Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is not your friend when it comes to technology. Well, he could well be your friend, if you’re the RIAA or MPAA.
The vice presidential nominee has sponsored bills over the year that were championed by both the music and movie industry. He was one of the main forces behind the Perform Act, which is what the RIAA used to sue XM Satellite Radio for giving its customers the ability to record songs over-the-air.
One of Biden’s bills that would have made encrypting your data much more difficult, which encouraged Phil Zimmermann to create PGP.
If this type of thing revs your engine, be sure to read CNET’s full breakdown. I know many of you couldn’t give a damn who’s president, much less vice president, (good on you, by the way), but I know that TechCrunch endorsed Obama for his views on technology, so maybe a handful of you care. If not, carry on.
The National Center for State Courts, a non-profit dedicated to “Helping Courts Anticipate Change and Better Serve the Public” has released a comic book that aimed at educating children on how the courts work by ripping a case right out of the headlines: piracy! Sadly, the tale is so fantastical – most cases end up in Civil court, not State, and are rarely tried with a public defender – that it loses most of its educational value. As BBG points out:
The strip also confuses federal with magistrate courts and presents a courtroom scenario that would never occur in real life.
It’s the Pascal’s Wager of antipiracy arguments: who cares about the truth when you might burn in hell? I submit that the war is lost when you’re reduced to publishing Chick Tracts.
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When Muxtape was shut down at the weekend, it was met with utterly predictable “Death to the RIAA!” cries. Hopefully we’re above such childishness here, and can spend a minute or two looking at the cartel’s claims, and then we can evaluate the RIAA’s position.
This is what the RIAA told Portfolio.com:
For the past several months, we have communicated our legal concerns with the site and repeatedly tried to work with them to have illegal content taken down. Muxtape was hosting copies of copyrighted sound recordings without authorization from the copyright owners. Making these recordings available for streaming playback also requires authorization from the copyright owners. Muxtape has not obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings
Would Muxtape have qualified as a public performance, for which authorization would have been needed, or fair use? I make a Muxtape using AmazonMP3-purchased songs then put it on here for you all to listen—would I be violating copyright?
All I’m saying is, not every discussion of RIAA tactics needs to descend into silly name-calling and unproductive temper tantrums.
A Bronx woman will have to pay the RIAA $6,050 for making songs available to download on Kazaa. That works out to something like $756 per song (there were eight songs in question).
The case, Electra v. Barker, matters a little more than serving as anti-RIAA fodder. The RIAA was trying to argue that merely making songs available in a shared folder was tantamount to copyright infringement. If that were the case, the RIAA wouldn’t have to prove that anyone actually downloaded songs from your computer (that is, that you actually uploaded songs). That seems, I don’t know, unfair, but my days of freaking out at the RIAA are over.
What’s the worst that can happen to someone who refuses to pay such a settlement? Are you looking at jailtime for downloading some songs?
Hey, you! Wanna be outraged? Try to go to muxtupe.com.
Oh! It’s down, and thanks to the RIAA, no less!
(Pandora Radio’s days may be numbered, too, by the way.)
That said, muxtupe was one of those sites I’d heard about but never used for more than 24 seconds. “Sharing playlists” really isn’t too high on my list of things I want to do.
But yes, now some of us have yet another reason to be mad at the RIAA.
And if you have no idea what Muxtape is (was?), it’s a site that lets users upload MP3s, then creates and easy-to-share playlist of said music.
via ReadWriteWeb
The RIAA is looking for people and is willing to sweep up whomever it needs to in order to accomplish its continuing goal of punishing piracy. Under a March court order, Tufts University and other ISP’s in the district are supposed to provide a list of possible violators when not able to provide names to a “reasonable degree of technical certainty.”
MediaSentry has identified 11 IP addresses of being an interest to the lawsuit. The RIAA would like people to believe those 11 IP addresses should belong to 11 easily identifiable users. Or even close to easily identifiable. However, that is not the case.
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This isn’t for me, but my parents might be into it. It’s a CD carousel that holds up to 150 CDs. It plugs into your PC via USB and plays via iTunes or the jukebox software of your choice. It doesn’t rip them, but instead acts as a jukebox with your PC as the interface. Interesting, but I don’t get it.
We’re guessing the RIAA is sending these out as Xmas bonuses this year. And for $130, we’d rather just rip it all to our iPods.
Usenet appears to be the MPAA’s next target. Not good.
The MPAA has told Newzbin, a popular Usenet indexing service and creator of the NZB file format, that it’s hosting copyright-infringing material, material that needs to be removed post-haste. Never mind that NZB files themselves aren’t copyright-infringing (though I doubt the courts would make that distinction), but such is the world we live in.
By the looks of it, Newzbin seems to be complying with the MPAA’s demands. It made a statement saying it doesn’t “condone” the posting of copyright-infringing material, and has hinted that it will remove such material and ban offending accounts.
A few months ago, the RIAA targeted a prominent Usenet provider, so going after enablers like Newzbin was the next logical step.
My advice? Leech off Usenet while you stile can.
via TorrentFreak
Flickr’d
You guys watch Revision 3, right? Diggnation, Tekzilla (my personal favorite), Totally Rad, etc. The company was DoS’d last week, and you’ll never guess who was responsible.
Can you say MediaDefender, the same company the RIAA and MPAA employs to shut down illegal BitTorrent trackers? According to Rev3’s CEO Jim Louderback, the anti-BitTorrent company had been sending more than 8,000 SYN packets a second to Rev3’s servers, leading to the outage. Meanwhile, MediaDefender said it was only sending one packet every three hours. That’s quite a difference.
It gets better! It seems MediaDefender had been up to no good vis-à-vis Rev3 for some time now.
First, they [ArtistDirect's CEO and a MediaDefender vice president; MediaDefender is a subsidiary of ArtistDirect] willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability. That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit.
Louderback goes on:
Although I can only guess, here’s what I think really happened. Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes – quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode – much like how a petulant toddler will throw an epic tantrum if you take away an ill-gotten Oreo.
This is the part when we all say “boo!” to MediaDefender, and wish Rev3 the best of luck in the future.
Speaking of Diggnation, they’re filming a live episode of the show here in New York next week. It’s in Brooklyn (Stuido B on Banker Street), and I imagine lots of the NYC “tech community” will be there.
As if music copyright laws weren’t mucky enough as they are, the Canadian government is reportedly working with other governments and industry groups, like the dreaded RIAA, to work out a trade agreement for digital downloads, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Designed to combat counterfeit movies and albums, the law would allow customs officials to check laptops, cellphones, iPods and other digital devices at the borders of member nations for offending files.
Depending on how it’s worded, if you were to rip your Cure CD to your iPod, the guards could theoretically seize it and fine you upon entry to the country.
This is horrible in every way, and we’re with those who say that governments shouldn’t bow to thugs like the RIAA when it comes to international trade agreements. Welcome to the future, friends!
Dancing, shall we say, isn’t something I do. Oh sure, after a tremendous amount of booze, I may rock the generic Ibiza one-two step while at one of New York’s “clubs” (such as Mansion, where I’ll be this Saturday supporting up-and-coming DJ and producer Vincent Voltaire), but generally, no bailo. So imagine my trepidation upon being invited to an event, DNCHRD IV, unofficially billed as some sort of “technology-dance fusion” deal. Sounds like oil and water, right?
Wouldn’t you know it, I enjoyed myself. That so rarely happens anymore.
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In a discussion with the Chronicle of Higher Education, an RIAA representative describes how they find and attack music sharers. Here’s how they do it:
1. They go to a computer.
2. They start LimeWire.
3. They look for a popular song (I hear the kids are into rap so let’s assume they look for “Gonna Gat-Cap Your Ass and Shake Your Milk” by Souljah Bizzoy so assume they are looking for that song.)
4. They find people sharing the music.
5. They right click to see who’s sharing the file.
6. They contact the person’s ISP i.e. your ISP.
7. You make boom-boom in your pants while you eat doughnuts, oblivious to the RIAA’s evil intent.
8. They sue you.
8. The RIAA rep goes back to their cave/hollow tree and moults, eating the transparent carapace and forming a new outer shell over the course of three days.
9. Repeat.
This process assumes a few important facts: A) You are still using LimeWire and B) You are so devastatingly retarded that you cannot keep your privates on the inside of your clothes. Therefore, if the RIAA catches you sharing music, you probably deserve the lawsuit.
Oops. Someone forgot to tell Hollywood bigwigs that DRM is dead, consumers don’t want it, and it doesn’t really work that well anyway. At a conference in LA this week, a member of the RIAA said that almost all digital distribution schemes they can think of use DRM.
The problem with DRM is it locks you into an ecosystem that only works with the DRM your purchasing. And you can’t change your mind, as members of MSN music recently learned.
When the record industry figures out a way to capitalize on music without crippling it, it will be profitable again. Also, we’ll buy more music. Also, we won’t feel a grudge about it.
I love it when people fight back against the RIAA. Their bullying tactics are getting old, and it seems the courts are realizing this. Last week a judge made it clear that making files available for download — seeding a file to a P2P network, for example — is not copyright infringement. There are other stories of people fighting back, and Atlantic vs. Boyer.
Boyer’s attorneys are being awesome and countersuing the RIAA for a number of offenses, and it’s a juicy, lovely list. The counter-suit states that the RIAA’s wrongdoings include civil conspiracy (to commit extortion, illegal investigations, and computer fraud), computer fraud and abuse, trespass, deceptive and unfair trade practices, declaratory judgment, and
abuse of process. Wow.
Sadly, the judge dismissed the countersuit, though that’s surprising. Hopefully Boyer’s attorneys will think of something else to screw the RIAA right where it hurts.
This is bad for the RIAA, but good for file sharers. Yet another judge today disagreed with the RIAA’s assertion that making copyrighted works available — say, on a P2P network like BitTorrent — is not copyright infringement.
This marks the second time the law has sided against the RIAA on this exact same issue. The judgment basically says, “leaving something out for someone to steal does not make them an accessory to theft,” and we agree.
Will this stop the RIAA from continuing with its ridiculous lawsuits? No way. Other than counting all of its money that never goes to artists, it has nothing better to do.
As if you needed any more reason to distrust and dislike the RIAA, BusinessWeek has an article this week detailing one woman’s fight against the cartel and its tactics. Tanya Andersen, a 45-year-old single mother, was sued by the RIAA several years for illegally downloading a couple of songs. Only, you know, she didn’t download a damn thing (she claims). She hired a Seattle lawyer to help her out who then went on to expose the RIAA’s tactics: the screen name linked to her IP address—and we all know how easy it is to spoof an IP address, steal someone else’s Wi-Fi, and so on—was in use by some kid with a MySpace page wherein he described downloading the songs in questions. (Something tells me Andersen doesn’t listen to rap.) The RIAA was all like, “Well, the kid said he didn’t download the music and we believe him.” Inconsistent? Believe the kid but not Andersen?
Long story short (seriously, read the whole article, it should take like five minutes), Andersen is now suing the record labels for their scare tactics under conspiracy laws.
A fun, quick, Saturday afternoon read. Also, hating the RIAA is sport ’round these parts.
Get this. It turns out that various parts of the music industry are very, very greedy. I know, I was shocked too! The Music Business Group (the UK’s version of the RIAA, basically) is proposing that music creators and rights owners should be entitled to profits from anything that facilitates you ripping a CD to your computer — anything used for “format shifting,” as it’s being termed.
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The Prez has Beatles songs on his iPod, showing he’s at least connected to the real world in some way. The problem is, iTunes still haven’t sold any Beatles songs, meaning he (or someone else) ripped them from a CD. The RIAA, governors of all things audio, say this is a big no-no, and not fair use.
While the RIAA isn’t likely going to sue the Prez it further puts them in a bad light. The RIAA wants to use you like an ATM, and that’s not right.
Keep in mind, it’s currently legal to rip songs from CDs you own, despite what the RIAA says, but if the RIAA gets its way in a future court case, the Prez would be breaking the law, and it could bring the inane argument the RIAA makes to the national stage.
Seven months after the RIAA requested the names of 11 OSU students accused of copyright infringement, the university is finally coughing them up in the face of further legal threats. The courts decided that there was no good reason the uni shouldn’t give the RIAA the names, so while OSU stalled as long as they could, they would now face contempt of court if they don’t follow through.
The fun part is that now the RIAA has names, but doesn’t know which of them have hired attorneys, and cannot legally contact an accused person directly if that person has legal representation. It’s all very interesting to law students, but our take-away lesson is this: the RIAA has the money to make practically any organization capitulate given time, so change your name, grow a mustache, and move to Mumbai where you can enjoy your Shakira mp3s in peace.
RIAA gets Does’ names after school threatened with contempt [Ars Technica, via Recording Industry vs. the People]
The IFPI (basically the worldwide RIAA) must have been riding high when it got Denmark’s Tele2 ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay. However, according to the Pirate Bay blog, traffic is up about 12 percent in Denmark thanks to all the media hoopla surrounding the Tele2 fiasco. From the blog,
So what has happened in Denmark now the past days?
Actually, the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to Ifpi. Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter – our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.
We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There’s no noticable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.
Let this be a lesson to the IFPI and the RIAA. Deftly quiet and nearly invisible ninjas work much better than law-talking guys in suits.
Pirate Bay to IFPI: Danish ban has led to even more traffic [Ars Technica]
