Tech: Juridics: Personal file-sharing hub reverses submission to Capitalist sharia-like legalistics

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This blog entry of Apr12,2k6 on refWrite's page 3 has been moved to the new refWrite Backpage on Jun20,2k6.
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Well, well, in the Canadian jurisdiction file-sharing has not yet been burdened by the absurdities of those prevailing in the USA (which latter is in file-sharing matters controlled by puppet-law dictated by the Recording Industry AA [RIAA]). Every now and then, the American difficulty for file-sharers produces an ironic gumption among a few of those who serve them (and must somehow realize thereby something in the way of a profit, I would the file-sharing community in the broadest sense). Techdirt a website catering, inter alia to personal-computer users now has an item that brings to the fore a descent of gumption onto the brow of one such file-sharing server, Streamcast:

Streamcast Realizes The Supreme Court Decision Didn't Outlaw Their Product

Streamcast sure is keeping its lawyers busy these days. Just after going after Skype and its founders for charges dating all the way back to the early days of Kazaa, it appears that the company has now decided to go to court with the recording industry [Recording Industry Association of America - A], rather than settle with it. This is actually a much bigger deal than it may seem. When the Supreme Court ruled on a tiny aspect of the case between Streamcast and the entertainment industry, it only said that file sharing companies could face liability if they somehow promoted copyright infringement (the so called "induce" test). As we noted at the time, if these firms could show they were not specifically promoting the use of their software to violate copyrights, they could be perfectly fine under the law. Of course, many people missed the specifics on that, and simply ran with the theme that the entertainment industry "won." The entertainment industry, of course, did nothing to discourage that viewpoint, and even started pretending the Supreme Court flat out said that file sharing was illegal -- something they didn't even come close to saying. Still, many of the file sharing platforms saw the writing on the wall and shut down or settled. Streamcast even went down that route, and said they were close to settling until one of the RIAA law firms began "seeking revenge, retaliation and retribution," rather than just coming up with an agreeable settlement. So, now, Streamcast says they've dropped settlement talks completely. Even more interesting is that they clearly recognize just how little the Supreme Court ruling really changed, as they say it doesn't make a difference. They plan on making the case that they didn't "induce" anyone to infringe on copyrights.

In the country to the North, it's more difficult to comprehend the maze-like terms in which the RIAA, the laws its induced from Congress, and thereby produced with courtly help a thicket of onerous inscrutables for online over-the-web file-sharers and their service-providers. In contrast, Canadian courts, following the lead of the Supreme Court of Canada, have in the last two years made several decisions which have stoutly maintained non-commercial copying standards against which the Canadian music-industry and its minions have not had any success in nullifying. Now, Streamcast stands ready to prove that the American Supreme Court did not make file-sharing illegal, and did not come close to doing so. When the RIAA and minions ("the recording industry") thru one of its law-firms became unbearably hubristic and triumphalistic, "seeking revenge, retaliation, and retribution," Streamcast stood firm against the greedy obsolescent barbarians more in the mode of the Robber Barons than a 21st-century firm dealing in non-digital music commodities for which file-sharing has been proven to create new customers and has contributed to revitalization the losers' market longterm, which the industry is determined to kill off in hopes of short-term windfalls (which just won't arrive). The RIAA mentality is caveman, and its tactics also are caveman against the file-sharing websites, so I reply to veekay's comment (#3 made on Apr7,2k6) on Techdirt.

One sane assessment as to why Streamcast may have attracted RIAA-type venom has to do with the former's style and rhetoric along the way. One commentator, BMSprint on Apr8,2k6, (#8 among 12 commenters to date) sounds completely plausible when he/she says:

It's arguable that if Streamcast cleaned up its act entirely, purported only to offer the technology of P2P, did absolutely nothing that even smelled like encouraging the sharing of copyrighted content (obviously no sloganeering about "joining the revolution" a[s] even advertising could be suspect), then it could be seen to be providing a legitimate service, one that the [music-recording]content industry couldn't touch. That is, it would look a lot more like other applications that can be used for both infringing and non-infringing purposes (eg BitTorrent), or even plain old email, than Napster did. However, all this depends on the Sony safeharbour remaining intact, something which was sort of side-stepped by the Supreme Court. The worrying thing is that three of the judges made noises about narrowing the Sony doctrine [of the USA Supremes]. This remains to be seen.

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