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By Thomas Mennecke 6/25/03 This has always been the trump card of the RIAA. Ever since the embarrassing loss to Streamcast Networks and Grokster, the RIAA has been forced to seek an alternative copyright enforcement tactic. This time it seems the common man may be at the end of the barrel. |
While the situation may appear to be cut and dry, this dubious tact may eventually turn against the industry. This situation is hardly new for the RIAA. For the tenure of P2P’s existence, the RIAA’s onslaught has fueled a technological arms race between copyright holders and the file-sharing community. For the duration of this race, P2P has always come on top.
For example, when Napster's centralized weakness was exposed, decentralization replaced this vulnerability. When networks were threatened with false files, "hashing" soon rendered this tactic nearly obsolete. This is in addition to numerous other enhancements such as multi-source downloading, the elimination of gateway servers or "peer caches", and greatly improved network reliability.
With this battle in mind, the real question remains not who will be on the RIAA's target list, rather, what technological response will the P2P community develop?
So far, this news has generated a tremendous amount of attention within the mainstream media. In fact, it has reached the headlines of powerhouse media outlets such as CNN, ABCNEWS, and MSNBC. Considering copyright holders are on the verge of victory against Verizon (pending their appeal), the ease of obtaining the identification of suspected individuals will be greatly enhanced.
Is the situation as serious as the mainstream is anticipating? Will P2P’s deathblow be at the hands of this serious threat? There is only a small group of individuals that can answer this question, those at the very front lines of the P2P battle: the P2P developers themselves.
Since most of the RIAA’s limited information is simply being regurgitated across the net, the true scope and detail of their renewed crusade remains an unknown. To truly get a sense of how the P2P community will respond to this, we have emailed all of the key P2P developers. We have asked for their response to this potential threat, the seriousness of the situation and how their plan to protect their communities and users. We will prepare the second part to this article once we have all (or most) of their responses.
Although the news isn’t shocking, it is best to prepare oneself by avoiding abnormally large amounts of shared files. In other words, try not to draw attention to yourself. This could prove to be one of the most embattled periods in P2P history since the fall of Napster. However, since the fall of Napster, the P2P community showed its resiliency by persevering through its darkest hours and rebounding to heights never thought imaginable. If the P2P community proved it unwavering strength in the past, this should prove to be just another obstacle in the road to file-sharing freedom.
Read the RIAA's press release below:
Recording Industry To Begin Collecting Evidence And Preparing Lawsuits Against File "Sharers" Who Illegally Offer Music Online
Launching Data-Gathering Effort To Identify Peer-to-Peer Infringers Who Continue To Offer Music To Millions
WASHINGTON (June 25, 2003) -- Starting tomorrow, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will begin gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally offering to "share" substantial amounts of copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks. In making the announcement, the music industry cited its multi-year effort to educate the public about the illegality of unauthorized downloading, and underscored the fact that major music companies have made vast catalogues of music available to dozens of services to help create legitimate, high quality and inexpensive alternatives to online piracy.
"The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear --- this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences," said RIAA president Cary Sherman. "We'd much rather spend time making music then dealing with legal issues in courtrooms. But we cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry."
The RIAA expects to use the data it collects as the basis for filing what could ultimately be thousands of lawsuits charging individual peer-to-peer music distributors with copyright infringement. The first round of suits could take place as early as mid-August.
Over the past year, the industry has responded to consumer demand by making its music available to a wide range of authorized online subscription, streaming and download services that make it easier than ever for fans to get music legally and inexpensively on the Internet. Moreover, these services offer music reliably, in the highest sound quality, and without the risks of exposure to viruses or other undesirable material.
Federal law and the federal courts have been quite clear on what is not legal. It is illegal to make available for download copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owner. Court decisions have affirmed this as well. In the recent Grokster decision, for example, the court confirmed that the users of that system were guilty of copyright infringement. And in last year's Aimster decision, the judge wrote that the idea that "ongoing, massive, and unauthorized distribution and copying of copyrighted works somehow constitutes 'personal use' is specious and unsupported."
"Once we begin our evidence-gathering process, any individual computer user who continues to offer music illegally to millions of others will run the very real risk of facing legal action in the form of civil lawsuits that will cost violators thousands of dollars and potentially subject them to criminal prosecution," said Sherman.
To gather evidence against P2P users who make illegal downloading possible, the RIAA will be using software that scans the public directories available to any user of a peer-to-peer network. These directories, which allow users to find the material they are looking for, list all the files that other users of the network are currently offering to distribute. When the software finds a user who is offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it downloads some of the infringing files, along with the date and time it accessed the files.
Additional information that is publicly available from these systems allows the RIAA to then identify their Internet Service Provider (ISP). The RIAA can then serve a subpoena on the ISP requesting the name and address of the individual whose account was being used to distribute copyrighted music. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), ISPs must provide copyright holders with such information when there is reason to believe copyrights are being infringed. Almost all ISPs disclose this obligation in the User's Terms of Service.
Music industry leaders, along with an unprecedented coalition of other groups like the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Country Music Association, the Gospel Music Association, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), American Federation of Musicians, songwriters, recording artists, retailers, and record companies have been educating music fans that the epidemic of illegal file sharing not only robs songwriters and recording artists of their livelihoods, it also undermines the future of music itself by depriving the industry of the resources it needs to find and develop new talent. In addition, it threatens the jobs of tens of thousands of less celebrated people in the music industry, from engineers and technicians to warehouse workers and record store clerks.
This message has been conveyed to the public in a series of print and broadcast ads featuring top recording artists. And, in the past two months, millions of Instant Messages were sent directly to infringers on the Kazaa and Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
Tom from Slyck.com is a regular contributers to MP3 Newswire. His insights on other digital music issues can be read on his site and we encourage you to check it out.
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Other MP3 stories:
The RIAA Offensive
- Part II (7/11/03)
The RIAA Offensive
- Part III (7/17/03)
