Coming out of the shadows

Anonymous bloggers seem to take great joy in 'outing' anyone who dares interfere with their piracy activity and make threats from the comfort of their parents basement.  So let's turn the tables a bit shall we and 'out' some bloggers and at the same time we'll expose the lie that they are only trying to help the arist as these emails will show, they know very well that piracy hurts the artist and are threatening to use it as a weapon:

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X-Originating-IP: [189.35.88.246]
From: Guilherme Niehues "nokturnal.fukkchrist@hotmail.com"
Subject: Should I Laugh?
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:59:05 +0000
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Apr 2009 01:59:05.0808 (UTC) FILETIME=[E937C500:01C9C7A4]



Should I Laugh about you?
Nah, you closed a blog.
 
Great job.
Now find my other 9 blog, 3 forum and try to close my user at Soulseek and Emule software, bastard.
I'm sure you can't, so how a looser is now? Cry, bastard, cry!
 
I share about 30 thousands files in Soulseek and Emule, and what's better? I don't need to upload in megaupload for people to share, and you can't report. Easy no?
 
I'm sharing all of your stuff as always, and you can't do anything about it, impotent. I should laugh and piss on your carcass.
You can't do nothing to stop me sharing what I want.
 
Nah, the less famous blog ov mine is down. "Great thing", try hard. Really, try hard. 
 
Tell me if you have a way to stop me sharing your "shitty" stuff on internet. Please, I usually do not share shits, but some guys want to download it... so... sorry but you gonna loose money, always.
 
BASTARD!
 
HAHA, who is laughing now?
HAHAHAHA... sorry, for making idiots like you loosing money every day.
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X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/1277.35 YahooMailWebService/0.7.289.1
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:57:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brad Scott "lbscottkc1@yahoo.com"
Reply-To: Brad Scott "lbskc_mo78@bigfoot.com"
Subject: Notice


The launch of "The Coalition to Sack Shawn Goron From Roswell Six and All Future Progressive Projects" is now official and already has members from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, all Scandanavian countries, Greece, Lithuania, Argentina, Poland, and several other countries. The audiences for our actions public libraries, book and record stores, Kevn J Anderson, the band members of Roswell Six, all progessive rock sites that are open, polical activist sites that are open, prog internet radio stations, public radio stations, nut case Bible Belt activist ministers who will be glad to believe you and your project are satanist in origin, Bible Belt radio stations, all private and public torrent sites, blogs, review sites, etc. and any any and all other avenuse we may choose to pursue. As a zealot, you have messed with the wrong people.

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So, because we "dare" to protect our interests and stop people from giving away our work, we get this kind of unhinged hysteria and threats.  This is the real pirate community, and they are killing music for the rest of us.

Excellent news on multiple fronts

Just because we haven't been posting, doesn't mean we haven't been active.  We've had amazing results over the past year and just today the judgement has come down against The Pirate Bay.  Each of the 4 principals has received a year in jail and a $4 Million dollar fine.  The other good news out of Sweden is:

On February 25, 2009, IPRED was introduced into Swedish Law. This means that the possessor of the rights (e.g. a record company) has the right to request IP addresses from the Internet supplier if there is a suspicion of somebody downloading files illegally. Since the day the law was put into force the Multimedia Sales Company, CDON, has reported a 20% increase in sales of music and films.

We think that this fact clearly proves that all ideas of filesharing as a mean to increase the sales of CD's is totally incorrect. On the contrary, it shows that the conditions are quite the opposite and that filesharing and other forms of piracy are damaging the possibility for the artist to support himself on his music

Italian police close down "Italy's Pirate Bay"

11:24 | Tuesday July 29, 2008

By Ben Cardew 

Colombo-BT.org, the largest BitTorrent tracker site in Italy, has been closed down.

The site was run by three Italian men, who have been charged with infringing copyright law and face potential prison terms of up to three years and heavy fines.

The operation, which helped users find and exchange the computer files they want on peer-to-peer networks, was funded by accepting online donations from users. 

Italian police, who worked alongside IFPI-associated Italian anti-music piracy group FPM on the case, closed the service, seizing computers and freezing two bank accounts. 


FPM president Enzo Mazza compared the site to notorious filesharing service The Pirate Bay. “Colombo-BT.org was Italy’s version of The Pirate Bay,” he says. 

“Its operators deliberately facilitated availability of copyright infringing content to line their own pockets. The gang of three now face potential prison sentences and hefty fines as a result of their activities. This police action sends a strong message that Italy will not tolerate serious online music piracy so criminals looking for get rich quick schemes should consider other options.” 

The UK is cracking down

This is great news coming out of the UK.  The 6 biggest ISP's there are finally taking steps to really crack down on pirates, you can read the details at:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/214620/big-six-isps-capitulate-to-music-industry.html

and if you think they can't tell what kind of traffic is coming down your pipe, you're fooling yourself.

Lots of progress has been made

As we browse the blogs it's very satisfying to see how much progress has been made, and even from people that haven't joined our group.  Many pirate blogs are now gone, tens of thousands of songs have been removed, but more importantly is the people who went from pirates to advocates and have started new blogs in cooperation with the labels and artists to do reviews and give songs away with permission.  This is the direction we wanted to help move things and we're seeing results that are positive for the artist and the consumer.  Many people said we couldn't make a difference, but we've made a difference, even if it is only in our small corner of the music galaxy.  Sales are up, awareness is up and piracy is down.

Next Years Harvest

Over the Easter weekend I got to thinking about stuff, I thought about the folk who say “we must download because we are poor” and here are my thoughts....

It's kind of like the starving hungry people who once the crop has grown they eat all the grain rather than saving some for next years planting.
If you illegally file-share, or illegally download, you are eating all of this year's grain, but not putting something back you are not ensuring next years crop.
Take, take take, “I need more music” this attitude is short sighted in the extreme, because what happens is without financial renumeration for their work musicians are no longer able to continue, labels are no longer able to invest and stores close their doors. The result will be a pretty poor musical harvest in the years to come.
All the musicians I know do not aim to be rich, they do not have the aim of wealth in their minds but like everyone else they need to cover their costs of living, and the costs of producing music. I do not know a single musician at this moment in time that is not slipping further and further into debt due to the theft of the music they make.

So going back to the original “we must download because we are poor” whine that we so often hear, by taking music in an illegal way, by not paying for what you listen to you are in fact enriching your life by creating poverty for those who made the music.
Lets not hide behind ill thought out defensive arguments and come clean over this, what motivates a music thief is really greed and selfishness, scream and shout all you like, but in reality you are merely bolstering the belief that you are greedy, selfish, extremely short sighted and driven by your ego to have a bigger collection of music that your mates!

What we delete

Boy, I've been seeing crazy posts and been getting crazy emails from people that think we're out there deleting music, movies, software, you name it and suddenly we are the boogeyman for everything.  We've said this in many ways and in many places, but we're only concerned with our material, this includes about 20,000 releases from our various supporters.  As I peruse various blogs, I see people complaining of deleted posts from a year before we started, so I imagine we aren't the only ones, but probably the only really open and honest ones about it, so we also take a lot of heat.  I've seen so many conspiracy theories about how we will shut down a blog and then take the url over and put junk on it and all sorts of things, none of this is true.  The problem for a lot of bloggers is when they have our stuff up there and we file complaints and the whole thing gets shut down.  I've seen all sorts of bloggers say "well, just tell me and I'll take it down", we've tried that and guess how many have taken it down?  exactly zero.  So now we don't bother, we just file complaints and whatever the colateral damage is, well, so be it.  You folks that are doing this are creating your own problem.