The old fools lingo shows he's clearly got his finger of on the pulse here.

How good will this 'digital fingerprinting' be?

My boxes at home seed and share pretty much all Fedora distros from the last 5 years, along with Gentoo Live CD Isos and other perfectly legal OSS etc. I use the same broadband link to run my commercial business. If I got kicked off and subsequently lost earnings when I'm not actually sharing anything illegal, rest assured that I would sue the shit out of everybody involved with making that decision.

When this fails to halt the decline in record company revenues I wonder what the excuse will be.

It's unfortunate that the record industry is both powerful and backwards. Stil, at least one fortunate consequence is that because of how outdated they are, they have an equally unenlightened view of technology.

With the decentralised infrastructure of P2P, and the content transferred over it being partial and encrypted, I can't see that they can take any relevant action short of disconnecting the entire nation from the internet.

to appease a music industry thats no doubt whining and yet again pointing the finger at everybody but themselves.

The fact is at this point in time, and for the forseeable future - especially since their current deciline is shrinking them further - record companies are dwarfed by large ISP's and telecoms companies and no amount of whining about indirect copyright infringement is going to budge them on this.

For once the government being under the influence of big business is working in our favour here - who'd have thunk it.

And this man used to be communist - makes sense, he has swapped one unworkable ideal for another!

shitty fucking country is shitty.

I'm not waiting 5 years for my fucking anime and j-drama (well to be honest most of what I watch wont ever get officially released).

Record industry can keep its shit music and holywood can keep its shit films, nobody wants them becouse they're shit. They should try and save money and stop paying lawyers and marketing people.

from the record industry...

1) SELL ME THE MUSIC I'M ALREADY WILLING TO PAY FOR

My vinyl collection is on its last legs and YOU have the masters, I just have a knackered Rega Planar 3. YOU have already issued most of the stuff I want on CD, so YOU have already done the necessary work. SO EFFING SELL ME IT, rather than telling me it's "out of print" FFS. If I want to buy a not very obscure 25 year old LP (e.g. Doobie Bros), WHY WON'T YOU SELL ME IT?

YOU, MR RECORD INDUSTRY, are **forcing** me to go the "illegal" route. DO NOT FORCE ME TO GO DOWN A ROUTE YOU TELL OTHERS NOT TO USE. SELL ME MUSIC I AM WILLING TO PAY FOR.

2) DRM benefiting the PUNTER as well as the Pigopolist

If you insist on using DRM, you could at least try to implement some kind of benefit to the punter rather than today's purely one-sided DRM. Have your DRM incorporate some kind of "owner-specific" features so that the paid-for content plays anywhere the user knows the (traceable) user-specific key. More specifically, make it *not* play anywhere other than places I want it to, e.g. if some lowlife nicks my (paid for) music collection, I want it to be useless.

YOU, THE RECORD INDUSTRY, ARE THE ARCHITECTS OF YOUR OWN FUTURE, BUT TODAY YOU ARE ARCHITECTING YOUR OWN DOWNFALL.

There, that feels better, even though it'll do no good. Sorry if it disturbs you. Is there anything else to report from InTheCity yet?

i can't help but laugh at all the proposals being put forth to catch these evil criminals.

the teenager in his/her bedroom ripping a file to their computer and sharing it, lets put millions of our tax £££'s into catching this person.

so much effort and cost is being thrown at this, that it massively outweighs the actual impact it is having.

P2P networks are popular with the vast majority of the online downloading community, but 99.9% of these people are not pirates.

that is the message that has been forgotten,

remember when we were being told that piracy is funding criminal activities, that stolen software, music and movies are being sold on to fund terrorism.

did they put half as much effort into stopping these people from distributing the copyrighted products that they seem so fervent upon stopping consumers from doing

i don't think so, they're going after the easy target...the 40 year old housewife who really is net illiterate, lets fine her thousands of £££'s. hell it's easier than cracking a real criminal.

So, just how are ISP's going to monitor and check the content of EVERY file going through their system without reducing performance to something resembling a snail on vallium?

Not to mention the little problem of people deciding to encrypt files.

Is to create a massive botnet that just downloads unencrypted mp3s onto peoples PCs, and try and infect every home in the UK so that they have to stop being so bloody stupid.

Well nearly.

Lets say they somehow stopped ALL "illegal" files from being downloaded to your comp, packet inspection, port blocking, the lot.

Would there be any need for your fancy 4-10mb connection? Nope, i'll have the cheapest package possible please, 1mb is fine for anything.

The ISP's know why people sign up to the fast accounts, theres no point without all those "illegal" files.

And cut off the internet for those who download music?! I heard some music from a passing car, maybe they'd like my ears now.

The Music Industry funds lobby groups to feed FUD to the minister and like a good little public servant seeing an opportunity to raise his profile - off he goes.

The issue is the fact that the 'Music Industry' is a dinosaur that is not capable of modifying its business model to accommodate the changes in technology and public demand.

The vast majority of criminals are the general public reacting to the unreasonable constraints created by the Music Industry as it struggles to make its outdated business model continue to generate revenue. Admittedly there are a minority of offenders who deserve prosecution for abusing the law to make money. The minority do it so that they can use the music in a manner suited to todays technology. Price is also an issue as the majority are of the opinion that high volume low cost is the answer that is easily achievable by todays technology. The Music Industry is adamantly sticking to the opposite, hence the conflict.

Unfortunately the people that suffer will be the public who do not have lobby groups to represent their opinion. This imbalance causes the minister to incorrectly assess the issue.

I have sent my opinion to him. Just one voice from the masses against the lobby groups but it may help. If you feel strongly enough to add your weight to our side of the argument the minister can br contacted via

info@dius.gsi.gov.uk. (That's the best I could find)

The more he gets, the more chance he may see things from our point of view and see through the FUD.

If the ISP are forced to stop file sharers the people sharing files will go on to encrypted 'dark nets' and new P2P protocols will be created to get around the problem.

What the people in charge seem to forget is the most people have a certain 'sod you' attitude toward authority they and will find a way around especially if what is being banned is believed to be right

Who cares? People will always find a way to get music for free. Record it from the radio, TV or off your mates.

It makes no sense at all to drop an ISP account here as one account could be shared by multiple peolpe in the house. Also internet access for the normal household is fast becomming, if it is not already, a must have.

I know that when i bought my house I turned down several because of poor internet connection, I just use the web and internet far too much to have it taken away now.

The illegal sharing of copyright material is a problem that has always been around and people tried in vain to stop other mediums such as the cassette to cassette recorders from being released, ultimately everyone realised that wouldn't stop determined pirates and they stopped asking for this.

I beleive this will happen for the net. If people do insist in infringing copyright then I'd support financial penalties possibly moving through to court appearances for persistent offenders. But any attempt to shut a net connection down because of the activity on said connection, may deprive perfectly innocent people of that connection and stop say for example an immobile person from being able to shop at a online store for example.

The record industry is trying desperately to protect revenue but this is a sledgehammer to a nut and ultimately I suspect this demand will fail, not least because peolpe will just move to another provider.

I have enjoyed the downloadable interviews/general meanderings of Ashlee Vance and friends. Most enjoyable.

However, would it be possible for you to actually arrange and record interviews with with politicos and industry leaders regarding issues such as this one? It would be interesting to hear such a debate with 'informed' people asking the relevant questions?

Surely John Humphries cannot match the interviewing skills of John Lettice now?

So firstly in order to finger print the files they will need to see all of the file which would be difficult for something downloaded over possibly several days from probably multiple different peers.

Secondly does nobody in government understand the concept of encryption? I can get 256 bit AES on my web browser these days. I don't know if any of the torrent clients have built in encryption but even if not it will only be a matter of time before someone writes one.

If they start dropping ISP service for anyone who sends encrypted traffic e-commerce will simply cease so this one will not fly.

Reminds me of the ad on the IT crowd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gLoBpTfSdo

The Record Industry lives in the past! No one wants to go to the shop anymore to buy a CD or a Film so they download it! the choice to buy a tune or download a pirate copy is up the user but let's face it, 12-20 year olds are the people that listen to music the most and they don't have money to burn so they download it illegally, I remember being 14 and scraping £15 for a new cd. The internet has given another option to the consumer which the record industry doesn't like but it has to adapt!

There needs to be a revolution! no more can the fat record companies continue to rip off the world! There's needs to be something big! maybe an application to download music legally and give something back to the consumer! e.g Gig tickets, merchandise etc. though it would have to work with the artist and would not deal with any record company so in reality that would never work, but if someone wants to give me a couple billion, i'll give it a shot!

I love music and I love to support great bands that actually need to make a living but supporting record company manufactured no talent pretty girl/boy bands in order to make money then suing people for downloading it is the real crime!!

rant over, bored now

Hehe, I love to read all the spouting off that goes on when someone mentions putting controls on file sharing. There are only a couple of camps

1) How could they prevent people from sharing files,

2) What about the legal files being shared

If the will of the ISPs to prevent filesharing is strong enough it doesn't matter how annoyed you get, filesharing will stop because they will stop it. You can encrypt your data all you like, if they throttle your upload speed your files are effecively not being shared any more. Most "Home Users" have little legitimate use for massive uploads to the internet. "Of course sir, if you want to run a business from your home then we have just the product for you. It'll only cost you 150 quid a month for each gbyte you upload".

Which gets us to those people that claim their's are "legal" uploads and shares. They must be running small businesses and so they will be charged accordingly. If these small businesses don't actually make any money then that is not the ISP's problem. The Royal Mail won't deliver things for free just because you don't charge for them and pretty soon neither will your ISP.

Get used to the idea people. The Internet is maturing. It's been a hive of slightly dodgy behaviour for a long time and now it is going to get cleaned up.

Don't flame me for writing this, think about it, it is happening and will continue to happen.

They can drop P2P traffic and when people scream just say, "we had to do it, they made us, it's all their fault.

When will they ever learn ....

The entertainment industry has promoted every new technology dating back over centuries. The entertainment may have been considered pornographic, but they grasped it, embraced it, exploited it and prospered from it.

Now, we have technology that enables people to copy CDs, DVDs or even make their own. What, no record company, musicians capable of making their OWN CDs and releasing their own music, oh dear, that means they will be retaining copyright too, we must obliterate this.

So, pick on a few miscreants, make a big fuss over it, selectively choose a few things with fancy names and blind a minister with science and see if we can put a stop to the internet.

Good luck, in a free society you are entitled to be wrong, but prohibition has never worked, anywhere, ever.

Microsoft still prosper, despite their software being copied all over the place.

A recent study found that the real destroyer of music profitability wasn't file sharers but supermarkets, yes, your friendly neighbourhood Tesco selling CDs at a price closer to their production cost. File sharing amounted to nothing significant in comparison.

Well, Mr Music Man, why not look to where the problems are before trying to solve them. P2P is not the problem.

Why not do something radical, republish your catalogues at a reasonable price with CD quality downloads and rake it in. The vast majority of people wish to be honest, why not try it out, if you charge 10p/track I suspect you would clean up. No need for DRM or Sony (TM) Root Kits, no need to brand everyone a criminal or spy on everyone, then just sit back and wait for your bank accounts to fill up.

The world and business works better with less regulation. Blaming everyone else because of your own greed is getting to wear a bit thin.

Lets just set up a firewall for all incoming traffic into the UK nationalise the ISP's then have a government department to make sure we don't do anything that they dont like or see anything that might be dangerous to us.......opposition politics perhaps. All p2p protocols blocked and the transfer of MP3 files made illegal. That would do the trick (we really need a sarcasm button on here) the record companies could no longer bleat about how the decline in music sales is down to piracy, although car boot sales would suddenly become very popular again, and they might realise that it's down to the content being pushed out that no one wants to buy, why sales are falling.

Lets get the party going with the slogan "we don't understand technology and don't want, so lets ban it"

Vote Chairman Guy for supreme leader

Its the year 2010:

All ISPs are running at a max 512Mb/s due to scanning all data passing through.

You have a £500 per year Video/DVDRW License (just incase you record something from TV

You have a £500 fine everytime your next door neighbour or man on the street hears music from your CD player.

All Cars have a device limiting the sound output (Failure to do this is 3 years in jail) so noone can hear your music.

And everyone has the same boring ring, ring ringtone on their mobile

Apple have the monopoloy on music downloads, and it now the richest company in the world (thats to its pay twice policy). They have also introduced fines for those who unlock their iPhones.

Over the top.......I suspect not ;-)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/vrs_value_gap_report/

apparently Apple and Tesco are significantly more to blame than piracy for the decline in record company profits.

When will they understand ending piracy is not going to get them back what they claim to have lost.

As for sniffing files, what about legitimate subscription services and the move by some legitimate content providers to using P2P type distribution models, how will they system distinguish between an illegal copy of a TV show and a legal copy ?

Once again a knee jerk reaction to generate a soundbite

Its the thought of actually wanting to buy the Doobie Bros that disturbs me!

Rip it onto CD (or magnetic media) from your turntable. Thats what I am doing with my 30 year old vinyl. (Project Debut 2, NAD 3070)

You wrote:

"So firstly in order to finger print the files they will need to see all of the file which would be difficult for something downloaded over possibly several days from probably multiple different peers".

This is not the case.

The popular mobile music identification service SHAZAM can identify an audio track

by hashing a very brief sample and comparing it with its vast database, typically managing to identify a track from a 2 second sample.

The same rules apply here i'm afraid.

I tend to agree with the rest of your post though, Cryptor here we come.

(p.s. i made that up - pat pending!)

Triesman must be trousering some juicy backhanders to be such a slavish lickspittle.

This has already happened, in China.

Oh China!! The Communist Country?? The PEOPLES Republic??

Figures!

Ladies & Genitals, The Minister is a communist!

"So firstly in order to finger print the files they will need to see all of the file which would be difficult for something downloaded over possibly several days from probably multiple different peers".

"This is not the case.

The popular mobile music identification service SHAZAM can identify an audio track

by hashing a very brief sample and comparing it with its vast database, typically managing to identify a track from a 2 second sample."

Thats his point. You need to have the whole audio track in the first place *before* you can make a hash of it or perform any meaningful fingerprinting

You also need to consider the medium in which its being transmitted - tcp/ip. Its not a continuous audio wave like the telephone - its a series of packets which in the case of p2p come from different directions on the internet at different rates. You would need to assemble at least some of the track in the correct order before being able to check and see what it is. The more of the track you intercept, the better the accuracy of the match.

>The popular mobile music identification service SHAZAM can identify

>an audio track by hashing a very brief sample

Not sufficiently accurately to know that it's not something else that just sounds similar but isn't on the database. This set up would have to be accurate enough for legal purposes.

You also need a data format that you can dip into at random without the other parts. Pretty easy to knock up something that breaks that...

To the whingers worried about not being able to nick stuff in some way:-

1) Don't worry, it's technically too hard to stop you.

2) If it's too expensive then don't bother with it, you don't have to nick it!

I don't actually run a P2P servent any more (consigned that to the 'mis-spent youth' category at this point) but I do transmit massive amounts of data encrypted to the internet by running a Tor proxy. Throttling uploads in the UK would prevent me from offering this free, legal and useful service and give me one more reason to emigrate.

The music industry used to own the means of production. Now everybody does and they really are just parasitic freeloaders. I don't buy music just because I don't download it any more - there are plenty of other (great) ways to get free music.

Bear in mind, folks, you and all of your friends all have the facility to borrow CDs from the library and rip them, or all chip in for one copy then sell it second hand once it's had a spin in each of your drives. Let's see the bastards shut down *that* option.

To Conway, what's the point of 8Mb connection when you're unable to do anything with it? People don't want "rented" files, don't want DRM and aren't buying Vista (so no protected path media that the industry wants). So the telco's will find themselves unable to sell broadband.

OK, so they won't have to pay to upgrade the network...

To Teh_Vermicious_Knid, two seconds is de minimis in copyright terms. So they need to use more than that! There's another problem that, if as the industry says, we bought a license and not a CD/DVD then I have a license. So downloading it is not infringing (I have a license). If I've bought a CD then there's no loss if I download it from somewhere (they still have 100% of my money).

maybe, just maybe the drop is record sales has something to do with the tripe that gets piled out from such esteemed musical stables as "X-Factor", and "who wants to be a media-whore".

maybe I'm gets getting old.

I like the 1st option more....

It seams obvious that large portions of the music industry are rapidly moving towards a DRM free and even cost free (eg. Radiohead) model for music distribution. Is it really worth crippling the internet now and criminalising people for something that will be a non-issue in few years time?

Its only a matter of time before all music is free - artists should make their money by <gasp> actually _performing_ music! Like they did for 1000's of years before the record companies came along. Giving away recorded copies of their music should be regarded simply as free advertising.

Big bands already make most of their money from concert tours and the best way for a small band to get big is to get their music out to as wide as audience as possible i.e. by giving it away.

The sense of entitlement from you chumps is just amazing. You have no right to getting any of this material for free. Regardless of how half-arsed these prohibition methods are you have to accept the basic premise music is not yours to pirate, steal, giveaway or share. Please get that through your heads. This property is just not yours - in the name of all that's Holy can't any of you morons understand this? Don't you realise the more you do this the more Draconian the methods become in trying to stop you?

Also stop being blatantly dishonest as it's making me puke blood:

1. You like a fast Internet connection for downloading MP3s of music you have no intention of purchasing.

2. You don't believe that people that produce this music have any property rights

3. The fact you claim to use P2P just for downloading torrents of Linux distros is dishonest - it doesn't excuse the fact most P2P traffic is for bootlegging

4. Your arguments about fighting against the record industry is really just a mountain of bullshit to try and legitimise the fact you're stealing music. You aren't freedom fighters so let me just pop that bubble for you. You're just thieves.

5. Pay up or piss off.

From the RIAA's UK division. It is funny to see that organisations that have no credibility of any kind and most of all no legal purpose can find they way to the top of the a country and then waste joe taxe payer money on something that is sure not to work and is a complete breach of privacy (snooping on someone data whiout a court order).

The enterteiment industry need to understand two things:

1. Low quality over price product is the >>ONLY<< cause of they declining sale. (i have a very large DVD collection, but i buy only from the wal-mart bargain bin)

2. There is >>ONE<< market: Earth. i want my TV , Music, Movie NOW there is no legal reason for witch i should i have to wait...

The RIAA/MPAA have ripped off consumers since day one, now the consumer fight back,,,,

Nice troll.

While I totally agree that lots of people seem to think that they have a right to copy whatever media they want and screw the copyright owners, there is the slight matter of the bill of rights. It states something to the effect of 'no man shall be punnished for an offence without being found guilty in a court of law.' (Leaving parking tickets aside) The suggestion is that an automated system will switch off your internet connection, maybe someone else's connection that you are using via wifi etc. and, that the decision will be made by the ISPs, rather than any law enforcement agency. This is totally outrageous.

As an aside I totally agree with the Anonymous Coward who was talking about replacing his old vynl with CDs or possibly downloads (preferably non-DRM) I too have the same problem, loads of old Vynl that I'd love to replace, but most of it out of print. I have also gone down the road of a Dual Project 1, with which I am going to rip the vynl. In three years, I've managed about two LPs. I think that I should increase my speed...

You're not even worth flaming, because you don't have a clue about peoples usage.

There are plenty of new legal uses of P2P (hint: BBCi Player, World of Warcraft patches, etc. etc.), and the bandwidth consumed by the average consumer is rapidly rising because of services such as streaming audio and video. There is also an increasing need fo upload speed, and that's not even counting services like cable, where upload is important for download speeds.

Moreover, your concept of bandwidth charges is just funny. And here's a hint: You get a £10 a month more expensive connection and rent a server or part of one, if you're running a business. Running it off your own connection is silly.

The Royal Mail won't deliver things even if you pay for it, and I'm not surprised to see the neo-luddites like you want ISP's to adopt the same model. "Maturing" in your sense means "to cripple", which is what is to be expected of a shill for the music industry. And in the end, the music industry will continue to suffer... and if they manage to cripple ISP's, even adopting a rational business model won't help them.

Hear hear! Smell My Finger!

(Or should that be smell smell?)

Pay Up or Piss Off!

@Mectron

>RIAA's (...) no legal purpose

The legal purpose is to stop or reduce the amount of theft of the property of their members. It's like saying Neighbourhood Watch or the Police have no legal purpose.

>1. Low quality over price product

Don't buy it then, but you have no right to steal it.

Just because Ferrari's have terrible reliability and are really expensive doesn't mean that I'm justified in nicking them.

>2. There is >>ONE<< market: Earth. i want my TV , Music, Movie

Yes, it's a market where you >>BUY<< stuff.

It's _their_ TV, Music, Movie not yours until you've bought it.

>now the consumer fight back

You're not a "consumer" you're a parasite, sponging off the thing you despise so much without giving anything back.

Shut up Larrs - nobody likes Metalica anymore that's why we don't buy your shitty music.

Nobodies downloading RIAA owned content it's all shit. They're full of shit.

The last US or UK made shit I downloaded? Aliens Special Ed, and the only reason I did that was becouse the fucking retarded ugly cow in HMV ID'd me. Dirty Hag. I'm 26 and don't drive why the hell would I have ID to buy a film I first saw when I was about 10.

Before that, who knows it was probably 9 years ago over a 56k connection.

Who the hell is downloading all this crap? I think they should all be locked up for listening to crap commercial music.

(that's the Wax Cylinder Industry Association to you whippersnappers) I wholeheartedly agree with this move. It is the Government's responsibility to ensure that new, disruptive technologies are not allowed to force the owners of entrenched business models to adapt.

One can look at any disruptive technology and see how its adoption could have been prevented by government to the benefit of existing stakeholders, without seriously impacting the existence of the least-important link in the chain of value, viz. the consumer.

Cars - the unwarranted holocaust of horse traders could have been entirely prevented at the slight cost of halting outright the personal mobility revolution. Result: thousands of jobs are protected, and the little man doesn't have any reason to be going anywhere anyway. Similar arguments apply to rail.

The telephone - Imagine Albert, the poor starving telegraph operator, his morse key dusty from misuse, his children starving at his feet because his specialist skills have been rendered redundant by the incessant march of hateful progress. IMAGINE IT!

Electricity - darkness is what the consumer wants, it's what the consumer has always wanted, and just because now there is some alternative to darkness, it does not automatically follow that this 'uptake' is related to 'demand.' Rather it is the callous act of those who would see the torch making industry destroyed. Bastards.

Instead of these epoch-making, world-changing innovations I request that the government instead recognise the importance of a strategy I will call Status Quo-gress. In this case, all new advances are allowed only when they are the tightly controlled brainchildren of the people who ALREADY hold the monopoly in this area. For instance, the replacement of Vinyl recording technologies with Compact Disc. This has the benefit of stimulating the economy and empowering the consumer without actually presenting any risk whatsoever. The committee deciding which matters are hated progress and which are beneficial quogress will be populated entirely by people who live 50 years in the past - I can supply a selection of music industry executives and Daily Express readers for this purpose.

There are in fact some very legitimate uses of P2P filesharing, i know that Blizzard employ this method for updating fairly popular games such as WoW or World of Warcraft and i do not doubt there are others.

I don't and have never downloaded music illegally nor would I condone it but a knee jerk reaction like the one being proposed is I would say the wrong approach.

I recommend as some others have here that RIAA and other companies who are being "hurt" by illegal downloading plough their money into better download solutions, look at iTunes and how popular it is.

It's not a hard decision to make and will still allow the music mega-giants to continue to keep their profits up, same for movies and TV shows. I mean come on the popularity of the downloading these is not down to the fact it is illegal it's because it is providing the consumer with what they want.

Frankly there is a market to be taken advantage of and the idjits like this who "sabre rattle" as opposed to putting effort into it deserve what they get..

"By Conway" said

Most "Home Users" have little legitimate use for massive uploads to the internet.

Hmmm, so what do you use your internet account for?

do you ever:

send emails? These are uploaded from your home machine...

Run a website? even if you choose not to host it yourself you need to upload the content.

Ever been near You Tube? How do you think the millions of legal videos got there?

Sent pictures or videos to friends/relations/online acquaintances...

Do you have a job? well one that involves accessing the companies network from home.

Have you ever used Skype? P2P!

And that is before we start getting into using torrents as a way of downloading Linux distributions.

OK, there is a vast amount of illegal stuff happening on the net, but that is no excuse to stop legitimate uses. Otherwise we should stop all procreation since some kids will grow up to be crims. Better make sure no one else is born.

Long-standing exponent of the Whitehall Farce.

We have a sclerotic industry struggling, with its business plan in tatters, in the face of evolving technology. What's their response? Regress rather than evovle. Call in the lawyers, get out the big stick.

When that doesn't work too well, their next move is to engage with Whitehall and have our government listen sympathetically to the record industry's problems with 'that intertube thingy'. In the third act, there'll be people without skirts and trousers running in and out of bedroom doors, just wait.

The serious part, though, falls with a dull thud once again on the PBC - poor, bloody consumer. Listen, even if (they couldn't but stick with me) even if the record companies could identify every file-sharing protocol in the world and even if they could persuade the British government to shut 'em down in Britain, I estimate that it would be approximately seven minutes after shutdown before new ones were up and running. So why is this bad news for the PBC? Because it's the excuse our thudding, blundering, clodhopping government needs to apply their Stasi tactics to internet users in the UK.

Licences to use the internet anyone?

Sure, it's illegal, and most people here aren't denying that.

It's a tiny bit short sighted to say fast connections aren't necessary though, to pick a few examples

1) The legally slightly dubious but morally more acceptable downloading of damaged material you already own. I'm not about to pay again for The Seduction of Claude Debussy, Vista or Planescape:Torment (which is no longer available) merely because the media is damaged. Hurrah for torrents.

2) High content online MMORPGs, second life etc etc.

3) Streaming media, free TV.

4) Free software/patches. There's lots of it, and it's pretty large.

Now, it may be that especially using 2) and 3) strains the download limit of many ISPs, but it's still illegal.

Still, I still enjoy watching idiots who claim that all their 100GB downloads are essential, squirm as they refuse to say exactly what they're downloading when challenged.

In a Free Market, the cost of goods reduce to the marginal cost of that good. Which, for digital "entertainment" is so close to zero, you'd be spending vastly more on collection than you'd get from the sale.

That method of working is dead. And legislating to keep them afloat is trying to get their right to profit enshrined in law.

Dirty, stinking thieves.

Someone once told me that the internet sees censorship as a blockage and routes around it, is that still the case I wonder? . . . or perhaps we could go back to making our own entertainment, cut out the middle man, so to speak.

New US TV series which have been broadcast there on TV but won't make it to the UK for a year (or two, or never) -- mostly done by my wife, who's mad on some of them.

Old BBC TV documentaries on things I'm interested in but missed or never saw (for example, Project Orion).

MP3 downloads of vinyl albums that I've got but are too knackered to transfer to CD (but somebody else has already done it) or that aren't available on CD anyway (I've transferred about 50 or my own vinyl albums to CD so far, but each one takes well over an hour including editing).

Put all that together and we average about 50GB a month, and *none* of it is stuff that I can -- or should have to -- buy.

I play in a band, we've made and sell CDs (mostly directly at gigs, certainly not through record companies), and I don't download "free" stuff that deprives an artist of a sale, I buy the CD. If I can't buy it because it's not available, that's different.

Ian

With many BitTorrent apps allowing the user to;

1) Randomize the port used for incoming connections, each time the app is used.

2) And, either Enable or Force Protocol Encryption, to make it difficult for ISP's to throttle-back P2P traffic.

How would ISP's and the music industry implement such a scheme?

How would they cope with P2P using TOR to connect to the trackers to give a limited measure of anonymity. Or even using a matured I2P protocol in the future?

Or even 3rd Generation networks such as ANtsP2P? http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/

Before you accuse me of not paying for music let's see how much exactly have you paid. Or is it more like you have BEEN paid, ah?

I have spend thousands buying my CD collection (then buying it again and again as I moved around the world). But I only did that because I knew what kind of music I like. And I knew that only because at school we shared home-recorded tapes. We did not have money to buy the LPs but that was irrelevant as you could not buy them anyway, not in Moscow in 1980s.

Now you can take the crap you call music today back and never show it to the world and then it will be safe. Otherwise, accept that it is not worth anything and can only be sold by weight. Your industry has commoditised the music because you thought you could sell more. Turned out you were wrong, so you are trying to make up for it by extortion.

Pay up for your mistakes or shut up.

I would like to see the ISPs pushed to cut spam bots off the internet. Spam is a much larger problem on the internet them p2p. It also effects more people the downloading music and videos.

Although I'm not The Finger, I share his viewpoint.

>Before you accuse me of not paying for music let's see how much exactly have you paid.

It doesn't matter what you've paid only what you've paid for.

>Or is it more like you have BEEN paid, ah?

...because everyone who hates seeing the creeping acceptance of crime in our society must be in the pay of The Man?

Everywhere you look there's some petty crime that everyone just ignores, I'm sick of it.

>not in Moscow in 1980s.

Is that really a sensible comparison with western europe or the US in 2007?

"The sense of entitlement from you chumps is just amazing. You have no right to getting any of this material for free. Regardless of how half-arsed these prohibition methods are you have to accept the basic premise music is not yours to pirate, steal, giveaway or share. Please get that through your heads. This property is just not yours - in the name of all that's Holy can't any of you morons understand this? Don't you realise the more you do this the more Draconian the methods become in trying to stop you?"

Oh really? In that case next time music enters my house because someone drove by with the radio on I'll be sure to sue the music industry for allowing something that's simply not mine in any way whatsoever to enter my house.

The fact is there is no ownership of music, the very premise that intellectual property is somehow a tangable and protectable object is fundamentally flawed because it's not. You can't stop someone from hearing music or comitting other intellectual property to their minds. The whole IP based industry is based around on this made up premise that somehow material such as music can in some way be sheilded from being heard by only authorised people and in a world where perfect digital replication is possible, that is where the probably has become so utterly apparent. The issue is that the music industry knows the very concept of their business is flawed but will do every single thing in their power, no matter how illegal to prevent the realisation of this but it is now perhaps just too late for them.

People like you assume you're correct because you're following the word of the law but that ignores the fact the law is in itself flawed and only exists in the way it does because of lobbying from large businesses that the public can't hope to compete with. Answer me this, if it's so wrong to copy music, then why does over 25% of the population do it regularly and well over 50% support it? It isn't wrong, the laws are wrong and that's the problem. The power the internet gives people over businesses is the real clash here and businesses realise this, 10 years ago a company could shaft thousands of people with a crappy product, nowadays it only takes one blog reaching the top 10 search results on Google for that product to completely and utterly destroy the products chance of success.

Moving on somewhat, I'd just like to point out that whatever they do to P2P, there's always cheap and affordable encrypted USENET at the end of the day from providers abroad such as Giganews, the loss of P2P isn't the biggest deal in the world.

So this communist Lord? wants to control me interwebs does he? Tell me what I can do or not do. Screw you communist.

As many of you have already mentioned, no one wants the drivel that the American, na, multinational companies pass for music, film or entertainment. I'm listening to music from 20 years ago, that I bought then from talented bands that worked for their loot and respect (The sensational Alex Harvey band- faith healer at the mo). You spend many thousands of hard earned cash for your Linn Sondek, Meridian set up to listen to what? Madonna? You buys a big fuck off LCD/plasma TV to watch what? endless repeats, and more endless repeats!

We wants quality, and lots of it. Shove your shiny little disks up your ass! Me remembers watching the lovely Maggie Philbin on Tomorrows world telling me that the little disks where indestructible!, but they lied to us, they degrade, they rot, entropy still rules.

We needs riots! we need civil unrest! we needs communist blood on the walls! Browns head on a stake at traitors gate together with all the other control freaks!

Anarchy!!!!!!

Join the Cromwell party now! just as soon as I get around to setting it up. Sometime after tea.

For those of you who decry the theft of IPR, get a proper job that benefits your community, mankind or nature. Want to make cash from music, then fill a hall with real people who want to see you play and sing, not mime, lip sync or pretend to play an instrument. Most of these "artists" couldn't exist musically without the benefit of "electronics" Stop trying to ripoff young girls and boys with manufactured bands. Too bad RIAA, big music corp, you've ripped the public off for years with sham products, with deceit, your chickens have come home to roost, the wheel of Karma has turned, you're reaping what you sowed, the sooner you're dead and buried the better. I'll dance on your grave, and sell tickets for it too!

/Rant over

As I anonymously made clear earlier, I'd be delighted to pay up, so why don't YOU bog off instead ;)

Similarly I assume the couple of other folks who admitted to digitising antique vinyl (at a few tens of MB/year if they're like me) might well pay money to increase their delivery rate and resultant quality. The record industries often ALREADY have the raw materials (digitised and remastered tapes), the customers have the demand and the money, the artistes probably wouldn't mind a few quid extra pension, wtf is wrong with this picture?

One obvious thing wrong with this picture seems to be my choice of Doobie Brothers, well fair comment ;) It could have been worse, I'm after Renaissance/Turn of the Cards too, but I reckoned that might be a bit obscure for here. Can't be that obscure on a global scale though, Renaissance's Northern Lights is on Youtube to raave reviews, so there may be other people willing to pay for the same kind of stuff I'm after, and equally others willing to pay for different kinds of ancient stuff.

IT JUST NEEDS THE RIAA IDIOTS TO MAKE IT AVAILABLE, AND (some) PUNTERS WILL PAY (a sensible amount).

But speaking solely for myself, I ain't paying tuppence for no stinking 50Cent shot, or whatever the RIAA may be feeding da yoof in da hood this week. Gil Scott Heron would be a different matter (got the vinyl, want the CD).

Smarter artists (if they're still around) could even do what Tom Robinson's done and put everything he still owns the rights to on a website for FREE UNENCUMBERED MP3 DOWNLOAD: "iTunes downloads cost 79p per track. Writer/publisher get 6p, Performer 6-8p, Visa/Mastercard 7p, Apple 12p, and Record Company almost 50p. Sod that. Help yourself to my songs & share them with your friends", he says.

Way to go Tom. Thank you - I bought your stuff on vinyl, and now I can have it again digitally. FOR FREE!!

Have a nice evening y'all (unless you're a numbnuts in the record industry, in which case please fall off a cliff and let someone with a clue take over)

But what happens when the Indian subcontinent and SEAsia (not to mention China...) get massively on p2p networks, moving to TCP/IP all the CD/DVDs that already get pirated there? Are the record companies going to completely shut off every damn net in the world?

This is nuts, and even worse is the fact that some bloody 60-to-70 years old MP, afraid even to use teletext, is going to actually make a law on this.

Here in Italy the Gov is in the process of backtracking the "blog registration" bill, and damn very well they should. It just seems politicos are targeting the net now that they don't know where else to stick their noses. Mind you, EU Security Commisioner (or somthink like that) Franco Frattini, who recently proposed to ban all "bomb building-related content" is Italian too, I guess I start seeing a pattern...

D'oh. 's better to focus on the Chianti and the fettucicne and get fat and drunk. At least I decide I'm doing it.

The simplest way to solve this would be to make it law to impose a Performing Rights Society (PRS) fee on your broadband subscription. Maybe 10 quid a month?

This is the same blanket fee that is imposed on public venues to play music or films. If we can't be sure what or how much people are sharing, then at least everyone with internet access will be paying something in royalties to this organisation who then distribute the payments accordingly.

This fee would generate hundreds of millions of pounds for the industry each year. In return we should be allowed to share, copy and view as much material as we like. It seems the fairest way to me!?

> People like you assume you're correct because you're following

> the word of the law

No, it's basic morality - Someone makes something and sells it, someone else (you) decides you want what they've made but won't give them anything for it, so you steal it. IT'S JUST WRONG.

picture it now a homogenous interweb where the RIAA has set up skynet and everything is controlled by them. no more porn, no more salacious websites. this is so what im looking forward too..Bring on the food wars and let's let Taco Bell win...me and Edgar Friendly will be underground...

and it's...allofmp3 (now mp3sparks).

Seriously, if the recording industry would get their fingers out of their ears and think beyond the marketing of the latest one-hit wonders, they might realize that allofmp3 holds/held the model that might allow them to remain quasi-relevant at least for a few more years Here's the formula: Allow the consumer to choose the format and the bitrate of the digital music they purchase. Make it reflect the actual cost of production, bearing in mind that the purchaser is doing the legwork and paying for the bandwidth. Make it a purchase model, without DRM, not a rental. Give the bulk of the proceeds to the artists. If the record companies want to save face and retain the DRM , why not limit its use to allow for self-destructing samples (like the Zune apparently does after 3 listens of a shared song)?

While they're at it the RCs could harmonize their licensing worldwide and get rid of the unhappy situation where a consumer can't purchase a particular song because they happen to be sitting in the wrong country and so turns to a P2P solution. Apply this same logic to internet radio. If the technology exists to deny me access to an internet radio service because of my location, does it not also exist to target any ads and marketing to my locale and reap the revenue rewards while I enjoy the service, rather than just throwing up a wall and throwing away that potential revenue?

Finally, many of us are old-fashioned enough to prefer a physical product to have and to hold. We all know the cost to produce a CD is negligible. If I can go to a "dollar store" and buy a multitude of products which were produced halfway around the world, shipped and put on the shelf for one dollar or less, why can't the record industry get a CD into the stores and market it for say $5.00 or less? I dare say, they'd sell a few more CDs/LPs/DVDs.

Feel free to retrofit all of the above to the film industry.

10 file sharers get booted off the 'net by an ISP, and the rest of them will promptly cancel the subscription and go somewhere else. The revenue defecit will be enormous.

Who do you think are the only people who pay for the high connection speeds? Gamers? Ha! If they have time and money to play latency-sensitive games, they still live with their parents and don't pay anyway.

"The sense of entitlement from you chumps is just amazing. You have no right to getting any of this material for free."

Neither did Sony when it decided that it'd install some poorly-written rootkit software on my laptop from a DRM-riddled music CD that disabled my CD-ROM drive when I deleted it. Coming from someone that lives in the U.S., that alone is the sole reason that I don't buy music anymore. I'll be hearing it all on FM radio, and if I like a song particularly enough, I'll simply run to the nearest unsecure wifi spot and download it off Bittorrent. Sony stole my right to legally listen to music without the fear of getting infected, so I am merely returning the favor. And if the MPAA or RIAA have a problem with it, well, they really can't do much about it, now can they?

You seem like a nice guy, this isn't a flame. I disagree with your point entirely, though.

Laws and governments are mutually shared delusions which exist in the minds of those who govern and those who submit to governance. To "clean up" anything is a physical impossibility, because the defense against rebellion is vastly more complex and difficult than the act of rebellion.

Eg: The war on drugs. In any British or American city, purchasing drugs is quite easy, despite the extremely lengthy and expensive efforts of powerful governments to make it not be so. Here in my native US, cannabis, cocaine, and heroin are at multi-decade lows in price. My government spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year, trying to prevent the import, sale, and consumption of drugs. The US coast guard, border patrols, and South American military presence are among the most well-equipped governmental forces in the world. Combined, their mission includes the protection of thousands of airports, miles of border, and the world's largest import/export operations.

But, to evade this extremely impressive and ultimately powerless force of Law, a smuggler carrying ten pounds of coke only has to find one weakness in the defenses, whereas the defenders have to anticipate every weakness. It is NOT the threat of enforcement which contains the illegal elements of society. It is the deference of the citizens and subjects of that ruling authority which encourages people to not get caught.

My concluding point: If you believe the internet is following in the pattern of the world, in being "cleaned up," then you sadly have a great misunderstanding of the basis of the power of governments, for the world itself is not nearly as clean as you might assume. The internet, reflecting the world, is simply a more distilled representation of basic human nature, which is:

A) Submit to authority when it is convenient, and costs nothing of yourself.

B) Disobey authority when the reward is greater than the risk of being caught.

A hundred million pot smokers can't be wrong.

"Where people have registered music as an intellectual property I believe we will be able to match data banks of that music to music going out and being exchanged on the net"

Clearly the PR machine hasn't thought of the obvious things like compression, encryption and anything else that changes data?.. Exactly what are they going to be matching over what? No bloody wonder government IT projects fail so often!

It's a war on P2Ps. The music industry, hollywood, et al are all forgetting that they were founded on piracy themselves.

Let's fine an illegal file sharer hundreds of dollars and just slap the wrist of a drunk driver!

"You like a fast Internet connection for downloading MP3s of music you have no intention of purchasing."

Bugger you, asswipe. Bugger you with a hedgehog on a stick.

I have a 15 Mbps connection that I use to RUN MY BUSINESS - a web hosting and email business.

I oppose the morons who want to put an end to P2P, because P2P is the best way to distribute *legally free* software, such as Ubuntu. It's also a convenient wayt to distribute software updates, such as the Blizzard downloader for World of Warcraft patches.

My business exists *soley* because I am able to get a reasonably-priced, stable, fast fiber-optic Internet connection. You and the rest of the RIAA's paid Luddites would put me out of business simply to make it easier for you to scrape in huge windfall profits from the crap you pretend is music.

I am prepared to pay for a good quality copy of music I like, be it on CD, USB stick, download or whatever on condition that I choose the format which is the most convenient to me and the content does not come with any strings attached (no DRMs that is).

I am NOT prepared to pay for:

- copying the purchased content from one format to another in order to play it back for my own (my household) consumption on a different device. This includes loading more than one device with the same content simultaneously.

- using an extract from the purchased content in my own non-commercial home recording or video.

- making a custom compilation of the content I purchased

- listening to a low-fi version of the content I have not yet purchased to identify content I may like and which I may later buy in a higher quality version.

- watching to a low-fi version of the content I have not yet purchased (youtube etc) to identify content I may like and which I may later buy in a higher quality version.

- playing the purchased content back, regardless of how many times and how loud I may want to do that, provided I do not charge anyone any fee.

If any of you think that any of these exceptions constitute theft or are immoral I would like to invite you to logically explain your position (don't just say "you can't do that because it's illegal").

1. You like a fast Internet connection for downloading MP3s of music you have no intention of purchasing.

As I said in my post, I run a Tor proxy, which is why I like my fast 'net connection. It's also nice for downloading ISOs. Just because you can't think of a better use for it doesn't mean the rest of us can't.

2. You don't believe that people that produce this music have any property rights

Yes, that's correct, I don't believe that people who *re*produce this music have the right to control further reproduction.

3. The fact you claim to use P2P just for downloading torrents of Linux distros is dishonest - it doesn't excuse the fact most P2P traffic is for bootlegging

It's only dishonest if it's not the case. My legal use of a P2P servent (hypothetically - as per a previous post, I don't actually run one) has nothing to do with anyone else's illegal use, and my use is not in any way obliged to somehow make up for their illegal use.

4. Your arguments about fighting against the record industry is really just a mountain of bullshit to try and legitimise the fact you're stealing music. You aren't freedom fighters so let me just pop that bubble for you. You're just thieves.

Nope. I'm not a thief. I hate the record industry because they shaft artists and consumers and offer no service that any real musician could possibly need. There was a time when they were useful - when it was difficult and/or expensive to record and reproduce and distribute music, but now they're just parasitic lumps of shit.

5. Pay up or piss off.

Fuck you too.

the faggots that be can't stop botnets how the fuck are they going to stop peer to peer file sharing? It's a fucking fantasy dreamt up by retards, old men, and people who know full well the first two are more then willing to piss money up the wall looking to chase this philosphers stone.

Seriously old record guy who knows fuck all about computers is told by flash laywer guy "hey these faggots are stealing all your shit, we should stop them! They're communists!" Old record guy is all "wahh how am I gonna afford my 3 mansions, bunny girls and big swimming pools and my jet! NOT MY JET!"

Lawyer fag goes "Don't worry, I can help, I'll start sueing some guys and I'll talk to those old geezers that run the country" in Lawyer fag head he's just cachining the cash register coz he knows all these dumb fucks are gonna be sucking him before the end of the year, they'll all be hated and broke but he'll be nobbing everybodies sectretary and have several personal Jets.

Well he talks to the guys in that parliment place and they all give him head, and say "wow we'll help you, we can't let those evil doers go free, we'll do two things, we'll make new laws so you can make more money and we'll force shitty technology on people that will work just as well as every other government IT project"

So our lawyer friend is busy fucking everyone up the arse except mr IT Consultancy firm, now they're good freinds of the fag lawyer and have shagged both the record guys and the government types hard a good few times.

Anyway they promise to solve the problem with magic, the guys in the government then get to fuck us the people and the ISP's. Nice and hard, screwing over our internets with broken plans, shit software and bad law and making us pay for it through taxes. The guys at EDS or CSC or whoever get to fuck the government, the ISP's and the recording industry, sucking money up like a giant Lawyer snorts up a line of coke. The record guy, well he doesn't fuck anyone, he's poor and covered in the shit that the Lawyer and the IT contractors took on him, The IT Contractor if they're unlucky get fucked by the lawyer.

The lawyer, well, he fucks everyone, and walks off rich as rich can be.

Everyone else though, man our arses are sore.

There are two internets at the moment - Internet 1 is the one you use when reading The Register or whatever, Internet 2 is the one used for distributing large files. Not only is illegal file sharing a problem for Sony etc, but it also clogs up Internet 2 (75% of all bandwidth is used by P2P) which is a problem for ISPs. If the big companies are going to distribute TV and movies over the internet, ISPs need to get rid of illegal P2P file sharing. Many ISPs in the UK now throttle back people who download too much.

The problem for ISPs is that they will have to state that they will ban P2P users - this will lead to a mass exodus as 15% of their users (and these will be the users who generally have the expensive packages) jump to an ISP that does not ban P2P. It may even lead to users of an ISP dropping the entire triple play package of internet, phone and TV. Also, P2P sharing drives the desire for higher bandwidth. If P2P is banned by all ISPs then they will all see a drop in revenue as users move down to cheaper packages.

This will also have effects on government policy - with France rolling out 100Mbps bandwidth, the British government want to keep up. How will this happen if the biggest group of high bandwidth internet users suddenly decide they don't want to upgrade anymore?

If I buy a game and d/load 4gigs in a hour or two its normally P2P. I will be pissed if I have to walk to EB games because their shit.

Also as we buy *licences* for games if I loose a cd I will d/load it. Use my legit key and away we go. I used to get pissed off that in the terms and conditions you only technically own a licence but now I'm reallising that its a good thing.

Oh I also d/load about 20 gigs of porn a month thats rated X so I can't buy in Australia. Leave my P2P along so I can get decent porn!

This latest battle against the internet community will ultimately fail. They always do. Period. Look back through history on any of these crusades started either by the government or big business in attempting to control some aspect of the intermet, it's content or the people using it. They have all failed. Why? Because we, the internet community, are smarter, more dynamic and more adaptable than they can ever be. Their arguments are always inherently flawed, their solutions are also backwards and flawed..

Copy protection, how long did that take to crack?

CD copy protection how long did that take to work around?

Governments in the early days scanning emails for key words, how long did that take to screw them over?

Pfffft. Whatever the music industry tries to impose on the community will be squashed in a very short period of time. There will, of course, be the few high profile cases of individuals being charged. The usual rhetoric on how evil and insideous these crimes are and then the balance will be restored again. They will then be nashing their teeth together in frustration wondering what went wrong. I await that day in the near future

to know how they intend on banning "p2p"

P2P simplying being two machines talking to each other.

Now for all the fucking retards out there, that's what a network is for. So one machine can talk to another machine.

There are over 60,000 tcp and udp ports to pick from, you can send anything over any port. Sure it's rude to use port 25 for encrypted traffic but there is little to stop you unless you're on a shitty ISP.But hell just run your P2P apps over port 443.

You can encrypt any communication as long as the both sides understand the encryption.

Just how the hell is the magical device these freaks are dribbling about going to work?

A good few people are running their torrents in encrypted mode (I should know as my torrent client will only communicate with other peers that are encrypted.) So what magic will be used to discover that I am running bit torrent? Not the ports as I run non standard, not the packets becouse they're jibberish, so it will be the fairies.

I use several File apps that are Japanese, and are encrypted. How will the magical interweb device detect that?

I also use a wide range of other encrypted network share programs as different subbing groups use less visible distrobution.

O and lets not forget IRC.

I also have VPN's

You can also join those peculiar virtual virtual private network things too, I used to run one to play moo2.

Again I have no interest in the drivle that comes out of holywood I just wish people would come back to the real world and stop wasting time and money. The reason I and many other people don't buy music, movies, etc anymore is becouse it's all rubbish and we'd rather spend £20 down the pub then on a CD.

Most of the people I know that like current music (or as I like to call it "that shit") still buy musics, except for people who don't use CD's (becouse they have IPOD's or other such mobile faggatory) then having cd's is too much of a pain in the arse (most of them can't really rip a CD, and they don't get DRM, so they just download it - it's easier and unlike with music you pay for it just fucking works.) And they all still buy dvd's and such like - becouse not many people have media centres installed.

When using P2P type services, at what point do they legally become a file ?

With the nature P2P works you get random bits of a file, it's only when you have all parts you can do something with it.

Chasing people that have parts of a file on a machine is like chasing me because I have a box of 8mm bolts in my garage. Hey they could be parts of a new BMW or Ford car.

just wait until people can shake hands and swap their entire music library. what are they gonna do then, make everyone wear gloves? what a bunch of pellets.

Ah, I see El Reg's two resident pigopolist trolls are dropping their poo around the place again.

I'm a Bittorrent user. Guess what I use Bittorrent for? Sharing MY work. That's right, when I'm not doing my day job, I'm an artist - a 3D modeller and graphic designer, to be precise. I create 3D models, and from these I create still images and video animations, which I wish to distribute far and wide over the Internet. Now some of these files are massive, especially the videos and 3D models (which I often also share for the benefit of the 3D community). I can't afford massive online space and bandwidth to host these files on my site and have thousands of people downloading them. I don't want my nice videos reduced to the postage-stamp pixelated trash that is YouTube. Instead, I torrent-hash them, host only the torrent files on my website, upload them to a few well-known trackers (I'll get to these presently), and seed them from my computer. Now this, of course, requires that I have a LOT of upload bandwidth in order to seed -*MY*- NOTE -*MY*- artistic work. Once they've been picked up and are seeding from elsewhere, that reduces my load too.

Now, to the trackers: Which trackers do I use? Guess what - none other than the PirateBay and Demonoid. Yes, THOSE nasty "illegal" trackers. Why? Because they're the two biggest torrent sites on the Internet, that's why. They represent a massive target audience of millions that I can reach. I get a piddling few torrent downloads on my own website, but I get hordes of visitors, and why? Because people looking for videos and 3D stuff find my torrents posted ON PIRATEBAY AND DEMONOID, download them there instead of my own site, see the link to my site in the file, and follow it. So not only are these "evil" sites helping to distribute my work, they're driving traffic to my website. Because of that traffic, I've had requests from people wanting to use my work commercially (I distribute under a free non-commercial license) and - SHOCK - actually made some money from my PERFECTLY LEGAL hobby!

Now your employers the pigopolists want to shut these sites, and the whole P2P/Bittorrent scene down. Well, guess what? If you shut this scene down, I (and MANY others like me who are in the hobbyist 3D/Animation community) are going to sue YOUR fucking arses off, for depriving us ARTISTS of our major source of revenue! And believe me, when it comes to that, we are going to take you self-righteous fuckards for every damned penny you're worth.

So YOU pay up and piss off.

So.. what happens when you click the encryption button on your torrent client? i don't see how they can tell whats being shared and whats not. and what about all the legal shares? do they suffer too? how do they tell the difference...

the people dreaming up these schemes always seam to have their heads in the clouds...

I think what must be remembered is the cost of making a record. My mates band got signed a few years back and were given £100,000 to buy some decent equipment, hire a studio and go and make an album.

Most pub bands who get signed need to update their crappy gear and even if one of them is an amature producer par excellence, proper gear and a studio are required to make polished sounding music.

Plus my mates bands album bombed and they never got anywhere and were soon dropped by their label. For every band that makes it big, there's a whole host who have pissed away thousands from the record labels coffers and fail. It does however, improve the quality and diversity of music on offer as the labels are giving many bands the opportunity to make it big.

That's why they get uptight when people copy their music as they need that money to keep them in business, to scout new bands, to fail on some but to ultimately provide the best music for us to buy.

Wouldn't it be funny if P2P decided to use port 80, the music industry force ISPs to block port 80... no more web browsing.

@cost of making a record

When I was a musician we were offered several contracts. the problem is yes they would pay £80k or so to record & market your album, although they wanted to dictate the songs we performed and the way we looked. However the contract stipulated that £80k was a loan. They take it out of your miniscule % of any sales, if you don't sell enough YOU OWE THEM. There was no gamble for the RC.

So there is one part of their model that is broken. A muso can put together a digital studio at home capable of full 24bit digital recording at a remarkably low cost & it only takes one guy to do it, then all your mates and their bands can also record their own stuff. You still probably won't make it big, but you won't owe a subsidiary of EMI £79,950.

Secondly they are used to people paying before they know what they are getting. Push a couple of catchy singles through the radio (which they get paid for) and then sell an album (CD) with 8 other shite songs on it. The movie industry is worse! Pay up front at the cinema and then walk out after 40 minutes or so because you'd rather play scat games with grandma then sit through hollywood's condescending bollocks. They don't care, they have your money.

downloading makes it easy to see whether what they are pushing is something you actually want and it frequently isn't.

The record companies aren't pursuing P2P because of commercial piracy, because p2p breaks their model too. Why buy a crappy quality cd with a photocopied cover from a boot sale on a Sunday morning when you can download it for free? They are simply trying to defend a business model which has been invalidated by new technology.

As for the legality of it all? Once upon a time it was illegal for a woman to kiss a man on a sunday unless she was mounted on a horse. I believe it was legal to shoot welsh people after dark within the walls of Chester. I believed it was illegal in international law to invade another country for the purpose of regime change.

I find it objectionable that anyone is allowed to acquire more than say £5m (being generous) of personal assets. I would give up work today and never be arsed to try and make another penny if I found enough money in an old sock under the bed to buy a house and draw a £30k salary.

I find the whole idea of corporations and consumerism moraly repugnant.

Yes I download music sometimes, even movies and tv shows. That doesn't mean I don't buy any CDs or DVDs. I will buy the stuff I like.

Would I care if they found a way to stop it? Not really, I can listen to music on the radio I can wait to watch movies on the TV.

Should the governement be involved in any way shape or form with this issue? Categorically NO, NO, NO! They should be working out how to stop 3000 old biddys pop their clogs this coming winter for want of a few quid to burn on heating. - The tossers! (not the biddys)

Rant mode cancel...

Quick quick

Share your pron with me while you still have the chance.

I'd just like to add my support for Smell My Finger and others who have chimed in. No, I am not in the pay of "The Man", just incredulous at the blatant lies, denial and stupidity that passes for justification of filesharing.

1) OK, so you find CD prices are high? Where does this end? Bread's a staple and some of it's over £1 a pop, shall we steal it because we don't want the bread companies to make profits? OK, the music industry is clunking and outdated, going direct to the artist would be great, but why do people extol this as a virtue only in the music industry? Going back to the example of bread, as everyone here hates companies, why not go direct to the farmer growing the wheat and buy direct from him and make your own bread? Naahhh, that's just like too much like hard work isn't it? Really, if you're honest with yourselves, you don't hate companies you just want the free ride? Cynical, moi?

2) Music isn't even an essential, if you can't afford it then tough. Cheap retailers (Internet, High St, and Supermarket) all now sell CDs cheaper than previously making purchases more attainable. OK "The Industry" do take a large wedge of the cash and the artist not so much. How does downloading the file for free really help the artist though? They used to at least get 3p (or whatever) from each sale, now they get 0p. With some artists having to bank roll costs towards video production etc they are effectively making a loss.

3) There is no contest to own all the music ever produced. Prizes will not be awarded to the person with the largest MP3 collection. Buy what you like, leave what you don't like alone.

4) "...a car drives by with music playing and that's sharing...will the industry sue them?..." Don't be an idiot. Sharing the actual music in a format that you can keep is massively different from a transient sound wave stimulating your aural faculty. If this does count as sharing though, and this is what you are so keen on protecting, why not listen to the radio (it's free!!!) and you can obtain as much music (for free!!!) as you want whilst listening. To really stick it to "The Man" why not invite your friends around to listen to the radio with you? Yeah, you're sharing that music now man and there's nothing those vile companies can do about it coz it's legal. Sticking it to the man, man!

5) Yes, there's always been piracy but it's been on a relatively small scale and so it hasn't threatened anyone's (artist and industry) profits to any great extent. The Internet, however, makes this more easy to achieve and so there's a massive threat. Example, a shop suffers 1 shoplifting a week. This isn't too bad, the extra cost of employing security measures (guards, tags, barriers etc) is too prohibitive to offset the loss from the theft. The shop then starts experiencing 5 shopliftings a week and suddenly employing additional security to ward off this loss is a worhtwhile investment. What else should the shop do? Lower prices to make it's products more attainable, protect its profits and employ security measures, or close down and tell everyone to go direct to the manufacturer any buy their stuff?

6) Wind your neck in. Coming up with spurious reasons as to why pirating\stealing\copying\etc is ridiculous. Just because you don't want it to be illegal does not make it so.

7) Legitimate uses of P2P. Yes, there are many. Perhaps the P2P community would like to police itself then? To the person whose a law abiding graphics designer; perhaps a community for sharing your works not associated with piracy would be a step in the right direction? If you align yourself with an illegal group you have no grounds for complaint if it is shut down. If you love P2P, for the love of P2P and not the illegal file sharing, then perhaps start policing yourselves. Kick out the illegal material from torrent sites or networks. Don't let the criminal element spoil it for everyone.

8) If you don't like the industry then do something proactive about it. Set up a campaign for cheaper music prices, no DRM, dealing direct with the artist, re-releases, etc. Raise awareness about this great injustice you so passionately care about! Except you don't really care do you? As I said at the beginning, you just want the free ride!

They seem to make it more difficult every day.

I'll download stuff as long as the likes of sony, microsoft, apple, riaa and bpi keep telling me where, when and how i can and can't listen to music i have brought.

I buy the cd if it's any good anyway.

> I believe it was legal to shoot welsh people after dark within the walls of Chester.

Yes, but ONLY with a bow and arrow. I suppose it was to avoid waking anyone up, or incurring the wrath of those nice Noise Abatement people from Chester City Council's Environmental Health department...

PS - No Welsh people were harmed in the making of this post.

rapidshit?

mediafire?

megaupload?

what about zip, tar, rar, gzip, bzip, arj, ace (this list could go on for a while.)

I still think they should just ban crap music and shutdown the record labels, save us all the agony of listening to their crap.

Anyway - I'm gonna go get some soup.

"No, it's basic morality - Someone makes something and sells it, someone else (you) decides you want what they've made but won't give them anything for it, so you steal it. IT'S JUST WRONG."

Well my friend, think about that for a minute. What does a musician make and what does she sell? Answer: she makes music and she sells her time and talent. She gets paid for the effort of making music, full stop. If she is good, hopefully she makes a lot of money! But once she has made the music, it's no longer hers, regardless of any sophisticated moralising about ownership and theft. You cannot own a thought, an idea or a sound. Intellectual property is nonsense.

At the risk of labouring the point, think of a shoemaker. He gets paid for the effort of making shoes, full stop. Imagine if you had to pay him each time you put his "intellectual property" on in the morning. Ridiculous, isn't it?

"1) OK, so you find CD prices are high? Where does this end?"

Well, it ends when the free market is opened, yes? I mean, that's what all the companies want, isn't it. So remove the monopoly of copyright.

Or, if you want to keep copyright then

a) use it or lose it. If you abandon works for one year, you lose the copyright

b) property taxes. Hey, you don't get to bypass Real Property taxes

c) rights of way. If you "allow" your IP to be used, then people get to use it. cf JPEG and MP3

d) squatters rights and so on. If someone makes a "better" work because you can't be bothered (e.g. you release a scratchy dump of a B&W movie you own copyright to and someone spends time cleaning it up and resells it, you get nowt)

In a monopoly, there is no competition except piracy. If the piracy is rife then the prices are *by definition* too high. If the price people are willing to pay is too low for you to sell, THEN DON'T SELL. If I write a book, nobody will buy it for £20 even if it was hardback. So people aren't "stealing" £20 off me by their refusal and I can't demand the government pay me for my "loss".

If the price people pay and the price you're willing to sell don't meet then either

a) people will find themselves able to pay more

b) you didn't have a worthwhile business and people will do without

so stop trying to get

c) get the government to pay you or demand that protections be made to stop your business failing

"downloading MP3s of music you have no intention of purchasing"

As I had no intention of purchasing it, there is no lost sale.

I repeat : NO LOST SALE.

Stick that in the same place as your smelly finger.

It's not bullshit. The person is offering you a service at a particular price and certain terms; if you choose not to agree with those terms that doesn't make you right.

If software was sold on the basis of pure labour, a copy of Word would cost 50,000 pounds. Horizontal market software is priced as it is because of an expectation of a certain level of sales. Vertical market/custom software is more expensive.

Likewise, to draw a direct musical analogy, when I want to listen to some Mussorgsky I either listen to a CD or buy a 20 quid ticket and sit in a concert. Hiring the entire orchestra and a concert hall to listen to The Hut on Hen's Legs is not realistic.

On some levels, the music industry should take account of consumer's response and through a bit of give and take provide something closer to what the consumer wants.

The consumer then has to hold up their end of the bargain (that is, to pay a reasonable amount for the product). They aren't doing that - and if you aren't have the honesty to admit it's because it's easy, you're low on cash and don't want to pay.

It's notable by the Radiohead experiment and many other voluntary payment offerings, that when people don't have to pay, they won't. That's a fact incidentally, not an opinion. Given that harsh commercial truth, people will always pay slightly more than they would prefer for music (in a physical format please, not a digital one that sounds worse and costs the same).

So, in my own opinion, at the very least buy the fucking music if you like it, regardless of where it's been heard/obtained from.

To quote George Carlin :

"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

Between my last post here and this, I spent US$19.98 buying two albums of elsewhere-unobtainable Central European music from Classicsonline. On my desk are 18 DVD's of a 50's TV show I received yesterday from skaryguyvideo. They cost me US$116.49 and I promptly ordered two more. I have FTP feeds from RandysOTR and The Listening Room and I have recently bought 45s from VinylUK and MusicStack. I spend about 100 to 200 bucks per month on music and videos.

So you can get off your self-righteous high horse now. I pay for the services I receive.

As you made a couple of interesting points I would have liked to respond, but the inclusion of the completely unnecessary Anglo-Saxon crudities in your post means that it's probably pointless.

Dear Mr 'The Record Company Man',

I consider your CDs cost too much when bought new, so I have an Amazon wishlist that I monitor semi-regularly. Many of the CDs get added to the wishlist purely on the basis of peer reviews and ratings. I buy CDs from it when the prices have dropped to the price I'm prepared to pay. I rarely pay more than a fiver a go.

I just bought 10 CD albums from the wishlist. 3 from Amazon and 7 from Amazon marketplace. Pretty much all of them were released within the last 2 years, most within the last 12 months and some within the last 6 months.

It cost about £30. For that price I get of a high quality recording on a physical medium, delivered to my door and will then be able to do what I want with the disc and the data contained within.

*If* I were to make those purchases online i'd probably be using iTunes cos there are precious few alternatives. It'd cost approximately £80 (10 albumsx10tracksx80p), and i'd be in posession of a bunch compressed music files that have a bunch of restrictions over what I can do with them. And that's assuming that albums I'm after are actually available to purchase. And the Amazon systems of reviews and ratings is absent.

But at present, the physical media is often cheaper, especially when second hand. And if I buy second hand, you get zilch. If you made available at second hand prices you'd; a) get some profit, and b) get extra profit due to increased share of the sales as you squeeze the second hand retailers out of existence.

So you've got some work to do. But we know full well what needs doing, don't we?

Mark, (posting on Thursday 25th October 2007 17:56 GMT) who said that he'd seen the future and that it was Allofmp3 was speaking the truth. AllofMP3 had found the pricing sweet spot and were coining it as a result.

Half-inch their business model, put some interactive bells and whistles on, keep the interface clean and you're on to a winner.

Seriously. If they were succesful to the point of you needing to shut 'em down then simply do what they're doing, don't get greedy and match their prices and then sit back and watch your share prices rise again.

It requires no creative thought or business modelling, and will be even more succesful than the site you've just shut down. Folk are sure to go for your "new, approved and imporoved Allofmp3" rather than the "dodgy old Russian AllofMP3". You could call it Amazonofmp3. ;-)

And for the collectors that want a physical product (and to throw a line to the inevitably slimmed down physical presence of HMV and Virgin) keep releasing those CDs with free DVDs. Maybe even release discs + free gig tickets or summat.

Regards,

W

PS: DMDs died before they were even born, you crazy misguided fools.

OH MY GOD,

The music industry are just scared cos its hitting them in the wallet, look lets share information, yes SHARE, A very important lecturer from Uni of greenwich once mentioned that people of the future will share there information, people will pay for live music but not for recorded music.

The greedy record companys have really shown there true colours how they manipulated legislation, fined people extorsionate cash sums, spread spyware, malware and the list gos on.

its a real shame when i read that some uk govenment called lord "whats his name" of the dept of innovation is bending the law to suit the consortium of record companys, AND dont say to me that music companys are about innovation or excellent in progressive music, if britney spears sells they go with it-Simple. However it breaks my heart theres so many great musicians out there who cant make a break cos the record companys push rubbish out "that sells"

The conglomatrate of these companys are trying to twist people into buying there copyright bullshit by putting pressure on governements, people, and generally being butt heads, does noone agree spreading virus's in the p2p network & on the net and relying on public ignorance of INFORMATION SHARING is a crime against humanity initself- behavior on par with a maniac me thinks!

Im a musicain myself www.myspace.com/shem115 and i have always believed in making music and releasing for free, people pay for gigs thats fair, i hear comments some people say like, "if people wernt paid to make music then they wouldnt be music" lol well my answer to that is if there making music for money they aint gonna make much plus if they make music for money then they aint making music for the right reasons.

truth is, there never stop p2p, there never stop people sharing, i hope to high hell they cant...................

SHARE INFORMATION & FREE THE ELEMENTS

"2. You don't believe that people that produce this music have any property rights"

You clearly have no idea how the music industry works. The people who produce this music are forced to hand over their rights to the labels if they want to get a recording deal. That's why artists make more money from concerts and merchandising. The transfer of these rights is permanent so that after a contract is finished, the producers of this music have NO RIGHTS to perform their OWN MUSIC.

That's why an artist can have a number one single and still end up bankrupt even without living the usual hotel-trashing high life.

"4. Your arguments about fighting against the record industry is really just a mountain of bullshit to try and legitimise the fact you're stealing music. You aren't freedom fighters so let me just pop that bubble for you. You're just thieves."

Piracy has not been theft since it ceased being concerned with Spanish dubloons. If I had actually found a way to physically remove an item from the record labels' possesion over an internet connection, then bet your arse I'd be using that technique in reverse to try and slap some of the stupid out of you.

Theft & Piracy. Different words. Different laws. Different acts.

I realise this comment is a little late so if it goes unread, tuff!

Most of the music companies trying to get these draconian laws passed to protect their more than lucrative interests are ignoring the democratic rights of the people of this planet. Since the introduction of the tape cassette in the late sixties almost everybody has shared files ( copying their friend's new albums etc) so, for thirty odd years millions of people have, according to the music companies, been breaking the law and with interest we should all be fined millions of pounds/dollars/yen etc each. In the times before tape cassettes people avidly collected sheet music for many of their favourite songs heard on the radio and shared those with their friends allowing them to copy them. So , I think there is a well established precedent to suggest the vast majority of people are against the `private´laws that are trying to be passed. What we need is more money to go to the performer and to break the strangle hold of big business, let every one enjoy the music they like and the music companies can go bugger themselves.

= *aa astroturf. They all seem to have a rather alarming predeliction for numbered lists too. Do you communicate with everyone like that? Whilst it's undeniably handy at the grocer's, how does your wife feel about it?

You missed out:

- Joost

- Kontiki (4OD, BBC iPlayer, whatever the Sky one is called)

- Video conferencing

- Webcams for keeping a sneaky eye on the Au-pair/kids/dog while at work

- Online games

- Offsite backup (BT now offering this to home users)

A swear word or two is used so that invalidates someone's entire argument?

Please, do grow up instead of looking for an excuse not to respond.

The music industry shills are here in force today, pathetically trying to discredit P2P arent they.

I certainly agree If somone resorts to swearing they deserve to be ignored, myself included.

As several posters point out the artist's are not the ones suffering, it is the record companies that are losing money.

I worked for 20 years in the live music industry, and one of the classic moments was mixing a popular act at a big outdoor performance in a shopping precinct. The performer was talking to the crowd and said "This is my new CD

please buy it" Then looking down at the record company bozo's at the side of stage said "Or you could just give me the 20 cents"-that being his cut of the $30 price of the CD at that tome. Artists make their money mainly from performing their songs and that is how it should be. This was a major act in this country (Australia).

So spare me the bleeding hipocrasy and pathetic accusations of theft, it simply aint so. Copyroght infringement is not theft, look it up morons.

I don't work for a record company. It's just the utterly moronic self justification of it all that irritates me, you know it's wrong, don't try convince yourselves it isn't. Also, if you pay attention, I was actually advocating not buying (or nicking) any of the crap that comes out of the record companies.

If you don't like their pricing model the solution is to do without it, not to nick it.

As for:-

"The people who produce this music are forced to hand over their rights to the labels if they want to get a recording deal"

No, they aren't forced, anyone can hire time in a recording studio, where professionals will help polish the sound, the truth is they sign up because they think the record company is offering them the best shot they'll get. And sometimes the record companies fuck 'em over.