The beginning of the end for P2Ps/Torrent Sites?

[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by Sean

But making your videos available to be viewed on Youtube as an advertising tool to sell DVDs of your movies and TV shows is very different from having people illegally download them to their computer so they can burn it to DVD for free and watch them any time or place they choose.

Not sure how different it is really.
And you could apply the exact same principle to marketing music. Except that instead of youtube you have p2p networks. Make music available for free online as an advertising tool for your concerts and merchandise (and better quality copies of the music on cd or paid download). The principle is exactly the same.
There's always gonna be people who will settle for the inferior quality donwload and not buy the cd, just as there will be people who will be perfectly happy to watch Python clips on youtube and never buy a dvd, but still they decided to embrace the idea of online filesharing rather than fight it, as they literally say in the video.

I seem to be repeating the same points over and over at this point to little avail though, so I guess that's that. Some people just don't seem to want to accept that stealing the work of artists - especially smaller independent artists - hurts those artist's careers and lives. As a smaller independent artist in the music industry myself, I can attest to it.

Now Sean, just because you keep repeating the same point doesn't mean that other people can't disagree or try to provide different points of view.
And while I sympathise and understand that you feel passionately about this, I have to say that just because your are an independant artist yourself doesn't make your point of view the only right one. (I'm sure that's not how you meant it but it does come across like that in your last paragraph).

[Sean]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

Not sure how different it is really.

The advertising approach is making the video available only on youtube. You can't download it to watch it any where any time like you could if you had it on a dvd. It's also only available on youtube as a compressed file. So logically, if someone wants a copy that they can watch any where at any time, and that's full quality, they'll buy the dvd.

Having an illegaly downloaded copy on dvd means that you can watch it any where at any time, often at full quality without having paid for it, thus robbing the creators of the content of income. It's pretty clearly different.

Originally Posted by King of Snake

you could apply the exact same principle to marketing music. Except that instead of youtube you have p2p networks. Make music available for free online as an advertising tool for your concerts and merchandise (and better quality copies of the music on cd or paid download). The principle is exactly the same.

Agreed.

The illegal downloading I have a problem with is when people use P2P sites to share full quality, copyrighted material, causing an artist to lose sales. Using lower quality downloads (although I would lean towards the youtube model of non-downloadable previews like Amazon.com does) for advertising is a great idea. Myspace does the same thing, providing a lower quality music player that can provide the full, non-downloadable track as a preview. I think that's great.

Originally Posted by King of Snake

Now Sean, just because you keep repeating the same point doesn't mean that other people can't disagree or try to provide different points of view.
And while I sympathise and understand that you feel passionately about this, I have to say that just because your are an independant artist yourself doesn't make your point of view the only right one. (I'm sure that's not how you meant it but it does come across like that in your last paragraph).

Point of view is one thing. We can all have diverse points of view on how best to deal with the issue of illegal downloads. But in the last paragraph you mentioned, I'm talking about a simple fact that too many people ignore. Stealing the work of an artist rather than paying for it hurts the artist financially. That's not my opinion, or my personal point of view - it's a simple fact. What we do about it is where all our different - and in many cases valid - points of view come into play.

[Deckard]

New Zealand Internet blackout protest against insane copyright law.

click

Black out your Twitter avatar, Facebook/Myspace pages, or even websites to protest against the insane new law that will come into full force on February 28.

(three cheers for Stephen Fry for tweeting it to wider attention)

[chuck]

Yeah - cheers Stephen.

I don't follow his tweets - but if you follow the links, you'll see the insanity of the law.

Here's the former minister, kicked out last year, in effect doing her best Marie Antoinette impersonation: "they can go to the library to use the internet".

Fucking ridiculous.

I'm in charge of info-tech at our school - we run the risk of being cutoff because some child watches a youtube video of the latest Paramount - or god forbid, remixes an image in an art appreciation class.

Someone should just cut the pissy little pipe that provides our link the net - and the RIANZ and NZFACT can all cut their losses and save the world. Fucking pricks.

And yes - I'm posting from school.

[Sean]

The founders of Pirate Bay, based in Sweden, have been sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of a little under 4 million dollars each. They're defying the court ruling.

I'm hoping to get some thoughts from others on this here, because I'm somewhat torn on it. On the one hand, they're not actually involved with hosting the illegal files being shared through their site, but on the other, what other purpose does their site serve than enabling illegal file sharing? Even the name implies as much - "Pirate Bay".

And of course there's still the issue that I'm in the minority on here, which is that I know first-hand how illegal file-sharing absolutely devastates lesser known artists and labels, so I'm against it from the get-go. But I know that many here believe it's a good thing because of the exposure it can provide. I actually understand that argument, but disagree with how beneficial it is to smaller artists, because while it's nice to hear that thousands of people love you're work, admiration and praise simply don't pay the bills....

[chuck]

In a desperate bid to keep hope alive... the Canadian BSA - just makes a whole bunch of numbers up - aiming to prove that piracy is thriving - they just don't have any evidence, because they never actually did any surveying in Canada.

Oh yeah - we're taking it seriously now.

[matt]

I don't use torrent sites as I don't d/l movies or tv shows and to be honest these days I don't even use soulseek much as it seems ridiculously easy to type in 'band name, band album, rar' into Roogle and find a leaked album on rapidshare or mediafire in seconds.

There's also loads of blogs out there that post links to leaked albums so I can't really see how they're going to stop it unless they do get the ISPs to come down on people with heavy traffic. But then if you've paid for Unlimited broadband I can't see how that will work unless they can prove you're d/l illegal content and it doesn't take to much research on Google to find out how to mask your ISP address when d/l if you so wanted.

Actually, fuck it, if they're serious they should go after Google as I can learn do to all sorts of illegal things using their search engine...

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Originally Posted by matt

I don't use torrent sites as I don't d/l movies or tv shows and to be honest these days I don't even use soulseek much as it seems ridiculously easy to type in 'band name, band album, rar' into Roogle and find a leaked album on rapidshare or mediafire in seconds.

There's also loads of blogs out there that post links to leaked albums so I can't really see how they're going to stop it unless they do get the ISPs to come down on people with heavy traffic. But then if you've paid for Unlimited broadband I can't see how that will work unless they can prove you're d/l illegal content and it doesn't take to much research on Google to find out how to mask your ISP address when d/l if you so wanted.

Actually, fuck it, if they're serious they should go after Google as I can learn do to all sorts of illegal things using their search engine...

No, no, no, you don't get it. It just takes the focus off the stealing from tax payers. I think. Maybe. To be honest, I don't really pay attention to this stuff. I'm just bored. For now.

(arrow thing pointing down)

Originally Posted by Future Proof

...and if Hoffman-La Roche isn't liable for every sexual assault that happens because of Rohypnol, then how are the guys from TPB guilty of anything?...

Yeah, but really, is it Oregano* or Basil* I'm tasting?


*I'm being all artsey now.

[Future Proof]

Originally Posted by Sean

The founders of Pirate Bay, based in Sweden, have been sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of a little under 4 million dollars each. They're defying the court ruling.

I'm hoping to get some thoughts from others on this here, because I'm somewhat torn on it. On the one hand, they're not actually involved with hosting the illegal files being shared through their site, but on the other, what other purpose does their site serve than enabling illegal file sharing? Even the name implies as much - "Pirate Bay".

And of course there's still the issue that I'm in the minority on here, which is that I know first-hand how illegal file-sharing absolutely devastates lesser known artists and labels, so I'm against it from the get-go. But I know that many here believe it's a good thing because of the exposure it can provide. I actually understand that argument, but disagree with how beneficial it is to smaller artists, because while it's nice to hear that thousands of people love you're work, admiration and praise simply don't pay the bills....

I can't say that I agree that the issue is about who's getting hurt and how, but whether or not the site owners are complicit in any way. In my mind this is really a slippery slope. Some of the content on TPB isn't copyrighted, and some is but the problem that I see is that if Ginsu's not liable for every person that's been murdered by their knives and if Hoffman-La Roche isn't liable for every sexual assault that happens because of Rohypnol, then how are the guys from TPB guilty of anything? TPB helps people commit illegal acts but what about movies that glorify violence?

I think that society's definition of complicity is way too vague to force these guys to pay $4,000,000 and a year of incarceration.

[Deckard]

Sweden's Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group - which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law - secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party.

Swedish pirates capture EU seat