Virgin-Universal Deal Offers Unlimited Music, Goes After File Sharers 254
suraj.sun writes "The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music. The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free. 'In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network,' a statement read. 'This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access.' DTecNet has already been working with UK content companies for some time to do much the same thing, and is also working with RIAA in the United States."
Sounds like a plan (Score:4, Interesting)
Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?
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Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?
Don't be silly. After all, it's "information", not "court order". It will only hurt the little guys.
Re:Sounds like a plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they going to suspend Virgin Corporation's internet access if one of their employees downloads an MP3 using it?
Of course not. They're going to suspend it if Universal alleges that they did.
Prosecutor, judge, jury.
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"Anonymous Cowardon" restates his own question. Wierd.
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And why can't I sync my non-Apple device with my iTunes library?
Because you didn't buy one of these players [apple.com]. Note the many non-iPod players on that list. If you meant to imply that iTunes was somehow locked to only work with iPods, sorry for bursting your bubble.
Re:Fairness in the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
Note the number of manufacturers on that list. Creative Labs makes seven, there are a bunch of "Rios" by Sonic Blue, a couple by Nike (?!?) and ... oh, yeah. Apple.
So, which of those *many* players does my local electronics store stock? Well, I'm not sure cause their online search is hooped. I'm sure at least some of the players on that list are long obsolete.
I wouldn't call that a list of "many non-iPod players." I would call it a list of three companies who did a licensing deal with Apple.
If you meant to imply that the gp was full of it when he suggested that iTunes - for all practical purposes - really only works with iPods, sorry to burst your bubble.
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want to know a secret? sony players only work with sony sonic stage, MSFT players only really worked with MSFT based services.
That is standard. Apple is no different however, apple players worked like people do. Their software wouldn't randomly crash. The hardware didn't ned a full on power reboot after every other battery charge because of poor memory management. They did one thing and did it well. having 20 functions is useless if you can't use any of them.
now all that said yes apple horribly locks
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Sorry, friend, that's not a "secret," and I wasn't arguing that iTunes should work with Sony players or Xboxes should run WII games. The comment I replied to suggested "many players" work with iTunes and I was disagreeing with that point, based on the link he provided.
Personally, I wouldn't expect iTunes to manage the music on my Walkman, or my iRiver. I also try to buy players that work as a USB mass storage device, even if they're running fat16 like I think my Walkman is. This eliminates the need to worry
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Dude. AAC is a standard format. Just like MP3.
And if anything, they should be taken to task for charging so much for music (in NZ, the prices go as high as $2.40 a track - fuck that), rather than the lack of DRM free music (I should note that the entire iTunes catalog is already DRM free, negating 33% of your comment).
Re:Fairness in the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Apple uses the AAC format which is an open royalty free format designed to replace mp3. Alcatel-Lucent owns the patent on MP3. So, Apple chose the more modern and more open format. Any company can support or use AAC without paying any royalties.
You might want to check on your facts [vialicensing.com] a little more.
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AAC blows. My Sony Walkman NW-E0005x uses it and it royally blows. The encoding has more bugs than a 2.0 Microsoft product and doesn't work well even with hardware designed specifically for it.
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I don't know how "public" their API is. I know there are Linux apps that work with iPods, not sure if they do this by utilizing a "public API" Apple is generously providing, or if they are employing mass storage mode.
The problem is with the store, not iTunes itself. I've already ranted about that above, but basically it boils down to the fact that I own the music files I purchase from iTunes, and I should be able to play
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Because you didn't buy one of these players [apple.com]. Note the many non-iPod players on that list. If you meant to imply that iTunes was somehow locked to only work with iPods, sorry for bursting your bubble.
That only applies to iTunes on the Mac, not the Windows version, for which none of those will work. And this feature doesn't seem to be offered to vendors or developers anymore, it's a remnant from when Apple was selling iTunes before the iPod came along, and those legacy players were grandfathered in.
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The same reason you can't sync your iPhone with Palm Desktop. The same reason you can't sync your Zune with the sony SonicStage software. iTunes was made specifically to sync with iPods. As someone else pointed out, it does sync with a couple other players. However the main purpose of iTunes is to put stuff on your ipod.
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No. iTunes is good for putting stuff on you iPod, it also is a decent media player. I started using iTunes for my music a year or so before I got an iPod (or even a Mac). Part of my getting an iPod and a Mac was because I really liked how iTunes handled music. I'd probably be using it even if I didn't have a supported device (though I might migrate to Songbird, which is basically an iTunes clone).
iTunes was one of the first players that didn't force me to play with directories, or use self-imposed namin
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Wow... you actually like itunes? I can't stand the thing. The only thing I do actually like is that I can subscribe to podcasts and it auto-updates them... but i'm sure lots of other music player's software do that as well, I just have never used them.
Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less)
I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of (this is probably more of a gribe with the IPOD UI)
Using it with audiobooks has been a frustrating and hair pulling experience
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Itunes is slow as a dog (on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram no less)
I find this hard to believe. My mother uses it on her 550MHz P3 and it seems responsive. On my C2D Mac it doesn't cause a noticeable spike in CPU load except when encoding.
I despise it's music ordering structure or lack there of
Personal preference. Some people like to create complex structures, but most don't. This is one of the reasons why programmers make terrible UI designers; almost all programmers fall into the category that does, while most of their users tend to fall into the other category (there was an interesting paper published about this around
Virgin? Pfft (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Virgin? Pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Anal doesn't count.
Monthly fee (Score:5, Funny)
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No, no, no. Their service lets you download music. DSL lets you download (or upload) anything that can be represented digitally.
Net Neutrality implications? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutrality implications? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Net Neutrality implications? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no it's not risky.. you are not looking at it right.
Everything for one monthly fee, and they will be going after file sharers and illegal file holders with vigor...
I.E. if you dont subscribe and have music on your computer, you're a criminal. The ONLY way to not get labeled a criminal is to subscribe to the service.
I might be paranoid, but Evil is as Evil does.
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Well, yeah... that, or boycott them and use one of the saner ISPs.
Re:Net Neutrality implications? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutrality implications? (Score:5, Interesting)
But record companies don't care about being morally bankrupt; They're just in business to make money.
And after all that, if you really think there's still some reason that record companies should exist, and moreover deserve some portion of your income or mine, I'd love to hear it.
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It's always been that way. US cable companies would get really narky at you if you downloaded tv shows on their services.
Generally speaking ISPs only care as much about piracy as they're forced to because they make money by selling you internet access(it's a little different in the US because the US doesn't have quotas so they get narky if you use too much bandwidth, but not much). However if your ISP produces or distributes the content you're pirating they're all of a sudden really concerned. Virgin distri
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Is it like America across the pond where many municipalities allow broadband providers a legal monopoly?
Virgin Media is the result of a group of mergers between all of the cable companies in the UK. There are basically three ways of getting wired Internet access here:
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. First off, when they say suspend, does that only go for Virgin Media customers (if there are any, not sure what the UK ISP world is like)?
Second, the all-you-can-download idea sounds reasonable. If the catalog is extensive enough (including classical), and it truly is DRM-free and platform-agnostic, I could actually see myself using this. They had better make sure the file metadata is good (a large collection with good metadata is worth paying for), and it'd be nice if they had something like iTune's "Genius" to find things you might like based on your current collection.
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Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it. Wouldn't most people sign up for 1 month, download everything they want, and then cancel? Or are they really going to make it cheap enough, and adding new (good) content frequently enough, to make the whole thing worth it? I have my doubts.
As far as suspending copyright infringers, I've always been concerned by how readily ISPs seem to punish their own customers over a civil dispute in which they ought to have no stake. I guess if they're getting a cut of the action with this service, it makes some sense.
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Good question. I would guess that they would do a contract term with the service. I'd guess 12 or even 24 months, and the requisite early termination fee.
Why help Universal screw artists harder? (Score:5, Informative)
If Universal had a deal where the artist gets half of the take, you'd have far less reason to suspect an all-you-can-hear deal because you'd know you're helping artists and encouraging them to publish more music. As it is, there's nothing in this deal which even suggests a better arrangement for artists (the people corporate copyright holders love to trot out whenever illicit copying and distribution comes up).
The catalogs aren't the same, and neither is the history of pay-for-play, but compare the deal Universal is touting to the deal Magnatune [magnatune.com] has offered for years. Both are all-you-can-hear, but Magnatune lets you set the price (above a specified minimum), you get more choice in what types of files you want (I like FLAC, it's unencumbered, lossless, and I can transcode to something lossy if I choose), the half-goes-to-the-artist deal still stands, and artists license Magnatune which allows artists to retain their copyrights. Magnatune has no history of pay-for-play but all of the biggest music publishers do; I see no reason to reward that history with my sale. I didn't have to worry about risk: anyone can listen to Magnatune's entire catalog online at no charge. I don't have to worry about risking my Internet connection if I share Magnatune tracks [magnatune.com] either; even if Magnatune had the power to suspend my Internet connection I've got license to share. I put my money where my mouth is and I've bought an unlimited subscription from Magnatune. I'll not do the same with Universal until their deal gets a lot better for me and the artists whose interests they claim to care about.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Debatable.
It's easily said: download everything they want. Maybe quite a few people will do that: sign up, binge on free mp3s, save them, then quit. But it seems to me that the people who would do that are pirates already. They've already downloaded everything they want.
Meanwhile, if you're Joe Average, can you enumerate all the tracks you want, such that you could grab the lot of them in one mass download? It's a hell of a job. You'd always forget some band or other, then months later slap your head in frustration and go 'Oh... I knew I should have downloaded more of the back catalogue of Oingo Boingo!'
I don't view the service here as 'pay to download music'. It's not really a sale thing. Why would I buy what I can have for free? This service is pitched at the lost generation, at the people aged 30 and down who have completely lost touch with the idea that music is something you pay for and then keep. We now treat music differently. Music is free - and I don't want to hear about copyright: maybe music SHOULDN'T be free, but that doesn't change the fact that it IS free.
What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess.
So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource. Why would I download and keep any of it? Why should I go to the bother of maintaining my own collection? It's right there on a service run by my own ISP at the other end of a 20 megabit connection. Music on demand. The colossal cloud jukebox.
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What I'll pay for is the service of organising music. My music collection is a total shambles. It's inconsistently tagged. It's encoded at a variety of bitrates and in a variety of formats, such that no MP3 player made since the glory days of iRiver will play them all without a Rockbox hack. And it occupies disk space that could be used for anime or porn. Frankly it's a mess. So that's what might attract me to Virgin's offering. If it's as complete as The Pirate Bay or more so, and the music is consistently tagged and encoded at a high quality, then a monthly fee is eminently fair to have access to that resource.
Exactly. I have about 50 gigs of music, but it may as well be 5, because only that much is properly tagged and organized. I've tried tackling the organization problem in the past, but it's just too overwhelming. I'd pay for properly tagged music.
That said, I wonder if it really will be tagged well - i.e., beyond simply Artist/Album/Title/Year. For classical music, I'd like to have the composer, and date of composition would be nice, too.
Also, you'd want to be able to download to take it with you on your por
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You'd always forget some band or other, then months later slap your head in frustration and go 'Oh... I knew I should have downloaded more of the back catalogue of Oingo Boingo!'
So if you get a big enough list together, you sign up for another month, download all that, and you're done.
Listen, I'm not really saying this is a bad idea. For a long time now, I've thought that the way to get people to pay for music (to have no use of piracy) was essentially to provide a subscription service where music was "free". The idea here would be to erase the need to amass a "music collection" (on your local hard drive), because you could always just re-download what you want. The service wou
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I think the point of ISP's suspecting copyright infringing users is pretty simple, and one that has yet to be tried out.
Real simple. There is no safe harbor for what your customers are doing. If they are doing illegal things that the ISP can detect and block - something that is probably not far off - they have an obligation to do so. Failure to do so means they are an accomplice and liable for damages, at least contributory damages.
Today nobody has tried this approach because it is not clear that an ISP
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I think the point of ISP's suspecting copyright infringing users is pretty simple, and one that has yet to be tried out.
Real simple. There is no safe harbor for what your customers are doing. If they are doing illegal things that the ISP can detect and block - something that is probably not far off - they have an obligation to do so. Failure to do so means they are an accomplice and liable for damages, at least contributory damages.
Today nobody has tried this approach because it is not clear that an ISP can detect copyright infringement in a clear and unambiguous way. Should this change, ISPs will certainly be viewed differently in the US.
You are not correct on this, at least not in the US. One good thing that came out of the DMCA (continue reading once you get off the floor) is the "safe harbor" provision, aka OCILLA. An ISP is considered under section "a" in most cases, as they are providing only a connection, not hosting the material. If they are hosting the material (for example, an ISP who gives each user space to host a personal website), they can still follow the safe harbor provisions for that service under section "b", while remaini
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From a consumer side of things, a pay-per-month model of getting access to a DRM-free library does sound good, but it seems awfully fishy that Universal would offer it.
I'd be surprised if it were truly DRM free - if Universal releases their entire play list; what would be the point of staying subscribed once you got the songs you really want? Or, simply having one person in a group sign up and "share" offline? My guess is they'll have some sort of ID tag to identify the music tied to the original subscriber; so if songs get shared beyond that then they have someone to sue.
Of course, that doesn't solve the churn problem - if people simply subscribe to get a catalog and th
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Fixed for you.
Of course with the current state of the music industry it would be:
"If they can provide enough new content that they play on the radio then people will keep subscribing."
No oversight. Who polices these people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, where's the due process in all of this?
Oh right, it's business, so it can do whatever it likes.
Someone bring back the mafia, at least they had style.
I wonder how much this subscription will be, and whether it will be mandatory or optional. It won't get money to the non-label bands though, will it, just Universal. Wankers.
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Their customers. If mistakes/abuses are common enough, they'll have a class action lawsuit on their hands.
They're a business, as you said. If they have a system for weeding out pirates that they think will work, they can use it in their service. If it doesn't work, well, then it won't be very successful.
I don't. I'm pretty damn sure it will be optional.
Too little, too late? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really a shame that it took over a decade for a music producer to provide what people have been asking for instead of trying to force their own solution down their customers throats.
Oh wait...they still want to suspend accounts.
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If they have a higher standard of proof than the RIAA, then I'm fine with them terminating pirates.
As far as I'm concerned, wankers who pirate stuff just to avoid paying for it are just as much scum as the RIAA, in that they're trying to freeload off the efforts of others.
Generally, the law should be obeyed. The fact that these pirates are getting away with it doesn't make it right, or make the law flawed.
If civil rights were at stake I might advocate civil disobedience. However, that is not the case here
good luck.. hard to compete with $0 (Score:2, Insightful)
I can already go to the library, or even the radio to listen to free music but I guess it is a small step in the right direction.
It only took them how many years after iTunes and Amazon mp3 was out?
> In terms of both convenience and value, our new music service will be superior to anything that's available online today
Bwuahaha. Let me know when I can download .FLACs
Interesting but... (Score:3, Interesting)
What format for the download? 128Kbit lossy compression? I could not find any mention of that. For it to really work out, I would want at least CD quality lossless compression.
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This is the same company that cries it's customers are using too much bandwidth at the same time as announcing a new faster service. Given the apparent blindness to what their broadband customers want broadband wise I'd be surprised if they manage to offer a music service that keeps mp3 users happy let alone those who want something better. The more companies spend all their effort crying about how their business is hurting because of their customers, the less able they are to offer a service those customer
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Re:Interesting but... (Score:4, Insightful)
> Legal or not, if this isn't AS GOOD AS what us pirates can get, then just why would we even think about paying for it?
Some sort of crazy notion of rewarding people who create the content in the first place?
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Damn, someone brought common sense into the argument, HOW DARE YOU?!
The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.
Yes I have downloaded music, only because its easier than ripping all my CDs myself, I probably have downloaded some tracks that I don't own, but conversely, I own a lot I haven't downloaded.
I will never sign up for such a deal, it only goes to fuel
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The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.
The rest of Slashdot would like a word with you, the word is cluebat. [wiktionary.org]
Perhaps after you have stopped attributing what you worry may be your own failings to others you can jump down off that high horse and appreciate that what you're saying has diddley squat to do with the issue at hand. Do you really think that the vast majority of people who buy music do so out of the goodness of their hearts? I mean, attributing peoples motivations to their use of money says a lot about your own priorities and not a lot a
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Have you read half the comments on here?
"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"
"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"
I am not anti-file sharing (you missed where I said I have downloaded a lot of music?), however I am laughing like fuck at the people who try to justify it with the kind of excuses I list above.
I avoid music that I can't purchase direct now (yes, that limits me a lot, but I have found some great new bands who are very willing to sell me a copy of their album for around $
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No, I haven't had a chance to read most of the comments on this thread yet. However, did you read my comment before replying? I did not even suggest that you were anti file-sharing.. I used the phrase once in an example that did not presume to involve you.
"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"
"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"
Again, you are trying to attribute a distinct motivation to a vast group of people who apparently have little in common other than not being offered a decent product.
I don't justify copyright infringement with any of those issues, free choice was around b
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...which immediately rules out any sort of "official" electronic format.
The labels have been royally screwing the artists when it comes to iTunes
and the like. If I could have some assurance that my favorite bands would
actually benefit from such a scheme only then would I be interested in it.
OTOH, a "virtual hat" would probably do equally as well.
What's the artist's cut? Really?
It's time to make this sort of detail front and center along with whether
or not there will be DRM or it will be something that's Win
Re:Interesting but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a content provider of sorts (I do graphics, icons etc., not music, but it's still "IP"), if I sold the rights to one of my creations with a deal like most musicians get, if I later found out people were downloading my creation for free, thus screwing me out of a cut, I wouldn't be pissed at them. I'd be flattered that they took the time to download my stuff, and I'd ask, if they've got some spare cash they want to reward me for my work, then they could paypal me whatever they like. Kinda like donationware...
I say this because if just 1 in 100 downloaders gave the musician $1, then they'd already be getting about 5 times as much as a lot of record labels give their creators.
If you want to support a band, paypal them, or go see a concert, or buy some hoodies or t-shirts.
If you want to give more money to the soulless scumbags who would literally try and sue the dead, only to then try and sue the living descendants of said deceased for "damages" that could not feasibly be real (on the order of tens of thousands of times the actual value of damages inflicted), then completely wreck the grieving families lives through court cases, legal fees, media scrums etc. only to find said deceased was completely innocent and not even have the god damned common fucking courtesy to say sorry; if you want to do that, buy a record.
I'd rather buy conflict diamonds from africa, and have some vietnamese $1-a-day wage-slave set it into a ring made of nazi-gold than ever buy anything ever made by the labels that are part of the BPI or the RIAA or the MPAA. Only by starving these grubby little parasites of their money can we begin to set right the system whereby an artisan gets paid a fair amount for their work, and their art is allowed to become part of teh social consciousness.
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"protect Universal Music's intellectual property"
Did UM create the content? Really?
Or, are they actually exploiting the musicians they promote?
To simplify, /. style: Buying from UM hurts the musicians by supporting the entities who strip them of their intellectual property using contracts, procedures and practices that abuse the musicians' rights and interests.
Yes, I know it's the artists' choice to sign up for a label or not. In a world where most distribution of content, including radio and television, are controlled by the same companies that own the l
Re:Interesting but... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, now this is where I have problems. Here is how the arguments have gone over the past years...
1. You shouldn't pirate...
"Well, we don't want to buy the whole CD! We only want good songs!"
Introduce iTunes/Amazon
2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"DRM! AHHHHHHHHHH!"
Remove DRM.
2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"The pricing model is bad and too expensive!"
Introduce scaling pricing with popularity.
3. You shouldn't pirate now...
"We can't get all of the songs we want for one low rate!"
Introduce unlimited downloads.
4. You shouldn't pirate now...
"We can't get the songs in as good of a quality as we want!"
This is stupid. People like yourself are obviously not going to pay no matter what because there is a free alternative. Please just stop trying to justify yourself and just say, "I like free stuff, and since I can get it, I'm not paying!" At least it would be honest instead of hiding behind a thinly veiled curtain of "complaints."
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By the way, all of the points you mention seem like valid complaints to me. Instead of blaming it on consumers you should analyze how long it's taking them to acknowledge each one of them, and fix them. They're just not listening enough.
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2. You shouldn't pirate now...
"The pricing model is bad and too expensive!"
Introduce scaling pricing with popularity.
More like:
"The pricing model is bad, and too expensive"
Raise pricing on popular songs, keep prices on the crap the same.
Not trying to invalidate your argument, just a quibble. Show me one service that actually lowered prices (even the average price).
Your also missing the ethical question; why shouldn't someone pirate?
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I'll take your argument one step further. The real fact is that the product, once created, is totally worthless. It has no value. It is raw data. It can be duplicated perfectly ad infinitum at practically zero cost, therefore supply is infinite, therefore value is zero. The only thing that actually has value is the act of creating the product. The time put into the creation, the time the artist spent honing his or her talents, this is where the value truly lies.
We don't know how to deal with this conc
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You're right, they should have modded him flamebait instead..
But seriously, what is wrong with wanting a decent product? Is there a reason they cannot provide it? If they'd spend half the budget they did on anti-piracy propaganda on a study of what the pirates want they might even stand a chance. Until then we can pay them as much positive notice as they pay us, considering they are the ones who want our money.
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Why indeed? In fact, a paid for service will, by definition be more expensive than what you pirates can get, so why would you even think about paying with any service?
Well, I'm sure you're aware of the legality (or lack thereof) of your actions, so I'll say that artists enjoy working while not ever being paid as much as you would.
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"128kbit lossy is more than enough quality, the only kind of people who would need anything more than that would be audiophiles and other people who love placebo effects.
Wow! If you can't easily tell the difference between a CD and a 128Kbit MP3, you are either listening through cheap ear buds or are hearing impaired. That is not "Monster Cable" audiophile or a placebo effect. The artifacts on a 128Kbit MP3 are obvious and annoying, 160Kbit AAC is very listenable for mobile players, but CD quality is the *
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Yeah, you can tell the difference between CD and 128Kbps MP3, but can you tell the difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3? In a blind test?
Maybe you can. I've heard people claim to be able to, but I don't know anyone who can beat a blind test. Have you tried?
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"...but can you tell the difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3?"
Probably not. I guess my main point is that I have been buying at a certain quality for 25 years! Now, in 2009, they may offer (a guess as they have not given details) quality *almost* as good as that. Why not just *erase* that issue with FLAC or equivalent. It would not be just as good then, it would be *better* because you would not need to rip or travel to Best Buy.
Everything is in place to do this, so why not get the ball rolling by offeri
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Well, most people don't even really want something like FLAC. It will increase download times, and take up way more space on portable players unless you transcode. If you transcode and keep the lossy copy, then you'll be taking up a lot more space on your hard drive than if you just had the lossy copy. If you transcode on the fly, it'll take longer to sync your portable player. There are various complications in order to provide "higher quality" that will be inaudible to most people.
What I would *much*
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It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?
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'It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?'
Already happening, at least with some specialised labels, e.g.:
http://www.gimell.com/catalogue.aspx?filter=Studio+Master+Pro+5.1 [gimell.com]
http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-formats.aspx [linnrecords.com]
http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=audiophile_96khz [hdtracks.com]
MP3s as a legal download... (Score:2)
So when you introduce legal MP3s, does that mean it is now impossible to detect illegal content?
.
.
You read these stories about police or customs finding pirate content and I wonder what the chances of getting hit with that after just using this service to download MP3s? And if these MP3s contain signatures what is stopping me from altering my existing music library to make it appear legitimate? When everything is an MP3 who is to say what was obtained legally and illegally?
Music publishers won't sig
What you aren't seeing... (Score:2)
Is the law they are crafting that they will call the "RetroActive Pirating Extended Digital Unity" Act. (The RAPEU Act) that will allow copyright holders to get logs of all users who have downloaded music without DRM and force them to pay a media shifting licensing fee of 10 dollars (so that they can have the right to convert the music to CD, MP3 Player etc..) per song.
Has to be said.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) I'd signup for a month or 2
2) Download everything and anything music related they offer.
3) ???
4) Cancel Subscription
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But music changes..... At some point your friends will abandond you, your girlfriend will leave, and you will be left with your outdated collection.
All to save a few bucks. Or pounds. Or whatever.
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Yes, and when your girlfriend leaves, she takes your cds and hifi with her.
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Better than taking your beloved son with her.
Sometimes, I wish we would stop and think about what really matters.
Oddly, music doesn't rate high on my priority list.
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The thing is, they've (Virgin at least) figured out that they're getting money if you do that, rather than that other copyrightey-violatey thing that so many people do already.
And you never know, maybe you end up (somehow) enjoying the service enough to keep coming back from time to time.
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That presupposes that the minimum subscription period is a month or two. It may be £40 a month for 12 months, £20 a month for 24 months, £10 a month for 5 years etc.
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Saying that, I'd probably run out of toilet paper...
All those RIAA letters are useful for something!! lol
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A sense of decency?
Or, you know (Score:2)
might be reasonable (Score:2)
It sounds like they *are* trying, if the monthly fee is reasonable. If you're going to compete against illegal downloads, you must be at a minimum (a) DRM free and (b) available for a reasonable price. The third requirement is sufficient quality (where hulu still fails), but maybe it'll be ok. This could actually succeed.
Of course, if it is successful, the American music industry will implement their own version, which will be more expensive than CDs, have draconian DRM and be accompanied by punishing
Not the law, their rule (Score:2, Interesting)
By this they really mean they will ban you from their network not because you're breaking the law, but because you're not following their EULA, which would stipulate you may not transfer copyrighted material by other means than their service. (which is complet
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Give that this is speaking of the UK, you want fair dealing [wikipedia.org], not fair use (similar concept, but there is legally no such thing as "fair use" in most Commonwealth countries). Also, transferring copyrighted music on the internet is not fair use or fair dealing. It's illegal and copyright infringement in many countries, except if the music is provided under a copyright licence that allows it (i.e. Creative Commons), or there's some other law that allows it for another reason (such as Canada's tax on recording
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I'm not sure blatantly sharing an ENTIRE work constitutes fair use.
Information? (Score:3, Insightful)
The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using allegations provided to it by Universal Music.
Fixed that for your.
I live in England... (Score:4, Insightful)
laff.... (Score:2)
So now we are down to "all you can download for a monthly fee" and "education for file shares + temporary suspension of ISP services, my my my how diluted has war on filesharing gotten?
Not to long ago they were trying for suing the crap out of you possible time in prison and "3 strikes no more internet for you" and while that's a mixed bag of different countries solutions it's clear that they aren't getting any where so this lean approach is how it's going to be.
I'm amused.
Alternative (Score:4, Informative)
An alternative for UK surfers:
http://www.ukfsn.org/ [ukfsn.org]
I have no affiliation with them, but...
"all profits from UKFSN go to fund UK Free Software projects"
"Our policy is that the electronic communications of our customers are private. We do not intercept, censor, scan or otherwise interfer with our customers' internet service."
"UKFSN does not and will not have any dealings with Phorm, the company behind the Webwise system being deployed by some other ISPs to intercept customer internet traffic. We are firmly of the opinion that the Phorm Webwise system is illegal under UK and EU laws. We also believe it to be fundamentally unethical to intercept customer traffic in this manner. It will never happen here."
"There is some suggestion that the UK government would like to mandate some form of interception and possibly censorship. We would encourage all interested persons to make it clear to MPs and the government generally that this is not acceptable."
Meterial reduction? (Score:2)
Material reduction? I think they have failed to grasp some fundamentals of online file sharing.
Hurrah (Score:3, Funny)
I am totally stoked about Virgin Media's forthcoming music download system and fully believe that it won't be an overhyped sack of crap at all. The downloads will certainly be unlimited, fast, cheap, not watermarked and of at least cd quality from an enormous library of popular, familiar tunes the exact same recordings of which will be currently or formerly available in record shops on cd.
Unconstitutional. In ANY country. (Score:4, Informative)
internet is no longer an amenity of modern technology. its a FEATURE of life. which affects many things ranging from, especially, freedom of speech and right to receive information to paying bills online. some european governments are even carrying over all kinds of services that citizens need from a government online. therefore internet is not a luxury anymore, its a BARE necessity of MODERN Life.
just reflected in the french high court decision, striking the dumbfucked 'three strikes and youre out' law as unconstitutional. that is the case in any country of the world.
just wait until virgin and universal gets sued by an angry subscriber who misses to pay his bills online, or cant access his bank site, or cant use new online government services.
no, actually dont wait. its unconstitutional, its YOUR country, YOUR constitution, YOUR rights. stand up for them. give them a piece of your mind.
I'd pay for that (Score:4, Insightful)
Vast library of mp3s, directly from the labels, and DRM free so that I can back them up, thus allowing my purchase to survive hardware failure? (And yes, requiring backup is of course valid; I'm not asking for this in order to facilitate piracy)
Sign me up, Universal, quite seriously. This is a better deal than what someone could hypothetically get on IRC for free, simply because it removes the electronic legwork they would have to do if they want particularly old/rare/obscure files. Pirates generally only trade what's popular; being able to drink straight from the labels' tap means I can get whatever I want, whether it is popular or not, I don't have to waste time looking for it, I can potentially get it at top sound quality, AND I don't have to worry about being prosecuted or sued.
I don't know about the rest of you, but in my mind, piracy is motivated purely by pragmatism; free mp3s are considered a better deal than per-cost CDs. However, give me a service where I can have just about everything since when Cocky was an egg, catalogued, and with a 384 khz bitrate, even better, and I'll be there with bells on, and will be quite happy to pay.
I'm not paying for the actual files themselves here, necessarily. What I'm paying for is a) file quality, b) guaranteed availability and convenience, (due to the source) and c) legal protection.
A flat monthly fee would be preferable to me, but we could talk about just about anything up to around $50 AUD a month. Get 100,000 people to sign up for that, and you've got a $5 million pilot program. I could be wrong, but something tells me that upwards of $10-$20 million a month is something the RIAA could potentially be interested in. ;)
Here's another idea for giving us both some security without the DRM bogeyman, as well. Give me a digital receipt with a unique key every time I download some paid-for files from you, and I'll keep it in the same directory the files are in, and back it up with them as well. That way, if there's ever a question asked, if you keep that key on file, we can both know said mp3s have come from you, and that I haven't pirated them.
It could work brilliantly.
So you're watching what I do on the internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can the phone company do that?
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They get paid for doing what pirates are currently doing for free. They get a reliable stream of income from people who don't shut the service off after downloading everything they want. Universal promotes its catalog, which if it includes current artists may mean additional concert revenues. They keep people in the habit of paying for music, particularly the kids who grew up with music downloads being the norm for obtaining music. They create another avenue of advertisement and promotion for artists th
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I see the problem with this being something like:
The result of, say five people, doing this is the service has zero subscribers six months out and everything they are trying to block is pretty much impossible to block. This differs from the current situation not one tiny little bit.
The only way this is a success is to (a) prevent downl