Indiana Gregg versus The Pirate Bay
p2pnet news Music | P2P:- Don’t Humiliate Yourself Complaining to The Pirate Bay, said a TorrentFreak headline in June.
“The ‘legal threats’ section of The Pirate Bay is where record labels, movie companies, software house and general anti-pirates have their complaints posted after the staff on the site have ridiculed them,” said enigmax, going on >>>
A new set of complaints has appeared in the last few days – some of the most cringe-worthy ever.
When organizations and companies don’t like it that their material – be it music, movies, games or software – are indexed by a torrent site, very often they will contact the site in question and demand that the relevant .torrent files are removed. A lot of sites will remove the files but a few refuse.
Most people know that The Pirate Bay doesn’t like to remove torrents at the copyright holders request, in fact they claim they have never removed any. Instead, when a copyright holder enters into dialogue with the staff, instead of removing the files in question the site posts the discussions up in the ‘Legal Threats’ section. Most of the discussions are entertaining to a degree, with some even extending to personal insults.
However, during the last few days, another copyright complaint and subsequent discussion has been posted and although many might find it funny, personally I found it quite embarrassing raising the question: Should copyright holders just keep their complaints to themselves to maintain some dignity – at least where The Pirate Bay is concerned?
The complaint comes from Ian Morrow at UK based label Gr8pop Ltd, representing American vocalist Indiana Gregg.”
Morrow wanted a .torrent linking to Gregg’s ‘Woman At Work’ album taken down but, “the request was worded in an unfortunate way which appeared to betray a lack of legal understanding,” said TorrentFreak, going on to quote the section in question, and TPB’s (in the shape of Peter Sunde’s (right) response to it.
“We request that you have the file removed immediately as this is legal copyright and has not been authorised to be released as an illegal download,” said Morrow.
In answer, “Is it possible to authorise something to be an illegal download?” – asked Sunde, going on, “That would be a legal download if it would be authorised now, wouldn’t it. Also, i’ve never heard of ‘legal copyright’ (nor illegal copyright for that matter). I think you need to re-check your intentions of the e-mail and try again. We do not respond to messages that do not make 100% perfect sense. You’re confused.”
‘You’re a hoot, that’s what you are : )’
Things quickly degenerated into a fierce slinging match between Sunde and Morrow.
Morrow claimed, “people sharing the album his company is almost bankrupt (along with him personally) and Indiana herself – despite her current position of No.1 in the MySpace charts and the 4th most viewed artist on YouTube,” said enigmax in TorrentFreak, going on, ” The inevitable response from Peter is what we have to come to expect, and that was >>>
You’re a hoot, that’s what you are
I want to hug you in a non-sexual way and tell you that you make my heart burst of joy and cuddle up like a cute little cookie monster and ask for more milk … and btw, to be in a business you have very little knowledge on what you’re doing. I would actually see you as a retard, but it’s hard when you’re so cuddly and manly! I wish I was just 20 years older and a girl … oh my..
The post continued:
“Undeterred and armed with a shaky understanding of the scope of the law she’s trying to enforce, Indiana writes to Peter with a fairly detailed explanation of a torrent site’s obligations under the DMCA, but makes the same mistake as so many others. The DMCA is a US law and The Pirate Bay is not in the United States, leaving herself wide open for further ridicule.
“Indiana goes on to explain that she’s actually a millionaire after all, contradicting Ian’s earlier bankruptcy comments which were clearly designed to tug on Peter’s heart strings. Unfortunately when it comes to copyright, Peter’s heart is made of stone.”
You can read the exchanges here, here, here and here.
‘Am I a millionaire because I have millions of ants in my garden?’
Meanwhile, says enigmax in a second TorrentFreak post, Gregg decided to step up on her own behalf, at length, and in detail, stating:
“I felt misrepresented in the first article and obviously, my attempt at humor by stating I’m a ‘millionaire’ wasn’t appropriately quantified.
“Am I a millionaire because I have millions of ants in my garden? Is it because I have had millions of people listen to my music on sites like MySpace or YouTube? Is it because I’m grateful to be healthy?
“How people quantify ‘richness’ in their lives depends on how people perceive value. And, yes, I’m guilty of fueling Peter Sunde’s fire and animosity. I can image it’s not easy in his position just now considering the amount of angry artistic people who are fronting against his cause. I’m sure he has his core values that he wants to defend … I have mine … and I’m not afraid to speak about them … for the sake of music … and the common good.
In The Pirate Bay: The Sinking Ship – My Response, she goes on >>>
The Wild West of the Internet seems to be getting seriously out of hand and i’ve been wondering if and when the Internet Police will come and sort it all out. I mean … this is the new Wild West …
We’ve all heard and read every form of complaint about the Internet. From cyber-bullying, to child pornography sites, to copyright theft in the form of ‘file-sharing’.
Imagine … .What if the Internet had ‘frontiers’. Why can we go all over the world on the Internet without a passport? Why are cybernauts allowed to steal goods from the store ’shelves’ and ’shop windows’ and justify it as ’sharing’? Since the birth of the Internet, people have been hacking software, stealing music, books, films, television shows, credit card numbers, eBay accounts, IP addresses … you name it, if it’s out there and can be downloaded, it’s being virtually stolen from under your nose.
So, why is this Wild West so hard to monitor? Why are people up in arms and waiving their guns wildly … … Are these new pirate ships sharing other people’s goods for gold? Of course they are … yes, I’m speaking about the torrent sites … and all the other sites who are making money on other people’s back …
Is the Internet really that much ‘bigger’ than the ‘real’ world? I think not. I believe that in the near future, we will all be using our Internet passports. If the government can do it in the real world, what’s stopping them from monitoring this new ‘Wild West’ phenomenon of the Internet in every town, city, state and country. I mean … Don’t we have just as much right as citizens to be protected on the Internet as we would be anywhere else? And really, the only people who would disagree with this idea are people who either are engaging in illegal activity or people who claim ‘civil liberty and freedom of speech’ on the Internet, but remember guys, those freedoms are only good until you begin to harm other people.
You don’t have freedom to shout from the rooftops at 3am outside your neighbor’s house … . and it’s certainly not your civil right to steal from your local baker and share his cream puffs outside his shop window … either, is it? Allow me to explain.
Let’s take one of the major forces on the Internet for example. Let’s look at all of the big music content sites (such as MySpace, Yahoo Music, etc) who seem to be huge driving swarms of traffic on the Internet. When you see the amount of advertisements per page and click, you know you can almost hear the ‘kerching’. These sites are like interstate junctions at rush hour (24 hours a day) so to speak. Torrents are no different … . Kerching kerching … They are giving away things like films, music, tv programs, software … . If it can be downloaded, it can be found … for free …
Thousands upon thousands of websites, sharing sites, and torrent sites exist. These websites are making a constant steady flow of income by using other people’s goods … they are pointing people to the goods (music) for free and selling masses of advertisement because people come to ‘leech’ the goods … these sites are basically allowing people to steal and destroy the music industry (which is in fact like shooting themselves in their own foot). The sites themselves claim to be ‘legal’. It is the user’s responsibility not to share copyrighted files.
So, you’d be silly to think that the Internet police are not planning on coming. How easy would it be to simply find all these people who are illegally ’sharing’ and slap a lawsuit on them. They can do that with a virtual push of a button. How hard do you think it will be for the ISP’s to hand over your Internet passport over to the new frontier police? They can see how much you’ve ’shared’ and potentially fine every single torrent user. I bet the torrent sites wouldn’t like that very much. Suddenly all their users would disappear.
Last year, in an article on Sky News, I read that a woman received a massive fine for file sharing on the KaZaA network. I thought, great! The police are coming.Then my husband sent me a link to another article titled “Should You Pay For Music?” I instantly thought … .eh? Has the world gone mad? It’s like saying “Should you pay for petrol?” or “Should you pay for bread?” Hey, maybe I was being too ‘traditional’? I guess you could compare it to you, yourself, working all week long. You go to the bank and cash your check, and the banker takes your money without putting it into your account.
But, it’s much deeper than this. Whether or not the public is offered music for free or at a cost is not the real issue. The real problem lies in the fact that ’share’ sites are making money by pointing to other people’s copyrighted content … The end user gets it for free … the torrents make money … . And the musicians and artists?? Well, they get to live off of ‘fresh air’. Put simply, musicians will not be able to exist financially in order to create music if income streams are cut off (whether or not a record label comes to play).
And this is exactly what is happening.
As a musician and an independent record-label, I see my livelihood being sucked away every day through file-sharing and torrent sites which are allowing copyright material to flow in and out of their sites. All they have to do is claim that it’s the responsibility of the user to make sure the content they are sharing is not copyright protected material. Last year, in a period of two weeks, we tracked and found over 100,000 leechers of my album alone. Since then, we’ve found about 150,000 more, of which I, the artist, who put my heart and soul, time and sweat into an album and raising money to market that album, haven’t received a dime, not one red cent. Full torrent files of a complete album! Since it’s so easy to ’share’ the music …
In the real world, if everyone walked into HMV and took as many albums as they like … and said they were ’sharing’ … errr … shoplifting? I really don’t see how people think they can give music or any other form of media for ‘free’ without it hurting the livelihoods of musicians. Sharing of copyright protected material is 100% illegal. However, since it’s not being regulated, it’s as if all of us musicians have just left the shop door open so that anybody can lift our guitars and gear out on the street and drive off with it. Isn’t that what’s happening? If you can’t make a dime from that album you just spent all your money, time and effort on because everyone is ’sharing’ it, then how are you going to buy your guitar strings, pay your landlord, or eat? You’ll be selling your gear soon and asking the boss for overtime. Right?
Torrent sites are claiming that they are creating ‘free promotion’ for musicians … . that’s right.. they claim that by giving all these people the opportunity to “share” the music, they are doing all of us musicians a big huge favor. In fact, they think that musician’s, songwriters, sound engineers, mastering companies, etc … should all live on ‘pure fresh air’. They blatantly state that they think it should be enough for a musician to make music out of their ‘passion’ for music … and well, since it’s ‘art’ it shouldn’t have a price … .. er, ok … .. maybe we should go and see if Fender will start giving away free guitars? Free gear for everybody!!! Yipppeee … . Free strings, free amplifiers, free microphones and drum kits … … awww … how novel.
Here’s another funny one … the torrent site’s answer to how musicians are supposed to earn a living is: .. well, musician’s will just need to go out and gig some more in order to make a living. Maybe the band can sell a few more T-shirts, etc. etc. They rationalize stealing by stating that they go to gigs and buy tickets … (or that they plan to do so if ever their favorite band can finally afford to come and do a tour in their country). They claim that by allowing sharing, they are ‘leveling the playing field’.
Well, torrent sites are absolutely NOT leveling the playing field. They are just moving the field and reaping the benefits due to a temporary loophole in the law. I’ll bet that when all their users get slapped a fine for ’sharing’ in their respective countries the torrent sites won’t be there to support them. I doubt that they are planning to send all their users a bunch of ‘gold’ off of their pirate ship. So far, there have only been a few ‘examples’ made with users being slapped heavy fines. I have a hunch that this will CHANGE.
Aww, now there’s a word “CHANGE”.
Well, let’s talk about CHANGE for a moment. The torrent people even go as far as to quote Charles Darwin in an effort to justify theft:
“In nature, it’s not the strongest nor the most intelligent who survives. It’s the most adaptable to change.” (a quote from a torrent fanatic referring to Darwins theory).
Hmmm … … … ..well, I assume that the torrent sites are planning to be adaptable pretty soon then, considering the number of pending lawsuits from pretty strong and intelligent companies who have not only proven their adaptability to change, but have changed the world as we know it (companies like Microsoft, for example).
Please – spare us this kind of rhetoric guys. With the likes of Microsoft, Prince, and the IFPI going after you, any outsider might begin to wonder when YOU plan to adapt to ‘change’. It’s becoming evident that your business model is a sinking ship. Pretty soon, your users will be slapped with fines and more big companies will be slapping on lawsuits. Why not just sink your ship yourselves..eh? That’s really what you’re doing.. Your resistance to ‘change’ is in complete conflict with your very survival … Oh the irony. “Let’s have all our users quote Darwin”.
“Sharing is caring”, so they say. Torrent sites are promoting the idea that if people are taking the time to ’share’ other peoples copyright material it means they care. So, what’s stopping the torrent pirates from ’sharing’ the revenue from the advertising on their sites? Funny how it’s ok for musicians to live off of ‘fresh air’ but these pirates are meanwhile filling their boat with loot on the backs of other people’s hard work. Let’s see how adaptable to ‘change’ they decide to become … and put their Darwin theory where their mouth is … .
Free promotion? Basically, torrents are promoting music that has ‘already been promoted’, so it’s not ‘free promotion’. There will be a small percentage of people who go through the millions of songs that are being seeded and perhaps discover something new because they searched for something they had already heard about. So, torrents are not only ‘moving’ the playing field, they are, in reality, making the playing field so un-even that bands are going to be the new “Sysiphus’s” trying to roll a ball uphill for eternity – although the sites would like to fool us all into believing otherwise.
Stay tuned.
.
.Stumble It!
TorrentFreak – Don’t Humiliate Yourself Complaining to The Pirate Bay, June 25, 2008
TorrentFreak – Indiana Gregg to The Pirate Bay: The Internet Police Are Coming, July 4. 2008
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July 5th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Her entire argument rests on the ‘Lost sale’ doctrine, which has, time and time again, been
disproven. It has been debunked …. its simply not .. true.
A download does not and never will equal a lost sale.
The playing field is in fact being leveled for those that do not wish to sign
with a label .. ever, although some industry controlled shill would like to
fool you into thinking otherwise.
I am quite certain indiana gregg is far from broke, since downloading has not harmed her at all.
If she isn’t getting paid she should look at the real thieves … the holder of the one-sided contract she
signed.
As for the ‘ massive fine’ it’s pretty typical of the media to report only the temporary RIAA victory and
ignore the fact that the very case she speaks of may well be overturned.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:03 am
BTW, Indiana …
You can go stand by Lars, Prince, Gene, and Elton as your stand will
cause you to be boycotted even harder.
Welcome to obscurity.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Internet passports? borders?
customs? police?
Indiana,
Go to China,
Burma or North Korea,
Get jailed there,
and do not come back again!
July 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
This nobody is getting a lot free publicity.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Indiana Gregg, Indiana greg who is this?
July 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I downloaded few of her stuff and I am sorry to say that this is hawful! Stupid lyric, crapy music unoriginal arrangement and crapy singing! Another artist relying on the majors marketing BS to make money, Once the majors go she go too to make room to real artists.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:05 am
There are a LOT of artists who echo the sentiments expressed by one singer/songwriter (I think it was Tom Smith) who did a little number called “I Want My Music on Napster”. His thesis is that it’s fine for the millionaire singers to bitch about “protecting” singers from “pirates”, but people with talent trying to make it in the business really WANT and NEED all the exposure they can get.
One author, in fact, when asked about it said something like: “are you asking me what I would do if I found out that there were a million copies of my latest book being downloaded on the Internet? I’d tell my agent to make plans to throw a big party on the yacht I’d be buying real soon from all the new book sales I’d be getting.”
The economic model people like Ms. Gregg use assumes something called “market transparency”, i.e. that buyers are aware of what is “out there”. The problem from the point of view of MOST of the providers in the business is just the opposite: market opacity. They’ve got to use everything they can, including P2P distribution on the internet, just to try to get noticed. This is not because they’re not talented; some of them are VERY good. It’s just a matter of “breaks”.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Yeah, I quit reading the first time she said “kerching.” The idea that torrent sites are raking in the money though ads is ridiculous and laughable at best. To quote (the now clinically insane) Tom Cruise: “SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!”
July 5th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Indiana’s ignorance is astonishing. She sounds like a RIAA shill, espousing fallacious statements. Let’s rebuke her assertions shall we?
(1) A download equals a lost sale.
Rebuttal:
How do you know they would have bought it in the first place?
It’s called sampling, which has been occurring decades before the internet was operational in the form of radio. Shock horror, not everyone used to buy music they heard on the radio. But surely according to Indiana, this is tantamount to shoplifting / theft also?
(2) The internet should be policed.
Rebuttal:
It already is, and if you wish to be party to it, by all means move to china, or another equally communist state of your choosing. O, wait, wont your capitalist ideals conflict with a communist state?
Regulation of the internet inevitably begets further rescindment of privacy rights, freedom of speech, and other essential liberties. The freedoms you enjoy today are in part because of the neutrality of the internet.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
” I downloaded few of her stuff and I am sorry to say that this is hawful! Stupid lyric, crapy music unoriginal arrangement and crapy singing! Another artist relying on the majors marketing BS to make money, ”
But this can’t possibly have anything to do with why she is going ‘broke’ at all, right ?
Well, in her case, downloading IS probably hurting her.
Without downloading, her CD may have been purchased for a short while until word got around that
except for the one song that got constant airplay, the rest was crap.
All of those folks would have been out of luck since the policy of most retailers is a no return on
CD’s once the shrinkwrap has been broken, except for a replacement copy due to damage.
Filthy pirates you, know, buying, ripping and returning the CD.
With downloading, those who hear the one song, but want to be smart about who they support
with their hard earned dollar, the album gets previewed, is found to be crap, and is thus not
purchased, saving the customer from having yet another fine drink coaster in their non-returnable
collection. So, I guess, yes, from the standpoint of the mediocre, pretty much all the Labels try to
foist on us, downloading hurts.
Screw them.
Still boycotting
not downloading, not buying.
If I have to have it, it will come from a second hand
CD shop.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Check this out:
http://stashbox.org/v/151705/madeworseincanada.mp3
Made Worse in Canada (feat. Jim Prentice)
by Upset Canadian
This clip is about the controversial Canadian Copyright Bill C-61, recently tabled in the House of Commons. Starring: Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry, Conservative), Colin Carrie (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, Conservative), Charlie Angus (NDP), Bill Siksay (NDP), Howard Knopf (Excess Copyright), David Fewer (CIPPIC), Safwan Javed (Wide Mouth Mason band). Based on “Below the Arctic Ocean” by Azhrak. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ verify at http://www.jamendo.com/album/22408/ . Cover picture by p2pnet.net.
A remix should be made featuring Indiana Gregg and other RIAA shills (Paul McGuinness), to ridicule her worldwide.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
No one wants to listen to her s**tty music anyway. The numbers on
the Pirate Bay torrents tell the story: 0 seeds 0 leechers.
I don’t know where the hell she gets that 250,000 figure from. Must
be numbers pulled out of her a** just like all MAFIAA piracy statistics are.
July 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
“Since the birth of the Internet, people have been hacking software, stealing
music, books, films, television shows, credit card numbers, eBay accounts, IP addresses … you name it, if it’s out there and can be downloaded, it’s being virtually stolen from under your nose.”
Why would someone steal an ip address? Is that even possible? If someone gets an unauthorized copy of my home address, have they stolen it? Do I no longer own my own address? In short, HUH???
Still, she does have one thing right. Before the internet, no one ever hacked software, stole music, books, films, television shows, credit card numbers, ETC. Dirty internet! It has corrupted our society. We lived in a utopia before the net came along and ruined it all.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
” music, books, films, television shows, credit card numbers, eBay accounts, IP addresses … you name it, if it’s out there and can be downloaded, it’s being virtually stolen from under your nose.”
And yet, the software industry managed to boom, authors still have best sellers, movies still bring in recor numbers to
the box office ,, etc ..
Downloading has had no impact at all on the health of those industries.
There must be sime other factor that hurts them .. what could it be .. i wonder ?
July 6th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I have never heard of Indiana Gregg until today. So I guess her idiotic argument has worked out for her, since she is now getting free publicity. The companies are desperately fighting to preserve their ancient business model. After the old folks die, I’m sure the market will adjust itself accordingly taking into account the Internets. Of course, the problem right now is that all the old farts in Congress are also stuck on the old business model since all of these “digital dealies” are strange, weird and foreign to them. Lobbyists can easily manipulate their aging minds. My great fear is that they’ll do something crazy like remove net neutrality, etc.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Who is she? where is she famous alaska northpole??
July 9th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
There are several factual inaccuracies that need addressing if you are going to be taken seriously.
1. There are no internet police. Due to the nature of the internet being global and countries having different laws it makes this very difficult. It’s like international waters, you have casino ships that are run from coastal states of america that forbid gambling, these are not able to be stopped as they in fact do not commit crimes in the country itself.
2. You claim that violation of copyright is stealing, and that those that copy music don’t pay for it. Well in the case of the pirate bay there is actually a levy on all cd and dvd media that is paid to music publishers, so they do in fact pay your tribute in this country, even if they don’t download copyrighted material EVERYONE pays you guys. In Russia as well many of the most popular sites that commercialise MP3 downloads pay their subscriptions to your music associations.
3. When lawsuits are brought against downloaders for copyright violation the artists don’t receive any of the remuneration. You as an artist have given that right away anyway. Your contracts and remaining rights suck. This only fuels the argument that artists are not being robbed.
4. The artists that HAVE released their music FREE online have seen MASSIVE sales figures recorded. The best example of this is TRENT REZNOR /NIN? and Radiohead’s In Rainbows. This fuels the downloaders into believing that not only is it your Labels that are ripping you off because your too lazy to take a risk and release it on your own, but people downloading free copies HELPS sales not hinders.
I would argue that the internet was shunned by the labels as a distribution method as their control is not as solid on this platform, this has bit them in the bottom as it is inevitable that superior technology replaces obselete technology. itunes embraced this platform, need I say more?
5. Indiana is only a popular artist because she gave away her songs for FREE on myspace. Myspace, Youtube, and Google Video, the list is endless. These sites give away copyrighted material ALL THE TIME to more people than the pirate bay. They don’t get pursued by the copyright holders because they have Big companies backing them that can defend themselves. Its only the small fry that get savaged by bullies.
Theres my $0.02.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:21 am
“Why would someone steal an ip address? Is that even possible?”
No. Not that I have ever heard of. Maybe if you worked for a telco, but even then, why?
Also, I have to agree with your comment here…
“4. The artists that HAVE released their music FREE online have seen MASSIVE sales figures recorded. The best example of this is TRENT REZNOR /NIN? and Radiohead’s In Rainbows. This fuels the downloaders into believing that not only is it your Labels that are ripping you off because your too lazy to take a risk and release it on your own, but people downloading free copies HELPS sales not hinders.”
My example – audioslave came out with their new album at the time, ‘out of exile’, and had the entire album on their website to listen to. I listened to the whole album and then immediately went out and bought it for two reasons – 1. they realize that your above comment is very true and don’t consider their fans to be criminals (unlike Indiana and many others), and 2. there isn’t a crap song on the whole album.
It was the first album I have bought new in probably 5 years. Most of the time, I buy them used because $15-20 is way too much for most albums (2 good songs, rest is filler). I forget what % of sale price actually gets to the artist, but i know it’s a very small fraction. Perhaps some of these artists should drop their labels and get out there on their own, and use the internet as a tool (which it is) instead of trying to litigate it out of existence (which could never happen – it’s a lost cause). What’s funny is that their album sales could drop 50% and they would make more money because they won’t be giving all the profit to a label.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:39 am
To BigRob:
Yes, you can steal an IP address. You can not only steal it, you can use it and basically download porn, use it to hack into https websites without
being detected. It is a serious problem.
The problem here is that a torrent site “The Pirate Bay” makes over $3 million in profit by pointing us to URL’s where
we can download. The argument isn’t whether or not someone would’ve bought all those albums/ software/ films/ TV shows or not.
The argument is that sites like the Pirate Bay exploit the material and earn advertising revenues by allowing users to infringe copyright.
So, the argument is that these sites should share with all these copyright creators. Everyone else is getting something out of it except for
the creative people. Those creative people need to be able to continue creating.
There are bands like NIN, Radiohead, that you have mentioned who have profited from a huge marketing machine. The amount of PR and marketing that fueled those downloads was enormous. Likewise, these bands were already well-known beforehand. (known world-wide).
They will be able to fill big stadiums (and already did before they gave their music away)
Some sites like Youtube pay a royalty to musicians. So, it’s free music/film for the users and the musician’s get paid and also the participating songwriters.
One problem is that everyone is trying to put all musician’s inside the same box. All musician’s are not part of the major label debate. There are millions of musicians in the world who work on music of all genres. Songwriters are hurt most by this downloading because they can only be paid
if there is a royalty structure.
I think in this case the bully is The pirate Bay. If The Pirate Bay is beginning to bully independent musicians who want to be able to chose where they will share their music, then, they are going after the wrong people. Myspace is also in negotiations about paying a royalty to musicians. Last FM is paying a royalty to musicians for their streams. The Pirate Bay claim to be some sort of “Titantic”. They are flagrant about a lack of respect to the artistic community.
As an independent film maker, I see a real crunch going on. It is getting much harder now than ever for independents to find funding. This is because investors will want a return on their investment and if films are being given away for free the day after release, who is going to pay?
Creativity at the level that people have come to enjoy is being destroyed unless these sites make a decision to help fund creativity by sharing in revenues. I don’t see how we will be able to survive. Everyone is tired of seeing the same films without any new great story’s. Same with TV. But, how do we independents get to break through now? I think it is great to have our work popularised by internet. But, I don’t see how we will be able to continue making these interesting films without still selling our automobiles and going into debt because nobody will invest at that big risk.
I think Indiana has produced a solid argument. I think she has been rhetorical and provocative. I think if I was being attacked by The Pirate Bay and if they started to publish my emails and begin to bully me, I would do the same and respond. I respect that a lot. I hope many more independent creators do the same.
Thank you,
Art
July 11th, 2008 at 10:50 am
@ ART
If you truely believe what you are telling us then we must regard you as incompetent If on the other hand you just pretend to believe it, we must regard you as a liar.
Your choice!
Since you posted your incompetent stuff on TF too, let me copy my answer from there here too:
@ART
TPB is NOT bullying any musician.
Its’s the “downwardspiralchick”-indiana’s husband that is bullying people!
wikipedia he is/was bullying for example! (*)
and beside all that “character swineness” of indiana and her man, why the hell are those loser artists always complaining about what TPB does?
They complain that they have no marketing, that they are not known so well so far,that they can’t pull therefor a Radiohead or NIN act in having the people(fans) decide what to pay.
To hell with those whining “artist”!
Nobody, I repeat NOBODY is hindering those artists to rent a dedicated server for Euro 29 per month and set up their own TAB (The Artist Bay) and compete with TPB that way!
(*)
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16342#comment-581518
July 11th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
OMG, here is Readers Write again. The internet stalker of Indiana Gregg. OMG OMG….
July 12th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The party goes on here:
http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/open-letter-to-indiana-gregg/
Indiana Gregg vs The Internet. The comments rule!
Enjoy!
June 14th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Riiiiight. She said she was a millionaire because she was talking about her “heart”. She was just striking out. Either she lied when she said she was poor, or she lied when she said she was rich out of spite.
October 30th, 2009 at 6:58 am
um, no, she wasn’t lying. The release of her album was in 2007 and her mails to TPB were over a year later in 2008 and she was getting ready to launch a new company. Alternatively, a lot of lies have been spread about Gregg: http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/a-discussion-with-indiana-gregg-setting-the-record-straight/