Music industry to end policy of suing song swappers

[solone1]

This is cool I think?

See the article here if interested:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008540437_webdownload19.html

[Gerk]

Not really in my eyes. It means that now there's been precedent set in people beating the wrap (and the RIAA having to pay huge court fees because of it) they have just decided to switch tactics and strong-arm ISP's into shutting down 'suspected' users that are doing heavy amounts of swapping. It will all still come back down to the fact that an IP address is not a person. Because swapping is happening at your IP address doesn't mean that you're guilty, which is the assumption they have based all of their accusations on to date.

It's a real catch-22 -- they can't prove that the material is really what it is (without actually downloading it which is illegal) and base all their stats and law suits on file names. They also can't unequivocally tie an IP address to a specific person -- which now has precedent. Now they are going to go above the user's head and try and strong-arm ISP's into shutting down people, who a lot of the time are not ultimately responsible for the alleged infringement. Same thing all over again, except it won't get as much press as the law suits did. When they sued grandma for hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing rap songs it makes the news ... when they have the ISP shut grandma's internet access down it doesn't .. it just means that some poor woman will be without internet and have no way of 'proving' herself.

It's a classic case of guilty until proven innocent The internet is the wild west all over again because there's no real governing bodies to keep rabble like the RIAA in check. Do musicians need their copyrights protected? Absolutely. Should the RIAA be doing it? Absolutely not. Just about any musician I know out there is quite happy to have their material, or at least some of it, being distributed virally. That is just about any musician that's not already on the RIAA's noose ...

Yes, I'm outspoken on this issue... I HATE THE RIAA They have sucked the life's blood from starving musicians for too long and with the way things are going in this new digital age I think their days will be numbered and they can see the writing on the wall. I will not shed a tear the day they go bankrupt, or get sued, or whatever their end-fate may be! Raawwwwwwwrrr!

[Charvelguy]

ya, I just got done reading that before I came here. I don't like it one bit.

[redbaron]

Here's something that might help:

www.songbeatplayer.com

Behind this are two good friends of mine from Berlin, Philip and Marco. Songbeat is not a P2P client, so as opposed to Bittorrent and the like, you DON'T provide music to others while you download yourself. And since not the downloading but the provisioning is considered illegal, you should be OK with it. What's more, Songbeat allows to record directly from lat.fm streams, pretty much like taping from the radio. And that isn't illegal, either.

The way Philip and Marco see it, in the digital world people will always find ways to get the music they want. So why not capitalize from it? It sounds ironic, but they plan to work together with the Music Industry not by avoiding, but by decidedly working with "illegal" music downloads.

If they have, say, 10.000 Songbeat users in Berlin who mainly download Punk music, they´ve created a powerful marketing channel to place concert tickets, merchandise, new records etc every time a Punk band is in Berlin. They can sell targeted ad space on the player - "show my concert ad only to people in Hamburg that prefer Jazz music". They can feature new artists - "show tour dates of latest Popstar-band only to female users in the South German countryside".

See the point? Since Songbeat is no P2P client, you will see it's not very good at downloading specific songs anyway; it's more like a music discovery tool.

And that's the latest news from the Berlin hotbed of innovation

[atalwar]

guilty until proven innocent ??
i dont think it even gets close to this, as who gets to decide who is guilty?a Group of the The Victims?? fine if so then what about all other classic examples of things in society happening each and every day which eventually end up in losses of life and destruction of families (and many of those who end up losing all faith in justice system,that too not just on the financial aspect either) . Do the victims of these incidents also get to decide the course of action and the mode of punishment for whom they believe to be any part of what was inflicted on them. If not then why the injustice, or excuse me if we talking about some communist regime here that i am unaware of.

btw i am NOTdebating the Motives and the intentions of either of the parties involved in here, they have their reasons and excuses (financial,moral and ethical) to be pissed off but then that is the reason the institutions for justice and settlement were put in place

this time it's Just their course of action that seems to be out of league. Perhaps a new law is being put into practice:

i.e a group of RICH people representing a certain sect ,who CANNOT AFFORD (financially of course) to fight a legal battle against certain individuals (could just be an average joe's) who they BELIEVE to be incurring losses to them are hereby granted full authority to inflict any damages to whomsoever they deem necessary.

If above is not a social crime , then That's ugliness at it's best, nothing more nothing less.

Just thinking out loud folks.

[Gerk]

This is what turned it all around for the RIAA ... who are now being countersued by this defendant for racketeering (which IMHO they are guilty of and I hope that she wins!) and likely the biggest reason that they have decided to stop pursuing these frivolous cases ...

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16724

The court accepts extremely flimsy 'evidence' -- if you can call an IP address and a list of alleged filenames, not copies of the files (that many legal experts agree would not stand up at all in a criminal court) ... the suits are based on filenames because they can not legally download these files or they would be infringing themselves! Then it's on the head of the defendant to prove that they didn't do it or to find another way to get the matter dismissed.

To me that is guilty before proven innocent.

[Gerk]

Well the forum wouldn't let me post my reply as it said it thought it was spam! Grrr

[Gerk]

It's the link to a p2pnet article I was trying to post that the forum has decided was spam (which is a completely valid article that shows the details of the defendant who won against the RIAA).

Here's the slashdot article that in turn links to the story, let's see if this works.

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/08/15/1145236.shtml

This is what turned it all around for the RIAA ... who are now being countersued by this defendant for racketeering (which IMHO they are guilty of and I hope that she wins!) and likely the biggest reason that they have decided to stop pursuing these frivolous cases ...

The court accepts extremely flimsy 'evidence' ... if you can call an IP address and a list of alleged filenames evidence (that many legal experts agree would not stand up at all in a criminal court but the rules are different for civil matters). Not copies of the files ... these suits are based on filenames because they can not legally download these files or they would be infringing themselves! Then it's on the head of the defendant to prove that they didn't do it or to find another way to get the matter dismissed.

To me that is guilty before proven innocent!

[Gerk]

guilty until proven innocent ??
i dont think it even gets close to this, as who gets to decide who is guilty?a Group of the The Victims?? fine if so then what about all other classic examples of things in society happening each and every day which eventually end up in losses of life and destruction of families (and many of those who end up losing all faith in justice system,that too not just on the financial aspect either) . Do the victims of these incidents also get to decide the course of action and the mode of punishment for whom they believe to be any part of what was inflicted on them. If not then why the injustice, or excuse me if we talking about some communist regime here that i am unaware of.

The "victims" in this situation -- taken in the literal sense -- are ultimately the musicians who recorded and wrote the material. They have NO say at all in this process, the RIAA has taken it upon themselves to be their protectors in this matter because the material was published by their record companies. This is my biggest beef against the entire system that the RIAA has in place, and further solidifies my position that they are evil and need to go away.

P.S. I'm a big fan of CopyLeft type licensing -- as are the authors of RiffWorks as all the material published is done through the Creative Commons share-alike licensing! Which is something designed to counter this exact type of thing from happening ... and protecting the people that do the art, not the distributers who promote it. It also allows people to make copies of the material (given restrictions such as not being able to use it for commercial purposes) -- which completely nullifies this whole nastiness with the RIAA altogether. With material licensed like that people are allowed to share your music!

I'll stop now

[GuitarSlinger]

I never got into P2P programs and file sharing so its a non issue for me. If I want something, I save up and buy it.

[blue4u]

We see this with technology going on for years where the mass ignorance of the populace (and in this case, the courts to some extent) is exploited for any number of reasons (usually for financial gain). Many people have no idea what an IP address really is, EVEN if you try to explain it to them. They don't have the paradigm for relating to it. Still, many others (dumb as they are) don't really get it that file sharing should be illegal. Alas, this confusion can be leveraged in all sorts of ways to define or redefine what theft is. The lines between sharing and theft are being blurred by using arbitrary numbers as there is no physical person to be found who has their hand in the cookie jar. I think everyone is losing right now. But that depends on how we want to go on commercializing music. If it returns to its original value as a performance then all is well once we get past the shrinking ideas of rock stars and mega-million dollar album sales. We just progress to selling t-shirts, concerts tickets and the like. That said, album (or CD) sales at shows still works and probably will for a while to come. This is because of the impulse buy that it solicits. You're there and this album is staring you in the face after you've just been inspired by the music. If the price is fair and there is something to sweeten the deal such as an accompanying t-shirt, behind the scenes video footage or what not then it becomes a timely sale.

Attempting to stop P2P or any other kind of file sharing however....pointless, expensive and ultimately the Achilles heel which will break this industry and force it to reinvent itself!

That's my banter anyway

[d3drocks]

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/day14-riaa

[Gerk]

I'm not condoning P2P by any means, but as blue4u said I don't think there's any way to stop it at this point. I condemn the RIAA for suing grandmas that have no idea for tens of thousands of dollars.

[GuitarSlinger]

How about when Sony BMG put that malware of a copy protection program on their CD's. This is the kind of stuff that crosses the line imo.

[Gerk]

Yep that was pretty lame as well .. I feel as strongly about DRM as I do about the RIAA.