Greene's Grammy Speech Debunked

jonerik writes: "Today's New York Times has this article which debunks at least part of NARAS president Michael Greene's much-publicized speech at last week's Grammy Awards ceremony in which Greene claimed that he had hired three students to download a whopping 6,000 songs "from easily accessible Web sites" over two days. Leaving aside for a moment Greene's bizarre admission on national TV that he'd hired three students (at least one of whom, Numair Faraz, is a minor) to break the law (the No Electronic Theft Act), Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."

The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

By his own admission he has violated Federal Copyright laws, has Contributed to the delinquency of a minor and should be prosecuted and fined for doing so. He had no legal right to do what he did (e.g. no court order) and then went on TV and admitted that he had done it.

I would urge everyone and their friends to gather this evidence together (video tapes, web page printouts, etc...) and send it via USPS snail mail with a certified return receipt to the DOJ asking them when they will be prosecuting him.

The more of us that do it, the more likely it is that he will face fines and penalties for his actions. I'm already looking for a copy of the actual speech (not just a web transcript, but the actual video of him doing it) and will be sending this to the DOJ.

Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him

According to Numair, there was an agreement signed beforehand. You'd think that the agreement would indemnify him - but no, it actually indemnified NARAS, not him. So, if someone's thinking about suing, they'd have to go after Numair & Co. - which wouldn't be very nice.

Of course, it should also be noted that "prosecution for criminal offenses cannot be waived by the aggrieved party" - so the government could go after them if they wanted to. (See http://www.loc.gov/copyright/title17/92chap5.html# 506 [loc.gov] for the relevant criminal code).

In fact (and here's the interesting part) - they DIDN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL. *Downloading* is in itself not illegal - it's uploading that's illegal. Non-commercial downloading is specifically exempted. From NETA:

TITLE 17

Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

What do you expect

They have to lie to make their points because the facts show that Napster, et all seem to have a positive effect for the most part on sales...

Re:What do you expect

If they accept that Napster improves sales, why the hell would they fight against it? It seems much more likely to me that they don't accept the facts themselves.

And... all of this AIM versus p2p stuff is a red herring. We shouldn't be arguing over how many files you can download in a certain period of time, or what mechanisms you use to do it. Our concept of intellectual property is broken, and they are pushing through laws that hurt the public good more and more deeply, while we quibble over what program was used to download files!

What we need to focus on is that they are doing things that reduce software reliability (SSSCA will do that), hurt people (snuffing our ability to copy will do that), and retard progress to protect an industry that is composed of trivial entertainment. Don't be distracted from the issues.

Call the FBI.

He broke the law by hiring people to break the law. The law apply to all, including him.

Easy to prove, he made an admission that was recorded and video taped.

Doesn't he want all music pirates convicted?

Re:Call the FBI.

Give 'em the Hemlock!!

Re:Call the FBI.

Maybe someone can correct my logic here...but it seems to me that the students didn't break the NETA.

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

It seems analogous to hiring a hacker to try to crack your network. While his actions would be illegal if he was unaffiliated with you, by hiring him, you've legitimized his actions which would otherwise have been illegal.

but IANAL...so there's a lot that's illegal these days that makes no sense to me.

Re:Call the FBI.

Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?

Despite what the RIAA would have you believe, the RIAA-affiliated companies do NOT hold the copyright to every MP3 that found its way onto the internet. I've got MP3's of music I wrote, recorded and encoded myself on my site, for example.

For those that are held by the RIAA -- common sense says that you can't steal something from yourself, but when has copyright law ever used common sense? Viz the lawsuits where a musician is sued by the copyright holder of some of their previous works, because the musician wrote a new song that sounds TOO MUCH LIKE THEMSELVES.

Missed my 45 seconds of fame!

Dang. I was supposed to be there, too, but I received all my songs through a model 14 Teletype, and am still running them off on paper tape.

Chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka--

Hmm, maybe lower sampling rate next time...

Re:Call the FBI.

Hey, back off, dude. It's their law, they bought it, and they can break it if they want to!

6000 WOW

That is alot of pipe for 2 days worth of downloads. 6000 x ~3.5megs per song = ~21000megs of download. I don't think that this was accomplished on a 56k modem.

I believe it is in bad taist to plug your agenda at an event like this.

I think I will go home tonight and "Hire" 3 friends of mine to download a hack of starcraft and play all night.

Re:6000 WOW

This is actually quite easy to debunk:

6000 mp3's @ approx. 3.5 - 4 mb per song / 3 Students for two days (48 hrs)

(6000 * 3.5 * 1024)/(3 * 48 * 60^2) = kB/s

Sustained data rates between 41 and 47 kB per second would be required to support the claim.

Now, most of these "easily accessible Web sites" wouldn't sustain those rates to an individual user. And P2P definitely never gets close. The only real way to get that much data would be from other computers on the campus LAN not said web sites.

So, now we know he lied in his speech apart from his ridiculus extrapolation to millions of students (when was the last time you skipped a month's worth of classes just so you could download all that pirate music?)

My question is, why can't the broadcast media crunch these simple numbers and figure out that this guy is full of sh*t?

AIM isn't P2P?

Is not AIM P2P when two users are "directly connected" as when they are transfering files, pictures, or just typing to each other? If not then what are they directly connected to? I was under the impression that if I was directly connected to someone and the AOL servers ceased to exist, I could continue my conversation with them until one of us severed the link.

news?

3 college students download songs off the internet... call CNN, make sure /. is notified!!

life and death issue??

Did anyone listen to the speech [aol.com]?

This problem won't be solved in short order. It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites

How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face? Needless to say I turned the channel and stopped watching the shortly there after. The little respect that I had for the Grammies was lost that night. I think it pissed me off more that no one booed him off stage.

Recording Artists Coalition

This is why many artists are taking a stand:

Recording Artists Coalition [recordinga...lition.com]

(take a look, you'll be suprized who's there)

ps. I think I did hear one person boo... I'm sure he/she got to enjoy the remainder of the grammays outside. :/

Re:Pirates

"Pirate", being not in any dictionary acception what someone who copies a song or a software is

This is simply untrue. For example, Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary contains:

pi.ra.cy
('p{i-}-r*-s{e-})
...
2) n, the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or
conception esp. in infringement of a copyright

If you consult the OED, you'll see that the first recorded use of piracy in this sense is hundreds of years ago, only a few years after Britain enacted its first copyright laws. The idea that anyone today is trying to evoke brigandage on the high seas when they use piracy to refer to unauthorised reproduction of copyright material is not very credible.

Re:life and death issue??

If I had been there I would have shouted very loudly:

"minus one, troll!"

graspee

I must be slacking...

I don't have nearly 6,000 MP3's.

Maybe I have the wrong IM friends. Hey... I wonder if those UCLA students are still for hire!

-magic

FUD

I found that speech rather humourous.

First off he said that downloading music is a bad thing. Then in the next breath he incuraged everyone to download music from RIAA approved web sites.

Second. Who uses the www to download music anyway? It's all FTP or the various P2P services. The only exceptions that I've seen is music that has already be approved for download. MP3.com is an example of that.

Third. My guess is that MP3.com would have 6000 MP3s avaliable. All you would need is wget and a small shell script to download all the songs automatically. Keep in mind that there is legally nothing wrong with downloading music from there.

I find it pretty sad that they had to go to all of the trouble of writing that speech just to try and sway the public away from downloading online audio. Was downloading the 6000 songs trying to prove a point? It just sounds to me like they were breaking their own laws. If it is okay for them to do it why can't I? The RIAA knows their current role is coming to an end and they fear this. The truth is, is that they will not become obsolete, their role will only change.

Odd connections in the mind

In a way, this reminds me of the "airline safety" brouhaha after 9/11. No, no, I'm serious. Think about it:

Greene claims that P2P programs are bad, and that thievery is easy, backed up by the 6,000 songs they got. Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.

Post 9/11, there was a need for more airline security and an outcry over the pisspoor airline security that was in place at the time...and then it comes out that the hijackers used boxcutters, which were legal to take onto airplanes at the time.

You think that's bad?!

You think that's bad? Just the other day, my wife downloaded 5 gigs of songs [apple.com] in under a half hour! Talk about thinking you know someone!

NYT Article without the registration

Go here:
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://w ww.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/arts/music/07POPL.html [nytimes.com] To view the article without registration.

I'm not karma-whoring, I've already hit the cap.

Is it any wonder?

How surprising is it that Greene was easily debunked? When we all know that mp3 trading is the best thing to happen to the music industry, this snivelling little weasel has the nerve to get all prosecutorial in a five minute rant during the Grammy award show. He may call it theft, I'd call it sampling. There are many CD's in my collection that if it hadn't been for the fact that I found mp3's to listen to, they wouldn't be in my collection. It's because of those mp3's and the ability to sample the music first that caused me to head for the store and purchase the album. The RIAA should be glad that we're swapping songs.

Now, here's a question I'd like to ask: If I have purchased all of Sarah McLachlan's albums (for examples sake) and if she were to release a "Best of" compilation, and I already own the CD's on which the songs that are part of that compiliation originally appeared, then go to USENET and download that "Best of" CD in mp3's, am I a thief? I've already paid for the rights to listen to the songs on the original albums. Hell, for all they know, I got the track list and created it myself based on burns from my original CD's.

The RIAA can go fuck itself, in my estimation, hopefully using a large, blunt instrument, such as a baseball bat or rubber pitchfork. I've never seen an industry try so hard to alienate it's customers.

Life and DEATH?!?

It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death [my own empahsis here] issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites

Geez, can't the music folks go back to "raising awareness" about other life and death issues like HIV and Breast Cancer? Seriously, life and death? Has this guy been reading too much of The Onion [theonion.com]? A statement like this completely undermines all of the actual life and death situations in the world, ones which Greene mentioned at the beginning of his speech.

The only thing seriously in jeopardy is Mr. Greene's ability to continue payments on his Porsche as he watches his 1950's-era business model crumble under the weight of 80's-era technology that's finally come of age.

Credibility...

Music industry heads have long relied on the fact that money can buy credibility, especially from the two classes of people they're most concerened with... government regulators and performing artists. Before the music-sharing era, these were the only ones they *had* to be credible for.

What RIAA heads like this guy and Hillary Rosen are demonstrating, however, is their complete and total lack of intelligence, wisdom, and understanding of the technology they're dealing with. MPAA's going through the same thing. DeCSS was supposed to be uncrackable, and I beleive in my heart that Jack Valenti and his buddies bought that hook line and sinker. When Jon J. cracked it, it was not just a kick in the movie industry's legal nuts, but a phenominal blow to their credibility. Record industry is going through the same thing right now with CD copy protection. Nothing they can do will prvent the ripping and encoding of CD's, even if MP3 traders have to revert to using non-digital capture methods. (Headphone to Audio-in port, anyone?) Despite this *obvious* problem with audio copy-protection, the music studios are trudging forward with poorly thought out, poorly tested, unworkable, and uneeded copy protection controls. This makes them look like idiots to the public.

Articles like this are both promoting and refelcting the popular opinion that not only is the RIAA a bunch of idiotic cartoon bad guys, but that they *deserve* to be taken advantage of.

The RIAA's worst enemy is not P2P, MP3, or even the people who trade audio files. The RIAA's worst enemy is itself.

What about the students

Can you imagine how much people are going to hate them when they show back up on campus? I mean the look of fear on their faces when they were put on camera was priceless. "Hi kids, these are your peers and they're working for us to stop you from trading music, please don't hurt them" (now get a nice clear shot of all of their faces)

Hmmm...

I wonder which OS he was using?

Speaking about Mr. Greene, Mr. Faraz said, "He said it took two days to do all the stuff, and we did it for three days from 9 to 6 and left the computers on all night long, except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen."

New math

"He added that in two days the three students downloaded nearly 6,000 songs.

"'Now multiply that by millions of students and other computer users, and the problem comes into sharp focus,' he said."

Let's see, three students downloading 6,000 songs in two days...that's a thousand songs per student per day, or 365,000 songs per student per year...times millions of students (say fifty million, which was the last figure I recall hearing for the number of Napster users back before the RIAA killed it)...that's 18 and a quarter trillion songs per year!

CD prices are approaching $20 for a disc that typically contains ten songs or so. So the music industry must be missing out on $36.5 trillion dollars in sales every year. Since their actual revenues are closer to $10 billion—a mere one three-thousandth of their potential—it's no wonder they're so upset about file sharing.

Worst

Think about how much the people who make the phisical CDs are losing. If all these misguided students were actually buying the CDs they steal, we would probably be mining the Moon, Mars and the Asteroids Belt for raw materials to make all these discs.

And don't even get me started about the potential losses of the transport industry.

Re:New math

Don't forget about all the bandwith it would use...

18.25 trillion songs, at an avg of 4 megs/song works out to a little under 2,314,815 megs/second (assuming I didn't screw up the math)

woah...where do I sign up for *that* connection?

Don't call for his arrest!

He WANTS to spread the meme that downloading music off the internet is illegal. If a warrant goes out for his arrest because he hired some people to commit the "crime" of downloading MP3's, then his point will have been made. Transferring an MP3 file between computers is not a criminal act -- UNLESS the recipient is not licensed to have a copy of that content.

His implication that the results of hiring 3 people to do nothing but get MP3's all day long for $12/hr plus lodging can be extrapolated to represent the behavior of "millions of students and other computer users" is, of course, ridiculous.

Downloading music is WRONG

Whats worse is, none of my freinds belive how easy it is! I have to download music all the time on to my hard drive just to demonstrate to them how far this has gone.

I even have to listen to the songs I've downloaded all the time just to be sure these are in fact illegal songs.

I think I should ask the music industry to help me out with a few bucks so I can continue educating the general public about this.

oh great...

And I bet that he's not going to buy any music now.

At 4 minutes per song, that's...
(wait a sec...)
over 16 days of nonstop music.

At 75 minutes per CD, that's 320 CDs.
At 15 bucks per CD that's $4800 in revenue
(or $4500 in profit) that the record company
has had stolen from them!

My brother has worked at an independent CD maufacturing plant for 13 years (they used to do tapes). He repairs the duplication machines
They handle programs, music CDs, etc. They often make shipments directly to the consumer.

I recently asked him how much they charged to produce a CD today.

He said "18 cents."

I said "No, I mean with the case"

He said "18 cents."

I said "No, I mean with all the inserts and stuff."

He said "That's included in the 18 cents."

He wasn't kidding.

Not using P2P clients? Oh my!

Why download files of suspicious origin and quality from someone who might go offline in the middle of your download, when you can get them from friends who know what they're doing? I used a P2P client whose name I can't even remember anymore once but it sucked for those very reasons. I have a friend who runs a fileserver with about 50,000 tracks on it. They're all well-labeled, have ID3 tags, are encoded at good bit rates with good encoders, and he's not going offline without warning people first. Only friends have accounts on the machine, and he accepts logins only through SSH and file transfers only through SCP. There's no comparison between the level of service he provides and what a P2P client provides.

P2P tools are just that. Tools. Like FTP, SCP, ICQ file transfer, AOL file transfer, &c. Their existence does not create piracy - it is just another way to do it. Resnet here experiences massively more traffic due to kazaa and audiogalaxy than FTP and SCP and I expect this is generally true. Combined with the fact that there's no money behind them, they are easy targets for the huge media companies. If AOL/TW and thee RIAA members were really serious, they'd sue AOL/TW and Microsoft too.

I'm torn between wanting them to cut it out because it's just silly and wanting them to win and teach people to be a little careful and use encryption. Spreading packets all over the internet with your IP and the names of the copyrighted works you're downloading is just stupid. People are paying attention. My ISP told me flat-out that they've sold their souls (isn't that a good Slashdot phrase?) to Sony (among others, though only Sony was mentioned by name) who analyzes every packet they handle searching for copyrighted works.

how to torture musicians (Mac version)

This is like a modern voodoo doll:

1. Select an MP3 (Metallica is usually the best choice)
2. Create a new folder on your desktop, and put the MP3 in that folder.
3. Open the folder, hit command-A (select all) and then command-D (duplicate selected files)
4. Repeat the previous step until your hard drive fills up.

You should be left with hundreds or more copies of the MP3. With each copy, you have STOLEN from the artist. With each copy, your artist LOSES MORE AND MORE MONEY. By the time you get to the end, each keystroke should be DRAINING THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS!!

If we all did this, we could instantly bankrupt any artist. For even more damage, move the MP3s to a CDR and repeat.

Re:how to torture movie studios

It's even more fun to do this to the movie industry.

Here's a list of instructions, much like the ones you just gave, although they are written in a context-free language so that they can be interpreted directly by a computer as well as a person, to unencrypt the contents of a DVD - ugh, my head.

THE POSTER'S BRAIN CONTAINS THOUGHTS WHICH QUALIFY AS CIRCUMVENTION DEVICES UNDER THE DMCA. THEREFORE, IT HAS BEEN ERASED. - YOUR FRIENDS, THE MPAA.

What was I talking about? Oh, 40 days and 40 nights was such a great movie!

Get your data straight

Greene needs to get his data straight. He specifically points to the usage of Napster, P2P, etc...as a direct correlation to record sales.(i.e. if Kazaa downloads increase, sales go down.) This is in fact not the case, since when downloads go up, their revenues follow the upward trend. Their sales have been higher than ever until 2001, and obviously economic factors and the 9/11 disaster accounted for this loss of revenue. The industry finally had a down year to blame downloads which have seemed to "help" record sales. But the question remains...Is the industry losing money that was never going to be spent in the first place?