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IFPI 'First Wave' Sues 247 In Europe & Canada
securitas writes "AP and many others report that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry - IFPI - has sued 247 accused file-sharers in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Canada as part of an unprecedented, coordinated attack. The IFPI represents the global recording industry through its members - national associations like the IFPIG, DRIA, FIMI, CRIA and RIAA - and says it will launch more international lawsuits in the months ahead. You may also want to read the official IFPI 'first wave' press release/related documents and a statement by the IFPI's chairman and CEO. Lots of coverage at AP/AJC, USA Today, the New York Times, Reuters/CNN Money, ZDNet/CNet, Bloomberg , netimperative and the BBC. The timing of the international legal attacks is especially interesting in light of the recent study that indicates file-sharing has a negligible impact on music sales."
On first read, I thought it said Pornographic! That has got to be the only media that's probably shared more than music...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Same thing happened to me! When I first looked at the summary of the post, I thought it said "International Federation of the PORNOgraphic Industry"!
I was like, "Oh, no, they're suing people over sharing porn! What are we going to do?!"
All kidding aside, I'd really like to see chart showing the so-called "decline" in CD sales displayed alongside the trends in other aspects of the young person's financial life, such as increases in college tuition and the price of textbooks, the price of gasoline at the pump, and sales of designer clothes, video games, and other luxury items. I bet there are correlations all over the place.
Remember when Bart Simpson encounters the inventor of Spirograph, who glumly points out that there's a direct correlation between the decline in sales of Spirograph toys and the rise in violent crime in our nation's schools?
I think that the RIAA is using the same kind of logic... CD sales went down as P2P usage went up, therefore P2P usage caused CD sales to go down. I have this cool program on my Mac called "Fallacy Tutorial," which was made by some logic professor, and it lists this type of argument as "Ignoring a Common Cause." The RIAA and its buddies are doing what politicians have been doing for centuries. Go back and look at how Prohibition came into being in 1920, and you'll see how spurious arguments can be used over and over again until a tiny group of overly-influential people (often very wealthy to begin with) get their way.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
How can they sue file sharers in Canada? I thought they had a media tax to make it legal to share files?
Jay | http://oldos.org
"This is our first co-ordinated effort to take this campaign over the range of countries where file stealing is a problem," said Allen Dixon, IFPI's general counsel and executive director.
Maybe I was asleep, but since when did copyright infringements become known as "file stealing"!?
These cartels have had it too good for too long.. they're trying to sell us both media, and a license, then claim the license is non-transferrable and the media is non-replaceable.
In effect, you're being sold a hunk of plastic along with a very limited set of rights as to what you can do with your hunk of plastic. This business model is now crumbling thanks to the Internet, and I say good riddance to them and their Executive Directors.. go back to the dirty holes you crawled out from, and make room for real musicians, that make music for the love of it.. they've have no trouble embracing the 'net as a distribution mechanism.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
In reaction, the german Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has called for a boycott: German Page
This banner with the motto "Industry kills Music" is especially nice. The german text at the bottom translates to "And you are surprised that things are going badly?" and was part of a recent speech at a german music price ceremony where except for one indie band only badly casted, out-of-TV and largely joke-"stars" were on stage.
Oh, and the big bosses of the german music industry were present. According to news articles, they didn't exactly like being told the truth so bluntly and on live television...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I generally use warez groups to find out about new software or software I didn't know existed. I try it, if it's good I buy it. As a software developer I find it extraordinarily hypocritical that people will steal (illegally copy) software but want others to pay for their offering.
I would have never purchased the Adobe Design Collection if I hadn't been able to learn to use Photoshop, InDesign and Acrobat Forms first. I have yet to use Illustrator but Freehand is easier for me, and I'm too busy to pick up that old book I bought.
I have a policy at my company that if you use a piece of software to enhance your productivity and contribute to your job, you will get it. Hell, I've even bought WinRAR, Textpad and VuePrint (which readily have keygen's available).
This is why I think the "stealing music" slant is bullshit. How are you supposed to hear new music when Clear Channel owns 1/2 the radio stations and someone else owns the other 1/2? File Sharing. I buy every CD I have an mp3 for because honestly I make too much money to waste my time trying to decrypt the slang used to name songs. Not to mention my bandwidth, etc. A $11.99 CD is well worth the time savings.
The RIAA, etc need to pull their heads out of their asses and learn that people like to test drive a product before they buy. I cannot imagine buying a car without trying it out. Why should music be any different?
Why would they go after third-world pirates? Those guys are just increasing market-share when they would otherwise presumably be buying from local media/software vendors. Why would they want them doing that?
But you can bet your ass they'll go after us -- we don't have any other sources to buy their product from so why not? Whatever other sources we might have had they took away with the product design (DVD region codes) or DCMA.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's not interesting that they are suing at all. If filesharing helped music sales increase 1000% they still would be suing filesharers. They care about control of the media not sales. Filesharing is a threat to their business because filesharing makes their class of middleman obsolete. If artists release their music over kazaa what purpose would RIAA members serve?
*sigh* some people never learn...or they knowingly choose to use stronger language to frighten (or terrorize in today's overused parlance) the masses into submission.
And I don't want to fuckin' have to think twice every time I want to listen to the same music in my car, on my computer or on my living room. Is it that difficult to understand?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Copyright law in many countries prevents you from distributing somebody elses work, plain and simple. These people are not being sued because they had some kind of tangible impact on sales, but because they were distributing copyrighted material to anybody (ie: nothing to do with fair use rights here).
These are the people that are making it bloody hard for the rest of us to get non-crippled CDs, because the recording industry thinks this is the way to fight them (which it incidentally is not, but that's a whole different story).
I'm glad the record industry is suing, because this is the way copyright conflicts should be dealt with: in court. Not with half-assed technological countermeasures that are making it a pain for the rest of us, and certainly not with lobbying legislation that will obliterate 'fair use' for their works.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Damnit - I need to get this off my chest. If this much effort was put into catching the real criminals of the internet (spammers, child pornographers etc) the net would be a much better and safer place. All this is just due to a huge lobby and a horde of overpaid lawyers. I refuse to recognize this as problem worthy of this many ressources.
Ok - I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry for the rant.
Underholdning.info
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I wonder how many sales are being lost because of the negative PR all these lawsuits must bring.
Even if it could be proven the lawsuits are having a larger negative effect than the perceived downloading has on sales, I doubt the RIAA would stop. They ignore studies which show CD sales have not been majorly effected by downloading (we had a post about that yesterday, and the RIAA just tossed it aside claiming all these studies that had shown a direct-link. The only problem is I believe the RIAA or someone in the recording industry funded the research of all the researchers who found that there was a correlation.)It's not like the RIAA is even trying to hide that it's just sue-happy right now. Even people who haven't heard about the whole downloading bruhaha are starting to notice and think the RIAA is a bunch of idiots. That has to be effecting the industry, but does the RIAA even seem to consider the possibility? If they have, they sure don't act like it.
Based on the co-ordinated nature of the attack, I have to suspect that Al Quaeda had something to do with this.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
The artists are represented by their recording company. The companies are represented by the RIAA, and the RIAA is represented the IFPI? I think the artists are far enough removed at this point that the IFPI is a purely political organization only interested in money / power / self.
If you work to reform the copyright laws, you can make the sharing of any file legal.
Here are some steps you can take to do this:
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Speak Out
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Vote
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Write to Your Elected Representatives
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Donate Money to Political Campaigns
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Support Campaign Finance Reform
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Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
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Practice Civil Disobedience
In the US anyway, copyright is not a Constitutional right. I suspect that it's not a fundamental right in most countries.The reason I ask you to googlebomb my article in my signature here is that I'm trying to educate the peer-to-peer network users. I attract the readers by offerring links to lots of free, legal downloads, but give them a political education while I've got their attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
IFPI Switzerland seems to go down the same road according to this article (german).
As in Canada, only uploading copyrighted music is illegal here, not downloading. As Switzerland is not member of the EU, the laws between the EU and Switzerland are quite different in some points. Cracking copy protection for instance isn't illegal (yet) AFAIK.