Net firms in music pirates deal

[funke_munke]

On that note, I pay the Virgin bill in my house which is shared between five of us, if someone where to download something illegaly, would I be held responsible? I don't but theres no way I can continuously monitor four other people :s.Or is this something they haven't figured out yet?

[uni]

Originally Posted by funke_munke

On that note, I pay the Virgin bill in my house which is shared between five of us, if someone where to download something illegaly, would I be held responsible? I don't but theres no way I can continuously monitor four other people :s.Or is this something they haven't figured out yet?

the account holder is responsible under the T&C's. so if you don't secure your wireless and someone else accesses your connection and does something illegal, you may be held responsible, just as if you allowed someone in your home/building to pysically access your internet account via wired networking

there seems to be a lot of confusion about this whole issue according to all the stuff (mostly complete and utter crap) written on a number of different forums all over the web, and perhaps this agreement will help resolve some of these as it's an educational campaign first and foremost. some main points are...

1) the isp isn't checking what you are going to download - they have just agreed to pass on details of complaints with the bpi, presumably to try and resist any further heavy handed action from the bpi

2) the bpi is using p2p programs to see what users are downloading certain files and passing the ip numbers to the isp to make the user aware that they have reason to believe they are sharing/downloading illegally - the bpi don't get any personal information (unless you consider an ip address to be personal information - they don't know names, addresses etc)

3) the isp isn't passing personal information to the bpi, and the bpi isn't passing personal information to the isp - that's not allowed by law without a court injunction

4) the bpi will provide details of the files shared, times, dates and software use from the ip address

5) downloading anything else from non p2p sources such as rapidshare, usenet, etc, etc isn't involved at this stage as that involves a far greater deal of involvement and checking


the main problem seems to be that as it's so easy to download music illegally from p2p now, and such a large percentage of internet users are doing it, and there are steps available that can police/prevent/reduce the problem, yet until now no-one has been doing it and people are getting away with it and it's clearly affected the music business. as it's now such a big issue it's difficult to be ignored. if the isp's didn't do something about it, such as this, it would probably give bodies like the bpi further power to get backing from governments to force changes in law. as such, as far as the illegal p2p users are concerned, this should be seen as a reasonable and acceptable compromise as if you do get a letter, you get a warning with no further action being taken and you won't get fined. if this action stops the majority of joe public p2p users from downloading it might keep the bpi happy enough to avoid trying to force further action, as the real problem is the casual users who download the odd album instead of paying £10 for the cd, rather than the hardcore downloaders who download gigs of stuff a day and wouldn't spend a penny on a cd. anything that stops consumers spending money is a threat to business. people who wouldn't buy something if they couldn't download it aren't really affecting business, although it's obviously hard to tell what percentage of downloaders fall into either category

should the government help the bpi and record companies out by bringing in changes of law? i've seen many people disagree, as it's a civil matter of copyright infringement, and why should the government help those companies make more money. the thing is, the government changes laws on a regular basis to resolve legal issues and help other industries out with whatever important issues they need assistance with, so this is a similar thing, only most downloaders are completely oblivious to this and think it's a one off special case with the government to stop them downloading music and making record company owners and musicians even richer than before. and why should someone pay £10 for a cd when the artist is going to spend it on snorting coke from a supermodels chest in the back of a limo on the way back home to their mansion?

it is interesting and amusing to read the excuses from people posting to openly admit breaking the law, to see how they justify why they should do it, and why the isp's and bpi are evil for daring to stop people breaking a law and threaten their industry

probably the best excuse for illegal downloading is amy winehouse and pete docherty... people have bought their cd's, and look what the money's done to them. or if illegal downloading is killing music, get downloading as much westlife as you can!

[Lucio]

Originally Posted by funke_munke

On that note, I pay the Virgin bill in my house which is shared between five of us, if someone where to download something illegaly, would I be held responsible? I don't but theres no way I can continuously monitor four other people :s.Or is this something they haven't figured out yet?

Unfortuantely you're screwed, under the T&C it's *your* job to monitor thing and makes no allowances for whether it's pratical or not. Gonna make being the bill payer for a bunch of students very risky!

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by funke_munke

On that note, I pay the Virgin bill in my house which is shared between five of us, if someone where to download something illegaly, would I be held responsible? I don't but theres no way I can continuously monitor four other people :s.Or is this something they haven't figured out yet?

It depends what you mean by "legally".

In the context of this thread, which is this anti-piracy agreement, I agree with Lucio. Whoever holds the account has agreed to terms and conditions, and it isn't about who breached those terms, but that they were breached. It's a contract, so breaching them is breach of contract and, especially where those T&Cs give the other party the right of termination in the event of a breach they can, clearly, terminate the agreement.

In more general forms of "legally", however, in the sense of have you committed an offence, then no, it wouldn't (IMHO) be down to you. Should, for instance, someone on that account be downloading child porn, the police would need to prove who was doing it, and it going through that IP address would not, in my opinion, be sufficient. It may well, however, be sufficient for them to get a search warrant, resulting ion you getting raided and all PCs seized for a forensic search. If you weren't downloading, there'd be no evidence on your machine so there'd be no charges against you ..... but you'd probably go through months (and maybe more than a year) of aggravation, suspicion, investigation and lack of PC before that came conclusion was reached.

Shared accounts have their drawbacks. And, clearly, so do inadequatetly secured net connections.

[vegas]

I find that even if i download an album, I will buy the CD if I like it - I like having a collection

[garweber]

this is complete crap. if cd's werent so expensive, ppl wudnt download stuff. tho i do buy cd's occasionally if its an exceptionally brilliant artist

[educatedfool]

I'll always buy my music as I much prefer holding a CD.


Although, I would like to see solid proof that it has adversely affected the music industry. It's like a repeat of the 'Home taping is killing music' crap. The music industry is making more money than ever, yet still they whine and waste money on these poor efforts to curb piracy but the people they claim to be protecting, the artists, never get an extra penny.

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by garweber

this is complete crap. if cd's werent so expensive, ppl wudnt download stuff. tho i do buy cd's occasionally if its an exceptionally brilliant artist

The price of CDs is an argument I'd agree with, but it's a justification for not buying them. It isn't a justification for just taking the product of other people’s hard work, because you can.

And, what makes you think people wouldn't pirate a lot if they were cheaper? There are people that quite cheerfully admit to having multi-terrabyte collections of music and films .... hundreds if not thousands. Even at £5 a disc, 1000 Cds is still going to have cost five grand. If people pirate at £15, many will still do it at £5, because it still adds up to a lot of money.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Originally Posted by Saracen

The price of CDs is an argument I'd agree with, but it's a justification for not buying them. It isn't a justification for just taking the product of other people’s hard work, because you can.

And, what makes you think people wouldn't pirate a lot if they were cheaper? There are people that quite cheerfully admit to having multi-terrabyte collections of music and films .... hundreds if not thousands. Even at £5 a disc, 1000 Cds is still going to have cost five grand. If people pirate at £15, many will still do it at £5, because it still adds up to a lot of money.

end of the day, artists make there money on gigs/concerts. you cant pirate that mate

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

end of the day, artists make there money on gigs/concerts. you cant pirate that mate

I'm sure it helps. But they make money, or at least make their chances of the big time, from record deals. There was a relatively new group interviewed on TV a few days ago about these chances. They pointed out that they have to buy equipment, pay for transport, feed themselves, etc, and that when people then pirate their work, they have trouble even getting their own expenses back. They even said they're wondering if it's all worth it, if they can continue. Piracy isn't just about music corporates or multi-millionaire artists.

[streetster]

Music industry to tax downloaders

thoughts?

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by streetster

Music industry to tax downloaders

thoughts?

It's a possible solution, I guess. And, if it worked, would resolve the old dilemma of recognising the de-facto state of things, which is that a lot of people ignore the law (as it currently stands) precisely because they think (rightly, or wrongly) that they stand little or no chance of getting caught, whilst at the same time, recognising rights holders and compensating them for losses incurred in copying.

But ..... I wonder if it would actually work?

One reaction is that I'd bet some people currently pirating would continue to do so, without paying, if they could find a way to do so.

Another aspect is that you'd potentially open the floodgates, with people openly downloading far more than they do now, and many perhaps buying less content directly than they do now.

And, after all, there's ways of buying content legitimately now if all people want to is download, though maybe not all content.

And it won't solve all problems. It's one thing for rights holders to get compensation for downloaded material, but when that material is stuff that, for example, hasn't even been released yet, pirated versions finding their way onto the web can seriously damage a whole release, and a bit of compensation from this "levy" isn't going to compensate for the losses involved in that.

And, to be effective and manageable, it'd require a change in the law, because otherwise, the odds are that you'd never get agreement from all rights holders, and the whole thing falls apart of downloaders will have to be sure if the material they download is covered or not, and risk getting sued or booted off their ISP if they download content that isn't covered.

So, all told, it's an option worth looking at, but I can see it having issues to resolve yet.

[garweber]

Originally Posted by Saracen

The price of CDs is an argument I'd agree with, but it's a justification for not buying them. It isn't a justification for just taking the product of other people’s hard work, because you can.

And, what makes you think people wouldn't pirate a lot if they were cheaper? There are people that quite cheerfully admit to having multi-terrabyte collections of music and films .... hundreds if not thousands. Even at £5 a disc, 1000 Cds is still going to have cost five grand. If people pirate at £15, many will still do it at £5, because it still adds up to a lot of money.

i quite agree. but personally i like buying the cd. it feels good to own something that produces such intense feelings deep inside, which is what music does essentially. but i would feel much happier buying it if the cd cost £5 say instead of £15. that kind of price is just ludicrous!! there cant be that high an expense! their net profit must surely be very close to their gross

[kalniel]

Price doesn't seem to have any effect in other areas though - PC video games and DVDs are both very cheap compared to their historical prices but piracy is way higher than when they were more expensive.

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by garweber

i quite agree. but personally i like buying the cd. it feels good to own something that produces such intense feelings deep inside, which is what music does essentially. but i would feel much happier buying it if the cd cost £5 say instead of £15. that kind of price is just ludicrous!! there cant be that high an expense! their net profit must surely be very close to their gross

We can't know, can we?

It isn't just the cost of the CD itself, and not even the CD, case and printed material. There are a LOT of other things going into costs. Whoever pressed the CDs expects to make a profit. Whoever printed the cover notes and inserts expects to make a profit. The CD will probably have gone through several company's hands by the time it gets to the shop, like the distributor, wholesaler, at least one transport company, more than one lot of warehousing, and you're paying a bit towards the costs, and provits, of each and every one of those, from the record company's secretary's salary to the cleaners and security guards in the warehouses to the guys that drove the lorries..

And, of course, you're paying for the artist's time and creativity. It can take a year or more to put an album together. And having done so, there's no guarantee that it'll sell, or for a major name, no guarantee how well it will sell. Yet a lot of money has been put in up-front (so financing costs have to be covered), and a risk taken that they'll recover costs, and make a profit of sufficient size that it's larger than they could have got just by investing their money in much safer ways. You take the risks, you expect the rewards, because sometimes risk results in loss.

And, as far as record companies go, that's also part of what you're paying for - losses on other products. It's all very well being fairly sure that major chart names will sell reasonably well, but those major chart names had to go through a process to become major chart names, because they all, without exception, started out as unknowns. And tomorrow's big chart names are today's unknowns.

So, for every big success a record company has, and for every big chart name they have, how many bands did they risk money on, and lose because the band failed?

And even then, the price you pay is a structured price. If you're paying £15, it's probably because it's a relatively new release. Wait a year or two and that'll drop. For most CDs, it'll drop to much closer to that £5 eventually.

The price you pay is what the market will bear. Companies obviously make far more on brand new releases of major names that they do on exactly the same disk a few years later. But that's true of most (non-commodity) products. God knows it's true in the PC world. Look at the price, for instance, of most new graphics cards, then look a few years later? In fact, in many cases, look a few weeks later.

The timescales between graphics cards and CDs (or movies) is different, but the principle is the same - and early adopters pay a premium.

Oh, and it's that pricing differential over time that makes piracy so iniquitous. The revenue a record company (or movie studio) decreases rapidly after that initial splurge. That's where the lion's share of the revenue comes from, and the returns diminish very rapidly after that, partly due to dropping sales and partly due to dropping prices (which are linked via the demand mechanism). Yet piracy can dramatically reduce demand in that initial period, which is by far the most profitable period in any album release. Yet, record companies have to look at the revenue stream in total, and clobbering that first few months can make all the difference between a given release being a commercial success or a commercial failure, especially for second or third tier bands.

Yes, I'd like my CDs at £5 (-ish) not £15. But, generally, all I have to do to achieve that is to wait. If people want the latest release when it's released, you'll pay a premium.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

bluray movies are overpriced. £20 for a an hour and a half movie? LOL