Slashdot Mirror
MP3s In Foreign Countries
KirTakat writes: "We see lots of links to information about MP3s in America (by this I mean most English speaking countries, which seems to be the major readership on Slashdot), and how they are being handled legally and the such, but how are they affecting other countries? Are they even mentioned in the news, or is the legal aspect of MP3s pretty much an American thing?" Maybe some readers can describe how the "music on the internet" debate has gone in other areas of the world.
Posters? You mean ones like this?
__
VPRO not only took all sony stuff offline, they took it off the air, and do not play ANY sony music anymore. They want to put their radio-programmes online in its entirety, not with parts cut out.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Napster says that they have all right to deep link to MP3, BUMA says that there is enough international jurisprudence to get the site shut.
A national dutch Media (not commercial) union called VPRO put their radio shows onto the internet after broadcast. Sony got a bit pissed and said that music fans should not be able to hear their favourite music for free, they should sit next to the radio and wait patiently until their favourite song would be played. The VPRO took all Sony content offline. Nowadays other record companies are getting pissed as well, we still don't know what the VPRO is going to do.
A little offtopic (not mp3) but interesting: The union of consumers, biggest organization for protecting consumers rights, published an article this month on the quality of DVD players. They also wrote about the region code. According to the article, it is not illegal to modify the player into a region free player, they even published adresses and prices for player modification.
I just love this counry (Holland).
Bizar technology?
Although Denmark is a member of the EU, Danish music industry took initiative to hit hard on illegal mp3 downloading and CD copying about one and a half year ago.
This lead to a couple of cases in which residents at Danish university dorms were brought to court and charged ridiculus high sums of money for allowing public access to mp3's on the university's networks.
Shortly after that followed a couple of cases against private collections of mp3's and again the sums sued for by the music industry was incredibly high for Danish standards. Normally in a lawsuit no one gets compensated over $100,000 but in the cases the demand was closer to $200,000. The cases were rejected by court, and the music industry's crusade against illegal copying fizzled. A lot of money was spent on advertising the campaign but not a lot came out of it. About a year or two ago, some danish musicians started making some of their tracks available of th web, thus forcing the industry to relate to the new media. However, there are (to the best of my knowledge) no commercial mp3-sites in Denmark today.
-.sig sauer-
In the Netherlands, I dont think there has been much discussion yet although its clear that the industry and the BUMA/STEMRA organisation (who get money from airplay, cd sales and blank tapes/CD-R sales) are watching the developments closely. The BUMA/STEMRA organisation (http://www.buma.nl click on the UK flag for English) have made a temporary arrangement where webmasters can pay a sum of money to legally put online some music. There has also been a campaign (i.e. posters, commercials)against illegal copying of music.
Some time ago the Napster case was on national news and especially the djs of the Dutch public pop/rock radio station 3FM (http://www.3fm.nl) formed opionions. Some djs are clearly supporting mp3s.
There has been quite a lot of talking about mp3 here. The napster-trial is on the news and most record-companies here are screaming bloody murder about the net-distribution of music.
The most interesting point as I see it was a Recordlabel CEO that pointed out that what the recording industry was most afraid of was what he called "The lost generation" meaning that there is quite a large group of young kids who think that music is free. Us older geezers are used to paying for our music and use mp3 mostly for screening what we like and whats worth buying. The young don't have this behaviour and that could become a great problem for the industry.
So a lot of programs on radio and TV discuss this topic and so far noone has a solution.
/OSH
Swedish government has finally figured out that the "opt-out" scheme for spam is worthless. It's better than never I suppose.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Britney Spears, N' Sync, Vanilla Ice.. All the greats are from America.