1. let this be a lesson to you all, use an anonymizing proxy and a Tor (Vidalia) client to browse the web. It slows you down a little, yet provides almost perfect anonymity. Had he done this it would have been impossible to prove he was the uploader, they would have had just circumstantial evidence, although this is a “civil” case (the FBI intraction notwithstanding).

2. is GnR REALLY that worried of much lower-quality streaming of their cr@p (imho) being released that it might impact sales of their BIG4 CD’s? Yes, one could, I suppose, reconvert the stream and burn it to a CD to listen to in their car, but the quality loss is very noticeable (due to lack of automatic gain on the reprocessing among other things) and real fans are just going to go buy the CD or get burned copies from friends…there would have been NO loss in sales.

you can read the court complaint and other documents here: http://www.piracyisacrime.org/In-The-Courtroom/updated-information-about-guns-n-roses-leak.html

First off, thumbs up to a well thought out response to
Sam I Am’s trolling. I think it effectively silenced him
(or maybe not – trying to show others of his ilk just
how wrong they are is like talking to a brick wall.)

Second, it was former MPAA president Jack Valenti
who said that owning a VCR was the equivalent of
the Boston Strangler.

…in favor of shit like Amy Winehouse…

Nicely said, I can’t stand her either. A real product of the “Cult of Celebrity”. Yuck.

The rest of your post is solid gold too. Dunno if you’ve seen Sam’s posts from a few months back, but he seems like just another troll to me; perhaps a *real* RIAA shill, rather than someone mucking about? He’s been boo’d off the stage many times here.

First, no. Historically, there WAS no such thing as “copyright” in the conventional sense of the term. That began with something called the “Statute of Anne” in England. Ironically enough, it was a compromise between the printing-houses of the time (which had previously been granted perpetual monopoly over printing “rights” even to works whose authors were long dead), and the general public.

The idea that State-backed monopoly power is a “fundamental human right” is actually horrifying. Look into copyright “law” some time, and you’ll notice that the DISTRIBUTORS of “content” have historically had far more control than the actual creators of said content — Just one example, is John Fogerty (Of CReedence Clearwater Revival fame) being barred from “legally” performing HIS OWN SONGS because he changed labels.

“We, the people” don’t have multi-million dollar lobbyists, and “we” did NOT change copyright “law”: legislators did.

Honestly, if you’re really interested in the “fundamental human rights” of creators to the control of their own works, then you should regard the RIAA-member record labels as the worst offenders against it in history.

And, just to head off whatever specious “objections” you might have: I am a musician myself. As such, I genuinely resent a system which penalizes REAL ARTISTS — people who actually give a damn about what they’re doing — in favor of shit like Amy Winehouse; a system which screws people out of their “fundamental human right to control their own works” by classifying them as a “work for hire”; a system which has routinely failed to actually come through on delivering royalty payments to vast numbers of their own major label “workforce”.

Look back at the original version of Copyright the Founding Fathers created: 11 years. NO “life plus infinity” bullshit.

To be honest, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the only way out of this bullshit is to release my stuff gratis online with a little note to a paypal account or something, so that people can throw me a few bucks if they want to. Barring “Major Label” support, that’s about the only way (other than woefully infrequent gigs) that it’ll ever actually be heard.

Trust me, Sam — I used to be just like you, parroting off all of the same rhetoric — but then I actually looked at what the “copyright” regime had done — served as just another way to screw people over. Do you have a VCR or TIVO? If so, according to a former RIAA spokes-drone, you’re the equivalent of the “Boston Strangler”.

Unless you’ve NEVER used blank video-tape to tape something off air, you very literally have NOTHING to say, here.

This is, after all, an “all or nothing” deal: if you’ve violated “fundamental human rights”, then ‘fess up to it, man!

Why am I even bothering?

One of the songs that was on that site was downloaded by a Vancouver radio station and played on the radio.

And just recently one of the other radio stations downloaded the new leaked track of TI and even said they would probably get some C&D order but until then they’ll play dumb and play the song.

And any song that is streamed online can be downloaded. Even songs on Myspace and artists own websites. There are several addons with firefox that lets you do this.

almost as bad as when dave mustane of megadeth came out in toronto and said “hello montreal” played one song broke his guitar and hten left

The problem is that the penalty is completely out of proportion to the “harm” that was caused. There are more serious crimes that can cause much greater financial harm and/or even physical harm, but which will earn lower fines and/or shorter jail sentences than copyright infringement. Copyright infringement has been elevated to some kind of monumental crime against humanity, when all it is, is a civil crime (if that’s even the word) against a corporation.

Get busted for selling crack on the street corner and you’ll be out sooner than if you sold a pre-release copy of a movie. Which is more harmful to society?