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Finnish Record Labels Want To Block Pirate Bay
jones_supa writes "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the national trade association representing record companies in Finland, has filed for a court injunction ordering the Internet service provider Elisa to block access to the Pirate Bay website. 'The development of a legal online market is impossible in Finland if illegal services like The Pirate Bay are freely allowed to continue their operations,' said Lauri Rechardt, a spokesman for Finland's branch of IFPI."
If that was true in any way, shape, form, or sexual position then Apple, Amazon, and a multitude of other legitimate services would have failed.
Lo and behold, they have not. Instead they have grown.
What if someone is using the pirate bay to distribute his own content?
Blocking it for the record company is just using the government and laws to prevent competition.
They are losing control of the music business and they are getting scared.
The artists are partially to blame for that. They continue to perpetuate the control the record labels extend by signing those shitty contracts. The sad thing here is that if they managed to block that site, and records sales still don't improve, who are they going to after next? Recorded music, as a technology, hasn't decreased in price as the technology became cheaper. People can buy spools of a hundred CDR's for pennies, meaning the only real value is the music itself, and when you compare a 3 minute song to the value of a matinee movie for 5 bucks, the difference is a bit startling. 5 Bucks for a few hours of entertainment vs. a $1.00 or more for 3 minutes, it's just not a good value in most people's eyes.
Most of the regular services are available in Finland, with the exception of Pandora (However "regular" Pandora is, I don't know). Finland also has Spotify. Given Finland's stance on free speech (We top the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index along with a few other countries, last I checked), I doubt that this kind of censorship will go through. I know, press freedom isn't entirely related to this. But Finland is a lot more liberal about such things than, say, the US.
Pretty much everyone I know here in Finland had moved to Spotify from illegal downloading, until Spotify watered down the free version. Restoring Spotify to its previous state would be far, far more effective than blacklisting TPB.
We pay ungodly amounts for our blank media so we can legally copy. Fuck you Teosto and Gramex.
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At issue is not that the organization wants to protect it's copyright. That is certainly a logical desire. At issue is the argument that they make in an attempt to protect said copyright. The argument is clearly and obviously flawed and frankly, just plain silly on the face of it, as evidenced by the success of iTunes alone.
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I think a lot of it depends on ownership of publishing rights and to the masters. A lot of older artists, to put it bluntly, were royally screwed as far as ownership goes, or, to put it more bluntly, bamboozled. The recording industry left behind a lot of victims, which is why I find the current "woe is us, TPB is killing us" rather ironic. The problem is that, no matter how you do it, the fall of the record companies, whether it happens now or later, will have a lot of victims who weren't in on the scam.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Or until the DRM decides otherwise.
No, but the IFPI/RIAA/MAFIAA "either you sign the contract with us or we'll have you blacklisted from most live venues and you won't be eating by next week" negotiation model is pretty damn close.
Actually most musicians will tell you they don't make shit from record sales, all the money comes from concerts and merch. hell even those of us that played in regional bands can tell you that, you sell the CD for a little over cost, just to cover production, and where you make your profits are the T-shirts, hats, mugs, keyrings, etc.
Why? simple: the music is advertising that gets you to the show. The more CDs you have out there, the more people you have potentially listening and hopefully playing it for their friends. this advertising then gets said friends to go to the show, where you as the artist then sell them the merch.
I had a nice thing going with my band where in each city we played I'd go hit the pawn shops and pick up a "pawn shop special" guitar or bass, which we would all sign and either myself (if it was a bass) or one of our guitarists would play it for a few (or several if they liked the sound) songs and then we would raffle it off. Every CD,T-shirt, etc got you another slot in the drawing. made out like bandits with that one we did. Oh and if any other musicians want to use the idea I offer it under the GPL. As long as you give me credit have fun! And enjoy the money, as we'd make close to a thousand a night with that trick.
So you see Nomadic the CDs are adverts nothing more, and it is the middle men leeches, that royally fuck EVERYBODY that are trying to make them profit centers. and why not? they steal the rights from the artists, don't pay them shit (last I checked even top draws only get a lousy 80c on a $20 CD) and own the rights to do with as they like for eternity.
Oh and as for why anyone would sign? We were told flat footed that NO radio stations in any of the markets would be allowed to play us, NO TV other than local would be allowed to touch us, and you know what? They were right. We had DJs tell us "Man we just love your stuff and listen to it in our cars, but we'll get fired if your name isn't on the list". You see this is what in the past would be labeled payola or antitrust, but since our corporate masters were able to get those pesky laws ignored with sack fulls of bribes they are allowed to pull that shit. We never signed but we got to see first hand what happened when you did, as one of the bands opening for us did. They ended up breaking up and never being able to work together just to get out of their contract, and now they can't play those two albums worth of songs, since the record company completely owns them for eternity.
So I can tell you that you aren't hurting any artists by going PTB, in fact the more people that listen to them the better. They will be lucky if they get a few pennies from the record leeches, more likely they will be like our friends and get hit with a $60,000 bill for "advertising expenses" for a record THEY promoted THEY recorded for less than $10k and THEY hustled to sell. The record management set up a grand total of TWO radio interviews, then new management came in and decided they were "going in a new direction" and basically left them in the street. so fuck the record companies and the horses they rode in on, you ain't doing no favors to artists by buying from them!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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Never been known to fail..."
Hungary has a similar law and tax (and quite a few other European countries as well). The tax is currently only distributed among musicians, moviemakers don't get a share, and the distribution ratio is based on popularity ( radio playlists and number of records sold). Downloading copyrighted work is legal*, uploading is illegal. So bittorrent is illegal in theory, as people upload as well, but users aren't prosecuted. (Although, you can't use it in university networks.) Sometimes trackers are shut down. Pay-for-ftp warez servers are quite often the target. And there's BSA. But they only harass corporations.
* Rationale is that users can't know what content is legal and what isn't, but they won't prosecute you even if you're using a pay-for-ftp warez site.
A huge, already successful band tried to bypass the concert system a few years ago.
Failed.
The only way you can bypass the labels is if you find a new path- the existing ones are all wholly owned top to bottom (distribution channels, record stores, radio stations).
I think it's breaking apart and hopefully the radio stations will not be able to lock up online distribution.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The problem is supply and demand and changing technology leaving behind a formerly profitable business model that is slowly but surely going extinct, and not going quietly into that good night. The recording industry would do well to spend their efforts on figuring out a business plan that fits tomorrow instead of yesterday. Some will make the transition, some won't.
As for TPB, they merely supply a place to discover what other people are offering - whether illegal or legal. They profit from the traffic to their website creating ad revenue. One might successfully claim that they encourage illegal acts, and that they facilitate illegal acts, but they aren't selling anything but ads and TPB paraphernalia.
As for the artists, they are getting publicity and growing fan base at the low low cost of $0.00, which is one heck of a lot less than what the big labels charge them. (Give up your artistic freedom, give up your publishing rights, give up nearly all of the profit from selling recordings, etc. etc.)
The fact is, for most artists the labels provide a valuable service for a steep price. However, the value of that service is decreasing, but some labels still see more profit in fighting change than in revising their way of doing things. The future is bright for labels that offer good service with equitable terms to artists, and fair prices for desired products to consumers. Fact is, though, the value of a commodity is how much someone is willing to pay for it, not how much it costs to produce. And bits are cheaply and easily obtained - unlike in the past.
WALSTIB!