RIAA Attacks Sites Participating in Its Own Campaign

An anonymous reader writes "The RIAA is once again at their old tricks. The band Nine Inch Nails has intentionally 'leaked' songs via USB keys hidden at restrooms during their current European tour. Sites hosting the songs are now being sent cease and desist orders. 'Ironically, with its numerous pirated downloads available, the whole album has not leaked yet. According to a source, the only leaks are the ones Reznor approved himself. And whether he realizes it or not, Reznor may be building a new option for presenting music that augments the existing CD/tour scenario.'"

Re:Huh?

[Crazy Man on Fire]

Exactly. Just because they authorized the distribution of some promo copies of an upcoming release doesn't mean that the people in possession of those promos are authorized to distribute them to others. Yes, it is stupid of them to be killing the buzz around the album by sending these takedown notices, but I don't think they have a choice but to go after the people violating copyright.

Re:Huh?

[iminplaya]

(Score:0, Troll)

Those who "defend" copyright can no longer make a logical argument for it(keeping these laws on the books now requires a certain amount bribery), so now they moderate.

Re:Huh?

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

When lawsuits are brought against copyright violators, the plaintiff is oftentimes the label - NOT the RIAA. The RIAA is acting on behalf of the label. The label signed off on the promotion.

Nothing new

[jlcooke]

The Barenaked ladies did this in their last tour to support their "Barenaked for the Holidays" album.

USB + MP3 + concert.

Not to take away from Trent, big fan of his and the 'Ladies.

Re:Huh?

[gregmac]

It's not even necessarily infringing. Case in point, open source. The authors of the work still hold the copyrights, but they've effectively granted a license to distribute it freely (GPL, BSD, etc).

Re:Has anyone

[operagost]

Granted nin has been downhill since downward spiral

That seems logical.

If they didn't like the marketing campaign...

[dfay]

What do you think they'll make of this?

Trent Reznor has put the full album up on the official website for promotional purposes.
http://yearzero.nin.com/ [nin.com]

(no reg: http://yearzero.nin-thespiral.com/FLJoi4gjw2f/play er.html?reg=no [nin-thespiral.com])

This is the first RIAA-produced album I'm considering breaking my boycott for. First, because it's very good, and secondly, because even if they may get some profit from it, the message to them should be very clear.

Re:Security Standpoint

[RainierSnow]

been done already :)

check here http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/08/215 1222 [slashdot.org]

Re:USB Flash Drive RISKS

[freedomlinux]

Yes, Windows will autorun a USB device.
Solution #0: run Linux or Mac OS X
Solution #1: override Windows autorun by holding Shift as the device is inserted.
(Hold it until the device is shown in My Computer)

Re:USB Flash Drive RISKS

[MulluskO]

Hold the shift key to disable autorun.

Fixed.

Re:This is a matter of point of view

[Jaysyn]

There is no such thing as copyright "agreement". Maybe you're getting confused with licensing. Copyright is bestowed upon creation of a work.

Re:was part of an alternate reality game

[Rob T Firefly]

Yeah, for a few weeks my inbox was peppered with email from friends along the lines of "there's this weird NIN thing, I think it's computer hacker stuff, you're a nerd right?"

Much of it is actually fairly brilliant, the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] is worth a once-over if you haven't been following things. I'm especially impressed with the fact that they hid a picture in the spectrogram of one of the songs.

Which brings me back to this article.. NIN wasn't just leaking music tracks, they were distributing clues which were part of this whole ARG thing. As such, they were obivously counting on the tracks being further distributed, unless they really believed that the one person who picked up the USB stick in the bathroom would just happen to be a steganography buff or whatever. People were supposed to throw these tracks around and analyse the crap out of them.

Bad article

[cwilly]

The article does a horrible job of explaining the campaign. Here are http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070402/music_nm/ninei nchnails_dc;_ylt=AgIXkKsEUNycFRi_5MtSiIeVEhkF [yahoo.com]two http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/20 07/02/22/year-zero-project-way-cooler-than-lost/ [rollingstone.com]si tes that do a better job. This "new thing" everyone is talking about has less to do with the fact that he's giving music away on USB keys and more to do with the series of sites that are linked together and help promote the album. The first site's address to be "discovered" by fans was given in highlighted letters on a tour t-shirt. From there, further "codes" were solved and those lead to other sites, all related to NIN and the album. The keys/songs are just bonus material for fans at the concerts. The sites, with the USB keys, with the tour, with the album is what they are buzzing about, not just the USB keys.

Re:This is a matter of point of view

[linhux]

If isn't clearly marked as being not copyrighted, then it is. In general, everything copyrightable is copyrighted by default, unless the author puts it into the public domain (or the author could attach a license to it (such as Creative Commons), but then it'll still be copyrighted, just with some extra freedoms).

Re:I think you're the confused one

[shark72]

"The sad reality is that most bands have to give up their copyrights to the record company to get their first record deals. That's why some of the early Beatles songs are owned by Michael Jackson and not the Beatles themselves."

Not hardly. The Beatles were making too much money on royalties and were losing 90% of their income to taxes (the UK does not, or at least did not, have the caps on personal income tax that US residents enjoy). So, they formed Northern Songs as a corporation to manage the publishing rights, so the revenue would be capital gains, rather than income. This was a tax dodge created by the Beatles themselves well after their first record deal, and the record company had nothing to do with it.

And keep in mind that we're talking about the publishing rights to the Beatles songs, not the recordings. Even when artists do own the publishing rights (and many, if not most, do), artists still typically don't have the right to distribute recordings on their own -- those rights are owned by the record label.

Re:Huh?

[Xtravar]

Nothing Records and the studio in New Orleans are defunct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Records [wikipedia.org]

Re:OMG copyright makes no sense

[broohaha]

Your post isn't as silly as you thought. people in south America had to pay north American corporations for clean drinking water not so long back. If they refused to pay, their water was just cut off.

I don't recall the company, or country involved, I saw a documentary on it last year.

Company was a subsidiary of Bechtel. Country was Bolivia.

Here's a link [pbs.org] to a piece by PBS.

Re:OMG copyright makes no sense

[broohaha]

I don't recall the company, or country involved, I saw a documentary on it last year.

The company was a Bechtel subsidiary. And the country was Bolivia. Check out this piece [pbs.org] that PBS did on the water crisis in Bolivia.

Re:Huh?

[billcopc]

Regardless of your opinion of NIN's artistic integrity, Trent Reznor is a self-produced artist. His label, Nothing Records, is in limbo right now over legal woes with his former manager and business partner, John Malm Jr. It is still legally operating, but the owners are going through rough times as Reznor recently won a law suit against Malm for a significant chunk of money. It is speculated that one will buy out the other's half at some point in the near future.

What I'd like to know is what authority does the RIAA have in these matters ? Can they legally "defend" an independent label ? Were they called upon to pursue litigation by either Reznor (unlikely) or Malm (very likely, but I never liked him to begin with) ? Could this be a sign that the RIAA's members release so much filth that they can't even keep track of what's theirs ? It's somewhat common for the RIAA to claim damages on things they don't even own, as many suits have been thrown out of court on such premises.

Re:I think you're the confused one

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't all work copyrighted by default, whether accompanied by a notice or not?

It is safest to assume all work is copyrighted and you do not have permission to redistribute unless you are explicitly told otherwise.

Re:Huh?

[cpt kangarooski]

Because the costs of producing any work are non-trivial, and these works on the whole do enrich and further society as well as our individual lives a system to reward the production of such works should be in place.

Almost.

First, many works are trivially produced. Look at the average /. post, for example. Secondly, and more importantly, we should only encourage the production of works where the costs of that encouragement are less than the benefits that those works provide to society (where the types of benefits are 1) having the work created and distributed and 2) having the work be in the public domain so that it can be enjoyed freely). It doesn't make much sense to encourage the creation of works when the costs of doing so would be detrimental to the public even accounting for the benefit of having that work exist. This means that there are limits to how much copyright is best to have, and these limits have nothing to do, really, with where artists or publishers think that they ought to be.

Re:Huh?

[cpt kangarooski]

Given that deposit was mandatory for a long, long time, they'll have no difficulty being that busy. Hell, how did you think they got such a large collection to begin with? Of course, you'd also see a tremendous number of works enter the public domain, since most works are not felt by their authors to be important enough to be worth taking even the slightest step to get a copyright. And if that's what the author thinks, who are we to go against their judgment and give them copyrights anyway? Authors who are encouraged by copyrights to create works will actively seek out copyrights. Authors who don't care will ignore getting copyrights and would have created the work anyway.

Re:I think you're the confused one

[SonicSpike]

No - just because you physically possesses the medium containing the material does not give you authorization to reproduce or distribute it. The courts have already determined this.

All creative works are copyrighted the instant that they are "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" which means recorded, drawn, written down, typed up, digitized, etc...

I am an audio engineer, I have a degree in the recording industry, and I took 2 semesters of copyright law in college.