Australian Record Industry Has Best Year Ever

Hecatonchires writes "ARIA (Australian Record Industry Assoc.) had their best year ever, but are fudging the figures because they run counter to their anti-filesharing arguments."

Comments

Mirror

[topgun98]

Mirror here: http://www.silenceisdefeat.org/mirrors/www.smh.com .au/articles/2004/03/28/1080412234274.html

It's NOT STEALING. And it never will be.

[User 956]

Seriously. No one calls "patent infringment" "patent, stealing", no one calls "trademark infringement" "trademark stealing".

Copyright infringement isn't stealing either, though they can both be independently illegal. The difference here is that the copyright holder doesn't lose his rights. His exclusivity is infringed upon, but nothing is taken.

If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.

Anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing" has an agenda, and shouldn't be trusted.

Re:It's NOT STEALING. And it never will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it contributes to monopoly-sharing as explained in this Slashdot posted article (that was mysteriously absent from the main page).

Re:It's NOT STEALING. And it never will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not neccessarily defending copyright infringement, he's just saying that falling into the habit of equating it with "theft" is worth avoiding. There's a good reason we have different laws for theft and copyright infringement.

Re:It's NOT STEALING. And it never will be.

[DjReagan]

> "actual piracy is incredibly rare"

According to a recent news article its not as rare as you'd think. In 2003 there were 445 reported incidents.

Re:It's NOT STEALING. And it never will be.

[cthugha]

That's very odd, there was a case in Australia in the 1930s with very similar facts that went the opposite way: see Victoria Park Racing and Recreation Grounds Company Ltd v Taylor (1937) 58 CLR 479. Considering that actual presence on or interference with the plaintiff's property is one of the elements of trespass, the idea that you could be sued for merely watching what's happening on somebody else's land is very strange indeed.

Repeat?

[Jack Porter]

File Sharing Increases CD Sales

Re:Keep in mind

[Brandybuck]

it does suggest that file sharing can't be hurting sales that much

It doesn't suggest that at all. Consider if sales were up ten million over last year with filesharing, but would have been up twenty million without filesharing. Filesharing would have thus hurt sales by ten million.

I have no idea whether filesharing actually helped or hurt anything, but at least try to keep your logic straight.

About the author

[supine]

Steve Cannane is the presenter of Hack, a half hour current affairs program on the national "youth" radio station Triple J.

There isn't much bio information on the website but he is in his second year of presenting Triple J's current affairs program and was previously a reporter for same. You can listen to the show online.

He has written some interesting articles for the Sydney Morning Herald in the past, including this one on the decline of Sydney and another on censorship of CDs.

cheers
marty

Re:Keep in mind

[maharg]

Amen. From the British Phonographic Industry website:


Summary

The value of sales of music topped 500m in the final quarter of 2003, the second highest quarterly total ever recorded, representing an increase of 4.5% on the same period in 2002. Clearly the demand for recorded music in the UK remains strong.

Re:Keep in mind

[sholden]

That quote doesn't say that file-sharing helps record sales. It says "... are buying more CDs after file-sharing", which is not the same as saying "... are buying more CDs due to file-sharing".

It is stating the findings of the research - that after file-sharing that particular group of people are buying more CDs than they were before hand. Causation isn't claimed, only correlation which is the point being made.

Maybe CD prices have dropped between the before and after file-sharing time frames. Maybe the economy boomed and hence spending on CDs. Maybe the price of DVD players dropped and suddenly a large number of people had a device that can also play CDs in the lounge room.

The quote you provided makes no claim as to the reasons why, it merely states the correlation. Exactly what the "correlation is not causation" crowd demands.

Re:Oh, come on

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, your numbers are all wrong, and you didn't even cite a source.

Truth is that CD sales went up since p2p networks were released, but I'm not claiming there is a connecton.
Truth is CD sales went down when with the economic downturn, but I'm not claiming that economics and CD sales have any connection whatsoever.
Truth is CD sales went up with each new p2p network released and went down when the p2p networks were shut down, But I'm not claiming there is any connection.
Truth is that record compaines have fewer new realeses now than before, but I'm not claiming that that fewer realeses == fewer sales.

I'm not claiming anything, I'm just telling you the truth. It's all in these following links.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/f eb 2003/tc20030213_9095_tc078.htm
http://news.bbc.co .uk/1/hi/technology/3117505.stm
http://www.azoz.c om/music/features/0008.html
http://www.theregiste r.co.uk/content/archive/26710 .html
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report /Summar y/0,1338,14854,FF.html

Re:Morally, IT IS stealing

[d99-sbr]

So by this rationale, getting on the bus without paying is stealing. Parking your car in the city without paying is stealing. Reading a paper in the store is stealing.

What about if your neighbor calls you and asks you to play your new CD so loud that he can hear it through the wall? If you do, are you an accomplice to his stealing the music?

Clearly, your claim is flawed.

Re:Keep in mind

[gerddie]

Howevere - what would be really intresting to know is how the independent artist and/or labels are affected by the p2p filesharing. I believe p2p filesharing of music helps people discover new and different music - which, more often than not, come from independent artists/labels.
According to this article: What record industry slump? Independent labels say business has never been better.

Re:Still isn't theft

[mistered]

Right from the Copyright Board of Canada,

... the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of ... a musical work embodied in a sound recording ... onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

Check the link for the full context.