User:Stevenarntson/group spaces/2009springanalytical/group 4

Overview
Avacorrea

AdiGue

Lindsayfoley

Quintincooke

Lohara

summary
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Gavel, Scalpel, or Rabble?
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When one mentions piracy, one might think of a scruffy character with a parrot on their shoulder and ending every sentence with Arrrr. They also might think of recent pirate attacks on merchant ships off the cost of Africa. Piracy has many forms and different definitions. The piracy which is spoken here is the unauthorized use or reproduction of another’s work, particularly in music. Piracy on the internet is a common practice in the world today. With the internet becoming more advanced, it is allowing people to connect and share content more freely like music, software, and images. This is a broad subject with many different facets in each individual case especially on the university level. According to K. Matthew Dames, “The college campus has long been a tinderbox for some of this society’s most pressing controversies, so it is no surprise that our nation’s institutions of higher learning are at the crux of the global challenges concerning digital copyright.” University students usually live on borrowed income from parents and government. They are also in the creation process of expressing themselves without the influence of their parents. Because of these circumstances, they are searching for cheaper avenues for downloading music. Some students aren’t sure where to get legal music. In a focus group conducted by Cheryl Elzy, dean of Illinois State University Libraries. Students were asked to name one legal source for downloading media but could not. Some students indicated that even iTunes was illegal.

There are many internet sites devoted to downloading free music and free file sharing. These internet sites allow the user to either, upload their music files and share them with other people or download free music files from others that have uploaded their music libraries. Because this practice is common with students, some universities have joined internet file sharing sites to allow their students to access and share files between each other; Allowing a flow of creativity and communication. Now universities are being targeted by the music industry for piracy. The music industry is seeking to protect it’s incoming revenue by taking universities and even some students to court to settle their dispute and to end the practice of music piracy. An example of this happened to a student at Boston University. Joel Tenenbaum had a lawsuit filed against him by the RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America) for sharing of digitized music on a peer-to-peer network. Tenebaum offered to settle the case for $500 but that wasn’t good enough for RIAA, they wanted $12,000. Charles Nesson, Tenebaum’s lawyer, argued “The RIAA is using the statute not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual revenue loss but to make Tenenbaum into an ‘urban legend’ whose successful prosecution would scare off future media pirating among the rest of his born-digital generation.” The statute that Nesson is talking about is the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999, which set the fine for unwittingly pirating a digital work at up to 30,000 for each offence. Libraries are also on the chopping block when it comes to piracy. The outcome of some of these cases could create restrictions in how they share digital media. This can be a problem for creativity. When laws become to heavy handed they have the potential to hinder the creative flow. Students might keep there talents or breakthroughs hidden, in fear of being punished with fines.

A good example of hindering creativity is discussed by Larry Lessig, a Stanford professor. In a keynote address he speaks about John Phillips Sousa and quoted him saying that, “Talking machines would take our artistic development away”. We would loose the capacity to learn and give back. Lessig calls this a read-write culture. Where someone can “participate in the creation and recreate in their culture” The fear of John Phillips Sousa was that the talking machine would disrupt this process. Lessing calls this a “Read-only culture, where the creativity is consumed, but the consumer is not a creator.” If we get to where the laws on copyright are to restrictive we run the chance of culture becoming a read-only culture which would have a sever affect, on the progression of our culture.

To understand piracy and the laws that where implicated one must look back into history to see where this issue first began.


 * 2.reflective assessment


 * 1.successes


 * 2.failures


 * 3.future strategies

History

 * deprivation vs. duplication

Piracy in the past wasn’t as uncommon as you might have thought. An article by the New York Times from 1897 has Canadian pirates stealing sheet music and selling them for 2-5 cents. That was quite the downgrade from 40 cents the publishing companies were selling their sheet music for at the time. In 1964 a group called Radio Carolina went into international waters to broadcast their station because they had not bought the rights to the music they were playing. Not being able to legally broadcast on land, they had to move to a more liquid environment. Radio Carolina was one of the larger groups to illegally broadcast although certainly not the first. They later became legitimate. During the 1970s, the music world was revolutionized by the introduction of the cassette tape. People started to create there own mixes and recordings. A mix was taking a track off one tape, then another track off another tape and mixing them into each other. After tapes came compact discs (CDs) and it wasn’t long before every new album was on a CD. It soon became easier to copy music with personal computers CD-Rs, and burners, making copying music simpler. The Mp3 became available to the public in 1995; it was now easier than ever to mix and match CDs. However, at this time you still needed to buy the original CD, since there was no way to distribute Mp3s through the internet. This soon changed with the invention of file sharing applications in the 1990s, one of the best-known being Napster. You no longer needed to own a CD since you could download an entire album for free online.

One of the most controversial aspects of this is that people are creating a duplicate copy of the music through peer to peer file sharing. The user or owner of the music isn't being deprived of their music by sharing it. They are in fact adding to it by allowing someone else to download a copy of their music. Many new forms of piracy have formed with the growth of technology. Local area network (LAN) file sharing is one of those which connects people through a local network such as university campuses and businesses. With so many people able to access a shared network it can easily contain a considerable amount of unlicensed content. Another is Digital Stream Ripping which is a method of converting streamed music into a stored file. This allows for radio or internet webcast to be changed into permanent duplicates of individual songs, each with labels with artist and track information. One of the newest issues emerging is Mobile Music Piracy which is a rising threat to the music industry. Mobile phones can now be used to obtain free music as well. An example of is through Bluetooth transfers that facilitates files to be moved from phone-to-phone, and in addition to this there is also memory card swapping. This is changing the over all image of Piracy where there is no loss by any individual except for the Recording Industry Association of America or the RIAA, who has been taking action since 2000 suing at least 200 individuals for violating copyright laws since then. Avacorrea

Viewpoint #1: The Gavel
Litigiousness of the current system. <>

According to the Tennessee Journalist, many students have taken advantage of the vast sea of information available online for their daily entertainment, and where there are open seas, there are pirates. While the pirates of Somalia might dominate the real life oceans, computer savvy pirates trade music everyday online.

Groups like the Recording Industry Association of America have become the forerunners of the fight against online piracy. The group is committed to making sure the music business thrives by making sure music lovers pay for the "intellectual property" they use.

The RIAA website states "Piracy is bad news. While the term is commonly used, 'piracy' doesn't even begin to describe what is taking place."

Music piracy is not only stealing music from the artist but the producers, technicians and everybody involved in the music making process. By pirating music, individuals are being put out of jobs and limiting the flow of new bands entering the industry.

Many universities have successfully installed anti-piracy software tools and have reported receiving fewer copyright infringement notices. UT installed a torrent blocking software on all its servers, which stopped the use of peer-to-peer file sharing. While many students who have used this form of piracy have been stopped, many expert pirates have found ways around the software.

"There is no way [to stop piracy]. It's not possible. The internet is so vast, and there is always going to be a way around the problem no matter what it is," "Jackson", a UT software pirate said.

"Jackson" uses programs like the Firebug add-on for Firefox to download audio directly off websites. He also stated he could pirate whole albums off ThePirateBay.org.

In early 2008, the RIAA targeted 159 UT students with letters threatening suit. So far, the group has sued more than 70 students, including the 24 who are the subject of this latest litigation.

Students targeted by RIAA could either be made to pay a $3,000 "settlement fee" or demand a trial. A Minnesota woman who served as the first nationwide test of the industry's legal offensive cost her more than $200,000 in damages alone in 2007, according to USATODAY.com.

So far, all but one UT student identified as a result of the RIAA's first two lawsuits has paid the settlement fee. The lone person who tried to block the industry's demand that UT identify him failed when his motion to quash the subpoena was shot down in October. A settlement notice has not yet been filed, however.

ThePirateBay.org, the largest source of stolen software, recently became the target of the Swedish government. After a long trial, the founders of ThePirateBay.org were found guilty of aiding in the piracy of copyrighted material.

"Our goal is to shut down as much of this illegal operation as quickly as possible to stem the serious financial damage to the victims of this high-tech piracy -- the people who labor to produce these copyrighted materials," John Richter said.

Pirate Bay and Advance Patrol Hiphop group Advance Patrol was used by the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial, portrayed as artists suffering losses from illegal downloading. However, the group itself was never consulted, and they are now striking back at the music industry by releasing their new album for free - on The Pirate Bay, of course.

Acording to Ernetso from TorrentFreak, during the Pirate Bay trial, the prosecution showed how various torrents linking to infringing material could be downloaded from the Pirate Bay, including an album by the Sweden-based hiphop group Advance Patrol. The music industry lawyers then claimed that the Pirate Bay was aiding in copyright infringement and that the artists and labels were losing millions of dollars.

Interestingly, the bands and artists, including Advance Patrol, were never informed that they were to feature in the trial. Even worse, Advance Patrol feels that they were abused by the labels, as they are using BitTorrent themselves, and encourage their fans to do the same.

“We never asked to be plaintiffs in this case,” Gonza from Advance Patrol explains. “They used us as scapegoats in a fight in which we don’t wish to participate. We refuse to be used in a war against our fans.”

Gonza further explains that the people who download and share the band’s music are some of their most dedicated fans, not some criminals. To show how wrong the music industry was in targeting The Pirate Bay, they have decided to share their latest album “El Futuro” for free.

The Pirate Bay crew is delighted with Advance Patrol’s statement. “In the case against us the music industry used many artists without asking them first. The cooperation between us and Advance Patrol shows that not all of those who were plaintiffs wanted to be a part of the Spectrial circus.”

“Earlier we’ve seen the hip hop artist Max Peezay drop out of the trial proceedings, and when we’ve spoken to other artists they were upset as well. This shows that artists really like the internet, and of course - we love them right back,” we were told.

More and more artists are speaking out against the harsh anti-piracy efforts of the music industry lobby and the alienating effect it has on fans. Several top artists including Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Iron Maiden and Travis even founded their own lobby group, the Featured Artists Coalition - to stand up for their own rights and those of their fans.

Advance Patrol’s latest album can be downloaded via The Pirate Bay, and they encourage everyone to share it with as many people as possible. AdiGue 16:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Viewpoint #2: The Scalpel
As mentioned in the introduction, Lawrence Lessig is for the artist making the decision on how music should be copied. Putting the power of copyright in the creators hands and not the record companies hands. This would open more doors for the flow of creation.

To start this process Lessig created Creative Commons a non-profit organization that allows authors to decide how they would like their work cited and redistributed. Artists choose from 6 different kinds of licenses to apply to their text, audio, songs, videos, photographs etc. Creative Commons

In this link, J.D. Lasica interviews Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig for an 8-minute video in regards to the future of copyright. Lawrence Lessig Explains Creative Commons Licensing

These are the types of licensing an artist can find on Creative Commo ns.

Attribution This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution. Attribution Share Alike This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. Attribution No Derivatives This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. Attribution Non-Commercial This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms. Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature. Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially. Lindsayfoley 16:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Viewpoint #3: The Rabble
China is a country where music piracy is everywhere. The country is an example of how extreme piracy can get. It is estimated that about 99% of all online music in China infringes copyright law, further exasperating the efforts to develop a legal market. One of the reasons that piracy is rampant in China is that China has done nothing to control piracy because the duplication of the music is done so well you can no longer tell the difference between the copy and the original. “The International Federation of Phonographic Industry, which tracks music copyright issues worldwide, agrees. It figures 95% of music sales in China are of pirated copies.”(USAToday) It is so common that it is sold in the malls by legitimate stores. The music artist in China makes almost no profit from CD sales. As soon as a CD goes on the market it is immediately pirated and sold for about a fraction of the original price. So the artist has to use other means to make money. CDs are just used as promotional items. They make endorsement deals, do concerts and are in commercials. "Commercial sales make up about half of the artist income." (BBC) Music artists get paid a set amount by companies or promoters regardless of how many tickets they sell, often making double the amount of money than they would playing a concert in Europe. As China has surpassed the US as the world’s largest Internet market, record labels such as EMI, the Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music are teaming up with Google Inc. to offer free music downloads to anyone that is inside China only. The record labels are turning over a new leaf in the hopes of making money in China by other means. They have bartered with the Chinese government over the legalities of China's pirated music. Gaining money from China's music piracy is a losing battle that the Record Labels hopes to overcome by obtaining a market in advertising and broadening their horizons. By offering free music they hope to appeal to the advertisers, as they will be able to reach a larger audience through their free music downloads. Meanwhile Google has teamed up with the record labels in hopes of overtaking Baidu as China's most used search engine. Meanwhile Baidu has been dealing with lawsuits by these record labels which say that Baidu has infringed their copyrights by providing links to the pirated music. Baidu has also received warnings by the Beijing– China Music Industry (AFP) Representatives. Qu Jingming, director-general of the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC) says “Resolutely countering Baidu, the largest and most incorrigible purveyor of pirated music in China, has become a common goal of the music industry."  Baidu’s most known pirated source is their music delivery service, which is separated from their search engine linking hundred of thousands of copyright infringed tracks. This generates considerable advertising profits for Baidu.  However Baidu isn’t alone. Yahoo China has also been found guilty of offering a similar music service. In addition to the lawsuits that Baidu faces, the company is also in danger of losing advertising contracts over these allegations that it permitted the pirating of music files. The asking price from Baidu is an estimated 9 million dollars in compensation. This is the maximum amount of compensation available under Chinese law. It is estimated at about 71,000 dollars a track. The record labels teaming up with Google is the only seemingly reasonable attempt to reach a resolution to piracy in China. Avacorrea

Solutions
Anti Piracy technology: A few of the "Big Five" major music labels are currently experimenting with anti-piracy technologies designed to combat the on-line file sharing of their products through peer-to-peer networks. Both Sony and BMG have already implemented copy-protection systems, Universal announced that in 2002 it added restricted use technology to all its releases. These copy-protection programs encode electronic impediments onto commercial CDs, which prevent the discs from being played on any device that is not a simple CD player. Sony has developed its own anti-piracy technology, called "key2audio." The music label announced in January 2002 that it had produced a total of 10 million discs for 500 different albums that could not be played on personal computers by using its key2audio program, which prevents consumers from listening to CDs on any type of CD-ROM or DVD player. A second version of the software, key2audio4PC, is a bit more lenient than key2audio in that it does permit listeners to play copy-protected CDs on their personal computer. However, the discs are encrypted to limit usage to a single PC.For example, once the CD is played on the consumer's home computer, she would not be able to play the same CD on her DVD player in the next room, or on her computer at the office. Downloaded music files may be copied from the PC hard drive to a blank CD, but that CD would likewise be playable only in the specific PC on which the copy was made from an authorized download.Another music label is licensing anti-piracy technology from outside developers. BMG Entertainment began using the Cactus Data Shield anti-piracy program,developed by Midbar Technology, on CDs in the fall of 2001. Cactus is designed to prevent consumers from reformatting songs into MP3 files and burning copies, or making them available on file-sharing systems. The software prevents listeners from playing the discs on CD-ROM drives, which means that the music will not play on the Sony Playstation 2, a number of car stereos and DVD players, or on PCs.The Cactus patent application states that the resulting playback distortion on an unauthorized copy would not only distort the sound, but would also be "potentially damaging" to amplifiers and speakers. The Cactus system also disables stand-alone CD burners.

Decriminalization

 * Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons
 * Graffiti - freewall
 * Alcohol Age Limit

"creative reuse"

Just like any problem there is a solution or consequence, that's where music law comes in which involves solutions to music piracy and copyright problems. The recent music piracy law now lets Consumers transfer material from CDs to iPods, MP3 players and computers. But passing on copied material to others remains a breach of copyright. They can legally record TV and radio programs for one-off private viewing but not to be played in public. New measures to combat piracy will include on-the-spot fines, proceeds of crime remedies, a change in presumptions in litigation to make it easier to establish copyright piracy.The Australian Institute of Criminology will be asked to undertake research into the extent of piracy and counterfeiting in Australia and the best methods of responding to the problem.Copyright material can be used for parody or satire.Will remove the 37-year old statutory cap on license fees paid by commercial radio broadcasters for using sound recordings. Previously the law did not allow you to make any copies of your CDs or legal MP3s. However it has improved over the last 15 years. The Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 was signed by President Clinton on December 9, 1999. The main focus of the amendment is to increase the statutory damages for copyright infringement from the current range of $500 to $20,000 per act of infringement to a range of $750 to $30,000. In cases of willful infringement, the number has now been raised from $100,000 to $150,000. The amendment was effective immediately upon signing. the amendment was as followed, a copyright owner who sues for infringement may elect to receive either actual damages and profits or statutory damages. The advantage of statutory damages is that the owner is relieved of having to prove the actual amount of damage. However, in order to be eligible to receive statutory damages, the copyright holder must have registered the work with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to occurrence of the infringement. Statutory damages generally are aimed at providing a deterrent for infringement and to compensate the copyright holder for the harm.The primary reason for the increase in the damages is to reflect general inflationary increases for all types of goods and services. The damages originally were $250 to $10,000 a 1988 amendment increased the damages to $500 to $20,000. It now appears that every decade or so the statutory damages cap will be raised.The 1997 No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was also amended by this act to direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to develop emergency sentencing guidelines within 120 days. The NET Act was intended to curb digital piracy by expanding the Copyright Act's criminal infringement liability provisions even where there is no intent to profit from the infringement. The Act makes it a federal crime for anyone to willfully reproduce digital copyrighted works for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. If the works copied are valued at $2500 or more, a convicted defendant may be fined up to $250,000 and sentenced up to five years in federal prison.In fact only a single person has been charged under the Act. Jeffery Gerard Levy, a 22-year old University of Oregon Student who had downloaded large amount of copyrighted software, music, games, and movies onto his web site for download. The web site was hosted by the University of Oregon, which feared liability under the online service provider provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and University officials notified authorities after it noticed the high volume of traffic that was generated by the defendant's web site. Levy pleaded guilty to posting thousands of works on the site even thought he faced maximum penalties under the NET Act, in early December 1999, it was announced that Levy had received two years probation and would have only limited access to the Internet during that time.Either because of these fairly drastic penalties, there has been a scarce amount of prosecutions under the NET Act. The emergency sentencing guidelines are intended to respond to this concern. At the end of December 1999, the Sentencing Commission proposed three sentencing options to serve as the temporary emergency sentencing guidelines. Lohara

Prosecution
"redistribution for profit"
 * Pursuit of the "real" pirates

The pirates in the U.S that the RIAA have targeted with their lawsuits are just regular people, some who may not even know that they are infringing upon copyright laws. The RIAA appears to be hoping to set an example to other pirates that their crime will not go unnoticed. Using diverse methods that monitoring services employed to watch Internet users. This means digital surveillance through your (IPS) Internet service provider, or other third party monitoring services. They will monitor your bandwidth use. From there it escalates to the individual being monitored consistently and in addition to have their downloads examined. Interestingly enough the RIAA has resorted to using the very same type of P2P Peer-to-Peer applications to capture these pirates or at least the ones using LAN connections. By operating a program, which is able to obtain a computer unique IP address. The RIAA can begin to take legal action against said individual or, so choose to inform the University of the issue at hand. So I feel that the real issue at hand appears to be where is the money going, it appears current profits that are going to the RIAA, come from companies such as for example Apple, who are selling tracks online. In fact for every dollar that Apple makes 70 cents goes to the RIAA. Yet the main cause that is driving the RIAA to take action against these pirates is a decrease in sales. Since artists only make a fraction of this about 1-10% by selling their CD's, making that profit amount to anything they have to sell millions. This is making the affects of piracy mostly felt by the Record Label. Coming up with new ways to sell music digitally sell and appeal to the consumer is one of their solutions. As seen with the Record Labels take on how to deal with the situation that is in China although legal action is taking place there against corporate distributors. It is obvious that there is no appeal to the public for legal downloads, what is the norm is pirated music. This means that the record labels have to use other means to obtain their money. By offering free downloads and advertising spots the record label will have a new market in advertising. However there are still problems to face with torrents downloads available to people, who is to blame? Issues regarding the hosting of music is one that is difficult to over come as the so-called "pirates" that host these files find any means necessary. Torrent trackers such as Pirate Bay hosting illegal files being the Prime example that despite legal disputes, the apparent impact that music piracy has is going to remain a rampant issue and that the Music Industry will eventually have to adapt in order to make their money.

Avacorrea