wessman
July 18th, 2003, 03:07 AM
How to Legally Infuriate the RIAA?
from the using-their-rules-against-them dept.
posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday July 13, @10:26 (media)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/13/1348202
An anonymous reader shot us off a link to an article discussing how to use [0]the RIAA's System to Broadcast Music Legally. Now, I'm no lawyer, but if the facts are correct in this article, we're talking about a price point that makes streaming radio extremely inexpensive. There's a lot of worthless spite in this article, but if you can look past that, you might see something worth thinking about.
Links:
0. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10452
How to infuriate the RIAA and stay enragingly legal
Opinion Charlie D comes up with a cunning scheme
By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday 12 July 2003, 15:00
THE RIAA is one of the most evil organizations on the planet. From the schemes that they have implemented, to the ones that they proposed, it is quite obvious to even the most casual observer that the planning committee of the RIAA has thought processes that would make a sadistic North Korean prison warden cringe. I will assume that you know about the lawyer wielding antics that have brought them to fame, the political curiosities that scurry from the legislative process like roaches every time you shine a light on them, and the other games they play. If you want a good start, go to Slashdot, and do a search for RIAA
You will notice that I haven't used the term $!#£@*rs yet, the journalistic guidelines of The Inquirer will not allow the use of that term in reference to anyone who has more lawyers than we do. Damn. Those journalistic guidelines also state that I should disclose any biases that I may hold regarding the subject of my writing. Here goes, I don't like the RIAA much. I will however begrudgingly admit that I find their novel use of lawyers worthy of respect, in a Mussolini made the trains run on time sort of way.
Most people simply ignore the rantings and screed of the RIAA, it is easy (see here). If you do the math, and they make good on their threats to sue "thousands" of P2P users, the odds of any one of the 35 million plus users of Kazaa, not to mention the dozens of other networks, being sued are on the order of one in 10,000. Think roughly the odds of being trampled by a herd of zebra above the Arctic Circle, while being hit by a meteor and lightning. Oh yeah, those threats are going to matter.
A few brave individuals do something about it. They either spend their time, money, and effort to change the laws, or protest. You would think that more people would stand up to protect their legal rights from being trampled, but alas, we live in a world of really really dumb sheep.
Have you done anything, or do you just hope the odds don't catch up to you? I am not talking about hanging one of those little Christmas Tree air fresheners in "zebra repelling" scent in your car, but I mean really doing something, whether it is as simple as writing a physical letter to your Congressperson, or showing up at a local capital for a debate? Probably not, this is why we at Inquirer Labs US are going to do something for you.
As you know, the RIAA generously, with a flourish of backroom deals, set rates for webcasting songs. Curiously, they seem to have set them several times higher than what traditional radio stations pay. These rates are so high that only the largest commercial webcasters can pay them, more or less putting the smaller, worthwhile stations out of business. One would have to conclude that this was not by coincidence. We can all look forward to a vast wasteland of webcasting that resembles the sad state of FM radio in the US. Yipee, time for suicide if you liked music.
Why is this good news? Well, there is a gold hidden in the RIAA's moneygrubbing, power mad jihad, lots of gold. A closer look at the webcast rates shows that it charges .07 cents per song per listener. For the math challenged, if you have 100,000 listeners, you pay 70 cents per song. That can add up quickly, unless you are a US commercial FM station, where your bill probably won't exceed $4 a day due to necessary commercial time. If you still think this is bad news, bear with me a little longer.
The last piece of the puzzle is that the RIAA has gone after P2P networks with a vengeance, breeding hatred on a level rarely seen in modern times. No one, even most artists who they supposedly represent, likes them. Most people out there would happily pay a few dollars a year to put an end to them. Other than a donation to the EFF, what is one to do? Enter Inquirer Labs US.
We (OK, you saw through this, me) at Inquirer Labs US propose a new webcasting radio station, or a whole lot of them. This company, dedicated to bringing you the music you want and deserve, the way you want it, would be done in an "all request" format. No programming at the hands of bought and paid for "program directors", simply channels that you the listener make and maintain. Of course, this is not a 1 to 1 thing, no webcast radio station could support the bandwidth, that much is obvious. You simply can make a channel you want, and pick the programming you want from a large selection. Others can tune in, and listen to what you are playing if they want to, or make their own, or both.
I can almost sense the puzzled looks on the faces around the world. How is this any different from simply handing the RIAA more cash to sue you with? It seems like an extremely expensive way to write a custom chunk of software that funnels money back to the pigopolists. Well, you are half right, the software would need to be custom, no current internet radio software allows you to pick the songs you want to hear, they do it for you. Since we are starting from literally nothing, most of the money spent on software development will have to be put into the user interface and song selection mechanism. The technical details on streaming songs around are already written. Pick a format, say, .MP3 or .Ogg, and you can find already written open source libraries to do this part. So far, so good.
But isn't this sort of streaming illegal? Not if you tithe properly. Won't the bandwidth be rather expensive? Yes, it is, that is why you need to cache the music in various places around the internet, and stream it once to these network edge caches, whereupon they can be streamed out to other local listeners. A good place to have the cache is on the computer of the channel creator/'dj' for each channel, but others can be sub-caches if the channel becomes very popular. If you wanted to go a step further, you could make the song selection stream the music from other local channel owners who have the songs in their cache.
The other part of the software would be a very strict accounting program that tallies every song transmitted successfully to the listener, and dutifully pays the RIAA their .00007 cents per song, after all, the law is the law, we want to remain legal and stay "moral".
To remain moral, we would have to use technology to prevent the edge caches from being exploited as simple mp3 downloads. I propose two mechanisms to deal with this. First, it would only store the cache in a single directory, one that is easy to find in case the user feels there is any copyright violations going on. This way, all the music can be deleted in one easy step. On windows boxes, I propose using \my documents\my music, or c:\program files\Kazaa\my shared music. People know where these directories are, and can probably clean them easily upon notification of wrongdoing. Additionally, the files should be obfuscated in a way that they are not able to be played directly on any media players other than those that are used to collect royalties. Inquirer Labs US proposes that all files have their names changed to .MPx or .OGx to prevent misuse.
In an effort to stamp out piracy, the software should also do something that most people would find a little offensive, in a spyware sort of way. The software should search all cache directories, and, without the users knowledge, or more controversially, permission, and rename all .MP3s and .OGGs found to the encrypted file types. Guilt is presumed, that should make the $!#£@*rs happy. Oops, sorry Mike, won't happen again.
So overall, you have a custom, caching, webcasting software, that lets the user control what songs they listen to, and better yet pays its dues in a legal way! Wow. But isn't this a thinly disguised P2P network, that allows for a central database of songs anywhere on the network? Isn't this the reason that Napster searches were so much better than current peer to peer searches? Isn't this simply a way for people to download songs en masse, and pay a pittance for them once? Isn't this the ultimate P2P program?
The easy answer to this is no. That would be wrong, and an illegal, immoral use of a legitimate webcasting setup. This proposed program will be set up as a real radio station, and run as such, the only difference being that they have no DJs, are rather democratic, and run for profit.
The only downside is that this will be a non-commercial radio station, so in order to pay the RIAA its blood money, it would have to charge a monthly fee to users. Fair enough. If you look at a channel operator in this setup as a "worst case" scenario, and assume they have been in the DJ business for a long time, they might have a 20GB cache of MPx and OGx files built up. Assuming 4MB per song cached, and played 10 times per song cached, you have the following math to do:
.07 cents per song played
Played 10 times per cached copy
4 MB per song
20 GB total cached songs
20,000/4 * .07 = $3.50
I don’t know about you, but if you charge $1 per month per user, you can pay the RIAA their $3.50 per 20 GB downloaded, a 50 cent tip on top of that, and with 35 million users, still have enough to pay the rent. Legally. Cool.
This software has it all, and plays by the rules set down by the $!#£@*rs themselves. Damn, did it again. It only needs to be written, and have a company formed to tally the royalties, collect the yearly user fees, and write the software. It should probably be written in a cross-platform language to allow for widespread adoption, Java being the obvious choice here. It also needs seed money, and two people to help it along. One of those people should be a very rich, very repentant person, who has done the RIAA wrong in the past and is eager to make amends. The ability to stare lawyers in the face without blinking is a plus. Michael Robertson, are you listening?
The other person should be a technically aware, genius level programmer with a penchant for bending rules. With a person like that on the staff, you can be sure that all the laws would be followed to the letter. Getting repeatedly screwed for doing a good job by heartless corporate taskmasters for writing cool stuff would be a plus here. Justin Frankel, are you listening? µ
© 2003 Breakthrough Publishing Ltd.
from the using-their-rules-against-them dept.
posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday July 13, @10:26 (media)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/13/1348202
An anonymous reader shot us off a link to an article discussing how to use [0]the RIAA's System to Broadcast Music Legally. Now, I'm no lawyer, but if the facts are correct in this article, we're talking about a price point that makes streaming radio extremely inexpensive. There's a lot of worthless spite in this article, but if you can look past that, you might see something worth thinking about.
Links:
0. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10452
How to infuriate the RIAA and stay enragingly legal
Opinion Charlie D comes up with a cunning scheme
By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday 12 July 2003, 15:00
THE RIAA is one of the most evil organizations on the planet. From the schemes that they have implemented, to the ones that they proposed, it is quite obvious to even the most casual observer that the planning committee of the RIAA has thought processes that would make a sadistic North Korean prison warden cringe. I will assume that you know about the lawyer wielding antics that have brought them to fame, the political curiosities that scurry from the legislative process like roaches every time you shine a light on them, and the other games they play. If you want a good start, go to Slashdot, and do a search for RIAA
You will notice that I haven't used the term $!#£@*rs yet, the journalistic guidelines of The Inquirer will not allow the use of that term in reference to anyone who has more lawyers than we do. Damn. Those journalistic guidelines also state that I should disclose any biases that I may hold regarding the subject of my writing. Here goes, I don't like the RIAA much. I will however begrudgingly admit that I find their novel use of lawyers worthy of respect, in a Mussolini made the trains run on time sort of way.
Most people simply ignore the rantings and screed of the RIAA, it is easy (see here). If you do the math, and they make good on their threats to sue "thousands" of P2P users, the odds of any one of the 35 million plus users of Kazaa, not to mention the dozens of other networks, being sued are on the order of one in 10,000. Think roughly the odds of being trampled by a herd of zebra above the Arctic Circle, while being hit by a meteor and lightning. Oh yeah, those threats are going to matter.
A few brave individuals do something about it. They either spend their time, money, and effort to change the laws, or protest. You would think that more people would stand up to protect their legal rights from being trampled, but alas, we live in a world of really really dumb sheep.
Have you done anything, or do you just hope the odds don't catch up to you? I am not talking about hanging one of those little Christmas Tree air fresheners in "zebra repelling" scent in your car, but I mean really doing something, whether it is as simple as writing a physical letter to your Congressperson, or showing up at a local capital for a debate? Probably not, this is why we at Inquirer Labs US are going to do something for you.
As you know, the RIAA generously, with a flourish of backroom deals, set rates for webcasting songs. Curiously, they seem to have set them several times higher than what traditional radio stations pay. These rates are so high that only the largest commercial webcasters can pay them, more or less putting the smaller, worthwhile stations out of business. One would have to conclude that this was not by coincidence. We can all look forward to a vast wasteland of webcasting that resembles the sad state of FM radio in the US. Yipee, time for suicide if you liked music.
Why is this good news? Well, there is a gold hidden in the RIAA's moneygrubbing, power mad jihad, lots of gold. A closer look at the webcast rates shows that it charges .07 cents per song per listener. For the math challenged, if you have 100,000 listeners, you pay 70 cents per song. That can add up quickly, unless you are a US commercial FM station, where your bill probably won't exceed $4 a day due to necessary commercial time. If you still think this is bad news, bear with me a little longer.
The last piece of the puzzle is that the RIAA has gone after P2P networks with a vengeance, breeding hatred on a level rarely seen in modern times. No one, even most artists who they supposedly represent, likes them. Most people out there would happily pay a few dollars a year to put an end to them. Other than a donation to the EFF, what is one to do? Enter Inquirer Labs US.
We (OK, you saw through this, me) at Inquirer Labs US propose a new webcasting radio station, or a whole lot of them. This company, dedicated to bringing you the music you want and deserve, the way you want it, would be done in an "all request" format. No programming at the hands of bought and paid for "program directors", simply channels that you the listener make and maintain. Of course, this is not a 1 to 1 thing, no webcast radio station could support the bandwidth, that much is obvious. You simply can make a channel you want, and pick the programming you want from a large selection. Others can tune in, and listen to what you are playing if they want to, or make their own, or both.
I can almost sense the puzzled looks on the faces around the world. How is this any different from simply handing the RIAA more cash to sue you with? It seems like an extremely expensive way to write a custom chunk of software that funnels money back to the pigopolists. Well, you are half right, the software would need to be custom, no current internet radio software allows you to pick the songs you want to hear, they do it for you. Since we are starting from literally nothing, most of the money spent on software development will have to be put into the user interface and song selection mechanism. The technical details on streaming songs around are already written. Pick a format, say, .MP3 or .Ogg, and you can find already written open source libraries to do this part. So far, so good.
But isn't this sort of streaming illegal? Not if you tithe properly. Won't the bandwidth be rather expensive? Yes, it is, that is why you need to cache the music in various places around the internet, and stream it once to these network edge caches, whereupon they can be streamed out to other local listeners. A good place to have the cache is on the computer of the channel creator/'dj' for each channel, but others can be sub-caches if the channel becomes very popular. If you wanted to go a step further, you could make the song selection stream the music from other local channel owners who have the songs in their cache.
The other part of the software would be a very strict accounting program that tallies every song transmitted successfully to the listener, and dutifully pays the RIAA their .00007 cents per song, after all, the law is the law, we want to remain legal and stay "moral".
To remain moral, we would have to use technology to prevent the edge caches from being exploited as simple mp3 downloads. I propose two mechanisms to deal with this. First, it would only store the cache in a single directory, one that is easy to find in case the user feels there is any copyright violations going on. This way, all the music can be deleted in one easy step. On windows boxes, I propose using \my documents\my music, or c:\program files\Kazaa\my shared music. People know where these directories are, and can probably clean them easily upon notification of wrongdoing. Additionally, the files should be obfuscated in a way that they are not able to be played directly on any media players other than those that are used to collect royalties. Inquirer Labs US proposes that all files have their names changed to .MPx or .OGx to prevent misuse.
In an effort to stamp out piracy, the software should also do something that most people would find a little offensive, in a spyware sort of way. The software should search all cache directories, and, without the users knowledge, or more controversially, permission, and rename all .MP3s and .OGGs found to the encrypted file types. Guilt is presumed, that should make the $!#£@*rs happy. Oops, sorry Mike, won't happen again.
So overall, you have a custom, caching, webcasting software, that lets the user control what songs they listen to, and better yet pays its dues in a legal way! Wow. But isn't this a thinly disguised P2P network, that allows for a central database of songs anywhere on the network? Isn't this the reason that Napster searches were so much better than current peer to peer searches? Isn't this simply a way for people to download songs en masse, and pay a pittance for them once? Isn't this the ultimate P2P program?
The easy answer to this is no. That would be wrong, and an illegal, immoral use of a legitimate webcasting setup. This proposed program will be set up as a real radio station, and run as such, the only difference being that they have no DJs, are rather democratic, and run for profit.
The only downside is that this will be a non-commercial radio station, so in order to pay the RIAA its blood money, it would have to charge a monthly fee to users. Fair enough. If you look at a channel operator in this setup as a "worst case" scenario, and assume they have been in the DJ business for a long time, they might have a 20GB cache of MPx and OGx files built up. Assuming 4MB per song cached, and played 10 times per song cached, you have the following math to do:
.07 cents per song played
Played 10 times per cached copy
4 MB per song
20 GB total cached songs
20,000/4 * .07 = $3.50
I don’t know about you, but if you charge $1 per month per user, you can pay the RIAA their $3.50 per 20 GB downloaded, a 50 cent tip on top of that, and with 35 million users, still have enough to pay the rent. Legally. Cool.
This software has it all, and plays by the rules set down by the $!#£@*rs themselves. Damn, did it again. It only needs to be written, and have a company formed to tally the royalties, collect the yearly user fees, and write the software. It should probably be written in a cross-platform language to allow for widespread adoption, Java being the obvious choice here. It also needs seed money, and two people to help it along. One of those people should be a very rich, very repentant person, who has done the RIAA wrong in the past and is eager to make amends. The ability to stare lawyers in the face without blinking is a plus. Michael Robertson, are you listening?
The other person should be a technically aware, genius level programmer with a penchant for bending rules. With a person like that on the staff, you can be sure that all the laws would be followed to the letter. Getting repeatedly screwed for doing a good job by heartless corporate taskmasters for writing cool stuff would be a plus here. Justin Frankel, are you listening? µ
© 2003 Breakthrough Publishing Ltd.