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Music Piracy


Stripey

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I saw an interesting comment about this

Apple tell me of their 80GB ipod classic:

"Holds up to 20,000 songs in 128-Kbps AAC format"

Using itunes to fill this would cost me 15,800.

If this isn't an admission that the industry knows full well which way the wind is blowing, I don't know what is.

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I'd be interested to know how they are going to decide who is a pirate or not. As a Virgin Media customer (yeah, I know) I could quite easily find myself receiving one of these letters. Yet how do they know what I'm downloading? Are they going to monitor every single thing I download?

As people have pointed out elsewhere, they can't simply just punish those that download the most content as plenty of it can be perfectly legitimate (people using BBC iPlayer, downloading HD films purchased on iTunes etc). They can't just target types of traffic either - e.g. Bittorrent traffic. As plenty of that can be legitimate as well (WoW distributes updates and patches via Bittorrent now, as do many other games. Nine Inch Nails and other artists distribute their legal and free content using Bittorrent these days as well).

For this to work they have to start recording every single item that someone downloads and then decide whether they downloaded that item illegally. In short, it's next to impossible for them to do this with any degree of accuracy. They will simply warn the heavy downloaders and it will only take one of these people to turn round and ask for evidence that they have downloaded pirated content for this to all become apparent.

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There isn't really anything the ISP's could do to technically defeat filesharing beyond taking measures which would cripple the service so badly and have such horrendous privacy implications that their customers would leave in a flash.

Deep packet inspection that identifies filesharing traffic is easily defeated by using properly implemented encryption, and basically what you would have on your hands is a technological "arms race" which ISP's will lose.

What the BPI are doing is basically looking for torrents which contain their copyrighted material (infact I believe they are outsourcing this to 3rd party firms), then downloading the content and making a list of all the IP's in the swarm. Encyption doesn't help here but this kind of traffic analysis can be defeated relatively easily by using proxies or something like TOR Tor: anonymity online.

Interestingly, the nature of bittorrent means that you're never sharing the whole file, your computer is only uploading fragments of the file, so the data from a single IP will mostly likely result in an unplayable file. It would be interesting to see someone force the BPI into court to test their position.

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They will simply warn the heavy downloaders

I've heard it suggested that these ISP's (who already throttle and limit their heavier users) are agreeing with this because it gives them a straightforward excuse to give them the boot. I find the argument that just a small percentage of heavy downloaders are "a problem" really offensive, because you've paid for a service and you have the right to utilise it. What they really want is customers who pay 20-30 quid a month and do nothing more than check their email once a week because thats where the profit is.

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Apple tell me of their 80GB ipod classic:

"Holds up to 20,000 songs in 128-Kbps AAC format"

Using itunes to fill this would cost me 15,800.

If this isn't an admission that the industry knows full well which way the wind is blowing, I don't know what is.

Stupidist comment ever, hasn't he heard of ripping CDs?

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Stupidist comment ever, hasn't he heard of ripping CDs?

Sixteen grand is an obscene amount of money for a normal person to spend on music in an entire lifetime, let alone the twenty-somethings these devices are marketed towards. That companies create systems capable of holding this much music simply highlights what a bloated, money-grabbing bastard of an industry this is.

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another good quote

Please excuse the rant, one of my disparate jobs is that I am Dizzee Rascal's production manager.

For those of you who aren't familiar with him, he is a UK hip-hop star whose most recent release is presently at No.1 in the singles charts, where it has been since its release at the beginning of the month. We entered the charts on download sales alone (physical unit sales are dead). It is fair to assume that a trend in retail purchases of media will be shadowed by a similar trend in illegal downloading of the same media. It is accurate to say that, so far this month, more people in the UK are buying Dizzee's record than any other. Therefore I can infer that there are a significant number of illegal downloads of the song taking place - it's not unreasonable to suggest perhaps more than any other chart single.

Dizzee is a self-made artist by anyone's definition. He has not had major label backing at any point in his career and this release is on his own label (Dirtee Stank Recordings).

He is creating wealth, jobs, tax revenue and all the other things beloved of the government when making speeches about "small British businesses".

He is also the most visible UK artist in the hip-hop genre, traditionally highly US-centric, raising the profile of British music around the world.

How much would we see of this "immunity to prosecution" levy?

NOT ONE PENNY.

That's right, the proposed measures would do nothing for a British citizen, running a British business (no fancy off-shored tax evasion here), with the Number 1 record in the UK this summer. We're not part of the cabal whom these measures would benefit. Why should anyone trust a major label to do the right thing by the artists when they've been screwing them for 93.5% of their revenue for years. I believe we have demonstrated that a label is not required to build an artist from scratch - this is not Radiohead or NIN turning on their labels and capitalising on pre-existing brand awareness - Dizzee came from nowhere, and if you have heard of him it is because he works so damn hard.

Everyone on this forum recognises the naivety of any claim to end file-sharing. In fact this kind of agreement is more likely to "stamp-out" our successful business.

If I authorise our fans to seed torrents of show bootlegs, or recruit them to promote up-coming artists from the label by sharing album previews on P2P networks, am I placing them at risk of punitive measures from their ISPs, or potential criminal prosecution? Perhaps the only safe thing to do is leave USB sticks in club toilets.

No doubt soon this will also be targeted by labels as a promotion channel outside their control that can lead to independent artists mucking with projected chart positions.

Yes, we kept McFly off the top spot this week. Yes, somebody may lose their job over it - that's the way major labels work when you don't meet expectations. No, I'm not sorry.

We learned our lesson years ago, after being flown first class to Argentina, being put up in 5-Star hotels with a few days each side of the show to see the country, going on stage in front of 30,000 people who knew the words to all the songs, and coming home with money in our pockets.

We don't have distribution in Argentina.

We have never sold a copy of any of Dizzee's albums in Argentina, as the records aren't available (excusing imports, which we don't see the markup on).

That's a lot of downloads.

I suppose we should display our gratitude by suing the Argentinians.

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have you heard of DRM?

Um, yes. But I also know that it will not stop me ripping my CDs and putting them on an ipod.

And I also know that I don't rip CDs at 128kbs, and therefore I could quite comfortably fill an 80gb ipod with just a fraction of my CD collection without including any illegally downloaded material.

So it's still the stupidist comment ever.

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Um, yes. But I also know that it will not stop me ripping my CDs and putting them on an ipod.

And I also know that I don't rip CDs at 128kbs, and therefore I could quite comfortably fill an 80gb ipod with just a fraction of my CD collection without including any illegally downloaded material.

Yeah not illegally downloaded material, just illegally copied material.

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Yeah not illegally downloaded material, just illegally copied material.

Please provide some instances of anyone, ever, being charged and prosecuted for copying their own CDs onto an MP3 player for their own personal use.

Clearly this is never going to happen. Perhaps somebody should be complaining that iTunes includes a facility for ripping CDs and naming files via Gracenote if there is so much concern about this "illegal" copying.

Also worth pointing out that ipods can also be used to watch videos (again, you don't need to illegally download, you can rip your own DVDs), view photographs and they can also be used as a portable hard drive for data. So very easy to use 80gb on an ipod with illegally downloading anything.

So yes, still the stupidist comment ever Stripey, and you've put forward fuck all to change my position on that.

Please provide a link to wherever you found the original post, so that I can point all this out to the tube who wrote it in the first place.

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Please provide some instances of anyone, ever, being charged and prosecuted for copying their own CDs onto an MP3 player for their own personal use.

Clearly this is never going to happen. Perhaps somebody should be complaining that iTunes includes a facility for ripping CDs and naming files via Gracenote if there is so much concern about this "illegal" copying.

Also worth pointing out that ipods can also be used to watch videos (again, you don't need to illegally download, you can rip your own DVDs), view photographs and they can also be used as a portable hard drive for data. So very easy to use 80gb on an ipod with illegally downloading anything.

So yes, still the stupidist comment ever Stripey, and you've put forward fuck all to change my position on that.

Please provide a link to wherever you found the original post, so that I can point all this out to the tube who wrote it in the first place.

"In the United Kingdom, making a private copy of copyrighted media without the copyright owner's consent is illegal as of January 2008: this includes ripping music from a CD to a computer or digital music player."

Ripping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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"In the United Kingdom, making a private copy of copyrighted media without the copyright owner's consent is illegal as of January 2008: this includes ripping music from a CD to a computer or digital music player."

Ripping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some nice selective quoting there. The rest of the paragraph reads as follows:

"The UK government has made proposals to allow people to make copies of music for personal use."

None of this is likely to have a major effect on your average person.

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"In the United Kingdom, making a private copy of copyrighted media without the copyright owner's consent is illegal as of January 2008: this includes ripping music from a CD to a computer or digital music player."

Ripping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, because getting legal advice from wiki is a very clever idea. :rolleyes:

I think you'll find I didn't ask for any confirmation of the legal status of ripping. I asked for any instances of people being being charged and prosecuted for copying their own CDs onto an MP3 player for their own personal use.

I meant in the UK, if that clears things up for you.

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Some nice selective quoting there. The rest of the paragraph reads as follows:

"The UK government has made proposals to allow people to make copies of music for personal use."

None of this is likely to have a major effect on your average person.

Not selective quoting at all, I pointed out the position as it is at the moment to Bigsby who seems to believe different.

I agree that it will not have an impact on your average person, any company trying to sue someone for ripping music for personal use will quickly find itself subject to public scorn and ridicule so I don't think any of them want to be the first to try. The only way I can see them using this is for a "double-whammy" on file sharers, doing them for illegal distribution AND copying, just in case the distribution case falls apart.

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Every time you use the word "illegal" instead of illegal.

I was quoting Stripey's use of the term "illegal".

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an instance of somebosy actually being prosecuted for taking part in this supposedly illegal (resisted the temptation to use quotation marks) activity.

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I was quoting Stripey's use of the term "illegal".

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an instance of somebosy actually being prosecuted for taking part in this supposedly illegal (resisted the temptation to use quotation marks) activity.

No quotation marks but gratuitous use of the word supposedly. I'm afraid it's fact.

Just because no-one can point to a prosecution it doesn't change the fact that it is illegal. Personally I think it's highly unlikely anyone will be prosecuted because the majority of people think there's nothing wrong with it (and we live in a democracy, allegedly).

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