Slashdot Mirror
BPI Sue AllOfMp3 In British Courts
Ckwop writes "AllOfMp3 is getting sued by the British Phonographic Industry. From the article:
"We have maintained all along that this site is illegal and that the operator of the site is breaking UK law by making sound recordings available to UK-based customers without the permission of copyright owners. Now we will have the opportunity to demonstrate in the UK courts the illegality of this site."
" The issue of course will be whether any injunction will be enforceable or not.
... and win, are unable to enforce the verdict and therefore unable to retrieve any of the loss revenue.
I wonder who will pay the High Court costs of the whole affair. Artists? Perhaps an increase in fees. Consumers? Without a doubt. Shareholders? Nope.
ZOMGWTFPWNtKKTHNXBIBI!!!ONE!111!!!
"We have maintained all along that this site is illegal and that the operator of the site is breaking UK law by making sound recordings available to UK-based customers without the permission of copyright owners."
There are lots of illegal activities/products available to you in other countries (drugs, crazy sex stuff etc). The internet just makes them easier to obtain. I still don't see how they are breaking another countries law though.
If Russian Courts can't close a russian website how does the BPI expect a British court to manage any better ?
i seem recall them agreeing not to bother end users though, unlikely they will see anything from this other than trying to raise awareness.
Next to impossible to actually give allofmp3 ur money these days anyway unless you feel like parting with your credit card number.
I have to say that AllOfMP3 is doing something right, and it shouldn't be ignored by the music industry.
I've spent about $200 since discovering the site a few months back. That's particularly interesting given that I've probably spent a total of $200 on music *period* in the last five years. I'm now entirely a downloader when it comes to music, and I do not listen, download or accept DRM'ed music or music that's under 320k quality.
I'm sure I'm not alone. Rather than shutting down AllOfMP3, the industry might want to pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of people who are actually spending on music and haven't done so in years.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Who else read the summary as "Pornographic Industry" rather than Phonographic?
I think I've been on the Internet for far too long...
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
that'll teach those offshore pirates!
some of these parochial old twits should really get out of the club more often, look around, and see the hansom cabs have been replaced by buses.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Last time Allofmp3.com went offline for a few days, the traffic surged afterwards as more people were made aware of its existence and joined in on the fun.
If they weren't able to take down PirateBay **in the EU**, what chance have they got to take down Allofmp3 in Russia?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
These people are fighting for their lives because aside from looking good in miniskirts and screeching like barn owls, musicians (and I use that term loosely) have no marketable skills. If someone one day made computer programming completely unprofitable (I'm looking at you, Stallman), at least a handful of us programmers would be still able to manage a living doing something else. The rest would be just as up in arms as these music artists and music labels are at the loss of the cash cow.
Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be teen idols.
BPI is one entity. The title should read "BPI sues allofMP3....". Attention title-writer: you is using bad grammar.
Well, of course they're suing. The global music industry would like to be able to fix prices all over the world, and it's very hard to do so when cheap alternatives like AllOfMP3 are available. Whether or not they actually have a case is irrelevant -- they have the cash necessary to pursue the suit, and will do so in order to maintain shareholder interest and control of the market.
~ C.
So you can be sued for breaking licensing laws in the countries where consumers are?
This is disturbing, because the way the internet works is that its like a load of tubes (not trucks) and some of these connect different countries. So you could be sued for publishing something on the internet if its illegal in any country where it can be read, in theory.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
No, you're not.
"Stop! Or I shall say 'stop' again!"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There are lots of issues with this: Firstly, the UK High Court has no jurisdiction in Russia (unless you're British and then only for some crimes). Russian companys have no legal status in the UK. You can't sue them and they can't be prosecuted in the UK. I think what they might be doing is sueing the operator of a Russian site in the UK for damages for operating in the UK without a legal licence.
Who ordered that?
Don't knock it... it was #1 for 90 years running. Thats a little stronger than the Minidisk...
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Russian criminals? What laws have AOMP3 operators broken exactly?
The question that I have always had is this: if it is legal, and even desirable (as certain parties would argue) for consumers of labor (i.e. employers) to shop around the world for the cheapeast source of labor, taking full advantage of local conditions and legal structures, why should it be illegal for me, a consumer of music, to shop around the world for the cheapest source of music?
And please spare me any arguments centering on making sure that artists are compensated for their work. That isn't what the recording labels are about, and the argument is particularly spurious when you consider the types of artists that are represented on allofmp3.com. Good luck trying to find a small or independent musician on there.
These people basically pay no royalities at all to the muscians, and they give you a false feeling of buying legitimate stuff. I don't think this is nice at all, sure the the music industry is crooked, but these guys really are pirates for profit. They make money by selling stuff they have no right to sell.
Allofmp3 are money hungry low lifes.
I guess the British record industry is desperate for some positive publicity and hopes that calling Allofmp3 "illegal" in court will get people -- who just want to buy affordable DRM-free music -- to feel some sympathy for the BPI's hardworking lawyers. It should be obvious any injunction obtained would be unenforceable. How are they even going to get Allofmp3 to show up? If someone in Britain tried to sue me, I'd just ignore it like the hot air it was.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I doubt that anyone thinks such a lawsuit would be successful. However it might accomplish one important thing. It might raise awareness that what allofmp3 is doing is tantamount to piracy. It might stop people with conscience from using the site...
The Russians at AllOfMP3 are claiming that they'll comply with Russian copyright law changes coming in September, which makes all these kinds of claims against them moot.
What are those legal changes? None of the articles discussing them that I've seen have mentioned the law or what it does.
--
make install -not war
The allofmp3.com business model is one of the best that I have seen for Online music, Lets look at what the consumer gets
- The choice of bitrate.
- The choice of quality (vbr/etc)
- A choice of albums which are simply not available on other sites like itunes.
- Reliable service, friendly staff
- Often has new albums well before other music stores have them.
- VERY competitive pricing.
- NO DRM.
Now taking into account that they apparently are not paying enough for the rights to the music or whatever it may well be, the business model works, even if I had to pay 20cents for each song or 40cents US for each song I would still go with Allofmp3.com because they offer a service to the consumer that works.I can download the music and play it where I want when I want. So here the recording companies are in a sticky spot, they know that the consumers want that model and they are trying to restrict it as much as possible. I believe in paying for music and I believe that the artists should get paid for the music but there comes a point in time when your getting ripped off, and that is how the record companies and recording industry has been for such a long time and now they are wondering why there has been such a revolt.... Here Warner is offering 2.5bn for EMI and visa versa yet will that REALLY benefit the musicians, the end user.. Hell no its only going to make share holders richer which is going to screw me, and you and whoever else listens to music.
Again, this applies equally well to the two of them. The record labels in North America claim that they have legally valid contracts that give them the right to make a profit off of the creations of certain artists. I question the morality of what they are doing, but yes it's legal in the country they operate in.
AllOfMP3 claim that they have the legal right to make a profit off of the creations of certain artists, in compliance with Russian copyright law. You question the morality of what they are doing, but yes it's legal in the country they operate in.
That's exactly what I'm wondering, and I don't think I want a precedent saying that, yup, if in East Bumfuckistan it's illegal to publish something, you can be extradited to East Bumfuckistan if you published it in the UK.
I mean, seriously, almost every dictatorship somewhere has some things that are forbidden to publish or to even read.
E.g., China doesn't like anything that contradicts its propaganda. I don't just mean anti-communist stuff, but for example they forbade the game Hearts Of Iron 2 because it presented Manchuria as a separate puppet-state of Japan in 1936. Which is historically accurate, ffs: Japan had occupied a bunch of Chinese territory, called it "Manchuria" and installed a puppet emperor there that was little more than a figurehead with no power whatsoever. But someone in China decided that it's illegal to even mention China being, or ever having been, anything else than one unified state.
So could now the developpers be tried and imprisoned in China for publishing something like that in Sweden? I'm sure there's a lot of stuff on their site (maps, info, game patches containing those lists of countries and provinces) that can be accessed over the Internet from China. Does that mean that suddenly a site in Sweden has to abide by China's laws?
What about posts on that topic? Between Europa Universalis 1 and 2, Victoria, and Hearts Of Iron 1 and 2, there are a lot of talks about historical and ahistorical scenarios on Paradox's boards involving China. E.g., right this morning there was a post in the "Hearts Of Iron 2: Doomsday" forum where someone posted a screenshot of the game saying Mao Zhedong died in battle, somewhere in the 40's. (In HOI2 any general can be killed in combat, so if you use one in a lot of battle, yeah, something like that can happen.) And some tomfoolery ensued, with jokes about the party just hiding his death from the people, and similar. I'm sure some PRC party official can take offense at that idea, especially if taken out of context by someone who's never actually played the game. So can they now enforce the swift Chinese justice upon some posters from all over Europe and the USA, just because that info can be accessed from China?
E.g., in a couple of Islamist countries you can be tried and sentenced to death (yes, literally) just for saying that you don't believe in the official religion. Can they now sue everyone who's proclaimed themselves a Christian or atheist on Slashdot? Just because that info is available over the internet from their country? Oooer.
I don't think I want to see that kind of a precedent established.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The "your stealing from the artist" argument is a red herring. Unless your a mega-star, you don't get crap from record sales anyway, and from recent articles, we can conclude that they get even less from legal downloads. Often the artist does not even own the recording. So in that case it is a little like asking how much of that cheeseburger sold down at the dinner goes to the guy flipping burgers at McDonalds.
JC Penney is being sued by the Islamic Purity Party for serving web pages to Burkastan of women who are not completely covered.
I think the freedom that was the web is going to be shut down before long and we are going to have national firewalls that only "whitelisted" sites can get through.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dude, you'd make a perfect me.
If AllOfMP3 is simply a criminal endevour, just think of the marketing possibilities for a legitimate service that sells the same thing - even if for a little more. Future ad slogan for the music industry: "Hey, buy from us! We're not crooks (anymore)!"
You do realize that without capitalism in general and America in specific, you would be spending your time trying to find food to eat instead of plotting your giddy little schoolgirl form of anarchy? Your expressed opinions are incredibly vacuous; rather then suggesting a viable alternative, you insist on merely attempting to tear down and destroy that which has been proven to work best.
So AllOfMP3 sell phonography now?
It's the typical European arrogance.
There's something in the European attitude today that makes them think that they can control the world by passing laws and making "judgements". It probably stems from having failed to gain complete world domination through 500 years of inflicting their rule on any country they could sail to.
The Geneva Conventions forbid a country from being subject to any law or treaty it has not passed. Therefore, the UK has begun an illegal court procedure against a Russian firm. We should protest and break shop windows!
I live in the UK. I'm not here to judge the legality of the web service they offer. I can however say this, the only people that will gain from this are lawyers. The only way that the UK can stop this site is to get every ISP to ban the website. This would prevent Joe Average from accessing it, as for us slashdotters it would mean nothing. Shutting down access to the site will not be done.
At the end of the day, the only people that gain money are the lawyers and courts. The artists in the UK will bear the cost of all this. What a laugh all in all.
Lawyers indeed are the scum of the Earth.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I once did a rough calculation on the true marginal cost of distributing music online. It was something like 0.3 cents a tune -- and this was with a woefully inefficient, viz. my laptop. About a third of the cost was power, and half the power cost is my laptop display, which would be unnecessary with a similar but headless setup.
So at 10 cents a track, the gross profit margin would be 'round 95 percent.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Interesting, eh? Find the whole story.. the Indian gvt. was trying to use this guy as a scapegoat. The US didn't play along. Everyone dealing with day-to-day operations of the plant was a local. Modding this parent up is just asking for a war of words. Let the coward make his comment, but don't reward him for it.
If I understand Dirac correctly, his meaning is this: there is no God, and Dirac is his Prophet. -Pauli
Someone with time on hisher hands build something funny there...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I know this is quite old, but this is what Courtney Love thinks of RIAA, the music industry, and what's REALLY wrong with it all.
You have to love it. If only more artists saw it this way.
Hey, I suppose I should provide the link, shouldn't I?
http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html
no text
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I guess if this case were won, then it would imply that it should be possible to prosecute someone under Islamic law for something wearing 'too revealing' clothing, and making an image available to someone in say Afghanistan. It would be a nonsense if this case were decided in favour of the Record Industry Mafia.
"We have maintained all along that this site is illegal"
So.... instead of bringing criminal charges against the site, they sue instead.
People only sue instead, if they're greedy.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
...is how much they're charging. You say you'd still go with AllOfMP3 even if it cost 20 or 40 cents per track. Well, what if it cost 99 cents? What if the content owners felt that the losses they've internally calculated - no matter how right or wrong they actually are, or you think they are - means that they'd only sell DRMless music for $1.50 or $2 a track? Would you still go to it then?
That's the problem: AllOfMP3 is arbitrarily deciding prices so that it's profitable TO THEM, and using the questionable legality of a radio broadcasting model to do it. Whether that is a loophole or not beside the point, they're not the ones who get to decide what prices are. Their only costs are that of buying CDs, and running a web site. What about all of the costs involved on the production side of the music? What about the artist's rights? The label's rights? What about the basic right to ask for the compensation you choose for a service or product you provide? What about the massive costs associated with some of the "popular" artists on AllOfMP3.com. Whether you AGREE with those costs or not is irrelevant: they're there, and that artist is popular. Call it brainwashing the public if you will, but still, someone else doesn't have the right to decide that album should be sold for $1.42.
This isn't about "failing business models". I mean, you're talking about it like someone has found a way to "appropriate" (I won't say steal because of the implications for something that can be duplicated with no effort) new automobiles, and sells them for 1/10 or 1/20 of what the automaker sells them for, and then talking about it how it's such a great "business model". Have you ever considered that even with electronic sales at $1.40/album, it may not be enough to sustain their "business model"? You might then say, good riddance - new artists will come, etc etc etc. Except for the fact that people have made agreements in good faith, protected by longstanding societal frameworks that allow for the protections of these entities' (whether they may be artists, artists' agents, record labels, etc.) rights.
Further, and again, I realize this is complicated by the fact you can duplicate it with essentially no effort, why should the owner of said content not be able to sell it when, how, and for how much, they choose? Why is it up to a web site in Russia? Or to you? What, if ANY, rights do the owners have? Imagine the "owner" being able to be anything from Time Warner to an individual independent artist. Is people "stealing" your stuff just the cost of doing business? Maybe even a good thing for publicity?
This entire discussion is jaded and poisoned by the hatred of corporations, governments, copyright, and so on. I discussed some of the other issues here. But one thing's consistent: no one wants to acknowledge the owner's rights, because in their mind, the rights are illegitimate. They can't seem to piece together that from an individual artist, there might be a lot more people involved as they grow. Perhaps a group of people that provides a service or product, known as a "company". In this context, maybe a "record company". There might be a "contract" between said artist and company. There might be "advertising". It might be too big for him to burn CDs in his basement. There might be "production" and "distribution". Some of these companies may even have agreements with other companies that sell things. There might even be legal frameworks that protect all of these agreements and the ownership of original work.
The problem is, no one sees any gray areas. They just think that the big trade groups and labels are wrong morally, trumpet about things like "making shareholders richer", and then go to a Russian web site to download the CD of that very artist for one fifteenth of what it's sold for in the US, with zero (or extremely minute amounts designed for radio licensing, which, ironically, is designed to get people to BUY the content, not to be th
An outdated name for an outdated organsisation with an outdated business model.
It seems to fit their policy quite well if you ask me.
Better still is the Irish Recording Assosiation. The IRA!
"Has it ever occurred to you that many artists and consumers are shareholders?"
Yes, but irrelevant to the point.
If you owned the controlling shares in this company and you found out that the president was planning on suing a russian company that he has no way to actually enforce a verdict on the off chance they'll win, what would you say?
"How much is this costing me? And is there any way to fob this off onto the artists and the minority shareholders", does that seem better somehow? Does it invalidate the original post?
Or are you one of those internet people who think they have the moral high ground and will argue pointlessly to prove that moral superiority? Cripes, won't you get a hobby or something? This discussion is pointless as is, and this kind of illogical posturing makes it practically toxic. Could you see your way clear to crawling under a rock and not moving until the end of time or something?
Let's try a more apropriate comparison, because that comparison turns the whole chain of responsibility on its head. It wasn't some UK citizens who got mugged across the borders, but it was they who decided to reach across the border (even if through the Internet) and buy stuff from AllOfMP3.
So let's compare it to, I don't know, gambling. Let's say you're from a country or US state that forbids gambling, so you hop in a plane to Las Vegas and gamble your pants off. Does the casino have to comply with your state's laws, or is it enough that it's legal in Las Vegas? Most people would say it's the latter.
Or let's compare it to buying marijuana. In the US and UK and most of the world it's illegal, but let's say in Elbonia it's perfectly legal and can spend a week there higher than a kite. Sky high. (And I'm taking Elbonia as an example just to not get bogged into discussing the legal subtleties and limits of Holland, which is a RL example of a country where it's legal to buy and smoke pot.) So let's say that Johnny Dope hops on a plane and goes there and does just that: buys himself some pot, from a cafe that's perfectly legal under the local laws. Does the cafe have to comply with the USA or UK laws, or is it enough that it complies with the laws of the country it's in? I think it's pretty clearly the latter.
Or let's say you go to Russia and buy a CD-R with pirated music from a shop. (I don't know the subtleties of Russian law, but just for the sake of the example, let's assume it were legal.) Does that shop have to comply with the laws of _your_ country, or is it enough if it's legal under Russian law? I'd say it's pretty clearly the latter.
It doesn't matter if the shop/cafe/casino owner knew you're a foreigner, and it's not their job to ask for your pass and say "nope, in _your_ country this is illegal." In their own country it isn't. That's all that matters.
Basically I find sorta stupid the notion that if a site is accessible from the UK or China or Iran, then it must comply with laws of UK, China _and_ Iran.
AllOfMP3 didn't send someone to the UK to sell music. They set their (web-based) shop in Russia, and only have to comply with Russian law. Just because the Internet is linked everywhere doesn't make the shop exist simultaneously all over the world. It still exists just in Russia. If Johnny Pirate goes to AllOfMP3 to buy his pirated music, then it's Johnny Pirate who decided to go to a Russian shop, in Russia. Yeah, the internet makes that trip a lot easier than physically going there, but, nevertheless, it's Johnny who visited a (virtual) piece of Russia, not the Russians who came to his home.
And at any rate, the decision and responsibility lie squarely with Johnny. He wasn't just a helpless victim shot across the border. (Or hit by a CD packed with MP3's thrown across the border.) It was he who decided to go buy it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They'll get the site declared illegal then british customers who buy from them. 'Simply' get a court order forcing ISPs to hand over details about who've been getting lots of data from allofmp3 and sue random people who've been using it.
I'd love to see AllOfMP3 raise their prices a little bit, and start sending money to the artists. I mean literally, to the artists. Look up addresses and cut checks. This serves two purposes:
1. The artists get compensated for their work, and the morality of the situation is improved a bit.
2. The artists themselves might begin to see what kind of a crooked deal they've got with the RIAA and maybe it would make them think twice about signing more contracts.
And if the artists revolt, what's the RIAA got left to sell?
Nobody seems to have mentioned the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 yet. IANAL, but I saw one on TV explaining how this act related to dialler fraud - essentially, if you have money that's come from criminal activity, you can't do anything with it. The claim there was that under this act, people can't be billed for calls made by this fraud.
If we apply the same logic to allofmp3, it seems that once the site is ruled illegal, then processing card payments for the site will also be by default illegal. So, they don't need to shut it down - the site won't do you much good if you can't pay them.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper!
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
And people wonder why I didn't use their website. Russia is wanting to get into the WTO, and if means cracking down on piracy rings such as allofmp3, simply for apperances, then they will - all I have to say, pray that they don't come after those who purchase music off them.
When I talked about concerns regarding allofmp3, I was shunned off as an MPIAA supporter, my karma went down into the shitter - but is it really worth the risk given the number 'gray' websites which could, at a later date, deemed to be illega..
I don't know about you, but I prefer good old fashioned cds; atleast then you know what you're purchasing.
Dude,
You and valerie could really stand to lose a few pounds. You're both fine looking, but you'd be healthier, have more energy, and feel better about yourself if you lost pounds. I assume you're working out every day, but that's only 1/2 the battle. Stop eating so much.
As to your long rant on the RIAA and how they're actually the artist's friend, you're making me laugh hard enough to spew chunks onto my monitor. People don't hate corporations, the thought process is closer to this:
1) The real owner of an artistic work is the creator
2) Yeah, you can sign papers giving those rights away, but in general, the only people consistently making money on the artists works the record companies. Hardly any artists actually make money on these record "deals".
3) "So what" you ask. Good question.
4) If you go to the guy on the corner and he loans me money at 50% interest, that's not only illegal, that's immoral.
5) If record companies hold a monopoly on distribution and they sign artists to bad deals, why is that okay?
6)Record company execs are whining about teenage kids ripping them off as they get into their limos. Those darned kids!
7) They they trot out the fact that it's all about the artist. Oh the glorious irony!
And then you say "Well, but it's illegal, and record companies aren't all that bad".
Look, everybody knows that copyrights weren't intended originally to prevent you from giving a copy of a record to your brother in law. So as a consumer, you see high prices, starving artists and rich record companies. What should the proper reaction to that be?
The reaction will doubtless be more draconian copyright laws and more technical restrictions on entertainment. I say "bring it on". The sooner we get truely ridiculous restrictions (and we're almost there), the sooner people will revolt. They are already, but not on a really the wide-spread way that is going to happy just as sure as the sun goes around the earth.
So in the meantime, eat less. You and your pretty girl are too young to not be slimmer.
"What I don't understand is how anyone could think the singular is correct for a group of people"
It is obvious: only the singular is correct for a "group", because there is only one group in "group". If you are referring to groups, use the plural. If you are referring to the persons in the group, use the plural. However, if you are referring to the group, then only the singular is correct:
- The people of the BBC are....
- The BBC is....
- The football club is...
- The players in the football club are...
- The oil company is...
- The oil companies are...
It is pretty easy to avoid incorrect usage: Are you referring to only one of the thing, or many of the things?
"I think it just shows how completely americans buy into the horrendous corporation==person idea that is wrecking our world at the moment."
Why make things worse by bringing in nutty conspiracy theories? This has nothing to do with person. However, only the singular applies to "corporation" if it is singular (no "S" on the end of "corporation").
You know the above was a total joke, right?
Dude, you're just PO'd that he lampooned you calling yourself a musician.
Okay. Let's go through it. I am a musician too. I studied under an excellent teacher for 20 years, I perfomed many years (and still do), I get paid too. But it is done a hobby, so I don't go around telling people "I'm a musician", particularly since I do it primarily for enjoyment.
Let me give a better example.
I drive a car to and from work.
Also, once a month, we rent go-karts at the local track and we race for an entire day. It's real karts too. It's timed, it has scoring, corner workers, the whole thing. We take it seriously that one sunday a month.
Should I be called "A race car driver"? By your logic, yes. And technically I am, but let's stop being an idiot and playing pretend.
You're a computer geek. That's what you do, that's what you are. Everything else is a pastime. I don't claim to have an insight into the mind of a real, working, professional musician, even though I've gotten paid, I have a very good friend who is a professional musisican, and I spent my entire early life around professional musicians.
He's making fun of you because you're claiming some sort of false insight into the nature of being a working, professional musician, but that's B.S. You know it, I know it and the guy (rightfully) lampooning you knows it.
Get over it, and get over yourself. You're being silly.
The BPI is a single entity. It is not a single person, but you must realize some day that there are many other nouns that are not a single person. The only correct usages are in the following examples:
- Bob sues allofmp3.com (singular)
- BPI sues allofmp3.com (singular)
- BPI and RIAA sue allofmp3.com (plural)
- Bob and Sue sue allofmp3.com (plural)
It is entirely irrelevant that a group (singular) is made up of many persons. Using your logic, you would always say "the lorry are going down the street" because lorries consist of many automotive parts or "Bob sue allofmp3.com" because Bob is made of billions of living cells. Just remember: if it is one, then stick to singular usage.
By the way, you violated your own rule when you said, and I quote: "The BPI [b]is[/b] a collection of people, not a single person". You actually made the correct use of "is" as applied to the singular in your sentence. Too bad you choose instead to defend an incorrect usage.
Exactly right. It seems the only succesful weapon they actually have is fear. Instead of pursuing a change to their moral (i.e. pirating is theft), which is obviously a very hard task, they opt for the much easier solution: we know what you're doing online.
When you underpay your workers, or overcharge your customers, they will, rightly or wrongly, steal from you if they can get away with it. Fact of life. What we have here is looters mentality. I can't afford all that I want, and I don't understand why that should mean I can't have it.
Ways to stop it: stop people from getting away with it. Difficult if you're got a small bunch of employees who can sneak stuff out from under your nose, but with millions of music downloaders all over the world? You're not gonna make a dent on it, whatever you do. You've gotta stop making people want to steal. Rightly or wrongly, that's what you gotta do.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Do we know that the ROMS aren't paying their dues? I'm betting that they are. As lawsuit-happy as the RIAA and their ilk happen to be, if the ROMS didn't uphold their legal end of the bargain these guys would be all over them. But as of today - they aren't.
Could the lack of a lawsuit imply that what they are doing is legal - and the RIAA knows that?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...read that as British pornographic industry?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
"I'd say, "Go, and how can I help?"
Which is precisely why you'll never be put in the situation of being asked that question.
You seem to be grasping at things like morality when business will tell you over and over that "the only obligation they have is to their shareholders".
When a company sues you it's not over a moral reason or over right and wrong, it's because it's a more profitable for the person making the decision. Corporations are set up so that corporate officer's interests more or less coincide with shareholders. But not always. Suing allofmp3 might make some individual feel better, but unless it makes money for the corporation, it's simply not done.
You need to understand that about corporations before you can predict their behavior. You and I might pick up a wandering child because it's a good and humane thing to do. A corporation will not pick up that child unless either (a) there's a direct profit on it or (b) it's good PR. Unless you really understand and believe that, you'll dream this merry life of good vs evil, right vs wrong when corporations have no such concepts.
"some of these parochial old twits should really get out of the club more often, look around, and see the hansom cabs have been replaced by buses."
Dear boy, how little you know of respectable gentlemans clubs.
If one desires a hansom cab, one gets a hansom cab.
Buses have very little to do with the matter.
" but with millions of music downloaders all over the world? You're not gonna make a dent on it, whatever you do. You've gotta stop making people want to steal"
You are mixing this up. You are talking about downloading, which has nothing to do with theft. Theft, in fact, is not involved with the issue at all. Nor is looting, in any way or form. You can stop downloaders from doing any stealing at all, and still they'd be able to download zillions of songs. In fact, anyone can make unauthorized downloads/copies of thousands of songs and never engage in theft or looting. Such a person is probably less likely to steal because they are spending all their time downloading. Why don't you concentrate on making them want to stop downloading, instead of something that is not related? How does it make sense to prevent someone from doing A in order to prevent them from doing B? Or are you the kind of guy who would paint your fence in order to fix a leak in your roof? All requirements causality and relation are ignored?
If you really wanted to prevent theft and looting, you would encourage music downloading. The more time spent downloading music, the less time someone might spend stealing.
Why pay for free files? Especially when the artists refuse to sell the files themselves? They don't even want the money, really. If they did, they'd be selling Beatles MP3 files, recorded concerts that fans give away but the artists refuse to sell, or files from "out of print" albums, but they are not. If an album is out-of-print, but there is enough demand to give away copies on the Net, it is certainly just another clear example of the artists not even wanting the money.
"Anything else is just quite desperate intellectual willy-waving to justify stealing "
That is really quite a huge leap. The discussion involves (possible) unauthorized duplication of music files. It does not involve "stealing" in any way. You might have instead said "Anything else is just quite desperate intellectual willy-waving to justify copying". There's a case to be made for that. The topic certainly has nothing to do with stealing.
"Im presuming you dont create digital content for a living, because if you did, you'd look upon things a bit differently"
If I did, I wouldn't be so dumb as to flat out refuse to sell my work or sell it in a crippled useless format.
"What you are advocating is communism"
Is this some sort of version of Godwin's law? Where anyone you don't like is Stalin? Why wreck your arguments by bringing in entirely unrelated matters. We're talking about duplicating files, not commies or stealing.
Where were you when the voynix came?
WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR YOUR FAILED BUSSINESS MODEL?
What I would do if I were in charge of AllofMP3.com, with my rapidly rising market share (and ectoplasmically amazing typos), would be to really stick it 'em: announce that from now on all customers of the site will pay a 10 cent surcharge on each track. That surcharge would go directly to the artist (not the copyright holder), or the artist's nearest beneficiary, subject to those copyright holders applying for this to be done.
OK, OK I know it'll never happen, and that there would be massive admin and other problems, but that's what SHOULD happen.
Imagine though, like Amazon reviews: "I am the artist and I wish to claim my fee."
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
This is what ThePirateBay thought of such threats
....if the guys on the streetcorners were selling copies that THEY CREATED THEMSELVES of the clothes and speakers. Otherwise, it your example involves theft, and nothing like that is involved.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"and/or OWN content"
Artists and producers do not own the content.
They have a state-sponsored distibution-monopoly on the content.
Man, am I the only one who read the first sentence of the description and got "British Pornographic Industry" the first time through?
When life gives you lemons, you CLONE those lemons, and make SUPER-LEMONS. -- Dr. Cinnamon Scudworth, Ph.D
Well, bingo: then it's those citizens who are to blame, and not the site/shop/casino/brothel/whatever that gets tried under US laws. That's the way the chain of responsibility points.
If it was Johnny Hornyguy that travelled to Holland to smoke pot, then sue Johnny Horny guy, don't try extending US laws to a cafe in Holland. And if Jack Pirate goes to the USSR to buy pirated music, by all means, sue Jack Pirate, don't try pretending that US or UK laws apply to a Russian site. It wasn't the cafe or shop that decidet to go to the US or UK and harrass someone out of their money, and they weren't breaking any laws of their own country. That's the whole point.
The BPI trying to sue a Russian site under UK laws strikes me as just stupid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I suppose at some level you can always argue that you personall disagree with copyright, or with the big record labels and trade groups, or that artists are abused in the current system, or that politicians' hands are in the pockets of the industry, and so on and so on and so on.
But it still continues to ignore basic thing: even if you erase all that, do you still believe that the creator of a work should have some rights to that work, including the choice of how much to ask in return for that work?
Nice work. Effectively what you are saying is "ignoring all your arguments against my opinion, what is your argument against my opinion".
It's ok that you don't agree with some of the arguments against the RIAA, but to nullify them and ask for some other nebulous argument is a little one-sided. And while you make some good points, you have set the table for a very lop-sided debate. Unfortunately, in my eyes, you cannot simply boil the whole debate to a simple yes or no question of whether the creator has rights.
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
(Yes, I realize that AllOfMP3.com believes it has a license to do this legally, but that is arguably AT MOST valid only in Russia, besides which, let's just forget about that for a moment.)
Here is the problem.. I visited the site to see the Russian artists offerings that are so popular on the site.
Hmmm Backstreet Boys, Arvil, 9 Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins.. Since when are these Russian artists selling to the Russian market? Somehow I doubt they have any agreement with these copyright holders and therin lies the problem. It isn't Russian artists selling only to a Russian market and beyond. It's artists and their distributors that have not authorized this retailer. Their IP has been stolen.
The truth shall set you free!
Musicians should earn their living by actually, graps, playing live music.
Recording technologies just created an artificial situation, before the 20th century musicians had to actually work to earn a living, not make one recording and then sit back and relax.
If you are already working hard, good, but do not expect to make a living from recordings. It is frnkly immoral.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... for 35 dirty bucks.
Musicians play and meet their fans, they sing, play, compose and perform.
A "recording artist" is not such. People expecting to make a living from recordings are dishonouring the profession.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People spending money there would surely be spending money in the RIAA shop.
RIAA and their dopelgangers worldwide don;t want to serve you, the consumer, they want to control you.
If you are all for that, great, enjoy.
Many chose legal options that are not trying to control us (and the legality of this website is still to be debated in the courts, and before anybody asks, I don't use them because there are other shops that actually care about costumers and artists as well).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
BPI is singular. It ends in "industry", not "industries". Therefore, you need to say "If the BPI was to get an injunction..."
You said: "The copyright is the only actual property". No, a copyright is not even any sort of actual property.
Where? Find one single line, or even one word, where one of your opponents has justified or defended theft. I bet you can't. You are now engaging in a straw-man attack: condemning people for something they never did. It's really easy to attack your opponents for loving theft. Makes them look real bad, right? Your tactic might actually work unless someone bothers to find out that your opponents never defend theft, and theft/stealing is not even being discussed or mentioned except when you try to change the topic 100% from the subject of copyright infringment to the subject of theft.
"and where people are free to consume whatever they want without paying. Thats called communism, look it up sometime."
I don't know about you, but I've never consumed a song. If you look up the definition of "consume", you will find that you are yet again using a word without any regard to its actual meaning. All the definitions of consume involve something being used up during its use. The word does not fit at all: making a copy of an MP3 file does not use up ("consume") anything except the time used up by the person listening. MP3 downloading and peer to peer are in fact a usage model that involves the opposite of consumption: they create more copies, they do not destroy. Or look at it this way: if hamburgers were "consumed" the way music files were "consumed", eating a hamburger would result in the creation of extra hamburgers on your plate. All of which, either way, has absolutely nothing to do with the definition of communism.
There, we have three words, "theft", "consume", and "communism" which are not involved in the subject at all.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Except the content is not being appropriated. Look up the word: "To take possession of or make use of exclusively for oneself, often without permission". The only part that applies is "without permission". Possession does not fit very well, and the part about exclusive use certainly does not apply.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I'm not for filtering or blocking any content, but the arguement that blocking/filtering 'material X' means one can block 'material Y' is silly and untrue.
You can use a sift to 'filter' gold from grains, but that doesn't mean you catch all the gold, and it doesn't mean that you can filter out any other minerals/material with the same method, with the same accuracy, or for the same cost.
Pictures are by nature dynamic, moreso than P2P traffic or other material that might commonly be filtered. Pr0n of any type uses the same protocol as regular web-material. Illegal pr0n, I would imagine, is even difficult to sift by hand. Take a TV actress and try to guess her age. Is a girl *really* young or just trying to look thus? When a human cannot even attain a strong accuracy in such material, how could anyone program a machine to do so (since the machine must, ultimately, be programmed by humans)? Yes, some stuff is going to be obvious to a human, but some isn't, and neither is going to be good for a computer. The best you could probably do is gauge flesh-tones Vs non-flesh-tones to ascertain whether an item is in fact pornographic or not, and even that isn't very effective and still doesn't deal with whether something is illegal or not.
Again, it's probably good for us that the community at large - including the legal community - is rather clueless about what 'magic' computers can and cannot perform, since filtering in general sucks. However I hardly see how an arguement that one could do (a) would qualify that one can also accomplish (b).
All they would have to do is use the big-box store method. More in, sell at a hugely underinflated rate at a loss (or much lower profit), thus undercutting the competitors and forcing them out of business. Once they're gone, jack up the prices and gouge the consumer again.
Not something I'd support, but I'm surprised it hasn't occurred to the ??AA, or likely it has but they wouldn't want to compromise their more immediate profits which are hardly affected by downloading (legit or non) as much as they'd like us to think.
Again, the use of words without any regard given to meaning. The key word you use is "take". "Take" is a necessary part of "theft". However, the definition of "take" is not met at all with copyright infringement, because nothing is taken.
"And I supposed "stealing" a car would involve hacking into..."
Am I stealing your car if I build an exact copy of it which I drive around? According to your "faith-based" definition of theft which actually involves no theft or taking, it probably would. This is very analagous to the music-duplication situation.
" The word "stealing" isn't defined as depriving somebody of something without permission, it's defined by the action of the taking."
I'm glad you agree that taking is so important to the definition of theft. Hopefully, this is an admission that an act that involves creating a copy of something without even touching (or TAKING it) can never be theft.
"Despite what you believe the word should or shouldn't mean"
Looking up word definitions should dispell any of your lingering problems of "belief" concerning words. It really should not be so hard to consult actual authority instead of relying on incorrect opinions or beliefs.
Where were you when the voynix came?
You're talking about something else. I'm talking about "that's the thing the RIAA has failed to grasp. Even at 10 cents a track and without any DRM, they could be making a fortune."
The RIAA has an enormous catalog. Those costs of producing it are "sunk". The price point at allofmp3.com is about right for music. Priced there, the RIAA and all the artists involved would make a killing. Priced there, I suspect that 3 or 4 times as many artists would be able to earn a living from their music. (Would you pay $18 for a CD by a fairly unknown band that you kinda liked? How about $2.50?)
The RIAA will not price there. Not -- as the original post and I keep arguing -- because it would hurt their profits. It might increase them. Rather, it's because it would explode their myth -- which keeps them in business -- that music is really expensive and thus requires big well-funded companies to "invest" in it otherwise we wouldn't have any
Here's the cost breakdown of a CD. Graphed. As you can see, the fixed costs you're talking about occupy a tiny slice of the pie.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Maybe you're trolling, but I figure there are enough people out there who seriously think something like that to make replying worthwhile.
I personally believe that copyright is immoral because of the restrictions it places on citizens (especially in a digital age where information duplication is so easy and beneficial). As far as I'm concerned, any artist can set a bounty on their work creation (go around asking for $x to make a given thing), or ask for donations, or whatever. But they do not have the right to control their work after it has passed into public view.
This argument frustrates me to no end because it's so very short-sighted. Of course current copyright laws need revision, but if you simply did away with copyright, everything you're enjoying now would disappear so fast your head would spin. I'm sure you don't like DRM-locked music, and you're probably pro open-source... but if we enacted your "everything is public domain" you would basically force all but hobbyist music into extreme DRM lockdown, and open-source would also lose all its advantages.
Think about it. My wife's a writer, so I tend to come at it from that angle first. She spent about 7 years writing her first novel. Her publisher is giving her an advance, and she'll get a bonus plus royalties once her advance is covered by sales. The publisher pays her editor, plus pays for all advertisement costs, managing book tours, printing and distribution, etc.. Even with good advertising, there's no guarantee they'll make money -- in fact, they usually don't; they make up for it by sometimes finding a book that really sells well and makes them enough money to cover the losses from rest of the authors in their stable. The money they pay my wife won't be huge (divided over the 7 years of work), but hopefully she'll get the next book out quicker, and hopefully she can build name recognition to increase future sales. She also retains film and foreign rights for a separate, future contract, so that's another possible source of income from this book.
Now let's imagine as soon as the first copy is released (in paper or online) *any* publisher can print and sell it, make a movie out of it, etc. without paying her a dime. Surprise; of course the standard publishers will go out of business immediately, and only printers will survive, competing to print the cheapest copies. None of them will be able to affort to advertise, because the competitors (without the advertising costs, but reaping the benefits) will wipe them out. My wife would have two options:
* Set up a website to plead for donations. Of course, the actually published books (hard copy or electronic) needn't bother to link her site, and she'd have no money for advertising, but let's say 10,000 generous fans who picked up the book at the beach for $1.50 googled her name (a ridiculous overestimate, since no one will be advertising her book), stopped by and contributed a buck. Great, honey, you just netted an average of $1,428 annually, which may just about cover hosting the site and payment processing fees.
* Stop writing books, or relegate writing to a spare-time hobby.
Let's look at the music POV since that's what you were discussing. Musicians need money to simply survive, plus recording, mastering, advertising, distribution (yes, even online distribution)... all costs money, and lots of people besides the musicians themselves need to get paid somehow to do all that, or they can't survive either. Welcome to capitalism, right? After paying for this stuff the music labels likewise lose money on many bands that just don't pan out into good sales, but they make up for it with the pop stars that make it big.
Now let's take away the revenue stream entirely. The recording companies go away -- that's what you wanted, right? -- and only some touring management companies remain. Bands that are already well-known can probably do just fine touring and pay for some advertising out of that, though concerts will likely get a lot more expensive (si
- Providing it in the target's language, even though it is not that of the provider and country it is ostensibly for. (Heck, do you think 'All of MP3' has any meaning in Russian?)
- Charging for it, especially in the target's currency, instead of simply providing a free service.
I'm not going to bother debating this further, your analogy is too weak. Russia HAS copyright laws; AllOfMP3 is simply taking advantage of a hole in them to make a killing in countries where their service is completely illegal. You buying is as illegal as them selling, and if they were truly trying to limit it Russia, they would probably block sales to foreign credit cards or something similar, rather than posting a notice (in English, on and English page) suggesting clients confirm the legality (in the client's country, which is where it matters) of their purchases (in US dollars or British pounds) themselves.Oh, and are you suggesting that it should be legal for you to buy fully automatic weapons in countries where that is legal, and have them shipped to the US or UK for use here? If nothing else, AllOfMP3 is exporting - and it's western customers are importing - products that are not legal here.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...