The RIAA continues to amaze me.    Everyone might want to grok the
news yahoo has:
http://rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/nm/tc_nm/inlinks/*http://Listen4ever.com
And if you're really bored, go ahead and read the papers that were
filed by the RIAA against the major backbone providers.
http://www.riaa.com/pdf/Listen4Ever.pdf
So it looks like the RIAA is getting bored with its usual tack of
suing the peer-to-peer services, and is instead using the DMCA
to sue ISPs and backbones into compliance --  They want said backbones
to block the ip address of the listen4ever.com server due to
listen4ever's alleged infringement of copyright.  To quote
the Motion that the RIAA issued:  "Plaintiffs request that
the Court issue a preliminary injunction requiring Defendants to block
communication to and from Listen4ever's servers that travel through
Defendants' backbone routing systems".
At least according to the RIAA (probably for bonus terror tactics )
the Listen4ever site is even more formidable than that bane of p2p
goodness, Napster, due to the fact that its on a centralized server,
out of their reach of RIAA/DMCA control (its located in China), and
because according to the RIAA it facilitates the downloading of entire albums.
Apparently listen4ever has a few other sites floating around, and the RIAA has been
unsuccessful in getting any of them to voluntarily surrender
service(1).
Gotta love the RIAA for jumping into this lawsuit with the customer's
interests in mind.  How lawyers can write drivel along the lines of
'if you dont stop these guys, we'll run out of money and we won't be
able to supply you new music!' just blows my mind, especially in this
day and age.   The RIAA has enough money to file inane lawsuits
against backbone providers, but they don't have enough money to
produce new artists?  Something seems wrong here.
Here's my problem.  Say the RIAA wins in court, and the backbone
providers comply.   Their biggest hurdle is now accomplished, and one
hell of a terrible precident is/can be set.   At least in the RIAA's
case, I'm sure once they get a Court-mandated Ok for this particular
site, they'll just go ahead, write their nice friendly lawyer letters,
and demand that subsequent IP addresses also be blocked, as they too
route to sites that are problematic to the RIAA.
Even worse, the concept that other groups (the first that flashed into
my little brain being the Scientologists) also decide that this is the way
to go.   If the RIAA prevails, they have record set, albiet in NY
only, that can be pointed back to, and used in other cases.
Eventually this will hit a large enough court that precident will set,
and we have a very quiet, very non-reported event occuring from then
on, the systematic C&Ding of the Internet.   Anything that violates the
DMCA, given its takedown provisions, might now potentially
fall prey to a Cease & Desist letter.  Rather than appealing, the
backbone providers will just agree -- as they seem likely to do
'provided a court order'.
Point being is that soon this won't take a court order.  A nastygram
will suffice and we'll wonder where all the new
music/information/dissenting opinions/ criticisms went.
This is a scary road we're running down here.   So nice to see that
its still hush-hush in the geek community.
Whats more bizzare is some of the support(?) that the RIAA seemed to
get.   I'm curious for instance, how Dave Farber got dragged into
this...  (2) Dave, you still read FoRK?
(1) Save for one, lmp3.com, which was listed as a redirect site in the
court documents, has since gone down.   Their website has a humorous little note:  "Lmp3
will be closed and will never come back! ".  Listen4ever.com is not
responding, but i'm not quite sure if thats due to backbone compliance
or the site being overburdened.
(2) Declaration of Prof. David J. Farber:
http://www.riaa.com/pdf/Listen4Ever.pdf (p. 95)
A very disgruntled,
bitbitch
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork