Submitted by aaron29

As an Information Technology Professional, I found the Coleman hearing interesting and strangely familiar. The panel’s questions to Mr Bainwol and Mr Valenti were very appropriate and relevant. It's unfortunate that we never received the answers those questions deserved.

It was obvious that these gentlemen have no wish to move forward with technology. For example, when asked, repeatedly, what will the MPAA do with the new FAST technology; the answers were evasive at best. Instead of saying that they'd find ways to use the technology to create new and compelling distribution models, the answer was basically, find out what we can do to stop or control it via technical and legislative copyright controls. This approach was tried by the software industry in the 80’s. It failed miserably.

Most of the companies that took this approach are out of business today. We discovered that technically adept individuals take copy protection as a personal challenge, no matter the legal or professional consequence. In addition, as technology continued to advance, the copy restrictions prevent the systems from being useful to the corporate users of hard drives and then networked computers. We had to move with the technology.

Today, the license key is used to activate software and control copies. The CDs themselves having no copy protection; the content can be copied on to and executed from any type of mass storage device. The license key activates the software. However, even the use of a license key is only on a minority number of packages.

The RIAA and MPAA must move with technology, not fight it. If you look, you'll find that every copy protected CD published so far is already on a P2P network. There's no way to stop this, short of shutting down the Internet. The Internet is based on Peer to Peer protocols (TCP/UDP). Every version of Microsoft Windows since version 3.1 (Windows for Workgroups) has included some form of P2P technology (shared folders). Virtually every corporation and government office in the world relies on this technology; you can’t just shut it off.

Another statement that I found particularly troublesome was:

"There is no way to build a business model to compete with free."

If the software industry took this attitude, there'd be no software industry. Every commercial software package competes with a legal and free counterpart. Many of these have equal or greater functionality. Windows, the #1 operating system in the world, competes with Linux, a free alternative. Oracle, the leading database software, has MySQL, again an open source, free alternative. Outlook, the leading E-mail package has Outlook Express, Eudora lite, Kmail, and many more as competition. MS Office, the leading word processing, graphics and spreadsheet package, competes with Sun’s Star Office and Koffice, both free alternatives. SAP, the leading Enterprise Resource Planning system, must compete with Compiere, a free, open source alternative. Even Kazaa has free and pay versions!

The best example for the RIAA and MPAA is Redhat. This company sells what's available for free - Linux. They package Linux, add valuable utilities and support. For this, they charge any where from $45 on up. In addition, they offer free copies of their own software for download. I strongly suggest that the MPAA and RIAA talk to Redhat about how a model that uses and competes against 'free' can work.

If the MPAA and RIAA are going to wait until there is no 'free' alternative to create a business model, they may as well do as was suggested: determine how to orderly shut down their business. There's no excuse. They must, at least, attempt to create a model to compete with and embrace free music and videos or make way for someone who can.

If the MPAA and RIAA follow the Software Industries model, most software is distributed in both 'free' and 'pay' versions. Why not a free version of popular songs or movies with voice over advertising trailers or commercials? Buy the download; get the song without the advertising, in addition, get a great poster and other artwork in the mail. If they work with the P2P vendors, the 'paid' version could include a Broadcast Flag to prevent further distribution on P2P networks. If there's a free version of the song or movie available to share, the average person will not risk creating and distributing an unauthorized version. It'll also be easy for even a 12-year-old to understand the difference.

If we're truly looking for a solution, we're going to have to force the MPAA and RIAA to build new business models even though they have convinced themselves it's impossible. The P2P companies must assist if this model is to succeed. Failing this, the only alternative will be compulsory licensing.

If the history of the last 20 years is any indication, free alternatives are not going to magically disappear.

Let’s find a solution that will help all of us.

repeal the DMCA. Get CodeWarrior's
bill passed.
http://codewarrior.web1000.com/digitalconsumers.htm

http://codewarrior.50mb.org/digitalconsumers.htm

Amen!

SECTION 4 – Punishment for violation of any provisions of this Bill



It is self evident that for legislation enacted by a governmental body to be enforced, that there be needs to be provisions , establishing punishments for any person , group of persons, business, or other entities who may act in such a manner as to violate the Act.



It is hereby held that the rights established under this bill are of such importance to the individual consumer, that the punishment(s) for any violation of any provision of this bill, need to be of a magnitude to deter potential violators of this bill.



It is hereby stipulated that,any violation of this bill shall be punishable by a fine of one hundred fifty thousand United States dollars ($150,000.00) and that concurrent and/or consecutive violations, will also carry a fine of one hundred fifty thousand dollars per incident or per violation, whichever is the largest in number. For example, if a company were to conduct five illegal searches of a consumer’s hard drive within a period of five minutes, this would constitute five violations, each resulting in a fine of one hundred fifty thousand dollars each, resulting in a fine for that event of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars ($750,000). Furthermore, individuals who opt to violate the provisions of this act, upon a true conviction for violation of this Bill , would be subject to imprisonment, with a term not to exceed three (3) years in federal prison, per violation . This term of three years, could be assessed for one violation, and multiple violations, could expose any person convicted of multiple violations, to receiving either concurrent, or consecutive terms of imprisonment, of up to three years per violation, depending on the findings of the Court.

hahahaha
Give them a taste of their own medicine!
CODEWARRIOR FOR PREZ IN 2004!!

Beautiful.

I really prefer Jessica Litman's suggestions in her book "Digital Copyright". Her conclusion is back to basic, scrap current copyight law and start from scratch. Things that were not around at the time the original law was enacted have been added (often at the behest of the creators) movies, The copyright act is such a patchwork quilt of exceptions and special circumstances that even the lawyers and people who wrote it don't understand it and disagree what it means...But the pressure must be kept on congress to change section 512(h) to where at the very least proof of ownership, and judicial review be required to issue a subpeona. Whne Srnator Coleman introduces the bill to reduce the statutory damages and require judiical oversight over section 512(h) subpeonas we most make our voices heard. 60 millian people can't be wrong...

and then, of course, there is bottled water.

The only way to change it is to defeat it in the courts first. As long as the bill in not declared unconstitutional those bozos on capitol hill will just make noise and maintain the status quo at the behest of their masters in hollywood

This is slightly off topic but wanted to get an opinion on a strange developement.

I use a software program from sonic foundry called Acid to make my own recordings on my home pc. It works quite well with sound forge as a low cost recording solution.

I went to the sonic foundry website the other day and see a message showing that it was recently purchased by sony.

I believe the industry is possibly strategically acquiring threatening technology to increase their control.

My greatest fear is that they will somehow acquire ownership of the mp3 format itself and further erode independant artists ability to record and distribute our works without the music industry.

Is there a way that this could happen or is the mp3 format public domain??

What do you think? should we be concerned?

I think the RIAA and MPAA know exactly what they are doing. They are not ignorant of the technology and its implications. They want to control how the technology is used and the ideas behind the technology via copyright law. Unfortunately, this stifles technology by limiting the sharing of ideas. This also means that they can set the prices for their products high and produce trash if they so desire.

Money trumps all and it appears to be creating a mindless culture of expensive garbage.

I think the MP3 format is actually owned by someone, wethepeople, but I'm not certain who. Maybe someone on here could enlighten us. Anyway, I wouldn't put it past those pigs to try buying the format...sounds like the best advertisement for Ogg Vorbis yet.

microsloth owns the mp3 format (at least that's what they said) and a few others. that's why it's hard to get cross platform performance. they don't want to have to compete with linux and mac. (although it is still done but this makes it really hard to develop software)

ok I remember why I was here now. So were not going to repeal or alter the dmca eh? Hey thanks Norm, you've shown us the true scope of the riaa's influence.

Last I heard, Fraunhofer Labs in Germany hold the copyright for MP3. They have decided that encoding files for personal use with this technology is free, but to use the format in business does require licensing. Even that's not punishingly huge; to use mp3s in a computer game requires something like a £1000 license, easily manageable by a large software developer. This sounds like an excellent way forward for many programs - free for personal use, charge for business.

Rename all your mp3's to ".shit". Then set winamp to open ".shit" files. It will work just the same as mp3.

off topic: is the riaa website down?

wethepeople - i think when Sony goes to acquiring companies that sell software that creates music , alters music, or any other media, we SHOULD be concerned.
-bulkeraser

curtnerc - a better question is :
Is the RIAA website ever up?
lol..i think they have digital priapism.

Supply And They Demand

What they are doing is:
1:They had a tax added to blank Cd's and hardware
2:They shut down napster
3:Now they are after p2p in the courts
4:They are suing the people who keep them in business
5:Getting a lot of people afraid of p2p
6:Trying to get our elected officials to pass new laws that are tougher than the DMCA is now
7: Using DMCA as a end around fair use by copy protecting the movies and music Cd's, DVDs yes you may still copy them but it's against the law of DMCA

When they first started out back in the early 1900's. Nobody and i mean NOBODY but them could make or show movies. They did what ever they could, to put everyone out of business. They had thugs destroying the films and the equipment of their competition. They had the police to shut them down and run them out of town or put them in jail. They went to congress and the senate, with their lobbying groups and hammered out the new copyright laws.
The music industry were just about the same as the movie industry. From day one they took control of the sheet music,the player piano, radio, then they started on the artists. Because they owned the recording studios. They had them just about sign their lives away. Sure alot of the artists made good money back then. But most of them did not. The artists never made their money off of records.One example B.B. not BB King sometimes made a thousand a week in NYC in 1938. But other times he had to sell his music to live on, for one hundred dollars. One of which was his number one song. Artists went from town to town, just like it is today. It has not changed since then. Nor will it change now. The music industry will die fighting for this concept and business model.
Why do you think they were there? When the DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998 was first formed. You can bet your bottom dollar the mpaa/riaa and of course big corporations, they were in the thick of it. Who else would put in 1/10 of a song but only 30 seconds of the song as fair use.Where was the people voice in this act? It sure wasn't voiced very well. If you look at the history of this industry,and then compare it with the Mafia. You will find that it is the same. The only difference is that they used the law to do it. By going to congress and the senate with all of their lobbyist, with their donations to what ever pet causes that our elected officials were doing at the time. I am not saying what they did was against the law. But how can we have corporations giving money, to our elected officials who introduce bills and laws of the land. It just does not make sense to me. To the corporations it's business as usual. Supply And They Demand.
Where were: We The People Of The United States Of America, Representatives.Why was it so one sided in favor of big corporations? Well one reason is that the United State Of America had to join the WIPO. I do not know why we had to join. Unless it was an end around the constitution of the good old U.S.A. Your know all those foreign corporations that own Music and Hollywood Industries.They just had to get us to join this org. Because our laws did not suite them.

Now they want to own the Internet. They have to shut down P2P now. It is all about controlling the market. If they do not control the market who would need them. Yes my friend it's supply and demand. they supply and always demand. It has nothing to do with Music or the Movies. The law suites are really just a front. Look at the settlements $2000 to $3500, maybe they will up the ante more later on. It's costing them more for their lawyers. It makes them look good in the eyes of our elected officials. Instead of suing for $750.00 to $150,000.00 a song. Which was really enacted for the selling of Cd's. You know the pirates of the seas. The guys on the street corners, The ones who make hundreds of thousands of Cd's DVDs to sell.Yes they made us the bad guys,with the black hats. It's the bait and switch game. You're looking here but what they really want, is way over there. They are not stupid. They been doing this for a hundred years now.

They do not care about p2p's or who owns them.Yes they will talk to them, egg them on and on and on. Yet nothing will come from this. These racketeers are not going to deal with them. Why should they? It's all about controlling the market. Supply and Always Demand. They have given out piece meal of songs to a few companies. Making them look good to our elected officials.While charging the same as a CD would be. Sometime even more than the CD"s with all the restrictions that they can put into it. While i believe that they will make their own mp3 and servers. So they are the only ones on the net that you can download from. And still charge the same. After lets say fifty downloads they break even. Most likely less, but who knows. The rest is pure profit and ten to one it will be 128 kbs and not wave or anything in between. They control the radio, that why you will only find the same artist being played over and over. It will be the same with the net. They want to be the only game in town.Supply and They Demand.

Riaa /Mpaa Content Cartel are working very hard trying to pass tougher laws.They are spending millions of dollars to achieve this goal. There is more at steak than music and movies. Our Constitutional rights as a free nation are slowly being eaten away by corporations. A lot of them foreign owned. Why are we letting this happen? It's not what our families fought for and died for. Our forefathers set up checks and balances in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.It is We THE People. Not We the Corporations.The people of this great nation has to rise up, and let their voices be heard. Call everyone you know have them call, write, email their Congressman/woman Senators. Let them know how you feel. Bug the hell out of them never let them rest. Hammer it in that you will vote them out. the almighty vote is our power.

Amen, hawk7771...what an incredible post!!! WELL SAID. This is the most moving thing I have read on this website, and that says a lot because there have been MANY excellent posts here! I hope this post gets a permanent place on this website.

I just heard on the news that Charter Communications has filed a lawsuit against the RIAA! Way to go Charter!

THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN TO FAVOR THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE, NOT THE COUNTRY

Wow Hawk...that was really a wonderful post ! you put so much thought into it ! You are so right about the reasons behind all this...You should send this to newspapers so people reading would maybe understand just what we have to lose

i did send it to couple of newspapers whether they will print it or not who knows thanks

Anyone know how to get hawk771's message onto the soap box on congress.org? Maybe with a little rework it could be posted there as a call to action?

I had a friend who tried to rent out 16mm movies once to have shown at a small gathering once. Mono sound. Not so hot quality. But good enough for a bunch of people to watch on a projection screen.

BUT. The cost to do so was so prohibitive it was hardly worth it. The studios wanted HUGE amounts of money up front to show a movie in this manner.

When he explained it to me I was totally disgusted.

rework it if you want to, email to who ever you want to, do with it what you want

To hell with that. They don't deserve any help in creating a new business model. They can go right ahead and implement whatever insane plans they want. They wont work. As far as I'm concerned they can trampled over by legal alternatives and a loss of artist loyalty when the truth of the economics and availability of p2p as a promotional tool is obvious. The RIAA made their bed. They can lie in it.

I just got an e-mail from corporation@weownyou.com.

"Attn: The Common People

It is time we came back to show you that we, the corporations, are the true masters of the world. Not any 'we the people' people-owned government. The Corporations, the tyrants, and the kings. We are your true masters. The idea of people actually holding power is atrocious and will only result in chaos. We have the authority. We have the real power. Your 'government' is only a transparent curtain to make you think you have rights. But in the end, we still rule, and we always will."

Note that that's just a satire, although it would be freaky if true..

iH8RIAA, that may be more true than false, however scary it seems heh.

Just look at this:

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/target.html

Abso-friggin-lutely insane. I feel like I need to get myself irradiated, turn into a hulking green giant and BASH and SMASH a few certain corporations.

And how about the ultimate sale

THE PET ROCK

Someone should ask all the presidential candidates where they stand on filesharing and copyright.
And also remind them that people who use p2p are more numerous than the people voting for any one of them.

where they stand? They stand four square against "piracy" and "theft".
They are lying bastards. That's why politics is usually a dirty word!
It's all about making a good quote in 7 words or less.
-bulkeraser

Look, here's the scoop. It's no big mystery on why both the RIAA and DirecTV are both offering settlements in the 3500 dollar to 15-17,000 dollar range. They came up with a figure that they could play with that they could offer the really poor (the 3500, which gets moved down in cases that they think will damage them from a PR perspective like the 12 yr. old and Lorraine Sullivan) and up to 15-17000 for more affluent college students. The notion is that they make the settlement offer cheaper than what an attorney would charge in order to make the choice clear to the defendant.

Also, it's no mystery why they are choosing poorer folks who can't fight the suits. They need to get a momentum of people falling under their weight that are just giving up. They don't want anyone to fight them in court, because the lawyers for the RIAA have told them that a defeat in any federal district court is going to be disastrous for their overall strategy. They certainly don't want people to look too close at the acts of their mercernary toadies who did numerous serious violations of most of the Kazaa end user agreements. Though most think this is a negligible thing, technically, when the toadies for the RIAA entered the network with the intent on violating the user agreement, they lost authorization, and entering a network with stored electronic communicaitons without authorization is a felony, according to USC TITLE 18,Part 1, Chapter 121, Sec. 2701.

aaron29,

Yes, I agree that the RIAA affiliates need a new business model. The idea of making free content available (albeit with lower quality) as well as paid content (with extra service as appropriate) has, for the most part, worked for the software industry (not perfectly by any means, but overall it appears to work reasonably well). Another idea which I have seen on this website is for record stores to create "customized CDs" for sale at retail outlets.

As I think both of us know, it is the existing copyright laws which are largely responsible for the RIAA and its affiliates clinging to their "old" business models. Why invest a lot of time and money to develope new ways to serve customers if you have a monopoly on the vast majority of music which has ever been recorded? If we went back to the original 14+14 yr for copyright terms, there would be a lot of music in the public domain which could be freely shared by P2P with no legal reprocussions. This in turn would cause the price of commercial music (i.e. "new" music) to stay within a reasonable limit.

Funny thing is, Bufo, the RIAA doesn't really WANT to develop a new business model. Why? Because they want to CONTROL the business. How else can they get away with price fixing and bilking the American public out of BILLIONS of dollars! But, isn't that against the law? Sure is, but their punishment for violating this law was $147 million. Seem fair, doesn't it? I mean, they ripped off the American public for BILLIONS, get punished by only $147 million, and can charge you or I $150,000 for EACH song they feel violates their copyright. Mind you each song is probably an MP3 file that is 1/10th of the ACTUAL song, that is about 1/10th of a CD that costs $20.

BOYCOTT them... do not buy another CD!!!

Your ideas about reducing or scaling back copyright terms are RIGHT ON! Good luck getting anyone in Congress to agree.

Not much I can add to this article here.

The author pretty much explained it all.

It's TIME for the RIAA & MPAA to GET REAL, and start actually WORKING with the P2P companies, to create 2 versions of popular music... a Free, advertiser-supported version (which would include a commercial just before the free version of the track, or after it), and a pay version (sans advertising of any kind).

I can live with a 10- to 30-second commercial before or after a song...if the ultimate goal is to get the artists paid.

But the RIAA & MPAA must also stop hoarding the lion's share of the profits!! They MUST give a LARGER percentage of the profits & royalties to the artists themselves too!!

DeanSB2000

compmore.. I agree with you that the courts could be a venue for changing this.. however, that takes 1. Time. To sift all these cases through the courts and appeals.. in the civil case docket, could take years, and the outcome is really not known. One judge, yes, one judge, no, and so on.. courts can remain an option, but in my view, getting 60 million, hecks, even 20 million votes together in the next year would change things more predictably, more effectively, and more efficiently. Twelve months to a known result seems, to me, to be a real goal to work toward. One third turnover would essentailly make a congress change in the most dramatic way.

BOYCOTT. EDUCATE. REGISTER. VOTE.
ARE YOU REGISTERED AND READY?