EMI Says Online File Storage Is Illegal 405
WiglyWorm writes "MP3tunes CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service."
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tough. The pervasive use of automotive vehicles has put a lot of blacksmiths out of business. But would the world really be a better place if we had stuck to using horse drawn carts?
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes; exactly.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>"People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago."
Well then, supplement your CDs with sales of MP3 singles. The singles market is going through the roof, and if you provided your customers with a place to buy and download MP3 singles, you'd probably be a popular stop for the teen and 20-something market.
ADJUST to the needs of your customers.
If they are demanding singles, don't hand them CDs.
Give them singles; give them what they want.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:2, Insightful)
iTunes is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is this about some obscure difference between online storage and online storage?
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't care if record stores go out of business, since it's clear that online downloads has won as the successor to the CD format, I do care about copyright. Online distribution without compensating the copyright holder will cause the arts to suffer. Yes, artists are getting ripped off by music companies, that will change as online downloads dramatically decreases the cost of distributing the work to the people. There are already companies that will list you on iTunes while leaving the copyright in your possession. The artists still get compensated in a way they find meaningful. Just because you don't like how they are treated doesn't mean you have the right to give their works away for free, thus removing all revenue they would generate for the work. An artist who finds a way to give their works away for free while still earning money on those works is making the choice, which is well within their rights, but it is NOT within your rights to make that choice for them.
Copyright serves a purpose, yes it's misused, yes the way works is sent out to the masses can be improved, but artists need to know they can earn a living worthy enough to create works. Yes, they can earn a great deal of money playing live shows, but do you honestly realize how hard it is on a person to tour? People have left bands that were earning them millions of dollars because they missed their wives! These are human beings, not some commodity to be used at your discretion.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It probably is illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
They are NOT distributing it !!!
Distribute - verb (used with object), -uted, -uting.
1. to divide and give out in shares; deal out; allot.
2. to disperse through a space or over an area; spread; scatter.
3. to promote, sell, and ship or deliver (an item or line of merchandise) to individual customers, esp. in a specified region or area.
4. to pass out or deliver (mail, newspapers, etc.) to intended recipients.
5. to divide into distinct phases: The process was distributed into three stages.
6. to divide into classes: These plants are distributed into 22 classes.
They are not dividing the file into pieces, nor sharing it amongst any other parties. They are merely serving it back to the original owner when requested. I would imagine that definitions 3 and 4 could apply, but ONLY in the context of the original owner
Your argument is like accusing a bank of "distributing" your money when you pay a cheque into the bank and then use an ATM at a different branch to withdraw the SAME money that BELONGS TO YOU !!!
The way it seems to run, this isn't a common carrier thing that is being run in good faith, like say any random hosting company, this is a company that is advertising that it will distribute copies of music that you bought from someone else to you on any device you want.
There's that word again
That changes the rules, they can't do that without a license, even if you have 5000 copies at home.
When I purchase a CD, fair use says I may make backup copies for my own personal use. It does not dictate that those backup copies MUST remain within my own home, otherwise anyone with a cassette tape in their car that they copied from a CD they own would also be "breaking the law" everytime the car left the driveway.
If I choose to put my copies in a bank, they remain my property, and the bank does not "distribute" them to ANY third party. Likewise if I choose to store my data in an online file storage repository, and said repository ONLY returns that data to me when I supply MY username and password, it is exactly the same thing.
Don't let your shortsightedness blind you to the reality
Re:Jumping to conclusions again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The product has become dangerous. We used to buy 12 inch LP's, cut tapes for the car, play them with slides, etc. They have gotten the word out that most of these activities are now a legal liability that can cost you thousands of dollars. My peak piracy days 30 years ago was my peak purchasing days. The average then for the population was 2 LP purchases / year per capita in the USA.
My kids have grown up with iPods and the like. The music prices haven't changed. They have 30 Gig players and you still charge dribble prices for content. If the petrolium industry sold gas like you sell music, we would be arriving with empty 16 gallon tanks and finding the stuff in pretty packages that will fit nicely in your shirt pocket. Alternative fuel is the order of the day just like alternative distribution. The players have changed. The product value has changed. Back catalog is sold at full retail. There is no exchange or upgrade path for worn media. Care to exchange some 8 track tapes and Compact Cassette tapes? I have the full license to play them, but you don't back the license to ensure I am able to enjoy it.
Why is no one buying CDs?
That one is simple. I'm supprised you had to ask, but in no paticular order...
1 The loudness war
2 High prices for little content
3 Competition for the entertainment dollar (pay TV, satelite radio, cell phones, computer games, MP3 players, and others that had no or little presense 30 years ago.)
4 Retaliation for the industry's nukes on student's finances.
5 DRM on CD's makes them incompatible and dangerous to use. I don't keep a list of safe to play CD's. The lack of the Philip's Compact Disc logo on the good bad and ugly makes shopping by the cover very difficult.
6 Free music online (not piracy)
7 Piracy (fueled by all of the above)
8 Restrictions on use... Can't leagaly do the Carson Williams light show legaly unless you buy one of the approved for use licenses from Lights-o-Rama or play it in public at a reception, etc. No weekend DJ'ing for me.
8 ?? did I miss anything?
In summary, the product is compressed, possibly won't be transferrable to the kids iPod, can't be used with a Power Point Slideshow for a wedding, can't be used for the reception dance, super expensive to keep a current library for the above, and is a very expensive legal liability if your kids post it. The product is expensive, may be defective with no recourse, and a legal liability.
"When the kids went to bed, my wife asked me, "Will we be able to keep the house, David?""
I used to work in the VCR and TV repair business. When 20 inch color TV's were $400 and VHS VCR's were $600, people would pay the rate for a couple hours it took to repair them. Now purchase prices are near what a repair used to cost. I kept my house, but found a new line of work. Your field isn't the only one hit by distribution channels providing a cheaper product.
As long as your supplier is stuck on dribbling out product and sitting on back catalog and fighting hard to keep the ASP high, the demand in going to be small. Get used to it.
If your supplier was smart, they could sell compilation CD's of high quality MP3's of back catalog. They would be iPod, Zen, Zune ready, high quality and affordable. I would pay good money for high quality collections of Chicago, Pink Floyd, Styx, Led Zepplin, etc. Toss the restrictions on use and sell collections of 50's, 60's, & 70's dance music with permission to DJ the stuff may sell a bunch more. Many DJ consoles now play MP3's instead of CD's. Make loading the MP3's on the device hard drive legal instead of a legal liability.
See any trend here. Piracy i
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iTunes is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
One makes EMI some money.
One does not.
Inda says EMI is illegal.
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
EMI wants to gain access to copies of files that users have on their MP3tunes accounts. Now, I'm assuming that you can't just go in and browse the list of files that a user has, otherwise they'd have shot themselves in the foot by arguing on privacy grounds.
So I'm assuming that EMI came along and said, "We want all the MP3s stored in user X's account." As it's unlikely that any user has an account filled 100% with EMI music, EMI would be given access to a significant amount of music from other labels, without the consent of the copyright holders. Which seems very hypocritical, even if it's legitimised by a court order.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, you're aren't new here. You must have seen this one copy 'n pasted on every MP3 story?
Re:It probably is illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Making copies of works that you are not the copyright holder of is illegal, unless you have a license to do so (for example, creative commons license, or the license a record company holds for a musicians work) or unless you don't need a license for other reasons. (There are quite a few reasons. Fair use is one example. See the laws for more)
The points you have listed are not "things you need to know about copyright." but more like "things you need to know about how the old fashioned greedy corporations choose to use copyright in many cases"
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm not interested in those sweet boybands that some old producer with weird sexual preferences creates one after another, as those can't adapt to such an environment. so, if we get less "music" like that and more of 'underground' one... hey, go for it
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It probably is illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing I see this service do, is offer you a location somewhere else to store your music, so that you can listen to it on a different computer (such as for instance a work-pc).
They don't distribute it to anyone else.
Each user has his/her own password protected account on which they can store their music or any other file-type for that matter, it's not limited to music, I don't think.
So, saying that is illegal, will make for instance Amazon's S3 storage solutions also illegal, or other off-site storage solutions.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Not to mention the military, far from home months on end. And don't get me started on the average wage here.
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:2, Insightful)
They are going elsewhere.
The only point at which piracy would go away is when the original product is 100% free of any cost to the consumer.
And your point is what?
The record store owner and the content owners also seem to have a sense of entitlement. There are those that disagree with that notion, too.Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, it's completely disingenuous and completely false that you know all of the commercial music out there, and that out of all of it, non-commercial music would be better than all of it. Basically, it suggests an irrational prejudice against commercial music. I actually don't mean any offence about this; god knows I have a number of irrational prejudices of my own, but bear it in mind: not all commercial music fits that mould.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, making music yourself is easier than ever, and the results better quality than ever. But claiming your cheap digital multitrack produces better results than studio productions of a decade ago is frankly foolish.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
if music is created with intent to sell it but fails - is that commercial music ?
if music is created without commercial intent but becomes widely successful commercially - is that commercial music ?
i don't think current 'commercial music' would completely die off - just as with other niches, new business models can and will work. the market will only reshape, and then become more robust (there have been several showcases lately - nin, radiohead etc).
also, one side is the motivation to create, which can adapt, and then there's the insane length of copyright. i think that current piracy is only fueled by the copyright length, as re-selling of the same product for decades only damages its perception (in this case - perceived value of the music) in the eyes of the general public.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh how many musicians sell their own music out of their own store?
Please. Music store owners don't make the music they sell; they are a retailer of another person's product.
The smart ones diversify or change to a different product.
How many butchers went out of business when the ability for frozen pre-cut meat came on the market?
Seriously. Look at the number of butchers in your town and then figure out the numbers there were years ago before refrigeration.
People want to listen to the music and are willing to pay for their own copy of that music. The only fact that has changed is that we no longer need the bits of plastic to physically carry the copy.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
And what about people working very hard at off-shore oil platforms? Can we use them? I'm pretty sure that their wage is somewhat lower than the average artist on tour, but they have to do it anyway.
Not to mention the military, far from home months on end. And don't get me started on the average wage here.
So poor artists with their luxury hotel rooms, first-class plane seats, 50 foot long limousines and multi million dollar contracts can't stand tour pressure? Too bad. Makes me cry.
So, although the Elite touring groups do have all that cool pampered luxury, the bar for the average touring musician or group is quite a bit below that level.
That doesn't negate your main point, which seems to be "Other fields make sacrifices for the job too, and there is no reason to single out Artists" which I agree with, I might add.
Investment risk (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you deserve any more consideration than a gas station owner? Competition is fierce; people switch stations to save a penny per gallon. Rising wholesale prices cut into margins, "pay at the pump" delivers most of the profit directly to credit card middlemen. As prices go up, people WILL start to buy less. When alternative energy goes online, maybe they fuel up at home!
When the prices of CDs went UP at a time when the cost of most other content (videos, etc.) went DOWN, that was a strategic blunder made on your behalf by the buffoons at the music companies.
I spend very little on music. The latest music does not appeal to me, and at these prices they can keep it.
You might have found a wannabe pirate in your store and thought you discovered the problem. The invisible problem is the customer who shops at Walmart or Amazon instead of your place. Come back and tell us about the evils of piracy when Walmart closes their CD department due to lack of sales.
Walmart killed off many local merchants, and then we discovered Walmart was frequently out of stock or didn't carry what I wanted anyway. I call it "EmptyMart". I buy a lot of things online via Amazon that I used to buy locally. But like I said, I seldom buy CDs at all.
I doubt piracy alone is causing the problem, or even a significant part of it. Walmart is probably killing you on price and Amazon is killing you on convenience. I don't have the answers, but if you wipe out piracy tomorrow, don't expect the business to get much better. The wholesale price of CDs would probably go up AGAIN, killing off whatever remained of the market.
The music industry is your business partner, and they are just not that bright. I suggest you consider re-evaluating the local market and your efforts to serve it. Just don't open a gas station. If all else fails, start a doughnut shop next to the police department.
No kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's One Technicality Noone's Posted About... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, almost certainly their backup service is a massive shared folder that all their backup service users have access to. Large shared folder? Multi-user access? Starting to sound a bit more like the loathed P2P the record labels love to hate, isn't it?
Funny note: CAPTCHA word for this post was "AVARICE".
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
What is actually being supplied is the ability to listen to nice noises. The transport layer is irrelevant.
Re:It probably is illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
But because it's some pseudo-ownership pseudo-license hybrid, the music industry will, as you have, trot out whichever argument works in their favor in this particular case. In this case where the service is clearly legal if viewed in terms of a license, they'll argue that you own the files so you can't have a copy for yourself and give another copy to this service to distribute (even to you). If you needed to format shift your music (e.g. tape to CD) they argued the same thing -- that you owned the song on tape so you had to pay full price to own the same song on CD, or that MP3.com couldn't send you a copy of the song on MP3 if you could prove you already had the CD. But if a situation comes up where ownership would be beneficial to you, they'll turn right around and argue that it's a license. e.g. reselling (which they've tried to stop but thus far has been protected by the doctrine of first sale), playing in public or at an event, etc.
The hybrid nature is why music industry execs gets caught proposing stupid things, like it's illegal to convert your CDs to MP3, or it's illegal to play your CD on your computer because the computer is making a copy of it in memory. Originally, when music (and movies and books) was tied to physical media, it was a marketed as a license but (conveniently for the record companies) had physical limitations similar to ownership due to the media. The world has now gone digital and music is unshackled from any physical media, but the record companies still yearn for the physical limitations that came with ownership of physical media. So they've come up with this hybrid legal construct which is not self-consistent.
At this point it's pretty clear that copyrighted works like music are distributed via a license. We'd be much better off if everyone just acknowledged that and moved on. If they want to add license terms that restrict how I allow others to listen to the music I buy (e.g. public performance), I'm OK with that. But if they want to add license terms that restrict when and how I can listen to the music I've bought a license to listen to, well good luck with that. If this service were allowing people who didn't buy a license to listen to the music, then they'd need to get a distribution license from the studios. But it seems they're deliberately limiting their customers to those who already have such a license. Such a service (if operated as advertised) should clearly be legal. Otherwise you have a situation of charging for two licenses where one would suffice (which I suspect is what the studios want).
Re:It probably is illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 explicitly gives people the right to make personal, non-commercial copies of music they own (in the form of a tape, album, CD, etc.). The Senate commentary that accompanied the passage of that bill specifically addressed making copies for family members or use in a car.
In a related development (Score:3, Insightful)
In a related development, the U.S. FDIC has ruled that it is illegal to keep dollar bills of any denomination in banks. Details to follow....
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
If people no longer feel the need to shop at brick-and-mortar record stores because they want MP3s rather than CDs (which often force them to buy songs they don't want along with the ones they do), then brick-and-mortar record stores will find staying in business difficult. That doesn't mean you can't make money selling music, just that you have to change your business model -- sell MP3 singles instead of CD albums.
How's iTunes doing? Are they struggling to stay afloat as well, or is business doing fine?
Re:There's One Technicality Noone's Posted About.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then not only are you an old-fashioned developer, you're a lousy old-fashioned developer with no knowledge of the wider world your software is operating within. Security and legal concerns (especially legal concerns) trump the $0.00078 savings, by your estimated storage price, per copy of "Toxic". This is especially true when the architecture you're discussing would cost more time and money to implement than the safer version, what with the necessity of acoustic fingerprinting or some other technology to make sure that User1's "Britney Spears - Toxic.mp3" is the same as User2's "Toxic - Britney Spears (ub3r h0t ch1ck).mp3" is the same as User3's "251 - BS - TOXIC.mp3".
Please, by all that's holy, tell me you're just over-simplifying for the masses. Actually, don't tell me that, because there's only two options here:
- 1. You're over simplifying a complicated technology, just like the idiots at EMI/SonyBMG/ do to confuse the non-technical people judging a case, or
- 2. You're not even a developer (or are someone who's written a half-dozen PHP scripts for their buddy's website and thinks they're a developer) and are just blowing smoke on this topic.
Either way, this absurd and technically inappropriate answer isn't doing anything except to muddy the waters. Please leave that to the professionals at EMI.Re:There's One Technicality Noone's Posted About.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, great idea. Call me old-fashioned, but complex solutions to non-problems are bad. Storage is so cheap now that it's practicaly free. Think of it as free, and stop wasting resources that are actually scarce to save space.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
That would actually be a nice model if you could get the *AA onboard.
Re:No kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't tell that to the inventor of the RAID array. Or to anyone who's made a photocopy of any personal documents twice, one for at home and one for their safety deposit box.
The right to backup ought to be unquestionable. The right to store a backup OFF-SITE ought to likewise be unquestionable.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
for trying to kill the single format. They did this on purpose. They go greedy
and decided they wanted to soak everyone for the whole album price of ablums
not worth buying.
In the end, singles resurrected themselves because that's what the market wanted.
It just so happens that the form that singles resurrected themselves in aren't
suitable for your business model.
You should write a nice thank you note to EMI.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about the customer wanting old time singles and the people that
print out the plastic and vinyl disks not being willing to provide those.
iTunes is just the resurrection of the single where you could cheaply
buy the music you wanted without out being forced to buy the rest of the
dreck on some one-hit-wonder's album.
iTunes isn't something new. It's a throwback. It's the resurrection of a
product format the industry tried to KILL.
Now brick and mortar vendors are paying for that greed.
They find themselves out of the loop due to how the market fixed itself.
Your supplier's avarice is putting you out of business, not "entitled" teenagers.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
The way our legal system is supposed to work, is that Side A lays out an obviously BS interpretation of the rules, Side B lays out a similar but diametrically opposed BS interpretation, and the courts try to find a middle ground. So far in the US, it has been that Side A lays out an obviously BS interpretation, then buys a ton of lobbyist time to get that codified into law. Side B, being a single mother of four, rolls over to avoid her family funds being completely sucked dry. And the courts hardly ever get to actually make a ruling.
Hopefully at some point our government will catch up with reality and clickthrough / tearthrough licenses will go the way of prohibition and paid indulgences.
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Recording is changing. If you do electronic music, you don't need anything else than a computer and creativity. You don't need to pay a producer if you don't want to, you don't need to pay for time at a recording studio, you don't need to pay those engineers.
If you don't do electronic, home recording equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper, and gaining in quality and ease of use. The people that organise tours etc still get paid, the same way they are doing now.
Perhaps artists have less of a chance of getting multimillionaire? Yes. No huge marketing campaigns to force music down people's throats will have that effect, no doubt in my mind. On the other end, you will see smaller bands gaining in popularity as other forms of promotion (releasing albums on private torrent trackers comes to mind) take shape. It's evening out.
And you've got it all wrong. I pay for music when I buy an album off Magnatune. I donate to artists on Jamendo whenever I like their music. I pay for a subscription at Last.fm. I download music that wasn't meant to be distributed for free, too. Then I go to gigs. All in all I still listen to high quality music and spend a similar amount of money. More artists get money from me, instead of just a handful. I enjoy music twofold, as I can go to the gigs too. Who loses out on this deal? The record companies, of course. The CD manufacturers too. Record shops. Distributors. Millionaire bands. So what? These are middle men that are not needed anymore. It's called progress. Those people will get employment elsewhere, as they've done in the past. It's not morally justifiable to hold back progress when its benefits are huge.
Piracy is almost irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like a storefront business doesn't perform the measures necessary to stop 100% of shoplifting, music companies shouldn't either. Why? Because the draconian measures necessary piss of the paying customers, ultimately costing sales. So a store will go: In order to drop our shrink rate from 1% to
I suggest the music industry concentrate less on trying to stop piracy, especially with draconian DRM, and start trying to please customers. Offer me a good, convienent deal, and I'll take it.
Over 50% of my media problems have been traced to DRM. Software refusing to run, having to enter key codes, tracking down key codes to install. Media refusing I legitimately paid for refusing to play until I crack the DRM.
You might not be able to beat the pirate's price, but you can beat their quality and convenience. People are willing to pay for that.
*Such as music, movies, books, etc...
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's One Technicality Noone's Posted About.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just a naive developer, but wouldn't they just calculate the hash of each file uploaded, and if it matches that of one already on disk, avoid a second copy?
Re:Well, piracy hurts real people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. Working pretty well sucks. Making money is usually very difficult, taking a lot of work and personal sacrifice. Most of us have to work all day sitting in a small cubical under fluorescent lights, being abused by morons. If you're lucky enough to make a living by sitting in a nice club in front of cheering fans, consider yourself lucky.
How many times do we have to correct this? (Score:3, Insightful)
First and foremost EMI/RIAA/etc, we are not CONSUMERS , we are CUSTOMERS . Please correct your spelling.
We do not "consume" music, we do not "consume" goods. We are not an organism that feeds on these digital goods like a virus.
Second, once you start treating us like customers, we will then begin behaving like them.
A file format is neutral (Score:4, Insightful)