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The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges? 657

Posted by Hemos from the checking-whatcha-got dept.
Desus writes "Slyck News seems to have found a pattern in just what files the RIAA is searching on to find offenders. It seems the RIAA is targeting a wide reach of music, including Hip Hop, R&B, Rap, Rock, Pop and Country songs. Artists such as Ludacris, Michael Jackson, NAS, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat and Musiq were very common throughout the subpoenas. They've even created a helpful chart showing exactly what artists and songs seem to get one flagged." Update: 07/31 13:12 GMT by H : Here's another source for the chart.
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The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges? More

The RIAA Hit List - A Pattern Emerges?

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  • silver lining (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sad Loser ( 625938 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:45PM (#6576673)

    So the message I am getting is
    'Listen to good music, and the RIAA will leave you alone'.
    I don't have a problem with that.

    Legal action is justified and actually desirable if it stops someone listening to 'Destiny's Child'.
    I rest my case, M'lud

    • Re:silver lining (Score:5, Funny)

      by josh crawley ( 537561 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:51PM (#6576721)
      They'll get around to you eventually. John Tesh and David Hasselhoff remixes are just rather low on their hit-list right now.

    • Re:silver lining (Score:5, Funny)

      by gloth ( 180149 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:52PM (#6576725)
      Legal action is justified and actually desirable if it stops someone listening to 'Destiny's Child'.

      Yeah, don't listen. But damn, those girls are hot, at least let me watch their videos ;)

    • Re:silver lining (Score:5, Interesting)

      by duck 'o death ( 597155 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:56PM (#6576773)

      Amen, brother.

      I've got a couple of friends running a couple of (very) small labels, and quite a few more in bands ... and their basic feeling about the whole thing is that sooner or later people might eventually clue in, realise they're risking jail time to listen to music that's worse than white noise on the cheap ...

      Basically, they think the shittier it is to listen to shitty music, all the better for them. They don't think that they'll be getting any of the money or the fame, but it'll bring a lot of actual spirit and dynamism back to the currently-small indie crowd.

      Maybe more than 1% of the N. Am. population will start to care about music again.

      • Pop music not music (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:59AM (#6577395) Journal
        People don't listen to pop music because it's good music. It's because the singers are sexy or cool, and because it's marketed well.

        Pop music, like pop movies, are primarily a marketing phenomenon. Very few pop movies induce me to say "Wow, that was really impressive acting."

        Why do you think so few resources go into producing the music, and so much into marketing it?

    • Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by itistoday ( 602304 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:07PM (#6576837) Homepage
      I realized the second they told the public they were going to sue. So what I did was I decreased the amount of shared files I have by making copies of songs that are uncommon, and whos artists probably are not good friends of the RIAA. I share these songs only now, so if you want some good ol' Final Fantasy 7 theme music, just run a quick search! ;-)

      What the RIAA is accomplishing, is simply seriously decreasing the amount of shares on P2P networks, leaving only pr0n and unknown artists.

      Me, I'm set with my Russian servers.... Good ol' Mother Russia, land of the oppressed hackers ;-)

    • Why did everyone miss this? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:12PM (#6576871)
      Ludacris, Michael Jackson, Busta Rhymes, Keith Sweat

      This is obviously a plot my whitey trying to put down the black man. Fuck you cracker*!!!

      *cracker refering to person of white color, not someone who breaks into systems or defeats software copy protection

    • Isn't this like Batman part 1? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Martin Marvinski ( 581860 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:17AM (#6577689)
      From the article:

      After looking at 50 or so subpoenas, the suspicion of a pattern grew more confident. While an individual wouldn't necessarily get subpoenaed for just having a Busta Rhymes song, it was the combination of Busta and additional artists that triggered the bot. Slyck hopes to obtain the entire database to more conclusively examine and reveal this potential pattern.

      This is exactly how the Joker killed people in Batman part 1!. If you used a combinatin of cosmetics THAT would kill you, e.g. lipstick with eye liner. I guess these hollywood guys use stuff from the scripts in real life!

    • Re:silver lining (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Publicus ( 415536 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:25AM (#6577719) Homepage

      My thoughts were, these are the kinds of songs that people download because they aren't going to buy a crappy CD just for one song. Too bad the RIAA doesn't get the drift.

      • Re:silver lining (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:37AM (#6577755) Journal
        More people would buy the album if they couldn't download the one good song on it. This is what the RIAA wants. They don't want to sell you an album you are going to treasure and listen to 1000 times. They want to sell you an album you listen to twice and forget about when the next candy ass pop star releases more junk.

  • excel sucks (Score:5, Informative)

    by tedtimmons ( 97599 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:49PM (#6576697) Homepage
    I have the lists on my site:

    http://perljam.net/misc/p2p/ [perljam.net]

    Most popular:

    Busta Rhymes Pass the Courvoisier (12)
    Avril Lavigne Losing Grip (8)
    Avril Lavigne Complicated (6)
    Incubus Nice to Know You (6)
    Marvin Gaye Lets Get It On (6)
    Musiq Halfcrazy (6)
    Tracy Chapman Fast Car (6)

    -ted

    • Re:excel sucks (Score:5, Funny)

      by TechnoGrl ( 322690 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:56PM (#6576774)
      OK so I guess I'm safe with my William Shatner Sings The Blues collection, right?

    • Re:excel sucks (Score:5, Funny)

      by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:08PM (#6576846) Homepage
      "Busta Rhymes Pass the Courvoisier (12)
      Avril Lavigne Losing Grip (8)
      Avril Lavigne Complicated (6)
      Incubus Nice to Know You (6)
      Marvin Gaye Lets Get It On (6)
      Musiq Halfcrazy (6)
      Tracy Chapman Fast Car (6)"

      I'm sure it's just me, but seeing that list made me laugh. It looks like a fairly complete description of a computer-generated attempt at coming up with dialogue for a lame pick-up artist and his drunken prey who is losing her grip on reality and having a hard time focusing:

      She: "Pass the Courvoisier."
      He: "Nice to know you."
      She: "Complicated."
      He: "Fast car."
      She: "Losing grip."
      He: "Let's get it on."
      She: "Halfcrazy."

    • Most interesting song (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mrvis ( 462390 )
      There was a big mix, pop music that only teenagers would be caught dead with, some 90's better music, and then some older stuff like GFA and Fleetwood Mac.

      I have to say that the most surprising song on there was My Iron Lung by Radiohead. Radiohead is hugely popular. Kid A sold tons (and granted they went after one song from it). Their next, Amnesiac was good. Their live album which followed was good as well. Their brand new album is great. The RIAA passed up these 3 albums entirely and went after a

    • Re:excel sucks (Score:3, Funny)

      by EinarH ( 583836 )
      I bet its only a mather of time before some entrprising reader throws togheter a "Top 30 RIAA HIT HIT LIST -Music that suck" ; makes a torrent out of it and then upload it to suprnova.org or something.

  • I'm going to do it the safe way (Score:5, Funny)

    by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:50PM (#6576711) Journal
    Shove CDs down my underpants.

  • Hint: put only one type of data in each cell. When you mix data in a single cell, it makes it very hard to sort or analyze. For instance, this spreadsheet has two colums: "Artist" and "Song title (times appearing)".

    Would it have been that hard to break out time appearing into another column, so interested people could actually *use* the data for something? No. In fact, it would have been *less* work.

    Sorry to bitch and moan, but spreadsheet abuse is one of my pet peeves.

    Cheers
    -b

    • Re:Too bad they don't know how to use spreadsheets (Score:4, Informative)

      by tedtimmons ( 97599 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:58PM (#6576790) Homepage
      So you break it into text, then use sed and grep. What's the problem? :-)

      The real spreadsheet abuse was loading it into a spreadsheet in the first place. What's wrong with a text file, or a pretty HTML tabled version, considering it was posted to a website? I blame that on the webmasters of Slyck News, whoever they are.

      Text versions on my site: http://perljam.net/misc/p2p/ [perljam.net]

      -ted

    • Only on slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frac ( 27516 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:11PM (#6576863)
      Only on slashdot will you see people complaining about *anything*.

      Those guys rummaged through the 911 subpoenas to compile a list on a spreadsheet, they let you download it for FREE, and not only did you show a token of appreciation, but you bitched about the formatting?

      Would it have been that hard to break out time appearing into another column, so interested people could actually *use* the data for something? No. In fact, it would have been *less* work.

      Interested people can compile their own list if they want.

      Next thing you know, they'll have a version with actually splits that column into two, and we're gonna see people say stuff like "Why the FUCK would these idiots use a Sans Serif font? Everybody knows that a Serif font looks better on the monitor! Those insensitive CLODS!"

      Yes it's mashed in the same column. Yes they used Arial. Yes they used a proprietary format by Big Bad Microsoft. Yes they weren't thoughtful enough to put in plain text so I can run your Perl scripts on it. Yes it's not encoded in ogg vorbis. Yes it won't play on your iPod or microwave. Yes they deserve to burn in hell for not making 2 million different versions catered for each person that downloads it.

      No they don't! Thank them for spending the time to sift through all the subpoenas!

      • Re:Only on slashdot... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:47AM (#6577326) Homepage Journal
        Yes they weren't thoughtful enough to put in plain text so I can run your Perl scripts on it.
        Simple solution: Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple [cpan.org] .

        Here's one untested way to do it, based on the sample code given (Slashcode doesn't agree well with nicely indented Perl, so I've replaced standard indentation with vertical space instead to retain some clarity):

        #!/path/to/perl -w

        use strict;
        use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple;
        use LWP::Simple;

        my $content = get("http://www.slyck.com/misc/p2p.xls");
        open my $fh_excel, "p2p.xls" or die "cant write: $!";
        print $fh_excel $content;

        my $xls = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple->read('p2p.xls');
        foreach my $sheet ($xls->sheets) {

        while ($sheet->has_data) {

        my @data = $sheet->next_row;
        print $data[0], "\t", join("\t", split (/ */, $data[1]));

        }

        }

        And hey presto -- if all goes well, the spreadsheet in question should end up being magically downloaded & converted to a tab delimited table on the fly.

        Now that wasn't so bad, was it? And you didn't even have to do any of the work... :-)

  • That's not that interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Frac ( 27516 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:52PM (#6576728)
    Once those songs are less populated, they'll go after other ones.

    What would be more interesting is the percentage of subpoenas there are for each ISP. I've heard rumors of how AOL users are more immune, simply because of their Time Warner affiliation.

    While I have no sympathy for those that choose to distributed copyrighted works on P2P networks without the copyright owner's permission, I don't understand why customers not using an ISP owned by the same holding company as the record companies should get in trouble first.

    On the other hand, maybe AOL can leverage this to attract more subscribers. It's no longer "823451 hours for free", it's "music and movies for free"! Heh.

    Of course, if the scare tactic doesn't pan out, eventually AOL users won't be safe either.

    "You've got jail!"

  • The other method? (Score:4, Funny)

    by pfleming ( 683342 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6576732) Homepage Journal
    Reading the RIAA hit list... your ip has been logged, don't move the police are on their way.

  • Margin of Error (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6576733)
    THe article claims that from 50 total subpoenas being checked, they can deduce overall proportions of artist representation in the subpoenas, which is, frankly, a load of crock; with a sample size that small, margin of error would be enormous. Oh, and by the way, it's not like the RIAA needs to limit itself to these artists of these songs, they just happen to be what they were searching for to trigger some results, and with the huge body of work protected by the RIAA, I imagine that if it were not for simple lack of motivation, they could easily cycle through an enormous number of searches to perform... Perhaps they'll do exactly this each time someone tries to analyze their "pattern"...

    • Re:Margin of Error (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:14PM (#6576887) Journal
      THe article claims that from 50 total subpoenas being checked, they can deduce overall proportions of artist representation in the subpoenas, which is, frankly, a load of crock; with a sample size that small, margin of error would be enormous.

      Ah, one of the great statistical fallacies... "sample sizes must be large to be valid". Not entirely correct.

      Assuming a distribution, and reasonably random sampling, a sample of 50 would be plenty for single-digit accuracy, by my BOTE calculation. The problem is, what distribution shall we choose? Song preferences are clearly not Gaussian; personally, I'd guess Zipf.

      But that's only a guess; not knowing the distribution is a complete stopper, and it can only be answered with extensive surveying of lots of data, which isn't about to happen for this study. It's not the sample size preventing good statistics, though, it's lack of knowledge of the distribution, which is a completely different matter. (Actually, it's a bigger problem, requiring much more data to be collected to answer the question, well beyond merely scanning the sued people.)

  • Rap and R&B top the list... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Remik ( 412425 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6576736)
    I guess it won't be long before Jesse Jackson is accusing the RIAA of racism.

    -R

    • Re:Rap and R&B top the list... (Score:5, Funny)

      by JudgeFurious ( 455868 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:04PM (#6576828)
      And that would suit me just fine. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Jesse wants to play the race card here then I say fire it up. Normally I despise the poverty pimp but here I don't think it could happen to a nicer bunch of people.

      RIAA meet Jesse Jackson, enjoy.

      Maybe we can dig up Al Sharpton to "activate" on them while we're at it.

  • Bah, Excel (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mitchell Mebane ( 594797 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6576742) Homepage Journal
    If you don't like Excel, you can grab the files in HTML format (25.2 KB) [ev1.net] or in OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet format (10.4 KB) [ev1.net].

  • A pattern emerging? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BalaClavaChord ( 686030 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:53PM (#6576743)

    The one pattern I see is that the overwhelming number of the artists seem to be those that appeal to under 25's. Obviously the RIAA have decided to go for those who can least afford to offer legal resistance (school kids and college students).

    Come on RIAA, dare you to pick on us Lou Reed fans!

    • Re:A pattern emerging? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by God! Awful 2 ( 631283 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:05PM (#6576830) Journal

      The one pattern I see is that the overwhelming number of the artists seem to be those that appeal to under 25's. Obviously the RIAA have decided to go for those who can least afford to offer legal resistance (school kids and college students).
      Or maybe it just turns out that the file sharing demographic is disproportionally composed of young people... nah, you're right. They must be specifically targeting people who can't afford a lawyer.

      -a

    • Re:A pattern emerging? (Score:3, Informative)

      by BWJones ( 18351 )
      Come on RIAA, dare you to pick on us Lou Reed fans!

      Yeah, but you guys spend all your cash on heroin and don't have any left over for music. :-) Seriously though, I am a Lou Reed fan and know what you are talking about, although there were a few bands on the linked .xls file that would appeal to those over 25. Try Bob Marley, Blue Oyster Cult, Duran Duran, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Grand Funk Railroad, Marvin Gaye, Pearl Jam, Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Clash.
    • They're going after the most popularly downloaded music which happens to be listened to by mostly young people. If old people music was being downloaded more often than young people music and they were still going after us youngins, then you might have a valid point.

      So, do us youngins a favor and get your old folk together to start mass downloading your old people music to distract the RIAA from us.

      Thanks,

      Ben

  • statistically irrelevent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pavon ( 30274 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:54PM (#6576748)
    hmm, out of a miniscule sample size of 50, we found that a wide variety of types of music were being shared. Many popular songs were shared by many people, while some songs where only shared by a few. This roughly fits a bell curve distribution as would nomally be found in a random sample of shared files.

    Therefore we conclude that the RIAA is targetting people with specific music sharring patterns.

    yeah.

  • I just have to say (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CanSpice ( 300894 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:56PM (#6576769) Homepage
    What a stupid chart. If you're going to go through all the trouble of making an Excel spreadsheet why not create a proper spreadsheet and put the number of times a song was mentioned in its own column? See, now it's even more useful because I can sort by the number of times a song was mentioned to see what the most popular one was instead of having to scan the whole list manually. Simple, no?

    And then you don't have to figure out if the number in brackets is actually the number of times it was mentioned or maybe makes up part of the title. If I was being pedantic and took the "Title (Times song appears)" column header to be gospel, then the Jay-Z song "I Just Wanna Love U" has been mentioned "Give It 2 Me" times, and the Ludacris song "Cry Babies" has been mentioned "Oh No" times. What is this? How many is "Oh No"?

  • Getting the numbers to be sortable (Score:3, Informative)

    by =weezer= ( 180393 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @10:59PM (#6576792)
    A few people complaining about the fact that the person put the numbers in the same column as the Song Title, here's an easy way to fix if you have a word processor that can do find/replace:

    1. Get a plaintext [perljam.net] version.
    2. Replace all instances of " (" (thats a space and open parantheses) with a Tab.
    3. Replace all instances of ")" with nothing.
    4. Import into a spreadsheet program (practically every single one will do tab-delimeted fields).

    Annoying to have to do it but dead simple.

  • This can't be the correct list... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MoThugz ( 560556 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:00PM (#6576802) Homepage
    There's no Metallica on it!

  • helpful? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thanjee ( 263266 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:02PM (#6576807) Journal
    They've even created a helpful chart

    And please tell me what is helpful about a chart written for a product I do not own? This is the internet people! What is so hard about creating a simple table using um....tables? You can view them for free!

  • Change in direction? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:02PM (#6576814)
    I think we all feel like we need to fight back, right? Unfortunately, I can't really see how we can convince the gov't (or the RIAA for that matter) to agree to a business model built on P2P. So how bout we start a little smaller? How about we demand that the "open CDs cannot be returned" policy gets permanently lifted?

    Think about the ramifications of this for a sec. You can go to a store, buy an Album, and return it if it sucks. It's not as cool as P2P, but at least the RIAA will suddenly have a fire lit under them to produce more of what people want. If they want to avoid returns, then they'll HAVE to consider selling singles and custom mixes. Heck, take it to an extreme, and they may develop a decent On-line service.

    You all should think about that. I think the return policy would be an easier goal to attain than P2P. It's in the consumers' best interests anyway. I mean, how can an oligopoly legally use the "open your mouth and close your eyes" business model?

    • Re:Change in direction? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cfish ( 61161 )
      The problem with your senario is that it is precisely why RIAA wants to accomplish by lawsuits.

      Good music has always been produced, just not promoted by the MTV and radio station. But who needs those? We have a new medium to spread music!

      The RIAA doesn't care about right or wrong. The big 5 record labels is in it for the money. They actually believe that shuting down P2P network will increase sales.

      Remember: every penny for the lobbists, the lawyers, the private investigator to capture IP addresses and t

  • RIAA gives Darwinism a hand... (Score:3, Troll)

    by southpolesammy ( 150094 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:09PM (#6576850) Journal
    Given the songs they're scanning for, then I'm all for their current methodology. The fewer people that listen to that garbage, the better.

  • I'm really quite amazed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by under_score ( 65824 ) <mishkin@be[ ]ig.com ['rte' in gap]> on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:10PM (#6576858) Homepage

    In the last five years or so, the Internet has gone from being fairly calm and safe, to more and more of a virtual reality war zone. Viruses and worms are one front, security holes and exploits are another, intellectual property "theft" and counter-tactics... and counter-counter-tactics are another, spam and filters and anti-spam are yet another. Those early books by William Gibson aren't too far off the mark anymore!

    It is interesting that the Internet was viewed as a kind of egalitarian utopia not too long ago. Some people still hold this view, but in reality, it is becoming a constant war zone.

    I wonder if all this could have been avoided if the internet was not commercialized? Is all this conflict going to destroy the Internet's potential fertility?

    I think that there is no policy, no law, no technology which can create peace on the Internet. I personally think that the Internet is rather a microcosm of what is happening at a slower pace in the "real" world. And that can only be fixed by a fundamental change in the way that people (everyone in the whole world) think. It's like the cold war's arms race. At some point, everyone is going to have to realize that it is getting ridiculous and everyone is losing out because of that.

    • Re:I'm really quite amazed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhreakOfTime ( 588141 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:05AM (#6577144) Homepage

      Your not amazed, your just making a mistake. See, the internet as you know it consisting of a bunch of www adresses and p2p apps is just the result of what has been going on on networks long before your parents screwed to pop you out. Its called free exchange of thought.

      Yes, I do agree with your point of it being a utopia of sorts, and thats exactly the point! When all those people you consider geeks and nerds were telling you this was going to change the world, they were right. The world is now changing, take a step back 20 years and think about how people would react if you told them that in 20 years most media(books,court records, music, etc) would be available to anyone, anywhere for FREE! This does have the potential to change the world, and it already has in many ways.

      Dont fall for newsspeak so easily...example...it was called the .com bust, not the .org, .edu, .gov, bust. why? because commercialism is in reality(whatever that is) .com is a very small subset of the useful information available to you, unless your just replacing one phosphorous tube for another(TV -> PC)

      War zone? hardly, just because your ignorance gets you in trouble doesnt mean it needs to be changed for everyone to satisfy your need for security. Networks were a lot more 'dangerous' as you like to call it, years ago than they are now. Cops and robbers, cat and mouse, call it what you will...but the more things change the more they stay the same. Most NOCenters were lucky to have one person to maintain and police their subnets...now every jackass that can write a C+ script gets a job to watch over the traffic on subnets. that to me is more dangerous than whatever it is you think is so threatening about the internet.

      At some point you are going to have to realize that nobody cares what you think everyone needs to realize.

  • Tr8der Boy (Score:5, Funny)

    by borkus ( 179118 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:10PM (#6576859) Homepage

    He was a tr8der boy
    RIAA hater boy
    Downloaded his music off of Kazaa
    He had "Complicated"
    Up on his supernode
    Now he gotta subpoena from Silberberg & Knupp

  • Good Thing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Shant3030 ( 414048 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:14PM (#6576888)
    I'm happy they are targeting Keith Sweat listeners. He is a menace.

  • Honeypot the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KevMar ( 471257 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:25PM (#6576942) Homepage Journal
    Why dont we setup fake servers serving files with names that match the file.

    or setup p2p clients that will respond to all requests for these files with a spoofed address.

    If we flood the network with false positives, when it comes to the lawsuit it comes out that some people accused were not actualy shareing any files, they would have to prove that they verified each and every one of their victims.

    we could easily create blank files with the same time and size as the "real" files

  • RIAA will not stop (Score:5, Informative)

    by snopes ( 27370 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:38PM (#6577011) Journal
    Just chatted with my investigator friend at the RIAA again. He told me they've got this whole operation outsourced to online investigators (not sure exactly what that means) and law firms. They're budgeting the effort as a simple cost of doing business. They do in fact have patterns, schedules, etc. This is just going to keep going until a group finds a common defense and can start making this more costly for them. Otherwise he said that internally it's clear they're following this road as long as they can.

    He also mentioned that they're now paying for staff at ISP's. Basically with the Verizon case everyone is ready to roll and RIAA finishes them off by offering to pay for the staff increases needed to fullfil the subpeonas.

    Personally I haven't bothered downloading music since shortly after the Napster demise, but this stuff is bullshit. I really hope the folks getting targeted can band together with some sort of tenable defense and start making this more expensive for them. During the Napster case I was told by this same guy that RIAA was getting short on funding and the labels weren't willing to cough up extra cash for the case. It sounds crazy, but maybe enough individuals could eventually team up, get all cases into a single jurisdiction, and try to start bleeding them again. They're big, but there funds are not limited. Certainly a long shot, though, and expensive for everyone involved.

    • Re:RIAA will not stop (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      maybe enough individuals could eventually team up, get all cases into a single jurisdiction, and try to start bleeding them again

      Oh man, does this make me depressed.

      What you describe will never happen, because technically, what they were doing is illegal. Of course, someone could show that the RIAA doesn't have enough evidence to prove damages, but that's another matter entirely that's highly unlikely anyway.

      In some respects, I'm glad the RIAA is doing this rather than other things. I personally feel th
    • If I was a stockholder in one of the record labels, I'd be pretty angry by now. I don't know what they're smoking, because there is no way this can hope to save their revenue stream. About the only effect I can see is to make *millions* of their core customers resolve not to spend any money on their products again.

      During Prohibition, demand *increased*. People didn't say, "Oh, well, alcohol is illegal again, I guess the Christian Temperance Movement was right. I'll switch to tea." People started bring

  • Kudos to the slashdot readers! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:57PM (#6577097)


    Slashdot readers are fantastic.

    Most interesting stories are mirrored in the comments. Which is great, especially when it concerns a story at NYT (which there should be less of), due to the registration requirements, I don't go to the site anymore.

    But the thing that really hit me with this riaa story is that someone who provided information in excel format was good enough to share the info, but not everyone uses excel, or any microsoft products, myself included. So what do some of the slashdot readers do? They adapt, and provide a service to other readers. The excel format document was changed to html, and even OpenOffice.org format, and made available on alternate sites. Both of the formats work for me. And I haven't even read all the comments yet. It may be available in additional formats.

    I had to stop and write this comment because of the greatness of the slashdot readers. I tip my hat to each of you who help make slashdot better for all of us.

    Thank you.

  • RIAA is in violation of kazaa license! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by levk ( 692264 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:58PM (#6577107) Journal

    I am baffled as to why i have yet to see this mentioned (maybe I have not looked around enough).

    The only way to be able to say in court that a given user actually was making a certain file available to the public is for the RIAA to have downloaded the file themselves. (unless of course they were sniffing the traffic, but that would be illegal as well)

    If they used kazaa to download from users to find out that they had an "illegal" file they would violate kazaa licence terms [kazaa.com]

    "2 What You Can't Do Under This Licence" sub sections:
    "2.11 Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users;",
    "2.12 "Stalk" or otherwise harass another;" and
    "2.14 Collect or store personal data about other users."

    If they somehow reverse engineered kazaa to make their own client and avoid the above licence stipulations they would have run afoul of:
    "3.2 Except as expressly permitted in this Licence, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the Software in whole or part, transmit or communicate the application over a network."

  • I know what I'm going to do now... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RPI Geek ( 640282 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:08AM (#6577161) Journal
    I'm going to start downloading all sorts of music that I already own on CD, not share it, and hope they catch me. Then I can say, "but I already own that song and I wasn't sharing it with anyone! What was I doing wrong!?"

  • Understand Why It Is These Particular Files (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Murdoch ( 102085 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:22AM (#6577226) Homepage Journal

    Hi!

    One of the reasons the RIAA is targeting a specific group of files (in addition to target market, etc.) is that the RIAA is acting, legally, as the agent of the copyright owner. The RIAA doesn't own the copyrights to the music--generally, neither do the record labels. The "artists" (using the term very broadly in a few cases) own the copyrights, and the RIAA is acting on their behalf. They're looking for U2 files because U2 has given them permission to haul kids into court on a trumped-up infringement action.

    Which might give you pause, next time you're in the record store looking to buy a CD.

    Which brings me to an interesting idea:
    If you see the name of an artist you admire--and perhaps support with your hard-earned dollar--why not drop an email to the artist asking why he or she is supporting the draconian actions of the RIAA? As always, it pays to be polite--screamers just get ignored (or reinforce the "they're all crooks" attitudes). But a few hundred polite, irenic notes might just change a few attitudes.

    And a few hundred thousand polite irenic notes might just drum some sense into the musicians.

    • Re:Understand Why It Is These Particular Files (Score:4, Insightful)

      by suss ( 158993 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:11AM (#6577667)
      They're looking for U2 files because U2 has given them permission to haul kids into court on a trumped-up infringement action.

      Why are they looking for Michael Jackson songs then?

      Quoting:

      A proposed US bill that could send illegal file-swappers to jail for five years has outraged pop star Michael Jackson.

      "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music," he said in a statement.

      It seems your statement is false.

    • One of the reasons the RIAA is targeting a specific group of files (in addition to target market, etc.) is that the RIAA is acting, legally, as the agent of the copyright owner. The RIAA doesn't own the copyrights to the music--generally, neither do the record labels. The "artists" (using the term very broadly in a few cases) own the copyrights, and the RIAA is acting on their behalf. They're looking for U2 files because U2 has given them permission to haul kids into court on a trumped-up infringement actio

      • You are only partially correct. The record label owns the copyright for the recording, not the song.

        The copyright for the recording and the copyright for the song are legally seperated. Unless the record label payed the artist a direct fee for writting the song ( as happens with commercial jingles) then it is not a work for hire and the artist retains ownership rights until he reassigns them by contract (which is often required of a new artist if they want to get a recording contract).

        Look at a CD produce

    • RIAA signed artists don't own their music! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dido ( 9125 ) <dido&imperium,ph> on Thursday July 31, 2003 @03:16AM (#6577860)

      Look at a music CD you have. Any CD. Look for the copyright notice in fine print (usually on the bottom part of the back of the disc jewel case). I hold in my hands a copy of U2's Best of 1980-1990 CD, and it says the copyright is held by "Polygram Records". No mention of U2 or any of the band members anywhere in the copyright notice! The record label always owns the copyright! I have a lot of CD's, and none, I repeat none of them has a copyright notice that includes the name of the band or the artist as copyright holder (not even joint copyrights). The record companies always hold the rights to everything. If you want to know how these artists are actually treated by the RIAA, here's a small article [negativland.com] that may enlighten you as to how the system really works.

    • Can't Get Enough - Depeche Mode
    • Money For Nothing - Dire Straits
    • Hungry Like A Wolf - Duran Duran
    • Love Don't Cost A Thing - Jennifer Lopez
    • I'll Trade A Million Bucks - Keith Sweat
    • 2 Legit 2 Quit - MC Hammer
    • Money Is My Bitch - NAS
    • Another One Bites the Dust - Queen
    • Is It A Crime - Sade
    • I'm a Thug - Trick Daddy

    • Paging Dr Freud...

  • DMB? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cei ( 107343 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:22AM (#6577706) Homepage Journal
    I'm surprised that Dave Matthews Band shows up on the list. Sure, they have the right to protect their studio recordings as much as the next guy, but if the data being pulled is based on song title, the number of legally taped live performances is going to throw a false positive more times than not.

  • A better chart for you all. (Score:5, Informative)

    by davesag ( 140186 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:37AM (#6577753) Homepage
    Having read the comments above I took a good look at the chart and decided to fix it. Sure - blatant karma whoring perhaps, but read on. I have moved the hit count into its own column, saved it as CSV and (here's where it gets silly) I decided to look up each song in Gnutella and chart the guntella hit count against the RIAA hit count.

    I am happy to present my results [davesag.com] in the form of a new spreadsheet, a CSV file and a GIF formatted graph. I am too hungover, and too rotten a statistician, to draw any conclusions. Enjoy.

  • I think some artists need to speak up against this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by orbital3 ( 153855 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:48AM (#6577789)
    Granted, I don't make my money selling my music, but I can't help but imagine that if I did, I'd be trying to opt out of having my songs used as bait for prosecution. Of course I'd want my fans to actually buy my CDs, but I can't imagine I'd be very comfortable knowing some 14 year old kids's life was being ruined because he wanted to hear my music and didn't want to or couldn't pay for it. If I'd have to end up having a day job because of it, then tough shit for me. At least I'd be able to sleep at night. I'm really kinda surprised at least a couple artists haven't come out against this draconian nonsense. I know a million other comments have brought up the point that you're better off shoplifting CDs than downloading them nowadays, but seriously... that's just not right. I'm totally for artists rights, but I'm sure even some of their stomachs are turning at these recent events.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @03:07AM (#6577843)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hrm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lewp ( 95638 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @07:20AM (#6578492) Journal
    Maybe they figured the rather unique words/spellings of the titles and/or artists of a lot of these songs would present the lowest possibility of tripping on another embarrassing false positive [slashdot.org] while still being popular enough to net plenty of "examples."

    Just a thought.

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