Interesting news, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The site is still up. Also, I put Spot's full name in the search engine and ended up with links to downloads (illegal, I presume) for many of his works.

More important, in the article linked to in Spot's initial post, the Pirate Bay site operators are unrepentant, and are adamant in their intent to keep the site operating.

With the increasingly draconian attempts to straitjacket even legal use of copyrighted material (exhibit A being DRM in both the Mac O/S and Vista), I am finding that many people I talk to sound like they just stepped off the set of " 'V' for Vendetta" the excellent, but disturbing, movie that romanticizes rebellion and terrorism. Like that movie, the bad guys (file sharing pirates) are starting to win sympathy despite their wanton lawlessness. To stop them, the good guys must find an alternative to treating ALL their customers like criminals, something many people now feel as a result of both the RIAA enforcement efforts, but even more from the limits and "big brother" controls built into so many of the new products, from Vista to music players, to HD-DVD/BluRay, etc.

I don't have an answer on this one; just observations ...

As much as I don't like the idea of these guys doing what they're doing, I find the draconian DRM schemes currently in place as even more of a crime.

I have a DVD set (Coral Reef Adventure) that is both standard DVD and has a HD version encoded with DRM Windows Media - I love the image quality of the HD content, but to run the WM version on my computer is a test in patience since it has to phone home - which I am hesitant to do since I try to keep that machine off the net.

I'm all for content creators maintaining their rights but it seems like as you stated - legit buyers are treated the same as criminals.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

Watch the bust on You Tube.



John

Link parameters not working for me tonight??

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of global music body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, said: "The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music.

like any of the companies listed are only interested in making movies/music/etc & not money? :)

For all the illegal crap they did, a) I didn't even HEAR about this place until a company who's 20 year old software was on there complained by name & b) they have lots of legal stuff that's a MUCH FASTER download then the non-illegal sites. That's basically the only thing I used that site for was legal stuff.

but ah well. This won't eliminate the piracy those companies scream about. it will just create 10 other places who want to replace it. :/

No publicity is bad publicity. I have never hered of Pirates bay but I just went there and they seem to be going strong.

They are going strong (again) once their servers were reloaded elsewhere. I was/am pretty bothered to find my work up there/linked from their sites. I no longer dig much into this, once I realized that sites like eBay and MySpace don't give a sh** about artists rights, copyrights, etc. They all pay lipservice, but it ends there. There hadn't been a week in years that I wasn't finding my stuff up on Ebay in an illegal compilation. It's disappointing that folks value an artists work so little. One of my former band members released live recordings of my compositions, that was a shock, almost as big a shock as when Gary Kleiner bought my name in several domains and linked them to his website.
Seems like artists either need to get baseball bats and go after these bastards with physical force or just give up. Anything in between seems to be a losing situation. Actually had one anonymous person on this forum email me once, showing me he had nearly every one of my over 400 copyrighted musical works, on his computer. All illegal. It was like he was proud to be able to get away with it and wanted me to know what he'd done. :-/

Seems like artists either need to get baseball bats and go after these bastards with physical force or just give up.

I grew up outside of Chicago in a Mafia neighborhood (actually, the Chicago mafia is known as "the syndicate"). Learned a lot about baseball bats from our nearby neighbor, Tony Acardo, a.k.a., Joe Batters. If you've seen the scene in DePalma's The Untouchables, with DiNiro and the baseball bat, the circumstances in that scene were derived from a true story about how Tony got his nickname.

Anyway, the point of the story is that hiring a wise guy to rough up a few of these bastards would probably do a LOT more than a hundred RIAA suits. Of course there might be consequences ... (although Acardo died at age 86 of natural casues).

Consumers need to support artists by purchasing music and not visiting or patronizing sites and organizations that allow illegal pirating, or there won't be any original content to buy eventually (if the RIAA and DiMA have their way):

http://www.nmpa.org/aboutnmpa/presidentscorner.asp

Summation: new copyright royalty rates are being discussed now. The NMPA and artist community are proposing a raise in royalty rates (as it should be). The RIAA and DiMA (Digital Media Assoc) are proposing a cut. With streaming media (the projected future of creative content), the DiMA is asking that writers and artists get 0, zilch, nada. Seriously. That's more than an insult, it's the worst kind of piracy - would be legalized piracy.

Strange how the RIAA is supposed to be protecting the rights of content creators while trying to cut royalties at the same time....

Stealing is stealing. And some people have the audacity to complain about DRM. They must be the ones without anything worth stealing.

bluprojekt wrote: I'm all for content creators maintaining their rights but it seems like as you stated - legit buyers are treated the same as criminals.

Well that's hardly limited to music, movies and software. I can't get MY OWN money out of my bank without bank DRM-- my bank card and PIN number. And I can't drive my own car without automobile DRM-- drivers license, registration, and proof of insurance (it costs me nearly a thousand dollars per year for the *right* to drive my car!). Can't enter or exit the country without ID either. And at work I'm not privy to everyone's password.

Our lives are filled with instances where we're treated like criminals. (In fact, when we drive we're treated like STUPID criminals, because we're forced to wear seatbelts and follow other "this is for your own good" rules.) So I don't really mind a little bit of intellectual property security. I wish it weren't necessary, but several hundred million bad apples have ruined it for everyone.

Fred

"Stealing is stealing. And some people have the audacity to complain about DRM. They must be the ones without anything worth stealing."

I am wholly apposed to stealing through the torrents (but not to legal use as it's a brilliant way to do bandwidth sharing), however I have to say that the majority of these people torrenting stuff aren't going to result in lost sales, because most of them wouldn't be paying for it, they just wouldn't get it. So while it maybe does mean some lost money, what it really does is show us how sad our world is, that if someone makes it easy to steal for the majority of people out there with at least some familiarity with computers, and where they can do it w/o immediate consequence, they are plenty happy to break the law and swipe a file right onto their hard drive.

anyway, that's my humble opinion on the matter, and i acutally know some people who torrent a LOT and they actually buy things that they torrent and feel is worth money ( though I know they are a minority) and really they're still breaking the law so it doesn't make it better necessarily, but at least it's good to know tha some of them aren't JUST downloading out there :).

Dave

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that making money by charging the public for edited videos is just dying as a business model. At least most musicians have live performance as an option. Most film makers don't even have that.

I'm thinking of just giving my stuff away to the public, making a little money off advertising in the page or video, and hoping that some of my viewers have the generosity to click a "donate" button, or that the stuff gets picked up by broadcasters with a conscience who will pay.

I've recently joined the Australian Copyright Councils mailing list. Reading through the request for comments document regarding changes to Australian copyright and the matching proposed changes to UK copyright revealed an interesting fact. Copyright is nothing like how many like to portray it.

Copyright is granted under a bargain between a publisher and society. Society gives certain rights to the publisher and denies others. Society may change those rights. Publishers should consider the rights they are granted and decide for themselves whether to publish or not. For this reason changes to copyright law are not retrospective.
When you look at it in that light you realise that all the attempts to equate theft of property with breach of copyright are bogus. The publisher entered into a bargain and the bargain was breached, hardly the same as someone breaking into your home and stealing your property. As far as I can tell theft falls under common law, copyright does not.

The proposed changes are nothing earth shattering but still interesting. Format shifting will be permitted, time shifting will be permitted. Both are currently not permitted. Oddly enough parody and satire are currently breaches of copyright under UK law, it's proposed to change that, after all satire is at the core of much of British humour. The format shifting permission gets messy though, both for the consummer and libraries as it runs counter to the provisions for DRM. The question remains will circumvention of DRM be permitted for format and time shifting. Some of the current issues that time and format shifting being relaxed raises are an interesting read.

The really weird thing is that of all the copyright issues that get slogged out in our courts very few of them relate to music or video. Plans are a very popular source of litigation.

Bob.

Stealing is stealing. And some people have the audacity to complain about DRM. They must be the ones without anything worth stealing.

Some interesting points in various posts about whether copyright violation is a civil or criminal act. But, leaving that aside, I think the comment above is at the heart of what most people are struggling with. However, the problem with the statement above is that it assumes that DRM, as currently implemented, is a fair, proper, and appropriate remedy to the problem.

I do not think it is either fair or appropriate.

When you go to a store to purchase a leather jacket, there is usually a tag bolted to the jacket that causes an alarm to sound if you attempt to walk out of the store without paying for the jacket. That tag is designed to stop the thief, and is an appropriate remedy to the problem. However, if that store owner were to adopt a policy similar to DRM, then that tag would stay on the jacket for as long as I own it, even if I paid for it. This would be done because the jacket can also be stolen before it gets to the store, perhaps even from the manufacturer's warehouse. Every time I take it to the cleaners, it will be checked. Every time I go through a security checkpoint, it will be looked at. Perhaps the manufacturer doesn't want me to have it cleaned at establishments that don't follow their cleaning policy. Once the tag stays on the jacket, the manufacturer can enforce that.

The point is that so-called "rights management" can -- and in the case of music and video DRM -- DOES extend way beyond the initial objective of stopping theft. Just like the leather coat, the DRM model must be changed to focus only on the act of theft, and not on the subsequent usage. It is this odious intrusion into my private usage of something I have purchase that makes me 100% opposed to DRM as currently implemented.

Thus, I support technology that stops stealing; I do not support technology that limits or controls my usage of something I have purchased.

Where are you getting this information? As a member of RIAA, we're not/I'm not trying to reduce royalties.
Most labels are reducing royalties for digitally distributed content, but that's a given. There is little cost to the label, as they're not storing it. RIAA has nothing to do with this. It's absurd to suggest they do.
Might as well suggest Ford is responsible for the price of gas rising.

I disagree with many of the RIAA tactics while wholly supporting their efforts, but c'mon...it's already bad enough without tossing FUD.

Right on JohnMeyer. Make content available easily and at a fair price and people will pay. The media business model is changing and they just haven't been able to adjust. My dream is to be able to download a movie (and burn once to a disc on format of my choice). If I lose my electronic copy or my disc is destoyed I want the distributor to know that I bought it so that I get the content back. I know someone who lost tons of iTunes purchased songs because their drive puked and they didn't burn them, they should be able to get those back without repaying.

Radiohead offered their latest album In Rainbow for pay-what-you-want download for several months before the actual CD release.

The physical CD was the top-selling CD in the US and also in Britain when it was released (N.Y. Times music section 1/10/08).

I don't know what this means, but it's sort of interesting.

Spot - read the President's corner newsletter on the NMPA site in the link I posted (www.nmpa.org) - the numbers proposed are there. 12.5 cents/song mechanicals from the NMPA and 6 cents from the RIAA, which as you know is lower than the current 9.1 cents. Also see the difference in proposed download and streaming royalties - there is a rather wide disparity between the three organizations (NMPA, RIAA, and DiMA).

I'm not spreading FUD about the RIAA - just passing on what is being reported by the NMPA and writers' organizations on the copyright royalty hearings in progress right now. If that's misinformation, then you should make the NMPA aware of that.

And fwiw, I completely support preventing piracy (though not the tactics some organizations are taking - not just the RIAA in some cases, but a few others as well), but I also support the right of songwriters, composers, artists, illustrators, video/film producers, screenwriters, etc. to make a living. But there are also conflicting interests at times when it comes to dividing up the profits of distributing and selling creative material which is the crux of the descrepencies in propose rates. You know that already though.

The problem is that too often it becomes "two sides" rather than the recording and arts communities being united to promote art and making a living producing it, and consumers wanting to support it rather than just get it for free.

I hadn't read that article, but it's still not accurate in the way you posted it. RIAA is proposing reductions in mechanical royalties, which are mandated by Congress. I was aware of this, but have been told of lower royalties than NMPA is claiming. NARAS sent a petition around to fight the reduced rate, but I suspect we'll see it hit anyway. part of the argument is that some royalty is better than none, as the concept of mechanical in a digital world is very debatable.

John,
The interesting thing about the youtube bust is the time stamp says 05 -2006 :-)

Rich

Then it isn't accurate the way the NMPA reported it either Spot.

My concern (and yes, this has a direct impact on me), is that as CDs become less prevalent, and downloads become more the mainstay (I believe iTunes already exceeds CD sales by a significant margin), the low percentages (or none if the DiMA's proposal is accepted) would effectively reduce writers income to nearly nothing. What motivation would writers have to write music if someone else stands to make a lot of money on the sale of a song, and we make nothing?

No, the argument that something is better than nothing doesn't apply here anymore than it applies to a client telling you the film you produced is only worth what they want to pay for it, and you should be happy to get that. This is simply a case of the corporate side of this industry seeing a decline in CD sales and trying to make up for it in part by setting lower respective rates for writers. What do you think DiMA's motivation is for proposing 0% to writers on streaming content? Where would writers have any source of income if digital content moves to an all streaming delivery system (which I think is likely to happen in the next 5-8 years)?

> ... the DRM model must be changed to focus only on the act of theft, and not on the subsequent usage. It is this odious intrusion into my private usage of something I have purchase that makes me 100% opposed to DRM as currently implemented.

I wholeheartedly agree that the DRM model must be changed because as it is currently implemented, it treats customers like criminals. But your coat analogy has one flaw. You cannot freely copy your coat and give it to your friends because it’s a physical item! In contrast, once someone buys digital media and the “tag” is removed they can freely make copies and give them away and that’s where the problem lies. How do you prove ownership? This is where DRM breaks down (or rather becomes overly restrictive because there is no general way to prove ownership).

I agree somewhat with the coat analogy though. If a coat had DRM the manufacture could decide where you can and cannot wear it and that’s just absurd, yet that’s exactly what DRM does. I purchased three episodes of a TV show that I had missed from Amazon Unbox. They contain DRM which restricts their viewing to the computer you purchased it from, a collection of unknown 2nd rate media players, or a Tivo. Since I own the three most popular portable media players (iPod, Zune, & PSP, NONE of which are supported by Amazon Unbox!!!) and I don’t have a Tivo, I am restricted to watching them on my PC. I can’t even move them to my media server and watch them on my TV using my network media player. Essentially they are telling me where I can and cannot wear my coat. And for that reason alone, I refuse to buy any more of their DRM content. I sent a letter to Amazon explaining that I will not be making future purchases from Unbox because of their draconian DRM policy.

We need to vote against this form of DRM with our wallets. It’s the only weapon we have. I purchase all of my music from iTunes because it allows me to burn an audio CD so that I have exactly the same media as if I had purchased a CD from a store. That allows me to listen to it in my car, or rip it to MP3 to add to my media server or whatever I want. Any media that doesn’t give me this flexibility doesn’t get my money and I always send a letter to the merchant telling them why I did not make a purchase (because if you don’t they won’t know that they are loosing sales because of poorly implemented DRM).

The future of home entertainment is home media servers with network media players. DRM can’t handle this. DRM wants a Windows PC running somewhere so that it can phone home. Most home media servers run Linux (i.e., Buffalo Linkstation Live, LaCie NAS both of which I own) so this won’t work. The other problem is there are no media server standards. Some play MP4 files, some don’t, some say they play MP4 but only special profiles. So there is no one way to encode your media to make it work on all media players. DRM must allow customers to recode/repurpose their media to fit with their media server/player capabilities and currently it does not allow this.

> Thus, I support technology that stops stealing; I do not support technology that limits or controls my usage of something I have purchased.

Exactly! The company that figures this out will make a LOT of money selling DRM that actually works more like removing the "tag" from the coat after you buy it. I am not against DRM either. I’m just against restrictions that don't allow me to enjoy the content that paid for. It’s not a simple problem to solve but it’s not unsolvable either.

In the mean time... if you don’t like it... don’t buy it! (but absolutely don’t steal it!!! You have no right)

~jr