UK group angers Big Music
p2p news / p2pnet:- Britain’s National Consumer Council (NCC) has seriously upset the Big Four record labels by suggesting their BPI (British Phonographic Industry) is trying to make file sharers look like criminals.
It would be something of a disappointment were that not the case. The BPI, and the many other Big Music ‘trade’ organizations, such as the RIAA, have spent millions of dollars on international PR propaganda campaigns calling file sharers ‘thieves’ and ‘pirates’ to create the precise impression that file sharers are indeed criminals.
NCC director of policy Jill attacked the cartel’s BPI for its “heavy-handed” use of court action against people who share music with each other online.
But BPI front man Peter Jamieson says the BPI hasn’t initiated any criminal actions. The BPI’s opposite numbers in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere aren’t similarly restricted.
Meanwhile, Jamieson’s bosses, the EMI Group (UK), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and Warner Music (US), have singly and collectively been found guilty of various scams, for example:
- New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer ordered the labels to return $50 million to musicians they’d had under contract
- Sony BMG recently, and under protest, agreed to stop making payments and providing expensive gifts to radio stations and their employees in return for “airplay” for the company’s songs. It was ordered to issue a statement acknowledging its “improper” conduct and told to make a $10 million payment for distribution to New York State music education and appreciation not-for-profit entities organizations.
- Sony also had to come up with $1.5 million for using a phony ‘critic’ to boost its movie releases
- The labels were collectively ordered to pay $67,375,000 as part of a national antitrust settlement for illegal price-ficing in violation of various US state and federal laws
“When people cross the line from being paying customers to taking music without permission, they can no longer be regarded as consumers – they are law breakers,” says Jamieson sanctimoniously.
=======================
And that’s it for today.
It’s Thanksgiving in Canada and we’d like to wish our Canadian readers all the best. We hope they’ll enjoy their Thanksgiving repasts as much as we know we’re going to : )
Cheers!
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
heavy-handed – UK watchdog attacks Big Music, October 8, 2004
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
Tired of being treated like a criminal? Don’t just boycott them. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls. Tell your local political representative how you feel. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
October 10th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
I am not only NOT a customer of the cartels, but I am acually working AGAINST the cartels and promoting filesharing. I do not like bullies, and I do what i can to put an end to their bullying. The stronger, the mor powerful a bully is, the more effort I put into bringing the bully down. Guerilla warfare in the form of writing code, posting information, and demonstrations (showing how something works, not protesting) are very powerful weapons against the cartels. They need to fear because we are going to win. What the cartels need to do is start competing for revenue rather than trying to wipe out the competition. Anyone can produce and distribute information cheaply.
The cartels need to lower their prices or people will choose to get their information from elsewhere. I will continue to help provide customers with these choices whether the cartels like it or not. I have singlehandedly turned on over 200 people to filesharing.
If I am caught (or I should say, set up) and sued, the cartels won’t make a single dime from me. Any money or property that their police manages to forcefully remove remove from me will be dwarfed by the punishment I will mete out to the cartels. If they mug me and steall $10,000, I will steal $100,000 from them or will cause them $10,000,000 in damages. I base my fines against the cartels based on the amount of time it takes me to earn my money. If the cartels steal a years worth of my income, then i will steal a years’ worth of their income. It is amazingly easy to cause cartels damage and then slip away unscathed.
When we win, the cartels will not have the funds to continue to bribe politicians. This source of revenue for politicians will dry up causing the cartels to have less and less influence on the government. When we are able to destroy the cartels, we will no longer be forced to consume items that we do not really want. An example of this forced consumption occures when proprietary business software companies force their customers to “upgrade” their software and/or operating system. Before the upgrade, for example, the software would manage accounts and handle billing. After the upgrade, the software would manage accounts and handle billing. The software will do the same thing after the outlay of hundreds to thousands of dollars. Fileswapping and the cracking of programs or OS’es bypasses the forced outlay of cash. As far as I am concerned, cracking a program and sharing it is not immoral since in many cases, people and business are forced to use the program in order to be allowed to conduct business.
October 10th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
Windows XP Pro costs 199.99 for the “upgrade”. That means in order to puchase XP Pro, a $7 per hour burger flipper or store clerk must work 28.57 hours to earn the required money. Acually, the amount of work required is much higher since this store clerk or berger flipper must also pay a higher percentage of income in taxes than the CEO of Microsoft.
I would rather pay a trusted cracker $35 for the same software (If I would actually allow that crap to run on my computer) or better yet, choose Linux.
In the Police States of America, the only national consumers association that really matters is called filesharers. When Billy Gates make the price of his software more reasonable (and better quality), I might use it willingly. Until that day comes, I will either use Linux, or will crack Windows if I am forced to run Windows in order to use government required software. I believe in true competition, not forced consumption.
October 10th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Welcome to p2p.net
While I wholeheartedly endorse what you say, it’s not related to the story before us.
You may have been accidently redirected from /.
October 10th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
“But BPI front man Peter Jamieson says the BPI hasn’t initiated any criminal actions.”
Mr. Jamieson no one has accused you of filing criminal charges. you’re being accused of unjustly LABELING these individuals (through you’re PR campaign) as criminals. don’t you know the difference?? No wonder you guys don’t get it.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:30 pm
As aways, the pot is calling the kettle black. Since the pot has greater resources, owns lamestream media, and has its fingers in kettle’s business at all times, guess which one gets heard?
The cartels are far from the poor and harressed business they would claim to be. Much of their dealings can not stand the light of day, nor public scrunity. Buying off problems is the solution that they depend on heavily. What they can not buy off is the public. The public has a choice in where they spend their money. The cartels, for all their wishes can not force the customer to come buy. This idea of sueing the customer base into submission isn’t working on my end.
For one thing, they don’t offer any longer the type of stuff I am interested in. Their target audience is not me nor my peer group. I no longer see the generated interest in new releases as I did of older times. The artists being put on stage as the latest greatest don’t deserve the title of artist. They deserve the title of preformer.
Accusing the customer of the businesses own failings do nothing in my book to encourage me to buy. If I had a local business doing these same tactics I would refuse to buy from them too.
Dancing around the issue in the responce does nothing to settle in my mind anything other than I have already made the right choice. To further see obsene profits being made by the cartels while they poor mouth does nothing to change my mind either. This is pure and simple greed with the idea of doing as was done in the older days and controlling the entire market so that there is no choice.
Never do I see anything coming from the cartels corner that even acknowledges that independants exist. Much of what they do and attempt to do is an attempt to put those independants in the corner and keep them there. Surely neither the cartels nor the customers buy the idea that any national group just started there without earning the ability to do what it is they claim to be. Every group in existance starts at the bottom as an independant. It’s a deal with the devil to sign the contract. To this day no money that has been collected on the sale of blank recording media has actually gone to any artist, in spite the fact that several artists have sued in court for dispersal of those funds to the “rightful owners”. This shows just where the cartels interests are. It is certainly not for the benefit of the artists as the cartels claim. It is only for their own interests.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Steal from the rich and give to the poor. I think this is sort of how file sharers see themselves, as a Robin Hood type of fellow. The rich are of course the media conlomerates whom are so obviously corrupt and steal from perfectly innocents folks, and the poor are ourselves, made so by the corrupt media conglomerates. So you see, it all balances itself out in the end. They rip us off, so we in turn rip them off. Sounds perfectly fair to me. There are no innocents in this game, survival of the fittest and all that.
October 11th, 2005 at 4:14 am
Jon I believe that SONY had to pay a 1.5 million dollar fine for the film critic scandel!!! I wish however that it would have been more like you said !!!
October 11th, 2005 at 6:11 am
We need to encourage more people to adopt an IP filter strategy. Programs such as peer-guardian/built-in-filters can block supernode/ultra peers being run by the cartels. This is especially important for non cartel supernodes/ultrapeers.
If we all block traffic from these thugs and the companies they use, then they will have no one to go after.
October 11th, 2005 at 8:43 am
Run peer guardian for a while, and you’ll realize it blocks a ton of legitimate web traffic as well.
It’s not very accurate, IMHO.
October 11th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Dear Mr. Jamieson:
During the filesharing process, no physical property belonging to your group or anyone else is being ‘taken’. In order to be ‘taking’ music, someone would need to be sticking CDs down their pants and walking out of HMV without paying for them. Taking music in this manner does not require a computer. For this reason, filesharers are not ‘theives’, since nothing is removed from someone’s possession depriving them of it’s use and benefit. ‘The original definition of ‘piracy’ clearly states that it’s an activity that involves a sea-going vessel. However, your cartel, along with the film and software cartels have seen fit to pervert the English language and refer to such activities as filesharing as ‘piracy’. The proper term for this activity, when it runs afoul of the copyright laws, is ‘infringement.’
Please use the English language properly. It is not your place nor that of your trade association colleagues to redefine words in the Queen’s English. That duty falls upon the Fellows at Oxford University. They are very reluctant to permit such linguistic transpondence to be considered valid when there is a perfectly suited word that currently exists. And no, they will not be swayed even if a rumpled paper bag full of banknotes should magically appear in their office. That stunt only works with politicians.
–TG
October 11th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Here is a Video about BPI.
ed2k://|file|BPI%20HQ%20London%20music.zip|11815841|c984ffd9fb159eca4e21b6912eec67e1|/
magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:DOJO4TJUHFW4RBQ6XPPNAHM4ALXAKGCK.JMPXJN2T7KYAIOMHOK3MLRDRJQMEZNDSN3FPBUI&dn=BPI%20HQ%20London%20music.zip
October 11th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I wonder why they area located so near to HOP for?
October 11th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I usually disable http blocking. You only need to block the p2p list.