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Legal Music Sharing Returns To MIT
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Oct 25, 2004 06:48 AM
from the swallows-to-san-juan-capistrano dept.
from the swallows-to-san-juan-capistrano dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students relaunched MIT's believed-legal music sharing network today, using a Linux-based consumer audio device that also launches today as a commercial product. The 'Library Access to Music Project' (LAMP) system was first launched a year ago, but shut down after its content supplier encountered legal hurdles. The re-incarnated LAMP is based on StreetFire Sound's RBX1600, which network-enables multiple inexpensive consumer audio jukeboxes. So... what do you think? Does the new version look legal?"
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Is it legal? (Score:5, Funny)
Serious potential (Score:5, Informative)
"Does the new version look legal?"
Of course it looks legal, but is it enough to avoid lawsuits? Very unlikely. MIT is the very place where the hacker culture were born, so obviously it is the first place for RIAA to keep an eye on.
Re:Serious potential (Score:5, Insightful)
1. She doesn't own the CDs in question and can't claim Fair Use
2. She doesn't have permission from the copyright holders to make copies
Now what *I* want to know is:
If I own a game (like SSX 3 or DDR) that has a soundtrack, but I don't have the means to rip the tunes myself under Fair Use, how does my downloading the tracks from someone else fit into Fair Use/Copyright/DMCA?
And yes, I understand the person distributing the tracks to me is almost certainly in violation, even if I do have a clear right to receive...
GTRacer
- Needs a DVD burner...
Re:Serious potential (Score:4, Informative)
Your mom is not allowed to make copies of those CD's. Is it enforcable? No.
She might like to know that due to the Patriot Act, the government can check her library records whenever they want and not tell anyone about their inquiry. Of course, it's suppose to only be if she's a possible terrorist threat. But that hasn't stopped them busting dope dealers under the 'terrorist threat'.
Personally, I don't think the RIAA wants to tackle the 'library problem'. First of all, it's not that popular of a practice. It's also quite tedious. But those things aside, I'd say the RIAA would never want to undermine a library. That's just to close to home to voting parents, and would really paint them in a bad picture.
does it MATTER (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:does it MATTER (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up +5 insightful but sad.
Re:does it MATTER (Score:5, Funny)
Now there's a thought. If you throw a lawyer at someone and miss, does the lawyer bounce? Or just make a nasty squelching noise?
Re:does it MATTER (Score:5, Funny)
Neither. He'll just send you a bill.
Not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
-sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
-photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
-MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.
The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
Re:Not so sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you sure about this? RIAA minions are doing bright lining ever since the topic came up, and were able to promote/force their interpretation of law and its spirit via media to the public by doing this, thus making it easier to lobby laws that in turn better fit the now-common interpretation of the law.
Bright lining is a Good Thing(tm). It shows that the law is ambiguous and need clarification, and that the public has not one, but more interpretations of the spirit of the law
Re:Not so sure (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not so sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Like, for example, the bit about copyrights being time-limited, so lets just extend them every twenty years? This "bright-lining" is going on on both sides of the game. Why should one side respect the rules, when the other side is bribing the referees?
What was once a "socially beneficial copyright law" is now a no-holds-barred money-grab. It's not exactly the *AAs fault though; it was never their mandate to give a stuff about citizens. That's the government's job (and, by extension, the voters), and they seem to be asleep at the wheel.
MIT Paid and Licensed it (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one, other than you, is claiming that their contract requires "Adverts", "Incomplete songs" & "Unscheduled recordings", "degraded analogue" or any other such condition.
No IP (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you link to some examples? I actually believe that the system could work full well without IP laws. If you want innovation and creativity, you can sponsor them by other means. I would like to see the evidence to the contrary you appear to know about, so I can revise my views.
The core issue is not legality... (Score:5, Interesting)
The core issue is how long we will have to wait until supply meets demand. There is a demand for technology like this, but thr RIAA and its peers realize stuff like this empowers consumers... thus they feel threatened.
This will ultimately be legal, regardless of wether it is now. One only has to wonder how much tax money (in god knows how many nations) will have to be spent on pointless lawsuits until we, the consumers, can finally get what we want at a reasonable price.
I'm no lawyer, (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it really different from p2p filesharing? (Score:5, Interesting)
read the article (Score:5, Insightful)
The full article clearly stated that MIT *HAS* a license:
LAMP distributes music in analog form, over MIT's cable TV network, which enables it to be covered by licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, in much the same way that the campus radio station is covered.
This means that they pay 2 cents or whatever for each song played. The RIAA *is* getting their money. Everything appears to be legal since its an analogue broadcast over the cable network at MIT. It basically is a radio station using wires instead of wireless.
Since they have a contract, why is this even a question? Why are so many people already claiming that its bordreline or the RIAA will sue even if its legal. The RIAA doesnt go after radio stations, yes they pay to play the music, but they dont do it. Why would they because MIT is doing it on their TV network rather than via RF?
I am ow wondering how many people read the articles before posting replies to /.
What will this accomplish? (Score:3, Insightful)
"LAMP distributes music in analog form, over MIT's cable TV network, which enables it to be covered by licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses such as BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, in much the same way that the campus radio station is covered."
Bye-bye to the permissve "licenses MIT already has with copyright clearinghouses". Nice knowin' ya.
Not to mention:
"Copyright restrictions on analog distribution systems are more permissive than those on digital systems, because the lossy nature of analog-to-digital conversion prevents perfect copies from being made."
So long "permissive analog distributions", you're now marked for death also.
This whole MIT thing is a perfect example of the "lalala, I'm not touching you!" approach to the existing laws. These MIT folks are working up to the letter of the law, but raping its spirit. Maybe the laws are too vague, but stunts like this will surely rectify that...
Slink-e did this 6 years ago. (Score:3, Informative)
Guess they never heard of the Slink-e, which has been around for more than 6 years. In fact, it's so old it was just discontinued a couple months ago!
http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm
Sure, it doesn't handle the audio side, but that's pretty trivial to do.
Is it OK? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it OK to steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family? Should it then be OK to steal music to entertain my boring family?
Bread bought and paid for (Score:4, Insightful)
MIT bought and paid for its license, is fully within its license and is not doing anything outside the scope of what its paid for.
Is it OK for my family to eat the bread I bought?
Re:if there existed... (Score:4, Insightful)
And yes, I have done this, I have "released to the wild" a widely used implementation and customization idea that I made zero on beyond initital cost of development basically, once with a tool (a specialty wrench design) and once with a very common mode of transport used daily by millions,(I built one of the first prototypes of what evolved into the "mountain bike" concept back in the 70s, and I know that one large company copied the design and started selling them, and I am happy so many people found the idea useful and have run with it,and,although I don't claim exclusivity to it,the concept, I do know from research there were only a handful of fellow bike developers doing this at the time I did my own version of it, there certainly weren't any you could buy on the market), and also I released freely quite a lot of "IP" in the form of writings in the past. It doesn't bother me that those things have been copied by others and improved upon/used whatever. None whatsoever. In fact, the tool I developed I have a few example of where others have adapted and made their own versions, they were freely given to me by THOSE developers.
I share, if you don't want to, that's your business, but if you can copy what I do easily and cheaply, please go for it if that is your interest.
There's a significant difference between copying and stealing. Theft-stealing- means you've taken something from someone and they no longer have it. Copying is not theft, you still have yours, it's fully intact. The word "copy" is what is in dispute and is contentious now. It used to be that it was illegal to teach serfs/slaves to read, or for anyone other than the monks or royals could have "copies" of writings. Times changed. I want times to keep changing, and I see current US style "copyright" as being little different from the exclusivity laws that existed in the middle ages. If they had kept up with the original US design, and exactly followed technological advances, I wouldn't have a problem with it as much, but they haven't, they want to extend it and go bass-ackwards back to the middle ages concept, and I think that's a bad idea.
I personally don't download MP3s or movies or whatever, but I don't consider folks who do that to be heinous criminals either, nor do I consider it "theft" either technically or ethically, although I will grant that the current law structure makes no such distinctions and treats the two words as if they were the same.
I think that law is an ass, a complete absurdity. It is feudalistic in nature now because of our technological advances. It is medieval-level dismal. That is my opinion only of course, and you are welcome to your "me-me-me mine it's all mine" concept, that is your decision to make. I'll make an effort to not touch "your stuff", no problems. If you don't want folks to play with your ball on the playground, that is perfect
A legal way to share music? (Just another idea) (Score:5, Interesting)
If I buy a CD, I have the right ("first sale") to sell it again, or give it away. [provided that I don't keep a copy] I also have several hundred discs, but I can only listen to one at a time.
How about a system for buying and selling discs in realtime? Two questions need to be addressed:
1)If I physically destroy the original CD, am I allowed to sell the backup? Does this apply to an electronic copy if, as soon as I pass it on, I destroy my original?
2)In order to save bandwidth, is it necessary to destroy the orignal, or is it sufficient to render it unplayable? Obviously, I'd want to re-purchase it at some time, and a 650MB download is a pain. Would some form of cryptographic token suffice?
As far as I can tell, such a system would work effectively if everyone has at least say 10 CDs that they own at any time, so that the requested track would almost always be available from someone. I know it would be legal if I were to pass on the physical disc, but that requires a personal meeting. Is it possible to automate this?
Re:You Just Don't Get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the question was always the extent of coverage their existing broadcast licenses gave them and how those licenses were to be interpreted in the light of digital vs. analog and wired vs. wireless transmissions.
Fair use is most often brought up with respect to my rights to do what I want with stuff that I buy within the boundaries of my own home, like format shift to use my favorite devices. No, "fair use" is not a cast-in-stone definition, and it's very weakly protected. We all know that perfectly well be now. But some of us believe that all "use" of copyrighted materials that does not involve redistribution should not fall under copyright legislation at all, and thus should be "unregulated" use. Do we always have to agree with current legislative or jurisprudential standards? And are we idiots if we think the courts and lawyers have mucked things up over the last few years over pure FUD spread by parts of the content industry?