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Aussies Face Jail Over MP3s
An anonymous reader writes "Two Australian students have been charged over music piracy offences, according to this story on Australian IT. It's short on details, but presumably they weren't running a P2P network. The maximum penalties for breaching copyright under Australian law is 5 years jail."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/24/10507773 42470.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-998132.html
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From one article....[smh.com.au]
"Three students have been charged with copyright offences over an alleged $60 million music piracy operation. "
While another reports....[news.com.com]
"Australian police said on Thursday they had closed down an Internet music piracy site and arrested three students in an alleged copyright scam that cost the music industry at least $37 million."
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
If this copyright law dates back to 1968 than there are bound to be some loop-holes that should get these guys off. They just need a decent lawyer.
No,it makes it a lot harder, since all the other cases since 1968 have been testing the law as it stands. The police (in general) will not prosecute if they determine that there's a previously known escape / loophole in this law that fits these circumstances. They make pretty sure that the law applies before going into court.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Umm, these WERE the "real pirates". They had thousands of albums online, full cover art, on a website - just click and take it. It wasn't some two-bit peer-to-peer sharing for fun. It was deliberately undermining the entire industry, and they deserve to be punished severely.
What exactly is the difference between the Aussie's crime and lending an (honestly purchased) record to a friend? Selling it second-hand? Taping the record before you sell it?
Clearly the artists must own the rights to their creations - but that does not guarantee they make money from it. When I buy a record I have bought the right to play it as often as I like, and for who I like. How could it be any other way?
fart/faart/(coarse) (v.intr.): emit intestinal gas from the anus. (n.): emission of intestinal gas from the anus.
For the curious, you can download (.pdf, .rtf):
the original act plus revisions
the copyright act amendment, known as the Digital Agenda
The reader will note that for the purpose of copyright infringement, actions that are not specifically allowed are considered to be infringing. Making .mp3's out of legally purchased CDs is technically an infringement, as it is not listed in the permissives, and not explicitly endorsed by (most) content producers.
More specifically, you can check another government site to learn what they interpret copyright infringement as.
I quote from the above: "Infringement of copyright can happen when works - such as paintings, books, computer software, films and music - are reproduced without permission from the copyright owners."
Ignorance of the law is no excuse..
Salon has been writing about this for a while for example take a look here: Will Congress Tackle Pay for Play
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Sometimes they purchase rights from the musicians. Of course, they control most of the distribution channels and use their monopolistic powers to keep that control.
So if you really want to hit it big, you sell your music to the music industry, who will pay a fair price for it and market you equally with the other bands they support....er, no.
What actually happens is that they send out people to look for bands in clubs. Those people look at a band and say, "can I sell this?" If the answer is yes, then the band will be offered a contract to make one, two, or however many records, for X dollars and Y% royalties on record sales, and Z% royalties from merchandising...or maybe just X. If the band is smart, they ask for X and Y too, but the company can always tell them to get lost; there are other bands out there that will sign for X.
After a band is signed, the company that signed them gives them a loan for M dollars to make a record. Since you'd better believe everything in that industry rotates around the big companies, some of that money comes back to them. M is divided up amoung producers, extra musicians, a studio, and whatever else there is. After a record is made (and made to the company's tastes, not the band's), they go on tour to earn money to pay back the record company. If the company doesn't advertise for them, the band will sink. If the company doesn't throw its weight behind them, then other bands will get the good venues. When everything is all said and done, the band has made very little actual profit, the record company owns the songs (and has the master tapes to make unlimited copies of those songs), and the band still has to do B-1 albums before their contract is over.
That's how the music-making end of the music industry works. On the music distribution side, the record company has deals with radio stations to play certain songs (of the record company's choosing) more often that normal. The radio stations must pay the record company to play these songs. The band is told to go on Leno or Conan to advertise themselves (Conan let slip once that they had to pay movie companies for the rights to show the little clips actors bring, dunno if they have to pay the record company for a band's appearance). The CDs are pimped to music shops, and everything, everything, everything revolves around getting the consumer to buy as many copies of the CDs as possible. Once that's happened, the record company has made money. It costs about 12 cents to press a CD, slightly more to produce the artwork, and the band is footing the bill for making the music that they don't own. At NO time does the record industry have _any_ obligation to the customers out there. All they want is money, and how they get it is irrelevant.
But you're still missing the core point. The media companies don't want their songs to get exposure, they want specific songs to get exposure. Allowing them all to float around gives them an equal chance to be exposed, so they've lost control. It isn't about just making money, its about control. They think they can make more money if they can control the market.