p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood’s p2p PR blitz
p2pnet.net News:- p2pnet editor Jon Newton writes a regular column for TechNewsWorld.
Here’s his latest >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The File-Sharing Follies
By Jon Newton - TechNewsWorld
With a landmark Supreme Court hearing on online file sharing slated for March 29, Hollywood is stepping up its multimillion-dollar, international PR blitz to keep peer-to-peer networks in the public eye and to characterize men, women and children who share music and other files online as hardened criminals.
In the U.S., nearly 10,000 people have been sued. In Sweden the police raided the Stockholm offices of Bahnhof, Sweden’s largest ISP. They were acting on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is looking for dirt on the sites it wants to shut down. According to Reuters, "U.S. copyright protection experts" — i.e., the movie studio cartel’s lawyers — have considered Bahnhof a "haven for high-level Internet piracy for years."
Six UK ISPs have been ordered to give the Big Music cartel’s UK representative, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the names and addresses of 31 people said to have uploaded large numbers of music files onto P2P networks. The BPI says it will probably ramp up its attacks on UK file sharers, likening the action to legal fights to curb drunken driving.
Backward Thinking
International singing star Joni Mitchell once said, "The deal that I got was just atrocious. I mean, it was like slave labor, really — no points, no budget. And I’ve never really had a good deal in the business." She also said, "Now, this is all calculated music. It’s calculated for sales, it’s sonically calculated, it’s rudely calculated. I’m ashamed to be a part of the music business . You know, I just think it’s a cesspool."
Nor is Mitchell by any means alone in her view of the music business, which cynically casts itself as a tough but scrupulously fair entity that has the best interests of its artists and customers at heart. In truth, it’s an industry run by venal, narrow-minded, technically ignorant people who have no idea how to treat music fans or the performers who have made them so very, very wealthy.
The executives are making a religion out of refusing to accept that they live in the digital 21st century. As Britain’s The Economist says, "So far they [the record labels] have been slow to embrace the Internet, which has seemed to them not an opportunity but their nemesis."
The Supreme Court battle involves heavy and not-so-heavy interests from all parts of the corporate spectrum, all fighting for consumer dollars. But the most important people involved are the file sharers themselves — customers whom the entertainment industry and its friends are trying to scare into buying their products.
Crooks and Customers
The principle of innocent until proven guilty is being mocked by the entertainment industry, which, with the assistance of the mainstream media, presents online file-sharers as crooks.
When someone shares a digital music or any other file online, however, it’s not a criminal offense. No sales are made and no money changes hands. Not one file sharer has ever seen the inside of a U.S. court, let alone been convicted of anything.
Sharing a file with someone doesn’t automatically mean the loss of a sale to the entertainment industry, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
File sharers are not criminals; they’re victims of entertainment industry greed.
Victims of Greed
The music labels claim there’s a thriving alternative to file sharing: corporate online music stores such as iTunes and Napster II. But this business is so tiny that it barely exists. Only an infinitesimal proportion of online music lovers use such sites. And that’s because, in their greed, the labels wholesale their MP3 tracks for between 65 and 75 cents each, forcing the retailers to charge around a dollar a track. And the labels want to increase, not decrease, this already extortionate price.
So, of course, few are buying. Instead, they get their music from one of the P2P networks, or from a site such as AllofMP3.com, which sells MP3s for pennies instead of dollars.
Meanwhile, the true criminals — the duplicators who use CDs and DVDs as masters for making counterfeit copies for software, music and movies — count their profits, virtually untouched.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
March 15th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
>>File sharers are not criminals; they’re victims of entertainment industry greed.
Well, actually, they are. The works in question belong to someone else, so making copies and giving it away is theft.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think that the price is too high, and that I should be able to download something full quality and burn it myself, at a hefty discount because I provide all the equipment. Until that happens, I’ll make due with what I have.
But let’s not get confused about what’s going on. Don’t whine that the music business is laying lawsuits against innocents. Just don’t buy the stuff. Real loss of money will hit them harder than any file that can be shared.
March 15th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
The works in question belong to the people who bought them in the first place
March 15th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
These thug tactics by the RIAA and MPAA need to be stopped. This is getting out of control, and is uncalled for.
Probably our own Goverment are the only ones that could stop them. Or a Judges ruling.
I guarantee you, that if you dug into the closet of ANY RIAA or MPAA member, you would find plenty of dirt on them that they have done in their own lives.
Courts have already ruled file sharing networks as legal. Yet they continue on this rampage as if they are some kind of law enforcement. Threatening people with lawsuits to invoke fear in them to settle for a lesser sum (Blackmail).
We no longer have the Mafia controlling our country, its the RIAA/MPAA. They are making big bucks off all these lawsuits and hiding behind their unethical business practices. What a perfect scam job for a crook, pretend the other person is evil while you steal the life from them. They even have paid off members of our congress to help them.
America is not the free country many think it is. We have MANY injustices that go on over here, such as what the RIAA/MPAA are doing.
March 16th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Yes. And that would be the copyright holders. In this case, the record companies and movie studios.
You purchase the right to use that material when you buy the media. Nothing more. You don’t own the work anymore than you own a public building.
March 16th, 2005 at 9:07 am
You purchase the right to use that material when you buy the media
AND I choose to share it……………..
March 16th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
You are indeed permitted to share it. Always have.
But you are not permitted to reproduce or distribute it.
A distinction in verbs is key to understanding copyright law.
See 17 U.S.C. 106
.
March 16th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
As long as we’re getting technical here, HE (spelled H-E) is NOT reproducing it or distributing it, but just hosting it. The REQUESTOR is the impetus and reproducer, so therefore, the RIAA should be suing the people downloading the content, if infact it is illegal.
The only reason they sue the people who ‘host it’ is because they want to be as efficient with their ‘attorney dollars’ as much as possible and shutting down the ‘hosters’ of this content is much more bang for their buck. They tried to subpoena hundreds at with one visit to the municipal building and that was shot down.
Too bad the practice of sharing content is growing exponentially, especially in Asia where copyrights are not respected like they are in the US and Europe. And too bad for the greed mongers in Hollywood (Not the artists as they are also the good guys here) that the answer to shutting down Napster and its server centric-approach was a distributed model that cannot be shutdown easily. And as the RIAA continues to get more and more free press (they love the word FREE) over this, they are just expanding the word that people CAN get free music via the web. Their efforts are just the shovel digging their eminent demise and finally compensating the starving artists for their hard work and risk.
Let’s sit back and watch this REALITY SHOW aptly named “What Goes Around Comes Around”… TIVO anyone?
March 17th, 2005 at 6:45 am
I agree with what you say, but with all the injustices that go on, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else because I’ve been everywhere else in my lifetime and, believe me, we are better off than anywhere else. I think we should wait and see how the Supreme Court rules on the P2P (Grokster) case before we reach a conclusion that everyone is against file sharers. I also believe that when the Supreme Court Decision comes down it will not be in the favor of the RIAA/MPAA. If I am correct in this assumption, then I believe the Supreme Court will also have to eventually rule on file sharing of Copyrighted material over the P2P networks. The reason I say this is because the Consumer will be the only one’s left that the RIAA/MPAA can sue. When the RIAA/MPAA starts saturating the public with law suits they will really feel the rage of the U.S. public at large and something will have to be done.
March 17th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
These idiots are pissed because you find out - by downloading - that the new stuff is crap - which is 99% of new releases - and so its not “I’m off to the store to get my tactile content Jim”. These idiots have ruined a good business by constantly finding the next “new thing”, selling as much as possible in the quickest time then dumping the (lol) band/artist before they can afford a lawyer and sue these idiots for ripping them off along with a gullible 9-12 year old paying audience who have no taste when it comes to buying something sold with sex and almost completely content. These idiots are dinosaurs and hopefully will meet the same fate soon. The net will empower real musicians and give them a decent income without some idiot getting in between. This not only holds for music. If the latest game/app/film is rubbish then you or your neighbour have “seen” it and told you its crap - or not, in which case you part with your cash and are happy to do so.