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A Glimpse At Piracy In the UK and Beyond
Zocalo writes "The BBC has a fascinating look into the music download habits of the UK population based on stats compiled by Musicmetric. The stats, gathered through the monitoring of BitTorrent swarms and geo-locating the IPs, shows the hotspots for music copyright infringement across the UK and regional preferences for certain types of music. Some of the outliers are somewhat unusual though, suggesting some problems with the methodology or sample size, unless people on the Isle of Wight really do prefer trumpet-playing crooner Louis Armstrong to the likes of Rihanna and Ed Sheeran who top the lists nationwide. Not in the UK? There are some global stats on the ' Most pirated near you? tab' of the story. Better yet, if you want to crunch the numbers for yourself all of the data has been made available at the Musicmatch website under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike license and a RESTful API to access the data (free for non-commercial use, but requiring an API token) is also available."
Now take Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish all despise him,
But to the British he's a hero and they idolize him,
It's how you look at buccaneers that makes them bad or good,
And I see us as members of a noble brotherhood.
Hey ho ho - We're honorable men,
And before we lose our tempers we will always count to ten,
On occasion there may be someone you have to execute,
But when you're a professional pirate, you don't have to wear a suit!
#DeleteChrome
That second link to Musicmetric (incorrectly labelled Musicmatch) for the download of the raw data should actually go here since it's a little hard to find the link on the Musicmetric website. So much for posting comments into the Firehose to help the editors edit, huh? ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
For those too lazy to look. Here's the Top 20 "pirate" countries.
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Italy
4. Canada
5. Brazil
6. Australia
7. Spain
8. India
9. France
10. Philippines
11. Mexico
12. Netherlands
13. Portugal
14. Poland
15. Greece
16. Hungary
17. Chile
18. Romania
19. Sweden
20. Belgium
Interesting is the absence of China and Russia, countries not known for having authoritarian copy laws. Maybe the Chinese and Russians are happier exchanging thumb drives and DVDRs. I would be very worried, if I were Hu and Putin, of all that info that can't be censored or monitored with a few key strokes.
While the presence of India at #8 isn't surprising, given its huge population, somewhat surprising is the presence of smaller Third World countries like Brazil and Philiippines that you don't expect to have the broadband speed necessary for a decent BT download.
Why would people who pirate things not use an anonymizing proxy? Is there something about the bidirectional aspect of bittorrent protocol that stops this working?
I tried one for web browsing when they were discussing the establishment of the great firewall of Australia (which failed to eventuate), and while it did slow things down, it seemed to work fine. Websites that guessed at my location would be completely wrong.
If you love music, download legally
I'd like to ...
Where's the store that I can go to with my 20 gbp cash and a usb stick and download/buy music/software/movies?
It doesn't exist. That's the problem.
Only about 20% of copying happens over the net. The majority comes from swap parties between friends as they copy MP3s or AACs from one drive to another. (Yes there's a source for this. It was published here on /. but I can't find the article.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
So maybe America should be on its own Special 301 Report list of countries that are "watched" for piracy? Kinda ironic and super funny.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
The USA is a pirated country from the native Americans. It would only be appropriate that we would be number 1 on the list. I believe we pirated German scientists in order to build our nuclear arsenal so as we could pirate more bounty! I sense a theme here!
My man.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I used to live in the Isle of Wight, you inconsiderate clod!
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
when the music industry steals from artists it would be good to see how bad it is and how much they are stealing from taxpayers. It could be used to warn Musicians from signing bad music deals.
I would have thought that streamtuner and the like would have killed music piracy by now. I suppose most people simply do not know how convenient internet radio stations are. I haven't pirated or purchased music in years. Their is no need to do so, with hundreds of internet stations listed.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
She was afraid you'd be upset that the people there already know her because she's been going for years.
That's why Dublin is one of the top party destinations for the Brits is it? Its complete bollocks. Any sensible Brit has no problem with the Irish. Most of us are mongrels anyway and many have Irish blood.
The overwhelming majority of musicians are unpaid amateurs and do it for fun.
Of those who make a living at music, almost all derive most of their income from instrumental teaching.
Of those who derive their income from playing, almost all are paid per performance (think session musicians, orchestral musicians etc), not on a royalty basis.
This whole issue is about a tiny proportion of musicians (mostly modern rock & pop) who perform almost entirely for recorded distribution. The recording business talk of 'killing music' is hysterical horsesh*t.
Human beings have been making music for over 30,000 years. Downloads are not going to stop them.
Where do you find sensible Brits?
Not her ein England that's for sure ...
When are you returning to the 17th century?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
But even those of us who have had problems with Irish terrorism are able to separate the terrorists (and their supporters) with the rest of the population.
There used to be intelligent life in Britain, but I moved to Australia 25 years ago. ;-)
It's been my experience that everyone hates the English and no one really cares who they hate.
By everyone, I mean, Wales, Ireland & Scotland.
I spend a considerable amount of time and Russia and Ukraine on business. Let's put it this way: ALL THERE IS in Russia and Ukraine is piracy. Let me give you some examples.
- you can go down to the corner shop and buy DVDs and CDs of your favorite movies, music, and/or games. They are all pirated, and professionally so.
- companies that sell legitimate entertainment products last about a week in most places before they close for lack of sales.
- even large electronics outlets sell pirated goods
- use of torrent is extremely widespread
- you'd be hard pressed to find anybody under 20 who has ever legitimately paid for music or games, ever. and i really mean that.
- a major university in ukraine that i know of has on its campus intranet a 400+TB system exclusively for piracy. I mean, university set up, where people upload movies, music, games, software, etc. this is actually a university function that they figure saves them on outgoing bandwidth.
- the first thing people do when they buy a new computer is to take it to a local 'repair shop' where for $5-$10 you get a full suite of every application you might want, nicely installed. This practice is extremely widespread.
if you think "fine, because these are disadvantaged countries..'" well, you're only fooling yourself. while the per capita gdp of those countries is somehwat low, it is also highly unequal. the ones with the PCs, ipads, and university educations doing the pirating are highly likely to be quite well off indeed.
the authoritarian laws are there. there is simply no will to enforce them.
The most startling fact I found out when reading this article is that I am now, at 29 years old, past it. I had heard of hardly any of the "top" artists in these lists never mind pirate their music.
Darth Vader: Noooooooooooooooooo!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
The problem with this survey is the fact that most UK users access via a small number of ISPs, and the IP addresses being reported are highlighting this fact. I live in Edinburgh, scotland, but a geolocate on my home ISP puts me in Oldham, just outside Manchester.
The survey is not showing pirate hotspots, it is showing ISP locations
There used to be intelligent life in Britain, but I moved to Australia 25 years ago. ;-)
Mate, I thought they stopped transportation longer ago than that. Tough on you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But even those of us who have had problems with Irish terrorism are able to separate the terrorists (and their supporters) with the rest of the population.
That won't get much recognition here on slashdot, where the "most terrorists are Muslims, therefore most Muslims are terrorists" argument seems fairly well entrenched.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ed Sheeran is remarkably popular. However when they claimed 1:10 of the entire UK population BT'd his music, he's not that popular. No one is.
Makes it hard to take any of the claims seriously, simple arithmetic says they're lying.
Where's Germany? Did they not collect any data for it?
I did this and it came up with those for the UK , not my location - which was The Cars? Really ? A town that has a University?
From the record company, the artist gets something, although maybe you and I agree that it could be a lot more. From you, they get nothing in exchange for something.
Don't pretend that's a virtuous act on your part.
- a major university in ukraine that i know of has on its campus intranet a 400+TB system exclusively for piracy. I mean, university set up, where people upload movies, music, games, software, etc. this is actually a university function that they figure saves them on outgoing bandwidth.
Ooh I remember the times of FTP hubs on all uni networks in Poland. All administered by students on the uni WAN. They only forbid it like 5 years ago. Those were the days...