Interesting Read on theinquirer.net…
By Peter |
Saturday, September 4th, 2004 at
1:01 am
…about the RIAA. It was an interesting opinion even if it seems to be somewhat overly simplified. I think, until the end of time (and by definition), lawyers will continue to sue, and politicians will continue to politick. So to think that the RIAA is finished because of a few recent court losses would seems naïve — we’ll just have to wait and see if the proverbial fat lawyer has sung.
Note: This post would not have been possible without help from the Merchant’s Encyclopedia of HTML — more specifically, this table.
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Filed under: Science and Technology
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Interesting read, I agree Pete. I also share you scepticism.
However, the technical facts where always there – I’m sure we all realised that just because Napster was dead you weren’t going to stop file sharing. Heck, MP3 sharing existing before Napster – it just made it 100x easier.
One element of file sharing that I never quite understood was the legal issues associated with running the server in a foriegn country. If Napster had merely relocated itself to an island they purchased off the coast of Peru, renamed it the Repubic of Napster and started sharing files – would the RIAA have had any recourse?
For example, De Beers is an abusive diamond monopoly whose executives aren’t alowed to set foot in the United Status without fear of arrest, but that hasn’t stopped them because they are based in South Africa.
I bet De Beers has very powerful lawyers at its disposal, which is something that is sorely lacking in the file sharer community — lawyers and the funds needed to pay for those lawyers.
But DeBeers probably does not need the lawyers since they are outside the jursdiction of the US. Futhermore, add a country that relies on thier monopoly to maintain thier GDP, and they will always be able to do business. As to Scott’s example – it works differently for DeBeers versus Napster – Napster was working off the concept of enabling the sharing, but DeBeers actually offers product. But I believe Napster could have done that, and remained around. But why? Copyright law is fundamentally broken now – there are several really good articles out there by folks who comprehend this issue far better than any of us. I suggest reading around the EFF, and you will see well spoken folks who understand the laws speaking on how to fix them.