Big Four p2p ’spy’ demand fails
p2p news / p2pnet: A French authority has thwarted a bid by the Big Four record labels to spy on p2p users.
CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés), the French data protection authority, rejected a request by music industry groups to use automated tools to monitor file-sharing activity on p2p sites and "communicate with suspected infringers," says the BNA Privacy & Security Law Report.
CNIL found the music industry’s surveillance request, "posed a potential violation of Internet users’ privacy rights and was disproportionate to potential wrongdoing likely to be uncovered, says BNA.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Wow, that’s a very reasoned, rational response. France is dealing with some heavy social unrest right now. Perhaps they just didn’t want to throw gas on the fire… A good decision in any case.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
We should all follow the lead of the french, clearly civial liberties are higher on their list than lining the pockets of corrupt politicians.
November 11th, 2005 at 12:43 am
I guess the French government has been put in its place. It seems a darned shame that people have to resort to violence to get their grievances addressed. How much
can people take before getting fed up enough to riot?
November 11th, 2005 at 1:35 am
The cartels are sold on their own propaganda. They are starting to sound as if they believe their own misstatements. Over the years they have used the misinformation whenever possible to sell the reasons to alter laws.
They even hide their own data to prevent discovery of what would be embarrassing situations to everyone that deals with them in business. It is the only reason they would go for a units sold or shipped as public information over a truer measure of income generated. It requires that they keep extra records (hidden from the pubic and business partners) to actually determine for their own uses and for tax purposes what they made. Without those true figures of income generated it is much easier to crank out misinformation and no one can prove them wrong without either going long research times or spending unreal fees to find out from the Soundscan of the actual sales by quarter. Even that doesn’t break down the sales to actual dollar figures but only gives lump sums.
The cartels have done their best to convince lawmakers of every country that the problems they face are one of no one buying and that part of it may well be the truth. But the reason no one is buying is an entirely different thing that what is portrayed.
The cartels would have you believe that every customer is a thief. You have only to look at the anticopy included in every sale to realize this. Locked down and protected as it is, it is not usable except in a very limited form. No cross platform playing is allowed. You buy it in wma, unless your car player happens to support that you are out of luck. That makes the product useless to me. I am not going to go out and buy a new player everytime the cartels think they have a new format that better supports their holy grail of anticopy.
Nor has the content they are selling improved. The only thing that has improved has been the use of the technological tools to doctor sound into what the artist can not do. Unless these artists can take those tools with them on the road, they can not pull off the studio sound that the audience expects to hear. I suggest to the cartels that it is the imperfections of being human that make music and culture. It is not the machine perfect examples that are sold as commercial product.
When that product is overpriced to the extent that it is now, customers must evaluate if the product is worth it; especially considering the practice of overhyping that is now standard in the industry. So many customers have been burned by this over expectation generated by the hype, that they now must sample the product from front to end to determine the total package and not the one hit that they hear, when they hear it.
Even hearing new stuff that might interest the customer has been blocked from that customer seeking other avenues of exposure. Can’t get it from public broadcast, that is so influenced by money that maybe you will hear it sometime but then again, when? Where else can you hear it on demand to sample? Most music stores won’t allow it; to be sure there are a few, but not many. Break the seal on the wrapping, it’s yours.
In the interest of anticopy, the cartels have even left the standards of the cd behind; standards that ensured your purchase would play when you got it home or when you reached your car. Now you can never be sure when you buy something it will play when you get it home. More and more you take a chance everytime you buy one of these products that it will be unusable. Nor will you be able to swap it for some other format that will. You are basically stuck with it.
Sony has lately been in the news with their latest version of anticopy. They give you a free player with the music. If you don’t use the player, the music doesn’t play. Don’t see anything there that solves the in the car player ability. If I can’t take it with me, why would I purchase it? Then there is the issue of the rootkit. Who wants a new hole in their security of their box? Third party spyware is yet to catch up but malware is already using the rootkit to hide.
Nothing in all this gives me the idea that I even want to buy such problem laden products. In fact, why would anyone want it now? Maybe this is why the cartels aren’t selling their products but to hear them tell it, it’s you the thief that is the reason.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:38 am
I agree. It’s a pity it’ll go straight over the kartels heads.
November 11th, 2005 at 9:51 am
With any luck this will stop a lot of the crap the kartels think they’re allowed to dish out.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/10/digital_rights_online/