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UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers'
Joel Rowbottom writes "The British Phonographic Institute has warned that it is about to engage in a round of legal action against file-sharing users, following in the footsteps of the RIAA. Apparently they are 'safeguarding the future of music' - don't you just feel so secure and cuddly knowing that?" Their statement is available.
It obviously doesn't work for the RIAA, so why take the political heat?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Speaking of pornography I find it amusing that it's ok to share Gb's worth of hardcore material without harassment - potentially supplying minors with stuff they wouldn't have been able to get hold of say 10 years ago, yet share some mp3's and you're automagically a criminal...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
I know a young single mother in the US who got sued and had to use her kid's college fund to pay the RIAA. Sorry, but piracy or no piracy, that simply isn't right, and I am surprised that there hasn't been more public revulsion in the US over this. Hopefully there will in the UK.
Music, musicians, even paid entertainers existed long, long before the RIAA and other similar entities existed and musicians will be better off when the middle persons are gone! Hopefully.
Major filesharing of copyrighted material that isn't under a GPL-like license is illegal, damaging to the industry, and should be dealt with accordingly. This is on a different scale than simply sharing a few songs between friends (which is likely to actually improve sales in the long run), so don't confuse the two. If the industry was going after everyone who was making personal backups of their music or making copies for friends, then I would have a big problem with it. But going after "major filesharers"? It's their duty to do that, for the preservation of the industry!
What is the BPI going to do to stop british music download in other countries where there are no/very primitive piracy laws especially for music download from the net.
I guess not much. Piracy is not that easy a task to do away with that u sue a few percent and expect the whole to react.
It occurred to me when I was reading the article, one of the subheadings was "targeting fans", and it occurred to me the fundamental difference between different roles and relationships that motivates people to download music illegally and the lawsuits by the music industry comes down to differentiating fans vs. customers. The music industry are targeting fans who are not customers. Fans support the artists, but through being a customer, support the artists financially and at the same time pays the commercial "tax" to the music publishers/industry.
As quite a few articles may have already pointed out, the music industry, after all, isn't suing customers, because if they were customers, they'd have paid and there would be no reason to sue.
Artists have fans, music publishers/industry have customers. The major problem is, fans generally want to support artists without having to be customers, because they are not customers of the artist, and frequently, most of the money doesn't go to the artist.
Not at all. I figured if the Pornographic Institute was coming after file-swappers, Slashdot would be down to about 6 people by the end of the month.
Mod point free since 2001
I didn;t read the links and I don't know much about ants but, as you said, this is /.
I am sure there is some unnecessary bw use. As for the second though, if the application itself falls under fair use b/c there are some legal uses, just being a node on the network isn't enough for a lawsuit.
Also, while they are at it, they can also spend some money from their fat vaults on doing a little more to preserve old master tapes from musical recordings rather than hoarding them away like squirrels and letting them rot away.
I understand that even master tape recordings as recent as some of REM's albums have now deteriorated to the point where they are now just about unusable - not that losing anything by REM would be a great loss to the music world.
I don't agree with illegal downloading but I agree even less with price-fixing. I never buy anything from rip-off merchant stores like HMV and Virgin in the UK, I support second-hand stores and Ebay for my music and will continue to do so until the greedy bastards in Sony, Time Warner, etc. stop ripping us off.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The porn industry is not worried about DRM, and here is why. 1. low costs of production. The cost of producting "Hoes on Hoes" or "Bratman" is painfully small, the small cost of a video camera, a tape and serveral people willing to have sex for money. 2. The porn industry has already been moving to the internet model, lower overhead. 3. Piracy HELPS media companies. You see if a friend gives me a video on my computer with Jenna Jameson in it and I like it then I will probably look for a tape starring her next time I go and look for a good porno tape. Just my 2 sense.....
Or why not stop sharing illegal content ? I'm not a big fan of somebody
trying to stop me from making copies of things I buy, but sharing
commercial music/video/software/games/etc. is bothe illegal and morally
wrong.
Notice how they've cleverly begun confusing "file sharing" with "copyright violation".
This is just moving towards a time where they can pass a law saying that all ISPs must block all ports besides port 80, and all ports registered with the FCC for valid, licensed use, like AOL Messenger and Windows Media.
Why not? Because the media companies say so? Because they have politicians in their pockets.
Copyright law used to be a good deal for the public because it restricted publishers for the benefit of authors without restricting ordinary people in any practical way (because printing books was difficult).
Now it has been twisted to restrict the public for the benefit of publishers. It's no longer a good deal for the public and we deserve a total overhaul.
Obviously the majority of the editors and posters here have similar viewpoints to eachother politically and socially, and so to anyone with an opposing view this place is filled with propoganda.
I personally think musicians have a right to make money from selling their music, especially small artists, without a bunch of jackasses giving their work away to literally thousands and thousands (and then millions if the work is deemed valuable and gets popular) of people.
I say sue the pants off the bastards. If you disagree with the way an artist chooses to distribute and/or charge for his/her music... then don't listen to the artist. Its as simple as that. Or get off your lazy ass and make your own music.
Many artists see value in free distribution. And so P2P is good for them, and often they'll encourage it at their shows. Some artists don't see the value and feel robbed. Hence legal action against the criminals who violate their rights is the only recourse at this point in the game.
I can't recall my sources, but I remember reading that singles don't generate much revenue for the label and/or artist. The whole purpose of a single is to promote an album or tour; where the real revenues are (for the label or artist, respectively).
I remember New Order's Blue Monday best-selling maxi single (world record) actually generated a loss. But that's also partly due the fancy packaging they chose.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
When the RIAA tried to shut down Napster, the Slashdot line was, "but people like this! And you're not offering a legal alternative!" And Slashdot was right.
When the RIAA sued the "second-generation" P2P companies like Kazaa, the Slashdot line was, "But they just write the software! They can't be held responsible for how people use it!" And Slashdot was right.
Now, with a dozen legal music stores available, the RIAA (and its ilk) are suing the individuals responsible for breaking the law. And now, finally, they are right, and Slashdot is wrong.
There are easy, affordable, online mechanisms for getting the music you want, in which the artists get paid. And there are ways to get music such that the artists don't get paid. One of them is right, and one of them is wrong. The individuals sharing stuff don't have anyone else to point a finger at; it's not the RIAA's fault, it's not Kazaa's fault, it's their fault if they break the law and deprive artists -- and the companies which support them -- of fair compensation.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
If you're so keen on giving away information then you develop something, pay with it out of your own pocket and give it away. We'll see how long you survive.
It's probably worht noting that the RIAA hasn't really developed anything here..
I'd like to clarify the Slashbot stance on things:
It's is okay for people to illegally download music, movies, and software as long as they're made by a big studio or artist. Even though this goes against the wishes of the creators and owners of the content in question, it is acceptable.
It is not okay for you to use a GPL'ed piece of code without GPL'ing it because this goes against the wishes of the creators and owners of the content in question.
It is okay to sue or threaten to sue people for the above mentioned infringement of the GPL license because it is important to protect the coder's rights and not set a precedent of ignoring violations.
It is not okay for the RIAA, MPAA, or BSA to sue people for illegally infringing on their copyrights or the copyrights of their members because the content in question falls under one or more of the following abstract, personal objections:
Despite the fact that any of the above arguments could easily be eliminated simply by telling people not to purchase the content in question, they're the basis for the argument here on Slashdot.
I just thought I would clear this up, because the babbling of all the braindead asswipes that frequent this place can sometimes confuse newcomers who don't understand what's so hard about "don't take things that aren't yours to take".
This story is a non-issue, nobody outside Slashdot cares because you deserve to get sued if you're infringing on their copyrights, go soak your head in a bucket of cold water, shave the damn beard off, tuck in your shirt, and join the rest of modern society you whiny, communist jackasses.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
>>Yep, in the UK it's illegal to sell most goods in Imperial weights and measures. (Some stupid European Union rule, which we're probably the only country to enforce). Probably because you are the only ones in the EU that doesn't already use the metric system...
He isnt trolling....in our fair isles its the truth.Because our Chief Justice Lord Woolf has decided crimes against Private citizens should be dealt with leniently.
Wanted : A Signature.
Because selling MP3s would make a profit and reduce piracy. Now, if that is the case, you have to ask why they're following the course that they are...
The management in charge of locating and developing music talent might be a bunch of coked out lowlifes that would sell their own mothers into slavery for below market value, but the army of ravenous accountants, lawyers, and other denizens of hell are actually quite sharp. These people, given the 2 choices of "sell MP3s and make nice profits" and "continue with a 1970s business model and die" will choose the former *every* single time.
So, if they aren't making that choice, well then, it's because there is a third one. More so, we can deduce that this third choice is indeed more profitable than that first one, the "honest business" choice. How can that be so? Well, in short, it's the "dishonest business" method. First, you need to create a piracy crisis, but hell, that sort of fell into their laps. Second, you need to wait for technology to advance to where we have the capability of making (mostly) working DRM. Then, when you own everything, you can let the money roll in, and buy legislation when necessary to patch this or that hole that you missed.
"But NoMoreNicksLeft, if that is so, won't hackers break the new DRM?"
Maybe, but does it matter? You don't stop hackers from hacking by punishing them when they commit an infraction. No, they still have that annoying privacy in their home... too many will get away with it where you can't do anything about it. You go after the hive. If some web forum describes the hack, nail it to the wall. Co-opt the internet, make it too transparent. Spam up the email systems, so that everything concentrates to a few email services that are easily subpoenaed. You see, hackers work in groups. A DirecTV smart card takes dozens, if not hundreds, of engineers to produce. To have a fair shot at it, dozens of hackers need to work together. If you can divide them, well, barring that one in a billion genius, they are defeated. And while they're scrabbling around trying to make a comeback, you're building the nextgen smartcard with 1000 engineers...
"But NoMoreNicksLeft, if that is so, won't we just make our own music?"
Yeh, sure. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather listen to an enthusiastic amateur any day rather than some of this shit I hear on the radio. But in the coming years, they'll make that something that's legal only if you are *licensed*. And how will they do that? They'll tell you it's for your own good. Congress will decide the RIAA is raping too many musicians, so they'll try to protect you from this... even if it's really the RIAA pulling the strings, and it's to protect them from you. But even before that, DRM will get in the way. As little as 3 musical notes can be copyrighted, did you know that? Obviously, when you use the mixing software, it will be searching for you playing covers without a license. There are what, 13 notes total (I'm not musically talented) ? Do you think it's difficult for a machine to recognize notes, or a sequence of them? Especially 10 years from now, when all of this will go down? The software might just lock you out, or maybe report you, but the effect is the same... you won't be making music. Go on, search the thrift stores for a serviceable tape deck, and something to record onto. The future is bleak
To support what the_mad_poster said but in a slightly different way...
Don't download copyrighted music from the net. Buy used CDs from online retailers instead. If you spent as much time doing a search for decently priced used CDs as you do looking for "free music", you'd find that CDs are cheap and getting cheaper.
Case in point; my Dad wanted to get a few songs from the 70s and 80s to listen to that don't get played on the radio much. (We're talking top 40 schlock here, not obsure stuff). One of his friends at work pointed him to a scam that make s you pay a "lifetime" membership to download the Limewire client. It turned out that this wouldn't work for him at all and after I explained the whole copyright issue (Like it or not, it's the law right now so you are better off abiding by it unless you want to be made an example of. Pick your battles.) he understood why downloading copyrighted music from the net (without the artist or label's permission) for free isn't ethical.
I then took the trouble of showing him the most mainstream online sources for purchasing used CDs. It turned out that the very songs he wanted were available on complete albums for as little as $1.99 per CD. It may not compete with legitimate downloads from the Apple iPod Store but it's not a bad deal either. He really did get the issue after I took the time to explain it and I showed him that his previous notion of $15 per CD is no longer true unless you want the very latest hits. He has no interest in newer music.
Once you have the disc you want, then you can rip it to whatever format you want for YOUR OWN PERSONAL USE. This does not include file sharing. MP3s or Vorbis files on CD-R are the electronic equivalent of cassette tapes and that is the way I use them. For those of us who need to have a soundtrack to our lives (You know who you are. You listen to music nearly every waking minute of the day because music is the most important thing in life.), CD-Rs stuffed with MP3 or Vorbis files are an inexpensive godsend compared to the Apple iPod. Once the iPod or devices like it come down to earth in terms of pricing, then maybe it would be time to consider a switch.
But, I repeat:
-Downloading music from the net that you don't have permission to download is not ethical.
-Uploading music to the net that you don't have permission to distribute is not ethical.
If you really want to distribute music, then get into distributing music from performers who have given you their permission. Speaking as a musician myself, I have to say that no matter if I was a number one hitmaker or just a one hit wonder, I would stipulate that my music be given away for free after a period of seven years. There is only so much money a person needs to make off of a creation. After a certain point, it's just greedy to expect more cash to flow in without any more real work.
Un-news
The porn industry took in (according to a pretty conservative Forbes article) around two *billion* dollars last year. I'm guessing that a whole lot of "good, Christian America" secretly wants (and secretly votes) to *keep* porn legal.
The only way to stop greed is by not feeding it.
Don't buy CDs, DVDs.
Who the fuck is Feargal Sharkey??????????????
Ah, the old "I'll over-simplify the arguments so it'll look like I'm right" argument. Well, first of all, there is no one Slashdot stance. If there was, there wouldn't be anywhere near the number of flame wars that there are.
Second, your over-simplification doesn't take into account the goals of the various parties. There are people who believe in strongly enforcing the GPL because it's geared towards helping the community/society, whereas the licenses for films and music are intended purely to make as much money as possible for the companies/machines that are extending and corrupting copyright.
Here goes a concept to blow your mind. I support stronger copyright law, but lesser enforcement of penalties for non-commercial infringement. That explains your GPL issue compared to the others. If I download some Opeth I couldn't find in a local store or get the Noir soundtrack online, no one loses since I wouldn't have had it anyhow. But it is still illegal.
This issue is not black and white, and I suggest you look at the gray area before you attack a community over it. I personally have no problems with mass file sharing. I also think that there are other solutions to supporting full time artists financially. Are you aware that the US government gives money to the arts? That's rather socialist. Perhaps you should move to a different country if you're against a solution that would lean towards communist ideals and that doesn't involve suing tens of millions of people?
Go read about the topic before you think it's needed to waste your time with illogical and misthought tripe. It wastes others time as well, having to explain it to you.
That's scary.
While I agree with much of what you have said, I do have a few points:
For me personally, my issue with the RIAA/MPAA/BSA is not so much *what* they are doing, but *how* they are doing it.
I have nothing against a copyright holder protecting their copyright. I do object to draconian solutions that attempt to remove or bypass the rights of the individual. I should *always* be allowed to make a copy for my own use (and why can't I make multiple backups, if they really *are* backups and not being shared?), but the industry giants don't want to allow that since it is difficult to allow some copying while blocking excessive copying.
The only way I can think of to protect everyone is to have hard encryption on the content, trusted signatures all the way to the display device, and government-mandated overrides to allow for individual backups, libraries, etc. Of course this still leaves the analog hole, but it was always there. It also leaves the issue of how to bypass the encryption when the term of copyright is up--some kind of escrow service might be possible.
I think the reason Slashdotters generally support GPL copyright holders is that usually in that case we're cheering for the underdog, whereas with music/film its the other way round. This is not to say that such a double-standard is *right*, but that's the way it is.
No, you're wrong. It's OK to use a piece of GPL software in your own code until you decide to sell it. It's OK to download music until you decide to sell it. This is the original intent of copyright, to control the use of materials by commerce, not individuals. Follow the money and the logic is clear and unambiguous. It's a century of corporate influence peddling which has distorted that original intent and made downloading music 'illegal'.
Mod parent up!
The other thing to realize about used cd purchases is that they do not fund any lawsuits since the recording industry (aka the RIAA) does not recieve a red cent from these transactions.
It's the only ethical way to buy music that I can do and still wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. I can't support these lawsuits against music fans by buying new cds.
-Downloading music from the net that you don't have permission to download is not ethical.
-Uploading music to the net that you don't have permission to distribute is not ethical.
Why?
Noone really addresses why it isnt ethical. Illegal does not mean unethical, just like legal doesnt mean ethical.
Frankly, since the other side so corrupted the "deal" that is copyright, I see no reason to continue my part of said deal.
Right now we are on the hub of the largest creative library in the history of mankind. The only thing keeping us back are greedy corperations and corrupt government. This would result in a massive explosion of new creative work, as has every other serious media breakthrough. You can already see this trend with sites such as homestarrunner.com and newgrounds.com. Free creative works, some of which are of incredible quality. (alien hominid.. which, consequentially, is available for free online, but is coming out for home consoles soon. I expect sales to be brisk.)
In the process, it would also completly disrupt the methodology and "business" of music. Music would no longer be as commoditized as it is. CDs would still be available for sale, I assure you. Fans would WANT the super-high-quality sound recordings.
Also, there is the "ITS FUCKING REALITY" argument.
People are going to distribute your music without your permission, regardless of its legality. So why fight it? Its obviously benificial in a worldwide social sense. Why lock up/fine/punish people for sharing culture?
Laws, policies, etc. that promote and protect the free exchange of information are okay.
Laws and policies that prevent the free exchange of information are not okay.
Simple huh?
You accept intellectual property as a founding principle, and then show how illogical people's opinions are on that basis. Obviously people who view things in terms of free speech will come to different conclusions.
-Downloading music from the net that you don't have permission to download is not ethical.
-Uploading music to the net that you don't have permission to distribute is not ethical.
Although I generally agree with you, ethics are of a personal nature, and it really isn't one person's place to tell everyone else what is or isn't ethical. My ethics are my ethics as yours are yours. I mean no disrespect in all of this, but I just feel as though you're sounding a little bit preachy.
Now if you want to talk about what is or isn't ethical to society as a whole, then it's a different story. Of course, I'd say that we're divided to a good extent on that one.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
The braindead babble, much like yours, is the result of the naive application of pure boolean logic to situations which aren't black and white. You can't just boil a complex problem down to a small number of truths in this hand-waving manner, as you will notice by the number of well written replies picking large holes in all the assumptions you've made to get there.
These days, I'm seeing this style of grandstanding boolean logic applied to so many of the world's issues by people with far too much power. It doesn't solve anything, and usually ends with war.
Have sledgehammer, see every problem as a nail.
It's okay to sue large well-budgeted entities, like companies, because they have money to defend themselves.
It's not okay for a large company to sue individuals, because it's like shooting fish in the bucket.
It's not okay to strengthen laws against technology that has any legal use whatsoever, because, well, it has legal use. That said, I can't think about a technology that doesn't have a legal use.
It's not okay to pass laws that increase IP protection, because there is more than enough already, and it really gets in the way of progress as it is.
Now, RIAA behaviour is despicable because they sue people who can't defend themselves, not because the illegal filesharers are right.
You are right, there is a huge, gaping contradiction there.
The reason, I think, why people (read: zealous slashdotters) wind up with that postion is sort of obvious though: It's because they hate (at least large) corporations, and they consider them to be evil. So the they (these slashdotters) don't really have any respect for whatever "rights" those corporations might have under the law.
I try not to follow this bad example... but it's difficult because: being I'm on the non-corporate side of things, the incentive for me to illegally download music is high: it's cheaper, *appears* to be victimless (even though it isn't), easier than going to the music store, and no one's gonna tell me what I can or can't do with the song once I've "aquired" it. Meanwhile the incentive for me to break the GPL by incorporating GPL code into a corporate product and not release the source code is... nill, since I'm not writing programs to sell.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
First of all, a large portion of P2P users are quite likely under the age of 20... they likely don't know much about being hippies or communism, and aren't likely any dirty than others of their age.
And bribing congress is a related problem, because it's not about "ripping off the music industry," it's about being sued for breaking laws. But the problem is, the laws and penalties keep changing, because the "industry" is bribing politicians to make them worse - and using their monentary clout to scare out settlements in face of said penalties.
The problem here, is not just that the industry may at times be getting "ripped off," but that they are ripping us off through our wallets by price fixing. And more importantly, they are ripping us off through our dimished rights through bribed politicians.
I'm sorry, but while there's no real excuse for dl'ing a commercial item you didn't pay for, neither is there an excuse for crippling the discs that I did pay for so that I can't make anti-scratch or roaming copies.
So guess what. I don't need to justify myself. The music I've been listening to the last few years: bought and paid for or freely licensed. The games, bought and paid for. It's the industry that is justifying itself by attacking consumers with lawsuits and copy-protection, claiming damage by piracy when in truth they're making more profit than ever. When I go on Kazaa I'm happily downloading copies of music simply because it's easier than trying to rip my own copy-crippled discs... think about that for a second.
The FSF line has always been "Without copyright the GPL would not exist. It would also be unnecessary". As an author of GPL code, I'd be perfectly happy to ignore its enforcement provided no one else had a right to stop me passing on or not passing on any information anymore either
But you aren't.
What you're downloading and uploading: recordings.
Which are to music what porn is to sex.