Ding
Ding. Round one.
I read this quote from an article in the associated press and freaked
out.
"The AP tracked targets of subpoenas
to neighborhoods in Boston; Chicago; St. Louis; San Francisco; New
York and Ann Arbor, Mich."
What the fuck?!
I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. How
the hell did we get thrown in there with Boston, Chicago, San Francisco
and New York City?
I just knew I had a subpoena waiting for me from the RIAA in my mailbox
when I got home.
Now although I don't use any of those P2P services that the RIAA are
sniffing around on to get my music online, I was half expecting them
to say that they got my IP from one of those services just on GP because
I am so shameless about how much I download.
I have "make an example out of me"
written on my forehead.
The article I read was all about how grandparents and roommates have been getting subpoenas in the mail because their roommates and their grand kids have downloaded something off the Internet while using their computers.
So grandma is getting sued for millions for the mp3s on her hard drive
that she doesn't even know are there.
Well that's nice.
Don't they have to prove you were the one that was actually downloading the music not just that the account is in your name? That is like there being a hit and run accident and then the police arresting whoever the license plate is registered to without regard to who was actually doing the driving.
The president of the Recording Industry Association of America said their lawyers will pursue downloaders regardless of personal circumstances in order to deter other Internet users.
"The idea really is not to be selective,
to let people know that if they're offering a substantial number of
files for others to copy, they are at risk," Cary Sherman
said. "It doesn't matter who they are."
Well that sounds tough but the reality is that being indiscriminate
about who they bring to court is not likely.
"If they end up picking on individuals
who are perceived to be grandmothers or junior high students who have
only downloaded in isolated incidents, they run the risk of a backlash,"
said Christopher Caldwell, a lawyer in Los Angeles who previously
worked with major studios and the Motion Picture Association of America.
You know what I find really funny is that It turns out that out of
all of the genres of music that have see a lull in CD sales since
the popularity of Napster and MP3 file trading on the internet, Christian
Music has taken the hardest blow.
Just like sewing patterns are more "warez'd" (pirated) on
the internet than software. I bet you didn't know that either.
It seems to me like the June Cleaver's of the world are wreaking havoc
online. Between exchanging sewing patterns and Gospel Mp3s Super Christians
are making it harder for everybody.
And it's not like we can team up with them. You know how Jesus freaks are. Although we are both downloading music we are the heathens.
Jesus freaks are notorious for not taking responsibility for themselves.
They have been telling the RIAA that they are perfectly in the right
to download Christian music because, "you
can't sell God's word".
Ain't that a bitch?
….
Yeah, I know.
So what about buying music legally online? What about the success
of iTunes? Well evidently we have a growing number of artists not
wanting to "compromise their artistic
integrity" like Metallica, Green Day, Linkin
Park and The Red Hot Chili Peppers so they are refusing to make their music available as individual
downloads on Apple Computer Ink's iTunes online music store.
They claim that when you are selling songs individually you are
ignoring the whole body of work [the album] and therefore is compromising
the integrity of their work.
"If you download a single, you may
ignore the other tracks on the album," said Mark Reiter,
with Q Prime Management Co., which manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Metallica and several other artists. "When
our artists record a body of work, it's what they deem to be representative
of their careers at that time."
Give me a break. Ignoring whatever the fuck I want on the album
is my god damn prerogative.
Do you see what you are dealing with? I don't know about you but
my CD player has the ability to select what tracks I want to hear.
I don't have to listen to tracks 1, 2 and 3 just to hear track 4.
This isn't a fucking 8 track.
That was the fucking selling point to the CD player in the first
God damn place. I can count on one hand how many albums I own that
I listen to the whole album all the way through from beginning to
end. It was probably the last time I bought a cassette tape and
it was only because I was too lazy to take it out the player while
I was driving.
I have owned that REM album with losing my religion on it since
1989 and that cassette hasn't gotten past that song yet. It was
the second song on side one if I am not mistaken.
See for some of these people they just don't want you using the
computer to listen to their music period.
When offered the opportunity to sell their music online legally
Metallica and the rest of their cronies still refused.
So fuck em.
Then you have buymusic.com come online. These people still don't
get it. Yeah they are selling music online but they are not even
in MP3 format. It's some bullshit file format that only plays in
windows media player. They still don't get it do they? We want MP3s
and we want to be able to do whatever we want with it.
I wouldn't buy a television that only worked if it was plugged into
an outlet in my living room.
I don't want your television if you get to determine where I have
to watch it. Likewise you can keep your bullshit file if you get
to control where I get to listen to it.
I'll be damned if I spend one fucking cent on a digital download
that I can't even play in the program of my choice, in a file format
that is encoded to my hardware so I can't do whatever the fuck I
want to with it. Thank you but no thank you. I'll wait until the
album comes out, either download it or get it from a friend and
rip it to MP3. You bastard motherfuckers.
I have .wma files that don't play anymore because they were burned
from a hard drive that died a few months ago and evidently those
files were encoded to that particular hard drive. They won't play
anywhere else. That effectively ended my brief but traumatic experimentation
with alternative digital music file formats.
Well you knew it was coming.
Amidst all of these subpoenas that have been going out the first
shot has been fired back.
Software will be available for download by this weekend which will
block scans by the RIAA and other agencies from finding out if you
are sharing files on P2P networks.
How it works is that the software blocks the IP of any machine that
is being used by the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America,
or other companies that are out on the net searching for people
who have these files available for sharing on these networks by
their IP addresses.
So basically the idea is this, if the RIAA can find out who you
are by your IP address then we can find out who they are by their
IP address.
The updates will also allow you to block people from being able
to see what you have on your hard drive as well as clear out a user's
search history automatically after exiting the program.
The two versions available for download are Kazaa Lite 2.4.0, and
Kazaa K++ 2.4.0.
In the meanwhile if you are concerned that information about your
file-sharing username may have been subpoenaed by the RIAA you can
check here to see if your username or IP address is on one of the
subpoenas filed with the D.C. District Court. http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaasubpoenas/
MP3's
The Best Thing To Happen To Music "When corporations are trying to
protect themselves from major hackers and terrorists ... trying
to do serious damage to their networks, I don't know that they want
to spend their time chasing down a half-dozen employees who like
to trade old Rolling Stones songs," said
the group's president, Harris Miller. "It's
a matter of prioritization."
Ding
Ding. Round one.
