Cosmos Games 2003

Some of you might remember the first 'Cosmos Games'... this one is gonna be a little different...

In contrast to the 'you vs. me'-objective of the first Cosmos Games, this one is about compromises. The goal is multiple: I'd like to find out if we Antionliners are really able to set apart our 'you vs. me'-feelings. I'd like to find out if different nationalities/cultures are able to reach a compromise all parties agree with.

To make a long story short: we all seem to disagree on what's going on in Iraq.
Let's find out if we can at least agree on something...

So, basically, the goal of this challenge is to get to one compromise, to see if we can take the same stand on something... an 'unofficial' AntiOnline stand if you want...

What inspired me for this is the Belgian situation: we have liberalists, socialists and environmentalists in our government (catholics and nationalist are in the opposition... and they all formed frontier against racists). Although being in totally different 'camps', they always seem to come to one conclusion supported by all...

Anyways, here's the subject:

- Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa: blame the messenger? or blame the message?
- mp3: idem
- The music-industry: making too much money already? Or going broke because of P2P?
- The artists themselves: over-paid? Victims of p2p?
- Governments and music industry: allowed to 'spy' on p2p-users?
- P2P-networks: should they be forbidden?
- Your ISP handing over your IP to the authorities?
- A tax on blank CD's to cover it all?
- ...

Let the games begin... in about 6 weeks (the average in Belgian politics) we should come to a compromise.

Everybody is free to join.

Quote:

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The students named in the complaints are Aaron Sherman and Jesse Jordan of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Daniel Peng of Princeton and Joe Nievelt of Michigan Technological University. It seeks to recover $150,000 for each copyrighted work that was downloaded.

The students allegedly set up sites using the programs Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect, that, like the now-defunct Napster, indexed and executed searches for copyrighted songs on the closed networks. The RIAA charges that one network operator distributed 27,000 music files, while the other three students ran networks offering 500,000 music files, 650,000 files and over 1 million files.

---

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58351,00.html

As everyone should know by now, there is a big lawsuit going on right now,
with RIAA trying to "make an example" of some students to scare the rest
into submission. This is a war they can never win. They are fighting against
a very motivated group of consumers who could bring the entire recording
industry to its knees in a matter of weeks (by boycotting all pop music).

I am an ardent advocate of private property, and abhor socialism in all its forms,
but the concept of "intellectual property" sounds bogus to me.
Once words have been spoken, they are no longer under the control
of the speaker. Once a song has been sung, it is out there to be heard.
You can not recall it.

Performers want people to listen to their songs. They can't have it both ways,
desperately trying to get published, and then trying to ration out the music
by charging for each copy. Copying technology can not be put back into the
bottle. Let them charge what the traffic will bear for their live performances,
but consider recordings to be free giveaways, because the fans can get
the songs for free, no matter how many people you sue or punish.
:cool:

Quote:

---

Lawsuits against four college students accused of trading copyrighted songs are the biggest punch yet by the recording industry against its core audience, and has experts worried that the next step will be suing the colleges themselves.

The Recording Industry Association of America filed the suits Thursday in three federal courts, naming one student each at Michigan Technological University and Princeton University and two others from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who ran Napster-like file-sharing services on their campus computer networks.

The damages sought by the suits are astronomical: $150,000 per song, the maximum allowed by law. Multiply that by the 652,000 or so songs the RIAA alleges student Joseph Nievelt offered to other Michigan Tech students on his service, and the scope of the suit is clear.

That total? About $97.8 trillion -- yes, trillion with a T -- or enough money to buy every CD sold in America last year over again for the next 120,000 years, according to RIAA statistics. And that's just Nievelt's case.

---

quoted from [ here ]

I almost passed out when I read that. How can they even begin to justify wanting 97.8 Trillion from one single person? Its so obviously a scare tactic, and a horrilbe one at that. There is just no way the RIAA can even expect to see 1/100th of that money, considering thats more than even Bill Gates could muster. They (RIAA) want to end illegal filesharing so badly, but yet they make themselves look like villans in the process. Its like trying to teach a dog not to pee in the house by smacking it when it does, but never rewarding it for doing good. They give no reason for people to quit trading, just to be more covert about it. I don't think the RIAA is going to make any progress against the FileSharing situation untill they start looking at proactive solutions rather than resorting to reactive law suits

The lawsuit seems overkill but i think the point is to scare the kids into setteling..as for music sharing well...

On one hand its been happening for ever (I doubt my friends and I ever bought more then 2 or three tapes..we just copied them and passed them around pre CD days) but that doesn’t make it right. I think every one who copies music without the artists’ permission (or the copywriter holder if not the artist) should just accept the fact that they are stealing. I don't have a problem with that, and I doubt the music industry dose. The problem is when companies like Napster or whoever makes Kazza try to profit form the theft, once there is money changing hands (in this case from adds and subscriptions) it needs to stop.

What gets me is that Napster didnt make any money from the trading. At least not initially. In the beginning it was simply a spare time effort and not anything major. Only when Metallica and the RIAA got involved did Fanning and company start making money, because they were getting free publicity via the RIAA. As far as stealing goes, I think its stealing to give an artist anything less than 75% of the sales of the albums and concerts. I can understand a small band or record label being upset over sharing, but not a major label that makes millions and millions from merchandise, concerts, endorsements and such. How can a major act like Metallica or Dr Dre say that the honestly need the extra three million they claim to have had stolen from them by filesharing when they already are worth more than most of us will ever be in our lives?

Just MHO.

Kazaa is loaded with spyware (i am not sure bout morpheus but e-donkey, imesh are too) they make money from you using the program. Let them pay some to the artist to keep them happy.
I don't use p2p alot. When I use it I search for rare things like bootlegs or concert footage.
I also have some vids (mainly skateboarding) which are not for sale where I live.
I downloaded music I would have never bought so that is no loss to the music industry.
I have also downloaded music that inspired me to go and buy the album. I would not have bought the album if I had not heard of the group.

When I was younger we had a double-cassete deck. One would buy the album and everyone would have a copy. I think this is somewhat the same thing.
I do think however that if you download zero days all the time you are doing the wrong thing.
ISP's handing IP to authorities ? I think the autorities should have reasonable evidence that you are a big loss to the industry before the should obtain the IP from your ISP.

Also when I used to buy LP's they were like half the price of a CD nowadays. I am not willing to pay 25 euros for 8 songs of which 5 suck. CHANGE THE PRICES INDUSTRY.
Also artists should tour and make money from that. If I visit a concert I buy the overpriced t-shirt or whatever.

One more thing. I recently got the J-to the LO album (it was a gift BTW). This is one of those albums with 'will not play on cd or mac' printed upfront.
I do not own a stand alone CD player, I play everthing in my puter so I returned the album.

My conclusions:
Kazaa makes money of you. Let them pay some to the industry.
The industry should lower their (monopolist) prices.
Artists should tour, proof they are worth the money.
Spying: they allready do wheter legal or not.
p2p forbidden ? I don't think it is possible. Things would go underground which would make it harder to spy on.
ISP handing IP and other personal information to authorities ? Only if the authorities can make assumeable that illegal usage has been performed.
Little tax on blank cd's could be an answer. Just don't overdo it.

well my two cents

Hello,


since there are several topics i'll start with the first one and the P2P network as they are closely related.
Whomever i going to try to prevent me to use P2P will have to come and physically desinstall it from my pc's since i'll never give it up. I am not a kazza, imesh ... fan because i don't care much about music/movie/ warez but they are convienient. THat i admit.

Forbiding p2p is like forbiding me to have a private talk with the guy down the street without having the in-between neighboor listenning. Of course it should be private and no organization shoudl have the right to just come and drop ears in.
As the music, well sorry for the lesser known musician but at least your music is more available to the world. Your work is not confined to some remote/unknown warehouse. And for the superstars, damn they already made enough cash so it's time to chill i mean they don't need to renew their jag every 2 years...
In any cases they should decide what they are in music for: cash or fame. the cash part is out and as far as the fame well it doesn't mean that you need tons of cash for it. and on top of that artists are usually more creative when starving. (that is a fact for it is darwinism expressed to its purest form)

For the other topics that'll have to wait.

nabylbt

While I was in college I worked at the schools network center, this was at the height of napster and the traffic was so bad that we started to drop off line a lot and our ISP was threatening to pull all of t1's.... So I think a private organization (school, business ISP)is well within there rights to block p2p ports. Most file shares are very disruptive to the network.

I hear all this conversation about P2P and about how every one is against stealing, but what about the source for all of this content? True some of it starts on these networks, but most of the stuff comes off of another place, IRC. The only way to truely stop piracy is from the source.... The only network so far to combat piracy is Dalnet, no other networks are even concerned about it as far as I can tell.

Personally I don't have an issue with people stealing music. . Its been happening for ever and doesn’t actually drop the number for records sold. I have a problem with Napster and Kazza and Bearshare ect. companies that try to profit off someone else’s product. As soon as you try to profit from the stolen music I have a problem

The main reason that P2P had to come about is not just the idea of free music but also largly the concept of making personalised cd's easily. You may notice that a lot of CD's have maybe one or two good song's so most of what your paying for is crap. To destroy the illegal activity is easy enough, remove the need for it. If less people need to use it then those highly moraled people will stop useing it for illegal purposes and the decrease in users will cause it to become less efficant in finding and downloading music so the less moraled people lwill give t up. It would die.

But as i said, we need to replace it. If it were the music industries themselves running the P2P, getting money off the ads, and watching the downloads then there would be less complaining because they would get their money back and also get free market reasearch into things that were before underground. They won't need to worrie about illegal shareing because they would be filling the need for it. They could perhaps insist that some (this would have to be a small number) of tracks don't get shared to insure that artists could still sell cd's with these "Forbiden" songs on them. And to finish it of, music stores could sell custom CD's, with only what you want on them.

They may loss a little money in these methods but in the end would gain and would no longer have to worry about illegal activities. I would like that system myself. It's Win Win!
Who agrees with me?