Couple of very promising stories came out today. First up:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7240234.stm
Basically the law being seriously considered would be similar to a drunk driving arrest where you loose your license and car and such. If you get caught, you don't get to have internet any more. This kind of ties in with the extreme punishment blog that we did. Even if you had no financial fine at all, how would you feel about loosing any ability to have internet for a year for pirating? I think this is an excellent step and if it passes, will have a significant impact, especially when the first people get convicted.
In a similar situation, there is talk of legislation in Germany to address companies like Rapidshare that would make them responsible for the content on their service without a complaint having to be made. Currently a lot of bloggers will password protect their files thinking that Rapidshare is looking at the archives and to keep them out. If something like this passes, you can bet that Rapidshare, Megaupload and others are going to start enforcing their terms of service a lot more enthusiastically.
Today the Kuwait government just blocked 20 bittorrent sites and they plan to get even more extreme with it. As rich as Kuwait is, you can hardly use the "I'm poor" excuse for piracy. Good going Kuwait.
And finally the story of ShareReactor http://torrentfreak.com/sharereactor-admin-guilty-080212/ - of course torrentfreak puts their spin on it, but if you look at the details, this guy has had his life turned upside down for years, had to move from country to country, had to pay a ton of legal bills and ultimately this creates a positive precedent for shutting down hosters and propagators. Actually I'm curious, what legitimate use is there for systems like Rapidshare?
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32 comments:
Always the biggest problem to fight downloaders is there isn't any punishment most of the times. If the UK is going to do that it's a great step forward, at least for the countries involved. You steal an album, fine bye bye internet for "amount" months gone.
This would also affect those who just say they will do p2p behind closed doors. Providers should be hold responsible for checking the amount of data involved.
Shut down the internet for those that use it for criminal activities.
Of course you get the whole "privacy" issue with it which makes it a tricky thing for each goverment but imo privacy should be pushed aside the moment they suspect someone is breaking the law. And copyright thieves just do that.
Rapidshare/megaupload should be put more on the test too. They might claim they can't control what's being put on their servers but they should change quick. They can remove anything they want as long they understand not doing it will cost them "amount" fine. It's facilitating criminal activities with allowing copyright thieves too use their systems.
Isn't it now already a criminal offence if a system would falicitate drugs through their system even when they aren't involved inthe drug traffic themselves?
As too the question if rapidshare can be used legal, yes it can. I use both rapidshare and filefactory with putting data on them which i was allowed to use by labels/artists.
Gert
I guess I was more asking, does anyone use them for legitimate activity that doesn't involve music and movies and maybe software?
Hi Gert,
Yes, "privacy" and "integrity" are words misused by criminals and people who have something to hide.
But if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have to worry about anyone watching.
well I for one am leaping about with excitement over the news!
It might also make parents a little more vigilent about what their kids are doing with that computer! A few 'dads' losing their internet access because the kids are downloading might wake up the shoulder shruggers and "what can you do"-ers!
HOOOOORAH!!!!!!!!!
RW x
Yes this is great news, but it's only a proposal. Anyone that lives in the UK who supports the Prog Against Pirates cause and cares about the future of music could help us by asking their local MP to vote for these internet controls if and when the proposal becomes a parliamentary bill. I'll be lobbying my MP to do just that.
Nice idea but how are they going to monitor it and where would that money come from? Also who'll be responsible for checking that the people contacting the ISP are actually the copyright OWNERS. Again I'm certainly not "Pro Pirate" but this could be a logistical and costly nightmare for the ISP's and innocent end user who uses the net for legitimate downloading.
It's pretty easy to monitor, they know who is using the bandwidth already, and you're basically going to have to sign away some privacy to have access to the internet. Then if they have probably cause, they can search your computer and you will either be a legitmate owner or not.
I think if they do this, it really won't take long for the amount of piracy to drop off to make active enforcement unnecessary except to go to a low level random sampling.
"I guess I was more asking, does anyone use them for legitimate activity that doesn't involve music and movies and maybe software?"
That would really be interesting to know. If it's used mostly for music/movies/software maybe there should be tax added to be able to use rapidshare the same way as already has been done when buying empty cd's/dvd's (at least i think that's happening here in the netherlands. Not sure about other countries.)
Gert
"It might also make parents a little more vigilent about what their kids are doing with that computer!"
In a time where i get the feeling that tons of parents don't have a clue about what there children are doing i doubt that. But that's a whole different discussion.
Gert
In Denmark the supreme court has taken the decision that danish internet suppliers must block access to Pirate Bay.
It's pretty easy to monitor, they know who is using the bandwidth already
You can't really assume large bandwith use = piracy, there are plenty of people using large amounts of bandwidth for legal purposes including Netflix Watch Now, Archive.org and legaltorrents. The legal number of users will also grow in the future.
and you're basically going to have to sign away some privacy to have access to the internet.
That won't sit well with most people I'd assume. Especially if it's a government agency doing the monitoring (for corporations).
Then if they have probably cause, they can search your computer and you will either be a legitmate owner or not.
That is currently being battled in several cases in court now, such as is a shared folder or "Making Available" actually infringement, or even if so are ripped files from CD's the person purchased, are legal? The Sony lawyer in the Jamie Thomas case recently said ripping files from purchased CD's for your own use "IS" stealing, which caused a big uproar.
Realistically I think the above factors will need to be decided and infringement properly defined in a court of law before they could prove infringement has taken place and can go ahead and confiscate a user's net access. Sure there's the obvious violators out there, but several grey areas as well.
Lots of stuff to think about but I think in the end there's still lots of work to do before a realistic and fair solution is created.
I don't think you have a firm grasp of how much the internet provider knows about the traffic, they can tell what ports are being used and if they have cause, they can tell exactly what files are going on and from where, so it's pretty easy to exclude a place like Netflix and include a place like Rapidshare.
And those "evil corporations" are the ones that paid for the infrastructure so you even have an internet and access to it, so they can damn well set any terms they want to set and you'll damn well abide them or you don't have to use their service.
As to that case you're talking about, if you actually research the details of it you find they differ radically from the headline news, here are the salient points:
* He claimed he just ripped it to his computer.
- What he did was rip it to his computer and put it in his file share directory for the file sharing system he was on like Soulseek or whatever it was. There is already law and precedent that providing material like this can subject you to fines up to $1.5 million per DOWNLOAD depending on the blatency of, but the precedent is about $9,000 per download at the moment.
* Idiot from Sony claiming that ripping was illegal copying
- Said idiot mispoke because "Fair Use" is long established law.
so it's pretty easy to exclude a place like Netflix and include a place like Rapidshare.
True, but will they know if the files on Rapidshare are legal? It's been proven with one of the college students recently targeted by the RIAA that was dismissed just by going by the file name alone doesn't work.
And those "evil corporations" are the ones that paid for the infrastructure so you even have an internet and access to it, so they can damn well set any terms they want to set and you'll damn well abide them or you don't have to use their service.
I don't remember calling the corporations "evil" but anyways it's true the ISP can do whatever they want but who will enforce it if the ISP does not ban users? If it's the Government, would there be a conflict of interest if the government becomes the "copyright police" for private companies is what I'm asking I guess?
He claimed he just ripped it to his computer.
- What he did was rip it to his computer and put it in his file share directory for the file sharing system he was on like Soulseek or whatever it was. There is already law and precedent that providing material like this can subject you to fines up to $1.5 million per DOWNLOAD depending on the blatency of, but the precedent is about $9,000 per download at the moment.
You're talking about the Jamie Thomas case I assume. She was fined for each file made available, they couldn't prove how many copies were actually downloaded.
* Idiot from Sony claiming that ripping was illegal copying
- Said idiot mispoke because "Fair Use" is long established law.
Are digital copies documented in the "fair use" law specifically?(I know recording LP to tape IS, but does this apply to Mp3)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not "Pro Pirate" here, I just think things REALLY need to get more resolved and defined before/if the Government should step in. I'd really hate to see the Government answering to big corporations like Sony and Warners. Then next thing you know they're eliminating smaller competing companies which I'm sure we all agree we DON'T want!
Hi Anonymous,
I see your points and think the make sense. Just want to reply to one thing.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not "Pro Pirate" here, I just think things REALLY need to get more resolved and defined before/if the Government should step in. I'd really hate to see the Government answering to big corporations like Sony and Warners. Then next thing you know they're eliminating smaller competing companies which I'm sure we all agree we DON'T want!"
Basically the issue is not about big corporations. It is about the artists rights to decide about their work. Some artists make deals with major labels, others with smaller labels while others decide to sell their works by themselves. How they decide to do it doesn't matter. They should have the right to decide about their work and should be able to expect people to respect copyrights.
Hansi, only ONE isp in Denmark was ordered to block access to one torrent website.
Ha ha ha! A blogger calling someone else a loser? That really IS funny. Blogging has got to be about the saddest activity in history.
The world got on perfectly OK without a "blogosphere" for thousands of years, but it ain't going to be much of a place without music.
So the blogs that give away music illegally have got to be and will be closed down.
So get real Adriano and get a life.
"Nobody cares about you!!!"
Apperently you do care since you took the time to post your drivel.
Maybe you should stick to "prog not frog" and "lost in tyme" until you start to understand the basics of having a discussion with other people without needing to use curses.
Gert
Anonymous said...
"Hansi, only ONE isp in Denmark was ordered to block access to one torrent website."
Yes, I noticed. As I understand it is Denmark's largest internet supplier. Let's hope other's will follow. The Pirate Bay guys are true criminals. I really don't care about people who are discussing how to interpret the law. It is obvious that they are helping other's to violate copyrights. And that they earn money from it.
Have a look at the whole picture and you will see that they are making money from others work.
My stance is what we declared on the "Some comments..." thread.
"I guess I was more asking, does anyone use them for legitimate activity that doesn't involve music and movies and maybe software?"
Hard to say. Nobody i know who uses rapidshare otherwise then for music, movies and software.
Gert
"...the basics of having a discussion with other people without needing to use curses".
Should i learn "the basics" from all of you? Are you sure you can teach 'em? Really sure?
How do you teach these basics? With censorships, with truth distortions, whispering for your own private rights? The rights of a small label that nobody cares about? Please, as I always repeat: shut up and go the fuck away.
"Please, as I always repeat: shut up and go the fuck away."
The bands who you rip of will go away, thanks to criminals like you that is. Of course we shouldn't forget that Italy is well known for all those criminal bootleg companies so maybe you don't know any better.
To bad for you i won't since i am not in a band, not associated with any label or what so-ever. But hey you proof again what i said: you miss the basics for holding a discussion but maybe you can download something which might teach you this!
Gert
I am a person who is a recent convert to only downloading legal music. It was not an easy conversion, but it was the list of musicians on this blog, musicians that I admire, that convinced me most. I am a member of eMusic which has a lot of Progrock Records music on it's site. Several of the albums have bad rips on some songs which has made me cautious of downloading anything from Progrock. eMusic ignores it even if you bring it to ther attention. Can you guys (who everyone knows are people from Progrock or the Kompany) get this fixed. I usually download just about everything on your label from eMusic. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Glad to hear you are using legal methods. As far as eMusic, we use a 3rd party propagator to put our music out digitally to 30 or 40 different places, I've had at least a half dozen complaints from customers of bad rips and we let the company know and supposedly they fix it, but I haven't been too happy with them so I'm in the process of going to a new service. One of the other advantages with Mindawn beyond a CD quality download for $8.99 is that on the very rare occasion there is a bad rip, we fix it immediately because we have full control over the account.
Thanks for your response. Please don't take your stuff off of eMusic as it's my favorite download site. I've thought of trying Mindawn, but it will require an ogg to mp3 coverter or an ogg burner for me to make a cd, which is really not a big deal, but a pain in the butt. Sometimes I use Amazon's mp3 store. I'm more of an mp3 lover than ogg.I buy hundreds of mp3 albums of prog and fusion.You will be happy to know that your efforts are reaching people like myself.People who actually care about the artists and their hard work. I have downloaded illeagally in the past, but usually stuff that is out of print, but I have even stopped doing that. Right is right and wrong is wrong. They are polar opposites. Besides, I must answer to a higher power. I'm not pushing that thought on anyone else, I'm just speaking for myself. Thanks Pirate Killer.
That's how this all started, as a campaign of education as opposed to what the RIAA was doing, and it has been good to see the large number of people like yourself making a change.
As to Mindawn, it offers both Ogg and FLAC. If you're not familiar with FLAC it is a lossless compression (like ZIP) for audio, we profide a free tool (and there are others on the net) that let you decompress to WAV or AIFF, which makes it identical to the original CD, and you can use those files to burn to a CD or encode to another format like MP3 if you want.
Just so you know, the eMusic model is really a terrible one for the artists, they literally make about 1 cent on a song, but I do appreciate you going the legal route.
I wish eMusic would give a better deal to the artists. That's really a shame, 1 cent per song. I'm still going to use them because I enjoy much of the content and it's a great deal for the consumer. I might give Mindawn a try, if I don't find the music on iTunes or Amazon first. Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my comments. Don't give up the fight.
As far as I know, one cent a song is better then the average return from itunes for a major-label artist... and if you put your music on emusic you don't get charged for promo copies and all the many other ways in which record companies ensure they don't have to pay artists anything.
Also, I posted two long comments which didn't make it through moderation, but when I tried to post another I saw a yellow "your comment will be posted if it survives" message that didn't appear before so I'll try again. I don't like this system..
Rapidshare has many legal uses. Most commercial software products output large files (think video editing, audio editing, computer automated drawing, rendering, mapping systems, data analysis), and many of these have consumer equivalents (not to mention games and saved games, mods, free games)..
Basically any large file which is released under a redistribution-allowed license or you own the copyright to is okay. And with video and audio recorders and computers so widespread anyone can create such a thing. This doesn't necessarily mean that the sender wants the government or anyone else looking at their private data, esp. if they're moving it between one of their computers to another (I have done this). So it'll probably be encrypted in which case Rapidshare has no legal way of finding out what's in it.
actually iTunes takes about 30%, which is reasonable. This has nothing to do with promo copies, you have to send promo copies to the buyers, the magazines, the DJ's, the web sites, etc., you have to put it in their hands, they aren't going to just randomly go out and pick it up or even buy it to review it. When you consider it costs about $1.50 to produce a unit, sending out promo's is pretty effective, you can hit 500 places for the price of a single ad in a moderate magazine. Labels do NOT use promo's as a way to not pay artists, they use it to help the artist sell more copies, and no, the blogs don't help because they don't get the word out, they give the album away.
let's be honest, the legit use of something like Rapidshare is probably 1% of their traffic, the entire structure of the site is organized to promote piracy.
First off, I just saw this: http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com/2006/06/digital-more-profitable-amazon_02.html
Plus, everyone I know gets info about music from friends, the net, streaming radio, we don't care if something's advertised, advertisements are nothing but lies anyway. That's just gonna increase in the future. When I tell someone about emusic, they go there and see a bunch of artists they like and can afford to buy them all. Then at 33 cents a song it's actually somewhat affordable to try out new artists.
It looks like emusic can even pay more per track then Amazon, even though I buy 10x as much stuff from emusic as anywhere else (it's cheaper!!).
Re: Rapidshare, assumptions like that are meaningless, why did you ask the question in the first place if you didn't care about the answer? That's not science, that's religious fundamentalism.
Finally, it's impossible to stop services like rapidshare without destroying the entire internet. Even then people in cities would just use short-range wireless connections totally independent of the internet and impossible to monitor. It's okay if you want to hurt the pirates but when you try to shut down sites like rapidshare you're hurting people who BUY music far more then you're hurting ones who steal it. If one guy steals 12845812598215891258 songs and makes rapidshare's piracy % go way up does that hurt you more then if he steals one song? Can he steal more then the entire gross domestic product of the earth? Your logic doesn't make sense. We need to be working toward a way in which the artists can get as much or more money as they are now AND people can enjoy the benefits of the digital age. Buying songs @ 33 cents a song is better then 1 @ $1, so much so I'll probably buy 10 instead.
You didn't cite any actual real uses of rapidshare, just supposition. I've worked in the open source space for 9 years and no one is using rapidshare or megaupload or anyone like them for putting files around, they just aren't. Rapidshare rewards you for uploading material and then they charge you so you can download more often, and what normal usage is going to have you downloading so much from rapidshare for legit files? It's just not happening.
As for advertising, that's not what promo's are for, they are for reviews and airplay and while maybe you and your group of friends don't pay attention to ads, it is a cumulative thing, the more you see a bands name around in different places, you start to get curious about them and then check them out, this is just a fact, it's how things work. I know that's how I got exposed to Coheed and Cambria for example, never heard a note and just started seeing their name around a lot.
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