As far as I am aware, this is at least the third instalment of a thread like this, but all the previous ones are archived.

However, with the upcoming court case against Pirate Bay I think we should have a common place for discussion. It might seem small on the surface. Let’s face it, the fall or rise of one tracker will change nothing, if one goes down, two new one will appear. Eventually the music and film industry will have to rethink there ways. But this could very well be a very important decision for things to come. This could be the beginning of the end, or the beginning of a giant witch-hunt.

My vote goes to giant witch-hunt... You know how dangerous giant witches are

Seriously though. Film and music are both billion dollar industries and they are still going very strong, there simply is no way any court is going to judge against them.

There is something strange about the European green parties.
I really like a lot they stand for, and they do have a number of the best politicians I know working for them. However, I wouldn’t vote them. And the reason why is purely for the people they attract. Not so much their voters, much more the majority of people working for them. The radical environmentalists, who set eco-values without thinking about social-consequences. The social rebels who use environmental (pseudo) arguments to fight there age old class-war. The wanna-be hippies that missed Woodstock and believe they would get more shagging if drugs where legal. In other words, the nut cases that lost touch with reality. – I just don’t want a political institution that has a fair share of all of the above to run a country.
Which sometimes is a pity, because they often have really good things going for them.

At the moment the European green parties started the I Wouldn't Steal A TV champagne.

quote:

Originally posted by Wanderer:
Seriously though. Film and music are both billion dollar industries and they are still going very strong, there simply is no way any court is going to judge against them.

Yes and No.
In Sweden, more then anywhere else, the public is strong against the record companies, they are not silent, and they are voters. The government has to think about them as well.

The judge is now bang in the middle. The money on his right side the voters on his left.
In the past, a court ruled over Sony and on behave of the consumer when audio tapes came along. But as many people have stressed out, that was at a consumer friendly time, and times have changed not in thier favour.

I agree with the Pirate Bay, this will most likely last for years, as it's ruling will be appealed by whoever loses.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Newro,

I don't understand how they've ignored the cassette ruling as a precedent.

Newro, was there a link in your link that tells me about the case? I just saw a link to Denmark?

Here's my basic philosophy on issues pertaining to control technology:

Technology is a force that controls us.

Resistance, indeed, is futile.

People fight these things, industry fights these things, but I don't think individual free will has an over all effect on the gestalt. Which may seem counter intuitive, but I don't think it is.

I don't think we possess the kind of free will we think we do. But that's a heady matter for another thread.

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
I don't understand how they've ignored the cassette ruling as a precedent.

There are two big differences between distribution over the internet and distribution with cassettes. And those two differences set these cases worlds apart.

The first is the lack of loss in quality. Cassettes always got worse over time, a copy of an original sounded ok still, but a copy of a copy already started sounding bad. If i remember correctly that was one of the mayor strong points in the case.

The second is that the internet is a one to many distribution, while cassettes are a one to one distribution. One empty cassette could only give you one copy. One digital file on a website can be copied an infinite amount of times.

That totally depends on the equipment used to produce the tape, and is a biased opinion formed years after the precedent was set.

quote:

Bay cites a recent precedent involving direct music downloads: "The case is based on a similar case in 2007 where Danish ISPs were forced to block access to the illegal Russian website AllofMP3. "We expect other ISPs to follow [by] blocking off The Pirate Bay. It may take another court case, but the law is quite clear on this."

Although not everyone agrees on the applicability of the law involved, Bay is prepared to look to the future: "The list of similar services is of course long, and it is certainly an up-hill process. But we intend to carry on, although it should be stressed that we would much rather see the ISPs enter into a creative dialogue with the right holders in order to solve these problems on a voluntary basis rather than having to go through the courts."

source

quote:

Bay cites a recent precedent involving direct music downloads: "The case is based on a similar case in 2007 where Danish ISPs were forced to block access to the illegal Russian website AllofMP3.

That's like trying to block spammers by banning IP ranges...

quote:

Originally posted by Wanderer:
There are two big differences between distribution over the internet and distribution with cassettes. And those two differences set these cases worlds apart.

I agree with both arguments.
However, there is one big similarity that should not be overlooked.
The original ruling was, regardless of quality and distribution, based on revenue. Now, I am not an expert in European law what so ever, and some might slightly vary from country to country, the only real exception I am aware about is Switzerland, but generally spoken this is more or less how most are currently executing it.

You are allowed to copy legally obtained material and give it away as long as you do not charge for it. This means, I can record something from the radio, or copy it from a CD and burn it on a new one and give it two you. (A classic mix tape.) Now as long as I give it to you for free, that is perfectly legal. The moment I ask for 10 cents for the blank CD, even though I still wouldn’t have made money with it, it would be illegal.

Medium or distribution was never mentioned in the original ruling. However, another aspect is the distribution. Most countries say that if you ‘broadcast’ something to the public you have to pay a fee/concession tax for doing so. What does that mean? If you make a party and play music, you know the people you invite, more or less, and you can listen to music or watch a movie together. However if you make a home made radio station or run a nightclub and play music, you make this music available to the wide public, as you can not control who will listen to it or not. So you have to pay.

Now this is interesting in a number of ways. First of all, if you share something over the internet, you can not control who will download it, and therefore you would have to pay a fee.

By law, you are acting illegal.
But, there is no ‘legal’ institution. You can not say, lads look here, I want to share data what sheet do I have to fill out and how much does it cost me?

Second, when the cassette ruling was made, the pore artists complained and an extra fee was put on all blank tapes. Did you know that the same is now on empty CD’s? As this varies from country to country it explains the different prices and why Amazon for example does not ship empty CD’s from Germany to Austria. (They complain that the taxing in Austria is too complicated.)
(Oddly enough, the money collected that way, is distributed unevenly and only around 10% of the artists are actually seeing some share of the cake. But never mind.)


Okay, here are my two cents:
The record and Movie companies should have worked from the beginning with Napster and co. Make a contract to get a fee from Napster (give us 99.9% of you advertising income – okay, 80%) – tread it like a radio station. Dead simple. On the big picture, it is no different then listening and recording something from the radio. And if the record it on CD and give it away and put it on their iPod’s? So what, they get fee for that as well.
But because they went against them. The networks got decentralized and communication protocols are now encrypted. It became impossible to control.

The only possibility they find themselves left with, and I bet they try to do that, is trying to get it from the ISP. Like you have to pay a fee for owning a TV, you ISP might end up being forced to put some fee on top of your monthly bill and redirect it to the GEMA, RIAA or whatever it is called where you are.
Now this is a bad solution, because it will be a local solution for a global phenomenon.

They fucked up, and I for one can't wait for them to die from the mistake. We don't need their pablum, their watch and fucking chain. We don't need their obsession with children wrecked from being enslaved to their machine like Britney, Justin, Christina...We certainly don't need their quantum-plagerism and violence glorifying rap.

Metal went underground for a reason. Fuck the record and film industry. Maybe, once their dead, someone will write a damn book. Maybe someone will read one....there's always hope.

quote:

Originally posted by Newromancer:

quote:

Originally posted by Wanderer:
Seriously though. Film and music are both billion dollar industries and they are still going very strong, there simply is no way any court is going to judge against them.

Yes and No.
In Sweden, more then anywhere else, the public is strong against the record companies, they are not silent, and they are voters. The government has to think about them as well.

The judge is now bang in the middle. The money on his right side the voters on his left.
In the past, a court ruled over Sony and on behave of the consumer when audio tapes came along. But as many people have stressed out, that was at a consumer friendly time, and times have changed not in thier favour.

I agree with the Pirate Bay, this will most likely last for years, as it's ruling will be appealed by whoever loses.

By the time that happens all of it will be moot.

The humans are not in control of the technology they produce.

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
They fucked up, and I for one can't wait for them to die from the mistake. We don't need their pablum, their watch and fucking chain. We don't need their obsession with children wrecked from being enslaved to their machine like Britney, Justin, Christina...We certainly don't need their quantum-plagerism and violence glorifying rap.

Metal went underground for a reason. Fuck the record and film industry. Maybe, once their dead, someone will write a damn book. Maybe someone will read one....there's always hope.

That's quite a good diatribe. What is quantum-plagiarism?

...I wrote a book.

its when a dj samples so many records not one of them is recognizable, making it an original peice.

(And congrats!)

Did you make that term up, that's a good term.

--thanks.

quote:

Metal went underground for a reason.

Nah, 's only cause the one time metal seriously came on the surface it became drugged up and retarded (the 80's hair metal era). How much of that you can blame on the industry is questionable.

Metal is a good example though of how small labels with commitment to or directly run by the artists can succeed at the exact same game that the record industry is failing. And they do it by treating the artists and the fans with equally high amounts of respect. It helps of course that even the biggest metal label bosses are all fans themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by Wanderer:
...drugged up and retarded (the 80's hair metal era)...

You get one warning.

I always thought the only reason you paid for recorded music in the first place was that when mass produced records became available in the 50's the equipment required for the recording and duplication of these was expensive. This has the natural effect of making it an item of value that should be paid for. Musicians existed long before this and manged to make a living without the income for recorded music. Now that the technology exists for the free and effortless duplication of music (I understand that the music production still requires a real studio for really good sounding material) available supply swamps demand. Without the natural technical limit on the duplication of material though any attempt to create artificial limits, i.e. copyright lawsuits, is am unnatural restraint on the market. This is the evolution of business, the niche of the market created by the limited ability to record and duplicate music has largely ended. That means that those who earn income from this area must either adapt or disappear.

When the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters, and some build windmills. - An old Chinese saying.