Malachi

At least I think that's the point the RIAA is making when Brad Buckles, Executive Vice President, Anti-Piracy, RIAA says:

"The illegal music trade attracts various forms of criminals and groups of criminals who increasingly have connections to drugs, guns, and in some cases even terrorist activities"

So the next time an Al'Quaida operative approaches you on the street saying "Hey buddy, wanna buy some Britney Spears, real cheap?", just say "no".

Better and more amusing coverage at Ars Techinica Reviewing the RIAA's "Reefer Madness" for the digital age

Aimee Weber

GAH! These nutjobs drive me crazy!

Serenity

I for the love of Al Gore....

I think the RIAA really needs to re-evaluate their priorities and income models.

I believe that artists deserve to be rewarded for their work, totally, but the efforts to stop digitial distribution are not just hurting the comsumer more than anything. And all this fear mongering is nuts.

Though to be honest, their lawsuits are enough to keep me from downloading much.... I just don't want to deal with that..

Serenity

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"I don't care, I'm still free; you can't take the sky from me."

Lucifer Baphomet

The RIAA should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Wildefire Walcott

I just thank my lucky stars that CDs were invented back in the Stone Age, before DRM, otherwise we'd have region-restricted CDs and players just like we have with DVDs. There would be no such thing as an import CD, and if you ever wanted to hear stuff from overseas you'd basically be forced to obtain it illegally.

It's a terrible and archaic business model from so many angles, how media companies are still handling things today. Our government(s) sure as hell aren't helping anything, either, their ears much more in tune to industry lobbyists than constituents. Thank god for hackers and disruptive forces like Napster, iPod, and BitTorrent. If we didn't have them our entertainment options might be so limited that many artists might not even bother.

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Malachi

Oh, if the RIAA gets its way you don't even have to download. Recently the RIAA had filed suit that copying your CD to your computer was a copyright violation.

These are the dying gasps of a dying industry, and every credible model that I've seen for the future of music distribution rewards the artists far more than traditionally, and rewards the anachronistic RIAA not at all.

Malachi

Do NOT, repeat, Do NOT attempt to watch the video linked therein, unless you like to see lawyers talk to other lawyers in a video for lawyers about laws you don't care about and technology they don't understand.

Tech tip from lawyer: "You can close the CD-R burner by just pushing the drawer closed" (after fumbling for the button to make it open).

Oh and all of the "surveillance" video happened to show people with a high degree of skin melanin, but at no point (of the 10 minutes I did waste) did they say the pirates would rape your daughters.

Jellin Pico

Before the lawyers? No one goes before the lawyers

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Dolphins ... The Smug Bastards of the Sea

Briana Dawson

Keep your revolutions in Scottland, you William Wallace!

Dancien Graves

It's on the list. Trust me.

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Serenity

Well seeing as it was established a while back that it was legal to copy your LP's onto a cassette tape (no I won't explain what those are, kids).

I'm not a fan of the "Free the music, man" camp. I think that we should pay for what we get, but I'll be damned if I can't take a song I've paid for, put it on a CD, put it on my iPod or play it on my computer all I want.

It's a bit annoying that if everyone were honest they wouldn't need all this crap. We'd all pay for every song someway, and we'd all be sharing the wealth with the artists and producers who deserve it.

But.... we're not all honest, are we?

Serenity

Malachi

Well speaking for myself, I don't download non-free music. But if you want to talk about honesty, Courtney Love has some very cogent desciptions about who is honest in the music business and who is honestly screwed.

Courtney Love redefines music piracy and blasts the RIAA | Salon Technology (trying to abide by cristiano's desire to let his URL parser do its thing)

Joshua Nightshade

I agree with you to a point. Artists should be paid for their art. End of story.

However they aren't getting paid for it right now anyway. They make at best a few cents off of a cd, the rest goes to the executives, and they're churned out like replaceable commodities.

prinţesă nină

The Problem With Music

Mordos Yering

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The Secret of Nimh <:3 )~~~~

Daisy Rimbaud

Not just CDs - if these guys had ever got into publishing, it would be a crime to let anyone else read your copy of the newspaper. Books would cost ten times as much because of the expense of developing unphotocopyable ink.

Vivianne Draper

actually they filed that copying it to a shared directory connected to a p2p network was a copyright violation.

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Lucifer Baphomet

I'll be ok then... all I leave in my shared files folder is porn

Sarah Nerd

This article still holds a ton of great points
demonbaby: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

How I miss Oink's Pink Palace I'm still looking for a waffles invite if anyone has one floating around.

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http://www.your2ndplace.com/sarahnerd

Serenity

Which... er.. actually kinda is... when you consider that once it's there it can be copied a few million times.

I think part of my sympathy for "the man" comes from my application of Kantian morality and the concept of the "Universal Will". Basically you ask "What if EVERYONE did this? Is this something I would WILL everyone to do?"

And really if EVERYONE copied music over P2P networks there'd be no money in music production. Someone would buy a CD, just one, and then EVERYONE woudl have a copy by way of P2P and that'd be the end. Total income to the music industry: $16, or less if it was on sale.

And that doesn't seen "right".

Serenity

Malachi

True, but I find the ruling a bit creepier than that. The judicial order notes that:

Howell, proceeding pro se, denies liability on the grounds .. that he owns compact discs containing the sound recordings at issue and “translated” them to his computer for personal use, and that “a malfunction or tampering by a third party is responsible for [those] files being available on the [I]nternet.

What the court held was that by merely (even if inadvertently) Howell put the files in a shared Kazza directory and even if no one downloaded them: "the mere presence of copyrighted works in a shared folder is enough to trigger liability". I've never seen Kazza but am familiar with iTunes. I know that if I rip a CD under iTunes for my personal use that by default it will be available to other iTunes users on my LAN. It would surprise me not at all if Kazza were to put rips made with it into its share.

So, Howell may or may not have intended to share his music via Kazaa and that music may or may not have been downloaded by anyone at all. But none of that matters to the deciding court.