p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood vs BitTorrent
p2pnet.net News:- Yesterday, the major movie studios turned their MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) loose on BitTorrent and eDonkey p2p networks, claiming the effort is necessary to bring file-sharing under control.
Perhaps p2pnet’s spoof post in which the RIAA and MPAA merge to form one Mafia-like organization wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
RIAA boss Cary Sherman says he’s glad his counterparts in the MPAA are joining in.
“If you have 10 stores in the strip mall each with a security guard instead of one, it’s going to be a safer strip mall,” he’s quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been using the US legal system to try to force people into buying its product for some time. At last count close to 7,000 people were being ’sued,’ although not a single case has yet been processed under civil law.
Victims have no option other than to take up the RIAA’s ‘offer’ to ’settle’ out of court, giving the false impression that they’re guilty of something, a falacy strenuously promoted by the Big Music cartel owners, EMI, UMG, Sony-BMG and Warner.
But there is a difference between the Mafia and the MPAA and RIAA.
International law enforcement agencies recognizes the Mafia as being corrupt and evil. The entertainment industry, however, seems able to use its enforcement agencies to do whatever it wants with impunity, up to and including suborning international police forces.
Hollywood has significantly ramped up its efforts to bring p2p file sharing and anyone who uses p2p applications under its heel, saying people who engage in it - teenagers, mostly - are crooks, bent on destroying the multi-billion-dollar industry.
Now the MPAA is going after people who run BitTorrent servers.
Finnish police yesterday took down a BitTorrent site and seized equipment owned by the site’s operators. The bust was at the behest of the Big Four music label cartel.
“Criminal actions have already been filed in Europe, including the seizure of seven Net-connected servers, with their operator still wanted by French police, a representative of the French government said, according to CNET Asia.
Yesterday, Shareconnector.com, the Dutch p2p release site, was shut down, apparently at the instigation of BREIN, the Netherlands’ RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
We don’t have any further details at this point, but BREIN recently turned its attentions to file sharers, specifically to sites such as Releases4u.com, even going so far as to collect data on the people behind them - with the OK of the Dutch Privacy Authorities.
In France, Youceff Torrents, one of the largest BT sites, was shut down by Fremch police Monday afternoon.
“This morning, Arjan received and e-mail explaining that the servers had in fact been deliberately terminated and the police where on scene,” says Slyck, going on that it, “spoke to a rather nervous [owner] Arjan, who explained that the police would find nothing on the servers but torrent files. He does not host any FTP servers or warez.
“Arjan does not live in France, or believe he has done anything wrong, but he is naturally apprehensive that the local police will make a visit to his door. He also remains defiant, saying that even if the French servers are shut down permanently, he will find elsewhere to host.”
New economical forces could bring about a new ‘Golden Age’ for Hollywood but, “these same forces threaten to unleash a wave of intellectual piracy that will undermine the very foundations of moviemaking,” Dan Glickman, Hollywood’s new mouthpiece, stated at a Newsmaker Luncheon at the US National Press Club last month.
The studios would rather, “produce courtroom dramas than star in them,” Glickman said.
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See:-
spoof post - RIAA, MPAA merger plans, p2pnet, November 11, 2004
security guard - Hollywood Sues Computer Server Operators, Associated Press, December 14, 2004
BitTorrent site - Finland’s Finreactor raided, p2pnet, December 14, 2004
Net-connected servers - MPAA targets core BitTorrent, eDonkey users, CNET Asia, DEcember 15, 2004
Dutch p2p site vs Big Music - Dutch p2p site vs Big Music, September 5, 2004
deliberately terminated - Youceff Servers Raided - Updated, Slyck, December 14, 2004
December 15th, 2004 at 4:29 pm
Dan Glickman is a bubblehead. Him and his posse think they’re making the slightest bit of progress. History has a big habit of repeating itself, and these nitwits will just never learn.
December 15th, 2004 at 4:37 pm
“New economical forces could bring about a new ‘Golden Age’ for Hollywood but, “these same forces threaten to unleash a wave of intellectual piracy that will undermine the very foundations of moviemaking,” Dan Glickman”
it is called efficient information transfer at increasing returns to scale.
the marginal cost is negligible, but it requires a willingness to accept open standards and *gasp* give people what they want.
They want to PARTICIPATE in their culture, not simply “consume” it.
Your industries, mr. Glickman, have, in the mean time, forced us to it by making an end run on fair use via the DMCA. Because under the DMCA we are not able to do as we wish with our purchased media, we no longer really own what we buy.
YOUR group has stripped us of OUR right to individual property; not the right to distribute it online, the general right to govern what we buy. It is being applied to “protect” our electronics from our evil tinkering hands.. how dare we as purchasers choose to add capabilities and interoperability to our devices and media.
Now its your turn. Weve been taking it up the wazoo from your pet DMCA for 6 years now. My right to innovate as a programmer is effectively nullified unless i pay kickbacks. Now you get to suffer for a while. I personally hope you continue to be more abstinate and blatant until your industry really does die.
December 16th, 2004 at 2:56 am
The industry won’t die. There will always be a huge market of people to eat up the product. Even when the product is terrible. What they fail to see is the file-sharing community is a minority. Most people are unaware of this struggle between net users who have been fed up since they had the ability to bypass the greedy middleman. The file sharers are the few, and like has been proven through “real” mathmatics, have little to no impact of the bank rolls of these corrupt corporations. IMO, they are only raising awareness to the fact there are free alternatives to get the same 1’s and 0’s that they over-charge for and over protect. The economic damage that will happen to these companies will be a result of harrassing customers (the would say consumers) with the law, changing laws to remove fair-use, and thier own legal bills resulting from constant legal action against people who were once free from attack due to thier empty wallets. There was a time when any large industry would have seen the futility of suing people with no or little money. How times have changed. I’ll bet that every $3000 the RIAA steals from a customer, costs them 10 times as much. The justification is educating (putting the fear of the $law$) the general public. They think that most of thier customers can’t afford to dish out $3000 at a whim, and they are correct. I don’t have that in my bank account. That should scare the average person enough, right? That is a sticky bet to place. When people who have very little are taken advantage of by the people who have very much, the very much sometime get more than what they expected. They will need to secure corporate HQ’s like embassies. They mind find that they push someone at some time to the breaking point. I hope this never happens. If you take from the poor through [legal] force, then you also have to accept the possible response to fincially breaking someone. All in all history will be written highlighting the many mistakes of the RIAA and MPAA. They will never win this battle. I don’t think many religions state that the rich and greedy shall inheret the earth. =P
December 19th, 2004 at 8:34 pm
I suppose this poses quite a few questions:
Well, how much are their actions costing, I mean researching and capturing data about alll these P2P sites, bittorrent, emule, DC etc is going to take quite a lot of work in itself. How much are they spending on capturing the P2Pers??
Also how many people who would have bought albums would now boycott them?? (Well I suppose that they don’t care about because then they can always blame lower figures on P2P).
I mean how much do you want to keep paying these, in essence, “heavies”. And IS there actually any difference between these guys and the mafia?? I mean can anyone seeing the mafia shakin down a kid, wouldn’t there be uproar?? But hey .. the mafia don’t control the airwaves!!
When will more Artists realise that they can now market their product directly to their consumers over the Internet. I mean, they don’t really need these people anymore!!
So I suggest that everyone stops giving them money, yes in essence a boycott, and goes and buys something from from an Independant, like Warp Records www.warprecords.com
Here’s a great quote from Warp:
“Bleep MP3s have an average bit rate of around 205kbps VBR, while the majority of MP3s found on the internet are 128kbps.
Secondly, Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music. Apple has even privately stated that they decided to use a weak form of DRM solely to get major labels onboard.”
There’s also www.soundclick.com - buy direct from the Artist, here’s a quote:
“What is a zero-commission store? Unlike the other music sites, we take 0% commission on sales. All profits are kept by the band. The bands are also the ones sending out their merchandise. You as a customer have later the chance to rate the delivery. Was it prompt? Did the shipment arrive in a good condition? All customer ratings are available to all other potential customers. This open system works perfect for bands and customers alike. So go shopping!”