Filesharing Traffic Drops After RIAA Threats 635
bryan writes "According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs. Internet audience measurement service Nielsen Net Ratings said traffic on Kazaa, the leading filesharing platform, fell 15 percent in the week ended July 6 from the previous week. It was during that prior week, on June 25, that the Recording Industry Association of America said it would track down the heaviest users of "peer-to-peer" services like Kazaa and sue them for damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation." This follows earlier reports, from the filesharing companies themselves, that traffic was actually increasing.
Pretty common scenario (Score:4, Insightful)
If Pat Robertson were to tell the truth, he might loose some of his marketshare.
The file sharing companies want to display a facade that their business is as strong as ever, even in the face of the new RIAA litigations and attempts to prevent the further theft of their products. Saying otherwise might hurt their (the file sharing companies) potential advertising campaign or the planned "pay-per-play/download" strategies.
Reverse (Score:5, Interesting)
Could it be Nielsen doesn't have the best numbers?
From their press release [nielsen-netratings.com], I can't tell how they arrived at their numbers.
I also wonder about their "unique visitor" term.
It seems to me that file sharing admins would have a pretty good idea of the traffic on their networks.
Hard to really know what's going on with so little information.
Re:Reverse (Score:3, Informative)
Of cource you could try
www.earthstation5,com
The RIAA can't find you and it is free.
Re:Reverse (Score:4, Insightful)
So we have to decide between the opinion of those with less accurate information, and the opinion of those with a vested intrest in distorting the more accurate information which they have, not a great choice.
Re:Pretty common scenario (Score:5, Informative)
I'll leave it as an exercise for the readers to find a reference for marsupial pouches.
Do not feed the Trolls!! (Score:3, Funny)
Not all guesses are the same (Score:3, Interesting)
Scientist: My guess is valid because of these reasons, this logic, this immense mesh of other reasons which all hang together by logic.
Hmmmm
It's my fault the sharing dropped (Score:5, Funny)
File sharing on p2p networks rises 15% despite RIAA threats; ShieldW0lf buys new hard drive; has more space to download; reconnects to network.
Re:Pretty common scenario (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty common scenario (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking a poll (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Taking a poll (Score:2)
Re:Taking a poll (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason why slashdot users are passionate about things like the RIAA, the DMCA, etc. etc., than the average person is that the average person accepts the argument that sharing copyrighted files is wrong.
Thus, while the average person will share files in an anonymous environment, he or she either feels guilty about sharing or otherwise doesn't feel strongly enough about it to cause trouble, a
Re:Excellent point (Score:3, Informative)
If we want to be perfectly honest, let's stop calling it sharing -- it's not that either, it's distributing.
If you want to get really picky, it's making available for distribution.
MC Hammer-"Can't touch this" (Score:5, Funny)
We at 65.42.25.3 are still going strong.
Re:MC Hammer-"Can't touch this" (Score:4, Funny)
No one (Score:5, Interesting)
No one stopped sharing, they just switched to networks which are harder to monitor.
People arent stupid, they know the RIAA is looking at Kazaa.
Just as many people are on Kazaa, but if you think Kazaa is the best place to find music files you are wrong.
Face it, no one is going to stop.
Re:No one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taking a poll (Score:5, Interesting)
I still go to P2P for the odd South Park episode, that hard to find must have porn, or to get some software. Movies have absolutely nothing to fear from me though. Too much time and the results are crap.
I never said I wasn't stealing their shit. I only said I'd buy it if they met me halfway. iTunes did that and now I'm doing that.
Now let's get with the $5 DVD's and the $29 Photoshop people! Chop Chop!
Re:Taking a poll (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually had the exact same experience with audiobooks. For the last month or two i've been considering buying audiobooks so i'd have something interesting to listen to during me 30+ minute commute. However if you go to Borders or Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com they cost a bloody fortune. $30 is about as low as they get, and seeing prices up in the $70s and $80s is not uncommon.
I bought one cheap audiobook (A Wizard of Earthsea) and was impressed, but the price kept putting me off. I was seriously considering looking around on filesharing systems to see if i could grab mp3s of them from somewhere. Most of the tiles i want are books i already own anyways, so i wouldn't have felt too guilty about doing so.
Then i discovered that i could buy audio files of the same books from Audible.com. [audible.com] Theoretically they have the same list price as the tape version, which is insane, but just about all the files there are marked down to a reasonable price, and if you're willing to sign up for a monthly account you can get any two books a month for $20.
I signed up for the one year membership since after looking through their library i could find at least 24 books i wanted and that way i could get a free mp3 player. (Yeah, it's a piece of junk player, but if i'm going to sign up for a year anyways...)
So the book-on-CD people made $30 or $40 off of me once, and then scared me away with the horible prices and the lack of availability of the books i was interested in. Audible.com put things at a reasonable price and just made $250 off me. And i would have never taken the time to find Audible.com if the CD people were pricing things at a reasonable price of $20 or so per book. (About what i'm paying now when you consider the price of CDs.)
STEAL!!! or the RIAA will do it for you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok so you dont share files. hundreds of millions of people do, and hundreds of millions of people think its right.
Re:STEAL!!! or the RIAA will do it for you. (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet my taxes still increase every year thanks to idiots voting yes on various bonds...
In other words, it's only OK if it's government backed.
Re:Taking a poll (Score:5, Interesting)
They are an infinitely reproducable thing. Otherwise, something like Kazaa would not really work.
All you can do is deprive the RIAA of a "potential" sale. Now since the demand for luxury items is typically VERY elastic, you can't equate a presumed loss at $0 to an actual loss at $20.
However, you can achieve a similar end result by merely buying used media. It's rather nice being able to "stick it to the RIAA" in a manner that no airchair moralist can reasonably complain about.
Its not stealing, it's trespassing. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. No one calls "patent infringment" "patent, stealing", no one calls "trademark infringement" "trademark stealing".
Copyright infringement isn't stealing either, though they can both be independently illegal. The difference here is that the copyright holder doesn't lose his rights. His exclusivity is infringed upon, but nothing is taken.
If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.
Anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing" has an agenda, and shouldn't be trusted.
Re:Taking a poll (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, the money from the account would indeed be stolen since the original owner would lose it.
who isnt sharing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:who isnt sharing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:who isnt sharing? (Score:5, Insightful)
a lot of those who are sharing are college students. the riaa made the "we're suing everyone" claim just as most college students go on spring break. many people that were sharing over their dorm's high speed internet connection are home now, stuck with their parents' dialup accounts. file sharing does historically decline in the (northern hemisphere) summer months, so a decline in file sharing would not be at all unexpected.
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
According to RIAA member AOL Time Warner
Re:Correction (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Correction (Score:3, Interesting)
(Of course AOL Time Warner is also the author of Winamp and the original author of Gnutella ... hahaha)
Heres the REAL news. File sharing traffic goes UP! (Score:5, Informative)
Silly File THIEVES and PIRATES use of P2P to commit robbery increases [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Heres the REAL news. File sharing traffic goes (Score:5, Funny)
Makes perfect sense to me. Since everyone who has an internet connection uses it to pirate music, we should all be forced to pay for this! Its not people out there use the internet for things like....oh, I don't know...shopping, or for information.
If I'm going to be treated like a criminal (and I already am, seeing as how I buy CD-Rs for data backup and mixing my own albums from music I legally own), I'm going to at least act like a criminal. Hoist the Jolly Rogers, it's time to sail the IRCs! Yaaaarrrrrrr!
Wow who would have guessed (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't belive that many people really had something better to do than surf the web on a holiday.
Truly anonymous is the only way to go. (Score:5, Informative)
Please mod me up - we need help with this project. Please get in touch if you can code, or have ideas, or comments.
udpp2p (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoofed source addresses do not beget security nor anonymity, especially now that ISP's are required to "cooperate". Properly configured routers will put a dead stop to the practice, and even without that its still trivial for a big organization to backtrace you.
If you want real anonymity you need something called "plausible deniability" which you can get only from projects such as freenet [sourceforge.net].
Re:udpp2p (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, Freenet's not the easiest thing in the world to use. It's getting better, but the high rate of key return failure is disheartening. Still, it's better than requesting a file on KaZaa, only to find out that the user isn't really trading.
Re:udpp2p (Score:4, Informative)
Re:udpp2p (Score:3, Informative)
Or, (Score:5, Funny)
Or, your neighbors un-protected wireless AP. You gotta love other peoples networks
Re:Or, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:udpp2p (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:udpp2p (Score:5, Insightful)
> come from that network. That still gives you a lot of addresses to chose from.
No. A properly configured router is connected to TWO networks, and will not allow traffic to pass either direction unless the source IP matches what it knows of the two networks.
If your network is 192.168.1.0/24, and your source IP is not, it should drop it.
If a packet attempts to get in to you and its source IP _is_ in that range, it should also drop it.
Forging your IP will fail the first test.
The second test is to prevent others from pretending to be hosts in your network to bypass IP based security rules.
Re:udpp2p (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, so you downloaded a file, but from where? Five thousand different nodes sent you parts of the file.
Better yet, what if no file is actually ever sent, but randomish blocks of bits that must be XOR'ed together to reconstitute the file. This means that a file takes double or tripple the bandwidth to download. But which other node sending you a randomish block of bits was guilty of copyright infringements? Said differently, where did you download the file from? Can someone monitoring your traffic even know that you downloaded a file? Can we even make this work in the presence of someone running a packet sniffer. If each incomming packet indicates which "fileid" or "ssa checksum" it is part of, which block, and which XOR part.
You've now eliminated the spoofed packets problem of getting blocked at firewalls. A downloaded file arrives as many UDP packets from thousands of different nodes. No single such packet contains any copyright material, just random bits.
The node sending out the file has to send out two or three copies. Each block of the mp3 file is XOR'ed with a random number. The random number and the result XOR block are two blocks that must be XOR'ed back together to reconstitute the original block. Repeat this process on one of the two halfs, and you've now got three blocks, if you care to use three times the bandwidth to upload/download a file to ensure that no single block has copyright content.
Re:Truly anonymous is the only way to go. (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose there are legitimate applications for anonymous sharing. I don't really think that stealing music is one of them. But if you really want to do this, why not simply obscure what is being shared? That way network congestion control is left intact.
Any well administered network will interpret these packets as a Denial of Service attack and kill them anyway.
If you just encrypt the material, nobody will know what you are sharing.
Except of course for the directory you published telling people h
Unreliable stats (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unreliable stats (Score:5, Informative)
AAA Predicted that 37.4 million Americans planned to travel over the holiday. --With the US population roughly at 291 million, that's about 13%..
For backup of my stats:
US Population Clock:
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
Travel States: (search for July 4th on this google cached page)
http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:vb3Zo5s2UH
Random distributions. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a random subset within a larger set [p2p users in the USA], a randomly distributed decrease in the superset will correlate with a similar decrease in the subset.
Re:Unreliable stats (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, the "real" statistical problems here...
IF those people using file-sharing apps form an essentially random cross-section of the population, and if none of those people had any way to engage in their normal filesharing activity while on vacatio
Re:Unreliable stats (Score:5, Funny)
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
And In (still other) other news... (Score:3, Informative)
Stats (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11 ... (Score:4, Insightful)
How were the measurements made. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since these services are peer to peer with no centralized servers, it would be interesting to know how the measurements were made.
If they are merely asking people if they used P2P, it seems like fewer people would openly admit it.
Logical counter-claim. (Score:5, Funny)
10% claimed up, 15% claimed down, that means we should see a 22.5% up counter-claim.
Unless aces are wild, which could throw the whole thing off.
Ryan Fenton
Wow, who woulda thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
Media claims their threats were effective and the userbase decreased...
I mean...neither of these two groups would have an ulterior motive...naaaah...
So, in cases like these, aside from using your own good (or not so good) judgement, how are we supposed to be able to tell who to believe, or if we can't believe either source, where to find a source we CAN believe?
Hmm. (Score:2)
What happens in false-positivies? When someone's time and money are wasted because the RIAA took them to court over 'suspected piracy'? How much is the RIAA paying this team? My guess is 'more than they're losing to piracy'. Then they can add the two numbers up and profit in lawsuits.
summer time vacations (Score:4, Insightful)
Them File Swappers (Score:2, Funny)
ain't it just wrong?
Goin' all around
swappin' them songs.
Swappin' them Mp3s,
and the movies, what the hey?
Gettin' nasty threads
from the RIAA.
Look at those File Swappers
tradin' up a torrent
Waitin' 'til the fateful day
they burst in with a warrant.
How to be a File Swapper,
don't need a ticket.
Get a P2P app,
click the file and swap it.
No problem! (Score:5, Funny)
According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs.
Fine, whatever. Just as long as the number of people sharing porn videos doesn't drop!
GMD
That's because I'm using iTunes now (Score:5, Interesting)
We aren't all theives just looking for free music. Some of us were just looking for what we consider to be an equitable business model for buying songs. I've found iTunes and it's close enough that I'd rather buy music there than download it on Kazaa.
Re:That's because I'm using iTunes now (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a shame the RIAA is so inflexible and that they are still trying to enforce their draconian system o
you're shitting me, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, when I hear a timeless Beatles classic on the radio and then go home to look for it on Pressplay or ITunes and it isn't there, I tend to longingly eye the Kazaa icon that still sits on my desktop, beckoning me to return to piracy.
Can't get a Beatles song? A song from one of the most mercilessly comercialized bands in all history is not on iTunes? iTunes must blow!
No commercial company can measure up to the file sharing networks. They have lost the recordings, or just don't have money or resources to digitize them. The distributed effort of all music fans created a catalogue of all kinds of music you could never get in a store. That's what you get when you let music lovers share their stuff. Some of the newer music services are gettin good, but none match Napster yet. The comercial services don't stand a chance unless they figure out how to enlist the fans. It is this fundamental failure to make work available by the current "owners" that makes them obsolete, despite legal sucess beyond all reason. People will get around them sooner or later.
Re:you're shitting me, right? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure that probably a lot of music hasn't made it to iTunes yet that people are looking for. How can it not be? The sheer volume of stuff people want is incredible and hopefully it will all (or at least mostly) make it on there.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that yes, no commercial company can measure up to the file sharing networks RIGHT NOW but they're relatively new and have to take a much different approach to assembling their catalog than Napster and Kazaa did. The upside to this
Re:That's because I'm using iTunes now (Score:4, Informative)
1 Hrm...iTunes music store. 0.99$ sounds about right. Been meaning to pick up that new autechre album, anyways.
2. Search "autechre": returns 0 results.
3. Hey, that's a bummer. Lets see if they've got anything else.
4. Search "boards of canada": 0 results.
5. wtf
6. Search "aphex twin": 0 results.
7. wtf * 2
8. Ok fuck this. Preferences->Deactivate iTunes music store.
Maybe this has changed since last time I was on, but the selection sucks. Maybe autechre and boards of canada might be considered 'obscure', but aphex is on a major label and is quite well known. Until the iTunes store evolves from yet another place to buy eminem's music, I'm not putting any money into it.
Re:That's because I'm using iTunes now (Score:4, Informative)
I also have DSL and I'd be ok with the file sizes if they gave me an option of getting the WAV instead of the AAC but the AAC doesn't suck so I'm good. Hell since I'm mostly about downloading a track or two per album (and not always the "hit single" either) I'd even be willing to go a buck fifty to get the better quality file. Now a lot of people wouldn't but again, that's me.
I respect what you're saying but I think that based on the number of people who've been downloading MP3's and the price that iTunes is asking for individual tracks that they're going to appeal to plenty of people selling it the way they're doing. The Dial-ups are going to require the file size be small enough to at least get in a night and so many people out there are ok with the MP3/AAC kind of quality already that it will be a non-factor to most.
sheesh more twisted truths... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm kinda funny how filesharing drops on the biggest holiday/vacation/camping week in the USA.
that week most areas had massive concerts, air-fairs, festivals, beer tents, you name it than any other week of the year.
over 50% of my neighborhood were gone a large portion of that week either to shows at the local music festival or travel to detroit or chicago for their festivals/events...
Distinction with a difference (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess: Since they're all Pirates, they're downloading that new Johnny Depp movie. ARRRR!!!
Gadzooks! (Score:2, Funny)
yup, happened here (Score:2, Interesting)
All of a sudden last week, the sysadmins sent out notice that they will be blocking commonly used P2P ports out of fear of being sued by the RIAA. This is a small non-profit company that's just managing to keep its head above water. No way could we deal w/a lawsuit. It's another case of money buying the legal system - whether RIAA could ultimately win the lawsuit i
Re:yup, happened here (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA is like a wounded sabre-toothed tiger... It's going down slowly, and it's getting weaker, but it's still more than strong enough to kill the average person.
Even though they are slowly disintegrating, they still have far more money to bribe the judge and far more lawyers than their victims (who are chosen because of this) ever will so most of their victims ha
easy: school's out (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it has little to do with the RIAA threat.
In other news, truancy drops by 90% after mid June.
Its bullshit. (Score:2)
I just logged into Kazaa and saw just as many people offering files as usual.
Where is CNN or whoever getting their statistics from? The RIAA?
Of course P2P activity is dropping! (Score:5, Interesting)
If I worked for RIAA, I would use P2P activity as a leading indicator of future sales. Reduced P2P activity means the current products are not very popular. When will they learn?
Re:Of course P2P activity is dropping! (Score:3, Funny)
This is brilliant! Better yet, don't let the RIAA get credit for it -- steal their stats, refurbish them as market research & sell them to record companies ;-)
they have learned and they know. (Score:4, Insightful)
They know what gets traded on the networks and it terrifies them. The catalog is so much bigger than they could ever support at a physical store that the only way for them to survive is to eliminate the networks. They are obsolete, and will never wield the power of the "big hit" again. When people are free to share what they have and pick what they want, it turns out they have much broader tastes than any music mogul ever had.
When you stand back and look at things, you might start to wonder what the purpose of the recording industry is. For decasdes it was more about promoting a small subset of all music over all others to drive sales. That's not so much a matter of promoting that one song as it about supressing all other songs. The heavy rotation play from broadcast stations never were anything more than an obnoxious advertisement. Music sharing networks cut that out and alowed music to be chosen on grounds of taste an merit, criteria the music industry abandoned decades ago.
Worse still (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure I've pulled down songs, listened to them, and not bought the CD (and since I didn't dig the song, I deleted it). Is this wrong? I've actually found myself finding more and more groups this way to get into. I spent my college days working in Record World and seeing just how much it cost to produce a CD compared to how much the store charged. Nothing worse than buying the CD for one song and getting slayed by the rest of the songs (that are useless).
Perhaps we are nearing the end of an era?
What we must remember about RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
If you know any private eyes, you know they lie, cheat, deceive, distort facts, whatever they need to do to get their work done. They are very often only two spits shy of being crooks themselves.
So, it doesn't surprise me that RIAA takes stats from a holiday week, as has been pointed out already, to show that their threats & intimidation work.
The big problem that I see is that RIAA has essentially unlimited resources -- all that money that could be paid in artists' royalties -- while Joe Blow P2Per in the dorm doesn't. It will be very interesting if RIAA ever gets an opponent in court who has some financial backing. Of course, that will have to wait until we have a Department of Justice and not a Department of "Just Us"...
It's part of a cycle... (Score:3, Insightful)
As one /.'er has already pointed out in a shameless plug for udpp2p (looks interesting, actually), the next step in p2p is straight-up anonymous filetransfers. It makes sesne, and it's inevitable...only a matter of time before someone codes up a decent client. And when that happens, you bet I'll be one of the first standing on their tiptoes, trying to see the RIAA's face and how they respond to that.
Personally I haven't used p2p, especially for music, in a while. If I need to get my fix though, there's always alternative routes to getting what you want...hotline/IRC/FTP sites still exist and flourish. It may not be as easy, but beggars can't be choosers it seems.
There was an article on CNET about this... (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting quote from the head of Freenet [sourceforge.net]:
no recent change in stats (Score:5, Informative)
filesharing usage...here's the usage statistics today:
FastTrack 3,525,734
iMesh 1,175,244
eDonkey 770,032
Overnet 458,752
MP2P 199,214
These stats have actually remained fairly constant for a couple of
weeks now. Back in May there was a lot of fluctuation on the EDonkey
vs Overnet, and FastTrack was around 4.5M. I suppose it dropped
because college students went home for the summer.
At any rate, Slyck's stats have noted no increase or decrease in
filesharing in the last two weeks. So the media hype (both ways)
seems to be just that...hype.
Move along; nothing to see here.
bzzzt (Score:3, Interesting)
Only time will tell (Score:5, Insightful)
As for me, I've switched swapping methods to avoid detection. This means I have to come out of my mother's basement and swap CDs behind the local convenience store. :)
Correlation or causation? (Score:5, Insightful)
-- July 4th. Even geeks have lives.
-- Summer. Same as above.
-- Summer. Less college students, who tend to be heavy users.
-- No notable "new" stuff, TV series generally aren't releasing new episodes to be downloaded over the summer.
-- Simple statistical anomaly. 15% may sound like a lot, but if it's just a weeklong trend it doesn't mean much.
And there are other possibilities too. Be creative, I'm sure you can think of some.
Man, the world would benefit so much if somebody would just take out an ad during the Superbowl or something that would explain in simple terms the difference between correlation and causation. Except such an explanation is likely impossible. Oh well.
Like the great blackout baby boom (Score:3, Interesting)
One week fluctuations are pretty meaningless, especially when there is a huge confounding factor like the July 4 Holiday. But that doesn't mean the RIAA won't use it as evidence to coerce people.
I'm sorry (Score:5, Funny)
sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
Call me cynical, but I bet not.
Disinformation & Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
I can say it's our own fault for not fighting this or doing anything about it that allows it to continue. Tell me how is it possible that downloading files, copyrighted or not, and movies is frowned upon more than violent crimes? The guy who released the hulk movie on the net is going to do 3-6 years. That's more than first offenders get for violent crimes yet he's lumped in with them and he didn't hurt anyone's bottom line. Total and complete bullshit and we allow it to continue.
All it takes is a grass roots effort to put an end to this. We give them the power and we can take it away. This is about money and only when we stop buying completely will they listen and take notice. Until then keep spending and supporting the entity that is out to make a point by suing you into a financial disaster and making all of your choices for you.
As I stated in my previous post the RIAA seems to be trying out every angle available to stop filesharing. Guess what? It's not working nor will it. Disinformation seems to be a new tactic but I'm sure it'll work on the un-informed masses. In all actuality I bet a mojority of filesharers are under 18 so they aren't afraid of going to jail because they can't be charged as adults. Maybe the RIAA will sue them and their parents into poverty?
Dear CNN, repeat after me: (Score:4, Insightful)
Particularly when it occurs over the major holiday weekend for the world's largest population of 'net users.
Why RIAA & crew are idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Prices go up.
Then MTV forgets that Music Television should play music on television.
Next, Clearchannel starts the "McDonaldization of American Radio"
Now, RIAA attacks their own customers.
Result? Those of us that see this, really do love the music, FIND SOMETHING ELSE and rip internet radio streams to our heart's content, buy turntables and pay cash for Vinyl Records of the artists we like. We find new music, enjoy new artists, NO commercials and pay money that goes to the artists we like.
And have big fat hard drives and data DVD burners.
Less big music industry. More boat parties.
And ProtonRadio.com [protonradio.com]
This is a classic example of using the Media (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please... (Score:3, Insightful)
AyeRoxor [8i3]
We need an inherently encrypted network protocol (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you can use VPNs to get much of this functionality now, but it would be better for all concerned if all the traffic were encrypted and obfuscated, not just that of people with something to hide, or those who like to thumb their nose at authority.
And in other news.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right?
Did they?
I mean I thought these eeeeevil file traders were responsible for all the woes of the music cartel^Windustry.
Right?
Is it?
And now that all those eeeevil file traders have got their comeuppances, the music cartel^Windustry should be back in the black.
Right?
Shouldn't it?
What do you know, scare tactics work! (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem I currently have with suing individuals for copyright infringement is that the infringers are being charged a lot more than their individual infringements had been worth.
No offense to anyone who thinks one infringer's damage may equate roughly to $150,000, but I don't think so. I think it would be difficult to prove that millions of dollars worth of infringements, spread out over tens of millions of infringers, would equate to even $100 from even the worst infringers.
You can't put everyone's bill on the one guy you catch. That's like throwing in a couple of unsolved murders into a serial killer's list just to say the killer has been caught. That isn't justice.
Re:CDRs? (Score:2, Informative)
Don't know if you're trolling or not...but is it really that hard to find a way to use CDRs aside from burning pirated material? How can you possibly tell if the usage of an online service has increased or decreased based on the amount of blank media sold of which only ONE of the many uses is to backup pirated files?
Re:ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. And that's why it is targetted, just like Napster was. RIAA and others couldn't care about the 50,000 people trading on IRC, BT, and other services. They know that you are smart enough to come up with a new way to avoid them, even if it means a lot more work for you. They care about the 10 million that use Kazaa, a program that a monkey can have up and downloading within 1 minute.
Re:Maybe the drop in traffic is due to... (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, without filters, I can search for "Beethoven 9th symphony" and suddenly see 50 files ending in