Posts Tagged ‘riaa news’

Big Music plugs RIAA into Haiti tragedy

// March 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view P2P | RIAA:- “Canada is once again under attack from the entertainment cartels, this time from the Big 4 record label section”, said p2pnet onTuesday, going on: “For Big 4 read Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and they’re using the Haiti tragedy as a launching ramp for their allegations, with someone named James Gannon (right) as the missile. “In a promo piece thinly disguised as a genuine news item and prominently linked to , not at all coincidentally, by the Big 4’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), ‘I was dismayed, but really not surprised, to see how quickly the Haiti benefit album ‘Hope for Haiti Now cropped up on all the popular BitTorrent indexing sites like ThePirateBay and Torrentz’ says Gannon.” In IP, Innovation and Culture , Gannon went on, “No matter how much the operators of these websites like to portray themselves as ‘digital revolutionaries’ who are encouraging the adoption of ‘new business models’ (i.e. ‘please compete with free’), there is really no excuse or justification for hosting a website where users can obtain this album for free”,  continuing > > > What possible justification can one give for uploading, downloading, or making available this album over the BitTorrent network? Not only that, but out of the 9 front-page Google results for “Hope For Haiti Now torrent”, a dismaying 5 out of the 9 results (Torrentz, IsoHunt, BTJunkie, Monova, TorrentZap) are hosted or have some connection to Canada. No matter what these website operators’ opinions are of record labels and movie studios, wouldn’t you think that they would take at least some steps to ensure their services aren’t used to pirate a $7.99 charity album? Looks to me like the Pirates of the Caribbean can be found right here in Canada. At least we’re also good at legitimately hauling in the gold as well. But that was only Part I. Now, “Wow”, says Mike Masnick in TechDirt , going on > > > The RIAA is getting seriously desperate these days. In the past, at least, its arguments made a little bit of sense, if you didn’t understand the details or have the data. But these days, they’re really reaching. We’ve already covered Mitch Bainwol’s bizarre attempt to link Chinese hackers breaking into Google with copyright law — despite the two being totally unconnected. And, now, the RIAA is claiming that P2P file sharers are “undermining” humanitarian efforts in Haiti . Now that’s quite a claim, and you would think the RIAA would have some evidence to back it up, but (of course), it doesn’t. It’s just making stuff up. The claim is based on the fact that some musicians quickly put out a “Hope for Haiti Now” digital only album, with the proceeds going to help Haiti. It apparently did quite well, topping the Billboard sales charts. Considering there were tons of ways to donate to Haiti, this was basically a way to get some free music with your donation. Fair enough. But the RIAA noticed that the tracks also appeared on file sharing sites. This is hardly a surprise, nor is it meaningful. But, according to the RIAA’s interpretation, this somehow “undermines” humanitarian efforts: The album is now widely available on illicit BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and more. The posting highlights a truly ugly side of P2P piracy — the undermining of humanitarian fundraising efforts via online theft of the “Hope for Haiti Now” compilation. So much for the notion that illegal downloading (”sharing”) is an effort to help advance the plight of artists. So much wrong in so few words. First of all, the album is “available” on the internet. The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and those other sites aren’t hosting the album at all. They may be pointing to it, but so is Google. Is that also an “illicit” site? It’s amusing, but the blog post the RIAA links to, in an effort to back up this claim, highlights how he found out about it being available via a Google search. But notice what the RIAA did here? Rather than focus on where the file actually is, it blames The Pirate Bay, even though their own source actually used Google to find it, and the files aren’t hosted by The Pirate Bay. That’s called being disingenuous, at best. Next, how does this “undermine” anything? If someone wanted to donate to Haiti, there were countless ways to do so. If someone donated a bunch of money directly to the Red Cross, and then chose to get those songs via an unauthorized copy, is that really undermining humanitarian efforts? And for those who downloaded an unauthorized copy and didn’t donate anywhere, does anyone at the RIAA seriously believe they would have bought the album otherwise? I recognize that the RIAA thinks music powers everything, but no one bought the album because it was the best way to donate to Haiti. And that last sentence is a total non sequitur. What does humanitarian aid have to do with advancing the plight of artists? And who said that file sharing was “an effort to help advance the plight of artists” in the first place? No one. The RIAA is just setting up bizarre totally unrelated strawmen to knock down. “But,” says TechDirt, “the much bigger issue is that the whole premise of the RIAA post appears to be wrong”, adding: “It turns out that, while the albums are available via these unauthorized means, almost no one is downloading them . MusicAlly saw the RIAA’s blog post, and figured it would check in to see just how much downloading was going on to undermine those Haitian humanitarian efforts… and discovered that very, very, very few people are downloading the album . Considering the sales of the album topped the charts, a comparison was done between downloads of this album and Lady Gaga’s hit album, and they found that the charity album is barely noticeable: “Source: MusicAlly.com In terms of specific numbers, MusicAlly explains: At its peak on 24th January, Hope For Haiti Now was being downloaded 2,680 times a day according to BigChampagne — compare that to The Fame Monster’s 63,845 downloads the same day. Meanwhile, by 23rd February, Hope For Haiti Now’s daily downloads had dwindled to 820, compared to 47,971 for the Gaga album. “In other words, despite the claims of the RIAA, file sharers certainly weren’t ‘undermining’ anything. They certainly weren’t particularly interested in downloading this album at all. Looks like the RIAA has been caught making up arguments that have no relation to fact, yet again.” Pirates of the Caribbean in Canada In our post citing Jim Gannon as the sharp end of the earlier Big Music Haiti farce, “He’s a Canadian lawyer. But he’s more than that. He doubles as a PR hack for Apple and Amazon”, we said. “For those of you who have yet to pick up this truly amazing album, which also serves a great cause, there is no shortage of legal source [sic] where it can be obtained”, he raved, adding: “‘I highly recommend heading to iTunes or Amazon and ordering a copy.” Does he know Bazza Sookman , we wondered? - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi p2pnet – Pirates of the Caribbean ‘here in Canada’, March 2, 2010 TechDirt – RIAA Claims File Sharers Are ‘Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti’, But Leaves Out The Facts, March 5, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? - “No matter how much the operators of these websites like to portray themselves as ‘digital revolutionaries’ who are encouraging the adoption of ‘new business models’ (i.e. ‘please compete with free’), there is really no excuse or justification for hosting a website where users can obtain this album for free”, he says in IP, Innovation and Culture , continuing > > > What possible justification can one give for uploading, downloading, or making available this album over the BitTorrent network? Not only that, but out of the 9 front-page Google results for “Hope For Haiti Now torrent”, a dismaying 5 out of the 9 results (Torrentz, IsoHunt, BTJunkie, Monova, TorrentZap) are hosted or have some connection to Canada. No matter what these website operators’ opinions are of record labels and movie studios, wouldn’t you think that they would take at least some steps to ensure their services aren’t used to pirate a $7.99 charity album? Looks to me like the Pirates of the Caribbean can be found right here in Canada. At least we’re also good at legitimately hauling in the gold as well. “We’re”? Yup. He’s a Canadian lawyer. But he’s more than that. He doubles as a PR hack for Apple and Amazon “For those of you who have yet to pick up this truly amazing album, which also serves a great cause, there is no shortage of legal source [sic] where it can be obtained”, he says, adding: ” I highly recommend heading to iTunes or Amazon and ordering a copy.” Does he know Bazza Sookman , we wonder? No need to stay tuned.

Video games’ link to violence + Call of Duty

// March 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view Games | P2P:- “Life imitates art or vice-versa?” – posts voxleo in a Reader’s Write . “Consider the following and what implications it may have regarding the state of our society at the moment.” She’s an occasional but, when she puts digit to keyboard, prolific p2pnet comment poster and this time around, among other things, she’s picking up on an item in p2pnet World Headlines, March 2 , namely, New analysis reasserts video games’ link to violence in USA Today “My partner in crime, Chad, has discovered the online facet of gameplay on his PS3, and I have noticed that his mood in general tends to correlate, whether in causal or effectual form is unknown, to how well he is scoring on the latest round of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′,” says voxleo. “When I hear him shouting various obscenities at the flat screen in the other room I always think to myself how wonderful it is that he is having so much ‘fun’.” I can relate to that. It was my birthday last month and one of my presents was the wii version of Modern Warfare 2. “There are so many others having fun along with him that if I type the letters ‘COD’ into the search pane, Google’s first suggestion for completion is not ‘code’ or ‘codec’ or even ‘codeine’ but ‘cod modern warfare 2′,” says voxleo, continuing > > > His rank among the nearly 8 million other virtual commandos is somewhere in the middle to upper third, while his friend is somewhere at newb level near the 7,000,000 marker. He can join a round of “Team Deathmatch” or “Search and Destroy” in under 30 seconds to continue his quest to unlock new callsigns earned by accomplishments during gameplay to strike terror into the hearts of his opponents. There [are] more than 500 possible emblems, with titles ranging from the banal “Major” or “Colonel” to the clever “C4 and After”. There are charming examples of The typical: Destroyer, Impaler, Devastator, Predator The topical: 1bullet2kills, Boom! Headshot, Crackin’ Skulls, Blunt Trauma The tribute: Mmmmm Brains…,Live Long…, Global Thermonuclear War, Top Gun The top dogs: Submit to Authority, Bow Down, Big Bad The truncated: SBD (Silent But Deadly), STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease), NBK (Natural born Killer), The tell-tale: Philanthropist,The Anarchist The totals: Omnicide, Omnipotent The temeritous: 9 Lives, Phoenix Rising, Godhand and then there is my personal favorite, The ultimate testament to testosterone: Wargasm My own favorite PS3 game at this juncture (at least since Chad stepped on our Soul Calibur 4 disk) is “American Idol Encore 2″ which also presents the opportunity to compete/interact with others who don’t happen to be in the immediate vicinity but can still console you when “Simon” decimates your ego in his typical fashion. I was curious to try playing with strangers, but despite this being a game that made my mom laugh so hard she nearly peed, and fashioned after a show that draws in millions, would you believe there was not a single match to be had in all the network for me to dust off my vocal cords with? Zero. None. Nary a one. Anywhere. “I find interesting social commentary in the fact that I couldn’t find a soul to join me in a game that never leaves me cranky, and in fact, never fails to leave me with a smile on my face no matter how badly I might perform”, says voxleo, adding: “While 8 million folks around the world gather to play a game which often makes them angry. What fun!” heh Not incidentally, my brother Mike was in the SAS , motto ‘Who Dares Wins’, the UK special forces regiment featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. He did it all for real. Me? I’m still walking into walls and falling off scaffolding.  Jon Newton – p2pnet - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi March, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

Listening to rap in California

// March 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view Music:- Oz rap-fan Nathan Michael Wilkie was arrested for listening to what local cops called “offensive” music . Warrnambool magistrates heard he was listening to lyrics such as “shut your f—— mouth bitch, f—— motherf—–” and in “what could be a legal test case”, Wilkie faces a charge of offensive behaviour,  says the Herald Sun . He was listening to underground rapper Kid Selzy while he, Wilkie, was parked outside a supermarket waiting for his mother, says the story. Wilkie “allegedly” told the cops, “You’re a joke, go do some real police work.” They nailed him and Kid Selzy says he’ll turn up when the case continues on June 11. But he got off light, says a Reader’s Write because … … “The cops here DO WANT THEY WANT TO DO.” ‘Here’ is California. The comment goes on > > > Make sure you have a valid driver’s license and vehicle registration and an insurance policy or otherwise you’ll get your car impounded. Playing loud rap music will get you stereotyped as a gangbanger and you will get jacked by the county sheriff’s department or the California highway patrol and you car get ripped apart for drugs and weapons. Why draw attention to yourself ? You will not like it when you get a .357 Smith and Wesson pistol stuck in your face by a cop and a 12 gauge shotgun stuck in your face by his partner. I suppose people like you complain after your rights were violated and you want a lawyer claiming police brutality. Quess what your claim will get thrown out of court. The judicial system and the police review board always sticks together and will almost never convict a cop for wrongdoing. “Immaturity is not obeying the law and not willing to pay the consequences”, the post adds. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi “offensive” music – Rap-lover arrested for ‘offensive music’, March 5, 2010 Herald Sun – Teen Nathan Wilkie arrested for playing ‘offensive’ rap music from car, March 6, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

The RIAA – Anything but the Truth

// March 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view P2P | RIAA:- While I was working on the last couple of stories, I came across an item I’d posted in 2008 when Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA was at the height of its powers creating, on behalf of its owners, terror and hardship for thousands of families across America. In 2010, together with their opposite numbers at Hollywood’s MPAA, they’ve escalated their efforts, transforming them into an international campaign called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), designed to scam governments into implementing their last-ditch copyright enforcement campaign, disguised as law created and initiated by local administrations. With the mainstream press corpse as their PR agents, they’ve successfully implanted into the public consciousness the idea that sharing online is a criminal activity. “When 15 college students recently visited the Tribune editorial board, we asked them if they had committed a certain crime”, I said in the post I mentioned in the intro, going on, “That’s the Chicago Tribune , a respected mainstream newspaper. “So, what crime would that be? ‘They all eagerly pleaded guilty, story goes on. They illegally download music on the Internet. “Ah! The crime of illegal downloading! “Except it isn’t a crime. Neither is file sharing.” Copyright infringement might come into it, “But even that’s only a civil matter, although Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and their RIAA have spent billions of dollars convincing the likes of the Chicago Tribune it’s a ‘crime’ of a similar magnitude to rape and murder”, said the story, continuing > > > “The Recording Industry Association of America says 7.8 million U.S. households a month steal music online,” says the story. “That means singers, songwriters, musicians, producers and others don’t get compensated for their work.” Actually, it means nothing of the sort. Sharing does not equal stealing. No exchange of money is involved and no one, least of all the Big 4, has been permanently or temporarily deprived of something it, or they, used to own. Nor has it caused “singers, songwriters, musicians, producers” to lose income. The Institute for Policy Innovation, “a pro-business think tank, says illegal music sharing costs the U.S. economy $12.5 billion a year,” says the story, the implication being the IPI is a credible organisation whose statements and statistics should be taken seriously. However, “think tank” is incorrect. It’s another organisation that’s in many ways akin to the marketing firm NPD Group, which regularly and routinely pumps out highly questionable ( to be charitable) statistics which ‘prove’ the Big $ and their RIAA are making headway in their battle to sue music lovers into becoming compliant corporate cash cows. Nothing could be further from the truth. On file sharing, “The music industry’s preferred method of fighting this — filing large lawsuits against a tiny percentage of downloaders — has earned the RIAA plenty of bad publicity, with little deterrent effect,” says the Chicago Tribune, continuing, “The RIAA seems finally to have realized that. It announced last week that it would stop filing lawsuits against individual music thieves — in favor of other, more creative deterrents.” Making piracy ‘irurelevant’ Creative? Not at all. The RIAA has merely stolen an idea originated by Hollywood’s MPAA, and which it still uses: get ISPs to act as corporate copyright cops. Meanwhile, “illegal downloading is not as harmless as illegal parking,” opines the newspaper in a mangled comparison. No matter. “It’s the theft of someone’s work,” says the story. “But if you file 30,000 lawsuits, you hit fewer than four-tenths of 1 percent of the estimated 7.8 million people who illegally download. The RIAA finally sees that it doesn’t need a different enforcement model, it needs a different business model. It needs to make piracy ‘irurelevant,’ [sic] says RIAA President Cary Sherman.” Where would the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, IFPI, BPI, so on and etc, be without all these wonderful magic numbers? “When the RIAA detects a serial downloader, it will notify the person’s ISP,” story goes on. The ISP will, “initially ask the downloaders to simply stop, eventually slow down their Internet service and, finally, cut them off.” The RIAA hopes. And 30,000 lawsuits? Actually, that’s subopenas , a subpoena being a piece of paper, not a court case. And it’s probably more like 40,000. However, subpoenas are excellent for terrorising innocent men, women and children and, “Most of the targets, faced with the prospect of attorneys fees and ruinous financial judgments, settle and agree to pay,” says the Chicago Tribune in another industry inspired exaggeration The RIAA never releases numbers on precisely how many people settle. But “most” should be “some” because without exception, the RIAA’s innocent victims (not one of them has ever been found guilty of anything in any court) are very ordinary people with very ordinary means. They can no more afford to meet the RIAA’s extortionate ’settlement’ demands than they can pay for adequate legal representation to defend themselves against the legions of highly paid lawyers fielded by the RIAA. But the object of the exercise is to generate headlines and imply thousands of people have been successfully prosecuted for the non-existent crime of file sharing. As we said earlier, numbers are magic, especially when they’re supplied by such as the Institute for Policy Innovation and NPD Group. Creative accounting What’s the difference between the RIAA, MPAA and BSA? – p2pnet asked recently, answering, rhetorically : “There is no difference. MPAA means Motion Picture Association of America, RIAA is Recording Industry Association of America and BSA is Business Software Alliance. “All three are front organizations owned and maintained by vested entertainment and software interests to give the entirely false illusion that they operate in a fair, free and open market place.” The point was to suggest statistics and claims from any or all of these organizations are often unreliable at best, or completely fabricated at worst. The music, movie and software cartels claim ‘piracy’ is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole, I said in a 2006 story . The industries have, “fabricated a multi-headed monster by turning a simple commercial concept — copyright infringement which in truth, affects only them — into a huge, international conspiracy involving millions of their own innocent customers around the world, and genuine criminal counterfeiters,” I said, continuing »»» So successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they’ve been able to use them to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. However, the cartels are also frequently accused of fabricating statistics upon which they base their claims and according to the Havocscope global index of illicit markets, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy are way, way down the list, ranking 16th and 20th, respectively. And even those positions are highly questionable given that in both instances, to reach them, Havocscope relies on statistics tainted more than somewhat by the industries concerned. The movie industry figures are, for instance, based on, a study released by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), bolstered by further stats from the Institute for Policy Innovation which, starting from an MPAA $6.1 billion claim, says the, total impact of movie piracy in terms of lost jobs and tax revenue costs the US economy $20.5 billion. But the latter numbers were also put together with, some funding from NBC Universal and the MPAA, says The Washington Post . And guess where the music statistics come from? The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), owned by EMI, Warner Music, EMI and Vivendi Unversal, the members of the multi-billion-dollar Big Four Organized Music family who singly and collectively claim they’re being devastated by their own customers who are, they scream, ‘criminals’ and ‘thieves’. Institute for Policy Innovation I’d described the IPI study cited by the MPAA as “deeply flawed,” suggesting its attempts to qualify music industry claims that files shared equal sales lost were just so much hogwash . A Reader’s Write contributed by IPI boss Tom Giovanetti responded, “I love it when someone only gives a cursory scan to a press release and then thinks they can characterize an economic study as ‘deeply flawed’.” He went on, “Why don’t you at least read the study and then tell us precisely how you think the study is flawed? Why don’t you show some sign of actually familiarizing youself with something before firing off a knee-jerk reaction? “I challenge you to tell us, from an economic standpoint, how our study is ‘deeply flawed.’ Consider the gauntlet layed down.” Actually, Tom, I did read it, I answered, “but didn’t see much point in saying anything more than I did,” going on »»» But since you mention it, I particularly liked the bit where Stephen E. Siwek, the author, says: In the Motion Picture Piracy study, estimates of the global losses to the U.S. industry from motion picture piracy were available from the extensive piracy survey analysis conducted for the Motion Picture Association of America by L.E.K. Consulting. Is he referring to The New York Motion Picture & Media Industries: Piracy and the New York Economy ( .pdf ), prepared for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)? It’s hard to say: the MPAA comes out with so many of these things. But if that’s the case, the spin is: it’s a definitive document accurately portraying losses incurred by Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney due to the ravages of ‘piracy,’ and quoted by the MPAA on its home page . How accurate is it? Let’s just say statistics produced by Hollywood’s MPAA are generally as fanciful as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) facts and figures. In the RIAA (oops, IPI) study, Siwek goes on: At this writing, no such comprehensive analysis [as the New York item?] of piracy exists for the recorded music industry. However, many of the underlying building blocks of such an analysis do exist in a variety of industry and trade publications. For this study, the most important of these sources was 2006 Global Recording Industry in Numbers which is published by the International Federation of the Phonogram Industry (IFPI). It’d be interesting to know who authored it because the IFPI is, of course, nought but another of the many and various enforcement units used by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel, to present ‘reports’ purpose-written to bolster Big 4 claims, and justify the lawsu9ts they’ve launched their own customers in a bid to: turn them into compliant consumers; and, gain control of online distribution. In other words, Siwek is using music industry figures to support music industry claims. And guess who wrote the MPAA’s Motion Picture Piracy study alluded to above? Yinka Adegoke picked up our p2pnet post and wrote about it in the Reuters Mediafile , saying, All those illegal music downloads don’t just harm the beleagured music industry, they also damage the wider U.S. economy, according to a new report. Further down, the story says: The report has already been panned by some doubters who believe it was funded by the music industry. But IPI spokeswoman Erin Fitch says the report was paid for by its general support funds for Intellectual Property program. Fitch says the thinktank’s policy is not to disclose its sponsors, though she says IPI, which was founded by former Congressman Dick Armey, has worked with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and could do so in the future. Well, Yinka, I didn’t actually say I thought it was funded by the music industry. I merely observed: Confidently expect to see this fulsome and overblown report repeated as incontrovertible fact ad nauseum, and at length and in detail, in the mainstream media, and by various bought-and-paid-for US congresspersons But since you mention it … And at the end of his ’study,’ Siwek says: Economists Incorporated is grateful to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) and its member associations for their support and assistance in the drafting of this report. In particular, we would like to thank the staff of the IIPA, including Eric H. Smith and Maria Strong, for their comments. The IIPA is a private sector coalition formed in 1984 to represent the U.S. copyright-based industries in bilateral and multilateral efforts to improve international protection and enforcement of copyrighted materials. These six member associations – the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Independent Film & Television Alliance (I.F.T.A., formerly known as AFMA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) – represent over 1,300 U.S. companies producing and distributing materials protected by copyright laws throughout the world. yada yada yada. All of these outfits are owned by, and represent, heavily vested corporate interests. But back to the IPI’s deeply flawed study , says another p2pnet reader : Consider what this would mean if it were true: 12 billlion dollars and 300 million Americans. That means that every man, woman and child, every tiny baby, every 100 year old nursing home patient, every prisioner, every soldier OWES the record industry 40 bucks! And thats just music. Surely the movie industry, software, and game producers could generate a similar report. Then there are the lesser crybabies: books, phony handbags, duff Rolex watches, Chinese designer clothing, etc, etc., By the time everybody releases their reports, every last American OWES the economy several hundred bucks. This money would come right outa our pockets and into the coffers of ‘the economy’. So let’s bankrupt the nation for the sake of those poor starving cartels. Isn’t that what their balony report boils down to? Jon Newton – p2pnet - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi designed to scam governments – US shares ACTA secrets with RIAA, Sony Pictures, October 16, 2009 March, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

Meet the IPR Training Database

// March 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- Corporate America never had it so good. Well, perhaps it did — under George W. Bush. But it’s not doing badly under Barack Obama. On the right are organisations comprising an “Obama Administration partnership with PhRMA/Publishers to promote industry IPR propaganda”, says James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, in a Twitter post . His tweet points to the international Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Training Database , “maintained by agencies of the United States Government and industry associations who provide training and technical assistance relating to protecting IPR”. Interestingly, in the first pic, in the top row, front and centre, and with the executive office of president of the United States and US department of homeland security flanking, are the IIPI and RIAA, two hard-core entertainment cartel organisations whose sole purpose in life is to act aggressively for, and on behalf of, heavily vested corporate interests. IIPA is short for International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), the Gang of Seven representing US “copyright-based industries”, in alphabetical order > > > Association of American Publishers; Business Software Alliance (Microsoft et al.); Entertainment Software Association; Independent Film & Television Alliance; Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)’ National Music Publishers’ Association; and, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). On the right is an earlier (or is it updated?) version including Hollywood’s MPAA, the copyright office and the DoJ, but excluding  PHRMA, US Aid and Obama’s executive office . Officially, the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Training Database is “designed to permit the IPR Training Coordination Group, composed of these U.S. private and public sector training providers, to share information in order to coordinate and plan IPR training, as well as respond to queries about U.S. IPR training activities”, it says. But, irrespective of who’s included in which pic, sponsored by the bureau of economic and business affairs of the US department of state and funded by US taxpayers, the IPR’s true purpose is to promote and protect narrow business interests to the exclusion of all else. Stay tuned. Jon Newton – p2pnet - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi March, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

Pay the RIAA, Nesson,Tenenbaum ordered

// March 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view RIAA:- The RIAA Ogre has been largely relegated to the sidelines by the entertainment cartel’s ACTA and Three Strikes campaign. But repercussions from its many and various attacks against people who shared online continue to echo loudly. In the latest, “Joel Tenenbaum, the second P2P defendant to take his case to trial in the US, may never pay the $675,000 judgment currently filed against him — but someone on his legal team will soon be paying something” , says Ars Technica . How so? Because judge Nancy Gertner (right), who’s been presiding over the farce since the beginning, has ruled both Tenenbaum and his lawyer, Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, are “jointly and severally liable” for some of the fees incurred by the RIAA during the trial, says the story. The ruling comes “after the defense team inexplicably posted the very songs at issue in the case to the Internet, and Nesson posted a public link on his blog for anyone to download them,” it says, adding: “The labels have until March 8 to file with the court ‘an affidavit containing an itemized statement of the expenses they incurred in filing the motion to compel’.” Nesson is on record as saying in his view, Joel caused no more than $21 in damages when he, Joel,  shared 30 songs online. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi Ars Technica – Charles Nesson, scourge of the labels, now must pay them, March 2, 2010 may never pay – RIAA ’statutory damages’ argument trashed?, February 19, 2010 $21 in damages – Tennebaum damages worth only $21: Nesson, February 24, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

RIAA ‘locking arms’ with Google

// February 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view RIAA:- “ In texting parlance, Google has finally had an OMG! moment when it comes to intellectual property. Unfortunately, it took this theft of their IP to flip on the switch.” That’s RIAA spinster-in-chief Mitch Bainwol writing in The DC on Google’s unfortunate experiences in China. The RIAA “has made some bizarre and totally nonsensical arguments in its time, but it may have just set a new low”, says TechDirt , referring to Bainwol’s wafflings in which he concludes: “With the light shining on Google, one of the 21st century’s business icons, perhaps we will see a renewed sense of purpose at home and abroad to protect the heritage and the future of our IP community. “And who knows, maybe Google will lock arms with us so we can say, ‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’.” The RIAA locking arms with Gargle? Interesting picture. Meanwhile, TechDirt goes on > > > castilho points us to an opinion piece written by RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol that tries to pin the blame for the Chinese hack of Google on Google’s opinion towards copyright . Seriously. Of course, the logical leaps and bounds you have to go through to make this sort of statement is a bit crazier than your average roller coaster, and in the process Bainwol seems to be implying both that those who give away anything for free are against content creation and that getting hacked actually has something to do with copyright law. In January, Chinese hackers infiltrated the systems of the biggest technology dog on the global block and, according to the company, stole Google’s intellectual property. I see where you’re going with this, but to compare hacked code being copied with fans sharing music (neither of which, by the way, is actually “stealing”) is so far off-base that it’s guffaw-inducing. In Google’s case, this was information for private use — not something protected by intellectual property law that it was trying to sell. The two situations are entirely different and, unlike Mitch Bainwol, the folks at Google clearly do understand the difference. In texting parlance, Google has finally had an OMG! moment when it comes to intellectual property. Unfortunately, it took this theft of their IP to flip on the switch. Ignoring the bizarre and slightly creepy attempt to sound hip, nothing in Google’s response suggests any change in opinion on the issue of intellectual property. That’s because, as stated above, the hack had nothing to do with intellectual property or intellectual property law. If it caused any sort of epiphany, it should have been in relation to the problems with gov’t mandated surveillance , which is what opened Google up to being hacked. Again this has nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual property law and everyone knows it. Except, apparently, Mitch Bainwol. Frankly, Google has never been very warm to the idea of copyright protections. Google routinely has sided with the “free access” (more aptly the “free of charge”) crowd against those who actually create the intellectual property. I can’t speak for Google, obviously, but my sense has always been that they actually do take copyright law incredibly seriously. They went out and hired one of the world’s foremost experts in copyright. But it’s that second sentence that is so amazingly wrong that I’d like to formally request that Mitch Bainwol and the RIAA issue an apology for being blatantly insulting to everyone who believes in the use of “free” as part of a smart business model. I’ll note, of course, that the RIAA itself has long used “free” in parts of their business model — and to then imply that this is against those who actually create intellectual property is obnoxious in the extreme. I create intellectual property every single day, as do people at Google, and many others who recognize the value of free content. To imply that those who understand basic economics are somehow “against” content creators is ridiculous. How can you claim that, when we spend so much time showing how content creators — including a bunch who the labels that Bainwol represents have clearly ripped off repeatedly — are now making more money by ignoring copyright and leveraging free to their advantage, often to make more money than any RIAA-label ever helped them make? Mitch, you owe all supporters of “free” an apology. Remember the Big G’s idea to digitize every book in the world and put it in their digital library? That went over so well that Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild of America sued to stop Google from creating the virtual library. Wait, what? A lawsuit, by itself, doesn’t mean anything. Mitch? The Authors Guild hasn’t won its lawsuit, and has admitted that the reason it settled was because a bunch of copyright experts told them they had a pretty good chance of losing the lawsuit to Google. Hell, the RIAA has been sued for racketeering a bunch of times. By Bainwol’s own logic here, the RIAA must be racketeers. Google argued that they were just trying to make the world a better place by making important works of literature available to people all over the globe. A rather egalitarian idea (unless you’re the authors and publishers who depend on people actually buying books in order for you to make a living). Yes, you heard it here first. The RIAA is apparently against people having more access to books. As for that final sentence, again, Bainwol is playing fast and loose with the facts. Google Books only showed mere snippets of books, and most authors found that when their books were available on Google books it helped them sell more and make a better living. Isn’t that the point? Or should we not be surprised that the guy who’s the spiritual leader of an industry that sued tens of thousands of its biggest fans and presided over the massive collapse of its revenue doesn’t quite understand how to focus on the actual bottom line results rather than making up false stats? Last month, Google found out just how dangerous free access to one’s property can be to one’s business model. Like Inspector Renault who is “shocked” to find gambling in Rick’s saloon in “Casablanca,” Google was “shocked” to find their systems hacked and their precious intellectual property stolen. Now, I’m not expecting Google to make a 180° turn and join us in our fight to protect IP the way Claude Raines joined Bogart to fight the Nazis, but perhaps Google will have a more reasonable view of the need to protect IP. Why? Seriously? Please explain how the hell intellectual property laws would have made the slightest difference here. You could have had the most powerful copyright laws in the world, and it would have had zero impact on the ability of Chinese hackers to break into Google’s servers. The hack had nothing to do with intellectual property laws. The problem here — and this is quite common with folks who don’t actually understand this topic — is that Bainwol is confusing intellectual property laws with the intellectual property (which isn’t actually property, but that’s another issue…). What’s the effect of IP theft on the U.S. economy? First, let’s look at the IP industry’s share of the economy. A 2007 International Intellectual Property Alliance study found 11.7 million people working in the total copyright industries. That’s 8.51 percent of the U.S. workforce. These industries help drive our nation’s economy. In 2007, IP companies added $1.52 trillion or 11.05 percent to the GDP. When people say “we don’t make anything in America anymore,” just hit them with those facts. I see your bogus $1.52 trillion dollars and raise you to $2.2 trillion . That’s the amount of the US economy dependent on exceptions to copyright law such as fair use. And that, by the way, is using the same methodology as your $1.52 trillion bogus number. And you know, companies like Google are a big part of those that rely on exceptions in copyright, such as fair use — something your organization has tried to deny exists. In cities and towns throughout America, the IP community creates good paying jobs that have an enormous, positive impact. Those jobs come with health care plans and retirement savings accounts. They benefit our cities and towns with increased tax revenues that help pay for the services we all need. See what Bainwol is doing here? He keeps shifting back and forth between content and IP laws, as if they’re the same thing. But they’re not. Most of those jobs don’t rely on IP laws to exist. In fact, as noted above, a much greater number rely on avoiding IP law through exceptions to have those jobs, with that even larger enormous, positive impact. Most importantly, the IP industries create products that are enjoyed the world over–games, movies, books, and of course, music. Yet every year, as broadband technology advances, intellectual property thieves become increasingly more sophisticated. The assaults grow more ferocious. The broader the broadband, the easier to steal copyrighted works. Mitch, those aren’t “IP industries.” They’re content industries, and a significant portion of their income doesn’t come because of IP laws. Hell, if we just look at your own industry, music, we see that a significant and growing portion is the part that doesn’t rely on IP laws at all. And please can the faux moral panic about broadband being to blame here. You and your organization have had well over a decade to learn how to adapt. Many in the music business have adapted . It’s just the organizations that you represent that have been resisting and making bad decisions — many under your leadership — that have resulted in nothing but greater and greater losses. This isn’t about broadband, but about a basic failure to adapt to a changing marketplace. Like our friends at Google, we fully support the adoption of broadband and the new and exciting opportunities it provides for consumers to enjoy movies, television programs and music. And that, right there, explains why you’re so far behind. You still don’t realize what the internet is. It’s a communication platform. It’s not for consumers to just enjoy music, television programs and music. It’s for them to communicate . You want to turn the internet into a broadcast medium when it’s a communications medium. The reason people share content online is because that’s what the internet is for . To communicate — and communication is just a way of sharing information. Until you understand that simple fact, you’re going to keep flailing. Yet there is no question that despite our extensive and innovative offerings of legal content, the levels of online and physical theft around the world extract a profound toll. That activity has a direct and harmful impact on American jobs and our economy. And as Google has found out, this illegal activity is exacerbated by the unwillingness of some–including some businesses and even some governments–to take reasonable steps to address these problems. As we know too well, IP theft has “enablers” all over the place. Again, no, what Google found out was that it needed better security, not stronger IP laws. If it is in the national interest to protect the millions of Americans who use Google’s services–and it is– it is also in the national interest to stop the theft of intellectual property. But doing so requires cooperation by other industries and a commitment on the part of government to take reasonable steps, both at home and abroad, to combat the harmful economic effects of IP theft. Again with the apples and oranges comparison. You’re still talking about two totally different things. And your readers know it. They’re not stupid. Why treat them as idiots who can’t tell the difference? Working with our partners in business and in government, we hope to ensure that the American intellectual property community remains a strong, vibrant world leader that helps fuel our nation’s economic resurgence. With the light shining on Google, one of the 21st century’s business icons, perhaps we will see a renewed sense of purpose at home and abroad to protect the heritage and the future of our IP community. Again, what Google needs is better security. But, given that one of the stellar moments under your watch was when the recording industry decided to place security-eviscerating rootkits on people’s computers in the form of DRM, perhaps we should prioritize computer security as an issue before we focus on your wasted effort to prop up an obsolete business model. “I try to take the folks at the RIAA seriously, but when they published something this ridiculous, insulting and wrong, it really makes you wonder”, says TechDirt. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi The DC – Google has reason to rethink IP, February 19, 2010 TechDirt – RIAA CEO Tries To Connect China Google Hack With Google’s Attitude Towards Copyright, February 25, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

A totally new copyright law

// February 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- “The word ‘ENFORCED’ says it all.” That’s p2pnet reader Songwriter in a comment post to our story on Obama copyright enforcement ‘czar’ Victoria Espinel’s attempts to get US citizens to tell her what to do about copyright. The answer is really easy, Virginia. Abolish it. But we know it’ll be some time before that happens and meanwhile, “After that word, I stopped reading the post” says Songwriter, asking, ” Why should anyone care about the enforcement of a senseless law?” Why indeed. The Reader’s Write goes on > > > What is really needed is a totally new copyright law that: 1. Can be understood by children. These are already copying internet content by using the “save as option” of any browse and that is a violation of copyright law as it is written. 2. Can be FULLY understood by anyone without consulting a lawyer that can probably answer no question except by saying it depends on the facts, the judge or the jury” or “it depends on who are the lawyers in a case”. 3. Allows the copying personal and non commercial use. 4. Classifies infringement as copying or performing for direct payment to the seller or performer, without authorization. 5. Prohibits the transfers of copyright ownership from authors to others other than heirs. 6. Prohibits claiming copyright ownership of public domain works by publishers even if these made “improvements” to the work. Make that a crime. All or almost all publishers are in the racket of doing this. 7. Require that books that have a mix of recent works and public domain work place the copyright notice on each page of each work that is not in the public domain. That way another publisher or person can re publish or perform or record the public domain ones without worrying about a lawsuit. 8. Require that the IRS (the tax department) audit (and publish the results or the data) record companies and publisher to see how much and to whom royalties were paid. A great deal of money laundering will end and artist will finally be paid. Thanks, Songwriter. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi tell her what to do – How should the US enforce copyrights?, February 25, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

FUC the FAC. Who needs them?

// February 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view Music | P2P:- “Increasingly, the mood of the zeitgeist is that rights owners are wasting their money by trying to control file-sharing. They are neither succeeding in their efforts nor acting with fiduciary responsibility to the content originators whom they are failing to recompense properly.  Their vain efforts at control are merely Canute like attempts to maintain an anachronism of a business model.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.  But I didn’t. The words are Jeremy Silver’s, former acting chairman of the Featured Artists Coalition which, it states , “campaigns for the protection of performers’ and musicians’ rights”. Does that mean FAC has finally seen the light — that it has done, or is about to do, another reversal on its file sharing policy? Sadly, not even nearly. It’s still rooting for Mandy Mandelson’s Three Strikes law. During the historic FAC  meeting at Air Studios in London, late last year, Lily Allen ’s, “intervention highlighted the conflicted feelings of many musicians and artists,” said Silver, going on: “On the one hand they recognise the incredible potential and value of the net — on the other hand they can’t feel entirely comfortable knowing that their ability to make a living from their own creativity is being reduced by the actions of millions of people who consume without valuing their work — because they can.” Having previously panned it, the FAC ended up endorsing, “The new proposal from Lord Peter Mandelson for the UK to adopt a policy of broadband account suspension to be applied to the heaviest sharers, the now famous ‘egregious’ offenders’.” It said in an official FAC statement > > > Our meeting … overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer`s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional. Now, “The Digital Economy Bill that is wending its glacial way through the UK parliament has produced an interesting row between the BPI (representing the interests of the major record labels) and the ISPs, telco’s and mobile network operators”, says Silver in a FAC post. “They are arguing over who should pay how much to fund remedial measures to clamp down on illegal file-sharing”, he says, noting: “The BPI is in a tough place since the cheaper they argue the cost will be, the more the ISPs respond by saying ‘well then you can pay for it.’ Minister Stephen Timms recently suggested the split should be 75/25 (with the BPI paying the greater amount).” Silver continues > > > The chorus demanding collective licensing of recording rights is growing ever louder. The argument is very simple, instead of spending money trying to stop file-sharing,  simply agree to monetise all the activity that is out there by licensing it, making it legal and charging for it. Essentially, this would create a baseline of revenue through a flat rate subscription which would legalise and remunerate the flow of music around the networks. The first point in the argument is that a small levy of say £3 per month per subscriber to every UK ISP would generate more than the current £1bn that the recorded music industry earns at dealer price today. It’s of course a moot point and hard to argue without a) trying out a version of it somewhere small and harmless and b) seeking the active cooperation of the ISPs in trying to envisage how it might work. The second point is that we could build added value services on top of the baseline revenues.  Services like recommendation and discovery engines, market/user analysis and data-crunching, ticket sales and gig guides, digital bundling with physical products, quality of service – higher speed delivery solutions, etc, etc. What’s not to like? And what’s not to recognise – when all of these kinds of products and services are already being offered by up-and-coming businesses out there online. One objection from the majors to this, of course, is that these kinds of businesses are not owned or controlled by them and they are all broadly based on the presumption of access to all content – not on the nurturing and distribution of some sub-segment of it.  It’s true of course that innovation comes from elsewhere. They don’t own or control these new kinds of companies – although as we’ve seen very publicly with Spotify – the majors do take a stake if the market-entrant foolish enough to seek to jump over the licensing hurdle. The cost of jumping is very high – in cash and in equity.  If we can’t continue to feed our old business model, the majors argue,  how will we nurture and develop new talent? We invest in talent for the UK and make it internationally successful and these new ideas do not support that model, they protest. The problem is that they are spending a lot of money defending the old model and it’s hard to find evidence of a single major record company investing in new ways of nurturing talent or developing artists careers online or offline. The nature of the recording contract has not fundamentally changed in fifty years – it has simply evolved recently to try to encompass even broader areas of an artist’s creative output. So what might be the total added value of all these kinds of new services which live on top of the content?  Nobody knows, but clearly the opportunity is very significant. In fact it is so great that, in my view, it exceeds the value of the entire recorded music and live industries put together. After all,  it represents what the architecture of the new digital content industry will look like. If we can shift from compulsory control (which has failed) to compulsory remuneration (which is highly feasible) then we can allow file-sharers to go crazy in consumption and we can all make money. Independent labels (like Beggars Banquet and other smaller labels) are increasingly seeing the economic arguments in favour of the new model. The Zelnick report just published in France has recommended it. The UK Music Manager Forum has been calling for it for nearly a year. The UK music industry group called the Value Recognition Strategy group has been planning to trial a version of this on the Isle of Man for about eighteen months, but the major labels and the music publishers have prevented it. Universal music themselves proposed a form of collective license for unlimited downloads to the Virgin Media group for their music service and this has not launched due to the objections of the other major labels. Running out ahead of the crowd,  a group of thinkers with a great deal of experience and insight into digital media has been proposing this for some time. Myself, Pete Jenner, Gerd Leonhard, Paul Sanders, Paul Hitchman, Matthew Brown and occasionally our cousin Jim Griffin in the US have been meeting for about five years to develop the thinking around this. But we have often felt ourselves to be in the wilderness. Jim has been trying to work through the issues with his Choruss group courtesy of Warner Music in the US but his proposed trials on US university campuses have yet to launch – hopefully we will see some action this year. Meanwhile, the UK Government’s Digital Britain programme has spawned Digital Test Beds which are being managed by the Technology Strategy Board and which may become precisely the kind of platform that could help try out some of these new models in a relatively risk free fashion – and with some public subsidy – how enlightened is that? [ Jim Griffin, eh? Actually, it's not 'courtesy of': it's for, and on behalf, of. Choruss is Warner Music's  failing effort to scam American universities into taking on a licensing scheme described by TechDirt's Mike Masnick as a 'bait and switch' operation.] Of course all sorts of issues remain unresolved, desperately in need of further practical examination. It’s only when you try things out in the real world that interested unexpected questions surface and can start to be resolved. If a collective license were compulsory how could artists protect their moral rights? On what kinds of grounds would it be legitimate for an artist to refuse permission for their work to be used?  It is perhaps not well understood or recognised, but today’s songwriters, lyricists and composers enjoy the fruits of a compulsory license by law. But should the law be reviewed for other matters? What is the relationship between the statutory license fee and the contractual sums agreed between artists and publishers? How do we balance the economic needs of creators against the creative competition of the market place? Perhaps artists should be arguing for statutory minimum royalties for any contract – over and above which publishers could offer premiums according to the status and value potential of the artist? What kinds of new agency should we establish that could collect and administer royalties appropriately and with the lightest touch enabled by technology? How could we group rights together using their meta-data tags so that they can be handled with the maximum efficiency and rights owners can get paid in real time – not with the kind of 15% overhead charge and six month delays that are the norm among current collecting agencies? Silver adds: “The Digital Economy Bill has not helped any of these discussions surface. It has sought to listen to the high cost lobbying efforts of the incumbents and paid little attention to long view policy proposals.  It has found political expediency in the short termism of the big business driven by quarterly results rather than really trying to place the country’s long term benefit at the forefront of its objectives.” The pretentiously titled “Air Statement” So what of the FAC decision to back Mandelson’s version of the corporate entertainment industry’s Three Strikes law? Having initially said they were against it , they did a total about face . Said FAC member Akira The Don not long afterwards > > > So, there you have it. With that pretentiously titled “Air Statement” The FAC have announced that they are taking the Metallica route. They have revealed themselves to be greedy, backward, vindictive crybabies. So fuck them. Who wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with Adriano Buffone  from Raygun and Timothy Rice-Oxley from Keane anyway? Are they going to personally sign the “warning letters”? “Dear naughty filesharer, I want more port, no more broadband for you, yours Timothy Rice-Cuntly, Oxford.” Come friendly bombs and blow these sad fucks to smithereens!  I was not joking when I said that! I mean. Really. “A three-strike sanction”? Who’d you pricks think you are, Rudy Gulliani? Rockefeller laws for file sharers? Are you fucking insane? Damn! You foolish, foolish people! These are not the seventies! Things are different now! Time has marched on and left you behind! You are dead meat! The wind changed, and you got stuck making a really stupid face! I feel sorry for you, but swear down, I will not have anything to do with you. (Goddamnit, there’s a photo of me looking celebratory on their homepage. I am embarrassed) So goodbye FAC. Groucho was right, and I have learned my lesson. In his new FAC post, Silver winds up: “Perhaps the time is right to turn to Brussels for hope in this area with its broader perspective and more radical agenda — despite the bureaucracy and opacity of process — maybe change can be effected across all of Europe?” a2f2a.com My friend Billy Bragg is one of the FAC board members who voted for the Three Strikes measure. Later, he and I started a2f2a.com under the premise artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them. Billy recently decided he’d had enough of the way things were going and quit. I was, and am, sorry to see him vanish into the sunset. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I, however, think things are really starting to come together on a2f2a, and I still believe in its goals to: Help each community better understand the other; Help find a practical and workable system which offers artists fair remuneration in exchange for access to material by fans; and Help set the agenda for discussions about the role P2P can play within the emergent digital record industry. So a2f2a.com is still online and with that in mind, I recently posted a2f2a Massive Monster Mash in which I said > > > I have a totally insane idea. a2f2a.com was started with the idea of putting fans and musicians together. So let’s put them together. All in one place. The UK is where most of the (in)action is happening at the moment, so let’s organise a concert — a Massive Monster Mash — specifically so fans and musicians can meet in the same place at the same time and trade thoughts and opinions … … artists to fans to artists. Have half-a-dozen bands, say, not on a stage, but in a performing area surrounded by fans.  They’d each do a short set, break, talk to fans via roaming mics/cameras broadcast live on X number of big screens so everyone could see and hear, and then the next band would take its turn. And so on. Film and tape it and turn it into a documentary for free release online, and for showing in offline cinemas. That’s one way we’d make it clear the Rock Tsars aren’t where it’s at. Devilish Presley’s Jacqui and Johnny are both in the UK and the other day I was talking to them about this. They reckon it would take six months or so to put such an event together. Could it be done more quickly? Either way, IMHO, it’d be a great opportunity for a documentary/film maker or two, half-a-dozen bands and who knows how many fans to make it clear who’s really in charge. I know, I know. It’s an insane idea and I haven’t really thought it through. But anyway … And isn’t this kind of thing what a2f2a.com is all about? And it would be a media magnet with the focus on us instead of them . It’ll take a huge amount of work and effort. But it can be done. Cheers! And all the best. And stay tuned … Jon Newton – p2pnet | a2f2a - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi FAC – License to Control?, February 15, 2010 total about face – Dear Ed O’Brien …, January 23, 3010 Akira The Don – F the FAC, September 30, 2009 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

Tennebaum damages worth only $21: Nesson

// February 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p

p2pnet view P2P | RIAA:- Joel tennenbaum, ordered to pay the Big 4 labels $675,000 in damages for allegedly sharing 30 songs online, caused no more than $21 in damages, says his lawyer, Harvard University professor Charles Nesson (left). Nesson told US district court judge Nancy Gertner the 1999 federal law a jury applied when calculating damages caused by his client, Joel Tenenbaum, had “produced absurd results” and a grossly excessive award that “violated Tenenbaum’s constitutional rights”, says the Boston Globe . “If Tenenbaum had bought the songs legally on iTunes, Nesson said, the student would have paid 99 cents for each, and Apple would have passed on 70 cents for each to the labels, bringing the total damage to $21″ he argued, according to the story, which has him stating: ” ‘The idea that somehow Congress has done this,’ Nesson said of the federal law passed in 1999, ‘it’s almost like an insult to the Congress’.” But, “This defendant has no one to blame but himself,” says Big 4 lawyer Timothy M. Reynolds in the Globe postk, which adds Gertner “took the matter under advisement but was openly sympathetic to Tenenbaum, a 26-year-old doctoral student in physics, who sat with his legal team in the courtroom. “I’m not saying it was wrong to bring the case … or to hold people’s feet to the fire” for copyright infringement, Gertner told Reynolds. But she asked, “Is there another case in the galaxy that’s held up damages to that degree?” Well actually, judge Gertner, there is. Tennebaum’s $675,000 is almost paltry against the almost two million dollars Jammie-Thomas-Rasset was originally ordered to pay the labels for supposedly sharing 24 songs on the net, and who’s shortly to endure a third civil trial. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi Boston Globe – Lawyer argues illegal downloader only caused $21 in damage, February 23, 2010 two million dollars – Third RIAA trial for Jammie Thomas-Rasset, February 11, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -

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