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.

What would make packaging "special" enough

There is a basic quandry that goes on with regard to downloading.  One the one hand you have people that say the CD is overpriced for what you get.  A simple understanding of economics and inflation shatters that argument because the price has remained unchanged for decades basically.

On the other side is people who think the package should have more features, and that's what this post is about.  What makes it special enough?  We've got digipacks, extended booklets, video segments, "b-sides" (a reference to the obscure vinyl single where songs that didn't make it on the album, sometimes they outshone the single).  Autographs, posters, easter eggs, hidden messages and meanings (One of our releases from Planet P Project called 1931 that talked about WWII Germany used a font that was only ever used on street signs in Berlin at that time, and all the text was at a 31 degree angle for example).

So what makes a package "special enough" for you?  What are you looking for?

Some new industry news

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?

COPYRIGHTS AND COMMON SENSE

There is lot's of discussions regarding copyrights.

Some people feel that copyrights are a bad thing.

I would say that these people have not bothered to check the whole picture.


What is copyright?

It's rather simple.

An example: If a band creates music they have the copyright for it.

Sometimes the band has their work released by their own label.

They own their music. Then it is common that they work together with a record label who either license the rights and pay for that, or, at times, the record label buy the music. Basically there is these three ways to go. Either the band owns the copyrights or a label owns it. If they license the rights they own it for a limited period. If the bought the music they own it forever - if they do not sell it, or hire it to some other company.

Either way the bands get paid.

That anyone else should claim that they should have the rights to use the music without asking for permission is in no way acceptable.

Copyrights are not a bad thing. It is simply a way for the originator to protect the rights to decide about his/hers own work.

It is common sense.




How can anyone disagree with that?