Illegally Downloading MP3s Can Give You STDs or Even KILL You!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

If you think the RIAA is doing something stupid and should be stopped, stop buying their music. Most likely you’ll find better stuff.

My friend’s band, Rabbit Junk, is quite good in fact.

It may not put an end to them. In fact it probably won’t since 99% of the buying populace doesn’t pay attention to what they’re listening to. But by everyone’s own admission, file sharing just ups the amount of play time RIAA songs are getting. All you’re doing by sending their songs around is breaking the law, helping them, and getting yourself and potentially other people into lawsuits–as well as increasing the amount of silly protection and divergent CD/DVD player protocols added to try protecting against it.

22

At the risk of playing devil’s advocate (though I am not by any means defending the RIAA or validating their propaganda video) there is a germ of truth to their claims based on two general concepts:

  1. Rank novice computer users are unlikely to change their folder display options to reveal file extensions of known filetypes. Most (novices), for that matter, aren’t even aware that this is possible.

  2. Simple viruses can masquerade as a known filetype by having a double extension (eg. song.mp3.exe) Given the example set forth in point 1, novice users would then see “song.mp3” (the “.exe” being hidden by their folder display options). The fact that they can see the extension probably wouldn’t even register.

So, with a user such as that in point one having downloaded a file such as in point 2, double-clicking on the file to enqueue in in Winamp (not a bright thing to do anyway, but these are novices) would instead execute the virus, thus infecting their system.

It’s not an outlandish scenario, but it’s fortunately not so widespread as to be the sort of thing more than a few rank neophites would experience, because it demands that the specific factors be present that A) the user is a complete novice who B) doesn’t have his Windows set to display file extensions and who C) double-clicks on songs to listen to them instead of enqueuing them from within Winamp inside a playlist.

The RIAA are just using the same bullshit scare tactics the mainstream media does: Take a few isolated incidents that are, on the whole, very unlikely to happen to more than the terminally naive and blow them so far out of proportion that they become their own parodies.

23

Sage rat: Saying that the licensing deal would have to be somewhat different is your cue. Existing licensing arrangements aren’t written with the internet in mind, and until they are at least proposed, assigning dollar values or even using it as a hard and fast analogy is spurious. Existing licensing deals cover distribution of music over the radio or in public places. File-sharing over the internet simply isn’t covered.

Mindfield: Wouldn’t the writers of malicious software be smarter to forget the mp3 entirely and name the executable, say, ‘Britney Spears - 04 - Toxic.exe’ ??

24

[QUOTE=chrisk]
Sage rat: Saying that the licensing deal would have to be somewhat different is your cue. Existing licensing arrangements aren’t written with the internet in mind, and until they are at least proposed, assigning dollar values or even using it as a hard and fast analogy is spurious. Existing licensing deals cover distribution of music over the radio or in public places. File-sharing over the internet simply isn’t covered.
[/QUOTE]

Ah yes, I have heard that the RIAA is having a problem with their customer support division: all those home file sharers calling up, day in and day out asking, pleading for a licensing deal!

But the problem is, is that the internet gives you your own high quality copy, forever. Essentially the only licensing deal one could ever do would be to charge a sales price each song download. And surprise, surprise that’s exactly what Apple did.

25

[QUOTE=chrisk]
Mindfield: Wouldn’t the writers of malicious software be smarter to forget the mp3 entirely and name the executable, say, ‘Britney Spears - 04 - Toxic.exe’ ??
[/QUOTE]

That just makes the title shorter and the .exe less likely to disappear off on the right.

26

[QUOTE=Mindfield]
At the risk of playing devil’s advocate (though I am not by any means defending the RIAA or validating their propaganda video) there is a germ of truth to their claims based on two general concepts:

  1. Rank novice computer users are unlikely to change their folder display options to reveal file extensions of known filetypes. Most (novices), for that matter, aren’t even aware that this is possible.

  2. Simple viruses can masquerade as a known filetype by having a double extension (eg. song.mp3.exe) Given the example set forth in point 1, novice users would then see “song.mp3” (the “.exe” being hidden by their folder display options). The fact that they can see the extension probably wouldn’t even register.
    [/QUOTE]
    I was going to post something like this; there are quite a number of other ways in which a computer can become compromised from file sharing activities (installing a file sharing client that is bundled with trojans or other malware, for example), but I deleted my post after watching the ad; they might be morally right, but that ad is just moronic and laughable.

27

Normally, I’d be on the RIAA’s side, as property owners trying to prevent the theft of their property. However, the RIAA lost their moral authority when they began using the force of government to give them extra protections and revenue.

Here in Canada, the RIAA managed to browbeat our government into imposing a tax on sales of blank media. So now every time I back up my hard drive onto CD I get to pay some money to the RIAA, even though I never listened to any of their music. And they have successfully lobbied government to extend copywrites for music to keep it out of the public domain long past the original intent of copyright laws.

Add to that the shady accounting of the record labels, their domination of public airwaves and subsequent smackdowns of alternatives like internet radio (which were willing to pay license fees, but got shut down anyway), and the situation gets a lot grayer.

28

[QUOTE=chrisk]
Mindfield: Wouldn’t the writers of malicious software be smarter to forget the mp3 entirely and name the executable, say, ‘Britney Spears - 04 - Toxic.exe’ ??
[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily. Some filesharing clients (I recall Kazaa did this way back) didn’t display the full filename unless you hovered over the entry. Moveover though, a “.mp3.exe” extension might still confuse the rankest of neophites by virtue of still having “mp3” in the filename. It seems absurd to us, but believe me, I’ve dealt with enough clueless newbies in the capacity of a PC technician to say with absolute confidence that they’re not only out there, they’re dimmer than a dead bulb at midnight.

I find it rather amusing that the only people who would likely be caught up by the vague but dire warnings in that video (such as in my examples) are the only ones likely to take that video seriously. Or maybe that’s their point: users that filehsare are stupid, so their ridiculous video must be effective.

29

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
And I do mean destroyed by the viruses. One guy says something like he quit file sharing after he got tired of having to replace his harddrive because the virsuses ruined them. :dubious:
[/QUOTE]
Viruses can do physical damage to a computer. Usually, that requires knowing some specifics about the hardware involved, but a virus could potentially install its own drivers and screw things up. You might be able to issue constant read requests from the hard drive or exploit something to make the disk fail physically. Or you might be able to flash the BIOS with an image that doesn’t bother to turn the fans on and let the processor run until it catches on fire.

This isn’t very likely for a variety of reasons. But it is possible.

30

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Here in Canada, the RIAA managed to browbeat our government into imposing a tax on sales of blank media. So now every time I back up my hard drive onto CD I get to pay some money to the RIAA
[/QUOTE]

I remember hearing they wanted to do this in the US, but not sure what the status of it is. (Any info Dopers?) Complete and utter bullshit and, frankly, the veto of any and all RIAA arguments from now until to eternity.

I don’t, as of this writing, do any file-sharing of copyrighted material. Not because of illegality or immorality, rather because I have 6 month’s of free Napster service for music downloads. All from hardware purchases. Technically, the RIAA is still getting paid, but it’s not as if I can get a discount on the players by opting out of the offer. So as long as they’re getting paid anyway, I’m going to use any means possible to get the music playing by their rules.

One thing to check for, for anyone that has one of these offer cards, is some states do not allow an expiration of the offer. For example, this card has an expiration of 30 June 2007. However, this does not apply to the states of CA, CT, HI, LA, MA, ME, MT, ND (yay), NH, OK, RI (is anything allowed there?), VT or WA.

So, in theory, you can hang onto that card and get your 2 free months in 2010. Provided the RIAA doesn’t kill the Golden Goose by then. Which I suspect they will with even half the effort they’re expending right now.