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BPI Threaten Uploaders With Legal Action
rizole writes "Following the RIAA, ARIA and more recently the
CRIA, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) intend warning 'serial uploaders' that they risk court action if they continue their activities. The BPI has announced a new 'instant messaging' campaign to warn offenders and quotes research that indicates that downloaders spending on albums was down 32%, and spending on singles was down 59% over the previous year. All the best U.S. trends get exported to the UK."
and so does the best FUD
"seven million people in Britain steal music..." (it's not.. you know the argument. + if so many are doing it, maybe the law needs some reworking)
"downloading music from illegal sites" (no they're downloading from networks, peers, and the networks are legal. just makes the geek in me cringe when journalists do this)
"There is no clearer evidence of the damage that illegal downloading is doing to British music and the British music industry" (has this been proven yet? Is it just bad for for the BPI or is it bad for British Music - there's a huge difference in scope there!)
"The illegal downloaders tend to go for the most popular artists, but in the long term unknown artists will lose out because record companies will not have the money to invest in new artists." (very very unproven - i've found lots of new music that i couldn't buy, because i wouldn't know about it, if it weren't for free file trading).
and remember the final FUD point (assuming this is the same as in America) they don't get you for downloading! it's uploading. this is the big one to try to scare people off. though of course, not sharing ruins the network ultimately.
"They are more likely to live in London and the South-East where internet broadband connections have taken off more quickly than in other regions." (so they are more likely to be rich.. so they are not cheap, they are more likely to buy your music if you sort your act out).
Now a few questions I want to ask:
- Which networks are they monitoring?
How are they deciding who to go after and who to ignore?
(this is the part where i want to save my own ass getting sued).finally: "allows tracks to be bought over the internet for less than 1 pound each." That's nearly TWO dollars at the current exchange. get the h*ll outta here! a dollar is already too much and too little for artists; rip-off Britain strikes again!
wow my largest post ever. yeah, i love music.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
People need entertainment. And since they know they're a monopoly they should be able to raise prices with impunity while having only a modest effect on sales. It's not like they're competing with other companies for entertainment dollars, they're the only ones allowed to sell music.
Oh wait. You might be reading the same econ texts. You're just not subscribing to the same fallacious set of assumptions. Clever rabbit, Brits are for Tricks.
Also, over ten years, given the rate of inflation, prices shouldn't have quite doubled yet. So that tells us something too.