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Kazaa Agrees to Pay $100m to the Record Industry
siddesu writes "BBC has the following breaking story:
File-sharing site Kazaa will become a legal music download service following a series of high-profile legal battles. The peer-to-peer network has also agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry. The announcement follows the release of a music industry report that says more than 20 billion music tracks have been downloaded illegally in the last year. Hungry artists across the globe rejoice."
I know theres a lot of artists, but does anybody know just how many and just how much of this money will actually go to the artists?
I personally think they will still be hungry.
liqbase
$100,000,000.00 / 20,000,000,000 Songs = $0.005
seems rather hypocritical that the RIAA won't allow AllofMP3 to sell songs for $0.05 when they are selling them for 10 times less..
-- lol pwned
Wow, 3+ tracks for every person on the planet?
How do they know those are all illegal? My CD collection is in my attic. My p2p software is on my desktop. I DL tracks from CDs I own all the time, because it's easier than finding the CD.
Did that get counted as an illegal download?
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
In other news, use of Bittorrent and eDonkey networks is up.
"We have won another battle in an ongoing war [...] We move forward with a spring in our step."
I have to hand it to these guys, they can sure convince themselves of what they want to believe in.
And the hungry artists who were "damaged" by this get a $1 off coupon for their next recording session advance.
Kazaa would be better off throwing in the towel, a keyword search is too broad to block only protected works and will result in the service being mostly unusable for either legit or non legit uses.
Now instead of having a large range of MP3s to choose from I can choose from a limited range of music that is encumbered with DRM. Where do I send my money?...allofmp3.com I guess. I wonder if the music industry will eventually get it?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
That's not a war, that's a massacre.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
"Hungry artists across the globe rejoice" isn't even in the article- probably because it's just wrong. And while I do not support illegal filesharing, I do have to agree with earlier posters that the starving artists won't see a dime of this settlement. In fact, I'd be suprised if any artists, even the 'big names', get some of the settlement. The artist's contract only gets them money under certain conditions- and I'll bet that 'settlements from lawsuits' are not one of those conditions. No, this is a victory for the RIAA, but not particularly helpful to anyone else.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Hahahaha. Oh, that's golden. I couldn't have made up a more lawyerly and selfish resonse. 0% for the artists, straight from the horse's mouth.
This money could be used for attorney fees for going after the next P2P company, or to go after individuals downloaders/sharers, or to R&D for the next DRM scheme, or for lobbying governments for laws that benefit them and/or make it easier for them to target the above groups.
One thing it will likely not be used for is to work to further integrate musicians and their music into quality, legal digital distribution channels that allow broad consumer rights.
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
"Nobody is guaranteed the right to make money"
Really? The RIAA seems to think they are. And the U.S. congress seems to agree with them.
But at the heart of what you're saying, I agree with you. People should be allowed to borrow money from loan sharks. They should be allowed to buy tainted food. In fact, the only thing a government should do is enforce contracts. That way, people will be much better off. Don't you agree that when big businesses do well, we all enjoy the fruits of their success?
In fact, history shows that when big business is unchecked, it is a golden age for the world. That's what GW Bush is trying to do. He is slowly undoing the shackles on big business that keep them from reaping the fruits of their labor. A lot of people complaining about workers rights, or consumers rights are just whiners and complainers. Where would we be if not for the largesse of large corporations.
Why do people *COMPLAIN* all the time about this benevolent hand that guides us, much as a mother might put us to their breast and allow us to suckle at that teat of kindness and success known as the corporation.
the artists won't get a penny.
what will happen is the riaa's lawyers will get a new house, car and maybe some other toys, too.
riaa: "another day, another lawsuit"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
So, the cost of bringing piracy to justice is greater than the losses incurred by said piracy?
Unreal.
OK 80% of Pirate CD stands (physical media) were closed in a Mexican city -> 25%+ increase in sales.
.25/.8=.3125 = 31%+ of all sales in the city were pirate CD's - physicals not downloads - and not including impulse buys because they were cheap.
I really think that the record companies might want to redirect their efforts from the P2P users & back to the sources. 30%+ of the CD's were not being cranked out in somebody's basement. This is & always has been big business.
Kaazzaa was stupid, IIRC they offered tracks for sale, but they also encouraged trading.
Personnally, I'm not certain how a P2P company can effectively filter files. Most titles contain common words. Filtering out audio files titled 'Stupid Boy Band #1' is also going to filter any podcast review of it. MD5 checking on the file? Rip w/ a different bitrate & it changes - hell you can rip a random watermark into the file & no 2 source copies of the song would have the same MD5.
The only effective thing is to respond to requests to remove specific indexes. But any bets on **AA surfing & submitting a request to every search engine every day? P2P has a lot of legitimate uses, some that distributers are starting to recognize, and it's not going away. So somewhere/sometime there has to be a compromise. So far the **AA isn't willing to see that. But as long as they are going to keep dumping restrictions people don't like onto how people can use thier media, they are going to see people pirating things en masse.
Files might be being downloaded 'illegally' but here in Europe the recording industry is doing better than it ever was. These n-billion files that are being downloaded cannot be counted as a loss, as they wouldn't be bought anyway. They are being downloaded precisely because they are free; an argument for damage here is absurd.
P2P is best thought of as an advanced try-before-you-buy network. For this reason the people that are losing money from P2P are not recording artists, but Marketing Execs that would like to steer our consumption interests and habits, in short to push crap on us we don't want. P2P lifts the standards of consumer choice.
"Artists around the world rejoice", my llama..
Which casts a huge megalith of doubt on their intentions. No profit driven enterprise would spend more on litigation than they expect to get in return - which is why, for example, car companies don't issue recalls for lemons if they expect to be able to settle for far less than a recall will cost.
So that leaves one wondering - what do they really want? And there's only one answer left.
Power and control.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.