RIAA Sues Dead Lady, While Sony Sells Content Sharing System

[Gizmo]

A little over a year ago, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against a lady alleging copyright infringement of over 700 titles by serving them over P2P networks. There was just one problem.

She was dead.

So, the RIAA allowed that they might have made a mistake, and went on to sue hundreds of other people, many of whom apparently were guilty, some of whom were not. All in an effort to ensure that people get the message that sharing music is illegal. We've had the same kind of thing going on in the realm of video, and the new standards coming out are going to attempt to prevent us from being able to make copies of our favorite DVDs by using new copy protection measures.

Ok, I get this. The content providers don't want us going to Block Buster, renting a movie, making 25,000 copies for our friends, and sending it over the Internet to millions of other people for free. I get that, and I don't have a problem with it, per se. After all, there is a lot of hard work that went into producing that stuff, and the people who did all that work deserve to be fairly compensated for it.

Where I get really confused, though, is when an outfit like Sony creates a viral content protection system (supposedly to prevent copyright abuses) and then turns around and sells items that not only allow, but could be argued to actually ENCOURAGE such abuses (Here, and here)!

Did I miss something?

[fearless joe]

doesnt look like anyones gona be using it anytime soon

System Requirements Intel® Pentium® processor 4.2GHz or faster


lol

[Pitch]

Originally Posted by gizmo

A little over a year ago, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against a lady alleging copyright infringement of over 700 titles by serving them over P2P networks. There was just one problem.

She was dead.

Well.. heck.

I'm trying to act suprised.. no.. really.

[madcatmk3]

Originally Posted by fearless joe

doesnt look like anyones gona be using it anytime soon

System Requirements Intel® Pentium® processor 4.2GHz or faster


lol

a presler can fo that. About all of this I'm not surprised, there just trying to scare people.

[Kaitain]

Well it's not just Sony at it. Apple are just as guilty with their methods. I had my little cousin moaning at me a few months back - she was given an iPod for Christmas, installed iTunes and accepted the offer to "add all music on the computer to her library". Well, three or four hours of grinding later and it's all done (she had a lot of music).

Well, all's great until the iPod breaks down. Woe is her when she tries to use her old mp3 player until the iPod gets back from RMA, but iTunes systematically hunted down and converted every music file on her computer to aac, with apple drm.

And yet they sell their software with the tagline, "rip mix burn".

Good show.

In some cases, I think that it's just that the brand company has lost control of some of its subsidiaries - a la Sony BMG selling rootkits whilst Sony Entertainment sells movie file converters and Sony Electronics sells region-free DVD players.

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by Kaitain

Well, all's great until the iPod breaks down. Woe is her when she tries to use her old mp3 player until the iPod gets back from RMA, but iTunes systematically hunted down and converted every music file on her computer to aac, with apple drm.

I can tell you for sure that iTunes doesn't convert your music unless you specifically tell it to, and even then I believe it leaves the original file alone. I've got plenty of friends who rip their CDs into MP3s to put onto their iPods. Also, AAC files do not necessarily have Apple DRM on them. Only files coming from the iTunes store itself actually have DRM, while ripped music has none.

In fact, AAC is just a slightly modified MP4 format. Try taking an .m4a file (an AAC file) and renaming it to .mp4 and it'll still work fine.

[aghastpumpkin]

I'm annoyed that the music I boguht can now only be played on an iPod. I've paid solid cash for a few albums which I can't even use. That, I think, is a disgrace.
Sony's Connect Software is slow but it doesn't interfere with how you want your music, like iTunes does.

[Staz]

Originally Posted by aghastpumpkin

I'm annoyed that the music I boguht can now only be played on an iPod. I've paid solid cash for a few albums which I can't even use. That, I think, is a disgrace.
Sony's Connect Software is slow but it doesn't interfere with how you want your music, like iTunes does.

isn't the fix for that to burn a CD. Then you can rip it as an MP3.

[Staz]

Didn't they sue a woman who had never even owned a computer not to long ago?

They need to be counter sued for filing frivolent and malcious law suits. However current law will only award the defendant the cost of legal fees for the defense of the case if the is found to be frivolous.

[AthlonAddict]

Gizmo, you may have missed that today it's not about justice or fairly paying somebody, it's all about making as much money as possible in no time. I'd like to say it's about squeezing as much out of all of us as possible.
If you don't like that concentrate on _quality_ content. I haven't seen copy crippled books yet and talking about music it's the same for classics and jazz. The labels wouldn't dare crippling their recordings because customers would quickly turn their backs on them
Since only throw-away-stuff is coppy crippled because of it's short time to life just don't buy it and if you have to watch for a nice price sell out because these discs don't seem to be worth protecting

Hope that helps,
AthlonAddict

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by aghastpumpkin

Sony's Connect Software is slow but it doesn't interfere with how you want your music, like iTunes does.

This is just simply wrong. Music you buy off of Sony's Connect service is encoded in the proprietary Atrac3 format with some sort of DRM on it. The only devices that can play this format are manufactured by Sony. Please tell me how this is any better than music from the iTunes Music Store.

[aghastpumpkin]

The Sony music I've downloaded plays on all my MP3 players, non-Sony included.