2008 Woodie Awards
Technically Speaking As the World Wages War on P2P
Reed Porter
Issue date: 4/29/08 Section: News
I have always downloaded music and movies- who the hell hasn't? Unfortunately, downloading is harder than ever now because the legal system is blitzing my pastime. The inundation of Limewire with faux music files and porn viruses have forced me to turn to my BitTorrent client for even individual songs.
I could always trust uTorrent to get the job done even if it took a few days, but now with Comcast throttling my bandwidth illegally and torrent sites being forced to shut down, seemingly every month, methods of online distribution are under serious attack.
The legislation behind downloading music seems to change almost everyday. The Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) has been changing its stance on ripping cds sporadically throughout the past few years; one month ripping a CD is okay and the next it is illegal. (Of course, the RIAA did not even HAVE a policy on ripping CDs until years after it first became available as a means of copying your CDs to your computer.)
No governing body has ever seemed to care about something until the mainstream skews it into moral panic, so this does not surprise me.
During an interview with Fox News, el presidente Bush described how he had some Beetles songs on his iPod. At the time, the Beetles had refused to put their music online. This means that even our President had attained music through a means that is NOT in accordance with the "fair use" policy outlined by the RIAA. Thus the lawmaker becomes the lawbreaker. Every one citizen is treated equally under the law, right?
Unfortunately, some are not the president of the U.S.. For example, A. Mary Lindor, a single mother living on disability payments in Brooklyn N.Y., was sued by the RIAA for a minimum of $750 per song.
The RIAA is known to have sued for up to $30,000 per song "distributed," so I guess you could say Lindor was lucky. In this ironic turn of events, it would seem her disability payments from the government would now be spent paying off her legal fees, despite the fact she had absolutely no music on her computer. (This situation is so full of "win" I simply can't describe it.)
I could always trust uTorrent to get the job done even if it took a few days, but now with Comcast throttling my bandwidth illegally and torrent sites being forced to shut down, seemingly every month, methods of online distribution are under serious attack.
The legislation behind downloading music seems to change almost everyday. The Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) has been changing its stance on ripping cds sporadically throughout the past few years; one month ripping a CD is okay and the next it is illegal. (Of course, the RIAA did not even HAVE a policy on ripping CDs until years after it first became available as a means of copying your CDs to your computer.)
No governing body has ever seemed to care about something until the mainstream skews it into moral panic, so this does not surprise me.
During an interview with Fox News, el presidente Bush described how he had some Beetles songs on his iPod. At the time, the Beetles had refused to put their music online. This means that even our President had attained music through a means that is NOT in accordance with the "fair use" policy outlined by the RIAA. Thus the lawmaker becomes the lawbreaker. Every one citizen is treated equally under the law, right?
Unfortunately, some are not the president of the U.S.. For example, A. Mary Lindor, a single mother living on disability payments in Brooklyn N.Y., was sued by the RIAA for a minimum of $750 per song.
The RIAA is known to have sued for up to $30,000 per song "distributed," so I guess you could say Lindor was lucky. In this ironic turn of events, it would seem her disability payments from the government would now be spent paying off her legal fees, despite the fact she had absolutely no music on her computer. (This situation is so full of "win" I simply can't describe it.)
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