MetaFilter posts tagged with copyright and filesharing

Illegal downloaders 'face UK ban'

electricinca — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:03:58 -0800

British internet users face ban for illegal downloads. A draft copy of a Green Paper produced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was leaked to The Times newspaper which detailed how the government was considering introducing legislation that would require ISPs to take action against users who access pirated material. The Government's resolve on the issue has apparently been stiffened following similar proposals made by the governments of the US and France. The proposal is designed to bolster the UK's creative industries but it is questionable how much impact it will have on piracy and how willing Internet Service Providers will be to cut off their revenue by banning their own customers.

War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Leaks

Coherence Panda — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:55:09 -0800

Steal this album. "In the dying days of the music business as we once knew it, record labels are waging war on leaks—only to discover that many of the saboteurs come from within the industry itself." It's easy to arrest a geek or lay draconian fines on a single mom; what happens when their witchhunt leads to their own offices? Animal Collective won't always be around to get the culprits off the hook.

The problem with music, redux.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:16:20 -0800

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.

"Suing our fans is destructive and hypocritical"

Johnny Assay — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:00:44 -0800

Canadian musicians protest file-sharing lawsuits. The Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, and many other Canadian artists have formed a coalition to protest the hard line taken by the recording industry against file-sharers, and call for copyright reform. Is there a better way to protect intellectual property rights than suing file-sharers?

A deterrent?

plenty — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 06:23:29 -0800

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.

SinCity in less than 80 seconds

thanatogenous — Tue, 03 May 2005 11:44:55 -0800

Illicit downloading is now tantamount to domestic terrorism. I wonder if "CleanPlay" will still censor my illegally downloaded DVDs.

Ryan Malcolm knows what's up.

Jairus — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 23:36:19 -0800

In response to Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruling that file sharing was legal in Canada (previously discussed here), Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer has stated that "As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law".

The problem is that Canadian copyright law has been going through a slow and thoughtful reformation process. Since the unveiling of A Framework for Copyright Reform in 2001, a lot of progress has been made in updating the laws to reflect the needs and concerns of content producers, and the public domain. Now, however, it seems that all of this work may be bulldozed by Helene Scherrer, who declared her intentions at the Juno Awards last night.

Government owned by corporations

giantkicks — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:31:22 -0800

Vans Stevenson, senior lobbyist for MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America), was the last to revise a letter California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is to distribute to other attorney generals. Lockyer is the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. - is your government owned? Lockyer receives thousands in campaign contributions from MPAA, RIAA, and '[via: The Register]..corporate and private donations from the major studios, including The Paramount Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Warner Bros PAC, AOL Time Warner. Senior executives, such as Alan Horn and Howard Welinsky, respectively CEO and senior VP at Warner Brothers..." Adam Eisgrau of P2P United said that "the draft attributed to the attorney general's office contains many significant factual errors, eyebrow-raising metadata, and articulates a very broad expansion in several important respects of product liability and consumer protection law that would have enormous effects..' It's in The NY Times. Slyck has the original document.

Blame Canada!

XQUZYPHYR — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:02:09 -0800

Why the RIAA's lawsuits aren't worth moose droppings. Tech Central Station columnist Jay Currie explains how Canada's copyright law, which instills the right to copy music in exchange for levies on blank media, renders the RIAA's legal precedent against file-sharers useless up north.

Give respect, get respect

Down10 — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 11:32:53 -0800

"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!

Access Denied: RIAA, MPAA Blocked From Techfocus

metameme — Sun, 20 Jul 2003 17:27:34 -0800

MPAA Blocked From Techfocus
:Effective immediately, the RIAA and MPAA will need to find another way to get to Techfocus. In response to their legal targeting of individual file-swappers, access from their known networks to this site has now been blocked. While it may still be possible for them to access Techfocus via address ranges which we're not aware of, they'll otherwise have to use non-RIAA and non-MPAA networks to view the site."

We know who you are. We know what you're doing.

Blue Stone — Tue, 29 Apr 2003 16:44:06 -0800

Hi! You have the right to remain silent! (wanna cyber?)

The RIAA, bastions of goodness and justice, are sending IMs to nasty file-sharers, telling them that what they're doing is naughty. And that they might just end up in court.
A private company they're hiring plans to send a million messages per week, telling the thieving pirates that the RIAA knows where they live.

Looks like "Hilary Rosen" is one person I'll be putting on my ignore list.

Bookshare

mathowie — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 15:50:09 -0800

BookShare is a napster-like service that relies on volunteers to share e-books with as many people as possible, and it's completely legal. The reason? Thanks to a special carve-out in copyright law which states "if such copies ... are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities."

robotrock — Sun, 27 Oct 2002 09:15:59 -0800

A few key points in a debate on file sharing. Oddly enough, Hillary Rosen tried to say there are no copy protected CDs in the US.

fpatrick — Thu, 12 Sep 2002 08:17:25 -0800

Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music From a Business Week Online column..."Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy. On July 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an unprecedented request of Verizon Communications (VZ). The music industry's trade association served the telecom with a subpoena, seeking the identity of a Verizon subscriber who had allegedly illegally traded digital songs by artists including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and "boy band" N'Sync. The RIAA didn't specify why it wanted to know who the user was or what it would do with the information."

Irontom — Mon, 19 Aug 2002 06:42:51 -0800

Hosting Provider Bans RIAA - According to this press release, Information Wave Technologies will actively block all RIAA IP space because RIAA is intentionally seeking to invade customer networks / hosts to check for copyright violations. Additionally, they are going to deploy a "honeypot" system (simulates a GNUtella client sharing copyrighted material) in order to log requests for the files and correlate them with attempts to invade the host -- RIAA's stated plan to combate music piracy.

Leonard — Tue, 30 Jul 2002 07:52:53 -0800

Open source music? Give away the songs without copyright, sell the audio source files dirt cheap and waive the copyright. That's the idea behind Brad Sucks. Are any bands you know of doing something like this?

dobbs — Tue, 28 May 2002 11:49:15 -0800

RIAA sues Audiogalaxy. "After targeting decentralized popular file-sharing services such as Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, and Madster, the Recording Industry Association of America took aim at Audiogalaxy in court last Friday..." [via pfm]

emptyage — Wed, 27 Feb 2002 23:49:29 -0800

Did you hear Michael Greene's speech at the Grammys? At first it seemed like it was going to be just yet another recording industry weasel with an obligatory goatee congratulating himself on stage. But it quickly turned into a lesson on the harms of the illegal Internet downloads. "This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal. Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business. Ripping is stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time, leaving their musical dreams haplessly snared in this World Wide Web of theft and indifference," says Greene. Was this appeal-cum-address effective or appropriate? Were you more sympathetic to the RIAA or artists afterwards?

holgate — Wed, 03 Oct 2001 09:30:59 -0800

The War Against MP3? Hilary Rosen, everyone's favourite defender of record company hegemony, outlines her new strategy ("Help me help you.") in an email leaked to FuckedCompany. Interestingly, it's aimed at beating the dastardly hackers at their own game, with tactics such as "Spoofing and/or interdiction methods for existing peer to peers". Signs of desparation on the part of the RIAA, or should people be making the most of the second-generation Napster clones while they have a chance?

Steven Den Beste — Tue, 04 Sep 2001 23:40:50 -0800

Napster is dead but the dream lives on. After two years of hard fighting, RIAA managed to kill Napster -- and now at least four comparable systems have appeared, all of which will be much harder to either control or to kill off. An RIAA rep acknowledges the problem. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

X-00 — Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:47:03 -0800

Sorry, but where do you live? The RIAA/CRIA, seem to be a little overzealous in stopping the spread of "napster like services" by quoting laws/court desicions in C&D letters to ISP's in other countries. I'm not saying that thet're wrong to protect their copyright, but surely IRMA could have directed member countries to contact the ISP's?

DiplomaticImmunity — Thu, 10 May 2001 11:01:52 -0800

Songbird is billed as a Napster anti-piracy tool. It's job is supposedly for an artist to see the many title variations of their material as documentation for copyright violations. I don't know if this is truly a thinly-veiled claim of legitimacy or whether the author is just being earnest - but because it shows what users have what variations, I'm finding it a great tool to track down songs that I couldn't find before because of Napster's filtering and not necessarily being able to think of every possible variation...Neato.

black8 — Mon, 30 Apr 2001 15:46:19 -0800

How to win friends and influence people! Metallica goes after Seattle ISP for copyright infringement. I got this link from a pal-has anyone else heard about it?

andre_111 — Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:50:32 -0800

If you are downloading from Napster or some other service, the RIAA is tracking you. Here's a screenshot of the Recording Industry's secret weapon.