LONG LIVE BIT-TORRENT

I think sam knows all about that already.
first hand.

The Problem With Music
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Pot, may I introduce you to kettle.

The vast majority of peer-to-peer file sharing is illegal, eh?

So every time I download the latest Debian, KNOPPIX, Ubuntu, CRUX, or Fedora CD set, that’s not legal? Because last time I checked, there’s a LOT of large file downloads out there that are 100% legitimate, fall under the peer-to-peer distribution method, and getting ignored by people who choose to follow the media associations in a partially blind manner.

btw,
The TOPIC of this article … Ripping CD’s …
The ripping of CD’s that you own, for your own personal use is a
LEGAL protected activity.
A heretofore perfectly legal social activity that the RIAA is trying to use
purchased lawmakers to end, and is catching widespread public resistance.
As it should be.

Really, how so ?
There are no other possible factors ?
The fact that there a fewer new releases ( artificial shortage ) wouldn’t have anything to
do with it ?
The boycott ?

To assume that the only factor is ‘ product taken but unpaid ‘ IS a fallacy.
There are many factors, none of which have anything to do with sharing of
copyrighted material, that are costing them.
Time and time again, the viral marketing of P2P has proven a boon to sales.
Ask the ‘Umbrella’ Girl
She was signed to a label before she ever appeared on YouTube.
The labels used the marketing engine of the web and P2P to spread her around ;P
Brilliant marketing.

Once again, P2P has zero effect, proven in 3 studies.
Losses due to P2P are a fiction.

” Music is huge but no industry is going to let a new form of digital shoplifting cut into their business in the billions of dollars each year without “whatever it takes” to stop it. ”

Of course.
The sky was falling for them with the advent of the VCR.
They failed to stop it, and a new market ( which they made millions off of ) was created.
They failed to sue the Diamond Rio out of existence ( one of the first portable MP3 players),
and a new market was created.
This same pattern has been repeated with every new technology.
They fight tooth and nail.
In the long run .. they fail.
Eventually they adapt.

As before, in the long run .. they will fail.
Whether or not they adapt is their choice.

” For the record, I’m the first to acknowledge that an illegally downloaded file is not inherently a lost sale, but when somebody wants and takes your product and doesn’t pay for it, there is a certain justice in seeing it that way. ”

Not is the assertion is false.
There is no justice prosecuting on the basis of a falsehood.
Once again, there is nore evidence that those who download and enjoy DO
in fact make a purchase, if they like it.
Of course, when you alienate your largest cutomer base ( young people ),
you MIGHT be shooting yourself in the foot.

” Say what you wish, fellas, but the numbers are clear. ”

Yes, they are.
Three studies showed that P2P has no effect on sales.
There is also a large indication that sales are increased

” Up until Napster we all went to the Tower or the Virgin or the HMV and we purchased CD’s. ”

Aaaaand , when napster was at it’s most popular, More CD’s were purchased than ever before.
People discovered artists they had never heard before, got to hear them , and bought.
Nice.
Others rediscovered artists they had forgotten, resparked interest, and they bought.
Nice.

Compare the most downloaded to the best sellers, nearly in sync .. always.
the evidence IS there.
The labels just want it ignored.
As I said before, this has never been about losing money ( they don’t )
It’s about losing control.
It’s about a market where anyone with a decent home studio can participate
and COMPETE .. all without the middle man.

All else is just bullshit.

‘” If you have a problem seeing a link between illegal downloading and billions of dollars off the market pace since Napster, you are in a very dwindling few. ”

Actually the opposite is true.
More and more are ‘getting’ it, and the labels lawsuits are fueling the backlash.
Head in the sand much ?

” Truly dude, up until this you sounded smarter than that. ”

No offense taken.
You never sounded like anything other than an idiot to me.

To the contrary. I’ve not changed gears nor have I ever said that this crime and its effects were negligible. And I certainly never said it wasn’t “hurting them financially.” I said it’s a “small percentage of the overall market.” Even p2p advocates acknowledge that yearly sales figures are down a few percentage points every year (in an otherwise expanding market) and this translates to billions and billions of product taken but unpaid. All but a small single digit percentage of p2p use is illegal. I’ve never once said this is “negligible” but it is all relative.

Music is huge but no industry is going to let a new form of digital shoplifting cut into their business in the billions of dollars each year without “whatever it takes” to stop it. Nor should they. THAT’s why you sound so dumb. The biggest single miscalculation of illegal downloaders is their consistently mistaken belief that innovation will always find a way to keep pirating online a norm. That’s nonsense. As the stakes grow higher, so will the diligence of enforcement and the scale and aggression of the penalty. With an attendant loss of freedom and privacy. This has been generally true in every instance of American law enforcement. We raise the stakes until criminal activity subsides. And the government has always held the high cards in this debate. Your argument is with reality.

To be clear with you “lol”, I think there is no reason now nor was there ever a valid legal, moral or ethical argument to engage in copyright infringement within a free, capitalist market model. In my view it is a form of theft. You take without paying. To regard this migration to “taking without paying” as some “evolving market model” is such bullshit. It’s not an industry being outmoded by new technology either. The legal online download models are already in place, you just use p2p because you can get it for free and your lack of ethics doesn’t stop you. And you are fucking up the network for everybody and you don’t care. So stop bullshitting here.

It’s like saying the advent of the crow bar and a resultant flurry of auto theft is an “evolution of the market model in the automotive industry”. You are all just so full of shit.

Just so we are clear, I do not work for the RIAA, but I am on the side of what I think is right, just as you are. Boycotting is honorable and proper. I work in entertainment. I’ve had my troubles with the entertainment industry, too, but the capitalist model works extremely well for our nation and for our culture.

HERE’s THE POINT:
Taking for free the work of others that you know is properly intended for sale is not very complicated to me. And I think those of you who have done this to artists and their families and to the industry that hires and pays them (and seriously enriched quite a few) are cheap, cowardly punks hiding behind technology and thinking you are clever. You may not like nor approve of industry contracts, but they are absolutely legal. In fact indies, by percentage, make up a greater share than any of the other “big four.” If the artists must press for justice in contracts, then let them. Support them by boycott. What you do is illegal. I listen carefully to your talking points. Few stand up to real scrutiny. This distinction is not lost on anyone with a conscience and it is certainly not lost on our judicial system. This sad period will be regarded in retrospect as a time when a few petulant assholes spoiled an insanely great network for everybody. I think p2p illegal downloaders are rubbish. Just so we are clear.

According to the UCLA International Institute:
“The entertainment industry in its broadest definition is big business, 4-5% of GDP in the United States. That is about US$400-500 billion.”

For the record, I’m the first to acknowledge that an illegally downloaded file is not inherently a lost sale, but when somebody wants and takes your product and doesn’t pay for it, there is a certain justice in seeing it that way. Even a small percentage of a gargantuan number is still a very big number, and some number of billions are now lost every year since about the new millennium, when broadband caught stride and Napster began the drift to unethical filesharing.

Say what you wish, fellas, but the numbers are clear. Up until Napster we all went to the Tower or the Virgin or the HMV and we purchased CD’s. Once in awhile we burnt one for a buddy. Big fucking deal. If you have a problem seeing a link between illegal downloading and billions of dollars off the market pace since Napster, you are in a very dwindling few. The RIAA isn’t fighting to control the internet for God’s sake. PASS or PAY on their product and we have no problem BUT STOP TAKING IT. THAT’s what they fight for. You can’t expect the industry to fold when some of you are still hold-outs in wink-and-nudge refusal of the facts. YOUR attitude is as much a part of the problem as THEIR attitude except……guess what?……..they’ve got the entire judicial/legal/law enforcement infrastructure on their side. And it is ruining this beautiful network ALL OVER THE WORLD. Are you fucking crazy?

And Dreddsnik, I had more faith in you until your Prohibition reference. In Prohibition, government sought to end a here-to-fore perfectly legal, social activity and caught widespread, public resistance just as they should have. Illegal downloading has been improper and illegal with real victims since the first download and the courts are finally making that crystal clear. It is the provenance of a significant but relatively small cadre of online outlaws. Moreover, it encroaches on a legal, profitable business that is the prideful, leading light of the global entertainment industry, with historically close ties to the Democratic Legislature. You really ARE fucking crazy.

Truly dude, up until this you sounded smarter than that.

‘ just a bunch of kids and a few adults ‘

Which is it ?

both ?

neither ?

So then, p2p hurts them how ?

” Oh gosh, no it’s not. It’s a buncha college kids and young adults comprising a small percentage of the overall market behaving badly because technology is out ahead of legislation and their folks didn’t instill any ethics ”

Small percentage overall. you are right.

So, where is the damage ?

This fits right in with the studies that show that P2P has zero effect on sales.

So if it’s such a small percentage, and it clearly isn’t hurting them financially, as you
said after all, 90% of their model remains intact, where is the basis for suing the
evil sharers ?

Easy.

It’s NEVER been about losing money for the labels, clearly they lose nothing.
It’s about the potential for non-riaa acts to sit next to RIAA acts on the same
virtual shelf, and potentially get preference.
It’s about locking up the net, with the RIAA as an excuse to do so.

You have just shown us all in your own words, that P2P is negligible.

Yes, it is a war.
The way Prohibition was.
We all know how that went.

Your first mistake is that you assume that everyone who posts here pirates.

My apologies if I’ve offended anyone. This is a p2p advocacy site and the percentage of legal use of p2p remains in the very small single digits. It’s a very reasonable “mistake.”

The mechanism to stop YOU is already in place, and doing well.
Not giving you our money.

This is ideal. This is the way to use a free market to bring prices down. I think if we all boycotted the industry properly they’d hear us loud and clear and immediately. The big problem is 90% of their model remains intact and they still have great cash flow. And filesharers have handed them the legal area in which filesharing (and the internet) inevitably loses. THAT’s been the big tactical mistake by downloaders all along: the belief that a huge and profitable global infrastructure is going to shrug and fold in the face of a bunch of kids digitally shoplifting. Downloaders have never gotten this right and it’s why the trends are against them.

There has NEVER been a copy protection scheme that has done any good.
Never.
Please, find one copy protected title that can’t be ‘found’ elsewhere.

True. Very true. But the simple beauty of the ISP onramp file-matching model is that nothing ever needs protection. Encryption will be licenced and a copyrighted file will either be 1) blocked (unlikely) 2) three strikes and you are off the network as in France (also unlikely) or 3) the purchase price is just added to your ISP bill. VERY likely.

darknets, sneakernets, portable terrabyte HDD. yup, you’ll lose

For the industry, this is a huge win. Little copies have always been made and you can build a case that a shared file—even a harddrive– might compel a future purchase. What the labels will stop, however, is three clicks and the entire Rolling Stone’s catalog is yours for free. THAT–you can bet–will end.

This is a war.

Oh gosh, no it’s not. It’s a buncha college kids and young adults comprising a small percentage of the overall market behaving badly because technology is out ahead of legislation and their folks didn’t instill any ethics. Geeze guys. Education, legislation, observation and significant punishment leads to compliance in everything from auto theft to online child porn. Get used to it, fellas. As legislation wends its way through congress, you’ve already lost this.

“darknets, sneakernets, portable terrabyte HDD”

Fine.

so mellow

there are quite a few musicians there that know EXACTLY how good
a label is

George would have a lot of fun cutting you up.