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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."
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)?
A black hole is where God divided by 0
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.
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.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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
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.
1) I'd signup for a month or 2
2) Download everything and anything music related they offer.
3) ???
4) Cancel Subscription
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Because money is changing hands?
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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?
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."
"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."
Common Sense
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".
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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.
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.
I don't care why you're posting AC
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.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
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
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
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'.
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.
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?
expandfairuse.org
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.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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.