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UK Musicians Back Watered-Down "Three-Strikes" Rule
A brace of anonymous readers sent along coverage of UK musicians who have turned around to support three strikes, or a milder variant of it. What they suggest is more like "three strikes and you're hobbled" — after a third offense a downloader would be not disconnected, but rate-limited. The artists involved include Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw. The Guardian has more details. The final quote from the music industry, striking out at UK ISPs, is priceless: "BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading. That's not only unfair to artists and creators, but penalizes BT's many customers who use the Internet legally."
"BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading."
Doesn't that pretty well describe the music industry to a T right now?
...that's all you had to say! If we can't trust the judgment, decency, and foresight of George Michael, who can we trust? The man is a latter day Sodomon. Solomon. Whatever.
trying to illegally download music and later discovering later you actually downloaded George Michaels stuff. Wham!
... you've gotta have faith!
Trust people George
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9-esIM2CY
While stirring up this latest uproar, it turns out that Lily Allen was at the same time distributing illegal mix tapes on her Web site.
Hypocrite.
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk
Illegal downloads hurt all of us
So do laws which find the accused guilty based on the accusation alone.
It doesn't matter how mild the punishment is. Accusation alone, no matter how many there are, should never be sufficient to determine guilt or impose a sentence.
In any civilized society, the accused must have an opportunity to defend himself, and guilt must be determined by an impartial party.
The pillars of justice are more important than the profitability of business models built upon artificial scarcity.
This is the most logical proposal I've heard yet, aside from ignoring the damn pirates. Considering what dickheads the suits in the music biz are, however, I'm sure that "cooler heads will prevail."
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
*sigh*, let the flaming begin....
An old business model...
Maybe if someone would just create a steam like system where users can download music from a central source without DRM, and pay a minimal fee to artists for their work? Oh wait, Itunes...
In response to your claims that Illegal downloads are hurting ISPs bandwidth, I would say, A: If a system similar to Itunes existed for movies and TV shows there would be a problem in the fucking first place, and B: If anything it is accelerating the rate of growth for ISPs, causing them to allocate more resources for their users.
And how can you say that a user is hurting it's ISP by consuming bandwidth that they are legally paying for?
Illegal downloading will always exist, but systems like itunes and band websites that allow streaming / download of their music and get money from the ads are still allowing artists to make a profit.
Let me restate a fact: PIRACY WILL ALWAYS EXIST IN ALL FORMS.
Drm won't work, this propaganda won't work.
The media industry needs to end this war on it's customers and find new alternative, and let's be honest, more effective ways of making money.
In short, they need to stop trying to live on an old business model.
She is really vehemently against filesharing technology. In fact she has quit from music apparently because of filesharing, citing that the days of being able to make money from music is over; and giving up her fight for the hasher 3 strike and you are out scheme.
Besides the obvious questions about being able to definitively identify the correct person responsible (IP addresses can be shared, spoofed, etc), won't this just increase the burden on ISP's and hence make things more expensive for their consumers? Such awesome artifical and abitrary restrictions...
Boycott the artist and boycott the labels.. try to live without your badass niggas and your blonde sluts. You really don't need that shit! everything starts because you just cant stop drooling for that miserable class of lechers called "artists"
^ who the fuck are these people?
Let me restate a fact: PIRACY WILL ALWAYS EXIST IN ALL FORMS.
And SHOPLIFTING WILL ALWAYS EXIST IN ALL FORMS.
Therefore merchants on main street need to find a 21st-century business model, one that doesn't treat "customers" who are shoplifters as common criminals!? Yeah, that'll work. I'm sure you have lots of practical experience running businesses to back up those kinds of solutions, right.
If someone hasn't been convicted of breaking a law there can be no punishment. If they had anything of substance against someone they wouldn't be pursuing a three strikes law; they'd be in court. If the music industry doesn't want to follow the law but instead act on a hunch then I'd say the entirety of their limited monopoly should be done away with entirely. The law should not be used to intimidate; its purpose is to serve society not serve the greedy to the eclusion of all else.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That's all I've got.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
And as allways before, the old technology will lose and be a historical footnote. So will the companies and artists that do not understand the new one or are unwilling to switch. No law will help. This has happened countless times before and the outcome was always the same.
True, the times were you could get rich distributing creative works by others are over. Distribution is now extremely cheap. Also true the times of insanely richt musicians are likely over as well. Those that adapt will still be able to live very decently, as long as their product does apeal to a reasonable number of people. Examples exist. On the plus side, all those that had problems earning anything, now have the chance to distribute globally with very little cost. Getting a global small audience was pracitcally impossible before. And any audience contains a significant number of people that are willing to pay or donate. I do not see the music culture losing anything overall, just a few rich, lazy and inflexible peole that cling to the old status quo. I do see "big music" dying however.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Y'know, I have one major point against ideas like this (okay, I have a lot of points against it, but one that really bothers me, as beyond my personal control)...
What counts as a "strike"?
I know the obvious smartass response of "anything the RIAA/MPAA wants", but in practice... Let's even say, for the sake of argument, that "they" can 100% reliably detect when I download something copyrighted. We then have a problem in that everything (in the past 75 or so years, varying a bit by country) has a copyright on it. When I visit the totally legit New York Times website, I have downloaded copyrighted material. When I buy a song on iTunes, I have downloaded copyrighted material.
So now we need the qualifier of "unauthorized", which becomes much more subjective. Who can authorize me? If I have Trent Reznor in my office and he tells me to grab a copy of his latest unreleased album off Kazaa, then I have "authorization" from the artist himself. Yet my ISP has no way of knowing that.
Okay, too unrealisitc? How about MySpace, which Ms. "Can't even write her own anti-piracy rant and has to steal it" Allen used to great effect to promote her own career... Any moron can upload tracks there, even under the band's name (if the band didn't already think to make an account). How can the ISP ever know which count as legit and which don't? For that matter, how can we know the difference?
So yeah, I have a problem with effectively taking away my primary means of communication with the rest of the world, by force of a law that I can't accurately know whether or not I've violated.
Call it overly dramatic, but I don't think the courts realize yet that for anyone under 40, depriving them of internet access amounts to a "dead to our entire peer group" sentence. Just wait, we will see people going on mass killing sprees over this.
Certainly accusation should not be the end of the story, and everybody should have a chance to respond.
OTOH, accusation is sometimes enough to warrant corrective action. Which while it might be inconvenient, should not be so harmful that it can't be resolved afterwards, should the accused in fact be innocent.
Yes, downloading music pieces illegally has long been a issue that bothers the whole music industry. In some countries, nearly everybody downloads music from online resources illegally. However, it is hard or we can say impossible to stop them from doing that, because everybody loves free stuff. If you can download music for free, why bother purchase it from itunes? However, I do think the "Three-Strike" Rule should help reduce the illegal downloading from online. But as I have mentioned, it will take a VERY LONG TIME to eliminate illegal downloading and actually, it might take forever.
Well if you think about it, you pay the isp, not the music industry or copyright holders. The music industry quote is a bit of a wakeup call on the concept of 'free file-sharing'.
If you are a p2p downloader, then work out how much you've spent on hardware/software, your time and skill (pro-rata if you desire) and regular payments to whomever to keep the services running. It amounts to a significant recurring charge. Also what about the down-time when you are not P2P-ing? That's wasted bandwith and capacity that you're paying for.
The point being is that it is not free and if the RIAA/MPAA or local equivalent is upset about that, then it's the ISP who will be faced with some form of tax or levy because presently there is no other way around it. The entertainment industry hasn't monitarised copyrighted P2P - I don't think it can. It's expensive to sue infringers, as downloading seems to be legal but uploading (the sharing bit) is illegal, so it's the P2P software at fault here and government intervention by lobbyists is restrictive to personal freedom and the 'free net' philosophy.
Lily Allen is still going to complete her tour, but states that she won't release another track. This is very interesting as tours and tour promotion can go ahead without the arm of the RIAA. Live performances may be the key in all of this. No more digital tracks to download, just go to the live performance instead. If you are an existing band or new band/singer then YouTube/Radio/FTA/Web is the way to promote your goods and make money by touring, wholesale video tracks to Apple and put up with crappy YouTube video of bits of your live concerts.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Congratulations <Anonymous Coward>, we at slashdot are happy to inform you that you're the one-millionth poster to blur the line between downloading music and stealing a physical object. Your prize, should you wish to accept it, is a one-week vacation in The Guantanamo Bay Hotel. Please reply within 48 hours to accept your prize.
From the title: UK Musicians Back Watered-Down "Three-Strikes" Rule
From the summary: The artists involved include Lily Allen, George Michael, and Sandie Shaw.
This is a classic example of the subtle lie.
This title suggests that ALL UK musicians back this absurd law, when in fact it's a very small number of musicians; the summary mentions three.
The title is correct: this story is about UK musicians that back the "watered-down" three-strikes rule. It's not factually inaccurate. But it is worded so perfectly (and precisely) to be subconsciously misleading. This is the new wave in media, and Fox News, defined.
T'is truly a brave new world.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store. I can go into almost any book store and read the entire thing if I so please. Guess what? They don't come running over to you screaming "thief!" and press charges when you do that. In fact, many book stores actually -encourage- reading by providing comfortable chairs and tables for reading and having coffee shops so you can drink coffee while you read.
What about restaurants which pay their employees with tips? You don't -have- to tip (in most cases).
What about Red Hat which gives away their product (RHEL, yeah, theres some trademark crap so you pretty much have to download CentOS but its the same thing) and only charges for support? Or Canonical with Ubuntu? Or Mozilla with Firefox? Loads of software companies give away their product.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
That's not power you're talking to there. We're talking about people who are so cheap they'll go out of their way to avoid paying a dollar for a song. It's a bunch of wannabe leaches.
Also, this isn't the time to do it. No matter how good the intent, we're talking about a law that is poorly written and will have bad side effects. Bring up the comment again on a more reasonable story.
Qxe4
So does 150 year+ copyrights, but i don't see them bitching about that.
To all those that think copyrights as they are is a good thing I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been wormfood(or a Popsicle) for nearly a half a century, yet one of his FIRST works, made when airplanes were made of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, is STILL under copyright. I think we can all agree that is pretty fucked up.
If we had SANE copyrights there would be no reason why I couldn't go and download Jimi, and Janis, the Buddy Holly collection, all the great music of the 50s and 60s, all free and easy. And musicians would be able to use these works to build new music. Instead we know have perpetual copyrights thanks to treasonous politicians taking bribes to have laws passed. That is also seriously fucked up.
So want the world to actually respect your copyrights? Then how about having terms that aren't legalized rape of the public domain. The US copyrights, which seem to be forced more and more down the throats of the rest of the world (sorry about that. we think they suck ass too) is a CONTRACT...nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright we, the people of the United States got a richer public domain. But the contract has been broken, and we have been robbed. So until We, The People actually have a seat at the bargaining table I say fuck them and the horse they rode in on. There is NO reason we should support illegal laws forced down our throats paid for in backroom deals by crooked politicians. We no longer have a say, the bribery wins every time. Until we get a vote I say let the pigs starve. I will support local artists by buying merchandise directly from them, and the rest? can kiss my proud southern ass.
Copyrights on software should be 7-10 years, music 10-15. We can argue about specific terms but I think we can ALL agree that 150+ year copyrights terms are no less than the complete hijacking of our culture by greedy pigs running multinational cartels and paid for with the corruption of our election process. i think we can all agree this shit needs to end.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Lobby is equivalent to bribing.
This is the caliber post that gets modded up Insightful here.
Don't buy their music, if you're dumb enough to do so to begin with.
I am worried.
I am not worried for the pirates, I am not worried for the artists, I am worried for the current RIAA/MPAA.
Bandwidth keeps increasing, BT and other file-sharing services keep getting more and more convenient, and we all know that it's not going to stop.
Let's look at examples where organizations distribute media online in a DRM-free format.
Games: Steam, valve's baby, it is a platform that allows me to sign in and re-download a game as many times as I want, as long as I bought the game. (Some third parties don't like this, but I am talking about valve's games.)
Music: Itunes. (Sort of anyway...) I don't actually use it but I understand that they removed most / all the DRM from their library, correct me if I am wrong, and I am not sure if you can redownload a song more then once but... It's a start.
Also in Music: Youtube! People play a video with a copyrighted song, an ad shows up showing where you can buy the song. But I am talking more along the lines of official videos that band's release on Youtube, I believe several record dealers have deals with Youtube, gaining money in exchange for their music being available to use on the site. (Without trying to take it down) Though I am not sure if this is on a per-listen basis or a yearly contract.
Anyway, time to get to my point:
Why aren't there:
A) Any movie sites that allow DRM-less download.
B) More competitors to Itunes.
Let's be reasonable, if you could download an episode of your favorite show in HD for a minimal price and be able to keep it forever / use it on whatever medium you wanted to, and you knew the artists were getting paid (I'm not sure how much creators of shows usually make now for DVDs you buy), wouldn't you?
Who the fuck wouldn't?
What is the excuse for not having a system like this? Surely no one actually believes that it will lead to more piracy because of the lack of DRM.
And what is with DRM anyway? How much money the MPAA spend on bluray's encryption to have it cracked in the first few months? There is NO WAY that you can give someone information in a DRM form and not expect it to be broken, things always have to be stored in RAM decrypted, if you have a virtual machine you can analyze and crack anything.
So again, why is there no online distribution system like this? What could be the reasons? Is it greed? Is it stupidity? What is it?
Instead we get laws like the DMCA, which prevent competition / enforce a monopoly, prevent user's for executing their fair use rights, and have all sorts of consequences no one considered. (Like affecting the security industry world-wide, despite being an American law.)
And now for the end of my rant:
If something doesn't change, here is what is going to happen:
Bandwidth will improve. New and easier file-transferring protocols will emerge.
Everyone will pirate.
Hollywood as we know it would die.
The music industry as we know it would die.
And everyone would work totally independent, no big studios, no overlying organization. Directors and producers and singers and songwriters would all find each other on their own and all work on their projects without giant companies making demands.
Maybe even copyright law will change... Which is a shame, because I think it's generally a good idea.
If it were a bit saner.
Programmers create software and software gets pirated. Why are all these new laws structured as if the "music industry" and "movie industry" are the only ones capable of producing copyrighted material? I guess they just have the most lobbyists. They certainly don't have the most money (the game industry alone exceeds the movie industry in revenue), I guess they are the ones willing to resort to abusive legislative tactics, while the software industry is satisfied with abusive anti-piracy measures.
It's hard for me to be sympathetic when most of the music coming out is very derivative and it all sounds the same and is composed of roughly the same rock and blues and R&B riffs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's good to see some artists trying to reach a "compromise" of sorts with the idea of piracy instead of trying to strike down anyone who's ever downloaded something copyrighted, but it won't really work because people will always find ways to get what they want over the internet no matter what
Dude, you're missing one big point.
Motley Crue sold like 40000 copies of "red white and crue", a compilation album. That alone netted a total income of about 7 million bucks.
Do you think they're going to give up the ability to make such a massive profit on a couple days' worth of work and tons of marketing? That's really their money machine, the marketing. It has nothing to do with the bands being good in alot of cases (Cases in point: Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, and a million others). They can just sell the bejesus out of their product.
Imagine what would happen if these dudes got shut down, anyway. The guys in their marketing departments would end up in other industries, and I imagine many companies would end up going bankrupt extremely quickly because of pure marketing destruction.
> So have any of those three stated a position on this policy?
I'm not sure that they've made any statements (unless they're still voting), but the RIAA seems to think that retroactively extending copyrights by 20 years every 20 years will incentivize them to produce more music...
how do they catch people doing this? could not the file sharing community simply zip the album and generate a random filename before upload/download?
...and now she wants legal protection for the business model that screws artists because she's one of the few that profit by it. You want the law enforced. Fine. Go fucking hand your skanky mockney arse in and stand trial for fucking up kids lives with your drug dealing you filthy two bit self congratulatory self important piece of human trash. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you don't see a problem with a law that means the mere accusation of a person is enough to prove guilt when it's convenient for you. It's because we live in a world where people like your worthless self are treated like gods. What the fuck is she afraid of anyway? That one day her lifestyle of running around with other skanks like Linsay Lohan might be limited to one million per fucking trip instead of two. Boo fucking hoo.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Hi, I'm posting from the future. At first I thought, "Don't worry, be happy", but then it was more like, "It's gonna be a hard days night" and now it's pretty bad, almost "Heaven knows I'm miserable @#%^H!*( NO CARRIER
No matter how illegal, how immoral, how unethical a down loader's conduct might be - those people who wish to punish him need to go to court to punish him. The ISP has no authority to punish anyone, nor do the rights holders. Only the court has that authority. Attempting to delegate that authority to anyone other than the court for any reason undermines any claims of "justice". It's really that simple.
I will not change my mind for some argument of "Woe is me, I can't afford to file an injunction and a suit against everyone who "steals" my song!" To that, I say, "Tough shit, dude. Find another way to make money from your work, or find another line of work!"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I thought you said "musicians".
I don't have much problem with this cept as long as the new work differs quite a lot from the original, I'd be pissed if I had made something, and someone else made a profit from basically copy pasting my work into something and flogging it off without any real change. But for the public just downloading it I wouldn't care all that much.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
[...] penalizes BT's many customers who use the Internet legally.
How exactly are BT's "legal" customers penalized by downloaders?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I find it horribly amusing how the MPAA and the RIAA bitch and moan about the internet and downloading, while it is simultaneously killing the pr0n industry's profits, entire trackers are devoted to adult content, and you never hear a peep from them. why? my theory is that they have been fscked up the rectum too many times by the courts and simply will not resort to the legal system under any circumstances.
Total crap, It's easy enough to torrent 3 albums illegally, only using small amounts of bandwidth. It's also possible to transfer huge amounts of completely legal data. It pisses me off that ISPs are trying to say that all heavy users are the same as pirates. The whole 'it's the user's fault' is rediculous. The fact they can't take the data through the network isn't a sign the users are using too much, it's a sign they need to upgrade their network. Instead, they are passing the buck to the user, and then blaming it on the 'dirty pirates'. Next they'll just start putting people in prison for copyright infringment if you use more than XGB bandwidth a month (subject to change without notice).
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Why does what she say mean anyhting?
Lily Allen. Isn't that the girl/woman who sings songs with naughty words in it in a baby's voice ? And she's against it ? Well then it must be good. Or something.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Artist should also be subject to "three strikes", where all their works enter the public domain if they are caught three times snorting coke or doing whatever other criminal activities it seems the well-paid lawyers of the music industries get them very lenient punishments for.
"Yes, your Honor, my client did take drugs but sine he is an important celebrity he should spend three months at Betty Ford (paid by the record sales) instead of six months in jail."
That's really their money machine, the marketing. It has nothing to do with the bands being good in alot of cases (Cases in point: Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, and a million others). They can just sell the bejesus out of their product.
I happen to think that ...Baby One More Time and Toxic are among the greatest pop records ever created. But our subjective views on the quality of music is not really relevant here.
Your point is well taken though. The marketing is inherent to the product, it's creative and it's expensive. To sell 1,000,000 albums, you would expect to spend $1,000,000 or more (figures gleefuly plucked from the air, but you get the idea) on image consultancy, design, photography, promotional travel, buying lunches for TV execs and showbiz columnists, etc.
When you bought an album, you weren't just buying the music. That was just the tangible part of the product that you could actually walk into a shop and acquire. But what you really got was a piece of the entire construction - dress, attitude, style, soundbites, scandal, whatever.
A big chunk of the money that faciliates all that, traditionally came from album sales. Yes, there's also broadcast royalties, concert tickets, sheet music royalties etc., but album sales is stil a big chunk.
Now, many of us may agree that the world would be no worse off if we lost the extravagant starmaking marketing machine, and therefore didn't need albums to sell millions in order to fund it. But I'd argue that in fact millions of people like to have a world with mass-market celebrities.
And at least by understanding that, we can see where the music industry is coming from. If we say "you can't sell albums any more" (since if copyright restrictions were lifted, no rational customer would pay for a copy), the way they've financed the creation of music for the past 50 years collapses.
The question is whether we should care about that or just let it go ahead and collapse. Me, I'm not sure. I'm having fun watching.
Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store. I can go into almost any book store and read the entire thing if I so please. Guess what? They don't come running over to you screaming "thief!" and press charges when you do that. In fact, many book stores actually -encourage- reading by providing comfortable chairs and tables for reading and having coffee shops so you can drink coffee while you read.
But they wouldn't let you walk out carrying a book without paying. I suspect you'd get booted out of the shop pretty quickly if you took a laptop and a scanner in and started scanning their books.
Bookshops encourage reading in their shops because they anticipate that having read a couple of chapters, you'll want to buy the book and take it home. Further, they've found that by providing that kind of atmosphere, they're able to sell books more effectively than a competing bookshop that doesn't.
Record shops provide listening stations for exactly the same reason.
It's entirely different from the practice of copying a piece of music then listening to it as often as you like, wherever you like, for evermore.
There's nothing saying that you have the right to control distribution in the constitution, is there.
You've make that up just so you can say that P2P is wrong.
And free speech means I can say what I want, even if someone else said it before.
Even if I say it to a tune.
And play an instrument.
In front of lots of people.
Even if they paid to get in.
THAT is free speech.
Censorship is what you want and it is the antithesis of free speech.
Now if you want us to agree to censorship, you'd better pay up to get your control. You get nothing for nothing. So if we're going to give up our own free speech, what will YOU give US?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
when we gave them copyrights?
Initially, just for written music and plays and for short times, with no (in the UK) wrong if done for no profit.
Then you stole more. Software. Recordings of both music and movies. Then for longer. And longer.
And now you complain because your "IP" isn't treated like real property and in some distant future, you may have to give it up!
When you took copyrights, you weren't buying real property. You aren't paying rent on it for a start. Nor are you being taxed on it (for utilities and police protection) and you don't have to keep the property in good working order. You also aren't under squatters rights, improvements and rights of way either.
So what did YOU think you were buying when you made your works? And why do you want it changed now, after the fact?
Congratz you are our 1 millionth dumb-shit of the week.
GET A FUCKING CLUE!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store. I can go into almost any book store and read the entire thing if I so please. Guess what? They don't come running over to you screaming "thief!" and press charges when you do that. In fact, many book stores actually -encourage- reading by providing comfortable chairs and tables for reading and having coffee shops so you can drink coffee while you read.
And when you do buy a book, it's yours. The pages don't blank out when the store closes.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
For anecdotal evidence, for me the average size of a ripped album at 192kbps is around 90MB's.
In the last couple of weeks I've downloaded a Sony PS3 update (about 400MB's) followed by a 90MB Singstar update, followed by buying 8 singstar tracks (approximately 70MB's each). Re-installed Steam on my PC and downloaded my games collection (20GB). When you put all that together I'd have to download 289 albums this month to match my completely legitimate use of bandwidth. While Steam has knocked up my download stats this month its not unusual for me to use 20GB a month.
Also in defense to BT they have been trying to role out FTTH (Fiber To The Home) for at least 5 years. To do it would cost approximately £15 billion. Every time they ask the government for money they get fobbed off. They are now rolling out Fiber to the Junction box using their own funds. BT were also pretty consistent about rolling out ASDL and are slowly unbundling the local loops so true competition exists.
Software costs thousands sometimes 10s of thousands time more money to create. Yet they manage to whine less, it is quite amazing really. I think it is that the RIAA is closer to being useless. Software companies often distribute files directly to people or through just one middle man, stores. In the music industry they are realizing that if musicians distribute things by themselves then the RIAA has no place anymore. They are in deaththroes, whereas the software 'riaa' is far less important to begin with.
I wouldn't describe Fox News as "not factually inaccurate" but "subconsciously misleading". From what I've seen they don't even bother to pretend they have that modicum of respect for their audience.
Does that matter if speed rate are limited ?I don#t think so. 1 kilobyte per second is still 85 megabyte a day, it is still 2.5 giga a month. 1 kb per second is hardly a good speed to surf, but if you leave your PC 24/7 switched on, it is a speed good enough to download anything on P2P.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
And I am forced to listen to it every time I sit in a cafe or walk in a shop or somebody plays it in the public transport. This makes these "artists" not very different from workers producing noise with their hammers and drills on the street. They must pay noise tax for that.
I would think software could be longer since much much more time and money is put into software than music. But the short lifecycle means it doesn't really matter )to be fair to the software industry I haven't seen anyone getting sued over 10yr old games lol...). 10~15 is probably fine for music.
But I'd like to point out that while the US is up there for insane copyrights... the world MINIMUM is life + 25years. So something like a 70year minimum up to 100+ in the states.
Exactly (I submitted a story on this, but I think it's still lost in the firehose). It's depressing that so little of the mainstream media are covering this, instead still going with "Wonderful Lily Allen rallies and unites artists, and she closed her blog because people 'abused' her". She added nothing to the debate, just the same old tired arguments we've all heard before (you wouldn't steal from a shop; it's not free to make, how can it be free to give away? etc), it was like talking to a brick wall - she was completely obvlious to the point people were making when they pointed out her filesharing and plagiarism, instead she then retreated to defending it, whilst still saying it was wrong for anyone else to do it.
Her defence for filesharing mp3s was she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry" - what, just like most of us, who don't work in the music industry at all?
Her claim about it being 5 years ago is nonsense too, as the mp3s were still being shared until she took them down *after* she was found out (ignorance is no defence of the law, and it won't be in this new law either).
The claims that she received "abuse" - or "vitriol" as the Featured Artists Coalition claims - is nonsense too. I saw the blog, and most comments (all that I saw) were polite and well argued. It was heated sure, but with her accusations of people being thieves, she gave as good as she got. Furthermore, she posted and offensive rant by James Allan in support of her, who referred to people as "tight fucks" and their girlfriends as "fat fucks". Why is this offensive and sexist rant being excused and ignored by the media, whilst instead they focus on allegations of "abuse" from random anonymous people on the Internet?
Oh yes, and the Government Consultation ends 29 September (Tuesday) - please repond, unless you want the debate to be run by people like Lily Allen: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html .
I'm a UK musician and I don't back this draconian garbage. I fileshare. I support filesharing.
Where's my say on the matter?
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/
bullshit. we the people are not interestes in this kind of laws.
but we the big corporations ARE interested in this kind of laws.
question remains: why do we the people vote and what do we vote for?
we vote for companies to run our countries?
Privacy is terrorism.
If any UK citizens wish to protest this, feel free to take a look at my petition to legalise filesharing. Thanks.
Sadly I feel this is just an argument to moderation. The "restriction" method still has the same flaws, and also introduces some of its own. By compromising, all they're doing is rewarding Lily Allen for taking an extreme position, despite the fact that her arguments were very poorly made.
What about artists (or indeed, software developers, etc) who disagree with this law altogether? Supposing we decided to take an extreme position and say "Copyright shouldn't exist at all" - does that mean we should "compromise" by keeping copyright, but not having this new law?
The Featured Artists Coalition proposed: "restriction of the infringers bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional."
However, this is technically impossible - consider, a single song is of the order of a few MBs in size. I know from my own experience of measuring my usage, that even casual web browsing can easily use up over 100MBs in a period of hours. Whilst at one time people managed with dial-up connections, it is not the 1990s anymore - websites have grown, based on the expectations that most people have broadband, thus even websites result in significant amounts of data being shared. Users would also be prevented from downloading legitimate freely available content, in particular software, which are typically also of the order of MBs or 10s of MBs in size. There is also the point that the web is becoming more dependent on media files such as video, and this will be increasingly true as time goes on - for example, news websites such as the BBC routinely have content in the form of audio or video. There are also many legal radio channels, that are used to present news.
Even more serious is that Windows Update requires 10s or even 100s of MBs of data to be downloaded, and this is essential for security updates. Similarly for security fixes in newer updates to other software such as web browsers. Therefore, restricting download speeds would not only harm the user, but would put everyone on the Internet at risk due to the increased threat of viruses and other malware. Such a move would be irresponsible.
The plans also unfairly discriminate between types of content. For example, a movie may be several GBs in size, a TV program 100s of MBs, and album 10s of MBs, and a single song a few MBs. Wherever the threshold is set, either it will be large enough that people can share songs, or too low, such that they cannot even access websites properly.
It is even more difficult with software, which can range from 100s of MBs in size, to just 100s of KBs. Clearly, reducing someone's connection so that even sharing 100s of KBs is little different to a complete disconnection. Yet a threshold that limits sharing of music and video would still allow people to share software. So this proposal does not seem adequate - as a software developer myself, I do not see why music producers are treated differently to software producers.
Reading the consultation (closes 29 September! Please respond!), it looks like the Government is seriously considering restriction of bandwidth as one of the measures anyway, before complete disconnection. Once again, policy will be shaped by those who are clueless about the technical matters.
(Yes, I never thought I'd be citing Windows Update's huge security downloads as a good thing...:)
There is a Government consultation, that is open for anyone to respond to. Please do - although it closes 29 September (Tuesday).
Otherwise this law will be decided by the likes of Lily Allen and James "fat fuck" Allan, who have nothing useful to add to the debate, other than using their fame to get media attention on the matter (whilst being a filesharing hypocrite of a pirate herself, in the case of Lily Allen).
I agree. There's also the point that with the Featured Artists Coalition's proposal of "the restriction of the infringers bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional", aside from being technically impossible (daily web use these days will easily be comparable to downloading mp3s, let alone things like Windows Update and other software security fixes), would only protect music and video. Note how they explictly say "media" - that's right, according to them, we don't even exist. Given that some software might only be of the order of 100s of KBs, this proposal would be useless, and unfairly treat different kinds of content differently.
It'll be even more useless for someone wanting to rip off a Techdirt article, like Lily Allen did. Again, one rule for them, one for the rest of us.
And I've noted that several times whilst debating this on various news forums, I've had people say "I bet you're not a musician", as if they're the only ones allowed to have a say. It's a fallacy anyway - why does not being a musician mean you don't have a say in laws regarding Internet usage and disconnection? Surely I could just say "I bet you're not a computer scientist" or "I bet you don't work for an ISP"? Or, can I lobby for a draconian law regarding software, and say "I bet you're not a programmer" to anyone who disagrees? Anyhow, the politicians supporting this law aren't musicians either.
I did write a big rant on this elsewhere, which I might as well copy here (i.e., so imagine it is targetted towards Lily Allen and her supporters when I refer to "you" - obviously I know you are not in disagreement with me:)
1. Yes, the software I produce relies on copyright. I do not argue for the abolition of copyright. It is a straw man argument to polarise the debate into pro/anti-copyright. However, I do not support this planned law on disconnecting or restricting Internet access. And do you know what? I think I'm damn lucky to be working on something where I can write it once, and it can be copied over and over again, with people paying me extra. Sure, there might be some additional copies made by people don't pay - but I don't care. I realise instead how lucky and privileged I am to be working in a job that I enjoy, making more money than most people do. Yet the creative control I have, and the money I earn, is still a mere fraction over that enjoyed by Lily Allen. Indeed, I'm a perfect example of the "little guy" that she, and many of you, like to speak for - "the guy who works in the studios" etc. I'm the little guy who hasn't made it rich, working for the company that sells content that could be pirated, and pays me a wage. Yet I oppose this law, and I think Lily Allen's arguments were flawed and badly made. And don't you dare claim to speak on my behalf.
2. Back when I was a poor student, I sold software I wrote directly. The amount of money was trivial. I know for a fact that people had pirated my software, because I saw pirated keyfiles. Yeah, I might prefer they bought it, but equally I couldn't claim it was a lost sale. I got over it - it's not worth caring about. Instead I thought it was great that I was still earning a bit of extra money from something creative I enjoyed, instead of working a boring job at minimum wage (which I did have to do at times, too).
3. Today, although I have a professional job, I still write open source software in my spare time. I do respect copyrights when I distribute my work. Unlike music, software is usually dependent on other software such as libraries, so we have to be careful to follow the licences. In particular, as a free author, I have to look for freely distributable libraries. Furthermore I like to write games, and as I can't do my own graphics, sound - including music - I have to seek out free content (e.g., Creative Commons licences). Even though I'm not making any money out of this, I still bend over backwards trying to find out such material and make sure that ev
I think such long copyrights are a wonderful idea. But surely if life+70 years is so important to the profitability of creative art, it must also be so retroactively. If we are granting rights to dead people in the future we should also grant them to dead people in the past.
And now on behalf of the danish family of H.C.Andersen and the german family of the brothers Grimm I would like to charge the Disney corporation and all it's resellers for criminal copyright infringement (theft and piracy) to damages of 150'000$ pr instance and jail sentences all round.
That Disney can argue that such a long copyright term is necessary, when their own business model is and was to steal works that would be under copyright when using their own definition, is a display of a mind-bogling amount of hypocrisy.
I hope that "I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS" becomes a new Internet meme or macro :)
... albeit an amateur British musician, can I just say, no I fucking well do NOT support this.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Shit, are people still listening to The Smiths in the future?
Heh, totally agree. I also thought I'd mention books, which while less costly to produce can take as long as software to produce (and time is money). But they wouldn't be afforded a shred of protection by this ruling. Books are generally not even compressed since they are smaller than mp3s to begin with. And clearly a fraction of what a legitimately free streaming video would be.
And I say life + 25 is too fucking long. The reason I put a shorter lifecycle on software copyrights is how quickly it ends up "deadware/abandonware" and becomes completely unusable. Look at the games that came out for Win3.1/Win95, do you know how much of a royal PITA it is to get some of that stuff to even run at all? Try to get FFVII to run, even on Win98 it is an exercise in frustration. Now think about how much software has come out since 1981, and how much of that is now completely useless. With insane copyright laws by the time the stuff becomes legal to sell or repackage or offer it will be so old it will be like trying to run wax cylinder music. The point of a public domain was to enrich us all, not to be a dumping ground for shit they can't figure how to squeeze another dime out of.
More and more of our history and culture is being hijacked by these multinational corporations, and frankly it makes me sick. Sorry I can't find the link ATM, but I remember reading that many of the old WC Fields and Mae West films have been lost forever. Why? Because the movie companies that own the films don't know how to market old stuff or simply don't care unless they can reel in the cash like "Gone With The Wind" or "Wizard Of Oz" and because thanks to insane copyrights anyone restoring these old prints would be able to get exactly jack squat and would in fact be busted if they tried to repackage and sell them, and so they just rot.
There is NO reason why we shouldn't be able to get all the classic NES, SMS, Genesis, SNES, Coleco, etc games packaged on a CD with a preconfigured emulator ready to go, along with prepackaged binaries for most major cell phones. Imagine walking into Walmart and having a "Best of DOS" or "all the great games of the 80s" that can be ran on just about anything with a screen. Imagine how many new titles would be cooked up using these things as a basis. But thanks to insane copyrights you will probably be dead for a couple of decades before any of that stuff gets out of copyright, and that is if they don't just keep extending it to make damned sure that stupid mouse never leaves copyrighted status.
And more importantly as this "three strikes' bullshit proves they are using their status as a cartel to manipulate the laws and subvert the will of the people. Does anybody here think that the average broadband user in the UK is all for this three strikes bullshit, when they don't even get a right to contest it? What if your ISP gets pissed at you because you are using a competitors services instead of their expensive bundled crap? For too long now we have seen our laws all across the world subverted by treasonous bribes by multinational cartels, and I think we can all agree that the totally insane laws we have now are just the tip of the iceberg. These bastards won't be happy until the entire Internet is just a walled garden designed to push more product down our throats. And I think the Internet is too precious a resource to let it become another strip-mined wasteland for the benefit of multinational cartels. This shit has to end.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Major British recording artists have met to try to hammer out a truce on their views on the Mandelson-Geffen "three strikes" proposal to cut off filesharers.
Radiohead, Pink Floyd and Blur have said the proposals are unworkable and will only alienate people. However, Lily Allen has come out strongly in favour of the proposals, saying that "the fackin' slags need a good fackin' kickin'. It's fine for the rich fackers, but it's all a bit of a rum do for the starving artistes like me, what? Er, I mean, fack the fackin' fackers. Innit. Blud." She then accidentally exposed one of her nipples.
Lily Allen came to popularity from filesharers pointing to her MySpace page. "Fackin' fans, fackin' fack the fackers," she wrote in a blog post plagiarised without attribution from TechDirt. If she copies two more blog posts, or if anyone notices the mixtapes of other artists' music on her website, her Internet will be cut off.
James Blunt has backed Ms Allen's position strongly. Respecting his stance, filesharers across Britain have sworn never to download a James Blunt song again if they can possibly avoid it, several taking out insurance against such an event.
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group has put forward a proposal for a small mandatory licence percentage for copyright holders, as on radio and television. "We plead with the music industry not to throw us into the mandatory licence briar patch," said Mr Killock, "in which no-one ever buys a record again otherwise as they've already paid for it. Please."
"Punk Floyd ... weren't it them what did 'Beatlearchy In The UK'? Hippy crap," said 14-year-old music fan KT Myspce, loading up another Lady Gaga song to play in the background from YouTube.
Illustration: I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT NOT SWALLOWING IS DESTROYING MUSIC
Bonus: http://quiteovious.blogspot.com/
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Your point about VIdeo Game copyrights is exactly why most people who want to play anything from NES through even N64 and PS1 have emulators and play them for free. If Nintendo hadn't decided to create the VC, you would have no way to buy a new copy of any of these games to give money to the original copyright holder. Is it better to buy a copy of Suikoden 2 on ebay for over $100 than to download a free copy online and play that? I think not. All Nintendo with the VC and Sony with the PS1 store are doing is making it sound like "oh yeah we are going to sell those so you should feel bad for pirating them." The problem is that neither company has the rights or the interest to re-release all the popular games (especially the popular RPGS) from a given generation. To make matters worse, emulators for PS1 and N64, while working, aren't exactly the greatest. In a few years when you can't find PS2 games in stores anymore and all the remaining stock is used, we are likely going to be prevented forever from playing them when all the living PS2s die and all the PS3s in existence are not backwards compatible. All this to give Sony and the other publishers the chance to re-release what they determine are the best games on PS2 (aka the most popular) as bundled games on a PS3 playable blu-ray. I bought all those ps2 games when they came out for a reason, so i can play them years in the future, too bad that won't be so easy.
After three strikes, you and your family will be sterilized! LOL
Are you going to stop listening to music? No.
So. You go over your friend's house with a blank hard drive and copy his entire collection. Ding. Done.
I have 35,056 songs in iTunes. I've downloaded, at most, 100 of them. Much of what I have is from my massive CD/LP collection (2300 units). The rest? LAN parties.
Right now I could easily slip a USB drive in the mail and send 16 gigs of audio (about 3000 songs) to a friend. They then copy it to their drive at their leisure, and don't have to deal with bandwidth issues. They then erase the drive and send me 16 gigs back.
Not that I would do that (16 gig drives are still too expensive, IMHO) but I'm simply pointing out that this won't stop file sharing. Period.
Note the three people advocating:
Lily Allen: marginally talented hack and hypocrite.
Sandie Shaw: has been who never was much and had her last top 10 hit when the Beatles were still together.
George Michael: has been whose value was created during the age of vinyl and the early CD period, making what is best described as "pop bilge".
Losers. The lot of them.
Proceed.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Most musicians out of the U.K. these days are shit, with very few exceptions. Who cares what they think.
ISPs like the fact that we are paying flat rate for all-you-can-eat (up to 250GB) bandwidth - say, for $60 a month.
This is clearly communism and it provokes piracy.
Every time free market and supply/demand is violated we have problems.
If you'd pay say $1 per GB you would think twice about whether to download a movie or to go to Redbox and rent it.
The same thing is wrong with our health insurance - you pay your $20 per visit regardless what has been done.
I break the law every day. You break the law every day. Everyone who will read this post breaks the law every day. Illegal activity is meaningless. For example, here in the UK owning any sort of map is illegal, if the police and the courts decide that it is, and you only get to find that out after you've been in prison for several months. You're a fucking dick, AC.
Be smart, help people!
If that was a poor analogy, it shouldn't be hard to think of a better one. I agree that he was trying to point out the logical error in the statement " will always exist, so don't bother trying to stop it." It's one of those basic logical fallacies. We should know better, but when it's something where we are the threat, and an industry we don't care for is the one being threatened, logic tends to get pushed to the side.
If you're not sure what I mean, imagine if I were to tell you that people will always try to violate the GPL, so we shouldn't even bother with the GPL. You'd be upset, and rightly so: it's a stupid logical fallacy.
As for the viability of the two business models: the top Kazaa executives probably made $10 or $20 million each. The most popular bittorrent trackers might make maybe a million bucks a year. These amounts are more than your typical signed recording artist makes, and in fact, the most successful tracker operator probably makes more in a year than many, many indie record labels. So, at first glance, you can make a point that piracy is a better model than the traditional model. But when you make a more direct apples-to-apples comparison, the luminaries in the arts -- say, Stephen King, Jeffrey Koons, or Bruce Springsteen -- have incomes that dwarf the most successful people in the piracy industry by an order of magnitude.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Lets take the closest physical thing to the music industry, a book store.
Ummm, wouldn't the closest physical thing to the music industry be a music store?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Ah yes, that's a good point - have added it to the consultation reply I'm writing :)
Talking of software, it's interesting to read the statistics of alleged damages caused by copyright infringement. The interesting thing is that even if we accept their numbers, they give $48 billion for software, and $332 million for music and video combined - that's over 144 times as much! They also note (rightly) that most software infringement is done by businesses, not individuals filesharing.
I had no idea, but it really puts it in perspective - even by their own figures, filesharing is less than 1% - over 99% of all alleged damages by copyright infringement is due to businesses pirating software, not individuals filesharing music or video!
So I was driving through Alabama, had a little delay due to some kangaroos (don't want to go into it) and I decided to just sit on the porch at the court house while I waited for my case to come up. I was just taking in the scenery when this local comes up and asks me if I'd like a shot of shine. I declined, as I've been trying to cut back and I told him that, but he insisted and pulled out some sort of old pistol which he pointed at my head. So I took a drink. He said "The missus don't let me drink neither, now you hold the gun."
So, how do you feel about holding the gun? I mean I don't want to watch House at all or anything, but if you're holding a gun and all....
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Shit, are people still listening to The Smiths in the future?
I'm afraid, Very afraid. I am listening to my portable music playing device while I read this. As soon as I got to this part of the thread, who should come out of the earphones but The Smiths singing Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.
This sig is intentionally blank
How about 3 strikes for the artist: it would go something like "release 3 dogs and you're out"
Strategy from the start?
Good point, but House/24/Lost and you name it are basically fta.
All of these progs on torrent have had the ads cut out and it's obvious that they're not dvd rips. So you can point the gun at me and I'll happily download the next season(s). Anyway, it's emus you have to worry about in Alabama. The roos are tame.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Musicians would best spend their 'glam' time pushing business models like spotify instead of running an inquisition
Why don't people just boycot the music industry, stop going to shows, and wait until they come crawling back. The failure to buy CD's will hurt the record label and failure to go to shows will hurt the artists. At some point they'll have to come around to the consumer way of thinking. The movie industry isn't much better. I don't pirate movies, but I do rip DVDs to my laptop so that I can watch them off that (which is piracy according to the movie and music industry). I say a big screw you. I bought my DVDs/CD's and I will put them on whatever of my devices I darn well please.
Similarly, the internet existed before all this P2P. People always pirated software/music/whatever since it went mainstream via websites, but mostly now these industries think because of P2P services that everyone uses P2P and no one uses the internet for legitimate uses. Like I don't know downloading Linux distributions, porn movies that they paid for, free content (ie The Pirkening hahaha), data sets.
i say it's time to cut the movie and music industry out of the picture and start only consuming independent media that'll teach them to play ball or go out of business. I'm sure the actual creative guys will start jumping ship long before the **AA start going out of business.....
Also these industries have been trusts for a long time. Isn't it odd how most CD's were about $15, even from different labels. Even older music was still around $15. Cassette tapes used to be cheaper. But aren't CD's a cheaper media that is easier to press?
in the UK owning any sort of map is illegal
That's news to me. Why? Since when? In what way?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I'm a software developer.
I do not have a problem with piracy because I accept it exists, my main income is from writing bespoke software on a permanent contract for an engineering firm. I write and update software as and how they need me to. I work for a living.
I do also write software in my spare time and sell it, however I have no expectation that everyone would or even should buy it. I don't expect someone to pay £30 for my software if they're only going to use it once or twice, because it's that type of program. I'd like them to buy it if they're going to use it more than that however, but if they don't they don't. So why do I even bother writing it? Because there's enough people out there who do buy it to net me thousands of pounds of extra income on top of my wage each year.
This is the model artists need to start following- if they want a guaranteed stream of money, start working for a living, do live performances, do concerts and so on. If that's not enough sure produce CDs and such, appreciate the extra income it brings in.
The reason this legislation focuses on the music industry is because they are the ones crying the hardest for exactly this reason- they do not want to have to work for a living, they want to be able to do a few weeks work and profit off it for life. There are some software developers in this situation too of course but they're fewer and further between. This is also the reason you see movie stars crying about piracy but do not see soap opera stars crying- because the latter work for a living, whilst the former only want to do a few years work to set them up for life.
You see, this is why I can't hate piracy, because all it's done is expose who the lazy amongst society are, no, not the pirates- those who actually see piracy as a problem. The only reason piracy would be a problem for you is if you depend on trying to make a living from doing next to no work and exploit the previous monopoly on distribution that the internet has done away with.
It just comes down to the fact the music industry has built itself around this lazy living more than anyone else, because music tracks are short they have to do very little work compared to even movie stars who at least have to put months, sometimes years into a film, whilst "artists" put a mere few weeks or a month or two into an album. Of course they like to think they work hard promoting it, but promoting your album is basically musician language for a free round the world trip.
You're quite right in that the software industry wont oppose this type of legislation because it does indeed provide an easy ride. But they've not been so vocal about it because they realise that it's not the end of the world, there's no point pissing your customers off when you can just adapt. Adapting is something the music industry apparently doesn't understand.
Huh? So what! Why is the will of a *few* of the *commercial* pop-music "artists" always put forward that of the majority? "UK musicians"? What about the Irish band I saw down the pub the other weekend? Or my brother? Or some mates of mine who write music? They don't care!
I suggest that only a tiny minority of UKs musicians are backing this crap.