EXCERPT:
RIAA Chief's Republican Pedigree
Katie Dean
07.29.03
On Sept. 1, Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), will replace Hilary Rosen as chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
Bainwol takes the helm as the music industry is embroiled in a battle with music lovers over illegal downloads on the Internet. Over the past few weeks, the trade group has sent out hundreds of subpoenas to Internet service providers and
"Mitch's strong background and experience will be a real asset to the RIAA. We welcome him to the RIAA and look forward to working with him on the important issues facing our industry at this crucial time," Cary Sherman, RIAA president, said in a statement.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5056299.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_Industry_Association_of_America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trust that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors, which the RIAA say "create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States".[1]
http://www.essortment.com/all/whatistrust_rfyg.htm
There are many differences with the wording of Trusts and many different types of Trusts. However, there are two basic distinctions the Living Trust and the Testamentary Trust. A Living Trust is created and instated while you are alive. A Testamentary Trust is carried out after your death from instructions given while you were alive. There is also the distinction of revocable and irrevocable Trusts. A revocable Trust can be changed, added to, taken from or stopped at anytime by the person instating it. If the Trust does not specifically state that the Trust can be revoked or amended,then it is an irrevocable Trust and can not be altered, ever.
Trusts can be created for many reasons, but they usually are best for people who have assets over $500,000.00 dollars. Here are some reasons to create a Trust. To run and support a business. Take care of minors. Pay for medical bills. Create a scholarship fund. Hold real estate, cash, securities or property. Avoid probate. Save on Federal taxes. To hold all your assets together for future instructions.
Whomever is appointed as trustee must follow the rules of the Trust and can not go against your instructions. As said earlier, you can appoint yourself as trustee or another friend or family member. Or, you can appoint a corporate trustee. A corporate trustee is usually a lawyer, accountant, bank or trust company that is chartered to be a trustee. They will charge you fees to take care of your Trust. They will also be able to invest your assets in a more educated manner than unqualified trustees.
When a Tust is done right, it will protect your assets in many ways. It can protect your assets from probate after your death. Save on estate taxes. Keep all assets out of creditor’s clutches. Keep your property away from a divorcee.
To find a lawyer who can put together a Trust for you, call your local Bar Association for a referral. Ask for an attorney who is experienced in tax and estate planning. Ask for a free conference to interview them. Many attorneys are willing to give you fifteen minutes or a half an hour free consultation. If you feel they are experienced and you want to do business with them have them prepare a plan for your Trust. You should always get a second opinion on this plan that is developed by paying another attorney, your banks trust department or your accountant to review it. After all, you want to make sure that it is done properly, legally and to your best benefit because you will be transferring your property to it. It is well worth the money to make sure you are not getting ripped off.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Anonymous-Attacks-the-United-States-Copyright-Office-164623.shtml
Anonymous Attacks the United States Copyright Office
November 3rd, 2010, 17:21 GMT| By Lucian Constantin
After hitting riaa.org during the weekend, Anonymous members have turned their attention towards the United States Copyright Office and are currently coordinating a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against its website.
Anonymous is group of hacktivists claiming to fight for freedom of expression and freedom of information online, which has no problem with using illegal means to get its message out.
It is not an organization with a real structure or leaders, but rather a spontaneous gathering of Internet users who share the same views.
The group has its origins on the infamous 4chan /b/ board, the birthplace of many Internet memes, where the majority of users post anonymously.
On September 28, Anonymous began a DDoS campaign dubbed Operation Payback against the entertainment industry and anti-piracy organizations.
It started after an Indian company called Aiplex Software openly admitted to attacking torrent sites that failed to respond to takedown notifications sent on behalf of movie studios.
So far, the group's targets have included music and film industry associations, law firms involved in copyright litigation, record labels and even artists, who were vocal against Internet piracy.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Dutch BREIN Foundation, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) and the Federation of the Italian Music Industry (FIMI), are amongst the group's victims.
Some outfits were even attacked multiple times. For example, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) was hit on two separate occasions.
Last time it was during this past weekend, after a court shut down the LimeWire file sharing application, as a result of a complaint filed by the association.
It's not immediately clear if there is any specific reason why copyright.gov has become the main target, except for the organization's mission to protect copyright.
Follow the editor on Twitter @lconstantin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiplex_Software
Aiplex Software is a company based in India contracted by the MPAA[1] to deliver copyright notices to websites that they deem violate copyright laws, and distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) said sites if they fail to remove the offending content.[2] Both Aiplex Software and the MPAA were subjected to a DDoS attack themselves as a result of said contract.[3]
Aiplex have openly admitted to engaging in illegal actions such as DDoS attacks against various anti-copyright websites [4].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimeWire
EXCERPT:Pirate Edition
In November of 2010, an anonymous individual by the handle of Meta Pirate released a modified version of LimeWire Pro, which was entitled LimeWire Pirate Edition[31][32]. It came with all undesirable components removed, such as the Ask! Toolbar and all other malware, adware, spyware, and backdoors removed, as well as all dependencies on LimeWire LLC servers.[33]
In response to allegations that a current or former member of Lime Wire LLC staff wrote and released the software, the company has stated that: "[LimeWire is] not behind these efforts. LimeWire does not authorize them. LimeWire is complying with the Court’s October 26, 2010 injunction."[31]
On 11 December, the source to LimeWire Pirate Edition was placed on the popular source code hosting Web site, SourceForge. Due to copyright concerns, the name of the application was changed to WireShare. The application supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/12/08/the-wikileaks-scandal-is-more-than-just-a-diplomatic-scuffle-its-a-war-for-the-future-of-the-internet/
The Wikileaks scandal is more than just a diplomatic scuffle; it’s a war for the future of the Internet
By Tom Mendelsohn
The Foreign Desk
Wednesday, 8 December 2010 at 12:29 pm
You’ll have been following the Wikileaks saga, of course, because it is novel and interesting. Maybe you like it because it looks like a live action retelling of Enemy Of The State, or because history seems to be in the making. It feels big, doesn’t it? It is, but it’s bigger than that, too: what we’re witnessing right now is the opening of hostilities in the first big infowar. The war for the Internet is very big indeed.
If you’re not a digital native, or if you’re some kind of hearty outdoors type, this may not seem important, but you’re dead wrong. We could be spectators for the start of the cyber Great War – and they’ve just knocked over Franz Ferdinand.
We’ve seen cyber skirmishes before: Russian hackers targeted and sank Georgia’s internet infrastructure during their brief conflict in 2008, while there’ve been hints of Chinese muscle flexing for some time – especially last month, when traffic through US government sites was rerouted through Chinese servers for 18 minutes in November.
The difference now is that this battle is extra-national; it isn’t one country against another, so much as an establishment of nations fighting a global insurgency – with the soul of the Internet as the spoils.
At the moment, the greatest invention in human history is broadly free. It allows for unprecedented communication, truly free assembly, and with these, an unparalleled forum for the exchange of ideas. It’s a seat for radicalism, and it has the potential to usher in dramatic reorganisation of established power structures.
Up until now, the apple cart hasn’t been upset enough to incline governments to make overt changes. Wikileaks has changed that, and provoked the US into action: now the powers that be can see what the Internet can do, they want it changed.
It’s Internet power that lets us watch this unfold minute-by-minute, as the web’s corporate support structure crumbles before our eyes. One by one, companies we take for granted bow to pressure and desert the insurgents. First Amazon’s hosting, then Pay Pal, EveryDNS and Mastercard and Visa – betrayals all, robbing Wikileaks of the oxygen of hosting and funding. This is the old order’s first salvo, an old-fashioned show of power, using old-world intimidation tactics to bring down tangible assets and demonstrate the fragility of the Internet we thought we could trust.
Make no mistake, if they win here, online life will change. Expect tighter government control, more regulations and sanitised information flow. It won’t end the web as a place of freedom – but it will raise the technological barriers to entry, necessitating secrecy software and technical savvy. People without the IT skills may never be able to stumble upon radical ideas or free speech.
This leads us to the insurgency. There are people fighting against the constriction of the net, a rebel alliance of hackers and activists, and it is they who are causing such a ruckus.
Now Wikileaks has put its head above the parapet, myriad spontaneous groups are emerging from the soupy corners of the Internet, refusing to take all this authoritarianism lying down. Many of these are simple anarchists, like the infamous group Anonymous – a collective in the loosest possible sense of troublemakers and technophiles. Angry, porn-obsessed adolescents they might be, but they’re angry, obsessed adolescents with significant technological firepower – and a grudge.
Operation Payback is in full swing, lashing out with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks – which flood a website with fake hits in order to overwhelm its servers. Armed with a simple hack tool called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), hackers have been attacking the websites of those companies who slighted Wikileaks and Assange with surprising success, knocking them offline for hours at a time.
The Swiss bank that deserted Assange was down for the whole day yesterday, while MasterCard – which, lest ye forget, still allows you to donate to subsidiaries of the KKK – has now lost control of its own homepage. If people can’t see http://www.mastercard.com/, it’ll certainly cost them money; infowar is waged on the bottom line.
DDoS attacks, while difficult to trace, are illegal, and the LOIC currently has a Trojan in it.
Other groups are rallying around too: Pirate Parties and private individuals are hosting Wikileaks mirrors now that wikileaks.org has been removed from the DNS – the Internet’s address book. Allies worldwide are assembling on Twitter and Facebook, disseminating information, organising protest and downloading the all-important insurance file. Consider the Justice for Assange group which sprang from nowhere yesterday, and organised an entire protest through Twitter in time for his court appearance.
The war has escalated to the extent that anti-Wikileaks hackers are retaliating with DDoS attacks of their own, counter-attacking anonops – Anonymous’ own organisation hub. Last week, an apparently rightwing hacker calling himself ‘th3 j3st3r’ DDoS’ed Wikileaks itself, with limited success.
Like I say, it’s going nuts out there, and this is truly just the beginning. Remember, if this sounds trivial or nerdy to you – and well it may – it doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening or that it isn’t significant. While the only casualties right now may be websites and services, there will be bigger trophies to come in a war which is only just getting warmed up – and which will certainly shape the future of the world.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/spam-downloads-surge-wikileaks-supporters/
EXCERPT:
WikiLeaks supporters download ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannon’ software en masse
By The Associated Press
Friday, December 10th, 2010 -- 12:59 pm
Security experts see surge in downloads of spam used to attack sites hostile to WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks supporters on Friday downloaded increasing amounts of the spam-shooting software used to attack companies seen as hostile — a development that could challenge even Internet giants such as PayPal and Amazon.com during the crucial Christmas shopping season.
U.S. data security company Imperva says downloads of the attack program used to bombard websites with bogus requests for data have jumped to over 40,000, with thousands of new downloads reported overnight.
"It's definitely increasing," Imperva Web researcher Tal Be'ery said in a telephone interview from Israel.
The freely available software is a critical part of the campaign by "hacktivists" seeking to take revenge on sites they believe have betrayed WikiLeaks, the group that has outraged American officials by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and military intelligence reports.
Users who download the software essentially volunteer their computers to be used as weapons that volley streams of electronic spam at targeted websites. The more computers, the greater the flow of data requests, and the better chances are of overwhelming the targeted website.
The cyberguerillas, who gather under the name Anonymous, have generally been successful in foiling their enemies. Attacks directed at the main pages of Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. succeeded in making them inaccessible, in MasterCard's case for several hours. Attacks on online payment company PayPal Inc. have periodically rendered part of its website inoperative. Moneybookers.com, another targeted site, was inaccessible Friday.
All four sites have severed their links to WikiLeaks, often citing suspected "terms of use" violations, hurting the group's ability to accept donations. The moves angered WikiLeaks supporters and alarmed free speech advocates, whom claim the companies are caving in to U.S. pressure to muzzle the controversial website.
WikiLeaks has been careful to distance itself from Anonymous, saying "we neither condemn nor applaud these attacks."
A press release circulated under the Anonymous name Friday said the group was acting "to raise awareness about WikiLeaks and the underhanded methods employed by the above companies to impair WikiLeaks' ability to function."
Imperva said Friday that it had monitored Anonymous supporters boasting about bringing in huge numbers of extra computers to back the attacks — something it said might challenge Amazon.com — another site that cut its ties to WikiLeaks — at one of the retailer's busiest times of the year.
But Be'ery stressed the boasts were unconfirmed, and the Anonymous statement said its members did not want to alienate the public by causing online havoc over the holidays.
"Simply put, attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones would be in bad taste," the Anonymous release said.
Dutch police said Friday they were investigating whether hackers were responsible for taking down the websites of police and prosecutors in the Netherlands after the arrest of a 16-year-old suspected cybercriminal and alleged WikiLeaks supporter.
In Australia, WikiLeaks supporters held rallies Friday in Brisbane and in Sydney, where more than 500 people gathered outside Town Hall, some waving signs that read, "Hands off WikiLeaks, We deserve the truth," and "Don't shoot the messenger."
One man sealed his mouth shut with tape on which the words "NO LEAKS" was written.
Among the most recent newsworthy WikiLeaks revelations was a claim that drug maker Pfizer Inc. hired investigators to dig up dirt on Nigeria's former attorney general in a bid to stop action over a 1996 drug study, and that the U.S. considered taking military action against an arms-laden Ukrainian ship after it was hijacked by Somali pirates two years ago.
The U.S. Department of Justice, meanwhile is considering whether to charge those behind the leaks under the espionage act or other laws, while U.S. diplomats, deeply embarrassed by WikiLeaks' disclosures, have struggled to contain the fallout.
"The deplorable WikiLeaks disclosures put innocent lives at risk, and damage U.S. national security interests," U.S. Ambassador to London Louis Susman wrote in an editorial Friday in The Guardian newspaper. "There is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations on which our common security depends."
The U.S. may soon be facing more than WikiLeaks as an opponent.
A former WikiLeaks spokesman plans to launch a rival website Monday called Openleaks that will help anonymous sources deliver sensitive material to public attention. Daniel Domscheit-Berg made the claim in a documentary by Swedish broadcaster SVT airing Sunday but obtained in advance by the AP.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remained in a U.K. jail ahead of a Dec. 14 hearing where he plans to fight Sweden's request to extradite him to face sex crimes allegations.
Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Michael Corder in The Hague and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm contributed to this report.
Mochila insert follows...
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/film-industry-hires-cyber-hitmen-to-take-down-internet-pirates-20100907-14ypv.html
Film industry hires cyber hitmen to take down internet pirates
Ben Grubb
September 8, 2010
The film industry is launching cyber attacks on websites hosting pirated movies. Illustration: Karl Hilzinger
The film industry is using pirate tactics to beat the pirates – by employing “cyber hitmen” to launch attacks that take out websites hosting illegal movies.
Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software, a firm in India, told this website that his company, which works for the film industry, was being hired - effectively as hitmen - to launch cyber attacks on sites hosting pirated movies that don't respond to copyright infringement notices sent to them by the film industry.
Kumar said 95 per cent of sites hosting illegal movies co-operated with notices, but a few - mostly sites hosting torrents and used primarily for illegal content - did not.
Managing director of Aiplex Software, Girish Kumar. Photo: Supplied
"Most movies are released on Friday morning at 10am in India," Kumar said in a telephone interview. "The movie is released in the morning [and] by afternoon it's on the internet."
His company trawled the net to find movies uploaded, he said.
"What we do is we see all those links on the net," he said.
"We find the hosting [computer] server and send them a copyright infringement notice because they're not meant to have those links. If they don't remove [the link] we send them a second notice and ask them [again] to remove it."
He said that if the provider did not do anything to remove the link or content hosted on its site, his company would launch what is known as a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the offending computer server.
In Australia, distrubuted-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are an offence under section 477.3 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, according to the Australian Federal Police. As for DoS attacks, which are different, according to Australian law a person is guilty of an offence if the person causes "any unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a computer".
According to news site Daily News & Analysis, Kumar's company sometimes went further in its attacks.
"At times, we have to go an extra mile and attack the site and destroy the data to stop the movie from circulating further," the site quoted him as saying.
"Generally speaking 95 per cent of ... providers do remove the content. It's only the torrent sites - 20 to 25 per cent of the torrent sites - that do not have respect for any of the copyright notices," Kumar said.
"How can we put the site down? The only means that we can put the site down is [by launching a] denial-of-service [attack]. Basically we have to flood [the site] with millions and millions of requests and put the site down."
He said commercial sites such as YouTube and Daily Motion were the only sites that responded promptly to infringement notices.
"They are immediately responding to our copyright notices and removing the links and this is saving immense revenue to the producers [of movies]," he said.
Asked whether his company ever warned when it was to launch a DoS attack on a site if it did not remove pirated content, Kumar said that it did not.
"No, we don't do that. We generally ask them to respect the copyright notices under DMCA ruling XYZ."
Kumar even pledged to come to Australia to help out on internet piracy here.
"If you want me to service any Australian companies I would be really pleased to come down and do a presentation and work for the Australian movie [industry] also if they are willing," he said.
Kumar said that at the moment most of the payment for his company's services came from the film industry in India.
"We are tied up with more than 30 companies in Bollywood. They are the major production houses."
As for Hollywood films, he said they, too, used his services.
"We are tied up with Fox STAR Studios - Star TV and 20th Century Fox -who are a joint venture company in India."
The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, or AFACT, which represents the film industry on piracy in Australia, said it did not condone the activities of Kumar's company.
"The methodology [used by Kumar's company] ... is not something that AFACT has undertaken nor sub-contracted to outside vendors," executive director Neil Gane said.
Asked whether it, on behalf of the Australian film industry, would use Kumar's services, it said: "AFACT have very talented in-house investigators and a successful track record that does not require outside vendors to assist in ongoing criminal investigations."
"AFACT investigates websites that infringe our member companies content and refers such alleged criminal matters to law-enforcement agencies using investigative techniques that are within the law, cost effective and would elicit the necessary level of evidence to support further police inquiries."
You can follow the author on Twitter @bengrubb
http://www.afact.org/
AFACT
AFACT is the Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business. It’s a non-profit, Non-governmental organization that is open to participation from the representatives of member countries and experts from private sectors within the Asia-Pacific region.
The forerunner of AFACT was ASEB (Asia EDIFACT Board) established in 1990 in response to disseminate EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) policies and activities in the Asia-Pacific region. After 8 years’ contribution to facilitate international transaction within the region, through the simplification and harmonization of procedures and information flows, the need for re-engineering was raised in the 16th ASEB meeting to conform to the rapidly changing trend of EDI and EC, and to respond to the successful restructure of UN/CEFACT. As a result of re-engineering, AFACT marked down the era of ASEB in 1998. In 1999, the epoch of AFACT was officially commenced.
AFACT aims to promote the commitment and development of trade facilitation, electronic business policies and activities in the Asia Pacific region, mainly focusing on those promoted by UN/CEFACT ( United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business), to guide, stimulate, improve and promote the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations from members, as well as to exchange products and relevant services effectively within AFACT community.
Currently, there are 19 members from Australia, Chinese Taipei,China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan. Each of which is represented by a local organization dedicated in promoting the application of standards and recommendations, e.g. UN/EDIFACT, developed by UN/CEFACT. eBusiness Asia committee and PAA (Pan-Asian eCommerce Alliance) are the associate members of AFACT, which is dedicated to promote cooperation in implementing trade facilitation and eCommerce in this region.
There are 11 Working Groups formed under AFACT, of which each with its own scope of work and responsibilities. The Working Groups are Awareness and Education Working Group(AEG), Financial Working Group(FWG), Transportation Working Group(TWG), Customs Working Group(CWG), Supply Chain Working Group(SCWG=PWG+ECWG), Security Working Group(SWG), Air Transportation Working Group(ATG), Legal Working Group(LWG), Inter-networking Implementation Committee(IIC), Business collaboration Framework Working Group(BCFWG), XML Working Group(XMLWG).
The major activities include:
1.Analyzing and understanding the key elements of international transactions and working for the elimination of constraints;
2. Developing methods to facilitate transactions, including the relevant use of information technologies such as UN/EDIFACT and ebXML;
3. Promoting both the use of these methods, and associated best practices, through channels such as government, industry and service associations;
4. Coordinating its work with UN/CEFACT and other relevant international, regional and non-governmental organizations; and
5. Enhancing the cooperation among the AFACT members and promoting the objectives of the mission statement in the Asia Pacific region.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/24416
Apple, Pepsi and the RIAA SuperBowl scandal
p2pnet news view Kids & Kartels:- | Advertising | P2P:- I thought the reappearance of Psystar on the Apple front was pretty funny. If nothing else, it shows Jobs and his merry crew of Reality Distortion specialists aren’t as all-powerful as they think they are.In May, as Psytar points out in a letter to customers, it filed for Chapter 11 protection but, “we are now ready to emerge and it again battle Goliath,” it says. “More information will be available in the coming days when will be formally discharged by the Bankruptcy court.
“When life gives you apples, make applesauce.”
In a Reader’s Write to the p2pnet post saying Psystar was back, “Apple has a niche selling premium products to people who are willing to pay for that premium,” said Lachlan, but, “I think the word ‘premium’ here is a farcical perception perpetuated by that ‘niche’ market,” said Devil’s Advocate.
I responded, posting, “Way back in the dark reaches of time when I wrote for a friend who had one of the first ‘computer’ newspapers, Apple actually gave me a Mac and a printer. It was a relatively new company and the idea was I’d write about its product(s). But because a) unlike a PC, you couldn’t fool with it unless you were an expert; and, b) most people couldn’t afford it, or the software needed to run it, I couldn’t see how it’d be of much use to the general population. So I gave it back. With apologies to surfer, a keen Macolyte, I used to believe those who bought Macs (and were subsequently afflicted with the manic religious fever which seems to hit most people who own an Apple product) had secret brain implants. Now, I realise they’re just too embarrassed to admit they were had.
”However, “Basing your current opinion on preconceptions garnered a long time ago is not a wise course of action,” reckoned Dan, and I replied:
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s not much to choose between Apple stuff of yester-year and Apple stuff of today. But it isn’t just that, or the fact Apple and Jobs were among the early, and most enthusiastic, long-term adopters of DRM, or that Jobs closed down an excellent Apple-centric site for promoting ‘product’ before he wanted it promoted. Etc and so on. What really bothers me, and it’s something I won’t forget or drop, is how he [Jobs] blatantly used 16 innocent teenagers identified by the RIAA as alleged ‘copyright violators’ — ‘alleged’ because they never appeared before a judge — in his infamous 2004 SuperBowl iTunes / iPod ad. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/677
“I didn’t like Apple back when, and I don’t like it now.”
I’ve alluded to the disgraceful RIAA / Apple /iTunes / Pepsi SuperBowl ad before, but this time around, I’m going to re-run the whole item, together with another which sets it up.
I wonder where Annie Leith (right) is today and what she thinks of her appearance? Does she believe it was right for Apple and Pepsi to hold her and her friends up to be falsely accused by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA as criminals in front of hundreds of millions of people in a warped iPod commercial?The iTunes /RIAA / Pepsi advertising connection has been forgotten by most people. But the RIAA is still trotting out kids and their parents as thieves.
And it’s still getting away with it.
Meanwhile Item Number One »»»
Pepsi ads wink at music downloading
‘Wink’ at downloading? That’s the headline in a USA TODAY story pumping up Pepsi’s coming iTunes music store promo.
Some 20 teens sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses them of unauthorized downloads, will appear in a Pepsi-Cola (PEP) ad that kicks off a two-month offer of up to 100 million free – and legal -downloads from Apple’s iTunes, the leading online music seller, says the story here.
The sassy ad [no kidding - it's a direct quote] due out on February 1 during Superbowl, is a wink at the download hot button, says Theresa Howard in a piece which might have come straight from Pepsi’s promo department.
Pepsi hopes the promotion will connect its flagship cola, as well as Sierra Mist and Diet Pepsi, with teens who’ve shown more affinity for bottled water, energy drinks and the Internet, she says.
The ‘wink’ comes in because Annie Leith, 14, has been suckered into appearing in the ad with other downloaders and apparently says she no longer makes unauthorized downloads and, can say I was on TV for something so ridiculous. With her older sister and younger brother, she downloaded 950 songs over three years, says the story, going on:
They settled the lawsuit for $3,000, the average according to RIAA. She’ll use some of her undisclosed ad fee to help pay for the settlement.
‘Settled’ means they paid the RIAA $3,000 rather than getting hauled into a court hearing which might have cost them thousands of dollars more.
In the meanwhile, Green Day cut a special version of the 1966 Bobby Fuller Four hit I Fought the Law for the ad, by BBDO, New York, says USA TODAY. In the ad, Leith holds a Pepsi and proclaims: ‘We are still going to download music for free off the Internet.’ Then the announcer says how: ‘Announcing the Pepsi iTunes Giveaway’.
It’s all in good spirit, Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America, is quoted as saying.
Pepsi even managed to wheel out the RIAA’s seldom-seen boss Mitch Bainwol.
This ad shows how everything has changed, Bainwol says. Legal downloading is great because fans are supporting the future of creative work in America.
How low can you go?
Ask Pepsi.
I should have added a line to this story: “The only people laughing are the people who run the RIAA.”Item Number Two »»»
Hi, I’m one of the kids who was prosecuted for downloading music free off of the Internet, says a teenager in an ad slated to be aired during the Super Bowl tomorrow.
And I’m here to announce in front of 100 million people that we’re still going to download music free off the Internet.
She’s one of 16 naive US teenagers ‘persuaded’ to appear in the 45-second spot which was to have reprised Apple’s triumph of 1984 when, in the first Super Bowl ‘event’ ad, it launched the Mac.
However, the 2004 production will be remembered with shame.
The 16 teenagers were identified by the RIAA as alleged ‘copyright violators’ – ‘alleged’ because they never appeared before a judge. They, or their parents, settled out of court rather than risk much larger financial penalties had they gone head-to-head with the RIAA’s heavyweight legal team, and lost.
The ad has Pepsi ‘giving’ away 100 million iTunes songs as a promotion. Waving bottles of soda, the kids let everyone know that’s the kind of ‘legitimate’ music they’ll be downloading in the future.
I would like to see more of this, Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, part of Universal Music Group, is quoted as saying in a National Post story here. We’re starting to see technology companies come on our side, now soft drink companies are coming on our side.
Iovine’s reference to technology companies comes from his love-in with Hewlett-Packard when he appeared onstage at an HP dog-and-pony show to support the latter’s introduction of DRM systems.
In the meanwhile, Annie Leith, 14, whose parents gave the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) $3,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit, is featured and she says she’ll use some of her undisclosed ad fee to help pay for that.
Michelle Maalouf is another teenager caught up in the RIAA’s stop-at-nothing sue ‘em all campaign.
It was fun being in the commercial, but being sued wasn’t so great, Michelle, 13, says in this SFGate story here. We didn’t know it was illegal. We really like music.
All of the teenagers in the spot were sued by the recording industry’s powerful trade group [the RIAA], says the report.
What’s interesting is that the SFGate story uses the word ’sued’.
More on that later.
Falsely attributing criminal conductIt’s all in good spirit, says Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America.
Josh Wattles, however, doesn’t think that adequately describes the commericial. In fact, Falsely attributing criminal conduct to someone is a slam-dunk libel in just about every state, he says.
There’s no calculus of relative harm to justify this kind of abusive, untruthful and cynical behavior towards minors no matter how complicit their misguided parents may have been in this deception.
He’s the former acting general counsel of Paramount Pictures, a key architect of the MPAA’s (Motion Picture Association of America) anti-piracy programs in the transition to videocassette distribution, and the former senior executive in charge of Viacom’s music subsidiaries, The Famous Music Publishing Companies.
It started last year when Big Music instructed the RIAA, its principal enforcer, to sue any file swapper it could identify for copyright violations. Its lawyers used ‘instant subpoenas’ obtained under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to pressure ISPs into handing over subscriber names and addresses – until the Verizon decision put a stop to it.
However, before being ordered to use due process like everyone else, the RIAA had been able to track down and identify close to 1,000 p2p file swappers, mostly teenagers and students, whom they threaten with civil, not criminal, court actions. Unless they settle.
The 16 teenaged Pepsi stars were among those swept up in the RIAA’s ‘investigations’.
By the sheer volume of ink the RIAA has been able to generate in the media, it’s succeeded in making people believe anyone who downloads music, shares files, swaps music, or whatever you want to call it, is a criminal and thief.
That’s not true.
But the RIAA’s relentless, mind-numbing assertions have been sufficient to paint the picture and hence, the Pepsi/iTunes campaign could be catchily entitled I Fought the Law.
And, I was one of the kids prosecuted for downloading music, says a teenager. She was not, though, ‘prosecuted’ for anything. She’d never been in a court. She was, rather, mouthing words from a script contrived by BBDO and approved by Pepsi and Apple.
However, to make the theme stand up, the message that these kids were ex-criminals who’d been rightfully ‘prosecuted’ had to be driven home hard and therefore, Busted, Charged, Incriminated, and Accused appears over their images, and the carefully arranged lighting and their sullen looks purposefully suggest a gritty, urban, isolated feel – the kind of thing associated on TV with ‘lawbreakers’ and criminality.
To make the point even more strongly, Convicted file swappers star in Pepsi Super Bowl ad, reads a ZDNet teaser headline leading to another site.
Convicted? When? By whom? And on what criminal charge?
And in During Breaks in Game, Satire and Silliness, New York Times business writer Stuart Elliott thinkse the stand-out (his words) Super Bowl commercial was a, cheeky spot, introducing a promotion co-sponsored by the iTunes division of Apple Computer, that smartly teased the recording industry for suing teenagers for illegal file sharing.
“Sixteen of the miscreants appeared in the commercial, identified with tongue-in-cheek labels like ‘Incriminated,’ ‘Accused and ‘Busted,’ as the soundtrack played ‘I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).’ The jest was topped at the end as these words appeared on screen: ‘Drink down Pepsi and download music at iTunes. Legally’.
Smartly teased the recording industry for suing teenagers?
QuestionsA number of questions go begging, however.
- Did the kids appearing in the commercials know exactly what the script would have them saying – specifically, that the word ‘prosecuted’ would be used? And did they know there’d be suggestive overlays superimposed while their images flashed up?
- Did the ‘actors’ or their parents or their guardians or lawyers see and OK the ads – and the various elements such as the overlays – in writing after they’d been edited and approved for airing by Pepsi and Apple?
- Were they given the option of backing out if they didn’t like the look of the final cut, if they indeed saw it?
- Was the agreement between BBDO and the teenagers carefully crafted and honestly written to protect them?
- Or was it a standard ‘name and likeness for a fee’ boilerplate or worse, a cold and cynical contract made by a calculating team of highly paid lawyers and account executives with 16 naive and easily impressed youngsters to insulate Pepsi, iTunes and CBS from possible libel suits filed by the teenagers after the ad was cut?
I still can’t get over the fact that these fresh faced teenagers are being attacked by companies just to preserve a business model in need of freshening up itself, says Wattles. I don’t want my kids treated that way by business and I don’t want other people’s kids treated that way.
And on the choice of language, Prosecutions are usually understood to be actions by the state to enforce criminal laws, he says. Prosecutions aren’t generally understood to mean civil lawsuits. The word ’sued’ would be appropriate and accurate in this context.
The ad falsely pumps up the music industry’s enforcement effort, and its suggestive criminalization of the kids’ behavior building up to the tag line ‘we’re still gonna download music for free off the Internet – and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it,’ reinforces the ad’s presumption that their behavior had been criminal.
What’s the problem?But, What’s the problem? – asks a nameless, faceless RIAA spokesperson. We’re only involved as good corporate citizens. We gave Pepsi and Apple and BBDO the kids’ names to help them. The kids, that is. This is our way of working with wholesome American institutions to save the Children of America from having us prosecute them for stealing music. What can be wrong with that?
And Gosh! Pepsi is giving the music away anyhow. But this time, the kids won’t end up in a court for downloading!
‘Giving’ is probably the wrong word, though.
Actually, Pepsi is marketing the tunes on behalf of the RIAA’s owners, the major record labels, who sold the songs to Apple in the first place. People get the songs by buying Pepsi and looking under the bottle tops, some of which have a code which can be redeemed to ‘buy’ a song from iTunes.
Rich Menta, editor of MP3newswire, says here, The RIAA will earn $0.75 from Pepsi for each of the 100 million downloads. And that’s $75 million, in pure profit for the record industry, which is why RIAA president Mitch Bainwol is happy to go along with the joke, suggests Menta.
Apple wins, of course, because now they have more than quadrupled their total sales of downloads from 30 million to 130 million tunes – all using the AAC format that only the iPod will play, thus pushing iPod sales.
Is ‘get sued by the RIAA and star in a TV commercial’ the message? – Menta asks.
It’s bad enough that the RIAA targeted kids for their lawsuits but, it’s worse to criminalize their behavior on national television just for the sake of a provocation, or to sell soft drinks and iTunes downloads, Wattles told p2pnet.
Moreover, he goes on, Congress, in making the copyright laws, never, to my knowledge, considered the circumstance that kids would be engaged in mass infringements, however technical. Certainly, imposing extraordinarily high statutory civil damages on an ill-behaved and/or ill-informed teenager seems out of step with the result a legislature would have openly picked.
And there’s a big legal question mark over whether or not they can be tried as juveniles for criminal copyright infringement.
Wattles – who was at Berkeley in 1969 – points out that he’s speaking as an individual concerned over the excessive and intrusive behavior of an industry to which he’s contributed, and in which he still has a stake.
I don’t want to see it [the entertainment industry] behave in this way and I believe I’m speaking out responsibly to help it correct itself, he says.
No matter how old they are and even if their parents or a court signed off for them, they could possibly sustain an action for libel if they weren’t completely aware of what this ad was going to look like and suggest about them.
These kids weren’t criminally prosecuted, but they’ll get to live with this characterization for the rest of their lives – even after they grow up and move away from their childish false bravura performances.
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