Virgin-Universal Deal Offers Unlimited Music, Goes After File Sharers

suraj.sun writes "The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music. The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free. 'In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network,' a statement read. 'This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access.' DTecNet has already been working with UK content companies for some time to do much the same thing, and is also working with RIAA in the United States."

Comments

brr.

[Tibor the Hun]

frost?

Re:brr.

[mcgrew]

You just infringed on Virgin's copyrighted song "Frosty The Snowman" by using the word "frost". Expect a letter from their lawyers shortly.

Sounds like a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?

Re:Sounds like a plan

[Jurily]

Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?

Don't be silly. After all, it's "information", not "court order". It will only hurt the little guys.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[lightversusdark]

I refer you to my previous post on the matter.
Most poignantly, Dizzee was No.1 again at the beginning of this month..

Re:Sounds like a plan

[jez9999]

Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?

Of course not. They're going to suspend it if Universal alleges that they did.

Prosecutor, judge, jury.

Re:Sounds like a plan

[CommanderIsm]

virgin media is the devil incarnate in this. the services offered by this the (taking over the biggest debtor in british history) are mediocre and at best below their own specifications. i suffer their service everyday and i know how crap it is. they slow down torrents - yet if you go to a virgin media website it is the correct speed.

Virgin? Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody this intent on raping their customers should be calling themselves a virgin.

Re:Virgin? Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

Anal doesn't count.

Monthly fee

[BetterSense]

I already pay a monthly fee for such a service. It's called DSL.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

How realistic and politically incorrect of you. You're going to hurt their feelings. Play along with them as they slowly die off and everyone is happy.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the concept that the internet IS information and that your connection fee is a guarantee of that information seriously impedes the idea that some information is worth paying for.
 
  I know several people smarter than me, I hope you do too. It doesn't make me jealous that there's some things they can think of better than I can... even in the general sense.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I wish I had your service. My service, OC-1, does not cover it. Fuck.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

lol true story.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all know several people smarter than you.

Re:Monthly fee

[CarpetShark]

I already pay a monthly fee for such a service. It's called DSL.

No, no, no. Their service lets you download music. DSL lets you download (or upload) anything that can be represented digitally.

Re:Monthly fee

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a further question. They are going to try this Pay Big Brother shit in
the UK--the same UK where they are torching off "traffic ticket cams" around
three times a week on average? What will happen to the physical connection boxes of
the OTHER inmates/subscribers once they suspend the right person?
I hope there's a website for "torched internet boxes", complete with pics, too!!!

Net Neutrality implications?

[Enuratique]

I agree that this is a risky venture... Though, at least they're trying new ideas and bringing everything to the table when they do... For one thing it could backfire - driving customers away from their service. Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly? And won't this further blur the line between content providers and internet providers? Will this subscription service be optional? What if I don't want the price of my bill inflated an extra $10 a month for the privilege of downloading music guilt free? What if I'm happy as a pig in shit with the current system (eg: morally bankrupt)?

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[master5o1]

I want to know if they will cut someone off for downloading Warner Bros. or Sony BMG music, considering that this deal is for Universal Music Group, would they protect the rights of the other labels even though they are not directly involved in the deal?

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Sirusjr]

Furthermore, what about the people who like to import music or listen to music from other countries. I sure as hell would never pay for a service unless it would allow me to access Japanese and European music as well as the occasional American group I actually like or the foreign groups that get US releases. Plus like other users have mentioned, it is not worth the price if they are only giving it to us in MP3 format regardless of the quality of the files.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Lumpy]

Oh no it's not risky.. you are not looking at it right.

Everything for one monthly fee, and they will be going after file sharers and illegal file holders with vigor...

I.E. if you dont subscribe and have music on your computer, you're a criminal. The ONLY way to not get labeled a criminal is to subscribe to the service.

I might be paranoid, but Evil is as Evil does.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[gurps_npc]

Not everyone that is happy as a pig in shit with the current system are morally bankrupt. Some of us make full use of itunes and would be quite upset if on top of our itunes bill we have to pay more money. Others simply DON'T listen to music. Some people are deaf you know, no reason they should be forced to pay an extra $10 for internet access. Not to mention those of us that simply don't like music in the same way that some people don't watch TV or the appaling number of people that don't read books.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Threni]

> Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly

No. Anyone can provide internet access. A lot of - perhaps most - people are connected via BT landlines to their exchange, and it is from that exchange that other companies can provide access. Or there's genuine "hole in the wall" fibre, utterly independant of BT. (BT was previously the state owned phone company before privatisation, and it slowly lose its monopoly, but it had something of a lead over competitors).

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[CarpetShark]

it's not risky...The ONLY way to not get labeled a criminal is to subscribe to the service.

Well, yeah... that, or boycott them and use one of the saner ISPs.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

or the appaling number of people that don't read books.

Yea, it is quite appalling how many people don't read books. Take the dictionary, for instance!

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[xtrafe]

I'm not quite sure what you think qualifies as 'morally bankrupt', but here's how I'd illustrate the term:

• Inspiring generations of musicians (and other professionals) to toil for free in some faint hope of rockstar-scale success is morally bankrupt.
• Crowding out a cornucopia of music, and an entire economy of middle-class musicians, is morally bankrupt.
• Conning people into thinking it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a produce a professional-sounding album when it really only costs a couple thousand, at most, is morally bankrupt.
• Convincing musicians that they should live off recordings, rather than performance, is morally bankrupt.
• Subjugating art, expression, and creativity in the name of selling impressionable children on fad after fad, is morally bankrupt.
• Leveraging the legal system at taxpayers expense in a hopeless attempt to keep a depricated business model working is morally bankrupt.
• Lying to people that somehow the most fundimental law of economics we have, that price = demand / supply, does not apply, as if somehow even gravity could be driven off by a marketing campaign, is morally bankrupt.
• Capitalizing on ignorance to charge both producers and consumers for a middleman service that can be had entirely for free is morally bankrupt.
• Trying to sell people into acting against their own self interest is morally bankrupt.
• Spying on people is morally bankrupt.
• Propagandizing is morally bankrupt.
• Brain-washing people is morally bankrupt.
• Telling me I can't twiddle the bits on my own harddrive any way I see fit is morally bankrupt.

But record companies don't care about being morally bankrupt; They're just in business to make money.
And after all that, if you really think there's still some reason that record companies should exist, and moreover deserve some portion of your income or mine, I'd love to hear it.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they would need to take should a hard PR line. If I were them I would start a lifestyle campaign that painted pirates as leeches that suck the bandwidth from paying subscribers. Basically paint pirates as no account low lifes that are willing to troll through the muck of file sharing sites risking viral infections for tunes that bright clean sexy subscribers that are above such nonsense just get as part of their plan.

Of course I would never stoop to work in the soul-less advertising industry so what do I know.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[smithberry]

Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly?

No, they don't have a monopoly. I use Virgin for my broadband but I could use BT or any number of other ISPs. If I don't like what they offer I can easily go elsewhere (although because of the distance from the exchange my cable broadband is way faster than anything coming down the BT line at present).

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Eskarel]

It's always been that way. US cable companies would get really narky at you if you downloaded tv shows on their services.

Generally speaking ISPs only care as much about piracy as they're forced to because they make money by selling you internet access(it's a little different in the US because the US doesn't have quotas so they get narky if you use too much bandwidth, but not much). However if your ISP produces or distributes the content you're pirating they're all of a sudden really concerned. Virgin distributes music, so they care about music piracy, no big shock.

The world is always like that, Open Source guys pirate close source code but spit the dummy if the opposite happens. Move guys pirate software, software guys pirate movies. I remember flying with a guy who wrote scripts for movies and he was all up in arms against Movie piracy while writing his script on a pirated copy of Office.

You can bet that the RIAA guy pirates software and the BSA guy pirates movies because that's just the way the world works.

The moral of the story is never choose an ISP who is also a content provider.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[TheRaven64]

Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly?

Virgin Media is the result of a group of mergers between all of the cable companies in the UK. There are basically three ways of getting wired Internet access here:

• Get an ADSL connection from a BT (incumbent monopoly telco) reseller. Owing to regulation, you can't buy directly from the part of BT that operates the network, you have to buy from an arm which gets the lines at the same prices as their competitors. This also requires you to have a BT land line
• If you life near an exchange with local-loop unbundling, you can get ADSL from a third-party provider without paying BT anything, but they still typically need you to have a landline phone connection with somebody.
• If you are one of around 60% of the population living in areas covered by Virgin, you can get a connection from them.

For some strange reason, the regulator recently decided that Virgin doesn't need any regulation, while BT needs a lot. This is odd, because it makes it increasingly difficult for ADSL providers to compete in the areas where Virgin's network extends (i.e. all of the profitable areas of the UK). There are occasionally mutterings about making Virgin sell access to their network wholesale (as BT has to), but they keep being rejected.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly?

Not remotely (I doubt that the legal framework in this country would even permit that, but either way it's not the case).

The UK went through a spate of privately-funded fibre-optic cabling for TV offerings a few years ago (mostly in urban areas), followed fairly quickly by another spate of company mergers, takeovers and so on. Virgin basically owns a sizeable portion of that infrastructure, and that's the medium by which they're offering their service. But alongside that is the DSL picture. The UK doesn't have the same set-up as the US, with lots of local phone companies; we've had a single trunk network over *almost* the whole country since 1912 (the single exception now is Kingston Communications, servicing Hull on the north-east coast, and which ceased to be municipally-owned about 10 years ago). BT, who operate the main network, are an ISP in their own right, but also have legal obligations to provide access for other ISPs (most recently local loop unbundling). The upshot is that, when I decided about a month ago that I wanted to jump ship on my existing ADSL supplier, I had a choice of a dozen or more ISPs, all providing packages of varying sorts and terminating over the same twisted-pair landline from my local telephone exchange. I also have a cable running right past the front of my property, so could, had I wished, have gone for Virgin.

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[AmiMoJo]

I bet the cost of the subscription is more than the cost of a VPN service like Relakks that would prevent them spying on you.

Interesting

[langelgjm]

Interesting. First off, when they say suspend, does that only go for Virgin Media customers (if there are any, not sure what the UK ISP world is like)?

Second, the all-you-can-download idea sounds reasonable. If the catalog is extensive enough (including classical), and it truly is DRM-free and platform-agnostic, I could actually see myself using this. They had better make sure the file metadata is good (a large collection with good metadata is worth paying for), and it'd be nice if they had something like iTune's "Genius" to find things you might like based on your current collection.

Re:Interesting

[awarrenfells]

Just coming from an ISP perspective, I imagine it would be only their customers. Most ISPs only suspend accounts for a violation of their own AUP or ToS. However, most ISPs have a ToS against P2P file sharing, so if the other company can prove such activity, I imagine suspension could occur.

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it. Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.

As far as suspending copyright infringers, I've always been concerned by how readily ISPs seem to punish their own customers over a civil dispute in which they ought to have no stake. I guess if they're getting a cut of the action with this service, it makes some sense.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can provide enough new content each month it could be worth subscribing.

Also, people may intend to only subscribe for a little while but end up sticking around out of inertia.

Re:Interesting

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.

Good question. I would guess that they would do a contract term with the service. I'd guess 12 or even 24 months, and the requisite early termination fee.

Re:Interesting

[bigngamer92]

"If they can provide enough new quality content each month it could be worth subscribing."

Fixed for you.

Of course with the current state of the music industry it would be:
"If they can provide enough new content that they play on the radio then people will keep subscribing."

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably would be cheaper than buying all of the CDs. I do wonder how that would work. Are you allowed to license it DRM free for as long as you have the subscription, or do you own it and can get new content for as long as you have the subscription. That's a big difference.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better: 1 person sign up and and take orders for a couple hundred of their closest friends.

The truth is that the large corporate media middle man model is fatally broken. Yes they will scream about "protecting the poor artist" and fight a few more sensational court battles but its just the dance of dead men walking.

Not many are going to pay for what they can easily get for free. And free does not pay the rent. How long before they try adding Ads halfway into a track?

Re:Interesting

[meringuoid]

Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel?

Debatable.

It's easily said: download everything they want. Maybe quite a few people will do that: sign up, binge on free mp3s, save them, then quit. But it seems to me that the people who would do that are pirates already. They've already downloaded everything they want.

Meanwhile, if you're Joe Average, can you enumerate all the tracks you want, such that you could grab the lot of them in one mass download? It's a hell of a job. You'd always forget some band or other, then months later slap your head in frustration and go 'Oh... I knew I should have downloaded more of the back catalogue of Oingo Boingo!'

I don't view the service here as 'pay to download music'. It's not really a sale thing. Why would I buy what I can have for free? This service is pitched at the lost generation, at the people aged 30 and down who have completely lost touch with the idea that music is something you pay for and then keep. We now treat music differently. Music is free - and I don't want to hear about copyright: maybe music SHOULDN'T be free, but that doesn't change the fact that it IS free.

What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess.

So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource. Why would I download and keep any of it? Why should I go to the bother of maintaining my own collection? It's right there on a service run by my own ISP at the other end of a 20 megabit connection. Music on demand. The colossal cloud jukebox.

Re:Interesting

[cdrguru]

I think the point of ISP's suspecting copyright infringing users is pretty simple, and one that has yet to be tried out.

Real simple. There is no safe harbor for what your customers are doing. If they are doing illegal things that the ISP can detect and block - something that is probably not far off - they have an obligation to do so. Failure to do so means they are an accomplice and liable for damages, at least contributory damages.

Today nobody has tried this approach because it is not clear that an ISP can detect copyright infringement in a clear and unambiguous way. Should this change, ISPs will certainly be viewed differently in the US.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous subscription-based systems have relied on a form of DRM to enforce the payment.
Otherwise, in theory, you could join up and leech like mad for a while and drop the subscription when you had enough music.
Or don't we consider the music "calling home" occasionally as DRM?

Re:Interesting

[Registered Coward v2]

From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it.

I'd be surprised if it were truly DRM free - if Universal releases their entire play list; what would be the point of staying subscribed once you got the songs you really want? Or, simply having one person in a group sign up and "share" offline? My guess is they'll have some sort of ID tag to identify the music tied to the original subscriber; so if songs get shared beyond that then they have someone to sue.

Of course, that doesn't solve the churn problem - if people simply subscribe to get a catalog and then bolt, how do you generate a reliable long term revenue stream? Do you produce enough new music each month to make a subscription a more viable option than say iTunes or buying CDs? Do you slowly release the catalog to milk people for subscription fees?

Finally, how do you negotiate payments for songs sold by this method? Large volumes of downloads means each song gets a small slice of teh revenue - so a per d/l fixed cut could kill Universal. How many people would simply d/l everything they can because it's "free?"

I bet you see caps and some sort of watermarking at a minimum.

Re:Interesting

[langelgjm]

What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess. So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource.

Exactly. I have about 50 gigs of music, but it may as well be 5, because only that much is properly tagged and organized. I've tried tackling the organization problem in the past, but it's just too overwhelming. I'd pay for properly tagged music.

That said, I wonder if it really will be tagged well - i.e., beyond simply Artist/Album/Title/Year. For classical music, I'd like to have the composer, and date of composition would be nice, too.

Also, you'd want to be able to download to take it with you on your portable devices - and so that it doesn't disappear when you decide you want to end your subscription.

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

If I commit slander over the telephone, is my telephone company liable in a civil suit? When I make a getaway from a bank robbery, is the federal government arrested for being an accomplice? They did provide my getaway driver with the interstate highway system, after all, so the government helped us escape.

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

You'd always forget some band or other, then months later slap your head in frustration and go 'Oh... I knew I should have downloaded more of the back catalogue of Oingo Boingo!'

So if you get a big enough list together, you sign up for another month, download all that, and you're done.

Listen, I'm not really saying this is a bad idea. For a long time now, I've thought that the way to get people to pay for music (to have no use of piracy) was essentially to provide a subscription service where music was "free". The idea here would be to erase the need to amass a "music collection" (on your local hard drive), because you could always just re-download what you want. The service would then allocate royalties based on the number of unique downloads, or something like that.

The problem is that it needs to be cheap, and there needs to be a steady influx of new music that people will want to listen to. If there isn't a lot of great new music, then the service better be very cheap. My sense is that record companies aren't going to accept less money, and personally I'm not too happy with the new music I hear. So for me, I'd probably join up to something like this for the convenient downloads, long enough to get legal copies of what I want, and then I'd quit.

Re:Interesting

[laughingcoyote]

I think the point of ISP's suspecting copyright infringing users is pretty simple, and one that has yet to be tried out.

Real simple. There is no safe harbor for what your customers are doing. If they are doing illegal things that the ISP can detect and block - something that is probably not far off - they have an obligation to do so. Failure to do so means they are an accomplice and liable for damages, at least contributory damages.

Today nobody has tried this approach because it is not clear that an ISP can detect copyright infringement in a clear and unambiguous way. Should this change, ISPs will certainly be viewed differently in the US.

You are not correct on this, at least not in the US. One good thing that came out of the DMCA (continue reading once you get off the floor) is the "safe harbor" provision, aka OCILLA. An ISP is considered under section "a" in most cases, as they are providing only a connection, not hosting the material. If they are hosting the material (for example, an ISP who gives each user space to host a personal website), they can still follow the safe harbor provisions for that service under section "b", while remaining exempt under "a" for their normal connectivity service.

Under section "a", the ISP has effectively no liability. The copyright holder can sue the user if they believe the user is infringing, but that's it. Under section "b", since the ISP is hosting the material, they do have to take it down if they are sent an OCILLA request. The moment they do, they are immune from liability. If you, the user, believe that they are in error and that the material in question is not their copyrighted material, you may send a response for it to be put back up. Unless the copyright holder then files in court and gets an injunction, the ISP may then do so. At that point, it's again between you and the copyright holder, with the ISP out of the picture.

This is as it should be. If I threaten or harass someone over the telephone or by sending them mail, I can be sued or arrested, but you shouldn't be able to sue or prosecute the phone company or the post office. This is no different. An ISP should no more be monitoring your Internet communications than the telephone company or mailman should be monitoring your calls and letters.

Re:Interesting

[R3d M3rcury]

Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel?

Solutions:

1. The service is only available for $29.99 per month for those who sign a three year contract. So if you cancel, they still get their $1080.
2. Files downloaded from the site have an appropriate MP3 tag saying so. Before you can cancel your contract, you must download and run appropriate program which will delete all MP3s with the appropriate tag. Don't want to run it? Then you can't get out before the end of your contract.

Re:Interesting

[Pentium100]

The idea here would be to erase the need to amass a "music collection" (on your local hard drive), because you could always just re-download what you want.

No, it will actually increase the need for big hard drives. Well, at least I would use that service the same way as a free-leech time in a private torrent tracker. Download first, sort it out later. In case of this service, I would download everything and then unsubscribe from the service, so I would only have to pay for only a few months of the service and some hard drives or LTO tapes...

OTOH, my ISP provides a FTP server with movies, games and music for free. Though I usually don't find anything interesting there and download using torrents.

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

Do you produce enough new music each month to make a subscription a more viable option than say iTunes or buying CDs?

I think this is the biggest problem. It's hard to say how much new music would be needed-- maybe it wouldn't be a lot-- but I don't think media companies want their businesses to be dependent on consistently churning out high-quality product. Or why else would they keep pushing to extend copyrights?

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

I currently have >3,500 songs, and I don't have everything I want. Even "everything I want" would be small in relation to some people's libraries. If I were starting from zero (none of my music being legal) and wanted to get every song I wanted, paying $1080 over 3 years might well effectively mean $0.20/song or less.

Now I know Universal isn't willing to sell their songs on iTunes for $0.20/song. So really, I'm just wondering how this works out. What's the catch? How is Universal getting a deal that they're happy with, without putting in some additional draconian protection, a download limit, or ridiculous prices?

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

Right, but here was my point: imagine that instead of paying for cable TV, pay-per-view, and buying stuff on iTunes, you paid for a single service that gave you unrestricted access to download or stream any song you wanted, whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted. You didn't have to worry about buying big enough hard drives to store everything. You didn't need to worry about backups, since you could always re-download. Everything was fast, easy to find, and legal. There was even a very good recommendation engine to help you find new stuff.

Wouldn't that be worth some kind of fee? Some non-zero dollar amount, just to make it pleasant, convenient, comprehensive, and legal? Like you download from torrents. What if someone offered a method to make it easy to find trackers with any piece of content you like, and the resulting download would be completely legal, with no risk of harassment from your ISP or from the MPAA/RIAA? Would that be worth something? A few dollars a month?

Now maybe you wouldn't pay very much, but I'm sure there's some relatively high price at which the gross majority of people would happily pay for it, just to make things easy. Lots of people already pay close to $100/month for cable TV alone. And if you had such a service, there wouldn't be much point in trying to store everything locally. Not until you decided you wanted to quit the service, that is. But even so, it'd be worth paying a certain amount per month just for the online backup. of all that media.

Re:Interesting

[Pentium100]

I'd pay some money per month so that the rights protectors would keep off me and let me continue download like I do now.
I'd pay some money for a legal torrent tracker with good seeds.
I'd pay some money for a legal e2dk server (torrents are not that good for finding some old music/movies).

I would still archive everything locally. While I rarely watch TV (usually only music shows that have music that is hard to find for me (old)), I record every show I watch, when a VHS tape is full, I put it in a box. If I had to program my VCR for unattended recording, I will record to another ape while editing out the commercials.
The legal tracker/server will probably last for a long time, on the other hand, it is subscription based, so it can be shut down easily (as opposed to a DRM authentication server, where people expect it to last forever after they paid a single time (not monthly)). Also, local storage is faster. While I might some day get a 100mbps fiber connection (if I somehow come to enough money for it) it would still be slower than my tape drive made in 2002 (LTO-1, 15MB/s) and I might upgrade to a newer generation of LTO that's even faster.

Re:Interesting

[Jarik_Tentsu]

Yeah agreed. To be fair, this service doesn't sound too bad.

But are they gonna provide just limited content? Or give it to you in 56kbps mp3s or some other horribly low quality?

Or have some 'watermark' in the middle of every song - "You are listening to Virgin's Free service, please go to www.whatever to get more songs for just $30 per month!" or something.

~Jarik

Re:Interesting

[ae1294]

Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.

Good question. I would guess that they would do a contract term with the service. I'd guess 12 or even 24 months, and the requisite early termination fee.

Or more likely all of the above and 'all you can eat' really means 'all we allow you to eat'.

Re:Interesting

[zeldorf]

Download caps, speed limits, a flat out limit on the number of files you can download. It wouldn't be the first time an ISP has promised something that's not quite the truth.

Re:Interesting

[arkhan_jg]

A little background - virgin media is virtually the only choice for cable provider in the UK, having bought up most of the competition, though their network only covers the cities and largest towns. They offer up to 20Mb, though I think they've started offering 50Mb in some areas now. They're competing with ADSL2+ in city centres, with services up to 24Mb (if you're close enough to the exchange)

Virgin already offer TV packages, phone etc being cable, and already have throttling in place. When you download a certain amount in peak hours, they throttle you for the next 5 hours (for the 10Mb users, it's down to 1Mb after downloading 800MB, for example). They've also worked with the major labels to issue warning letters when accused of file sharing, and are partnering with phorm to handover browsing data for targeted advertising, so they have form for keeping a close eye on what their customers get up to, alongside official media services.

So this new DRM-free all-you-can-eat music package, as long as it's a Universal artist (i.e. they don't get deleted when you leave) will be an optional add-on to their normal packages, with all users having extra policing of their use in order to keep Universal happy. Their pricing estimate so far is 'a couple of albums a month'; so £20 or $35 a month on top.

Re:Interesting

[Vintermann]

While I rarely watch TV (usually only music shows that have music that is hard to find for me (old)), I record every show I watch, when a VHS tape is full, I put it in a box.

You're a squirrel. But that's OK, I don't think squirrels should be charged for the nuts they bury and never dig up again.

Re:Interesting

[Vintermann]

Well, that takes a nice and admirably corageous approach and makes it stupid and evil.

Re:Interesting

[blackest_k]

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardTagger This can be fairly successful, it's able to match tracks from audio finger prints as well as filenames and existing tags, typically successful to about 80-90% 100% tends to be mp3's already organised as albums. Still a major job to tag stuff, but a lot more efficient than doing it all by hand. No I don't have a perfectly tagged collection but its improved. unfortunately one area that will never be right is genre.

Re:Interesting

[IndieKid]

Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel?

I think the minimum contract with Virgin Media is one year for broadband service, so that wouldn't be possible. Or rather, it wouldn't be possible to cancel after a month unless you paid the remainder of the monthly fees.

In theory it might be worth doing that - you could download the entire Universal catalogue in month 1 then buy out the remainder of your contract and go somewhere else. However, there will probably be limits on the amount of music you can download each month, as well as the usual Virgin Media limits on the amount of bandwidth you can use at peak times each day before throttling kicks in.

Re:Interesting

[Jaknet]

Download caps, speed limits, a flat out limit on the number of files you can download. It wouldn't be the first time an ISP has promised something that's not quite the truth.

You hit the nail on the head there. I'm with Virgin (lack of any choice) and their service is so throttled that trying to use even a fraction of the bandwidth I've paid for results in my connection speed (both up and down-stream) being restricted by 75% for the rest of the day. From 3pm - midnight there is a 400 mb max limit before being throttled and this is on a 10 meg connection, 10 am to 3pm allowed 1Gb download then 75% throttled. Just downloading the Medal of Honour AA patch (1.3Gb) finished my connection for the day, so much for legitimate digital downloads of games(Sacred 2 - 13GB), films etc.

All this is going to do is slow your connection down to a complete crawl. It's going to take ages to download anything other that a few albums a day, unless you restrict your downloading to the middle of the night.

Virgin claim as ever that this is not due to over-selling of available bandwidth. They are more than happy to take your money for fast connection as long as you don't use it for anything more than browsing a static web page.

Re:Interesting

[AmiMoJo]

What's wrong with signing up for one month and the cancelling? If I buy a CD it doesn't stop working if I don't pay for it again next month.

They can't have it both ways. Either I get to hammer my connection 24/7 for a month downloading every track available and keep them forever for free, or they use DRM and I'm not interested.

Re:Interesting

[permaculture]

> a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good

Q: So, how much is that?

A: It's basically infinity dollars.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/05/20090515.jpg

Re:Interesting

[mdwh2]

Indeed, I'd love an all-you-can-download for TV.

Remember also in the UK that anyone who watches TV is forced to pay £142.50 a year to the BBC (whether or not they watch it), on top of whatever cable/satellite provider they have. They wouldn't have to pay this if only using a download service (as long as the shows weren't being streamed live). So the total price for many people would be more like £200-£250 a year.

(Of course, if this happened and people no longer had to pay the licence fee, no doubt the Government would whine about it and insist it applied to Internet downloads too - which would be especially two-faced since it's the Government currently whining that people don't use legal download services.)

Re:Interesting

[mdwh2]

I'd be surprised if it were truly DRM free - if Universal releases their entire play list; what would be the point of staying subscribed once you got the songs you really want?

Minimum term contracts. Or the fact that most people would happily subscribe continually (not everyone has such limited tastes that they can download everything they'd ever want to hear in one go...)

Or, simply having one person in a group sign up and "share" offline?

They already have this problem. My guess is that they'd prefer going back to the days of "person gives a taped copy to his friend" if they can avoid "person shares with thousands of people".

You might as well ask, how can a cable company ever sell TV - surely by your reasoning, only one person would buy it, then he'd tape all the shows for his friends?

Re:Interesting

[mdwh2]

Files downloaded from the site have an appropriate MP3 tag saying so. Before you can cancel your contract, you must download and run appropriate program which will delete all MP3s with the appropriate tag. Don't want to run it? Then you can't get out before the end of your contract.

How would they enforce this without DRM?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

They want it to fail so they can cry to the government to get a cut of everyone's tax revenue as mandatory income while they slip back into bullshit mode.

Re:Interesting

[b4dc0d3r]

That kind of thinking ends in just one thing - authorization servers which can turn your library off at any time. Stop paying and it stops playing. I'd be looking into the details to see if that hint is in there anywhere.

As a content producer, I'm more worried that people will download but there won't be any statistics and I wouldn't get my fair share. If someone's going to make money off my content, I want documentation and proof that I'm not being screwed by the ISP nor the record company. They already try to short you with their version of hollywood accounting. I'd hate to have a situation where they use something like MusicBrainz Picard tech to ID tunes, but they miss FLAC or REAL or other formats.

I don't see how this benefits the people who make the content - just the big companies.

Re:Interesting

[mcgrew]

Doesn't "all you can eat" really mean "all you can stomach"?

Re:Interesting

[Registered Coward v2]

Or, simply having one person in a group sign up and "share" offline?

They already have this problem. My guess is that they'd prefer going back to the days of "person gives a taped copy to his friend" if they can avoid "person shares with thousands of people".

You might as well ask, how can a cable company ever sell TV - surely by your reasoning, only one person would buy it, then he'd tape all the shows for his friends?

First of all, cable companies sell convince and variety - I can get a whole lot of different shows beyond free OTA broadcast; many off which it would be difficult to find otherwise and / or cost a lot more on DVD.

TV, in general, is a more here and now type of entertainment. People want to talk about their favorite shows or latest sports events the next day; so taped copies lack the same experience.

Music, OTOH, is different - it's much more of a repeat and activity based consumption - you listen while traveling, jogging, etc; and don't mind hearing old favorites again and again. Indeed, most people probably have small play lists relative to the available music in a genre. How many people watch the same show over and over?

Re:Interesting

[nine-times]

Yeah, really I'm just saying "something doesn't add up". Monthly subscription, no additional obligations, unlimited downloads, and no DRM. It doesn't sound like something Universal would agree to.

Re:Interesting

[ae1294]

Doesn't "all you can eat" really mean "all you can stomach"?

The Roman's didn't think so... But that's old news.

No oversight. Who polices these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, where's the due process in all of this?

Oh right, it's business, so it can do whatever it likes.

Someone bring back the mafia, at least they had style.

I wonder how much this subscription will be, and whether it will be mandatory or optional. It won't get money to the non-label bands though, will it, just Universal. Wankers.

Re:No oversight. Who polices these people?

[kentrel]

Your comment makes no sense. Your ridiculous comparison to the mafia, joking or not, just shows how out of touch you are with reality. There is no medium on the planet that will get music to non-label bands by buying another band and another label's music. If you want to get money to these bands... then do what everyone else does - buy their music.

And what is wrong with the music going to the label? The band signed the label. It was their choice that they'd lose a huge percentage of income in exchange for mass exposure and distribution.. Like whats going to make you people happy? There are many good reasons why its difficult for record labels, large or independant to give away music for free, and make their money on touring. There will never be an age where 100% of music is free to distribute legally without any compensation for the people who invested in it. This sounds like a reasonable compromise. Nobody is forcing it on you, but they have every right to disconnect your internet if you break the law. SO RELAX.

Re:No oversight. Who polices these people?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

No oversight. Who polices these people?

Their customers. If mistakes/abuses are common enough, they'll have a class action lawsuit on their hands.

They're a business, as you said. If they have a system for weeding out pirates that they think will work, they can use it in their service. If it doesn't work, well, then it won't be very successful.

I wonder how much this subscription will be, and whether it will be mandatory or optional.

I don't. I'm pretty damn sure it will be optional.

It won't get money to the non-label bands though, will it, just Universal.

No, but then again, they were never selling the music of non-label bands, were they? All you'll be getting for the subscription price will be RIAA signed music. If you want non-label bands, and you don't want to rip them off, you'll have to actually pay for the music.

Re:No oversight. Who polices these people?

[spearway]

Actually this is going to be interesting Virgin-Media is a European company even if the English sometimes conveniently forget it, and the European Parliament is pushing to have Internet access recognized as an essential service like the phone.

I can see a law suit coming.

Re:No oversight. Who polices these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

No oversight. Who polices these people?

Their customers. If mistakes/abuses are common enough, they'll have a class action lawsuit on their hands.

They're a business, as you said. If they have a system for weeding out pirates that they think will work, they can use it in their service. If it doesn't work, well, then it won't be very successful.

A class action lawsuit which they will win due to their multimillion-dollar legal team, and the fact that the judge will almost certainly be on the take. Or perhaps they will settle with the lawyers representing the class action, admit no wrongdoing, pay the lawyers millions, and give the customers they represent a coupon for $5 off one month of their new music service as recompense.

I wonder how much this subscription will be, and whether it will be mandatory or optional.

I don't. I'm pretty damn sure it will be optional.

Yes, you'll have the option to have all of your net traffic spied upon. Oh wait, they'll do that whether or not you subscribe.

It won't get money to the non-label bands though, will it, just Universal.

No, but then again, they were never selling the music of non-label bands, were they? All you'll be getting for the subscription price will be RIAA signed music. If you want non-label bands, and you don't want to rip them off, you'll have to actually pay for the music.

Or maybe some of us actually do pay for the music and are insulted that our traffic is being spied upon anyway.

Too little, too late?

[EzInKy]

It's really a shame that it took over a decade for a music producer to provide what people have been asking for instead of trying to force their own solution down their customers throats.

Oh wait...they still want to suspend accounts.

Re:Too little, too late?

[tubegeek]

What you wrote was pretty much what I was going to post . . . . They would have had some decent success with this model in 1995, I think. The horse is WAY out of the barn now.

Re:Too little, too late?

[shentino]

If they have a higher standard of proof than the RIAA, then I'm fine with them terminating pirates.

As far as I'm concerned, wankers who pirate stuff just to avoid paying for it are just as much scum as the RIAA, in that they're trying to freeload off the efforts of others.

Generally, the law should be obeyed. The fact that these pirates are getting away with it doesn't make it right, or make the law flawed.

If civil rights were at stake I might advocate civil disobedience. However, that is not the case here, and thus the pirates don't have a moral leg to stand on.

Economically, they are also hurting the pockets of the companies that make the stuff, either by pirating instead of buying, or letting someone else freeload off of them.

So, pirates get zero sympathy from me, especially if they get caught red handed with a smoking gun in their hand.

As long as no innocent bystanders suffer, I say let the pirates go to hell. The only thing they're doing is helping karma tit the middlemen for tatting the artists.

Re:Too little, too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

You be one o' th' ones that agree that sea dogs an' land lubbers in america ortin' ta be havin' a gun aren`t ye?

Seriously tho, I buccanneer stuff. Mostly on accoun' o' 'tis nay released in me country at all or fer a long while after sea dogs an' land lubbers else has seen 't. Sure I agree that piratin' be unethical t' a point, but when ye say that 't dasn't make 't starboard or th' law flawed jus' on accoun' o' we get away wi' 't I be havin' serious conflicts. Th' fact that we be havin' got away wi' 't fer so long be only on accoun' o' th' music industry did nay keep up wi' what we wanted an' we found our own system. Now that 't be goin' on fer so long now 't really does mean th' law be flawed. When swabbies be havin' become accustomed t' somethin' removin' 't wi' laws will often fail.

Jus' on accoun' o' in th' scheme o' things 't seems wrong, dasn't mean th' laws ortin' ta keel haul 't. Th' music industry brought this on them selves. A couple o' examples 'ere society gettin' somethin' fer too long made 't almost impossible t' make ou' starboard illegal:
Alcohol Prohibition
Marijuana fer medical use
Tobacco

All three o' them be damn wrong fer ye. (Although I could duel both sides o' that fer hours its nay th' point I be gettin' at.)

T' conclude, th' music industry did nay do the'r job an' provide what th' customer wanted. Th' customer sailed' elsewhere an' got 't at a better / cheaper rate than what th' music industry could provide. (too bad fer th' industry 't jus' so happened t' be fer so low they couldna e'en undercut 't (free)).

Th' only way they be havin' a chance t' come aft from this be through th' law an' bribin' law makers. They jus' canna win. Trust me on this. They won`t.

They ortin' ta jus' give the'r music away fer free an' put adds at th' the start an' end o' each song an' offer a premium rate 'ere they get nay adds. Works fer pretty much ever' other industry usin' th' model..

They might e'en come aft wi' a move like that..

-Annony

Re:Too little, too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which music label did you work for, again? I've just decided, I'm going
to set up a site/setup, where US "Virgin Mobil" people can send their
Virgin Mobile Phone to be crushed, poured into a box, and shipped to
Virgin in the UK---suspend THAT, sweetums!!

Re:Too little, too late?

[shentino]

People generally prefer free stuff to cheap stuff. It's part of human nature to look for bargains. It is for this reason that piracy will prevail, because people don't generally give a rat's ass about how much or how little it cost to produce.

Those who get away with piracy enjoy quite a bit of what in economics is called a "consumer surplus" in which one pays less for a good than what it is worth to the buyer.

Now you're right, the music suppliers are a bunch of lowlife rent seekers, however that ignores the fact that many "consumers" are simply exploiting piracy to get bargains on stuff that some of them would have been willing to pay for anyway.

Alas, though pirates be thievin rascals, ne'er have they sunk a ship with a loose aimed sue-cannon like the sleaziest sleaze of the seven seas that be the RIAA and it's scurvy lawyer dogs.

I say let the RIAA walk the plank first.

I do like your idea of embedding advertisements in the files though.

good luck.. hard to compete with $0

[UnknownSoldier]

I can already go to the library, or even the radio to listen to free music but I guess it is a small step in the right direction.

It only took them how many years after iTunes and Amazon mp3 was out?

> In terms of both convenience and value, our new music service will be superior to anything that's available online today

Bwuahaha. Let me know when I can download .FLACs

Re:good luck.. hard to compete with $0

[L4t3r4lu5]

I can already go to the library, or even the radio to listen to free music but I guess it is a small step in the right direction.

You're lucky. I can't listen to any music that I like on the radio, or find it in the library.

The Metal section of my local library consists of Bon Jovi, Green Day and Nickleback. Ironically, these are the bands which feature heavily on the local "Rock" radio station, Kerrang Radio. *Gag*

Re:good luck.. hard to compete with $0

[mcgrew]

You can sample the radio and make your MP3s out of the tunes. I have a lot of cassettes I recorded off of KSHE, the St Louis station that has been playing seven full, uncut albums back to back every Sunday night for decades. I had Ted Nugent's Stranglehold a week before you could buy it in the stores. See Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station, an article I wrote five years ago.

Your CD of the sampled songs will sound as good as FM (not quite CD quality but better than MP3).

If you make MP3s out of albums or cassettes, unfortunately the encoder amplifys the flaws.

Interesting but...

[Sponge Bath]

What format for the download? 128Kbit lossy compression? I could not find any mention of that. For it to really work out, I would want at least CD quality lossless compression.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Legal or not, if this isn't AS GOOD AS what us pirates can get, then just why would we even think about paying for it?

I'd shell out $10 a month for legal .flac's of whatever I want. Nothing more, nothing less. Album covers and MD5 sums too.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the average person, 128kbit lossy is more than enough quality, the only kind of people who would need anything more than that would be audiophiles and other people who love placebo effects.

Re:Interesting but...

[Xugumad]

> Legal or not, if this isn't AS GOOD AS what us pirates can get, then just why would we even think about paying for it?

Some sort of crazy notion of rewarding people who create the content in the first place?

Re:Interesting but...

[D Ninja]

See, now this is where I have problems. Here is how the arguments have gone over the past years...

1. You shouldn't pirate...
"Well, we don't want to buy the whole CD! We only want good songs!"
Introduce iTunes/Amazon

2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"DRM! AHHHHHHHHHH!"
Remove DRM.

2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"The pricing model is bad and too expensive!"
Introduce scaling pricing with popularity.

3. You shouldn't pirate now...
"We can't get all of the songs we want for one low rate!"
Introduce unlimited downloads.

4. You shouldn't pirate now...
"We can't get the songs in as good of a quality as we want!"

This is stupid. People like yourself are obviously not going to pay no matter what because there is a free alternative. Please just stop trying to justify yourself and just say, "I like free stuff, and since I can get it, I'm not paying!" At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled curtain of "complaints."

Re:Interesting but...

[Barny]

Damn, someone brought common sense into the argument, HOW DARE YOU?!

The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.

Yes I have downloaded music, only because its easier than ripping all my CDs myself, I probably have downloaded some tracks that I don't own, but conversely, I own a lot I haven't downloaded.

I will never sign up for such a deal, it only goes to fuel the RIAA and co even more, now I only purchase what albums I can direct from the bands directly.

The two very interesting implications of the OP though.

1. At a fixed rate for "all you can eat" how much per song worth of damages does that equate if I download the latest metallica album, listen to it once and delete it?
2. Once having paid the "all you can eat" fee, does it then mean I can go download my songs anywhere, since I now have a valid license for them?

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For it to really work out, I would want at least CD quality lossless compression.

Nuts! I think they can do even better than CD-quality lossless. I want RAW format ripped directly from vinyl records!

Re:Interesting but...

[vivaelamor]

This is the same company that cries it's customers are using too much bandwidth at the same time as announcing a new faster service. Given the apparent blindness to what their broadband customers want broadband wise I'd be surprised if they manage to offer a music service that keeps mp3 users happy let alone those who want something better. The more companies spend all their effort crying about how their business is hurting because of their customers, the less able they are to offer a service those customers might be satisfied with. It's not an issue limited to the big companies though, apart from Nine Inch Nails (who were hard to miss even had I not already been a fan) I haven't come across any commercial service offering FLAC since allofmp3 died.

May the IFPI and all they represent reap what they sow for what they did to allofmp3. Those guys had more sense about a good product in one pinkie than Virgin Media have in the entire company.

Re:Interesting but...

[Sponge Bath]

"128kbit lossy is more than enough quality, the only kind of people who would need anything more than that would be audiophiles and other people who love placebo effects.

Wow! If you can't easily tell the difference between a CD and a 128Kbit MP3, you are either listening through cheap ear buds or are hearing impaired. That is not "Monster Cable" audiophile or a placebo effect. The artifacts on a 128Kbit MP3 are obvious and annoying, 160Kbit AAC is very listenable for mobile players, but CD quality is the *baseline* for purchased music, at least for me.

Unfortunately, audiophile has become a loaded term meaning people who buy goofy stuff for high prices that makes little or no difference. I don't think preferring CD quality over a 128Kbit MP3 qualifies as that.

Re:Interesting but...

[Sirusjr]

This is the problem with the way things are going. A CD that is only available in a poor quality mp3 format that you can't purchase in CD format just leaves the people with ears reverting to download. There is no way I will pay for some mp3s when it doesn't contain all the parts of the song.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you have tin ears doesn't mean we all do.

Re:Interesting but...

[jedidiah]

...which immediately rules out any sort of "official" electronic format.

The labels have been royally screwing the artists when it comes to iTunes
and the like. If I could have some assurance that my favorite bands would
actually benefit from such a scheme only then would I be interested in it.

OTOH, a "virtual hat" would probably do equally as well.

What's the artist's cut? Really?

It's time to make this sort of detail front and center along with whether
or not there will be DRM or it will be something that's Windows only.

Re:Interesting but...

[nine-times]

Yeah, you can tell the difference between CD and 128Kbps MP3, but can you tell the difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3? In a blind test?

Maybe you can. I've heard people claim to be able to, but I don't know anyone who can beat a blind test. Have you tried?

Re:Interesting but...

[frostband]

For it to really work out, I would want at least CD quality lossless compression.

That's the least? You ask for so little...

/sarcasm

Re:Interesting but...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Legal or not, if this isn't AS GOOD AS what us pirates can get, then just why would we even think about paying for it?

Why indeed? In fact, a paid for service will, by definition be more expensive than what you pirates can get, so why would you even think about paying with any service?

Well, I'm sure you're aware of the legality (or lack thereof) of your actions, so I'll say that artists enjoy working while not ever being paid as much as you would.

Re:Interesting but...

[vivaelamor]

The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.

The rest of Slashdot would like a word with you, the word is cluebat.

Perhaps after you have stopped attributing what you worry may be your own failings to others you can jump down off that high horse and appreciate that what you're saying has diddley squat to do with the issue at hand. Do you really think that the vast majority of people who buy music do so out of the goodness of their hearts? I mean, attributing peoples motivations to their use of money says a lot about your own priorities and not a lot about their own. If I may abuse generalisation in a manner you seem so good at, a lot of anti file-sharing people I hear would rather people boycotted an artists music than didn't pay for it. I'd be pretty pissed if I sold some poetry and someone started telling people they shouldn't read them because they could not afford to buy a copy or disagreed with where the money was going.

As an aside, I tend to spend money on music which is in a format I want (pretty much just Nine Inch Nails at this point) or by indie artists whose entire back catalogues I already probably have downloaded in FLAC format but have no hope of going to see a show for. This way the money I am spending is supporting a product I want to see more of (FLAC) and artists who will actually see most of the money from iTunes or whatever where there aren't any alternatives. What I wouldn't do is tell everyone that they should do the same thing I am doing, because I am at least marginally less arrogant than you.

Re:Interesting but...

[meringuoid]

That's the least? You ask for so little...

It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?

Re:Interesting but...

[Sponge Bath]

"...but can you tell the difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3?"

Probably not. I guess my main point is that I have been buying at a certain quality for 25 years! Now, in 2009, they may offer (a guess as they have not given details) quality *almost* as good as that. Why not just *erase* that issue with FLAC or equivalent. It would not be just as good then, it would be *better* because you would not need to rip or travel to Best Buy.

Everything is in place to do this, so why not get the ball rolling by offering a product that has actually improved over the last quarter century?

Re:Interesting but...

[Barny]

Have you read half the comments on here?

"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"

"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"

I am not anti-file sharing (you missed where I said I have downloaded a lot of music?), however I am laughing like fuck at the people who try to justify it with the kind of excuses I list above.

I avoid music that I can't purchase direct now (yes, that limits me a lot, but I have found some great new bands who are very willing to sell me a copy of their album for around $5 or so), I, like all the others on here, don't give a fuck what you think (as they, and you likely think the same about me), just stating what I thought was funny.

In short, my argument is "I won't use it ever" :)

Re:Interesting but...

[nine-times]

Well, most people don't even really want something like FLAC. It will increase download times, and take up way more space on portable players unless you transcode. If you transcode and keep the lossy copy, then you'll be taking up a lot more space on your hard drive than if you just had the lossy copy. If you transcode on the fly, it'll take longer to sync your portable player. There are various complications in order to provide "higher quality" that will be inaudible to most people.

What I would *much* prefer, personally, would be a model where you're given options from the store on an ongoing basis. So, for example, let's say I buy a song from iTunes for $0.99, and I could choose whether I want to download it as ALAC, 256kbps AAC, 160kbps AAC, or 128kbps AAC. I choose 160kbps, but a year later I change my mind. I'd like to be able to go back and buy the ALAC version, but not for the full $0.99. I should only have to pay a nominal fee ($0.10?) to cover Apple's administration and bandwidth costs. That would be much closer to my ideal system.

Re:Interesting but...

[RDW]

'It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?'

Already happening, at least with some specialised labels, e.g.:

http://www.gimell.com/catalogue.aspx?filter=Studio+Master+Pro+5.1

http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-formats.aspx

http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=audiophile_96khz

Re:Interesting but...

[vivaelamor]

No, I haven't had a chance to read most of the comments on this thread yet. However, did you read my comment before replying? I did not even suggest that you were anti file-sharing.. I used the phrase once in an example that did not presume to involve you.

"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"

"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"

Again, you are trying to attribute a distinct motivation to a vast group of people who apparently have little in common other than not being offered a decent product.

I don't justify copyright infringement with any of those issues, free choice was around before copyright I am quite happy to ignore copyright until someone manages to justify it for me. That said, I'll be damned if I'm going to go routinely out of my way to support artists by throwing away my money to distributors who can't provide a service I want. I'd rather click a donate button on the artist's site.

Re:Interesting but...

[Decameron81]

I can't buy music online because no service that I know of works in my country.

By the way, all of the points you mention seem like valid complaints to me. Instead of blaming it on consumers you should analyze how long it's taking them to acknowledge each one of them, and fix them. They're just not listening enough.

Re:Interesting but...

[vivaelamor]

Note to self, check out Magnatune. I had dismissed it as something like Last.fm or Pandora but someone has mentioned it here as a possible source of FLAC encoded music (although probably not for artists I already listen to).

Re:Interesting but...

[Wizard Drongo]

Speaking as a content provider of sorts (I do graphics, icons etc., not music, but it's still "IP"), if I sold the rights to one of my creations with a deal like most musicians get, if I later found out people were downloading my creation for free, thus screwing me out of a cut, I wouldn't be pissed at them. I'd be flattered that they took the time to download my stuff, and I'd ask, if they've got some spare cash they want to reward me for my work, then they could paypal me whatever they like. Kinda like donationware...
I say this because if just 1 in 100 downloaders gave the musician $1, then they'd already be getting about 5 times as much as a lot of record labels give their creators.
If you want to support a band, paypal them, or go see a concert, or buy some hoodies or t-shirts.
If you want to give more money to the soulless scumbags who would literally try and sue the dead, only to then try and sue the living descendants of said deceased for "damages" that could not feasibly be real (on the order of tens of thousands of times the actual value of damages inflicted), then completely wreck the grieving families lives through court cases, legal fees, media scrums etc. only to find said deceased was completely innocent and not even have the god damned common fucking courtesy to say sorry; if you want to do that, buy a record.

I'd rather buy conflict diamonds from africa, and have some vietnamese $1-a-day wage-slave set it into a ring made of nazi-gold than ever buy anything ever made by the labels that are part of the BPI or the RIAA or the MPAA. Only by starving these grubby little parasites of their money can we begin to set right the system whereby an artisan gets paid a fair amount for their work, and their art is allowed to become part of teh social consciousness.

Re:Interesting but...

[Maestro485]

Virgin-Universal didn't create the content, the artists did, and I seriously doubt any artist is going to be paid more as a result of this deal.

Re:Interesting but...

[aaandre]

"protect Universal Music's intellectual property"

Did UM create the content? Really?

Or, are they actually exploiting the musicians they promote?

To simplify, /. style: Buying from UM hurts the musicians by supporting the entities who strip them of their intellectual property using contracts, procedures and practices that abuse the musicians' rights and interests.

Yes, I know it's the artists' choice to sign up for a label or not. In a world where most distribution of content, including radio and television, are controlled by the same companies that own the labels, I don't really see a lot of viable alternatives.

Music comes from the people. People want to hear music. A business that puts a toll in the way of this flow should offer some value. The value was there for a while, with manufacturing costs etc. is pretty much gone. So now the business entity muscles its way to stop this flow and wedge its business model by charging both artists and consumers of music... for what?

Just because someone wants to keep their cashflow going doesn't mean you should pay them.

Who's really stealing and from whom?

Oh, well, just a thought. Along the same lines, rainwater is taxable and collecting it from your own roof is a crime: http://is.gd/12Wg0

Let's criminalize artists performing their own art without a license from the recording labels and let's criminalize audiences listening to performances without paying a monthly fee to the record labels.

That will set things right, wouldn't it?

Re:Interesting but...

[Omestes]

2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"The pricing model is bad and too expensive!"
Introduce scaling pricing with popularity.

More like:
"The pricing model is bad, and too expensive"
Raise pricing on popular songs, keep prices on the crap the same.

Not trying to invalidate your argument, just a quibble. Show me one service that actually lowered prices (even the average price).

Your also missing the ethical question; why shouldn't someone pirate?

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you have applied the bat at all.

If you want the poor and needy to be able to read your poetry for free, make it available as a free download.

Otherwise, you are saying 'Well, you might get caught and fined for pirating my stuff, but at least I feel ok about charging for it, as you *could* have pirated it if you wanted'. Which doesn't make a lot of sense. You are just pushing the problem onto someone else.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. And it's not just him... it's nearly everyone that's vocal about the issue. In fact, I'm surprised you haven't been modded through the floor by now.

Re:Interesting but...

[Opportunist]

A product has to meet the market. Appearantly it is possible to offer music that can be used on NetBSD, in 740kb/s Ogg files. Else, why bother asking for it?

The entity you have to compete with as a legit seller of content is someone offering it at zero cost. That's hard. You can't beat that on price, no way. But people are willing to pay for quality, and even more for convenience. So what you have to offer is what the user can readily use and in a way that it as or more convenient. Then people will pay.

Forget laws and similar rubbish in that context. People don't care about things that don't care about them.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends at lot on the material.

MP3 is not good at reproducing quiet sounds with sharp transients, combined with sustained tones. These can cause the encoder to flip flop between precession masking and frequency masking. An example would be a castanet+a church organ.

It's possible to specifically design sounds that make MP3 sound bad. Once you hear the flaws though, you can often pick them out at higher bitrates.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoted AC here.

If you want to pay the artists, pay the artists, not the record labels. They will gladly accept donations. I've done it several times :)

Re:Interesting but...

[shutdown -p now]

May the IFPI and all they represent reap what they sow for what they did to allofmp3.

The only thing they did to AllOfMP3 is to force them to change name and hoster - it's MP3Sparks now. Similarly, the old MP3Sugar has been reincarnated as MP3Count.

Re:Interesting but...

[i_b_don]

Oh, i would LOVE to support the people creating the content... but i thought this was brought to us by the RIAA?

d

Re:Interesting but...

[vivaelamor]

Mp3Sparks is a slightly different service but I had not realised they were still running, thanks!

Re:Interesting but...

[johannesg]

Your argument is certainly supported very strongly by the low number of subscribers that iTunes has. Ever after they sold that 49th song, they haven't been able to sell anything else because of all those concerns you listed. Really, I think you are onto something here with your complaints...

Re:Interesting but...

[RAMMS EIN]

Why the sarcasm? Lossless, DRM free, CD-quality seems a very reasonable thing to ask for. It's what you would get if you bought a CD, after all.

The difference is that, with online distribution, there is no medium: no physical CD needs to be pressed, no case need be manufactured, no cover art printed, the package doesn't have to be distributed, it doesn't have to be stored, and so on. So this ought to be cheaper for the distributor.

As for CD-quality being the least one would expect: in this day and age, with movies being distributed with surround sound and many people having hardware capable of rendering it, yes, CDs are starting to get long in the tooth. Stereo? 44.1 KHz? That is indeed the least you would expect.

As for lossless... Yes, of course. MP3 was all the rage in the 1990s when a gigabyte was a lot of storage. Today, harddisks are easily 1000 times as large. I think we can afford for our music files to be a factor 50 larger. And if you still want lossy compression, you can always do it yourself ... and make your own trade-off between quality and size.

All in all, I think the grandparent's asking for lossless CD-quality music is entirely reasonable. The only reason why it might not seem that way is because the incumbent players in the music industry want to fight it every step of the way. Yes, lossless, DRM-free, CD-quality music is probably a pipe dream. But it's not because it's asking too much.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are looking at it backwards.

'pirating' technology and community has been steadily improving while the industry spends effort trying to fight it, instead of trying to offer something *better*

Each of the examples you cite is an example of the industry bringing to market something that is just not as good as what can be obtained elsewhere for free, because they dragged their heels and it was just too late. They have the money and the clout - they should be able to come up with something
better instead of trying to play catchup all the time.

If the industry had stepped in and offered cheap, DRM free, high quality tracks in a convenient fashion back when sharing was a slow hit and miss affair, they wouldn't be in this bind now.

The longer they leave it, the better support for pirating gets.

Re:Interesting but...

[shutdown -p now]

Mp3Sparks is a slightly different service

Sure it is *wink wink* - except that your AllOfMP3 account, if you had one, was magically transferred to MP3Sparks, complete with balance...

Re:Interesting but...

[Vintermann]

Look, if I pay a fixed monthly fee for downloading stuff from Virgin's catalog, why should they care whether I get it from them, or a flac-encoded version from pirate bay? My guess is they won't. After all, to them it'd only mean that

1. They'd save some bandwith costs
2. The artist wouldn't get his cut from the monthly fee pool (looking at existing collective licensing schemes, I'm pretty sure Virgin won't shed any tears for that)

Anyway, if they're enlightened enough to adopt this distribution model, of non-mandatory unlimited download for a fee, then I suspect they'll soon be enlightened enough to understand that the best way to control your content is to be the best provider of it. We will see raw wavs at the very least.

Re:Interesting but...

[plasmacutter]

I agree that 128k is not good enough, but once you go beyond a certain sound clarity, the music actually feels cold and artificial.

It is possible to get "too clean", just like you wouldn't be comfortable living day to day in an operating room.

Re:Interesting but...

[L4t3r4lu5]

You might like Jamendo A lot of CC licensed music for which you can contribute to the artist directly, if you wish. A lot of it is FLAC encoded, or at least high-quality MP3.

I agree with you, though. The last album I bought was The Slip, and Ghosts I-IV before that. Trent really got his act together with that licensing model.

Re:Interesting but...

[L4t3r4lu5]

How's this, then:

I want the music I like (various genres, but a good selection), in a quality at least comparible to the physical media this model replaces, without any unreasonable limitation on use (I want it on my PC and my PMP, and I want to not be fined $150,000 per song if my girlfriend listens to it on my PC while I have it on my PMP), at a price which reflects the reduced cost of reproduction of the media (but bearing in mind required infrastructure upgrades), with a fair portion of the purchase price to go to the creating artist, and I don't want to "rent" it. I want the music to be persistently available, even if I choose to not continue to pay for access to music I don't currently have.

That sound about right?

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's rubbish.

If the music sounds cold and artificial, then that was the artist's intention. After all, it's what they heard when they made the record.

I can put a mic in front of a warm sounding instrument, record it at the highest possible fidelity, and the result will be a warm sounding instrument!

I would agree though that there is a lot of nasty sounding music around nowadays. This is purely down to the incompetence of the engineer and producer, combined with modern mastering practices and people using cheap shrill sounding condenser mics from china.

Listen to well recorded material, and the better the reproduction, the better it will sound.

Re:Interesting but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds so good when you make it appear as if it was a singular entity making the argument(s).

What you are saying doesn't make sense anyway.. one of the underlying arguments has always been that if the music industry won't provide what the consumer wants (yes this includes QUALITY) then the consumer will fulfill that need elsewhere.

yes, some won't ever buy.. but that doesn't mean you get to include EVERYONE in that bracket with some disingenuous hand-waving.

Re:Interesting but...

[glindsey]

I'll take your argument one step further. The real fact is that the product, once created, is totally worthless. It has no value. It is raw data. It can be duplicated perfectly ad infinitum at practically zero cost, therefore supply is infinite, therefore value is zero. The only thing that actually has value is the act of creating the product. The time put into the creation, the time the artist spent honing his or her talents, this is where the value truly lies.

We don't know how to deal with this concept, so we try to prop up old models of compensation with artificial legal constructs like "intellectual property". But we're just fooling ourselves, because as you said, some people just want stuff for free. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, just that it is reality. So instead of trying to fight this segment of the population (which, barring police-state-level enforcement, will always be a losing battle), we ignore them and focus on the people who want to reward those who are actually creating the art.

Maybe products that can be infinitely, perfectly duplicated will have to be supported via some sort of commission system, the way operas and paintings used to be commissioned. You like what an artist does? Support him or her with a small monthly subscription to that person -- maybe a buck, maybe five. Think that person has gone off in a direction you don't like, or hasn't produced anything of value recently? Discontinue your subscription.

It is, admittedly, a totally pie-in-the-sky, borderline socialist idea, but I'd be happy to support something like that. It would be a sort of micropayment patronage system for artwork. I don't know if it would scale well, and there would certainly be areas ripe for abuse -- you'd need some way to make sure you didn't end up with the very rich dictating our culture by virtue of being able to contribute the most money to artists. But it's a thought.

Re:Interesting but...

[mcgrew]

What's interesting to me is the fact that in these threads, people who think nobody will pay unless forced at gunpoint are all ACs. Only a true thief thinks as the GP, only an honest man thinks as you do.

It's pretty obvious to me that anyone who worries about piracy is a thief. Most people are honest and more than willing to pay for what they get, as long as they don't percieve that they're being suckered.

Re:Interesting but...

[mcgrew]

Cory Doctorow goes to great lengths explaining this in the forward (or is it the afterward?) of Little Brother (for sale in bookstores, free at the library or free in many formats at Doctorow's web site). Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many creative people have gone broke from obscurity.

I'm not likely to pay for a book if I've never read the author's work before. If I've gotten his work for free (library, loan from a friend, etc) and liked it, only then am I likely to shell out cash for it.

Re:Interesting but...

[Sabathius]

I'd rather buy conflict diamonds from africa, and have some vietnamese $1-a-day wage-slave set it into a ring made of nazi-gold than ever buy anything ever made by the labels that are part of the BPI or the RIAA or the MPAA.

That has to be the funniest thing I've read for months. Thank you for that!

Re:Interesting but...

[GWBasic]

This is stupid. People like yourself are obviously not going to pay no matter what because there is a free alternative. Please just stop trying to justify yourself and just say, "I like free stuff, and since I can get it, I'm not paying!" At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled curtain of "complaints."

The real problem is that the recording industry thinks that they are "charging what the market will bear." The "market" is tired of waiting decades for prices that it "will bear."

Re:Interesting but...

[jfreaksho]

I agree with your sentiments, as do many creative people I've talked to about this, but there are a few problems:
1. Many contracts artists sign actually forbid taking money that doesn't get routed through the label. I would love to send a $10 check (or more, if I liked it) directly to a band that I like. Odds are, they have to forward that to the label, who takes their cut.

2. If you are at a concert at a medium or larger venue, the hoodies and t-shirts aren't helping the band as much as you would think. Very often the venue takes a cut of the merchandise, and I've heard tell it can be as much as half the purchase price of that hoodie. This can explain the obscene prices- there are purchase costs for the band, printing costs, some profit for them, then double all that for the venue. The artists are getting screwed.
J.

Re:Interesting but...

[Wizard Drongo]

oh, they are still getting screwed. Just less than on a record. Like on a t-shirt, they'll maybe see 10%, even 20% direct profit to them. On a record it can be 1%.
As for the handing it back to the label crap on that score I have nothing but sympathy, but suggest that if the industry unionised up a bit, and started refusing shitty contracts, like actors do to a degree, then they'd see less of this crap.

MP3s as a legal download...

[Manip]

So when you introduce legal MP3s, does that mean it is now impossible to detect illegal content?
.
You read these stories about police or customs finding pirate content and I wonder what the chances of getting hit with that after just using this service to download MP3s? And if these MP3s contain signatures what is stopping me from altering my existing music library to make it appear legitimate? When everything is an MP3 who is to say what was obtained legally and illegally?
  .
Music publishers won't sign on to an "all you can eat MP3 download service" for the simple reason that it just doesn't make financial sense for them to do so. So what you'll wind up with is a bunch of junk no-name artists for your monthly subscription with a few big names kicking around just for the adverts.
  .
Plus Virigin Media lose any moral high ground they had by dropping people offline, and have also agreed to police their network at whatever that costs to do. I for one will be creating an MD5 hash for every file on my hard disk and asking Virgin Media to stop them being download on their network.

Re:MP3s as a legal download...

[Anonymous Coward]

Music publishers won't sign on to an "all you can eat MP3 download service" for the simple reason that it just doesn't make financial sense for them to do so. So what you'll wind up with is a bunch of junk no-name artists for your monthly subscription with a few big names kicking around just for the adverts.

Tell that to Spotify.
3.46 million songs right now.

10 euro per month, or a few audio ads per hour.
They have most of everything, and add on average 10k tracks per day.
From the bigwigs.

Yes, they're technically encrypted downloads, but the actual file data is Vorbis, comparable to 160-192Kbps MP3.

Re:MP3s as a legal download...

[plasmacutter]

they can claim a song file is illegal all they want, but they can't prove you didn't lose the album.

I think when they refer to customs officials finding pirate content they mean actual physical counterfeit products.

Finally

[PhasmatisApparatus]

Simply punishing file-sharers without offering a reasonable DRM-free alternative is a bad idea. But I don't see a problem with this.

Re:Finally

[cdrguru]

I see the problem with this being something like:

1. Sign up for service.
2. Download everything possible.
3. Service is no longer valuable, terminate service.
4. Eliminate need for anyone else to sign up by sharing everything downloaded.

The result of, say five people, doing this is the service has zero subscribers six months out and everything they are trying to block is pretty much impossible to block. This differs from the current situation not one tiny little bit.

The only way this is a success is to (a) prevent downloading, not just sharing and (b) make it universal so you can't download stuff on any ISP anywhere. (a) is technically challanging to do, perhaps so challanging as to be impossible. (b) is completely impractical on a worldwide basis.

Doomed from the beginning. It might have an effect, but not for long.

Re:Finally

[PhasmatisApparatus]

I should probably follow this up with a clarification... How do they know who is sharing files legally or illegally? So yes, I do indeed see a problem with this.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Watermarks identifying the downloader might have some interesting side effects...

What you aren't seeing...

[Buzz_Litebeer]

Is the law they are crafting that they will call the "RetroActive Pirating Extended Digital Unity" Act. (The RAPEU Act) that will allow copyright holders to get logs of all users who have downloaded music without DRM and force them to pay a media shifting licensing fee of 10 dollars (so that they can have the right to convert the music to CD, MP3 Player etc..) per song.

Head Asplode

[Anonymous Coward]

If this had been done 15 years ago... the mind boggles.

I mean really, all I've ever wanted is to just get music as easily as possible, that's all.

The easy way in 1995 was to buy a damn CD, in 2000 it was to pull it from the net via Napster, in 2005 it was torrents. Can it be that finally, after more than a decade I can easily put money into the hands of the people who distribute what I want simply because they've finally figured out that I don't want to be tied to some horrible, controlling remote service (well, beyond the "here's my money, there's your stuff" kinda service)?

Maybe I'm reading far too much into this, but damn did it take this long to figure out?

Educating users

[Anonymous Coward]

... will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives...

What makes music companies so high moral that they think they can educate file sharers?
Is ripping off people's pocket's an higher level of morality this days?

What I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so if we get unlimited DRM-free downloads, how is that more beneficial to the record labels than illegal downloading?

Re:What I don't understand...

[ChrisMounce]

Because money is changing hands?

Re:What I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

They get paid for doing what pirates are currently doing for free. They get a reliable stream of income from people who don't shut the service off after downloading everything they want. Universal promotes its catalog, which if it includes current artists may mean additional concert revenues. They keep people in the habit of paying for music, particularly the kids who grew up with music downloads being the norm for obtaining music. They create another avenue of advertisement and promotion for artists that bypasses radio and TV, which have both become stagnant.

It's not that bad of an idea. Will it make as much money as CD sales used to? Not at first...

Has to be said....

[s0litaire]

If I had Virgin cable in my area.

1) I'd signup for a month or 2

2) Download everything and anything music related they offer.

3) ???

4) Cancel Subscription

Re:Has to be said....

[cptdondo]

But music changes..... At some point your friends will abandond you, your girlfriend will leave, and you will be left with your outdated collection.

All to save a few bucks. Or pounds. Or whatever.

Re:Has to be said....

[decipher_saint]

The thing is, they've (Virgin at least) figured out that they're getting money if you do that, rather than that other copyrightey-violatey thing that so many people do already.

And you never know, maybe you end up (somehow) enjoying the service enough to keep coming back from time to time.

Re:Has to be said....

[zmollusc]

Yes, and when your girlfriend leaves, she takes your cds and hifi with her.

Re:Has to be said....

[zmollusc]

That presupposes that the minimum subscription period is a month or two. It may be £40 a month for 12 months, £20 a month for 24 months, £10 a month for 5 years etc.

Re:Has to be said....

[meringuoid]

Sure, but you could do that right now on TPB. What's stopping you?

Re:Has to be said....

[shentino]

Better than taking your beloved son with her.

Sometimes, I wish we would stop and think about what really matters.

Oddly, music doesn't rate high on my priority list.

Re:Has to be said....

[s0litaire]

true....

Saying that, I'd probably run out of toilet paper...

All those RIAA letters are useful for something!! lol

Re:Has to be said....

[Macthorpe]

A sense of decency?

Re:Has to be said....

[Scumbumbo]

The press release was worded very carefully to not explicitly pin down the offer. I'll bet the subscription fee is for unlimited low-fi streaming, plus the ability to download an unlimited number of MP3 formatted files at the low low price of XX each.

it will be limited choice

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be an attempt to put the frightners on us that our teenage kids are downloading the internet while we sleep, so why not pay us a little bit of protection money and we will leave you alone..

This is Hannamontannization.

Or, you know

[gbarules2999]

They could just keep the all-you-can-eat service and skip all the re-education crap.

might be reasonable

[roc97007]

It sounds like they *are* trying, if the monthly fee is reasonable. If you're going to compete against illegal downloads, you must be at a minimum (a) DRM free and (b) available for a reasonable price. The third requirement is sufficient quality (where hulu still fails), but maybe it'll be ok. This could actually succeed.

Of course, if it is successful, the American music industry will implement their own version, which will be more expensive than CDs, have draconian DRM and be accompanied by punishing enforcement with lots of false positives. But hey, we were always on the forefront of innovation...

Not the law, their rule

[loufoque]

This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access.

By this they really mean they will ban you from their network not because you're breaking the law, but because you're not following their EULA, which would stipulate you may not transfer copyrighted material by other means than their service. (which is completely unrelated to what the law does and doesn't allow)

Transferring copyrighted music on the internet is fair use, not piracy.
By educating people about online piracy, they really mean lying to them to make them believe their rights do not exist.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[broken_chaos]

Give that this is speaking of the UK, you want fair dealing, not fair use (similar concept, but there is legally no such thing as "fair use" in most Commonwealth countries). Also, transferring copyrighted music on the internet is not fair use or fair dealing. It's illegal and copyright infringement in many countries, except if the music is provided under a copyright licence that allows it (i.e. Creative Commons), or there's some other law that allows it for another reason (such as Canada's tax on recording media).

While you may not agree with how copyright holders are licensing the use of their music or with how broken the copyright system in many countries is (I certainly don't agree with either for the vast majority of cases), it still is illegal in both the UK and USA (among other countries), and not a generic "right" of internet users.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[shentino]

I'm not sure blatantly sharing an ENTIRE work constitutes fair use.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[Richard_at_work]

Transferring copyrighted music on the internet is fair use, not piracy.

That, as a blanket statement, is as stupid and as false as anything the RIAA or equivilent associations have ever said.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[loufoque]

Also, transferring copyrighted music on the internet is not fair use or fair dealing. It's illegal and copyright infringement in many countries

False.
Using the internet to transfer copyrighted material from one of my computers to another is not more illegal than using streets to move my CDs from one place to another.

Transfer is not distribution.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[loufoque]

Distribution is illegal without acquiring the necessary rights, but sharing is always granted.

Just like you may put on a CD in your place and have your friends listen to it, you may send music digitally to your friends.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[loufoque]

If you ignore ridiculous laws such as the DMCA, copyright law does not restrict how you may transfer or copy data within the rights you have. And fair use, or similar concepts (we're talking internationally here) always allow you to make copies for your private use.

Therefore, fair use allows you to transfer copyrighted music on the internet for certain scenarios.

Re:Not the law, their rule

[Richard_at_work]

That is not what you said however, you just modified your stance.

Information?

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using allegations provided to it by Universal Music.

Fixed that for your.

I live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

And saw this on the news today. Thought it was absolutely ridiculous. A temporary suspension of the service I'm paying them to fucking provide? I don't think so. People need ISPs, not nannies. These fuckers will never see a penny from me. I'd rather pay over the odds with another ISP as long as it meant they'd keep their noses out of my business. I actually liked the music subscribtion idea, but I like my privacy a little more.

Re:I live in England...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there will be any disparity in how quickly people who are outside of there contracts are "suspended" compared to people who are still locked in for another X months.

Re:I live in England...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Let me help you choose a competitor

Re:I live in England...

[JasterBobaMereel]

What's the betting that while suspended you will

    a) still be paying for the service

    b) not be able to transfer to another provider

all this on the *allegations* of a third party you may never have had any dealings with

laff....

[koan]

So now we are down to "all you can download for a monthly fee" and "education for file shares + temporary suspension of ISP services, my my my how diluted has war on filesharing gotten?

Not to long ago they were trying for suing the crap out of you possible time in prison and "3 strikes no more internet for you" and while that's a mixed bag of different countries solutions it's clear that they aren't getting any where so this lean approach is how it's going to be.

I'm amused.

Wow, good scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, let's have people download music for free, then, we'll turn them over to universal and they'll call piracy and sue for lots of money, and they'll split it with virgin.

GENIUS!

Offtopic, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I dislike use of the term "platform-agnostic" as "agnostic" would imply "doesn't know." Really, what you mean is perhaps "doesn't care" which would be better expressed as "platform-apathetic."

Or perhaps you mean is "does not depend on the features of any specific platform" which could be expressed as "platform-independent."

Or, even more accurately, maybe you mean "can run on any platform" which might be expressed as "omni-platform-compatible"

The only phrase out of all of these which really fails to express what you are getting it as "platform-agnostic."

A Wire

[Anonymous Coward]

Well here we are again, someone else tried this and what was the defence of the pirates? Now we know how much it's worth, stop with the big ass lawsuits.
 
  Essentially Virgin internet provides a wire, for millions of people it is the single most important wire in their lives. Now this wire is being used as a potential punishing tool (parents the world over prevent children from using the net), and for what? Because the user is paying £16-25 a month (Assuming Cell Phone as seperate) instead of £24-38 (Estimated price of music service: £7)?
 
  I think the response of the British People should be clear, pay the £7, once they prove in court you've done something wrong.
 
  Brought to you buy the same people who don't think Ghandhi should have paid for salt.

Fairness in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing how the EU courts are banning Microsoft for daring to have a web browser in Windows, does this mean they are setting a trend?

Will Apple be forced to have iTunes offer a "choice" of music services to connect to, instead of defaulting to the anti-choice iTunes music store?

And why can't I sync my non-Apple device with my iTunes library?

Sounds like an untapped monopoly, just ripe for squeezing handouts from every 8-12 months by the EU!

Re:Fairness in the EU

[hplus]

And why can't I sync my non-Apple device with my iTunes library?

Because you didn't buy one of these players. Note the many non-iPod players on that list. If you meant to imply that iTunes was somehow locked to only work with iPods, sorry for bursting your bubble.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[multisync]

Note the many non-iPod players on that list

Note the number of manufacturers on that list. Creative Labs makes seven, there are a bunch of "Rios" by Sonic Blue, a couple by Nike (?!?) and ... oh, yeah. Apple.

So, which of those *many* players does my local electronics store stock? Well, I'm not sure cause their online search is hooped. I'm sure at least some of the players on that list are long obsolete.

I wouldn't call that a list of "many non-iPod players." I would call it a list of three companies who did a licensing deal with Apple.

If you meant to imply that the gp was full of it when he suggested that iTunes - for all practical purposes - really only works with iPods, sorry to burst your bubble.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[CastrTroy]

And why can't I sync my non-Apple device with my iTunes library?

The same reason you can't sync your iPhone with Palm Desktop. The same reason you can't sync your Zune with the sony SonicStage software. iTunes was made specifically to sync with iPods. As someone else pointed out, it does sync with a couple other players. However the main purpose of iTunes is to put stuff on your ipod.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[peragrin]

want to know a secret? sony players only work with sony sonic stage, MSFT players only really worked with MSFT based services.

That is standard. Apple is no different however, apple players worked like people do. Their software wouldn't randomly crash. The hardware didn't ned a full on power reboot after every other battery charge because of poor memory management. They did one thing and did it well. having 20 functions is useless if you can't use any of them.

now all that said yes apple horribly locks down their stuff. I only have a couple of apps from the app store on my iphone because most of them aren't worth it. 98% of my music are mp3's, ripped from cd's. I will buy a quality product. As long as the limitations are known and well documented. You won't see me using their word processor though. As all my data stays in open formats whenever possible. It helps with archiving purposes.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[hplus]

The point is that there is (apparently, at least) a public API for making one's mp3 player function with itunes. If other companies choose not to implement that feature, that's their business. Even if they don't choose to do that, if the player functions as a mass-storage device there's free software that lets it interface with itunes. Most mp3 players these days should have this option, so I still fail to see the problem.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Omestes]

No. iTunes is good for putting stuff on you iPod, it also is a decent media player. I started using iTunes for my music a year or so before I got an iPod (or even a Mac). Part of my getting an iPod and a Mac was because I really liked how iTunes handled music. I'd probably be using it even if I didn't have a supported device (though I might migrate to Songbird, which is basically an iTunes clone).

iTunes was one of the first players that didn't force me to play with directories, or use self-imposed naming conventions for my music library.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[multisync]

Sorry, friend, that's not a "secret," and I wasn't arguing that iTunes should work with Sony players or Xboxes should run WII games. The comment I replied to suggested "many players" work with iTunes and I was disagreeing with that point, based on the link he provided.

Personally, I wouldn't expect iTunes to manage the music on my Walkman, or my iRiver. I also try to buy players that work as a USB mass storage device, even if they're running fat16 like I think my Walkman is. This eliminates the need to worry about installing some possibly malware-infested client that could be doing *anything*, accepting some loathsome EULA simply to put your player to the use it was purchased for, and having any sort of relationship with the manufacturer after the sale. If you deal with them further, it should be because you choose to, not because you need their software to continue to use your property.

I think the point of the gp I referenced is valid, though he too missed the mark. The EU and US DOJ should take them to task over the iTunes store. There are not a lot of alternatives for people out side of the US (which isn't the US DOJ's problem, I know) Unless you do the burn-to-cd-then-rip-to-mp3 routine, you're pretty much stuck with an iPod to play online-purchased music. I know they are offering non-drm files in some cases, but that needs to changes to their entire catalog and they should be offering it in a standard format like mp3. That, or they should prepare to be broken up, as they do have a monopoly in the distribution of the music as well as the manufacturing of the players.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[multisync]

I don't know how "public" their API is. I know there are Linux apps that work with iPods, not sure if they do this by utilizing a "public API" Apple is generously providing, or if they are employing mass storage mode.

Most mp3 players these days should have this option, so I still fail to see the problem

The problem is with the store, not iTunes itself. I've already ranted about that above, but basically it boils down to the fact that I own the music files I purchase from iTunes, and I should be able to play them on my choice of players. Apple has a effective monopoly in both industries. They are using their monopoly in the online music sales to force you to purchase their player. That's the problem.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Kalriath]

Dude. AAC is a standard format. Just like MP3.

And if anything, they should be taken to task for charging so much for music (in NZ, the prices go as high as $2.40 a track - fuck that), rather than the lack of DRM free music (I should note that the entire iTunes catalog is already DRM free, negating 33% of your comment).

Re:Fairness in the EU

[hplus]

Apple has a effective monopoly in both industries.

Also untrue. The itunes store no longer has DRM for any music files, so any AAC compatible player (including ones made by Microsoft, Sony, Creative, and Samsung) will play songs purchased through it. That said, you are correct that they are using itunes as a means of promoting ipod sales.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Old97]

they should be offering it in a standard format like mp3. That, or they should prepare to be broken up, as they do have a monopoly in the distribution of the music as well as the manufacturing of the players.

Apple uses the AAC format which is an open royalty free format designed to replace mp3. Alcatel-Lucent owns the patent on MP3. So, Apple chose the more modern and more open format. Any company can support or use AAC without paying any royalties. Why so many others in the industry stay with an older proprietary format they have to license is what you should be questioning. BTW, Sony's devices support AAC as do some other manufacturers.

Apple does not have a monopoly on the distribution of music. Never has and never will because it doesn't own or control the content. Apple does not have a history of trying to dominate the world, gain a monopoly and then abuse it. They've dominated in a couple of areas because they've done a better job of putting together the right package and selling it. The only thing holding back their competitors is their amazing stupidity and lack of imagination. The worst you can accuse Apple of is being very focused and not trying to be all things to all people by offering a multitude of product options. Either you like what they sell or you go elsewhere. Obviously a lot of people like what they sell.

Apple does protect and promote their business model which is essentially to create and nurture an "ecosystem' of products that work very well together and exploit their synergies. People who point to an individual Apple product and says it lacks this or that feature product x or y have are completely missing the point. The point is that once you buy into the ecosystem, each thing you add to it can use or be used by the other things you've bought before. For example, I manage my music on iTunes (ripped from my CDs) on my computer. I extend my wireless network by buying a $99 airport express. I place the express near my audio system and connect the receiver to the airport express and suddenly iTunes knows about it. Suddenly I can stream music from my computer to my audio system. I can remotely control what iTunes does and where it streams using my iPhone or iPod Touch. I can synch all my computers where ever they may be using mobile me. When I buy an iPhone it synchs that as well. I don't worry about my calendars or settings or passwords or much of anything else getting out of synch on one device or another. It just works. That's the sort of thing that is so attractive (to many people) about buying Apple.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[hplus]

Dammit, that's not what I meant for that post to say. Apple does certainly dominate both the online music sales and mp3 player market, I did not mean to imply otherwise. Regardless, my point stands: AAC compatibility is widespread amongst mp3 players, and is certainly not limited to ipods.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[multisync]

I didn't realize the entire iTunes catalog is now DRM free. I still buy most of my music in the popular CD format, and use iTunes mostly for impulse buying when I hear a song I like and don't have on radioparadise. I'm not as up to date as I should be.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[absoluteflatness]

Apple uses the AAC format which is an open royalty free format designed to replace mp3. Alcatel-Lucent owns the patent on MP3. So, Apple chose the more modern and more open format. Any company can support or use AAC without paying any royalties.

You might want to check on your facts a little more.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Larryish]

AAC blows. My Sony Walkman NW-E0005x uses it and it royally blows. The encoding has more bugs than a 2.0 Microsoft product and doesn't work well even with hardware designed specifically for it.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[i_b_don]

Wow... you actually like itunes? I can't stand the thing. The only thing I do actually like is that I can subscribe to podcasts and it auto-updates them... but i'm sure lots of other music player's software do that as well, I just have never used them.

Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less)
I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of (this is probably more of a gribe with the IPOD UI)
Using it with audiobooks has been a frustrating and hair pulling experience. (I have to rename the files to change the order they are played on my IPOD? seriously, wtf?)

But honestly I could probably ok with it if it wasn't SO GOD DAMNED SLOW.

I'm sorry, this post is totally off topic, but i'm just floored that someone actually likes itunes on the PC that I just had to chime in and vent a bit.

d

Re:Fairness in the EU

[TheRaven64]

Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less)

I find this hard to believe. My mother uses it on her 550MHz P3 and it seems responsive. On my C2D Mac it doesn't cause a noticeable spike in CPU load except when encoding.

I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of

Personal preference. Some people like to create complex structures, but most don't. This is one of the reasons why programmers make terrible UI designers; almost all programmers fall into the category that does, while most of their users tend to fall into the other category (there was an interesting paper published about this around 5 years ago, but my Google-Fu is weak this morning so I can't find it).

That said, the iTunes UI peaked around 4.2. Every version since then has had at least as many regressions as it's had improvements.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[dangitman]

Because you didn't buy one of these players [apple.com]. Note the many non-iPod players on that list. If you meant to imply that iTunes was somehow locked to only work with iPods, sorry for bursting your bubble.

That only applies to iTunes on the Mac, not the Windows version, for which none of those will work. And this feature doesn't seem to be offered to vendors or developers anymore, it's a remnant from when Apple was selling iTunes before the iPod came along, and those legacy players were grandfathered in.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[dangitman]

The point is that there is (apparently, at least) a public API for making one's mp3 player function with itunes.

Uhhh, no. Where is your evidence that there's a public API?

Re:Fairness in the EU

[metacell]

Sounds like an untapped monopoly, just ripe for squeezing handouts from every 8-12 months by the EU!

What, are you opposed to foreign aid?

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Old97]

I stand corrected on the royalty fees. So much for believing PC "journalism". Thanks.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[sorak]

The problem isn't lack of choice. If you don't like the way iTunes runs things, then by all means by a product from one of Apple's many competitors. The problem is a monopoly combined with lack of choice. That is why bundling is illegal fro the big guy but not the little guy.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[mcgrew]

Wikipedia doesn't say when the patent was granted, but it odes say that 1995 was the year it was released commercially. Patent issues shouldn't matter for long.

But it should be a moot point anyway. With today's far larger storage media, you should be able to get songs in lossless format, even uncompressed. There would be no patent issues at all with these.

Using .shn or .flac (compressed, but lossless) you can fit an LP on a minidisk. Lossy compresson should only be needed on a portable iPod-type player.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

That link references iTunes for Mac. Suppose I have iTunes for Windows (like the majority of the world)? In that case, I'm SOL because iTunes for Windows can only sync with iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Whoops.

Sorry once again.....

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Old97]

With today's far larger storage media, you should be able to get songs in lossless format, even uncompressed. There would be no patent issues at all with these.

Using .shn or .flac (compressed, but lossless) you can fit an LP on a minidisk. Lossy compresson should only be needed on a portable iPod-type player.

I agree with you. Since I rip CDs and I don't purchase downloads, everything I have is ripped to Apple Lossless. I use AAC for the iPod. One of the major reasons I don't purchase downloads is because they are all in compressed format.

The truth is I might not be able to tell the difference between AAC 256kps and lossless even on my premium audio system, but somehow I feel cheated by compressed formats. If I can download movies why not a lossless format?

I think of MP3's and AAC files as the equivalent of the old 45rpm singles in the glory days of vinyl. They were relatively cheap and useful if you only wanted the "hit" song. If you became a fan of the group you'd spring for the LP. I'd usually pass on the 45's and make my decision based on what I heard on the radio. I don't agree with unilaterally violating copyrights but if an artist or record company is smart, they'd want some MP3 and AAC tunes in free circulation in order to promote their work. They are in my mind today's radio.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[Omestes]

It isn't perfect by any means, and as the person who replied to you states, it have been getting progressively worse with time. I first tried it, and got hooked on it in 2001 or 2002, when it was much more oriented on music management and not on connecting 80000 peripherals I don't have/care about, and at that time I was using WinAmp, which generally sucks.

I haven't notice any speed problems on the PC (I have on some Macs, though, oddly), and I don't use it for audio books, so I'm not sure how it handles them.

I do like being able to just drag music to my library and forget about it. iTunes fits that very well, I can't even imagine going through my large music library by hand anymore. The iPod interface is frustrating at times, though, I agree.

I guess the main thing is that we like what we're used to, and I haven't stumbled on a substantially better music app yet. Though its getting to be time, since both Apple and Google have decided that my computer is theirs in which to load any strange TSR/Service that they want. An aspect of modern software design that is beginning to wear on me.

I like it, but I'm not going to go out of my way to be a cheerleader for it.

Re:Fairness in the EU

[peragrin]

It is but apple has conveniently dropped support for some songs as a version that can't be purchased in the USA, when they were purchased in the USA(I have three friggin songs that are still protected, out of some 1500 songs)

New songs though are DRM free.

I'm a Virgin customer...

[CorpusKilo]

...and am intruiged as to what "the process will not depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic by Virgin Media" actually means? Does this mean if Universal suspect me of filesharing, they can pass my IP to Virgin and have me temporarily disconnected? On the plus side, the subscription service... as long as it is appropriately priced... is exactly what I have been looking for in terms of digital music. Provided it truely is DRM-free, and hopefully lossless quality :)

Why help Universal screw artists harder?

[jbn-o]

If Universal had a deal where the artist gets half of the take, you'd have far less reason to suspect an all-you-can-hear deal because you'd know you're helping artists and encouraging them to publish more music. As it is, there's nothing in this deal which even suggests a better arrangement for artists (the people corporate copyright holders love to trot out whenever illicit copying and distribution comes up).

The catalogs aren't the same, and neither is the history of pay-for-play, but compare the deal Universal is touting to the deal Magnatune has offered for years. Both are all-you-can-hear, but Magnatune lets you set the price (above a specified minimum), you get more choice in what types of files you want (I like FLAC, it's unencumbered, lossless, and I can transcode to something lossy if I choose), the half-goes-to-the-artist deal still stands, and artists license Magnatune which allows artists to retain their copyrights. Magnatune has no history of pay-for-play but all of the biggest music publishers do; I see no reason to reward that history with my sale. I didn't have to worry about risk: anyone can listen to Magnatune's entire catalog online at no charge. I don't have to worry about risking my Internet connection if I share Magnatune tracks either; even if Magnatune had the power to suspend my Internet connection I've got license to share. I put my money where my mouth is and I've bought an unlimited subscription from Magnatune. I'll not do the same with Universal until their deal gets a lot better for me and the artists whose interests they claim to care about.

Re:Why help Universal screw artists harder?

[L4t3r4lu5]

I use Spotify at the moment to listen to music on my home PC, but I may just get into Magnatune. Thanks for pointing them out.

Mod Parent Up

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Look, mods, I know that the parent post is offensive to pirates, I know that slashdot is full of them, and I know he might get some impassioned responses, but modding people with valid opinions down, even if you find them that offensive, is considered "moderation abuse". If you were part of the government, it would be called "censorship".

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Why...thank you! I wasn't trolling.

(Posting anonymously because I'm scared of the moderators now.)

D Ninja

Re:Mod Parent Up

[vivaelamor]

You're right, they should have modded him flamebait instead..

But seriously, what is wrong with wanting a decent product? Is there a reason they cannot provide it? If they'd spend half the budget they did on anti-piracy propaganda on a study of what the pirates want they might even stand a chance. Until then we can pay them as much positive notice as they pay us, considering they are the ones who want our money.

Smells like hypocrites for dinner...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?

Will they cut their own access off if the corporation is caught breaking copyright law? And, could they manage it without cutting off all their customers too?

Re:Smells like hypocrites for dinner...

[interkin3tic]

"Anonymous Cowardon" restates his own question. Wierd.

Re:Smells like hypocrites for dinner...

[mdwh2]

And, could they manage it without cutting off all their customers too?

Indeed, the question is what's in it for them?

I wonder if it's a method of getting rid of heavy users, since many ISPs seem unable to keep up with the demand when customers actually dare to make use of the "unlimited" service that was advertised, and that they paid for...

(VM already use bandwidth throttling if you download too much of the service you've paid for in a given time.)

Re:Sounds like a plan ... Well there won't be many

[davidsyes]

Left in the US to shut down, since they sold off or are going to sell off most or all their US operations...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7828483.stm

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96MR0NO0&show_article=1

Also, frrom what i heard from a source, they made so much cash selling the Times Square location that they just happily threw in the other US locations just to be done with them.

Alternative

[pr0nbot]

An alternative for UK surfers:

http://www.ukfsn.org/

I have no affiliation with them, but...

"all profits from UKFSN go to fund UK Free Software projects"

"Our policy is that the electronic communications of our customers are private. We do not intercept, censor, scan or otherwise interfer with our customers' internet service."

"UKFSN does not and will not have any dealings with Phorm, the company behind the Webwise system being deployed by some other ISPs to intercept customer internet traffic. We are firmly of the opinion that the Phorm Webwise system is illegal under UK and EU laws. We also believe it to be fundamentally unethical to intercept customer traffic in this manner. It will never happen here."

"There is some suggestion that the UK government would like to mandate some form of interception and possibly censorship. We would encourage all interested persons to make it clear to MPs and the government generally that this is not acceptable."

Meterial reduction?

[noidentity]

In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network

Material reduction? I think they have failed to grasp some fundamentals of online file sharing.

Mere Conduit?

[ougouferay]

"The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers"

Surely once should be enough! The police don't wait until you have persistently commited a crime before arresting you. In order to establish that you were a persistent file sharer wouldn't they lose the right to claim they were acting as a 'mere conduit' in order to avoid civil liability themsleves?

On a secondary note - if they warned a customer ahead of time about their alleged persistent *illegal* file sharing (as distinct from sharing, say, open source software) would they be allowed to "promote" their new service at the same time (and would this amount to a "get out of jail not-so-free card" or alternatively "demanding money with manaces")?

Sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I've already got a better deal.

ISP's Should not be content providers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blatant conflict of interest. Of course we will get censorship practices when the ISP's deal media content. Even if they get what they want and stop pirating there will be something else they will want to limit next. Maybe competing content providers I suppose? And, not all file sharing is pirating as these content providers would like everyone to think it is.

Hurrah

[zmollusc]

I am totally stoked about Virgin Media's forthcoming music download system and fully believe that it won't be an overhyped sack of crap at all. The downloads will certainly be unlimited, fast, cheap, not watermarked and of at least cd quality from an enormous library of popular, familiar tunes the exact same recordings of which will be currently or formerly available in record shops on cd.

Where are the virgins?

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread is useless without pics.

Testing my irony meter?

[jonaskoelker]

Fixed that for your.

Oh, the irony's.

Unconstitutional. In ANY country.

[unity100]

internet is no longer an amenity of modern technology. its a FEATURE of life. which affects many things ranging from, especially, freedom of speech and right to receive information to paying bills online. some european governments are even carrying over all kinds of services that citizens need from a government online. therefore internet is not a luxury anymore, its a BARE necessity of MODERN Life.

just reflected in the french high court decision, striking the dumbfucked 'three strikes and youre out' law as unconstitutional. that is the case in any country of the world.

just wait until virgin and universal gets sued by an angry subscriber who misses to pay his bills online, or cant access his bank site, or cant use new online government services.

no, actually dont wait. its unconstitutional, its YOUR country, YOUR constitution, YOUR rights. stand up for them. give them a piece of your mind.

Re:Unconstitutional. In ANY country.

[Ma8thew]

We don't have a written constitution. The only way for us to find out if it is unconstitutional is to challenge it in court.

Re:Unconstitutional. In ANY country.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please direct me to the nearest British Constitution?

Re:Unconstitutional. In ANY country.

[mdwh2]

We have the European Convention on Human Rights. Unfortunately it doesn't have quite the same teeth (if a European court finds something unlawful, the UK Government evidently just carries on doing it, saying "Maybe we'll look at it at some point and introduce a minor insignificant change in the hopes it'll fix the problem" - as happened with the case of fingerprinting of people not convicted of any crime). But it's something, nonetheless.

Tagged: itsatrap

[sethstorm]

Virgin-Universal Deal Offers Unlimited Music, Goes After File Sharers
Go figure what they offer in one hand but take in the other

Negative nettie

[TiggertheMad]

Please just stop trying to justify yourself and just say, "I like free stuff, and since I can get it, I'm not paying!" At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled curtain of "complaints."

Are they? Personally, I they are getting close to where I am considering paying for the stuff. You pretty much enumerated why I wouldn't buy digital music in your points. I don't think its rationalizing to tell the media companies what you don't like about their product.

I'd pay for that

[petrus4]

Vast library of mp3s, directly from the labels, and DRM free so that I can back them up, thus allowing my purchase to survive hardware failure? (And yes, requiring backup is of course valid; I'm not asking for this in order to facilitate piracy)

Sign me up, Universal, quite seriously. This is a better deal than what someone could hypothetically get on IRC for free, simply because it removes the electronic legwork they would have to do if they want particularly old/rare/obscure files. Pirates generally only trade what's popular; being able to drink straight from the labels' tap means I can get whatever I want, whether it is popular or not, I don't have to waste time looking for it, I can potentially get it at top sound quality, AND I don't have to worry about being prosecuted or sued.

I don't know about the rest of you, but in my mind, piracy is motivated purely by pragmatism; free mp3s are considered a better deal than per-cost CDs. However, give me a service where I can have just about everything since when Cocky was an egg, catalogued, and with a 384 khz bitrate, even better, and I'll be there with bells on, and will be quite happy to pay.

I'm not paying for the actual files themselves here, necessarily. What I'm paying for is a) file quality, b) guaranteed availability and convenience, (due to the source) and c) legal protection.

A flat monthly fee would be preferable to me, but we could talk about just about anything up to around $50 AUD a month. Get 100,000 people to sign up for that, and you've got a $5 million pilot program. I could be wrong, but something tells me that upwards of $10-$20 million a month is something the RIAA could potentially be interested in. ;)

Here's another idea for giving us both some security without the DRM bogeyman, as well. Give me a digital receipt with a unique key every time I download some paid-for files from you, and I'll keep it in the same directory the files are in, and back it up with them as well. That way, if there's ever a question asked, if you keep that key on file, we can both know said mp3s have come from you, and that I haven't pirated them.

It could work brilliantly.

Re:I'd pay for that

[Anonymous Coward]

It could. Right up to the point Universal accuse you of 'piracy' and get your internet cut off without any government oversight or legal comeback.

You are so focused on the carrot you haven't noticed the bloke with the stick.

Also I wonder if Virgin can actually provide this service when they constantly moan about people using iPlayer.

Re:I'd pay for that

[plasmacutter]

who says they'll digitize the old stuff?

until i see the ferris bueller mix of beat city on their network i will not be sated.

Re:I'd pay for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a digital receipt with a unique key every time I download some paid-for files from you, and I'll keep it in the same directory the files are in, and back it up with them as well. That way, if there's ever a question asked, if you keep that key on file, we can both know said mp3s have come from you, and that I haven't pirated them.

It could work brilliantly.

Wait, what?

Should I need proof that I'm innocent? I thought It was the other way around. I would absolutely NOT want I system where I can prove where I have bought it. If there exist such a system I would be presumed guilty if I for some reason don't have the proof. It sets a terrible precedent...

Re:I'd pay for that

[Inda]

Pirates generally only trade what's popular? Utter rubbish.

When I was a "Pirate", I had 280gb of MP3s plus a few FLACs. None were from any of the big boys. In fact, most record labels I collected had only ever produced 20 or so discs. I had ALL scene releases for my choosen genres dating back to 1990. All record labels were collected - well over a hundred. My collection was a source of admiration amongst my fellow sharers. If only I'd backed up that 80gb hard drive...

Why does everyone think we want or need mainstream cheesy pop and rock? The dance scene is massive in the UK and the rest of Europe. It draws more weekly admission money than all the "live band" concerts put together and yet it's not promoted at all. Sure, I can pull figures out my arse, but I prefer to trust my own eyes. The two large clubs in my town draw 1,500 each on a Friday and Saturday. Knowing about Pendulum or The Prodigy is only a the small tip of the cheese-berg. Not knowing about them, or any other 'group', sets you aside from all the other trainspotters.

Virgin can kiss mine as far as this goes. Who do they thnk they are kidding with "it'll only cost the same as a couple of albums a month"? I already give them 120 quid a month, where do they think another 20 is coming from? Do they really think 20 quid to entertain my kids and their cheesy pop habit is affordable?

Branson, you suck. Virgin, and their lack of decent HD, suck. You could have been so good after buying NTL but you failed and you continue to fail.

Re:I'd pay for that

[mdwh2]

Pirates generally only trade what's popular; being able to drink straight from the labels' tap means I can get whatever I want, whether it is popular or not

I have no idea, but I'd be very surprised if the available collection offered under this deal is broader than what someone could find by downloading already (especially as it's only one music company doing this). Add to that things like rare bootlegs - do you think they'll be offered by Universal?

This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

It is stupid to allow a large corporation to provide so many services - just wait until they start throttling Spotify and Napster to force people to use their service, etc.

So you're watching what I do on the internet?

[rastoboy29]

See, this is the most basic problem with all these schemes--it assumes the ISP has the right to monitor what you're doing with your internet connection.

Can the phone company do that?

Re:So you're watching what I do on the internet?

[L4t3r4lu5]

No, but pirating music in 8 kilobits doesn't really give you a stellar aural experience.

It might make teh Jonas Brothers bearable, though.

Do it for free

[Vitani]

OK it's not exactly like-for-like, but you can listen to an insane amount of music using Spotify - it's not a download service, but you can listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, and it's all ad-funded. I've not looked back since I signed up (I'm just waiting for Android & Sonos versions!)

Tortious Interference is illegal.

[plasmacutter]

This is an act of Tortious Interference

Tortious interference with contract rights can occur where the tortfeasor convinces a party to breach the contract against the plaintiff, or where the tortfeasor disrupts the ability of one party to perform his obligations under the contract, thereby preventing the plaintiff from receiving the performance promised.

I expect lawsuits on this ground, and mass defection to other ISP's

Getting round the law

[dugeen]

Sad to see that Virgin are giving the copyright farmers exactly what they want - a way of harrassing alleged file-sharers without evidence, charge or trial.

How about reason 5?

[plasmacutter]

This is stupid. People like yourself are obviously not going to pay no matter what because there is a free alternative. Please just stop trying to justify yourself and just say, "I like free stuff, and since I can get it, I'm not paying!" At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled curtain of "complaints."

how about reason 5.

"This 'deal' allows some unaccountable third party to arbitrarily disconnect my internet at a mere accusation"

if universal wants to offer their ENTIRE catalogue at a flat fee independent of ISP "sanctions", then i'll go for it. If they continue this campaign to "suspend" people's internet connections, they dont get one dime of my money to justify their "proof of concept" to legislators in support of their disgusting "3 strikes" laws.

But with a sense of decency

[Anonymous Coward]

you wouldn't sign up for 2 months, download everything and then cancel.

monthly?

[Anonymous Coward]

broadband, unlimited downloading, drm-free... hell, I'd only need about a month of the service to get everything I want.

Re:Interesting but... people are individuals

[b4dc0d3r]

You're making the single most idiot and common mistake there is on any argument. These aren't the same people.

Lots of people dropped off the pirate ship and bought stuff when iTunes came around, because iTunes is easy and the costs (used to be) predictable and kinda reasonable. Still has DRM, but there's a workaround, and there are other, separate, not the same, individual, not part of the first group people who either don't like DRM or don't like additional data loss of the workaround. Especially since it's the provider's own admission basically saying "DRM is useless, but we're going to do it anyway".

Then lots of people disembarked at the DRM-less idea. Different people had a different opinion. Not the same group of people changing their minds.

There are still people who download because it's easy, and it's what they know - and that's the recording industry's fault for not only failing to move to a new business model, but actively trying to shut it down. They aren't necessarily even concerned about pricing - it's convenience.

There are people who aren't going to pay as long as the alternative is to not pay, but these aren't customers. And people like yourself aren't going to realize that no matter what because there is an alternative you think they should be using. Please just stop trying to lump everyone in to the same set of principles and just say "Not everyone thinks the same. A segmented market will work better than trying to serve everyone the same deal." At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a not-so-thinly veiled curtain of ignorance.

Monopoly?

[dogeatery]

If Virgin provides Internet and mobile access, as well as content and distribution channels, isn't this the same as owning a steel mill, the railroad tracks and the trains that drive on them (delivering the steel)? IANAL, and maybe I've got this model wrong, but I'm open to corrections ...