Moby Board Member Sued By RIAA For Filesharing

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The RIAA is suing “liquidlevel,” one of Moby.com‘s board members!
Moby “can’t see any good in coming from punishing people for being music fans and making the effort to hear new music.” Right on dude!
He says he’s tempted to use Kazaa to download some of his own music, just to see if he got sued.
Of course, they probably wouldn’t, once they knew it was him. Because presumably, Moby is the copyright owner of his own music.
But this raises other questions about a musician’s right to use the internet to promote themselves — even if the record company says “no.” Why would a record label punish an artist for trying to promote themselves (to sell more records or concert tickets)? It just doesn’t make sense.
This all has a lot to do with the revolution that I have predicted (or instigated, depending on how you look at it 🙂

Moby Tour Diary Update – RIAA 9/29/2003 – New York City

so apparently the riaa are sueing one of our very own moby.com board members, liquidlevel, for file-sharing.
personally i just can’t see any good in coming from punishing people for being music fans and making the effort to hear new music.
i’m almost tempted to go onto kazaa and download some of my own music, just to see if the riaa would sue me for having mp3’s of my own songs on my hard-drive.
-moby

Do My Comments Work? Or Not?

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So either you guys don’t have anything to comment on anymore (even though my readership has doubled over the past couple months) or my comments are broken.
Please send comments today and let me know what your experience is.
I really want to get to the bottom of this.
Thanks!
lisa

Librarians Stick Up For P2P Networks

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Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh!
By Declan McCullagh for CNET.

In a hotly contested lawsuit before a federal appeals court, two peer-to-peer companies are about to gain a vast army of allies: America’s librarians.
The five major U.S. library associations are planning to file a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major record labels and Hollywood studios. The development could complicate the Recording Industry Association of America’s efforts to portray file-swapping services as rife with spam and illegal pornography.
According to an attorney who has seen the document, the brief argues that Streamcast–distributor of the Morpheus software–and Grokster should not be shut down. It asks the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the April decision by a Los Angeles judge that dismissed much of the entertainment industry’s suit against the two peer-to-peer companies.
Among the groups signing the brief are the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries Association. The American Civil Liberties Union, in one of the group’s first forays into copyright law, has drafted the brief opposing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
A central argument of the brief is that the district court got it right when applying a 1984 Supreme Court decision to the Internet. That decision, Sony v. Universal City, said Sony could continue to manufacture its Betamax VCR because a company “cannot be a contributory (copyright) infringer if, as is true in this case, it has had no direct involvement with any infringing activity.”
“The amicus brief will make the point that we are not supporting the wrongful sharing of copyrighted materials,” ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels wrote in an internal e-mail seen by CNET News.com. An amicus brief is one filed by a third, uninvolved party that comments on a particular matter of law. “Instead, we believe the Supreme Court ruled correctly in the Sony/Betamax case. The court in that case created fair and practical rules which, if overturned, would as a practical matter give the entertainment industry a veto power over the development of innovative products and services.”…
The ACLU said Thursday that the brief argues that peer-to-peer networks are speech-promoting technologies that have many noninfringing uses. If the MPAA and the RIAA succeed in shutting down peer-to-peer networks or making them more centralized, the precedent could create undesirable choke points that could be used to monitor Internet users, the ACLU said.

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Jesse Jackson’s September 16, 2003 Speech – No On The Recall, No On Prop 54

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I had an interesting time at the Rally at Sproul Plaza in Berkeley on September 16, 2003.
I won’t say it was “fun” or anything, because it wasn’t, really. More on this below. My first problem was that I had left late from school and I missed the first part of the speech. The second problem was that I had been up till 2:00 am the night before posting Cheney on Meet The Press clips. So I only got the last third of the speech (see below).
I was quite excited when I got to interview Jesse Jackson for a minute, but otherwise, it was kind of a mean crowd. Or, should I say “immature” crowd, at best. They had no respect for my camera, for instance. And one jerk even thought it was funny to push it over on purpose, once he realized I was trying to protect it.
I guess I’ve been spoiled for the most part at these kinds of events in the past, where everyone has been really nice and ducked when they walked in front of the camera and helped me to reach better views and the like. This crowd just wanted to get autographs after Jesse’s speech and they were pushing and shoving really badly.
I decided to go stand on the stairs of Sproul Hall and try to get a better shot from up above. (I had given up on actually talking to Jesse). I guess the crowd’s attitude toward me could have been partly my own fault from trying to maneuver in the crowd with a tripod, so I ditched the tripod and was trying to figure out how to get close again when…the usual miracle happened (Yes, I do have incredible luck at these events!) and Jesse started walked over towards me on the stairs.
His security people were holding back the crowd a bit, so I waited until he was close enough for him to hear me and took a chance on asking him a question. He didn’t hear me the first time, so I asked him again. I saw a light go off when he heard the question, and he stopped signing for a minute and looked up and said “Huh?”
“Do you think the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision about the recall will hold?” I asked again.
Then he paused and thought for a minute, and gave his answer.

Here’s an edited version of the speech. (Small – 5 MB)

Here’s a longer, edited version of the speech. (Small – 18 MB)

Here’s a near complete version of the speech. (Small – 31 MB)



ACLU Challenges RIAA Subpoenas

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A.C.L.U. Challenges Music Industry in Court
By John Schwartz for the NY Times.
(Thanks, Jason.)

The civil liberties group argues that the constitutional rights of its client, referred to as Jane Doe, would be violated if her college, which is also her Internet service provider, were forced to reveal her name. The industry subpoena “seeks to strip Jane Doe of her fundamental right to anonymity,” according to the group’s court filings.
The industry subpoena is one of many recently filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that gives copyright holders broad powers to get the names of suspected infringers from Internet service providers.
But the civil liberties suit claims that the subpoenas, which can be issued with little judicial oversight or involvement, go beyond even what the law allows. The group also claims that the law itself is unconstitutional, because it does not provide for the judicial review of requests or notification of the target of the investigation.
“We’re not saying that they can’t ever get her identity,” said Christopher A. Hansen, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re only saying if the industry wants her identity, then they have to do it in a fair way.”…
Also today, a group that opposes the suits, Downhill Battle, is expected to announce the creation of a legal defense fund for those caught up in the file-trading suits. “If we make noise for all those who’ve been sued and give the people who want to fight in court the resources to do so, we can make these lawsuits fail,” the group said on its Web site, downhillbattle.org.

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Some Interesting Slashdot Threads On The Diebold Voting Machine Scandal

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Diebold Audit Released, BlackBoxVoting.Org Shut Down

“The State of Maryland requested an audit of the Diebold electronic voting system by SAIC, after a report released by Johns Hopkins University and Rice Researchers (disclaimer: I’m one of Dr Rubin’s students) noted several security issues . A condensed, from 200 to 40 pages, and censored version of the report has been released online (PDF link). The report notes that ‘SAIC has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have significant impact upon the AccuVote-TS voting system operation.'” However, Diebold says Maryland are moving forward with installation with “new security features” included, and elsewhere, Badgerman points out “Diebold has shut down blackboxvoting.org , apparently with copyright claims made to their ISP. But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site…”

From Tristero: On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold’s FTP site they uncovered “an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California”. Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm – during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: “So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines.
(Thanks, Tristero.)

Howard Makes Nationwide “House Call” Tonight

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This just in from the Dean Campaign:

Tonight — Monday night — more than 14,000 supporters of Howard Dean in
all 50 states will gather for house parties. Together they will set a
world record for the largest conference call in history when Governor
Dean makes his “National House Call” at 8 pm ET.
But tonight’s House Call is about more than setting a record — it’s
about sending Howard Dean into the final quarter of the year with the
financial strength he needs to win the nomination and defeat George W.
Bush in 2004.
During the House Call, from 8 to 9 pm Eastern, I ask you to support the
efforts of more than 14,000 other Dean supporters by contributing to
Dean for America. Join tens of thousands of Americans who are making this
the September to Remember by contributing what you can tonight:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/contributetoday
You can also ‘virtually’ attend the house party — and listen to
Governor’s Dean’s conference call — by checking the campaign weblog
this evening at 9 pm Eastern:

http://www.blogforamerica.com
Your contribution tonight will make a tremendous difference in our
efforts to raise the final $2 million of our goal before midnight
tomorrow.

Message From MoveOn: Stop The Recall!

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This was just sent to me from MoveOn:

Dear fellow Californian,
California is at a crossroads. Our finances, schools and society are all in crisis. And at this, our state’s most vulnerable moment, a handful of self-interested political players are attempting an unprecedented power grab.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and his backers are seizing the recall as a once-in-a-lifetime chance for him to buy the governorship. The abbreviated race has allowed him to duck tough questions and avoid unscripted debate. He has promised voters a balanced budget without new taxes or spending cuts — an impossibility except perhaps in a Hollywood movie. He has no plan for helping California and absolutely no experience that might help him come up with one.
The recall and Schwarzenegger’s self-funded, media-driven campaign are sucker punches to our democratic system and values. We have seven full days left to fight back and a team of 250,000 people for this final push.
If you have not joined the team by signing our “No Recall” pledge, then please join us now by clicking here:
http://moveon.org/pac/recall/
If you’ve already signed, then forward this message to all your like-minded friends, coworkers and family and ask them to join us for this final one-week blitz to defeat the recall, stop Schwarzenegger and defend democracy. Let’s grow our team to 300,000 people.
Don’t be discouraged by the weekend’s far-out poll: this race is so unusual that polls are even more meaningless than they usually are. We believe this is still an incredibly close race. And it’s a fact that there are enough of us working on this to make the difference ourselves. But we’ve got to work hard: pick up the phone and call that friend you know might forget to vote, put up a sign in your window, sign up for phone banking — do whatever it takes.
Over the next seven days we’ll be highlighting several different things you can do to make a real, tangible difference in the recall election. With 300,000 people working together, we’ll each just need to influence one other person to vote against the recall who might not have without us. If we can do that, then we’ll defeat the recall by a wide margin and democracy will have a decisive victory on October 7.
Sincerely,
— Carrie, James, Joan, Peter and Wes
(The Californians of) MoveOn.org PAC
September 29th, 2003
PS: For more on how Schwarzenegger leads the pack in fundraising thanks to his own personal contributions, check out this article.