arstechnica.com — The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing, the EFF goes for the jugular and shows that the RIAA's entire approach is wrong.
Jun 23, 2008 View in Crawl 4
belzoradonJun 23, 2008
Rock! how much?... no really i want one!(hope it doesnt infringe on the EFF's copyrights =P hehe)
Closed AccountJun 23, 2008
Let's say someone knows that I've committed a crime. Then they contact me and offer to forget about it for a sum of money. I believe this is called blackmail. So why is MediaSentry not being slapped with blackmail charges?
pentaliveJun 24, 2008
What I am saying is that Media Defender can't download it if it is not "Made available" first. Sure making is available is not enough, but If anyone downloads it then there has been distribution. "anyone"? Isn't Media defender a part of "anyone"?
andronJun 24, 2008
If you find that both "Bob" and "Alice" have an identical MP3 file how do you know whether bob sent it to alice or alice sent it to bob?Even if it had a comment in the ID3 tags why does that matter? I can create an MP3 file that has "Ripped by Goerge W. Bush" in the ID3 tag, it's hardly trustworthy is it?Also if you start with 2 identical CDs and they are ripped with the same version of the software with the same settings won't the MP3 files by be the same?Of course one might say what is the chance of that? On Linux distributions, everyone with the same release would have identical ripping software. The CD ripper has it's own settings so those would be the same for everyone. The ID3 information is fetched from some online database so that would always be the same. The only way that the MP3s would differ would be if the time the CD was ripped was encoded in the tags. So all you have to do is erase that and then there is no way to tell whether 10 people have individually ripped 10 CDs with the same software or whether the file was shared (or any combination, i.e. p1 ripped it and didn't share it, p2 ripped it and shared it with p3-10).
andronJun 24, 2008
The argument is no Media Defender is not "anyone", they are authorised by the rights holder and thus the copy they made was authorised (I Am Not A Lawyer). Did you even *read* the article (what am I thinking this is digg!).It says:"It is axiomatic that a copyright owner cannot infringe her own copyright," says the brief in its concluding section. "By the same token, an authorized agent acting on behalf of the copyright owner also cannot infringe any rights held by that owner. Accordingly, where the only evidence of infringing distribution consists of distributions to authorized agents of the copyright owner, that evidence cannot, by itself, establish that other, unauthorized distributions have taken place."<a class="user" href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080622-eff-attacks-foundation-of-riaa-lawsuit-campaign.html">http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080622-eff- ...</a>
containimatedJun 24, 2008
I drink lots of prune juice, record myself on the toilet and label it with popular song titles.
tendonutJun 24, 2008
From my post: "The rake wasn't hidden or protected..it was sitting in my unfenced front lawn."Not all yards are surrounded by fences and locked gates. Actually, only people with dogs have fences around the BACK yard, let alone the front. At least that is how it is here in ol' Niagara Falls, and it is not exactly what I would call a safe city, even in the LaSalle or Deveaux area.
cjw314Jun 24, 2008
Wow... so no one even called me a dumbass for not showing the shirt design? Only 2 diggy downs for the mistake? I'm ashamed of you...fwiw, <a class="user" href="http://www.cafepress.com/studio314">http://www.cafepress.com/studio314</a> now has the shirts for sale. /sigh