“After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy,” Sarah McBride and Ethan Smith report for The Wall Street Journal.
“The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl,” McBride and Smith report.
“Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take,” McBride and Smith report.
“Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether,” McBride and Smith report.
More in the full article here.
@predrag, you wrote:
“You are trying to detach the content carrier from the content itself, but it doesn’t work that way. And your thinking is a mere rationalisation and justification of getting that stuff illegally.”
But it does work that way. The RIAA says so. When I buy a record or a tape or a CD, I buy a license to listen to that music for my personal use. I don’t buy “the content” – I buy the carrier and a license to listen to the contents. Here’s one for you – if I rip my CD collection to AAC or MP3 or some other digital format, and then my CD collection is stolen (it’s happened to me), and I still have proof of purchase of all the CDs, do I still have the right to listen to the music that was on those CDs when I bought them? The RIAA will say no, and according to your argument, they’d be right. To do otherwise would be to disconnect content from the content carrier.
As for your claim that the unavailability of certain titles is merely my way of rationalizing doing something wrong – yes, you’re absolutely right. It is. Alan Sherman has been dead for 25 years now, and I don’t know how to get money to his estate. I don’t know if anyone’s there to collect the money. I do know that it seems wrong to let really great material go to waste because nobody cared enough to market it, and didn’t even care enough to place it into the public domain where it could be widely enjoyed.
I plead guilty to the charge of moral relativism.
Another perspective:
I have to say, it’s refreshing to read intelligently presented arguments. Yes, the RIAA would say, if you no longer have those CDs, any copies made therefrom no longer are fair use. Presently, the law is on their side. Morally, I can see the point of your argument. You do have to keep in mind, though, that whoever stole those CDs can presumably enjoy their content and as the new ‘owner’ of the physical medium has also acquired the license to listen as well (much like the person who steals your car acquires the license to drive it, or chop it up into used parts). That is, until law enforcement catches the thief and recovers the stolen CDs.
I don’t know who is Alan Sherman or which label had published his works, but you obviously have a moral point here. However, we aren’t really talking about Alan Shermans here; if these were the only transgressions in the field of copyright, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, nor would labels be making pacts with ISPs today.
So what happens if your say….
Uploading your OWN recorded music VIA p2p for friends and others to listen to, or just to get it out there?
Or perhaps you build websites and upload a large amount of information that way to your host?
What happens then?
Will I get booted for offering my own recorded music free for all to listen to?
Even if they are only watching p2p ports or for file types that same situation applies.
Sounds like a counter-suite waiting to happen to me.