Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick




Aimster/Madster Being Forced To Shut Down

from the another-useless-win-for-the-RIAA dept

I hope the RIAA is proud of themselves. They're wasting all sorts of time and money shutting down services that were being used to promote their artists. Now that those services are shut down, people simply move on to other, better services. The latest situation for Hilary Rosen to sound smug about is a judge ordering Madster (formerly known as Aimster) to shut down. Admittedly the guy behind Madster was a bit of a show-off who baited the RIAA from the very beginning, but it's another useless win for the RIAA. Madster had adjusted their software over time to the point that it really just became a system for two people to share a file between just the two of them. I don't see how this is much different than current IM software products that easily let me share files with anyone on my buddy lists. Will the RIAA go after the IM providers next? Maybe we can have AOL sue themselves. Clearly, the RIAA should just go to the logical extreme in this situation and sue the backbone providers to shut down the entire internet since it's a "tool" of piracy.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

  • Sep 4th, 2002 @ 7:44pm

    Good idea

    by Jack Valenti

    Michael, that is a great idea -- we'll start with mae west, then go from there... Thanks!

    Jack

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

    • Sep 4th, 2002 @ 9:37pm

      Re: Good idea

      by LittleW0lf

      I'm in the process of breaking out my 14.4 modem and my BBS software (I ran a BBS a while back.) I wonder if Fidonet, WWIVnet, and the other BBS networks are still around? Let me know when the internet is going to be cut, since I expect millions of computer users will once again go back to using BBSs.

      Oh, you plan to make running a BBS illegal too? You can pry it from my cold, dead hand...the claymores and machine gun nests are primed and I've also got some tractor beams for rearanging cellular structures, so every RIAA lawyer coming to my door will be turned instantly to farm animals (and hopefully my transporter to transport them to Scotland is also working.)

      P.S. for the FBI agents reading this, I realize you have no humor, but this is meant only as sarcasm. I am not a terrorist, at least not that I am aware of.

      (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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