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UK Record Industry Starts Suing Filesharers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has the story that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has started a first set of lawsuits against UK file sharers. 23 people paid £50,000 to settle out of court. This is the first time people in the UK have been fined, and probably won't be the last. From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
This is just the start of the trends which have become somewhat commonn place in the states making the hop over the Atlantic. I think read on Drudge yesterday that the MPAA is considering a similar manuever in the UK. Insiders say that they plan on going after people who are sharing 10 movies or more. For now they are only planning on targeting those who offer up movies which have yet to be released but I would imagine they will be widening that net before too long.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Seriously, 50,000 pounds for some music? They're so extreme with the amounts.
I had a doubt. If my neighbour uses my wireless network (which I have kept open as a social service) to download copyrighted stuff, can I be sued????
fuvoo: watch something
When will the record companies learn, if they price there product in an affordable price range, people will buy.
r ow ing.fast/
Apple has sold approximately 85 million songs in the first two months of 2005, surpassing Piper Jaffray's initial estimates for the entire March quarter. Based on Apple's earlier announcement of 300 million total tracks sold, Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster says that iTunes sales could account for $83.2 million in revenue in the March quarter--or about $35 million more than the firm has been estimating. The firm also believes average daily sales rate has been 1.35 million per day since late January, which very similar to the 1.43 million daily run rate (i.e., sales of songs) in the weeks following the holidays. "We had been anticipating a more significant drop off in iTunes sales from the levels seen in the weeks following the holidays."
In addition to driving iPod sales, the firm says that Apple's iTunes Music Store will also contribute significantly to the company earnings: while it estimtates that the current operating margin on iTunes is in the low single digits, Piper Jaffray says it believes iTunes profitability will begin to increase throughout 2005, with operating margins reaching 5% to 10% in 2006.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/03/02/itunes.g
How many of these 23 people were under 10 or over 80 years old? And did at least half of them own a computer?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to
If that's all your kids have been up to on the internet when you're not watching, you're in OK shape...
I need more sleep. I just read that as 'British Pornographic Industry'.
My other first post is car post.
50,000 pounds for music? Things have sure gone up when I was a kid. Bubble gum used to cost a quarter too!
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
"...make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
Don't most artists make only a pittance on their album sales anyway, even after they have paid back the label for their 'generous' promotional contract?
Call me cynical, but claiming that the settlement money is going to go to artists seems disingenuous. Of course claiming 'lost' profits by the labels on file sharing is moreso.
Quick Vyvyan! Eat the hard drive!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
why don't they just sue for the ammount of $ they have stolen (i.e. the average cost of a CD) instead of charging these OUTRAGEOUS fees? Any body?
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
So, way back in the day, everyone was outraged that the music industry was trying to fight piracy by litigating away P2P technology, instead of going after the people who were actually breaking the law.
Now they're going after the people who actually break the law, instead of trying to end P2P.
I think that the idea of fair use ought to be extended, but am I supposed to be outraged that this is happening? They're actually going after people who are breaking the law, instead of trying to end technologies with legitimate uses.
Isn't this exactly what we asked for?
The problem is that it IS NOT their property. The RIAA is NOT a rightsholder. Therefore, by US law, their lawsuits are frivolous. They are suing on the behalf of others, who are mistaken if they expect money from the RIAA. The RIAA should go back to worrying about who gets gold records.
Hmm... How many people do you think they will sue? 10? 20? 1000? You know I don't know anybody who bothers to use p2p to pirate music anymore. There are easier ways to get old or indie albums by borrowing off of friends and everything new or mainstream is crap. My friends and I share music perfectly easy without P2P, in fact one of the first things I do with new friends is share our music collections with each other. The genie of digital copying is out of the bottle and it's going to take a lot of restriction to get it back in again. Enough restriction to destroy the music industry itself. Record sales aren't going to improve until the BPI or the RIAA stop stuffing crap down our throats, stop suing us and stop treating us like criminals, even if from their perspective we are. Society has changed, forever.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
make them compensate the artists
Bahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahaha hahaha haha whew.
Sorry about that.
I mean, really, I don't want to pay what I consider outrageous prices for crap. I'm not downloading anything either. If you want some good music, go down to your local coffee house and listen to a good live band and buy their CD if you like their music. For the price of a coffee, I can listen to a small live concert for several hours while I do homework. You mean you can try before you buy? Amazing! The CD's I get from the local artists (and other independent artists that come through my area on tour) are much cheaper than the record-label CD's and the quality of music is sooo worth it. While the ethics of downloading the label's music is disputed, one thing I think we can all agree on is that the labels would have no ammo if people would just boycott them instead of refusing to purchase their crap and downloading music. Boycotts do work. And boycotts 'steal' nothing from the artists.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
It's like walking into a Wal-Mart, stuffing something in your coat, walking out, and justifying it by saying that they charge too much anyway.
No, it is not. It's more like not wanting to pay $5 to rent a movie that you've heard is bad, so you walk over to your friends house and borrow it. You've just screwed the movie company out of money and should be tossed in jail for "stealing" by not paying them every time you watch it.
Learn to love Alaska
An even better way: (read my sig)
http://www.mediachest.com
Share your collection face-to-face, or through the mail. Meet new people.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Probably everyone has played a version of the lemonade stand game that teaches simple economic sense or for those more into other things the drug game w/ the same basis.
/em sends a copy of the lemonade stand game to MPAA, RIAA and now BPI.
I'm not an economist or even a leader in the corporation I work for but that game taught me that people are willing to pay what they feel is a decent price for the product they receive and will not purchase any lemonade that is $5.00 a cup even on a 99degree farenheit day with no clouds in the sky.
The music companies are totally right in doing this.
:-)
They do have LEGAL RIGHTS to do this, yes.
Whether they are MORALLY RIGHT is up to your particular morality, and there's a wide variety out there
Yet another question is whether this is a RIGHT THING TO DO from a business viewpoint. Or from a public-good viewpoint. Again, answers vary.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I guarantee all lawsuits would stop within a month once the soul-sucking corporations stopped getting their infinite percent cut.
It's a rant people, don't reply like this was a thesis statement, but seriously, when are we going to make them give up the "for the artists (children)" argument? I think if the court is going to rule in their favor it should also require them to publicly announce their true actions. Which are using the legal systems to prop up an outmoded business model and integrate profit margins that they otherwise would never have earned anyway.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I bought a CD recently of 50 year old recordings. It hadn't been remastered or cleaned up in any way. I didn't special order order it but when I saw it I figured I'd never see it again. At any rate I'm the fool because I spent USD$23.95 + tax for a single CD. I'm left wondering though how many more fools like me are still around and what the fuck the record companies think the real world notion of value is? I mean, seriously - an old recording repressed to a CD with no post production, probably was sitting in the bins for 10 years and every 'artist' involved is probably dead by now. D'ya think the suits made their money on it, yet? Perhaps the only response we as consumers have is to try to press the copywrite owners into a patent-like situation where they get exclusive rights for a few years and then they lose all rights to the recording and we can do with it whatever we wish.
Some questions i'd like answered:
yeah, there's always a quote like this. trying to make it sound so righteous. What about the parents who said "wtf, you're extorting 5 grand out of us for what?" they never get quoted. What attempt. It's pay a huge fine*, or go to court and risk paying a really huge fine. It can't be a deterrent and be fair. So admit it: it's not fair to the people caught, but you're desperate to scare people. I trust the next BPI press release will show how much the artists got from this (yes, sarcasm).What kind of music (artists, genres, labels) were they sharing?
Why were they singled out (uh, awful pun)- sharing >x000 songs on a fixed IP for > x days?
Are the IPs of these british organistions listed in anti-anti-P2P blocking lists? i can bet these people weren't using any blocking, but would it have helped is another question.. proper anonymous music trading networks anyone?
*and admit you've been naughty and promise not to do it again, of course. whatever that means.
interesting, the fact that two people out of such a small pool were caught *twice* suggests they are looking for something very specific, like a particular list of songs (e.g. counting the matches, then taking the IPs of those with the most?). i'm guessing that these were people with dynamic IPs, rather than those sharing e.g. at home and at work.
Well i've been expecting this to happen in the UK - really, i'm amazed its taken until 2005 - and i always said "fuck it, safety in numbers" but i have to admit it is slightly scary to know you could get caught... i guess carrry on with the indie music, people! (and you know, buy some; just don't support the pigopolists, either by buying their music, or getting caught and really funding their lawyers.
btw, do they actually have to listen to your songs to see if they are the material as named? if so, maybe having a max-uploads-per-IP in the client would help you not get into trouble, as well as being fairer, spreading things around?
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Usually this results in songs that take 5-10% less time to listen to. Excellent stuff!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
i haven't bought a single cd since 1999 when i started using napster
many iterations of file sharing tools later, i'm on emule, and i have a simple solution to beating the riaa, et al:
i embrace world music, i let my mind wander
currently, i'm into filipino music (i live in new york city)
the thing to do is is to expand your musical interests to things beyond the usual pop crap, and you are also therefore using the new file sharing technology to its greatest benefit: connecting with resources that otherwise would be beyond your grasp in the pre-interent universe
embrace world music, screw the pop crap, and you win two ways:
1. you won't be on the riaa's radar
2. you'll grow new brain cells as you develop an awareness of a world beyond your nation's borders
there really is a lot of good stuff out there that isn't the usual robbie williams or britney spears crap
free your mind and give the bastards who want to market you sugar water the finger in the process
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
If anything, it is the labels / artists who should have to pay fines everytime they rattle off phrases like that. I bet they don't use that sort of language in court. No one is stealing anything from anyone. There is no property that is being exchanged, nor has anyone's actions resulted in someone somehow losing any material item. They make it sound like every d/l song is a lost sale and that a lost sale should be counted as an asset. Maybe at Enron, but that's completely bogus.
What is happening is that people are illegally infringing on the labels / artists right to distribute (ie. copy) said material. That is not stealing. If someone goes into a library and photocopies an entire copyrighted book, they are infringing on the copyright owner's right to issue copies; however, that does not compare to the person who goes into a bookstore and removes from the bookstore, without paying, the same book. THAT is stealing! Both are committing an illegal activity but they are exceptionally different in character.
Besides, copyright is a stupid law to begin with.