The end of Kazaa and P2P ?

Read this if you like downloading mp3s.

Yeah...I'd like to see them try. How the hell will they get their information? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Eh. Them getting the information would be easy. NOONE is anonymous on the net.

But, I dont see them spending the $$$ on craking down on this, and paying for court cost either.

Theres no way they can stop PPL from sharing music.

It is the sound of death rattles as an industry dies. The recording industry has in the past been a necessary industry. They were the only ones with the means to properly record and distribute a standardized medium. Every musician, producer and everyone associated with the art were totally dependent on the recording companies to produce and distribute the medium. Along with it, the recording industry found itself in the position to directly determine the stars and trends. Now, they are not needed.

You can expect to see them try everything from litigation to legislation to artificially maintain what they've lost. Don't be surprised to find them attempting to force, through laws and lawsuits, a percentage from the makers of storage medium, computing equiptment, network infrastructure and any other new technical gear they think infringes on what was once their domain.

Software piracy has been a problem....forever. Not really sure what to make of that..just a fact. Software is swapped as much as music, but you don't see the software industry whining nearly as much do you?

BY the way, the Digital Media Millenium Act scares the hell out of me. I think everyone online should be more than a little scared by it, weather you swap files or not. It basically throws "Innosent until proven guilty" out the window. Music companies can request all sorts of info about you and your ISP has to hand it over. No proof that you're file swapping is necessary. Anybody that thinks that won't be abused is nieve.

I'm with you Sabby... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

Thank goodness that the RIAA doesn't seem to know how to access USENET yet. I never used the peer file-sharing systems because of my concerns over security of my computer. I do miss using FTP to trade music, the old Audiogalaxy FTP search was my favorite way to get mp3's for some time before that was shut down.

How much are they going to sue for and who exactly is doing the suing? In the article is said they will "sue thousands of individuals who share substantial amounts of copyrighted music on-line over peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA." I wonder what a "substantial" amount is. Questions, questions and more questions. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

Oh, and I wonder how the people being sued will be contacted. Will they get an e-mail, a letter, a visit, or a virus? I also would like to see if the people being sued, actually are found guilty, or will be found innocent.

Going after end-users it's the only thing they can do. It might be not efficient, maybe it won't help at all (after all it was never proved that actually p2p hurts their profits) but as long as they do it right (I mean no Digital Media Millennium Act poop) I would have no problem with that. We said for a long time: don't go after the p2p programs/networks themselves, but after the guilty people (guns don't kill people, people kill people). They are doing just that.
But I have another BIG problem: with the copyright levy. USA is fortunate to have no copyright levy, but right now at least in Canada and Germany when you buy media (let's say CD-R) you pay a "copyright tax". Now _this_ is guilty until proven innocent. What's more in EU because of a stupid "Directive of the European Parliament" we are going to have a copyright levy for ANY piece of computer equipment that can be used for copyright infringement. The actual coverage for this law depends on specific legislation for each country, but in Germany we are talking about:

~ 1 EUR for CD-R/DVD-R
16%+13 EUR for the computer itself
20 EUR for an inkjet printer
38 EUR for multipurpose printer (this is probably the fax/scanner/printer thing).

Please keep in mind: we are not talking about some distant future, this law (with some different "coverage" is right now enforced in some EU countries, for example Italy).

I can't even begin to count how many problems are with these taxes. But my question is: are those who make these laws extremely stupid or extremely corrupted?

I've been ticked by just the mere "mention", that the RIAA can legally do a DOS attack on a single person's computer to kill their bandwidth, if they're suspected of sharing files.

My beef is, if I'm on an ISP that is heavy with file-swapping, I'm going to feel that DOS attack across that ISP, and if I mistakenly get categorically classified as a file swapper, even without any proof, I would have to waste my time and my money to fight them and their stupid laws...

The RIAA is so dumb, they can't realize (or refuse to admit) their industry was on death-row when the CD-R/W came out and the internet started proliferating. Nor can they realize that anything having to do with I/Os will never ever be 100% "unbreakable" or non-redistributable. Ignorance is their best friend, and they'd rather beat a dead horse than figure out that the internet, the CD-R/Ws, DVD-R/Ws, MPEG-4 and MPEG1-LayerIII codecs are here to stay...

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif over...

itsme1234, we do have at least one copywrite levy, its on blank cassette tapes. I believe the law came about when the record industry successfully persuaded legislators that they were entitled to compensation for a minimum expected amount of piracy due to the proliferation of cassette tapes.