Music Industry again targetting college students

[RPankn]

Music Industry Targets Piracy Over Internet2 Network

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; 3:14 PM

The entertainment industry's effort to sue music pirates into submission is reaching into the next generation of the Internet with the filing of several hundred lawsuits tomorrow against college students using a faster version of the Web called Internet2.

The Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group of major music labels such as Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music, found that students have been moving to Internet2 -- a network created by universities and colleges for sharing research and other academic works -- to illegally share songs after the RIAA began its lawsuit campaign against Web swappers in 2003 [The question is, who gave the RIAA a presence on Internet2?]. To date, the RIAA has sued more than 9,000 file-sharers.

"This is an emerging epidemic," RIAA president Cary Sherman said today. "We cannot allow a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules do not apply." [I disagree. For a

resident and Congress who claim free trade is a good thing, there's certainly an epidemic of legislation specially designed to protect the entertainment conglomerates (see the DMCA; thank you Bill Clinton and the 'Third Way'), which has created a zone of lawlessness for these companies as it permits them to use the courts as their own enforcement arm, and goes way beyond the intellectual property protections the Framers provided in the Constitution. If Bush and Congress really believed in free trade, they wouldn't provide special protections for this industry and force them to adapt within a Constitutionally acceptable framework of laws.

]

The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents big studios such as Warner Bros. and Sony, also said today that it would go after Internet2 file-swappers who illegally trade digital movies such as "Spider-Man" on the Internet.

"With these lawsuits, which reach from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Kokomo, Ind., our message to these thieves is clear -- you are not anonymous and you will be held responsible," said Dan Glickman, MPAA president.

During the past year, the RIAA has been monitoring the swapping of copyrighted material, such as songs and movies, via a relatively new file-sharing device known as "I2hub," which, like Kazaa and Grokster, lets users trade song files for free over Internet networks, Sherman said.

The Supreme Court is considering a case concerning Grokster and other file-sharing Web sites.

The music and movie industries say the sites are responsible for the illegal activities of their users and should be held liable. Grokster and others say they are protected by the court's 1984 "Betamax" decision that ruled that companies that make VCRs are not responsible for potential copyright violations by consumers using them.

In this round of lawsuits, Sherman said the RIAA is targeting students at 18 schools, including Boston University, Harvard University, Ohio State University, University of Southern California and Michigan State University. He said his group is limiting itself, at least initially, to 25 suits per school.

The average number of music files on defendant's computers is 2,300, Sherman said, with one computer containing as many as 3,900 songs. [How does the RIAA know which songs the student has a license to and which ones they don't? For example, I could rip a song from a CD to my computer, and this isn't illegal because the license I obtained when I bought that CD allows me to make copies for myself. Or, what if I purchased a CD and don't have a CD drive on my computer. Why would it be illegal if I downloaded a copy of a song on my computer that I already have a license to? Why, then, doesn't the Post state that it's possible the student has a license for some, or maybe all, of those files?]

Sherman acknowledged that his group found non-infringing files on users' computers, but many more illegally obtained files.

"We didn't see many copies of the Bible or works of Shakespeare," he said. [This is misleading because, as I noted above, legal copying can extend beyond those works that are in public domain.]

Songs can be downloaded on Internet2 in 20 seconds, Sherman said, with movies taking less than five minutes. This marks a significant speed advantage over the Web, Sherman said, where it can take one to two minutes to download a song and well over an hour for a movie.


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46612-2005Apr12.html#nosmileys

[Moses]

How do they know how many songs we have on our computer?

[Ropegun]

Thats the crux issue here, is'nt it Moses?

[RPankn]

Moses said:

How do they know how many songs we have on our computer?

I don't know how it works on Apple's OS, but if you're using any of the MS systems, when you download or rip a song on to your computer, it collects them in a folder called 'My Music', unless you specify another destination. When you install most P2P applications, one of the first things they do is perform a one-time search for all media files -- like mp3s, WMV or RM files -- on your harddrive. This is how the program "learns" where you keep your media files; in MS's case, if you store mp3s in the 'My Music' folder, the P2P will always make that folder available for sharing when you sign on. As you keep adding songs to that folder, the P2P program makes those available as well because they're in that folder. Now, when you set up a P2P program, you also select a username to go by on the network. Most P2P programs allow searching by username, so you can see what they have. The trick is to move your media files out from the location where the P2P program "thinks" they are, and move files you just downloaded out of the place where the program "knows" you downloaded them to.

[Moses]

So how is it the music companies can check this?

[RPankn]

Download a P2P program. They're free and available to anyone who wants it, you or the RIAA. From there, they can search by a person's username and count how many, and what kind of, files they're sharing. Say that you and I both use the WinMX P2P program. If I know your username, I can enter it into a search box on the program interface and find out how many, and what kind of files, you're sharing with the rest of the network. However, I don't know what the RIAA's particular criteria are for deciding which users to target, but using the P2P program itself to find them is the only way I know it could be done.

Whether they know a file was illegally downloaded or not, is another matter and I don't know if they actually care. I know that in that past few years, record companies have been embedding code into CDs so that if someone rips a track, or the album, onto their computer and tries sharing it with someone else, MS XP will pick up on this code and won't play the file unless the person can supply proof they have a license for the song. The RIAA itself also plants dummy mp3 files on P2P networks that look like, and are the size of, a regular m3 file. I remember reading about this around 5 years ago, when the RIAA first starting doing this with songs from a then-newly released Madonna album. People would download the dummy files expecting it to be a song from that album, but would instead get an admonishment from Madonna herself about stealing music.

[Moses]

The whole thing about spying on people gives me the creeps.

I don't like that corporations feel entitled to do this.

I recall seeing a headline recently that Americans are more concerned about Big Brother and loss of privacy than anything else -- wait-- it might have been government secrecy-- it was something like 70% of Americans have this as a top concern.

And yet not a single political candidate or party has made this an issue?

Re-instating privacy should be a top issue for a real political party and not handmaiden of these powerful entities.