What the RIAA really said.

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2008-01-01 at 18:16 -0700, Chris Gehlker wrote:
> On Jan 1, 2008, at 5:21 PM, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > and one more thing that is quoted in the referenced motion for Summary
> > Judgment (by the plaintiffs) which was actually taken from the jury
> > instructions of Capitol Records v. Thomas...
> >
> > "The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for  
> > electronic
> > distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the
> > copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of
> > distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been  
> > shown."
> >
> > Which basically means that if you have both copies of copyrighted  
> > music
> > files on a hard disk that has smb/nfs/ssh/sftp/ftp/http/afpovertcp  
> > file
> > sharing protocols, you are deemed in violation of the copyright  
> > owners,
> > which clearly comes back to the original supposition...that it's
> > probably illegal to turn on your computer.
> 
> Craig, I just don't understand this need for so many in the technical  
> community to make these hysterical sounding straw-man arguments. I  
> don't agree at all that the RIAA is equating Kazaa with "smb/nfs/ssh/ 
> sftp/ftp/http/afpovertcp" since both common usage and technically  
> correct language don't identify any of the latter as forms of a "peer- 
> to-peer network". And if your chain of reasoning actually leads you to  
> literally believe that the RIAA is so foolish as to assert that "it's  
> probably illegal to turn on your computer", then you really need to  
> examine you chain of reasoning.
> 
> If the RIAA were really silly people who would make such clearly  
> specious arguments then they would  be no threat at all. Let  me  
> assure you that, despite a few egregious missteps, they are serious  
> people who understand the difference between someone sharing a file  
> between her personal computers behind a NAT router and sharing files  
> with the whole world over Kazaa.
----
It's not straw-man arguments at all...A business exists behind a NAT
router and the RIAA would never differentiate between whether the files
were shared within behind the NAT router or through the NAT router.

A university would likely use NAT routing and I can't see the RIAA
differentiating between the protocols that are shared beyond the router
or behind the router.

You must remember that the various protocols I mentioned are indeed
tcp/ip protocols and boundaries are artificially defined as to whether
they are allowed to pass through a router or not but the process is the
same regardless AND they meet every definition of a peer-to-peer network
ever considered.

Personally, I can't imagine anyone technically knowledgeable making the
argument that you made above, at least not without some ulterior motive.

Craig