RIAA = outmoded, broken business model.Change, adapt or die.
Posted on 08/27/2003 6:25:30 PM PDT by El Conservador
WASHINGTON - The recording industry provided its most detailed glimpse to date Wednesday into some of the detective-style techniques it has employed as part of its secretive campaign to cripple music piracy over the Internet.
The disclosures were included in court papers filed against a Brooklyn woman fighting efforts to identify her for allegedly sharing nearly 1,000 songs over the Internet. The recording industry disputed her defense that songs on her family's computer were from compact discs she had legally purchased.
Using a surprisingly astute technical procedure, the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) examined song files on the woman's computer and traced their digital fingerprints back to the former Napster (news - web sites) file-sharing service, which shut down in 2001 after a court ruled it violated copyright laws.
The RIAA, the trade group for the largest record labels, said it also found other hidden evidence inside the woman's music files suggesting the songs were recorded by other people and distributed across the Internet.
Comparing the Brooklyn woman to a shoplifter, the RIAA told U.S. Magistrate John M. Facciola that she was "not an innocent or accidental infringer" and described her lawyer's claims otherwise as "shockingly misleading." The RIAA papers were filed in Washington overnight Tuesday and made available by the court Wednesday.
The woman's lawyer, Daniel N. Ballard of Sacramento, Calif., said the music industry's latest argument was "merely a smokescreen to divert attention" from the related issue of whether her Internet provider, Verizon Internet Services Inc., must turn over her identity under a copyright subpoena.
"You cannot bypass people's constitutional rights to privacy, due process and anonymous association to identify an alleged infringer," Ballard said.
Ballard has asked the court to delay any ruling for two weeks while he prepares detailed arguments, and he noted that his client — identified only as "nycfashiongirl" — has already removed the file-sharing software from her family's computer.
The RIAA accused "nycfashiongirl" of offering more than 900 songs by the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson (news) and others for illegal download, along with 200 other computer files that included at least one full-length movie, "Pretty Woman."
The RIAA's latest court papers describe in unprecedented detail some sophisticated forensic techniques used by its investigators. These disclosures were even more detailed than answers the RIAA provided weeks ago at the request of Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who has promised hearings into the industry's use of copyright subpoenas to track downloaders.
For example, the industry disclosed its use of a library of digital fingerprints, called "hashes," that it said can uniquely identify MP3 music files that had been traded on the Napster service as far back as May 2000. Examining hashes is commonly used by the FBI (news - web sites) and other computer investigators in hacker cases.
By comparing the fingerprints of music files on a person's computer against its library, the RIAA believes it can determine in some cases whether someone recorded a song from a legally purchased CD or downloaded it from someone else over the Internet.
Copyright lawyers said it remains unresolved whether consumers can legally download copies of songs on a CD they purchased rather than making digital copies themselves. But finding MP3 music files that precisely match copies that have been traded online could be evidence a person participated in file-sharing services.
"The source for nycfashiongirl's sound recordings was not her own personal CDs," the RIAA's lawyers wrote.
The recording industry also disclosed that it is examining so-called "metadata" tags, hidden snippets of information embedded within many MP3 music files. In this case, lawyers wrote, they found evidence that others — including one user who called himself "Atomic Playboy" — had recorded the music files and that some songs had been downloaded from known pirate Web sites.
An RIAA vice president, Jonathan Whitehead, said evidence proved the Brooklyn woman was "hardly an unwitting or passive participant in the events that involve her computer."
The recording industry has won approval for more than 1,300 subpoenas compelling Internet providers to identify computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet.
The RIAA has said it expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages as early as next month. U.S. copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer, but the RIAA has said it would be open to settlement proposals from defendants.
The campaign comes just weeks after U.S. appeals court rulings requiring Internet providers to readily identify subscribers suspected of illegally sharing music and movie files.
The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (news - web sites) permits music companies to force Internet providers to turn over the names of suspected music pirates upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office, without a judge's signature required.
They ain't gettin' nuthin' from me!!!
With automated copy and scanning machines, should we also be allowed to buy a book, such as Ann Coulter's 'Treason,' then copy or scan it, post it on a website and allow anyone who wishes to down load it?
How does that differ?
RIAA = outmoded, broken business model.Change, adapt or die.
Been there done that.
This recording industry will end up agreeing to paid services and the artist still will not see a dime. All they want is, what they will lose when all the artists get tired of being ripped off go it alone at their own studios.
And Guess What? Sell the recordings through the "NOW" owned Studio paid web sites.
Look around! who's investing in paid services? Not the artists!
Is there a version of PGP to encrypt MP3's???
Then sneakernet the encrypted songs to the computer attached to the net...and do a thorough ERASER (Google it) to erase the file 999 times with ERASER's strong scrubbing algorithm.
Or VPN it!!
Is there a version of PGP to encrypt MP3's???
Then sneakernet the encrypted songs to the computer attached to the net...and do a thorough ERASER (Google it) to erase the file 999 times with ERASER's strong scrubbing algorithm.
Or VPN it!!
This horse has been beaten to death here so many times it seems fruitless to try to explain it to you, but I'll try.
We live in an age where copying of digital files is transparent, or to quote the vernacular, 'frictionless'.
Opponents of IP law (I am one) argue that it is construed to give protection not to the artist,but to the pretenders to the art, in this case the bureaucracy of the RIAA. But I digress.
The concept of frictionless duplication (that which requires virtually no effort) negates just about any hope RIAA has of prosecuting all criminals of this class (which renders the prosecution moot - a favored argument of the pro-dopers, by the by). The difference between the RIAA and the War on Drugs is that people tend not to OD on MP3s and thereby harm others.
The gist of it is that the RIAA is arguing a forgone conclusion. Digital copying is here to stay, RIAA missed out due to their own ignorance as the ship left the harbor. Selectively prosecuting and using what to most any casual observer is dubious law will get them nowhere. Much like prohibition, RIAA is doomed because it cannot recork the bottle. It's just a question of how much they can take down with them.
Finally, two salient points: Ann Coulter's book has tremendous "friction" (most books do), but if someone within the publishing house wanted to do her harm, no doubt they could slip her book out and post it on the web as a digital file. This seems unlikely, as the web is cumbersome for such long tomes, and people seem inclined to buy her work in an almost cheerleaderly fashion. I expect little harm would come of it.
The last point is that I have no interest in downloading MP3s and the like, it's not my bag.
I am a bemused observer, however, and lest you think that I have come to these opinions as some sort of interloper, I will tell you that I am a content producer - on a national and international scale (you may have some of my stuff on your shelf or in your VCR) and I frankly see the duplication of my digital creations as part of the cost of going to market. It induces me to keep creating and stay ahead of the 'curve'.
For better and more detailed analysis of the views I've put forth, I recommend Tom Bethell's "The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages"
I couldn't agree with you more -- look at Apples download service, which is going gangbusters in spite of being (right now anyway) only for Mac or Ipod. People will gladly pay for a good download service, they just won't pay as much, or buy a whole album. RIAA has set their price above market level, and is not giving the market what it wants. Just plain stupid business. I will never, ever, understand why the RIAA just didn't BUY Napster and turn it into a subscription or per-song download service -- they would have owned the digital market. Instead, the market turned to P-to-P services like Kazaa and Morpheus that are much harder to prosecute, and programmers are coming up with programs like FreeNet that are programmed to make it impossible to identify users (although it isn't very user friendly yet.) How dumb was that? Ten years from now Harvard Business School will be teaching RIAAs decision to prosecute Napster instead of own it as a classic business screw-up.
I would think that your attitude differs from most in your industry.
I fully understand your arguements and the salient points made, but I still believe that the recording industry has a right to protect their product, the ease of duplication not withstanding.
I commonly combine and mix my own CD's to produce a CD which is more to my liking. Combining artists, eliminating certain songs, etc. This is a form of duplication, which I think the industry accepts and would not prosecute, after all I purchased the CD's originally. That however, is a far cry from my then selling those duplicated or remixed CD's to the general public. That is primarily the type of duplication that I feel the industry has a right to protect itself from.
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