[piracy] Worth a look: Everytime You Torrent God Kills A…

[music] How it feels to be sued for $4.5m by the RIAA … ‘I came home from work to find a stack of papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment. That’s when I found out what it was like to have possibly the most talented copyright lawyers in the business, bankrolled by multibillion-dollar corporations, throwing everything they had at someone who wanted to share Come As You Are with other Nirvana fans.’

[copyright] Real Dialogue: The Tech interviews Jack Valenti — head of the RIAA interviewed by MIT’s The Tech … [via Boing Boing]

[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line “qrpff” DVD descrambler.]
TT: If you type that in, it’ll let you watch movies.
JV: You designed this?
TT: Yes.
JV: Un-fucking-believable.

[mp3] UK song-swappers ‘could be sued’ … ‘Speaking at a London conference about music and technology, Mr Yeates said any legal crackdown would be “proportional”. Talks were taking place with internet service providers across Europe to streamline a process for identifying those who distribute the most songs, he said. The move comes despite healthy album sales for the UK industry. Album sales in the UK rose by 7.6% in 2003 to a record high, fuelled by falling CD prices.’

[mp3] European RIAA-style anti-file swap lawsuits ‘inevitable’: ‘…the subpoenas could start flying next year. Writing in the IFPI in-house magazine, organisation chairman and CEO Jay Berman says: “Lawsuits on a large scale have so far been restricted to the US; this ‘fight back’ will almost inevitably have to take place internationally as well.” Berman’s piece outlines the industry’s global Internet strategy for 2004, suggesting that the organisation has next year in mind for its legal assault.’

[p2p] Would You Download Music From This Man? — Wired profiles a “master of the file sharing universe” … ‘What motivates someone to collect more music than he could ever possibly listen to, more movies than he can watch, more games than he could ever play – and so actively spread the wealth? It’s no stretch to say Verner’s responsible for millions of dollars in lost revenue for the record labels and movie studios. And while he considers those industries “damn greedy,” it’s not malice that drives him. “A lot of people out there don’t have any idea what their computer really is for and how much they can enjoy it,” he says. “I think I’m doing a public service.”‘

[MP3] Napster endgame — The US Music Industry moves to close down Napster. Totally pointless, of course, the Net has moved on… check out Gnutella.

[mp3] Lars from Metallica talks (at length) about Napster and MP3 on Slashdot.

[mp3] Forget Napster — IRC’s the place for MP3’s reports Wired News. [via Wired MP3 News Archive]

[mp3] Lars Urich and Chuck D talk about Napster. “It’s a parallel world, and a new paradigm is taking shape. You have to adapt to it. This goes beyond Chuck versus Lars. This is about the record industry versus the people. The people have got it on their side, and you’ve got to adapt.” – Chuck D [via Josh Blog]

[human nature] Slashdot asks: Can you legally lend a friend a DVD?

[mp3] Two amusing links: Kid Rock starves to death – MP3 piracy blamed. Metallica’s new CD [both via Metafilter]

[mp3] Napster is irrelevant reports Wired News. “The amazing thing about Napster isn’t the program, it’s the idea,” Weekly said. “You can’t litigate the idea. You can’t tell people that they need to stop thinking about the idea. Already we’ve seen commercial alternatives pop up with Scour Exchange (a commercial file-trading exchange), so even if Napster is sued out of existence, there are alternatives popping up everywhere.”

[mp3] “The Man” is watching you if you’re using Gnutella… Starting as early as this morning, most gnutella searches also turned up the file “The RIAA is watching you” 0 bytes. If this file is actually being put out by the RIAA remains unknown. This could be a prank, but could very easily be the real deal.

[tech] Richard Stallman on Metallica: Metallica justifies their lawsuit saying they think it is an outrage that their music has become a “commodity”. Apparently they think music is a commodity when shared between fans, but not when large companies sell copies through record stores. What hypocritical absurdity! Such drivel is normally laughable. But Metallica is presenting it as an excuse to attack our freedom, and that is no laughing matter. I encourage people to write letters to periodicals that cover this story, stating disgust for Metallica’s lawsuit and rejecting their views. [via Slashdot]

[MP3] “Napster? Never heard of it mate” — UK reaction to Napster/MP3. It’s not an issue in the UK because nobody can afford to download MP3’s anyway. I reckon students are probably starting to get interested in it but you need free networking to make it fly like it is in the States — especially at American universities.

[MP3] Gnutella Nullsoft’s open-source Napster clone lives on.

[mp3] Wired News reports that AOL has shutdown an open-source Napster clone written by Nullsoft creators of Winamp. Slashdot has a discussion thread on this.