Final judgement on peer-to-peer music sharing in the UK

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article341342.ece

Don't expect anyone here is silly enough to risk the penalties, but it's a useful reference.

notice that they have only sued people who have uploaded and made significant numbers of files available.
I think the courts might look more favourably on someone who downloaded a few tracks to "check out the album before buying it".

hmm, interesting... although if I remember correctly these were all people caught using WinMX, KaZaa and Grokster?

I don't believe this will be the end of music sharing, there are plenty of other places and ways to get music illegally... personally they could make a much better impact on it if they just provided a way to legally buy music at a reasonable rate...

I'm sorry but £1 - £2 per track is NOT reasonable, I have bought a lot of albums because I've been able to listen to it beforehand, either illegally, or because the artist provide lowish quality versions of their album (or at least a good number of the songs) on their website...

with all the rubbish tripe out there they can hardly expect people to buy full albums if they've heard one song...

when I'm buying a book from a new author I always read the back, and maybe even some of the first chapter to see whether I like the style of the writer... it's not much to ask for samples of music either...

personally I think a version of www.allofmp3.com thats legal in the UK would be fantastic, the prices are great (and yes I know its illegal here), even at double those prices I'd use it! £5 for an album at good quality (preferably FLAC or APE lossless so I can re-encode later... OGG Q6 or Q7 would be good though) is resonable I think, and the ability to listen to low quality tracks to sample would be great, even if its the first minute or something... it helps make a decision :)

I agree totally, £1-2 per track is way too much, they should be pushing online legal sales and the only way to do so is to make the music cheaper on the whole. I would happily pay around 50p for a track. Cheaper music = more buyers = more money ultimately (for the record companies). I can't see it happening though, maybe a structured pricing system like everyhthing else, more popular tracks = £1, less popular = 50p. Although the iTunes price of 79p is not too bad I guess. And when its an album of 14-15 tracks, you still pay £7.99, the price of about 10 single tracks. £5 for an album should be the most though.

I don't believe this will be the end of music sharing, there are plenty of other places and ways to get music illegally... personally they could make a much better impact on it if they just provided a way to legally buy music at a reasonable rate...

I know someone who buys the latest albums and then makes a 'top 40' DVD and sells them for a fiver each. He easily makes his money back and buyers get 40 albums, including scanned covers and inlays for £5. At no point is there any net connection or download so it would be difficult to get caught. Not to mention the time money saved from not having to have your PC on downloading.

I know someone who buys the latest albums and then makes a 'top 40' DVD and sells them for a fiver each. He easily makes his money back and buyers get 40 albums, including scanned covers and inlays for £5. At no point is there any net connection or download so it would be difficult to get caught. Not to mention the time money saved from not having to have your PC on downloading.

I think that kind of thing (actually making money from the piracy) is much worse than downloading a track to listen to it yourself.

I would think that if someone wanted some music, they could borrow the cd from a friend who has it and rip it. and vice versa.
No danger then, and no ones trying to make a profit.

I believe its aimed more at the uploaders than the downloaders.

EDITED - My PRO file-sharing comments

the question is, how to annonymise your p2p app.

what happened to the inherently anonymous one i was reading about a while ago?

I'm a musician, and although my band isnt famous, rich, or all that good any more - i would ENDORSE my album being downloaded. Many will always prefer to have that "orginal copy" in their collection.

I blame James Hetfield.

When you consider that loads of classic albums have been available at Fopp for £3 and £5 over the last month, that is a genuine product at 20-30p per track. Surely a flileshared version of the same thing is worth half that.
In addition I have recently bought some recent extremely expensive foreign language music cds which are priced at £15 - £17 in the big town retailers for as little as £4.60 from Amazon partners. There is no excuse for expensive music anylonger.

I'm a musician, and although my band isnt famous, rich, or all that good any more - i would ENDORSE my album being downloaded. Many will always prefer to have that "orginal copy" in their collection.

The Arctic Money's manager was saying this on the BBC 10 o clock news the other night.

I'm a musician, and although my band isnt famous, rich, or all that good any more - i would ENDORSE my album being downloaded. Many will always prefer to have that "orginal copy" in their collection.

I always buy albums I like even if I originally get them illegally... but I wait till they're on sale or something as I refuse to pay the stupid prices asked... I know bands have to make money, music is a career, I'm a programmer if everyone stole my programs (when I start making them commercially) I'd be ****** off, but if I was asking some stupid amount of money from people I'd expect some people think sod it...

people will pay for things they like if they deserve it, I've donated to various open source projects when I've thought the person deserved it... I buy my CD's and I go to my gigs... but yes, I do illegally download some of my music, I'll listen to it, if I like it I'll buy it so long as it's less than £10 if its great and I can't stop listening, if its just good I'll wait till its a £5 - £7 in a sale

Music is an art-form though. Personally, I want as many people as possible to hear the music I have written, and a lot of people I have met over the years whom are far more succcessful musically than I am - have agreed.

You generally find that artists that put the music and the ART before finances are the better bands to listen to.

i download alot of music...also share quite a bit too. I only share live audio and video music from a few bands. Now and again i'll download a track to see what an artist is like, iv found a great many artists like this!

They will never be able to stop it all and sueing a few people i dont think will put most people off!

the arctic monkeys album is now the biggest, fastest selling debut album ever
apperently theyve sold more albums in a couple of days than oasis did in the first week (oasis were the current holders of the record)
not bad for a band sharing ALL their tracks on the internet beforehand

blows the music bizs yelps straight out of the water tbh
it shows as long as its good and people like it itll sell no matter how shared online it is

I download music illegaly. I do sometimes by abums though. I might start using whippit its one of the legal dwnload sites and for £4.99 a month or £50 a year you can download unlimited music. http://www.wippit.com/

My view has always been that, if they are going to shut down illegal file sharing (or try as it is impossible to completely stop it) they should go for the jugular, so to speak. I mean the uploaders as mentioned previously. The people cannot download music if it is not there for them to download. There is also the question of numbers. I would imagine that the uploader/downloader ratio is easily 1:40, if not more.

This means that it would make much more sense if the companies are looking to stop P2P sharing to go for uploaders. If they just wanted the money they would go for downloader’s. I suppose this poses a moral issue for the companies suing then.

There will always be new downloader’s coming in, but far less uploaders, this means that it basically would make better sense to go for the uploaders, wouldn't it?

I download music illegaly. I do sometimes by abums though. I might start using whippit its one of the legal dwnload sites and for £4.99 a month or £50 a year you can download unlimited music. http://www.wippit.com/

that site sucks... it only had songs for 1 out of 5 bands I tried, and I put in Metallica and it comes up with about 5 songs, which were covers done by Apocalyptica... that's CRAP!

obviously their range only covers pop and stuff, not to mention its all WMA which IMO is nasty!

When they say that this is costing the music industry £X billion do they just calculate that by estimating the amount that is illegally downloaded and multiply by the cost of legal downloading?

I think that it is widely known that a small amount of illegal downloading is a win-win situation. The public gets to experience a wider range of music than they would otherwise listen to, and out of that they then go and spend more of their money on legal music in the high street.

When they say that this is costing the music industry £X billion do they just calculate that by estimating the amount that is illegally downloaded and multiply by the cost of legal downloading?

I think that it is widely known that a small amount of illegal downloading is a win-win situation. The public gets to experience a wider range of music than they would otherwise listen to, and out of that they then go and spend more of their money on legal music in the high street.

It would seem that is the way these 'experts' calculate what they assume to be lost revenue. The fact that in many cases the downloader wouldn't have purchased the album/track anyway so it's not a lost sale at all seems to pass them by.

It would seem that is the way these 'experts' calculate what they assume to be lost revenue. The fact that in many cases the downloader wouldn't have purchased the album/track anyway so it's not a lost sale at all seems to pass them by.

Yes that was precisely the point I was implying, but didn't quite get around to saying!

I think the music scene at the moment is really vibrant, and there is so much interest in live music andm in my opinion, the ease of downloading music (legal and otherwise) has played a major part in this.

Of course, a vibrant live music scene and real interest in music is not the bottom line for the big record labels, as it is only short term sales they are interested in.