Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Music Media

AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lawsuits-are-the-business-of-the-future dept.
Greyfox writes "In yet another twist in the current IP debate surrounding free music downloads, mp3board.com has filed suit against AOL for helping consumers locate and download copyrighted materials by creating gnutella. The story is here on USA Today's site." Ok, I'm officially confused.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella More

AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella

Comments Filter:
  • Now what would be funny is to see the judge rule that anyone actually linking to Gnutella or any related material is guilty and has to pay xxxxxx$ in fines :o)

    That would be soooo funny.

  • I'm taking bets on the next version of AOL having some sort of "copywright protection/watermark" code to prevent "unauthorised" media distribution.

    You'd win that bet. AOL will be incorporating copy-protection measures (under the misleading name, "digital rights management") as part of the next WinAmp and AOL 6.0 release. The copy-protection technology is to be supplied by InterTrust.

    Alert your AOL-using friends; encourage them to not install it.

    Schwab

  • EFF has limited resources. They need to use them where they are most urgently needed. While they may support AOL's position in this case (though I haven't heard them say anything to that effect), AOL does not have any urgent need for financial support for their defense. Their CEO could probably pay for it with the cash he leaves laying on his dresser. There are plenty of other cases, like 2600, where the defendant doesn't have the funds to mount any sort of effective defense. That is where the EFF should use its resources.

  • Come on. Doesn't giving users access to the likes of Google count as helping them find and download copyrighted material? Please. As much as I hate AOL, I hate music barons more. Go aol.
  • This isn't an attack against AOL. It is an attack against all of US.

    Satan, whip out the longjohns! I think I just read this sentence on Slashdot!

    -thomas

  • Appears to be silliness (Score:5)

    by __aapbgd5977 ( 124658 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:05AM (#836551)
    Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but this is not advice. Please consult your own attorney before acting on any information in this posting.

    That disclaimer aside, this appears to be a rather dumb trick. The RIAA is suing mp3board.com for providing pirated mp3s for commercial gain (putting aside the whole linking thing in the MPAA v. 2600 case). mp3board basically does do that, right? I don't want to get into the whole piracy/fair use debate here - that's not the point.

    In this new action, piracy is just a red herring.

    It's my understanding that mp3board.com's method of distributing mp3s is a direct download from a website (or a link to someone's website, yadda, yadda...)

    So now mp3board sues AOL for creating Gnutella? WHY? In order to sue in civil court, you must have what's called "standing" to sue. Standing in a nutshell means that you have been injured by the actions of a defendant, and have the right to go into court to seek remedies to that injury.

    Where the hell is mp3board injured by the mere existence of Gnutella? The only real effect mp3board might feel is that of competition - Gnuteela being a competing method of delivery. Certainly this isn't a justifiable injury. I think what they have in mind is criminal defense law - they're pointing blame on someone else who is doing something worse than they are, in the hopes that a jury will find them not liable. But that doesn't change their conduct.

    Essentially, mp3board.com got caught doing 75 in a 55 mph zone. As the cop is giving them the ticket, AOL/TWX/Gnutella blows by at 100 mph. The events are unrelated - it in no way lessens mp3board.com's punishment, and in no way is mp3board injured by AOL/TWX/Gnutella's conduct. Now whether the cops (picture Ponch and John in tan jumpsuits with RIAA logos on the shoulder) pursue AOL/TWX/Gnutella is a different story.

    Oh, and best of luck proving that damages caused by Gnutella are attributable to AOL/TWX. AOL's made it pretty clear that they didn't approve of Gnutella, pinning losses on them is pretty unlikely.
    ==
    This post sponsored by the American Obstetrics Society:

  • No, no, no, it's "Who wants to be a Plaintiff" starring Regis and Judge Wapner.
  • Ada Lovelace. Thus the Ada programming language.

    --
    Max V.

  • Re:Legal Thuggary against Engineers (Score:5)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:46AM (#836562) Homepage
    How the hell is that insightful?


    It's not designed to give coders nightmares. Mp3board was sued for having a web-to-gnutella gateway. If MP3board loses, they want AOL to have to cover some of the costs since AOL created the thing in the first place.

    It's simply a childish "but he did it first!" act. They just wanna cover their butt, not make a moral stand against anyone who creates software that goes against their personal idea of right-and-wrong (they seem pro-pirating anyway).


    As a sidenote, I don't think this suit will go anywhere. If the law decides that you've done something wrong, and you did it of your own will (not entrapment or mental sickness), then you get punished, regardless of what some other party did.

  • It's not 'legal thuggery' (Score:4)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:47AM (#836567)
    This isn't designed to 'put the fear of God' into anyone. It's an attempt by a defendant in a big-bucks suit to spread the exposure around, particularly to a deep-pockets party (AOL). I predict that they're at least considering adding Napster, Freenet, Gnute, ad nauseum. If they can get a court to buy their theory, the additional parties gives them some additional folks to extract dollars from to reduce their liability. The longer I live, the more I think I should convert my net worth to gold or something and hide it. It's getting reeeal dangerous out there ...
  • what I don't understand is why mp3board.com uses Gnutella right off their front page if they are going to be suing them. This just strikes me as frivolous. But then again, in a land where a lady can sue someone because of hot coffee she spills on her own lap...
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)

  • next they'll sue (Score:5)

    by passion ( 84900 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:31AM (#836572)

    Mr. Major Domo for distributing information about illicit activities.

  • Just as I feared, programmers are now accountable for the uses of their software. This of course has some major implications...for example, if the 'ping' utility were to be written today, the author could be accountable for including the "-f" switch, which of course floods a circuit with ICMP traffic...DoS tool anyone?
  • I'm really amazed that napster/gnutella/DeCSS would be illegal because you can do something illegal with them... yet I haven't seen a suit against the NRA and firearms companies. ...oh, it's true, nobody has ever committed a crime using a gun!
  • This is interesting news. I say this because AOL is the first 'big' company to get in trouble with Napster/Gnutella/lookalikes business. It'll be interesting to see if it turns out any differently for a larger company than for a smaller company or group of people. Either way, it might be one of the more interesting points in this never-ending line of law suits dealing with MP3s.

  • Re:Legal Thuggary against Engineers (Score:3)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:50AM (#836583)
    Damn, you're so right it's scary.

    And what's scarier is thet there is precident, and we all failed to notice it and arrive at your conclusion until now.

    Remember the eyntomology of the word "sabotage"?

    Back in the 19th century, french factory workers took it upon themselved to force a stop to any kind of automation or technological advance. When they would come across any kind of automatic manufacturing equipment, they would force their wooden shoes, called sabot, into the machinery, destroying it; hence the word "sabotage".

    The inventor of the sewing machine, if I recall my history correctly, was run out of several towns by tailors who refused to tolerate any competition; leaving a trail of smashed sewing machines in his wake.

    The RIAA/metallica vs Napster, MPAA vs everybody, and now this suit againts AOL are nothing more than the modern equivelent of that same simple, pathetic thuggery. The only difference is the lack of *PHYSICAL* violence.

    In all these cases, a geek invents something that threatens to make some other, old technology or business model obsolete or irrelevent; so the now useless people, instead of adapting to the new model, simply lash out at the geek who made them useless, by trying to sue the techies into destitution.

    If there is any justice at all in the world, the RIAA/metallica, the MPAA, the DVD-CCA, and the whole bloody lot of them will be smacked down like the life insurance industry was in Robert Heinlein's "Lifeline".

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Re:Big guys get it now (Score:3)

    by FatouDust ( 197743 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:52AM (#836586)
    You know, I've been hearing a lot of the 'don't sue the messenger' argument lately. Here's an analogy, though. Illicit drugs are created/grown/manufactured by someone. Dealers make it easier for joe-on-the-street to get hold of them. The dealer didn't make the product, and might not use it, but knows that what's being dealt is mostly illegal. Joe-on-the-street obtains and consumes said products, driving the market.

    But in anti-drug policy, isn't the philosophy not to go after the end user, but to nab the dealer? We generally say 'Leave the little guy alone.' Isn't 'sue the user, not the provider' effectively the opposite of this?

    The reason end-user drug offenders go to jail is because it's easier to grab them, than to work up the chain. The reason intermediaries are getting sued is because it's easier to sue a company than scads of users.

    I'm not challenging drug policy here, and I'm certainly not saying that I agree uncontestedly with it. Nor am I saying that it is appropriate to sue/prosecute intermediaries like mp3.com, napster, et. al. Perhaps, though, we need a better way to challenge unconstitutional laws.

    Do we really want to sue/prosecute end users for this type of litigation?


    ---
    "The Constitution...is not a suicide pact."
  • Actually it look more like these guys are suing to protect themselves. Read the article.

    Actually, I did read the article, but my interpretation had been (foolishly) slanted by the slashdot intro. Having re-read it, you are right: it is more of a preemptive strike or effort to share the blame, and being perpetrated by the subsidiary which was spun off (perhaps to take the brunt of such actions?), not the recording industry (as I had first thought after skimming the article). That of course changes the entire tone of the lawsuit. (though it is still a bit rediculous -- shall Napster sue the power company for having helped them develope their file sharing technology by providing electricity to power their servers, thus making them vulnerable to being sued by the RIAA?)

    Such acts coming from the RIAA/MPAA do appear to be aimed at intimidating engineers into not developing new sharing technologies (e.g. the DeCSS debacle), but this particular case isn't one of them.

    mae culpa.

  • I think I see a motive... (Score:5)

    by z84976 ( 64186 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:53AM (#836590) Homepage
    I am TOTALLY not a lawyer (though I have more sense than most), but I think I see a strategy here. What mp3board is doing to AOL is essentially the same thing they feel is happening to them.

    If they can manage to sue AOL before their case is finished, and intentionally expose they total insanity of such a case, they hope to set a precedent such that their own case may get thrown out--- or at least ruled on fairly.

    Basically, they have no intention or expectation of winning. Once they lose, there's one other case to use as a reference in their own defense: "see, this case was thrown out because it was stupid!"

    The hope would be that the judge in their own case might be a bit sensible and rule correctly in their favor rather than the RIAA's.

    And no, I don't think stealing mp3s is right, but it's always going to happen and I for one see it as nothing different from recording music off the radio; I still want to buy the album if it's good....

    RIAA are idiots, and greedy pirates. They may win a few rounds, but they've already lost the war.

  • So what you're saying is the entertainment industry believes it has found a way to tell us, "You'll never work in this town again!!"

    Sadly, I fear you may be right.

    However, engineers can fight back. For example, somewhere within the bowels of Intel are a bunch of guys working on bringing copy-protection to IEEE-1394 (FireWire) devices. It simply requires the engineers to lay down their pencils/keyboards/VHDL compilers and say, "We will not build this for you. We don't want it, and you don't need it."

    Yes, they will put their career at risk, but even if they are fired, they will not carry the responsibility of having created the tools by which their families, friends, and neighbors were shafted.

    For myself, I couldn't live with myself if I did something like that to my friends.

    Schwab

  • I remember hearing about the a story a while back about the control of the drug extacy in Holland. Extacy, more technically the drug MDMA (I believe), is illegal. But under dutch law, it is the exact, specific, chemical that is banned. So drugs labs just come out with new varients, with slight differences, all the time. These varients may be more dangerous than the original - as companies have to keep trying to do something different, so the drug is mutating all the time. In England, and I guess most countries, it is the whole class of similar drugs that are banned. In Holland, every time they discover a new varient, they ban it. Just like whack-a-rat.

    Whether this story is accurate or not, it is a good analogy for the legal situation RIAA and friends find themselves in. Either you must ban the whole class of programs to share files of the Internet (ftp & web browsers included, after all web pages are just .html files), or we will keep producing new varients of file sharing programs.

    Let them ban gnutella. Let them have their fun. Who gives a damn - we'll only come back stronger. RIAA, I'll warn you this: I know that everytime I revisit a programming problem, I learn, and I do a better job than the last time. I'm sure most programmers are the same. If you keep making us come up with new programs to share files, then the programs we use will just get more and more sophisticated.

    cheers,
    G

    *(ps. I am not dutch, I don't know the situation that well, so if I'm wrong and offend, I apologise.)
  • No, I'm pretty certain that Y was a replacement for X (Window, that is). Hang on a minute... ah, found it. Take a look here [hungry.com].

  • That's my point... AOL doesn't need the money. This post is intended to show that we are all hypocrites ourself if we don't stand behind AOL just as much as we stand behind 2600, napster, DeCSS etc. etc. etc...

    Just because they are the "big guys" doesn't make them any less of a victim than one of us...

  • I don't get it! I went over to http://www.mp3board.com and looked at their lame web site. These boneheads have links to copyrighted mp3's all over their friggin web site. Ohhhh.. and they also provide a web interface for Gnutella searches. Then they have the cajones to turn around and sue AOL for "creating" a service that they are providing access too. This is not kosher my friends. Major hypocracy! It's gotta be a PR stunt. --grumpfish out

    Grumpfish
  • Dear Super_Frosty,

    You probably haven't noticed that I am not American and don't know everything that's going on there (Do YOU know all the news in Canada?). My point was to say that if the ones who make napster/gnutella/DeCSS are guilty because you can do illegal stuff with them, then the firearms manufacturers are even more guilty, because the worse you can do with firearms is far more damaging than the worse you can do with DeCSS.

    Welcome back to Earth, and please immerse yourself in current and past events before posting on Slashdot

    So you think you know everything or what? I know I don't know everything going on in the US (should only US citizens be allowed to post on slashdot, since most stories are about stuff going on there?) and I'm very pleased to be told where I'm wrong. I have, however, a problem with your attitude. ...and before you start complaining about my spelling, can I say that english isn't my first language either.
  • Actually here name was Ada Byron. Lovelace was her nickname. IINM.
  • "it would be like suing a gun maker for making guns because people are using them to kill other people"

    This happened in New York state. The gun makers lost. I believe it was Smith & Wesson that chose to leave the consumer gun market as a result.

    Or perhaps you were just being ironic, and I missed it.
  • Has their been any legal precedence set yet in terms of prosecuting offenders for denial of service attacks?

    If so, why not charge RIAA, MPAA, and others that file frivilous lawsuits for denying citizens expedient use of public services (the legal system)?

    (Yes, I know the article does state that it is the MP3Board suing AOL and completely understand the irony of it...but everyone here keeps bringing up RIAA over and over again =)

  • A Script (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    I have -no- idea where this came from, or how it applies. Honest!

    Scene: The Courtroom.

    Pot and Kettle enter, stage left.

    Kettle: Hey! You! Pot! You're... black!

    Pot: Racist barsteward! I bet I can pirate more than you, anyway!

    Judge Stallman: You're both in contempt of court (and freedom, as in speech), and I hereby order your wits melted.

    Pot & Kettle: You can't melt what we don't have!

    Judge Stallman: In which case, you are hereby committed to Jerry Springer's audience for life.

    Pot & Kettle: ARGH!

  • The people (who do still work for AOL) that created GNUtella are the same folks that created an obscure MP3 player called Winamp. They might have a future.
  • Defendants [AOL], [...] are adherents of a movement that believes that information should be available without charge to anyone clever enough to break into the computer systems or data storage media in which it is located.

    So obviously, by promoting this open not-controlled-by-the-RIAA file exchange system, that AOL is necessarily guilty.

  • As well as I can tell, since AOL pulled the plug on the program shortly after it was posted (they should be able to prove this) then they should be in the clear.

    But no, that's the truly hilarious thing, they aren't! The lawsuit should be (it doesn't list the specific Cause of Action in the news article, but this is the legitimate one) negligence. You can't show that AOL intended to aid music piracy, because I don't believe they did. What you can show is that they were grossly negligent in allowing it to happen.

    Think about it. It's like you're a biochem lab researching different compounds and virii, and you authorize your researchers to take any new samples and just dump them into the general populace without your even checking them first. Then when you find out from all the deaths that they developed a disease instead of the cure for cancer, you tell them to stop.

    AOL granted their programmers (Nullsoft) the access to publish on the web any new tool that was created, and didn't require that Nullsoft's tools be approved by AOL. When they found out what Nullsoft had done, they shut it down, but they should have known what it was before publishing it.

    Now the other hand is that you can't hold ISP's responsible for the content they allow to be published, but AOL wasn't just Nullsoft's ISP, they were the employer. And if a security company hires a felon who was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and murder, then gives him weapons and leaves him in a building lobby, they take some of the legal responsibility when he goes on a killing spree. Sure, it wasn't their official corporate decision to kill people, but they were grossly negligent in allowing their employee to do so.

    Disclaimer: I like Gnutella. I'm just pointing out that there is legal merit in the case.

  • Re:Big guys get it now (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Er... your anology doesn't work at all.

    Drug dealers KNOW what they're selling illeagle things. That's the entire point of what they do.

    A better anology would be the USPS. They dilver mail and postcards and other legal things. It can also be used to send drugs through the mail. I've seen it done! Should the USPS be sued because the facilitate the transfer of illicit substances?

    Of course not! Just the same gnutella doesn't know if what it's transferring is legit or not, it just provides a way to transfer it.

    In any event, all these anologies are poor. Oh well.

  • How long do you think it will be before one of these huge conglomerates ends up suing some portion of itself over something like this?

  • It was actually Glock.

    -saintalex



    Observe, reason, and experiment.
  • The party with the deepest pockets can hire the biggest lawyers. Bigger lawyers means more room to fill with bullshit, and as we all remember, bullshit is what wins these frivolous lawsuits.

    Sometimes, it's more effective to sue little people who cannot contest your suit. If your utility function is something like $=(assets)/(countersuingpower) where countersuingpower is a function of assets, then the maximum of $ is perhaps suing someone with midrange assets.

    You're also forgetting that the purpose of these lawsuits is not to maximize $ but to maximize legal restraint of the party sued. That requires a whole 'nother system of equations.

  • Breaking news (Score:5)

    by FigWig ( 10981 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:32AM (#836656) Homepage
    I'm filing suit against Tim Berners-Lee for creating the web which helps people find kiddy porn. I'm filing suit against Vint Cerf for his part in developing TCP/IP. I'm suing Moore for mass production of computers. I'm suing Shockley for developing the transistor. I'm suing Maxwell for his work in E&M which is vital for our understanding of electronics. And finally, God will be hearing from my lawyers for starting this whole mess.

  • GNUTella? What about AOL itself? (Score:3)

    by shaunj ( 72350 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:32AM (#836659) Journal
    If that logic works (indeed the logic that is the basis for the RIAA vs. Napster case), then shouldn't you also be able to blame AOL itself (ie AOL v5.0). It also "helps users find illegal music". That is just one example of how huge this issue is. That logic extends all the way to newspapers and phonebooks and (yes) speech!

  • Wait a stinking minute..... (Score:3)

    by glitch_ ( 48803 ) <email@ryanrinaldi.com> on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:32AM (#836665) Homepage Journal
    If i create program X....then get hired by company Z, could group Y sue company Z cause I work for them, and I created program X?....that doesn't seem to make very much sense to me....or did I miss something very obvious?
  • IRC is relatively small. In an average MP3 channel, you'll find a couple hundred people, tops. On an average Napster server, you'll find thousands of users. Add that with the fact that Napster script kiddi3z don't keep bombarding you with confusing ads and high-ASCII-laden instructions, and you'll see that IRC is not really meant for the masses.

    People want a simple point-and-click interface to download MP3's, not an endless stream of "j00 @r3 #49800 in d@ qu3u3" messages from your friendly neighborhood script kiddy. IRC, Usenet, FTP sites -- all of these confusing old "standards" are no match for the point-and-click clients that get millions of people into "sharing."

  • The Circle is Complete (Score:3)

    by CMU_Nort ( 73700 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @01:03PM (#836670) Homepage

    Okay. So the RIAA sues MP3board.com, which sues AOL, which owns Time Warner, which owns Warner Music, which is a member of the RIAA.

    Around and round we go...

  • The real money is in digital music lawsuits! (Score:3)

    by jms ( 11418 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @11:22AM (#836673)
    After reading about mp3.com's $20,000,000 out of court settlement with Sony, it is clear to me that the big money with internet music distribution isn't in actually distributing the music -- the major labels can't seem to do that successfully. The big money these days is in suing people who actually are able to distribute the music. mp3board.com just wants to get in on the action while the getting is good.

    - John
  • All that means is that IRC is spread very thin. Sure, you'll find a few kiddies running fserves here and there, but IRC was not designed as a medium for searching for and sending files. Gnutella and Napster were. The primary function of file-sharing networks is just that, sharing files. 99.9% of the traffic on Napster is file-sharing related (the rest being the odd chat room here and there, and who's to say that's not about file sharing). The vast majority of traffic on IRC is not about MP3 transfers, at least on the big networks. Porn? Well, that's another story. ;)

  • Several major US cites (New Orleans is one) are currently trying to sue firearms manufacturers for making an "unsafe" products.

    Be careful what you use for sarcasm, no matter how unbelievable, it may be true!

  • No, I'm serious - look at it this way:

    1. RIAA (including Time/Warner) Sues Mp3Board
    2. Mp3Board Sues AOL, which may (God forbid!) own Time/Warner soon
    Don't you see?
    They've invented Peer-To-Peer Lawsuits!

    Now all we need for poetic justice is some good anti-silly-lawsuit legislation, and perhaps we can get a class-action-suit going against Congress for creating this lawsuit-sharing technology...


    Joe Sixpack is dead!
  • Counter-suing (or suing a third party) is SOP in these sorts of disputes.
    Indeed!

    For some reason, this brings forth an odd image of lawyers in a Hong Kong martial arts movie. It's all legal kung-fu.

    The RIAA has thrown the first legal punch at mp3board.com. The energy from that hit needs to be disapated somehow and mp3board.com doesn't have a way to strike back at the RIAA. But there's an available conduit - Time Warner, one of the major RIAA members. Time Warner is AOL. AOL is also Nullsoft. Nullsoft made Gnutella. Go after Gnutella, therefore Nullsoft, therefore AOL, therefore Time Warner, finally striking the RIAA.

    I'm not sure how practical all this is. But it does make for some amusing coreography.

  • You aren't the only one... NullSoft... a subsid. of AOL, is the first place where GNUtella shows up, written by some "rogue" programmers there. It is yanked within hours. They don't run the servers - heck, a lot of the people using gnutella now are running a clone. It's not like Scour, where they host the searches... not that I like AOL all that much, but I can't see how they could be held at fault...

    --
  • MS should jump in the fire, and make their own vesion of Gnutella/Napster, and make it easily available for download for windows users.

    Let them attempt to get sued by RIAA and have MS's almightly legal team have at it. Get the big guns in. hate MS all you want for their legal teams and legalsese, but this time let them work for you! They could make up some fancy story on how it is no different than a user's transfer directory, but with added search features.

  • I'm not officially confused. ;) (Score:4)

    by zorgon ( 66258 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:35AM (#836704) Homepage Journal
    Why is this confusing? It's obvious to me even though ianal. Counter-suing (or suing a third party) is SOP in these sorts of disputes. If there's anybody even peripherally involved that might have deep pockets they get whacked with a lawsuit. That's why they have full-time legal staff. That's why we pay too much for everything, it's the litigation tax. DoH.

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?

  • This is the same web site that.. (Score:4)

    by Talonius ( 97106 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:35AM (#836708)
    This is the same web site that sued the RIAA "before the RIAA could sue them" as an effective countermeasure to being shut down after MP3.com was sued. (Reuters article, don't have a link handy, was posted on Slashdot I believe.)

    I have to admit that mp3board.com looks pretty much like it's *just* a search engine, but the various categories that it includes *does* make it look bad. (I. e. "illegal MP3s", etc.) Also, the "Top Ten Downloaded" MP3 list including nothing but big name bands also can't be good.

    Still this is funny, unless mp3board is counting on the bad publicity to help drive hits before they get shut down. (Suicide pact?)

    IANAL but the basic premise of the lawsuit seems to be hilarious and pretty similar to "I'm going to sue the phone company for servicing phone lines because I'm getting phone threats." Or, take the "Napster is nothing more than a service provider and not liable for content" theories and apply to Gnutella.

    BTW, if Gnutella was never officially sanctioned by AOL and AOL pulled the plug on it, can they be held responsible for the open sourcing of it?

    And, not to mention, that MP3Board allows searching of "HTTP" and "Gnutella". Ack?

    We use your service, let's sue the person that created the original, which was reverse engineered and created clean room, because we don't want to be held responsible for our own actions.

    Wow, this is jumpy.

    Talonius

  • AOL's liability (Score:3)

    by LocalH ( 28506 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:35AM (#836711) Homepage
    As well as I can tell, since AOL pulled the plug on the program shortly after it was posted (they should be able to prove this) then they should be in the clear. This is just another way for someone to attempt to control the flow of information (granted, gnutella is mainly used to trade music and porn right now, but was it designed for this or for the general sharing of information?). I hope mp3board.com falls flat on their proverbial face here.

    Disclaimer: If you take any of this post as any type of legal advice and you get burnt in the buttocks, don't come crying to me.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
  • The creator of Gnutella did not do so entirely on his own time - he released it as a product of NullSoft. In this case, it is NullSoft that has to take responsibility for it. And since AOL is now the proprietor of NullSoft, they must take responsibility for what NullSoft creates.

    And hence, you get the blame game...
  • AOL granted their programmers (Nullsoft) the access to publish on the web any new tool that was created, and didn't require that Nullsoft's tools be approved by AOL. When they found out what Nullsoft had done, they shut it down, but they should have known what it was before publishing it.

    This is a pretty disturbing argument, in terms of its implications, tho. Imagine that an employer allows its employees to put up web pages over which they (the employee) have complete content control, and stipulate that that content is to be generated not on work machines during work time.

    MP3Board's argument, as explained in your post, is that the employer is, in that case *still legally responsible*. IOW --- if you don't keep your employees muzzled, we will punish you for it.

    This is yet another dark shadow on the wall of the net. Our economy doesn't actually seem to believe in free flow of ideas any more, if it ever did.

  • Melvil Dewey, that rat bastard! (Score:3)

    by HvidNat ( 148511 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @11:32AM (#836715)
    Finally there will be precedent... Soon we can all file suit against the Library Bureau and the American Library Association for the damage caused by their meddling founder, Melvil Dewey, who invented a numerical classification system for books (and other media) that makes it easy to catalog and access megatons (literally) of copyrighted material. Down with card catalogs!

    Can you imagine the Library of Congress' reaction when next year, under the auspices of the WIPO, they are confronted with a global class-action lawsuit for maintaining their catalog!? People of Earth v. US Library of Congress!

    Every year thousands of school children all across the US have simple access to pronographic materials like "Catcher in the Rye" and such because of such indexing systems. It's nice to see this madness is finally coming to an end.

  • "Hello, I'm Regis Filben and Welcome to "Who wants to be sued!!??"
    [Cheesy rip off Who wants to be a millionaire theme music].
    "Today's defendant is AOL, being sues my the Mp3board"
    "How you doing AOL?"
    "As always you have your life lines...
    Phone a friend, 50/50 and get out of jail free"

    Now lets play, "Who wants to be sued!!!!!"
    [Cheesy rip off Who wants to be a millionaire theme music].

  • Is Mr. Al Gore...after all, he created the internet, which fuels these things anyway :P
  • Disclaimer: I speak about my feelings and not as a lawyer, I have very little knowledge and I'm not even american. Feel free to moderate me down if I'm too far off the track...

    My feeling here is that MP3Board is trying to force AOL to be on its side against Warner and other MPAA members. The idea being that if MP3Board is declared guilty, then AOL will have to pay an even larger sum. So having AOL "on their side" would make enforcement against Gnutella because there would always be the possibility of annoying AOL... Would be nice if a lawyer could comment on this?

  • Seems to me... (Score:3)

    by dimator ( 71399 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:36AM (#836729) Homepage Journal
    ...if mp3board.com is doing the suing because of gnutella, they shouldn't have a gnutella search field on their freaking home page!! Am I seriously missing something?


    --
  • There are two products with Y. Besides the hungry stuff there is Y sound system by Fox. The same guys that do the stratrek stuff.
  • I found about GNUtella while I was using Netscape. AOL owns Netscape (as we are all too often reminded of) therefore it is their fault that I know about GNUtella.

    Worse yet I downloaded Napster with Netscape as well as many other things I will refrain from mentioning here/now.

    But if we really want to get into this, I have used WinAMP to play some of my illegal MP3s (I have also used XMMS, but that doesn't go towards my current point) and AOL owns WinAMP too. Wow, I think we can solve all of the worlds problems with this one.

    Devil Ducky
  • Although I have no legal opinion on the case, I think suing the RNA because they promote firearms is not more (or less) silly than suing 2600 because it promotes DeCSS. The MPAA has sued 2600 (and won). I wouldn't be suprised is there was a law suit (at some point) against the NRA. Of course, the NRA has a much deeper pocket than 2600.
  • My point was to say that if the ones who make napster/gnutella/DeCSS are guilty because you can do illegal stuff with them, then the firearms manufacturers are even more guilty, because the worse you can do with firearms is far more damaging than the worse you can do with DeCSS.

    You know, you're right. Sure, technically, Gnutella and Napster *themselves* are not doing something illegal. But it could be argued that they are *aiding and abetting* illegal activity. Napster sure isn't being *all* that aggressive in preventing people from doing illegal things. No matter how much people don't like it, some sort of responsibility comes in proportion to the potential or actual illegitimate activity perpetrated on a system. For most small systems, this is negligable...carriers can entirely disclaim responsibility. But in others it's just unethical. Take for example, a small private airplane company who leases planes. Now what if it so happens that every single one of their clients uses their planes to traffic drugs. Sure, they are only in the business of leasing planes, but if they know what is going on and just ignore it and pretend they are ignorant, that is just plain unethical and they should be called on it. It's at least a gray area.
  • Actual Slashdot Fortune from today:
    Use an accordion. Go to jail.
    -- KFOG, San Francisco

    Share a file. Go to jail
    Design a file sharing app. Go to jail
    ---

  • The RIAA is suing mp3board, who is suing AOL as a responsible third-party, who owns Time-Warner, who is a member of the RIAA...

    Don't be surprised if AOL botches the defense.

    The value to the AOL monopoly of the court precedent set by losing this could be worth far more than the value from gnutella and the net payout losses combined.

    In other words, this entire court case could be a setup for a high level con game.

  • Sendmail.com for creating a product that allows their users to produces spam
  • Um... Yes, but isnt' the world-snake supposed to eat the sun or something before it dissappears? Damn, and just when I was going to get a tan... But honestly, who here is actually surprised that AOL finally managed to bring about armageddon?
  • Sorry, dude, but X [xfree86.org] has already been created, and Z [zsh.org] is a shell. Y, however, appears to be available ;)
  • Dunno about ironic, but definitally bloody stupid.

    Don't people grow up any more? this sort of thing might be tolerable among 12 year olds in the playground, but for adults??

    All these millions getting thrown around in cases that in the end only argue pretty much bugger all but minor semantic points. I thought the millenium dome was a waste, but think of the actual good, betterment-of-mankind, causes that the money and resources could be going to.

  • You're right! No news, good news!
  • I'm hopefully going to graduate in May with a dual EE / CE degree. Maybe I made a mistake! Looks like the only people making money these days are the lawyers!!

    d'oh

  • I wonder whats going to happen when Hillary Rosen and her pal good ol' Jack discovers IRC.

    " . . . and thats why sharks don't get cancer. In totaly unrelated news, the RIAA has sent threatening letters to several operators of IRC, a totaly new way of trading pirated MP3 files over then Internet. The RIAA has posted losses of $300 bazillion due to this new service."

    **Insert sounds of geeks laughing so hard at the reporter's technical illiteracy here**


    ------

  • This lawsuit is smart as hell. (Score:3)

    by Gog_Magog ( 14833 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @11:54AM (#836771)
    MP3Board is using AOL to do its defense work for them. AOL/Time-Warner will basicly have to prove that they aren't facilitating piracy. ANY defense AOL uses, will be able to be used by ALL other Napster/Gnutella/MP3Search programs.

    Also since AOL/Time-Warner is part of the RIAA, they won't get sued by the RIAA. Basicly this lawsuit devides the RIAA on this issue, because conversely, any argument the RIAA uses to kill Napster/MP3Board, is one that MP3Board can use against AOL.

    Ta Da.
  • MP3Board has been sued by the RIAA for having the gnutella gateway.
    Yes, I can see how AOL sent their goon squad to MP3Board's corporate offices and kicked some ass until they put the Gnutella search on their page.

    Freaking morons. Smells like they don't want to take responsibility for their actions, to me.

    --

  • This just in:
    The Apache Software Foundation, Microsoft, Netscape, Lotus, and many other http and ftp server software developers are being sued for making it possible to distribute copyrighted materiel...

    argh...

  • P.S. Another thought I had is that maybe someone just got confused about GNUtella. They realized that it is really a products of the internet (no matter who wrote the code) and they checked their computer to find out who owns the internet... Voila - AOL is to blame. When you look at it that way Al Gore just barely slipped through this scandal.

    Devil Ducky
  • Now, will the EFF [eff.org] step up to the plate and help AOL with free lawyers to help fight this injustice like they did 2600 Magazine [2600.com]???
  • You need to read the article more closely. I am a grammar nazi, not a lawyer, so the following may not be correct. It seems that the subsidiary of AOL that originally created Gnutella is suing AOL and Time Warner in order to protect itself, in the event that it is sued.

    In other words, that company is covering their ass.

    All three companies have disowned the project as soon as they realized the consequences of it. I think this is a liability lawsuit.

  • The Next Ask Slashdot... (Score:3)

    by danish ( 60748 ) <danish@debian.org> on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:41AM (#836786) Homepage

    Anonymous Coward asks "Hi, I'm an executive of a rather large Internet company, and we just had a suit filed against us because of some file-sharing software we created that happened to be used for sharing MP3s. I'd like to ask the community - What do you think we should do as far as a defense goes?" (insert some random, half-sensical comment from Taco here)



    Dear my! What are those things coming out of her nose?
    Spaceballs!

  • I think they expect to lose. (Score:5)

    by M-2 ( 41459 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:41AM (#836794) Homepage

    No, really. Think about it.

    If MP3Board LOSES this case... then there's a legal precedent set about what's allowed and not allowed as far as the liability of the writer of a piece of software. And it's got a very large company involved in it, which means the company has an interest in making sure other jurisdictions know about it. While it's not a binding precedent nationwide, it WILL become a referenceable case for other suits about the responsibility of a software author for the software they right and how it gets used.

    And that... that's where it goes. In New York District Court. Where the DeCSS trial was held. We could see this suit turn around the other one's presumptions. It could lay down completely opposite precedents in the same court district.

    IANAL, but I think that's the sort of thing that makes Appellate courts go crazy. It may very well be the thing that makes them toss the DeCSS verdict out.

    Unfortunately, if this backfires, it's going to be very, very ugly...
    ----

  • News flash: Major Domo arrested by military tribunal! He will be demoted to private before his execution for chatting with the enemy.
  • There would be a whole different debate if AOL had sanctioned an official release of Gnutella (after the fashion of the Napster trial), but considering that Gnutella was allegedly developed and released without their consent, it would seem that there is little ground for them to be held liable. Can you be held liable for something that an employee of yours does without your permission? Seems a little dubious. The last time that I checked, development on the origonal Nullsoft Gnutella client had stopped at the Gnutella site [wego.com] in favor of clonese using the same protocol, meaning that they would be basically sued for the development of a communications protocol. Maybe we ought to go after the authors of The Infinite Monkey Protocol [ietf.org] for cruelty to animals. . .

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • It happens all the time. It's called a sexual harrasment lawsuit.
  • To win a copyright lawsuit you have to show harm, or the expectation of harm (IANAL). I don't see how Gnutella is harming mp3board.com except through competition. Last I heard, competition was still legal.

    --

  • Ourobos.. (Score:5)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:46AM (#836820) Journal
    ... is the mythical snake that bites its own tail...

    The RIAA is suing mp3board, who is suing AOL as a responsible third-party, who owns Time-Warner, who is a member of the RIAA...

    (desired) Net Result: The RIAA sues itself out of existance, taking the AOL-Time-Warner monster out with it...
  • "Rogue" programmers are still employed by the company and use company-owned equipment to write their software and post it online. Any email, source code, etc., made on company time with company equipment and transferred through company communications systems is legally considered an official message from that company. That means that not only do they own it -- they can be held liable for its contents, and AOL could conceivably be found at fault for the copyright violations facilitated by Gnutella.

    Whether any judge in the country is going to accept that is anybody's guess. I, for one, think it highly unlikely. We can hope, though, right? Basically, if this thing doesn't get thrown directly out of court, it becomes a win/win situation for supporters of peer-to-peer networking tech: either AOL/Time Warner loses, thereby biting themselves in the ass with the legal teeth of their anti-Napster arguments, or AOL/T.W. wins, in which case the future of peer-to-peer tools looks a little brighter.

    Plus, either way, they're going to be involved in a nice, hyped, confusing legal action which will obscure their anti-swapping message for months. I can see the first-time Net users reading the AUP for their service now:

    AUP: "...any use of these services for the purpose of knowingly violating copyright or patent protection of intellectual property is strictly prohibited; these uses may include, but are not limited to, the sharing of copyrighted media files, software, or proprietary information (see MP3s, FTP & Me on p. 3)."

    User: "...uhh, but didn't AOL do a bunch of that stuff? I saw it on the news, I think, so they must mean something different than what I think they mean...so where's that stupid Noo-tella site? I want me some tunes...

  • This is the same as the latest Tobacco lawsuits and Gun lawsuits.

    Some tobacco companies were sued for the health problems of smokers that started smoking AFTER the warning labels were placed on the packaging: http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/07/1 6/tobacco.smokers/ [cnn.com]

    Some gun manufacturers are being sued for crimes using guns: http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/09/ crime.guns.reut/ [cnn.com]

  • ...receive a file (in a birthday cake)

    ...get out of jail!

  • Re:AOL Is Big, This is Interesting. (Score:3)

    by wesmills ( 18791 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:56AM (#836835) Homepage
    Nope, not correct.

    MP3Board [mp3board.com] is currently getting sued by the RIAA [riaa.com] for copyright infringement by distributing MP3s. MP3Board has turned around and sued AOL [aol.com] because their subsidiary, Nullsoft [nullsoft.com] created Gnutella [gnet.ath.cx]. MP3Board wants AOL to share some of the liability for music piracy if MP3Board is found guilty. MP3Board's reasoning is that piracy wouldn't be happening as much if AOL's subsidiary hadn't created Gnutella.

    ---

  • NEWS: Metallica Sues Descendants of Alan Turing (Score:5)

    by cje ( 33931 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:56AM (#836837) Homepage
    METALLICA SUES DESCENDANTS OF ALAN TURING
    ".. And Justice For All," Vows Furious Drummer

    LOS ANGELES, CA (AP) - In a legal move that is likely to set a precedent for many portions of the entertainment industry, the rock group Metallica today brought suit against the living descendents of Alan Turing, who is widely regarded as the father of modern computing. Claiming that Turing's work spawned the creation of "unabashed piracy machines," Metallica is seeking unspecified millions in damages.

    Though Turing had no children of his own, he is survived by a large number of great-nephews and nieces. Spike Turing, the owner of a Starbucks' franchise in El Paso, Texas, told the Associated Press that he recieved a letter from Metallica's legal firm, Dewey, Cheat & Howe. "The letter claims that great Uncle Al is responsible for the destruction of the economies of the Western world," explained Turing. "They're taking us to trial."

    "This is bullshit," stated a confused 84-year old Bertha Turing, who is a retired seamstress living in a cozy London suburb. "These Metallica fellers sent letters like this to all of us."

    Lars Ulrich, who is Metallica's drummer, has taken the lead in fighting against what he claims is "a coordinated band of pirates hell-bent on obliterating creativity and musical freedom." Ulrich expressed hope that the Turing lawsuit would send a message to the rest of the community. "Um, we want people to understand that file sharing is not to be tolerated," explained Ulrich. "Open source is not to be .. uh .. tolerated. Piracy is not to be tolerated. Britney Spears is not to be .. well, her music is not to be tolerated. And above all, we want to make the relatives of the inventor of all of these fucking devil-boxes pay their dues."

    Dr. Dre contributed to this story.
  • In retrospect, I wonder if the plan here is to clog the legal system so badly with silly suits that no real justice has time to get done. Furthermore, being highly concerned about real justice getting done, I wonder if I can sue them for something or other for filing lawsuits to clog the legal system.

    I am not a lawyer, but I play one on TV

  • First principle of lawsuits (Score:4)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:49AM (#836842) Homepage Journal
    Sue the party with the deepest pockets. AOL certainly has deeper pockets than Napster or any of the other mp3 (or any other file format) "online exchange clubs."

    What's missed is that this may well have a knock-on effect, where legal blame gets transferred to the original author. This is kind of a fallout of the DeCSS case, except there the author was clearly a citizen of another country. Makes you kind of surprised that there isn't some sort of international civil suit against Johansen. (Is there such a thing?)

    There could be a chill here regarding writing GPL software "that could be used to do Evil," as defined by some big company. Of course this suit has to succeed. Won't it be odd to see Slashdotters rooting for AOL?

  • You're forgetting someone. (Score:3)

    by kwsNI ( 133721 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @09:49AM (#836847) Homepage
    Don't forget to sue Al Gore for inventing the internet.

    kwsNI
  • if mp3board.com can be sued for simply providing a search engine that, among other things, finds illegal mp3, then why can't gnutella be sued as well? They have a point.

    The point is, both are rediculous.
  • This could be the perfect opprtunity to fight the silly GIF patent. Since Compuserve claims that they own the GIF format then they must be responsible for it. And I have seen some pretty sick stuff in GIFs (usually worse then the jpgs even).

    I am now officially announcing my intent to sue Compuserve for damages done to my frail innocence cause by implicit images compressed using the .GIF format. (It doesn't get much more legalese than that from me)

    Devil Ducky
  • Ahh, how I long for the Good 'Ol days of non-commercialized technology. As soon as corporations get ahold of the newest big thing (i.e.: Internet), everything gets commercial.

    Ahhh, Sonny...Remember the days when the Internet was used for sharing information?

    I do. But remembering them is like remembering a dream.

    I'm so sick and tired of corporations bullying eachother over who has the bigger dick. I'm not involved, so I don't care. I just want to learn, socialize, and have fun.

    But this can't be done anymore without seeing banner ads, or spam, or "X is suing Z because they created Y", or "Corinthians isn't a book from the bible, it's a soccer team! That's OUR rightful domain!", etc.

    It's time for an underground internet, to take back to the sense of community the internet once had. Leave your commercialized, greedy asses on this internet.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • This can't be the first time that some engineer invented something illegal/troublesome on company time. Any lawyer worth his wingtips would put a clause on there saying, "Anything you invent while employed by us, including those great ideas you have while driving in rush hour and in the shower, are owned entirely by us...unless we don't want it, then it's all yours." But good call, though. If AOL didn't have that kind of language in there, they may well get screwed.

    -B
  • Welcome to "Who do we sue next?", bringing you tons of whining ninnies from around the globe because they might lose 5 cents.
    Seriously though, they have started televising small claims court room dramas, they should start doing this crap. Hey it could be bigger than day time tv. No more "Young and the Restless", here comes "The Rich and the Whinny".
  • MP3Board has been sued by the RIAA for having the gnutella gateway.

    From the CNET article [cnet.com]:

    • "It's not our preference to say Gnutella is infringing or that our search of Gnutella is infringing," said Ira Rothken, MP3Board's attorney. "But if a court finds that it is, we believe that AOL should share part of the blame."

    Or, as the LATimes puts it [latimes.com]:
    • But it goes on to argue that if it loses the suit, AOL and Time Warner should help shoulder any penalties because of their indirect role in creating Gnutella.
  • "the RIAA has sued the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardizing e-mail, [yahoo.com] a pernicious protocol used to forward MP3s to unauthorized parties. The RIAA has lost billions of dollars due to this highly illegal service."

    sulli

  • Legal Thuggary against Engineers (Score:3)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:02AM (#836867)
    This lawsuit isn't designed to harm AOL.

    It is designed to put the fear of [insert deity here] into any software engineer harboring dreams of developing the next generation of file sharing technology.

    I don't recall if the original developers of GNUtella still work at AOL or not (if they do, you can bet they're in a whole heap of trouble and their opportunities for advancement just went to zero), but it isn't really relevant.

    The message to employers (and independent contractors) is clear: if your employees develop software we don't like, we're going to sue you.

    The message to engineers is: we're going to give your employer every incentive to shitcan your career.

    The message to everyone is "don't invent technology we don't like or we'll destroy you, and we have more than enough money to do so."

    Our message, in response, should be "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" in the form of boycotting their products as well as supporting and embracing the technologies they are trying to suppress.

    This isn't an attack against AOL. It is an attack against all of US.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close