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The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is the British record industry's trade association and they would suggest it is a serious crime https://www.bpi.co.uk/assets/files/BPI_Digital_Music_Nation_2013.PDF but you have to do a bit of searching to find the word bit torrent.

Its going to be fun. Fire off a SOPA takedown request and http://www.louisvuitton.co.uk/ disappears.
How about the http://www.bpi.co.uk/. I'm sure SopaTrack can make one.
Remember, you dont need proof of infringement after these are passed.

Also, Ireland even has a shiny, new blasphemy law. But anyway;

There isn't actually a lot of money in music. People think there is, (and the large record labels would like to believe it) but there isn't. In 2009, according to the BPI's figures, the entire UK recorded music industry revenue was less than GBP1bn. That's for all their recorded music (CD sales, music videos, legal downloads, ad- and subscription-based services, the whole lot) for an entire year. A top film will make nearly that much. EMI (the UK's one, failing contribution to the "big four" - and the smallest one) made more than that in 2009 (actually, it even announced pre-tax losses of more than that; but that is more due to its screwed up investments and legal battles with its own musicians, or former musicians).

While $1bn may sound like a lot to you or me, on a corporate level, it is hardly anything - there really isn't that much money in actually selling recorded music to normal people. Normal people don't have that much money.

Moving on; yes, this will be an interesting case and will likely be hailed as a success and great progress tomorrow by the IFPI and all their little friends; in fact, it will probably be used to support their efforts in forcing through something similar under the UK's Digital Economy Act. These measures will not work for two reasons. Firstly, they won't stop file-sharing without causing a huge fuss (and likely leading to an even greater backlash against the lobbyists). There will always be loop-holes, there will always be unlicensed file-sharing while it still more convenient. Secondly, even if people stop sharing, they won't naturally move to paying for stuff (and they certainly won't be downloading from iTunes or using Spotify if their Internet has been cut off for a year).

The only people who will win here are the lobbyists (who can get nice big bonuses for getting their laws passed) and the lawyers who will be spending the next 10-15 years trying to untangle the mess it creates in the local, national and European courts. Stopping piracy through legislation and litigation isn't going to work, nor has it ever worked.

Incidentally, I am doing something to stop things like this; I am a member of my local Pirate Party and will be meeting with Ofcom (the UK's communication regulator who has been tasked with drafting - or just using the BPI's draft of - our n-strikes law) to explain to them why they will be unable to carry out the requirements made of them.

What are you doing to stop this sort of thing?

wasn't there just a story I read recently that the head of the UK's music indutry trade group reported profits for 2008?

http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/7th-january-2009-bpi-press-release-7c-uk-reports-resilient-music-sales-in-2008.aspx

as far as I can see, someone here is lying. The music industry may be hurting for profit, but it's due to their own management's inability to shift their business model to a more profitable one to align with the changing market.

Do they [the RIAA] operate outside the US? I've got *loads* of MP3s on my server

In the UK, they're the BPI. http://www.bpi.co.uk/ As you can see from their website, they're for "fair" copyright, that is, copyright that lasts a thousand years. Instead of having to sue people, they want your ISP to be their enforcement arm. Cheaper, easier, and if there's any flak, the ISP will be the one who catches it.

Actually, the BPI is the UK equivalent of the RIAA. The PRS should really be called the Public Performance Rights Society as they deal with things like taxing live groups doing cover songs for money in pubs, jukeboxes and anything entertainment related being used in a publicly accessible place. Yes, they're bastards, but these are not the bastards you're looking for.

You're right, of course. You've just stated much of what I was thinking more elequently that I could. As you said our system just makes it not worthwhile going after the little guy, who's harmed noone. Although the IIRC BPI did float the idea of acting like the **AA I've not seen anything come of it. And, to be blunt, the British press, loves an underdog, so if they started suing old grannies they would quickly lose credibility among the general public. I can see the Daily Mail headlines already.

Then considering the way this government reacts to headlines, perhaps we should hope the BPI tries somthing; Tony's (or maybe Gordon's) next speech would be on the terrorist evil that is copyright law.

Having said all that, I would like to see some clarification of the law (more case law?) in this area, just so we can see what exactly is allowed, and what isn't. Because there are many people (including myself) who just don't know what fair dealing allows and what it dosn't. My opinion is that my photocopying activities are inline with the government guidelines I posted eailer, but IANAL either.

The reason that we are all asking these apparently dumb-ass questions is that we have heard to the contrary. Specifically, here in the UK, where the local equivalent of the RIAA the BPI are suing allofmp3.com and their chief council said in evidence to parliament "AllofMP3.com is illegal under UK law and it is illegal to download from it". Now, she did go on to say that they wouldn't be prosecuting users, but of course that could always change.

Now, you are a US lawyer and can't be expected to understand UK law, but you might be able to speculate whether it would be illegal to download from allofmp3.com in the US.

BPI contact details. If you feel strongly about this, how about writing to them to let them know? Try and keep it polite though, as I suspect that flames aren't likely to flow up the org-chart ;)

The Windows Trojan/Erazer-A Trojan looks at default folders for downloading MP3, AVI, MPEG, WMV, Gif, Zip graphic and video files, and wipes anything it finds with these extensions in the target locations.

The assumption is that because the Trojan is only deleting certain file types in specific download directories used by P2P programs -- one of the main sources of inadvertent malware infection -- it is attempting to protect those it manages to infect. [emph mine]

This press release on the BPI site explains how 2005 was the best year for sales in history, beating 2004, which in turn beat 2003, which beat 2002, which beat... and so on.

From the press release: This high comes after six years of year-on-year growth in artist album sales from 87.7m [units] in 1999 to 126.2m in 2005, an increase of 44% in just six years.

It's sad to see this once powerful industry decimated by p2p piracy.

"Oh, wait..."

The unauthorised distribution of music over the internet is against the law. It infringes the legal rights of artists and record companies. And it's bad for music.

There is a British Phonographic Industry association, but the Recording Industry Association of America has no legal power here.

That's fine as far as development is concerned, but of course any customer who uses your software can be sued for patent infringement as well. So who's going to use it? Compare file sharing of music where here in the UK, the British Phonographic Institution has just successfully sued individual UK Internet users for up to £4,500.

I'd like to try and track down some of these people; so far all I've found is the BPI press release, where they give the initial letter for the surname only.

It would be good to actually hear from some of these people (is there any chance they are stooges for the BPI?).

First observations: no ed2k, no soulseek there. these are still fairly mainstream/'newbie'/old networks. all of these allow you to see a list of someone's shares? i wonder where else they're monitoring/know about - there's a lag in their learning about the newest trading methods, but there's also a lag in this sort of news getting out, so it's tricky to know.

The press release states that users of soulseek and ed2k are among the next 31 people to receive lawsuits.

We need to move very swiftly from a climate of ignorance to one in which people understand that illegal uploading is fundamentally no different from shoplifting."

From the statement:

The best-known unauthorized filesharing network is KaZaA, but others include Bearshare, WinMX, iMesh and BitTorrent.

Hmm. I was under the impression that the main use for BitTorrent is to share the load of software downloads. Given that (as far as I know) there is no way to search for a file over BitTorrent (other than finding the appropriate tracker), using it as a Napster-alike would be both impractical and somewhat masochistic. <hat type="tinfoil">Perhaps this is also a cunningly concealed smear campaign against free software?</hat>

In all seriousness, though, when we're encouraging people to download new releases of (say) Firefox via BitTorrent, its association with KaZaA and other somewhat dodgy software of its ilk could discourage "upstanding citizens".

On a totally unrelated note, the newspapers I've seen today are using a photo of Avril Lavigne to illustrate this tale of the plight of the poor starving musicians...

For those of you wanting to learn more about the organisation, here's the British Phonographic Industry website.

You can visit the British Phonographic Institutes homepage (obviously) here.

But if you'd rather not be annoyed by the overly gratuitous flash webmash, just send them an e-mail, on general@bpi.co.uk.

I'm disgusted this is spun as a "copyright" issue.

BPI release statement on CDWOW!

and just in case you might start using your brain and realise the isn't a good thing:

Music Buyers Enjoy Lower Than Ever Prices

BPI release statement on CDWOW!

and just in case you might start using your brain and realise the isn't a good thing:

Music Buyers Enjoy Lower Than Ever Prices

Here's a link from the horses mouth

MPAA should be US-only problem.

When the easy group last did something the content industry disliked, they got slapped down - not by RIAA, but by The BPI (The British Phonographic Industry). Presumably at RIAA's behest.

I'm sure there's an MPAA equivilant in the UK, and I'm sure Chemical Valenti will just give them a call.

[because they're US only] MPAA should not have ANY say in the matter

I agree. But I suspect they think they've already got the right to go into Europe.

Look at the US content industry's attacks on Australians and lets not forget DVD Jon

"The volume of CD albums shipped in 2002 reached another all time high: 221.6m units"

Source: British Phonographic Industry

So sales haven't declined at all. I guess they just haven't risen as much as they hoped. At least in the UK, that is...

Yeah... but the RIAA has some good friends in the form of British Phonographic Industry (The RIAA's equivalent number), considering ~ 25% of the world's commercial music comes from the UK, they usually have something to say about these matters.

I'm surprised the British Phonographic Indusitry isn't shitting bricks about Napster, they do have piracy info on their site, but I think their main objective is to concentrate on dodgy CD manufacturers that pump out illegal CD's en mass.

Since 25% of the worlds music comes from the UK, they probably are shitting bricks, but maybe they're just too nice to say anything about it and are plotting like a bunch of cads behind closed doors? I can remember a few artists went to Brussels to pledge their support for some European legislation to counteract mp3 (because legislation will work, right?), they seem to forget it stamps on all the 'fair use' terms out there. I doubt they're ignoring what's going on though, they obviously have links with RIAA and are supporting their actions.