Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/03/27/19 ... =95&tid=99
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2004-03-28 03:08 ]</font>
PIRATE Act Introduced in US Congress
Anyone who downloads "chart-topper" crap deserves to be punished. It's also a crime to even suggest to record companies that anyone wants to listen to such manufactured, souless & vomitous bile.
And anyone who downloads quality music from struggling artists, but gives them nothing in return also deserves to be punished.
And anyone who downloads quality music from struggling artists, but gives them nothing in return also deserves to be punished.
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Joxer the Mighty
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2003 4:00 pm
Being a poor struggling college student doesn't give you the right to steal. I can only imagine what kind of an impact it would have on Creamware and all the great 3rd party developers on this board if their synths and plugins could be easily obtained through P2P.
That's an interesting thought about musicians not being paid for their art resulting in more art and less garbage. Seems to me all the musicians would have to get full time jobs and wouldn't have much time left to write music, lol.
That's an interesting thought about musicians not being paid for their art resulting in more art and less garbage. Seems to me all the musicians would have to get full time jobs and wouldn't have much time left to write music, lol.
Well, to illustrate how i see this, I'll do a quick aside to an act from a year or so ago that they lovingly penned as the 'RAVE' bill. It specifically targeted 'ravers' with language against 'glowsticks, candy, vics vaporub' and etc. and classed that as 'paraphenalia' to be associated with drugs.
Those following drug law cases over the previous year before this act surfaced would know that there was a case in New Orleans, Louisiana that involved 3 young men (rave promotors) and a federal prosecutorwho wastrying to nail the promotors under crack house laws (which are rebadged 'gang' drug laws from 1986 which amended a 1970 controlled substances act which "consolidated" many other laws from the 60's, 40's and the original Controlled Substances act etc.) Well it worked out that the case failed and the young promotors were let of the hook for the massive fines and large jail sentences that were being levied at them. So fast forward a year and we had a RAVE act to attack the (by then dying) 'Rave Scene' by--guess what--simply amending the crack house laws that failed to apply in court so that they would indeed apply in a court of federal jurisdiction in the future. Now this act thankfully failed to pass, but soon after its failure a bill called the AMBER Act was passed which basically said that if a child is kidnapped all media (Tv, radio etc) in the area must broadcast an 'Amber Alert' and comply with any aid necessary to get info to the public to aid law enforcement. Pretty hard to vote against saving young children who are kidnapped I would think. The funny thing is tha the AMBER Act turned out to have almost the entire RAVE act (as well as a few other random acts completely unrelated) inside of it, and hence that finally passed.
Well the important thing here to get is that a court case failed and the response was to pass legislation to fill the 'legal loophole' so that future prosecutions would succeed. For those following the P2P related law cases recently, Verizon actually WON against the RIAA in a case where the RIAA was attempting to establish precedent whereby ISP's must reveal the name & information for P2P users that the RIAA felt were 'infringing on copyright law'. Basically the RIAA was trying to establish precedent whereby they could directly subpeona info from ISPs without even needing to go through a prosecuting attorney for more than a signature.
And now here is a law that increases the blanket of copyright law to include p2p apps & 'illegal downloaders', decreases the burden of proof required by prosecution to bring legal forces to bear in gathering information and prosecuting, and most importantly creates powers for the Attorney General for civil enforcement.
The scariest thing here is that while Hatch is a long-time stoolie for the MPAA & Disney (Eisner specifically), Patrick Leahy (the other person introducing this bill) is one of the few people in the Senate who has previously championed online freedoms & 'fair use rights' in the digital age. Now he's done a complete turn and is joining with his once-supposed arch rival in this bill.
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/032504a.html
Now I'm definately not saying I'm in support of giving all my music away for free while I wait tables or work at some other menial job. However the way that online legislation has gone ever since the passing of the DMCA appals me. Corporate interests seem to be running over our rights as CITIZENS in the US (not to mention that we're branded CONSUMERS rather than CITIZENS in the eyes of the corporations & law). The following quote from the slashdot discussion echos my sentiments pretty damn well:
Those following drug law cases over the previous year before this act surfaced would know that there was a case in New Orleans, Louisiana that involved 3 young men (rave promotors) and a federal prosecutorwho wastrying to nail the promotors under crack house laws (which are rebadged 'gang' drug laws from 1986 which amended a 1970 controlled substances act which "consolidated" many other laws from the 60's, 40's and the original Controlled Substances act etc.) Well it worked out that the case failed and the young promotors were let of the hook for the massive fines and large jail sentences that were being levied at them. So fast forward a year and we had a RAVE act to attack the (by then dying) 'Rave Scene' by--guess what--simply amending the crack house laws that failed to apply in court so that they would indeed apply in a court of federal jurisdiction in the future. Now this act thankfully failed to pass, but soon after its failure a bill called the AMBER Act was passed which basically said that if a child is kidnapped all media (Tv, radio etc) in the area must broadcast an 'Amber Alert' and comply with any aid necessary to get info to the public to aid law enforcement. Pretty hard to vote against saving young children who are kidnapped I would think. The funny thing is tha the AMBER Act turned out to have almost the entire RAVE act (as well as a few other random acts completely unrelated) inside of it, and hence that finally passed.
Well the important thing here to get is that a court case failed and the response was to pass legislation to fill the 'legal loophole' so that future prosecutions would succeed. For those following the P2P related law cases recently, Verizon actually WON against the RIAA in a case where the RIAA was attempting to establish precedent whereby ISP's must reveal the name & information for P2P users that the RIAA felt were 'infringing on copyright law'. Basically the RIAA was trying to establish precedent whereby they could directly subpeona info from ISPs without even needing to go through a prosecuting attorney for more than a signature.
And now here is a law that increases the blanket of copyright law to include p2p apps & 'illegal downloaders', decreases the burden of proof required by prosecution to bring legal forces to bear in gathering information and prosecuting, and most importantly creates powers for the Attorney General for civil enforcement.
The scariest thing here is that while Hatch is a long-time stoolie for the MPAA & Disney (Eisner specifically), Patrick Leahy (the other person introducing this bill) is one of the few people in the Senate who has previously championed online freedoms & 'fair use rights' in the digital age. Now he's done a complete turn and is joining with his once-supposed arch rival in this bill.
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200403/032504a.html
Now I'm definately not saying I'm in support of giving all my music away for free while I wait tables or work at some other menial job. However the way that online legislation has gone ever since the passing of the DMCA appals me. Corporate interests seem to be running over our rights as CITIZENS in the US (not to mention that we're branded CONSUMERS rather than CITIZENS in the eyes of the corporations & law). The following quote from the slashdot discussion echos my sentiments pretty damn well:
I agree... these things are illegal... but it's frightening that the potential monetary damages and jail time are so high!
I've been watching Animal Planet all day... guy starves his dog to the brink of death, leaves it outside, he gets a $500 fine... no jail time, etc...
But allowing someone to copy a music file has routinely caused people to get multi-thousand dollar judgments held against them...
I'm sure there are many like me here. I've spent more money on music in my life than ANYTHING else. I have a few thousand CDs & a few thousand records. I plan on continuing to spend more money on music.
One thing that file sharing services has done for me though is give me the opportunity to hear live shows & braodcasts that I would only have the chance to hear if I traveled to Europe or the UK. Where else could I hear an "Essential mix" or a "Breezeblock" in the US(without the horrible RealPlayer). It seems as though satelite radio is starting to catch on to this but it's hard to justify buying unreliable consumer electronics & pay unreasonable subscription fees for 2 one hour radio shows when they're free to those who live in the country of origin. I would however buy a hi-res mp3 of these broadcasts for a few dollars. Many of the chowder-heads who record these & post them don't realize that 0dB is no man's land in digital audio.
What I suppose I'm saying is, if I can buy it, I WILL. The funny thing about the live shows I hunt down is, it only makes me buy more music...
PS Orin Hatch is a big stinkin whore!
One thing that file sharing services has done for me though is give me the opportunity to hear live shows & braodcasts that I would only have the chance to hear if I traveled to Europe or the UK. Where else could I hear an "Essential mix" or a "Breezeblock" in the US(without the horrible RealPlayer). It seems as though satelite radio is starting to catch on to this but it's hard to justify buying unreliable consumer electronics & pay unreasonable subscription fees for 2 one hour radio shows when they're free to those who live in the country of origin. I would however buy a hi-res mp3 of these broadcasts for a few dollars. Many of the chowder-heads who record these & post them don't realize that 0dB is no man's land in digital audio.
What I suppose I'm saying is, if I can buy it, I WILL. The funny thing about the live shows I hunt down is, it only makes me buy more music...
PS Orin Hatch is a big stinkin whore!
I'm with you. Money has ruined music. True musicians and composers will never stop even if they make nothing. It's nice if we are paid but that is not why we make music. Furthermore piracy is not the only reason sales are down. There are a lot of other ways people are being entertained these days including hundreds of channels of TV, DVD, games, chatting online and other things. The recent legal actions by the RIAA may actually turn people away from the industry. In the past big record labels and radio stations were the only way to make a buck in music. We can now record at home and distribute our music online. In the future people may become well known with no help from over paid record company excutives and their immoral payola. If you release your own music with no help from the fat cats anyone can legally download it. We need to create a network of free and shareware music and forget about the idiotic immature record company executives once and for all.
Madonna is making millions yet she complains about piracy. Doesn't she have enough already?
Madonna is making millions yet she complains about piracy. Doesn't she have enough already?
On 2004-03-28 09:42, Spirit wrote:
On the other hand it's also been suggested before that a world where musicians are paid nothing for their art would give us more art, and less manufactured rubbish.
The problem with saying 'sales are down' and propping it up with statistics is that both sides are referring to the same statistics but the RIAA & record companies are showing decline using these statistics but groups like the EFF and boycott-riaa come up with INCREASES in album sales.
Personally I think that its just big business propping up an outmoded business model through campaign contributions & lobbying.
The thing about the RIAA is that initially they were a 'standards setting body'. Any old Phonograph/record player you have lying about (or even a new one) outputs a signal that is NOT what you hear through your speakers. The signal is modified (filtered/eq'd) so that it suits the characteristics of vinyl when it is pressed and then modified again on playback by the phono preamp. The actual components doing the modification are known as an RIAA filter. The RIAA also set standards on several other audio components over the years.
Fast forward to the late 70's and early 80's and Philips (who later sold a large portion of the patents to Sony to finish development) created the CD which the music industry quickly adopted to bypass the evil of TAPES which was the big fair-use issue back then. A bit of research shows that the 70's was really the 'fattest' time for the music industry. More music (and more crap) was published during those few years by everyone & their mom than ever before. This resulted in a glut in the marketplace. Large movers in the industry were focusing their energies on 8-track cassettes and 'quadrophonic sound' but most people stcuk with vinyl. Then suddenly audiocassettes arrived which were lower quality sonically (think mp3) but allowed--GASP--infinite copying! There were tons of knee-jerk ads talking about how taping was killing the artists and reducing profits throught the early 80's (and I might mention that the MPAA reacted to betamax/vhs the same way as they are to downloading movies now). The point here is that the glut of crap in the 70's so flooded the market that by the 80's profits were falling and the industry raced to the CD format as its salvation.
Well the REAL point to this aside is that the RIAA was left out cold in this picture, since the CD wasn't a 'standard' but a privately owned patent. It floundered for about 10 years and the 10% of the RIAA that made up their legal representation morphed into a lobbying group in our US legislative bodies (state & federal) for 'music industry rights'. When Napster appeared on the scene the RIAA found its new lease on life. I'll remind you again that the RIAA *USED* to be a group of engineers working to make music TECHNOLOGY accessible to the population by acting as a standards setting body. Well now we have a bunch of lawyers that saw an opportunity to act as a revenue collection & enforcement body-much like Ascap & Bmi but with vastly expanded access to lobbying forces and law enforcement due to the number of lawyers involved.
Now if you're under the impression that the RIAA really is on the side of 'artists' and is doling out the money it collects on our behalf (yes US) then I recommend you read this:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/facts/truth
Personally I think that its just big business propping up an outmoded business model through campaign contributions & lobbying.
The thing about the RIAA is that initially they were a 'standards setting body'. Any old Phonograph/record player you have lying about (or even a new one) outputs a signal that is NOT what you hear through your speakers. The signal is modified (filtered/eq'd) so that it suits the characteristics of vinyl when it is pressed and then modified again on playback by the phono preamp. The actual components doing the modification are known as an RIAA filter. The RIAA also set standards on several other audio components over the years.
Fast forward to the late 70's and early 80's and Philips (who later sold a large portion of the patents to Sony to finish development) created the CD which the music industry quickly adopted to bypass the evil of TAPES which was the big fair-use issue back then. A bit of research shows that the 70's was really the 'fattest' time for the music industry. More music (and more crap) was published during those few years by everyone & their mom than ever before. This resulted in a glut in the marketplace. Large movers in the industry were focusing their energies on 8-track cassettes and 'quadrophonic sound' but most people stcuk with vinyl. Then suddenly audiocassettes arrived which were lower quality sonically (think mp3) but allowed--GASP--infinite copying! There were tons of knee-jerk ads talking about how taping was killing the artists and reducing profits throught the early 80's (and I might mention that the MPAA reacted to betamax/vhs the same way as they are to downloading movies now). The point here is that the glut of crap in the 70's so flooded the market that by the 80's profits were falling and the industry raced to the CD format as its salvation.
Well the REAL point to this aside is that the RIAA was left out cold in this picture, since the CD wasn't a 'standard' but a privately owned patent. It floundered for about 10 years and the 10% of the RIAA that made up their legal representation morphed into a lobbying group in our US legislative bodies (state & federal) for 'music industry rights'. When Napster appeared on the scene the RIAA found its new lease on life. I'll remind you again that the RIAA *USED* to be a group of engineers working to make music TECHNOLOGY accessible to the population by acting as a standards setting body. Well now we have a bunch of lawyers that saw an opportunity to act as a revenue collection & enforcement body-much like Ascap & Bmi but with vastly expanded access to lobbying forces and law enforcement due to the number of lawyers involved.
Now if you're under the impression that the RIAA really is on the side of 'artists' and is doling out the money it collects on our behalf (yes US) then I recommend you read this:
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/facts/truth
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Counterparts
- Posts: 1963
- Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2003 4:00 pm
- Location: Bath, England
I have to say in this particular case - probably nothing. What are you going to run them on? Besidses, you need to get a key from Creamware to register a product to a particular board...I strongly doubt if anybody's cracked that.Joxer the Mighty wrote:
I can only imagine what kind of an impact it would have on Creamware and all the great 3rd party developers on this board if their synths and plugins could be easily obtained through P2P.
I found this bit interesting:
"...designed to criminalize P2P filesharing by lowering the burden of proof for law enforcement"
Er..."LOWERING the burden of proof for law enforcement"?? What the hell does that mean?
Officer: "Yeah, well I'm pretty sure he did it"
Judge: "Good enough for me. Guilty as charged!!"
Various authorities have been trying to crack down of P2P filesharing for quite some time now...I just don't see how they going to arrest everybody involved? That's likely to be thousands upon thousands, if not millions of people, from anywhere in the world too.
Royston
I honestly doubt the law will pass in its current form, and I don't believe that they intend it to. The wording is too overt and they're making massive press with it.
However that press plays towards those who are lobbying for this act, and the real danger is that a lot of bills that are pushed over & over eventually wind up reworded & slipped into something else.
Imagine if this really did pass and the RIAA's civil cases sueing individuals were criminalized as this bill intends. 30-50 Million Americans instantly become true criminals. I think that's about on par with Prohibition and just about as idiotic. And I don't drink!
However that press plays towards those who are lobbying for this act, and the real danger is that a lot of bills that are pushed over & over eventually wind up reworded & slipped into something else.
Imagine if this really did pass and the RIAA's civil cases sueing individuals were criminalized as this bill intends. 30-50 Million Americans instantly become true criminals. I think that's about on par with Prohibition and just about as idiotic. And I don't drink!
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samplaire
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Well, have't thought about it! You are right!On 2004-03-28 18:33, braincell wrote:
There are a lot of other ways people are being entertained these days including hundreds of channels of TV, DVD, games, chatting online and other things.
... people not only compose for the money. They also do it to be famous. If no rules surround us we would have much plagiarism or just people would rename our songs with their name. So your suggestion is too simple to be released.We can now record at home and distribute our music online. In the future people may become well known with no help from over paid record company excutives and their immoral payola. If you release your own music with no help from the fat cats anyone can legally download it.
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paulrmartin
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next to nothing
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heh, i guess RIAA is gonna flame Harvard now 
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSh ... ch2004.pdf
This is a good reading, tho major record companies and RIAA is gonna bury it.
and just a little note from Australia:
in 1998 (the year before napster), 39.6 million cds were sold. In 2003, 50 million were sold. Nimbers taken from this article: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/ ... 34274.html
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: piddi on 2004-03-30 18:34 ]</font>
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSh ... ch2004.pdf
This is a good reading, tho major record companies and RIAA is gonna bury it.
and just a little note from Australia:
in 1998 (the year before napster), 39.6 million cds were sold. In 2003, 50 million were sold. Nimbers taken from this article: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/ ... 34274.html
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: piddi on 2004-03-30 18:34 ]</font>