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The Pirates Will Always Win, Says UK ISP

Posted by Soulskill on from the except-in-pittsburgh dept.

TheEvilOverlord writes "The head of UK ISP TalkTalk, Charles Dunstone, has made the comment ahead of the communications minister's Digital Britain report that illegal downloading cannot be stopped. He said 'If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.' Instead he advocates allowing users 'to get content easily and cheaply.'"

53 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. They hit the nail on the head by Simon+(S2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is really refreshing to see someone, sometimes, who understands the situation and puts it down this clear in an unbiased manner.

    we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.

    or even worse, introduces new problems without solving the intended ones.

    --
    I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
    1. Re:They hit the nail on the head by psnyder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.

      or even worse, introduces new problems without solving the intended ones.

      Charles Dunstone's wording is better when talking to politicians.
      Politicians know that new problems will always arise, so it's not much of a deterrent. But they do NOT want to look stupid.

    2. Re:They hit the nail on the head by janwedekind · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You can't stop copyright infringement but you can inhibit free culture.

    3. Re:They hit the nail on the head by A+coward+on+a+mouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nuts to this argument. The packaging, extras, quality, and convenience that are offered as part of non-pirated media will keep the honest artists and publishers going strong.

      The music industry as it exists today is horrifically ineffecient and has had to settle price-fixing litigation as a result. Even after this wake-up call, they refuse to lower their prices signficantly. Do you honestly believe that it costs more to produce a 45 minute CD than it does to produce a 90 minute DVD?

      Finding decent quality rips and downloading them takes time and effort. A lot of people would rather not go through the hassle and instead just buy the product from a legitimate retailer if the prices weren't artificially twice as high as they ought to be. This is not a case of people not wanting professionally produced works or of people not being willing to buy them for a fair price. It is a case of the media industry refusing to sell things for a fair price.

      When CDs came out, they were fifty to a hundred percent more expensive than vinyl, but we were all told that the prices would come down because CDs are cheaper to make than vinyl or cassettes. Guess what - that didn't happen. Instead, the music industry just decided to charge as much as they wanted to charge and dare us to find a way around them. We found a way around them, and now they're trying to lobby and sue the entire world into submission. This guy is not the first one to tell them there's no way it works and that they'd better just start making the adjustment now to a less-lavish lifestyle now that large parts of the contribution they used to make to music production and distribution are no longer needed.

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    4. Re:They hit the nail on the head by joaobranco · · Score: 4, Interesting

      we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.

      or even worse, introduces new problems without solving the intended ones.

      Trouble is, some of the new problems it introduces (namely overbearing policing of actions online, bordering on a police state) are not usually seen as problems by the politicians (at least those in power or which hope to achieve it soon), but rather goals that they date not describe publicly...

    5. Re:They hit the nail on the head by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Things will even out, again thanks to technology...
      A few years ago, high quality cameras and equipment for producing special effects cost huge sums of money, as did decent audio sequencing equipment... These days, a lot can be done very cheaply... Powerful computers with complex 3d modeling software are affordable and most special effects are computerized... Same for audio, a lot can and is done in software these days.

      Big productions can be good, but they do come at a cost... Big name actors don't come cheap, and aren't necessarily any more talented... There are so many layers of management, corruption and greed that the production actually costs far more than it should.

      Singers i think will do just fine, especially those who enjoy doing live shows... Technology is still no substitute for a live show. I guess other forms of live entertainment such as sports will also do very well. The effect it will have tho, is that being a singer will no longer be seen by people as an easy path to riches (as exemplified by all the talent shows on tv these days).. It will be seen as hard work, and only people who have a true passion for art will go for it.

      There are also other avenues for actors, big name actors like patrick stewart do live plays, professional wrestling is also a form of acting, and the fame of being the star of popular (not necessarily profitable, most widely viewed is what matters) movies can propel people into other fields such as politics (see arnold schwarzenegger).

      Incidentally, movies and music are already heavily used for advertising, not because they need the money to survive but because the producers are often greedy and only care about the money, not about the art.

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    6. Re:They hit the nail on the head by Truus · · Score: 3, Funny

      In the Middle Ages the life of an actor was a lot harder than what it is likely to be when no movies are sold anymore in these periods of time. Cinema's, live concerts, and theatres will do the job for these still ridiculously rich group of people. So hit that download button, and save your money for the theatre.

    7. Re:They hit the nail on the head by eiMichael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All this means that if your art can be reproduced, it will. Be fucking excited that people regard your creative endeavors worth reproducing. This doesn't mean people won't pay for some of it. It just means that people won't go through hoops and gatekeepers for it.

      This reproduction opens your exposure to a MUCH MUCH wider audience. You may lose some paying consumers as they never really wanted to pay the price, but buying your CD was just the easiest way to get your art. Now it isn't. However, people may be willing to 'donate' the $9.99 they would have paid in a store to those who produced such art.

      This new distribution network for information is probably one of the biggest technological jumps in producing as it gives everyone who has an IP address the ability to distribute w/e it is they create. From tweeting to personal scientific research, everyone has the capacity to be a producer. This leads to tons of new competition against big-media, and as has been shown people will produce for nothing more than a few hits on their web site.

      In summary, if you do art for a living, good luck. Everyone is creative, and now you have a bunch of competition lowering the value of what you produce.

    8. Re:They hit the nail on the head by A+coward+on+a+mouse · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If what you said was true, there would simply be less sales.

      On what do you base this assertion?

      Instead we see more piracy.

      More than what?

      Hence the fallacy of your argument comes crumbling upon itself.

      It looks like your sentence is crumbling upon itself.

      It was never about prices being "unfair" and you know it.

      It is about prices being unfair and it will continue to be about prices being unfair no matter how many times you or anyone says it isn't about prices being unfair. Millions of dollars of equipment and a specially-designed studio are no longer necessary to produce professional-looking or -sounding media. Most creative personnel signed by major labels / studios aren't being paid well. Social networking and not expensive advertising is driving sales. Lots of people know this stuff. Older folks know that prices haven't come down since all the expenses associated with producing and distributing music and video dropped. Put all of this together and it's clear to anyone who thinks about it for a moment that the pricing is unfair. Some people (like me) have cut way back on acquiring new music rather than pay the inflated prices. Others are settling for the decidedly inferior product available through filesharing and torrent sites. "Piracy" is what happens when markets are distorted the way the market for music and video are distorted.

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    9. Re:They hit the nail on the head by A+coward+on+a+mouse · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not the stars or the writers whose livelihoods are at risk. That's why it's the MPAA, the RIAA, and their ilk fighting piracy and not the screenwriters or actors or musicians (except for Lemmy, who noone ever thought was mentally stable). In fact, the actors and screenwriters have been in legal battles with the studios trying to get paid. Both the actual creators of the music and video and the actual consumers of it want to do the same thing, which is to cut the fat out of this market and thus reap the benefits of all the wonderful technology that made the major studios and labels unnecessary.

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    10. Re:They hit the nail on the head by arkhan_jg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason CD prices and DVD prices are what they has virtually nothing to do with the cost of production. It's because they lie on what the companies believe to be the optimum point on the price/demand curve - i.e. the maximum they can get away with. This is the result of monpoly distribution - if you want a legitimate copy of a particular artist on a major label, or a particular film, you go to their media representative and pay their price, or you don't buy it at all.

      If you look at the price breakdown of either media, the largest slices of the pie go to the retailer, the label, and the taxman, generally in that order. The artists get a very small percentage. Where you see price drops, thats due to competition between the retailers (i.e. supermarkets) reducing their cut, rather than the label taking a hit. Of course, the record labels have used it as justification to reduce the artist's cut, even though their own profit margins have increased due to the substantial falling cost of production. Pressing plants are a lot cheaper, and while a good studio engineer and producer still costs money, the equipment is a lot cheaper and time needed to run it through autotune has fallen.

      Just take radio; payola is still in business, so labels literally pay to get their music on the air, as a promotional tool to drive album sales.

      With DVDs, most of the costs of production have already been paid anyway; most films at least break even in the cinema, so DVD sales are just gravy, and they'll take as much as they can get away with. It's also why prices are so wildly different between regions; they price to what local demand will allow (prices are generally 50% higher in Europe compared to the US), and use DRM and import restrictions to prevent customers price shopping around.

      So, the internet. The long tail has turned out to be somewhat of a myth - online sales have emphasised the marketshare of the top marketed artists, not flattened it. Many of the more obscure back catalogues don't sell anything at all, as generally teenagers want the latest new hit, not some crusty 20 year old album from a band they've never heard of.

      What it has done though is freed the indies. OK, their share of the market might not be very big, but the market itself (if you include piracy) has grown quite a lot. indie music doesn't end up on piratebay much, and they can price themselves very low and still keep almost all the profit. Self-production is pretty cheap indeed now, and there's various indie distribution channels such as cdbaby that leave the artist with almost all the money. You might not make the megabucks of being a heavily marketed hit teen sensation, but it's still enough to make a decent living. Even major artists have twigged that once they're famous, if they can break free of the label they can really make a killing using the internet. Just look at radiohead.

      So the record industry is being squeezed between two places. Internet distributed indies are showing how the internet can make you money not lose it; and piracy is utterly destroying their artificial distribution monopoly, and its monopoly prices. They had their chance to become the go-to online distributer buy buying napster and keeping it running, and blew it big time - now apple have that title. The film industry is not making the same mistake; with services like netflix, and video streaming via xbox live, or even just over cable they're trying to stay ahead of the curve by offering convenience for a price. If they can keep that price low enough, and get titles out fast enough not to drive the general public to piracy, they'll survive. Plus of course, they have the cinema chains to fall back on; anyone prepared to watch a cam rip wasn't likely a customer in the first place.

      My maxim is always this - in a world where you can sell bottled water, you'll be able to sell packaged entertainment media. You might not make as money as you'd like, but give the customer a cheap, easy to use experience that 'just works', and you'll stay in business. Trea

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    11. Re:They hit the nail on the head by A+coward+on+a+mouse · · Score: 2, Informative

      I find designer clothes are way more expensive to buy than they are to produce so i've taken to stealing them from shops until these rip-off designers get the message and reduce the prices.

      That would be stealing, not copyright infringement, and it certainly causes more damages to more the store, manufacturer, and designer than downloading an mp3 causes to the artists.

      As for music, i made an album on my laptop which sounds ace and it didn't cost a penny.

      Good for you! If you let me listen to 128k MP3s off the album for free, maybe I'd give you some money for a DRM-free 256k MP3, if I like your music.

      So all these bands have been taking the piss out of us for years!

      Happy to pay the artists, just not so much the studios; I know the studios don't pay the artists very well. In the video industry, the creative types (screenwriters and actors) have been suing / striking because they're tired of being screwed by the studios.

      I'm going to sneak into their gigs for free too.

      OK. Good luck with that. I've never considered gatecrashing and I don't know anyone who has.

      I went to see Madonna and it was really expensive.

      Supply and demand keep the prices high. There's limited space in an arena, and taking up space makes it impossible for others to occupy the same space. This is one of the differences between IP and other kinds of property.

      I worked out the cost of her show with all the dancers and stuff wasn't that much.

      You might want to sharpen your pencil. A roadshow like Madonna's is expensive to put on. Also, a live concert isn't something that can be canned or reproduced or downloaded.

      Gatecrashing and shoplifting are not the same as copyright infringement. For one thing, far fewer people think either of them is socially acceptable than think that downloading MP3s is socially acceptable. There's a reason for that that has to do with people's perception of what's fair. Seems more people agree with me than with you about this, and that's dangerous to the major studios and labels, who can tell they're losing their grip on this market. Anyway, I think it may be time for you to get back to that briefing with the lawyers about how the anti-customer litigation campaign is going, Mr. Valenti.

      --
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  2. Of course... by XPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as there is internet, there will be piracy. Plain n' simple.

    --
    "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
    1. Re:Of course... by Lillesvin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm inclined to correct that, because long before the internet there was piracy too. I remember copying the new Guns n' Roses album (Use your Illusion I) and lots of other stuff to tape. Yeah, that was 1991 - internet did technically exist, but let's be realistic, it wasn't a common thing to see in a house hold.

      So how about we say, "as long as art exists, there will be piracy"?

      --
      "Live free or don't."
    2. Re:Of course... by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      back then piracy was what people did when they made hundreds of dupes and sold them on a market stall. taping an album off your friend was just taping an album off your friend.

      half of my dad's music collection was lp's and recorded tapes, half were dupes an blank tapes. the same went for everyone i knew. there was never even the inkling that there was something wrong with this.

      now all of a sudden anyone who obtains dupes for free is a vicious evil greedy selfish thieving pirate and deserves to be financially ruined and/or imprisoned.

      fucking absurd.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    3. Re:Of course... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So how about we say, "as long as art exists, there will be piracy"?

      No. Not at all.
      You can't pirate something which is freely given.

      As long as copyright exists, there will be piracy.

      If and when society discards the crutch of copyright in favor of modern means of funding creative endeavours, piracy will end.

      Getting rid of copyright is the only way to end piracy.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    4. Re:Of course... by impaledsunset · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Works of art were copied long before your tape recorder existed. Hell, they were copied long before the printing press. I would guess that monks were copying lots of literary works by hand without any permission.

    5. Re:Of course... by impaledsunset · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And making killing people legal is the only way to end murder....

      Current copyright law is FUBAR, which doesn't mean we should get rid of copyright completely. Even a sane version of copyright will still be infrinded just as any other law out there, which doesn't mean that one shouldn't exist. Sane copyright laws should exist, however they should be beneficial to art and culture, not to the RIAA's pockets, and shouldn't thread down on almost everybody's and their wishes.

      Currently many people want and have the opportunity to remix and share art, so they will do it. On the other hand, current copyright laws make almost everything you can do with a work illegal. It's simply inconsistent with reality.

      P.S. What's this piracy are you all talking about? Why would you bring sea-robbers in a discussion about copyright?

    6. Re:Of course... by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Advertising... It's already happening, how many movies have sponsors or product placements these days? Tho most of these movies have their traditional revenue streams as well, adding the advertising is pure greed to get a bit of extra cash. That's one method right there, as requested.

      Modern technology makes production costs much cheaper than they used to be.

      Live shows.

      And many others..

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    7. Re:Of course... by msouth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      but you were copying to crap cassette tapes. You didn't have digital audio tape. Why not? Cuz the RIAA won that one.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape

      As long as the technology was localized, where they could attack a single format, target manufacturers, etc, they could keep it under their thumb. Things are, I think, fundamentally different now that digital copying and digital redistribution is ubiquitous.

      You weren't making anything like the quality of copy that is possible now, and you had no way to anonymously dump a million crappy cassettes for other people to pick up, either.

      Although technically you might have called what you were doing piracy, I think the Internet has fundamentally changed the game. He might have needed to say "piracy at this scale" vs. just piracy, but functionally it's just a minor quibble.

      --
      Liberty uber alles.
    8. Re:Of course... by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      More sane copyright laws would massively reduce the level of infringement that occurs... If you make media easier and cheaper to obtain, while removing nasties such as DRM then people will have far less reason to infringe.

      People do it because it's easier, substantially cheaper and often yields a superior and more usable product.

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    9. Re:Of course... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And that will get rid of people who make content and use the proceeds to pay the bills, such as everyone I know who works creating computer games.

      And nothing of value was lost? I tease.. I haven't played any of your games although I occasionally consider pirating a few just out of spite.

      And people like you will whine like children that "all teh games are teh shit now. They were so much better back then.."

      Why are you so incapable of seeing what the result of your dreams of a copyright free world lead to? it is NOT rocket science.

      And people like you are another reason to abolish copyright altogether. Incessant whining aside, you have consistently and ignorantly overlooked what would happen if copyright was abolished. You only see destruction [of your way to make money]. There would also be a lot of creation by people merging works together to form new works. I've written a more detailed post that you should read.

      I know you're in the UK, but (from wikipedia): An example of the intent of copyright, as expressed in the United States Constitution, is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors...the exclusive Right to their...Writings".

      You only see copyright as an express guarantee for you to make money. To others it's a way to promote new culture... provided that things actually return to the public domain. I don't care if you can't make a living from making games in the future. The abuses of the system by those who make the same argument as you do have demonstrated that you are not responsible enough with our culture to keep the system in place. If you want to keep your guarantee to make money, stop yelling at the angry mob with the pitchforks and torches, and instead yell at those they're angry with. The ones who keep pushing to prevent what is rightfully ours from returning to us.

  3. Re:Yep, now explain that to the politicians please by jginspace · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exactly what he said:

    TalkTalk has always maintained the defence that it is merely a broadband pipe and not an online policeman for the content industry.

  4. I don't think that's actually the industry's goal. by Pollux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe the industry knows that you cannot stop 100% of software piracy. I don't think that's their goal.

    I remember back in 2000 when I went to my dentist. He sat me down and started making the usual small-talk, asked me where I worked, what I was majoring in in college, etc. When I told him I was a comp sci major, he brought up Napster. My dentist was using Napster. He went on and on about how computer illiterate he was, but he had no problems using Napster, and how he was finding songs on there from back when he was a kid, how he could find anything he wanted, and how simple it was to get whatever song he wanted...

    I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.

  5. Re: There will always be piracy by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not so certain...

    At some point, as with Prohibition in the States, the law may cave to reality at some point and we'll give up on the concept of owning strings of 1s and 0s.

    Some other mechanism for paying creators will have to emerge - I think it'll end up being patrons for most things and live performances for others (like band tours and book readings), with a smattering of physical merchandise related to the original content.

    Some things may end up being free, done as labours of love. It's not like those of us in the First World don't have enough resources and time to burn on things we enjoy without necessarily requiring pay.

  6. The ways in which TalkTalk gets it by jonaskoelker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here's a few snippets from the article, selected to show how TalkTalk gets it:

    TalkTalk has always maintained the defence that it is merely a broadband pipe and not an online policeman for the content industry. Dunstone said any technical measures to try and clamp down on sharers of copyrighted material would soon be bypassed by pirates.

    "If people want to share content they will find another way to do it," [...] This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive."

    TalkTalk is testing BT's new fibre-optic super-fast broadband network in north London [...] Dunstone [of TalkTalk] reckons super-fast broadband â" offering speeds of up to 40Mb a second â" will be more expensive than current-generation broadband but less than the sort of £39.99-a-month prices being asked for basic broadband a few years ago.

    Fast cheap internets, "we can't stop the pirates"...

    Exchange your currency into British pounds and vote with it.

    (I'm not paid to say that)

  7. Amazon! by Rick+Richardson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Amazon has 89 cent downloads. And .99 to 3.99 albums (one per day). Pirates should check out Amazon!!!

    Here is what I've gotten (albums for less than $3.99) in 6 months:

    $ ls -d */* |cat
    Aerosmith/Big Ones
    Alanis Morissette/Flavors Of Entanglement
    Amy Grant/Heart In Motion
    Bob Marley/Live At The Lyceum
    Bon Jovi/Cross Road
    Boston/Boston
    Butch Walker/Sycamore Meadows
    Cary Brothers/Who You Are
    Creedence Clearwater Revival/Chronicle_ 20 Greatest Hits
    Creed/Greatest Hits
    David Bowie/Heroes
    Eagles/One Of These Nights
    Elvis Costello/My Aim Is True
    Forgive Durden/Forgive Durden Presents Razia's Shadow_ A Musical
    Heart/Make Me
    Inxs/Kick
    Jack's Mannequin/The Glass Passenger (Amazon Exclusive)
    Jackson Browne/The Pretender
    James Morrison/Songs For You, Truths For Me
    Jimi Hendrix/Electric Ladyland
    Joan Jett & The Blackhearts/I Love Rock N' Roll
    Joe Bonamassa/The Ballad Of John Henry
    Joshua Radin/Simple Times
    Kate Voegele/A Fine Mess
    Katy Perry/One Of The Boys
    Led Zeppelin/Led Zeppelin
    Madonna/Like A Virgin
    MC5/Kick Out The Jams
    Metric/Fantasies
    Mieka Pauley/Elijah Drop Your Gun
    Neil Diamond/Sweet Caroline
    No Doubt/The Singles Collection
    Pink Floyd/Animals
    Prince/Purple Rain [Explicit]
    Queen/News Of The World
    Robin Trower/Bridge Of Sighs
    Rod Stewart/The Definitive Rod Stewart
    Seether/Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces Spaces (Bonus Track Version) - [Explicit]
    Seth Walker/Leap Of Faith
    Shiny Toy Guns/Major Tom
    Soundgarden/Superunknown
    The Apples In Stereo/New Magnetic Wonder
    The Band/Greatest Hits
    The Benjy Davis Project/Dust
    The Go-Go's/Beauty And The Beat
    The Pussycat Dolls/Doll Domination
    The Weepies/Hideaway
    The White Tie Affair/Walk This Way
    The Who/Who Are You
    U2/No Line On The Horizon
    Van Halen/Van Halen
    Van Halen/Van Halen II
    Various Artists/Motown Number 1's Vol. 2
    Whitesnake/Whitesnake
    Yes/The Yes Album

    1. Re:Amazon! by Crookdotter · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If I got that right, that's 54 albums, so in cost that's $215 you've spent right there. I bet I could have the majority of that on a torrent in a day or two, for nothing.

      What's the incentive for pirates to look at amazon?

    2. Re:Amazon! by adona1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, pirates should check out Amazon. I've checked it out. However, because I don't live in America, they wouldn't let me give them my money. Credit card out, mp3s selected, and bam...sorry, you're in the wrong country (nothing stopping me buying the CD from Amazon though). And the record companies wonder why they're dying...

      --
      Between the falling angel and the rising ape
    3. Re:Amazon! by mightyteegar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I got that right, that's 54 albums, so in cost that's $215 you've spent right there. I bet I could have the majority of that on a torrent in a day or two, for nothing.

      What's the incentive for pirates to look at amazon?

      Of course you could find all those via torrents -- with no guarantees that an album in a discography won't be incomplete, there won't be any pops, skips or warps in the song files and that your download won't stop at 98% for eternity. Part of the reason I quit pirating is because, just like getting anything else on the black market, the quality often left a lot to be desired.

      Furthermore, Amazon has a massive catalog of great albums that aren't freely available as torrents. Some of them you'd be lucky even to find on Soulseek. And all of it downloads quickly; almost all the albums I've purchased from Amazon MP3 were in my music library less than 2 minutes after I bought them. It's 192k MP3, which isn't lossless, but it's not bad.

      What was my incentive? Amazon eliminated my desire to pirate by offering me cheap music, the lack of which led me to pirate in the first place.

    4. Re:Amazon! by caluml · · Score: 4, Funny

      What, exactly, are you thinking that | cat on the end is adding?

      --
      Get your own free personal location tracker
    5. Re:Amazon! by PRMan · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually most Amazon songs are over 200kbps. I suspect that they are using something similar to the LAME alt present standard, which even people with much better hearing than I have can't hear the difference from the original.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  8. Re:Yep, now explain that to the politicians please by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Making ISPs police the users and the content is as if they wanted to make BMW and others responsible for all the illegal activities people commit in their cars.

    How come it's so hard to differentiate between offering access and being responsible for what people do with it?

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. The Pirates Will Always Win... by pboechat · · Score: 3, Funny

    Take that, ninjas!

  11. Re:I don't think that's actually the industry's go by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.

    That's what they like to think. But knowledge of how to use the latest piracy tools is just as unstoppable as the piracy itself. It is a variation on the same phenomenon that results in virus-construction-kits and script-kiddies.

    They can only go so far to make piracy harder. What they can do without practical limit is to make alternatives to piracy easier. If typing a song name into google gets you 10 different places you can legitimately download it in various ways for various payments (outright purchase, or advertising supported, or streaming, etc all with different pricing based on the seller) then that goes a long ways to keeping the dentist from even thinking about piracy.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  12. Re:I don't think that's actually the industry's go by Yacoby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    he had no problems using Napster, and how he was finding songs on there from back when he was a kid, how he could find anything he wanted, and how simple it was to get whatever song he wanted...

    I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.

    Then the solution is not to sue the dentist, but to give him options to get the music he wants cheaply and easily. By cheaply, I don't mean the current prices that they are ripping me off with. 12p a track sounds reasonable. 10p to the artist, 1p to the publisher, and 1p to the distributer.
    When they try and sell me a digital album for £8 - £10, I just give up. Do they think I am made of money? Why should I pay a large amount of money for something that costs them nothing to reproduce?

    One big issue the industry will hit is that when people my age (late teens) get to the point when we are the dentist, we won't have any problem pirating things. We won't have any problems with computer illiteracy. We will know where to find the programs that encrypt the traffic. If we don't, we just ask a friend who does.

  13. Wow, progress being made, but ... by soporific16 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    they're still calling us pirates. I like to think of myself as someone who likes to walk around the tollbooths the entertainment industry puts in front of everything, not walk through them. Haven't they got enough money? How many copies of my favorite albums do i have to buy to replace the ones i lost, or had stolen or whatever? Because the tollbooth owners don't care about that sort of fairness, how can i be expected to WILLINGLY put up with the hassle of the tollbooth experience when i can just walk around? The ISP guy got it spot on in one regard -- the only way to combat the culture that has developed to avoid this hassle (ie filesharing) is to make stuff dirt cheap and mega accessible. But there's no or very little profit in that is there, and so here lies the contradiction of trying to own something in digital form and make "good healthy profits". Normally i would sarcastically say "good luck with that" but its simply not funny that while they're trying to make these healthy profits we have to put up with all the associated nastiness of their stand-over tactics and absurd propaganda... can we have the revolution now please?

    1. Re:Wow, progress being made, but ... by Draek · · Score: 2, Funny

      If I had to look to the content creator in the eye every time I "pirated" something, I'd download the entire Metallica discography on a weekly basis and I don't even *like* Metallica.

      Let's face it, pretty much everybody who downloads and quite a few of us who don't despise the RIAA and their so-called "artists", so appealing to people's consciences ain't gonna do much.

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
  14. Re:I don't think that's actually the industry's go by david.given · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Napster was awesome, and I regret its passing. There is nothing like it today.

    The great thing about Napster was that it let me find new music that I liked. I'd see a reference to a song in, say, a book; I'd search for it on Napster, download the track, and play it; and then, if I liked it, I could go back to the same place and see what else the guy had. I discovered They Might Be Giants that way; I downloaded Rock To Wind A String Around from a recommendation, then went back and dug out more of their tracks, then ordered the Apollo 18 CD.

    Okay, Napster was pretty slow and BitTorrent has it beat technically in pretty much every way, but no other music sharing service had the same sense of exploration and community. You could explore people's music collections, find interesting new rare stuff, and then actually talk to them about it (if they were on). It was, in fact, all social networking and Web 2.0-y before the terms had even been invented. I wish something like it existed today.

  15. Geographic Limitations by S77IM · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Can anyone convince these TalkTalk guys to start a branch of their business in Austin, Texas? I know a number of current Time Warner Cable subscribers who would be eager to switch.

      -- 77IM

    --
    Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
    Master: Well, yes and no.
  16. Re:Yep, now explain that to the politicians please by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wish my ISP would filter out all the car analogies for me.

  17. Re:Yep, now explain that to the politicians please by superskippy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The problem is that TalkTalk sabotage their own arguments by being one of the biggest proponents of Phorm and traffic shaping. If it's just a pipe, and "oh we can't possibly be expected to look inside the packets and find out what they are", why are you planning on inserting adverts into my web pages at the ISP stage?. Why do you open up my packets and make some of them go slower or faster?

    The truth of the matter is that ISPs secretly love pirates- they pay the broadband bills. Modern piracy has been a big loss for the content industries and a big win for telecoms companies. Please don't pretend that Dunstone is resisting this because he is a huge fan of civil liberties, he is resisting this because it is good for his business.

  18. Re:Same goes for child porn by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your post is clearly flamebait, but...

    What the hell makes you think that a child's right to not be abused by a pervert is of equal or lesser importance than a corporation's desire to have a profit margin higher than any traditional industry?

    These companies are greedy and want to produce infinite copies of something for virtually no money so that they can sell them at 99% profit, and gouge consumers for multiple copies of the same thing. Do these companies have more "right" to this level of profit than a kid does to not be abused?

    Why should companies in markets like this make such massive profit margins when anyone else selling food, physical goods or services etc must make do with a few percent?

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  19. Re:Yep you can stop P2P by Swizec · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes it's hard to stop copying, but it's not that difficult to seriously clamp down on P2P. To me it's easy to spot P2P, the characteristics are: 1) Lots of connections to multiple other IPs 2) High upload AND download So if you see that, you can just leave the first 4 "conversations" that are downloading alone, and the first 2 "conversations" that are uploading, and squish down the rest till the first bunch are done. By conversation I mean IP to IP. Doesn't matter how many TCP/UDP connections between two IPs, it's still one "conversation".

    1) What if I open 20 different websites in a few seconds because I happened upon a cool wikipedia article?

    2)What if I'm chatting, uploading a video, opening websites and running a dev server? Many many connections.

    3) How do you define "high" transfer? Firstly I can tell my torrent client to curb how fast it's going to just a few kilo per second. Secondly, I could be doing something funky, like, I dunno, running an ftp server to share photos and video between people in a design shop.

  20. It's a sudden break of common sense by DragonTHC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have been screaming this line for years and years.

    It would appear, I'm a fucking visionary.

    Why do they put up so many barriers to buying their content?

    Make it cheaper, make it easier to find and access. If I could buy your content online in HD format for what I think it's worth, then I would buy it instead of download it. You think it's worth more than it is. You strictly control access to it. You claim that your business is suffering. Adapt to the damn market.

    And finally, make up your damn mind. Is it a product or a license? You can't have it both ways. If it's a product, I can understand that. Since downloads are not stealing and aren't a diminishment of your product, we can download anything we want.

    If it's a license, then I have a right to download the mp3s for all the vinyl and CDs that I own. I also have a right to download any movies I own on vhs (which is a lot.)

    If it's both, we can still download anything we want.

    Copyright law was intended to prevent counterfeiting. Piracy isn't counterfeiting. Downloading isn't piracy. Downloading isn't counterfeiting.

    The statutory damages were intended to prevent corporate counterfeiting. They were never intended to be applied to music fans.

    --
    They're using their grammar skills there.
  21. Re:Yep you can stop P2P by swilver · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You should go into politics, you have about the same level of understanding of the issues involved.

    Making lots of connections is not illegal, and is in fact likely to become more and more commonplace as more and more services are developed where the combined uploading / downloading power of users is leveraged to provide decentralized and cheaper services. The only reason it is not more prevalent right now is because of retarded bandwidth restrictions on connections like ADSL. This will become a thing of the past soon enough though.

    You seem to think that people use their internet connection for one thing at a time, like a microwave oven. I however run a webserver, versioning system, several SQL servers, a torrent client (yup), IMAP mail server, web mail, reverse proxy, a regular proxy, do remote backups and allow some friends to have SSH/SFTP access. Sometimes I even read slashdot.

    Profiling that with some simple rules is not going to work. The webserver alone would look like a P2P program with thousands of connections a day. If there happens to be some download activity as well, I'm screwed.

  22. Re:Yep you can stop P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You seem to think that P2P is only used for copyright infringement. What gives someone the right to clamp down on me using bittorent to spread a Linux ISO? What gives them the right to interfere with apt-p2p? And if they're gong to scan and only interfere with copyright infringing materials, they'd be infringing on my privacy.

  23. Your argument already applies to TV, radio, papers by Geof · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They will not contain ads, they will BE ads, and nothing more. Every single aspect of the movie will only serve to advance the commercial(/political/ideological) interests.

    This is already the situation for TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers. In all of these media, the real customer is the advertiser who pays for access to the audience who watches/listens/reads for "free."

    Now I won't say that's a good thing. I think it's terrible. In my opinion, quality is clearly higher when it is made directly for the audience (as is the case for the BBC, PBS, NPR, or CBC radio, for example). To the extent that a changing media landscape is undercutting the advertising-supported model I am hopeful that direct payment for (and influence over) cultural works will become more widespread.

    In the early days of radio, the manufacturers had a problem. Radio sales were extremely popular, but the people buying needed something to listen to. So the manufacturers created radio stations in order to drive demand for their products. It worked (though government licensing in favor of the networks also wiped out a wide range of independent and community services).

    Today, the media industries argue that their production has a multiplier effect on the economy: each dollar invested in media produces many more dollars in related activity (transportation of books, sales of Star Wars toys, Macdonalds promotions, and so on). Some of this activity is really a cost of doing business, whose elimination would result in greater efficiency (e.g. it's more efficient to download a book than to ship it across the country), but much of it is new value. They present this as an argument for strong copyright[1]. In fact, it may be just the opposite: if the return on the dependent activity is greater than the cost of producing the original work, then there is an incentive to create the work even if it made no money directly. This is why Apple created iTunes, for example: not to make money from selling music, but to drive the (much more profitable) sale of iPods.

    Or take Star Wars: the films earned $4.3 billion, but merchandise earned $13.5 billion. Widespread copying of the film would not touch the business case for making it, and at the beginning, when the venture was risky, wider distribution would only increase the likelihood of success (while possibly limiting the maximum possible scale of that success - to $13.5b in this case, rather than $17.8b).

    We already live in a world where many movies are driven more by the model you describe than by ticket revenue per se. Producers care tremendously about ticket sales as a metric of popularity and because that's what keeps the films in the cinemas, not necessarily because that is their key revenue stream. As it happens, DVD sales recently became more profitable. So we have seen business model change on this scale extremely recently. It ain't the end of the world. (Though it might mean a lot more Star Wars-like films, which admittedly wouldn't make me thrilled: I'm not a fan.)

    [1] In the recent copyright debate at The Economist, Dale Cendali, their May 8 guest made just this claim. She cited a study that found that the "IP industries" contributed "nearly 40% of the growth achieved by all U.S. private industry." Unfortunately for her argument, she failed to point out that under the category of "IP industry" the study included the whole automotive industry, big chunks of the transportation and retail sectors, a significant part of the petroleum industry, and so on. (You can see my detailed rebuttal if on page 5 of the May 8 comments.) Turned around, this appears to be evidence that IP is an input cost for many businesses, and there is a large incentive to create works regardless of copyright. (The actual economic claim is not that such works would not be produced, but that they would be underproduced. It's not clear to me that economic theory has a good answer for what the "best" (for whom?) level of production of Big Brother shows or Shakespeare plays is, or at what cost.)

  24. FINALLY someone seeing clearly! by kheldan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've recited the mantra a million times: You can't stop the signal, Mal!

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  25. Re:Yep you can stop P2P by bestalexguy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you carefully analyze the traffic there's no problem in identifying P2P traffic and what that traffic contains. The point is, it's unacceptable to use in this case investigation techniques which should be reserved to extremely serious crimes. The police don't break into every small time crook's home to recover stolen apples. There must be a careful balance between social benefit and privacy violation. Duplicating a file, as well as copying a piece of poetry by hand, shouldn't be considered a major offense.

    Awarding damages amounting to thousands of times the market value of the item duplicated and sentencing to time in prison is outrageous. Like hanging a guy for stealing the king's deer. What is so special with this offense to make it the only one for which punishment must be made unreasonably harsh until it's fully eradicated?

    Some theoretically less civilized countries use this draconian method for serious crimes. I wonder where is civilization, actually?

  26. Re:I don't see the problem by Ant+P. · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are you proposing that you'll pay Blizzard's server bandwidth once their current bittorrent-based update client is rendered useless? If not, fuck off.

  27. Myth of market forces and network TV by Geof · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First, if you prefer what the commercial networks produce that's fine by me. They have made lots of good TV shows. It's probably largely a matter of what you grew up with. I grew up with BBC shows rebroadcast in Canada, so prefer Doctor Who to Star Trek.

    I prefer networks that look at their viewership numbers, and try to tailor their entertainment to what the general population wants. I've found they produce more good entertainment than any of the government-run systems.

    This is not actually what the main private networks (ABC, CBC, NBC in the U.S.) do. They target specific demographics desired by advertisers. The results are quite different from what would happen if they attempted to capture a) the most viewers, or b) the viewers most willing to pay for their shows. This is obvious when you compare to programming by cable channels (e.g. HBO), which are more directly responsive to their audiences. For a long time (many decades) the networks made the (patently absurd) assumption that men made all the significant spending decisions in the family, and targeted their prime time shows accordingly. Or take The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the most successful shows of its time: cancelled not because its audience went away, but because the advertisers figured its audience was too poor. They wanted to chase hip urban viewers instead. It is largely a myth that they are rational actors directed by the market. In practice, networks are basically huge command economies inside. They're not famous for making smart decisions.

    The other systems I mentioned vary widely in governance and funding models. CBC TV is abysmal due to a lack of stable funding or independence from the government. Recently, CBC radio has been following in its footsteps. I believe the BBC is quite a bit more independent than CBC, largely because it has a dependable source of long-term funding (the TV license). I don't believe NPR is government run at all. It gets very little money from government. Most of its funding comes from viewers (pledge drives), member stations, and corporate donations.

    What we have seen with the non-commercial networks is that they have coalesced around a different audience not well served by the private networks. So on the one hand we have a different approach to funding and governance, on the other we have contrasting tastes and cultures (the stereotype is "popular" vs "middle/high brow"). It's not clear that the one caused the other. In a world without the private networks (which, as I pointed out, would not happen because the consumer electronics industry would profit from creating them if they did not exist - probably even if there were no such thing as copyright), the character of the programming on these systems would likely be quite different.

    I am aware of the limits on Fox's rights to Star Wars, but that makes no difference to its relevance. The licensing arrangements in place today are irrelevant when conjecturing whether it could or would have been made if it were unable to depend on ticket sales. My point is that it would have been profitable even if ticket sales were zero.