According to industry figures digital music sales are rising.. the result they say of increased legislation and the introduction of new services like Spotify that meet users needs .. And to be honest it is not a bad thing if commercial music services do appear that provide what consumers want. About time you might say.
That streaming can be the death of pirating is the subject of an article by Mercedes Bunz in the Guardian - pointing to the possibilities that streaming services can bring. But streaming comes at a price - and in any case is not the panacea it seems. Cory Doctorow has an excellent piece on why streaming might make the industry happy, but ultimately won't make copying go away. Basically, from a technical stand point, saving a streaming film or music track is a very small step.... (think radio and tape recorder)
The risk is that this sparks another technology war between the user community and the copyright lobby - with ultimately the only way to enforce copyright being through gross intrusions on your privacy.
More though - streaming is a bad solution when it comes to practical use of the Internet - particularly streaming when on the move. It places very high load as everyone wants to stream at the same time.. Stored tracks on your MP3 player are much more effective.
That last issue is one I've been thinking about for some time. Peer to peer trafiic - downloads - happen in the background. It doesn't matter if they take a bit longer - and you don't need the traffic to get there in real time. It can be low priority in the operator's network - and operators can and do throttle p2p traffic to keep their networks running.
Streaming traffic is live, and time sensitive, and needs to be high priority in the network to get an acceptable service. Not only that but downloading is a 'do once use many' activity, whereas streaming takes bandwidth every time you want to play something - even if you've heard it before. So total traffic will rise - and traffic mixes will shift to make handlling peak loads much more difficult. Streaming is bad news for telecom operators - it is likely lead to them needing to build out capacity to cope with streaming traffic - or disasterous impact on network quality.
Which means that, on top of the bill for monitoring user traffic and policing peer2peer use operators are likely to be stuck with significant costs for network upgrades as streaming music, and particularly video, becomes more popular. They (and we the subscribers) take the cost for the media industry's gain.
Is that how it's going to be in the Digital Economy?
(When I get the time I'll try and make a guesstimate of just how much that extra investment might be.... but it's not going to be small...)
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
300 000 strikes.... Record labels in court for piracy face $6Bn bill
Truth they say is stranger than fiction....
..so while record companies are complaining around the world about the costs of piracy, hiring lawyers to demand money from alleged offenders and lobbying anyone who will listen to draft new draconian legislation against file sharers, they are meanwhile quietly ripping off artists by publishing tracks without permission and forgetting to pay the royalties.
Michael Geist reports on a case in Canada where since the eighties record labels have been issuing compilation discs without getting prior permissions and never getting round to settling their dues. Three hundred thousand tracks later they are now in court facing a class action suit by artists... and bearing in mind this is not non-commercial file sharing we're talking about, but out and out commercial exploitation, the artists are seeking statutory damages of $20 000 per track... a cool six billion in total*.
The companies in the dock are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada - the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Now if I was a shareholder in a company that through ineptitude and bad practice exposed itself to the risk of damages on that scale I would expect heads to roll...
Resignations gentlemen? And don't forget to switch off your Internet as you leave.....
(via Rick Falkvinge)
* Don't forget that $6Bn is around 20 times the recording industries estimates of the annual losses to music piracy in the UK. (..if you believe them?)
Errata: corrected from $60Bn to $6Bn... sloppy maths - sorry!
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
..so while record companies are complaining around the world about the costs of piracy, hiring lawyers to demand money from alleged offenders and lobbying anyone who will listen to draft new draconian legislation against file sharers, they are meanwhile quietly ripping off artists by publishing tracks without permission and forgetting to pay the royalties.
Michael Geist reports on a case in Canada where since the eighties record labels have been issuing compilation discs without getting prior permissions and never getting round to settling their dues. Three hundred thousand tracks later they are now in court facing a class action suit by artists... and bearing in mind this is not non-commercial file sharing we're talking about, but out and out commercial exploitation, the artists are seeking statutory damages of $20 000 per track... a cool six billion in total*.
The companies in the dock are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada - the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Now if I was a shareholder in a company that through ineptitude and bad practice exposed itself to the risk of damages on that scale I would expect heads to roll...
Resignations gentlemen? And don't forget to switch off your Internet as you leave.....
(via Rick Falkvinge)
* Don't forget that $6Bn is around 20 times the recording industries estimates of the annual losses to music piracy in the UK. (..if you believe them?)
Errata: corrected from $60Bn to $6Bn... sloppy maths - sorry!
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Record label head resigns to oppose Digital Economy Bill
CMU reports in an article that Anthony Hall, head of record label Pure Mint, is resigning from both the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) because of their support for the Digital Economy Bill. Significantly Mr Hall, who is also a lawyer, has been both a member of the BPI's rights committee and IFPI's International Legal Committee.
His resignation letter is strongly critical of the bill and BPI and IFPI's support for it. His complaints are precisely those that have been raised loudly in other quarters... The bill, the article says "is in danger of disregarding some sacred legal principles (regarding process, presumption of innocence and burden of proof) and ... it won't solve the record industry's piracy problems anyway."
The proposal for new ministerial powers he describes as "wholly undemocratic and contrary to centuries of good practice regarding the forming of our copyright legislation."
Top marks to Mr Hall for showing that integrity and principle matters more than profits. But are government minister's really so blind that they can't see this for themselves???
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
His resignation letter is strongly critical of the bill and BPI and IFPI's support for it. His complaints are precisely those that have been raised loudly in other quarters... The bill, the article says "is in danger of disregarding some sacred legal principles (regarding process, presumption of innocence and burden of proof) and ... it won't solve the record industry's piracy problems anyway."
The proposal for new ministerial powers he describes as "wholly undemocratic and contrary to centuries of good practice regarding the forming of our copyright legislation."
Top marks to Mr Hall for showing that integrity and principle matters more than profits. But are government minister's really so blind that they can't see this for themselves???
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
Telia stick to their guns in IPRED case
Telia have decided to appeal a judgement that they should hand over details of who is behind one of their IP addresses to film companies investigating a torrent search site..
'Protection of customer's integrity is important' they say. It's a pity UK ISPs are not as dedicated to their customers interests (as they hand over thousands of IP addressees details...).
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
'Protection of customer's integrity is important' they say. It's a pity UK ISPs are not as dedicated to their customers interests (as they hand over thousands of IP addressees details...).
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
Think tank says think again on Digital Economy
The Adam Smith Institute is the latest to come out with criticism of the UK Goverments plans for the 'Digital Economy'. They have released an online briefing paper on Digital Britain - which is described in brief on their website under the title Leave 'Digital Britain' alone.
Aside from a key message that the digital economy is doing very well thank you without government interference it takes the government to task for not taking privacy issues seriously. It also makes this superbly simple suggestion.
"The report suggests that personal identity and all data associated with it should be defined in law as private property owned by the individual. Any use of that personal data without the owner’s consent would thereby become unlawful."
Yesterday would not be soon enough....
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.
Aside from a key message that the digital economy is doing very well thank you without government interference it takes the government to task for not taking privacy issues seriously. It also makes this superbly simple suggestion.
"The report suggests that personal identity and all data associated with it should be defined in law as private property owned by the individual. Any use of that personal data without the owner’s consent would thereby become unlawful."
Yesterday would not be soon enough....
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Sue, Grabbit and Run: copyright solicitors?
Just this week in the news is that a UK legal firm is preparing 15 000 letters for what I would best describe as judicial blackmail - pay up or we take you to court. Lawfirm ACS:Law requested and are now getting user details from ISPs on 30 000 IP addresses. Many of the alleged infringements apparently relate to pornography and it is thought many people will pay up rather than go to court and defend themselves. An example of this type of threatening letter is available on Wikileaks
To gather the 30 000 IP addresses they used German firm Digiprotect - a specialist in this area renowned from allegations that they seeded copyright material with rightholders permission to then 'catch' people downloading it. In fact only last week their relationship with a German law firm was under investigation for fraud for basing claims for this type of payment on legal costs that don't actually exist.
Previous rounds of this sharp practice has raised hundreds of cases of wrong accusations - but as information from other firms involved in the same business shows- chasing pirates is more profitable that selling music games and videos legally...
(Personally I intrinsically question any process where the costs to recover money for rights holders exceeds the money recovered by a factor of four.... that's a business for making money from litigation, not from creativity)
If you have received this type of threatening letter you could start by reading the advice here from Gareth Halfacree (via Amused Cynicism). If you need help pleading your innocence you may be interested in Torrentfreak's article on a UK law firm that is giving free support for this type of case (dated last year). This thread at Consumer Action group is on the same topic.
Update: also checkout Beingthreatened
More reading:
Extortion Is Profitable Too, Doesn't Mean That It's A Fair Way To Profit Off Piracy
If you think the RIAA sucks check these guys out
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
To gather the 30 000 IP addresses they used German firm Digiprotect - a specialist in this area renowned from allegations that they seeded copyright material with rightholders permission to then 'catch' people downloading it. In fact only last week their relationship with a German law firm was under investigation for fraud for basing claims for this type of payment on legal costs that don't actually exist.
Previous rounds of this sharp practice has raised hundreds of cases of wrong accusations - but as information from other firms involved in the same business shows- chasing pirates is more profitable that selling music games and videos legally...
(Personally I intrinsically question any process where the costs to recover money for rights holders exceeds the money recovered by a factor of four.... that's a business for making money from litigation, not from creativity)
If you have received this type of threatening letter you could start by reading the advice here from Gareth Halfacree (via Amused Cynicism). If you need help pleading your innocence you may be interested in Torrentfreak's article on a UK law firm that is giving free support for this type of case (dated last year). This thread at Consumer Action group is on the same topic.
Update: also checkout Beingthreatened
More reading:
Extortion Is Profitable Too, Doesn't Mean That It's A Fair Way To Profit Off Piracy
If you think the RIAA sucks check these guys out
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
Standards of justice - rights, wrongs and copyright infringement
Non-commercial copying of copyrighted maerial is a long established practice - covering everything from sharing recipes, photo copying course notes and taping material from the TV or radio. What has changed in recent years is not that it happens - rather, that technology has made it easier to do -while at the same time technology makes it practical in many instances to see that it is happening.
What is legal - and how infringement is addressed - differ in different countries. In Britain (as I understand it) it's still an infringement of copyright to copy your LPs onto tape - or your CDs onto your media server. As for making a compilation from your records collection to give to your girlfriend.... Hots coals and the lash await...
Enforcement is the proof of the pudding - putting individuals in the firing line for having shared copyrighted material.
This week has seen two interesting court cases in Sweden. First a court in Södertorn decided that Telia Sonera were obliged to hand over details of who runs the Torrent search engine SweTorrents to Antipiratbyrån - a lobby and enforcement organisation for the media industry. The judgement included in it's rationale both that SweTorrents had a large number of copyright works uploaded onto the site - and that the site has been used to download material.
Now it's hard for me to comment on whether providing a search engine counts as abetting copyright infringement under the letter of the current law.... but those aren't legal judgements - they are matters of fact. It's a search engine.. there are no files on the site to download - and nor can you upload to the site... so if that's the basis of the judgement it's a pretty dodgy one. No surprise then that Rick Falkvinge pulls it apart in an article that argues that information politics and it's importance for economic development are too important to leave media industry lobbyists to set the agenda.
Another judgement came this week - this one from the Swedish High Court - saying that broadband operator Portlane is not required to shut off access for a tracker site, Opentorrent. Here they stated
"För att medverka till upphovsrättsintrång krävs mer av en mellanhand "än tillhandahållande av en internetaccess".
namely:
" in order to contribute to copyright infringement an intermediary needs to do more than provide an internet access".
This judgement is interesting to contrast with the the current proposals in the UK's proposed Digital Economy Bill which will put specific responsibilities onto operators for policing copyright. And notwithstanding the lack of technical knowledge shown in the first case - both cases show considerably more interest in the individuals rights and a just process than we see in the UKs current legal and political arena .
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
What is legal - and how infringement is addressed - differ in different countries. In Britain (as I understand it) it's still an infringement of copyright to copy your LPs onto tape - or your CDs onto your media server. As for making a compilation from your records collection to give to your girlfriend.... Hots coals and the lash await...
Enforcement is the proof of the pudding - putting individuals in the firing line for having shared copyrighted material.
This week has seen two interesting court cases in Sweden. First a court in Södertorn decided that Telia Sonera were obliged to hand over details of who runs the Torrent search engine SweTorrents to Antipiratbyrån - a lobby and enforcement organisation for the media industry. The judgement included in it's rationale both that SweTorrents had a large number of copyright works uploaded onto the site - and that the site has been used to download material.
Now it's hard for me to comment on whether providing a search engine counts as abetting copyright infringement under the letter of the current law.... but those aren't legal judgements - they are matters of fact. It's a search engine.. there are no files on the site to download - and nor can you upload to the site... so if that's the basis of the judgement it's a pretty dodgy one. No surprise then that Rick Falkvinge pulls it apart in an article that argues that information politics and it's importance for economic development are too important to leave media industry lobbyists to set the agenda.
Another judgement came this week - this one from the Swedish High Court - saying that broadband operator Portlane is not required to shut off access for a tracker site, Opentorrent. Here they stated
"För att medverka till upphovsrättsintrång krävs mer av en mellanhand "än tillhandahållande av en internetaccess".
namely:
" in order to contribute to copyright infringement an intermediary needs to do more than provide an internet access".
This judgement is interesting to contrast with the the current proposals in the UK's proposed Digital Economy Bill which will put specific responsibilities onto operators for policing copyright. And notwithstanding the lack of technical knowledge shown in the first case - both cases show considerably more interest in the individuals rights and a just process than we see in the UKs current legal and political arena .
Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.
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