Digital Piracy Is Over

[tiktok]

Internet service isn't free, you pay a provider; library membership only charges fees for overdue or lost materials.
So in your premise, the difference is the end user pays a premium to "get something for free" while potentially violating copyright laws...instead of using a free service that to a degree, compensates the content creator.

Of course, one can make a personal copy of the library's property, when borrowed...but blank media and disk drives and storage space all cost $...

Truly "free" content is rare like finding money.

Well, the libraries aren't free either--they're paid for with taxes. You just don't get charged when you walk in the door and check out a book. I've been paying for my local libraries for decades, haven't used one since college.

 

[badger146]

One thing I do know, is that Youtube doesn't mess around with copyright. If you upload a song, they have ways to tell if its your song or not, and if its not, then the original artist immediately gets the plays, and thus the $$.

but where does the money come from? I doubt it's coming from google/youtube's own pocet.
and its not coming from the uploader pocket either I bet, otherwise they would've pull out the vid.

I can search youtube for any artist, new/old, whatever genre I want, and I can listen to their whole album. other than the one uploaded directly by the bands/artist or their label the rest would be illegal.

are you sure youtube is paying these artist?

here's satriani latest album in full, who's paying joe? is it from those ads? i thought the ad were linked to the uploader account?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z570ZUNjcU4

And I'm sure that label has deterred exactly zero people from doing it if they want to...

LOL of course, I'm merely pointing out that its illegal. from the library point of view, there's nothing else they can do, apart from not lending CDs at all.

I do agree with the earlier post, unless you want to prosecute millions of people in different country and continents every day, piracy will keep going on.

how many people dl from torrents etc every day? millions.
how many get prosecuted in a day? in a month? in a year? barely a few if any.

 

[phil_m]

How to you imbed advertising with a downloaded song? You cant. TV is totally different.

I don't think TV is totally different. It's still recorded and transmitted media. The way people consume TV is different, but with all of our portable devices, that's even changing. All the music streaming services have ads in their free offerings, and they remove them for their subscription services, much like premium cable services.

I just think that if there is a future for the music industry, it will look more like this model than the traditional model where everyone buys and stores copies of albums. There will still be people why do that, just like there are people who buy DVDs and Blu-Rays, but I think eventually most people will be happy with streaming as long they can whatever they want whenever they want.

Maybe then piracy will be over...

 

[tiktok]

How to you imbed advertising with a downloaded song? You cant. TV is totally different.

Well, it depends on how its downloaded. If it's an open file, you can't. If you need to use say a "Spotify Music Player" to play the track, they can make you listen to a commercial every fifth track.

But with the current system of unrestricted mp3's, not feasible.

 

[chrisjw5]

Not really. One thing to consider is that, at least in as much as legal streaming services are operating based on contractual relations, there is the potential for the negotiated rates to be modified. In as much as I'm offering an argument, it is that calling legal services piracy is sort of ridiculous, as piracy is a concept of criminal law. I'm not making a value judgment concerning morality or immorality. However, it does seem to me that, when discussing illegal behavior, splitting things into legal and illegal is unavoidable.

And again, I'm not commenting on the wisdom of labels and such facilitating materials on streaming services, or the ease with which those materials are subsequently pirated. It just does a disservice to this sort of discussion to call those legal services piracy. Might they offer up material in a form that makes technological piracy easier? Absolutely. But that doesn't make the service itself piracy.

Fair enough, but I don't think the big issue among musicians on this board is what it's called. We all know what the issue entails here - lost revenue. While you make a fair point, I don't think the semantics are that big of a deal.

 

[gearandguitars]

I wonder if the future of the music industry isn't a model more similar to the way TV works. You rarely hear TV people complaining about piracy. I believe that's because they have a model where they do an end around the whole issue. Everything they produce is paid for up front, for the most part. There are royalties involved in syndication, but even syndication is based on up front payments. So rather than the end user paying directly for watching something, it's all paid for by advertising and subscription. Network shows have always been free to users and people who watch cable shows pay a block fee one way or another.

So I think that people will continue to produce albums, but they'll do it only with some sort of guarantee that they'll make so much money with that album. It's kind of a patronage model, I suppose. But in those models, piracy becomes pretty much a non-issue.

Music will become like TV when Net Neutrality is finally dead. But that's the only way.

 

[gearandguitars]

I don't think TV is totally different. It's still recorded and transmitted media. The way people consume TV is different, but with all of our portable devices, that's even changing. All the music streaming services have ads in their free offerings, and they remove them for their subscription services, much like premium cable services.

I just think that if there is a future for the music industry, it will look more like this model than the traditional model where everyone buys and stores copies of albums. There will still be people why do that, just like there are people who buy DVDs and Blu-Rays, but I think eventually most people will be happy with streaming as long they can whatever they want whenever they want.

Maybe then piracy will be over...

Piracy is funded by advertising. Stop the advertising and you stop the piracy (more realistically manage it). This isn't that hard to deal with if the political will is there.

http://digiday.com/platforms/why-is-ad-tech-still-funding-piracy/

According to AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, it’s an easy problem to fix, but ad companies are attracted by the revenue torrent sites can generate for them. Kelley said his company refuses to serve ads to torrent sites and other sites facilitating the distribution of pirated content. It’s easy to do technically, he said, but others refuse to do it.

“We want everyone to technically stop their customers from advertising on these sites, but there’s a financial incentive to keep doing so,” he said. “Companies that aren’t taking a stand against this are making a lot of money.”

 

[gearandguitars]

I do agree with the earlier post, unless you want to prosecute millions of people in different country and continents every day, piracy will keep going on.

nonsense. piracy is about big business not individual downloaders. we're not talking about kids in bedrooms were talking about corporations and boardrooms. piracy is a mass scale, enterprise level transfer of wealth from musicians to silicon valley interests as lead by google and ad tech. bit-torrent provides the delivery mechanism and google (and others) provide the financing.

this about holding illegally operating businesses making hundreds of millions of dollars a year accountable for wrong doing.

Hey Tom Waits! Who’s That Bandido Ripping You Off Now? … Wendy’s, Yahoo, BMW, Mitt Romney, Adobe, Cadillac, LG, Target, Westin Hotels, Priceline, Hyatt Hotels, Weight Watchers, VISA, State Farm, Mini Cooper, ADT Security…

 

[catpeople]

It amuses me greatly to see anti piracy people posting pirate excerpts of articles from other sites, thereby robbing the publishers of ad money.

 

[andrekp]

Well, perhaps, yes.

Library usage is a special case, and has historically been limited by the fact that only one person can listen to the libraries copy at a time, and only for a two-week period (or whatever the branches limit is) while it's checked out to you. The concept of library lending of materials has been firmly established for thousands of years. Content creators know going into the process that libraries will buy and make available a very limited number of copies without direct remuneration to the content creator, other than the original purchase. The key is: only one person at a time can use the copy. It's like a CD being sold to a new person, who then sells it to someone else, etc.

If you make a copy of the library's copy, and then return the original and keep the copy, yes, you have deprived the artist of revenue. That's long-established law.

But times have changed. Libraries could lend books without worrying about copyright infringement by borrowers because it was just not practical to do. For most of time, it had to be done by hand - so it was hardly worth it. Only recently has photocopying been available, and even that's barely practical (and usually banned at libraries, except for short excerpts anyway). The advent of digital technology and the ability to directly make a perfect copy in seconds or music and movies is a very recent game-changing thing, and while there may be some "rule" that supposedly bans you from doing it, even THAT would surprise me, frankly.

But IF you believe that copying a CD or mp3, without paying the rights-holder is piracy, then doing so at a library is likely considered piracy. While libraries SOMETIME pay for materials, they don't always, and it is very likely the the CD sitting on a shelf there was donated by someone who bought it and there is essentially no difference at all in copying that CD and borrowing one from a friend and copying it. The fact that it happens with the involvement of a library is just a technicality that changes nothing.

 

[tiktok]

But times have changed. Libraries could lend books without worrying about copyright infringement by borrowers because it was just not practical to do. For most of time, it had to be done by hand - so it was hardly worth it. Only recently has photocopying been available, and even that's barely practical (and usually banned at libraries, except for short excerpts anyway). The advent of digital technology and the ability to directly make a perfect copy in seconds or music and movies is a very recent game-changing thing, and while there may be some "rule" that supposedly bans you from doing it, even THAT would surprise me, frankly.

But IF you believe that copying a CD or mp3, without paying the rights-holder is piracy, then doing so at a library is likely considered piracy. While libraries SOMETIME pay for materials, they don't always, and it is very likely the the CD sitting on a shelf there was donated by someone who bought it and there is essentially no difference at all in copying that CD and borrowing one from a friend and copying it. The fact that it happens with the involvement of a library is just a technicality that changes nothing.

It's still not practical to copy a entire physical book. The effort and cost to produce a very crappy copy just isn't worth it.

Digital content is different, but the eBooks are covered by DRM, and the eBook industry saw how the music industry had screwed itself by having such an open playback format/player system. The gaming industry really had it right though: make the user check in via live network connections for authentication on a frequent basis.

Digital music is still by far the most vulnerable, since the file size is small, the file format is very simple, and virtually everyone has the necessary means to make a digital copy in a few minutes. Had broadband not become the standard across the country, there'd be a lot of heat on libraries serving as facilitators for music piracy. As it is, why bother to walk to the library to check out out a CD when everything's available via torrent, YouTube, Spotify or from your friends via mega.co.nz or any similar service? Plus, libraries don't make an effort to stock "the hits", so it's basically a slow way to get music very few people are interested in.

But yes, by definition violating the rights of a rights-holder to make a copy is piracy, whether you're copying from a library or a friend's copy. Again, this is long-established law.

Whether a library is the first purchaser of an item (and libraries typically receive discounts from the publisher in recognition of their special status), or whether it's donated is irrelevant in and of itself: both are legal means of acquisition. The problem arises if the the donor has kept a copy for their own use: in which case the donor is at fault, not the library. The principle is that only one user can make use of the content at a time, so the library (or your friend) is welcome to lend you the item. If you're listening to the CD, then your friend is not. They may be listening to a copy they've made, but again, that's a rights violation. It's akin to a seat license for a piece of software.

The law is built on technicalities. And everything's a "technicality" or "semantic difference" until it takes a bite out of your ass.

 

[andrekp]

The law is built on technicalities. And everything's a "technicality" or "semantic difference" until it takes a bite out of your ass.

Absolutely true, AND why it can't effectively deal with digital formats that no longer conform to the old way of using words.

For example: What is a thing? What is property? If you have an mp3 file that you bought legally, and then agree to sell it to me (just as you might have a record in 1975), can you do that, so long as you destroy your copy once I have mine? In theory, this would conform to the 1975 use of the words. However, you have not really sold me the original as ANY copy you give me is actually a copy - you cannot "give" anyone the original of digital data, short of perhaps giving away the actual storage medium too. Now we can agree that if you destroy your copy when I buy a copy from you, that that it roughly duplicates the act of selling a physical record, but there is no guarantee that anyone else will see it that way.

In fact, the "original" was never even the original, since it itself was a copy (of a copy of a copy...), and software (as digital music really is) might not even be considered as sold to you, as opposed to leased, licensed, whatever words the rights holder uses. (think the copy of MS Windows that you "purchased") So can you even sell it? Can a manufacturer prevent you from doing so? That question is not necessarily a clearly settled one in software law.

And what if I then put that purchased copy up on various internet sites for download. Then they (rightly under the law) come after me for piracy. What if I blame YOU? - say you're my accomplice in all this? Then they search your computer and find that in fact you DID have a copy of this very same file (perhaps distinguishable in some way) and it is claimed that you deleted it in an attempt to avoid liability? (They find your deleted file - perfectly possible.) Can you really deny it? In the physical world, you would no longer have the record, in the digital one, you do - sold or not.) Maybe the source you bought if from, in an attempt to track pirates has marked the file in some way and they can say affirmatively that YOU are the person who originally purchased and downloaded the file, so now some overzealous prosecutor is going after YOU for piracy. None of which was an issue for a person in 1975 selling a record to a friend - where you either have it or you don't.

The PROBLEM is that the words and their legal usage has remained the same, though the world has changed. Congress has not caught up even to the technology of the year 2000, and the Courts, hindered by Congress's inaction are still in the 90's at best (often the 80's - pre-internet) - while deciding disputes based on the technology of 2010. It is simply a farce. The BIGGER problem is that so many people don't see anything wrong with this.

Meanwhile corporations, not Congress and not considered thought, are making the decisions on this, in their best interests alone. Justified by laws that are older than a significant number of people on this board, in the same wold where technology over 5 years old is utterly ancient...

 

[tiktok]

Absolutely true, AND why it can't effectively deal with digital formats that no longer conform to the old way of using words.

For example: What is a thing? What is property? If you have an mp3 file that you bought legally, and then agree to sell it to me (just as you might have a record in 1975), can you do that, so long as you destroy your copy once I have mine? In theory, this would conform to the 1975 use of the words. However, you have not really sold me the original as ANY copy you give me is actually a copy - you cannot "give" anyone the original of digital data, short of perhaps giving away the actual storage medium too. Now we can agree that if you destroy your copy when I buy a copy from you, that that it roughly duplicates the act of selling a physical record, but there is no guarantee that anyone else will see it that way.

In fact, the "original" was never even the original, since it itself was a copy (of a copy of a copy...), and software (as digital music really is) might not even be considered as sold to you, as opposed to leased, licensed, whatever words the rights holder uses. (think the copy of MS Windows that you "purchased") So can you even sell it? Can a manufacturer prevent you from doing so? That question is not necessarily a clearly settled one in software law.

And what if I then put that purchased copy up on various internet sites for download. Then they (rightly under the law) come after me for piracy. What if I blame YOU? - say you're my accomplice in all this? Then they search your computer and find that in fact you DID have a copy of this very same file (perhaps distinguishable in some way) and it is claimed that you deleted it in an attempt to avoid liability? (They find your deleted file - perfectly possible.) Can you really deny it? In the physical world, you would no longer have the record, in the digital one, you do - sold or not.) Maybe the source you bought if from, in an attempt to track pirates has marked the file in some way and they can say affirmatively that YOU are the person who originally purchased and downloaded the file, so now some overzealous prosecutor is going after YOU for piracy. None of which was an issue for a person in 1975 selling a record to a friend - where you either have it or you don't.

The PROBLEM is that the words and their legal usage has remained the same, though the world has changed. Congress has not caught up even to the technology of the year 2000, and the Courts, hindered by Congress's inaction are still in the 90's at best (often the 80's - pre-internet) - while deciding disputes based on the technology of 2010. It is simply a farce. The BIGGER problem is that so many people don't see anything wrong with this.

Meanwhile corporations, not Congress and not considered thought, are making the decisions on this, in their best interests alone. Justified by laws that are older than a significant number of people on this board, in the same wold where technology over 5 years old is utterly ancient...

The overriding, very old principle is that of intellectual property, which is independent of the carrier technology, although for many years the two were largely inseparable, because making "things" that embodied an idea was difficult and expensive.

There are two basic questions: Do you believe in property rights? and: Do you believe in the ownership of ideas?

 

[A-Bone]

The overriding, very old principle is that of intellectual property, which is independent of the carrier technology, although for many years the two were largely inseparable, because making "things" that embodied an idea was difficult and expensive.

There are two basic questions: Do you believe in property rights? and: Do you believe in the ownership of ideas?

Although even there, the simplest retorts would likely be that intellectual property rights do not resemble property rights by design, and copyright in particular does not confer ownership of ideas.

In the case of the former, although it is too late now, it is largely unfortunate that the doctrinal area was coined as "intellectual property" in as much as this leads to all sorts of inaccurate analogy to property law. At heart, real property and personal property is based on dominion and scarcity, and the infringement thereof is based on deprivation. Intellectual property law does not generally implicate deprivation, as possession of the intellectual property by one does not deprive the other of its simultaneous possession, which is not true of real property and personalty. All this just to suggest that intellectual property is fundamentally different from property.

In terms of the latter, copyright confers control of reproduction or derivative use of the fixed form of an original creative work in the covered area. That is, an idea is not copyrightable, only a particular expression is --which is why others cannot copy the copyrighted work absent license or legal excuse without infringing that copyright. Two independent works of original creation could encapsulate or represent an identical idea without either being infringing. And a subsequent work could freely utilize an earlier idea as long as substantial passages or elements are not copied in the later work.

 

[Tone_Boss]

And what if its coming out of China? What will they do ? Write them a nasty letter ?

 

[nomadh]

Listen close. You can hear those watermarks. It really screws up sound. Sounds like someone is tapping out numbers on the cymbals. Screws up that mp3 sizzle.

 

[andrekp]

The overriding, very old principle is that of intellectual property, which is independent of the carrier technology, although for many years the two were largely inseparable, because making "things" that embodied an idea was difficult and expensive.

There are two basic questions: Do you believe in property rights? and: Do you believe in the ownership of ideas?

As as in the point I'm making, if you follow it, this has little to do with how it is actually dealt with and little to do with reality.

Your two questions don't even make a good start in dealing with the realities of the digital world, and in fact, they stand as an impediment.

Is an mp3 an idea, or a thing? In some ways, it is both. In some, it is neither. You do a disservice to property law to claim that it is, in some way, just another bundle of sticks, yet define it in such a way that it isn't really.

There needs to be a whole new concept to deal with "things" that only exist as bits flipped in RAM, yet are transferable. If you don't believe that, all you have to do is look at a handful of Federal Circuit decisions to see that Federal Courts have no idea at all how to deal with such things consistently.

 

[tiktok]

As as in the point I'm making, if you follow it, this has little to do with how it is actually dealt with and little to do with reality.

Your two questions don't even make a good start in dealing with the realities of the digital world, and in fact, they stand as an impediment.

Is an mp3 an idea, or a thing? In some ways, it is both. In some, it is neither. You do a disservice to property law to claim that it is, in some way, just another bundle of sticks, yet define it in such a way that it isn't really.

There needs to be a whole new concept to deal with "things" that only exist as bits flipped in RAM, yet are transferable. If you don't believe that, all you have to do is look at a handful of Federal Circuit decisions to see that Federal Courts have no idea at all how to deal with such things consistently.

The mp3 is separate from the thing that actually matters: the conceptual content, which can exist in a myriad of formats.

If we're going to say that digitally encoded information is substantially different from pre-digital information, then by the time you figure this out, there will be no air left in the content creation industry. Which may happen regardless, but I don't think it's as tremendously different as you're making it out to be.

Generally, it becomes a lot simpler to understand when you have a good idea, and you see someone else making a lot of money off it without paying you.

 

[andrekp]

The mp3 is separate from the thing that actually matters: the conceptual content, which can exist in a myriad of formats.

If we're going to say that digitally encoded information is substantially different from pre-digital information, then by the time you figure this out, there will be no air left in the content creation industry. Which may happen regardless, but I don't think it's as tremendously different as you're making it out to be.

Generally, it becomes a lot simpler to understand when you have a good idea, and you see someone else making a lot of money off it without paying you.

But the conceptual content ONLY exists as something that can be interpreted. Whether that's an mp3, a AAC, an FLAC file, whatever. It can ONLY exist as such, and really, only exist as a played thing, since as a series of stored ones and zeros, it doesn't really exist at all as an idea. If it did, then NONE of it could be copyrighted because all possible permutations of binary data either already exist, or can be deemed as pre-existent, because that is the nature of binary data. Plus, it's just math, which is (nearly) always in the free domain. And how does the recent ruling by SCOTUS affect all this? There's another rub.

This is nowhere NEAR as simple a concept of A). define something as physical or intellectual property, B). prosecute offenders.

 

[A-Bone]

But the conceptual content ONLY exists as something that can be interpreted. Whether that's an mp3, a AAC, an FLAC file, whatever. It can ONLY exist as such, and really, only exist as a played thing, since as a series of stored ones and zeros, it doesn't really exist at all as an idea. If it did, then NONE of it could be copyrighted because all possible permutations of binary data either already exist, or can be deemed as pre-existent, because that is the nature of binary data. Plus, it's just math, which is (nearly) always in the free domain. And how does the recent ruling by SCOTUS affect all this? There's another rub.

This is nowhere NEAR as simple a concept of A). define something as physical or intellectual property, B). prosecute offenders.

But words are composed of the same symbols and letters, too, with now centuries of permutations and combinations thereof. I wonder if your argument isn't conflating the medium of storage with what the copyright applies to -- namely, the original, fixed expression. This doesn't mean that if one writes a novel the copyright only applies to others copying it in novel form, or written form at all. If you took a copyrighted novel and made it into a film, or a play, or an audiobook, or multimedia presentation without legal excuse or license, that would likely constitute copyright infringement. That is, the copyright does not cover the idea as such, but by design it covers that expression of the idea, rather than simply narrowly covering the form that expression takes or the storage medium containing it.