War
p2pnet.net News:- The entertainment industry, of which the major recording labels are elements, is ruthlessly determined to tear its way into the wallets of online music lovers.
Customers aren’t reasonable people with reasonable expectations, it says. They’re all potentially hard-core criminals, out to destroy the labels unless they’re beaten into submission by lawsuits.
It’s using its unwholeseome political connections, the fact it owns most mainstream print and electronic media outlets, threatening to withold advertising from the ones that don’t follow the party line, and its limiteless financial resources to steamroll competition and anyone or anything it doesn’t own or control.
The entertainment industry is hell bent on destruction.
Up against it at this point are 6,159 (at last count) very ordinary people around the world – mums and dads, kids still in grade school, senior citizens. They’re your next-door neighbours, not the calculating organized criminals the entertainment industry makes them out to be.
They’ve stolen nothing.
They’re not making huge profits re-selling millions of Big Music copyrighted tracks instead of buying them from the plastic corporate music sites.
There’s not a millionaire among them, and probably, most would be grateful for an extra hundred dollars or two. And yet they’re being humiliated and pilloried as a virulent evil the record labels and movie companies claim is ruining their businesses and are being forced to crush on tghe grounds theat file sjharing is respoinsible for huge sales losses and business down-turn.
Yet, in truth: the economic effect of file sharing is tiny and, “Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale,” as Felix Oberholzer (Harvard Business School) and Koleman Strumpf (UNC Chapel Hill) point out in their empirical analysis, The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales.
Big Music, in particular, is at pains to present its many international enforcement, PR and marketing arms as trade organizations working selflessly in the interests of a vast number of separate music labels, all of which are striving to make a decent living in the face of ongoing thievery perpetrated by endless ranks of file sharing criminals.
In fact, the vast majority of the ‘members’ of the RIAA, CRIA, BPI, IFPI, and so on and so on, are ultimately owned and/or controlled by a cartel comprising four staggeringly huge, unbelievably wealthy, multinational conglomerates – Warner Music, USA; United Music Group, France.
There’s a collection of companies billed as ‘independents,’ but a significant number – the majority? – are in fact owned in one way or another by the majors.
The above graph was compiled by the IFPI.
File sharing is here to stay.
P2p is here to stay.
CD / DVD burners and blank discs, mostly made by the self-same companies who are behind the law-suits, are here to stay.
In the meanwhile, the music industry has a proud record, and one that it’s flaunting with gusto.
Below are boasts, published yesterday by the IFPI.
United Kingdom
The UK record industry confirmed that is it launching a rolling programme of legal actions against major alleged illegal file-sharers for the first time. The BPI is launching court cases against 28 individuals. The BPI alleges that they were engaged in copying and making available large numbers of music tracks on the internet in breach of copyright. They will face civil action for an injunction and damages.
France
Criminal complaints and civil court cases are being filed against 50 major uploaders of music in France, as the first legal actions in an ongoing campaign to combat illegal file sharing. French anti-piracy organisation SCPP is pursuing court proceedings that allow fines and other criminal sanctions, or civil remedies including termination of the internet account of an infringer.
Austria
IFPI Austria announced that it will be filing 100 criminal and civil cases against people found to have been offering large numbers of music files on peer-to-peer file sharing services without authorisation. Austrian proceedings permit a range of remedies and penalties, including criminal raids and fines, as well as civil compensation and injunctions.
Denmark
IFPI Denmark is sending civil demand letters to approximately 174 more alleged illegal music file-sharers, bringing the total number of such legal claims launched in Denmark to nearly 300. So far 67 individuals in Denmark (representing approximately 40% of those targeted in the previous wave) have already either paid or agreed to pay compensation averaging a few thousand euros each – one as high as €13,000.
Germany
IFPI Germany has filed 100 additional criminal complaints against individuals alleged to be engaged in illegal file sharing of music. This brings to 168 the number of such cases launched. To date, 10 of the earlier defendants have been raided, 5 have had criminal judgments or fines imposed on them, and 16 have made civil settlement payments from 2.000 to 10.000 euros (averaging 4,000 Euros).
Italy
Police have raided 7 more individuals on suspicion of copyright infringement in connection with large-scale file sharing of music, with more actions expected in the coming weeks. This follows similar criminal cases brought against 30 individuals in March this year, which are still pending before the courts. Individuals found guilty are subject to fines expected in the range of 5,000 to 25,000 Euros with additional civil compensation possible.
United States
Since September 2003, the US recording industry has brought copyright infringement lawsuits against over 5,700 alleged illegal file sharers. There have been hundreds of settlements to date, averaging several thousand US dollars each.
It also says cases are in hand in Canada when in fact, a Canadian court threw out Big Music’s single case in which it demanded that five Canadian ISPs hand over the identities of clients it claimed were, “illegally distributing hundreds if not thousands of music copyright files to millions of strangers”.
The case is now under appeal.
