Re: What's needed is an amicus brief to discourage finding direct infringement and limit the harm of finding secondary infringement
* Addendum: When I say as-yet undemonstrated, I mean the RIAA has asserted in their complaint that it's possible to search for plaintiffs' recordings via the site, and that searching the site generally results in links to MP3s as well as playback via an embedded widget, but unless I missed something (maybe I did), they did not actually say that they successfully and routinely were able to use the site to access the specific recordings at issue.
IMHO, without such an assertion, it can't be assumed that users are able to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights for those specific recordings, and thus there should be no finding of secondary infringement by the site's operators.
What's needed is an amicus brief to discourage finding direct infringement and limit the harm of finding secondary infringement
Looks to me like the RIAA is trying to beef up their arsenal of precedents against search-engine-like sites.
I mean they can't seriously think MP3Skull is a threat to their business. They say it's infringing and causing harm "on a massive scale," but they have no numbers to back that up and don't need any. That's because it's not about MP3Skull or their business model at all. MP3Skull could shut down today and it wouldn't result in any bump in business. Nor does the RIAA want to partner with MP3Skull and get a cut of their ad revenue.
No, they really just want to get a ruling against this type of website; they are seeking a declaration that any site willfully infringes if it is a search engine that provides links to copyrighted content.
One of the things the RIAA is doing here is trying to solidify the concept of secondary, contributory infringement—an emerging doctrine in civil case law which does not require proof of actual infringement by the defendant, but rather just proof that the defendant has a sort of conspiratorial role with the people doing the actual unauthorized copying and distributing. All that needs to be shown is that infringement has occurred as a result of MP3Skull's actions, and that MP3Skull was knowingly facilitating it. In this regard, the case is an easy win for the RIAA, and their complaint is chock-full of evidence against Mp3Skull. MP3Skull uses major-label artists as examples, and instructs & encourages users to work around blocks instituted as a result of takedown notices. The RIAA has already used that kind of "red flag knowledge" of infringement by users to obtain favorable precedents against user-uploaded content services, file-sharing services, and file-sharing software distributors. MP3Skull's smoking guns are in plain sight, no discovery of internal emails needed.
One of the other things the RIAA is doing in this case is much more sinister. In addition to claiming secondary infringement, they are claiming direct infringement. They present absolutely no evidence in support of this, but they are hoping the judge (who I assume they've forum-shopped for) will agree with their claim that MP3Skull's owners "reproduce and distribute unauthorized reproductions" and "engage in unauthorized public performances". This right here is the backdoor SOPA and must not be allowed traction.
Unfortunately, MP3Skull's owners are unlikely to emerge from the shadows to raise a First Amendment defense. I am also wondering if it's reasonable to expect any amicus briefs from companies which now have an "arrangement" with the RIAA, like Google/YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. Even if a "hyperlinking is free speech" defense were raised, I wouldn't expect it to succeed in this case, given MP3Skull's public nose-thumbing and their apparent intent to hook people up with any music whatsoever, regardless of whether it can be legally distributed.
I think the best we can hope for is an amicus brief from the EFF in an effort to limit the collateral damage. They should insist that no "plain reading" of the statutes nor circuit precedent supports a finding of direct infringement. And if the court is to find secondary infringement, then it must be expressed in a way that makes it clear that it's contingent upon 1. evidence of direct infringement by MP3Skull users (or at least evidence that such infringement is likely, based on site traffic and an as-yet undemonstrated ability to search for and acquire plaintiffs' recordings via the site); and 2. the egregious infringement-encouraging and facilitating things that MP3Skull did above and beyond mere indexing and hyperlinking.
I wouldn't even consider the companies that do the tracking on behalf of advertisers and the NSA to be necessarily distinct entities. We're talking about fully opaque companies specializing in things like ad placement, analytics, and content/widget hosting. Their resources are embedded in practically every webpage we visit nowadays, and are almost always transmitted unencrypted. I count about 20 unnecessary such hosts embedding resources on this page alone. So how can we see whether any one of these is run by, colluding with, or being snooped on by the NSA or anyone else?
Try getting any these companies to tell you just how they operate, who exactly they share our data with, how secure the data is, and what breaches they've had. Ask them if they're, in any way, in league with the NSA or any other branch of law enforcement. Ask them how many NSLs, subpoenas, and requests they've gotten, and how much data they've disclosed, including inadvertently, to third parties, including government, law enforcement, and unidentified persons.
This is where my mind goes whenever someone suggests that we have nothing to worry about from advertisers tracking us.
Consider linking Like fashion to Johanna Blakeley's 2010 TED Talk on the subject. Short version: trademark protection alone has proven more than sufficient to support a flourishing fashion industry that, economically, dwarfs the entire entertainment industry.
Indeed, I don't see how Boundless Informant is identifying participants or even geolocating with any more precision than any other IP address-based lookup. It seems to be precise only to the country level.
So Emmel didn't lie, considering she qualified her denial of geolocation and identification as being something they can't do with certainty in regard to all parties to a given communication. That leaves quite a bit of wiggle room.
Re: How is status quo "clearly good news for fair use"?
I think most of us can't help but regard a failure to erode the public interest as a win.
The part I find interesting is that it's a case of using a complete work, not just an excerpt or two. It's usually pretty difficult to get a determination of fair use when more than a portion of a work is at issue. In this case, the portion didn't matter, due to the copies being made (a) without intent to compete (b) for their factual rather than expressive content.
The parents and administrators probably still give this security company the benefit of the doubt. It's assumed the scans would only be used for attendance and would only be useful when the child is in school.
They don't even think of things like what could go wrong, how secure is this data being kept, how long do they keep it, what else might be done with it, what if someone uses the data to identify and track the children in places & situations where they (and their parents) expected anonymity, what happens when the company goes out of business or is acquired by a big government/military/law-enforcement contractor, etc.?
Agreed. It's in their interest to conceal the fact that they've declared him an "enemy", the ramifications of which are profound for Assange, Manning, anyone else who has any connection whatsoever with Wikileaks, and anyone who is in a position to leak any U.S. government/military information to anyone, ever.
Re: Re: Re: Mike NEVER deals with the morality of Napster.
Are you talking about Patronet, his buggy, overengineered, browser-based content subscription service? That seems to have died on its own, and is more comparable to crowdfunding than Napster. Rundgren was vocally anti-Napster and the like.
If the only people with the ability to develop a test for a deadly virus are so ethically challenged that they need to be "motivated" by a fat monopoly payday, then it's going to take a massive die-off of humankind before people get their priorities straight and realize that just because you can charge for something doesn't mean you should.
That kind of stuff continued through the mid-'80s where I lived. All the students in our (small-ish) high school were on guard for it, too; they even protected, across social and class divides, the kids who were acting out. No one was trying to "terrorize" or "bully" anyone. Everyone eventually grew up and became successful in adulthood; no one had to be taught a lesson or locked up for decades to send a message.
Our yearbook staff conspired to sneak things past the faculty advisor (or so we thought, who knows what she really knew), writing risqué captions, creating fake students, swapping in embarrassing photos of kids doing things they weren't supposed to be doing ... it was all just silly fun. Now it would be "bullying" and someone have to pay with a felony record, I guess.
As you said, they are in a public place. It would be improper to broadcast any footage disclosing the identities of the civilians, but I'm not sure the act of filming them can be said to be an invasion of privacy, even if they don't want cameras on them. And we've already established that cops don't have the right to privacy in these situations.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Again, sheerly an anti-copyright WEDGE for Mike.
What I see is basically what I said in my previous comment: the post is merely a relayed report about an IP-maximalist organization spreading baseless FUD and employing faulty reasoning for upholding the status quo, to the detriment of the disabled. And that's not even Mike's assessment; KEI blogger Jamie Love is who ascertained these things. Mike's contribution, besides the secondary report, is really just the addition of his "see? yet more evidence of..." reaction.
I suppose his posting it here can be interpreted as an attempt to discredit someone, although "copyright holders" is a bit broad, since that's basically everyone who has ever authored anything. Rather, it's discrediting this particular business lobbying group, based on something they're actually doing. What more do you want?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Again, sheerly an anti-copyright WEDGE for Mike.
You want to have a conversation based on the merits of your post, yet your post is pure ad hominem.
the folks on TD who can't stand it when their leader is challenged
Like any blog, this one attracts more than its share of readers whose opinions are aligned with those of its contributors. And like most popular blogs, the writers know their audience, and both consciously and subconsciously write for it.
Yet, for some reason, you envision Techdirt readers as an obedient, unthinking cult, hanging on Masnick's every word and regarding him as their "leader". You regard all the readers - except those agree with you, I bet - as unable to formulate positions and arguments on their own, unwilling to see that his posts are mainly griping and shit-stirring.
Like I said, he knows his audience - he can certainly whip us up into a pissed-off comment frenzy - but we know him, as well. You guys keep trying to point out to us what's really going on, not realizing that we already know, and it doesn't matter, because most of the time, he's not saying anything we don't already agree with.
Mike and his guest bloggers just relay reports of outrageous things that the IP industry is up to, and they often express their opinions about it, and we all chime in with ours. It's as simple as that. He doesn't have us under mind control. He's not our "leader". One misstep and we'll turn on him...for that one post, which is how it should be.
This "leader" fixation is a generational thing. Mike's generation, the Gen Xers, distrust power and leaders in general, starting with their parents. The younger Millennials laugh at would-be leaders and rarely conflate celebrity with authority. But the older generation, the Baby Boomers - good god, they revere and exalt as ideologues anyone who's got anyone's attention, and can't comprehend the idea that everyone must be following someone. Of course there are exceptions to these trends, but I'm guessing you're in this camp, born before the 1970s. Am I right?
On the post: Major Record Labels Use Lawsuit Against MP3Skull To Try To Backdoor In SOPA
Re: What's needed is an amicus brief to discourage finding direct infringement and limit the harm of finding secondary infringement
IMHO, without such an assertion, it can't be assumed that users are able to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights for those specific recordings, and thus there should be no finding of secondary infringement by the site's operators.
On the post: Major Record Labels Use Lawsuit Against MP3Skull To Try To Backdoor In SOPA
What's needed is an amicus brief to discourage finding direct infringement and limit the harm of finding secondary infringement
I mean they can't seriously think MP3Skull is a threat to their business. They say it's infringing and causing harm "on a massive scale," but they have no numbers to back that up and don't need any. That's because it's not about MP3Skull or their business model at all. MP3Skull could shut down today and it wouldn't result in any bump in business. Nor does the RIAA want to partner with MP3Skull and get a cut of their ad revenue.
No, they really just want to get a ruling against this type of website; they are seeking a declaration that any site willfully infringes if it is a search engine that provides links to copyrighted content.
One of the things the RIAA is doing here is trying to solidify the concept of secondary, contributory infringement—an emerging doctrine in civil case law which does not require proof of actual infringement by the defendant, but rather just proof that the defendant has a sort of conspiratorial role with the people doing the actual unauthorized copying and distributing. All that needs to be shown is that infringement has occurred as a result of MP3Skull's actions, and that MP3Skull was knowingly facilitating it. In this regard, the case is an easy win for the RIAA, and their complaint is chock-full of evidence against Mp3Skull. MP3Skull uses major-label artists as examples, and instructs & encourages users to work around blocks instituted as a result of takedown notices. The RIAA has already used that kind of "red flag knowledge" of infringement by users to obtain favorable precedents against user-uploaded content services, file-sharing services, and file-sharing software distributors. MP3Skull's smoking guns are in plain sight, no discovery of internal emails needed.
One of the other things the RIAA is doing in this case is much more sinister. In addition to claiming secondary infringement, they are claiming direct infringement. They present absolutely no evidence in support of this, but they are hoping the judge (who I assume they've forum-shopped for) will agree with their claim that MP3Skull's owners "reproduce and distribute unauthorized reproductions" and "engage in unauthorized public performances". This right here is the backdoor SOPA and must not be allowed traction.
Unfortunately, MP3Skull's owners are unlikely to emerge from the shadows to raise a First Amendment defense. I am also wondering if it's reasonable to expect any amicus briefs from companies which now have an "arrangement" with the RIAA, like Google/YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. Even if a "hyperlinking is free speech" defense were raised, I wouldn't expect it to succeed in this case, given MP3Skull's public nose-thumbing and their apparent intent to hook people up with any music whatsoever, regardless of whether it can be legally distributed.
I think the best we can hope for is an amicus brief from the EFF in an effort to limit the collateral damage. They should insist that no "plain reading" of the statutes nor circuit precedent supports a finding of direct infringement. And if the court is to find secondary infringement, then it must be expressed in a way that makes it clear that it's contingent upon 1. evidence of direct infringement by MP3Skull users (or at least evidence that such infringement is likely, based on site traffic and an as-yet undemonstrated ability to search for and acquire plaintiffs' recordings via the site); and 2. the egregious infringement-encouraging and facilitating things that MP3Skull did above and beyond mere indexing and hyperlinking.
On the post: Latest Casualty Of NSA Spying Revelations: Web Advertising Based On Tracking Users
Re: If the advertisers can track you...
Try getting any these companies to tell you just how they operate, who exactly they share our data with, how secure the data is, and what breaches they've had. Ask them if they're, in any way, in league with the NSA or any other branch of law enforcement. Ask them how many NSLs, subpoenas, and requests they've gotten, and how much data they've disclosed, including inadvertently, to third parties, including government, law enforcement, and unidentified persons.
This is where my mind goes whenever someone suggests that we have nothing to worry about from advertisers tracking us.
On the post: What The Continuous Flourishing Of New Cocktails Can Teach Us About Intellectual Property
Nice TED Talk covering the fashion side
On the post: Pandora's Fed Up With The Lies The RIAA Has Been Spreading About It: Presents Some Facts
Re: Re: Strange math
On the post: Pandora's Fed Up With The Lies The RIAA Has Been Spreading About It: Presents Some Facts
Re: Strange math
1.5 million listens in 6 months got Zoe Keating ~$1600. So there's some math for ya.
On the post: How The MPAA Fought To Keep Audiovisual Materials Out Of WIPO Treaty For The Blind/Deaf; And How That's A Disaster For Education
Re: Re:
On the post: Yet Another Leak Shows NSA Lied About Not Being Able To Geolocate Data It Scoops Up
Re: wait
So Emmel didn't lie, considering she qualified her denial of geolocation and identification as being something they can't do with certainty in regard to all parties to a given communication. That leaves quite a bit of wiggle room.
On the post: Horrifying Supreme Court Ruling Lets Police Collect DNA Because You Might Just Be A Horrible Criminal
Re: Anyone who wants some of my DNA can have it.?? !!
...including the ones you didn't know you had until the DNA proof! :)
On the post: Court Says Copying Journal Articles To Show Prior Art In Patent Proceedings Is Fair Use
Re: How is status quo "clearly good news for fair use"?
The part I find interesting is that it's a case of using a complete work, not just an excerpt or two. It's usually pretty difficult to get a determination of fair use when more than a portion of a work is at issue. In this case, the portion didn't matter, due to the copies being made (a) without intent to compete (b) for their factual rather than expressive content.
On the post: FL Schools Go Minority Report On Students, Give Parents Opt Out Choice Afterward
They don't even think of things like what could go wrong, how secure is this data being kept, how long do they keep it, what else might be done with it, what if someone uses the data to identify and track the children in places & situations where they (and their parents) expected anonymity, what happens when the company goes out of business or is acquired by a big government/military/law-enforcement contractor, etc.?
On the post: Bradley Manning Accused Of Aiding [Classified Enemy]
Re: Assange
On the post: RIAA: There's Been No Innovation Stifling Here!
Re: Re: Re: Mike NEVER deals with the morality of Napster.
On the post: Internet Association Hits Back At RIAA's Desire To Wipe Away DMCA Safe Harbors
Re: Re:
Citation needed. I would grant you that unchallenged doesn't mean legitimate, but even so, come on.
On the post: How Long Before A Patent Kills A Hundred Million People?
Re: Just to play Devil's Advocate
On the post: High School Girl Faces Felony Charges For Yearbook Prank
Re: Re: Corrective Action.
Our yearbook staff conspired to sneak things past the faculty advisor (or so we thought, who knows what she really knew), writing risqué captions, creating fake students, swapping in embarrassing photos of kids doing things they weren't supposed to be doing ... it was all just silly fun. Now it would be "bullying" and someone have to pay with a felony record, I guess.
On the post: Another CA Cop Thinks A Cell Phone Might Be A Dangerous Weapon
Re: Re:
On the post: RIAA: The Copyright Reform We Need Is To Make Everyone Else Copyright Cops
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Trade Group Representing Many Large Companies Claims That Exceptions For The Blind Would 'Cast Aside' Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Again, sheerly an anti-copyright WEDGE for Mike.
I suppose his posting it here can be interpreted as an attempt to discredit someone, although "copyright holders" is a bit broad, since that's basically everyone who has ever authored anything. Rather, it's discrediting this particular business lobbying group, based on something they're actually doing. What more do you want?
On the post: Trade Group Representing Many Large Companies Claims That Exceptions For The Blind Would 'Cast Aside' Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Again, sheerly an anti-copyright WEDGE for Mike.
Like any blog, this one attracts more than its share of readers whose opinions are aligned with those of its contributors. And like most popular blogs, the writers know their audience, and both consciously and subconsciously write for it.
Yet, for some reason, you envision Techdirt readers as an obedient, unthinking cult, hanging on Masnick's every word and regarding him as their "leader". You regard all the readers - except those agree with you, I bet - as unable to formulate positions and arguments on their own, unwilling to see that his posts are mainly griping and shit-stirring.
Like I said, he knows his audience - he can certainly whip us up into a pissed-off comment frenzy - but we know him, as well. You guys keep trying to point out to us what's really going on, not realizing that we already know, and it doesn't matter, because most of the time, he's not saying anything we don't already agree with.
Mike and his guest bloggers just relay reports of outrageous things that the IP industry is up to, and they often express their opinions about it, and we all chime in with ours. It's as simple as that. He doesn't have us under mind control. He's not our "leader". One misstep and we'll turn on him...for that one post, which is how it should be.
This "leader" fixation is a generational thing. Mike's generation, the Gen Xers, distrust power and leaders in general, starting with their parents. The younger Millennials laugh at would-be leaders and rarely conflate celebrity with authority. But the older generation, the Baby Boomers - good god, they revere and exalt as ideologues anyone who's got anyone's attention, and can't comprehend the idea that everyone must be following someone. Of course there are exceptions to these trends, but I'm guessing you're in this camp, born before the 1970s. Am I right?
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