I think the RIAA is entirely insane. Yes, the artists are entitled to copyrights, but there is free speach, so if there was a new type of compression that compressed songs to an insanely small amount (a thread on gamedev was also about this, the format would, in some cases, be extraordinarily small), then I could go around on the streets shouting the binary data, which people could use. Is that illegal? Another sign of it's being mean, is the fact that (so far) they've targetted young people, like the 12 year old girl, who don't know that they're doing anything wrong; plainly put the people who aren't able to defend themselves in court. And they spread misinformation that should be able to get them into legal trouble (for example, saying that Kazaa is illegal, which is not, which should be able to get the RIAA in legal trouble).

Agreed; we need to do something about this. I am not sure about the compression idea; but it's a good idea, and worth checking into...maybe we can have the CA legal department look into this.

We've already had _way_ too many rights taken from us regardiny the Internet; governments and corporations seem to think that some how their power translates onto the Internet as well as in "real" life.

Any one have some more ideas on this?
I have a few...

-Dig up dirt on the executives of the RIAA and RIAA's dealing in general; especialy regarding financials

-En mass emailings to artists, polititians, and users.

[ This Message was edited by: ItinitI on 2003-09-12 06:13 ]

What you really need to stop this lawsuit dead in its track is a crack team of highly paid lawyers... sigh, if only we had a few corporations backing. Look at Napster, they shut it down, and the Kazaa rose from its ashes. Even if these guys loose their court case, something new will arise that will again allow free sharing of songs. Rather than waste time battling law suits, would it not be better that you devised some ingenious way to share songs without being detected?

If kazaa is illegal, then so is FTP and the internet, so it'll be a while before they form a case against it.

Well, the debate doesn't seem to be as much whether KaZaA is legal or not... The courts, for the most part, determined it is.

But, true, lawyers could help some...but most is going to fall onto the lap of a judge who probly doesn't realy give a about downloading music and believes nearly everything the RIAA tells about it not being fair.

If we coudl find something like RIAA doesn't have many minorities in their ranks, or has shady buisness dealings.

And if you're feeling bad that downloading is ripping off artists; realize that only like a 1.64$ [out of 15-20$] of a CD price goes to the artist; they are the ones getting totally ripped!

I know, it's not like the artists get the money when the RIAA sues someone. The RIAA just wants to profit off of people.

First of all, digging up dirt on RIAA executives isn't going to accomplish anything. And, mass e-mailing artists won't do anything, as 1. Not even half of them check their own mail, and 2. They could simply change the address. The artists don't deserve anything along that line anyway. They have a job, just like many of us do. They write songs, and sing them, not for free, but to earn money to support themselves and their families. How would you like it if you wrote the ultimate OS and the next day the source code was on 1 million computers around the world? I know I wouldn't appreciate losing profit on something I wrote to help others.

And, the RIAA may be getting on your nerves, but you should put at least one foot on their side of the line. It's also their job to govern the music industry, just like they're cracking down on illegal sharing of copyrighted music.

Napster was cracked down for a reason, and a good reason. Just like Sharman's KaZaA will be shut down. This is illegal, and there is no reason it shouldn't be stopped. This would be like shooting twenty-seven people in front of police officers, FBI and CIA agents, and then pulling out a cigarette and blowing the smoke right in their faces. [addsig]

I do not view [for the most part] non-tangible objects, such as ideas, sounds, smells, or tastes, as being able to be truely be owned- only the media in which they exist [ie, you can steal a candy bar, but not its flavour; a mind, but not it's thoughts; a CD but not it's music]. Hence, I do not feel they can be stolen, as they are all, in a sense, under public owner ship.

Even though I am not overly enthusiastic of musics; I am strongly oposed to the RIAA [And any government, corporation or organisation for that matter] in their attempt to regulate the Internet with what they deam as legal.

Quote:
Napster was cracked down for a reason, and a good reason. Just like Sharman's KaZaA will be shut down. This is illegal, and there is no reason it shouldn't be stopped. This would be like shooting twenty-seven people in front of police officers, FBI and CIA agents, and then pulling out a cigarette and blowing the smoke right in their faces.



That's nonesense. Kazaa is a file-sharing server/client. That's what the internet, ftp, and many other things are. But are they illegal? Nooo... So neither iz kazaa. It's usage is what's illegal. But I still don't think it should be. An no, you won't find any "illegal" music on my computer, or in my possesion at all, so don't bottomume that I'm just a greedy theif.

Napster used a central server. Judgements said that the company was held liable for what their user were trading since they had a way to control what was going on. Beside, I think the original Napster only ever allowed .mp3 files, 99.9999% of which are illegal

No such judgement has hit KaZaa. KaZaa is a peer-to-peer distributed (I'm not even sure but it's so damn slow in general that it MUST be distributed p2p) network. They just post the app on the web and warn their future user that they must be good. The company making KaZaa can't be held responsible (related example: if I own a GM truc and start randomly hitting poeple walking on the sidewalks, I don't think GM should be help responsible) otherwise it would have been down a LONG time ago. As it is, KaZaa can't be compared with FTP, IRC, HTTP servers. You can't ban communication protocols but you can keep a company from giving a particular service.

EDIT: My opinion on this subject is quite biased away from RIIA. It's obvious they won't win, Internet is stronger than them. If they shut down KaZaa, 2 or 3 oher wicked tools will appear, and some even more wicked with grow after them, enabling everyone to violate the law at will. Underground trading (FTP, IRC, etc) still works pretty well too. They will stop suing when they'll realize ther are trying to kill a steel elephant with a water-gun (wow, nice analogy ain't it?)

EDIT: After thinking about it, even if KaZaa is a P2P distributed network, they must use some kind of node directory to allow users to find some nodes to connect to. That could eventually be shut down and the main KaZaa client would be disabled. Note that this is just an hypothesis

[ This Message was edited by: Neu[Mann] on 2003-09-13 10:04 ]

Quote:
On 2003-09-13 07:22, ItinitI wrote:
I do not view [for the most part] non-tangible objects, such as ideas, sounds, smells, or tastes, as being able to be truely be owned- only the media in which they exist [ie, you can steal a candy bar, but not its flavour; a mind, but not it's thoughts; a CD but not it's music].

When you buy a CD or tape, you aren't buying the medium (a CD is, what, 50 cents ). You buy the rights to listen\watch\play\etc. whatever it is. If you were just buying the media, I guess a blank CD\whatever would suffice, huh?

Neu[Mann] & Drew: Very well put

_________________
When I got VB, I could have flown without thrusters and shot down TIE Interceptors just by spitting at them.

[ This Message was edited by: dxprog on 2003-09-13 12:20 ]

KaZaA may not be shut down, but at this rate it is obvious that their illegal file sharing activities will cease. Sure, they could then turn into a community for, let's say, programmers to exchange documents, but I don't think they'll do that now, will they?

And, dx: Kudos, you called me Drew. [addsig]

To follow up on my last post, I dug up a little info.

Cowsarenotevil, at the KaZaA homepage, it definates KaZaA as: "...search for and download audio/music, document, image, playlist, software, and video files." Do you notice where it says audio/music? There are clearly no restraints they list, even in the software, to my knowledge, that claims their software should not be used for sharing illegal files.

I did a little research at download.com, and couldn't help but notice this one application that popped up several times. NeoNapster's description: "NeoNapster 4 is a file-sharing program based on the Gnutella and OpenNap protocols. NeoNapster gives users the ability to search for, download, and share music, videos, software, and other digital files with millions of users. NeoNapster 4 supports both the Gnutella network and the OpenNap protocal, with multihost download swarming, file hashing, Ultrapeer compatibility, download resuming, IRC integrated chat, firewall compatibility, and much more. Advanced features such as search filtering, bandwidth, and CPU limiting controls reside in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Version 4.0 beta 6 fixes OpenNap timeout errors."

Why isn't the RIAA tackling them? In the mini-description, it explains the user is able to "tap" into the Gnuletta network, and download music! Hello! Just by the title you can tell it's a Napster clone. Why aren't they down? Because the RIAA is to focused on KaZaA.

Another download, I couldn't help but notice: "MusicMagnet". Wait a second, guess what the description says? "Gives the users the ability to tap into the Gnuletta network and download." What do you know? I smell suspicion. NeoNapster had a user rating of 100% with 1 vote, and MusicMagnet had 59% with 138 votes.

A bit up the list, and I see this: "KaZaA Black Cat MP3 Protector 1.1" ... "Stop the RIAA's scans while using KaZaA." Hmm...

As you can see, I think I have another point. Either way, I still believe KaZaA is, simply put, wrong.
[addsig]

Quote:
On 2003-09-13 12:14, dxprog wrote:
When you buy a CD or tape, you aren't buying the medium (a CD is, what, 50 cents ). You buy the rights to listen\watch\play\etc. whatever it is. If you were just buying the media, I guess a blank CD\whatever would suffice, huh?


lol I never argued that; you buy a CD to aquire what is on it; same as you pruchase food, in many cases, for it's flavour. I said, that I reject the notion that non-tangible items such as ideas, sounds, smells, and tastes can truely be owned. That is why I feel nothing wrong with sharing and giving away [sound/music] files over the Internet.

Quote:
On 2003-09-13 12:45, DInsane wrote:
To follow up on my last post, I dug up a little info.

Cowsarenotevil, at the KaZaA homepage, it definates KaZaA as: "...search for and download audio/music, document, image, playlist, software, and video files." Do you notice where it says audio/music? There are clearly no restraints they list, even in the software, to my knowledge, that claims their software should not be used for sharing illegal files.

As you can see, I think I have another point. Either way, I still believe KaZaA is, simply put, wrong.

No, kazaa is "meant" as a way to share things that YOU (the distributor) have created. Google lets you search for those things to, and is it illegal? No again.

And if it was up to me, I'd make music uncopyrightable. Perhaps even movies. The artists can raise the prices for concerts/theater presentations so that they still make money, and then the RIAA will just die.

I would make non-tangible objects uncopyrightable; and limit such things as movies, software, games, books, ect to like 15 year max copyright; OR give the owner option to pay major money to keep it. lol thats just IMHO, of course. [addsig]

I'm not a law specialist but it is obvious that KaZaa is much harder to legally shut down than Naptster was. Heck! they even pay companies that make software that try to slow down the traffic on KaZaa. Shaman will eventually submit to the pressure of RIIA, but they will hold a while.

On thing that is sure is that you can't stop clients using the GNutella protocol. It doesn't rely on any particular server. Suing each company or group producing a GNutella client would take a lot of time and like I said before, several new other clients can appear instantly. That's why they don't go after other software for now.

RIIA used the only real strategy that scares people: suing some of them individually It's a more efficient strategy in the short run but I think they are not making very much new friends by doing that.

Quote:
On 2003-09-13 13:26, ItinitI wrote:
lol I never argued that; you buy a CD to aquire what is on it; same as you pruchase food, in many cases, for it's flavour. I said, that I reject the notion that non-tangible items such as ideas, sounds, smells, and tastes can truely be owned. That is why I feel nothing wrong with sharing and giving away [sound/music] files over the Internet.


But you aren't buying the music, you're buying the rights to use it for yourself, not the rights to distribute it.

_________________
When I got VB, I could have flown without thrusters and shot down TIE Interceptors just by spitting at them.

[ This Message was edited by: dxprog on 2003-09-14 07:42 ]

Quote:
On 2003-09-13 13:53, cowsarenotevil wrote:
Quote:
On 2003-09-13 12:45, DInsane wrote:
To follow up on my last post, I dug up a little info.

Cowsarenotevil, at the KaZaA homepage, it definates KaZaA as: "...search for and download audio/music, document, image, playlist, software, and video files." Do you notice where it says audio/music? There are clearly no restraints they list, even in the software, to my knowledge, that claims their software should not be used for sharing illegal files.

As you can see, I think I have another point. Either way, I still believe KaZaA is, simply put, wrong.

No, kazaa is "meant" as a way to share things that YOU (the distributor) have created. Google lets you search for those things to, and is it illegal? No again.


How do you know KaZaA is meant as "a way to share things YOU the distributor" created? I don't see that anywhere, and I definitely don't see the Sharman Network regulating how their software is used.

Google is a search engine, completely different. It'll search for what you want, and link you to it. Does that mean it's giving you the ability to share illegal music? "No again." [addsig]

I used google and found illegal music on someone's server. So it's no better than kazaa. I kazaa is probably not really "meant" (hence the quotes) to be for things you create, but it's website (which you should look at before jumping to conclusions) makes it seem that way. Even if the author meant it to be a Napster clone, it can't be proven. There's simple no way to legally shut down kazaa, because it doesn't do anything wrong.

First of all, I did look at the web site, which shows you didn't accurately read my second post in this thread.

Google might have linked to the server, but did it give you access to the server? No, again.

And KaZaA is doing something wrong. They aren't regulating what their service is used for, and they are in fact giving their users the access to illegal music.

_________________
||DrewBurns.com||
||Longing for a Mac||
||Coding with Windows||
||Can you say "backup"?||


[ This Message was edited by: DInsane on 2003-09-14 22:59 ]

Quote:
And KaZaA is doing something wrong. They aren't regulating what their service is used for, and they are in fact giving their users the access to illegal music.


KaZaa can't regulate whetever a particular MP3 is legal or pirated since it's a distributed network. They don't have a central list of all the MP3 shared on the network unlike Napster did. So yes, they are allowing their users to share media using their software but they can't be held responsible if people share illegal stuff. I swear I've read somewhere that this was legally decided right.

Simply banning the KaZaa software because it allow people to share MP3 illegally would be a big set back: Why not ban CD-R since they allow people to share pirated software? or VHS because it allow people to record films illegally? or shovels because I can illegally whack the hell out my neighbours with one? The users of those tools are responsible of what they do with it. Sadly, I'll stick with my idea that indivually uing even just 10% of the users of P2P networks is doomed to fail I think it's time for the RIIA and the Big Record Labels to go with their time and use the Internet intelligently.

Google has more control over what they are indexing. They could simply remove sites that have links to MP3 files on them.

I agree. [addsig]

Quote:
On 2003-09-14 22:58, DInsane wrote:
First of all, I did look at the web site, which shows you didn't accurately read my second post in this thread.

Google might have linked to the server, but did it give you access to the server? No, again.

And KaZaA is doing something wrong. They aren't regulating what their service is used for, and they are in fact giving their users the access to illegal music.


Well then so is Internet Explorer. It isn't regulating anything either. Internet explorer must be illegal then. It gives people access to tons of illegal things. Pirated music and video included. Just because pirates happen to target a particular service doesn't make it illegal. And if it did, something would be seriously wrong. Now stop trying to prove that kazaa is illegal. If it was, the RIAA would have shut it down by now anyway.

That would go for all internet browsers (not just IE). Neu[Mann] is right, it's not KaZaa that's wrong, but what the people who are using it for. It's like guns, people thin that when some one goes and shoots another person (or persons) up, that it's the gun company's fault. Not so, the person had complete control over their actions. They decided to use it, not the people who made it. [addsig]

I was using IE as an example because it's the least likely to be shut down of all browsers.

True [addsig]

cowsarenotevil, it's nice to know that you still have respect for others' opinions. lol

And, just for the record, I respect your view, I believe in that view, I see that view as true. But, I think that KaZaA could be doing just a little more to prosecute illegal file sharers than what they do now. [addsig]

Great, as of that last post dxprog is my master. [addsig]

How did you become an admin without me becomming one also? I am leaving now!

Don't feel bad... I wasn't aware of this or any speculation of such until now.

bleh.

Check your PMs... [addsig]

Okay, cow, you're part of the order. I think we now have a good administrative team for YPN again [addsig]

YAYS!!!1!`!

Hang on, didn't I request to become an admin way before cowsareevil?

And notice, the RIAA are suing users of Kazaa, not kazaa themselves(If I understand the case correctly), thus they are saying using Kazaa is wrong only if you share copyrighted files.

Quote:
On 2003-09-16 07:31, C_Rdd wrote:
Hang on, didn't I request to become an admin way before cowsareevil?

And notice, the RIAA are suing users of Kazaa, not kazaa themselves(If I understand the case correctly), thus they are saying using Kazaa is wrong only if you share copyrighted files.


Don't worry, I still can't get to the crew's lounge (o_O). But yes, they're suing users of Kazaa, but they're also making it very public that Kazaa is "illegal."

C_Rdd: cow didn't actually request to be an admin. [addsig]

Actually, I did(at least once) so if that's any basis, you should remove my adminship(or whatever it actually is) immediately

Oh, well I've (or maybe it was KaGez ) explained how we pick admins, and you and Drew fit the criteria. You're active (which is a huge plus) and you're pretty level headed. So, welcome to the team

P.S. If any one has a problem with my decision, leave me a PM. [addsig]

I seem to be more of a "pseudo-admin" in that I can't change my title, and also am unable to actually do anything that I couldn't before. Oh well

Hmm... The Title change thing is funky... And I think setting users for Lounge access is a bit different than just making them Admin; not sure though.

Yeah, I was right you two aren't on the access list... BUT, I added you both to the list; so you should have access now. [And RDD, wasnt what you primarily wanted lounge access? If so let me know...]
BTW, I'm glad someone changed the final rank to something a little more appropriate than it once was [addsig]

Funny, I can read the crew's lounge, but can't post...

EDIT: Nor can I close this post.

[ This Message was edited by: cowsarenotevil on 2003-09-16 12:40 ]

Don't worry about that now. I'm just pulling together a team for the new YPN (YPNgine). Everything will work for you then [addsig]

Ah, okee!

I'm an admin?!? Yay!

(Acceptance speech)

I accept this award, in honor of all of those that have helped me get to this spot, PHP, PHP, PHP, and water! Oh, and..... err...... Windows.

And the admins of YPN! [addsig]

(applause, appluase) [addsig]

Ditto

Also: KaZaA can't be totally shut down. Here is a better solution that would EVEN GIVE THE RIAA what they want, yet still let us have some file fun:
Block sound files from P2P.
Of course a new sound format will come out the next day.

But what about people like us that want to trade source code? Does that violate the RIAA's rules too? [addsig]

To tell you the truth, I always wanted a community where you could trade source code. But we don't want to end up like the X-Plane creator (getting drunk and uploading the source code ) [addsig]