Your views on file sharing and piracy

[SirHartlar]

I don't have any moral qualms with downloading things for free, I just don't do it because I don't know how risky it is. Do people ever get punished for downloading songs or films or torrenting them? I bought a CD for £7.99 and it wasn't worth the money at all, I'd much rather download something I'm interested in and delete it if I don't like it.

[BlueTear]

There is also undisputable evidence that these downloads are really free, effective advertising that lead to increased sales.

While the study was certainly a good read, let's not overreach. In referencing several other studies, it brings up many good points, but it also points out that it's result differ from previous studies. Calling it undisputable when the thing itself says "this is different from this or that previous study" is, well, selective?

 

It is also - when compared to, Idon'tknow, the internet - limited in scope in only examining Canada, with a distinct set of laws and as well as a culture.

 

 

 

And calling it free, effective advertising also appears somewhat overstated. "no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file-sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative." Maybe I'm being old fashioned here, but how is it effective if there's no result in sales? "Oh, but they get more exposure!" Yeah, and what do they do with the exposure? "Sell stuff! Make money! I'M REALLY DOING THEM A FAVOUR HERE". Hrm. Yes. Wait, what? Didn't they conclude, just now, that the aggregate effect was neither positive nor negative? "But the more downloaders download, the more they buy! It says so right there!". But the net effect is still neither positive nor negative? That only works out to sense if you start taking population segments into account (which, unless I'm misreading, is what the study has done - the downloads-increase-sale effect does not actually reach out of the population segment that downloads frequently) and if you do that...

 

 

 

 

 

The problem with file sharing and piracy is quite neatly demonstrated in the study. They talk of substitution - that's downloading instead of buying - and sampling - that's downloading and then buying. They note that, according to their study, taken togheter, the two appears to arrive at the [wagon]-covering statement "neither positive nor negative". Right. So what stops it from going negative? What happends when the digital divide - also mentioned at several points in the study - shifts? When the people who frequently download things off the internet grow up, become the majority of the population? The internet continues to spread and expand?

 

 

 

It's not a sustainable system for ensuring production*. Screw "it's free advertising!"; You will not finance any form of digitial entertainment with your entire consumer base advertising it to eachother. Someone still has to pay, and as is that someone is selected not by ability to pay, absolutely not by consumtion of product but by, dare I say it, honesty. A willingness to do right**. I'm tempted to call it a digital-consumerized-communism; Instead of need and ability, it's desire and, well, choice, but the fact is that it's so unsolidary it'd be misleading.

 

 

 

 

 

*Yes, I realize and aknowledge the theoretical argument that live performances would still ensure some form of production. That, however, does not apply to every form of digitial entertainment subject to filesharing.

 

**'Fear of the law' doesn't have same ring to it, but nevertheless, it's there.

[Skeptical]

The Pirate Bay isn't closing... stuff is changing, but do they really think another site won't just replace it? Google it, there are dozens of smaller sites that will grow IF it is acquired.

 

 

 

Possible acquisition

 

 

 

On 30 June 2009 Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced its intention to buy The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.8 million).[7][125] Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya commented on the site's future by saying "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site". On July 16, the new owners announced that users will be charged a monthly fee for access to The Pirate Bay, in order to compensate copyright holders.

 

 

 

According to owners of The Pirate Bay, "no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept)."[126]

 

 

 

First of all, the most important fact about piracy is profit division: if an artist that I like sells an album, they get 3.3% (maybe not if you're say, Britney Spears or Rihanna... facts are here --> http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=101815) Now, I am a metalhead, and routinely buy T-shirts, which are just about as poorly made as clothing can be. Yet, to wear this sacred uniform, I often pay up to $25. Many times, the proceeds head straight back into the band's pocket. And this doesn't count ticket sales, which it seems they just raise the price of any time they feel like they need a bit of extra money. Call it justification, but no matter what, I will fight lining the pockets or wealthy, useless, corporate executives.

 

 

 

Movies, in my opinion are a bit different than music: I have more of a problem with that than music, personally. First of all, and most importantly to me, I don't watch super popular movies, just when I'm forced to, really. That means that I'm not just helping to stuff the pockets of Tom Cruise or whoever else people worship these days. Movie tickets are however, grossly overpriced in my opinion, but if I have to shell up $10 (4.99 on cheap night) then I do.

 

 

 

I refuse to watch twenty minutes of commercials in a half hour show. Seems like that's what the same bloated executives want, but screw it, I refuse. I don't watch T.V. really anymore. Online, occasionally, or when with addicted friends.

[Skeptical]

Why should i feed these huge record companies pockets. While mine is drying up...Ive heard of popular bands putting there album out on the internet to screw over there huge [wagon] record compaines

 

 

 

P.S. How do we know this isnt a sting operation to catch all of us :shock:

 

 

 

 

 

Abbydog, I totally agree with that. And they won't be going after the guys that are downloading: they're just going to try to nail the bit sites and torrent uploaders/Initial seeders.

 

 

 

And yea, some bands do that, but mostly only for underground music.

[Bouwzie]

I prefer to download stuff. Most of the bands I download don't even have their cds here, so it's quite hard to buy them. And why would I buy a cd while I actually only like 1-2 songs? That's a waste of money.

[Furah]

I don't have any moral qualms with downloading things for free, I just don't do it because I don't know how risky it is. Do people ever get punished for downloading songs or films or torrenting them? I bought a CD for £7.99 and it wasn't worth the money at all, I'd much rather download something I'm interested in and delete it if I don't like it.

 

Yeah, but it's very rare and it's easy to gain plausibility deniability by using a wireless router which you can easily reset so it uses the default password or no password at all. Me and my friends torrent many a GB a month and never have had any infringement notices. (Friend's dad has 200GB a month, and he uses uses it all up, mostly torrenting.)

 

 

 

EDIT: I'm planning on going to a huge concert next year (Soundwave 2010, for those Aussies interested.) All of the bands I am going to see I like because I torrented them. If I never torrented I wouldn't have liked the bands, and wouldn't be going. It's a yearly thing too, so as long as the lineup is good I'll keep going.

[Lenin64]

I do the sampling bit, except I don't download things first. I just find it on Youtube and decide if I like it.

[Skeptical]

I saw somewhere someone looking for info on Peer-2-Peer (Ex Vuze, Miro.) downloading in Canada?

 

 

 

I'm confused a bit - sounds like in 2003, it was legal to P2P download and share, but not upload (eg, you can't add any new files to the network.) Info ---> http://news.cnet.com/2100-1025_3-5121479.html

 

 

 

Now, according to this, it isn't legal to share... i think, lol kind of out of my area of expertise ---> http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/08/22/1655233.shtml

 

 

 

This seems to be the important bit:

 

You may not copy a cd or rip an mp3 and give it to anyone else. You may not send an mp3 to a friend over the net, because a copy is made in that process. You may not file share (or upload) over the internet without infringing. This last infringement is due to the nature of p2p file-sharing.

 

 

 

Then again, do anyone but the record and movie executives actually give a damn?

[champion]

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/seven-cri ... han/32033/

 

 

 

Thought that link was appropriate.

[PastyGangsta]

I only download stuff that I already have on vinyl. Records are no use for me since I have an iPod now (but I keep all the records because when it comes right down to it... you just can't beat the sound of vinyl).

[deathdrow]

I've bought two songs legally, and about 15 albums of mine I already owned. Most of the bands I listen to don't give a crap, or let you download their music for free anyways, or their albums are next to impossible to find, let alone do I have the money to buy that many albums.

[forestfrolic]

I was watching random videos on Youtube today, and the singer of the band 'Protest the Hero' said something along these lines: "I support illegal downloading. People don't realise it but when they go out and buy our album to supposedly support us, they're really just supporting the greedy bastards of the label. Bands make money off of t-shirts and tickets. The more people illegally download, the closer we get to killing the industry and the bosses that will [bleep] you over."

[Huta]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/506.html

 

 

 

I'll just leave this here.

 

 

 

Also, I've heard that you are more likely to get caught downloading movies and playing pirated games online than you are downloading music. Is there any truth in this?

 

 

 

Probably, movies are usually downloaded shortly after both their theatre release and their DVD/Blu-Ray release, so it's easier to catch people during those spurts.

 

 

 

Most people caught downloading music are usually caught downloading it shortly after it gets a massive popularity [bleep]e, and it's usually pop Billboard 100 type music.

 

 

 

in other words, getting caught downloading Die Hard 1 or Dookie is unlikely, trying to get Inglorious Basterds pushes your odds a big higher (but not much, almost nobody gets caught because the negative feelings it generates in the fans isn't worth it).

[deathdrow]

How exactly DO they catch people anyways?

[Furah]

How exactly DO they catch people anyways?

 

Illegally.

 

 

 

Most common method is joining into a swarm and acting like a peer and then logging the IP addresses and date/time. Then they tell ISPs to hand over the information of the person who had the IP at the date and time that they recorded the person being part of the swarm. IIRC they aren't allowed to do this yet they still do. MediaSentry got owned because courts ruled against them for using illegal methods to obtain IP addresses.

[BlueLancer]

Also being 'caught' is an American/Canadian phenomena for the most part. European countries have different legislation, and there are practically no (if not zero) people who have been arrested for downloading any kind of digital files. Uploading is another matter, even then if you use exclusive or very private trackers with encrypted traffic, there is a 0% chance of 'getting caught'. Uploading without encrypted SSH tunnel servers is extemely readable by the ISP and law enforcement.

 

 

 

The only concern would be that the ISP will complain about overconsumption of traffic even in the EU. I'd say at about 800GB/month sustained for a couple of years they would send offers that you either cut down on bandwidth or they'll lower your speed/increase your fee.

 

 

 

Not only would you need to spend significant amounts of $$ on external harddrives, I don't see how anybody could need multiple dozens of terabytes of entertainment. Even with 2-3TB you will have nearly all the worthwhile movies in existence in full hd 1080p, or all songs of any genre you ever listen to, all worthwhile games ever made for PC, you get the point..

 

 

 

The ISP has very real reasons to doubt that you 'hoard' files merely for future upload distribution if your annual dl traffic is ridiculously high such as 100+ terabytes. I wouldn't recommend going that far if you ever want to DL things legally or otherwise.

[Furah]

Not only would you need to spend significant amounts of $$ on external harddrives, I don't see how anybody could need multiple dozens of terabytes of entertainment. Even with 2-3TB you will have nearly all the worthwhile movies in existence in full hd 1080p, or all songs of any genre you ever listen to, all worthwhile games ever made for PC, you get the point..

 

Friend's dad gets 200GB/month data, and goes over that. He bought 2 1.5TB HDDs today due to running out of space, and he already has alot of storage space, him and his 2 sons each have and upgrade 3+ computers each. They download movies, music, tv shows, games, OS .iso files in both x86 and x64, programs and pretty much everything under the sun.

[assassin_696]

I would imagine that downloading in the conventional sense might be on the way out anyway. With services like Spotify, and smartphones having increased internet access globally I imagine the model might move towards streaming with adverts. Bands might make money through fixed salaries from record deals then whatever they can get from concerts and merchandise. And there'll probably be more "collector's edition" CD sales with physical products you couldn't get by downloading.

[Skeptical]

I was watching random videos on Youtube today, and the singer of the band 'Protest the Hero' said something along these lines: "I support illegal downloading. People don't realise it but when they go out and buy our album to supposedly support us, they're really just supporting the greedy bastards of the label. Bands make money off of t-shirts and tickets. The more people illegally download, the closer we get to killing the industry and the bosses that will [bleep] you over."

 

 

 

One smart dude.

[DUELMASTER30]

I just remembered a funny story. I went to a concert last year, and I ended up with backstage passes due to the person I went to the show with knowing the band.

 

At one point, I asked the frontman of the band what he thought about piracy. His answer was something like this.

 

"You know, my label's made me do a few things in public about it being a plague for the business and whatnot.. But I can't say I don't do it in private"

 

 

 

That is [bleep]ing hilarious.

 

 

 

 

 

I torrent, not because I'm trying to "fight" anything, but I just honestly can't afford all the music I have. I can't get a job yet, so all my money is from birthdays. I save up my money for 360 games and the like, so I can't afford to shell out $1.29 per [bleep]ing song. Also, don't say I don't "need" the music I download, I have some mild form of OCD or something, so the patterns in the music helps me. I also have found a lot of new artists, and if they ever come to town I go to the concert, and sometimes buy a shirt there. Such as, I went to Disturbed and Dragonforce last summer, then saw Disturbed again in January, and I just saw Coldplay last month. I barely ever heard any of their music before I found torrents, and I would have never seen them if I hadn't downloaded their music.

 

 

 

I also download old games they don't make anymore, or cost a giant amount because there are so few of them, such as NES, SNES and N64 games. I recently downloaded 11,000 SNES games lmfao, although they were mostly hacks, with the normal games in there too.

 

 

 

 

 

To help torrenting along, I have a few Demonoid invites if anyone wants them. Pm me if you do.

[forestfrolic]

I was watching random videos on Youtube today, and the singer of the band 'Protest the Hero' said something along these lines: "I support illegal downloading. People don't realise it but when they go out and buy our album to supposedly support us, they're really just supporting the greedy bastards of the label. Bands make money off of t-shirts and tickets. The more people illegally download, the closer we get to killing the industry and the bosses that will [bleep] you over."

 

 

 

One smart dude.

 

I know. I used to refuse to illegally download because I figured if I liked the music enough to own it, I should give the band something because I know that they're not swimming in money. But now I realise that buying the music doesn't support the band at all, unless they're on an independent label or not signed.

[Furah]

How exactly DO they catch people anyways?

 

Illegally.

 

 

 

Most common method is joining into a swarm and acting like a peer and then logging the IP addresses and date/time. Then they tell ISPs to hand over the information of the person who had the IP at the date and time that they recorded the person being part of the swarm. IIRC they aren't allowed to do this yet they still do. MediaSentry got owned because courts ruled against them for using illegal methods to obtain IP addresses.

 

So what, nobody ends up getting "caught" because they're among 700,000 others on TPB?

 

No, because maintaining a continuous connection to all Torrents 24/7 is going to be near impossible, and then if you do people figure out what the IPs are and then permaban them from connecting. I never download new release stuff anyway, so I am not that worried.

[forestfrolic]

[hide=Al Baker on file sharing]Dearest Dolies,

 

 

 

Late this morning I saw, through my twitter feed, Mr. Frank Turner post a link to an article from the Daily Mash (the poor man's Onion), satirising the arguments of pro-file sharers as "File Share Crackdown 'Breaches Fundamental Right To Steal'" (see the article here...)

 

 

 

For those of you not quite in the loop, this strand of the long running debate began a few days ago when renowned evildoer Peter Mandelson released a statement describing a Government proposal to 'crack down' on illegal file-sharing by cutting off repeat offenders from their internet service. This, coupled with the recent fining and imprisonment of the Pirate Bay founders has brought the debate to something of a head, and I'd like to put my thoughts in the ring while most people are still calm enough to listen.

 

 

 

There is no question that, if you download for free an LP (for the sake of argument, let's say it is Elvis Costello's Armed Forces) which you did not own on another format, you have broken the law (there is some question, apparently, about whether you have broken the law if you already owned Armed Forces on Vinyl, for instance). But we all know that the law isn't always right - and more to the point we all know that theft isn't always morally wrong. So no sensible person will argue "This is illegal" or "This is theft", therefore it is wrong. In order to determine the rightness or wrongness of illegal file-sharing, music piracy or whatever you want to call it, we'll have to think a bit harder than that.

 

 

 

Firstly, I need to spill a couple of not-so-secret industry secrets. Selling records is just about the least profitable part of making music. The amount of money it costs to record, press and promote a record to put on general release is staggering, and the money is very rarely made back (a very large number of artists finish their fifteen minutes of fame in debt to their record labels for this reason). If you sign up to a record label, which is pretty much a necessity if you want to get your music well promoted and distributed, the chances that a musician will see any of the money from the sales of that record are pretty slim, and for the lucky few that do make some money back, or don't wind up in debt to their label, the sales still aren't generally enough to live on (artists only ever get a variable percentage - I haven't the exact figure to hand, but roughly 2.5% of what you pay for a CD goes to the people who wrote the music).

 

 

 

The way musicians make most of their money (I'll hopefully include myself in that number before too long) is through royalties and live performance. Whereas your averagely successful rock and/or roller might see 2.5% from a sale of a CD (25p from a £10 product), they're likely to see roughly 25% of the face value of a ticket to see them in concert. It's fairly common knowledge now that the number and attendances at live performances have gone up since file-sharing became more widespread, and I think there is a very easy explanation for this. If you are forced to shell out some £10-£20 in order to hear a new artist, you're unlikely to do it. If you can do it for free, you'll listen to as much as you can, and if you like it you'll pay to see it done live. And, the more live shows a musician does, the more royalties the songwriter gets (for instance, I'll get about £5 in royalties when I play half an hour down my local pub, if I get played on Radio 1, it's about £20 per minute, it all depends on the audience size and various other boring things that Chris tried to explain to me once).

 

 

 

In terms of hard, money grubbing, selfish, capitalist scumbag thinking, I firmly believe that file-sharing has been a good thing for musicians in of themselves. Besides which, I think that people still will buy people's physical format music if they like it (I've done exactly that, tried-then-buyed, with plenty of artists, too numerous to mention). And it strikes me as a very unpleasant, almost blackmailing habit, when musicians insist that people have to shell out pretty substantial sums before they're allowed to hear whether they like what's on offer or not.

 

 

 

Is it harmless? Absolutely not. As I said in the opening paragraph, by far the easiest way to get your music heard is to sign on to a label. Labels will judge your performance on record sales, and small labels can't afford to take the sort of blow that file-sharing often deals out. So I would urge you, as I have urged people in the past to think on this, to remember that the artist you like will only be allowed to continue working with a label if that label makes a profit - and that it is through these small labels that artists often get their first 'break'. The music world needs independant labels, and we need to be responsible enough to make sure they don't go broke - but I have enough faith in people to know that when we can afford to help people out, we will. If that's not possible, I personally would always rather someone heard my music for free than that they didn't hear it at all. In the words of Stan Marsh "If we're real musicians, then we should just play and be stoked that so many people are listening". Yeah it's a job, and we need to make a living, but it's our art first and foremost.

 

 

 

One final main point - I think that people who bang on too much about the wrongness of illegal file sharing of music and videos, in defense of the creators (that's you and me, Frank), are, to be honest, pissing in the wind. We would, in my opinion, be serving ourselves far better if instead of making time-honoured arguments equivalent to the "home taping is killing music" campaign of the 80s (it didn't, in case you hadn't noticed), we looked to the future. The music business is going to change enormously in the very near future, and with any luck it'll mean the end of EMI, Vigin and Colombia. The best way that we can ensure that we get paid fairly for the work we do is to organise ourselves and lobby for legislated internet-generated royalty guarantees. Spotify, MySpace, YouTube, and similar services are where people go to listen to music now and if we don't act soon to ensure that we get our fair share of the revenue generated from such services, then all the decisions will be made without us, by the same people in the industry who are ripping us off now, while we're still bickering over Pirate Bay.

 

 

 

I think that's all for now, if anyone has any comments, corrections or questions I'd be pleased to hear them - and there's a very good podcast from Stephen Fry that anyone interested in the issue should hear (just go to his website and subscribe from there).

 

 

 

Thanks for your time,

 

 

 

Al x[/hide]

[BlueLancer]

How exactly DO they catch people anyways?

 

Illegally.

 

 

 

Most common method is joining into a swarm and acting like a peer and then logging the IP addresses and date/time. Then they tell ISPs to hand over the information of the person who had the IP at the date and time that they recorded the person being part of the swarm. IIRC they aren't allowed to do this yet they still do. MediaSentry got owned because courts ruled against them for using illegal methods to obtain IP addresses.

 

So what, nobody ends up getting "caught" because they're among 700,000 others on TPB?

 

No, because maintaining a continuous connection to all Torrents 24/7 is going to be near impossible, and then if you do people figure out what the IPs are and then permaban them from connecting. I never download new release stuff anyway, so I am not that worried.

 

 

 

Peerguardian already blocks most RIAA and other 'suspicious' IP's. They on the other hand can never ban all BT users' IP's from connecting to each other, or persuading ISP's to throttle BT traffic to zero.

 

 

 

There are legitimate companies using BitTorrent technology for legal distribution of files. It's not a sham, many large legit files such as .iso copies of very popular Linux distributions, open source movie projects like Peach, etc.. are shared through BT because there are zero hosting costs for the file.

 

 

 

Even Blizzard's game patcher connects to other peers for downloading parts of updates due to their massive customer base, this in effect cuts their bandwidth bill by millions of dollars every month.

 

 

 

"Torrent" is not a synonym for "illegal". Hope that's going to become more of a known fact in the future.

[Furah]

How exactly DO they catch people anyways?

 

Illegally.

 

 

 

Most common method is joining into a swarm and acting like a peer and then logging the IP addresses and date/time. Then they tell ISPs to hand over the information of the person who had the IP at the date and time that they recorded the person being part of the swarm. IIRC they aren't allowed to do this yet they still do. MediaSentry got owned because courts ruled against them for using illegal methods to obtain IP addresses.

 

So what, nobody ends up getting "caught" because they're among 700,000 others on TPB?

 

No, because maintaining a continuous connection to all Torrents 24/7 is going to be near impossible, and then if you do people figure out what the IPs are and then permaban them from connecting. I never download new release stuff anyway, so I am not that worried.

 

 

 

Peerguardian already blocks most RIAA and other 'suspicious' IP's. They on the other hand can never ban all BT users' IP's from connecting to each other, or persuading ISP's to throttle BT traffic to zero.

 

 

 

There are legitimate companies using BitTorrent technology for legal distribution of files. It's not a sham, many large legit files such as .iso copies of very popular Linux distributions, open source movie projects like Peach, etc.. are shared through BT because there are zero hosting costs for the file.

 

 

 

Even Blizzard's game patcher connects to other peers for downloading parts of updates due to their massive customer base, this in effect cuts their bandwidth bill by millions of dollars every month.

 

 

 

"Torrent" is not a synonym for "illegal". Hope that's going to become more of a known fact in the future.

 

PeerGuardian is nowhere near efficient enough, the admins will ban any IP they feel fit.

 

 

 

I already know about legit uses for BitTorrent, sorry if it appeared otherwise. I think Blizzard are very smart for using BitTorrent, as is that company who will start using it for their game from version 10. I haven't downloaded any Linux .ISOs as I get the versions I like for free off the TAFE network (there is heaps off stuff if you know where to look). I have however have torrented the Windows 7 .ISO which is great because the MS download was ~8KB/s, whereas the torrent was 350KB/s.