Record labels' man in Washington (News.com) [LWN.net]

News.com interviews Mitch Glazier, lobbyist for the RIAA. "What are your plans regarding open-source or free software that facilitates file sharing, which tends to be hosted at sites like SourceForge?
I don't know yet. We have dealt with the individual development of peer-to-peer systems on college campuses when the OpenNap systems were being developed. We have stopped college students from developing independent networks and exporting those to other colleges. My guess is that we would have to proceed the same way. But no decision has been made in antipiracy strategy for open source yet."

(Log in to post comments)

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 4, 2004 14:14 UTC (Sat) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Probably a purple meteor has fall over the RIAA, It seems they plan
to conquer the world one teenager at a time.

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 3, 2004 22:50 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

How big of a threat to you is the legislation to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "anti-circumvention" section?

We're concerned by it. We think it's a terrible precedent.

Sigh. Despite the terrible abuses we've seen from the anti-circumvention provisions, and despite the fact that frikkin' copyright law already makes illegal what the music industry claims they really care about, they think that this awful provision of the DMCA is an absolutely necessary precedent.

This, more than anything else, proves to me that the music industry of today is an obselete beast that will need to go extinct in its current form before society, the Internet, and music can progress into the future.

-Rob

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 5, 2004 9:42 UTC (Sun) by khim (guest, #9252) [Link]

Of course. Record inductry have power. Record industry have money. Record industry... does not have future (most consumers are quite happy with MP3 and when not there are Monkey's Audio).

So the only thing they can try to do is to stop chnages. They will fail but how many peoples will be screwed up before that fail is good question.

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 3, 2004 23:04 UTC (Fri) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link]

Articles like this one perform a valuable public service in reminding a wide audience that there are some very mischievous people out there working full time to pass bad laws.

What can we do in response? A few things come to mind:

(1) Give to the EFF, the FSF, or the advocacy group of your choice.

(2) Keep informed. Watch the EFF site, or subscribe to a newsletter. Do what's needed so that you know about these bills before they are voted upon.

(3) If you are lucky enough to live in a legislative district (assuming you're in the US) with an enlightened candidate like Rep. Rick Boucher running, vote! Better, contribute! Even better, volunteer!

(4) Gently correct anyone misusing the terms "theft" or "piracy" in your presence. OK, maybe that's too humorless. Get a parrot, wear an eyepatch and say Arrr ... a lot, if that works better for you.

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 4, 2004 10:28 UTC (Sat) by jeroen (subscriber, #12372) [Link]

What's your take on Canada, where it's perfectly legal to download as much music as you can fit on your hard drive?

Canadian law was written a long time ago with the idea of getting material out to the hinterlands, to the northern territories, to the Yukon. I think that its legislature is going to have to grapple with laws written for a good purpose in a different time, when things like P2P weren't available at all.

It's actually the same here in the Netherlands, despite the music industry don't want to let you know by talking about "illegal downloads" etc. It's legal because our copyright act (and it's probably the same in some other European countries, but I haven't checked this) only talks about publishing and making copies. Downloading is neither, so it can't be illegal under the copyright act.

Downloading - not a copy?!

Posted Sep 4, 2004 13:22 UTC (Sat) by mali (guest, #4553) [Link]

only talks about publishing and making copies. Downloading is neither
Errrr... if downloading an mp3 file doesn't produce a copy, then I wonder what does...

Downloading - not a copy?!

Posted Sep 5, 2004 0:06 UTC (Sun) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

Well, this is actually an interesting point of law. When you download something, you have not
made a copy. The other guy, the person providing the service, has, perhaps, made a copy. Or
maybe he transmitted a copy to you and destroyed his, for zero net copies.

Legal home copying in other legislations

Posted Sep 5, 2004 14:25 UTC (Sun) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

In Finland making a copy for personal use is explicitly legal (with some exceptions). As a kind of compensation, there is a kind of "cassette tax" levied on just about any media that can store music (this includes nowadays even CD-ROM and DVD-ROM blanks). The proceeds go to a music publisher's association, which is supposed to use them for grants to artists.

Nevertheless, the music publishers rail against private copying just as elsewhere, making many people needlessly feel like lawbreakers...

As to P2P, I think the current interpretation in Finland is that while downloading any files off the net for personal use is not illegal, making them available over the net without the rightholders permission is. Since P2P programs famously work 2-way, I guess it makes P2P users liable if they load and then provide files that are not cleared for net distribution.

Legal home copying in other legislations

Posted Sep 16, 2004 16:25 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

Yes, and at least in Sweden, personal use explicitly includes your family
and/or close friends. That would even make "sharing" legal, as long as
you stick to your friends. And I think this is a good thing. When we say
copying, sharing, or listening, it's basically the same thing. The laws
are loosely stiched together with special rules for public performance,
publishing and playing. Technically now when music is all digital, these
are all equivalent. What a crappy world if we weren't allowed to listen
to records with our friends (no matter if they are physically here or
not) or play lousy covers together (infringing their "property").

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 4, 2004 15:33 UTC (Sat) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

When was the concept of piracy coopted by these folks?

I don't understand this. I could imagine that
duplicating something without a license could
be trespass, and I can understand taking something
without a license (permission) could be theft,
I don't understand, and have never understood
where piracy enters. It has mystified me ever
since I first heard it. Piracy being an old
term, and having a pretty specific legal definition
I think. I've always thought it was some kind
of meme, and deception, an attempt to unfairly
sway opinion.

Theft is kinda strange to me in this context.
When i was a wee child, theft was kinda understood
as taking something that didn't belong to you.
The real crime being that the rightful owner was
deprived of its use, rather than the ethically dodgy
concept of ill-gotten gain. In order for theft
to have taken place, a party has to loose
something rightfully held to another party
who took it without any compensation taking
place.

If you have candle, and I have a candle, and
yours is lit, and mine isn't and I use
your candle to light mine, even without permission,
I haven't stolen anything, though I may have
committed trespass. If I take your candle
and leave mine (or not), I have committed theft.

Piracy is (was?) taking by force, and usually
involves goods in transit. Like robbery, but
usually on a much larger scale. Hijacking
is piracy, be that a truck or airliner or
ship. Robbing a drugstore at gunpoint is not
piracy.

How in the heck copying software became piracy
I have no clue.

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 4, 2004 18:17 UTC (Sat) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

But the word "piracy" sounds good in the press. Much like the term
"hacker" when used to describe illegal entry into computer systems. Which
for one is a characterization of the term cracker. A hacker is one who
writes programs. Again the media being that it is, sensationalists by
nature will almost always use the wrong terms to hook a reader.

But you are right about the meaning of piracy which when the term
originally was used described an armed (weapons involved) vicious and
bloody encounter. Additionally back in that day it was an activity
employed by countries that were at war or soon to be at war.

Editorial piracy

Posted Sep 4, 2004 19:50 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

How in the heck copying software became piracy I have no clue.

Easy: the term "pirate" was commonly used by writers when referring to editors who did not pay them royalties. Any good dictionary will show you that meaning (e.g. Webster 1913). Then it was used in music for unofficial live recordings published by small companies, usually with very poor quality ("pirate editions").

Finally the editors tried to reverse it and applied it to unauthorized copying made by users, with mixed success. Many musicians have a hard time collecting royalties from big record companies, so it is obvious to them who the real pirates are.

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 5, 2004 18:34 UTC (Sun) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

I don't get this quote about Apple though:

"There's no way that a company that produces great digital rights management for a licensed product is ever going to be shown to want to profit from piracy."

Couldn't you also say:

"There's no way that a company that produces an audio player that costs $20,000 to fill up with RIAA-licensed music is ever going to be shown not to
intend to profit from piracy."