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Dino Price passed along this alert from the NYTimes.com:
Posted from The New York Times, today.

"...a federal judge ordered Verizon Communications yesterday to give a record industry trade group the identity of an Internet subscriber suspected of making available unauthorized copies of several hundred songs.

In the closely watched case, the Recording Industry Association of America argued that it had the right to invoke a legal shortcut compelling Internet service providers to turn over subscriber information without requiring a copyright holder to file a lawsuit."

More
...snip

Dino Price
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Actually, the snipped portion was a joke that I thought really drove home the pertinent development here.

...continuing Dino's message...

In a related development Justin of Ponca City has taken an immediate leave of absence from his job today citing "personal reasons". Good luck Justin.

Dino Price
----------------------------

Here are other links:
news story
text of decision

I'm not sure the real issue here is the fact that for the first time a court has upheld the remarkably broad rights given the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). I think the real news here is that RIAA has taken another major step toward shifting its battle from the software developers and hosting organizations of systems like Napster and Aimster to attacking individual file swappers.

This translates into an industry lowering a heavy hand of law on the biggest fans of its own clients (recording artists). This is something similar to Microsoft and the BSA (Business Software Alliance) pursuing common customers with a vigilante vengeance. How long can you irritate your customers before they turn on you.

OK, the line RIAA's trying to promote is that file swappers are evil incarnate. They are the Barbary pirates of the digital age. In reality they are your next door neighbors, the friendly kids at church and all of those young tikes that flood your neighborhood every afternoon. Whether file swapping is hurting or helping music sales is yet to be determined. It is a tough question to answer because of the messy environment. Maybe CD sales would be off even more during this little recession of ours without file swapping prodding the appetites of young listeners. Anyway, we can't answer that question here without more facts.

What we know is this. Copying copyrighted material for distribution is wrong. This covers probably 90% of today's file swapping and it is probably indefensible. However, these file swapping communities aren't sharing music for profit so it is hard to see the individuals in quite the same light as digital pirates running millions of copies of a CD for sales overseas.

Also, we have options other than draconian enforcement of property rights. When a huge number of people want to do things a new way but the traditional powers that be want to maintain the old way, two things eventually happen. The traditionalists continually raise the visciousness of their enforcement activities and when the people have had enough and if any chance is given revolt breaks out.

In this case I'm not sure how that revolt will play out. People won't stop listening to music in a general boycott. They just won't be able to make that stick anymore than the Baptists were able to do real damage to Disney a few years ago.

Hearing of common, A-student teenagers being dragged into court might put a damper on WinMX and KaZaA users. However, what I think might happen is that some alternative recording studios will spring up and sign up some great talent. They will invent a new business model that has an allowance for file swapping and yet maintains the integrity of the artists ownership over his or her creation. I could be Pollyanish on this, but it seems that in great tension new ideas are born.

Music lovers won't stop sharing music without a fight. It will go further underground. IP addresses (a key element in this latest court action) will be masked by the client software or something. The recording, publishing and software industries still have issues to work out in this new environment.

A larger question is whether we are going crazy with our need to own our intellectual property forever. Drug companies are using IP law to squeeze more profits from a drug and to eliminate competition as long as possible. Software companies are using IP rights to stifle competition. In recent years the U.S. Patent Office has been guilty of awarding patents on the most basic business processes.

One company received a patent that basically infers its ownership on the process involved in all of international ebusiness (the computerized process of automating the paperwork involved in commerce across national borders).

In another situation a company named PanIP out of San Diego has sued more than 50 companies for infringement of patents that cover an "automated sales and services system" and an "automatic business and financial transaction-processing system."

Tim Beere, owner of Fort Wayne, Indiana chocolate shop, DeBrand Fine Chocolates, is among the latest small businesses to be sued by PanIP and is fighting in a coalition with the others. Beere has also created an informational web site to promote this action and gain support from other small businesses and policy makers and attorneys interested in taking their cause.

My point is simply that we are rushing into a legalistic view of intellectual property rights without using common sense. Sure inventors should be protected in commercializing their inventions for some reasonable length of time. Software designers fit in there as do musical and visual artists. The body of law regarding IP rights is there supposedly to encourage invention and innovation. However, the extent to which we are going in protecting IP rights is actually choking the environment of all innovation.

If today's invention is protected for a lifetime what incentive is there to seek improvements or takeoffs? If even the broadest, most basic business processes are subject to individual ownership we will see brakes put on technology development and the productivity gains inherent in ebusiness. Where would we be if Tim Berners-Lee had patented his WWW technology, or if the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had kept tight reigns on Mosaic?

If today's art could be protected for a limited number of years and then shared freely there would be great incentive to continually turn out new works.
posted by Unknown at 10:39 PM