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[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7522334.stm[/URL]
I think this has been coming for some time. I'm actually suprised it's taken this long for the broadband companies to bow to the pressure and start cracking down on filesharing but i'm wondering to what extent. Will they be targeting just the uploaders or everyone?
What i'm really interested in though is the effect on the music industry. Now there seems to be two views on this. The music industry is of the opinion that if downloading stops, everyone will go out and buy more cd's. Everyone else i've spoken to has pointed out that without being able to listen to albums beforehand, they're actually less likely to go out and buy an album based on the strength of 1 track. I can look at pretty much every album i've bought over the last 3 years and know i'd previewed it before i spent money.
Opinions then? False dawn or start of the end. Good for the music industry or are they shooting themselves in the foot?
I think this has been coming for some time. I'm actually suprised it's taken this long for the broadband companies to bow to the pressure and start cracking down on filesharing but i'm wondering to what extent. Will they be targeting just the uploaders or everyone?
What i'm really interested in though is the effect on the music industry. Now there seems to be two views on this. The music industry is of the opinion that if downloading stops, everyone will go out and buy more cd's. Everyone else i've spoken to has pointed out that without being able to listen to albums beforehand, they're actually less likely to go out and buy an album based on the strength of 1 track. I can look at pretty much every album i've bought over the last 3 years and know i'd previewed it before i spent money.
Opinions then? False dawn or start of the end. Good for the music industry or are they shooting themselves in the foot?
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[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7522334.stm[/URL]
I think this has been coming for some time. I'm actually suprised it's taken this long for the broadband companies to bow to the pressure and start cracking down on filesharing but i'm wondering to what extent. Will they be targeting just the uploaders or everyone?
What i'm really interested in though is the effect on the music industry. Now there seems to be two views on this. The music industry is of the opinion that if downloading stops, everyone will go out and buy more cd's. Everyone else i've spoken to has pointed out that without being able to listen to albums beforehand, they're actually less likely to go out and buy an album based on the strength of 1 track. I can look at pretty much every album i've bought over the last 3 years and know i'd previewed it before i spent money.
Opinions then? False dawn or start of the end. Good for the music industry or are they shooting themselves in the foot?
I think this has been coming for some time. I'm actually suprised it's taken this long for the broadband companies to bow to the pressure and start cracking down on filesharing but i'm wondering to what extent. Will they be targeting just the uploaders or everyone?
What i'm really interested in though is the effect on the music industry. Now there seems to be two views on this. The music industry is of the opinion that if downloading stops, everyone will go out and buy more cd's. Everyone else i've spoken to has pointed out that without being able to listen to albums beforehand, they're actually less likely to go out and buy an album based on the strength of 1 track. I can look at pretty much every album i've bought over the last 3 years and know i'd previewed it before i spent money.
Opinions then? False dawn or start of the end. Good for the music industry or are they shooting themselves in the foot?
Mehhh, I'll still find my tunes.
Shooting themselves in the foot, definately.
Why buy albums only to find out they are rubbish and have to take them back when you can just download them, see if they are any good, if they are, ok i'll buy them.
Also TV shows released in USA but not released in UK, downloading is the only way to get to them, such as 24, stargate atlantis, etc.
In many cases general release do better thanks to P2P networks, such as stargate coniuum and ark of truth, they have sold very well thanks to being "leaked", probably by the studio themselves to increase sales, which it has.
This just seems like an attempt by a bunch of old people who don't understand technology or like it to prevent everyone else from utilising their superior ICT skills and understanding. Most people are doing it and they feel left out so they're punishing the rest of us.
I think which should start a petition to get rid of these new "measures" if someone hasn't already.
Why buy albums only to find out they are rubbish and have to take them back when you can just download them, see if they are any good, if they are, ok i'll buy them.
Also TV shows released in USA but not released in UK, downloading is the only way to get to them, such as 24, stargate atlantis, etc.
In many cases general release do better thanks to P2P networks, such as stargate coniuum and ark of truth, they have sold very well thanks to being "leaked", probably by the studio themselves to increase sales, which it has.
This just seems like an attempt by a bunch of old people who don't understand technology or like it to prevent everyone else from utilising their superior ICT skills and understanding. Most people are doing it and they feel left out so they're punishing the rest of us.
I think which should start a petition to get rid of these new "measures" if someone hasn't already.
I think the problem lies with both 'consumers' (much as I despise the notion people are purely there to 'consume') and with the music industry.
Some people want to download 'tasters' but instead of downloading the odd track by a band or off an album, they download the whole lot saying they'll pay for it later if it's good enough. Unfortunately laziness will all too often set in and they never get around to paying for the music. In my view this has a much lesser impact on the 'bigger' bands and labels (incidentally it's often these who are most likely to be found suing music fans) than on their small, independent counterparts. Big bands get radioplay, are stocked in all the big stores like HMV, Virgin, Amazon, Play, etc. - If someone really does intend to buy an album they've downloaded, if they see it in the sale in one of these stores, they might just buy it. They're far less likely to stumble upon a release by a smaller band on an independent label in one of these shops though, so unless they're active about going out and buying the album, single, etc. the band loses out.
There's also a big problem with who gets a slice of the pie. According to a recent interview I read with Howards Alias, a UK band that recently split up after releasing their final album, bands get very little per sale (about a pound per album). Even the record label gets very little, about the same as the band themselves. Most of the profits (according to the interview) go to retailers. The aforementioned HMV, Virgin et al. So much as record labels and bands whine about this, the whole model of selling music is... basically crap for bands. They only get a portion of what the label gets, and the label only gets a small amount of what the retailer get. Howards Alias resorted to a "no label" approach for their final album, asking fans to "pre-pay" for the album in order for them to raise enough cash to get it printed up themselves.
The major labels however certainly don't have the artists best interests at heart. To them, more sales equals more money. Simple as. They've been eager to introduce various technologies that limit what people can do with music from DRM to (years ago) adding corrupted 'data tracks' to the end of CDs to prevent PCs from reading and thus burning them. This does shoot themselves in the foot, people have always made each other mix-tapes, played friends new bands, and generally shared their love for music with other fans. However advanced labels get with technologies to limit file sharing, however blunt they become with hammering fans with lawsuits for downloading songs, they will never stop one person lending another a CD, or giving them their headphones to listen to a track.
So in essence, I don't agree with the idea of fining all those who download music, but I do agree that some bands are harmed quite significantly by illegal downloading. Unfortunately, it's often the big bands who want a tour bus with more room for a big screen TV that are those complaining, not the ones surviving on a few quid a day playing hundreds of shows a year. The way forward? Support small bands by going to see them live, buy albums off them on tour as they get a bigger chunk of the revenue, and do more to listen / download tracks as real samplers rather than downloading whole albums and trying to remember to "pick up the album later".
Some people want to download 'tasters' but instead of downloading the odd track by a band or off an album, they download the whole lot saying they'll pay for it later if it's good enough. Unfortunately laziness will all too often set in and they never get around to paying for the music. In my view this has a much lesser impact on the 'bigger' bands and labels (incidentally it's often these who are most likely to be found suing music fans) than on their small, independent counterparts. Big bands get radioplay, are stocked in all the big stores like HMV, Virgin, Amazon, Play, etc. - If someone really does intend to buy an album they've downloaded, if they see it in the sale in one of these stores, they might just buy it. They're far less likely to stumble upon a release by a smaller band on an independent label in one of these shops though, so unless they're active about going out and buying the album, single, etc. the band loses out.
There's also a big problem with who gets a slice of the pie. According to a recent interview I read with Howards Alias, a UK band that recently split up after releasing their final album, bands get very little per sale (about a pound per album). Even the record label gets very little, about the same as the band themselves. Most of the profits (according to the interview) go to retailers. The aforementioned HMV, Virgin et al. So much as record labels and bands whine about this, the whole model of selling music is... basically crap for bands. They only get a portion of what the label gets, and the label only gets a small amount of what the retailer get. Howards Alias resorted to a "no label" approach for their final album, asking fans to "pre-pay" for the album in order for them to raise enough cash to get it printed up themselves.
The major labels however certainly don't have the artists best interests at heart. To them, more sales equals more money. Simple as. They've been eager to introduce various technologies that limit what people can do with music from DRM to (years ago) adding corrupted 'data tracks' to the end of CDs to prevent PCs from reading and thus burning them. This does shoot themselves in the foot, people have always made each other mix-tapes, played friends new bands, and generally shared their love for music with other fans. However advanced labels get with technologies to limit file sharing, however blunt they become with hammering fans with lawsuits for downloading songs, they will never stop one person lending another a CD, or giving them their headphones to listen to a track.
So in essence, I don't agree with the idea of fining all those who download music, but I do agree that some bands are harmed quite significantly by illegal downloading. Unfortunately, it's often the big bands who want a tour bus with more room for a big screen TV that are those complaining, not the ones surviving on a few quid a day playing hundreds of shows a year. The way forward? Support small bands by going to see them live, buy albums off them on tour as they get a bigger chunk of the revenue, and do more to listen / download tracks as real samplers rather than downloading whole albums and trying to remember to "pick up the album later".
everyones at fault here to be honest. But i have no love for the companies either. They sell expensive trashy songs and expect us to sit there and take it. They have grown complacent and fat from cd sales and not embraced the age of the internet. Hell if they made songs really, really cheap it would have eased the pain.
Another point i want to make is that the piracy thing is so deep you'll never get rid of it completely. Someone will just encrypt the IP addresses and all that and you'll never be tracked.
Are internet companies stupid enough to lose their own customers? Also, will this simply criple the cause for better broadband when so few are streaming or downloading?
Another point i want to make is that the piracy thing is so deep you'll never get rid of it completely. Someone will just encrypt the IP addresses and all that and you'll never be tracked.
Are internet companies stupid enough to lose their own customers? Also, will this simply criple the cause for better broadband when so few are streaming or downloading?
spoonbeast wrote:
> Another point i want to make is that the piracy thing is so deep
> you'll never get rid of it completely. Someone will just encrypt
> the IP addresses and all that and you'll never be tracked.
You can encrypt your protocols all you like, but if the record companies (or whoever) are seeding the stuff and making a note of which IP addresses it's being sent to then encryption is useless. You could run it through Tor or similar but you'd be there all year. I recently read about another p2p network, no idea if it's running yet, but if I understood it correctly it addressed the concept by splitting files up into small blocks, reversibly altering them such that they no longer directly held 'real' data (XORing it against a pseudorandom vector), then to download you'd grab an instruction set saying which blocks you need to XOR against each other to recover the original file. What that would mean is that it would be far more difficult to prove someone was downloading something illegitimate because the same data block you might use to recover the first three seconds of a Britney Spears song could also be used to recover someone's holiday photos. Can't remember what it was called now, though.
Although it doesn't really bother me, I generally discover most new music by Last.FM now which is all completely above board.
> Another point i want to make is that the piracy thing is so deep
> you'll never get rid of it completely. Someone will just encrypt
> the IP addresses and all that and you'll never be tracked.
You can encrypt your protocols all you like, but if the record companies (or whoever) are seeding the stuff and making a note of which IP addresses it's being sent to then encryption is useless. You could run it through Tor or similar but you'd be there all year. I recently read about another p2p network, no idea if it's running yet, but if I understood it correctly it addressed the concept by splitting files up into small blocks, reversibly altering them such that they no longer directly held 'real' data (XORing it against a pseudorandom vector), then to download you'd grab an instruction set saying which blocks you need to XOR against each other to recover the original file. What that would mean is that it would be far more difficult to prove someone was downloading something illegitimate because the same data block you might use to recover the first three seconds of a Britney Spears song could also be used to recover someone's holiday photos. Can't remember what it was called now, though.
Although it doesn't really bother me, I generally discover most new music by Last.FM now which is all completely above board.
Artists get paid way too much as it is. In a perfect world, all music would be free.
spoonbeast wrote:
> everyones at fault here to be honest. But i have no love for the
> companies either.
Exactly how I would put it. Yes, it's all very well getting on your high horse, but if you're doing things illegally then that's what you're doing. (I know, pot and kettle, but there you go).
And the record companies are just running to the courts as soon as their profits dip rather than coming up with new ways to sell their goods. Legitimate online sales seem to be doing well...
> everyones at fault here to be honest. But i have no love for the
> companies either.
Exactly how I would put it. Yes, it's all very well getting on your high horse, but if you're doing things illegally then that's what you're doing. (I know, pot and kettle, but there you go).
And the record companies are just running to the courts as soon as their profits dip rather than coming up with new ways to sell their goods. Legitimate online sales seem to be doing well...
There's always going to be legal ways out:
"I promise I won't use Limewire for copyright infringement"
"I promise I won't use Limewire for copyright infringement"
The "download it and then buy it if you like it" applies to about 1 in 10 people, if that -- I know plenty of people who have literally never bought a CD in their lives. There are plenty of places to listen to clips of tracks online and most shops like Virgin, HMV etc. have listening booths or similar where you can ask to listen to a CD before you buy.
If you download music and/or films from anything other than official sources then you are breaking the law, end of. Like it or not it's not up to the customer to decide what's right and what's wrong -- the law's the law and everyone's bound to it. If you can't afford to buy all the music and films you'd like then tough. There are loads of gadgets I'd like but can't afford. The fact that downloads have no physical form doesn't stop it from being theft.
Personally I feel that if people are to be fined for illegal downloading then it should be representative of the amount they've stolen.
If you download music and/or films from anything other than official sources then you are breaking the law, end of. Like it or not it's not up to the customer to decide what's right and what's wrong -- the law's the law and everyone's bound to it. If you can't afford to buy all the music and films you'd like then tough. There are loads of gadgets I'd like but can't afford. The fact that downloads have no physical form doesn't stop it from being theft.
Personally I feel that if people are to be fined for illegal downloading then it should be representative of the amount they've stolen.
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