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New anti-filesharing organisation to take on the net
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7110024.stm
whilst it seems perfectly fine on the surface, read further and something concerning pops out at me. It is representing the interests solely of the music and film industries. These small groups have managed to get the government to sign up to regulation that will affect the whole of France, as people's access to information has another boundary on it (perhaps not unreasonable, but that's not my point anyway).
I mean, if Microsoft lobbied the government enough, we could have new monitoring of PC usage and some sort of body to monitor people's use of computers, and if you have cracked software.
I just find it quite invasive, and quite backwards that an industry can go to the government, and have it build a new organisation to monitor the whole populous for people who go against your industry.
whilst it seems perfectly fine on the surface, read further and something concerning pops out at me. It is representing the interests solely of the music and film industries. These small groups have managed to get the government to sign up to regulation that will affect the whole of France, as people's access to information has another boundary on it (perhaps not unreasonable, but that's not my point anyway).
I mean, if Microsoft lobbied the government enough, we could have new monitoring of PC usage and some sort of body to monitor people's use of computers, and if you have cracked software.
I just find it quite invasive, and quite backwards that an industry can go to the government, and have it build a new organisation to monitor the whole populous for people who go against your industry.
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Being uncivilised is what the internet was made for!
Although it does seem slightly intrusive, it isn't actually telling us anything new. File-sharing (ie, uploading, not downloading) is still the thing you should be careful of doing.
Yea I agree, but notice in the wording of the BBC, this was designed to curb 'casual filesharing' whereas all other initiatives only target the hardcore uploaders who have terabytes of data to share.
Looking at music, for example, the power of the big four (Universal, SonyBMG, EMI and Warner) is widely exaggerated. These four are indeed pretty powerful, and their dominance of the pop music charts is extremely worrying. However, what about all those independent labels out there? Piracy genuinely does cost them a lot of money. Music is hardly expensive either - at 79p a track, I'd say you're getting quite a bargain. And with legal downloads, you get to choose what you want - hence you don't have to buy compilations with tons of filler records. Looking at film, the scene is slightly different, but the point remains the same. Millions are spent making the films that you see on cinemas and on DVDs. Why should the people who spent all that money making them be deprived of an income from pirates on dodgy Russian websites?
As for the point about people's privacy, we've seen all too clearly in the past week what can go wrong - hence the details of 25million people being lost. They must only keep information about individuals where absolutely necessary, and for no longer than they have to. The same principle should apply here.
They're certainly not above exaggerating the problem though, are they? I love the way that when they tell us how much money they've "lost" due to piracy, they make the assumption that everyone who downloaded illegally would've bought the single full price if they could've. In fact I suspect that often they have more to gain from piracy than lose. It gets the tracks to an audience. Certainly the individual artists have more to gain than lose, because it increases their fanbase and potential concert audiences (where they earn all their money). Like Sony during the piracy problems of the original Playstation. Condemn it in public, but privately realise that it was one of the main reasons for the success of the format.
Incidentally, I've downloaded plenty of things I already own to save time, or because I don't have the CD with me at work and want to listen to it, for example. I've downloaded plenty of things, and then bought the album on CD if I enjoyed it.
No, I'm just saying that it's amazing that everyone steps to it the second a big corporation has money to lose.
Yeah, I think that's the main issue. For as long as we've had them, the record companies (and film companies) have never embraced a new technology, they've merely come out fighting and threatening anyone who uses it. Ultimately, it's up to the record companies to work out how to make money in spite of the new technology, not try and restrict it, because however hard they try it'll never happen.
Well, I agree that media companies need to be more inventive in this digital age. However, I don't think that somehow excuses people from downloading media which is copyrighted.
I think that if we're going to talk about it though, we need to accept the fact that the vast majority of people don't consider copying material to be immoral. You gain something, and nobody loses anything, so it doesn't have the intrinsic immorality that comes with stealing (where the vast majority of people would feel guilty, and wouldn't generally do it even if they had the opportunity). It's like drugs laws. If people don't consider it immoral, then you're never going to change that, you're just going to have to find a way to manage it, and work your business around the fact that this is the way people feel.
Not really. They lose nothing physical. In fact considering that there is no evidence that those who download illegally would pay for it anyway (along with the considerable evidence that those who download most also buy the most legally) claiming that they lose anything at all is highly dubious.
But they don't have the sort of money the music industry has. To be honest I don't listen to music in any preference - I'll turn the radio on if I'm desperate to listen to something, but 9/10 I just listen to music in games
Not that it changes the argument. I think it's worry a private money making machine can coerce a government whose first responsibility is to the people, into spending money and authorising the monitoring of those people in case they infringe the industries regulations.
You're losing a bit of privacy for the benefit of private companies, and you didn't have a say, and neither did anyone on your behalf. They got enough lawyers to get the government to agree.
Half the stuff I've downloaded, I wouldn't consider paying for in the first place, but like someone said if I downloaded something and liked it, then in my case, out of guilt I'd go and buy it, if you see what I mean!!
ETA: Ah I just noticed it's in France.. :chin: Thought it affected UK too..
Also as for it ahrming the music industry, there's been several studies which show that people who download music spend more on cds than people who don't, e.g.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/27/p2p_users_legal_downloads/
An organisation that has been sactioned as a self proclaimed internet watchdog? Whilst they will be watching the french, no doubt they'll monitor where the french are going to as well. So if there's a popular UK music downloading site a lot of French people are using, expect lots of printouts and faxes to occur.
I think you seem to be missing the point; you can't download music illegally, since the law breaking is done on the part of the uploader.
Besides, who gives a shit? Music is ridiculously overpriced anyway.
Uh, yeah. Most of the music I download isn't sold in record shops, so if I wasn't downloading, I wouldn't be buying either... I simply couldn't afford the sheer number of mp3's I own anyway. It isn't a "If I wasn't able to download this, I'd buy it instead" situation.
I'm into house music mainly, so the personal situation is slightly different. A couple of years ago, I couldn't afford to own records. Getting tracks on vinyl would have cost me around £6 a time, not to mention the cost of a good pair of decks. Now, I can just download them - it costs me far less, I get to choose what I want to download, and the only thing I need is a laptop and decent speakers. And I can download tracks from labels around the world. A few years ago, I'd have had to order these records on import, which would have cost a fortune. Downloads have been brilliant for me, and I have no problem paying for some brilliant music.
I think you could argue quite convincingly that the cost of singles has fallen in response to people being able to download music illegally. I remember before file-sharing properly took off that the cost of a single was creeping up and up, to about £4 as you stated. The record companies could charge what they wanted for singles pre peer-to-peer and were taking full advantage of the fact. It was some seriously satisfying karma to see the record companies getting fucked as hard as they'd fucked us. However, IWS makes a interesting point: in the long-term it's probably helped the music industry's marketing anyway.
But I can't defend the idea of record companies selling products at different prices in different countries. It makes no sense to me. Sometimes, I'm barred from downloading records from certain countries, as they've since been signed to UK labels. I can't defend that. It's a nuisance.
I've got some live recordings of Tim Buckley and Simon and Garfunkel from the 60's, and other than the people cheering at the end you can't tell it apart from most recordings today (I'm sure a sound engineer could, but you get the point). The point is that recording music needn't be any more work than doing a gig and employing one extra person to record. But that's art for you. It doesn't pay much money until you start threatening people with legal action. Hell, imagine the outrage if you had to pay every time you took a photo in an art gallery (which you shouldn't do btw, because apparently flash photography ruins the painting).
Maybe it's 'sheer nonsense' for the casual listener, but I have roughly 44,000 mp3's (none of which I upload, sorry RIAA :< ). If I were to have bought all these at £1.49, it would cost me £65,560. Sure, I took the max price, but you get the idea. As an average entry level graduate, I'd have to work what, roughly three years for that? Providing I don't eat, pay rent, pay bills, go out, buy clothes... Shit, and what if I had a harddrive failure? Virus? All that money, literally wasted?
Just because your personal experience justifies your argument, does not mean it's the same for everyone else.
EDIT: Oh, and a sizable amount of those mp3 files are 60 - 120 min long sets, which cost well over a tenner in the shops (from around £14 - £19... I've never understood why dance CD's are so expensive, or why they seem to go up in price the longer they're out. Go into HMV/Virgin and have a look at the big label dance compilations from even around six months ago... they're all around £17.99/£18.99). As well as this, I have a shitload of music that doesn't exactly have a big target audience, ergo isn't released digitally by the artist/label. I'm big into Swedish glam/sleaze, but I'm fucked if I'm going to pay £14 a pop then waiting 2+ weeks for it to actually get here from Sweden without even knowing if the CD is any good.
Personally, I think most dance CDs from the big labels are rubbish. The most recent exception was a Renaissance album, out via SonyBMG, but you are right in some ways. Music can be very pricey. I don't condone piracy at all, although I can understand the motivation behind it.
couldn't agree more, there's a really good (but long) article about how the technology and laws are changing to control online content and access, we take it for granted now but two-tiered internet is gonna change the whole experience and it's not that far away....but trying to stop file sharing is like trying to stop people taking drugs, where there's a will there's a way.