Canadian Piracy Rates Plummet As Industry Points To New Copyright Notice System 224
An anonymous reader writes: Canada's copyright notice-and-notice system took effect earlier this
year, leading to thousands of notifications being forwarded by
Internet providers to their subscribers. Since its launch, there
have been serious
concerns about the use of notices to demand settlements and to
shift the costs of enforcement to consumers and Internet providers.
Yet reports indicate that piracy rates in Canada have plummeted,
with some ISPs seeing a 70%
decrease in online infringement.
Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Insightful)
... I mean... there are some VPNs that are literally free.
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I think it is hilarious that they are so naive that they think rates dropped.
They fuck the industry up, people find a way around it, they fuck it up more, people route around that.
They will NEVER win.
It will get to the point where people will seriously move back to sneakernet methods, aka, literally travelling outside to meet people to share files.
Or mesh networks. They are only pushing people further and further away from control. Instead they could create decent services that don't want to screw you ove
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"They will NEVER win."
You are a fool if you believe that. They have won. You just don't understand what their true goal is.
The real goal is to shift control from the individual citizens and corporations, into the hands of government and mega corporations; in that effort, they were successful.
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How do you figure that they have more control now than they did before?
You do know the internet started as a government funded initiative right?
If anything, the powerful interests are losing control... not gaining it.
Offer a counter argument. Explain why I am wrong in some sort of rational way that can be interpreted. Simply making these bald statements is not auditable and therefore technically not an argument.
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know the internet started as a government funded initiative right?
If anything, the powerful interests are losing control... not gaining it.
I disagree, and one need look no further than Facebook. Most of the political distraction/messaging being passed around positively reeks of being astroturfed by competing mega-interests. Also, consider that the proletariat is too easily distracted, ignorant, and tribal, so getting them to ask the wrong questions means you never have to worry about the answers.
The control is still there and stronger than ever - just that they're now using new methods to do it.
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As to facebook, it is losing interest not gaining it.
Are certain social media outlets sanitized? Yep. But consider what existed before that for the sorts of people that use face book? They have MORE ability to exchange information with each other than they did before.
Do they have as much as I do or you do? No. But then we are not limited to facebook. We are more comfortable moving through a more democratized cloud of social groups where it is effectively impossible to censor us.
So all things are relative. D
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Insightful)
You're either very young or very naive, or a combination of both. If you're an adult, tough, I'd seek help because you're delusional. We're moving towards less freedom, more and more surveillance and a general understanding that we're better off censoring ourselves. Think how many things you can say today that would not only be perceived as "wrong" but actually cause you very serious trouble. One wrong word uttered and you can find yourself unemployable if not the target of the State's rough attention. We're not getting more access, we're getting more surveillance. It's going to get a lot worse.
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Think how many things you can say today that would not only be perceived as "wrong" but actually cause you very serious trouble.
This has always been the case. Go back 40 years, walk into a bar and announce that you're gay, or be black in the white part of town, or white in the black part, and then compare.
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As to facebook, it is losing interest not gaining it.
I Disagree [techcrunch.com]
I know a lot of people giving up on FB personally, and my kids seemed to have bypassed it altogether (Instagram is the big thing for teens here), but they are still growing somewhere.
So the over all trend is strongly towards things opening up more because every person in their own context is getting MORE access.
I have a mixed opinion of this. On one hand I agree, things are opening up, but at the same time, large swathes of the population are addicted to the Murdoch/Zuckerberg myopic view on the world. It is possible that the universe is expanding in both directions at once.
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Were people in general more free five years ago?
What about 10?
What about 15?
What about 20?
Find me any group of people that you feel is being controlled by this stuff and if we followed the same people back through time you'd find that THIS is an improvement.
You can't compare the facebook addicts to you or me. We're not that demographic. I know that I am every bit as free now as I was before. I'm in no way more controlled by the social media barons than I ever was... and for those that are under the thumb of
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Bill C-54, kind of a stronger version of the Patriot Act that allows all kinds of snooping in the name of "stopping the evil terrorists" and before that the law that they finally got passed on the pretext of stopping online bullying that forces ISPs to save data and pass it to the authorities when asked.
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You do know the internet started as a government funded initiative right?
If anything, the powerful interests are losing control... not gaining it.
Um, you seem to be equating "Powerful Interest" with the govt? Since the govt (in a democracy) is a representation of the People, and publicly owned, then the shift from govt owned/controlled to private (business not people) is a case of the the powerful gaining control. If Bush or Obama does something we don't like, we can vote them out (or wait 8 years). If Murdoch or Zucks does something we don't like we're screwed for life. Given the choice I prefer ownership by the former.
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I would have to agree with that. You know it has reached the point, we I am now turned off by the idea of buying their content because it feels like I am supporting their corruption of our governments. Buying rather the pirating is now the act of evil in support of evil. I go to buy some content and I have to stop and consider where that money is going, what they are doing with it and how many people will suffer as a result. They are such a corrupt pack psychopathic and narcissistic of ass hats that they a
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:4, Interesting)
It will get to the point where people will seriously move back to sneakernet methods, aka, literally travelling outside to meet people to share files.
This has always been the primary way movies were shared. As the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtape. People exchanging multi-TB drives full of ripped movies accounts for most of the bytes shared, at least according to some /. story we once had. And in some cities there are popular blind drops - where you put your favorite rips on a USB key, go to the niche in the wall in the park, and swap yours for the one that's there - potluck, but I guess its fun to see what you might get at random.
You bet your ass people will fight to protect their downloads. This is the internet damn it, people fight over lesser things.
Obviously not the fat sweaty nerd types, they'll likely have a stroke before any of this happens, likely with a penis attachment hanging from them and some anime VN dating game.
Come now, this will be an online fight, a battle of crypto and steganography, and in a fight like that I'd bet on the fat nerds who really want copies of that next anime VN dating game over the entire NSA!
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There's also the knock-off Nigel to be found in every school and office - the person who will swap a drive with anyone who asks.
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Dude - I thought that was the primary reason for going to a LAN party back in the day...
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What I'm saying is, before I rely on sneakernet on the off chance it having specifically what I want, I'll turn to other options. I'm not some bored kids in the burbs in the 70s that needs to go out and play baseball for a 1000th time, because there's absolutely nothing else to do.
It's not about "do you have this specific must-have thing I'm looking for"; it's about "lets swap all the all the movies each of us has ever ripped/torrented, so now both our collections are larger".
The only stuff I watch on my TV are the few titles Netflix has for streaming, or anything from my hard drive. I still have hundreds of DVDs in boxes, but I never watch them directly -- the UI is too annoying. Anything "must watch", I'll buy the DVD, rip it, and watch it immediately, but that's only a few title
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I think it is hilarious that they are so naive that they think rates dropped. They fuck the industry up, people find a way around it, they fuck it up more, people route around that. They will NEVER win.
True, it is impossible to win against a group of self-entitled individuals who feel they deserve everything for free.
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Interesting)
You shouldn't talk about copyright holders like that... They are people too...
The point is that a copyright holder doesn't deserve the life+70 or whatever the ever expanding length of copyright is for a work. How is that promoting the science and useful arts? How is that benefiting the public domain which is the sole reason for the existence of copyright in the first place? What other job do you know of where a person can keep getting paid long after they quit the job outside of these government grants of monopoly?
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The point is that a copyright holder doesn't deserve the life+70 or whatever the ever expanding length of copyright is for a work.
How long should it be?
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Some of us who are against copyright as it exists now might be more amenable to enforcing copyright if it had such a stipulation.
As it stands, the fact that people think everything should be locked up for what is essentially forever, many of us have zero respect for copyright because downloading Steamboat Willy carries exactly the same punishment as downloading a movie released last week.
Don't you agree that's rather ridiculous?
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At a start, it should be less than the average lifetime, instead of 2x the average lifetime.
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:4, Insightful)
Fourteen years was the original term, and seems quite reasonable - if a commercial work hasn't brought in enough money in that long, it isn't going to bring in much more with a longer term.
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What other job do you know of where a person can keep getting paid long after they quit the job
-CEO of a large company
-Politician
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds convincing until you realise that the overwhelming majority of content being shared illegally on-line is less than five years old.
People aren't really ripping Star Wars to protest against long copyright periods. They're ripping Age of Ultron so they can watch it for free.
People aren't downloading cracked versions of Donkey Kong. They're downloading cracked versions of the latest Assassin's Creed.
These things would have been illegal under even the earliest and shortest periods of copyright protection. These are titles that took hundreds of people and millions of dollars of investment to make, and the law effectively requiring people to contribute in return for their copy does promote the useful arts by making such projects financially viable.
Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Interesting)
The numbers are based on nothing more than whatever the anti-piracy goons feel like putting out. It comes with the support of Voltage who sees notice and notice as a way to send out their demand letters for free and not face the Canadian court system which has held up their litigation and placed appropriate restrictions on the information.
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Re:Or they're just proxying their connections (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably more like 7% reduction in people who pirate. And most of those would be kids who lost their in room PCs when mommy and daddy got the notice.
People don't all pirate the same amount, so changes in infringer numbers don't equate to an identical change in traffic amounts. The industry knows this and uses both interchangeably depending on whichever supports their case the best.
Here, as always, there is little to no context so we don't know the actual effect of the notices. We just have to take them on their word.
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Agreed.
I also find it interesting that they discount the growth of Pandora, Spotify, etc... and the fact that you can more easily pass around music via a digital version of sneakernet these days (long ago it was blank cassettes and hanging out at a buddy's house. Now it's "what's your dropbox addy? I can snag 'em that way." Then again, I know for fact that for quite awhile the smarter kids --and not just a few adults-- were passing around USB hard drives / geek-sticks full of music to each other as well...)
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It always hits the kids who could use disruptive media to learn to think for themselves hardest.
Re:Sneakernet (Score:2)
Phones, tablets and micro SD cards. What big brother can't see..
The ease of online file sharing has become risky. Other avenues are much less risky in a schoolyard.
My kids had no problem loading their devices to the max without using the home internet connection.
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Exactly. Cyberlockers are VPNs.
Its not just happening in canada but pretty much anywhere that notices are issued. Even if there are no consequences, getting a notice in the mail is scary and people don't like it. The false assumption of the copyright lobbies is that if such notices are issued that people will just stop.
No... they'll just do it in a way that is harder to track.
how do they account for alternatives? (Score:5, Informative)
i used to download movies. i received several notices from the service provider (comcast) that it's illegal. now i use watchfree.to to stream movies for free. so, some of those people might just be shifting to alternatives and the reduction might be less than 70%.
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With some services, movies can be captured. Streaming or saving look the same.
Taxes? (Score:4, Funny)
I guess not.
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As a Canadian, last I checked it was legal to download here but not to upload (i.e. distribute).
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Downloading of copyrighted music files is legal in this country, because we pay a tariff on blank media.
However, the tariff only goes to pay for music. Downloading of any other form of copyrighted material is not covered by the tariff. This includes television shows, movies, video games, ebooks, and even audio books.
So you're partially correct, yes. But not totally, and not applicably to what people think of when they talk about downloading these days.
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No, you pay a tariff, and it's *still* illegal. The tariff is to compensate copyright holders for the assumed infringement. It applies only to music because when it was introduced, music was the only infringement of major concern. Technology wasn't up to copying DVDs yet.
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1st rule of Usenet...
Re:Taxes? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's nothing to subsidize is you're making a private copy of something you've already bought/paid a license for, unless you think I should have to pay for a DVD twice because I keep a ripped copy for a media server?
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In Canada the courts basically said that personal copying of music is legal due to the (audio) media levy. The media companies never did really try for a levy on video media as that would have made copying video legal so now a blank DVD is much cheaper then a blank CD.
Re:Taxes? (Score:5, Informative)
And that tariff was applied to all media regardless of whether it was used for private copying of music.
Burn a cd or dvd with some of your pictures or personal data on it? The tariff was charged on that blank media and given to the recording industry.
And this shit goes all the way back to blank cassette tapes.
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Only CDs (and cassette tapes) in Canada so blank DVDs are cheaper then blank CDs. After they got the media levy on tapes and CDs the courts ruled that making personal copies of music is OK as we'd payed the levy and the media companies didn't try to get the levy expanded to DVDs (they did try for ipods and such)
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Yep, a few years ago I used to send a LOT of CDR's and DVDR's to friends in Canada I would trade for Cuban Cigars.
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You are thinking of the blank media levy [wikipedia.org] which they still charge and can't decide how to spend (literally they've been keeping the money from that tax since they started it in the 90s)
Cassette tapes? Yup
CD-Rs? Yup
MiniDisc? yup
Hard drives?
Flash Drives?
MP3 Players?
Laws changed around file sharing which made it illegal in most circumstances recently, as well it is illegal to circumvent DRM, so you can legally backup a Blu-Ray as long as you don't violate DRM restrictions (so if it is a movie or TV series or ot
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
"In an unrelated story, VPN services have seen a 3000% increase in Canadian customers."
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In other EVIL news... (Score:2)
MPAA owned subsidiary VPN services collected an increase of 3000% in Canadian customer information... All part of their evil plan to get at your information that the ISP refuses to give up!
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Go to any torrent search site and the ads there (other thjan the porn ads) are all for VPNs so people can't see you download. I'm sure they could figure that out.
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VPNs are stupidly simple to set up - every VPN provider has an OpenVPN based client software for every platform, or basically walkthroug
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's pretty trivial to follow instructions to set up a VPN. So I'm willing to bet a post made the rounds in Canadian "music sharing enthusiast" forums (also high schools, colleges) that read something like:
1) Download a bittorrent client that uses SOCKS v5 (I like Deluge).
2) Go to privateinternetaccess.com and pay them $6.95/month.
3) Go to Preferences in your bittorrent client and fill in the connection information from your VPN account into the SOCKS authentication fields in the "Proxy" tab.
4) Trade, uh, Linux ISO files and COMPLETELY LEGAL THINGS.
Just saying, if somebody gets a notice, they're going to go searching for a way to not get notices, and while "duh VPN" is something techy, it's not a hard script to follow.
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I use another approach.
1. Find a friend who pirates a lot too.
2. Swap retroshare keys.
3. Goto 1.
Correction (Score:5, Informative)
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Yup.
Of course, it's perfectly possible for policies to reduce piracy. But the most effective way of doing that would be to make legal methods to obtain media more convenient than illegal methods (e.g. streaming services).
But merely sending notices is far more likely to convince people they need to hide their access than it is to convince them to stop pirating altogether. When it's difficult or ridiculously expensive to get media legally, people aren't going to get it legally.
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But the most effective way of doing that would be to make legal methods to obtain media more convenient than illegal methods (e.g. streaming services).
That's been happening as well. I understand that netflix_canada now actually has some good content, the media companies are trying to get into the streaming business and things like the CBC offer more and more streaming services.
Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't hurt that Canadian Netflix etc has been improving their content, and the cable monopolies recently had to change to a-la-carte packaging for their services as well. There's also seems to be a bit of a dearth of great movies, so maybe there's less to pirate.
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Also 1/3 of all English-speaking Canadians use US Netflix [www.cbc.ca], so I am sure this is also helping.
I know it's helping for me personally, as the first thing I do when I want to watch something is check Netflix.
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The content owners seem to treat Netflix as if it were just a baby step up from piracy, but in fact Netflix (and services like it) are the content owners' best weapon against piracy. Imagine if Netflix were given free reign to stream every TV show over a week old and every movie over a month old (from all content owners). Even if they raised their prices, Netflix would be quicker and easier to use than any pirating software out there. Sure, some people would still pirate, but those people would pirate no
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Piracy really doesn't scare the big studios that much. What does scare them is Netflix becoming the gatekeeper to their products.
Why content owners don't like Netflix (Score:3)
The problems content owners have with Netflix could be what I heard from one of them (in Europe):
- They pay very little
- They give absolutely no information about how many viewers watched the content.
For content owners, Netflix is pretty useless. For smaller movies, it may be more expensive to find and package the content to deliver than what Netflix will pay. (It is in fact time consuming to hunt down the movie files at the right framerate in the right encoding, audio matching the framerate in the wanted l
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Also there have been several launches of competing streaming content providers from both Bell and Rogers as well that offer additional options.
So far the a-la-carte packaging is a bit of a sham. I just signed up for cable and got it installed last weekend. I looked at the a-la-carte option, and they were not all that price competitive, nor very flexible. Many of the channels are not available either, only as part of larger packages, presumably because the content providers refused (AMC for example, and a lo
Or (Score:5, Informative)
If they made content cheap and ad-free (Netflix, not Hulu) then not only would detectable piracy go down, but also all piracy would go down, and legitimate purchases would go way up. People aren't opposed to paying a reasonable amount to get what they want. People hate paying too much (fees), or forcibly (ads), or for stuff they don't want (bundling). Why is that so hard to figure out? Oh, right, I forgot about distributors (aka dinosaurs afraid to move on).
I now just wait a week after a movie is on torrent (Score:2)
kill up my load and download away.
Never seen a notice yet.
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When I download lots of old stuff 5.10,20 and etc years I leave upload limit open so people can get it. For anything brand new, I now wait a bit, turn off uploads and download to my hearts content.
Shifted to PVR or just not watching (Score:2)
I watch roughly the same amount of hours of TV shows/week and go out to see the same amount of movies/year (around 5-7?). The change was I switched from downloading TV shows after they have aired to PVR'ing every series I might want to watch. No more movies are watched, if anything I watch less if I download less. I changed to the PVR instead of downloading because I was worried about exposure to those legal notices and I am too lazy to do a vpn, though I would if I had to cancel my cable
The bottom line
Questionable numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
Bell Canada shows a 70% reduction, and Rogers shows a 15% reduction... and yet they are comparable ISPs of similar size who share the majority of their territory.
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To use an example: simply by changing from Bell's DSL to another ISP's DSL, I quintupled my overall speed, removed a 50G monthly quota (which was actually paid extra over the original quota), increased reliability, am no longer throttled during peak hours, and pay 15$ a month less.
Re:Questionable numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Neither Bell nor Rogers have throttled anything for years. Both abandoned their practices voluntarily after regulatory pressure, and more recent regulation (the ITMP framework) essentially forbids throttling as Bell and Rogers had originally implemented it.
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Rest still stands though, and as more alternatives show up, people can and are jumping ship (actually got a mail from a new isp in the area the other week: better offer than Bell, but inferior to the ISP jumped to already).
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Notice and notice has only been in effect a few months. Bell and Rogers both stopped throttling in 2012 (although Bell announced they'd stop in very late 2011).
I got one of those.. (Score:2, Informative)
.. and it did give me pause. A bit of researched showed that the max they could sue me for is $5000 and that they would likely not bother. Their best course is to FUD you into a settlement.
And decent ISPs help too (Score:2)
Does Tech Savvy even do this?
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Does Tech Savvy even do this?
I don't know. Why don't you ask TekSavvy [teksavvy.com]?
They have a similar name. Perhaps they have a similar policy [teksavvy.com].
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure. (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see, the article says that piracy rates have dropped 70% according to "CEG TEK".
Fair enough, so who or what is a "CEG TEK"?
So, draw your own conclusions.
http://fightcopyrighttrolls.co... [fightcopyrighttrolls.com]
Well, what do you know. (Score:2)
Threaten people with total legal impunity and they tend to not want to get eaten alive.
Next you'll tell me that making it a condition of employment that workers live in a company dormitory, buy food from the company store with company scrip, and sign hideous non-compete contracts, all reduces cost for corporations.
The real reason for the drop (Score:2)
Sorry folks but the hockey playoffs are on and we are busy watching that. Once they are over we'll be busy with the short summer and be outdoors. Once the fall rolls around then the torrent rate will spike back up as we catch up on the TV shows and movies we've missed.
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I find it hard to imagine music is even a major target for downloading these days - it's way too easy to simply go to youtube, find the song you want, download and convert it to an MP3.
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Even if they're not, it could still help in other ways.
Right now a lot of multimedia content, like music, is complete garbage. But its still "popular", because its "free".
If people end up only consuming good stuff, and ignore all the bad stuff (because now they have to pay for 100% of the content they consume), it would force the industry to actually pump out content people want to pay for.
This is true of almost everything where people can just sidestep rules. It puts a lot of noise on the signal, for those
But are they making more money. (Score:2)
The question is, are sales significantly up? Assuming that pirates are not just hiding better, then if sales aren't up then clearly piracy doesn't actually significantly effect the companies bottom line.
So lemme get this straight (Score:2)
ISPs send out threatening letters to those that they find copying. ISPs see a 70% drop in copying.
In other words, a third of the people who got the "you filthy pirate" letter simply ignored it.
Surely that's the wrong metric though (Score:5, Interesting)
Are sales up?
The only reason piracy is illegal is because it affects legitimate sales. If people are not getting media for free, but still aren't buying it (for whatever reason) then this is a net cost to the economy.
Here's my theory (Score:3)
My theory is that with Crave TV and such coming on the market, people don't need to pirate everything that they used to.
There is also a new IP TV provider in Canada that isn't tied to the internet infrastructure provider. That may have something to do with it as well.
And? Are people buying more digital content? (Score:2)
Because that is the real kicker: The copyright industry believes every infringed copy is a lost sale. Quite a bit of research found that it is actually the other way round: Copyright infringement increases legitimate sales. Hence these more effective practices to reduce copyright infringement should also reduce legitimate business.
Will be interesting to see, especially if this turns out to be happening and the content mafia cannot believe it.
That Explains My First Notice (Score:2)
I always VPNed to Canda for torrenting until I got a notice for torrenting a show about pirates (ironically enough). Wasn't sure if it was the VPN provider cracking down or a Canada thing. Haven't had any issues after switching to another country.
I do wish the movie/TV industry would sell me the content in an acceptable format though. I haven't pirated music in many years. Not since I could get a decent quality, non-DRM MP3 for a reasonable price. Money is not the issue for me, so much as the video format.
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Just don't use public-facing torrents. Talk to your friends, I'm sure one of them knows a way into a decent private tracker. Or just google around and find a good one that opens periodically for signups (though referral-only ones are better :p).
I pirate tv all the time (and other things very occasionally but more often than never) - I've just learned, never download *anything* from piratebay, etc, unless it's majorly super-obscure.
Re:We're just getting sneakier.... (Score:5, Interesting)
VPN sessions are most likely strongly encrypted insulating against any snooping on your connection...any cookies needed for the session are ephemeral keyfiles. Make sure your connection terminates quickly enough if the tunnel is broken and watch for DNS leaking. No logs could betray any data that would be of any use, some VPN companies say they don't keep logs (probably true, don't bet your life) and you can change server/IPs in a couple clicks. If you are paranoid, connect Tor through a VPN tunnel but this can be risky unless you watch what you are doing. Most VPNs are very safe, much safer than not having one at least.
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I don't download any music files since I can just stream it from Youtube.
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Not to mention that sometimes the people doing covers of some songs are actually better or at least more entertaining than the original group.
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surrounding something new. (ie. vaping) I actually like 80's TV, so my downloading Emergency! is covered under nostalgia. I also like MST3K, I think that falls
under geekism nerdaphile, whatever. Other than that, my piracy comes in other forms now, far more ingenious than the primitive torrents of yesteryear.
Well, IPTV anyway.
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If movie quality was any reason for a rise or decline in copying, infringing would have hit rock bottom years ago.
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Ya know, I wonder why them terrorists don't do that themselves. Why don't they blow up some nasty corporations instead of, say, subways and running events? They really suck at PR, do you have any idea what goodwill they could harvest if they blew up some corporate HQs?