The RIAA’s head, Cary Sherman, wants to put encryption on our computer that will force us to decrypt music before listening to it. In other words, the filter will scan all your incoming data and then either allow or deny your ability to listen to it. since this idea likely won’t be popular (who’s going to willingly put a filter on their computer that blocks the files they are downloading?), the next suggestion is to put the filters in our modems.

Despite the predictable public backlash against these tactics (in an environment where the RIAA already has public approval that rivals the US Congress), some ISPs are moving ahead with these filters. The technical specifics are a bit thick, suffice it to say that various file encryptions can bypass these filters unless entire protocols are blocked.

Here’s a video of Mr. Sherman lauding the glories of filtering:

Bottom Line: Being out of touch with your consumers’ needs does not improve your financial picture, or your credibility.

The RIAA wants to expand copyright law, with the apparent intention of having more technicalities to prosecute.? The new law on the table is for album compilations.? Specifically, having each track count as separate count of infringement.

Goggle’s top copyright lawyer was quoted saying the parties pushing this bill have an “unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered”.

Bottom Line: Fining someone upward of $9,000 for a track with a value of a dollar may not be fair, but lawmakers still seem to align themselves with this kind of enforcement.

This fantastic editorial by Tony Long is a powerful and accurate assessment of the fallout of the lawsuit against Jammie Thomas.? His analysis is so good that I have little to add.

Peep it for yourself.

Good show, Tony!

Folks, this has gone too far! $222,000 for 24 songs? Please read this article:

*****

By David Kravets | October 04, 2007
(Repost from WIRED Magazine)

DULUTH, Minnesota — Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation’s first file-sharing case to go before a jury.

Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.

They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others.

After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters.

The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services.

“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. “I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial.”

Still, it’s unlikely the RIAA’s courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits — the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending — the RIAA’s litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers.

According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals.

At the time, BigChampagne says, there were about 3.8 million file sharers trading over the internet at a given moment. Now, the group has measured a record 9 million users trading at the same time. Roughly 70 percent of trading involves digital music, according to BigChampagne.

The case, however, did set legal precedents favoring the industry.

In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant’s computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas’ share folder.

Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry.

Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user “Tereastarr,” whose files were detected by RIAA’s investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks.

The jury found her liable after receiving evidence her internet protocol address and cable modem identifier were used to share some 1,700 files. The hard drive linked to Kazaa on Feb. 21, 2005 — the evening in question — did not become evidence in the case.

According to testimony, Thomas replaced her hard drive weeks after RIAA investigators accessed her share file and discovered 1,702 files. The industry sued on just 24 of those files.

(Courtroom sketch: Wired News/ Cate Whittemore)

*****
Ok, now lets be honest. Songs have always been “free” on the radio. This is because you are forced to listen to advertisements which undoubtedly sway a percentage of the captive audience to go buy the products represented in said advertising.

The idea that downloading hurts CD sales has been disproven. In Fact, there have even been several cases where a song breaks on the internet and causes a landslide of physical sales. Shitty music is hurting physical sales. Ask anyone on the street, Mr. RIAA. What we are witnessing here is a truly EVIL organization that is not operating in the best interests of the people it was designed to protect.

Let’s go back to this quote: “This is what can happen if you don’t settle.” That is a direct threat from the RIAA, telling us to conform to their standard, or else be disciplined by their heavily funded hand. I have a response for you, Mr. RIAA Lawyer Prick…

…This is what happens when you don’t Settle:

The revolution, the birth of a free nation, the creation of epic works of art, the birth of new technologies and the absolute free and unfettered exchange of information.

RIAA, your #1 client base is who you are attacking. Everyone is watching you, and thinks you are stupid. You will NEVER stop the free trading of music on the internet. You do not control the flow of information, nor are you operating in the best interests of those you claim to represent

Black markets flourish when consumer demands arent met by governments or corporations (look at prostitution or the war on drugs). We will always share music! We used to do it with cassette tapes, we used to do it with burned CD’s, We will do it by singing at each other if we have to.

This is for everyone:
STEAL MY MUSIC.
SHARE IT.
ENJOY IT.

After all, I wrote it for you.
-r

The RIAA finally got their first case in court over people who serve MP3s on file sharing platforms. So all bland arguments aside, here’s the bottom line.:

The new argument is that if we rip or download songs we already own, we’re stealing.
Let’s cut through all the fancy arguments and cogent dissections and get right to the nitty gritty of it all.

Major media companies complain people aren’t buying music (as if over 500 million album slaes is some kind of small number), so they try to force us to buy music by restricting our access to it. The general public (that’s us) then gets indignant that we are being limited in our ability to enjoy music, and we download everything we can. The major labels then raise the prices of CDs, and add malware to their products (with some benign name so we don’t make the connection that a rootkit is a kind of virus).

We are told that when we buy music online, it will include some form of control, so that we can only enjoy it on proprietary software or hardware (think about how cellphone companies have 400 different adaptors to their chargers). Now they want us to believe we have no right to backup our data.

Now they are finally in court with us for downloading and sharing content, and they accuse us of stealing from them if we rip music we already own. There are now record players that will turn your albums into MP3s as you play them. I own lots of vinyl, and some of it is hard or impossible to find, even as an MP3. Am I criminal if I want to preserve my record collection? Most of these albums can only be obtained second hand at this point, anyways.

Where does it stop? At what point will they sue for the right to audit every harddrive on the planet, or require us to carry some sort of permit to listen to the music we have? Are we all to be fined for singing Happy Birthday?

Let’s look at it another way. People still pay for HBO. People still buy CDs, and digital downloads are a robust market (just not robust enough to support the behemoth of major record labels). It’s possible that if people weren’t forced to buy music, and told that everything we did with our music was a crime, we would be more inclined to buy more. What would happen if everyone stopped using DRM, and file sharing was accepted as part of society? What if intellectual property wasn’t treated like another flavor of soda?

If major labels want to revive their fiscal bottom lines, perhaps they could invest in developing talent, instead of suing us into buying music. Perhaps the answer to selling music lies inside of the music itself (this might explain why artists like Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd never stop connecting with younger generations).

Before I break down the long and short of this issue, I want to bring your attention to something.

Companies like Media Defender are not protecting copyright and content interests. They are actually encouraging people not to buy content. The more intrusively and forcefully companies like Media Defender attempt to control our content consumption, the more the general public will revolt. If companies want to protect their revenue, the way is to embrace p2p culture, not to subvert it.

On to the details:

MediaDefender is in the business of protecting content from piiracy. Specifically, they seek
out and protect content on peer to peer networks. They use a variety or sneaky tactics, including decoy files, to catch people who are downloading music.

Here’s how they describe their services on their site: “MediaDefender uses a range of non-invasive technological countermeasures employed on P2P networks to frustrate users’ attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content…Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title…”

Oddly enough, they also offer service to seed content onto peer to peer networks. From the Media Defender site: “Peer-to-Peer* Marketing is when we capture live search requests from your targeted demographic and respond with your clients’ files”

In other words, not only are they hunting down file sharers, they are using the data they obtain for marketing purposes. This would be like the TSA using travel information to provide us with travel discounts and promotions.
Recently, a huge amount of internal corporate documents were leaked to the public through (insert dramatic irony) Bit Torrent. The documents were obtained by a group called MediaDefender-Defenders

It appears that Media Defender has been running a secret site where uploaded files can be tracked – without any permission. I believe the legal term for this kinf od action is entrapment. I find it amusing that the same file sharing networks that are being manipulated by companies like Media Defender are being subverting for the uses of major media conglomerates by companies including Media Defender.

Even better, according to the documents, Major record companies and movie studios were paying Media Defender to protect their albums from file sharing (and for a hefty fee, too). As if it wasn;t sketchy enough, the documents show that Media Defender actively sought to divert p2p traffic to their own p2 website (the now defunct Miivi.com), so they could catch people in the act of downloading. This kind of action is similar to sending a drug dealer door to door, and then arresting people who buy something.

As if all of this isn’t embarassing enough for Media Defender, executives of the company insisted in July that “MediaDefender was working on an internal project that involved video and didn’t realize that people would be trying to go to it and so we didn’t password-protect the site” (source- ArsTechnica).
I can understand that compaines like Media Defender can make a great living out of protecting content. As a label owner, I can even understand the desire to want to sell units. However, Media Defender is denying they intentionally attempted to entrap users (can you say liar?) . And if that isn’t enough, they are using the same information to create marketing strategies.

In spite of the fact that people can get any media they want for free, records still sell. Album sales may be dropping like hailstones, but record sales continue to be a multi-billion dollar industry.

Consumers have the power now, and we get to say what has value, not corporations.

How does this give the RIAA a way to use pre-texting to go after file sharers… can you explain the process to me?

Here’s the reply:

This part is US Code Title 17 sentence two:

“For purposes of this chapter … any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a)”

And here’s the proposed amendment: “except that the court in its discretion may determine that such parts are separate works if the court concludes that they are distinct works having independent economic value.”

This ambiguously termed and open ended amendment is not accidentally constructed. It allows sterilization of any argument against the proposition, because any use is speculative, and cannot be proved.? The only place this exception will show itself is in a courtroom, where the RIAA and MPAA are lobbying for stronger tactics in chasing file sharers.

If musical works and movies get deemed patents, intellectual property, or trade secrets instead of being covered under Copyright Law, then the RIAA and MPAA will push for the strongest possible protection of their intellectual property.? In an environment like this, they will be using any tactics (including pretexting) to pursue anyone who shares media.? Courts are becoming more concerned about invasion of privacy inside of copyrights.? They don’t have those concerns around giving Microsoft the right to protect source code, or Coca Cola’s formula.

My interpretation is that if a court finds a distinct (singular) musical work to have “independent economic value”, then the work is not necessarily covered by Copyright Law.? Major media companies would have a loophole to argue in court that the albums they own are not applicable to the particular rights of US Copyright Law.? They would then be able to argue for the legal protections that exist for other types of intellectual property.

Between positioning themselves as black box royalty collection for internet media and dismantling our right to share music, these major media companies are trying to to transform entertainment and art into a product.? As their catalogs of media are viewed as products instead of self expression, the right to pursue theft of their property grows.? It’s the same downward trend we see in freedom of speech.

The moral high ground stands with the public in a conversation about copyrights.? Once the conversation shifts into a more patent based or product based context, the legal arguments on how far companies can go to protect themselves shifts.? Altering the context of music and movies changes their legal existence.

Thanks for tuning in!

Have you ever heard of Pretexting? It’s a manipulation technique often used to fool organizations into disclosing private information. In December of 2006, a California Law was proposed: “…any person…obtaining or attempting to obtain…personal information about a customer or employee contained in the records of a business …by making false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations…”. Although the bill was unanimously endorsed by members of the CA Senate, the MPAA stepped in and had the bill killed (see Wired Magazine, “MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill”, 12/1/06). To put it simply, the MPAA and RIAA demand the right to lie to us in the name of Copyright Protection.

It seems the RIAA and MPAA are willing to allow privacy laws to deteriorate for all of us to protect their profit margins. The question on my mind is: Why should the MPAA and RIAA get special freedoms to prosecute people for file sharing?

Back in 2003, the MPAA and RIAA filed for a permanent Antitrust exemption. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch. It contains a revision to The Copyright Laws of the US in Title 17 of the US Code. Here’s the revised copyright law of the US according this (thankfully non-passed) bill by Sen. Hatch (the revision is underlined):

For purposes of this chapter … any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a) except that the court in its discretion may determine that such parts are separate works if the court concludes that they are distinct works having independent economic value.

These are the tactics of the MPAA and RIAA are using to transform entertainment. Creating exceptions to copyright laws and the having legal permissions to lie, cheat, and sue us into buying media for the prices they set, and in the forms they dictate.

21st century entertainment is not based on mafia style coercion by transnational media conglomerates. An outdated business model cannot survive by excusing themselves form laws the rest of us have to follow. Corporations are legally recognized as people. People cannot have laws rewritten for their personal benefit.

Polyvibe Records‘ response is our forward thinking business model. We do not take our artists’ copyrights. Our prices are set by the perceived value of our audience. Our digital albums are 100% MP3. And best of all, we make sure our artists’ are taken care of financially and personally. Taking copyrights from artists, then prosecuting others for sharing them is in the past. The future is ours.

Universal Music filed a lawsuit against MySpace at the end of the day on Friday.? The lawsuit claims that Myspace is allowing their users to violate copyrights, in order to make a profit off of it. The suit also claims that MySpace encouraged copyright infingement. The suit even goes as far as suggesting that MySpace owes their success to using this same material.

Myspace asserts that they are in full compliance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects web sites from the copyright violations of their users, as long as they act fast when a rights-holder complains. Not to mention the fact that Myspace is a social networking site. The same thing accusations were thrown at YouTube shortly before they signed a deal with some of these major rights holders.

All links and cross-references aside, MySpace, YouTube, and even Universal are owned by huge corporations. The thing I find most interesting about the lawsuit is the part that says “UMG owns copyrights in thousands of sound recordings, including many of the most popular and well-known sound recordings in the world.”

So the soap opera continues, and somehow, the more I read, the less it all makes sense, or even seems to matter. How can a few dozen companies appear to own all of this fantastic music, movies and TV shows, and pass back and forth billions of dollars? Perhaps the real question to be asked is how just a few companies can own and make all the money off of this huge catalog of popular art.

Art, and especially music, are powerful because of the emotions they evoke, and have different values to different people. As the value of music continues to tank, these major music companies seem to striking more and more deals where major media corporations and websites are paying huge lumps of sum to each other. Money flows from Google to YouTube to Sony BMG to Viacom and around and around. Where exactly are the rest of us in all of this? Where is all this money going? If Universal won $400 million dollars from MySpace, how much would they pay to the artists?

To put it more simply, huge amounts of these catalogs were created by people who have left this world, or who are getting pennies out of billions of dollars that changes hands. The day of the post-major label is finally dawning. The age of the distributor.? Long Live D.I.Y.