RIAA dumps evidence-gathering firm
The Recording Industry Association of America has dumped the company charged with gathering evidence for use against people accused of illegally sharing copyrighted music, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.
As part of its controversial antipiracy strategy, the RIAA had enlisted MediaSentry to search the Internet for evidence of people sharing large amounts of music. The trade group's campaign on behalf of the world's largest recording labels reportedly resulted in lawsuits against about 35,000 people.
However, MediaSentry was often criticized for its gathering techniques, often characterized as invasive and excessive.
Earlier this year, The Chronicle of Higher Education visited the RIAA offices and got a demonstration of how MediaSentry hunted down file sharers. MediaSentry wrote scripts to automatically hunt for the names of copyright songs and locate the IP addresses of computers sharing files.
MediaSentry checked the hashes (identifying marks) on the song files to make sure they matched the copyright song. If the marks didn't match, the company used software from Audible Magic to compare sound waves.
MediaSentry would then forward the information to the RIAA.
However, MediaSentry only checked to see which songs were being offered; it had no way to check who was downloading them. So, instead the RIAA argued that making a file available is copyright infringement. But that strategy was dealt a blow in April when a federal judge rejected the RIAA's "making available" argument in a lawsuit against a husband and wife accused of copyright infringement.
Last month, the RIAA announced that it no longer plans to file lawsuits against people it suspects of pirating digital music files. Instead, the RIAA has reached agreements with unidentified Internet service providers to "reduce the service," to chronic file-sharers. Exactly what a reduction of service may include isn't specified, but a source close to the situation said that none of the ISPs have agreed to limit a user's bandwidth, a practice known as throttling.
The RIAA said it would replace MusicSentry with DtecNet Software ApS--a Copenhagen-based company the trade group has worked with before, according to the newspaper.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
Assuming this happens (highly unlikely but lets hope it does), RIAA might have to think of raising the price for song downloads and thanks to Jobs (THANK YOU FOR FIGHTING FOR US) the songs will remain @ 99 cents. This would force RIAA to think of something mutually beneficial to the industry and consumers - I HIGHLY DOUBT THIS WOULD EVER HAPPEN BUT FEELS GOOD TO THINK ABOUT SUCH A POSSIBILITY!!!
COMCAST and all the other ISPs - PLEASE STAY GREEDY.
maybe they've given up... or maybe...
Pay for your music, losers. If you don't, that's all you are. A loser. I guess living in your mom's basement without a job for years WILL do that to you.
Seriously, music should be free. Absolutely free. I am musician who has recorded in the studio and made several albums, I wish I could let that music become available for free to everyone, that way I could make a ton of money off of concerts, t-shirts, special events, private engagements, autographed singles (live just for you the rich guy singles) , etc... there is plenty of ways for me to bring in the dough, I just need to get people to listen to my music.
The record label makes all of he money off of my c.d. sells, so I need people to show up to my concerts so I can make a dime.
Trust me sir, you have no Idea what you are talking about.
Without the record companies' efforts to make the audience aware of a musician's work, who would recognise the musician well enough to want to buy his concert tickets and t shirts? At the end of the day, music still needs to operate like a business to keep things going.
You want free music, there's plenty if you look around. Download those instead and attend their concerts. But my guess is, the kind of music you probably want to listen to are mostly not free.
You buy a CD and the band is lucky to get a quarter for it.
The record companies are the thieves.
If the record companies don't do their jobs to make people aware of the band, who will attend the concerts?
I do respect people's right to their creations, but many artists use items manufactured in other contries that steal from ENGINEERS everyday. We all do, but because they are a bunch of Dilberts instead of famous beautiful people, their rights aren't nearly as important. Thomas Edison's family should still get the lion's share of recorded sound property, cause he thought of it first. It's all about the bleeping lawyers, this problem didn't exist until it became profitable to make this problem exist.
The joke also remains that when I ask people to truthfully say how much of their pirate music they listen to, MANY say, "oh, probably 10 or 20%, the rest I downloaded, but just never got around to". So when you hear about the HUGE piracy problem, it may really only come down to 10 or 20 % of the number you hear. The harddrive manufacturers probably love all this useless storage being taken up though. Hmmm maybe the RIAA should sue the storage medium people for profiting off of all this pirated stuff that is being stored on drives and discs??!! Keep Smiling 8)
It doesn't mean they're going to stop collecting evidence and doing things the same exact way they are now. From this link. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/no-isp-filterin.html
We see the RIAA's new plan is to send a notifications to ISPs that you are sharing files and have you kicked off line.
Exactly how would they go about that without a company to log your IP number? They have to have someone hunting around the Internet for shared files or else they couldn't send a notification to your ISP could they?
This doesn't mean the RIAA is changing their tactics. All this is, is a move to trip up anyone that would attack MediaSentry's methods in court. That's all this is. I don't care what company they use. I don't care if it's MediaSentry or Mickey Mouses's piracy detective agency. It doesn't matter what company they use.
The only positive side from this I hope my World of Warcraft sessions stop lagging.
If the RIAA gets away with convincing the ISPs to 'reduce connectivity' you are more likely to get your ports blocked from the ISP than to get a smoother connection.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of busy companies and governments out there just lurking around P2P networks, aren't there?
The irony here is that if the record industry had just followed the lead of the online adult industry they'd have probably seen the piracy level out after the initial interest died down, enabling them to factor the costs into the business model and move on (much as the online adult industry did). Instead they inflame the very customers they seek to attract as well as driving up interest in the illicit activity.
Once again the Gordon Geckos of the world decide "greed is good". Wrong Capitalism is good, greed is immoral...
Now because the RIAA took such a hard stance, they alienated their consumer base and thus encouraged the piracy, when in fact if they had just left it alone, and then factored that into their bottom line they most likely would be making even more money than before the stink.
No matter how you slice it you cannot justify theft.
- by MSSlayer January 5, 2009 11:17 AM PST
- Just download a CD off pirate bay and send the band $1. That is up to 10x the amount they would get if you bought the CD.
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