BPI Sues UK Filesharers

[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.

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, the are mostly cheaper...Often a lot cheaper. However, what I'm saying still applies...They'll still have to reduce their prices.

Their cost per CD will be MORE than a record label because they will have paid more per CD manufactured (Because they won't be making them in as much bulk as a record company).

(Just as an aside...If we were talking about an official record company release, much of the costs that you detail will be paid by the record company on a recouperable basis. This means that the artists themselves end up paying those costs. Just trying to point out that I'm not a big fan of the way that record companies work and that the artist is the one who often loses out ).

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.

I'm with you 100% there.

[mrpants]

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.

I think that's kind of the trouble at the moment.  Music does appear to be free, you hear it on the radio, tv, in films.  You hear music everywhere for free and that's why, I think, people have a hard time accepting the fact that you have to pay for it.

[chand]

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).

Shame though, it sort of assumes that everyone uses CD-Rs to put other people's mp3s on. I use them only for data backup and my own albums and CDs.

[jutl]

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.

Five cents per DVD is a little on the low side though, surely? You could get 60 CDs worth of good quality mp3s onto a DVD-R. Even reckoning with a massive profit margin currently taken by the record industry, that's got to mean at least £60 tax on a blank DVD to get anywhere near compensating the artists to the level they currently get from CD sales. You couldn't do that (a) because no cunt would pay it and you'd get bootleg DVD-Rs sold under pub tables up and down the country and (b) you'd end up penalising everyone who backs up data which doesn't violate someone's copyright.

I just don't think that model would work. Any other workable suggestions?

[Chadwick]

If you could find a way to download steam trains for free I don't think you'd hear Pete Waterman complaining.

[poison popcorn]

never heard the steam trains. they any good?

even with a piracy tax on cdr's i can't see how any of that money would make it back to the artists. it would probably just be used to promote the latest boyband spunkoff or maybe a new elton john greatest hits album.

just a notion, but if a band was worried about piracy they could always just release their music on vinyl. it's not impossible to copy vinyl obviously, but it would be a lot more inconvenient, and a lot of the filesharing theme seems to be based around convenience.

i can't help but think though, that if i download a track by an artist i'd otherwise never have heard of, that makes NO difference to the artist, other than increasing their exposure and giving them a potential sale if i like what i hear (and indeed potential sales from whoever else i play it to). the alternative is that i never heard the artist - end of story.

[jutl]

i can't help but think though, that if i download a track by an artist i'd otherwise never have heard of, that makes NO difference to the artist, other than increasing their exposure and giving them a potential sale if i like what i hear (and indeed potential sales from whoever else i play it to). the alternative is that i never heard the artist - end of story.

"I'm broke, but I'm extremely popular among the demographic that refuses to pay for its entertainment."

Sorry - that's not intended as a description of anyone here. Still, it's the briefest way I could devise of explaining why I think that your argument wont cheer up too many artists.

[Gazeuse]

Nice one Jutl.

...and sorry I've not suggested any inherently more clever ways of getting money to artists...I prefer the simple cash for sevices provided and anti-theft model which has happily served other businesses and transactions in the past.

For commercially available music, that is.

I'd also like to say that I think that the rabid hostility shown towards a trade organisiation which is just trying to protect the interests of its members (Some of whom are cunts and some of whom are nice) is a bit bloody silly.

[Neil]

i can't help but think though, that if i download a track by an artist i'd otherwise never have heard of, that makes NO difference to the artist, other than increasing their exposure and giving them a potential sale if i like what i hear (and indeed potential sales from whoever else i play it to). the alternative is that i never heard the artist - end of story.

"I'm broke, but I'm extremely popular among the dmeographic that refuses to pay for its entertainment."

Sorry - that's not intended as a description of anyone here. Still, it's the briefest way I could devise of explaining why I think that your argument wont cheer up too many artists.

This is presuming that people who hear the tracks never buy the albums though.  If people use p2p as a sampler, then surely the extra exposure can only be a good thing.  The artists in this example aren't losing out, poison popcorn might never have heard any of their work, but now he has had the chance to sample their songs, and may go out and buy their stuff.  There was talk in the soulseek room today about how thes Goldie Lookin' Chain guys used mp3s to gain vital exposure for their music, which has seen them gaining popularity, and subsequently selling records.

[poison popcorn]

"I'm broke, but I'm extremely popular among the dmeographic that refuses to pay for its entertainment."

Sorry - that's not intended as a description of anyone here. Still, it's the briefest way I could devise of explaining why I think that your argument wont cheer up too many artists.

i'd have thought the stuff that gets downloaded most would be the stuff that gets promoted most, ie. big name releases.  smaller artists tend to make stuff freely available as it's their most effective means of promotion. maybe we need a top of the piracy pops.

besides, artists make better music when they're miserable.

[flippant[/]

[Pinball]

Getting back to the BPI suing people thang, my natural reaction is a "fuck you" and then download more, which I suspect would be many people's reaction. Which makes me think it's a PR faux pas, if not disaster...

Bottomline, sales are up, so what's their fucking problem? Greed I guess.

[jutl]

This is presuming that people who hear the tracks never buy the albums though.  If people use p2p as a sampler, then surely the extra exposure can only be a good thing.  The artists in this example aren't losing out, poison popcorn might never have heard any of their work, but now he has had the chance to sample their songs, and may go out and buy their stuff.  There was talk in the soulseek room today about how thes Goldie Lookin' Chain guys used mp3s to gain vital exposure for their music, which has seen them gaining popularity, and subsequently selling records.

Yes - clearly there's a role for freebies and free samplers - the music industry uses them as promotional tools all the time. In a sense, music radio is a freebie channel too.  The problem with having the p2p-mp3 channel function as a 'taster' route is that there's no mechanism for stopping a 'taster' becoming a banquet. I'd imagine that everyone here has bought a CD as a result of hearing mp3s. I know I've felt smug about it in the past. The reality that that does take place does not alter the two basic facts about this:

(1) having an easy means of nicking music will tend to increase the amount of music you nick

and

(2) artists deserve some money in exchange for copies of their music

(1) means that (2) will be very difficult to achieve in the future. (1) also means, I feel, that some major and draconian limitations on our current system will take place eventually, either by the taxation route or by the technological route.

i'd have thought the stuff that gets downloaded most would be the stuff that gets promoted most, ie. big name releases.  

I'm sure that's true.

smaller artists tend to make stuff freely available as it's their most effective means of promotion. maybe we need a top of the piracy pops.

Well smaller artists tend to make sampler tracks available, just like bigger artists. I doubt many small artists who want to use their creativity as their means of living are giving away everything they record.

All I'm trying to say is that - even leaving all morality about screwing small artists out of it - the current system is dangerous and unsustainable. There is a real threat to the economic viability of producing anything that can be pirated digitally. This worries me, as I like music, films, application software and games. Politically i might agree that the previous system of exploitation was skewed too much in favour of the middle men, and that it's nice to see them sweat, but as a realist I think I have to accept that the widespread and easily achieved piracy of copyrighted material is going to need to be dealt with one way or another.  

Getting back to the BPI suing people thang, my natural reaction is a "fuck you" and then download more, which I suspect would be many people's reaction. Which makes me think it's a PR faux pas, if not disaster...

Bottomline, sales are up, so what's their fucking problem? Greed I guess.

That's a massively simplistic view, though, Pinball, and one I hear depressingly often.

I deserve everything I want whenever I want it, at no cost and preferably before it's released. Anyone who tries to stop me is greedy.

Trying to make money off something you've produced is not greed. It's willful ignorance to keep 'forgetting' that behind the promoters, CD pressers and retailers there are people who deserve your money for what they produce.

[Rats]

Everyone always says "you can't make a living off being creative" only a few manage it and maybe if nobody could do it then you wouldn't get "in it for the money" bands like coldplay. I like the idea of it being an amateur thing, you'd get more people with stuff to say like a butcher who records death metal in his spare time, people would do it simply for the love of doing it. I like the Creative communism idea too where everyone chips in via tax. It's not going to happen though is it? I just had a terrible thought of unskipable adverts between tracks, and product placement becoming legal in movies, urgh. I wonder if something drastic is going to happen in the next few years because people are just taking the piss aren't they?

[Neil]

Yes - clearly there's a role for freebies and free samplers - the music industry uses them as promotional tools all the time. In a sense, music radio is a freebie channel too. The problem with having the p2p-mp3 channel function as a 'taster' route is that there's no mechanism for stopping a 'taster' becoming a banquet. I'd imagine that everyone here has bought a CD as a result of hearing mp3s. I know I've felt smug about it in the past. The reality that that does take place does not alter the two basic facts about this:

(1) means that (2) will be very difficult to achieve in the future. (1) also means, I feel, that some major and draconian limitations on our current system will take place eventually, either by the taxation route or by the technological route.

Yeah I know what you're saying...to be honest, I'm quite interested to see how it all pans out.  Piracy has been around right through-out my life-time, we all used to copy C-64 games, but I've got drawers full of them in my mums house, especially those budget range ones.  I mean as a kid I used to dander down to the newsagents, and hoke through the boxes of Mastertronic games and pick out the most interesteing looking titles for 1.99 or 2.99.  Then there was a sudden leap in the prices of games as people started moving onto systems like Amigas and PC's.  Games went up from a tenner, to 20-40 quid almost over-night.  If that price rise went hand-in-hand with the rise of the internet, it would have been understandable, but it didn't.  Same thing with console games, 40 quid for games on 8-bit systems like the NES which was justified because the cartridges cost a few quid each.  You could also say that the production values shot up as the systems became more powerful, but the rise in the people buying the things should have balanced that out.  

Piracy never killed a system, games on the Amiga were widely pirated because of the disk format, but that never stopped it being a hugely popular machine, which would eventually be killed by inept management.  

Rambling a bit, but it is interesting to consider where this is all going from here, as the proliferation of the internet and digital media makes piracy that much easier to do, and massively wide-spread.  I think Rats'  idea of the hobbyists taking over is an attractive one, we'd all miss the expensive production values, but there's definitely a part of me that hankers for a return to people making games or music in their bedroom just as a labour of love, without considering making money from it.

[Gazeuse]

I think Rats'  idea of the hobbyists taking over is an attractive one, we'd all miss the expensive production values, but there's definitely a part of me that hankers for a return to people making games or music in their bedroom just as a labour of love, without considering making money from it.

But, surely there is something wrong with the system you suggest, where people are forced to keep music as a hobby...Not because they are not good enough, or that there is no demand for what they produce...Rather that the people who consume what they produce simply refuse to pay for it.

[poison popcorn]

i'd have thought the stuff that gets downloaded most would be the stuff that gets promoted most, ie. big name releases.  

I'm sure that's true.

well, it is largely the elton johns, madonnas and metallicas of the music world that appear to be concerned about lost sales, i'm sure the proportion of unsigned/independent artists against file sharing is much lower.

Well smaller artists tend to make sampler tracks available, just like bigger artists. I doubt many small artists who want to use their creativity as their means of living are giving away everything they record.  

probably not, but they are also less likely to call for downloaders heads on plates.

i actually like the idea of a piracy chart. how about if the p2p programs keep a log of all the songs that get downloaded, and the artists could be paid directly by bt, aol etc (the ones who ARE making money from filesharing) and everybody's happy. apart from bt and aol, obviously...

[jutl]

i actually like the idea of a piracy chart. how about if the p2p programs keep a log of all the songs that get downloaded, and the artists could be paid directly by bt, aol etc (the ones who ARE making money from filesharing) and everybody's happy. apart from bt and aol, obviously...

Unfortunately they're not making any money either, especially from flat-rate broadband. Pay-as-you-go seems to be the future of internet connectivity, or will be if the providers have any say.

[poison popcorn]

i actually like the idea of a piracy chart. how about if the p2p programs keep a log of all the songs that get downloaded, and the artists could be paid directly by bt, aol etc (the ones who ARE making money from filesharing) and everybody's happy. apart from bt and aol, obviously...

Unfortunately they're not making any money either, especially from flat-rate broadband. Pay-as-you-go seems to be the future of internet connectivity, or will be if the providers have any say.

really?? how do they afford all those directors bonuses...

is it not one of those we made £400bn last year but only £396bn this year, we're making a LOSS i tells ya... situations is it?

[jutl]

i actually like the idea of a piracy chart. how about if the p2p programs keep a log of all the songs that get downloaded, and the artists could be paid directly by bt, aol etc (the ones who ARE making money from filesharing) and everybody's happy. apart from bt and aol, obviously...

Unfortunately they're not making any money either, especially from flat-rate broadband. Pay-as-you-go seems to be the future of internet connectivity, or will be if the providers have any say.

really?? how do they afford all those directors bonuses...

is it not one of those we made £400bn last year but only £396bn this year, we're making a LOSS i tells ya... situations is it?

The internet connectivity business at the moment is a scramble for customers in  the belief that they will be worth something in the future.  No-one's making a fortune out of unmetered flat-rate broadband - hence the decision by many providers to warn customers whom they perceive to be taking the piss on the excessive-data-transfer front. No-one seeme to be predicting the survival of flat-rate broadband as an entry-level product. It will eventually become a premium service, with average customers paying by the megabyte over and above a connection service charge. The main reason that this wasn't the initial situation was that BT themselves were unable to provide reliable metering, and the downstream ISPs similarly couldn't create systems that could tell you exactly how much data a given customer has used. That's changing now, with some providers peddling pay-as-you-go as a positive feature. As providers manage to monitor traffic more effectively in order to bill for it, they are moving into a situation where (eventually) they could implement more charges for use over and above standard transfer fees. These could include payments for content.

The amount of money available to combat piracy is directly proportionate to the amount of money that content industries perceive themselves to be losing. Right now they will push large quantities of cash into semi-pointless exercises like these BPI/RIAA prosecutions. There are ranks of technology firms waiting to soak up their anti-piracy dollars with radical cryptographic and monitoring solutions to the current unsustainable situation. These technologies, once implemented, present a real threat to more important aspects of the current internet (more important than nicking Britney Spears singles anyway) - its inherent anonymity. The freedom and openness of the early internet may will be destroyed by greed. Not the greed of the companies, who are facing the complete elimination of their profitability and have to fight for their existence, but the greed of internet users who will piss away a great advance in the freedom of humanity in exchange for some fucking mp3s.

[poison popcorn]

hmm, yes i see what you're getting at. but just how free and anonymous is the internet now? all sorts of organisations can legally acquire your details, e mails monitored by isp's and echelon... i can't see there ever being a cut back on monitoring. i agree that introducing yet more monitoring could be a dangerous thing, but i don't believe the reason for it being called for is because the record industry is on its knees. they heve manipulated their figures by only counting point of sale transactions, ignoring online sales and producing and shipping less records to record stores. as a percentage of what they produced their sales were up. it would be a shame to see the internet suffer for their greed also.

i'm teetering on the edge of my ignorance with the technical side, (it was only fairly recently i discovered what a bandwidth was) but presumably isp's would be making a lot less if people weren't downloading as much? even if it does turn into pay as you go, in fact maybe because of it, that might reduce filesharing? ultimately the customer is footing the bill. but then everybody d/ling legal mp3s and anything else gets penalised...

it really seems like having to make the best of a bad situation.

[fanny splendid]

i'm teetering on the edge of my ignorance with the technical side, (it was only fairly recently i discovered what a bandwidth was) but presumably isp's would be making a lot less if people weren't downloading as much? even if it does turn into pay as you go, in fact maybe because of it, that might reduce filesharing? ultimately the customer is footing the bill. but then everybody d/ling legal mp3s and anything else gets penalised...

That's an interesting point you make about the ISPs. I wonder if it would be worth bringing that up in court? Maybe describing them as the get-away-driver? I know that we don't have to download illegal material, but if the prosecution can summon records of activity from the ISP, then they must be aware of any illegality that is happening, and allowing it to happen?

And I'm the one always going on about people taking personal responsibility for their actions.

[poison popcorn]

I wonder if it would be worth bringing that up in court? Maybe describing them as the get-away-driver?

well, personally i'm hoping the situation won't arise...

would be interesting to see how that would pan out though. they're definitely complicit: the biggest robbery in history and they've been kind enough to lay on a bus... :)