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Court Action Does Not Reduce File-Sharing
gollum123 wrote to mention a BBC report that despite numerous court cases, litigation does not appear to be reducing the amount of file-sharing. From the article: "The level of file-sharing has remained the same for two years despite 20,000 legal cases in 17 countries. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said it was 'containing" the problem and more people were connecting to broadband."
The more people that take court action, the more bitter people will be, and the less likely people will buy from them.
The people who get nailed in court for file-sharing seem very remote. It just doesn't seem like a file-sharing conviction will ever affect "normal" people who just use Limewire every so often when they need something. These people make up 99% of the file-sharing population.
True, the level has stayed the same .. but perhaps without the lawsuits and FUD campaign the amount of file sharing would have grown?
The number of users of iTunes and iPods music devices has increased, why hasnt the level of file sharing? Seems either lawsuits worked, or people prefer convenience of using the itunes store. I dont think it's healthy for the lawsuit factor should be blindly dismissed as ineffective.
The point I actually want to make is we have to be objective and have to know where the threats are. After all, no point in ignoring something that might be true. Maybe counter FUD is needed, or better file sharing methods?
I'm taking my w4r3z back to Usenet and IRC, where it's safe.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
1. People don't think that it's a big risk if there's a 1 in 100,000 chance they'll be the next one sued (especially if they don't swap too much).
2. Suing people tends to piss them off, making them less likely to buy from you.
Court Action Does Not Reduce File-Sharing
You can also interpret the data another way from this, if you so desire:
35% of illegal file-sharers have cut back*
14% of illegal file sharers have increased activity*
*Jupiter survey of 3,000 people in UK, Germany and Spain
Well I think it's obvious what the people want, and that's less strict copyright laws. I'm pretty sure democracy is not about who has the richest lobbyists, so the RIAA can kiss my ass.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Yeah, those kids who steal cookies, comic books, and CDs always grow up and get involved in armed robberies.
And a resounding DUH rang round the world.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I find the last paragraph of the article mildly amusing:
[Mr. Kennedy] said DRM was a "sometimes misunderstood element of the digital music business".
I wonder if he knows who is misunderstanding it...
good thing copyright violation and theft are different things entirely.
I wouldn't mind paying if the money went to the artist, and it was a decent price, but I'm sorry £9.99 for an album, of which the artist gets £1 (if that), it doesn't seem right. Until they sort out the corruption then I will not be doing business with them.
They are called The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries? Wow, that explains the ancient mindset of the music industry. Imagine the automotive industry still refering to themselves as horseless carriage manufactures!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
The level of file-sharing has remained the same for two years despite 20,000 legal cases in 17 countries.
Maybe THAT is the reason why record companies are seeing their profits decline? Court costs are not trivial.
Wouldn't we expect the level of file sharing to go up, proportional to the growing internet population? If it has, in fact, stayed flat that would indicate something is creating downward pressure. Whether it's the lawsuits or not is another question entirely.
You can't outlaw something that people don't think is illegal. Just how outlawing liquor in the 30's made it more popular than ever.
Who moved my sig?
.... RIAA lawyers kill a kitten.
A block of code, sufficiently well-written, is indistinguishable from magick.
You would expect file sharing to grow naturally as more and more people use the internet. The fact that it has merely stagnated suggests that the litigation is succeeding somewhat. My own mother, who doesn't even use a computer, warned me not to file share the other day. She had "heard that people are getting sued".
Something I did when I was a kid, which I'm ashamed of now, was shoplift just about everything that wasn't nailed down. And I was big into warez for a while. But now that I make a comfortable salary, my time is worth more to me than I would save by hunting down stuff online through nefarious means. (The shoplifting thing quickly faded as the risks grew when I reached maturity.)
/. visitors. I would guess that a large majority of those who are not students are, like me, nicely into middle class.
It would be interesting to see a demographic survey of
Anyway, the point here is that while I used to pirate a bunch of music, that too has faded. Now I mostly grab free music, mostly live stuff from etree. And I'm pretty embittered by the big music business. What fools.
However, unlike shoplifting or software piracy, I'm not really ashamed of the music piracy. All I was doing was something that was legal in the analog world. I was moving my own music from one place to another, or I was borrowing a copy of a friend's cd. And listening to a cd makes me want to go to a concert, and that's how their biz model should have worked.
Or they can just sue everybody.
Incidentally, I feel the same way about ripped TV shows. If I miss a show that was on yesterday, I still want to watch the show! All I'm doing is consuming what they air for free!
One spends money on things others can do more efficiently.
The price we pay is based on our assessment of the time it took to make the exact item/service we're getting.
Music live I can see paying $15-$50 or more -- supply is low, so demand sets the price.
Digital music has a near infinite supply. The market pushes costs to zero.
Entities like the RIAA and IFPI hire spin doctors (and the media) trying to make the public equate file-sharing with illegal activities. But this isn't necessarily the case.
P2P file-sharing technologies are inreasingly being used for legitimate distribution of many large content objects, simply because it makes more-efficient use of Internet infrastructure: the free-for-download fan series "Star Trek: New Voyages" and World of Warcraft patches are just two examples that come to mind.
I expect there's plenty of Gene Research data and other such things using P2P by now as well.
You'll notice that there is *never* any mention make of the use of portable storage devices, flash memory sticks etc., for the exchange of music files. Give the increase in the amount of storage that these devices are being upgraded to it becomes very convenient to copy MP.3s to these devices at your friends house etc. and to transfer such files to your computer, then iPod etc..
A draconian crackdown in online file sharing will only result the movement of file-sharing to an offline model.
I well recall the music industry wailing and gnashing their collective teeth in the late 70s, early 80s because of 'pirate' taping. There was much fuss, 'n feathers about electronics manufactures marketing dual well cassette decks. In the end CDs came along killing the cassette. Thus, the industry was placated for a couple of decades. Given the convenience of the CD, and the quality of the sound folks bought into the audio CD with a vengeance. They started replacing their music collection which had been on vinyl with CDs. This caused the recording corporations to reap a windfall, without having to develop new artist, paying for new albums etc.. About the time that the internet, especially broadband, got cranked up and really going the folks that were updating their music libraries to CD got caught up. Thereby causing a dip in CD sales. This was inevitable. Not that that placated the shareholders of the recording companies. Well the CEOs etc. in the industry had their backs against the wall, as they had failed to point out to shareholders that the retool to CDs was not going to last forever, and the CEOs had been operating on cruise control as per developing new sales. So recording industry fat-cats were staring doom in the face, heads were going to roll...
But Wait! We're not bad CEOs etc., it's those evil internet downloaders that are causing the drop in profit!
The fact is that the RIAA and its minion are doing *nothing* but scapegoating of a new technology, and its users so that oligarchs entrenched in an economic sector that is doomed for the scrape-heap of obsolescence can hang around long enough to be able to pop their golden parachutes.
It's not about morality, nor ethics. In the final analysis it ALL about $$$$$$ and maintain the oligarch's tasteless, but stately pleasure domes.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
consumers and artists
1.) artists need money to live and be productive
2.) artists need consumers who appreciate their art work, and pay for them
3.) consumers need artists too, because artists are the basic glue which upholds
and inspires our culture, every decade is mostly described by their artists,
and the artwork,
what you think of when I say 80s, perhaps there is a famous tune floating
through your ears, or you see a picture of the androgynous "Boy George",
or see a black pontiac transam cruising, it´s part of our culture,
or even parts of our identity.
<b>artwork belongs to both society and creator </b>
so as I wrote in the subject it´s a two way relationship where no side
can exist without the other, so from my point of view if you are an artist and create artwork, on the one hand you should have the right to sell your artwork,
and you should have the right to prosecute those people who sell
your creations, because this is a really damage in your oportunity to
sell your artwork, but persecuting private fileshares, which could not
pay for all artwork they have on their HDs aren´t really a loss,
because most of them still buy the artwork they appreciate most,
they are consumers who are willing to pay for artwork.
But accepting that you created artwork and release it to the public you also
must accept that since release you don´t own your creation entirely anymore,
it becomes part of the cultural heritage of a group, a society or even the worlds cultural heritage.
So concluding this, and citing what was said in a thread above, the more people you take to court the more bitter people there will be, the more consumers
you will lose.
<b>The copyright has gone mad since the "Mickey Mouse" - act induced by Bono.</b>
In germany we call the copyright "Urheberrecht"
Which means the right of the creator on his creation, but why should
the copyright last longer than the creator lives, because he is dead,
so he and his work were and are part of our culture, he participated
on the wealth of the consumers of his artwork, so why after his death
his artwork shouldn´t be public domain ?
Artwork isn´t pure commercial, because it´s part of our culture.
a.) I´m against commercial copyright violators
b.) I provide an allowance of private and fair use,
perhaps using a culture flat fee, where you pay non directional
so creators of swapped artwork get a compensation
c.) many artists owe their public success to the napsters and eDonkeys
of the world, for example "Gorillaz"
d.) music industry is stuck into a total commercial way of thinking,
they forgot that those private file swappers they sue, are also mostly
consumers, and that private fileswapping can boost record sales
e.) we even have recuded file swapping rates, but the record sales
are still decreasing.
<b> Copy doesn´t kill music,
Copy is a sign of life,
Hearing & Copying is a sign of appreciation,
</b>
and leads to prospering business.
Just one idea that seems, at the moment, to make sense. You're a music company, now. You sell CDs. You advertise them on the radio by passing out major bucks to corrupt DJs and so on. This works? For teenyboppers. Thus the boy bands, the Britneys, all of that. Hey, it's smokin' when you're 14. But it doesn't work with core music buyers. So what to do? Simple. Sponsor sharing networks. Pay people if they recommend things that get downloaded a lot. Give them download credits for uploading. Get into commercial deals with websites, and pay for their servers, give away prizes, all that stuff. It'll be a whole lot cheaper than KISS-FM, that's for sure. Now, if it's legal, why buy? Simple. Check out what's on pirate boards: nada. Three or four hundred albums and their songs, all current with teens and young adults. But servers cost money. A catalog costs money. Quality costs either bandwidth or straight money. Hardware, software and music companies should all take a piece of establishing the "music promo" environment, and get money back in hardware, software and music sales. The Hit Parade is dead. Top 40 radio is dead. Pirate Bay? Not dead.
i'm sorry, but i will never buy digital media in my life ever again. i haven't bought a single CD since i fired up Napster in 1999. my formula for not being caught is two-fold:
1. load your shared folder up with porn
2. if you must download linkin park or flipsyde, the kind of stuff the riaa is sniffing?:
a. stop all of your downloads except that song you want with the most sources and the best connections
b. suck it down in under a minute
c. immediately get it out of your shared folder
d. if you do it fast enough, all the porn suckers you have cultivated will flood out and anyone trying to get that drop of water pop song in your sea of masking porn
e. and the riaa only goes after those who make pop songs available, not those who download it, don't forget that
additionally you are a filesharer of good ethical standing: you ARE sharing files people want, you are just segregating what you share/ don't share according legal risk
and speaking of pop songs? i have the BEST solution for beating the riaa on that subject matter: i embrace world music, i let my mind wander. currently, i'm into japanese pop music and european techno: love that armin van buuren and ayumi hamasaki (i live in new york city)
the thing to do is is to expand your musical interests to things beyond the usual pop crap of your native country (and embrace pop crap of other countries, heh), 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-internet universe. file sharing is exactly what the digital utopians dreamed about in the heyday of the internet: the free exchange of world culture, bringing people together in large and small ways. file sharing is the promise of the internet. the only people who lose, are media conglomerates. every one else wins, INCLUDING THE ARTISTS. because a real artist does it for the art, not the money
so embrace world music, 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, of music beyond your stupid local music industry
there really is a lot of good stuff out there. free your mind and give the bastards who want to keep you in a marketing straightjacket the finger in the process.
and for those of you with a holier-than-thou attitude about me ripping off musicians from other countries? get around this chicken and egg situation: if it weren't for the filesharing networks, I WOULD NEVER BE EXPOSED TO THE ARTIST I AM LISTENING TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. solve that quandry and get back to me with your holier than thou attitude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh, picky, picky.
Eh, it's like people thoroughly mangling computer terms. There's one clause called the establishment clause, and that's in the First Amendment.
Perhaps I heard wrong and that section should be called a patent and copyright clause, though neither of those terms is employed.
And the elastic clause doesn't mention elasticity. So what? They're lawyer's jargon for various clauses in the Constitution, not parts of the actual document. The important thing is that people know what you mean when you use them, which isn't helped by misusing them.
You might note that the motivation is the promotion of useful arts
No, the purpose of copyrights is to promote science. The purpose of patents is to promote the useful arts. Remember, the Constitution was written in the late 18th century -- some of the words have rather different meanings than they do today, because English is a very dynamic language.
You can see that this is the case by looking at the structure of the clause, which always goes copyright, then patent: science/useful arts, authors/inventors, writings/discoveries. Or by considering that some uses of the word 'art' in its 'applied technology' sense still survive, such as 'state of the art' or 'prior art' or 'person having ordinary skill in the art.' Or by just consulting your convenient pocket-sized unabridged OED for the meanings of those words in the 1780's.
a monopoly on an expression is anything but a promotion
Well, that depends. Think of, say, cable tv monopolies. The idea is that a town will give a monopoly to a cable company so that the cable company will have an incentive to install all the wiring throughout the town. Eventually the monopoly runs out, but the wires are still in place, so the town can enjoy competitor providers to reduce prices. Basically it's a way of getting a cake and eating it too, but over an extended period of time.
Copyright is meant to work the same way: while the ideal world would be authors producing all they can, and with no copyrights at all, by deferring the point where works are in the public domain, you provide an incentive to authors to create works that they otherwise would not have created.
The trick is to remember that you're not doing this for the benefit of the monopolist, who must not be allowed to get too powerful, that the monopolist should be 'paid' the lowest amount where he still does what you want, and that sometimes the monopoly is more harmful than whatever benefits you can derive from it.
How copyright grew from 14 years to 75 is an inexcusable tale of greed.
First, term length went from 14+14 years to the current life+70 / 95 / 120 / not before AD 2048 / not before AD 2067 terms we have now (which one applies depends on various details that basically makes it impractical to even check). Of course, it didn't happen all in one go. Terms have lengthened over the years.
Second, don't get caught up on term length. Yes, it is tremendously bad, but the scope of copyright -- what it applies to, what exceptions exist, the procedure for getting a copyright or licensing or conveying rights, etc. -- are also of crucial importance. Merely reigning in term length would not be good enough to fix things.
I concur re: inexcusable greed.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I don't see the point in all the who-har around music piracy. Up until 1920s people in Spain would have played music via instruments in town squares joyfully, people shared music and shared the enjoyment of it. There was no complaint of reproduction of music. Later came the tape cassette, so shortly there after the bootlegger. Now we have CDs, at incredible prices and people just boot leg via mp3. There is some reduction in quality and there is also the colour injet to make the inlays.
Whats the point though, why all this fus, it's just people trying to share enjoyment. It's not like money makes people happy, if the artists are good then they sell tickets, that's where the real money is.
I'd rather move to Spain and try to catch some of the towns people reproduce music their way, that has to be more original.
But on this note, why should the consumer pay to listen to some remake of an old classic for a rediculous price, it's not original work and therefore as much IP theft as someone who boot leggs music.
And no, I do not copy music, kazza doesn't run on Linux, I listen only to shoutcast streams, and freeview channel 18.
Why UNIX?