File-sharing ruling [Merged]

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Should software companies be responsible if their technology is used to illegally swap music and movies?

According to a new ruling by the US Supreme Court, firms can now be blamed when their file-sharing networks help people illegally swap copyrighted material.

The case was brought to court by 28 of the world's largest entertainment firms.

What do you think of the ruling? Was the right decision reached?

personally it seems kind of ridiculous, since there are services that allow you to listen to a new release in it's entire format, only for the user to then use a recorder such as Creative Live! Recorder and then save -burn to disc.

Going after the online services is somewhat redundant since Microsoft, Creative Labs & Sony all make software to do exactly what the courts are trying to stop.

If the RIAA and Musicians that feel like they are getting ripped off want to collect on lost revenues, maybe they should make a CDR cost more than a box of paperclips. I remember back in the day when a case of 10 Maxell Metal 90 min. cassettes cost more than $21.00 and that was for only 10 of them. yet today you can purchase a spindle of 100 CDR's for the same price.


Go figure!

[Troll King]

If the RIAA and Musicians that feel like they are getting ripped off want to collect on lost revenues, maybe they should make a CDR cost more than a box of paperclips. I remember back in the day when a case of 10 Maxell Metal 90 min. cassettes cost more than $21.00 and that was for only 10 of them. yet today you can purchase a spindle of 100 CDR's for the same price.

But isn't that just shifting the onus from the companies to the consumers? The Private Copying Tariff has been in effect in Canada on blank media, I think for a few years now and it hasn't been very popular. The other issue is that the RIAA's issue isn't against burning things onto discs but the sharing and distribution over the Internet. Just find an average music downloader and compare how much music he's downloaded to how much of that he actually had burned to CD and you'll see how this wouldn't work to address the RIAA's concerns. Add to that the decreasing popularity of CDRs as a media to record music due to the rising popularity of MP3 players and it'll be clear that such a tariff would not work. Whether you agree with the RIAA or not, if they adopted a tax on blank media it would only weaken their main stance towards illegal distribution.

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But isn't that just shifting the onus from the companies to the consumers? The Private Copying Tariff has been in effect in Canada on blank media, I think for a few years now and it hasn't been very popular. The other issue is that the RIAA's issue isn't against burning things onto discs but the sharing and distribution over the Internet. Just find an average music downloader and compare how much music he's downloaded to how much of that he actually had burned to CD and you'll see how this wouldn't work to address the RIAA's concerns. Add to that the decreasing popularity of CDRs as a media to record music due to the rising popularity of MP3 players and it'll be clear that such a tariff would not work. Whether you agree with the RIAA or not, if they adopted a tax on blank media it would only weaken their main stance towards illegal distribution.

I would say it is shifting it more to the manufacturers of the actual products such as the MS XP Recorder, Creative Live! Recorder and so on. They can rip to MP3 no prob.

For example...bootlegging live concerts is illegal and Sony supports this and does not like people booting there artists on there label (CBS/Sony). yet Sony manufactures to consumers portable DAT and mini disc recorders, the DAT tape and blank mini-disc's as well as some nice directional mic's that have allowed me to ripp-off many a concert.

I also use the Rhapsody Player for pre-recorded music. This player allows one to listen to the entire disc of any artist, be it an old release or new release...just did the new Corgan and Beck discs. In using this program to listen to any artists entire release or perhaps just a song or two, I can then use my Creative Live! Recorder and with the setting to record "what I hear". I can then save this as a .wav file format to my HD and burn to disc. I can also convert these tracks to MP3, WMA, SHN, OGG, FLAC or whatever. As long as I have a blank disc at the cost of .10 cents a piece, I now have a format of which I can upload at any time to a server. I know of many FTP's that also have private access so that file sharing may be accomplished. yet I now have not paid anyone the costs of a store purchased CD.

All I am saying I guess, is that if the availability of the hardware/software is available to create the file types that the RIAA is worried about & that they feel is taking away from revenues, maybe they should go after the people who market this. Once someone has downloaded the tracks, what's to stop them from sharing them? With hundreds of CD's in my collection, I could easily upload to an FTP a variety of music on a daily basis in any format.

Personally I think that MP3's sound like crap 99% of the time. And MP3 players now are basically a HD that will let you put on any type media format.

There are many ways to look at this I guess....and the question is who is at fault?

[suxxor]

"One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses," Justice David Souter wrote in the ruling.

key phrase: promoting its use to infringe copyright.

[Arikel]

Should software companies be responsible if their technology is used to illegally swap music and movies?

According to a new ruling by the US Supreme Court, firms can now be blamed when their file-sharing networks help people illegally swap copyrighted material.

The case was brought to court by 28 of the world's largest entertainment firms.

What do you think of the ruling? Was the right decision reached?

personally it seems kind of ridiculous, since there are services that allow you to listen to a new release in it's entire format, only for the user to then use a recorder such as Creative Live! Recorder and then save -burn to disc.

Going after the online services is somewhat redundant since Microsoft, Creative Labs & Sony all make software to do exactly what the courts are trying to stop.

If the RIAA and Musicians that feel like they are getting ripped off want to collect on lost revenues, maybe they should make a CDR cost more than a box of paperclips. I remember back in the day when a case of 10 Maxell Metal 90 min. cassettes cost more than $21.00 and that was for only 10 of them. yet today you can purchase a spindle of 100 CDR's for the same price.


Go figure!

If "they" now want to start complayning about that then i hope weapon compannies start to pay when someone is murdered by one of their weapons. -_-

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If "they" now want to start complayning about that then i hope weapon compannies start to pay when someone is murdered by one of their weapons. -_-

Would be a safer world perhaps if they did start doing this.

Not that I am proud of this, but Philadelphia (my home town) = murder capital of the USA, by means of hand guns.

[Sarien]

Should software companies be responsible if their technology is used to illegally swap music and movies?

No.

According to a new ruling by the US Supreme Court, firms can now be blamed when their file-sharing networks help people illegally swap copyrighted material.

This is the same court that last week said it's perfectly kosher for the government to take your house that you and your wife have lived in for 50 years, raised children in, and wanted to die in, just so the city can build a hotel and make some extra tax dollars. What do you expect?

What do you think of the ruling? Was the right decision reached?

No.

If the RIAA and Musicians that feel like they are getting ripped off want to collect on lost revenues, maybe they should make a CDR cost more than a box of paperclips. I remember back in the day when a case of 10 Maxell Metal 90 min. cassettes cost more than $21.00 and that was for only 10 of them. yet today you can purchase a spindle of 100 CDR's for the same price.

Or better yet, make their CD not cost as much as 100 blank CD's. Maybe stop trying to blatanly rip off every consumer they can get to fall under their spell, as well.

Young people deserve this. They earned it, had it coming. Its what you get when you don't vote and let old fucks that have nothing in common with your generation, know absolutely not a fucking thing about technology past 1985, stay in office.

[Sarien]

If "they" now want to start complayning about that then i hope weapon compannies start to pay when someone is murdered by one of their weapons. -_-

That is quite possibly one of the single most juvenile airheaded things I've seen someone post about guns on this forum.

Maybe people can sue Ford when a person is hit by a car, too.

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This is the same court that last week said it's perfectly kosher for the government to take your house that you and your wife have lived in for 50 years, raised children in, and wanted to die in, just so the city can build a hotel and make some extra tax dollars. What do you expect?

Eminent Domain....I was amazed at this ruling! This is a missuse of the juducial system in favor of big business and not the actual people that it is supposed to be there to protect.

With crap areas of cities like here in Philly -> North & West Philadelphia, these are areas where more than 40% are slums and in condemned codition. Yet the city would not dare tear these down.

But the family that is on a nice street with manicured lawns and hedges with no decay and safe street can have there families homes for 1,2,3 or more generations taken away from them becuase some land barron wants to place a strip center, condo unit or a million dollar home in its place.

Where is the justice? different subject Sarien...but I agree with you on this subject!

[Miku19]

Let's ban all irc clients!

Hell, I could even use Continuum for warez. Somebody just uploads files onto the server and I download them from there.

[Sarien]

It's not really that different of a subject.

On one hand you have the Average American Citizen. We have 250+ million of these guys, more constantly being made, so while they could be a major force, they can't ever seem to agree on much of anything, and in the petty bickering they get caught up and don't seem to care about things they lose.

On the other hand you have a business entity that has a whole crapload of money. There might be only this one kind of that entity in our whole country. So if it gets mad it's going to say that it'll go somewhere else and our government will lose their money, will lose the jobs they create, and will lose them period. But the main thing is, they have a whole lot of money that they get from the first type of person.

Politicians that don't know what they're doing, don't care what they're doing, and some that downright like to do what they're doing simply shaft the citizen to protect the business. To me, that's completely backwards and wrong.

The RIAA and the MPAA have hated and fought vehemently every single technological advance they have seen that could have anything to do with their product. It's like a car manufacturer crying that a new larger engine technology will destroy their entire business every single time one is developed. You're old enough, you have to remember. They fought cassette tapes, They fought VCR's. Hell the only reason they didn't put up much of a fight for CD's is in the beginning they thought they were "uncopyable". They fought CD burners, MP3 (the file format itself), and pretty much anything they didn't have 100% control over.

To these associations, you the end consumer are not smart enough, or cool enough to be able to know what you want, and how you want to get it, so they have to determine it all for you and deliver it for:

A Low Low Cost*
*Low Low Cost meaning an adjustable price that will every year reap record profits to show stockholders.

To these ends they will lie, cheat, break the law (check what happened with Sweden's version of the RIAA -planting- music to sue over), and generally whatever they can manage to get away with in order to get their way.

Imagine a 5 year old throwing a tantrum. Now imagine that 5 year old has billions of dollars and thousands of lawyers to argue for him.

That's pretty accurate, I think.

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For reasons such as these posted prior, it is a nice change to see that there are the actual artists out there controlling there own music/distribution and not some schmuck group of RIAA suits & lawyers demanding on how it will be distrubuted as well as the set costs.


As far as music goes in todays market....seems we cannot even call them artists anymore, since everything is dictated by a consortium of marketing asswipes.

The people sharing these music files....aren't they mostly kids anyway? I just do not see my sharing of John Coltrane, Thelonius Munk, Bach, Handel, Primus, and other non-mass marketed types of music being so mainstream that the demand would be out of control.

Well at least it made for interesting forum chatter!

[Arikel]

That is quite possibly one of the single most juvenile airheaded things I've seen someone post about guns on this forum.

Maybe people can sue Ford when a person is hit by a car, too.

Laff!!
I didn't mentioned i wanted to see this implemented... i said that if they do what they are doing about copyrights then perhaps they should do the same about guns... it was supposed to be a comparisson! And at the same time it was supposed to show how a much more "noble" cause could be forgotted just because you show up with the right lawyer on court.! <_< i mean if one such as punishing the owners of the networks each time they get a teenager with a burned cd can be ok then punishing a weapon manufacturer or a weapon seller each time someone is killed with one of their guns must also be! <_<

[Dameon Angell]

fuck. This is like saying we should sue H&K for having someone shoot me.

[Arikel]

Grrrrrrr :annoyed: