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Kazaa CEO vs. Hilary Rosen 392

Posted by michael from the download-this dept.
Carpoolio writes "TechTV is continuing its good coverage of the RIAA attack on file swappers, and now they've gone to Australia to interview Nikki Hemming, CEO of Sharman Networks (Kazaa). It's supposedly one of the only TV interviews she's ever done, and Hemming has some interesting things to say about Hilary Rosen and the RIAA, and the future of Kazaa, but without revealing too much. In TechTV's story (part of a three-part series), they've pitted the two against each other, using a recent interview they did with Rosen. Streaming video of the Rosen interview is included on the site."
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Kazaa CEO vs. Hilary Rosen More

Kazaa CEO vs. Hilary Rosen

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  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by groove10 ( 266295 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:38AM (#6633789) Homepage
    which one is Gozilla and which one is Mothra?

  • Nikki Hemming vs. Hilary Rosen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Michael Hunt ( 585391 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:40AM (#6633802) Homepage
    Sounds like an, uhm, interesting mud wrestling match. I would seriously pay for front row seats to that.

    In the, erm, brown corner we have Hilary Rosen; devourer of civil liberties, champion of everyone's IP rights (for varying values of 'everyone',) and destroyer of the fell beast Napster.

    In the, uhm, OTHER brown corner, we have Nikki Hemming; fearless leader of Sharman Networks, profiteers behind such wonderful, life enhancing software as 'KaZaA Media Desktop;' single-handedly responsible for installing the Brilliant Digital plugin onto millions of desktops.

    Like I said. Front row seats. Winner gets a latex fist, ten pounds of diff grease and a brass replica of the Scales of Justice.
    • > Sounds like an, uhm, interesting mud wrestling match. I would seriously pay for front row seats to that.
      >
      >In the, erm, brown corner we have Hilary Rosen; devourer of civil liberties, champion of everyone's IP rights (for varying values of 'everyone',) and destroyer of the fell beast Napster.
      >
      > In the, uhm, OTHER brown corner, we have Nikki Hemming; fearless leader of Sharman Networks, profiteers behind such wonderful, life enhancing software as 'KaZaA Media Desktop;' single-handedly resp
      • Sold for anything under $49.95 Pay Per View! (And the Spice channel can air the post-game ceremonies, but there's no way I want that on my credit card!)

        Don't waste your money... just wait an hour and then download the avi off of kazaa.
    • Screw the mud wrestling, I vote for celebrity deathmatch...
    • Nikki would win hands down. Check out the pics of here here [wired.com]. I'd be scared to enter the ring with some who looked like that. And I bet she's farily happy in that picture. Although I wouldn't mind seeing her in a oil wrestling match... :)

      Now look at the competition's pic [wired.com]. She looks like your best friends mom for god's sake. She should be baking something. Note: Notice the IPod in the pic.
      • Now look at the competition's pic. She looks like your best friends mom for god's sake. She should be baking something. Note: Notice the IPod in the pic.

        I was thinking that looked like an Herbal Essence commercial gone horribly wrong.
    • I've always favored knife fights. They're melee weapons (which means that the fight may take a little while) and it's likely that the winner of the fight may bleed to death, and we'd be rid of them both.

      And yes, I think I'm joking.

  • This will haunt them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aerojad ( 594561 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:42AM (#6633809) Homepage Journal
    Once again, the RIAA is going to make life hard for theirselves down the line as they continue to sue their own customer base. Not a good business pratice, never will be.

    • Re:This will haunt them. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:28AM (#6634093)
      Agreed. I do not buy CDs anymore due to the RIAA's actions in recent years. Not only it's bad business practice concerning filing suits against individuals, but it's push for hacked CDs and other devices to prevent me from making backups of my purchases.

      In regards to their panic and need to sue everyone under the sun over mp3's, why do they get so upset when their public statements regarding the quality of pirated music as inferior to the CDs they sell? It would seem to me that inferior, unauthorized, copies would give downloaders an extra incentive to purchase after they download.

      Aside from my dislike over their litigation happy ways, other things that contribue to my refusal to purchase CDs:

      1) over-simplified, stereotypical bands and music categories. There's only ever a few songs from a few big names, with an occasional introductory band of any given category. At least that's all that ever hits the airwaves and major music stores.

      2) too much urge for political control. For the RIAA to be such a small sector in the economy, it has an incredible amount of political backing. They have systematically bought votes from a great number of politicians through donations and capaign funds.

      3) refusal to modernize business practice. The use of litigation and threats appear to be the means by which to keep a mid-1900's business model afloat in the new millenium. If all that money was spent on enabling technology and music, they wouldn't be sinking financially.

      4) refusal to acknowledge why sales are plumetting. They scream 'piracy!' when it comes to falling numbers. But, take the percentage loss of sales in the past two years and compare it to the loss of sales for movie tickets, vacations, amusement parks, and other recreational spending.

      I am certain the decline is global and due to a sinking world economy. Their sales will pick back up if they calm down, release more titles for people who aren't 16-20 years old, and wait for the economy to get rolling again.

    • Well, according to the Emergency SCO telecon earlier this week, Darl McBride read "how the RIAA's initial lawsuits reduced online music downloads by some 30%" and said that maybe suing end users *was* a good idea, after all.
    • Well, if they can'y get their money by selling them cds of questionable quality, then the alternative is to get their money some other way... this being to sue them.
    • Indeed! The more people they anger, the more people will join the ever-growing boycott of the recording industry. [dontbuycds.org] When the current bunch of bloodsuckers are put out of business, a new music industry of, by, and for people who love music can rise from the ashes.
    • the RIAA is going to make life hard for theirselves down the line as they continue to sue their own customer base

      I believe the RIAA's main complaint is that the people they're suing aren't customers, because they're copying the music for free instead of paying for it like they're supposed to.

  • Gotta love the FUD (Score:5, Funny)

    by mericet ( 550554 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:45AM (#6633828) Homepage
    "If you're using KaAaA today, you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song -- not what the artist did in the studio, not what they wanted you to hear, not their finest work" - Rosen

    Yeah, but that's what you get when you buy a CD too, a much too loud abomination of what the artist recorded.

    • Re:Gotta love the FUD (Score:5, Informative)

      by infornogr ( 603568 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:22AM (#6634051)
      Yeah, but that's what you get when you buy a CD too, a much too loud abomination of what the artist recorded.

      Couldn't agree more.
      Information on the 'too loud' problem for the less-informed: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles /8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C [prorec.com]

      • The problem with "mastered for radio" is only a problem with the most commercial, most stupid and least interesting music. The music which is made for MTV and radio play. If you didn't listen to such stupid music, this wouldn't bother you at all.

      • Can't you turn down the volume?

        I read the first half of the link you posted. I don't get it, but I'm no music aficionado. I just listen to the crap on the radio.

        • Re:Gotta love the FUD (Score:5, Interesting)

          by dytin ( 517293 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:06AM (#6635037) Homepage
          The way I see it (I'm no expert either, but this is how I understood it from the link) is that basically a CD has a maximum volume that it can have. We'll call this level 10 volume. The volume of course flucuates a lot in a regular song, but each song has an 'average' volume. Back in the old days of mastering, they would try to get this average volume at around 5. That way, you could have loud sounds occasionally, and soft sounds too. However, what soon happened was that whenever an amateur recorded a CD, their average volume would be at around 3 or so, and you'd have to turn your stereo's volume way up to hear them. So eventually people began to associate a low average volume with unproffesional bands. So then, the professionals started to make their average volume to be at around 6. This would cause their CDs to sound even more professional, because it was even louder than the other professional CDs. This was alright, because there was still a lot of lee-way for the volume to increase when it needed to. However, recently the professional CDs have increased their average volume even higher, to maybe 8 or 9. This is bad though, because there is not much lee-way for the volume to increase. If the average volume were at 10, then all the sounds in the CD would be at the exact same volume, and there would be no variety, thus causing the song to sound like crap.
          • That's part of it, but you've missed the most important part; there's only a fixed dynamic range. What you want is for the loudest part of the music to be below the top of the dynamic range. If not, it gets clipped which distorts the sound. If you increase the average volume when mastering, there's less room for the louder noises so there's more clipping (unless you decrease the actual range of volume which is what you were talking about).

            For more detail, check out a previous story [slashdot.org] on Rush CDs, or go s

          • CDs are digital! (Score:3, Informative)

            by stinkydog ( 191778 )
            Cd's are 44,000 16bit samples a second giving 65,536 possible values (0-65,535). As sound is half positive and half negative the range is split in half. Increasing volume involves adding a positive number to the positive half and a negative number to the negative half. Peak limiting destroys information by cutting it off a the limit of the possible range (resulting in it being discarded). More samples are either 0 or 65,535. One positive side effect is that the MP3 rip will soud more like to origional
      • I can't think of a better way to get people to switch to DVD Audio. You can't say they sound better, because most people won't notice the difference. People will be much more willing to move if there's a perceived quality difference. So why not spend five years slowly reducing the quality of sound on CDs, then make the DVD audios perfect. Then people will hear the difference and switch.
    • you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song -- not what the artist did in the studio

      Great! no copyright infringment is taking place then :)

  • So who do we support? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prince_Ali ( 614163 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:47AM (#6633839) Journal
    Do we support Hilary 'CD Crippler' Rosen or Nikki 'Spyware Installer' Hemming?
    • Exact Audio Copy. How rude is it to put out music on something that cannot be copied for personal use? Personal copies eg cassette tape, minidisk, MP3, for car CD player, are legal in Australia. As for the spyware. I've yet to install Kazaa. My favourite version of the file sharing networks is sneakernet. Slow but effective.

  • Damn! (Score:4, Funny)

    by magsymp ( 562489 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:49AM (#6633850)
    I was hoping they would mention if pirated versions of NHL 2004 were going to be available soon. I bet Nikki gets all the stuff first. -- I guess i'll give up file-sharing and go back to stabbing hookers.

  • i *WANT* to buy CDs... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LordYUK ( 552359 ) <jeffwright821@@@gmail...com> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:50AM (#6633857)
    But then I realize that part of the 15 bucks I would have given to best buy or whatever is going to fund a lawsuit against the parents of some 13 year old girl who downloaded the latest n*stink song, listened to it twice, and forgot about it (nevermind the fact that the song COULD have been copied from the GOD DAMN RADIO)...

    So I am left with hunting on KaZaA for a song that may or may not be the real (or whole) song, and might very well crap out halfway through the download...

    RIAA, sod off... some of us want your music, and WOULD pay 13-15 bucks for a CD, but not if you're going to rape us...

    • I applaud your moral conviction. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Prince_Ali ( 614163 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:56AM (#6633894) Journal
      Wow, I applaud your moral conviction. To pirate a CD instead of buying it must have been a terrible ordeal. You will be held as a martyr for your unthinkable sacrifice. You are the Ghandi of your day! If only more people could have the strength of character to take things without paying for them the world would be a better place.

      Yes, that was sarcasm!

      • Re:I applaud your moral conviction. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LordYUK ( 552359 ) <jeffwright821@@@gmail...com> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:04AM (#6633950)
        Its a helluva lot easier to get a CD at target for 13 bucks as opposed to hunting on Kazaa for the entire thing in good quality that isnt the chorus repeated over and over and over...

        but if even 1 penny of that purchase goes to fund a lawsuit, they fuck 'em. I'd rather infringe their copyright.

        Oh, and if they dont want us listening to their music for free, then perhaps they shouldnt play it on the radio... I'd guess that over 95% of the stuff I download is the flavor of the week on the radio.

        • Re:I applaud your moral conviction. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Prince_Ali ( 614163 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:09AM (#6633969) Journal
          How about not buying the CD or downloading.
        • Whether or not you actually pay for the media in question, by listening to and redistributing it you are supporting the companies behind it. For these companies, popularity equates to profitability. By listening to a particular song, you are increasing the exposure that song gets for you, your friends, your neighbors, and any people they may affect as a result of hearing you play a particular song. Similarly, how many people will download the song from you, how many will download the song from people who
        • You don't get to listen to music for free on the radio.

          Why do I say this? Commercials. Other people have paid for commercials in the hope that you'll hear them on the radio. The draw to get you to listen? Music.

          You are paid to listen to commercials and the currency they pay you with is music.

          The fact that you can switch stations makes no difference, because most people don't switch stations, they just endure the commercials.

    • the parents of some 13 year old girl who downloaded the latest n*stink song, listened to it twice, and forgot about it (nevermind the fact that the song

      Myth.

      Please show me where this is actually happening, as opposed to people suspected with good evidence of serious and prolonged illegal activity, such as people who have downloaded and/or distrbuted hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of copies of (whatever) illegally.

    • Pillory Hilary! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Phoenix666 ( 184391 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:18AM (#6635152)
      OK, we all hate and loathe the RIAA and MPAA and we will bring them down. I think it's time to start planning for a post-RIAA world order.

      First, and most fun, should come the war-crimes tribunal. Hilary Rosen, Jack Valenti, Congressmen Berman, Tauzin, Hatch, and Hollings, and all the top execs at the content companies should be put in stockades in public squares around the country so that music fans and citizens can throw CDs, cassettes, and excrement at them (sorry, triply redundant, that.). Then we put them in strait jackets, put them in rubber rooms, and force them to listen to N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, and all of their terrible music until their ears bleed and they're reduced to piles of gibbering insanity. Then we'll give them a life sentence in a nice asylum where they can finger paint and watch Barney with expressions of childlike wonder.

      Then we designate a national holiday to mark our liberation, to be celebrated by amateur musicians, thespians, and artists performing free in public plazas and parks across the land. We'll show movies outdoors against the sides of buildings, like in the old days, and have carnival booths where you can pay a nickel to take a whack at Lars and the Metallica boys. Ahhh, can you see it?

      • ...force them to listen to N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, and all of their terrible music until their ears bleed...

        Usually on Slashdot if you say how bad something is... or don't like something Like WinVsMacVsLinux or That you didn't like Xena or Buffy, there would always be someone defending them. I thought I was the onlyone who didn't like 'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and the like. I have yet to hear anyone on here defend their work.

  • Hang on... At least they agree on something?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:52AM (#6633867) Homepage
    No they don't...
    "P2P is unstoppable," Hemming said. It's a statement Rosen would likely agree with.

    Sorry, but where I come from, that's mere hypothesis... Rosen probably would agree, but she actually hasn't...

    Also, KaZaA (or whatever silliness they do with their capital letters) is known to be one of the most prolific distributors of spyware on the internet, so do we support them, or the technophobic legalistic RIAA?

    Oh well, each to their own. Use freenet! (They kennae catch you that way ;) )

  • Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:54AM (#6633877)
    Rosen claims KaZaA is ruining, not expanding, the recording industry by allowing inferior copies of music to be downloaded with its software. "If you're using KaAaA today, you're getting, in my view, a crappy quality song -- not what the artist did in the studio, not what they wanted you to hear, not their finest work," she said.

    I thought the problem the RIAA had with digital copying was that copies were near-perfect and did not degrade over generations? There Hilary is telling us that digital copies are not good copies.

    The RIAA, two faced? Never! If digital copies suck so much, I want my LP's back, too!

  • one of the only (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jpmkm ( 160526 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:59AM (#6633912) Homepage
    What the fuck does one of the only mean? It makes it sound like there were multiple interviews, but at the same time only one. Which one is it?

  • Bias Shown in First Paragraph (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @08:59AM (#6633916) Homepage
    "Her company's technology may be dragging the entertainment industry, kicking and screaming, into a future of file swapping, but the entertainment industry would rather drag Nikki Hemming and her company into court."

    I love how TechTV is portraying Kazaa as the noble progressive, leading us all into the GLORIOUS FUTURE OF FILE-SHARING, while Rosen and Co. are stodgy, grumpy old dinosaurs seeking to deprive humanity of life-saving technology.

    I know all of the "blah blah outdated business model blah blah" arguments, and even agree with some of them, but TechTV didn't lend itself much credibility (IMHO) with their one-sided opening remarks.

    I am now grabbing my ankles, waiting for moderators to get ahold of this.

    • Re:Bias Shown in First Paragraph (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer&centurytel,net> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:37AM (#6634171) Homepage Journal
      What would you expect from a Web site aimed at the tech savvy? Granted, they could have stayed away from any bias at all, but they know that most of their viewers would agree with the image they depicted, just as most people here would.

      Had they gone the other way and depicted kazaa as an illegal and immoral tool, they would have been flooded with irate emails, etc.

      Really, I see your point about bias, but hell, hardly anyone writes without bias anymore, and if you've watched cable news lately, it's almost scary.

      Besides, you read Slashdot... and you're complaining about bias on TechTV? Now that's ironic... ;)

  • Random Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bafraid2b1 ( 649740 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:03AM (#6633938)
    How is the RIAA finding out who's sharing what on Kazaa? Are they using Kazaa to do it? And if they are, by simply using the Kazaa software are they killing their own case?

    The thing that we all need to realize, like Napster and Morpheus, Kazaa is essentially dead now. Let it go. Nobody wants to share on it now for fear of being caught. So the real question is where's the next filesharing service? The one that we can all use for another year or two until legal action is taken against it and we move on to the next one?
    • If my Kazaa Lite software is to be believed, there are of this posting 3,397,980 users online sharing 679,092,156 files totalling 5,338,368GB. I wouldn't exactly call that dead...

    • Re:Random Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:54AM (#6634347) Journal
      Well I'm using K++Lite right now and it says 3.3 million. So, that's not quite dead. And an issue that is just casually glazed over in this debate that the RIAA has ignited is that much of the material traded isn't under the copyright of any RIAA memeber.
      Moreover, the laws vary from country to country. Sadly, as an American, I am under the impression that the most repressive and backwards copyright laws are from the US although they're spreading fast in Europe. I live in Asia though, and laws tend to vary dramatically here from region to region. And since we have abundant bandwidth, it makes me wonder about the future of P2P.
      This may be a long shot, but perhaps we'll begin to see a rising Asian cultural imperialism as an unintended consequence of this western reaction to the progress of information tehcnology. I already notice vast amounts of Japanese porn on P2P although you don't tend to see it unless you use Chinese or Japanese characters for your searches. If you do, however, there's a surprisingly large quantity.
      This could be interesting as it might foreshadow P.K. Dick's vision of the future Los Angeles with Japanese and Chinese overtaking Spanish as the predominant popular culture languages of the region. I actually moved to Taipei in the early 90s because it reminded me so much of the image of LA in the movie Bladerunner.

      • And an issue that is just casually glazed over in this debate that the RIAA has ignited is that much of the material traded isn't under the copyright of any RIAA memeber.

        I for one only share non-infringing materials. For instance, Beatallica [beatallica.org] is Beatles songs done in the style of Metallica, very creative, and their web site explicitly states:

        If you're having trouble downloading the songs, try the mirror site, or get the songs through Kazaa, WinMX, or some other p2p client.

        So I have their perm

    • Re:Random Thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by st0rmshad0w ( 412661 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:17AM (#6634535)
      There is no "next file-sharing service". My employer (a college) decided to throttle back the bandwidth so much as to make Kazaa etc unusable. Ok, so they killed my file sharing, I'm not gonna cry about it, it was pretty much unusable anyway since I really could give a rats ass about the monsterous amount of top 40 crap that was littering it. I could never find what I was looking for anyway. My answer: STREAMRIPPER!
      Just find a streaming station that I like and whammo! all the music I want.
  • Note that Hilary spells her name with one "l". This is the case with the vast majority of Hil(l)arys, at least in the United States. But the former first lady, a notable exception, has caused all these poor Hilarys (Hilaries?) to spend the rest of their lives having their names misspelled. Hilary Rosen deserves such an awful fate, but for the sake of the others, I ask you to mind your "l"s.

    Won't somebody please think of the Hilarys?

    The preceding was paid for by the Coalition for Hilary Awareness.

  • Thanks for the reminder... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:04AM (#6633946)
    I had forgotten to fire up my copy of Kazaa this morning!

  • Technology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:29AM (#6634095)

    "I don't think you do stop technology," Rosen said. "I don't think we'd want to stop technology."

    Indeed, the RIAA would rather load up CDs with copy-protection technologies instead. I've had to turn down three recent CDs that I was interested in, since I know they won't play on most of my computers or linux-based portables. A shame, since I would have shelled out the $18CAN for them too.

  • hmm. (Score:4, Funny)

    by BilldaCat ( 19181 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:29AM (#6634097) Homepage
    I didn't know you could videotape the devil. I thought it would be like with vampires and mirrors, not being able to see themselves, or something. :\
  • OK, this really irks me... I'm sure some informed person here answer this...

    Why do they constantly tout the number of times kazaa has been downloaded (as they do in this article) when the number of connected users is what matters?

    If it's been downloaded 240 million times, why the hell aren't there 240 million users on when I connect? Now, granted, due to times zones, jobs, and what-not everyone would not be on at once, but still, shouldn't there be more than ~3 million people connected at once?

    Eit

  • Strapped for cash. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by the web ( 696015 )
    I still believe that file sharing is a scapegoat for the real reason in dropping cd sales. Baby boomers have finished replacing their vinyl. Nuff said.

    Sure I believe file swapping is stealing. But if it never existed sales figures would be the same as they are now. Basically the internet has created a victimless crime. In my model of the world anyway.

    I ask the question. How many people anywhere can afford to buy 500 cd's in a couple of months. The RIAA acctually thinks that people have made the disicion t

  • Just in case.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:14AM (#6634507)
    In case the site gets slashdotted, I put a copy of the video up on Kazaa.

  • "anonymizing" P2P (Score:3, Insightful)

    by artemis67 ( 93453 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:56AM (#6634945)
    I'm surprised that no one has set up a company to anonymize P2P... I know there are companies that anonymize web surfing in general, but it seems like someone could write an app that would anonymize all TCP/IP traffic going out from your computer.

    IANAL, but I would imagine that it would be best if it was written by a company NOT involved in the P2P industry. That way, the company is simply offering generic anonymous internet and can't be slapped with charges like Napster of being designed solely for the intent of transferring copywrited material.

    If the company is continuously shuffling IP addresses among its various members, and not keeping records that can be subpoenaed in court, then the RIAA is once again unable to attack individuals.

    The only downside would be the huge volume of traffic going through the anonymizing site, making it a fairly expensive service that casual P2P users would probably never subscribe to.
    • There has already been at least 1 ISP that was thinking about setting up a "Kazaa-cache". any material downloaded from this cache would not be traceable to the sharer's IP-number through the use of netstat.
  • I do actually pay for music on the internet, but I'm frustrated by the fragmentation of the content. For example, I pay $9.95 a month for Rhapsody [listen.com], but there are huge holes in their content. The apple music store has some things Rhapsody does not have, but neither of them has everything I'm interested in. Meanwhile, I can walk over to my local record store and they have CDs from just about every label. What I don't understand is that record companies complain and whine about how the internet is killing

  • Little comparaison for Hilary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GnuVince ( 623231 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @11:24AM (#6635222)
    Buying a CD nowadays is like buy a bag of apples in which all apples but one are rotten. And the one that's not is not terribly good too.

    When every song on an album is worth listening to, I buy it, otherwise I use IRC to get the one good song. I don't feel bad about it, because instead of them ripping me off, I rip them off.

  • RIAA best summed up (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Meeble ( 633260 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @12:03PM (#6635606) Journal
    >>>>>
    "In the end, consumers and artists are brought together by this amazing technology, and they have a level of interactivity they've never had before," she said. "And the music industry is going to benefit, and the movie industry is gonna benefit, and emerging artists, and independent artists, and people who just want to share their views. They're all going to benefit. This technology is here to stay."
    >>>

    There you have it - the entire reason the RIAA is doing what it is doing - all summed up in one neat, tiny paragraph. Everyone will benefit from this...except the RIAA. This added level of interactivity will render the RIAA completely, utterly useless to all the record labels and put them out of business. plain and simple.

  • TechTV? (Score:3, Funny)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @01:07PM (#6636252)
    I thought Celebrity Boxing was on FOX.

    Sounds like a good match, tho.

  • KaZaA [is used for piracy only|has legitimate use] (Score:4, Interesting)

    by danila ( 69889 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @03:24PM (#6638090) Homepage
    Check the correct option. :) It is often argued by file-sharing advocates that P2P apps, such as KaZaA have a lot of non-infringing uses. Their opponents respond by claiming that despite that 90%+ of the traffic on KaZaA is illegal. But that certainly depends on the point of view.

    Most people here on Slashdot subconsciously assume that US laws define the picture, but that is not true. Copyright laws in different countries are different (that is probably one of the reasons for KaZaA's complex legal structure). You've heard about DeCSS case in Norway, you've heard about Denmark P2P users getting bills for downloaded files, but have you heard about the place where half of the Hollywood movies in in the public domain? :)

    Here is the breaking news. The Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation has published a long list [mincultrf.ru] of movies that are now in the public domain (automated translation [translate.ru] of the list> by Translate.Ru [translate.ru]). Titles include Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Monty Python and hundreds of other brilliant films.

    This is not the first time [com.com] when opposition to copyright comes from Russia and probably not the last. Now that these movies officially belong to the public (in Russia), what implications, do you think, this has for the rest of the world and for file-sharing?

    And hosting in Russia would probably cost just a few cents per movie uploaded abroad... And the best thing is that would really be 100% legal.

    P.S. You may think this is too good to be true, but believe me, it is true. It seems that most movies more than 30 years old really are in public domain now (called obschestvennoe dostoyanie in Russian.

  • Amusing math... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @05:43PM (#6639702) Homepage
    Kazaa has been downloaded 240 million times. Lets assume that represents nearly half of all P2P downloads - call it 500 million. Lets conservatively each one results in an average of 20 infringing downloads. That equals 10 billion infringments. Statutory damages of $150,000 each means they can sue for $1500 trillion in damages.

    Gross world product was about $45.9 trillion in 2001. The 30 year rate of growth was about 3.35% per year. It is then straight forward to calculate that the gross world product for the entire history of world up until today is approximately $1498 trillion.

    The RIAA could sue for ownership of the entire planet PLUS an extra $2 trillion to boot.

    -

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