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International Music Industry Amps Up Anti-P2P War
newtley writes to mention a BBC article discussing a new initiative against file-sharers by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. This international version of the MPAA is breathing down the necks of 8,000 users of file-sharing software. From the article: "The new cases cover file sharers in 17 different countries who have been allegedly using sites including BitTorrent, eDonkey, SoulSeek and WinMX. For the first time legal action is being taken in Brazil, Mexico and Poland. The IFPI said the actions affect a wide-variety of people: a laboratory assistant has been charged in Finland, while a parson has been served with action in Germany."
And this is why I don't buy music anymore (No I don't pirate it either).
The real pornography here lies in how the *AA is screwing the artists and the consumers at the same time.
Let's pass that along to our kids, too. Instead of paying record labels, patronize podsafe music or amateur bands (most of whom sound better than record label pap).
Or make your own music. That's the best of all.
Since the RIAA began their suicidal jihad, I taught myself to play the guitar. I'm no virtuoso or even very good by any objective measure, but there's about 100 times the satisfaction and enjoyment in playing the 10 tunes I know than in just listening to any song I've ever heard.
So, in a way, thank you RIAA for showing me that doing my own thing is far more amazing than giving you money for the garbage you laughingly, mockingly call 'art.'
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Makes more sense than Phonographic, frankly. Just goes to show how out of date those bastards are. If they had their way we'd still be listening to music on wax spools.
Seriously. This is the first format we've ever had that actually had the possibility of being constant quality for the indefinite future, with lossless transference between devices. I mean records got scratched, or degraded in quality over time, magnetic tape stretches, and is super prone to mechanical defects, cd's oxidize and have the alumnium fall off, but digital audio files, not being tied to a player, are a real threat.
Buy the White Album on CD and rip it to the format of your choice, and you'll never have to buy it again (assuming you back up your data). There is no way people will go back to the old "Tied to a chunk of physical stuff" method of information distribution. I just wish they would hurry up and realize this, instead of trying so hard to wish it true.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
the more star systems will slip through your fingers....
But the owners of commercial content ... Star Wars DVDs, if you like ... are going round intimidating people away from doing things that they have a perfect right to do, such as putting recordings of them singing songs they have written themselves on their own web sites for distribution to anyone in the world who cares to take them.
There should be some sanction against a cartel intimidaring someone into paying when no money is due. Is there any such sanction ? Jail time for fraud, maybe ?
As usual the anti-piracy dumbs are running their "scare tactics", saying things like "we sued a a laboratory assistant, a school teacher, a nurse, a grandma, young little kid, old granny, this poor black guy, that rich white guy, etc etc" saying they suing everybody and it can happen to everybody so people supposed get scared.
There is less chance of getting sued for file-sharing than winning the lottery.
There are constantly coming new software and new means to share files, and the anti-piracy dumbs cant keep up with it.
More and more people are getting Internet, and connections are getting faster and faster.
Which should make anonymous file-sharing more efficient and fast.
SSL, cryptography, darknets...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
"How many cents of the CD you buy do you think reach the artist, hmm?"
Another fucking idiot.
I get 50% of the profit on every CD I've ever made.
The biggest mark up is by the record shops. Why not whine about them instead?
Bands CANNOT handle all the distribution, on line sales, internet presence, marketing etc etc themselves.
If you try to then you spend no time performing or making music, you spend all you time fixing web forums and on the phone to people.
As soon as a band gets people to help them out..... well waddya know! they have to pay them!, and it's the same as being on a label. WHAT DO YOU THINK RECORD LABELS DO????
fucking idiots.
You bring home a point about the entertainment industry that most people seem to forget. This is all about entertainment. The RIAA et al are up in arms because for them the whole piracy thing is about money, their bread and butter. It's show-biz.
/. threads), the huge amount of piracy which occurs only proves to the entertainment industry that demand is there. If you have never visited an Asian country, you have no idea how pervasive piracy of entertainment and software is throughout the world. It is huge.
However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product. Nobody needs the latest hit singles. Nobody needs box sets, DVD extras, or music libraries of 10,000 songs. We want them.
The entertainment industry, as in any other area of business, relies on supply and demand, and (as I have commented on before in
Anyone who argues against DRM or says the entertainment industry is somehow ripping off "the people", yet fights this through anti-DRM software, or some sort of piracy, or other means of getting the industry product they want on their own terms, they lose some respect from me.
I say, put up or shut up. If you don't like what the RIAA does, if you think labels only offer music that sucks, if DVDs are overpriced or you don't like the "new release-newer release with extras" cycle, don't respond by taking their product on your own terms. That just says that you do indeed value that product and are willing to pay for it, just not in upfront cash - you are confirming the demand for the product.
If you really mean what you say, respond by not accepting their product on any terms. Remove the demand entirely, and the market will react.
Buy a guitar, a piano, an accordian or whatever, and learn how to play it. Go see a play in a local theatre instead of a major corporate Broadway tour. Don't initiate your kids into the corporate entertainment addiction by buying them cross-branded toys. Stop feeding the monkey on your back and turn off your fricking television. Entertain yourself and those around you instead of relying on someone else (corporations) to provide your escapism for you. You will probably find yourself living a more rewarding life.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
I'm pretty sure that is the whole of it, instead of just a lot.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
the major problem is that tor eats up lots of bandwidth people generally dont want to switch bandwidth with safety until there is an actual threat the amount of people the RIAA etc have subpeoned etc is laughable compared to the number of people using these services the chances of being caught are very remote however i think at least end to end encryption is in order so the ISP cant spy on you
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
Well, they'd like everyone to be on wax spools, but they'd like you to buy a new copy every few years when the old one wears out. Actually, what they'd really like is if each recording was a one-shot, somehow destroyed in the playback process. That would be just teriffic.
It's the electronics industry, not the music industry, that has driven new formats. The music industries go along with it because they make a lot of money in the short term, but they're rarely the drivers of new formats. In fact they tend to discourage their adoption more than anything else.
The music industry has been okay with the last few format transitions and hasn't fought the electronics companies too hard, because they've occured more rapidly than the old medium would have worn out. Thus, they made more money off of getting people to "buy up" to CDs than if they had waited around for vinyl records to all wear out and need replacement. Only now, they're starting to realize that they may have eaten the goose that could have laid a lot of golden eggs -- by forcing an 'upgrade' to CDs from vinyl, they made a lot of money in the short term, but they also gave people a format that doesn't wear out and is easily transferable to computers, where it can be replicated losslessly and endlessly, forever.
I'm betting they wished they had stuck with wax.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You are so wrong. The RIAA do oppose digital distribution. They sued Diamond Multimedia who produced the RIO. The worlds first mass market mp3 player. Had they won there wouldn't be any IPOD's or Music phones today. They are also currently suing a Satalite radio service for their PVR recorder.
The RIAA are against any and all forms of music distribution which they don't understand. Read 'Control'!
"In each of the 17 countries involved in today's actions there are legal music services available to consumers. There is no excuse."
How 'bout providing some legal alternatives that HAVEN"T been crippled with the infestation known as DRM (I call it the Devil's Recording Medium)
This I CAN agree with:
"Critics of the IFPI's policy argue that the music industry is targetting its natural audience and that the real causes of CD sales declining are DVD sales, computer games sales and pricing."
Another reason I can think of is DRM itself (Sony BMG anybody?)... AND the lawsuits. Would you be willing to buy products from a company that is suing you and your friends?
No, someone makes the same joke every time they're mentioned. Eg http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19124 0&cid=15721315
And amazingly enough, they often also get +5 funny. The mods must be goldfish.
Getting a little melodramatic aren't we? I've heard this so many times now, and I just feel this needs to be said: The only musicians starving are those who choose to be musicians regardless of whether they're starving or not. We don't see starving whip and buggy producers asking for handouts, those people have found other work. In the big picture we adjust supply to match actual demand, not some theoretical construct of what the demand could have been. People might have put blood, sweat and tears into making an überleet character in WoW, but that doesn't mean it has a natural right to be a viable source of income. Maybe those musicians have to become taxi drivers or burger flippers (or go on tour!) rather than doing what they want all the time, but that is how it is for most people. Most of them would have to do that regardless of piracy, very few can make a living on their hobby. Yes, it's quite unfair for the small group who should have been able to make a living, but where piracy is the dealbreaker but that hardly makes them anything like the poor people we see really starving in third world countries.
I'm not concerned that there's a burger flipper out there who wanted to be a musician any more than someone what wanted to be a pro football player. I'm concerned that society might miss the next Elvis because he's flipping burgers instead. Likewise I'm not concerned about whether people are doing programming or plumbing, but rather what kinds of great new software products we as a society might have missed. People won't put up with crap income and career potential, but they will adapt. Society on the other hand would stagnate. But if you're telling me that some artist's kids go hungry tonight because of piracy, I'd tell him to get a salaried job and suck it up like the rest of us. It might not be the life that he wants, but it's not that hard to make *a* living. It's quite simnply realpolitik - how the world is and not how it should be.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Music is not a commodity, it is an art. It is not meant to be sold, it is meant to be heard and played. It is meant to be shared and it will be. Try as it may, the corporate music industry cannot stop this movement. I look forward to its rapture.
What century did you walk out of? Music has hardly ever been about art. It's always been about leeching much from sponsors. Usually they were rich nobles, merchants, or priests. You know what. This all really started about copyright over song lyrics and sheet music. Those with the contracts with rich folks wanted a percentage from anyone that tried to use their work. It's amazing that we've actually have all the different types of music today. It isn't because of the musical industry. Musicans have always been about making money and living comfortably off it and teaching tone-deaf rich brats how to play passing music to be considered cultural.
How ever you dislike the concept, music is a commodity. (I'm not sure if commodity is the proper economic term, but it works for me.) The only reason that you think music is an art is because of the centuries hold that they've had over impressing into the minds of the rich that to be cultured that you need to be able to play or identify "classical" music. My culture is different than that. Slashdot and webcomics are part of my culture. Music is part of my culture as being in the background of video games and what's on the radio on the way home. In the 1500-1700s music may have been high end culture, but through the 1950-current music is now universal. Today you don't have sponsor you own musican to write & play a love song for your girl friend/wife/mistress. Today, everyone has access to music. Maybe musicans would be happy if some one did manage to rig a system for personalized love song writing/playing on an affordable scale.
Actually I can think of a few excuses:
Some of them may be less acceptable than others, but the notion that the simple existence of a legal music service in a country means that there isn't any excuse for downloading music there is, in my opinion, extremely short-sighted.
He's not a valuable customer. The valuable customers are ones who use a very small amount of bandwidth, so the ISP doesn't have to pay for external (or, worse, international) bandwidth. Customers who use more than the bandwidth that an ISP's under-provisioning allocates are expensive, and are better palmed off on a competitor.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Instead of bitching about DRM, let your wallet do the talking and sign up with eMusic. I found out that given how much I hate DRM, I just had to sign up with eMusic, it seems to be the best way of influencing the business. BTW, their catalog is much better than I expected. If you are not a Britney Spears fan, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.