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P2P File Swapping on the Rise Again?
asdf 101 writes "News.com reports today that 'After six months of declines, peer-to-peer usage recently climbed 14 percent.' Their bottomline: 'The decline came as the RIAA launched more than 300 lawsuits against file swappers. The reversal cast doubts on the music industry's claims that its lawsuits are working to deter people from illegally downloading music files.' I guess wake_up_and_smell_the_coffee time just gets that much more imminent for all the hacks at RIAA." There's also an AP story, and you might want to review this story from just a few weeks ago that has different conclusions.
College students who went home to dial-up stopped swapping music over Christmas?! This is shocking!
Seriously, from Day 1 of those lawsuits it was different stories every week. P2P use declining ... no wait, it's on the rise. Then it's declining, and CD sales are increasing, now it's rising again.
/. after all).
I'd like to know, though, which P2P networks they're watching... (my apologies if it says so in the article, this is
Who doesn't like free music?
I buy all my CDs now. It's the ehtical thing to do.
I've been getting my music via second hand stores or I've been getting free (not bootlegged, but totally freely given) music from places like http://www.modarchive.com.
I'll keep going until the companies that support the RIAA are bankrupted or they relent with their assault on fair use rights.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What the RIAA doesn't seem to realize is that, people are able to block certain IP addresses in many of the client programs. Thus, when the RIAA goes online looking for traffic, they see fewer clients.
The other thing they don't seem to realize is that, there's more to "illegal file sharing" than Kazaa. It could be that people have cut down on their Kazaa use and have gone to other P2P programs.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Let's all go buy a bunch of CD's, and share the files vi P2P. That'll REALLY screw with the statistics. . .;)
You are not the customer.
The reversal cast doubts on the music industry's claims that its lawsuits are working to deter people from illegally downloading music files.
I think the legal reversal pertaining to Verizon having to hand over its members' information to the RIAA could explain such a rise. People are more likely to fileshare if they think the RIAA is less likely to be knocking on their door tomorrow. If anything, the lawsuits seemed to be "working" before that Verizon ruling.
Statistics are dangerous in the hands of people who may have a certain agenda to push. For example, saying that filesharing goes up 14% could simply imply that more new computer and/or Internet users have signed online to find previews of their favorite music artists' songs. Also, it's very possible that the way these companies conduct these studies of the popularity of file sharing could simply have changed a bit. If one month they're monitoring seven different filesharing networks for their statistics, and they suddenly add an eighth to the mix, the numbers are obviously going to increase.
We need to stop worrying about these silly RIAA lawsuits and about the ethics of filesharing and simply realize that the current music distribution model is horrible. The CD/album is not popular anymore; artists are fueled by hit singles much more so than hit albums. Things like Apple's iPod/iTunes service, while expensive, are a good first step to delivering media content the way people wish to receive it.
Stop letting the media tell you what to do. If you want to use peer to peer software, use it. There's nothing wrong with sharing songs with friends/associates in my opinion, and it only helps to spread the word about music artists and make them and their merchandise more popular. Sharing file is as natural an act as sexual intercourse between a man and woman/man and a man/woman and a woman, so the days of prosecuting it are definitely numbered, and it'll be as laughable in 20 years time as the article 2 nodes down on the Slashdot front page about VCR taping regulations.
Have fun with life and be responsible, but at the same time don't worry about the evil bit devil at the other end of your cable connection reading your data that flows to and fro your machine. There will soon be better options, and hopefully moves like HP licensing Apple iTunes technology, as well as other things, will make the online movies/music environment better than ever.
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
....except that stuff like this can't really be measured too accurately?
How about making copyright reform a central issue in the upcoming election?
Very likely most politicians don't know if the DMCA is fit to eat, feel Disney and the RIAA are important campaign contributors whose requests should be given priority, and music downloaders are simple thieves who deserve every bit of punishment they get.
You can change that. But it's going to take some work. There are enough people sharing music in America - more people than voted for George Bush - that if you get off your collective asses and get politically active, you can get laws passed to get the RIAA off your back.
In Change the Law, I explain that copyright is not a Constitutional right, like free speech. Instead copyright is allowed (but not required) to serve a useful purpose, a purpose which I feel has long since outlived its usefulness.
I suggest steps you can take to bring about copyright reform, ranging from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
One thing I'd like you all to do today is to write your elected representatives to ask their opinion of the current state of copyright law given its widespread abuse by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, and to urge them to work towards copyright reform. Let them know your vote will depend on a positive response.
When you're done writing that letter, write to the other candidates for each office in the upcoming elections, to ask them the same question.
Sixty million American peer-to-peer file traders have the potential to raise a lot of Hell with the politicians. I want every candidate to be peppered with questions about copyright reform at every campaign stop and in every press interview. I want the repeal of the DMCA to be discussed in the Presidential debates.
People marched in protest when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested. Dmitry is free now - but the law under which he was jailed is still on the books.
If you agree with me that something needs to be done about copyright, I need your help.
Thank you for your attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
"The NPD Group, an independent market research firm, reported on Friday that peer-to-peer usage was up 14 percent in November 2003 from September. This upturn comes after six straight months of declines in digital file sharing. Usage dropped dramatically starting in April 2003..."
The first thing from the article that caught my eye was the timing. So the usage declined right around the time all the college students started exams and then went home. Then it picked up again in September...just in time for school to start again.
Next...just what is "usage"? It doesn't specify mp3s, video, documents...nothing. It just says usage. Yet the RIAA will assume it's all mp3s and go nuts again.
There will never be a way to truly determine why usage drops and rises. The RIAA likes to say "it's because we're educating the public", news sources like to say "it's because everyone is afraid of the RIAA's lawsuits", music download companies (ie, iTunes, Napster, etc) like to say "it's because of our services and people would rather get legitimate copies". Nobody knows. This battle will rage for years, we'll see different theories on why it rises and drops, and people will continue to download their files whenever and however they want.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Could it be that file sharing as a whole has been growing, but that people have been moving from p2p applications to pay-for-music services?
Sig intentionaly left blank
That's a rough average of how many are online at a time, the last time I checked. That would be 10 or 100s of millions of Kazaa users. And there are many other P2P systems other that Kazaa.
Can RIAA sue them all? There is strength in numbers. People would not take them seriously, if the chance of getting caught is next to nothing (if you don't share your entire HD worth of britney sphere =b)
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
I realize the RIAA is aware of the other ways people illegally swap music, but I don't think the press does. P2P is only one aspect.... usenet anyone? IRC? DC? BitTorrent?... I could go on. (Remember those great ratio FTP dump sites before Napster?? yeah those were _GrEaT_ :P ). The "war" being played in the media seems (IMHO) to say "If the RIAA can kill P2P, pirating will be dead". Whatever.
As a side note, I haven't touched anything but iTMS in almost a year (come April). Why would you want to pirate when there are great *legal* alternatives available?
I now bittorrent most stuff, and use Aquisition (OS X) for the most part.
According to everything I see, filesharing on the Mac is pretty much under the radar, which is fine by me.
Of course, I have a giant FTP server that serves everything I've ever downloaded, ratio free. I only give the addy/name/password to people I know, and that keeps leeches away, as well as the xxAAs. I freely share it all with people who need something. Why not? I know what I'm doing is against the law, but frankly everyone you know does something against the law everyday, whether they know it or not.
This is just my bit of civil disobediece. I'm posting this anon so I don't have a pile of emails asking for access.
I think when the RIAA first started to file lawsuits many many people got scared and either stopped filesharing or at least took steps to limit their risk of being sued (e.g. turning of file sharing programs when they're not being used).
I think people are still taking steps to limit their own personal risk (in the article this is reflected by It's important to keep in mind that file sharing is occurring less frequently than before the RIAA began its legal efforts to stem the tide of P2P). However, looking at people I know, I think a significant number of them who completely stopped filesharing when the RIAA started to file lawsuits are starting to do so again. My theory on this is that they've noticed that all of the people they know who still use p2p have not gotten sued, so they've concluded that some p2p usage is probably safe. This empirical result makes sense given the large number of p2p users, and the proportionaly limited number of lawsuits the RIAA has been able to file. Note that, this doesn't mean that p2p services are necessarily safe, it just means that for the majority of the population it appears that they are less dangerous then they might have thought they were a few months ago.
In my corner of the world all this RIAA stuff has
just pushed things further underground. Small networks consisting of trusted ssh users and sneaker net via usb2.0 external drives is the most common way of moving media around here and no one has to worry about RIAA and friends seeing what's going on.
You are missing one key motivating factor behind downloading: It is the only way to nearly instantly (on hi-speed) obtain a song or a movie.
Sure, you could drive to a store, but that involves getting off your ass, which is something manking has been trying to do less and less of since the Industrial Revolution. And store collections are severely limited compared to online collections.
The point is, there is a demand for instant on-demand entertainment, there's obviously the technology, but the only people who can allow it legally are dragging their feet.
You should never rely on statistics if you cant see the evidence. For all we know they could count this on how many people download off a server they set up. They could even run kazaa and look at the blurb in the status bar at how many users are online and how much theyre sharing and monitor it over time. With no way to know dont take this too seriously, and its rediculous that big companies will use trashy figures to promote their products. it just doesnt seem to matter these days companies dont care as long as they can dupe their customers into buying their product. Bottom line, dont even trust a %.
70 % of people i spoke to agree to this post with 100% of them being imagined.
How many computers are too many?
I own more than 1,500 CDs. Up until recently, I owned an additional 400 cassettes, but they degraded so much over time that I eventually had to pitch them after several unsuccessful attempts to record them as MP3s. I have purchased, on average, three to four CDs, every week for the past several years.
Prior to this year, I had very little experience with file sharing. I always thought it took too long, required too much effort and I didn't want to worry about poor rips at low bitrates. I thought both sides have their collective heads up their collective asses. Traders whining about copyright law vs theft and the music industry doing everything they can to destroy themselves. I don't know what's more annoying, people saying that they steal because music is overpriced, or label executives saying that traders will put low-level employees out of business. Show me that trailer with the stuntman again and I'll barf! Plus, I liked to point out that just about every complete album I downloaded I ended up purchasing. It seemed like P2P was a non-issue and both sides were idiots.
Then I got sick over the holidays and ended up hanging out in bed. After my third straight day of Bond movies on Spike, I decided to see how long it would take to download Pitchfork's Top 50 Singles of 2003 on a P2P network. By the end of the night I had the complete list, and suddenly the challenge was "How long would it take to download their top 50 ALBUMS of the year.
In the last two weeks I've downloaded nearly 50 CDs (Only six of them were on Pitchfork's list). Many have been out of print albums, but many more have been straight-up recent commercial releases. The quality is awesome and modern software enables you to queue up a long list of files and forget about it.
I now see what the RIAA has been so afraid of. Just a few weeks ago I was spending $50 a week on CDs. Now I drive by a record store and think "What sort of chump pays for music?" I don't download because music is expensive -- I download because it's too freakin' EASY. If one of their strongest customers is so easily turned, what's up with the casual consumer. The media companies are screwed.
As a quick check visit top 100 lists such as Pitchfork top 50 of 2003, which contains sub-pop music flavors. Now search for the albums on edonkey networks with clients or FileDonkey. It's amazing to see so many RARs and ZIPs.
Less fakes, more helpful comments, better hashing, etc... at least for time being.
Where the Music Matters
On a slightly related note, I have noticed getting a hit or to from http://www.riaa.com in my referrer logs. Should I be scared?
They have also critically damaged people's sympathy to them. If 100 year copyrights were not bad enough, threatening 12 year olds and grandparents was. Few people have any sympathy for publishers who are making money off dead artists, artists they hardly pay and stuff they could have recorded off the radio 40 years ago. Everyone knows that music recorded in 1902 paid for itself by 1903 and the big publishers are nothing but greedy control freaks.
The continued rise of file sharing spells the end of the 5 big dumb music publishers. Music is being libreated from it's comercial clutches and all sorts of wonderful acts will flourish and profit without those goons in the way. People basking in a variety of music and cultural service the comercial world never delivered will not put RIAA chains back on. They will understand they were right and when the money goes from the RIAA, so too goes their propaganda and fewer and fewer people will be mislead. Good riddance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As im sure alot of /.'s are aware their is a program out there called Bittorrent.
My preferred client is Bittorrent++.
Now, if you like to download stuff in an environment that kinda reminds me of the ol audiogalaxy days I strongly recommend you try out Suprnova.org. Obviosly this is still subjective to riaa 'snooping' as the clients dont appear to support ip range banning, but since they are Open source, anyone can be free to implement any sort of riaa spoofing/protection.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Keep in mind that the litigation campaign and stopping P2P activity are not ends in themselves. The real measure of success of anything record companies do is sales figures. Money is, after all, the only language they understand.
I couldn't find any year-end figures, but here's a look at the RIAA's own sales figures (pdf) for the first half of 2003. Notice that CD sales were down 14% from the previous year. Apparently the wave of lawsuits launched in April had no immediate effect on CD sales. However, look at the sales of CD singles. Up 162% ! ! !
Unless I'm crazy, the fact that music sales in album form are down and in singles form are up might indicate that people want to decide which songs they pay for, instead of being forced to buy a few good songs along with a lot of filler.
People have been trying to tell the record industry this for quite a while. With hard evidence in the form of actual money, do you think they still have no clue why their profits in recent years have declined? It's because of their own outdated marketing rather than "piracy."
According to this article in the Register music sales overall for 2003 fell only 0.8% below 2002. They credit a big rise in music videos on DVD, but the RIAA will no doubt be singing the praises of their legal crusade. Reminds me of Caligula ordering his army to fight back the incoming tide.
The Riaa could easily say the recent court ruling preventing them from easily forcing ISP's to hand over customers details are behind the recent rise.
I suspect one of the reasons for any possible reversal is that as the press about the lawsuits dies down so does peoples conciousness about it.
Scare tactics only work when you are scaring people. That's why the law suits won't work in the long term. You'd not only need new lawsuits all the time but you'd need the press to continue to be bothered to write about them. Otherwise for 99% of people they effectively aren't happening and there's nothing to worry about.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Yes, downloading is illegal. Yes, it should not be done. For god's sake make the punishment fit the crime though - if I get caught downloading one MP3 I believe that it is not right to sue me for $5000 or more. That's what they expect for the loss of one sale which, if bought through iTunes, would be $0.99 or less.
Also, you mention Freenet's only purpose being copyright violation. Wasn't it's main purpose to help those under opression make their opinions known? Isn't it far too slow for effective copyright abuse anyway? Isn't BitTorrent a P2P client which is usually used for legitimate purposes?
You could've made an interesting point, but get your facts straight first.
Now the theory is that they announce these things and people get scared that if they use a P2P they'll get sued right?
Well when are the more likely to find people to sue? When they haven't done it for a while, or the day after they file a suit and are busy with legal stuff? I'm thinking that the time immediatly after the suits are announce would be the SAFEST time to use a P2P service.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Reminds me of Caligula ordering his army to fight back the incoming tide.
Canute . Caligula was the sister fucker.
Da Blog
Since by buying the used CD you raise it's value in the market, and make it more likely someone will buy the CD new (either because it doesn't cost much more new or they can't readily find the CD used since it's in demand). If you really want to stop helping them go here and use it to stop buying music that supports them all together. I'm too weak though, several of my favorite bands have record contracts with the RIAA.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Evidently, a decrease in numbers of people hosting large volumes of files has taken place.. however the P2P networls are all still running well.
I suspect people have taken to downloading files, keeping them a few days or weeks on their shared volumes and then deleting... many people have always done this, when you get a file you help a few more people get it, then delete the shared copy to reduce the likelihood of legal action against yourself
in other words P2P has become more distributed.. more multiply redundant. Less legally actionable.
RIAA, and your counterparts here in Europe. We're the people who you have to thank if you wake up in the morning: everything in your comfy leather-lined world relies on IT support.
Don't screw with us. You'll lose.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Da Blog
I think I suggested it when they announced it in December, but it's obvious that college students probably make up the majority of P2P downloaders...and since most schools now offer 24/7 broadband access from dormitories, it would only go to reason that they make up a majority of the uploaders...
The RIAA was trying to spin the end of semester as a win for their cause...but as soon as they released the info, I'm sure they realized the error of their ways...it was only going to last for about a month...
So, why are all schools not blocking P2P??? Because, when you start blocking ports you start to take responsibility for what your users are doing (block KaZaA because it's "bad" and you have to block gnutella too)...most schools are simply throtling the most popular P2P ports...which isn't keeping students from downloading...
When the first person got that copy. There's no reason why the artist should get another cut just because it changes hands.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
A hobby of mine:
RecordStoreReview.com
Most have pictures and reviews so you know where to go at a glance.
As Obi-Wan might say, you can't win, but there are alternatives to downloading.
Your local public library has CDs that you can borrow, usually for a week or so, absolutely free.
Some of the more sophisticated libraries allow you to search and request titles online, so that a CD that's at a library twenty miles away, or currently checked out by someone else, will be sent to your nearest library as soon as it is available. Some libraries will send an email to let you know that your titles have arrived.
Library CDs are often pretty beat up, and many are missing the original booklets or jewel cases, but they will still play in a good player. You can even do your library a favor and use some of that CD repair glop on them so future borrowers can enjoy them as well (assuming that stuff actually works).
Now, I don't advocate that anyone go to their library's website, request a lot of titles that they want online, go pick them up, take them to their office with several networked PCs on a Saturday afternoon, rip the CDs to AAC, burn them onto a couple of blank CD-RWs, take them home, pop them into iTunes, and then transfer them all to an iPod. I couldn't support that. Especially since it's free.
Now that I've let that cat out of the bag, we can expect to see the RIAA confiscating CDs from public libraries across the country, as well as obtaining Patriot Act subpoenas demanding to know the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of every library patron who has ever borrowed a CD. Since librarians have about as much political clout as homeless people (actually a little less), Congress and the media will look the other way.
Or am I being exceptionally paranoid?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I mean, even if the RIAA is bad, stealing from it isn't good. *ducks* If the RIAA makes a lot, and the artists make a few pennies per cd, your still stealing a few pennies from the artist. Because your copying its not as bad as stealing a physical object which costs more to make, but it still isn't right IMO. Back when Peer-to-Peer started (back with napster and such), it made sense. You could only get full cd's with one or two good songs, and the music wasn't great. It still isn't, but we have iTunes and various other music services you can get it from at a reasonable price. Unless your just sampling, there really isn't much of an excuse. If you like to enough to download, pay a dollar.
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
...one factor is always pushing for a rise. Bandwidth. The companies can squabble all they want about reasons here, and reasons there. But if it was a song yesterday, an album today, then it'll be a jukebox tomorrow within the same timespan.
That's the one factor they can't stop. Napster was the pain treshold.. since then, they've done a lot of stuff to make it harder - but in the end, it just keeps getting easier... it's like fighting the tide.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I love the way that they assume that 14% increase in P2P usage == 14% increase in music sharing.
P2P != music sharing.
Its used for many other things as well, like, eh, movie sharing and ISOs etc..
in the GNU sense of the word.
Downloading MP3s from RIAA bands is like using cracked software. Somebody needs to step up and do for music what RMS did for software.
Nobody mentioned whether or not there was a correlation between increased numbers of broadband users and increased illegal mp3 downloads. Downloading songs in general is more appealing with more bandwidth.
Vote for Pedro
If it was legal for me to get a tape and record off the radio, then why is it illegal for me to use my pc?
... well, technically it's probably still a violation of copyright but I'm reasonably certain any lawsuit would be quickly thrown out by arguing fair use. (ie you bought the book, you just made a backup to preserve the condition of the valuable original).
Because your example doesn't match the reality of the situation.
Taping music off the radio is more like RIPing your CD to MP3. (ie "fair use") This is not (currently) illegal.
Taking that MP3 and giving it to someone (eg making it available on a filesharing network) is illegal. (because you just made a copy for the purposes of distribution, which is an exclusive right of the copyright-holder).
In the US, music licensing/copyright laws have explicit clauses for "fair use" (eg singing "Happy Birthday" at your kids party) while still defining as illegal other violations (eg public and/or for money performances of songs).
Think of it like this, if you bought a book and photocopied the entire thing 10,000 times, and gave those 10,000 copies to your friends (and their friends, and relatives, etc) - that's a violation of copyright and therefore illegal.
If you bought a first-edition hardcover signed book, made one single photo-copy, put the original in your book-archive storage room, and only even read the copy
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This would be fun, and I could have it right next to my S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq tickers.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Oddly enough, the RIAA have actually *thought* about "the right number" here, just that they're thinking is a little muddy.
Their argument is that one track downloaded on a P2P network could then be shared by that user and translate to thousands of future downloads. fair enough
Of course, that logic means the X1000downloads against the value of one track should be applied to those who make tracks available online not to JimBob "I downloaded one song" SixPack.
Anyone who downloads music in violation of copyright should pay penalties equal to the value of songs (and if they're not "released singles" , then to the value of whole albums) which were downloaded. Anyone who makes songs available should be sued X10,000 (or some other irrationally high multiplier) because they're distributing music in violation of copyright.
Of course, having said that, the RIAA really should get off their fat arse and make available lossless-encoded tracks available for (at least) Windows, MAC OS, Linux, *BSD in some "available as OpenSource decoder" format so that we can have a legitimate alternative to purchasing CDs.
Not that that will stop *all* the illegal activity, but it would then at least put them in the position of having some morals/principles.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
While we all know what you mean, I want to be pedantic. Downloading is not illegal. Downloading, even when just restricted to music is not illegal. It is important that the perception that "Downloading from Kazaa is illegal" isn't spread any further.
There are many sites and services that provide access to music free for download, because the artist has released it as such. My current favourite is Machinae Supremacy. However, there are many more. I suggest you have a look at a couple of things. First is a program: iRATE which downloads music and adjusts to your preferences based on what other people like. (If you don't mind building code, get the CVS version, it is quite improved on the stable version). Another thing that makes for good reading is this article which provides information on, among other things, where legally free music can be found.
RIAA is using a new tactic to get their message out by spamming referral/hit lists of blogs..
Mine is getting hit by them every few days because I speak out about the wonders of the P2P..
yes my weblog link is in my profile..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Are people actually swapping files more or are we just being less fearful and more honest to the pollsters?
..how much time have you spent listening to bad quality copies, or copies that end up being cut short? Perhaps not a ton, but some I'm sure.
So your music experience could be even *easier* yet. What if, instead of it taking to the end of the night to find and download Pitchfork's Top 50 Singles of 2003, it only took you a couple of hours, and you knew before-hand that everything you downloaded would be great quality and fully complete. Would you consider paying for that?
Now, on top of that, what if, once you'd downloaded a certain amount of Pitchfork, it gave you the option to download a free CD cover image and/or booklet to print out and go with your new Pitchfork tunes, would that be an incentive to have you purchase more Pitchfork tunes? And as you purchased more, other incentives would open up -- perhaps a discount code for Pitchfork merchandise, access to a mailing list that the artists themselves talk on once in a while, downloadable posters, exclusive interview tracks, etc.
What if, on top of that, after downloading a bunch of Pitchfork tunes, it started giving you the option to download a free single from a group somewhat like Pitchfork, to see if you want to try them out as well? Would that be a valuable service, one that might encourage you to keep spending money?
The media companies don't need to be screwed at all. They just need to realize that they can no longer be in the business of restricting access to music to those who can pay, and instead need to be in the business of selling what services they can add to make that music more valuable when it comes from them.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
"Free market" in this country sure looks an awful lot like old soviet socialism. It's no wonder they can't put a dent in "piracy" when the companies claiming to be "victims" look just as evil as Ivan and Boris that run the Ukrainian pressing plants...
This is self-reported usage So all the figures represent is the percentage of people who download music and are dumb enough to admit it to anyone who calls claiming to be a pollster. Of course this percentage would go down in light of the RIAA witch hunt regardless of whether there is any change, up or down, in actual file sharing.
All statistics based on self-reported data should be taken with a large spoonful of salt!
Repeal the DMCA!
First, the RIAA has done a very good job at injecting false music files, especially with hot artists. If you search "Eminem", most likely the top ten downloadable files that return are bogus. They play for five seconds, then BUZZZZ. Irritating. But I gues it's fire with fire. Second reason is that the initial flurry of downloading resulted in people downloading most of what they wanted. I used to be on P2P daily, but now it's only every couple of weeks, because my library is big enough that I could listen to it for days on end. So I believe the survey, but I think it's disingenuous to place cause/effect squarely on the lawsuits. I like to think of it as an "all-you-can-eat" buffet where the crowd has already gorged themselves. The new guys coming in the front door of the buffet will be eating, and the rest of us will be going back for seconds, but not with immediate gusto.
I seem to recall that the online music store (well, ITMS really) had created a huge increase in singles sales figures - do you know if that was physical CD's only or if those numbers were boosted by online stores?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The continued rise of file sharing spells the end of the 5 big dumb music publishers. Music is being libreated from it's comercial clutches and all sorts of wonderful acts will flourish and profit without those goons in the way. People basking in a variety of music and cultural service the comercial world never delivered will not put RIAA chains back on. They will understand they were right and when the money goes from the RIAA, so too goes their propaganda and fewer and fewer people will be mislead. Good riddance." A quite common reason given by file-sharers for downloading music and never paying for it, is that record companies charge too much for the product.
Personally, I think this is true, but I also think that these ~5 corporations should not control what is promoted and distributed to millions and even billions of people. If an album is released on any major label or affiliate, I try not to spend money on it, even if I like the artist. I still download at least a few tracks from any album before I make a purchase, even when I'm actually planning on buying products from people I have some amount of respect for. This is sometimes less necessary when I see an act live and can make some sort of judgement there, however, I've seen live acts whose albums I've downloaded and immediately deleted, thankful I didn't purchase them. Bottomline, If I don't think the album is worth what's being charged, I won't buy it, and I have yet to see a Compact Disc I would pay $15 for. For some I think $5 is too much.
Before I ramble on anymore.. twitter you are absolutely right, and I don't think that the record companies are going to let this happen if they can help it, at any cost. I'm curious to see how they attempt to implement points of control in digital distribution as they have already with distribution of CDs, Records, Tapes, etc. If there were no record companies, only artists, then the artists could concievably charge however much, or little, they felt was necessary. People wouldn't be contributing to their indoctrination by corporate giants, or at least not to such a degree. After all, you can take their distribution (maybe), but promotion... Well graffiti isn't as kindly taken to as file sharing, and without money, it's getting harder and harder to be heard on a large scale, while acting legally and/or morally anyways.
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
No one would think the maker of a table or any other product is deserving of recurring revenue if something they made once is passed from one person to another. Arbitrary is thinking that someone making a CD should be deserving where other creators and builders aren't.
Taxation is something completely different. It obviously is arbitrary because a goverment just decides it needs to take some money and comes up with some rules to do it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
"Wake up and smell the coffee time for the hacks at RIAA."
Wake up and smell the coffee for what? The realization that people are going to illegally pirate your product no matter how much you pursue them legally?
When they were trying to shut down p2p programs, all the Slashdotters went on and on about how they should be going after individual users. Then when they started doing that, suddenly the RIAA is the bad guy again.
When does pirating become so widespread that nobody can make any money anymore? Already, PC games sales are declining so much that everybody is moving to console games, and the PC is getting a bunch of ports as a result, some of them crappy (Deus Ex: Invisible War is the most recent example I can remember).
So, wake up and smell the coffee--and realize what? That nobody wants to pay for anything anymore and has justified it as a lame "culture movement" against the RIAA? What about the artists in this? Nobody gives a shit about the human beings who actually rented the studio, showed up, and spent weeks if not months recording the music people are now getting for free.
Seriously, for the past couple of months I've been buying more CDs than ever before. Why? Moved to Merida, Mexico. CDs sell for about $1.50 USD. Granted, they aren't "originals", but they sound fine to me. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that if you could pick up CDs in the US for that price, well, the number of downloads would drop.
Talk about hypocrisy. Slashdot wants you to think it loves the artist because it is trying to fight on behalf of the artist against this evil mega-alliance called the RIAA. This is a disingenuous load of crap at best. (Obviously by "Slashdotter" I'm speaking of the stereotypical anti-copyright, anti-RIAA type who is so popular here.)
Slashdot hates - HATES - the artists. More than anyone even, including the RIAA - and that's saying something. Ultimately, Slashdot wants to control the artist, to shape him into a being that exists solely for the pleasure of the Slashdotter - an entertainment slave. To this end, because offering CDs for reasonable amounts of money and expecting the Slashdotter to pay for them would be out of the question, Slashdotters want to see artists forced into a nomadic life of perpetual touring, surviving in a state of poverty on the meager funds brought in by low ticket prices and merchandise sales. Slashdotters hate for bands to be successful. Any band playing amphitheaters or arenas has "sold out" to the "mainstream" and does not deserve to be patronised. This is because the "mainstream" is beyond the control of slashdot, and any artist entering it is, in turn, freeing himself from the shackles of Slashdotters' self-centered desires. Slashdotters want to choose how much - and WHETHER! - to pay for the music they download. Most importantly, that music MUST be encoded in ______ [obscure format] at ____ [bitrate] with ____ [special encoder switches] or they will REFUSE to pay - but will STILL demand to be able to download this music anyway. (It is curiously both free and sub-optimal at the same time.)
"But whenever I use P2p, I send the artist a buck!" Sure you do, and that disheveled homeless drunkard who just asked me for a quarter really only wants it because he's trying to catch a bus ride to see his mom in the hospital. "Micropayments" seem like a great idea around here because they are just what they sound like - small payments, which are better than big payments, right???
Slashdot is full of grand ideas about how the copyright system is totally and completely fucked. I don't know - maybe it is. But when you consider that the underlying motivation for the perpetuation of this viewpoint in discussions here is the deep-seated desire to get cool stuff, like big-name music and movies, for free, maybe it's not the copyright system that's so fucked... maybe it's Slashdot and its head-up-the-arse notions of morality and fairness.
I can't stand cheap people. It makes me real mad when someone says something like, "Hey, when are you going to pay me that $100 you owe me?" or "Do you have that $50 you borrowed?" Man, quit being so cheap!
...Here's how to reduce (not stop) file sharing:
1) Get rid of the price-fixing of CDs that occurs across the handful of music giants and their associated retailers. CDs do *NOT* cost 10-20 dollars/pounds/Euros each to produce, it's that simple. Retailers and record companies are making *huge* profits because of price-fixing.
2) Make the quality of the output higher. Give people good artists that take the time to produce an entire album of high quality music rather than just the 1 or 2 tracks that most people want. Otherwise, give people the ability to download those tracks they want at a fair price.
3) Stop penalising those of us that legitimately buy CDs. I will *NOT* knowingly buy a protected CD by any artist and I *WILL* return any such as faulty to the vendor that sold it me. I will *NOT* give up my right to use something I have legitimately bought in the way I want to use it and the way I have previously leant and borrowed from) people CDs, LPs, tapes, etc.
4) Accept that part of living in a society is the sharing of thoughts and experiences. That includes sharing music, whether it's sitting in a room with a group of people listening to an album, lending somebody a CD / tape. etc. Music *ALWAYS* has been about culturally shared experiences and people will always share music as a result.
I personally do not agree with MP3 sharing as a mechanism to build up huge music collections free of charge - that denies an artist somewhere a livelihood.
However, sharing is a valid mechanism to overcome the hype and advertisement lies of record comapnies that try to sell CDs based purely on the way some artists look, not by the quality of the music they create. Therefore, downloading and listening to MP3s means that people can either buy the CD afterwards because they like the MP3s or delete them because they're not even worth backing up to a CD or wasting hard disk space on - at least people stop getting ripped off as a result.
People have no qualms or guilt about MP3 sharing because the record companies currently have no regard for them in expecting them to pay over-inflated prices for frequently sub-standard product.
When the RIAA gets it into its thick skull that this is purely and simply about *GIVING THE CUSTOMER VALUE FOR MONEY*, then MP3 sharing will reduce. There will always be pirates but this has never stopped the music and software industry in the past and is unlikely to in the future.
This is simply about making the customer feel valued, nothing more...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.