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Illegal Downloading Now a Crime In Japan With Increased Penalties
eldavojohn writes "Although downloading songs without paying for them in Japan used to be a civil offense starting in 2010, it is now a crime with new penalties of up to two years in prison or fines of up to two million yen ($25,700). The lobbying group behind this push for more extreme penalties is none other than the RIAJ (the Japanese RIAA). The BBC notes this applies to both music and video downloads which may put anime studios in a particularly uncomfortable position."
Isn't Japan the country whose P2P scene is dominated by darknet software like Winny and Share?
It is not worth wrecking the lives of the people involved just to boost sales of your crappy open source music.
Except that the only way for anti-piracy to "win" is to take general purpose computers out of the public's hands and move everyone into walled garden ecosystems, which would kill open source software.
For as long as people can use computers to share files, they will. The only way around that is to replace the public's computers with devices that don't run unsigned software and don't play back unlicenced media.
"people have to listen to our music"
Do you _really_ want that to be your business model? Successful not because of your ability but because someone has mandated it? I guess your artistic integrity is worth less than the bottom line. You'll fit in fine with the *IAA then.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
No matter how much we try we won't able to wreck the lives of artists as much as the MAFIAA does.
How about we don't wreck anyone's lives?
Exactly. Many, many of the people who pirate stuff also buy stuff.
It is just as easy to stop pirating AND buying as it is to just stop buying.
Plus there is no difference having an mp3 on your computer from a CD you legally purchased and ripped, and then later lost, versus having a pirated mp3. But when criminal jailtime is in play, this translates into having any mp3's on your computer being a bad idea that could land you in jail.
Draconian laws that can ruin someones life will eventually provide the impetus for people to stop pirating stuff AND stop buying stuff. Total avoidance will be the safest policy.
Then those police state espousing motherfuckers at the RIAA and MPAA can go the hell out of business.
The RIAA and MPAA should start tracking how the animosity that their customers feel about them impacts the bottom line. I wonder if they'd find a trend.
Yeah, but I've found most people who pirate have no bones about dropping serious bank on hardware.
That's probably because hardware isn't subject to a model of artificial scarcity. There are actual manufacturing and distribution costs involved in producing things like CPUs and hard drives.
If we ever have Star Trek-style replicators, you can expect that to change.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
There is a big difference between wrecking someone's life by taking away their freedom and wrecking someone's life by ending a subsidy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I get your point, but the kid didn't have $999 in the first place, and the purchasers of bootleg DVDs don't have that $1.3 million. If we accept those numbers, then we're just confirming the delusional math of the the "Associations" (pronounced "cartels").
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm not clear what an "open source artist" is: For artistic creations, there is no 'source code' to be open, only whatever sensory experience the artist has declared to be a work of art. Do you mean that you're an independent unsigned musician? Do you mean that you release your stuff under a Creative Commons license?
Here's the basic path to success for independent musicians:
1. Perform at any venue that will give you a chance to do so, so you can create some fans. If you don't get fans, then sorry mate, but you probably just aren't that good, keep your day job and enjoy making music as an amateur.
2. Start getting paid gigs. These will likely start out in venues you will hate, for not-very-large crowds and not a lot of money. You're trying to continue building your fan base, and also to create a good reputation among those who are responsible for booking musicians to play at venues in the area.
3. Make an album of your music and bring it to the paid gigs. Sell them for $10 a pop.
4. Any online presence is about building a fan base who will come to your live gigs. The goal is to be enough of a draw that you can start demanding higher prices and better working conditions from people who want to pay you to perform.
If you don't have at least a few people actively cheering you on, expressing interest in hiring you, or wanting to pay you for recordings, you just aren't professional grade. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the fault of music piracy.
And I say this as somebody who's good enough to earn a very low 4 figures for my musical work.
I am officially gone from
It would be sort of like if you refused to ever prosecute any store break-ins or shoplifting
No, it's nothing like that at all.
A store owner has a store full of stuff. If the government disappeared, he'd still have a store full of stuff. He might have to protect the stuff himself, or he may have to pay someone to protect it - but nevertheless, he has stuff. If someone shoplifts, he loses some finite amount of that stuff, and he no longer sells it.
A songwriter has a pretty tune. If the government disappeared, he'd still have a pretty tune. There is no way to protect this pretty tune - but it doesn't really matter because even if someone "steals" it, he can still hum the pretty tune. If he's lucky, his pretty tunes will turn the head of a patron of some sort and he might actually make some money. He could also make some money by performing the pretty song.
Short of a patron or a performance, the only reason a songwriter holds anything of value at all is because of a government subsidy. Taking away the subsidy has no moral hazard at all. If the system isn't working to the benefit of society in aggregate, then the system should be changed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The problem in this case is not that piracy is illegal but that it's disproportionatly punished.