Clamping down on illegal file sharing

[SiHart]

It's big news today!

Customers who illegally share music will get warning letters
Six of the UK's biggest net providers have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online.

The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music.

But the music industry wants people's internet cut off if they ignore repeated warnings, something the web firms say they are not prepared to do.

BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up.

Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of British Music Rights, said the plan was "a first step, and a very big step, in what we all acknowledge is going to be quite a long process".

The plan commits the firms to working towards a "significant reduction" in the illegal sharing of music.

It also commits the net firms to develop legal music services, the BBC has been told.


The British Phonographic Industry, which represents the UK music business, has focused on educational efforts and limited legal action in recent years, in contrast to the US, which has embarked on tens of thousands of lawsuits against alleged file sharers.

The six internet service providers are understood to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding drawn up by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR).

It is believed that the memorandum also requires net firms to go further in their attempts to tackle illegal file-sharing.

At the same time the government is also expected to start a consultation exercise that could result in laws that force net firms to tackle music piracy.

In the past few weeks net firms Virgin and BT have sent letters to some customers identified by the BPI, which represents the UK record industry, as persistent music pirates.

Before now the BPI has called for a "three-strikes" system which would see net connections of persistent pirates terminated if three warnings went ignored.

Many net firms have resisted the call from the BPI and have said it is not their job to act as policemen.

Mr Sharkey, formerly lead singer with The Undertones added: "Government, particularly in the UK, has now realised there is an issue, there is a problem there."

One BBC News website user Mark, from Hampshire, said he downloaded and shared files illegally and argued customers were "getting their own back".

In an e-mail, he said: "I used to run half a dozen record shops in the 80s and saw how far the fat cats of the record industry would go, in milking customers and retailers dry with more hyped rubbish."

"Why should I yet again pay for, say, the Beatles' White Album at full whack? I already bought it on LP, eight-track, cassette, and CD! This is those customers getting their own back."

"So will this make me sharing a CD with my next-door neighbour over the fence illegal?" he added.

So what do we think? Is this going to stop people illegally sharing music? Personally I think that there will always be people doing this and it's not going to stop the more determined people out there... however, is it right to stop it? Is the music industry really trying to protect the poorer musicians or to cling on to the last of their influence and power as a big industry? I don't know...

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

Illegally sharing music is wrong, and no different to stealing it. It was understandable in the days when it was hard to buy music on-line but c'mon! It takes 10 seconds for me to buy a track from Tesco's Download service, all I have to do is click and put my PIN in. It's time people stopped kidding themselves and realised that downloading a song for free that you can buy is no different to smuggling a CD single out of Woolworths under your jacket.

That said, I am concerned by the use of the word "suspected" and hope they have a sure-fire way of telling if someone is breaking the law before dishing out letters and fines.

Si.

[Perry Vale]

One BBC News website user Mark, from Hampshire, said he downloaded and shared files illegally and argued customers were "getting their own back".

In an e-mail, he said: "I used to run half a dozen record shops in the 80s and saw how far the fat cats of the record industry would go, in milking customers and retailers dry with more hyped rubbish."

"Why should I yet again pay for, say, the Beatles' White Album at full whack? I already bought it on LP, eight-track, cassette, and CD! This is those customers getting their own back."

Good grief, what a pathetic argument, from a very bitter man!


Sharkey is the PR king now, he's been on GMTV recently, and BBC Breakfast today.

[Larry]

! It takes 10 seconds for me to buy a track from Tesco's Download service, all I have to do is click and put my PIN in. It's time people stopped kidding themselves and realised that downloading a song for free that you can buy is no different to smuggling a CD single out of Woolworths under your jacket.



Si.

and if your buying from the I-tunes web site it only costs 79p to download a song so there's no excuse for people to file share.

[Rob McCow]

Heh, the title of this thread made me think they were employing Clampy Robot from Futurama to sort out the Filesharers. "Shall I put the clamps on 'em, boss?"

and realised that downloading a song for free that you can buy is no different to smuggling a CD single out of Woolworths under your jacket.

I'm against illegal filesharing generally, I think it is theft. The trouble is that a closer analogy for filesharing theft would be an enormous pile of discarded CD's, with rare and unusual ones easy to find, thousands of other people picking through them and enormous stalls set up saying "Take these free MP3s! (While we install GatorGain on your computer!)!!!"

The whole business has had unforseen consequences. More bands play live (good thing) but it's more expensive (bad thing) and they include The Pigeon Detectives (unforgivable). The industry's efforts to fight it have hurt the loyal user far more than any illegal filesharer.

They should be aiming at shutting down the filesharing networks rather than spending money chasing the downloaders, 90% of whom will always try to find something cheaper or free if possible. I don't know how they can shut down the networks, but with all the money being poured into this they must be able to find a sensible and fair way.

[WhiteCrow]

You would think it would make more sense (and be more economical) to be trying to target and shut down the big sites which offer these illegal downloads, and once that's under control target the smaller users/distributers.

It's ironic though (and perhaps a side issue) that at the moment I find it's still usually cheaper to buy an album via Amazon and then rip the songs than buy an album in MP3 downloadable form. Surely that needs to change?

[Lissa]

I find it impossible to have any sympathy with the record companies because they do not tell the truth about file sharing. Whether through ignorance or lying they peddle their propaganda and the media - desperate to court favour with the owners of the latest pop acts - just repeats that propaganda without any critical analysis or thought.

You never hear the record companies saying that a fall in CD sales (if there is one) might be due to second hand selling on eBay or customers buying single tracks from iTunes instead of having to buy the whole album. No - the decline (if there is one) is completely caused by file sharing. They then toss in an utterly made up statistic about how many illegal downloads there are.

They never admit that people sampling music before they buy might lead to sales.

They never admit that sharing music introduces people to new acts.

It was the record companies who made music disposable by reducing the chart life of songs by gearing it all to going straight in at number one and freefalling afterwards. It was them who decided to make people buy songs as the ultimate short term fad - the ring tone. If people see music as a two week deal they are less likely to invest in it as a long term purchase.

It was also the record companies who insisted on DRM which most legal music buyers have been screwed by at one time or another. They're slowly moving over to unrestricted MP3s but the damage is done - buy it legally and sooner or later your music collection will stop working. People don't like paying for downloads but they hate paying for downloads that will stop working.

I only use filesharing for stuff I can't get anywhere else. If I want a CD I'll buy that CD. I have groaning shelves of DVDs because I'd rather buy it than download it. But there is plenty of stuff which isn't available anywhere else and the internet is the only way to get it. I'm not hurting anyone, I'm not infringing on anyones profits and I'm not making money from it. If the content providers want to protect the latest albums and movies then that is their right. But the implication that everyone who uses file sharing software is a "pirate" who is stealing from the record and movie companies is not only misleading it is quite offensive.

Besides, it is all pointless anyway. Moves like this will affect personal users but those who sell pirated CDs and DVDs will continue to get the goods. The real criminals will be fine.

[Carol Baynes]

It was the record companies who made music disposable by reducing the chart life of songs by gearing it all to going straight in at number one and freefalling afterwards. It was them who decided to make people buy songs as the ultimate short term fad - the ring tone. If people see music as a two week deal they are less likely to invest in it as a long term purchase.
.

I'd say this applies to certain releases much more than others. The kind of music were this happens, I'm probably not going to be interested in anyway (eg: X-factor winners, novelty charity songs, some new boyband, etc).
As for ring tones- I'd like to think most PS posters would never want one as an example of music!

I do generally agree though- I don't have great sympathy for the record companies. At the end of the day it's about making as much money out of people as possible and controlling the consumers' choices to that end- beneficial for them, perhaps not so much for us or many of the artistes for that matter.

[WhiteCrow]

Some generally good points there Lissa! The record industry was generally in decline before broadband came around, something which as you say is always covered up in favour for "it's all the internets fault". The singles chart is still hyped mad, but in terms of sales, albums are now far bigger.

As I've said, a couple of months ago, I bought 4 "catch up" albums second hand from Amazon for a total of about £12. Perfectly legal.

They were all albums of bands I used to like, but I was missing songs from. It would have cost me far more to download these albums. Did the original owner have MP3 copies? Did they delete them before they sold them? Did the artists get any money from this sale? Did the record companies?

But it's perfectly legal, and indeed would be an order of wrong to ban the resale of CDs.

[Rob McCow]

Other sources of revenue loss include:
- Supermarkets using CDs as loss leaders. By inflation values from prices in the early 90's, CDs should be pushing £17-£20 by now. But don't expect to pay more than a tenner at Sainsbury's.

- The VAT free loophole in Jersey, which was apparantely closed a while back, but forced down online prices of CDs to around £7 for a new release.

- Price Collapse! Within 6 months of release most CDs suffer price collapse. Everything apart from the Beatles has fallen to £2.99 - £5 at some point. These enormous sales of unwanted James Blunt CDs cheapen the overall market. Why pay now when you can get it for a third of the price in a few months time?

- Band rotation. A band now comes and goes so quickly it's like watching them whirl past on helicopter blades. The indie revolution happened and it was a disaster.

[Perry Vale]

It was them who decided to make people buy songs as the ultimate short term fad - the ring tone.

Some very good points, but I'm not really sure about this? The phone companies/makers did this, surely? They just made sure they got their fair cut from it. It was very profitable too, if I recall.

[MacNimon]

All that's been mentioned here so far is music, but file-sharing covers much more than just that. Films, tv series, software, books even!...this potentially could affect anyone who downloads anything (legal or not) because file-sharing software is widely used by legitimate enterprises (BBC's i-player, for example) as well as pirates.

Even though I prefer to own a hard copy of any music I like, file-sharing is ideal at times, though....particularly for rare, hard to find stuff. Any music I've downloaded has fell into this category, but I would have happily bought a 'real' cd if it was available. This is the market which will suffer most. There's really no excuse for downloading readily available stuff though, particularly chart stuff...especially when you can buy chart cds for under £8 at the likes of CD Wow.

I've also found file-sharing a bit of a gold-mine for some classic, hard to find tv series (Armchair Thriller: Quiet As A Nun being an example). Usually low quality second or third rate video recordings, but until such rarities are released on DVD what chance has a fan of Cult TV ever got of seeing these?
And it's also very convenient to catch up with the latest episode of any stateside drama which may not air here for months. This is more of a copyright control thing I think, though...I mean the tv companies in the US aren't going to lose much revenue because people in the UK download the latest edition of Stargate, or whatever, such downloads tend to have credits omitted for the sake of smaller download files and, US tv being what it is, much of the screen is regularly given over to advertising other programming. The only revenue being lost here is any possible future dvd sales...and someone who is happy with what is basically a US tv recording is never going to buy the season box-set anyway! (talking of which, any sign of a 'Journeyman' dvd release yet?! Downloaded tv can never match dvd quality)

Most importantly though, is how are these ISPs going to tell which file-sharers are doing it legally, and which are doing it illegally? By it's nature, you don't download a file from start to finish, it's in loads of random little pieces...so how will they be able to tell whether the sharing is being done by pirates or if it's someone using i-player or such like?

[WhiteCrow]

I remember my Doctor Who group in the early-90s, you used to turn up with blank tapes, and someone would always offer to pirate some Who goodies onto it.

The good old days when file sharing was face to face and involved buying the guy a pint in thanks.

[Captain Tancredi]

It's not an issue which affects me personally that much, as far as I can see- I don't really download anything at all because I don't think the technology is watertight enough yet- if you have a CD then you always have a backup and you can always have a clearout and sell it on or even give it to a charity shop, but if your computer goes haywire or your MP3 player gets pinched, it's gone as far as I can see.

While I can agree with the principle of people in the creative industries being suitably rewarded for their efforts, I'm also aware that while that's going on, an awful lot of people get a lot of money out of the music industry without putting anything in. It's a cynical business which is based around creating demand, building up a customer base and then squeezing them for every penny while often failing to give their talent the support they need. Every deal which is negotiated seems to work on the basis that those who've made a lot of money out of their music get more, while those who perhaps made one or two records have to carry on with what they've got (and less money to defend their rights). There's also an established rip-burn-sell culture online with a massive secondary market on Ebay and Amazon for albums and I'm not sure that music hasn't become more diverse and complicated than even the music industry realises.

Having said all that, if you gave me £10 and told me to spend it on music, I'd probably go down to the Junction pub in Otley on a Tuesday night and listen to a live band rather than cluttering up my life with more CDs.

[Si Hunt]

I don't really download anything at all because I don't think the technology is watertight enough yet- if you have a CD then you always have a backup and you can always have a clearout and sell it on or even give it to a charity shop, but if your computer goes haywire or your MP3 player gets pinched, it's gone as far as I can see.

Not really a valid point - most, if not all, download sites store an account of the music you've bought and allow you to re-download it at any time if you need to.

Si.

[Captain Tancredi]

That's fair enough, Si, but part of my point is that I don't know enough about the practicalities of doing it and I think that's probably a normal fear to have in the circumstances. If the music industry wants me to start buying downloads, then they have to reassure me as a potential customer on that score, which they haven't done- lay people have very long memories where horror stories are concerned.

[Si Hunt]

Hmmm. I see what you're saying, but that could be seen as a bit of an excuse, given how easy it is. No-one would have a video recorder if they all sat around and waited to be shown the "practicalities" of it. At the end of the day, you just have to give it a try, and following a few easy-to-follow steps on a website is a hell of a lot easier than setting up a VCR!

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I got the Tripods series 2 off a torrent site, I have no idea where else I could possibly have got this. Having said that, if I'd bought the first series on DVD, instead of getting the old videos off ebay, then maybe they would have had more incentive to release series 2 on DVD as well

(it was all pretty rubbish anyway though)

[Dirk Gently]

That was one of the biggest annoyances of my childhood, that they never finished the series.
I used to enjoy it.

[Alex]

Most importantly though, is how are these ISPs going to tell which file-sharers are doing it legally, and which are doing it illegally? By it's nature, you don't download a file from start to finish, it's in loads of random little pieces...so how will they be able to tell whether the sharing is being done by pirates or if it's someone using i-player or such like?

That seems to be the big problem at the moment, apparently a lot of people may well get letters sent to them even though they've just used the BBC iplayer and have never downloaded anything illegally. There's a rumour that they may well only send out letters to people who have been connected to a p2p network for over 18 hours in one go, but I don't know how true that is.

I don't download music or films as the threat of a big fine is enough to dissuade me, but I plausibly may download a lot of tv (I'm admitting nowt, guv ) because so far that's just a case of copyright infringement and no legal action has been taken against anyone for doing this. But if they did change the law to make a more serious crime and there was the risk of fines, I'd stop. It'd be frustrating though, as 99% of the stuff I *might* watch is American tv that either isn't shown over here, or takes an absolute age to be. If a system was introduced where you could pay to watch US tv online I'd be more than happy to do so though, as long as the price was fairly reasonable.

As for taking the sites on, that has been tried quite a few times - but a lot of them are based on servers in country's where it's not illegal to host them, so they're able to get away with it that way.