Recording Industry Drops MP3 Spies

The Recording Industry Association of America has dumped the company charged with gathering evidence for use against people accused of illegally sharing copyrighted music, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal.

As part of its controversial antipiracy strategy, the RIAA had enlisted MediaSentry to search the Internet for evidence of people sharing large amounts of music. The trade group's campaign on behalf of the world's largest recording labels reportedly resulted in lawsuits against about 35,000 people.

However, MediaSentry was often criticized for its gathering techniques, often characterized as invasive and excessive.

Earlier this year, visited the RIAA offices and got a demonstration of how MediaSentry hunted down file sharers. MediaSentry wrote scripts to automatically hunt for the names of copyright songs and locate the IP addresses of computers sharing files.

MediaSentry checked the hashes (identifying marks) on the song files to make sure they matched the copyright song. If the marks didn't match, the company used software from Audible Magic to compare sound waves.

MediaSentry would then forward the information to the RIAA.

However, MediaSentry only checked to see which songs were being offered; it had no way to check who was downloading them. So, instead the RIAA argued that making a file available is copyright infringement. But that strategy was dealt a blow in April when a federal judge rejected the RIAA's "making available" argument in a lawsuit against a husband and wife accused of copyright infringement.

Last month, the RIAA announced that it no longer plans to file lawsuits against people it suspects of pirating digital music files. Instead, the RIAA has reached agreements with unidentified Internet service providers to "reduce the service," to chronic file-sharers. Exactly what a reduction of service may include isn't specified, but a source close to the situation said that none of the ISPs have agreed to limit a user's bandwidth, a practice known as throttling.

The RIAA said it would replace MusicSentry with DtecNet Software ApS -- a Copenhagen-based company the trade group has worked with before, according to the newspaper.

By Steven Musil

[spadeisspade]

Think Harder-

You hit the nail on the head. Record companies need to wake up and smell the coffee. They focus on promoting a single and the rest is just ***. I''ve saved hundreds of dollars pirating that would have been wasted on albums that are sub par. If an album is worth buying, I will always buy it to support an artist. But RIAA can kiss my pink starfish!!

[whitemale08]

Ever since European bands like Kraftwerks introduce synthesizers i.e. digital instruments, the music industry has faced a steady decline as a true business model.

Now that music completely commoditized, which is what ''free-markets'' does to everything, people anymore don''t want to learn musical harmony, produce musical harmony, or sell musical harmony.

The theory of musical harmony as pioneered in the Renaissance by musicians Bach and Beethoven are considered ''old school'' and out dated.

Now it''s about commoditizing filth and raunchiness, violence and debauchery. That has completely destroyed any resemblance of a ''musical culture''.

But what the hell, music was never to be sold on Wall Street in the first place. It was to be enjoyed by people who love the musical talents of their local musicians.

We will see a Renaissance of good music again because the ''Minskey-moment'' has once again taken all of the profit out of it.

From that reality will once again retain true creativity.

[thinkharder-]

Digutal music piracy is probably the best thing to ever happen to the music industry, and I''ll tell you why. Because, it forces musicians to be musicians. For an artist to record an album in studio, they have vast resources at the helm to doctor and improve their sound in more ways than are imaginable. If studio albums aren''t enough to get an artist paid anymore, do you know what will be?

Live performance! These "musicians" might actually have to make music in front of the scrutiny of their audience and I can see no better way to ensure the quality of a musician. These artists should be making money off their tours, not their albums because that''s where their gifts are laid to bare in their truest forms. If 10-14 year olds actually knew enough about how to pirate a song, causing teeny bop sales to tank...do you really think half of these junk bands would be a quarter as revered as they are now? This will force an artist to get out and play...take a lesson from the Grateful Dead.

[uber7]

...Remember how record companies ripped off black artists from the 50%u2019s and 60%u2019s and what about the payola scandal. Record companies can kiss my a$$

[govwatch-2009]

RIAA = dinosaurs

[bobnjersey]

[The RIAA said it would replace MusicSentry with DtecNet Software ApS -- a Copenhagen-based company the trade group has worked with before, according to the newspaper. ]

maybe music listeners will replace the record companies and their intellectual property too.