p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music drops Audible Magic
p2p news / p2pnet: It looks as though the members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel have done a complete about face on Audible Magic as the means of removing infringing files from Kazaa.
When the Kazaa case began, ex-New South Wales detective sergeant Jorg Michael Speck, the Big Four Organized Music cartel’s Australian hit-man, had THE affidavit for the record companies, dating to February 3, 2004.
It was used to gain the special Anton Piller civil search orders executed against Sharman businesses and the homes of its executives, and in the document, seen by p2pnet, Speck clearly discusses Audible Magic.
“This is a software appliance which can be run in conjunction with peer to peer software,” he states in paragraph 120. “Once installed it monitors data traffic across the peer to peer network, it logs the traffic and can limit or block traffic according to a set of criteria specified by the network operator.”
And in para 121, “Based on the information available to me referred to above, I believe that the respondents and their associates can now employ technology that would dramatically prevent or inhibit the further distribution of unauthorised MP3 files – including those copies of the recordings of the applicants – by KMD users.”
Just the job. And almost since its emergence as a product, Audible Magic has been a big Big Four favourite, enthusiastically promoted and marketed by their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) through its chief, Mitch Bainwol. In fact, “The RIAA uses it to help identify musical evidence,” boasts Audible Magic, speaking of its RepliCheck ’song-recognition software’.
But now the Australian Kazaa p2p case is over (pending the appeal), it appears Audible Magic is no longer the apple of the Big Four record label cartel’s eye.
In a September decision, Oz judge Murray Wilcox ruled key word filtering was the way to go to prevent unauthorised file sharing by Kazaa users —— unless its owner, Sharman, and the labels could jointly come up with a better way.
Speck had already identified Audible Magic as a likely solution and now it was back in the light. The experts were leaning strongly towards it and Sharman had said, in effect, Cool with us, and that it could implement the software by February, and that it’d be a much better solution than plain old key word filtering.
Then along came Michael Williams, a lawyer working for Big Four Oz ‘trade’ group the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association).
He unilaterally cancelled the second conclave, to Wilcox’s considerable, and extremely vocal, displeasure. And with the cancellation, Audible Magic went out the window.
A year ago, Audible Magic was, according to Speck, a good bet. Now it wasn’t.
Was Williams indeed looking after his clients’ best interests - that Kazaa was getting a little too close for comfort to a filtering solution, one that might actually work? And if that proved to be the case, might not Kazaa be able to stay in business?
Throughout, Speck, who recently resigned from Big Music’s services, said he was only interested in one thing: closing down Kazaa’s “illegal” operations. He’d said nothing about trashing the entire concern.
But ARIA boss Stephen Peach is now delivering an entirely different message:
“There will have to be filters in place by Dec. 5 or Kazaa will be shut down,” says the Sydney Morning Herald.
Looks like Organized Music, aka Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, want Kazaa down the tubes. For good. And forever.
Kazaa’s legitimate applications? Apparently, they no longer rate a concern, if it they ever did.
Also read:-
Kazaa case began - Kazaa under Big Music’s gun, November 27, 2004
extremely vocal - Big Music Kazaa blunder: II, November 26, 2005
Sydney Morning Herald - Kazaa owners work to install filters, November 29, 2005
December 1st, 2005 at 7:51 pm
This is sad. I really wanted them to have audible magic as their standard so it could be trashed big time. guess the bluff was called and they blinked. As far as Kazza being shut down… even if the company was shut down the software is still out there and being used. Kazza lite was suposedly shut down but I still see it out there being used.
December 1st, 2005 at 11:52 pm
As speculation, could it be that Audible Magic isn’t the magic bullet it is touted to be? I suspect that Kaaza may have found a hole it in. Either that or there were too many fixes that needed to be done and it wouldn’t preform as advertised. Providing any of those are the case, I would imagine that the cartels would rather not have that mentioned as so much in the past history of the case rests on there existing possible means to empliment a workable filter.
It was used as a means to begin the case with a search for evidence that would not have been granted otherwise. For years the cartels have tried to peel the onion of Sharman corporation to discover who to sue and who to hold responcible. If the base underlying evidence to proceed with the allowing of gaining all this information proves to be magic smoke and not reality then all the foo faw raw may be recognised by the court as such and future needs may well consider the means and methods that were used and then turned into smoke and snake oil.
Sharman said the 3000 word filter was what they could work with and come up with something that functions. Everyone knows that isn’t going to cover all copyrighted works. Not only that but no one can tell what is copyrighted and truely distinglish that from non copyrighted works other than the cartels. Even sites that attempt to give you some hint find that extremely hard to do and there are always entries that they just don’t know. Further the same named album produced in different countries carry different labels as to if it is not protected or if it is belonging to the cartels. Who knows if any entry under these conditions is or isn’t infringement? You certainly can’t tell from a description; even most descriptions fail to mention label or country so that a reader could be informed what not to touch.
Then the second part of the theme of the cartels may also hold sway. That of totally removing Sharman from being a viable business with the idea that they could own the whole sheebang if they can shut it down to where the cartels are the only ones interested in buying it. Done that way, they could have another p2p for a song in price (pun intended).
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:06 am
another question about the three thousand word filter. What if I make a movie titled “The Star System Techno Wars” and their key words to filter are “Star Wars” my work can’t get distributed like I wanted. could I sue??
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:26 am
ARIA: Oh Noes! Piracy!
Kazaa: Fine, we’ll get rid of it.
ARIA: Oh Noes! Competition!
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:35 am
Can you, a copyright holder, sue and win if a p2p program filters out your work without your approval? I doubt it if the the owner of the p2p has no contractual obligation to distribute your work.
Can you, a copyright holder, sue and win if a p2p program does not filter out your work, which you do not want distributed over p2p? This is the question that the courts have been struggling with. In Movies Studios vs. Grokster, the answer from the USA Supreme Court was yes. The problems with the Supreme Court decision is that it shuts down legal file sharing and does not stop infringement at all anyway. With a common browser you can still infringe all you want by using the “save as” menu option or by using the “Set as Wallpaper” mouse option on Internet Explorer. You will not even realize you are infringing and the vast majority of people do not even know what copyright infringent is and the Grokster solution does not adress these “people” issues. And the “people” are the owners of the country ans its Supreme Court (a fact not realized by judges). The judge in the case of this story, in Australia, seems to be on more logical footing that is more responsive to the people than the USA Supreme Court and simply wants a filtering solution so that copyrigthed music cannot be allowed to pass the p2p filter. The problem is that if the record companie’s proposed filter worked (and will not) it would only filter out some music files (that belong to big record companies) and not other music files and would not filter out any image, text and software files. It would only be a matter of time for various organizations (photographers, program developers and book publishers, for example) to ask for equal “protection” against sharing.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 4th, 2006 at 12:21 am