Huh? Why is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, trying to get compensation for films and games.

I thought they represented the music industry not the film or games industries.

Firefox + Vidalia (Privoxy, Tor, and GUI bundle) + Encrypted Torrents = Win.

If they won't listen to us being civil, they'll beg for mercy when we're not.

Just like they were going to buy Sea Land. When will PB realise they don't have to make up these lies to get publicity?

Stick it to them Pirate Bay!

Crazy Swedes. Don't ever STOP

Damn funny stuff! I bet jaws dropped when they heard they'd be counter suing, they probably went 'Huh?....What??....They're suing US?! WTF?!'. As much as the music industry has shown themselves to be the Anti-Christ I don't think I'd go as far as calling TPB Jesus! ;)

I wonder how many of these "we'll sue the IFPI" they come with are just done for laugh to see what happens.

I get the impression that the Pirate Bay guys have a private competition going to see who can generate the most indignantly outraged response from the industry - who seem to be more than a little pissed off that PB aren't taking them very seriously enough.

The concept of buying / hosting with SeaLand was a good one. In practice however, it was a stupid idea. It neutrality is still unrecognised and it's highly susceptible to things like fire (most recently), the helicopter pad needing maintenance, breaking a leg.

Yup, sue the IFPI and rightly so. We can only imagine what the damages are to TPB after the IFPI got them blocked (even though Danish traffic to the site actually increased). Oh, wait, they claim to make no profit, meaning no damages...

Well, it was a full 12 seconds before World+Dog saw through this next shallow stunt.

International Federation of the Pornographic Industry

Where's the Paris Hilton angle?

@ top post:

Mod: without I think, giving any sugestions, I discuss anonymous P2P methods:

Actually, the combination that you outline is still vulnerable. To some extent, using TOR might prevent the website you get the torrent from logging your IP, however because of the way Bittorrent works, it is hard to produce a system in which at least some of the users are not vulnerable, not to mention the tracker admins.

TOR is not ready to carry P2P amounts of traffic, and many exit nodes deliberately prevent bittorent and others transiting them. Further, unless I'm missing something, you cant have an open inbound port, so one of two exchanging P2P users has to be not anonymous.

What people often do is to send their tracker traffic through TOR, so the tracker cant log their IP, and comunicate unanonymously with the other peers. This again requires one of the two users to be unanoymous. sorry. further, as no inbound, it stops firewalled, often fast users from connecting to you (i.e. dorm rooms).

The only option for real anonymous P2P is darknets like winny, mute, freenet. These are slow because traffic is encrypted and sent via other nodes, and many people do not use them because they are concerned about what material could through no fault of their own end up in a cache on their HD. If someone downloads illegal materials, they may go via you (so neither sender or downloader knows who the other is), and be cached on your system. This allows deniablity, but could be sold to a tech illiterate or very concervative audiance as aiding and abbetting say pedophiles, terrorists...

Plus judging by the japanese experience these things get compromised pretty quick.

Rock and a hard place.

I earn enough not to be overly concerned, but students and teenagers might hope that rather than try and prosecute sharing out of existance, labels and producers will use the distribution economies of the internet to offer competative products.

Let's hear it for the man-bites-dog story, in its truest incarnation. Keel haul the lot o' them!

"Oh, wait, they claim to make no profit, meaning no damages..."

not quite true.......

they can be maiking a loss, or even be breaking even... but if the actions of the IFPI have increased the losses then there has been damages.....

the bigger issue is that as trafic has increased to the site from the danes AFTER the block was in place, then there has definately not been any losses, on the other had, if they can sucsessfully argue that altho traffic has increased, if that rise has been below the expected growth or the actual growth of users in denmark, then there has been some losses,,,,,

and even if they argue the case and judgement made in tpb favour, it depends on the judge, if he is sympathetic enough to what tpb is all about....

mines the one with the skull and crossbones motiff...

Damage, isn't on profit, damage is on damage, just because a business turns a loss doesn't mean that by breaking the windows you haven't damaged it.

It can include costs incurred as a result of extra mainenance, legal costs, alternate hosting, staff overtime charges, lost advertising revenue, charges incurred due to broken contracts etc etc.

You should bear that in mind when you're ripping a CD for general release, it's not the cost of the CD that is the damage, there's other stuff.

(BTW Looks like TPB are better off from this anyway, might have to check it out in future)

Hang on, if PB runs at a loss, even a modest one, wouldn't INCREASING their traffic tend to increase their loss? Therefore damage has been done. I assume that their major costs is bandwidth.

How many of you legitimate music buyers here have too turned into avid fans of the Pirate Bay?

You need to remember that so far the courts both in Sweden and in Denmark have not actually suggested that TPB is doing anything illegal.

The comment relation between no-profit and damage is not necessarily relevant (it will also be dependent on how the case is pursued by TPB). However, the issue is more like this - if some one breaks your leg - and as a result you become a celebrity and sell your story about how your leg was broken - you still have suffered damages. Even if you actually made a profit... The point being that the damages to TPB is not necessarily acceptable even if they by definition of those damages actually gained in total. Their gain is actually irrelevant for the 'sabotage' of their legal activity to become a valid reason for taking the sabotour to court.

The point is that since TPB has not been proven to break any Swedish laws (or indeed Danish laws) then they have the right to demand to be treated as any other legally operating site. It is not up to private companies to define who is or who is not to be treated as a criminal.

Read the txt again. ONLY local trafic goes through so they are missing out on about 99% of the total volume of trafic and thats where the " damages " ocure.

They've done nothing wrong.

I hope the courts are more interested in justice, than cosying up to big businesses.

TPB forever. (if only because they make such a damn good example of what is wrong with the world these days)

"How many of you legitimate music buyers here have too turned into avid fans of the Pirate Bay?"

Quite a few. And even though the cat is in the microwave and the lights are fused, they don't want Mummy and Daddy coming back to spoil their party.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Pirate Bay are using the same PR firm as Ryanair... This smacks of the sort of stunt the Ryanair guys would do.

Count me as a fan - I don't buy much music these days, but by the same token, I also download either. The same goes for games, apps etc. - the last game I bought was Myst 4 (IIRC) and thought it was crap, so I went straight back to my old favourite, Natural Selection - a free mod for the original Half Life !

I did try and like the demo of Trackmania, but will not buy it because of the use of rootkit-alike malware "protection".

Just goes to show the old story , those that fail to consider all the facts and laws of other lands like IFPI before leaping into the abyss are just another generation of idiots without a basic functional brain cell to call their own and would rather blame others for their own inherent and basic inbuilt stupidity !

The other day in Oz , I saw an interesting comment about sales of music albums in the daily Murdoch propaganda sheet(when you see the front page fairy headlines they print you know why) the current number one by K D Lang sold at all retail stores across the land a mere 4914 copies in one week , two years previously Black Eyed Peas shifted 4800 in a week , however a compilation of past assorted number ones CD "So Fresh" shifted 23,465 copies in the same period ! It goes to show even in down under Oz when the new music sucks and it is on the nose the punters refuse to buy the dog and cat whippings they call new music in droves ! I really do not blame the discerning intertubes user from trying to find something in the daily big four labels music of noise and torture to find something worth listening too that is not s****** on you like a shag in a tree at the same time !

Oh well back to listening to Count Basie Jazz music for some relief , as most of what is released today by the major labels is pure evil torture and renders one's ears in pain to listening to the cat or dog being whipped with these discordant tones they call modern singing !

"Oh well back to listening to Count Basie Jazz music for some relief , as most of what is released today by the major labels is pure evil torture and renders one's ears in pain to listening to the cat or dog being whipped with these discordant tones they call modern singing !"

It's not even the music itself (in best case), but the production machinery which totally rapes the sound quality and nyances, to make music to sound more like a commercial: No dynamics and lot of distortion.

Pain in the ear, shortly. Even so called "good music" ie. oldies, "remixed" to "modern standards" gets equal shafting.

If everyone downloads books, music and games from the Pirate Bay for free, who pays for the creators' work? Eventually creators won't want to make new games or books or music, and we'll be left with poorer choices because we refused to pay for stuff.

Note that the Pirate Bay makes money from selling Pirate Bay T-shirts and advertising space on their site. If somebody comes along, and makes Pirate Bay T-shirts, or scrapes the Pirate Bay web contents and puts his own adverts on them, and doesn't give any of the money earned to Pirate Bay, then Pirate Bay will suffer - yet they don't see their own hypocrisy in making it possible for everyone to steal other people's work.

There is some kind of logic in the "Free Software Movement", albeit not-particularly-well-thought-out, but the "Anti Copyright Movement" makes no moral sense whatsoever - it's just stealing stuff because one can get away with it.

"Eventually creators won't want to make new games or books or music, and we'll be left with poorer choices because we refused to pay for stuff."

No, what will happen is that the parasitic creators/producers who do it PURELY FOR MONEY will stop creating, leaving only the GENUINE artists who do it because they enjoy doing it. These artists won't make obscene millions like modern pop stars, but if they're good at it, they'll attract a fan base who will be more than willing to support them. Just like in the old days, when the bard would sing for his supper. Artistry died the day some moneybags figured out that an artificial concept of "copyright" could be used to make loads of money, and then began the "formula" art; art designed around a formula to maximise profit, not art designed to express a genuine feeling or emotion.

And when these money-grubbing parasites die off, we'll have real art once again. Art from the heart, not art from the mart.

I just found some torrents to some.. err... files... critical... to.... management of the flexbile margin between the enterprise and outsourced digital commodity procurement solution paradigm. I had no idea PB was being blocked!

And another thing, why do I keep reading "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry" as "International Federation of the Pornographic Industry"?

yaarrr.....

I'd feel a bit more sympathy for the industry if it didn't want to apply US and EU pricing to the rest of the world, who can't pay them. And I'd feel more sympathy for PB if it didn't keep promising stuff it can't deliver. It must KNOW a lot of the links are deceased, dead, no longer with us, not live, gone to the great drive in the sky?

24 albums, nine films and four games cost $2.5m

no wonder nobody pays for them anymore!

BKB, your argument is an old and boring one.

This is the music industry’s own doing for being too greedy and too slow to change.

I spent some time in the early 2000 working as a consultant at one of the large music companies here in the UK.

I was told that the actual production of a CD and that included the paying the artist/artists,their commission, printing etc was less than 80p

Obviously distribution costs and marketing is on top of that, but how they think they could get away with selling a CD for £10 is just ridiculous, and yes of course in the end they didn’t get away with it.

Now they are moaning about not being able to put 1000% margin on a CD. Yes I understand they take a risk of taking on new artists so that they need to recoup that cost on the profitable ones.

If they had reacted early, put up legal websites where you could have downloaded the music for a fair price they would never have got into this pickle in the first place.

I believe people are willing to pay a fair price but not to fund some fat cats.

Now I believe Apple is finally paving the way by planning to offer a fixed fee to get full access to their vast music library.

@anon , thank you , you made my day !, but as always technology cannot make up for either the lack of talent or the lack of usable content in any form , and what we are hearing from the older music is closer to what one would have heard in a live concert of the time. The continuing fall and crap sales of the modern music genre is basically a reflection of the times selling to diverse sophisticated audience whose spending money is limited to cherry picking and then buying only the best of the best in the music noise department and attending live concerts of their favorite musicians. In addition they must support other forms of video entertainment(PC computer and console game boxes) with their limited finances and numbers(view western population demographics by country and you will see why the big four labels have lost the plot big time as to why they have failed in the new centuries market and will always fail as they know not what they are doing and the companies are run by bean counters who can only ever count beans no more no less) !

@BKB surely you jest as you have fallen for the propaganda ploy , and your argument has one very fatal flaw , in that human culture is dynamic and not static and thus unlike the absolute static copyright because it is fixed in the time it was issued moves on with each succeeding change in technology ! The average current note book user has more power at their finger tips then the original computer engineers could conceive in 1948!

Imagine if todays power users caught up in copyright restrictions must hard code their instructions as of old prior to running any program , it would be quicker to use an abacus !

As for software piracy the volumes and levels claimed are totally fictional and fail even basic occam's razor tests at every level from the ground up !

In 2000 Shawn Fanning hit the nail on the head , and produced solid figures as to the correlation between the popular tracks shared and existing CD sales of the same item , as for the industry which has seen sales decline by a massive two thirds in seven years as they switched targeted audience to the next generation which is numerically smaller then the preceding in numbers and far more diverse interests (Film industry has recorded similar rapid growth rates in DVD sales at the same time as the baby boomers reorganized their spending priorities) !

Choices today we stand poised with the next generation of powerful fully portable multi processors that can mash any combination of music style genre with additional video information that is only limited to the imagination of the users in real time or better . So if we lock up all information music video and pictures in perpetuity of copyright unable to change or alter it in anyway ? , what then will happen to human creativity stagnate at bottom of a putrid pond !

The industry can turn around and say piracy is killing us without showing any proof that it really is , where as in reality they fired both barrels at the new target audience and missing them at the same time whilst ignoring those who had in fact supported them very profitably indeed through three changes in technology in as many decades , little wonder the boomers have moved on , and the bean counters at the companies in question are continuing to fight the losing battle of the law of diminishing returns !

Copyright is and should exist for a term of not exceeding 15 years maximum , for that is when the next generation arrives to take over the reigns and chose their own direction as they see fit !

You are spot on.

Genuine artists will continue to make hefty fortunes. Millions will still pay to see them perform live concerts in packed stadiums and as recent NIN experiments show a percentage will still pay you for music even when it's free.

As for Movies, you can't beat a top quality projection at the cinema. A poor bit rate CAM or TS is no comparison. It is just a long trailer. If it's good enough people will pay to watch it.

The people who will lose out are the crappy Stock Aitken and Waterman manufactured POP artists and their backers who will go to the wall because people won't pay to see them live except as a wedding singer.

The multimillionaire backers will lose out because they have to find true artists to back rather than manufacture POP for sale to the teen masses. The SAW "artists" have in the main failed after a couple of hits and perform cabaret on cruise ships now.

As for Books, did Shakepeare do it for the cash, or Hemmingway?

True artists create art first without thinking it will be their meal ticket. If there are less people producing this absolute dross we are currently served then .....

Would this really be a great artistic loss to society?

Hell no. Then why the noise?

Because a few heavily connected multi millionaire record companies can see their meal tickets being slowly dismantled before their eyes and they are depsperate to maintain their 1980's industry as it was.

Evolve or Die.

Hope they go pop.

> Why is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, trying to get compensation for films and games.

Try listening to one with the sound up.

>leaving only the GENUINE artists who do it because they enjoy doing it.

Yeah, music produced by the idle rich or buskers doing it for nowt but scraps of dry bread. That's the way it should be!

>the old days, when the bard would sing for his supper.

Ah the good old days whatever happened to the hurdy gurdy. If they're any good they might get a bit of soup as well!

>art designed to express a genuine feeling or emotion.

Like starvation, despair, or a malaise born of wealthy boredom?

What do you do BTW? Is it just for the love of the game?

"I thought they represented the music industry not the film or games industries."

If only games or films had musical soundtracks!

Why should 'genuine artists' be the only ones rewarded? So what if someone makes music for the money - so long as it's actually good, doesn't it still deserve rewarding?

It's because the money driven artists are working for The Man, right? That's bad.

At times this discussion seems to be quite confused. But the confusion is understandable since it is exactly the same confusion that is being hyped by the so called 'music industry' (surprisingly few artists shouting about this though). Lets get this right:

TPB is not infringing on copyrights - this would be illegal also in the Scandinavian countries. They are infact not doing anything deemed criminal. As any open communal spaces theirs can be misused by people with lesser scruples when it comes to copyright etc. But this is not an activity that TPB itself (apparantly) practices.

What 'the industry' is arguing is that they wish to put the blame on TPB that there among all those millions of downloading activities they were able ot identify a small number of what is alleged to be illegal activities by a very small proportions of users of TPB services (24 albums was it? out of how many users per day that TPB has). There is more petty crimes going on at any one weekday in the little village where I live in and that village is VERY peaceful indeed. And in any case it is completely irrelevant how many alleged crimes users of TPB may or may not be involved as long as TPB itself is not acting in a criminal fashion.

"...

No, what will happen is that the parasitic creators/producers who do it PURELY FOR MONEY will stop creating, leaving only the GENUINE artists who do it because they enjoy doing it. ..."

Perhaps you could explain what is wrong with doing your job/what you are good at, just for the money? I enjoy my job, but I really don't think that I'd be arsed to get up at half six every morning to haul my ass across the 1.5hr commute to the office, if it wasn't for the money.

Or, do you think that only those who happen to have benefactors or are just prepared to live on the bread line should produce art?

Your argument that if someone is good at art they will attract fans is completely bogus, I am aware of many musicians who are excellent, but for one reason or another can't afford to produce music.

There has always been formula music/art, some of it attracts vast ammounts of money, while being pretty much worthless in the view of many (see Jack Vettriano paintings). But it usually has a reason to exist, it's bland an inoffensive to most, some get a lot of pleasure from not being challanged by what they see/hear, sometimes that is all that is needed. Your argument seems to suggest that all pop music is worthless, which is clearly not the case, some of our most influential bands have been pop.

"No, what will happen is that the parasitic creators/producers who do it PURELY FOR MONEY will stop creating, leaving only the GENUINE artists who do it because they enjoy doing it."

It's interesting that you've managed to polarize the whole world into "parasitic creators/producers" and "GENUINE artists". I'm sure that even GENUINE artists would like to make a living out of their skills. Why should they have to do it for free? Why shouldn't we pay the GENUINE artists to entertain us? Since this is an IT site, let's go back to IT: the shoddy quality of many parts of Linux, particularly the documentation, after ten years of over-enthusiastic hype from thousands of people, is a testament to the failure of what you're suggesting - people don't do boring but essential jobs like writing documentation or making useable interfaces unless you pay them for it. Similarly in any other field - some people might like to be the star of the show, and do that for nothing, but piano tuners and guitar makers, or the people who make TV cameras, or oil paints, or whatever, are not going to give away their labour for nothing. Neither should the GENUINE artist be forced to.

The copyright system is a system to protect and encourage creators. GENUINE artists probably hate people like you with a vengeance.

"The copyright system is a system to protect and encourage creators. GENUINE artists probably hate people like you with a vengeance."

Depends - some of the GA's get paid what they should, some don't. Some get obscene amounts of money, some don't.

I agree though, they shouldn't have to do it for free unless they want to.

I do think though, that they should have the right and protection to distribute their own material without going to the big four; although if any of the inie record groups treat them nicely then that is fine as well.

Incidently - I don't download free music or films because I am worried about malware etc, also worried about people hacking into my computer and worried about the gubmint or other authorities being able to watch what I am doing and worried somebody will sue the arse off of me.

The idea that copyrights are somehow real is just insane. They aren't really enforceable, and when they are it seems arbitrary and capricious. The reality is that copyrights are simply a way for large companies to make money on something for years, when it's something that probably shouldn't be made for money. How can you compare making a TV with making a song? Have you ever assembled something electronic or written a song. I've done both, and I've got to say there's an inherent feeling that writing a song shouldn't be about money.

But to further explain how copyrights are NOT REAL:

1. They are the only thing I know of that you are entitled to make money on for at least 75 years after you've died. If I make a TV (following your example) and I sell it to you am I going to make royalties (transferrable to my offspring) when they sell it at your estate sale? Hell no.

2. Artists don't make money on recordings . . . and traditionally they never have. This is for two reasons, firstly, record companies made all the money, and secondly artists have always made more money through live shows and benefactors

3. The idea that you can copyright music is absurd. George Harrison got dinged because his song My Sweet Lord used the same chord progression as some song that slips my mind now. George handled it well but it's still dumb. Following that same logic we should find the person who first did a I-IV-V chord progression and throw him all the money from every rock act since before rock and roll. Same with the person who developed 4/4 time

4. What about the reverse? Where in the bleepity bleep bleep is my bleeping money for everytime I've been somewhere listening to music I didn't want to be listening to? Like did you know they have a special way of calculating royalities for elevator muzak! This means that the record companies want to be paid for forcing me to listen to music I don't even want to listen to.

5. What about when you've already paid for a song? How come I never seem to get a discount on something I already own. I owned Nick Drake CDs before a copy of the Royal Tennenbaums, even though included in my price for the DVD there was a bit of a built in royalty for his work on there. I didn't get a price break, instead his estate was paid twice. There are some songs that I have that I've probably paid artists five or six times over for. Shoot buy one or two Queen's greatest hits and you'll be paying song writing royalties and I think mechanicals on some songs two or three times. That's like six tiny .08 cent payments but still, it's six-times higher than it probably should be, right?

had to give myself the thumbs down, didn't mean for it to be this long.

If you attach so little value to music why do you download it at all?

>1. They are the only thing I know of that you are entitled to make money

> on for at least 75 years after you've died.

I buy a hotel, leave it to my kids, they carry on running the business renting out rooms. There's no time limit on that.

>2. Artists don't make money on recordings . .

Builders don't make money on hotel room rentals. They make money from building hotels.

>3. (...) we should find the person who first did a I-IV-V chord progression and throw him all the money

No, they should be paid for their contribution, and I suspect they're long dead anyhow.

>4. This means that the record companies want to be paid for forcing me to listen to music

No, the owner of the lift decides they want music in it, the record companies want to be paid for providing that music.

>5. What about when you've already paid for a song?

What about when you've already paid for a hotel room? Is it yours forever? Are you allowed to sublet it?

Bloody freetard.

Seeing as this topic has started to drift away from TPB, I though I'd add this to the whole "Genuine Artist v Artists doing it for the cash".

I really don't see how these can be classed as seperate entities. Back in the 70's and 80's rappers would constantly tell us how they were desperate "to get paid" and that "the man" didn't want them to "get paid" because they "were black and the establishment was scared of their music."

Could these pioneers of hip hop be seen as genuine artists? They certainly weren't getting the money Rock starts like Van Halen were cashing in. They probably weren't even getting the same money as the "rock band" Europe.

Fast forward to today and rap and R'n'B (as opposed to quality R&B) artists are rolling in the money. Are these people no longer genuine artists, even the ones who are still around, ie Public Enemy?

I believe no one pics up a guitar, a mic or a couple of drumsticks because they don't love what they are doing. If they do make it and can make a living out of it, then good for them.

"The copyright system is a system to protect and encourage creators."

Hmmm, you see I dont think it has anything to do about encouring creativity, protecting yes.

I dont have an issue at all with people making money.

But as a business you have to be responsive to change, so when artist get a few pence per CD (I dont know the sum but it is less then 80p) Emi charges £9.

You are opening yourself up for competitiion.

Initially they said it was beause they were loosing money on the LPs, so when they moved to CDs they had to recoup that cost.. ok so how many years did they have to do that for? Then they moved online, still charged the same and the artist still get the same (less then 80 p for a £9-£10 CD)

So what is the cost for online distribution of a CD, for download?

Remember that the 80p included the full manufacturing cost of a CD (the actual CD, the printing, paying the artist etc)

So without knowing the exact details should they be able to get a very nice margin on download CD for £1-£2

If they sold it for that price the vast majority of people wouldnt bother about going to illegal side, getting dodgy quality etc.

So back to my original argument, it is the music industry themselved to blame for this. It has nothing to do with paying the artists. If the large music corporations had been quick enough to adopt to the changing circumstances.

They thought they could continue to get huge margins and try to crack down on file sharers by copyrights laws.

Rather than try to add value, decrease the price etc.

See on the games industry, they have had the same pressure on downloads but they have transformed, innovated so they are booming as an industry

Okay, my rebuttal.

1: "I buy a hotel, leave it to my kids, they carry on running the business renting out rooms. There's no time limit on that." Okay, fine, but they're making all the pertinent business decisions including all the creative marketing and everything that running a business consists of. Therefore there is a substantial difference between that scenario and just making money by having your daddy or mum right a song. You're talking about an example that uses physical property. Therefore a more apt comparison would be if I wrote a song and pressed a ton of CDs and left them to my kid, which is entirely different than a copyright.

2: "Builders don't make money on hotel room rentals. They make money from building hotels." Why the obsession with hotels? Once again, are you equating building a hotel with writing a song? So what if builders make money by building hotels, what's your point? Mine was that artists do not make the bulk of their money from recordings and that this actually represents a small portion of most artists income. Now I realize your'e talking about the song writing credit, most likely but that is a prime point, my friend. Builders are paid 1 time when they build a hotel. It may be spread into installments, but it's still basically a payment for finishing the building. So that payment scheme is absolutely not comparable to the IP payment scheme. Everyone else who gets paid for a job in the world gets paid once for it, except doctors, lawyers, patent holders, and IP copyright holders. Why should a song writer get to make money over and over again on one song, when the kid pumping out nikes in a sweatshop only gets paid the once. The kids contribution to the shoe shows just as much "creative influence" as Ringo Starr had on the typical Beatles album.

3. "No, they should be paid for their contribution, and I suspect they're long dead anyhow." So we're going to pay everyone for their "contribution?!?" How would that work. Take for example bluegrass music. It was invented by Bill Monroe, he literally decided to make a new style of music, his contribution to music then is that he created a genre. Not even Bill Monroe would expect to get money from every bluegrass act. Likewise, with Hip-Hop, John Cage was the first one to play two records at once and record it, so should he be paid for every hip-hop album? It's an idealic fantasy that you can pay people according to their contribution in a song. And getting to that, what if you don't even write the song. For example the Knack's "My Sharona" seems to me, the bulk of the money from that hit should go to the parents who named her Sharona, since that's pretty much the only lyric.

4. "No, the owner of the lift decides they want music in it, the record companies want to be paid for providing that music." - obviously you misunderstand my post. Record companies are paid by the lift owner I realize that. I'm saying that record companies are paid by a way of calculating how many "listeners" they are reaching in the lift, which is why they calculate the royalty and allot money according to how often a song is played/how many hours the drum is on, etc. Average volume of the store in question etc, all play a part. So yes, the end result is that record companies are getting paid based on the premise that people in lifts are listening to the music, when in fact a good deal of us want to blast it into oblivion.

5. "What about when you've already paid for a hotel room? Is it yours forever? Are you allowed to sublet it?" Okay to begin, you basically call me a retard, and then post this? I'm asking why in the hell I should be paying a song writing or phonographic recording royalty for songs that I've already paid all those royalties on numerous times before, especially if I'm also having to pay the mechanical royalty on those same songs multiple times. There are some songs I've paid for eight or nine times because of different circumstances, but in those cases, when I decide to listen to a song that's also on a DVD I load up my iPod. My point is that the music industry is out of control. Mechanical royalties are still paid out even though technically most of the money now is made selling music through non-mechanical means. It literally defies logic. Another illogical example, turntablists are given songwriting credit, although in reality what they are doing is arranging and not songwriting, for which a different royalty is reached. And none of these royalties has anything to do with helping the creator of music make music. All of the royalties exist, have existed, and will ever exist for is the betterment of the bulk of the copyright holders who are overwhelmingly not the creators of the music. Once again your hotel analogy fails, me paying for a hotel stay and being billed multiple times would be more akin to me buying a CD and a DVD that has the same song as one on the CD and paying three different royalties twice.

As to me being as you called it a freetard, I'll have you know I buy my music, even though I think it's stupid to support the music industry at this point when their business model is obviously broken, but they're like a drug cartel, they have what I need, and they've made it prohibitive to do otherwise. However, the notion of copyrights runs contrary to logic, which is why lobbyists and politicians had to create it out of the same slime-mold that spawned them, which is why copyrights as a concept is under 300 years old. It's a failed model like Soviet Communism, or mid-east peace negotiations, or day-light savings time.

Mine's the one with the bible I stole from the Hotel. Take that!

And another thing, why do I keep reading "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry" as "International Federation of the Pornographic Industry"?

Q: Do you like pornography?

A: Heck, I don't even own a pornograph.

Well, SOMEBODY had to post it!

Mine is the "Flasher's Special" overcoat.

all this talk of genuine artists not being affected is ridiculous and reminds me somewhat of the rabid fools who desire a recession in order to see the hedge fund managers etc get taken down a peg or two.

in the case of a recession, the hedge fund managers won't care - they can take a couple of years off work until the market shores up, and then go back to their old line of work. the people who will really be affected are the average joes, who get made redundant from the factory and lose their house. then maybe it'll spread to the middle classes. it's not right, perhaps, but that's the way it is.

likewise with the music industry. anyone who thinks they're sticking it to the man, to robbie williams, to the PARASITES by advocating downloading without paying is simply deluded. robbie williams doesn't care. he won't be affected. likewise the millionaires in suits. they can all wait until the business has sorted itself out and then carry on as before. but that cool band you just heard on radio 6? the GENUINE artists who just released their 2nd album to critical acclaim and everyone says they could go on to great things? they're going to struggle to earn £10K this year, and will probably earn less than last year - and will soon decide that they can't really afford to carry on like this any longer.

i understand that it's tempting to assume that because some people in the industry earn vast salaries, then the majority must be at least comfortably off, but it's not necessarily true, and the fall in revenues is affecting everyone, from the bottom to the top. but it's the people at the bottom who feel it most keenly.

The new version has no StarForce.