Speaker 1: You're listening to Matt Connorton Unleashed.
Speaker 2: On WMNH ninety five point three.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome to Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are
live from the studios of wm NH ninety five point
three FM, Inglorious, Manchester, New Hampshire. We got a big
show for you today. But right now, to kick us off,
we got a brand new single. This is from our
friend Opus and you know him as the drummer from
the band Dead by Wednesday. But he's got a brand
new solo album coming up called Purging the Demons, his
first ever solo album, and this is his first ever
solo single and you're hearing it first right here, brand
new from Opus. This is called not Okay.
Speaker 1: The silence servis t me.
Speaker 4: I don't know wan have afen.
Speaker 1: When she left?
Speaker 5: Did she do something my mind I can't get out of.
Speaker 1: I know I shouldn't thought that could. But it's not
the same with about.
Speaker 5: This counts and that days, but it never goes away.
Speaker 1: It ripped my heart out and stole my soul. Y
you ripped my heart out, cow out.
Speaker 6: Something that till I can't ta point, but it thinks
me night.
Speaker 1: And I want to be off andy thing.
Speaker 5: I'm stuck in.
Speaker 1: This dark place where I go.
Speaker 6: Up me, but I don't wanna be the person I
used to be because I wrote too far down, I'm
going too far down.
Speaker 5: I don't even why to start a care and don't
really want to. So I've left that knowing now myself
uns gone.
Speaker 7: Now I try and try, but enough thing to feel
drive my cowfos shiner and now saying mad, I can't
even think I'm weak.
Speaker 1: You've ripped my heart out. You stole my soul. Wad,
You've ripped my heart out, and now all.
Speaker 5: That stole my soul now brand by.
Speaker 8: Muscle No, you're heard it here first.
Speaker 3: That is not okay, the brand new single from Opus,
the drummer of Dead by Wednesday. But he's got a
solo project, his new album, Purging the Demons, which will
be out shortly, and excited to hear that you heard
it here first, And right now we're gonna play ninth Son.
This is navarros or Navaris. I'll have to ask him
because he's going to be joining us UH via Microsoft
teams right after this to talk with him. But this
is really good. This is called ninth son.
Speaker 9: You thank you.
Speaker 10: Look like men.
Speaker 2: Kick But what what what?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 11: What?
Speaker 9: What? What?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: What the what?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 3: How cool is that? I didn't even want to talk
over the end of it. That is so cool. You
can really groove to that. The track is called Ninth Sun.
That is Nevaras, and or it might be Navarus. Let's see.
I think we've got Augustin here with us. Augustin are
you there?
Speaker 11: Yes, I am, how are you good?
Speaker 4: Good?
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show. I'm excited to talk to you
because I've been grooving to this. I've been grooving to
this four track EP sound session. The whole thing is
so good.
Speaker 11: Thank you, man.
Speaker 12: I really appreciate that absolutely.
Speaker 3: So let's clear this up right off the bat. You
how do you say the name?
Speaker 11: It's Nevarus.
Speaker 13: You know, it's adaptation of my last name on my
mother's side, which is Nevadas, which is like a proper
Spanish name.
Speaker 8: But gotcha.
Speaker 13: I saw it misspelled on a piece of paper once
and I needed to It's like my stage name was
like Navarus.
Speaker 11: I just took it. I've had it ever since.
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool, that's cool, No, I dig it. I'm
really curious about your recording process with this. So for
people who are not familiar with you and how you
recorded this EP, I don't know if this is how
you record everything but your I mean, it's live. It's
it's studio, it's it's it's like it's it's in studio,
but it's also live in the sense that And I
don't know how many people do this anymore, but you're
all playing live at the same time. So there's no overdubs,
there's no you know, it's not you know, one person's
recording you know, guitar parts and then somebody else is
doing the synth and all this. It's all live. I
did watch the videos too, and I'm just I'm fascinated
by that.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, it was all live. No you know, no
click track, no headphones interestingly really play.
Speaker 11: Yeah, no headphones.
Speaker 13: So we had bleed, which kind of you're kind of
married to keeping it live at that point because you
can't you can't edit it. It's it's so no headphones
through amps. We could all hear each other live in
the space. And you know, that's hard work for James
de la Tacoma, who is the engineer, and Michael Black
was filming it. It was something that none of us
had try nine people, and it was definitely a sort
of an experiment. And once we did it and I
took it back, I listened to it, I was like, man,
this sounds unlike any of the stuff I've done for
years where you overdub and you lose something.
Speaker 3: For sure, that's incredible. So you've never done anything quite
like this In terms of recording, I never have.
Speaker 13: No, I've recorded, I've got four records, and then working
on the fifth, and then after that I already started
on the sixth.
Speaker 11: All of them were done with some form of live,
you know. I never did it like layer by layer.
Speaker 13: Often it would be like the drum set the base,
you know, just like the core group, and then on
top of that you're just adding and adding and adding building, right,
That's how I've always done it.
Speaker 3: Do you think that it's better to well, I mean
I assume you think it's better because this is your approach,
But do you prefer to get it as live as possible?
Or again, in this case, in terms of the EP,
this is all done live, like truly live. But do
you think it's good to get either do that or
get as close to that as possible, because then you
capture something that maybe you don't capture if you're doing
it the way most bands do it now, where you
are just doing one thing at a time and sort
of building the track because and part of why I'm
curious about this is I know bands that you know,
they they're really good live, but then you listen to
their studio work and maybe it's not quite capturing the
magic or the energy of the band's live performance, and
you go, I wish, I wish these studio records really
kind of captured that. I mean, how do you feel
about that? And do you think you lose something if
you do it, you know, just one thing at a time.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean I've always tried, and you know, I've
done a record since doing sound Session that is very
close to being finished. And we did it shortly after
sound session. We didn't fully go back to everybody live
in the studio, but four of us got together, so
Locatronto and drums, Jonathan Maren, oh, Bill Bernard and I
got together and put down the whole basis of it.
And in general, I do at least rhythm section plus
and alotic instruments, you know, a core live in the studio.
I never do. If you go back too far, you're
going to lose all the spirit of it, you know,
right right?
Speaker 3: And can you tell us too about working with Bill
Bill Laswell, legendary producer and bassist on this and these songs.
I mean he actually co wrote these with you, correct.
Speaker 11: He did.
Speaker 13: We So originally we did an album called Reverberations, which
is out there for people to check out if you want,
and that we did where he wrote all these amazing basslines,
and then we had a lot of stuff that didn't
make it on the record, and we had done two
records before that, so I've done three records with Bill
playing bass wow, And there was just a lot of material.
And so my idea was originally to get in the
studio with Bill and everybody and film it and document it.
And then Bill health has you know, he's been dealing
with a lot of challenges. He hasn't really been back
to the studio, and Peter Applebaum, the sax player, suggested
Jonathan Marron come in and he basically learned a lot
of Bill's basslines no for note wow, but then he
improvised on top of that.
Speaker 11: So I say, like the first part of every.
Speaker 13: One of these songs is a straight Bill Laswell bassline,
and then he took it where.
Speaker 11: It needs to go.
Speaker 13: So there was a lot of Jonathan involved as well.
Speaker 3: In terms of him coming in and doing that. Did
you sort of guide him and say, you know, at
least for the start of it, try to do what
Bill was doing? Or I mean, how much latitude did
you give him? I guess is what I'm really asking.
Or did you tell him, you know, go crazy, do
what you want and we'll see what happens, or how
did you approach that?
Speaker 13: Yeah, I sent him a bunch of recorded music, and
you know, Jonathan Maren is just one of the best
bass players I've ever worked with. It's a super talented guy,
and he learned everything, and he came with, you know,
like an ipatty and everything kind of ready to go
exactly like on the recording, and it's like, don't don't
worry about that. None of us are going to play
the track accurately. We're going to start. All of this
will be out the window within two minutes. But like
you know, for nights on that baseline in the beginning,
that's that's Bill's baseline, you know, Okay, pretty much.
Speaker 11: That's that's his baseline.
Speaker 13: And Bill has a vocabulary baselines, and you know, he
has just all this work that he's created.
Speaker 11: He's it's so.
Speaker 13: It's very distinctly his composition. But then you know, Jonathan
certainly and the rest of the band certainly took it
wherever it needed to go in the moment, and everything
else I'd say was fully one hundred percent in provods
except for the baseline.
Speaker 3: Really, no kidding, Wow, that's incredible. Tell us who about
working with DJ Logic on turntables.
Speaker 11: He's the best.
Speaker 12: Yeah, he's the best.
Speaker 11: He's the best.
Speaker 13: I met him through the great Bernie Warrel many years ago. Yeah,
I had the honor of working with Bernie of times,
which will always be the highlight from my musical experience.
Speaker 11: May he rest in peace.
Speaker 13: And we did a show and he just brought J
Logic alone to hang out and just and Logic gave
me his number on a napkin with the marker. He's like,
this is dope, man, here's And then after that, for
a long time we tried to figure out how to
get together. And then once we were in the studio,
the first time we've been in the studio fair amount
and man, I love that awesome human beings, just great
person and phenomenal talent obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, clearly and everything. I mean, you know, you
sit right in with what you were doing, that's for sure.
Oh yeah. So now what's what is the live situation
with this project? Are you playing these songs out live?
Or will you be? And I'm curious about that.
Speaker 11: I've been doing. I have been doing some shows.
Speaker 13: I think I have you know, four or five shows
coming up this summer. I'm playing different tracks from sort
of the full catalog of everything ever put out. And
you know there's a sort of iteration of the band
that's that's been out there working a little bit, and
we do.
Speaker 11: Have quite a lot coming up. Yeah, yeah, we're doing it.
Speaker 3: Oh outstanding, outstanding. And you're also the co founder of
Knowledge Records. Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 11: My brother and I started Knowledge Records a long time ago.
Speaker 13: It it you know, it doesn't do much except just uh,
put out stuff that I work on. OK, someday there's
I'd love to do more. I'd love to figure out
how to you know, there's so many talented artists around
people that I know that I you know, it's I'd
love to find some you know, wealthy billionaire that's like there,
just take all this money and make as many records
as you want.
Speaker 3: No doubt. And you're a You're in an epicenter of music, right,
I mean you're in New York, is that correct?
Speaker 13: You know, I'm based out of New York. My wife
is working for Penn State University. You know, I'm born
and raised in New York, so I'm sort of doing
a lot of back and forth on Route eighty right now, nodding, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, all the musicians are based out of New York,
and you know, my family, we still have our apartment
in New York where I grew up. But yeah, I've
been spending more time outside of the city, and I
found that people are really uh, there's a really great
listener base when you get out of the city, and
I'm trying to work with that more. You know, take
the music where people are hungry to hear.
Speaker 3: It, right right, which is everywhere.
Speaker 11: So that's everywhere.
Speaker 3: So that's good, you know. And of course, obviously, you know,
we live in a time because of the Internet where
you can you know, you can reach people anywhere, which
is wonderful. Yeah, and tell us about loud. You also
have a project called loud Apartment.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 13: That was the first kind of project name that I
had because I never wanted it to be my own name.
It's kind of Bill's fault that it ended up being
my name again, And he was when he did reverberations.
He was like, no, that's a cool name. You know,
it's it's like Santana. It's a good reference point. Now
you should use that, And I don't know. I kind
of was like, okay, but I liked I used a
loud Apartment for a while, put out three records and
did a bunch of playing us loud Apartment. But really
it's the same, just project name for whatever I'm working on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a cool name.
Speaker 8: I like it.
Speaker 3: Loud Apartment. That's a cool name. So so Bill's a
one convince you to use Navarus. I mean, he's not wrong.
I mean it is a cool name. It is avocative
of Santana. I like it.
Speaker 13: Yeah, he's very involved in all aspects of a project,
from the art to the song order.
Speaker 11: It's really cool.
Speaker 13: Like it was an absolute honor to work with Bill
over the years, and that's one of the things I
loved about working with him.
Speaker 11: Is it was never just one part of it.
Speaker 13: He kind of understands how to make a record from
start to finish and all the different parts involved.
Speaker 3: How did that You might have touched on it. Forgive
me if I'm forgetting, but how did how did that
come about? Where you first began working with Bill Laslow
Bill Laswell.
Speaker 13: Through a singer named Garrison Hawk ak Hawkman reggae singer,
great singer, most known for Blowback with Tricky, all the
reggae stuff on that. But he's he's been out there
for a long time and he's one of my best friends.
And he was working with Bill and I got hired
to produce the track for one of his records and
Bill mixed it and when I got the mill, when
I got the mixed back, I was like, oh man,
this is this is who I need to work with
and was very persistent in trying to figure out how
to make that happen more consistently.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and apparently you succeeded. So that's that's wonderful, outstanding.
So what's what's next for this project? Do you intend
to you know, obviously, I mean the sound sessions ep
is great, do you uh is there going to be
a follow up to this with the same sort of
configuration and approach to doing it?
Speaker 11: I think so.
Speaker 13: I think I would like to do it again, maybe
the exact same configurations. It's fun sometimes to repeat things,
you know, identically, same room, be like, hey, let's let's
try this one more time, maybe play a little longer,
put something together. In the meantime, I have a record
coming out called mind Funk, which has a.
Speaker 11: Lot of the same guys. That's almost done.
Speaker 13: And uh, yeah, there's some very exciting surprise guests on
that then talking about Yeah, one of them is Booty Collins.
Speaker 11: I'll tell you that.
Speaker 8: Really that's awesome playing.
Speaker 13: Yeah, he's playing based on two of the tracks. I
haven't really announced that yet, but yeah, he's he's going
to be on it. So I am very excited to
put this out and just I'm just trying to keep moving, man, Yeah,
keep it moving.
Speaker 3: That's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do.
Booty Collins, boy, talk about a legend. That's amazing.
Speaker 13: I know it was a shock when the track came back,
and that is fully Bill Aswell's work. You know, Bill
is Uh, it's it's really been awesome to know him
and you know you in terms of his health struggles,
it's it's something you can do. I don't like to
be the one to talk about it, but you can
read about it. There's go fund these and all you know,
ways to support him. And you know, he's he's he's still,
he's still you know, finding out how to keep creatively
working and you know, keeping things happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one hundred. Well, very good. Well listen, Augustin.
We'll let you go in a moment, but let me
ask you, well two things. First, let me ask you
where is the best place to go online for people
to keep up with everything that you are doing, everything
with navars and anything else that you want people to
know about. Where should people go online to keep up
with you?
Speaker 13: Navars dot net and E V A R I S
dot net that is where everything is. There's definitely music
that is not on Spotify, not streaming, that is there.
Speaker 11: Oh, I have four records on there.
Speaker 13: Uh, and I'm going to be posting all the shows
coming up there and yeah that's the spot Oh fantastic.
Speaker 3: Well that's easy. And the other question is what should
we play at the end of our conversation. We played
ninth Son to open. But I'm thinking, so we've got
there's document and there's Remedy, doub Orchestra. Might be a
little longest, might be might be a little long for
for the radio.
Speaker 11: But but but I'll let you go for document, document.
Speaker 3: Okay, what anything special we should know about this track.
Speaker 8: Before we play?
Speaker 11: I think that that one was the chance to.
Speaker 13: You know, play some more traditional Afro Cuban rhythms with
Angel Rodriguez, the Great Angel Rodriguez on congas.
Speaker 11: So that was cool. And that's Jojo Cool also.
Speaker 13: Playing percussion, who played in Felous Band after Tony Allen.
Speaker 11: So you know, there's some awesome people involved.
Speaker 13: And uh, there is a go fundme for Jojo because
he just had an operation on his heart, so I
shout that out. Cool, you look him up, he's playing
on it. And really just a great group of people.
It was a joy to work on it. No no arguing,
no stress, just playing music.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic and you know, the success of it is
evident and the end result. So definitely definitely a good
group of people you put together for this. Absolutely no, no,
I love it. I love it. The EP is incredible.
All right, Augustin will let you go. We're gonna hit
that track, but I'm sure we will talk again as
you're releasing new music. Sounds like you got a lot
coming up, so we'll definitely have you back.
Speaker 11: Awesome. I appreciate it. Have a beautiful day, all.
Speaker 3: Right, Augustin Navaris. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 11: Bye bye.
Speaker 3: All right. That is Augustin Navarus of the Project Navarus.
Of course, check out Sound Session. It's a fantastic for
a track EP. We're gonna play another song from this
right now. And this is called Document.
Speaker 10: And kept.
Speaker 4: Think and and and and.
Speaker 10: And game fast three game name.
Speaker 13: In m.
Speaker 3: That is so cool. That is called the Document. That is Navars.
And thank you again to Augustin Navarus for joining us earlier.
By the way, the EP is called sound Session. Four tracks,
really really good and I really enjoyed our conversation with him.
If you are just joining us, of course, this is
Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios
of WMNH ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester,
New Hampshire. Of course, you can stream the show from
anywhere go to Matt connorton dot com slash live for
all of your live streaming options, social media links, contact info,
show archives, et cetera, et cetera. Today is Saturday, March
twenty eight, twenty twenty six. Got a little bit of
music news, and I will be very curious to see
how people react to this on social media or if
you are listening live. Of course, you can always chime
in in the chat room as well. Because I say
that because I have what maybe among people who are
active in the music industry as I am and a
lot of our audiences people in the music and I
have what maybe an unpopular opinion about this. I'm not
sure though. So this is something that the Supreme Court
has ruled on regarding piracy and copyright and record labels
and all of it. And this isn't important. This this
could be you know, we use the term landmark ruling.
So this is important and it does involve the Supreme Court.
You know, we don't do politics on this iteration of
the show. But this isn't political. This is but it does.
It is something that affects the music industry, and I
have my opinion about this might be a little bit unpopular.
We'll see, we'll get into it, but I actually agree
with the Supreme Court's ruling on this in a time
where you know, I may not agree with a lot
of Supreme Court rulings, but I do agree on this.
But I'll be very curious to get audience feedback, either
live and or afterward on social media. But this is
from one of my favorite websites for music industry news,
music businessworldwide dot com. US Supreme Court. This has happened
this week. US Supreme Court sides with Cox Communications in
landmark music piracy case brought by record labels. Okay, so
here's the article. This we'll explain. The US Supreme Court
has ruled that internet service provider Coxcommunications cannot be held
responsible for music piracy committed by its subscribers, ending a
landmark copyright case in which the major record companies had
won a one billion dollar jury verdict. This this was unanimous.
By the way, the unanimous decision by the Supreme Court
was handed down on March twenty five, so this was
just a few days ago. Justice Clarence Thomas writing for
the Court. Again, if you know me, we don't get
into politics on this iteration of the show but not anymore.
We used to a long time ago. But if you
know me, you know again, Justice Thomas not someone I
would necessarily agree with much, if ever, but he's got
it right here. In my opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing
for the court, said that Cox quote neither induced its
users infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement. So,
in other words, saying that an Internet service provider, just
because they are providing you Internet service does not mean
that that somehow is inducing you to do something illegal
like piracy, like infringing on somebody's copyright. They're just providing
you the service.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 3: He's right, uh, he also said. He also wrote in
his opinion quote, Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers,
but it did not intend for that service to be
used to commit copyright infringement. Holding Cox liable merely for
failing to terminate Internet service to en fringing accounts would
expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedence. Unquote. Again, if
you know me, you won't hear me say this often,
if ever. But in this case, Justice Clarence Thomas got
this right. He's right. I agree absolutely. Now. The reason
I say this may be an unpopular opinion within some
of with some of our audience and people in the
music industry who listen to the show. Is there are
some in the music industry who are who are upset
about this, who say, no, piracy is uh has always
been a problem, and we need to do whatever we
can to tamp down piracy and copyright infringement. And look,
I am someone who again, if you know me, if
you know my background, if you're a regular listener to
the show, you know that ultimately, I will always advocate
on behalf of artists and the music industry that you know,
the people, not necessarily the major labels who but well,
we won't get into that, and certainly not I won't
advocate on behalf of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, but we
won't get in all of that. But I'm saying artists
making money, making a living, which is much harder than
people might realize, Artists making a living within the music
industry and being paid for their work. I will always
advocate on behalf of that, always, always, always, That's what
I care about most is artists getting getting paid, being
compensated for their work, and being able to make a living.
It's it's crucial it's critical, and we talk about that
a lot on the show, especially with AI and and
the advent of all this AI generated music and the
threats that that that that holds, and and you know,
we talk about this stuff all the time on the program.
But I do think it's a little bit absurd this
idea that you're going to hold Internet service providers responsible
and make them have to pay for what individual users
are doing. That would be like, uh, you knowing auto
manufacturers every time someone gets into a car accident where
somebody ends up dead, you know, is it the is
it the the fault of the auto manufacturers for producing
a product that someone uses to accidentally kill someone on
the highway. You know, let's see some common sense. Let's
be reasonable and rational about this. And again some people
will say, Matt, we have to do whatever we can,
literally whatever we can to stop piracy, to stop people
from having their copyrights infringed upon. I understand that, but
but we also again we have to be reasonable and
use common sense, and so to hold Internet service providers
responsible for what individual users are doing, whether it's piracy,
whether it's using the dark web to do other things
that are illegal, accessing the dark web, whatever, it is right,
you know, unless the internet service provider is somehow and again,
as Justice Thomas said, there's no inducing of individual users
to commit fraud or to do any kind of illegal activity,
you know, unless you have an internet service provider who
is marketing their service in a way that they're actually
saying somewhere in their marketing by the way, you know,
you can do whatever you want. You can do illegal
things if you use our internet service, and we won't
even uh nobody will even get mad at you about it,
you know. But obviously that's not happening. Okay, So more
to this article. Again, this is from Music Businessworldwide dot com.
Commenting on the decision, Mitch Glazier our IAA chairman and
CEO CEO said, and okay, so here's the dissenting opinion,
dissenting against me. I feel like I'm the dissenting opinion
because again I feel like I have an unpopular opinion
about this within the music industry. Here's here's what Mitch
Glazier said. Again, he's the RIAA chairman and CEO. He said, quote,
we are disappointed in the courts decision vacating a jury's
determination that Cox Communications contributed to mass scale copyright infringement
based on overwhelming evidence that the company knowingly facilitated theft,
knowingly facilitated theft. Come on, so, by that logic, you know,
take the music industry, take the piracy part out of it.
Let's just you know, back up and take a broader
view of this and what he's saying. By that logic,
anything that anyone ever does that might be illegal, It
might be fraudulent, that might be deceptive. On the Internet,
if they're using Coxcommunications for their Internet service, anything anybody
ever does online while using that service, well it's it
was facilitated by by the internet service provider. I mean,
that's absurd, that's crazy. That's that's that's truly, that's that's
an insane standard. How could any business live up to
that and and and be held responsible for that. That's
nuts to me. Um he said more Mitch Glazier said
more quote. To be effective, copyright law must protect creators
and markets from harmful infringement, and policymakers should look closely
at the impact of this ruling. The Court's decision is narrow,
applying only to contributory infringement cases involving defendants like Cocks
that do not themselves, copy, hosts, distributor publish infringing material,
or control or induce such activity unquote. The ruling means
that simply knowing some subscribers are pirating music and continuing
to provide them with Internet access is not enough to
make an ISP liable for copyright infringement. Right because again
the ISP, Yeah, they know that some people are pirating music.
Of course they do, because we all know that. But
is there I guess maybe there's an implicit expectation that
the ISP is supposed to detect who aspirraty music and
then turn off their service. Is that Is that what
we're expecting?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 3: What could possibly go wrong there? I mean, come on,
this is this is crazy. So again I agree with
the court's decision. There's more to this. Under the standard
set of today's set. By today's decision, rights holders must
provide either must prove either that a provider actively encouraged
infringement or that its service was designed for piracy with
no real lawful use. Internet access, the court said, clearly
has many lawful purposes. The case dates back to twenty eighteen,
when Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and
dozens of other rights holders sued Cox, arguing the company
ignored over one hundred and sixty three thousand infringement notices
about subscribers illegally downloading more than ten thousand copyrighted songs.
The labels pointed to evidence that a Cox manager overseeing
piracy compliance told his team to quote f the DMCA
unquote and the DMCA is a law that is designed
to I wish I could remember exactly what it stands
for digital media copyright? Is that the Digital Media Copyright
Act Again, it's an anti piracy law. A jury sided
with the labels in twenty nineteen, awarding one billion dollars.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned the verdict
in twenty twenty four, throwing out the vicarious liability finding
but keeping the contributory infringement ruling and ordering a retrial
on damages that could have reached one point five billion.
The Supreme Court took up the case last June, heard
oral arguments in December, and has now reversed the remaining
contributory liability, including finding entirely the Thomas opinion laid out
two and only two paths to contributory copyright liability. The
first is inducement, where a provider actively promotes its service
as a tool for piracy, as in a landmark two
thousand and five MGM versus Groster ruling involving file sharing software.
By the way, remember if you're old enough to remember
two thousand and five, early to mid two thousands, that's
the era of napster. That's the era of mass panic
and I do mean panic within the music industry about
file sharing. That was when in two thousand and five,
I was still working for trans World Entertainment, which owned
Strawberries and Fye and all of that at the time,
and there was panic because it was I remember having
conversations with people where I just, you know, kind of
shrugging and said, well, music is free. Now that's it.
You can't stop it, you can't help it. Music is
now free. What are you gonna do? But anyway, so
that's why I say, you know, two thousand and five,
remember what was happening into Again, if you're old enough,
remember what was happening in two thousand and five within
the music industry at that time. Okay, So the second
path is where a service is specifically tailored to infringement
and has no real commercial use beyond piracy. So now,
so when you're talking about that, I mean, I don't
know of an Internet service provider anywhere that actively promotes
itself as a service designed specifically for piracy. Now, there's
lots and lots of websites. I won't get into how
I know that you can do that. You can you
can download things that you otherwise might be required to
pay for. But I don't know of an Internet service
provider that actively markets themselves as Hey, if you need
to pirate something, where where the place to go for it?
I don't know that. Okay, So Cox, the court found
met neither test. The company had contractually prohibited subscribers from
using its service to infringe copyrights, sent warnings, suspended services,
and terminated accounts. The opinion stated, quote, this Court has
repeatedly made clear that mere knowledge that a service will
be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required
intent to infringe. Elsewhere in the opinion, Thomas wrote, quote
based on this theory of infringement respondence, Sony Music Entertainment,
and other major copyright owners secured a billion dollar verdict
against Cox. The United States Court of Appeals of the
Fourth Circuit agreed that because Cox provided Internet service to
known infringers, it was a willful infringer itself. Under our precedence,
a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for
merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge
that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights. Accordingly,
we reverse unquote yeah, because even if you know and look,
even if you know that there are specific people, maybe
customers you've had in the past who have bought your
internet service, you know that these people have been flagged
previously for copyright infringement, for piracy somehow they've been flagged.
What are you gonna do? So you're never going to
give them service again? Do they just depending on where
they live. I mean, look, depending on where you are geographically,
you might have very limited options for home internet service.
So does someone who may have got caught or have
been at least noticed by an internet service provider at
some point in the past, you know, downloaded something that
maybe they didn't pay for, maybe they pirated something. So
now they just don't get to have internet ever again.
I mean, what are you supposed to do again? From
just let's be practical about it, think about it practically
what do you want these Internet service providers to do?
There's no practical way for them to do what you
want them to do. If what you want them to
do is make sure that nobody ever pirates anything, it's
it's it's an unfair, untenable burden to be placing on
these Internet service providers. So the ruling also found that
the Fourth Circuit had gone wrong by creating a broader
form of liability, holding that quote supplying a product with
knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights
was enough. The Supreme Court said this conflicted with decades
of its own case law. Justice Sonia Soda Mayor, joined
by Justice Kaitanji Brown Jackson, agreed Cox should not be
liable in this case, but warned that the majority's ruling
goes too far. Soda Mayor argued that it strips ISPs
of any real reason to deal with piracy on their networks,
making the DMCA's Safe Harbor rules pointless. Those rules require
ISPs to cut off repeat infringers in exchange for legal protection.
She wrote that the majority's decision completely upends the balance
Congress created end quote consigns the Safe Harbor provision to obsolescence,
adding that ISPs no longer face any realistic probability of
secondary liability for copyright infringement, regardless of whether they take
steps to address infringement on their networks unquote. So again,
I agree with the Supreme Court's decision on this, and
but I'll be very curious, Like I said, I will
be very curious to see on social media how you
all feel about it, or you know, on YouTube, you
can you know, we stream the show on YouTube, you
can leave comments and so forth. But I really do
want to get feedback on this, because, like I said,
I know that my opinion may be unpopular in some circles,
and but I'm happy to I'm happy to fight it
out with anyone who wants to. All right, we are
approaching the top of the hour. Here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna play another track right before we show some
love to our amazing sponsors. We're gonna play one more
track from Novarus. And again, thank you so much to
Augustin Navarus for joining us. This has been or that
was I should say great. I say this has been great.
Makes it sound like he's still here with us. No,
it was great to have him on. I really enjoyed
talking with him and I love this project Navarus. Check
it out online Navarus dot Net. We're gonna play one
more track from the sound session EP. This one is
called Remedy and we're gonna play this. We're gonna show
some love to our amazing sponsors. And then when we
come back in the second hour, we've got another great
guest coming up, ek Schnack. I'm not sure I'm saying
that correctly. That's two guests in a row where I'm
going to have to ask the guests. Am I saying
this right? Am I pronouncing this correctly? Because I'm not
sure how to say this. But another really interesting project,
really fascinating. And in the third hour Kyle Heavy and
I think he's gonna be bringing others with him, or
at least one other person with him. Kyle Heavy will
be here in the third hour to talk about stand
up comedy, so looking forward to that as well. So
we've got a lot more to come. If you are
listening live on Saturday. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed from
the studios of WMNH ninety five point three FM. Here
it is, this is Navars. This is called Remedy Time.
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