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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.
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.
Never heard of her. But I have heard of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Ravel.
Maybe it would be a good thing if the modern music business died.
Never heard of her. But I have heard of Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Ravel.
So have any of those three stated a position on this policy?
#DeleteChrome
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.
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.
Guilty until proven innocent. I bet you think that is actually a unique idea. You clearly think it is a good one.
Sadly, it isn't far off from what we have now. There are too many crimes out there that are too heinous to be found innocent of; simple accusation warrants the worst punishment. The legal system may still be applied, but the minds of those in it, and those who make the laws, are too clouded by knee-jerking to actually think rationally. Innocence? You were accused; innocence is no excuse, and you will be punished.
Outcry has replaced justice, and pundits have replaced judge and jury. What the sparkly box with faces in it says is true cannot be argued with; what is written in Wikipedia must be fact; what the drudge report aggregates must be news. Welcome to the Information - or perhaps, Media - Age.
Great Intellect...
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
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.
You are a danger and a menace and should be removed from posting on Slashdot.
See how that works?
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.
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 .