Worried about a music lawsuit? Check here

The Houston Chronicle ^ | July 26, 2003 | Dwight Silverman

[Pern]

Nervous music file-swappers who worry they may be on the list of 871 people targeted by recording industry subpoenas now have a Web site where their fears can be allayed -- or confirmed.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that fights for personal and privacy rights in cyberspace, has set up a Web site that lets users of file-sharing services check to see if their screen names have been targeted for legal action by the Recording Industry Association of America.

According to information on the site, the data is gathered from electronic court records and may not be complete. The database is updated when new names are available.

Users of file-sharing services such as Kazaa, Grokster or Morpheus usually sign on with an alias commonly known as a screen name. The alias is associated with a number known as an IP address that's assigned every computer that connects to the Internet.

The RIAA is presenting 871 subpoenas to Internet service providers demanding to know the real name and contact information tied to the IP address and screen name. Recent court rulings require providers to give up the information.

At the end of August, the association has said, it will begin filing lawsuits against file swappers.

The RIAA is going after people who are making music available for download, rather than file-swappers who are downloading music. The association has indicated it will sue offenders who offer as few as eight copyrighted songs via file-sharing services.

The association has suggested one way to keep from getting sued is to turn off shared folders so no songs are visible to other users. Critics of this approach have pointed out that, if everyone does this, it will cripple file-sharing services because no music will be available for download.

Millions of people use file-sharing services every day, with estimates ranging as high as 43 million in the month of May, according to a recent study by the NPD Group. The music industry is turning to suing swappers themselves after legal action against the file-sharing services failed to shut them down.

The music industry is suffering through one of the worst slumps in its history and blames the rise of digital music for its much of its pain.

[Wil H]

It might, if it was a haute couture fashion, you might be infringing the designer's copyright.

That's why you have to PAY to buy a pattern.

Also, to complete your analogy are going to steal the fabric to make the new shirt too?

[FLAMING DEATH]

"It might, if it was a haute couture fashion, you might be infringing the designer's copyright. "

I checked this out, just to make sure. Clothing designs aren't copyrightable. The only thing about them that might be is if they contain a specific print on them that has been copyrighted, but it is the print then and not the clothing that is protected.

"That's why you have to PAY to buy a pattern."

You're trying to take the argument in a different direction. I'm not talking about buying a pattern. I'm talking about buying an original...an actual garment, and modeling your own shirt after it. You have to pay to buy an ORIGINAL. Just like when someone decides to rip songs off a CD, they have to have an original copy first. The songs that exist on P2P networks had to come from somewhere...while some might have come from bootleg sources, most probably came from CD's that people already had in their collections and had purchased themselves.

"Also, to complete your analogy are going to steal the fabric to make the new shirt too?"

That doesn't complete the analogy. I assume that you're bringing the whole idea of the medium from which a product is made into the argument, and that's really not even an issue here. For a shirt it would be fabric...for music, it would be...magnetic or optical signals on a disk? Either way, I legally own the medium from which these products were made. I assure you, my hard drive was legally purchased, and I only use blank CD's that are legally purchased as well.

Please explain where you are going with this analogy, because I thought about it for a while and simply couldn't figure out where I had stolen any of the tools, mediums, or materials that would be used for making MP3's from original CD tracks.

[FLAMING DEATH]

"News articles have very little initial value and a very short shelf life, that is hardly a fair comparison."

I don't understand how you got to the conclusion that news articles have very little initial value. If this were so, there wouldn't be newspapers or Internet websites. Apparently, they have value to someone.

If you were to say that they have very little initial value as compared to music, you'd be right. But nevertheless, they are copyrighted. Why do we look the other way when a reproduction of a news article is posted here, but can't accept that a reproduction of a song is posted on Kazaa? Strange. It seems that some are willing to ignore copyrights when it is inconvenient for themselves, but unwilling to allow others the same privelege.

But, nevertheless, I'll bite. Let's say I make a record, and it is universally panned by critics. Few people buy it, and no one really cares for it much. Nevertheless, some of my devoted fans decide to post it on Kazaa. Most would agree that it is of very limited initial value. Would it then be fair game to download?

Or, a short shelf life. Suppose I write a stupid song about a fad or a trend of the day. In six months, everyone tires of it because it is dated and irrelevant. Fair game?

The news article analogy is important, because, for the most part, news articles are very faithful copies of the original. You get virtually all of the original content, if the poster has done his work. MP3's aren't accurate copies, however. Anyone who knows anything about them will tell you that the hallmark of an MP3 encoder is its ability to change the original by taking out parts of the music, thus allowing the finished product to occupy a smaller space. It is not an original.

Imagine if you condensed a news article down to 1/10th of its normal size, the average compression rate of most MP3's. Could you call it an original? Probably not. This is the method that Freeper's use to get around the whining of some news services on the Net who complained about their articles being posted here...they condensed it, posting only a small portion of the original. Apparently, this worked for them because you still see it happening.

I fail to see the difference between these two concepts. Please clarify.

[Wil H]

I think you destroy your own argument. Yes there are thousands of newsites on the web - and guess what, the vast majority are free.

Why? Because of the reasons I've stated. A news article, is only part originality, the other component (hopefully) is facts. Those facts are reported in a thousand different articles by other agencies unless the article is some way an exclusive, in which case the news agency will try and leverage some value out of it, not by selling it, but by promoting it to increase circulation and thereby advertising revenues.

The financial model for news organisations is different from the record industry. With news, the story is effectively given away in order to attract circulation, with music, the sale of the song is the only revenue source.

Once the facts of a news article have been gleaned by the reader, the article, and it's thousands of other versions, loose their worth.

If news was as saleable as a piece of music Do you not think all news sites would charge subscriptions?

As for reproducing news articles here, FR has already been threatened with a law suit by the LA Times for copyright infringement, that is why posters place just an excerpt on here and refer you to the original site to read the whole article, that way the originator gets it's circulation hit.

You could liken that news exceprt to the compression of an MP3 if you like in as it is no longer the original as it has the majority missing.

However, compressing a music file to a tenth of it's size doesn't make it "not original" because the digital stream is not the product, the sound of the music is the product. If what you say is true then all you need to do is convert a file from MP3 to WAV or WMA format and claim you have a different piece of music. That would never stand up in court.

Compression is merely a convenient packaging element, it has nothing to do with originality of the content

[Quilla]

My teenaged children have downloaded numerous songs from Napster and Kazaa. They've burned a couple of cd's, but generally they just listen to their favorites while in their rooms. Now that "the authorities" are cracking down on the users of these services, I have instructed them to stop. My son argues that everyone he knows downloads songs and no one has contacted or harrassed them. I have tried to explain that this is a new development and eventually they will. Is there indeed a possibility of prosecution against a 15 year old kid downloading songs onto his own computer?

[BigBobber]

Whether a news article is offered for free or has low value is irrelevant to the copyright protection. Copyright has nothing to do with the value of the work.

If RIAA is serious about protecting copyrights, their first target should be the public libraries of America. My local library offers hundreds of music CDs which I can take home and copy for free. How is this different from KaZaa?

[Wil H]

..Nor could you sell those paintings as original and get anything like the money for them.

Your pictures on your wall may also be theft if the original is copyrighted, but then that doesn't seem to bother you.

[Wil H]

If you library is offering copyrighted material explicitly for you to copy then it is in violation of the law. I suspect it is offering them to you to LISTEN to, not copy.

It may be that the CD's it offers you are already in the public domain, then maybe not.

[Wil H]

If clothes designs are not copyrightable I guess you are in the clear if you copy them. But music IS copyrightable so the analogy doesn't apply, does it?

[FLAMING DEATH]

So tell me, what difference is there between music, which is copyrightable, and clothing, which is not.

Both come from the mind of a creator. Why do we value the creativity of the musician more than the creativity of the clothing designer?

Do you not see the irrationality of this?

Please tell me why a musical creation deserves special protections that textile creations do not.

[FLAMING DEATH]

When you read a news article on a website, you bypass advertising that some sites use to generate revenue.

In effect, if you can say that copying music is "stealing" because you deprive people of the income that they are due for songs, then you would have to say that copying news articles is the same, because you deprive the news corporation of income when you don't look at the advertisements and subsequently buy the products that support the news corporation.

Most people view this as ludicrous, which I do too. But, anyone who offers a product or service can determine what they'll take as payment. For music, it is money. For news organizations, it is having you look at their advertising.

There's no difference. Again, why do musicians deserve special protections that other creators do not?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Clothing designs aren't copyrightable.

There's something called a "design patent" which might apply. They do not last as long as copyrights.

[FLAMING DEATH]

"Compression is merely a convenient packaging element, it has nothing to do with originality of the content"

I agree that compression is a pacakging element. However, it does have to do with the originality of the content, because it removes sounds that were there in the original. In MP3's that I've heard, I can detect the difference between MP3 and CDA, especially in the higher frequencies (sometimes cymbal crashes and other high frequency noises seem to have a "phaser effect", that is definitely noticable, even though not that bothersome).

Point is, it is not like the original.

[Bill S]

If I understand most of this thread, it's ok to steal something if you feel that it's overpriced. These opinions are unworthy of anyone who considers themselves to be conservative.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Right. There are lots of different protections for different creations, whether they be utilitarian or aesthetic.

The point I'm getting at is: why do musicians deserve special protections that other creators do not?

[KneelBeforeZod]

you can sample music on amazon.com on a lot of albums. the more popular, the more likely. some obscure stuff you can't.

but I have bought a couple albums after getting mp3s.

[Wil H]

It's only "not like the original" because the limitations of the technology used to recreate it. The intent is to reproduce it as faithfully as possible.

By your logic, you wouldn't be prosecuted for passing a bad counterfeit banknote on the grounds it was not as good as an original one!

[FLAMING DEATH]

Perhaps so, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I'm not so sure it is stealing, because if I pay for a product (a CD), I should certainly be able to do with it as I wish. Some just choose to take their property, which they bought legally, and do with it as they please, i.e. share it with their peers.

You also seem to fixate upon the expense of the item supposedly stolen. According to the law, the articles posted here on Freerepublic are a copyright violation. What is your position on this? Does the copyright law not apply because of the supposed value of the news articles?

I'm more troubled by people who selectively apply copyrights upon a whim, contorting and manipulating the law to fit their own morality, and then judge when others don't fit in with their idea of morality as not worthy "to be conservative".

I say this not because I disagree about what the law IS. I just disagree about WHY. Obviously, the people who post news articles on Freerepublic are probably aware of the law, in light of the problems here in the past. But, they also think it is a stupid law, because they violate it every day. You obviously think so too, because you allow yourself to be associated with it.

The people who download music are no different.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Counterfeit law and copyright law are not analagous.

When I try to pass a counterfeit bill, the intent is to deceive or swindle.

I've never tried to buy anything using MP3's as an exchange medium.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Many artists have found that MP3's generate interest for their music.

For example, the band Wilco could not get anyone to distribute their album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" (a great piece of work, by the way), so they decided to buy the master tapes and post them for free on their website.

When record company executives realized how many thousands of downloads they were getting, they promptly offered to distribute the Wilco album on CD.

The whole copyright infringement thing is just a knee jerk reaction to a bunch of ensconced, bloated Industry thugs who realize that, because of the Internet, their time has come.