Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue' Big Music has launched a fresh lawsuit aimed at forcing ISPs to take action against users who trade in stolen copyrighted content. Over 20 record labels – among them giants such as Sony Music, Universal Music Group – last week lodged a complaint [PDF] that contents "Verizon is one of the largest Internet Service Providers ( …
Some of the music I've heard lately on BBC Radio 6 is doing quite a good job of that all by itself; never thought anyone would actually choose to add what sound like drop-outs from a cheap
'70s cassette recorder to their music but I've heard a few songs like that. Weird. I mean unless it's brickwalling-gone-wrong (or rather gone-even-wronger). Shame they can't apply automatic volume control to that irritating bellowing announcer they have on there all the time though.
If I really wanted to, using Linux Mint, I'd use Sound Recorder to record (Line-Out) music played on YouTube. Adblocker in place so no interruptions, but if there were, I could use Audacity to edit out any crap. Not that I've ever done this.
Granted, torrenting would be faster, but if someone is patient, they can download as much music as they want unobtrusively.
No need to even go to those lengths, there are plenty of Youtube video download sites will let you download just the audio from a Youtube video and there won't be any ads, well unless the video itself had sponsored content/ads baked in. Or there are locally installable programs that you can put on your PC to do the same such as YTdownloader
If you want to be double dangerous, you can set the YouTube playback speed to 2x, record the audio, then batch-process in Audacity* to restore normal playback speed. After all, you want to be able to do it as fast as a twin cassette desk with High Speed Dubbing!
*Audacity? If you're not going to bother using a cracked version of Adobe Audition then I don't think you're taking this piracy game seriously at all!
"High Speed Dubbing" - gosh, you're making me feel old. I remember when half the ghettoblasters (and even some 'HiFi' systems) in the shops had that emblazoned all over them in big letters!
(Me? I had more exacting standards: if I couldn't tape it from a friend's CD, I didn't bother. Shonky 2nd generation tape copy, no thanks! Unfortunately for me, most of my friends had rather different musical tastes to me, but, on the other hand, the likes of FOPP managed to sell quite a lot of fairly reasonably priced CDs to me over the years, so I think I got the balance between legitimately purchased music and 'evaluation copies' fairly reasonably balanced overall. Nowadays, there's so little new music worth buying, however. I really must be getting old!)
YTdownloader is very good indeed, coded in Python and distrubuted as standalone bin you can download, it will pull and recode YT vids, it can strip out audio formats. I don't use it for commercial videos only for artists who haven't yet released any material for sale on Bandcamp or Soundcloud, mostly unknown Synthwave artists.
BTW, Bandcamp and Soundcloud are superb places to find great new music from some very talenet people out there, YTD will do those sites too.
Trip down memory lane...
youtube-dl/github/RIAA
https://search.theregister.com/?q=youtube-dl+github
RIAA keeps whacking away
>Adblocker in place so no interruptions,
Following your link, I happened to looking at that Tom's site while I have PiHole on my network.
- When viewing it with Firefox there are no adds at the bottom of the page.
- When viewing it with the Chromium Browser there ARE adds at the bottom of the page.
It's something I started to notice recently. I checked the Chromium privacy setting "Use secure DNS" and it is OFF. Perhaps Chromium is now hard coded to detect when an add is blocked and then uses a hard coded DoH (Dns Over Https, aka secure DNS) to bypass PiHole?
Lightly paraphrasing Douglas Adams
- The infringment notices were delivered...
- Delivered? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.
- That’s the infringement notices department.
- With a flashlight.”
- Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.
- So had the stairs.
- But look, you found the notices, didn’t you?
- Yes, said Arthur, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'
While forum shopping is de rigeur in the US judicial system I think α-centuri is still a star system too far.
That's... not what "fair use" means. Also not how copyright works. You can absolutely be sued for paraphrasing something.
In this case the GP won't be, because (1) there's no possibility of adverse commercial impact, (2) it would make the estate of Douglas Adams look ridiculous, (3) said estate has already shown itself not merely tolerant, but tickled pink when people like to quote from the books, within reason. As it should be.
RIAA etc. must prove guilt in a court of law, NOT just try to "cancel" people on a WHIM. ISP takedowns are pointless .
They're better off making people want to buy the music by making music people WANT to buy. And they need to stop marketing CRAP.
I suggest using Tor to hide the endpoints so "they" cannot track it.
And why are you restricting yourself to Verizon ? There are other providers in the USA, if I am not mistaken.
Oh, and don't forget to sue the US Government as well, because those roads allow Internet providers to maintain their networks of thievery.
Up here there is a levy on blank CDs to pay up for piracy(*)
Obviously nobody pirates albums on CD anymore, so we need to have a levy on all communications networks to pay for piracy
* although the audit showed that the recording industry association spent all the money on themselves and never actually distributed anything to artists. Then stopped reporting it for "commercial confidentiality"
Here in France there's a levy as well. The last I heard (several years ago) there was an open letter from the recording industry to the government to continue this (and also support the three-strikes-disconnected rule) which was apparently signed by lots of people, some of who were less than living at the time.
I can't help but think that the biggest impediment to great music isn't piracy, it's the cartel of recording and rights companies that are living in some sort of rose tinted past. I think their primary value now is getting albums (in whatever media) on to supermarket shelves for easy accessibility by the public, but if course they're only going to want to do that for the big names. Taylor Swift, yes, everywhere. The Birthday Massacre, not so much. But more and more of the niche artists seem to be going directly to their fans to cut out the middle men. And while postage from Canada might cost more than the CD, it's just as simple to buy the music in a lossless format to burn my own CD (or just copy to USB media for the audio system).
I think you are right. The recording industry has been decimated by Spotify and the death of physical media, so lawsuits are a way to maybe make a buck. Today's modern cut and paste music "artists" all sound the same. The days of Metallica and Prince selling millions of profitable tapes, CDs and records is over forever. Perhaps the death of the traditional music studios will foster a new generation of talent that can compare to what has already come and gone.
"And, of course, forgetting that the deeper the pocket, the better the legal team behind it."
Not to mention that Verizon et al are more than capable of BUYING the entire USA music industry with change from down the back of the sofa (Ditto the movie industry) if sufficiently annoyed
And why are you restricting yourself to Verizon ?"
I think the "Verizon profiting from piracy" is a bit of a stretch too. The alleged "pirates" would probably still be using the same provider whether they were pirateing or not, especially in those areas where ISPs are effectively a monopoly or, at best a duopoly. And those alleged "pirates" are probably using far more bandwidth than other users, so if anything are lower profit users. Bandwidth costs money so ISPs are always happier with those who use less of it than others :-)
Or is it safe to say that there's a lot of other stuff caught in the net. You know, bangers like ubuntu-naughty-narwhal.iso*, ghost-bsd-0.7.0.iso, stuff like that?
* or whatever animal themed pun they're using at the moment, I've lost track to be honest
The real way that it works is that the IP holders also run honeypots on which they serve fake content labeled as real content (as not to distribute their content themselves). Anyone who connects to it has then shown intent to download copyrighted material as well as actually downloaded some of it, and getting their IP address (and timestamp) is trivial, because they run the seeder/peer themselves.
They pump up their seeder & peer count by running many seeders and peers themselves in order to make their torrent attractive to users.
They also do some scouring of available torrents, pick the ones that they own copyright to, and then try to connect to seeders and peers in order to get their IP addresses.
So if all you're torrenting is the latest Linux iso, you shouldn't have to worry too much because those are not being offered or tracked by Big Music... (but that may change and it may devolve into a "torrenting can _ONLY_ be used for what we call 'illegal' purposes")
It's not hard to find out who's "on the line", simply join the torrent, start pulling/pushing and it literally list out the other sharers on a file, as a copyright owner all you have to do is leave a torrent seeding for month and log all the IPs, setup an automated checker and do an automated mailshot, literally take most competant coders about an hour to throw something like that together. People think BT is anonymous, is it f**k! It literally tells you the exact files and IPs and how much of that file they have.
"all you have to do is leave a torrent seeding for month"
If one is actively providing that which they are complaining about being "stolen", isn't that called unclean hands or something?
Certainly in a logical world (not the current one), actively providing the content to pirates ought to render all copyright claims null and void.
I think what they meant to say but didn't is that you just have to find an existing torrent and, without needing to actually download any chunks, log the address of anyone who offers a chunk. You don't need to send the file, or even have the file, in order to do it.
Except that the only data at that point is a filename. It's hearsay.
That doesn't say what's actually in the file, or whether a given IP in the list actually downloaded or uploaded anything from/to anyone else.
The only way that can be found is to actually seed the file, thus becoming complicit in the claimed infringement.
Courts should be tossing out everything based on torrents because it's either hearsay or blatant entrapment. Which is probably what Verizon will say if it ever gets there.
You do realize that they can download the file, which they have reason to believe is their copyrighted content, because they own the copyright? It is not infringement to download an illegally distributed copy of something you have the right to. From a technical perspective, they don't have to seed the file, because just downloading proves both what is in it and who sent the data. They have no need and no reason to upload. They might not even have to download to figure out what is in it because, with a torrent, they have both the file names and, crucially, the hashes of the chunks of the file. If those hashes match an illegal encoding they already have, that will be clear enough to stand as evidence, at least enough that the person charged will have to show their file that just happens to have a hash collision for every 2 MB chunk if they want to disprove it.
I get it. You're looking for some reason why their legal actions should be invalid. I think you'll find one for the ones mentioned in the article where they try to have automatic rights over everyone's network connection. There's no law giving them that power. However, when it comes to torrents, your excuses for why their legal arguments won't work are getting both the technology and the law wrong. No matter how annoying I find their actions, I can't just decide that it isn't legal. Courts do not work that literally and if they did, the law is specific enough that it would still work.
Yes, the detection based on hashes alone would fail. They would have to download the file to check its content. There are several problems with the suggestion from the perspective of someone wanting to pirate and allow others to pirate without getting caught:
1. You can't do that with a torrent. Torrents only work when they can deliver identical, byte-for-byte copies. Deliver ones with additional noise that's different per user and all your seeds will stop being able to deliver the content anymore. You can do that if you're operating a central server that hosts the pirated content, but now you're incurring a lot more bandwidth usage to deliver the same number of copies.
2. The copyright owners can still download the file and identify that it's their music in there. Just having someone listen would be enough, and there are also pieces of software intended to detect similarity between audio files of different encodings or qualities which would instantly figure it out from a downloaded file.
At the end of the day, it wouldn't be effective enough to produce any notable change.
So can insurance companies sue TfL?
Clearly most thefts will use the road network to transport the stolen goods, so will naturally have to pay the congestion/emission/whatever charges. So TfL are directly profiting from crime.
(I'm sure there are equivalent schemes in place in other cities, I'm just most familiar with being shafted in London)
Very much so, it works very well so why try to re-invent the wheel. These days you won't find torrent sites per-se, more magnet link hosters where the magents links, that link to the torrents meta, are stored.
Visit Internet Archive and you'll they offer millions of torrents to allow you to get stuff from them. I use the IA to get old radio shows from the 50s and 60s, some stuff can be hundreds of files, so a torrent makes it easier to get that.
Don't diss Winamp! It really whips the Llama's ass,... remember <LOL> I have never downloaded a single Torrent but am still using Winamp because it does what I want, doesn't spew adverts all over my screen or in my ears, doesn't require a web connection, etc. I do use other players, but Winamp is still my go-to. No, I'm not a Grandpa, yes I am old-ish.
Music is clearly the monster in this horror movie franchise - it keeps getting killed and then coming back for more...
Don't forget AI !
I suspect the only reason the RIAA aren't whingeing on about AI actually is because the record companies know they can use it to churn out artless drivel without paying anyone, and then they can sue people for copying it! Chicken Dinner
Imagine being sued for torrenting an AI-generated music album ...
Can't "mindless generation of content based on what was a previous hit" be unpatentable as prior art? The music and film industries have been doing it for years, to the point that there's a "I thought Attack of the Clones was coming out NEXT year" was a joke in Foxtrot...
and...
Video Killed The Radio Star
The first video played on MTV
Watch on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs
icon: home taping is killing music
"Further, the plaintiffs allege that "more than 500 subscribers were the subject of 100 or more notices. One particularly egregious Verizon subscriber was single-handedly the subject of 4,450 infringement notices from Plaintiffs alone.""
How do they know? Verizon uses dynamic addresses. I'm sure more than one person uses whatever client they claim was being used.
Besides, if they had a cast iron case, they could subpoena the users ip and prosecute directly. This sounds like fishing...
For some very good commentary on the state of the music business, check out Rick Beato's YT channel.
I have no sympathy for the music companies and prefer to see good artists at non-Live Nation venues with tickets not purchased through Ticketmaster. If the band is good, I'll buy a CD and some merch. It's the only way those people will make any money.
Hear hear. I once published two albums through CDBaby. With us doing all the recording, mixing, etc., and then publishing there, we'd at least get most of the album price. iTunes wanted a 30% cut to have it there. And yet that's still miles better than the <1% that musicians get from big labels.
" iTunes wanted a 30% cut to have it there."
The problem is you weren't selling an item with a very big price tag and the costs/fees to create, host and process payments has a minimum. I'd be rather pissed if I was selling $100 items and being taken for 30%, but a $12 item I don't have to fulfill or pay payment processing fees might be worth the $3.60 I have to pony up.
A "friend" of mine is a prolific downloader, and makes an effort to (try to) download a different artist's complete discography daily. S/he has a massive compilation, now, and s/he's never been bothered by any authorities. In the 80's s/he would borrow cassettes from the library, make a copy, take it back, rinse-&-repeat, same when CDs became common. Now, s/he uses the internet to download. S/he's still waitin' for a knock on the door, but after 35 years on the internet, it's never happened.
This idea that they can sue the ISPs is crap. And copyright infringement is not theft, it's copyright infringement.
But they are not wrong -- Verizon has fiber optic service (but not in my area) and DSL (but not in my area) but it was well known since the 3G service came out that they didn't monitor jack, and if your friendly neighborhood cable or DSL company gave you any crap over torrenting, you could just hop onto Verizon Wireless. They'll have words with you if you fired off DoS attacks or started pumping out spam E-Mails but otherwise make a point of treating it as a common carrier (as they should), it's frankly not their job to monitor for anything else so they don't. Back in the day I had an unlimited aircard for $30 (then they modified it to "subject to deprioritization" -- if the service was down to 1mbps anyway you'd get cut down to about 600kbps... in other words full speed all day and all night unless there was a basketball or football game in town (University of Iowa Hawkeyes) so the service speeds got trashed by having 10,000s of extra people come into town on game days. They eventually put in more cell sites, and of course with 4G and 5G have far more capacity so it still slows down but not the nosedive it used to be.)
Now they sell unlimited 5G Home Internet, my parents got grandfathered in at like $20 a month (that includes autopay and a discount for having a cell phone plan with them), now that's $35.) It was no tough decision for them -- their other choices were $50 a month DSL for like 18mbps with a 750GB cap and 1gbps cable for $80 -- with a 1250GB a month data cap -- and apprently extremely unreliable. AT&T are dicks, that same $50 will get you 1gbps fiber with no cap IF they bothered to run fiber in your neighborhood, otherwise it's whatever DSL (some people are apparently paying $50 for under 1mbps DSL...) with that data cap. I mean the speed is the speed but the data cap is just a dick move in my opinion. And Comcast in their neighborhood (they live in New Orleans), they have cable drops just hanging off the poles and dangling about a foot over pedestrians heads up and down the block (no caps/terminators on the lines to block them off either) so the system is incredibly noisy, their neighbor with cable says the service goes down like 5 times a week on average. I'm astounded Comcast doesn't spend the like $1 a port (that's what it'd cost me so they could probably buy them in bulk for less), so probably $30-40 per city block, to cap these off. Bleh.
They wouldn't, so if you're going to send some copyrighted content, that will probably work. Not many torrents are done that way, though, because it makes it really hard for anyone else to find the stuff they want. You can easily hide what you're transmitting by doing that, but only if you've somehow told anyone else who might want the content you're hiding that it can be found there. Meanwhile, if you have a pirate site that just calls every torrent "LibreOffice_24.2.5_MacOS_x86-64.dmg.torrent", it won't have any protective effect at all because those trying to find torrents will start on that site that has the real names, and if they own the copyright to the content, they have committed no crime by downloading it to verify what is there.
I don't know who the RIAA thinks these torrent downloaders are but they're a bit out of touch. Everyone + dog is streaming these days and if you're following the tales of music people on the 'net you learn that its not only really difficult for the people actually making music to actually make money from streaming but also a lot of the music that's being streamed is automatically generated.
So I guess the RIAA is trying to prove its still relevant and, of course, like all robbers from time immemorial its going for the big ISPs because "that's where the money is".
Washington Post, 2020
<i>A few Sundays ago, Camerata Pacifica artistic director Adrian Spence, aided by his tech-savvy son Keiran, went live on Facebook to broadcast a previously recorded performance of Mozart’s Trio in E flat (K. 498), a.k.a. the “Kegelstatt” trio. At least they tried to.
The recorded performance was one of many that Spence had drawn from the Camerata’s extensive video archives. When the covid-19 crisis abruptly canceled its season, Spence launched a weekly series of rebroadcasts to fill the silence. These broadcasts, even with their modest virtual attendance of 100 or so viewers per stream, have been essential to keeping Spence’s Santa Barbara-based chamber organization engaged with its audience.
That is, until that recent Sunday, when his audience started to disappear, one by one, all the way down to none.
“What the hell is going on?” Spence recalls shouting to his son across the living room as the viewer count conspicuously dropped. Just minutes into the airing of the concert, Facebook issued Spence a notification that his video — an original performance of an hour-long piece composed by Mozart in 1786 — somehow contained one minute and 18 seconds of someone else’s work, in this case, “audio owned by Naxos of America.”</i>
One of the BIG problems with these takedowns is that the "perjury" aspect of claims has never been activated
A few C-level staff facing jail (or even a few minions) would dampen the RIAA's jets pretty hard
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