RSSRecord labels take aim at a clever playlist 'sharing' operation
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published April 28, 2008, 8:00 PM
In what could be a precedent-setting case, recording companies are alleging that the Project Playlist Web site is guilty of infringement by enabling its own members to give other users access to unlicensed music files hosted by other sites.
Ostensibly, Project Playlist purports to be a site where users can share lists of their favorite music. But lists alone do not a business model make, as indicated by the fact that songs chosen by members can be made to play in sequence, in Windows Media, RealPlayer, or Flash.
That might not be a problem for a site like Pandora or Last.fm that pays royalties; but in the case of Project Playlist, it's the stuff that lawsuits are made of. In a lawsuit filed this morning in US District Court in New York, the US recording industry at large, represented by the RIAA, alleges that the site maintains a massive index of songs chosen by members to appear on their playlists -- songs hosted not by Playlist but by third parties, but unlicensed nonetheless.
"The Project Playlist Web site holds itself out as 'an information location tool' that enables its users easily to 'find, play and share' with others the 'world of music' available on the Internet, 'wherever and whenever [they] choose,"' reads this morning's suit. "In fact, as Defendant well knows, Project Playlist's exploitation of this 'world of music' amounts to nothing more than an enormous infringement of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings for Defendant's commercial gain. Project Playlist performs and reproduces Plaintiffs' valuable works (and induces and enables others to do so) without any authorization whatsoever and without paying any compensation whatsoever to Plaintiffs. And, by providing to the public the fruits of Plaintiffs' investment of money, labor, experience and expertise, Defendant's illegal enterprise inflicts tremendous damage on Plaintiffs' business."
As the Web site explains to users searching for tracks, "Our Internet search engine allows you to locate media files that are freely available on the World-Wide Web. The listings in our search engine are automatically gathered from music blogs, trade-friendly concert archives, artist Web sites, record label Web sites, and other public sources. In addition to automatic gathering, we accept submissions to our search engine by our users."
In other words, it's not actually providing the music or even broadcasting it, but simply compiling links to sources that are already making the music available.
But that's not necessarily how the site's users see it. In a forum post by one member is a rather plain-stated request: "Hey you! You know, it'd be totally radd if someone gave me some songs to download. I'd be very gracious." One response was an invitation to view a "playlist," as the member put it, of some 600 songs -- suggesting that the playlist leads directly to a download.
Though some sites consider serving audio or multimedia files "streaming," the true test of downloading is whether the listener receives the entire file whole on his system. In BetaNews tests, we were able to take the rather academic step of retrieving an MP3 file of a song triggered from a Project Playlist member's list, listened to using Windows Media Player 11, from Windows' temporary download directory. It was indeed a download.
Further, we did not have to join the service in order to just listen to the files; membership appears to only be required for creating playlists and making them available to others.
It may not, therefore, have been to the RIAA's benefit to have described the song transfer as "streaming," especially since it differentiates which law the judge must consider was broken, and whose rights may have been infringed upon. A stream, legally speaking, is a digital performance which carries certain performance royalties in accordance with copyright law; a download, on the other hand, is a full transfer of intellectual property, which carries penalties if the transfer is found to constitute theft.
As a defense against the possible argument of Project Playlist's service being "just streaming," the recording companies allege that in order for the site to do what it does, it has to copy those songs from the third parties mentioned in its index, to its own servers, in order to route them to its users.
"Project Playlist also copies to its own servers thousands (if not millions) of the music files identified on its search index, so that it can perform those works to its users more easily," the suit reads. "This process of creating server copies ensures that Project Playlist's users will be able to hear requested recordings instantaneously upon demand, regardless of any service limitations that may exist on the third-party site that originally hosted the files. By making and maintaining copies of sound recordings on its own servers (which itself involves illegal reproductions), Project Playlist thus increases its technical ability to engage in illegal performances of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings."
An RIAA spokesperson declined further comment on the matter to BetaNews late this afternoon, other than to say that the allegations in the lawsuit essentially speak for themselves.
Frito from Idiocracy...Shut Up!
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|"I'll base your ass, shut up!"
That movie is so awesome but it scares the hell out of me because that's the direction we're all headed in.
Anyhow back on topic, apparently they should just move to an offshore oil rig and be happy there.
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|The basic difference between streaming and downloading is that that streaming content isn't written to disk while downloaded content is, and streaming content is played directly while downloaded content usually is downloaded and then you can use an appropriate application to play it.
However, with a basic knowledge of the HTTP protocol and packet monitoring tools, it is easy to monitor your network connection to intercept streaming content between your media player/browser and the remote server and save the streaming content to disk. There are also plenty of programs which automate this process by mimicking a streaming media player and saving the stream to disk directly. Of course this assumes there's no special DRM in play, which would make the task harder but not impossible.
My rule of thumb is, if the user is able to listen to the music once, then it is possible to create a permanent copy locally that they can listen to any way they want and as many times. DRM complicates this but there is always a way around it, even the "analog hole", as a last resort.
Only once have I come across music I was not able to rip from its source, and that wasn't even commercial music or from any source that would WANT to protect the music. It just used some weird encoding, was all. It wasn't even from a web source, it was from a desktop flash game I liked the theme to.
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|And why the hell don't the mods of this site have the ability to ban users and delete posts filled with ad links?
****ing useless this site is.
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|Seems you spoke too soon. I don't see this post you're complaining about.
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|It's the post by danse11 several down... but scored at -1, so you have to enable the ability to see posts with negative ratings to see it, as well as being logged in. This means that the mods have said this post is garbage, but unlike some sites, they don't make it so you can't see it if you REALLY want to. But it does take some effort initially to enable seeing this.
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|Torrents are now the main way to download just about anything. Why anyone would risk getting sued over a website like this is beyond me.
The RIAA cracks me up just like the advertising industry for TV. They (TV advertisers) said "Skipping commercials with your DVR is illegal" and "You can get up and leave the room to go to the bathroom during commercials but you should keep this activity to a minimum".
The RIAA now says, "Ripping your CD's to a computer is illegal" and "Lending a CD to a freind is illegal and violators should be prosecuted".
I can't tell you the last time I watched a commercial as I only watch recorded programs. I also can't tell you the last time I bought a CD for myself. The greed and audacity of these people are thier downfall.
The music industry is 10 billion off from ten years ago and the advertising industry is shoving ads into every streaming video, which I avoid completely.
Warner music now wants to charge every American with internet service a "music tax" of $5 per month regardless of whether you use the internet to download music or not.
I can't believe BetaNews hasn't reported this story yet.
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|You misunderstand how Project Playlist has been operating. They don't just provide the links like many other playlist sites (e.g. Seeqpod), which are still in a legal grey area. They COPY the entire file to their own servers and "stream" it from there. Actually they do progressive download, not true streaming.
This is highly illegal and was just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
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|I haven't been to the Project Playlist site and based my comments on the news article, particularly the section about "the RIAA, alleges that the site maintains a massive index of songs chosen by members to appear on their playlists -- songs hosted not by Playlist but by third parties, but unlicensed nonetheless."
So, I thought that the Project Playlist was only posting links to external content and not hosting any files locally.
My apologies if I was in error . . . and if they are indeed hosting copyrighted music locally then they should be responsible for their content.
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|This is equivalent to suing the phone company because they publish a listing (the phone directory) of pawn shops (which may or may not have illegally obtained merchandise) and then provide a means (the telephone) of conducting a transaction that might transfer the (potentially) stolen merchandise from one individual to another. It’s not the phone company’s duty to decide which pawn shops are reputable and only list them in their directory . . . and it’s not a web site’s duty to decide if a user’s links point to copyrighted songs.
Links are text and songs are audio – the text in the links are not copyrighted, and therefore the RIAA can’t stop a website from posting the names of songs (it’s the users that actually has the copyrighted songs, the web site just has text describing the users’ songs). If the RIAA wants to try and copyright song titles and start suing people for printing them, let them try.
Maybe they should sue Google and Yahoo for allowing search terms like "free music" or even just "mp3", since those can give listing of links to downloadable copyrighted songs.
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|*Yawn*
Is music still copyrighted these days?
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|Are people still making obviously illegal attempts to provide copyrighted music for free?
The answer to both questions is the same.
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|When a law is ignored daily by multi millions all over the world, is it enforcible or relevant?
The answer to this question is different, rendering the answer to the first moot.
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|The media industry is a multi-Billion $ (or insert a valuable currency) market. Surprise, surprise: This is so because they actually sell stuff/services - which is what the Earth's modern society is based upon - in case you were wondering...
Media 'stuff' is at it's essence 'information' or 'data' (besides the less defined artistic value) that can easily be duplicated. If it was possible to duplicate a Mercedes Benz as easily then Daimler would face the same issues. Nevertheless both products follow the same rules that govern economy. Just because it is easy to do does not mean it is 'right' to do as defined by the law.
If you disagree with this fundamental principle then you are an enemy of the state, which is highly protective of its taxes (remember Al Capone was done in for tax evasion, not for murder, extortion and prostitution).
Btw - this is an entirely different conversation than DRM and locking media into specific devices or abusing consumer rights...
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|The move by the RIAA (and most likely followed by the MPAA) to institute a "music tax" on all Internet subscribers is a very steep slope. If this goes through, and a new "music/artistic" tax is implemented, then that brings the IRS to the beckon call of the media companies.
As we all know, that's how Al Capone was ultimately convicted. Not for killing hundreds of people, not for drug running, prostitution, or gambling, but for tax evasion. SO, in the RIAA's eyes we are ALL potential Al Capone's to them. As such, they would LOVE to have a music tax in place. Then, who foots the bill for bringing to trial and convicting people found guilty of "illegally" downloading music??? The American Taxpayer, that's who!
This would be a win-win for the RIAA. They would get the most powerful govt entity to to do their hard casework, and they don't have to pay one red cent for it!!
WooHoo!!! Gotta love corporate lobbying at it's finest!!!! Huh???
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|I am not sure what you are arguing. This is about an enterprise hosting and distributing copyrighted content (and along the way making money from site traffic) without sharing profits with the rightful owner.
It is IMHO convoluted arguments like yours, which don't manage to distinguish between consumer rights (play purchased media on any of your devices) vs. making intellectual property freely available (without having a license or agreement of the original producer) that give ammunition to RIAA campaigns.
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|One clarification -- according to DMCA, a link directory may cache copies of content to allow for a smooth user experience, as long as they follow best practices for respecting hit counters on the originating site, and they remove the content from cache if the originating site takes it down or the content expires.
Not sure if PP was respecting these best practices (probably not) but it's not a given that PP's caching/streaming files from their servers isn't protected under DMCA safe harbor.
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