Music Industry to Abandon Mass Lawsuits
By Susie Madrak Friday Dec 19, 2008 6:30pmBecause now ISPs have agreed to spy for them:
After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.
[us album sales]Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.
Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones.
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... whether copyrighted material is being shared?
Does that necessitate analyzing every hard drive that has a P2P program?
They just will analyze the packets being uploaded by a customer.
Programs like browsers use a identifier say port 80 for HTTP webpages, P2P programs use other protocol numbers, Its all in a range of 0 to 65535, bit like a message zip code or house number for programs.
The ones they consider naughty will get flagged, and the wheels set in motion.
I think I get it..
There are a lot of torrents that are perfectly legal. Just like your phone company, now your ISP is BEING PAID to spy on you for a legal entity that is not the US government.
Don't think they are doing this for free.
Check out my anti-RIAA series, the protectors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDc10C43BAA
they hate me
Then having him go through your and your neighbors trash. When they find something that they deem detrimental to the corp., trash man gets a bonus and the corporation receives damages.
This is a bad precedent.
I admit plainsong isn't the same as singing
But who'd sue a mass?
(But I might sue you if you spit in my eye while imitating a plane's propeller.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoAEclDKbx8
Steal This Film II
Takes you all the way back to the invention of the printing press, when the Catholic Church wanted to hang on to a monopoly of who could distribute and who could access information. Could you imagine if we had the RIAA back then?
I love music and go to Pandora radio to listen. I don't download anything as I would like the artist to get their royalty payments when I buy books, music, etc.
Vain hope.
they killed themselves
when napster was created...they fought it, instead of seeing the future possibilities
had they bought the service, invested in the technology, improved it, and offered customers a low cost ez way to get music...they wouldve been hailed as heroes and innovators
instead, they fought it tooth and nail....destroyed the retail industry, and have lost billions
tv is slowly getting wise, but the movie industry is falling way behind
you know who is getting smart? the comic book industry
both dc and marvel are now offering yearly digital subscriptions, where one has access to the entirety of their libraries and new comics....brilliant...for that is the way to kill off the pirates
so fuck the riaa....fuck em all
This is not even legal. It will not pass the constitutionality test.
They have no right to monitor your data that is being passed over the lines without a warrant. First lawsuit that makes it to the supreme court will end this, and then the lawsuits against the ISP's will begin.
I know that the conservatives in this country love to get them some wiretappin' done, and they'll try to open that door any way that they can. So, you'll see them coming down on the side of the recording industry and ISP's. That way, they'll justify listening in on everybody so that they can start controlling what goes on in our bedrooms, kitchens, and even in our minds.
It's a damn good thing that the voyeuristic conservatives are out of power. Now we just need to get the Supreme Court back in balance so that they'll quit stripping us of our constitutional rights.
Of course it's legal. Anyone who steals music (just like anyone who smokes a joint) is supporting terr'rism and since "we" can pretty much do anything when we're fighting terr'rism, constitution or no, it's all good.
I, for one, welcome our ISP overlords...
My guess is that AT&T couldn't wait to sign that agreement. Violating their customers privacy, and other civil rights is their number one corporate policy. I refuse to give them any of my money.
Its been documented that they have NSA fibre optic splices (and real time packet analyzers) setup in secure rooms for the TLA people to monitor targeted peoples web usage.
It's true that they have been spying for the government for several years now. It now also looks like they will be spying on their customers for anyone willing to pay them enough money. Fascist bastards.
A lot of the US ISPs are heavily over subscribed and their systems are grossly oversold as fast broadband, when the reality is that if too many customers use it heavily at any one time it slows to a crawl.
There are quite a few heavy users of P2P who do suck down a lot of bandwidth and the ISPs do not like these people, its also a handy stick to intimidate the more sedate but complaining users.
British broadband is in a very sad state of affairs if the reports are anything to go by, this strategy is something that originated over there.
The only way they could actually do something like this is to analyze the ports used, sniff the packets to see if they contain a phrase or phrases on a list of phrases they're looking for (ie. Guns + Roses), and then see if it is an mp3 file.
If you threw the mp3s into an archive file, such as RAR, and gave it an innocuous sounding name (ie. RunsandGoses.rar), it won't likely be detected.
If you created and shared a rant audio file of yourself commenting on some music clip, it would likely be flagged. Such as "IHateGunsandRoses.mp3". It will be interesting to see how they handle such cases.
An ISPs customers have a right to know if their service provider is in bed with an industry that has been proven to be predatory. Of course the RIAA won't tell, because then people, even those not participating in file sharing, would steer clear of them.
I figure that a good rule of thumb is to bet that EVERY service provider is in bed with the RIAA.
I've always hated the RIAA ever since they took down Napster. Since then I have almost religiously steered clear of buying CDs from RIAA sponsored artists (I have sinned a few times) since the lawsuit money is going to the lawyers and not to the artists any damn way.
I knew their lawsuit strategy was BS from the start, just a coverup and scare tactic to prop up their failing business model of 20+dollar CDs.
Now they want to cut off people's access to the internet instead? Pssht, bloody likely. You cut me off, I'll go somewhere else.
Why not? They're already partly responsible for the death of Usenet; why wouldn't they want net freedom and inherent anonymity to be next?
I'm no fan of corporations collecting private data about consumers, but how about this for an idea: STOP STEALING MUSIC ONLINE.
For one, how about because it's not stealing?
This will just move internet users to better file sharing software, the same result as every other tactic that the RIAA has tried before. It seems that the one thing the music industry lacks these days is imagination.
Here in New Zealand laws have been passed which seem quite similar to this new tactic.
Essentially under the new laws, which come into effect sometime in 2009 I believe, the copyright holder can inform the ISP that the user is downloading material they own the rights to, after 3 such reports the ISP is obliged to cut the user off.
What's interesting about it, is that it seems at this stage as if all it takes is for the copyright holder to make an accusation that someone is downloading illegally - it doesn't go through the Police or a court, its just a letter from Big Label to ISP saying 'Hi, Joe Bloggs is downloading Quantum of Solace, please stop him.'
Its all quite weird.
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