How piracy paved the way in Sweden
The trial against The Pirate Bay site began Monday in Sweden. And while Sweden is depicted by copyright-enforcement groups as piracy's promised land, it is also a nation that experiments with legal music-service alternatives.
The case against the founders of Piratebay.org--one of the world's three major BitTorrent sites--is expected to last 13 days, which would make it Sweden's longest-ever trial dealing with copyright issues. The case is the result of the search and seizure of servers by Swedish police at Pirate Bay's offices in May 2006.
For years, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Motion Picture Association of America have depicted Sweden as rife with digital piracy.
On a mash-up created with Google Maps, Pirate Bay itself shows where file-sharing users are located: most are in China (22 percent) and the U.S. (11 percent). Sweden (2 percent) is clearly over-represented, which might partly be explained by the fact that broadband connections are widely used throughout the country.
During the time leading up to the trial, though, at least three innovative, legal alternatives for listening to digital music have been launched in Sweden: Spotify, Tunerec, and Chilirec.
"It helped us see that there's something wrong when an illegal alternative defeats a legal one. We wanted to solve the problem with playing music on the Internet and find a model that would work for artists, users, and advertisers," said Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify.
Spotify has forged agreements with organizations such as Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music Group, Merlin, The Orchard, and CD Baby, and now offers millions of songs streamed online. Subscribers pay about $12 a month and can listen to any song at any time.
But there's even more buzz about Spotify's alternative offer, a nonpaid service, completely free, that's currently open only for a limited group of invited users (except in the U.K., where Spotify a few days ago opened it up for anyone who wants to register). It's ad-financed, with a short commercial message being played a couple of times per hour, between two songs, whereas the paid service is ad free.
Chilirec and Tunerec, by contrast, offer a kind of personal Internet-based storage that records music from Internet radio stations worldwide, continually, resulting in a huge amount of songs stored in a short time that people have the right to listen to whenever they want, without ever downloading them.
The basic idea is that because the songs are recorded in a personal disk space for each user, it is to be considered private recording of radio music for personal use, which is perfectly legal.
Tunerec actually has an agreement with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Swedish copyright organization STIM. Chilirec has closed its beta, stating that it is now working on the design of a commercial product.
Three elegant solutions
We end up with three elegant solutions, at a time when copyright owners and authorities are trying to solve the piracy problem with law enforcement.
All three depend on people being online since they don't offer downloading. It's likely only a matter of time before they offer that feature, though. And when they do, they will probably use BitTorrent or similar file-sharing technologies as effective ways to distribute large files.
Where do we end up? Having people downloading and listening to all kinds of music, without paying, using file sharing. It seems familiar, but it will be legal and commercially viable. So did we really have to endure all the mess with hopeless legal efforts? It seems so.
Law enforcement is certainly giving people one reason to choose legal alternatives instead of piracy, but for years we have seen that it is not enough. Legal ways to consume digital music must also be extremely easy to use and have a very competitive price, which requires new ideas that both record companies and copyright enforcers have failed to produce.
These new ideas are instead popping up from companies that view a business opportunity where old models are failing. From that perspective, one might arrive at the conclusion that piracy actually showed the way.
You might even have noticed that "The Pirate Bay" is called "The PIRATE Bay".
People who go on about this issue (a) show a fantastic ignorance of the history of software copyright infringement and/or (b) are really just trying to trivialise the issue.
To sum it up... if someone wants to share a file on their computer then it is their file to share. So I don't see what all the fuss is about with this.
Downloading is taking something of value and not paying for it.
So I guess you don't care if your employer doesn't pay you for the work you do? You should let them know.
And you are not 'sharing'. To 'share' in this context would be like sharing a book; I loan it (and do not have direct access to it), then get it back (and the other person doesn't have direct access).
This is copyright infringement, just like if I had photocopied the book. It is wrong and illegal.
The Pirate Bay uses the term as a thumb in the nose for the media companies.
The media companies use the term to make it sound like it's some sort of heinous thing - like rape or murder.
Welcome to Propaganda... where sheeple like ajhoughton suck it down for the media corps, and even trabun sucks it down in a way by referring to copyright infringement as "stealing" (e.g. a crime), when in fact it is a mere civil tort as long as money is not involved in the act of copying/distribution. Meanwhile, we all carry blissfully on, as media corporations do their level best to continue their quest, their quest to maximize the money they make from both artist and consumer alike. It also has a nice side benefit of maximizing control and power over creativity...
...and meanwhile we hear all the bluff and bluster from soi-disant 'rebels' who try to justify their acts, we hear cries of "boycott!" from the mob, as they continue sucking down and trading in material made by manufactured media "stars".
A pox on all of your houses.
If you don't like the RIAA, then grow a pair and buy only from indies - at the same time you can stop trading the RIAA files. Sure they don't make a dime from the copying, but they do maintain their dominant position as to what's culture and what isn't - why the frig would you want to continue giving them that kind of control?
If you agree with the RIAA, then kindly get your facts straight - else you only look stupid when you parrot the pre-digested corporate line. And kindly continue to support your chosen masters by buying Britney Spears (or whoever is the star-of-the-day) until your credit card melts.
/P
An employer/employee relationship is a voluntary contract between two parties who exchange work for pay in a pre-arranged covenant. I have no covenant with the RIAA, nor do you, nor does the kid who downloads a Miley Cyrus song off of eMule.
A better analogy would be if you wrote a top-notch thesis, and suddenly all the other kids start submitting the same paper and defense, verbatim. That is the feeling that a content creator has - that sense of being cheated.
Monetarily, it makes no diff - you have no clue as to whether the copiers would have bought your wares or not, and trying to make a monetary argument is stupid since it cannot be quantified.
OTOH, the RIAA members aren't the creators - they're merely middlemen. It doesn't excuse the copying, but at the same time I can't bring myself to scrape up any sympathy for , say, a corporation who still rakes in money from the creativity of someone who is now well and truly a corpse (e.g. Walt Disney).
So.... meh - both sides suck. I will give the folks like Pirate Bay props for one thing, though - at least they're not trying to subvert whole governments to support their business model, nor do they commit mass extortion and legal intimidation to get their point across.
/P
What do you mean by "something of value"? Value to whom? I assume that you include options in the definition of "take". In other words - the record company has the option of selling a record to me. If I download it, I choose not to buy that record and I have thus "taken" (removed or atleast lowered the value of) the company's option. Is that what you mean? If not, what is the value that is being taken and to whom does it belong?
If it is a correct interpretation, is that reasonable a reasonable definition of theft?
It does thus imply that causing options to go unrealized for a third party is the same as theft. I assume that you would scope this to some type of action. If I withheld information causing a competitor to miss potential contracts, I would assume that I would not be deemed a thief, in your opinion.
All the same, I am removing the option from them - I am taking something of value from them.
If I understand you correctly, I think this view opens interesting perspectives. Very socialistic, strangely enough.
> Welcome to Propaganda... where sheeple like ajhoughton suck it down for the media corps
Or, in the real universe, where people like ajhoughton know what they're talking about, and the uneducated mob (in this instance you, Penguinisto) spouts unmitigated rubbish in an attempt to justify their illegal behaviour.
> Monetarily, it makes no diff - you have no clue as to whether the copiers would have bought your wares or not, and trying to make a monetary argument is stupid since it cannot be quantified.
That's not true in all cases. Sometimes you *can* quantify it, and the statistics are generally pretty shocking. I know because people pirate our software, and we have all kinds of interesting information about the people (and the number of people) who do.
Also, you can derive numbers from watching your sales figures before and after a file is released onto a public file sharing network. Sometimes you can actually see the fall in sales on the day when it happens.
Besides which, not being able to exactly quantify a loss doesn't mean it isn't a loss. It just means that it's difficult to say how much you've lost without making some kind of estimate. People might differ on what sort of estimates are reasonable, but at the end of the day everyone knows that piracy is costing copyright holders a considerable amount of money...
You call it "piracy", when it is in truth no such thing. Piracy is a defined crime internationally, and does not involve copyright at all - therefore, no, you don't know what you're talking about.
Also, you make the stupid assumption that I perform these acts - fact is, I do not, and have even gone so far as to exhort readers to buy (note that word) only from indies and avoid the RIAA material... so kindly keep your libel to yourself.
"Sometimes you *can* quantify it, and the statistics are generally pretty shocking."
No, you can only estimate at best, since not everyone who copies your product would have paid for it in the first place (unless you're claiming psychic powers or somesuch). Even by comparing a hypothetical loss of sales figures, you have no idea of all factors in play that contribute to the losses (competition pressures, economic pressures, negative opinions of your product, etc). Therefore the best you can do is estimate, and usually the public estimations are grossly exaggerated.
QED: you cannot quantify this.
> You call it "piracy", when it is in truth no such thing. Piracy is a defined crime internationally, and does not involve copyright at all - therefore, no, you don't know what you're talking about.
Again, you don't know what you're talking about. The word "piracy" has been used to describe copyright infringement for HUNDREDS OF YEARS; you can find examples dating back as far as the 17th century. Check the Oxford English Dictionary if you like; it has a number of examples you might find illuminating.
But in any event, in a modern context, as I said quite clearly, the people involved in copyright violation have themselves adopted the term, and have been actively using it to my personal knowledge since the 1980s, maybe even earlier.
I really don't get people like you who ignore and rewrite history in order to label the use of the word "pirate" somehow incorrect or unacceptable. Anyway, you're just plain wrong.
> "Sometimes you *can* quantify it, and the statistics are generally pretty shocking."
>
> No, you can only estimate at best, since not everyone who copies your product would have paid for it in the first place
I think you're mischievously attempting to conflate the fact that the data will necessarily not be 100% accurate with the idea that it might possibly be entirely inaccurate and exaggerated. I don't doubt that some groups do exaggerate the scale of the problem, but it is definitely possible to come up with figures with a good degree of confidence on the basis of the kind of data that can relatively easily be collected.
If you're going to claim that their business model is broken, then you should suggest an alternative. Except that nobody has yet suggested an alternative that actually works. People don't want to subscribe to a music service where they pay every month for access to their music; they want to own copies of it. Similarly, advertising supported services are *terrible* for consumers, and in the limit wouldn't bring in enough advertising revenue to support themselves anyway because the more advertising that's available, the cheaper it ends up being (that's simple economics).
Sure, a business model where musicians, software developers, artists, authors and all the other folks whose work is protected by copyright make no money at all works *initially* for consumers. It doesn't work so well for the people doing the hard work though, and as a result they'll lose their livelihoods and nobody will bother making any of those things. Or if they do, it will be done based on the patronage of rich individuals, because that's the only way to fund it if everyone else gets copies for free.
As for printing companies, IIRC at one point in the past U.S.-based printers were publishing books in violation of U.K. copyright and selling them back into the United Kingdom, robbing authors and U.K. publishers of their income. I don't recall the exact detail, but if you're interested I'm sure you could look it up.
Have you not yet realized that digital copies of music are quickly losing their monetary value? The music industry is still focusing on trying to make money off the consumer's listening to the song. Those digital files need to be viewed now as advertisement for the artist. Once the recording industry realizes this, they can begin brainstorming new business models. It will not be easy, but was it easy the first time they got into business? As a business you have to adapt to the changing environment. When one of your items or services becomes out of date, do you not transition to something else? Or do you simply throw your hands up in the air and claim that it's beyond your control and begin asking for handouts? I have no sympathy for any company that shows so much neglect in their business to let themselves be caught with their proverbial pants down.
If you were to simply take away the legality of sharing digital copies of music, what would need to be done to keep your business going? That is the question the industry needs to ask itself, litigating will only get it so far and tends to ruin the relationship between themselves and their consumers. You will probably come up with something to counter my comment, so have at it.
hell, that would mean i could go steal off of bestbuy and say their online shopping sucks so unless they improve it its my right to steal.(ok im pushing it a bit)
o and job loss is a part of what happens with piracy in place. don't twist it by saying it has to do with many factors. this is one of them. keep complaining about the fat cat then go take over their place so u can do better and keep the employees employed
> Those digital files need to be viewed now as advertisement for the artist.
Well that's one possibility, and I assume that you're saying that artists should therefore make their money from live performances.
Sadly that only really works for established, well-known artists. It would be difficult to make a living doing that for the less well known majority, which is one reason that they presently sell their music through distribution companies.
People forget that not all copyright holders are hugely wealthy and that copyright was intended to protect "the little guy" as much as, if not more than, big corporations. People also forget that even the big corporations employ everyday people to do often quite difficult jobs, and when taking illegal copies of copyrighted material instead of paying for it, they're robbing those people just as much as the companies they work for.
If the entertainment industry didn't overcharge for their products then people'd be less likely to use filesharing. Leave these guys alone and go after the real bad guys.
Amazon Unbox is still DRM'd, but that may eventually end, making their service even more attractive.
So you can "doubt extremely that the legal services will *ever* allow outright "downloading" all you want, it doesn't change the fact that it's already happened and that you missed the memo.
I assume the reason so much is made of piracy (downloading files) whatever we're calling it now is because the artist isn't getting paid for their work...?
If that is the reason then, why am I able to go down to my local second hand book store and purchase, at very discounted rates, the complete cd version of whatever music it is I want?
At what point does the artist get his money for this transaction? How is this any different than file sharing? Instead of paying my ISP for the bandwidth to download, I'm simply paying the store owner....still no profit for the artist yet these stores are completely acceptable.
Isn't this hypocrisy?
As an aside, "sharing" in the legal sense should allow for concurrent utilization of content. Think of two children reading from the same book, or people listening to a boom-box, or even broadcasts such as radio and TV. The problem seems to arise because with digital files, it becomes extremely difficult to tell when and if a copy has been made; conversely it has become extremely easy for a copy to be made. Now those two kids reading the same book are reading separate copies of the book on opposite sides of the world. Someone may see this as a lost sale, another may see it as theft, yet another as free promotion, and another as a market indicator. The latter two can lead to more sales in the end, whereas the former two can lead to corporate overreactions in the form of litigation or true lost sales due to artificial limitation.
These people need to grow the hell up... and get their priorities straight.
on the contrary lost jobs from these type of actions create recession and higher employeement rate which ends up with those unemployeed go steal rob and kill for what they need
Time to throw out the rhetoric. If I want something, I'm going to get it at the lowest possible price. I'd steal "real" merchandise too if I was confident I could get away with it.
Even if every single source of free music on the internet went away somehow, you'd just find me holding a tape recorder up to the speakers instead.
i for one will pay for content at a price that it is worth otherwise i will just not have it at all, saying everyone will just get stuff at the lowest possible to the degree of stealing it if u wont be caught is just plain wrong. and this is why society keeps slipping furthur into chaos
dont say that as long as no money is involved then its not stealing or its not that bad im just getting a copy of it. Think of it this way, a movie for example, has ppl doing light, camera, actors, sound, scripting, directing, publishing, etc a whole **** load more jobs. and if every one thinks copying with out compensation for all those that worked so hard to create the piece of work what does that leave for them?
these people will get less jobs because the movie can't make money so they scale back the effort they put in so future films get worse and worse eventually getting down to sticks for swords rocks as bullets. do u really want to see taht happening?
also think of the current recession. Ok i might stray a bit on this but in downloading "free" content people have the sense the publisher does not lose anything and the the downloader just get the content virtually like how radio broad casting "appears to be free" When in reality if 80% of the ppl download instead of purchasing the publishers lose that exact 80% of profit,
people go hungry u know... lets not forget, radio broadcasting get paid one way or the other unless privately operated and even then the privately operated one shouldn't be playing unpaid content(where the commercial ones do pay for them)
The second aspect I think that contributes to all of this sharing of works comes from paying for our internet service. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay for our internet service. We (again the children of the digital era) think that with our monthly fees we send to an ISP - that we have already paid for whatever we can get out of such services. Doesn't that mean that if we can find copies of stuff online, we deserve to have it? Again I'm not saying this is the correct way of thinking, but I think it is the way we think.
Bootlegging has always been an issue in our society. The people not in control want to be in control. The people in control don't want to loose control. There is no easy fix with any of it.
- by bmn_1213 February 19, 2009 4:48 PM PST
- I see a lot of comments about broken buissness models and such as well as debating right and wrong for downloading music. How can the music industry compete with sites that offer music for free. I guess thats their argument and it seems to make sense i guess. Oh wait Bottled water is a 50 billion dollar a year industry. I wonder what would happen if I got in doc browns time machine and went back to the fifty's and tried to convince the coca cola company that they could make a fortune filtering, bottling and selling water like they do coke. Hmmm. People like me would much rather get music from a reputable place where the quality is assured and the safety of the file is assured . perhaps they should find the people who started the bottled water craze and get them to create a new buissness model.....
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