Slashdot Mirror
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."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9-esIM2CY
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"
Metallica's bed-wetting cowardly lion of a frontman James Hettfield famously confessed that he used to crash on friends' couches and stay up all night copying his friends' tapes.
You know, the Metallica that helped kill the original Napster many years later?
Hmm. I wonder if no one has told her that many musicians earn a perfectly good income by means of live performances, as all musicians did not all that long ago. Earning vast sums from recordings is by no means the only business model for music.
One artist wrote a open-letter/song on this. It's brilliant.
Who said crime does not pay.......^__^
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
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!
For that matter, how can we know the difference?
You get a copyright infringement notice:
Dear Sir/Madam:
I, the person whose name is stated below, issue this notice for the purposes of condition 3 of item 4 of the table in subsection 116AH(1) of the Copyright Act 1968 and regulation 20I of the Copyright Regulations 1969.
I am the agent of the owner of the copyright in the copyright material specified in the Schedule, being copyright material residing on your system or network.
I believe, in good faith, that the storage of the specified copyright material on your system or network is not authorised by the copyright owner or a licensee of the copyright owner, or the Copyright Act 1968, and is therefore an infringement of the copyright in the material.
I have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the information and statements in this notice are accurate.
----------------
Regards,
Tarun Sawney,
Senior Director- Anti Piracy, Asia Pacific
BSA
URL: http://www.bsa.org/
E-mail: bsa@copyright-compliance.com
Address: 300 Beach Road, The Concourse #25-08 , Singapore 199555
Telephone no: +65-62922072
Fax no: +65-62926369
So then you visit the website provided, and explain yourself and remove the offending music/movie/software. If they don't accept the explanation, then you are classified as a bad person. If you keep doing it, then you are a recidivist and now it's 2 strikes against your name. One more and you're off the net.
Report her to her ISP. That's one. Two more and we'll be rid of her!
She also copied an entire article off of TechDirt and posted it on her website without attribution. That's two.
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
...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
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.
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 saw this in an interview with Lars Ulrich long ago: Metallica was the name a friend of Ulrich had in mind for a metal-themed music magazine. He convinced him to call it something else and used the name for his band.
The hypocrisy is hilarious.
... 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.