How to share files and stay safe
p2p special / p2pnet: On June 25, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America declared all-out war on users of p2p networks and began suing people for file sharing:
“Starting tomorrow, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks.”
Notice the very specific language of the RIAA, and Cary Sherman, its president: “The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear — this activity is illegal.”
I completely agree with Mr Sherman; distributing substantial quantities of music online should be illegal, but that’s not what p2p networks users are doing. They’re sharing files and sharing is what the RIAA is technically suing them for, except it calls sharing “distributing”.
In its own world, “The RIAA expects to use the data it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement.” Ray Beckerman, an attorney for several of the victims, says it’s inaccurate to call these downloading or uploading cases because the “complaints do not refer to any known acts of copying.” There’s a big semantic and volitional difference between simply “sharing” music and actually “distributing illegal copies”, but the RIAA wants to convince the courts that these two actions are one and the same.
Based on the evidence he’s seen, Beckerman prefers to term the cases ‘peer to peer file sharing’ cases, since that is what they are, at most.
This article is written as a general guide to help you understand what the RIAA is doing and how to use p2p software responsibly.
For p2pnet readers, a lot of this may be old hat.
So far, about 18,000 people have been sued, with more lawsuits on the way. In press releases, interviews, and the mainstream media, RIAA officials continue to paint file sharers with a broad stroke, taking every opportunity to brand users as “pirates” and “criminals” who are breaking the law, actively “stealing their property”, and collectively “decimating the music industry”.
The RIAA repeatedly cites irrelevant sales figures and blames industry losses on p2p users instead of acknowledging changing market conditions, questioning bad leadership, and examining their failing business strategies.
Firstly, the phenomenal success of Apple’s iTunes store clearly shows people do want to buy music, just not the way the RIAA wants them to — on an $18 piece of plastic. And buying music they are! Opened at the end of April 2003, the iTunes store is rapidly approaching its 1 billionth download and iPod sales continue to skyrocket, with no let up in sight – Apple sold 14 million iPods in the last 3 months of 2005 alone.
Secondly, when you treat your customers with open contempt as Sony and Thomas Hesse have done with their idiotic XCP rootkit scheme, customers are going to get angry and stop buying CD’s. The record companies, rather than embracing the enormous business potential of p2p systems and adapting to new technologies, are clinging to curmudgeonly thinking and antiquated business models and doing what greedy corporations do best when faced with a threat to their hegemony: sue the living daylights out of people.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. I strongly believe file sharing can benefit the record companies a great deal, allowing them to promote many more artists, take risks, and offer a much wider selection of music to their customers than they can now with their “all the eggs in one basket” megastar approach.
Smaller bands and independent artists will be the first to benefit from the increased exposure, and even many big name artists see the potential of p2p technology.
The distribution system is cheap and an already-existing army of users stands ready to essentially do the work of promoting the music for free. All this translates to lower costs for the labels and ultimately, cheaper and more interesting music for the fans. It could be a win-win situation for fans and record companies alike. But this argument is mostly academic. The RIAA doesn’t care to give p2p a chance, and I’m not going to give them free business advice. In their opinion, if you’re sharing music online, you’re a “criminal” and you’re going to get sued.
The RIAA doesn’t have the business intelligence, or even the common sense, to realize this strategy is not only ineffective, it’s counterproductive. Instead of creating brand loyalty among music fans and nurturing a cooperative environment with sensible file sharing rules, the RIAA is going after individuals who make up the customer base of the Boig Four record labels and young people who’ll grow up to become lifelong music purchasers.
Even more un-kosher is the fact they’re deliberately targeting young children, single moms, and grandparents, a tactic which should make you wonder about the moral character of the RIAA. Do you really want to do business with people who knowingly sue 12 year-old girls and grandmas? And as shown by a number of highly-publicized blunders, their investigative techniques are unforgivably sloppy, resulting in a lot of people being wrongly accused – people who’ve never shared a file in their lives, or even owned a computer, have been sued. They even tried to sue a dead woman.
The RIAA fails to realize that suing people for thousands of dollars not only turns them off to the idea of buying music from RIAA companies ever again, but that these 18,000 people have friends. And their friends have friends. Better yet, they have email, personal web sites, message boards, and blogs. Word is spreading fast and pretty soon, the RIAA will have an evewn worse public relations nightmare on its hands than it has already.
In the RIAA’s wrong-headed view, merely having files sitting in your shared folder is enough to get you in trouble for copyright infringement. It doesn’t matter that you legally purchased the music and intend it only for personal use. The fact they’re in your shared directory makes you liable. Here, then, are some ways for you to avoid being mistakenly identified and becoming their next victim.
- First, if you’re using Kazaa, uninstall it immediately! Not only is it full of spyware, adware, and all kinds of hidden programs that slow down your computer, it’s one of the programs the RIAA is actively targeting.
- Remember, as long as you share music RIAA companies own the copyrights to, you’re in danger. So the first step is to stop sharing RIAA copyrighted files. Share only music that’s copyright-free, or that the artists have given permission to share.
- Most, if not all, p2p programs perform a search of your entire hard drive for files to share when you first install and run them. Many people unknowingly, or out of convenience, shared their entire “My Documents” folder. This folder may contain a lot of personal files or music that you never intended to share. Make sure you designate a special directory for shared files and only share that directory.
- The RIAA seems to be targeting users who share “substantial quantities” of files: 1,000 songs or more. If you have a lot of files shared, the agents hired by the RIAA to monitor p2p networks likely won’t know or care what these songs actually are (if you’ve bought them, if they’re public domain, non-copyrighted, etc). Keep the number of songs you share low, although this is no guarantee that you won’t get targeted. There’s no telling who the RIAA will sue next.
- The RIAA also seems to be targeting users who are supernodes/ultrapeers, so turn off the supernode/ultrapeer option. If you’re not sharing any files that are copyrighted, then you have nothing to worry about, even if you are a supernode/ultrapeer. In that case, by all means, leave this option on.
- Scrub your mp3’s of all comment tags with a utility like TagScanner. The metadata is one thing RIAA lawyers zero in on to try to prove you’re downloading files. Most CD ripping software puts comments suich as, “Made with Real Jukebox” or “encoded with xxxx program“. Also, remove any comments or personal notes like “wow, this song is great!” or “for Judy’s birthday party”. The RIAA, looking at your metadata, might think you got these files from somebody else.
There’s no guarantee you won’t be sued for sharing files, so do so at your own risk.
If you disagree with what the record companies are doing, don’t support them. Let them know you mean business by not purchasing their products and telling your friends to do the same.
Buy music from sharing-friendly bands and companies, and if you really must buy CD’s from RIAA labels, buy them used from second-hand record shops, flea markets, or eBay.
The RIAA doesn’t get a cent of your money from secondary market sales.
P2p software gives power to the people and to individual artists, and the RIAA is afraid because it erodes their control over the music industry.
Send this message to the record companies loud and clear:
We are not your enemies, so stop suing us. Work with us, not against us.
If you fight us, we will fight back. Join, or Die!
Zi Mei
[Mei says he's a one-man design and technology consulting shop. Just as important, he's working hard to rip apart spurious RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) claims that it can reliably pin-point copyright infringers.]
February 11th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
use mute
February 11th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
One more, use a service that lets you share only with your contact list. (like Soulseek) And then be careful who you add to this list. Allowing upload only to people who first give you a download is a good compromise.
Or just leach and don’t share anything.
But of course, if we all did this, P2P wouldn’t work.
What’s interesting in all this in the long run is who, if anyone is going to buy music in the first place. And what price is “cheap enough” to make buying a sensible alternative to downloading.
If it’s only sharing and not what you are sharing that matters, what are we to make of the Gonzales case where 1000 “illegal” files was reduced to 30 when she showed that she had actually bought the 970?
February 11th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
that flies in the face of what the RIAA is claiming you do: illegaly share files. They are suing you for having the files in your shared folder, which they claim is illegal, however it’s apparently not illegal to share files you’ve proven to have purchased.
it’s so confusing
February 11th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
1. Buy used CDs (the RIAA won’t get a dime).
—Borrow CDs from a friend.
2. Rip the music tracks to your favorite format.
3. Sell the CDs
—Return the CDs to your friend.
4. Delete the music tracks off your hard drive. (yeah right)
February 11th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Hi Julian,
thanks for the info about the Gonzales case. I’ve been out of the country for a few years. Yes, it’s ridiculous isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned, the RIAA are a bunch of #@@#$#. Ms. Gonzales and her husband are hardcore music fans and owned hundreds of CD’s, but the RIAA is suing them for having 30 songs she didn’t own? Absolutely ridiculous. On top of that, she was laid off and is the mother of 5 kids. These RIAA people really are something. They keep saying how they’re protecting the economic interests of their artists, which is a lie. The Gonzaleses have spent thousands of dollars on music, and now the RIAA wants to take them to court for downloading a few songs to listen to see if they want to buy the CD. This is ludicrous, immoral, and GREEDY, plain and simple. I’m infuriated just reading the article:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter/050204.html
After reading about how the RIAA is terrorizing working people, many of whom are just getting by, I dont know how anyone can in good conscience do business with them.
Julain – in answer to your question: people will buy something when they perceive it to be a good value. A 45 min CD for $18 when there’s only 1 or 2 good tracks is cleary a bad value. A $.99 high fidelity download from iTunes is clearly a good value. Also mp’s floating around on the net are usually encoded at 128-160 kps, which is grossly inferior to the original. Apple’s format is lossless, so there’s no degradation in quality.
DVD sales for example, remain strong, despite the increase in filesharing of movies. Why? because a DVD costs about $10-$20 and you get A LOT of value: the movie, commentary tracks, extras, etc. Why should a DVD cost LESS than a CD?! does this make sense? From a production standpoint, a movie costs $100 million or more to make, and many millions more to market. From a consumer standpoint, I get 1 hour or more worth of entertainment from it. In the last 5 months, I’ve spent $800 on DVD’s. how much did i spend on CD’s? $6. and that’s off eBay, so the RIAA doesn’t get a penny from me. I encourage everyone who disagrees with the RIAA’s extortionist tactics to stop buying from the RIAA. Spread the word and let all your friends know what they’re doing is dispicable.
Filesharing isn’t hurting the industry. the RIAA needs to stop lying through their teeth and going after innocent people like Ms. Gonzales and the thousands of others like her.
/zi.
February 11th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Hi Zi:
You can in no way call $.99 for an iTunes DRM-ed track good value and you cannot call it high fidelity either.
“the RIAA needs to stop lying through their teeth and going after innocent people like Ms. Gonzales and the thousands of others like her.”
You got that right though.
February 12th, 2006 at 1:43 am
I won’t say people shouldn’t have the right to share files (I use ourTunes all the time at my college), but I don’t really think file-sharing helps the music industry.
I’m responding to the quote in this article, “Smaller bands and independent artists will be the first to benefit from the increased exposure, and even many big name artists see the potential of p2p technology.”
Really? It’s already hard to buy from independent bands because they are not available in music stores (I’m speaking of bands which start up). Once you have the music files, what’s there to motivate you to purchase the music.
That goes even for big bands, if you download the song illegally (yes, I believe it’s illegal) than what’s to motivate you to purchase the CD? Music sales have not gone up, but down, and whether or not file-sharing is a part of it is debatable, but I can attest file-sharing does not help.
I am open to good arguments which disprove my theory.
February 12th, 2006 at 2:35 am
The RIAA gets it’s folder snapshots by using the “browse users files” function. This function can be turned off in most P2P apps and should be. This is how they know how many and what files you are sharing.
February 12th, 2006 at 3:52 am
“You can in no way call $.99 for an iTunes DRM-ed track good value and you cannot call it high.”
I hate DRM, but I still think $.99 for a song is a good value. sure, I’d gladly pay $.99 for a song and pick and choose what I want to listen to instead of being forced to buy a whole CD for $18 just to get 1 or 2 good tracks. sales at the iTunes store support my idea that people see value in it. iTunes opened in Japan last year or so, and sold something like a million songs in a week.
I myself don’t have an iPod and don’t use the iTunes store, so maybe that’s not the best example. I hate DRM as much as you do, but I was commenting on the high fidelity-ness.. AAC is supposed to be high quality compression with better quality than mp3. again, I don’t know, since I refuse to be a “me-too” hipster and own one of these overpriced walkman’s. i’d like to see DRM get a well deserved death. mp3’s too. patent-free, open standards all the way, baby! (FLAC)
now what’s insane is that some people’ll pay up to $5 for a crappy ringtone. unfortunately, darwinism doesn’t work for humans.
February 12th, 2006 at 4:48 am
I give you a perfect example…
My favorite band in the world right now is Lacuna Coil, an Italian band on the independent label Century Media. If not for file sharing, I would have never heard of this band when I did. Only 5 radio stations in the entire USA have aired any of their music, according to their fansite. Since I discovered them 4 or 5 years ago, I’ve purchased their complete collection and been to every concert within 150 miles of my home, even though they were an opening act. I even had to special order and pay top import $$$ for their early releases.
My motivation?
1. The songs I had downloaded were crap quality and I had to have top quality to completely satisfy my thirst and fully appreciate them. 128kbps tracks cranked through good headphones sounds like shit.
2. I purchased their lastest CD twice at one of their concerts just so my wife and I could each have a copy which we got autographed. To us it was worth every cent.
3. To them, the music and their fans come first. They put 100% into all their songs and there’s no filler, and no DRM. I’ve never skipped a song on any of their cds.
4. I met them 3 times on their last tour and they were the coolest, friendliest group of musicians I’ve ever met, and I’ve been around a while and met numerous bands over the last 35 years. One of the nights we met them, they had the next day off. They hung out with us for quite awhile, until WE finally had to leave and make our long drive back home. We talked, they took many pictures with us, signed anything and everything we asked them to, and when we left, we exchanged handshakes, email addresses, and even a few hugs.
Do you think Madonna or Metallica would do this?
THIS is the kind of band I will wholeheartedly support in every way I can. Their last cd sold over 200,000 copies without major label support. Mostly due to P2P and word of mouth.
THIS is the potential power of P2P and how it can work to an artist’s benefit.
THIS is what terrifies the RIAA. Only lazy, non-creative bands need the RIAA, and those 2 characteristics do not a good band make.
I have other similar stories, and guess what? None of the bands are on an RIAA label. Every cd I’ve purchased in the last 5 years has been on a independent label and purely BECAUSE of P2P.
February 12th, 2006 at 9:53 am
That is because it is groundless. The MOST they could get you for (and yes, IAAL) is actually copyright infringement for no gain. A misdemeanor punishable by community service, lol.
But if they muddy the water, and try to link your sharing of files directly to thier loss of revenue, then they can justify changing the charge to copyright violation FOR PROFIT, or theft with mallicious intent (ruining their business). The problem with this is that they have to prove several tens of thousands of dollars of loses directly from you in order to bump it up to anything approaching jail-time. And it is precisely the threat of jail-time that they are trying to use to shore up thier failing business model.
A buisness mdoel that was failing BEFORE Napster came on the scene. No joke here: in the three years BEFORE Napster music label profits had been increasing at a rate LOWER than inflation. That means that they had been steadilly SHRINKING for years…and they knew it…as indie bands gained in popularity. Direct attacks on indie bands would be the worst possible PR move they could possibly make, since it is the aura of the persecuted outsider that had been selling their own bands for years beforehand.
Then along comes Napster, and suddenly they have a method of stemming the tide of word-of-mouth advertising that was responsible for the rise of the indie-bands. All they had to do was attack and prosecute anybody who was sharing lots of music files, and they could take these market-movers out of the market. Make the very people who would spread the word of an indie-band to their friends into “untrustworthy criminal thieves” and nobody is going to want ot be associated with them.
Of ocurse anybody with two brain cells could see the writing on the wall when this started. history has shown us time and again that while TECHNOLOGY can be supressed, IDEAS cannot. Napster spawned Kazaa spawned Grokster Spawned-Spawned-spawned-etc…and has now lead to the BitTorrent revolution. All based on the idea of using computer networks to share searchable files over a wide base of users. Like the movie says “the harder you squeeze the more star systems will slip through your fingers”
And now, after the truth of the situation is bleedingly obvious to anybody who isn’t sucking on the RIAA’s teat, they are in a WORSE position than they were ten years ago. Those 18,000 people are not RIAA victims…the money they lost to the RIAA is an INVESTMENT. Eventually the RIAA will LOSE one of these cases in open court, and te change in precident will then allow for a retrial under the new precident of all the older cases (even those settled out of court).
If the RIAA tries to deny that the file sharers who settled out of court do not have reason to litigate them to regian the setlement, lsot time, court fees, and mental anguish…then they are violating their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to the legal system. That is a whole other, and worse, can of beans that the RIAA will most likely open anyway. lol
The RICO act has never been so useful
February 12th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
I too would never have gotten into Lacuna Coil if it wasn’t for P2P. I was told by a few sites (probably Amazon or Last.FM) that because of my music taste I will probably like Lacuna Coil, so I downloaded a bunch of their songs from the P2P networks, and they were awesome. Since then I have bought some of their CDs. So yeah, it works for the smaller bands.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:20 am
I totally agree with you. But I would like to clear up that Lacuna Coil is certainly NOT an underground band. Damn, they even hit the charts in their home-country of Italy. They may be pretty unknown in the US, but this doesn’t make a band “underground”.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
I know this seems like a semi-lowtech solution, but I think it’s best to just get offline and do it the way it’s been done for a long time. Just get an external hard drive, walk over to a friend’s house and copy his or her music and share yours. No real way of tracking this and you can get a large chunk of information a lot faster and safer.
LONG LIVE THE SNEAKER NET!
February 13th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
The time frame is important here. You’re talking about now, I’m talking about then. Plus you’ve switched from “Smaller bands on independent labels” in your first comment, to “underground” in your latest comment. Which is it you wish to talk about? And what is your definition of “underground”, a garage band?
Spin it any way you want. I stand by my original comment. This band would not be were they are now without the help of P2P. Before their cd “Comalies” was released, and the boom of P2P, they were a little known band from Italy. If not for someone putting their name in the comment field of another song I downloaded, I would have never heard of them at the time. Again, time frame is important here. I didn’t just discover them yesterday, or 2 years ago. Thanks to P2P, I was a fan BEFORE “Comalies”:)
February 13th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
“I know this seems like a semi-lowtech solution, but I think it’s best to just get offline and do it the way it’s been done for a long time. Just get an external hard drive, walk over to a friend’s house and copy his or her music and share yours. No real way of tracking this and you can get a large chunk of information a lot faster and safer.”
People do this all the time.. people give each other CDRs of music on a very regular basis. I don’t think that should be illegal. I don’t see anything wrong with sharing a copy of a CD you legally purchased with a friend. I consider that fair use. I’m not selling it, and I’m giving the band free publicity. that person might discover that they really like the artist and go buy some of their CD’s. if my friend doesn’t like it, then the record industry hasn’t lost anything. that person wouldn’t have bought the CD anyway, so what really did they lose? some of you may disagree, and I welcome your coments.
in Japan, where I was living for 3 years, a new CD costs as much as $30! a single, $10! (though prices are comng down to less insane levels in the last few years). because of this most people rent CDs and copy them rather than buy. strange concept for most of us living in the US, but yes, video stores rent CD’s too, and sell MD’s, CDRs and DVD-R’s on the shelf right next to them. there’s an unspoken understanding that this happens and is unofficially accepted.
i stand by my belief that sharing helps, not hurts. what did your teachers tell you in grade school? and for those of you who are religious, how’s the phrase go: give and ye shall receive?
1. I treat companies nice when they treat me nice, by buying from them. When they loathe their customers and treat us like criminals, i’ll gladly take my spending dollars elsewhere. for this reason I don’t shop at stores that make me check my bag in, like CompUSA. treating your customers like thieves and operating with the mentality that each of us is a potential shoplifter is BAD business, however you dice it. that particular CompUSA i visited a few months ago already had a guard AND electronic theft deterrent sensors at the door. I got offended and talked to the manager. I’m not giving these people a red cent.
2. I spend over $2500 on DVD’s every year. any studio that dares to put a non-skippable FBI warning on the front of my DVD can FOAD. it’s an insult. they’re welcome to put it on the art in the back of the box, down in the corner with the other logos.
the big companies are always trying to take away our consumer rights. already DVD’s are crippled with the region codes. (I travel often and why shouldn’t I be able to watch my 400+ dvd’s anywhere in the world?). don’t stand for it. fight back.
/zi.