Reiki Music. Video Marketing

Six major UK ISPs, namely BT, BSkyB, Orange, Talk Talk (Carphone Warehouse), Tiscali and Virgin Media, have joined the UK Government-backed Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform scheme, aimed at curbing on-line software piracy, such as illegal music and film trading or sharing.

Under the scheme, ISPs will write to customers informing them that copyright rights holders are alleging that their broadband connection has been used to illegally offer content for upload.

In stage 2 apparently customers will be “blacklisted” and their internet access “curbed” under reforms to fight online piracy. In return, the Government has abandoned a controversial proposal to disconnect broadband services for users who had been caught out three times.

Of course how do they know one has been trading files illegally?
They are monitoring what you download/upload of course! But you knew that already of course?
Nobody say the word privacy, OK.

One of the ISPs, Carphone Warehouse, via its chief executive Charles Dunstone, says it is not TalkTalk’s “job to tell customers what they should or shouldn’t be doing, but we believe it is in their interests to warn them that they are being accused of wrongdoing.” He continues that the ISP will not disconnect customers, or divulge their details on the “say so of the content industry”. But he added that TalkTalk will “work with rights holders to develop a sensible and legal approach founded on protecting consumer rights and privacy”.

OPINION:

I can’t help feeling that this will become a bad example of education by making examples of a few. Meanwhile the “scene” will just go further underground and

Without doubt, Ebay, with its recent policy on having to post CDs anyway, will become a natural repositary for “physical” file sharing. And perhaps people will even start going to the pub, and coffee shops (furony.com not Internat Cafes) to exchange blank media.

As a publisher, naturally I support the principle of copyright protection. But instead of education, or offering “value” above illegal copies, the industries (ISP, music and film) and government seem to have adopted a poorly thought through way of going about it.

And in case you still don’t get, file sharing MP3s is illegal! K???? and M????.RU are not authorised copyright re-distributors and even if you give them money, it is still illegal, as they are the only people who profit – not the artists, publisher, content creators and copyright holders.

If you have anything more intelligent to say than “F U I’ll do what I want” then please comment below. I don’t think there can be any right or wrong answers about this per se.

I certainly don’t think we can blame the technology for facilitating this scenario. Surely the issue is that people do it because either 1) they don’t know 2) they don’t care 3) they choose to do it because it is wrong.

As an artist it is already massively hard to make a living. Between other professional (full time) artists and semi-pro and amateurs (part time) who choose to give their creations away for free, or under GPL, and the perceived value of music being so small (especially as it has a lifetime of repeat plays), piracy and file sharing does add to the noise and reduces the opportunities to sell ones music.

Many “experts” site live performances and gig’ing (and possibly merchandisig) as the alternative revenue stream to support free recordings and downloads.

As a studio artist only and one who can’t gig, this “solution” does not work for me. Plus 95% of the artists I know who do lie performances, struggle to even break even, and rely on sales of CDs to subsidise their gigs.

It is not an easy question…

I spend much of my time trying to develop add-on value for my music, which in itself can not be pirated and shared.  I have to come up with much

The point is I don’t want to spend my artist time “policing” my users for password sharing and re-distribution.

And we know that copy protection only really hurts (and inconveniences) the legitimate users. Pirates will ALWAYS find a way to circum navigate ANY copy protection.  They may or may not get a fractionally inferior quality copy, or features, because of that, but to them it is free, so do they even care…

Software piracy is stealing. There can’t really be any doubt in any ones mind about that. The difference to shop lifting is that evne a 5 year old can do it, because the technology is so easy and also becauseI don’t hink most people REALISE that they are shop lifting. They really are walking out of the store with it, thinking they really don’t need to pay.

But I don’t think the solution is to blame the technology or make the technology harder. That is all I think so far.

Ultimately what will happen is that any one who transfers more than X MB per day will be labeled a thief. And taht makes a totalmockery of legitimate servicesliek BBC iPlayer and even heavy iTuens users. Teh benefit of high pseed broadband will become non existent, as if you dare to use it, you will be labeled as a thief.

Maybe that seems like a ridiculous conclusion, but how much do you really think it woud take to re-encode a YouTube video with an unseen mp3 album that can be decryoted using a sppecial black market tool? Very little, it the correct answer. So then you won’t even be able to download YouTube videos en mass.

The YouTube will have to manually vet and test every YouTube video and the entire thing goes pear shaped and dies.

Do you have a solution?