Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
19, 2003
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
19, 2003
RIAA Watch
RIAA
is Full of Bunk, So is New York Times
By BILL GLAHN
On September 12, 2003, the New York Times defended
the Recording Industry Association of America's recent lawsuits
against P2P music file-sharers [Suing Music Dowloaders]. The
editorial was based on a number of flawed concepts, which just
goes to show that if the RIAA states something loudly enough
and often enough, even the New York Times will accept it as fact.
I thought the New York Times was trying to do a little more fact
checking these days before printing stories out of school.
Although many important ideological arguments
have been made regarding the morality or immorality of file-sharing,
I will limit my points here strictly to the confines of the capitalistic
system that we exist in and established legal principals. The
New York Times calls suing file-sharers the RIAA's best legal
strategy. The problem is this strategy doesn't even hold up in
those arenas.
The first and most alarming position
that has been propagated by the RIAA and apparently accepted
by the New York Times is the one that "stealing is stealing,
online or in a store." In fact, and in law, this is clearly
not as black & white as the music  industry would like us to believe.
The notion of copyright infringement
as theft was clearly addressed in the 1985 Supreme Court decision
of Dowling v. United States. While this case involved hard goods
(phonograph records), Justice Harry Blackmun was most certainly
speaking of abstract property (copyrights) when he wrote these
words in his majority decision overturning Dowling's conviction
of interstate transport of stolen property: "(copyright
infringement) does not easily equate with theft, conversion,
or fraud... The infringer invades a statutorily defined province
guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume
physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its
owner of its use."
This decision was based on established
law with a long appellate history. The Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, under which the RIAA gets its policing powers, is not and
is largely untested in the courts. Paul Dowling was convicted
of copyright infringement (a misdemeanor at the time) but was
vindicated on the more serious crime of theft.
This brings us to the point of whether
or not file-sharers meet the criteria of "fair use"
or are indeed guilty of copyright infringement. This is less
clear. Let's assume that they don't meet the confines of the
fair use doctrine. Is it the RIAA's lawful right to sue them
or does that right belong to someone else? File-sharers have
not entered into a contract with artists and do not collect fees
for the songs that are up-loaded from their computers. Therefore,
they are not stealing anything. Infringing perhaps. But not stealing.
But does the RIAA have the right to speak for the artist if such
an offense has occurred? As Fred Wilhelms pointed out in the
September 6 RIAA Watch column, there are some serious questions
about the artists' contracts with their labels and whether they
include digital rights. And also about how the payments are to
be made to the artists. The major labels are collecting fees
from for-pay download sites such as iTunes and also through lawsuit
settlements against file-sharers. RIAA Watch has already pointed
out how the industry may be pocketing money that isn't theirs.
Now Cory Sherman, president of the RIAA, has stated that none
of the lawsuit money will be passed on to the artists either.
These comments beg the question, "Who
is really doing the stealing here?" Artist's incomes are
tangible. Copyrights are not. I'd call pocketing income that
has already been collected as stealing. I wonder if current Justices
O'Conner, Rehnquist, and Stevens, all who supported the 1985
Dowling decision, would agree.
RIAA Watch Notes: The manner in which
the RIAA has handled their subpoenas and the public reaction
has prompted Sen. Sam Brownback (R, Kans) to get off his duff
and introduce the Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights
Management Awareness Act of 2003, a privacy bill that would change
the  way
in which the RIAA conducts their terrorism. They would no longer
be able to subpoena ISPs for the personal information by simply
filling out a form and getting a court clerk's signature.
Brownback states, "This will provide
immediate privacy protections to Internet subscribers by forcing
their accusers to appear publicly in a court of law, where those
with illicit intentions will not tread, and provides the accused
with due process required to properly defend themselves."
Apparently, Brownback isn't overly familiar with the RIAA. They
have been taking their illicit intentions to court for years.
But if this legislation is passed, it ought to slow them down
a bit.
The RIAA, naturally, isn't happy with
Brownback's proposed legislation. Included in their response
was this statement, "The rules of the road of the past five
years will be thrown out the window, and that's not something
anyone should wish for." Of course, the RIAA had no objection
when the rules of the road for the previous 222 years were thrown
out in 1998.
It's already been noted elsewhere that
at their current pace, it will take the RIAA another 2000+ years
to sue 60 million file-sharers. If there is a venue fight for
the lawsuits (and I expect there will be) the RIAA may wind up
having to enter courtrooms in every local jurisdiction in these
here United States. The Big 5 may be bankrupt before they're
finished. Wouldn't that be nice. So much for their "best
legal strategy."
Bill Glahn
writes the RIAA Watch column for CounterPunch. His Husgow Record
Guide appears at www.mondogordo.com
Feature articles appear in BigO
magazine.
Alt.Culture.Guide--The Journal of (Un)Popular
Culture (Rev. Keith A. Gordon with Bill Glahn, Anthem Pop/Kult
Publishing) may be
purchased online from Sound Products.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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