From: Fred Maxwell <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 18:34:04 -0500

Henry Mitchell wrote:

> I don't know specifically which college kid, but if we're thinking of
> the same one, I think he just didn't have the resources/willingness to
> fight the RIAA

I don't believe that Archos has the resources, willingness, or desire to
fight the RIAA or MPAA.

> Napster did, in fact, info on copyrighted MP3s (and its traders) on their
> servers. This is a big reason why they went down.

Napster cached info on files that users made available for download. They
did not try to determine the copyright status of the files or act as a law
enforcement organization.

> Remember how they were "fingerprinting" those MP3s on their servers by
filename to
> try to block copyrighted material, then the users circumvented that by
misspellings
> like "Metalica?"

You apparently don't remember that they did that in response to court orders
after the RIAA sued them. Prior to that, you could have searched for "Free
Lectures" or "The Beatles" and Napster's servers would not have made any
distinction between the searches. Are you going to argue that Google is
somehow responsible for software piracy because people search for "warez,"
"cracks," and "serial numbers"?

> You may be confusing Napster with other services like
> Kazaa, but note that the RIAA isn't going after Kazaa or its
> developers, in part because they don't have any servers on
> which to store MP3s.

Timeout! Napster's servers had no MP3s on them. The RIAA did sue the
makers of Kazaa:

http://news.com.com/2100-1023_3-942533.html

> They are going after users who are sharing their copyrighted MP3s
> through Kazaa (acting as servers). I haven't heard that they sued
> anyone actually downloading copyrighted MP3s though, only making them
> available to be downloaded - which really doesn't make sense to me.

It's easy: If you use Kazaa, you can get a list of all files that a given
user is making available. There is no way to tell what files any user has
downloaded or is downloading.

> I actually do believe David's statement - if it weren't true, Dell,
> Compaq, etc. would be sued for providing hardware to the end
> users who share MP3s through Kazaa, make illegal copies of DVDs, pirate
> software, etc.

Much like the RIAA sued Diamond in 1998 for selling a portable MP3 player:

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11_2-512266.html

Nice try, but as a biased observer here, I'd have to give this round to me.
;-)

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell
Received on 2003-11-08