Blackout threat for music thieves (2 Viewers)

[YankeeChica]

Blackout threat for music thieves

By Peter Holmes
April 15, 2007 01:00am
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• Tough guidelines to stop illegal music downloads
• ISPs in plan to cut services to thieves
• 18 per cent of Australians download 30 illegal songs a month

PEOPLE who illegally download music would have their telephone and internet services cut off under a radical new plan proposed by the music industry.

Fed up with falling sales, the industry - which claims Australians download more than one billion songs illegally each year - has been discussing tough new guidelines with internet service providers (ISPs) since late last year.
Record labels, music publishers and other copyright holders are involved.
The value of CDs sold in Australia between January and March this year fell by more than 20 per cent - from $100 million to $80 million - compared with the first three months of 2006.
This is despite big-selling albums from Australian Idol winner Damien Leith, Justin Timberlake, The Killers and Snow Patrol.
The remarkable plunge mirrors the US experience.
Last week, however, recording industry body ARIA put out a press release attempting to put a positive spin on the state of the industry.

Overall, CD sales revenue in 2006 fell by more than five per cent, yet ARIA focused on the growth in legitimate digital downloads, and the strong showing last year by home-grown acts.
The industry is now targeting those who repeatedly download music without paying.
Sabiene Heindl, general manager of the music industry's piracy unit MIPI, said record labels could trace people who illegally downloaded music via so-called peer-to-peer websites such as LimeWire.

They could also identify which songs were being illegally swapped.
"We can tell the ISPs the time and date people were engaging in this conduct, and what song was being downloaded," she said.
"We had a meeting a few weeks ago with the Internet Industry Association (about the new guidelines) but we're yet to hear back.

"We've put forward our proposal and we're hopeful they will come back with something positive."
The music industry is lobbying for a "three strikes and you're out" policy to enforce their copyright.

"Under this system, people who illegally download songs would be given three written warnings by their Internet service provider.
If they continued to illegally download songs, their internet account would be suspended or terminated.

Those with dial-up internet could face having their phone disconnected.
Ms Heindl said research showed 18 per cent of Australians engaged regularly in file-sharing, downloading an average 30 songs a month illegally.

:mad1:

 

[Legham]

I'm glad it only mentions peer to peer networking! It'll suck if they start acting on this, but maybe more people will just start using file hosting services like rapidshare, like i do..

 

[Bacilli]

Isn't there some sort of privacy law in place which prevents ISP's from monitoring our downloads?

 

[Legham]

Isn't there some sort of privacy law in place which prevents ISP's from monitoring our downloads?

It's the record labels tracing the downloads, and just reporting it to the ISP's i think.. Though whether or not that makes a difference, i have no idea.

 

[BritneySpears]

Record Companies can force ISP to disclose the subscriber details if they have substantial evidence that the person download illegal files, of course with court permission.

 

[The_highwayman]

Where i get my music from:

bittorrents, virtually untraceable if you do it right
rapidshit. Good way to distribute, plus music watchdogs wont bother with it
youtube ripping. Rip a video off youtube, take the music off the video and there you go.
take40 recording. Go to the take40 website, play the music there and record it.

Its a total crock of shit anyway, music artists get less than 5cents per every dollar of record sales. If they put their music for download, say 1$ a song they could multiply their profits by 10 and cut out the record industry. Only people missing out are the mega filthy rich record labels. Fuck them, we dont need them. new world order.

Instead of criminalising new technology, why dont they embrace it? its a far smarter business model than the current cd releases. Why would i ever buy a cd when i can download it in 20mins? Shit i might even buy cds via download if i could, because i can download them in less time than it takes to go to the store to buy one.

but without the record labels, many of the more popular artists would be virtually unknown, so they wouldnt make much more money anyway.

 

[wafflesnsorbet]

The real problem has nothing to do with the accessibility of music via illegal methods and everything to do with the fact we, the public, have no desire to support the artist thus the company who is getting ripped off.

Really, the fault lies in the music industry. If the artists of today weren't so homogenous, 'music thieves' wouldn't be so prevalent. Attacking p2p networks won't stop the problem. It will only stall it, temporarily.

Let's take a case study. A classic example would be Paris Hilton.

Really, her music wasn't that bad. True, she doesn't have any talent, but the production easily covered up for her. Her songs were actually quite *decent* in modern day standards, if you compare it to the rest of the industry.

However, her album busted on the charts. Yet strangely enough, it seems like every second person has (secretly or not) at least one song of hers stashed somewhere on their mp3.

It has nothing to do with p2p, and everything to do with bad PR. She just isn't likeable as a person. 'Nuff said.

In other words, the music indstury should stop flaking out about illegal music downloading, and either start culling some of their artists (Do you really need 238346078 versions of Hilary Duff or Panic! on the market? You just need to get one, and market them properly, and you'll probably get triple the revenue you would get from 10) or really start brushing up on their PR.

It's called quality, not quantity.

 

[Serius]

Where i get my music from:

bittorrents, virtually untraceable if you do it right
rapidshit. Good way to distribute, plus music watchdogs wont bother with it
youtube ripping. Rip a video off youtube, take the music off the video and there you go.
take40 recording. Go to the take40 website, play the music there and record it.

Its a total crock of shit anyway, music artists get less than 5cents per every dollar of record sales. If they put their music for download, say 1$ a song they could multiply their profits by 10 and cut out the record industry. Only people missing out are the mega filthy rich record labels. Fuck them, we dont need them. new world order.

Instead of criminalising new technology, why dont they embrace it? its a far smarter business model than the current cd releases. Why would i ever buy a cd when i can download it in 20mins? Shit i might even buy cds via download if i could, because i can download them in less time than it takes to go to the store to buy one.

 

[Serius]

but without the record labels, many of the more popular artists would be virtually unknown, so they wouldnt make much more money anyway.

Maybe some the current "known" artists would be unknown, but that doesnt mean that all the good artists wont get heard. Artists get popular from the radio, the radio people are obligated to play good music that people will like. Those people then might go to the artists website, or one big website and download the song for like a dollar. I tend to think that if you have talent, you will rise to the top and get heard, likewise we wouldnt be having shit music like paris hilton forced upon us every time we tune the radio in.

Maybe being willing to support this artist is part of it, i know with games that i used to copy, if i liked it alot i might go and buy a legitimate copy, or when they release i sequel i will just straight buy it. You can tell this is how i work from my collection of games, virtually every one of them is a sequel, only a handful are games i havent played before that came highly rated in PCpowerplay. Its a little different with music because i feel less like i am supporting the artist who created the music and more like i am supporting the allready filthy rich record label. Games dont really have record labels[unless we are talking about EA games, they are so big they are the same as a record label] and some game developers are absolutely tiny yet they produce gold.

 

[iamsickofyear12]

So here's the thing. These idiots at ARIA are acting on the assumption that if downloading is eliminated everyone will go out and buy the music that they were going to download and they will make more money. This is not the case.

If I couldn't download I may buy a couple CD's a year at most but more likely I wouldn't buy CD's at all. I'd rather listen to the radio or download freely available music from unsigned bands than waste my money on an album when I only like 2 songs from it.

If I do this then I won't be hearing nearly as much music, I won't tell my friends about it, they won't tell their friends about it and you'll end up with lower merchandise sales, fewer concert ticket sales and probably fewer CD sales as well.

The extra promotion from downloading in my opinion outweighs most of the problems it causes and there is still a market for CD sales. It is not as simple as saying "illegal downloading costs us x amount of dollars, so if we eliminate illegal downloading we will make x amount more money."

The music industry needs to focus on providing some kind of value with their CD's that people can't get download from the internet, merchandise and live concerts. You can't download a T shirt or concert atmosphere. Having a cry and putting all their energy into stopping downloading is a waste of time and money.

As for this disconnecting people thing. How is this any different from what is already happening?

I know my ISP already does it. If a copyright owner informs my ISP that I am downloading copyright material they will give me a warning and then if I keep doing it and they get another letter from the copyright owner I'll be disconnected.

So all this is doing is giving me more warnings than I get at the moment.

 

[all.time.fiend]

As for this disconnecting people thing. How is this any different from what is already happening?

I know my ISP already does it. If a copyright owner informs my ISP that I am downloading copyright material they will give me a warning and then if I keep doing it and they get another letter from the copyright owner I'll be disconnected.

So all this is doing is giving me more warnings than I get at the moment.

who is your ISP?

 

[Legham]

Really, her music wasn't that bad.

Yes, it was :/

If downloading didn't exist, the music industry would be fucked. About 3 of the bands i listen to can be found in music stores, so that means the other 30 something upcoming awesome bands wouldn't even have a chance of being heard of pretty much..

 

[iamsickofyear12]

Exetel.... and it seems that I was wrong, I don't even get a warning.

If they receive a copyright infringement notice they forward it to me and immediately suspend my IP [Although I am not sure exactly how I am meant to read that email if I am disconnected]. The only way to un-suspend myself is to email the accuser (once again, I don't know how I am meant to do this with no connection) and argue whatever I like in terms of denying this copyright infringement.

 

[Gilbert1]

Just about every last album I have bought has been because I downloaded the bands stuff first. Got addicted to it then bought the CD

 

[S1M0]

Let 'em try.

 

[AntiHyper]

http://www.savenetradio.org/

So apparently the US government will be shutting down internet radios, or webcasters would need to pay royalties to broadcast (hence listeners would have to pay too).

Although as usual, there would usually be web servers not located in the US who would continue to provide such services.

I'm surprised at the heightened level of strictness the record companies are trying to impose.

 

[Serius]

Wow thats pretty shit. Governments seem to be really opposed to freedom of information on the net hey? Do radio stations have to pay crazy high royaltys? hopefully we wont have to put up with this bullshit much longer, in then next 10-20 years computer literate people of our generation [and some from my dads] who think like us on the issue will be in power, then hopefully record labels will start to die[fucking cunts]

 

[_dhj_]

I think the faceless music labels should reconsider their options instead of lobbying for more ridiculous laws and making laughable threats. The fact is that the internet has changed the way people consume media. It's changed the way they spend money. Instead of whinging, the labels should adapt to the new ways and harness the marketing potential of the internet and profit through other means. If there is no moral barrier for breaking a law - and in this case there the conscience of lawbreakers is clear - there's no way to enforce it.

 

[HotShot]

The article that YankeeChica posted is misleading - it says that CD sales has fallen - buts thats all it says. IT doesnt say the fact the music sales over the internet have increased dramatically and that more people buy over the internet nowadays.

Why would I want to buy a CD? when I can listen to music for free on TV and radio? IT just doesnt make any sense.

If the record labels are really losing that much anyway (which I doubt - because people who download songs, if they couldnt I seriously doubt they would buy the CDS legitamely anyway - and even if they did it would only be a small % that would).

SO the fact that say they lose $100 billion bucks (they dont mention how much their profit is) IS purely based on the number of illegal download - but this is a false calcualtion - misleading statistics.

Think carefully - how many of those downloaders would buy CDs to the same value that they have downloaded? 1% maybe.. so then they are only losing 1% of 100billion bucks (or whatever they claim).

ITs all leaching money..

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Whichever ISP decides to NOT take their crap will win more customers than I think the record companies can possibly buy out.

Do radio stations have to pay crazy high royaltys?

Our laws (on paper) are actually pretty tough... Yes, radio stations have to pay crazy high royalties, but on top of that restaurants can't even play the radio through their speakers to their customers without having to pay lol