Tag Archives: P2P

[Media] Newspaper Articles About Copying And File Sharing

Abstract

According to the RIAA the media industry is suffering heavy losses due to increased copying and file sharing in the last 10 years. Sanity and reason shows there must be something true with that argument. But are the numbers the media companies are providing correct? What can we learn from history?

The following links provide an uncategorized and unsorted mixture of links (in multiple languages) dealing with the topic of copying and file sharing. It is in no way complete and perfect, but is probably usable as a lateral cut thru that topic.

We will update this section frequently. Comments are highly appreciated.

Links

Date Headling Editor/Media Link
1977 Sind Leer-Cassetten der Tod der Schallplatte? (~ “Will blank tapes mark the end of vinyl?”) Bravo Link
1977 “Klang-Supermarkt zum Nulltarif” (~”Sound supermarket for free”) Spiegel Link
Late 1980s “Anti-DAT lobbying” Wikipedia Link
1992 “Audio Home Recording Act” Wikipedia Link
2003 “Studie: Illegale Kopien sind ein internes Problem der Filmindustrie” (~”Study: Illegal Copies Are Internal Problem Of The Filmindustry”) Heise.de Link
2006 “Studios See Big Rise In Estimates of Losses To Movie Piracy” Wall Street Journal Link
2006 “Raubkopie-Studie: Hollywood verliert 6 Milliarden Dollar” (~”Illegal Copy Study: Hollywood Loses 6 Billion US$”) Golem.de Link
2009 “COMMENTS OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION IN RESPONSE TO THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN WORKSHOP ON THE ROLE OF CONTENT IN THE BROADBAND ECOSYSTEM” Paramount Pictures Link
2009 “Hollywood-Studio will Suchmaschinen kontrollieren” (~”Hollywood Studio Aiming At Control Of Internet Search Engines”) Golem.de Link
2009 “How UK Government spun 136 people into 7m illegal file sharers” PCPro.co.uk Link
2009 “Blu-ray kann weltweiten DVD-Verkaufsrückgang nicht auffangen” (~”Worldwide Blu-Ray Sales Don’t Compensate Reduced DVD Sales”) Golem.de Link
2009 “Blu-ray Disc zieht an – DVD-Verkäufe rückläufig” (~”Blu-Ray Sales Increasing – DVD Sales Decreasing”) Big Screen Link
2009 “Artists’ lawsuit: major record labels are the real pirates”) Ars Technica Link
2009 “Sind Labels die wahren Piraten? Musiker verklagen kanadische Musikindustrie” (~”Are Labels The Real Pirates? Musicians Sue Canadian Musicindustry”) Tom’s Hardware Link
2010 “Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods” U.S. Government
Accountability Office
Link
2010 “Verluste durch Filesharing sind stark übertrieben” (~”Losses From File Sharing Massively Exaggerated”) Big Screen Link
2010 “Seagate to preload hard drives with movies” Financial Times Link

[Muzaq] Former Universal CEO Calls For Culture Flatrate

Former CEO of Universal Music Germany Tim Renner has called for a culture flatrate in the german Rolling Stone magazine.

Renner said, potential music buyers could be offered unlimited access to the music industry’s repositories for €12,90 (~US$17,50) per month.

Furthermore at the address of the music industry he argues: “Instead of fighting with ghosts, it’s all about starting a business”.

In 2004 Renner left Universal Music and wrote the book “Kinder, der Tod ist gar nicht so schlimm” (~”Kids, the death is not as bad as it seems”) – his personal opinion to the music industry’s future.

Links

» Tim Renner on Motor.de
» Rolling Stone Germany: Renner fordert Kulturflatrate für 12,90€
» Amazon.de: Kinder, der Tod ist gar nicht so schlimm

[Muzaq] Incomplete-MP3 Store Alpha

The Situation

As an addition to our periodical music reviews we now offer to get those tracks legally as mp3 downloads from our own site here. We don’t expect big sales here. We see this as another experiment in our large field of experiments.

As this is all about gathering experiences, we currently offer this service for the U.S. and for Germany only.


The Quality

The quality of the mp3 files is very good. The mp3 files have round about 256kBits/s compressed variable bitrate.


Your Benefits

You get real mp3’s  without digital rights management (DRM) or watermarks. You can play mp3 files virtually on any mobile music player around, mp3’s are of course compatible to Apple’s iPods or iPhones or Palm’s Pre.

And yes: this is legal. No downloading from dark places. And the best: we teamed up with Amazon, thus allowing you to use Amazon as your payment service to get our finest mp3 selections.


The Prices

The prices vary depending on the size and the amount of tracks. LP’s usually cost about US$9.98 (€9.98). EP’s vary between $3.00 – $5.00.

Links

» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (USA)
» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (Deutschland)

Preview is limited to 30secs at the moment…

[Muzaq] Artists Sue Major Labels – $6 Bill. Lawsuit

Again the irony of reality strikes back on the major record labels. According to articles on Toronto Star, Golem.de, TorrentFreak.com canadian record companies have illegaly copied thousands of songs from artists without permission and without sharing the profit with the artists.

Instead the record companies put every song on a “pending list”. According to Golem.de this list has been set up in the 1980s until nowadays and comprises 300,000 songs. Following the idea of “exploit now, pay later if at all” the music companies have never shared profits until now.

In october 2008 the estate of Chet Baker (a famous jazz musician in the 1950s) fired a class-action lawsuit against the music industry. Well known artists like Beyonce or Bruce Springsteen have joined the list plaintiffs.

The defendants on the other hand are Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, and the likes. The irony here is: those four major labels are also the primary members of the CRIA – the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

Michael Geist of Toronto Star writes:

At $20,000 per infringement, potential liability exceeds $6 billion.

These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages.

With those news the Music industry’s fights against piracy will not become any easier. Media industry should eventually stop not facing up to reality.

Our comment

Good night major music companies. This is one of the worst message you could have ever been transporting to the consumers: “We exploit everyone, no matter if it is an admonished file sharer, or an artist. As long as we do it, it is right.”

Your business models are dying, and so are you. Creative indy labels that understand how to use technologies like the internet for the consumers and not against them and how to share profits with the artists will survive.

[Muzaq] Amazon MP3 Downloads in Germany

Amazon has opened their music download service for german customers. About 5 million MP3’s can be downloaded. Prices vary between 0.77€ and 0.99€. Complete albums start at 4.95€.
Amazon does not use DRM techniques. MP3’s are encoded at 256KBit/sec. By using the MP3 format these files can be played on virtually any digital portable music player.
Downloading requires Amazon’s MP3-Downloader. Amazon supports all major operating systems like Windows, MacOS X and Linux (Debian 4, Ubuntu 9, OpenSuSE 11, Fedora 9). The growing number of Linux users will most likely appreciate a way to legally buy and download music.

»Amazon’s MP3 Download service in Germany

[News] Pirate Bay Court Hearing Ends

With the final speech of the defense the court hearing ended today. The Pirate Bay guys have the public opinion on their side. As expected the defence negated responsibility for copyright infringement and continued to argue that Pirate Bay is basically a search engine, that provides torrent index files. The court is expected to take several weeks to rule in this highly complicated case.

According to the german newspaper TAZ, seven in eight newspaper articles in Sweden reporting in a positive or neutral style. A PR counsel for the music industry is quoted to be saying “We lost the fight for public opinion”.

In the meantime the media industry is trying to make the European Parliament push governments to persecute web services providing indexes of copyrighted material.

Because of the unknown illegal status here in Germany we cannot link directly to the trial page, that has been set up by the PirateBay team. You may use google.com to find it. It is linked from their main site.