Music Industry: All Your Bandwidth Is Belong To Us

[BIG PIZZLE]

RIAA to halt lawsuits, cozy up to ISPs instead

Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:18AM EST

At last, the music industry admits what we've known for years: That filing music-swapping lawsuits against teenagers, little old ladies, and corpses is a fool's errand (not to mention an expensive headache for the defendants). But don't worry—the RIAA has something new up its sleeves.

The new strategy (as reported by the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html)): If the music industry finds out that you're swapping music files online, it'll send an e-mail to your ISP (agreements have already hashed out agreements with "some" unnamed service providers, apparently), which will in turn forward the message to you—probably with a little "P.S." asking you to stop. [Update: CNET has a copy (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127050-93.html) of the RIAA's form letter to ISPs.]

If you don't stop, well ... your service provider probably won't sue you, but it might slow down your broadband connection, or cut off your service altogether.

So, why has the RIAA changed the play? Well, maybe it's been looking at reports like this one from the NPD Group (http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_081218.html), which shows that U.S. CD sales continue to slide, while the number of tunes shared via P2P sites continues to increase, despite all the litigation.

And then there's the disastrous headlines (http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/41308), as the RIAA relentlessly tracked down and sued tens of thousands of alleged music pirates. Among them: Kids, octogenarians, and a few dead people (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050204-4587.html).

Reaction to the news? Mixed. Engadget's headline (http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/19/riaa-finds-its-soul-will-stop-suing-individuals-for-music-pirac/) reads (in part): "RIAA finds its soul," with the story noting that while the RIAA reserves the right to go after "heavy uploaders or repeat offenders ... it appears that single mothers are in the clear."

All Things Digital has a darker outlook (http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081219/big-music-accepts-reality-drops-lawsuit-strategy-next-up-nasty-notes-from-your-cable-telco-companies/), speculating that ISPs—which "care about the cost of moving lots of data around … [and] want to make money by selling, renting, or just offering up Hollywood's movies and TV shows to subscribers"—might be more than content to "cut off file-sharers … [or] simply [charge] heavy file-sharers a lot of money."

And here's another possibility, courtesy of yours truly: Say your ISP catches you sharing tunes via P2P. No problem—download away! But when you get your next cable bill, you'll find the itemized songs added to your monthly charge, kind of like an iTunes bill.

Call it the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy.

P.S. Make no mistake—just because the RIAA has stopped filing new music-swapping lawsuits doesn't mean that it's dropped the existing ones, according to the Journal. Quite the contrary.

[Charlatan]

Via The Wall Street Journal (source (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html?mod=rss_whats_news_techn ology)).

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits

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.

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. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.

The new approach dispenses with one of the most contentious parts of the lawsuit strategy, which involved filing lawsuits requiring ISPs to disclose the identities of file sharers. Under the new strategy, the RIAA would forward its emails to the ISPs without demanding to know the customers' identity.

Though the industry group is reserving the right to sue people who are particularly heavy file sharers, or who ignore repeated warnings, it expects its lawsuits to decline to a trickle. The group stopped filing mass lawsuits early this fall.

…

Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales.

[WET HOT MESS]

1*1=1!!!!

[Charlatan]

Two minutes! Curse you, Pizzle!

[BIG PIZZLE]

My thread > yours.

[Charlatan]

Libel and slander.

[WET HOT MESS]

This news sucks. People need to start using passwords for their zip files and renaming them to ambiguous things like Please Eat My Dead Aunt Sally part 1.

[Charlatan]

Which story did you read? Not having to worry about the RIAA busting down your door to serve you with a lawsuit is great news. Pursuing the people who actually put the music out there isn't really anything new, so it certainly hasn't changed for the worse in any way.

And for the record, Pizzle, my thread was way better.

[Le Goat]

My thread > yours.

If you fucking got the saying right, yes.


"all your base are belong to us"

[Whiffleball]

This news sucks. People need to start using passwords for their zip files and renaming them to ambiguous things like Please Eat My Dead Aunt Sally part 1.

What are ISPs going to do? Sniff out ports and scrutinize the packets for phrases like "Britney Spears" or "Chinese Democracy"?

So, seriously, is there anything to stop someone from just putting the mp3s into a .zip or .rar file and naming the file "Dhinese Cemocracy"?

Really, this still smacks of desperation. Determined file sharers will just switch to ISPs that are not in bed with the RIAA or develop improved software that makes it harder for ISPs to detect file-sharing.

Did taking down Napster stop file-sharing? Did busting all those teenagers do any good?

Are they going to take down Google next?

sRv953XZX6Y

[fuldstændigamok]

This news sucks. People need to start using passwords for their zip files and renaming them to ambiguous things like Please Eat My Dead Aunt Sally part 1.

Fuck passwords. Nothing pisses me off more than passwords. But the files renaming should be a given, yes.
Anyway what is the riaa going to do against people using rs, mega or other? Nothing! If people are still stupid enough to use emule, limewire or even torrent... their problem, not mine.

[Archangel]

And all the while, the people at Rapidshit get fat off people who'd rather pay for illegal filesharing than the actual product.

[Hoser]

Music might not land you ind jail, but movies sure will

Men arrested for distributing 14 million movies
Thursday, 04 December 2008

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) yesterday arrested two men from Parkinson in Brisbane for illegally distributing movies and television programs via a website.

The 21-year-old and 27-year-old were charged with copyright and proceeds of crime offences.

Police will allege in court that the men managed an offshore website, which facilitated the sharing of movies among its 400,000 international members.

The men allegedly facilitated the transfer of over 10,000 terabytes of data, the equivalent of 14.3 million copies of movies and television programs.

It will also be alleged that the men received income from that website.

The investigation began earlier this year, when the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) received information about a website, which enabled the downloading of copyrighted movies by members of the public.

AFACT referred the matter to the AFP and a joint investigation commenced.

Search warrants were executed yesterday at the residence of the two men, where three computers and in excess of 1200 DVDs were seized.

Overnight approximately $50,000 was restrained in funds believed to have been derived from the illegal activity.

AFP National Manager for Economic and Special Operations Mandy Newton said the AFP would continue to take action to restrain the funds derived from organised intellectual property crime.

“The AFP will continue to work closely with its industry partners against intellectual property crimes and to restrain the proceeds of those crimes,” Assistant Commissioner Newton said.

The men have been charged with distributing copyrighted material contrary to Section 132AI of the Copyright Act 1968 and dealing in proceeds of crime worth $10,000 or more contrary to Section 400.6 of the Criminal Code Act 1995.

The men were bailed last night to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on 18 December 2008.

The maximum penalty for these offences is 10 years imprisonment and/or a fine of $66,000.
http://www.afp.gov.au/media_releases/national/2008/men_arrested_for_distributing_14_million_movies

[Kerjack]

And all the while, the people at Rapidshit get fat off people who'd rather pay for illegal filesharing than the actual product.

Pretty easy to understand why, people don't mind paying for things as long as the price is good. And two, DRM also known as 'Fuck you if you payed for it, we still own it you will use it how we tell you to' is not present on your downloads.

[fuldstændigamok]

And all the while, the people at Rapidshit get fat off people who'd rather pay for illegal filesharing than the actual product.

Dude, my rs account is free since well over a year and will be free forever now.

[Archangel]

Yeah, but I can understand why the industry would go after people who get paid off distributing tons of movies. The guy who, in between visits to the theatre and the video store, downloads a flick or two? Come on now.

[Kerjack]

Dude, my rs account is free since well over a year and will be free forever now.

I lack the ability to rep so... ???

[Hoser]

Fuck you RIAA


OH CANADA.....

[Archangel]

Dude, my rs account is free since well over a year and will be free forever now.

After you paid them how much in the years before?

[fuldstændigamok]

After you paid them how much in the years before?

It was a present actually, but it was 35$ for one year....

[Whiffleball]

But that's only if you want a premium account. For those of us who still have the patience to wait between downloads, it's not a problem.

With torrents, it's even more problematic because the RIAA has no authority over what, say, the Swedish government can do in regards to a torrent site based in Sweden. Sure, you can bust the Americans who download from them, but it's the provider, not the user, who is the real issue.

[Archangel]

They could bomb Sweden: As a matter of fact, I'm surprised that the outgoing administration didn't. The recording industry needs to get some better lobbyists.

[Limp]

I download from work... my boss iz gettin under arreststs.

[RedBEARD]

On a similar note, I got a message from MySpace the other day letting me know that they'd deleted a widget from my profile containing "illegal music". It was from Playlist.com, and it claimed that they'd received multiple complaints...I'm more under the impression that they want you to use their own playlist app than anything, but still - worthy of note, considering this news.

[UNC]

Someone should write a song about this

so that I can download it for free

[Swurgen]

On a similar note, I got a message from MySpace the other day letting me know that they'd deleted a widget from my profile containing "illegal music". It was from Playlist.com, and it claimed that they'd received multiple complaints...I'm more under the impression that they want you to use their own playlist app than anything, but still - worthy of note, considering this news.

See this link (http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp=49501eb0070dbe74&ei=D_RQSdCHGoGi9gTX-IiaAg&url=http%3A//blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/myspace-bans-pr.html&cid=1282155866&usg=AFQjCNFMYC4_-1bnt__8BvE8WGDjRS8iIw).




Incidentally, the movie people have been sending out "cut the shit" letters for years. I got one years ago on shareaza for "we were soldiers". Scared the shit out of me when I first saw it but nothing came of it.

[Swurgen]

Incidentally, I just got another letter TODAY. Zuffa contacted my ISP about me dl'ing Couture-Lesner. Oops. I really have to cool off a bit.

[BusterPortugal]

Incidentally, I just got another letter TODAY. Zuffa contacted my ISP about me dl'ing Couture-Lesner. Oops. I really have to cool off a bit.


Are you using torrents to get your files?

[Swurgen]

Not very often but I did for that fight. I honestly haven't been dl'ing much any more. A few albums on RS here and there but don't have the patience for multiple RS dl's.