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| This is a comments thread about Blog Post: FSM News and Notes—Spring 2009 by Lukas Kendall |
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Yes, it is stealing, and yes, it's a legal issue. The whole reason labels want to keep their releases in the dark until it's finally time to reveal them is because they don't want to have to deal with potential customers complaining at them if the release somehow gets pushed back. Just look at Prometheus and their "big one", for example. They predicted they'd get it out by December of last year; and due to legal hurdles it's still not even out yet.
So what happens if these two LP releases (we now know what they are) are somehow delayed for a good couple of months? If the word wasn't spread out there, there would have been no problems. But since it's now known what they are FSM and SAE will now have to (potentially) deal with irate customers wanting these titles, wanting to know why they haven't been released yet. And if somehow these titles are scrapped from production entirely, there'd certainly be a lot of disappointed people here.
I agree with Chris in PA. It's not polite to post what they'll be releasing (it's downright shitty), but if it's publicly accessible, you can't say what they did has legal implications.
It's actually a rather easy thing to do, and I'm not even that technologically inclined. There are programs that can basically map out all the publicly accessible files on a certain website. It would then be easy to collect all the images and check for new ones.
This is a dick move because it basically removes control from Lukas' hands, but at the same time, it was publicly accessible. The good news is, Lukas is taking to the programmers and from now on they won't be posting the album covers to the publicly accessible portion of the site. This way, people who use those programs to map out of the file paths won't be able to leak things ahead of time.
I'm not really surprised that this happened. We're not the most technologically inclined group of people and the websites the labels use don't have the same level of protection that something like Amazon or eBay would use. Best one can do is use it as a teachable moment and move on.
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 12:32 PM
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By: |
Mark Ford
(Member)
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A website isn't a house and information on the website is not like a TV or a couch.
A website is a collection of links with information and/or pictures that the user is deliberately putting out for public viewing and consumption.
The solution(s) are exactly as you cited. Either don't load the pictures on your server until you're ready, or put them in a private (off limits to the public) area.
But if you put it out there alongside other stuff that you WANT the public to see...
...well, then the comparison would be to put items out at the end of your driveway with a sign saying "FREE" and then accusing someone of stealing one of them.
You're simply not going to get far making a legal argument out of it.
There are, though, moral and ethical reasons not to use it/view it/link to it.
There's certainly something to what you say although it really is a matter of interpretation. I don't think FSM put those files there for public consumption, however. They were there awaiting that and should have been protected better. I spent a number of years as a server and web admin running one of the first web sites on the net way back in the early 90s and over those many years legal cases such as one like this this did come up. In some cases the lawyer got the person off because the judge agreed with his argument that the information wasn't adequately protected and they were as much to blame. Other cases went the other way. So there is legal precedence for this, but like all legal matters it's up to how the attorneys present the case and to the judge on how the laws get interpretted.
I guess I'm going a bit too far here and maybe blowing this up a bit too much, but the continual struggle to protect intellectual property is an ongoing beast. There still seems to be the perception that this property, whether it be, data, music, videos or whatever is not real property that people who own it have rights to because it isn't solid matter and is made available on the net. There are many opinions and many different laws concerning this depending on the area in which the data is stored. I personally don't agree that because it's on a website that it's there for the taking even if was not made public (and yes the owner may bear some responsibilty for not protecting it better), but as you say it really is a moral and ethical issue regardless of legalities. Nice debate! 
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 12:40 PM
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By: |
TJ
(Member)
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This is a dick move because it basically removes control from Lukas' hands, but at the same time, it was publicly accessible. The good news is, Lukas is taking to the programmers and from now on they won't be posting the album covers to the publicly accessible portion of the site. This way, people who use those programs to map out of the file paths won't be able to leak things ahead of time.
it's really not that complicated. They are in 'forbidden' directories, so the only way to find the images would be to use guesswork with the file names, not unlike how we used to be able to find out intrada releases early with the easy-to-guess sound clips, but then I told roger how we did it and they made the file names more confusing. I'm sure that if LK cares about this, he will do what he needs to do to "fix the problem".
Anyways, I don't see how it is a moral or ethical issue to share news of something you are excited about that you found from a link that is publicly viewed. That's silly. If you're gonna blame somebody, blame the german guy (Stefan Jania, you know, someone who actually is a FSM user and has been since 2001..) who posted the links to the images @ the Geramn forum, not the guy who posted the link here to another forum that broke the news.
It's not like he was confided something and then blabbed. it is stupid to make a new account just for that, but its not hard to see why based on the reaction here. Looks like that Morley title is limited to 1500, I'm sure there's plenty of Morley fans that appreciate the early news.
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 12:42 PM
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By: |
Chris in PA
(Member)
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I guess I'm going a bit too far here and maybe blowing this up a bit too much, but the continual struggle to protect intellectual property is an ongoing beast. There still seems to be the perception that this property, whether it be, data, music, videos or whatever is not real property that people who own it have rights to because it isn't solid matter and is be made avaiable on the net. There are many opinions and many different laws concerning this depending on the area in which the data is stored. I for one don't agree that because it's on a website its there for the taking, but as you say it really is a moral and ethical issue regardless of leagalities. Nice debate!
Thank you for your calm response, I certainly did not intend to start a flame war.
As I thought about the issue I realized that, as a legal issue, it would depend mostly on what the individual judge or jury would say.
I agree that FSM did not INTEND for those photos to go public.
But they DID put it on the "public" side of their server.
I would be more inclined to believe it would be a legal issue if the person had copied the pictures to a different site THEN posted them.
But the pictures on that site come directly from the FSM servers.
And unless Lukas could show that his company had been damaged due to the early release (e.g. studio backed out of their contract), I really don't see any lawyer who would take the case.
Of course, that doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed, it just means that it isn't worth the time/effort of the lawyer.
But I thank you for pointing out that there had been cases like this that went for the 'prosecution.'
I was trying to think of similar occurrences, and the only thing I could think of was several years ago when Ain't It Cool News released what they THOUGHT was the list of Oscar winners a couple of days BEFORE the Oscar ceremonies.
But I believe that the information had been hacked, not simply linked from a public area.
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Posted: |
Apr 19, 2009 - 1:24 PM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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This is a dick move because it basically removes control from Lukas' hands, but at the same time, it was publicly accessible. The good news is, Lukas is taking to the programmers and from now on they won't be posting the album covers to the publicly accessible portion of the site. This way, people who use those programs to map out of the file paths won't be able to leak things ahead of time.
it's really not that complicated. They are in 'forbidden' directories, so the only way to find the images would be to use guesswork with the file names, not unlike how we used to be able to find out intrada releases early with the easy-to-guess sound clips, but then I told roger how we did it and they made the file names more confusing. I'm sure that if LK cares about this, he will do what he needs to do to "fix the problem".
Anyways, I don't see how it is a moral or ethical issue to share news of something you are excited about that you found from a link that is publicly viewed. That's silly. If you're gonna blame somebody, blame the german guy (Stefan Jania, you know, someone who actually is a FSM user and has been since 2001..) who posted the links to the images @ the Geramn forum, not the guy who posted the link here to another forum that broke the news.
It's not like he was confided something and then blabbed. it is stupid to make a new account just for that, but its not hard to see why based on the reaction here. Looks like that Morley title is limited to 1500, I'm sure there's plenty of Morley fans that appreciate the early news.
Is there plenty of Morley fans?
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Is there plenty of Morley fans?
Is our children learning?
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F&ck him and f&ck you for sticking up for such horse sh%t!
MV
I'm pretty shocked at the offensive tone of your post MV. It's pretty unprofessional to post this kind of thing under your company name and certainly doesn't encourage me to buy more of your releases in the future regardless of their high quality.
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Once I again I must quote RoboCop 2: "Behave yourselves!"
LK
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F&ck him and f&ck you for sticking up for such horse sh%t!
MV
I'm pretty shocked at the offensive tone of your post MV. It's pretty unprofessional to post this kind of thing under your company name and certainly doesn't encourage me to buy more of your releases in the future regardless of their high quality.
That is a decision I fully respect and understand. I have sat idly by and watched BS like this come and go on this board but this situation is truly reprehensible. My words were swift, sharp and to the point...most certainly "R" rated. I make no apologies.
This SHITuation is despicable and the fine folks at FSM should not have to deal with this nonsense.
MV
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Once I again I must quote RoboCop 2: "Behave yourselves!"
LK
As you wish.
MV
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