43 Million Americans Use P2P Software 537
robl writes "If the NYTimes article is correct then somewhere around 1 in 6 Americans apparently are unindicted felons. In the eyes of the public file swapping is as morally wrong as speeding on the NJ Turnpike. The rest of the article talks about the RIAA's carrot/stick/education approach and how they may find themselves entering into negotiations for some forms of file sharing. Also the EFF will be running ads in Rolling Stone next month asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals."
Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose it's too much to hope... (Score:2, Interesting)
Major record companies deserve this mess; they've done it to themselves by overpricing CD's. However, they and the "stars" aren't the only ones affected by P2P copying -- studio musicians depend on royalties to live, and they are Not multimillionaires. I hear (anecdotally, but from reliably, from a friend who works for the musician's union), that those men and women are really hurting -- royalties are drying up.
Most people who make a living making music make a pretty bare living as it is. I wish there were some middle ground where people get paid a reasonable amount for real work that they have done, without it turning into a greedfest on anyone's side.
Re:Undetectable file sharing (Score:2, Interesting)
Give me an option to pay (Score:3, Interesting)
P2P software will continue to be used until someone gives us a viable commercial option. DVD's are 20 to 30 Euros here in Finland, and I'm not counting the rare imported stuff... There's no way I'm paying that much for a movie, especially when it probably has broken even in the theaters prior to the DVD being released.
Re:Doubt it, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
And if you think for a second I'd admit it publicly, you're a fool
Way I look at it is, I spend a LOT of money on DVD's and so my downloading of telesyncs and DVD'rips is more than covered. I don't listen to much music, so the 3-4 MP3's I download a month really isn't eating into the industry's pockets cause I wouldn't have paid a dime for them anyhow. I didn't buy CD's before, and I won't later.
To summerize: The RIAA and MPAA shouldn't see my 'piracy' as lost revenue, cause a) they're getting as much of my money as I can spare, or b) they wouldn't have gotten a dry penny from me regardless.
In either case, there's no point in whineing or threatening me.
if we all are felons (Score:3, Interesting)
Why keep it illegal? I dont understand what the point of this is, we cannot lock 100 million people up in prison, so why waste our money filling prisons up with people who share files and smoke pot, its ridiculous.
It makes me wonder if this actually is some kinda police state, I mean what happened to democracy? IF we dont think its morally wrong, and only a few rich CEOs who happen to own the information think its wrong to share it, why should the ones who have money rule over the ones who dont? Thats not democracy anymore, thats plutocracy and if this is what the USA is about then I'm leaving.
Re:Undetectable file sharing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I suppose it's too much to hope... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry that they maybe recorded with artists who are on the for instance the BMG label who are now selling Corrupt Audio Discs.
I was going to buy a CD by Spiritualized, but after I found out that it was a CAD, and unable to be digitally extracted to my PC, I'm not going to bother. I'm not going to rip it, either, though.
But, if record companies continue to flog CADs which don't play properly on PCs or sometimes car audio system, and people can instead get hacked MP3s off a P2P service (using various techniques), is it any surprise they aren't buying?
Re:Moral Speeding (Score:3, Interesting)
I dare you to drive 55 on the PA turnpike around Pittsburg.
Email me if you survive the experience.
Dude that is more like speeding to stay alive.
The first time I drove on that stretch of the turnpike I came through an area where there pretty much was no shoulder. Every 1/2 mile or so they had carved a space out where a truck or a couple of cars could pull over in case of a problem. Aside from those spots you were in deep trouble if you had engine problems.
Well traffic was, wow. I think I was too young to be driving on that road. I remember driving like 10 or 15 miles over the speed limit, something like 75 or 80 and being scared to death to go any faster.
Problem was I was holding up traffic something fierce. People were crawling up my ass and pushing me to go faster.
In one of those holes there was a cop sitting. As God as my witness (and co-pilot if I remember correctly) that cop was just simply sitting there taking his time. Everyone was speeding. He would sit there and occasionally and randomly put on his lights and pull someone over.
It was a real mess.
Two ideas for p2p (Score:2, Interesting)
other idea is that if people are being prosecuted for p2p and want to continue someone will make a p2p network where the originator of files is hidden. This would be easy. Just make the transfer go through nodes just like the searches do at the moment. You'd never be able to tell who the "offender" is since you don't know if the file is coming from the node you are connected or nodes behind it. In the era of broadband and litigation this scheme is also feasible.
Current intellectual property protection approaches level, which instead of fanning, stiffles innovation. Maybe above schemes are already patented so beware if you try to implement them.
Criminal penalties (Score:5, Interesting)
Under US copyright law [cornell.edu], it is only a crime to download copyrighted works if you reproduce more than $1,000 in goods within 180 days. Or if you infringe copyright for financial gain.
It would appear that it is only a felony if you reproduce or distribute [cornell.edu] 10 or more copies with a total value of at least $2,500.
Re:Dear /. (Score:5, Interesting)
If slashdot stopped accepting submissions that included a NYT link would the NYT stop requiring registration? Or maybe allow slashdot to link directly to the article?
just wondering if a slashdotting is actually a measurable benefit to a big site like that.
I'm guilty... AND HERE IS WHY! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a shiney new dvd writer. It has a nice button on the front. A tray that goes in and out. Oh, and it writes dvd's. Aside from archiving the family footage, and making great backups I like to do some authoring with dvd's.
Although I believe my flash animation skills are beyond question, others don't seem to think 2 hours of my artistic creations are worth the dvd they are burned to.
What I love to do is snag music videos off various newsgroups and p2p programs, and put them together on my own mtvdvd. I make custom menues, do different transitions, cut the crappy intro screenes for #lamevideos on pir8net, put the whole thing together, and everyone I know loves them! Every single person I've showed them to has begged me for a copy.
You know what else is interesting.. there is NO legal way for me to obtain the videos. Heck, the ??AA would make a killing selling these things. I know that I have seriously considered getting one of those in-dash dvd players just for this purpose (don't worry, I'm not a stupid driver).
There is obviously consumer demand for this stuff. So much demand in fact that consumers have resorted to less than legal means to obtain them. Its a shame that so much revenue is wasted.
what's the fuss (Score:4, Interesting)
The music industry have created their own downfall and I have no sympathy at all for them.
But the music won't die, just the RIAA, managers, agents, publishers and all the middleman hangers on who create nothing but take their cut anyway.
Re:Don't worry about it (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering I don't live in the US I'm pretty sure I'm outside the jurisdiction of any agencies that would be trying to seek me out. Furthermore, IP addresses don't prove a thing since bouncing through proxies is absurdly easy.
And I resent being called a fool, assmeat.
Intellectual property tone (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that, but I have serious doubts as to whether 'copyright' as we know it today will exist in the future.
I especially love the blatant statement that belies the fact that the industry is built around intellectual property, and that you get very little when you buy a CD. Information as a tradable entity is ok, but freedom to use that information in any way I see fit (including redistribution) needs to come with my trading rights.
Perhaps this means a change in business model for the entertainment industry, and perhaps it means that artists will not be in the running for mega-millions anymore. But none of this is earth-shattering.
Re:1 in 6? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather scary really.
Metrics (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case, how has the market changed? Just because they have metrics to describe the amount of revenue they are losing to song swappers (not file swappers, there's a difference) doesn't mean the numbers have really changed all that much. When is the last time you asked a 'real world' friend to borrow a CD to make a copy?
So if this is factual then they are not losing any more revenue from song swapping than they have historically since the advent of consumer recordable media... so much for the arguement that song swapping is killing the recording industry. It's only with the introduction of the internet and p2p and corresponding digital footprints that they've been able to track said 'piracy' and give it a value.
Clearly then it isn't the everyday file swapping which has increased RIAA losses, it is RIAA business practices which have done so. IE: Music industry is killing Music industry, not song swapping.
Whats your problem anyway? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:P2P2$ (Score:2, Interesting)
Same here, except I feel a little ripped off too. I bought a CD (Air - Moon Safari) recently, the first CD I've bought in a while and guess what, the damn thing doesnt play properly in a CDROM drive! And of course, theres no warning of any kind.
I would've asked 'Does this CD have some kind of protection on it?' but that would make me out to be some kind of pirate (arrrrr)!
I don't have a standalone CD player and don't intend buying one either!
I think thats the last CD I'm going to be buying for a long time.
Thats more people than.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, we know all your schools are still like Saved By the Bell.
I never make a serious post, but really how seriously can you take an article that assumes to have known how many p2p users are out there?
I think there are probably more people using private servers or private channels (see irc) to obtain illicit data "STEALING".
I don't believe its stealing but corporate America and likewise those golden lined suit wearing CEOs believe they own everything, including ideas.
But hey the world we live in sucks, nobody wants to change it so we can just complain on a webpage that probably has more intelligence than the USA congress, but probably alot less productivity.
-CHEERS
[cx]
Turnig Back the Xeorox Copier? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is to RIAA efforts at running the too top heavy Music inudstry into an early grave..
Re:Why yes, yes I am (Score:5, Interesting)
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Re:Welcome to Democracy (Score:1, Interesting)
Copyright violation, however, has nothing to do with human rights. Noone has an inherent right to listen/view/peruse another person's creation. That right is granted to people on an individual basis, usually as a result of buying a DVD/CD, but sometimes as a movie ticket or a public performance or whatever. If you don't want to pay for the right to listen/view/peruse, fine - don't do it. There is just no moral or legal argument anyone can put together to justify stealing someone else's intellectual property. I'm sorry, but anything i create is MINE until the day i die. I can understand people complaining about copyright extensions past death, but stealing works while the author is still alive and hasn't granted you permission is just vile.
Re:43 Million Felons? (Score:2, Interesting)
My 5 cents.
When crimes morph. (Score:2, Interesting)
First and foremost, AOL is an ISP. (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be argued that any increase in internet traffic directly results in a higher bottom line for their quarterly report (since AOL is undoubtedly paid for every byte that flows through its networks originating from smaller ISPs - roadrunner, earthlink, etc). It's called growth, and it's what fuels this stock market, as was witnessed by the implosion of dot-com stocks.
If AOL tracks the statistics on their network, they may realize that a huge percentage of their revenue stream comes in from p2p network traffic. This is probably a huge cash cow in terms of bandwidth resale.
Time Warner hasn't stopped growing by any appreciable rate. Neither has AOL. Winamp and Gnutella? How much traffic does this generate for AOL's networks? How much revenue? One can only imagine. As for mp3s being a detriment to TimeWarner's bottm line - as if there's a shortage of people buying music? I don't think so.
And didn't he say he was quitting, anyway?
Re:Snake Plissken downloaded files (Score:3, Interesting)
Theft involves the transfer of property from one party to another, copyright violation involves the unauthorized duplication of property, which by creating a larger supply, invariably devalues the property.
And the whole point of copyright law is not to turn a creative work into property, or rather, it is to turn a creative work into communal property. The supposedly-temporary grant of copyright is in return for the author handing over their creation to the public after they've had a good few years use out of it.
One might argue that with the new laws and legislations being passed (copyright extension, the DMCA making it illegal to access public domain materiel if it comes in a copy-protected form) mean that authors never have to give their works into the public domain. If so, then the reason for copyright is null and void, and people should feel no guilt at all for not upholding it. Scratch it all, I say. There were authors, musicians and painters well before copyright. Let's head back a few hundred years and try again. Maybe we'll get it right next time.
What the fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish people would start calling this what it really is and stop all the bullshit. You are basically too fucking cheap to purchase movies and music and instead of simply doing without you resort to violating copyrights. I say this, what goes around comes around. The next time Linksys or some other company uses GPL'ed code remember your stance here.
No Surprises (Score:5, Interesting)
The five of them have widley varying careers and none of them would consider themselves criminals. 2 of them were annoyed about the DeCss saga, 1 was buying a CD Burner to download stuff and burn CD's, another was getting Broadband to download stuff faster and another was already downloading stuff. The other 2 don't have computers.
All these people and most other people I have spoken to do realise that they are probably committing a crime but quite frankly they don't care because (a) they are getting music for free and (b) who cares if the record companies are losing money over it.
Some justifications for those reasons:
People have been getting music for free off their friends for years, there are some favourite albums which have at various times been passed around 10+ people in our extended group over 10 or more years.
In the UK the record companies seem only interested in setting up the next Pop Stars / Pop Idol / Shit manufactured act they can squeeze money from. Very rarely are they promoting any band which people like me are actually interested in - last night I saw on TV that Morrisey is unable to get a new record contract when bozo bands like One True Voice just have to turn up at an audition looking nice and sign away any artistic control over their 'career' from that point on.
The record companies really are bringing this on themselves and no amount of whining and threats from them are going to stop this kind of behaviour.
Re:Gah, felons? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:" The No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act"? (Score:3, Interesting)
To answer your question:
> let me ask you all something, how much intellectual property do each of you own?
Well, in the last week, I produced three whitepapers, a few tens of thousands of lines of code, and a couple of proposals, all of which are my intellectual property (or were, until I sold them, naturally). I've also written books, a shed load of web content, and I'm generating more intellectual property as I type right now. So, it turns out I own a lot of intellectual property. Many of the people who post on this site regularly create intellectual property, often in the form of code. It's a lot more common than you might think.
Intellectual property laws are what enable me to make a living doing creative things that I enjoy, like coding and writing. I don't think there's any reduction in my creativity and freedom caused by IP law - precisely the opposite. I also don't think my making a living selling my ability to write or code infringes your freedoms or creativity.
In other words, please engage your brain before posting a rant against something you don't understand.
Re:Celebrate Freedom! July is"Turn Yourself In"mon (Score:3, Interesting)
So the students renamed it RUSHA (pronounced as 'Russia') -- Redford Union Senior High Academy. Heh. Mad props to anyone from RU High? who attended that year and recognizes this little piece!
Pirates are so full of BS it is pathetic. (Score:3, Interesting)
That if it they could just download the songs they want that they'd pay for them.
That not enough money goes to the artist, and they don't want to support that sort of system.
This is bullshit.
Even if systems were in place to allow people to download as many individual songs as they wanted for only a buck a song, and even if mechanisms were in place to guarantee that 50% of all revenues would go to the artist, piracy wouldn't diminish... In fact, it would probably continue to rise. The reason people download this stuff isn't because of any higher morality, it's because they want it, and they know their chances of getting caught is next to nil. To make an analogy, how many people speed all the time that wouldn't speed if they knew there was a copy watching them? Morality, you see, isn't affected by laws or the chance of getting caught - if people believe something is morally right, they'd do it regardless of what the chances of getting caught were.
Piracy will only continue to grow, but that's not a reason to abolish copyrights. Hell, if anyone advocates the abolition of copyrights, they probably don't even care that the artist doesn't get a fair cut of the money - they just want what they want without having to pay for it. Somehow I think most pirates are in this category, although they may not admit it.
In my opinion, musicians, writers, and software artists who have chosen to seek compensation for their copyrighted works are often deserving of the compensation they are seeking. And if it does not deserve compensation, why the hell should I waste my resources (time downloading, hard drive/CD space etc) on it?
The only thing that would ever truly end piracy would be such a gross violation of human and civil rights that it's not even worth mentioning. But then, you pretty much say the same thing about almost any crime. The most we can do is to continue to punish the infringers that are caught to the fullest extent that the law permits. It's not a very effective deterrent, but it's all we've got.