However, it’s moved its activities up one significant notch.

“Verizon, the second-largest phone company in the US, is expected to begin issuing RIAA ‘copyright notices’ to customers accused of illegally downloading songs, “according to sources with knowledge of the agreement,” says CNet News.

“The sources, who asked for anonymity, said Verizon’s letter campaign is part of a test, which is expected to begin on Thursday,” says the story going on:

“Jonathan Lamy (right), an RIAA spokesman, confirmed the existence of the test but declined further comment.”

The RIAA has for years been persecuting innocent men and women, and even young children, accusing them of being criminals who ’steal’ Big 4 ‘product’ by sharing it online.

That  no money changes hands and no one has been deprived of anything he or she used to own  is never mentioned, and the RIAA is able is able to pillory its victims — none of whom have ever been found guilty of anything — in the mainstream media without due process, and without them ever having been near a court of civil law.

Verizon’s move is plainly the thin edge of the Three Strikes wedge the entertainment cartels are trying to drive between governments and the people who elected them.

As  Jordan Carter, deputy executive director of Internet New Zealand, recently summed it up:

“Big music and movie interests, and other content producers, are conducting a global campaign to put their interests ahead of citizens rights to use the internet and to not be subject to unreasonable and arbitrary penalties that do nothing for public interest.”

And if the report of Verizon’s decision to target its own customers on behalf of Big Music is accurate, it’s not only significant, it also amounts to an about-face.

In December, 2008, the RIAA used Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal  as its mouthpiece to claim it would no longer be suing individuals.

Instead, it began touting a graduated response — a three strikes and you’re off the net  — plan which would use ISPs as corporate enforcers against their own customers.

The RIAA claimed it had the major ISPs onside, implying implementation of the scheme was a virtual certainty.

However, this January, “We are not working with them on this,” Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu was quoted as saying in Wired.

Comcast, “declined to comment, and referred inquiries to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association” whereupon, “The group’s vice president, Brian Dietz, said he could not confirm any deals …” The NCTA, “represents dozens of cable internet providers,” said the story.

AT&T, “declined comment through a spokesman,” and Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Charter Communications, “did not return repeated phone calls for comment”.

Now, for Verizon, “it appears that the company is expanding the antipiracy relationships it has with the entertainment sector,” says CNet, adding:

“In past years, as many of its competitors began to lock arms with entertainment companies, Verizon appeared to hold back. Verizon fought the RIAA when the group went to court to force the ISP to turn over the name of an alleged copyright violator. Verizon also opposed antipiracy legislation important to the film and music sectors.

“Verizon’s attitude toward antipiracy seemed to change in 2005, when the company quietly agreed to forward notices to suspected illegal file sharers on behalf of Disney. In exchange, Verizon received the rights to transmit 12 of Disney’s TV channels over its broadband network.

“Several other ISPs have recently begun forwarding copyright notices on behalf of the film studios, according to the sources who spoke to CNET. It’s not yet clear which other ISPs are involved.”

If Verizon, or any other ISP, starts acting on behalf of the Big 4 they’ll be ratting out their own customers, the people who keep them in business.

Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music  have been doing it for years, under the mistaken impression  they’d be able to get away with it ad nauseum.

They were wrong, as plummeting sales and drastically deteriorating relationships with the people who used to buy corporate ‘product’, prove.

Stay tuned.

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CNet News – Verizon tests sending RIAA copyright notices, November 12, 2009
global campaign – New Zealand ISP says No! to 3 strikes scheme, November 9, 2009
as its mouthpiece – Big 4’s RIAA to drop mass lawsuits, December 19, 2009
Wired – Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan, January 5, 2009

Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s once powerful extortion arm is slowly being relegated to obscurity now its sue’ em all campaign has been replaced by the global Three Strikes and You’re Off The Net scheme.

But now, “HBO Films is developing a movie based on the book ‘Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age’ by music journalist Steve Knopper,” says the Hollywood Reporter, as Zeropaid points out.

“The book covers some 30yrs of the music industry’s missteps beginning with the disco craze back in the late 1970s, through the CD craze of the late 1980s and 1990s, its battle with Shawn Fanning’s Napster in the late 1990s and other P2P applications since then, to the rise of digital downloads replacing physical CD sales,” it says, going on »»»

It should be a good movie to watch if for no other reason than to see precisely how short-sighted and ignorant the music industry really is. Every time a consumer seems to want a product or service its response is automatically no and only has a change of heart when declining sales force its hand.

It was true of digital downloads, streaming music, and DRM.

Add to that the fact that all along the way, to this very day, suing file-sharing customers has been an essential component of its overall business strategy.

Rumours that Danny DeVito will be cast as Mitch Bainwol, with Red Skelton as Cary Sherman, should probably be discounted.

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Hollywood Reporter – HBO adapting record biz’s ‘Self-Destruction’, November 2, 2009
Zeropaid- HBO Making RIAA “Self-Destruction” Film, November 9, 2009

It’s by hartboy on Flickr with a caption which reads »»»

This is the argument the RIAA and similar groups make when explaining why downloading music is bad.

Except, when you steal a CD, you get a misdemeanor, pay a couple bucks in fines, and the store has one less CD to sell.

When you download a song, you get sued for up to $150,000 and no one has lost anything.

It’s like if you light your candle using someone else’s candle and they sue you for stealing their flame.

“In other words,” hartboy adds, “it makes perfect sense to consider copyright exactly the same as tangible property“.

RIAA is short for Recording Industry Association Assholes.

[Also see Shoplifter sued for copyright crime.]

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November, 2009

She’s a New York health aid who literally didn’t know one end of the computer from the other until she was attacked by UMG Recordings, Warner Bros Records, Interscope Records, Motown Record Company, and Sony BMG, and accused of being a massive online distributor of copyrighted music.

Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman, the independent New York lawyer who’s representing her, once summed it up like this »»»

The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have. As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.

Now, “Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy has recommended that the RIAA’s motion for discovery sanctions against the defendant and her counsel in UMG Recordings v. Lindor be denied, and that the RIAA’s motion for the action to be voluntarily dismissed ‘without prejudice’ be granted,” Beckerman blogs.

“We’re gratified that the plaintiffs’ meritless motion for so called discovery sanctions has been denied,” he told p2pnet, going on »»»

As we pointed out in detail in our November 7 papers, the RIAA’s request for sanctions was based on deliberately false misstatements of fact. While we would have preferred for the judge to have used stronger language than merely saying the RIAA’s motion was “largely overstated”, the result is the same.

We’re disappointed that the judge recommended that the RIAA’s dismissal of its own case be “without prejudice”, as Ms. Lindor has suffered enough.

“This case was frivolous in its inception, should never have been brought, and should never have been pursued,” he says, adding:

“Certainly it should not be brought again.”

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

until she was attacked – RIAA victim tells MediaSentry, put up or shut up, March 3, 2008
blogs – Magistrate denies RIAA motion for discovery sanctions in UMG v Lindor, October 9, 2009

Federal judge Nancy Gertner, “issued four default judgments against accused P2P file-swappers who never bothered to respond to the charges against them,” says Ars, going on »»»

Their failure to appear meant an automatic loss, and though the judge does have some discretion in setting penalties, judges often pick the minimum awards in such cases.

That was true in all four cases, where Gertner accepted the record labels’ claims and awarded them the minimum statutory damages of $750 per song. The defendants were accused of downloading an average of ten songs, putting total awards in the $7,500 range, in addition to a few hundred more for court costs.

Having $7,500 in damages assessed against you by a federal court is no picnic, but it pales in comparison to the two twenty-somethings who actually showed up to court, got attorneys, went through a multiyear process, a nationally covered trial, and came out the other side owing far more money.

By way of example, Jammie is currently appealing an order for it to pay almost $2 million for allegedly downloading 24 songs, and Joel has been told to find $675,000 for 30 tunes — a far cry from $1.92 million, but still enough to bankrupt him.

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Ars Technica – Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial, September 26, 2009
almost $2 million – Jamie Thomas-Rasset’s $1.92 million playlist,  June 19, 2009

Mitch Bainwol  (right) heads up the RIAA, the Big 4’s American mouthpiece-cum-extortion-unit.

Since 2003, he and his team of spinsters and truth reconstruction specialists have been lying about the allegedly deleterious effect file sharing is having on music sales,  and how the labels are being devastated by file sharing criminals and thieves, including  dead grandmothers and 12-year-old children.

In a fruitless bid to convince the world the multi-billion-dollar corporate music industry is on its last legs, Bainwol and his team use the wholly specious claim that files shared equal sales lost as justification for using the civil law system to terrorise families across America.

But the attacks have absolutely nothing to do with earnings. Rather, they’re elements in the music industry campaign to gain exclusive control of internet as the primary marketing and distribution vehicle of the 21st digital century.

The Wrap.com recently ran 5 Ways to Save the Music Industry, but now says, “a few of the recommendations slightly missed the mark, or were unnecessarily pessimistic” so, “in the spirit of the column and a friendly debate, here are five reasons for optimism” —-

—- with Bainwol supplying them.

First time around, make it free, or almost free, Wrap.com posted as suggestion # 1, going on »»»

It’s hard to tell people — even if you try to appeal to their law-abiding tendencies — to pay for something they can easily get for free. The Recording Industry Association of America may be trying to scare consumers by pursing them in the courts for sharing songs online, with defendants like Jammie Thomas Rasset of Minnesota being ordered to pay $1.92 million for getting 24 songs off the Kazaa site … but that genie is just not getting back in the bottle anytime soon. So, if you can’t beat ‘em or catch ‘em, seduce ‘em.

In other words, as p2pnet has been saying since the RIAA launched its vicious attacks against Big 4 customers on the half of the Big 4, woo ‘em, don’t sue ‘em.

As item # 2, under THE WHITE GUY, “Feeding a ravenous low-fi appetite among an ever growing legion of fans who want to rock DIY style, [Jack] White seems effortless modern, timeless — and all at the same time,” says the aricle. “Like he often does musically, White is playing by his own rules, keeping things close to his chest — and the audience. Maybe others need to start following?”

Suggestion # 3 opts for NO-LABEL LABELS, pointing out, “Punk rock bands like Fuguzi were doing it decades ago, and that lean and mean mentality might turn to green in an industry where selling records has become less a revenue stream than a marketing strategy.”

VIDEOGAMES is the header for # 4, which states, “For years, getting a song on a videogame soundtrack like “Grand Theft Auto” or one of the “Madden NFL” releases has been a nice source of income for both new and older bands. But with the hugely successful “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” franchises, the medium has taken off faster and higher in terms of cold hard cash than a Hellfire missile.”

And finally, as # 5, “EARN TO PLAY AN INSTRUMENT »»»

Some say that a recession is the best time to invest, since things will only get better –partially because of your investment. The same logic could apply to the music industry. So make an investment. Pick up a guitar, sit down at the piano or behind the drums and make your own music. Put it up online, pass it around to friends and family, play live. You might not be the next Neil Young, Taylor Swift, Whitney Houston or Jack White, but you just might be the next Metric, Miranda Lee Richards, Busdriver or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. That’s far from a bad thing, because besides being great musicians, they are the type of savvy artists that are the best chance the music biz has. Nothing beats the human voice, a couple of six strings and the ragged fun of belting out a tune with friends. And you can never download that.

Bainwol’s response in Wrap.com?

Same old same old.

For # 1, “Our product, music, remains as popular as ever,” he says.

Yeh, really. Yadayadayadayada

Under # 2, “The album’s demise is exaggerated,” he says. And,  “CD sales may continue to decline … but so far in 2009, growth in digital album sales is again outpacing digital singles (17.5 percent vs. 11.7 percent).”

But, but, isn’t file sharing ruining the music industry, forcing the labels to fire support staff, leaving them destitute in the streets?

3. Yadayadayadayada

Under 4, “A handful of well-known bands have elected to distribute their latest albums without the help of a record label,” Bainwol admits, but, “more often than not, it is the music label that can uniquely help the artist cross the bridge between anonymity and artistic and commercial success …”

Yeh, really. And ripping them off at every step along the way.

For 5 “This is yet another encouraging sign of a music business that is energized, vital, relevant and here to stay.”

Yeh, really. And if you believe that, you also believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden. WTF have the Big 4 got to do with people putting it up online and passing it around to friends and family? Absolutely nothing. In fact, their anti-consumer, anti-P2P, anti-filesharing sue ‘em all campaign can be summed up in five words:

Our Way or No Way.

No need to stay tuned

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Wrap.com – 5 Ways to Save the Music Industry, September 10, 2009
Wrap.com – 5 Reasons for Optimism in the Music Industry, September 20, 2009

“The RIAA and its owners, the Big 4 labels, have for years been demonising children and their families across America as file sharing criminals and thieves.

“And now the RIAA is actually running back-to-school ‘advice‘ for teachers from well-known educationalist and RIAA spinster Liz Kennedy, who kicks off with, ‘And although heading “back” means a little more work (and a little less play) for most of us, there’s something refreshing about it that I look forward to every year –- the reminder that we all have something to learn.’

“There’s no point in quoting her any further.”

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) picked up on the travesty, saying, “after spending countless dollars on failed advertising campaigns against peer-to-peer file-sharing, the RIAA has created a classroom activity to outsource the campaign to schoolchildren.

“Next up: A classroom activity where kids police peer-to-peer networks in search of potential infringers!

“Fortunately, teachers looking to educate their students about copyright have an alternative: Teaching Copyright, EFF’s unbiased, informative and fact-centered copyright curriculum. Rather than bombarding kids with the message that using new technology is illegal, Teaching Copyright helps kids to understand their digital rights, giving them the information they need to responsibly create, critique and participate in the Internet’s participatory mash-up culture.”

But as I said in a post also mentioning the release of Teaching Copyright, in my view, suggesting copyright or intellectual property law have a place in any school curriculum other than a law school’s is a Very Bad Idea because it lends credibility to the entirely incorrect contention they should be there in the first place.

Meanwhile, below is a video of  RIAA horse-source material.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

(Cheers, Marc)

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steaming pile of poo – RIAA back-to-school steaming pile of poo, September 14, 2009
EFF – RIAA Asks Schoolkids To Assist With Propaganda, September 17, 2009

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RIAA back-to-school steaming pile of poo

The RIAA and its owners, the Big 4 labels, have for years been demonising children and their families across America as file sharing criminals and thieves.

And now the RIAA is actually running back-to-school ‘advice‘ for teachers from well-known educationalist and RIAA spinster Liz Kennedy, who kicks off with, “And although heading ‘back’ means a little more work (and a little less play) for most of us, there’s something refreshing about it that I look forward to every year –- the reminder that we all have something to learn.”

There’s no point in quoting her any further.

Over at TechDirt, Mike Masnick cites the RIAA’s special “curriculum” for teachers, wondering, “Do schools use science curricula provided by Exxon or Monsanto?”

He goes on »»»

As for the actual content included in the curriculum (which, by the way, the RIAA links to incorrectly twice), it’s almost a joke. Check out the RIAA propaganda. Fair use doesn’t exist — at all. Reading through the main document, I find not a single mention of it. But what does exist is all sorts of bogeymen about how evil file sharing is, how it exposes your hard drive to viruses and reveals your tax return info.

Oh, but the best part, is that the RIAA is pushing for a new totally made up term called “songlifting” which is the central theme of every single lesson.

Sounds like “shoplifting,” right? That’s the idea — though the RIAA cleverly tries to pretend that it didn’t make up the word. In fact, it presents it as if it’s a common term.

Of course, the curriculum doesn’t happen to mention the Supreme Court’s Dowling decision, where the court specifically talked about how very different infringement is from “stealing.” Of course, the RIAA also mentions the Grokster ruling — but is misleading there as well, claiming that the law is clear that parents could be found liable for their kids sharing unauthorized files.

The actual exercises are ridiculous propaganda. The first one is supposed to be about “math” skills for the lower grades and “spreadsheet” skills for higher level students. Guess what the “math” is?

This part of the activity should help students recognize how songlifting, though it might seem harmless at first, can quickly become a largescale problem. Have students complete the calculations on the worksheet using spreadsheet software or a calculator. If time permits, repeat the first calculation by having students choose a realistic number of songs they would take if they could get them all for free. Adding desire to the equation in this way can further dramatize why songlifting can have an enormous economic impact.

Answers
Total number of songs lifted = 7,800,000;
Total cost of songs lifted = $7,722,000.
$926,640,000 (i.e., nearly a billion dollars).

Hmm. If we’re simply making stuff up for propaganda purposes, how about “total number of new listeners a musician gets thanks to such sharing?” And then “total amount those musicians make when those new fans go to concerts or purchase merchandise thanks to hearing the songs for free.” Might change the math a bit, but what do I know? I’m not an industry lobbyist, so my “industry” math isn’t up to par.

Then there’s propaganda about job losses:

Ask students to name some people who might work in this part of the music business (e.g., machine operator, printer, packager, truck driver, store manager, cashier, online order handler, etc.). Talk about how these people might be affected by songlifting, then have students work individually or in small groups to list other music makers unnamed in the story.

Ok. Why don’t we talk about the jobs on the other side of the equation? How about all of the people employed by technology companies that the RIAA has helped put out of business through lawsuits? Or students that the RIAA has bankrupted via lawsuits? Have students put together a list of just how many lives and jobs the RIAA has destroyed. Point them to the story of MP3.com. And Napster. And Launchcast. And Grokster. Tell them how the RIAA tried to have the iPod (or, more accurately, its predecessor) banned, and have them think about how different life would be without it. Tell them how the RIAA is fighting hard to tax radio stations, putting so many radio people out of business. Tell them the story of the MIT student who the RIAA suggested drop out of school to pay a fine. Talk about how all of these people might be affected by the RIAA’s overreaction to innovation and new technologies, and its own inability to embrace new business models. Then have students work individually or in small groups to list other tech companies making lives better that the RIAA has threatened, sued or put out of business.

Highlight the variety of career opportunities available in the music industry by having students research one behind-the-scenes music maker and write a brief description of that job.

Highlight the variety of career opportunities available in the tech industry thanks to new innovations that the RIAA has tried to kill. Then highlight the career opportunities in the music industry itself that have finally opened up now that the major labels are scrambling to learn technology.

Next, draw the copyright symbol (©) on the chalkboard. Ask if students know what this symbol means and where they might have seen it (books, posters, CDs, etc.). Explain that the copyright symbol is used to identify the owner of a piece of intellectual property and serves as a reminder that it is illegal for anyone to copy or distribute that property without the owner’s permission.

Next, explain fair use, and how the above statement claiming that it’s illegal for anyone to copy or distribute without the owner’s permission is not necessarily true at all. Oh wait… that sentence isn’t in there.

You might also inform them that our nation’s Founders included copyright protection in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), believing that it would encourage creativity by giving the creators of intellectual property an exclusive right to profit from their artistic talents.

You might also inform them that those Founders were highly cautious about this issue, and had stated their worries that these monopolies would do more harm than good, and that they should be greatly limited and monitored to avoid such harm. You might also want to point out that the RIAA seems to have forgotten the “limited time” part of this, but I guess you can be forgiven, since they (and their friends in the movie industry) have pretty much convinced Congress to ignore that part.

Then there’s this fun list of “brainstorming ideas” with some responses/corrections/clarifications after each one:

• Songlifters take millions of dollars of music each year.
  Actually, file sharers don’t “take” any money. This is a flat out lie.
• Songlifters hurt all kinds of music makers, not just the stars.
  Those who have embraced file sharing in combination with smart business models have found it works for all kinds of music makers, not just the stars.
  
• Songlifters keep new artists from getting their chance at stardom.
  Many up-and-coming artists are finding that giving away their music is a large part of how they build their fanbase and become stars.
• Songlifters are breaking the law.
  In many cases, those who share unauthorized files may have violated copyright law, though it’s a civil issue, not a criminal one.
• Songlifters can get other people in trouble by sharing illegal music.
  Because the RIAA isn’t very good with data, it’s been known to sue the wrong people
• Songlifters can get computer viruses when they illegally download online.
  Doing things online when not careful can result in getting viruses. That has nothing to do with file sharing. Careful users can avoid viruses.
  
• Songlifters don’t respect other people’s intellectual property.
  The RIAA doesn’t respect fair use rights, the need for a lively and dynamic public domain or the right of technology companies to innovate.

“The whole thing is pretty ridiculous frankly,” says Masnick on TechDirt, adding, “It doesn’t even make a half-hearted attempt at talking about the rights of everyone else or the actual purpose of copyright law. The whole thing is basically about brainwashing kids into accepting that the record labels’ old business model must stay in place forever. Luckily, most kids are smarter than that and can see through such propaganda pretty quickly.

“However, if schools really are interested in educating kids about copyright, why not use a non-industry curriculum, like the one put together by the EFF, called Teaching Copyright.”

Suggesting copyright or intellectual property law have a place in any school curriculum other than a law school’s is the wrong way to go, IMO, because it lends credibility to the entirely incorrect contention they should be there in the first place.

But it’s far too late. The labels (and movie studios) have now been accepted by federal administrations around the world  as  suppliers of ‘educational’ materials.

Kiddie mind-rape

In February, under the heading RIAA Music Rules – ’steaming pile of poo’, “You’ve heard of kiddie porn?” – I asked, going on »»»

It’s something Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA regularly dredges up so its bought-and-paid for politicians can raise it as an excuse to introduce corporate-friendly legislation.

But kiddie mind-rape is another favourite tool.

The RIAA and RIAA adherents scam teachers into believing intellectual property law is something every child needs to know. Then they use the teachers to plant ‘educational’ materials in schools.

The latest piece of RIAA bilge is called Music Rules with “Lessons respect intellectual property and responsible use of the Internet”.

The idea of the RIAA, of all corporate bodies, promoting ideas of respect and responsibility, and especially to schoolchildren, is somewhat like a paedophile being let loose in classrooms to promote safe sex.

And yet you can be sure you’ll see this promoted in the mainstream media and actually used by teachers.

Thank God we homeschool our daughter.

Asks Biff ‘Death of a Salesman’ Loman in a Reader’s Write, “is there any evidence that /any/ teachers have ever used this in their classroom? If so they should be exposed and thrown out of the profession.”

Then he comes up with an idea for a research tool, to wit »»»

• Lesson plan: read ‘Music Rules’ with students. Discuss.
• Have students pick out areas of bias and misinformation.
  
• Allow students to use the web to research and create a short report opinions opposed to those of ‘Music Rules.’
• … many humanities classes have something about detecting bias. This could be used as an introduction activity since it is so transparent.

“Personally,” Biff adds, “I would never use this steaming pile of poo in my classroom.”

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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September, 2009

• Using Twitter in a manner likely to encourage people not to take RIAA bullshit seriously.

But it’s worse, far worse, than that, says RIAA spinster Cara Duckworth.

Twittering with Aforethought, perhaps?

Nope.

Its Flouting the Letter and the Spirit of the Ruling Against Him.

“The RIAA argue that Tenenbaum promoted the torrent and other illegal downloading activity, in violation of the ruling against him, with a post on a Twitter account devoted to his legal case called JoelFightsBack,” says Harvard University’s The Crimson.

But Duckworth said Tenenbaum’s illegal activity, “goes beyond the Twitter post,” Elias J. Groll, going on:

“Duckworth said Tenenbaum has flouted the letter and the spirit of the ruling against him by allowing links to file-sharing web-sites to be posted on his web-site, repeatedly arguing for the legality of file-sharing in interviews, and by keeping illegal files on his computer after being convicted.”

Oh! The Horror!

Now you know.

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p2pnet -  New RIAA charge: illegal Twittering, September 4, 2009
The Crimson – RIAA Continues Pirating Fight, September 7, 2009

• Using Twitter in a manner likely to encourage people not to take RIAA bullshit seriously.

“In July, a federal jury ordered Mr. Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 to record labels for downloading and distributing 30 songs by several artists, including Nirvana, Eminem, and the Beastie Boys,” says Wired Campus. “Now, it says Mr. Tenenbaum is encouraging others to illegally download music as well. On Tuesday, it filed for injunctive relief in a federal court in Massachusetts.”

The story goes on, “In August, a person upset about the court’s decision posted the list of the songs named in the case on The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing Web site, encouraging others to download them in protest.”

It’s referring to a post by The Saint, who, in two Reader’s Writes, also told p2pnet about the Joel Tenenbaum $675,000 Playlist.

“All the 30 songs already available via torrent,” he said. “http://itoodownloadedthem.blogspot.com.”

With the list went the pic on the right, and on his site, “We can’t change the world by one campaign, but we can make it clear,” says The Saint.

From now on, “whenever anybody on this planet get sued for downloading and sharing any kind of art, we too will download and share it too. We will make it clear: by suing individuals for downloading stuff, they will just share it with everybody.”

Joel’s legal team, “noticed people downloading the track list and posted a note on Twitter in mid-August: ‘interesting: a ‘joel’ torrent list of the 30 songs is now on thepiratebay/other torrent sites and is being DL widely in protest’,” says Wired Campus.

Now, Cara Duckworth (right), the RIAA’s vice president for communications, said in an interview on Thursday the message is “a clear example of him thumbing his nose at the verdict and not taking us seriously,”it says.

She  admitted Joel probably wasn’t behind the posting on Pirate Bay, “but argued that he should not encourage others to look at the Web site”.

In an interview with The Boston Globe, Joel said he’d had nothing to do with track list, or the tweet from his legal team.

“It’s something that Pirate Bay just did on its own,” he told the Globe. “I don’t know who got the idea to put it up there. But we thought it was funny.”

Stay tuned.

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Wired Campus – RIAA Says Student Continues to Encourage Illegal Downloading, September 3, 2009

For the moment, anyway.

Especially if you like live-footy.org.

That’s because live online broadcasts of sports events don’t infringe copyrights, Tel Aviv district court judge Michal Agmon-Gonen has decided.

Her ruling is quoted by Haaretz, which says as a result, live-footy.org, “will be allowed to continue free broadcasts of Premier League soccer games,” going on:

“The Premier League grants licenses for broadcasting the games to broadcasters in 207 countries. The league’s management, which recently discovered that the Israeli-owned web site has been broadcasting the games live, sent an email to the owners demanding that the broadcasts cease. When the owners refused, the Premier League asked for an injunction to put a halt to the streaming.”

But Agmon-Gonen found the Premier League, “failed to prove that the web site had violated its rights,”, said the story adding:

“Internet broadcasts are not similar to television broadcasts, she ruled, and the Internet broadcast viewers are not people who would potentially pay to see the games on television.”

However, predictably, Premier League lawyer Meir Klinger, “believes the decision to be incorrect and will probably appeal it to the Supreme Court,”

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Haaretz – Live webcasts of sports events on Internet don’t violate copyrights, September 3, 2009

The money is being demanded in recompense for 24 songs Jammie Thomas-Rasset is said to have shared online.

That works out to $80,000 per song.

Or was it 1,700 copyrighted tunes.

Jammie’s lawyers are, meanwhile, appealing the decision and, says Recording Industry vs The People, have filed her reply brief to, “set aside the jury’s $1.92 million verdict”.

Here’s the document for anyone wanting the details »»»

There  is  little  in  the  response  brief  submitted  by  the  plaintiffs  or  in  the amicus  brief  submitted  by  the United  States  that Mrs.  Thomas  has  not already addressed in her opening brief in support of this motion.
As explained in Mrs. Thomas’s opening brief, the plaintiffs’ contention that the Due Process Clause’s  limits on punitive damages  awards do not  apply when those  awards  are  imposed  by  statute  rather  than  by  common  law  is  nowhere supported in the case law.  The Due Process jurisprudence that is today embodied in BMW v. Gore has its roots in Williams, a case involving statutory damages.  See St.  Louis  I.M. &  S. Ry. Co.  v. Williams,  251 U.S.  63,  66  (1919).   And modern courts understand that statutory damages that are punitive in purpose or effect are subject to due process review.  See, e.g., Murray v. Cingular Wireless II, LLC, 242 F.R.D.  415,  421  (N.D.  Ill.  2005)  (“it  is  true  that  a  grossly  excessive  statutory  damages award creates a due process problem”).  The concerns that trigger the due process  inquiry — arbitrariness, variability, and unpredictability  in awards — are here  in  spades;  of  this,  the  nearly  order-of-magnitude  difference  between  the verdicts in the first and second trials of Mrs. Thomas is unquestionable evidence.

An arbitrary award imposed pursuant to a statute is still arbitrary.

The  notion  that Congress  decided  that  the  award  of  statutory  damages in this case was somehow appropriate or tailored to ensure deterrence is a fiction that the  plaintiffs  would  have  this  Court  adopt.    The  Congress  that  enacted  the statutory-damages provision of the Copyright Act could not have had the kinds of illegal but noncommercial music downloading here at issue in mind.  And because the range of conduct that triggers statutory damages under the Copyright Act is so wide,  it cannot be  that Congress  tailored  the damages available  to any particular subset of that conduct.  Rather, Congress left this tailoring to the ordinary process for assessment of punitive damages: a joint inquiry by jury and judge into what is just.   See  Honda  Motor  Co.  v.  Oberg,  512  U.S.  415,  421–21,  434–35  (1994) (holding  that  judicial  review  is  constitutionally  required);  Cooper  Industries  v. Leatherman  Tool  Group  Inc.,  532  U.S.  424,  437  (2001)  (holding  that  judicial review  of  punitive  damages  does  not  violate  the  Seventh  Amendment —  from which it follows that such review does not violate the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial on statutory damages guaranteed by Feltner).

The  plaintiffs were  not  able  to  offer  testimony  about  any  actual  damage done to them by Mrs. Thomas’s conduct beyond perhaps $1.29 per song or $15 per album  in  lost  sales.    In  fact, under  cross  examination, Mr. Leak  testified  that he could not identify the particular harm, if any, caused by Mrs. Thomas’s conduct in particular.   The  testimony  that  the  plaintiffs  describe  in  their  response  relates  to harm  to  the music  industry  from  illegal music downloading  in general, not  from Mrs. Thomas’s conduct in particular.   It would be unconstitutional to punish Mrs. Thomas for the generalized and widespread conduct of others, whatever the effect of that conduct might be on the plaintiffs.

Contrary  to  the  plaintiffs’  suggestion,  Phillip  Morris  does  indeed  forbid considering  the  injury  to others  in assessing  the proportionality of punishment  to actual harm;  the page cited by plaintiffs  states  this  rule,  then goes on  to  say  that potential  injury  to  others  can  be  used  in  assessing  the  reprehensibility  of  the defendant’s  conduct.   Compare  Philip Morris  USA  v. Williams,  549  U.S.  346, 353–54  (2007)  with  id.  at  355.    But  what Mrs.  Thomas  did,  whether  or  not  a violation,  is  certainly  not  a  reprehensible  one.    See M.  at  6-7  (citing  cases  and observing that Mrs. Thomas did no physical harm and did not target a particularly vulnerable individual).  The reprehensibility inquiry being exhausted, the plaintiffs cannot use potential harm to third parties to cause a court to deem proportional an award  of  statutory  damages  that  bears  no  relation  at  all  to  the  actual  damages suffered by the plaintiffs.

Finally,  the  plaintiffs’ waiver  argument  is  unpersuasive  and  disingenuous.  Mrs.  Thomas  challenges  the  constitutionality  of  the  Copyright  Act’s  statutory damages  provision  as  applied  by  this  jury  to  her  particular  case.    There  was nothing for Mrs. Thomas to challenge until the jury rendered its verdict awarding the  plaintiffs  $80,000  per  song.    Promptly  after  this Court  entered  judgment  on that  verdict, Mrs.  Thomas  filed  the  present  motion,  arguing  that  the  judgment should  be  altered  or  amended  because  the  amount  of  the  verdict  rendered  the Copyright  Act’s  statutory-damages  provision,  as  applied  in  her  case, unconstitutional.

Had  Mrs.  Thomas  raised  her  as-applied  constitutional  challenge  earlier, plaintiffs would have argued that the challenge was not ripe: whether the statutory damages  provision  is  constitutional  as  applied  in  a  particular  case  might  well depend on  the particular verdict handed up  in  that case.   Indeed, one of  the  three Gore guideposts is the proportionality of the punitive award to the actual damages suffered by  the plaintiff, a  ratio  that cannot be calculated until  the amount of  the verdict is known.   And the broader concern underlying Gore, of the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of civil punishments, was best shown by showing the nearly order-of-magnitude difference between the verdicts in Mrs. Thomas’s two trials.

Challenges  to  the  constitutionality  of  damage  awards  that  are  punitive  in nature are customarily made  through post-verdict motions, either  for new  trial or to alter or amend the judgment, for precisely these reasons.   In Hardeman v. City of  Albuquerque,  377  F.3d  1106  (10th  Cir.  2004),  the  Tenth  Circuit  analyzed whether a constitutional challenge to damages had been waived and explained that the question was whether  the challenge was  raised  in a post-verdict motion.   See id. at 1122 (collecting cases).  The court nowhere suggested that such a challenge should have been raised even before the amount of the damages award could have been known.   See also Harris  v. City of Virginia Beach, 923 F. Supp. 869, 872 (E.D.  Va.  1996)  (explaining  that  court  reached  constitutional  challenges  to particular  damages  awards  because  these  challenges  could  not  have  been  raised until the damages were known).  Because Mrs. Thomas raised the constitutionality of  the particular damages award  in her case at  the  first available opportunity,  the argument  that  she  has  somehow  waived  consideration  of  this  issue  should  be rejected.

“For reference purposes, here is a link to my brief on the subject, and here is a link to the recent law review article by Prof. Pamela Samuelson and Research Fellow Tara Wheatland,” says RIvTP’s Ray Beckerman.

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

ordinary American mother – Jammie Thomas-Rasset: file sharing thief, June 10, 2009
1,700 – Did Jammie share 1,700 songs?, July 14, 2009

Recording Industry vs The People – Jammie Thomas-Rasset files reply papers in support of motion to set aside verdict, August 30, 2009

Cheney’s duties will include overseeing senior RIAA personnel currently seconded to the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, and liasing with US vice-president Joe Biden.

Cheney will be responsible for developing and implementing official DoJ copyright infringement and anti-file sharing policies in accordance with established music industry business practices.

Helped draft milestone document

When he became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, Cheney applied for, and received, five deferments, says the Wikipedia.

In 1989, Washington Post writer George C. Wilson interviewed him as the next Secretary of Defense and, when asked about his deferments, Cheney is quoted as responding, “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.”

It is believed he was at the time working secretly with RIAA executive director Henry Brief,  helping to draft the milestone document which in 1998 was to be formally adopted as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Political acumen and immaculate connections

With Cheney as senior RIAA administrator, Halliburton, Blackwater and DynCop security staff will be assisting the RIAA, FBI, CIA and SPCA in the identification and apprehension of file sharers and criminal copyright infringers.

‘”We are delighted to have Dick join us,” said RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol in a statement.

“His deep knowledge of the music industry, and his political acumen, will be invaluable, helping to help the RIAA ensure artists are properly recompensed.”

Outgoing president Cary ‘Tough Love’ Sherman  has been named executive chairman of the newly formed Penguin Inseminators Social Services Outreach Frontier Foundation.

The Recording Industry Association of America is owned and operated by Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (Canada).

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

August, 2009

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- At the start of a comment post marathon, “Jon, here is another article on the entertainment kartels,” says V for Vendetta.

“The article is an opinion piece by a Russian musician Dmitry Silnitsky and it is called ‘Beat-to-Bit’,” he says, going on,

“It talks about the path of the music industry from its glorious seventies to the desolate state of today. Insightful like ‘When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide’ by Demonbaby.”

The original article is a blog post in Russian and, “A translation job was started on the community site,” says VforV, adding:

“It is almost finished, only proofreading in English is required. If anyone has time and can help finish it, just join translated.by and contribute.”

http://translated.by/you/beat-to-bit/into-en/trans/

V for vendetta started posting sections as comments and, says M2 in a Reader’s Write, “heh if I make 2 posts in a row Jons filter says I am posting to fast and blocks it. WTF! This guy does 10!”

We can help him finish the job, but it’s long, so I’ll run it in two parts, both of them today.

If you  know anything about Dmitry, let me know and we can add it in, or maybe as a separate item.

Here’s Part I »»»

The air began to smell medications…

This is the feeling I get when reading reports about copyright and “legal” music battlefield.

Over the past twenty years far more than one industry gave up its soul under the onslaught of technological innovation.

The most intelligent and successful ones cured and benefited the most from this transformation.

Others have died simply, quietly and without fanfare. They will be soon forgotten; by the way, some people will keep good memories of them.

But the most disgusting are those, who, while dying, are screaming like slaughtered pigs, and, in their fever attack, smashing all medications on the table. Medications, that could have been a cure to their disease, had they paid attention to them.

But glass bottles are smashed, and the room is filled with the smell of medications.

One can judge by patient’s behaviour that the action is taking place in a psychiatric hospital. Patient’s actions are illogical, absurd and damn clumsy. On the one hand, you want to come closer, and help the patient, even by talking. But on the other hand, you only feel disgust and fear. Because of absurdity of the patient’s behaviour, you are completely discouraged from taking part in his fate. One could just contemplate this ugly picture, but I simply prefer to leave the room. Let’s recall patient’s best years, which he had plenty, without a doubt…

I have long asked myself, when has the music industry lost all its charm and appeal that it had in the old days? Good old days, when every record company had its own face, a bright personality, which is expressed not only in design of vinyl records’ labels, but in everything the firm did.

What happened to the music industry on the road from the “Beat” era to the “Bit” era?

There are many articles written on the topic. Most of them are absurd, referring to concepts like “business model”, “market share” and other abstractions.

They remind me of a placebo – a dummy pill that was placed on patient’s table. The patient looks at the pill and tells himself that everything will be fine, everything goes as expected, everything will come back to normal…

I would like to talk about abstractions of another level, the ones not directly related to the business itself, but are directly related to its death – Charisma, Illusions and Energy…

Charisma

What is the main difference between record companies of the golden era, “Beat” era, namely the seventies of the last century, and their today’s successors of the “Bit” era?

Indeed, there are many differences, but one catches the eye.

In those days, little record companies were led by great people. Personalities!

Today, huge record companies are headed by little people from the category of “no-body, and no-name”.

The majority of them has no relationship to the music whatsoever. They are either accountants or lawyers.

Sometimes at heart, which is particularly awful.

That is, in classic’s words – “office plankton”. (for more about the origin of “office plankton” term – read here http://www.transparent.com/russian/phraseology-in-the-news-??????-the-knee/ or here http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/t-shirts/office-plankton/ )

Even if it is a very well paid and glossy plankton, it is still plankton, and it would be a mistake to think that the quality of music only depends on the musicians themselves.

People like Richard Brenson (Virgin), Stig Anderson (Polar Music), Berry Gordy (Motown) and Daniel Miller (Mute) were carrying a huge charisma just by themselves. And yet it is not clear who had more of it – record companies’ artists or record companies’ leaders. Brenson’s charisma certainly did outweigh the one of all his musicians, and it still hovers over his 200 companies, no matter what they were doing.

Only an idiot would confuse Motown’s vinyl with Virgin’s vinyl. They were carriers of a specific culture. They had both style and drive.

Their product outlived both the record companies themselves and the artists they were recording. Today, thirty to forty years later, their product is still being sold, changing hands several times and, the most important, with price going up.

Sold for real money, despite the fact that the music from these records is available on millions of websites. Despite its free availability, people spend 30 dollars for the same thing on vinyl.

This is not because vinyl records sound in some special way.

The reason is charisma, which is present not only in people, but in inanimate objects too, despite what organized religion would make you think.

But this holds under one condition: only if the inanimate objects were created by people who had that charisma. Only if the creator put his soul into the product.

Charisma creates added value. And in our times, where everything is becoming free, it creates simply value. Not added value, but simply value, which is amazing just by itself.

Charisma is the key to success of computers with the ‘bitten’ apple logo.

Charisma is what sells Beatles vinyl records, this time with the “incised” apple. These two companies – musical Apple and computer Apple – are the most remarkable examples of charisma. No one needs to be persuaded to buy their product. People fight for it, despite millions of seemingly free alternatives.

I would like to know this: when has all of this become mass production of piles of faceless plastic, that you need to persuade someone to buy?

This moment is actually known. It is the moment when absolutely all bright and interesting music labels have been bought out by transnational companies, beginning full depersonalization of music.

A mere acquisition of one company by another has little meaning. It was very rare when it has brought tangible benefits to justify the acquisition cost. Especially when a huge accounting firm acquires a little creative and effective team in the hope to buy its creativity and charisma. However, the only thing they can achieve by this is killing all of the creativity and bringing their former charisma to zero, sinking it in the muddy puddle under the name of “corporate culture”.

But one way or another, acquisition cost needs to be recouped. And at the same time they get a new format in the form of questionable-sounding but low-cost and convenient compact discs.

Vinyl records, being also a result of pressing plastics, strictly speaking, still had great individuality despite it. Let’s start with the fact that the same record, released on different labels in different countries, sounded absolutely differently, and had a bunch of other fine details. But greed and desire to re-sell the recording material bought from genuine record labels in a new form has led to mountains of inanimate plastic. This put a first nail in the coffin of the music industry.

Despite the euphoria about huge initial sales of CDs, it may only be compared with an injection of a last dose of a strong narcotic. You will feel very good, but not for long.

In the meantime, charisma of artists was suffering equally dramatic changes. The era of musicians whose life could fill a book was replaced by the era of musicians about whom one could only write an article.

And then, one could only write a paid advertorial, because there was really nothing to write about the artist. And only journalists’ and PR managers’ creative thinking could help to get the public to know the artist, whose disc they had to sell.

We all know how it ended. Music press came to naught almost everywhere in the world because of absolute lack of basis for its activity. Cheap scandals and attempts to “make up” a bright personality do not work for the new generation, who feels it’s all fake. While Amy Winehouse scandals look comical, in the case of some B. Spears they are just abject.

Charisma is named charisma because it attracts people. This attraction works for the benefit of the charismatic personality and those found close to it. Even when things are universally free, charisma will generate money for its holder, one way or another.

There is only one issue with charisma. It cannot be created artificially. It either exists or does not. And those who preach pop psychology, those who claim they will teach you to be charismatic through various NLP methods, they can all go to hell. As everyone knows, the only benefit of an NLP training is NLP instructor’s salary.

One last difference of the old music industry from the new one, which is unrelated to charisma but deserves to be mentioned, is functionality.

What were the historical functions of recording companies?

There are five basic functions.

- Find an artist

- Record the artist

- Promote the artist

- Distribute recordings

- Deceive the artist

Until a certain time, all these tasks were performed pretty well, especially the last point, where highest levels of technology have been achieved.

But with the advent of the net, and it is even indecent to say, the label has left only one task it can perform better than the artist, and it is the last one. Artists, though, can also deceive themselves well, especially in their expectations.

Otherwise, artists find themselves, record at their own expense (thanks to technologies, who made the process cheap, and recording quality does not matter, as it was found out). Distribution is now a wonder, and promotion somehow can happen with the help of that same network in all its manifestations.

At some point the situation seemed idyllic.

Full freedom of expression (usefulness of which is to be discussed separately), no filters in the form of record companies’ A&R-managers (these are strange people who believe their musical taste to be close to the one of the masses), immediate distribution of music worldwide. This is just some kind of fairy tale that is coming to us now!

All is well in this new picture, except for one annoying detail.

People don’t buy this music.

And they don’t buy it in any form. Neither on CD, nor as music files. Neither expensive nor cheap. Neither from the record label, nor from the artist.

- No, thanks. I don’t need it.

- But why?

But please, do not give me iTunes Music store and Radiohead success examples as proof that it is still possible to sell music and you just need to find a business model.

First, I am sick of these two examples, because only a very lazy publication did not write a story or two about Radiohead.

Second, iTines is not profitable to Apple at all, as reported many times by the company. In fact, this service barely breaks even, but brings a great benefit to the company indirectly, namely through the sale of iPod players. Apple iTunes track sales figures sound very nice in Steve Jobs’ presentations, but they are simply a drop in the ocean when compared with numbers of free music downloads from the Internet. And this is the most successful online music store in the world.

Third, if someone has taken seriously the Radiohead experiment to let the audience choose their own price for downloadable tracks from Radiohead’s new album, I would like to have that childish and naive view of the world. I think it would make my life simpler.

In reality, Radiohead’s tactic is still brilliant, but in a totally different way. By leaking their well-done foul story to the net, the group simply owned (in both senses of the word) the world’s media, with an advertising campaign of unprecedented size and the same unprecedented arrogance. It is not surprising that, after a while, both Radiohead and its record label got their return, with excellent sales of real CDs and vinyl records, accompanied by great accessories.

The only lesson I take from the Radiohead experience is that when music is really good and the artists are bright individuals, their product will be sold for real money anyway.

As the former president of Russia said:

‘Missile defence, no missile defence… Our new missiles don’t care.’

Same for good music. Piracy or no piracy, it does not really matter. Especially if you put aside your idiotic illusions…

Illusions

First and most bizarre illusion is that a publication of each new album should lead to a materialization of at least a huge mansion on a private island.

Even Beatles thought at the scale of “one song – one swimming pool” (and then it was a joke). But they may think that way. Their music brings real happiness to millions of people for more than forty years and millions of copies are being sold even today.

During these forty years, no artist could get even close to their level of genius.

But then, who said that a singer whose album can be listened to only once and on fast-forward deserves the same income? Who cares that a million dollar budget has been invested in ‘this’ and it must be recouped?

Who even invented the concept that a music band or composer should have excess income?

World history does not confirm this state of affairs. If you exclude these twenty to thirty years of record industry boom (which is a drop in the ocean), the rest of the time creative people had incomes that are just sufficient enough to do the things that they love to do, and not to worry about money too much. Anyway, no need to be distracted from creative activity and no need to be forced to earn money in some other way.

Nobody ever promised a private island for this sort of activity.

Let’s have a sober look at things.

It was only a moment, a moment between the past and the future. It was called the music industry. It was very brief. It was at the crossroads between the time when there was no physical media, and the time when there is no more physical media. And what is horrible in that?

We still have a lot of relics from that moment. Maybe that’s enough for everyone?

I liked the most a phrase told by one of my friends, who is a sound engineer. One of his job duties is to listen to a lot of new artists for one reason or another.

I do not listen to music for free – he said.

Copyright defenders and all other lawyers, there is no need to start cheering. It does not mean that he does not listen to free music. He meant that he wilfully refuses to listen to modern music, unless he is getting paid for it.

Approach that is worthy of respect and understanding. After all, if you bought a rotten fish, you consider it as damage to your health. So why do not worry also about your mental health, or at least about spoiled mood?

And the problem is created by these same advantages I mentioned earlier as a potential fairy tale for the music business.

Those technologies, which were designed to provide previously unprecedented creative freedom, the absence of barriers, free flow, – they worked in the exactly opposite direction.

The illusion of freedom of expression

That sounds tempting, if you put aside a fact that is proven – 99% of people cannot create anything of value in principle.

The best way to prove it is the Internet itself, namely its Web 2.0 reincarnation.

People, who created quality content in the past, continue to create it. Everything else is filled with junk.

Have you ever noticed that really serious people never blog (unless it is their profession)? Chatting is not their specialty, and they have little interest in others’ opinions. Their job is to create something…

Good or bad, but other people’s purpose is to consume, not create, and this has always been so.

Today, every other person expresses herself, and it is not a problem in itself. It is even beneficial, if no one sees it.

The problem is that all this is done not for oneself and one’s friends, but thrown at the market as a real music product.

Now, try to find something you can like on this market inside a pile of music junk. At the minimum, you must be a really determined music lover in order to spend all your time on filtering.

I have a question for the music industry.

Do you seriously think that I must pay the same same 18 dollars for all this noise and for the Dark Side Of The Moon on a nearby shelf?

Or are you just kidding?

What have we got in the end?

Big Music ‘Beat-to-Bit’ – II

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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August, 2009

It didn’t go down well, says the Shanghai Daily, going on:

“After eight years, the ministry unveiled a list of 8,300 standardized characters in common usage to solicit public opinion in hopes to regulate Chinese writing.

“Ministry officials and some experts said the revisions would only affect 44 characters printed in the Song typeface (right) in publications, meaning the revised characters would only be used by computers and printing machines.”

Explains the Wikipedia, “Ming typefaces, known as Song typefaces in mainland China, are a category of typefaces used to display Chinese characters, which are used in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages. They are currently the most used style of type in print for Chinese and Japanese.”

It’s only a, “slight change of one stroke for a character, but if a student asks me which character is correctly written, I won’t know how to reply,” the story has Wang Jiayu, a Chinese language teacher at a primary school in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, saying.

“There will be much confusion if different ways of writing the same character exists.”

Tang Yunlai, chairman of the Tianjin Municipal Calligraphers’ Association, “also said the revisions were unnecessary and objections also emerged over the cost,” says the Shanghai Daily, adding:

” ‘The revisions of the 44 characters would lead to amendments in books, dictionaries, signboards, company names, ID cards and more,’ said Professor Wang Laihua of the Tianjin Municipal Academy of Social Sciences. ‘That will cost lots of money and time’.”

The online question period is slated to end on August 31.

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Shanghai Daily – Public says no to writing changes, August 24, 2009

In affirming the jury’s verdict in favor of the defendant, Launch Media — acquired during the lawsuit by Yahoo! — the Court said it did not even need to concern itself with possible errors in the jury instructions, since the trial judge should have directed a verdict for defendant ‘as a matter of law’ on the question of whether the radio stations were ‘interactive services’.

At pages 23-42 of its 42-page opinion (PDF), the appeals court carefully analyzed how Launch Media’s personalized internet radio stations worked, and noted that the users could neither obtain and play on demand a particular song, nor obtain the transmission of a particular program, thus rendering the RIAA’s claim of ‘interactivity’ meritless.”

It went down again today. But this time there was no message.

Is the second down in less than two weeks an indication of things to come under the new management?

It’s now online again. So what happened this time?  There’s no explanation.

Meanwhile, as  p2pnet reported a little while ago, there’s a The Pirate Bay clone for people to play with and obviously, while the site was offline there was no way of accessing the doppelganger.

No worries, though. Even if this is the start of a trend, there’s now an alternative URL for the clone torrent on MiniNova.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2872498

Stay tuned.

(Thanks again, TPB)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

11 days ago – The Pirate Bay offline: ‘Something is broken’, August 10, 2009
The Pirate Bay clone – The Pirate Bay clone on SourceForge, August 21, 2009
new management -The Pirate Bay Mark II, August 20, 2009

Yup, because the RIAA and its members haven’t been able to come up with a business model that works, they get the courts to tax you for listening to your satellite radio (on top of what you already pay and what they already pay to songwriters and publishers) and that gets passed on to you.

Just imagine what will happen if the RIAA gets its wish and gets to add a similar tax to terrestrial radio stations as well.

Adds the post, “If you thought radio was chock full of commercials before …”

No kidding.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

TechDirt – Sirius XM Passes RIAA Tax On To Consumers, August 19, 2009

Impressive that West ducked out of the Cartoon case with such alacrity.

Does that mean he’ll do the same in Capitol Records v Thomas-Rasset?

But why should he?

After all, a whole passel of former RIAA factotums, with clearly vested interests directly associated with copyright owners, are happily working for Barack Obama.

And no one sees any problems there.

“Advocates of digital sharing have been watching the DOJ with unease since the appointment of several former lawyers for clients who advocate strong intellectual property law enforcement, including Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli,” says MainJustice, which also goes into the fact West, “recused himself from Justice Department decisions in an important copyright case that pits Hollywood studios against the Cablevision cable company”.

Perrelli is an ex-RIAA guy.

Meanwhile, “West, who is a part of a power family in California, has known Obama since 2004, and he was a top fundraiser for Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign,” says WhoRunsGov.

“He was finance co-chair of Obama’s California campaign, where the then-senator raised a record total of $65 million.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Recording Industry vs The People – DOJ signatory has previously recused himself in content industry case, August 15, 2009
whole passel of former RIAA factotums – Jenner & Block – running the DoJ?, April 23, 2009
MainJustice – Tony West Recuses Himself in Copyright Case, June 2, 2009
WhoRunsGov – Tony West: Current Position: Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice (since April 2009)

“The business of the RIAA may be doing that because it has to justify its own existence, but the business of business is business, not litigation”.

So says Bill Patry, senior copyright counsel at Google who, almost exactly one year ago, decided to take his site offline because among other things, he found the state of copyright law, “too depressing”.

Now Patry is back with copyright fanboy Ben Sheffner posting on Patry’s blog in which he (Sheffner), “quoted one of the Tenenbaum jurors who said of the jury ‘We wish there was another way that all parties could be satisfied’.”

If the business as business is business, “One would never know that from the industry’s reaction to virtually every new digital technology that has come along,” says Patry, going on »»»

The industry’s failure to offer any alternative after Napster isn’t just a small oversight; in my view, when coupled with the industry’s repeated suits against almost any business it had not authorized (read controlled), and the decision to send out massive cease and desist letters and suits against individuals, that failure is directly responsible for the highly negative attitude many people have toward the industry. The failure of the industry to provide a way for people to access legitimate product led consumers both to unauthorized product and to rightly conclude that copyright was the primary weapon being used to thwart consumers’ desires. I really don’t think these assertions should be controversial.

I repeat that copyright doesn’t create economic value, a statement that is not intended to disparage copyright; it is merely to state the obvious: it is only consumers’ willingness to but something that creates economic value. Consumers were willing to buy authorized music after Napster, but we all agree the industry failed to do so. The industry only has itself to blame for what happened afterwards.

Patry says he’s an, “enormous fan of the copyright industries and a, “very steady source of income to it,” adding:

“I buy about 300 books a year. I take my kids to see every kids’ movie, buy the DVD when it comes out, and also buy two copies of the same product as a Nintendo DS game (which can be $30-$35 times two); I have bought maybe a hundred DVDs of Nickelodeon TV show DVDs, I buy dozens of CDs and would buy a lot more if the industry had supported the SACD format. I take my kids to live musical events. As a musician (clarinet) I buy lots of sheet music. I buy four hard copy newspapers a day and subscribe to ten monthly magazines a month. I have not bought any of these because they were copyrighted; indeed most of the sheet music is in the public domain but I am still happy to pay good money for a nice edition.

“The most respect that we can pay to copyright industries is to think only about buying such products and not copyright.”"

But, “The music industry forgot this.”

(Cheers, Ray)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

take his site offline – William Patry Copyright Blog returns!, August 8, 2008
too depressing – Willam Patry goes offline. DAMN !!!, August 4, 2008
Patry is back – My Reply to Ben, August 11, 2009
copyright fanboy Ben Sheffner – Jammie v the RIAA: $3.6 million, June 18, 2009