 |
| |
|
|
SlowwHand
|
 |
of The Cooler
Sep 1999
time: 23:27
|
|
Now They're After You: Music Cops Target Users
Recording industry expands focus and guns for file traders.
Dylan F. Tweney
From the April 2003 issue of PC World magazine
Millions of people download copyrighted songs and even movies from the Internet with little fear of being caught. That's about to change.
"[The music industry is] starting to move down the food chain," says Lawrence Hertz, a partner at New York law firm Hall Dickler Kent Goldstein and Wood, and a specialist in online law.
He predicts that music publishers and other content owners will soon use 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act much more aggressively--prosecuting not only companies like Napster but also individuals who download copyrighted content--and that they will start with the biggest users of peer-to-peer networks.
The new strategy became evident last year when the Recording Industry Association of America served Verizon with a subpoena demanding that the service provider disclose the identity of a user who uploaded more than 600 songs while connected to the company's Internet service.
Verizon protested, but recently a U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the RIAA and ordered Verizon to reveal the user's identity.
Verizon asked for a stay of the judge's order; at press time this was still pending, but approval seemed unlikely.
"If this ruling stands, consumers will be caught in a digital dragnet," says John Thorne, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel. If the stay is denied, Verizon says it will seek a stay at the appeals court level.
"It's going to have quite a huge impact on privacy," says Gwen Hinze, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF argues that the ruling lets copyright holders get users' identities merely by alleging copyright infringement (a fairly easy standard to meet)--without review by a judge and without giving users any chance to protect themselves or their identities.
The music industry says that it's just defending itself from digital piracy, which has contributed to two successive years of declining CD sales.
"Most consumers are getting what they want on the Internet, and it's really hurting this industry," says Brian Dunn, senior VP of corporate development for Macrovision, a provider of copyright-protection technologies. Dunn predicts that cash-strapped music labels could start paring promotion budgets for new artists in the coming year, while moving to include copy protection on all of their CDs. (So far, only a handful of major-label releases in the United States use copy protection.)
No New Laws?
Some major copyright holders appear to be satisfied with the powers they have under existing laws. Touting a "market-oriented" approach to copyright protection, the RIAA, along with the Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project, recently issued a statement agreeing to pursue such protection without government intervention.
But the movie industry, which is conspicuously absent from the group announcement, continues to support the notion of legal mandates. "We are not prepared to abandon the option of seeking technical protection measures via the Congress or an appropriate regulatory agency," says Jack Valenti, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.
There is one attempt in the works to mitigate the DMCA's harsher aspects: the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, recently introduced by Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia). The act--supported by an array of technology and telecommunications companies, including Intel, Philips, and Verizon--would let users circumvent copyright protection for "fair use" purposes, such as making backup copies of CDs or opening e-books in more than one reader, an activity the DMCA now prohibits (see "Hollywood vs. Your PC").
Whatever happens legislatively, the days when you could download all the songs or movies you wanted for free, without fear of prosecution, seem nearly at an end.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
spiritof1202
|
|
There are a few P2P schemes where material is distributed and encrypted among multiple users and that you can't tell exactly which packets are relayed and which are directly originated.
To defeat these kind of schemes, they'd have to negate the 'common carrier' clause which the telecomms and datacomms industry will defend to the death.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Starchild
|
 |
a raving alcoholic drama queen with a penchant for the biosciences
Jan 1970
time: 00:27
|
|
Media is rapidly becoming worthless. The current trend for music, television shows, and eventually movies, is for them to be available freely and easily on the Net. It's a scary transfer of control from large organisations to decentralised, democratic networks. Where does the profit lie in the new paradigm?
It lies in the extras. KaZaA can give you the songs but they can't supply the posters, limited edition this-that-and-bric-a-brac, the t-shirts and special-edition-OMG-look-at-this-behind-the-scenes concerts.
If the music industry really wanted to embrace the new way of sharing music, they'd put their entire collections on the Net. Every last bit of copyrighted audio and video on a secure, high bandwidth, never down website. Let people take all they want but charge for the extras. A searchable catalog of music, user-recommended playlists, etc.
It's even easier for TV. Given the popularity of paying for subscription channels already, there's no reason to believe that people won't pay a monthly fee to have access to an online database of HBO's shows, letting them download the latest hit whenever they want. Terrestrial TV can put regional adverts in the download. It's just like TV now but more direct and, as a consequence, more personalisable.
The current concept of copyright is sacred nor unchallanged (see the Creative Commons idea for example. Imagine if music was published under that.). The music industry is fighting a losing battle even with the help of some powerful governments. If they don't shape up soon, someone is gonna snatch the rug out from under them.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
optimus2861
|
|
Halifax, NS
Nov 2000
time: 01:27
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by spiritof1202
There are a few P2P schemes where material is distributed and encrypted among multiple users and that you can't tell exactly which packets are relayed and which are directly originated.
To defeat these kind of schemes, they'd have to negate the 'common carrier' clause which the telecomms and datacomms industry will defend to the death. |
Some states seem to be going about this problem a different way: by making the concealment of the origin of communications over a communications provider an offense under the law. Here's an excerpt from this site:
quote:
Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that "conceal from a communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication". Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal -- with no exceptions.
|
Encrypted email, Windows' own Internet Connection Sharing, even many firewalls (those that use Network Address Translation technology) therefore would be illegal under the law. In fact, according to that same site, some states have already passed such legislation, though I haven't heard of any actions coming out from it: Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming. 9 more states are considering similar legislation.
Wonder if RIAA is behind any of these? They obviously can't go after end users if the end user can just hide himself behind a firewall. RIAA's solution: make the firewall illegal, ignoring all the perfectly valid applications of one .
Die, RIAA, die  .
|
|
| |
|
|
|
spiritof1202
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by optimus2861
Some states seem to be going about this problem a different way: by making the concealment of the origin of communications over a communications provider an offense under the law. Here's an excerpt from this site:
Encrypted email, Windows' own Internet Connection Sharing, even many firewalls (those that use Network Address Translation technology) therefore would be illegal under the law. In fact, according to that same site, some states have already passed such legislation, though I haven't heard of any actions coming out from it: Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming. 9 more states are considering similar legislation.
Wonder if RIAA is behind any of these? They obviously can't go after end users if the end user can just hide himself behind a firewall. RIAA's solution: make the firewall illegal, ignoring all the perfectly valid applications of one .
Die, RIAA, die . |
Is it the provider or the receiver that is in issue? I wonder how this effects a system which encrypts the origin and relays internationally.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Bereta_Eder
|
|
I can see them trying to stop MP3s. They won't be able to, but let them try.
What I don't understand is how can you possibly censor LYRICS! of artists....
On web pages that is. Not offensive words, lyrics...
and to a lesser extend guitar tabs.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:27.
Apolyton Time is 00:27. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
01-04-2003 20:19
|