BPI Sues UK Filesharers

[TJ]

Make CDs cheaper, and you'll sell more.


Wankers.

[fanny splendid]

How much cheaper?

[Fuckwittio]

Almost every LP I bought this year I road-tested on the internet. That's hundreds of quids worth of stuff I wouldn't have spent my hard-earned on if I didn't get a chance to hear what it was like first.

What is it about that argument that these fuckwits can't get their heads around?

[Gazeuse]

OH FUCK!!!

Not this again.

I refer the honourable gentlemen to the answer I gave over and over again some bloody time ago.

I think £9.77 is a very reasonable price for the copy of Smile I got from Tesco the other day.

You've just startid this to get my blood pressure up.

[NattyDread]

I think £9.77 is a very reasonable price for the copy of Smile I got from Tesco the other day.

Even if it had turned out to be shite, which it so easliy could've, going by his last effort?

I may well buy Smile if it's going to be released on sexy shiny black vinyl, which I wouldn't have even considered before having a free taste on the net.
Of course, if it's only out on c.d, then bollocks to them, c.ds eventually rot and sound shite on anything less than decent mid range player (no welly).

[Gazeuse]

I may well buy Smile if it's going to be released on sexy shiny black vinyl, which I wouldn't have even considered before having a free taste on the net.

Of course I haven't got anything agains people listening to free samples...It's the downloading of the whole thing without the owners permission.

You might 'remember' to buy the actual thing, but others wont.

[Pinball]

Sales are up! Sales are up!

So why are the fuckers persecuting ordinary people?

[Peking O]

I think £9.77 is a very reasonable price for the copy of Smile I got from Tesco the other day.

That's overpriced. At current exchange rates £9.77 translates as $17.42 (US Dollars). I'm willing to bet that it's retailing for considerably less than $17.42 in the US at the moment.

[Gazeuse]

Sales are up! Sales are up!

So why are the fuckers persecuting ordinary people?

They are pROsecuting people who are 'sharing' LOADS of tracks ripped without permission.

[Gazeuse]

I think £9.77 is a very reasonable price for the copy of Smile I got from Tesco the other day.

That's overpriced. At current exchange rates £9.77 translates as $17.42 (US Dollars). I'm willing to bet that it's retailing for considerably less than $17.42 in the US at the moment.

Much the same as many other items.

I'm not saying that that is good btw.

[petercussing]

I studied this in some detail in my music business section of the course, and my basic opinion is that the record companies have fucked themselves over by not keeping up with trends and not making their content readily accessable over the internet.
They have gotten to an arrogant point where they have been used to having a drakonian hold over both the consumer and the artist and don't consider eithers opinion in any way, because they feel they control both. They feel that they can tell the consumer what they want and that they will implicitly buy it and everyones got fucked off with it.
The idea that you can copyright mechanical recording content is a relatively new idea which has existed for a very short amount of time and is massively flawed in many ways. I don't think will last because of the inately abstract notion that you can own sound and ideas, which is a bizzare by product of capitolism, the internets free exchange ideals is just highlighting this.
True £9.97 isn't much, but it would be significantly lower if there weren't so many middle men jacking the price up. I would, personally, mind less if the people who created the music got more money from the sales.

True people just want stuff for free as well, and there is a lot of stuff that i have downloaded that i have never bought any of, but at the same time i have probably bought more stuff on the strength of P to P sharing songs that i have gone out and bought that i would have never even listened to otherwise. So in this sense it is a great promotional tool. There's even stuff ive needed to listen to for assignments that is really hard to get otherwise, like Schaeffer and Varesse's music.

People do want something for nothing and i don't think it will stop untill something drastic happens, i.e. the complete collapse of the music industry, when everyone suddenly realised they've bust what they like by nicking it, leaving no more cash to make new stuff. The record companies are pricks though and they are just trying to take their digitally piped ball back, they've fucked up and now they are trying to get us for it. Everybody is wrong basically. Ha Ha, die music industry, die! It'll only get worst when phones become more readily (i.e. really cheap) available as MP3 players with Blue Tooth connections, yay!

[Gazeuse]

I don't disagree with much of what you say up there, but I do disagree strongly about your statement that mechanical rights are somehow abstract because they are 'intangible.'

Why shouldn't people own the art that they create in the hope that they may make some sort of profit out of it??? If they do, then they can devote more time and effort into making another piece of art.

The same thing is true of ideas in that you can't see them either. I've not noticed inventors slagged off as breadheads because they want to make a few quid out of their creations.

[bomb_dog]

The guy on Channel 4 news just said that 60% of traffic on broadband is file sharing. Thats a crazy percentage of traffic.

From this, we could argue that booming 'broadband Britain' is being predominantly driven by the lure of file sharing rather than any particular online content. If this continues, and people actually get sued, how many of these people using that 60% will cancel their access and go back to dial up?

And when the 28 spill their stories about which ISPs told all, their providers may suffer a glut of switchers to rival suppliers, on the assumption that they are being watched and will be grassed at a moments notice.

Who knows what will happen. All I know is that I'm growing more dispondent at big business, the government and  the growing exponential excuses for having an illegal war, the ever-more-elusive quality product, and the fact that I'm watching some series 3 Harry Hill from Channel 4 which is genuinely humourous, the standard of which I don't think I've seen on telly since it was broadcast.

[Doctor Stamen]

I used to spend a fortune on CDs, but I think i've bought about 5 in the last two years.  If I was to argue that I spent all this money on DVDs instead stand up in court?  Didn't think so.  I still can't bring myself to spend the best part of a tenner on a flat bit of plastic when I could get it off Soulseek and spend that tenner in the pub instead.

[fanny splendid]

All iPod users are thieves.

[Hornet]

What really irks me is what we are expected to pay for "legal" downloads.  Why is Napster and ITunes (to name but two) charging me 99p abd users in the US 99 cents?  They can fuck off.

[abighat]

Tons of free music here

http://www.enorgis.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php

[fanny splendid]

What really irks me is what we are expected to pay for "legal" downloads.  Why is Napster and ITunes (to name but two) charging me 99p abd users in the US 99 cents?  They can fuck off.

With iTunes it's generally 79p a track.

[untitled_london]

I'm going to do my best to avoid the well trodden path that we have all been down before.

I have to say, whilst I am obviously less than impressed at the BPI's decision to blindly follow the prosecution route, I am in complete awe of their utter stupidity.

I'll concede that its quite likely that they haven't targetted a 12 year welfare dependant child, which is a good thing, and that we likely have far more draconian lawsthat the US, but, you have to marvel and their sheer blind arrogance and naivety all the same.

Honestly, you have to ask yourself, what planet are these people on.
This action will see nothing more than the BPI cripple itself. There is no way any business model can survive by shitting on its user base without at least offering some addictive substance into the mix.

I am not sure how successful the RIAA boycott is/was/has been, but, you must be aware of exactly how much the RIAA is hated, and yet the BPI have proved true to the cause and stood shoulder to shoulder with them.

Apple, Creative, Rio, Real, Virgin, Coke, Pepsi, MS, hell, everyone who can do it is doing it, with the exception of the antiquated monopoly holders.

It will be better for the consumer in the end, hell it already is.

[Ambient Sheep]

The guy on Channel 4 news just said that 60% of traffic on broadband is file sharing. Thats a crazy percentage of traffic.

I wonder how much of that 60% is copyrighted music, though?

[phalmachine]

Surely they're not actually suing the man in the street doing the downloading this, I thought it was the people like Kazaa/WinMX?  If I go to prison for downloading Weird Al Yankovic songs, I'll be humiliated.

I thought that people had proved that those who download music tend also to buy more CDs.

All these record company complaints are bollocks.  They seem to assume that every time someone downloads an album, that's one customer less and they've lost X amount of profit.  Which is rubbish, because in my experience most people only download music which they like, but would never consider spending money on. So they haven't lost a thing.

TJ is right about dropping CD prices.  If they halved the price of CDs, I'd imagine that most people would end up buying more than twice as many.  I myself would probably buy for or five times as many CDs as I do know, if they were only £6.99.

[poison popcorn]

how about if rather than fining/jailing people for downloading music, they could just like, confiscate all their mp3's, right, and give them back to the record companies who like, legally own them... dig?

[mayer]

how about if rather than fining/jailing people for downloading music, they could just like, confiscate all their mp3's, right, and give them back to the record companies who like, legally own them... dig?

clever, but, no.

ownership does not entail physical possession.

if you rip-off a rival biotech company's DNA structure which they've patented, that's theft. or computer program or similar intellectual property.

[poison popcorn]

if you rip-off a rival biotech company's DNA structure which they've patented, that's theft.

whoooaa, hold your horses, i just wanted to listen to some songs.

sillies aside, an mp3 isn't a physical posession, and that's part of the problem for me. you don't get cover art, case, inlays, or anything other than a load of 1001010011's.

there's a thing, if the arabs had copyrighted "0" where would we be now...

but money is being made with file transfers, and if that 60% figure is accurate bt, aol, freeserve and the rest are cashing in big time. and besides, mp3 quality does not equal cd quality, so charging £1 for a legal download seems a bit steep. a 12 track album of mp3's would cost about the same as it would in a shop and you have no physical thing to show for it. if your computer crashes you've lost all your 'albums' - if your cd player breaks you still have your cd's. ok, you can burn cd's, but you buy them too, and there's talk of making d/l mp3 files only burnable once and so they can only be played on certain software, so for most folks that'll be through shitty pc speakers. what a big sentence.

[falafel]

[there's a thing, if the arabs had copyrighted "0" where would we be now...

We'd have developed an alternative standard symbol for nothing, and flushed those dirty A-rabs out of the market with scare tactics and dirty fighting.

[poison popcorn]

[there's a thing, if the arabs had copyrighted "0" where would we be now...

We'd have developed an alternative standard symbol for nothing, and flushed those dirty A-rabs out of the market with scare tactics and dirty fighting.

yeah, "our zero's bigger than your zero!"

makes sense.

[Gazeuse]

If you halve the price of a CD that means that unsigned bands and individuals will have to reduce the price of theirs.

Guess whether that will have more of an effect on them or on a major record company.

See what I mean when I keep on banging on that the smaller people will get hurt first and hardest.

[jutl]

Surely the more interesting discussion - whether you feel that filesharing is justified or not - is how any digital material can ever be protected? All the Digital Rights Management technologies that are currently envisaged are breakable. Will this make it impossible to charge for content of any kind in the future? If so, how can creators get cash to live? I've heard a couple of suggestions, both of which seem a little utopian to me:

(1) Creators will live by getting paid for 'other work', with their free downloadable movies/albums/pictures as promotional material. The classic example given of this is live performance of music. That's a nice idea,  but what would Steven Spielberg do?

(2) Creativity tax used to fund state-run Academies of Art, as in the former Soviet Union. This would work if people would actually pay the tax. I can't really see that happening though.

Any other models? Do any of the people who reckon the music industry deserves a spanking have any sugestions about what stable economic model will result from the current revolution?

[untitled_london]

(2) Creativity tax used to fund state-run Academies of Art, as in the former Soviet Union. This would work if people would actually pay the tax. I can't really see that happening though.

Any other models? Do any of the people who reckon the music industry deserves a spanking have any sugestions about what stable economic model will result from the current revolution?

That would be the (quite forward looking imo) Canadian approach. They are looking at applying a sales tax on all media (CDR's/ DVDr's etc).

As has been pointed out, if your box dies, then yeah you can lose the lot. As such I guess most people make backups and thats a viable tax revenue income. I'd happily pay the extra 1c per cd/5c per DVD, if it meant that i was no longer a criminal. The sales of recordable media aren't going anywhere but up. obviously it needs to be scaled according to the amount storage, but, the concept holds water imo.

[poison popcorn]

If you halve the price of a CD that means that unsigned bands and individuals will have to reduce the price of theirs.

Guess whether that will have more of an effect on them or on a major record company.

aren't most unsigned bands/individuals cd's usually cheaper anyway? and being unsigned they don't have a label, producers, engineers, studio costs, legal fees etc to be taken off whatever they make from selling them. yes, they may need to shell out for some of these before releasing a recording but if those costs are too high for many bands i'd like to think it would encourage a bit more of the diy approach. maybe that's just me though.

whether any digital material can be protected i don't know. with blank tapes there was an extra charge included to offset potential piracy, money i'm certain went straight to the record companies, after all how can anyone know what artists work were being copied. i'm not sure if such a charge exists for cdr's, i'd have thought so, but again it'll most likely go into the pockets of the biggys.

i think possibly the biggest problem with file sharing is that a whole generation of people could grow up considering music to be a free commodity. that would be fine if everything else was free too, but alas, those stupid shops want me to pay for my beans.

but i still don't really think filesharing is that big a problem. for all the music industry is giving us the sob story, it's sales are up. if it is genuinely worried about losing the market, make some stuff freely available, cut some costs by not spending a fortune on making manufactured acts sound as similar as possible to some other manufactured acts. maybe then we can get some interesting music being made without first having to forecast how much pre-teens pocket money can be raked in. that can only be healthy for music generally, and i'm sure would be reflected in sales.