1. I went to the "Orwell 2003" conference at Wellesley last week. Prof Jonathan Rose from Drew U. said that "the personal is political" is an idea kin to "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorence is strength," citing the Anti-sex League in 1984.

2. The regulatory state has been on the run for years. The result is a new rapaciousness not seen since the robber-baron days. If you don't believe me, do a Google search for "Leasecomm" or "Leasecomm scam," to cite one example I have knowledge of.

If they want to invade my hard drive, they will have to pay for that privledge. My proposal:

http://wizbang.blogspot.com/2003_05_04_wizbang_archive.html#93810441

What those clowns are proposing is highly illegal. It is hacking into people's computers, distributing what are effectively computer viruses or trojan horse programs, and possibly conducting denial of service attacks. I agree with the comment that if the industry does do this, then the big five record companies deserve to die as entities. I feel sorry for the employees who would lose thier jobs as part of that process, but not for the sheer blind stupidity of the bosses.

They have missed the boat with having too high CD prices for too many albums. They have missed the boat by not offering their catalogues for internet distribution by technically accessible and fairly priced means. They have missed the boat by trying to shut down services where people compensate for the second dose of idiocy (albeit through channels that are in themselves illegal). Now they are really trying to destroy themselves. Losing sales is one thing; getting hit by a multibillion dollar class action law suit (and given the number of people this could potentially affect, talking in terms of such figures is not outlandish) would literally destroy the companies.

If you've got a small biz and suddenly your computers start acting up, you might look more carefully at Windows.

At some point, it might be cheaper for Microsoft to simply buy the major studios and let "record piracy" flourish. The alternative - harden Windows or lose market share to secure platforms.

These guys apparently never heard of civil RICO either. Such attacks will impact work computers too - injury to "trade or business". I.e., treble damages and a reasonable attorney's fee. Not to mention the antitrust possibilities and state unfair trade practices laws. California's is vague and ominous - any business practice which a jury finds to be unfair.

I hope these idiots try. Think of it as evolution in action.

They've already charged me too much for music I had already paid for when it came out on vinyl or cassette tape. I believe in property rights, but I have no sympathy for these people. They're abusing their power and corrupting our democracy.

While I agree that these proposed measures are onerous -- and legal eagles I trust have questioned their lawfulness -- I'm curious about something: Have you reserved this same sort of passion for the widespread infringement of copyright that occurs on P2P programs? Or are you like so many others, who decry these RIAA tactics while making endless justifications for file-sharing?

Debating the legality of these measures is moot. I'm sure part of the plan is greasing enough congressmen to make these legal before actually unleashing them.

I do not download music from computers, so I do not have the obvious self-interested indignation of the author of this blog or the previous comments, so let me point out the two most obvious logical consequences of your position.
1) No copyrighted material can be legitimately protected in the world of computers if enough people decide it is better, or at least more desireable, to have it endlessly copied for free. Companies who produce this material, if any manage to exist, are criminal if they try to stop people from taking it online without paying any appropriate fee. This would include printed, audio, and video material, from the least to the greatest in demand, including blogs.
2)Intellectual property rights are meaningless if anyone can find and popularize a way of obtaining the material for free. It is therefore now adviseable to abandon any efforts to stop the production of unauthorized CD's, DVD's, or reprints of any popular book or magazine, as the very attempt to stop the copying is itself an assault on the rights of those doing the copying, and is akin to a criminal conspiracy.
How you holding this opinion expect any creative person to continue to produce material that you may then take for free at your leisure is not addressed in your previous comments. Perhaps you should consider it, especially if your ambitions to a future livlihood include any of the creative arts.

I don't think the author is asking for the abolishment of copyrights. He is asking that they just sell the material online, so that he can continue to download music in his preferred format, rather than prosecuting him for making a mix CD for his girlfriend. Makes sense to me. Doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but even if it takes a while, don't go gestapo on your customers in the meantime.

"Doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but even if it takes a while, don't go gestapo on your customers in the meantime."

Where is this whole notion of "customers" coming from, anyway? Someone who swipes content off P2P doesn't exactly deserve the respect of those whose creations he's stealing.

That aside, could someone please tell me why a technology that's been around for about five years has taken on this kind of quasi-spiritual connotation? OK, so file-sharing technology suddenly exists -- wowee. That doesn't eradicate centuries' worth of the principles that guide copyright law.

If certain record labels don't offer songs in your "preferred format," then don't patronize them. If there are enough of you, then another supplier will come into the market to give you what you want. Meanwhile, their stuff isn't yours to take or to copy and give away.

You don't have a "right" to music. Why is this so hard to understand?

Tomas:

I suppose then that you would condemn me to the 8th circle of hell because I made mix tapes for my friends by recording songs on the radio when I was in grade school? Get real. Music buyers (customers, if you will) figured out how to distribute files universally before the stupid RIAA did, so they should go to jail? For making mix CDs? Man, your sense of justice is whacked out. If the RIAA really wanted to make their artists money, they would have something up and running (like the latest Mac service) that offers universal catalogues at reasonable prices (dollar a song sounds about right). It just isn't asking that much.

More RIAA intransigence: "labelling is censorship!!" Like they care. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030505/hl_nm/lyrics_thought_dc_1

I have been buying music for approximately 50 years. First 78's, then 45's, then 33, then reel to reel, then cassette, and finally CD. Each time we had a leap in recording technology and the format changed you upgraded your collection if you could afford to do so.

The record labels made a lot of money from the technology changes in those days. Then suddenly technology changed again and they either couldn't smell the coffee or they froze up because they could not imagine how to use it to once again benefit (enrich) themselves.

All during this period they charged all the traffic would bear, and somewhere I read an article some time ago that they were in fact caught price fixing between themselves.

I am inordinately fond of Bill Evans, a jazz pianist that has been dead for over 22 years now.

Many of his vinyl recordings had never been converted to CD, but his "cult" following is so large that they are putting out CD's like crazy these days. They are even reformatting albums that were out on CD already in higher formats, and charging a very stiff price for them.

Just this past Holiday season they released the second sets of his last concert at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco at a cost of $125.00. Mind you these are the 'second' sets of that concert. The 'first' sets have long been out in another boxed set at a similar price. In addition many of the tracks were issued within a month of his death by two different labels.

I have to assume the various labels own his copyrights and of course they just got them extended again via the Congress some time back, so who is making the money? The label or his widow and family if they are still with us?

The feeble effort they have made to make any music available online does not portend well for the future. I seriously doubt we will ever see jazz, for example, available for download from a music service at a reasonable rate.

I am a collector of music. Once I have it I want to make it portable. I want to play it at home, play it at work, play it in my car. Copying music under the Digital Millenium act is forbidden, so how do I make it portable? What happened to 'fair use'? I PAID for the music, am I to pay for it twice again to have it at work and in the car?

I have never traded files online, but sometimes I get so perturbed at the music industry and their attitudes that I feel like trying to learn how to make mp3 files out of my CD's and doing it as a form of protest. Now that they avow using software to invade computers, I think it might be unwise....however the urge still asserts itself everytime I read another article that purports to tell me what I can and cannot do with something I bought and paid for.

My personal opinion is that the recording industry has been shown to abuse the musicians and the songwriters when it comes time to fork over money, there isn't much new music out there that is worth buying and I am tired of making the labels and their officers rich.

Rant over ;)

Fiamma, the DMCA doesn't forbid you from making a copy of a CD you own, for your own use. Where'd you get that idea?

!. The only thing the RIAA understands is money.

2. My money will stay in my pocket and I determine where it goes. (Aside from recurring bills for food, shelter & sustaining working needs).

3. If I want to download music that I decide to purchase, it may very well be through Apple's new site. (At $.99 per song, that should be a no brainer.)

4. The rest of my purchases will never result an store bought audio cd's ever again. (Besides, I've been buying DVD's instead for well over a year now anyway. Didn't anyone else suspect that was where our extra cash went anyway?)

So there, RIAA.
Nyah, nyah, nyah.

P.S. My computer was bought by MY money, no one else's - so anyone else can't enter it without my permission. (Meaning, my firewall, my spybot, my anti-virus apps that I bought will always endeavor to keep idiots like them, & others, out.)

Frankly, what we think of file-sharing is irrelevant. RIAA is proposing to unleash hostile computer programs through the Internet. These agents would damage property that does not belong to them, possibly beyond repair, because the software THINKS that person may have crossed a line.

No investigation, no warrant, no charges, no legal procedings. None.

Does this mean I'm allowed to walk into record executives' houses and shoot them, because my software tells me it THINKS they may have committed murder? Don't think so.

This isn't the first time we've covered stuff like this, and it's not isolated. It's part of a long pattern by a group that truly seeks to place itself above the law, and failing that to monitor each and every person's viewing and computing activities. RIAA and its allies are more out of control than the problem they're addressing, and far, far more dangerous.

"It's part of a long pattern by a group that truly seeks to place itself above the law"

Sorta like the pro-downloading contingent?

As I said, the RIAA's proposed measures are worthy of criticism. I'm still curious, though, if you reserve this kind of passion for other violations of property, such as copyright infringement.

In the context of the question I've asked, what you think of file-sharing IS relevant.

Business works like this for those who have never studied it:

You sell a product the customer wants at a price the customer is willing to pay.

New technology has lowered the price a customer is willing to pay.

Tough.

Let me put it this way:

The Grateful Dead managed to make quite a bit of $$$ giving their music away.

How is it a bunch of hippie proto-communists are smarter than the record company capitalists?

The secret is simple:

You sell a product the customer wants at a price the customer is willing to pay.

If songs no longer command a premium you get out of the song business and into the merchandise buisness.

BTW the music business with it's thinly disguised payola is one of the most corrupt in America.

In the 60s and 70s when I was an engineer at several radio stations the sales men regularly came around with bags of cocaine for the on the air talent, music directors, and station managers. To get their records played. The only thing that has changed is that the money goes directly to the station owners.

Guess what. As long as the record companies pay the station owners the owners don't give a damn about their audiences.

The corallary to that is that the audience no longer gives a damn about the music.

My sons who are deep into music prefer the 60s music on the oldies station to current pop offerings.

Since when did teenagers like their parent's music?

This is proof positive the record companies are out of touch with their markets.

The record companies would be losing sales with or without file sharing. File sharing may make things worse but it is not the root cause of the problem.

The root cause is that the companies no longer care about their customers.

Copyright is a government granted limited time monopoly.

The content manufacturers have been going to congress frequently to get their 'limited time' extended.

Basically copyright has become an unlimited time monopoly. Practically nothing is going into the public domain any more.

Prime example: Disney was about to lose the rights to the mouse. It went to congress and now the mouse is good for another 75 years (or is it 100?).

And still they can't make enough $$$$.

So they come up with a way to destroy their customer's equipment to prevent loss of sales.

In effect they are making their product a danger to their customers.

Brilliant. Fookin brilliant.

Let us take a hypothetical.

Suppose a spammer sends out snips of "music" that the "anti-piracy" software would recognize. The anti-piracy software then goes to town on your hard drive.

No criminal act has been comitted but your drive is trashed as if a malicious virus had gotten through your protective screen.

When it comes to file sharing the law is as helpless as it is when it comes to drug prohibition.

We either face reality or keep pissing into the wind.

Laws and virus attacks are not going to bring back the old model of the music business.

Live free or die.

I think what's happening here is that RIAA is coming up against the philosophical issue of limits of control. Like it or not, they're competing against file piracy. Barring a totalitarian state, file sharing will continue. It's too difficult to lock down entirely without the collusion of OS programmers and the like.

Taking measures like this that smack of arrogance and infuriate their remaining legitimate customers will not help. Passing Mickey-Mouse laws like the DCMA to defer copyrights in perpetuity will not help. RIAA honestly thinks that if they shout hard enough, mp3 files and the like will go away - and I think this is preventing them from making good business decisions.

Lots of good thoughts here. I'd like to expand on an idea in these comments.

While the record companies have a right to defend their intellectual property, their own distribution methods are oligarchical and exploitative. That is, the major record labels have a near-monopoly on the distribution of music AND how it is distributed, except for P2P.

They've been selling albums, CDs, cassettes, for years by requiring you to purchase inferior songs in order to purchase the songs you want. Making the sale of one thing conditional upon the sale of another thing has long been considered something close to an anti-trust violation.

The record companies have done this "shoving of extra product for more money" for years -- and were somewhat justified by the technology. It made sense to sell longer-playing albums (hence LPs). However, artists still had to pad a lot and you had to pay for it whether you liked it or not.

Now the technology exists to easily sell one song, or any package of songs, to the consumer -- or even better, let the customer choose. But the record companies don't want to abandon their old technological formats because it's more profitable right now.

Their control of the distribution chain has squeezed the industry dry of most originality (though I'm sure lots of great music is being made somewhere -- there always is) and they've used that leverage to dominate the airwaves and turn them into marketing opportunities for their products.

My point is that the record companies have behaved badly; two wrongs don't make a right, but the second wrong (illegal file-sharing) sure as shit levels the playing field, which has been horribly tilted against the customer and even the artist for years.

It is not illegal under the DMCA to make a copy of your CD to your hard drive. However, RIAA and the record labels are attempting to bypass this by creating copy-protection schemes that are not only badly implemented but keep your legal CD from being played or ripped on your computer. These CDs are not Redbook format, and there is a movement to get them clearly labelled as something other than a CD, since certain computers can choke on them and necessitate costly repairs. (Apple has a download to prevent this problem; if you own a Mac, go to their site before you pop in that new CD.)

The RIAA is perfectly aware that what it is proposing is illegal. This from an article I wrote well over a year ago:

"The RIAA, the lobby group of the American Music Industry, clearly contemplates using hacking in all its forms to fight what it calls the anti-piracy battle. In the wake of September 11, the American Congress passed the USA Act aka the Patriot Act. In it, some computer hacking was effectively made a ?terrorist? offence and the scope of the privacy intrusions authorized by government in cases of suspected computer fraud or abuse was broadened. As well, civil liability for the destruction of property and programs held on hacked computers was increased.

The RIAA proposed an amendment to the USA Act which would have immunized all copyright holders from the civil law rules against hacking.

"No action may be brought under this subsection arising out of any impairment of the availability of data, a program, a system or information, resulting from measures taken by an owner of copyright in a work of authorship, or any person authorized by such owner to act on its behalf, that are intended to impede or prevent the infringement of copyright in such work by wire or electronic communication; provided that the use of the work that the owner is intending to impede or prevent is an infringing use."

The amendment was not passed. The RIAA believed that without this change its members attempts to break into and disable pirate websites or peer-to-peer networks would be illegal In Wired News, Mitch Glaizer, an RIAA lobbyist, is quoted as saying, "We might try and block somebody, if we know someone is operating a server, a pirated music facility, we could try to take measures to try and prevent them from uploading or transmitting pirated documents." For the moment this sort of electronic self help remains illegal.

Actually, the DMCA does prohibit any and all copying of the materials it protects. (I don't recall the scope of the law, sorry.) The Copyright Act has a whole section devoted to "fair use." The DMCA does not. This means there is no fair use under the DMCA, and as far as I know, the Supreme Court has not created a fair use clause. If someone knows otherwise, and can provide me with a citation, I would greatly appreciate being corrected. :)

Would this attack .mp3 .wav or .ogg files as used to provide audio in PC games???!!!

My guess is it would be difficult to achieve their goal. How Do they propose to distinguish between legitimate soundtracks licenced for games and pirated music? If they get that wrong they can only hope to face action on licencing agreements.

I wonder? Put aninfinite number of RIAA execs. in front of an infinite number of typewriters....