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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.
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"
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
There is no such thing. In fact, most anonymizing and/or VPN services flat out state in their TOS that they will respond accordingly to all legal requests for information.
Anyway, it's kind of a waste of breath for us as a community of geeks to bother engaging people (like the journalist writing that article) in conversation when they don't even care enough to put the hyperbole aside and use rational words to discuss the topic. Starting off any discussion with the loaded word "piracy" or "pirate" in the title or opening paragraph is silly and unprofessional. It'd be like someone writing an article about a guy investigating government corruption by calling him an "anti-government terrorist" and asking him "why do you hate 'Merica?!"
As for "copyright infringement", and "file sharing", there's little point in people getting their panties in a twist. Technology evolves and so do industries. We already have services like MOG and NETFLIX, which replace what a lot of questionable activities used to provide, for a combined total of a whopping $13 USD/mo. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years, we should find more content available to more people in massive libraries like both of these services for *very affordable* subscriptions. When that finally happens, the idea of bothering with file sharing becomes silly unless you are really and truly destitute. For everyone else, it'd be absurd to waste precious time finding and downloading crap via these other methods when they could just pay $5 for an almost limitless library of music or $10 for an endless library of movies and television. The only possible exception will remain books, where there seems to be no equivalent and you'll be stuck paying the $30-$60 per book that we do, today.
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.
You are only No 1 on the totals. On a per capita basis AU is four times as piratey, and a clear winner over everyone.
Good to see we are doing our bit to combat global warming, FSM be praised.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
There is no such thing. In fact, most anonymizing and/or VPN services flat out state in their TOS that they will respond accordingly to all legal requests for information.
Some VPNs claim there IS NO information if the authorities come calling
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/
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.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years, we should find more content available to more people in massive libraries like both of these services for *very affordable* subscriptions.
FTFY; You highlighted the wrong word. I have no interest in *renting* the media I pay for; I either own it, and can play it whenever, wherever I want, or their business model can DIAF. They are not taking my money and running when they decide the service isn't profitable enough.
I can *buy* books, games, music for pennies, just not from big media, and that's what I do, and a bigger chunk of it goes to the author / artist per purchase. Fuck big media. Fuck it until it dies.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
When are you returning to the 17th century?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
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.
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
Lots of greedy authors accused them of theft. While the era of insanely long copyright lasts, there will be no comprehensive library of works
FTFY. Copyright would be no problem if it only lasted as long as a patent.
Free Martian Whores!