Remember Grokster? It was an attempt to be Napster without having a centralized database of songs and users. It was shut down by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

Go to Grokster.com now and you are not only told that Grokster is no more but that you are at risk simply by having gone to the site.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS 123.123.123.123 AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.
Don’t think you can’t get caught. You are not anonymous.

(The IP address they give is the right one.)

The site then suggests:

In the meantime, please visit www.respectcopyrights.com and www.musicunited.org to learn more about copyright.

RespectCopyrights.com really should be called FearCopyrights.com. It’s an MPAA scare site that doesn’t let you know you still have rights when using copyrighted material. (It captures the back arrow key in your browser, which is not only annoying, controlling and disrespectful, it’s a way of driving up the hit count.) MusicUnited is an music industry pro-DRM propaganda site. Hey, it’s their right. It’s a free country. Sort of.

[Tags: copyright copyleft grokster riaa mpaa broadcast_flag drm ]

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This Mon, Feb 11, at 7pm, there will be a Very Special Web of Ideas: A concert by and conversation with Brad Sucks (AKA Brad Turcotte), the webbiest musician on the Web. We’ll listen to some songs performed live and talk with Brad about what the battle over “business models” means to someone making music.

Note that we’re not holding this one in the Berkman Center. It’ll be in Griswold Hall Room 110 at Harvard Law. It’s free and open to all; rsvp to rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

[Tags: berkman brad_sucks brad_turcotte music RIAA ]

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[NOTE Dec. 31: The Washington Post article I based this blog post on is wrong. Thanks, Shelley!] The RIAA continues to ratchet up its claims for what we customers are allowed to do with music. According to this Washington Post article, the RIAA is now claiming in a law suit that a man who has 2,000 legally-purchased CDs is not allowed to copy those CDs onto his computer.

What next? Will the RIAA claim that were not allowed to play CDs loud enough for our neighbors to hear? Listen on speakers because people who did not purchase the CD might listen along? Look at our CDs funny?

Tags: RIAA copyright copyleft music berkman

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