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Old 28-07-2003, 16:22
Bill Clinton
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What do you think of the escalating war between file-sharers and the RIAA in the US.
The RIAA are now issuing subpoenas to ISP's to identify and sue individual users for sharing copyrighted music, they mainly seem to be going for Kazaa users at the moment. There was also a case recently involving college students in the US who settled with the RIAA for something like $17,000.
As a result of this increased attention, new file-sharing programs are being developed that aim to give complete anomynity to their users and increased security to make it impossible for RIAA snoops to detect what's going on.
Sources http://www.zeropaid.com/ and http://www.eff.com/
SO what do you think, should we come to a fair compromise with file sharing and charge a blanket licence through the ISP or have paid-for downloads, or should we be forced to go back to CD's where it's impossible to find any old or rare music at all and even if you do have to pay upwards of 15 pounds for it.
I'm sure many of you are fellow file-sharers who will be disappointed with the news from America, others will disagree.
But even if I was anti-file-sharing after reading some of the tactics used by the RIAA, I would still seriously consider boycotting CD's.
The record industry has completely failed to adapt to the new technologies of the internet and offer any decent legal services, and it hasn't embraced any ways of coming to new licensing deals to make the current situation legal.
The record industry on the whole are middleman who cream millions from the artists in exchange for simply distrubuting, many artists are unhappy with the status quo as a result. Ironically it is more the companies who the RIAA represent who could be accused of stealing music.
If you have used file-sharing would you really want to go back to just CD's, or would you like to find ways of making your activity legit.
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Old 28-07-2003, 23:59
ogryn
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I wouldn't mind paying a little bit extra a month I suppose, but only if the service has the range of stuff you can download off Kazaa on it.

The Record Labels have got their fingers in their ears going "lalalalalalalalalalalalalala", which is wrong. They need to offer something that apps like Kazaa can't (I don't know what yet).

They can't kill P2P (as when they kill one, 3 more pop-up). They can't even offer similar services (hmm, do I pay for it, or do I get it for free... err I just DONT know )
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Old 29-07-2003, 02:03
Pingu
 
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Look what happened when they brought the 'king' down, 2 and 1/2 years ago. We have a massive boom in file sharing with hundreds of clients.

I think it's fairly safe to say now that Kazaa has surpassed Napster, and if ever brought down, it would trigger a major uprising.

The RIAA will never win, they might as well face it, they have no chance.
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Old 29-07-2003, 02:11
Peej Kerton
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The RIAA are making more publicity for file sharing by having tantrums over it...

Plus as the BPI aren't suing anyone, all UK users are currently safe.
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Old 29-07-2003, 10:18
Rich2k
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From a personal perspective I can understand both arguments

One one hand you have the RIAA who can see people infringing copyright (interesting article on the register as to why this isn't classed as stealing http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32004.html) and thus see them and their artists loosing money.

On the other hand you have the music fans who are getting fed up paying over £15 for an album and £3-£4 for a single (complete waste of money for a track and maybe 1 or 2 remixes of the same thing).

How do you solve the problem. Well I certainly don't think suing your customers is the answer (because lets face it whilst there will always be people out there that will download everything for free... I suspect that many will still buy cds for stuff they like).

I think the Apple iTunes idea is a very workable one. If only they'd hurry up and expand it to PCs and the UK. I for one would have NO problem at all with paying $0.99 for a song (although what's the betting it becomes £0.99 when it hits the UK). It seems to me to be a fair price and perhaps a small discount if you buy the entire album in one go.

Where the apple model is good and where the others have failed is down to two points in my opinion:

1) You can burn it or transfer it to other PCs or music players (within reason) and are not forced to keep up your subscription to keep listening to those tracks

2) It contains music from lots of music companies. This is important IMHO as no-one in the real world could care less (or know) which company and artist has signed with. They just know the artists name and song and want to buy it.

Just my thoughts.
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