Say goodbye to your right to privacy...

Dragonrider someone can request the personal information of one of the record industries ceo. Then we can use that info and blackmail them into letting p2p stay.

Overall sales (both old and new music) dropped with 10% just in the USA last year according to recent data from IFPA (the organisation for the international record industry). For the world in general the figure is about 7%. The year before: 5%. The image is getting worse every year. Posted by MikroMarius

How about this as an explaination: The economy SUCKS right now. CDs are a luxury item, and during lean times, luxuries are the first expense to get dropped. Therefore, not a big surprise that CD sales are dropping (they just have a patsy to pin it on with the files sharing).

Considering that average retails sales are down something like 20% from a year ago, I STILL maintain that the record labels are doing better than average, and much better than they would have you believe, with only a 10% slump.

Originally posted by dragonrider
Overall sales (both old and new music) dropped with 10% just in the USA last year according to recent data from IFPA (the organisation for the international record industry). For the world in general the figure is about 7%. The year before: 5%. The image is getting worse every year. Posted by MikroMarius

How about this as an explaination: The economy SUCKS right now. CDs are a luxury item, and during lean times, luxuries are the first expense to get dropped. Therefore, not a big surprise that CD sales are dropping (they just have a patsy to pin it on with the files sharing).

Considering that average retails sales are down something like 20% from a year ago, I STILL maintain that the record labels are doing better than average, and much better than they would have you believe, with only a 10% slump.

You have a good point there. As I said the industry can't blame p2p for everything. Here in Norway the sales rose with 14% last year, because of a boom of new domestic artists and perhaps even because people over here have found new music on Kazaa they wanted to have a hardcopy of Norway's economy isn't of the best either these days, but if you have in mind that with all the new and brilliant exported artists, Norway has been called the new French wave, this is perhaps not THAT strange. There are many factors that play important parts in this scenario, and p2p can't take all the blame... I would've liked to see more detailed numbers on what music that has went up and what has went down. Interresting read I guess, that could say something about how the market is develloping. Links?

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Now, I *will* say this is a pirate....

Feds Charge LA Man With Camcording Movies Before Their Releases
LOS ANGELES 4.22.03, 6:37p -
Federal prosecutors have charged a man with using camcorders to tape prerelease screenings of major motion pictures.

[edit]
It's against forum guidelines to post the material of someone else without their permission.

Link to story here

[Edited on 25-4-2003 by William]

Privacy Ruling Goes Against Verizon


By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2003; 6:10 PM


Verizon Corp. must reveal the identities of two high-speed Internet subscribers accused of illegally trading music online, a federal judge ruled today.

[edit -- please do not post someone else's material without their permission ]

www.washingtonpost.com...

[Edited on 25-4-2003 by William]

Let's stop posting entire news articles and provide short clip and links instead.

Or are someone's words up for pirating now too?

Or are someone's words up for pirating now too? Posted by William

So do we need to get written permission from other ATS members before we quote others, for fear of being arrested for piracy?

That response is a bit extreme... don't you think?

Especially since all I'm doing is asking you to follow the website terms and conditions.

I have no problem following TOU, and if that is the case I will certainly abide by it.

However, I dont think my question was unfair: the entire piracy thing I believe is verging on hysteria and stupidity... I am just wondering where it will stop? If it is considered stealing to edit out commercials from TV broadcasts, and it is considered piracy to exercise what has heretofor been considered "fair use", how long will it be before we have to obtain permission to quote what others say online in other posts?

This is a domino effect, and I see no end in sight for it.

Originally posted by dragonrider
how long will it be before we have to obtain permission to quote what others say online in other posts?

To me that's a stupid question that does little to further the point. Participating in an obvious public discussion forum under an assumed name is very, very different than attempting to derive income and livelihood from writing journalistic content under your name, published by mainstream news services.

Don't try and muddle the concept by applying it where it need not be applied. Intent of use is a major component of intellectual property law... the underpinnings of which as protected the very important open-source community from being plagued with copyright claims on contributed segments of Linux for example.

It really very simple. All you need to do is understand one very basic concept: it's wrong to use or distribute someone else's property without their permission (and before you get flippant about getting a musician's permission to play their music, paying for it is that contract, or listening to broadcasts with commercials, etc.). I would submit that those pirating MP3's are guilty of the same level of greed as the music distributors... they want all the music, while keeping the money they would normally spend on it.

While it seems noble to fight on the side of the little guy who just wants some quality music, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The consequences of the breakdown of a system to protect the intellectual property of artists will have far reaching implications. Perhaps the end result will be positive, we can't be sure. But we do know, deep down, that this represents the growth of a core disrespect for the efforts of artists... and that is very bad news.


(And I do hope Verizon wins... but for other reasons.)

there's no such thing as a free lunch. Posted by William

I agree that there is no free lunch, and that the artists should be compensated for their work. However, I again, get heartburn over having almost 95% of what I pay for a CD go into the pockets of the fat cats who essentially made NO financial investment in these artists.

Honestly, ask your friends how much money per CD they actually get. If it is more than $0.50 to $1.00 per unit, at about $18.95 a unit, I would be highly surprised.

But, again, that is NOT the purpose that I started this thread.... it is the fact that the DMCA can easily be misused and abused, simply because the ability is there for someone to falsify a written afadavit (again, there is NO requirement for actual proof of ownership of a copyright, or of infringement of that copyright to be provided) to gain information of someone online.

An excellent site to learn the truth of what is going on with the RIAA and the legistlation they are attempting to push through congress, adversely affecting your rights as a consumer and as a human being.


www.boycott-riaa.com...

Maybe a boycott on those organizations that wish to control our freedoms would not be a bad idea at all.

OH HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!

www.businessweek.com...

A federal judge in Los Angeles has handed a stunning court victory to file-swapping services Streamcast Networks and Grokster, dismissing much of the record industry and movie studios' lawsuit against the two companies.

Guess their not going away anytime soon then...

Originally posted by dragonrider
Honestly, ask your friends how much money per CD they actually get. If it is more than $0.50 to $1.00 per unit, at about $18.95 a unit, I would be highly surprised.

Do you realize that's about the same ratio writers get for books?

Well I never said that book publishers were any less of crooks than the music labels...

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

An excerpt of the Freenet Summary

What is Freenet? An Executive Summary
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.

Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East. Ideas and concepts pioneered in Freenet have inspired hundreds of academic papers in the fields of computer communication, security, and law. Freenet has also received significant coverage in the mainstream press.

freenetproject.org...

Hackers have a field day with Madonnas anti download track (hilarious story)

story.news.yahoo.com.../nm/20030427/en_nm/music_madonna_dc

Originally posted by dragonrider
Hackers have a field day with Madonnas anti download track (hilarious story)

story.news.yahoo.com.../nm/20030427/en_nm/music_madonna_dc

Great find. Wonder how much frozen pizza and coke was consumed while piecing together this one... Madonna got what she asked for...

Blessings,
Mikroma

Record labels will begin sending instant messages to all file swappers that log onto Grokster or Kazaa telling them that they will be easily identified, and threatening them with legal action and possible criminal arrest.

sg.news.yahoo.com...

Maybe it IS time for a boycott???

This is the response that they will get from me...

..."F--- YOU!"

[Edited on 29-4-2003 by Tetsuo-51]