. Although Apple is buying rights from record labels right now, there's nothing to prevent it from dealing with the artists directly, thereby crashing the record industry for good.
Okay. It sounds like we're on the same page after all. I guess as a lawyer I am trained to think that when someone claims a law is "unenforceable" they are claiming there is no legal basis for enforcement. Clearly, the copyright holders have the legal right to enforce their copyrights, but, as you say, and I agree with you, in the case of music downloads the copyright laws are unenforceable as a practical matter.
There is a revolution going on and it's about time; however, people seem to be losing track of who the enemy is. The enemy is the record company shoving an outdated business model down our throats, not the copyright law or the concept of copyright protection. The legally and morally correct way to fight this battle is to refuse to buy the record company's products, rather than stealing them.
By the way, the Lanham Act deals with trademarks (e.g. "Coca Cola") not copyright. At the risk of creating an overly long post, I'm including the relevant language from the US Copyright Act, which clearly applies to file downloading. No separate statute relating to file downloading is necessary in light of this provision.
Sec. 106. - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission
You too, huh? I just love that fresh ozone smell.
(I hated reloading WinXP, but the sight of the cat with all her fur standing straight up in the air was worth it).
Okay, find out which ones they are and download them with impunity. I'd be willing to bet that not a hundred of the millions of songs that are downloaded each day are in the public domain.
Great .... freakin records will look like Atari game cartridges then .... or something close to a baby 8 track ...
That's the ONLY way it will happen. Oh .. and if they REALLY wanted to restrict it they will have to embed it in a proprietary player ... then use a non-standard input jack for custom headphones .... and then hope that no one is smart enough to rip the wires of said headphone into a line in jack for copying.
They literally CANNOT win.
Uh, supercat--the royalties are being paid, it's just that the contracts that the artists signed charge off studio time and tour expenses against the royalties.
Bottom line: stupid people generally earn their rewards.
I have no problem with someone lending a friend a mix CD (or MP3-CD-ROM) of their favorite music to allow their friend to try it out if, within a reasonable length of time the friend either returns the CD, destroys it, or buys the music for real.
I also have no problem with someone who privately emails a friend an MP3 file of some favorite music, with the caveats noted above. To be sure, the person would have to take the friend at his word as to whether he destroyed the file or bought the music, but someone who sends a reasonably-trustworthy friend a file under such conditions can be said to have made a 'reasonable effort' to ensure that it was not abused.
By contrast, anyone who makes a file publicly available for anonymous download must be well aware that it may be downloaded by unscrupulous people. The act of putting up a file for anonymous download without permission from the copyright holder represents a wanton disregard for that possibility.
In many cases I have no trouble with people who download music to sample it, whether legally or not, if their own use of the music is limitted to such purposes. I can see no excuse, however, for people who promiscuously make copies music available to everyone without the consent of the copyright holder.
The blank CD media royalties aren't distributed among all record companies. How can they possibly make their way to all the artists?
Actually, I read awhile ago that most of the money collected from those "royalties" was ending up in the pockets of the clearinghouse which collects it; little of it was getting distributed to any artists at all.
If copying articles were theft, it would be covered under common law and would be prosecuted by the states; in fact, establishment of copyright law is specifically set out as a Federal power.
You're butchering the language.
It's not equivalent. In your analogy, the cops have said, if effect, that even though you're breaking the law, it's a nonserious breach and they're willing to look the other way.
In the case of file downloading, the cops, namely the record company copyright holders, are saying it's a serious violation and that they're coming after you. You have the comfort of knowing, however, that the chances of being caught are very low as a practical matter.
Of crappy quality (no MP3 really sounds decent unless it's at least 192K, and hardly anyone rips at more than 128), ripped by amateurs who often screw up the job. And that's assuming you can find the song - easy if it's the latest top 40 hit, exponentially harder as the songs get older and more obscure - and assuming it's not a trojan horse file that ends up being Englebert Humperdinck even though it was labelled Christina Aguilera. Apple's songs are exactly what the say they are, at a cost per single, protrated for inflation, less than 45s used to cost back in the good old days. The audio quality is so superior it's nearly CD quality. There's no "keep paying every month or all your files die" BS. You buy it, it's yours, forever. Burn it to CD and there you go.
I'm not going to harp TOO much on iTunes Music Service since it's only been around for one day, and the selection is not what it could be, but that's entirely the fault of the record companies, not Apple. iMS is a great start that will grow as the record companies become more comfortable with it. Right now, it's mainly about quality. You want a digital copy of a song that sounds like it wasn't taped of an FM radio? You want it legal? And cheap? Then Apple's a damn good choice.
Let them..
And let the manufacturers produce their product exclusively for propritary hardware.
They can switch, but it won't help them.. Eventually some smart (and soon to be rich) individual is going to come up with a way to protect copyrighted material.. and when he does, all this file sharing stuff is over.
Give them time.. They are inching that direction already.
Like MS has with Windows XP online reg process.
When that's accepted and people quiet down, they will tighten it up another notch.
These napsterites are going to be boiled like frogs.
The other day, I saw a a young music student on a train copying by pencil a musical score. I (and everyone else there) should have dialed 911, according to the sanctimonious Church Ladies here. She was stealing, like musicians have done for centuries. Along the same line of thought, if you listen to a concert outside a concert hall without paying for a ticket, you too are stealing. Borrow a friend's LP, listen to it, and you're a despicable thief. Oh well, according to a well worn anecdote, some primitive tribes on primitive continents (if we're allowed to use such words) think you're stealing their souls when you snap their picture. The notion of stealing when downlading zeroes and ones is in the same category, me thinks, but hey, what do I know?! And while we're at it, assuming a pious position while on a high horse is quite a trick, I'd say! The Ringling Brothers might even be interested!
Then you have no reason to be concerned about the collective efforts of the Software, Movie and Music Indistries.
Everything should be just fine and "free" music, software and movies will always be there, just for the taking.
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