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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."
In other news today, several socialist countries have launched The Pro-P2P International Socialist Society (PISS).
... Yarrr. Perhaps ye government could subsidize ye artists and let the people get jigs & tunes for free?"
This international version of 'everybody but the MPAA' is opening new cases against people & their sites that are allegedly attempting to sell digital copies of music that they themselves did not write or perform. The chair and spokesman of PISS, Mr. Blackbeard, said, "Aye, PISS is pissed. Digital music should be provided on the cheap--a utility the likes of water or that magic electricity
These lawsuits will affect a wide-variety of people: a programmer who coded a few lines of the Windows DRM algorithm, while Steve Jobs is facing seven life sentences in the gulags and is considered to be armed and advertising.
My work here is dung.
Whoa! Am I the only one that read: the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry and did a double take?
And this is why I don't buy music anymore (No I don't pirate it either).
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The IFPI is the international counterpart of the RIAA not MPAA. The MPAA is movies, the RIAA is music, the IFPI is music.
Can't wait to see the first Canadian sued, then him/her countersuing this group and/or the SOCAN for their levies since copying is legal for personnal usage in Canada.
Pardon me, but in some countries it just might be legal to download for your own use. Like it used to be in Finland, before Tanja ex-Karpela now-Saarela, Jukka Liedes and the Gramex mafia sold out to the media biz.
And all those trained monkeys in the Parliament just keep on pushing the button as they are told by the party.
We might as well replace the "elected representatives" with remote-controlled robots. I bet they would be cheaper, too.
Yes, nowadays you can buy and download legally, IF the record label or rights holder in question has authorized your country to be the one who can download that specific track you want.
In other news, whale songs are being investigated in the ocean. The ocean, itself -- being a great conductor of sound waves, could be the largest p2p network on earth, and if lawyers can piece together three consecutive notes of any copyrighted materials, whales could be served with papers ... or harpoons....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
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.
"a laboratory assistant has been charged in Finland"
Oh my god! Our safe haven is compromised! *flees to sweden*
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 ?
Actually, you can get a high-end turntable these days with a USB port. I just use line-out to my nforce2 audio in, and sample at about double CD quality; that ALMOST gets all the sound that is on vinyl that a CD misses.
As for P2P, I can't use it anymore. My ISP politely asked me to stop, as it was really killing their ability to service their other customers.
I'm serious; they didn't threaten to throttle me, kick me off, or sue me, they very politely requested that I cut back as much as possible.
Which sucks, in a way. if they were assholes, i would have just circumvented whatever they tried. Now I have to play nice.
Grrr.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Someday, maybe soon, the most popular peer-to-peer networks will have TOR or something similar built in and turned on by default, with the seed- and data-carrying nodes hidden behind .onion. Yeah the speed sucks but subpeonas suck worse.
I'd love to see the RIAA try to shut down a beowulf cluster of those babies.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
Since when do they go hand-in-hand?
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.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
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."
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.