Sundtempest

Reporting, analysis, and opinions on the latest trends and developments in the music industry.

Posts Tagged ‘Piracy’

France to Punish Pirates With Internet Cutoff

The French National Assembly today passed legislation that sets up a “three strikes” system for those who pirate movies and music online. First time offenders will receive a warning via email. If they continue illicit downloading (or perhaps uploading - the original article doesn’t specify) they’ll get another warning through snail mail. After a third and final infraction, their internet access will be shut down for a year.

The technical details of this bill were not immediately clear, such as whether offenders’ home internet would be shut down or whether they would be somehow ‘blacklisted’ by multiple ISPs and access points. However, compared to the fines in the United States, this is a much more reasonable punishment that is in line with what the RIAA has promised to do in the future.

What do you think? Is it tough enough, too harsh, or not much of a deterrent?

France adopts tough internet bill [Straits Times]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

RIAA and Suburban Family Reach $7,000 Settlement in Music Piracy Suit

Despite the RIAA’s promise to stop suing people, the organization admitted that their outstanding lawsuits would continue. One such lawsuit, against a suburban family from White Plains, NY, has been settled for $7,000 after a four year nightmare in court.

The RIAA initially brought suit against the mother of the family, Patricia Santangelo, who was a bit confused about the whole thing since she lacked the requisite knowledge to actually do the things she was being accused of.

However, thanks to generous donations from the general public and a fighting spirit, she got the RIAA to drop the case… only to have them refile against her children, now 16 and 20 years old. Keep in mind this means that at the time where the piracy took place, they would have been 12 and 16. Both children denied doing anything wrong, but one of them, Michelle, supposedly admitted to piracy in a deposition; the other, Robert, was “implicated” by a family friend.

After four years of harassing two kids and their mother in court, what did the RIAA have to say about all this? From the source article;

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Santangelos,” Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA, said in an e-mailed statement. Asked how much had been spent to win the $7,000 settlement, and whether it was a victory, she said, “We don’t break out costs per case, and it’s not a question of it being ‘worth it’ or a ‘victory.’”

Wait, what?

“…and it’s not a question of it being ‘worth it’ or a ‘victory.’”

I actually can’t think of anything witty or scathing to say in response to this statement. It speaks for itself.

Suburban NYC family settles music piracy suit [Associated Press]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Potential Conflict of Interest Discovered in the Pirate Bay Trial

Courtroom drama! Legal intrigue! Hot issues! It’s not Law & Order, it’s the continuing saga of the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden. Calls for a mistrial have been flying after it surfaced that the judge in the trial may have had a conflict of interests. Tomas Norström, who presided over the case, was found to be a member of two “pro-copyright” groups, the Swedish Association of Copyright and the Swedish Association for Industrial Legal Protection.

Those on the side of The Pirate Bay claim that the judge’s membership in these groups constitutes a serious conflict of interest, calling his sentencing into question. Norström contended that the Swedish Copyright Association “only promotes knowledge about copyright” and that he is a member “so he can follow related debate and development.” Monique Wadsted, one of the lawyers prosecuting the case, added that all jurists in Stockholm are members of that association.

It remains to be seen whether these new facts will result in a mistrial or whether they will impact the appeals process. Eric Bylander, a professor of law in Gothenburg, Sweden, believes it was “inappropriate” for Norström to take the case, but also that a mistrial would probably not be granted (though it would be a “close call”).

Pirate Bay Judge Exposed as Member of Pro-Copyright Groups [wired]

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Pirates Buy Ten Times More Music? Maybe Not

A new study conducted at the BI Norwegian School of Management has revealed some interesting music consumption habits among a sample of over 1,900 subjects over age 15. Those subjects who had downloaded music for free purchased ten times as much music as those who said they had never downloaded free music.

This has been reported on many news websites as evidence that “pirates buy ten times more music than non-pirates”, or variations of that claim. However, this claim is definitely misleading: the study specifically avoided using the word “illegal” when asking respondents whether they had downloaded free music.

There are a wide variety of websites and services that provide free and legal music, and bands all over the Internet can be found giving away free tracks. Often, these free downloads are heavily promoted, especially by electronic artists and record labels, which are particularly popular in Europe.

The original Norwegian website which reported the story did not go into detail about the breakdown of participants. Further information is crucial in actually analyzing these statistics. For example, what kind of person would never download a single MP3, even one that was available legally, for free?

It is hard to imagine anyone even remotely interested in music not taking advantage of free promotions. A reasonable hypothesis explaining the findings is that those who didn’t download free music did not even have access to a computer, and/or were perhaps in a very low income bracket. Perhaps these people purchased less music because, comparatively speaking, they could not afford to.

I don’t know a single person who listens to music that has not downloaded a single free MP3. I know people that don’t illegally download music, but these people still take advantage of legitimate free music promotions. This study lumped both groups together, making it intellectually dishonest for anyone to conclude, from the data, that pirates buy ten times more music.

You can check out the original story here, via Google translate.


Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right [ars technica]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Pirate Bay Administrators Found Guilty in Swedish Court

Two months after their trial began, four men associated with the administration and/or funding of torrent website The Pirate Bay have been convicted of criminal charges (contributory copyright infringement) in Swedish court. They’ll be heading to jail for a year and will be paying the equivalent of $3.6 million dollars in damages to various copyright holders.

The convicted men seemed unphased by the trial. Before the verdict was revealed, one of the men, Peter Sunde, was quoted as saying, “Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media.”

The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome [Wired]

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Legal Music Downloads in Sweden Double Thanks to Anti-Piracy Law

In years to come, the country of Sweden should make for a very interesting case study in copyright law and its efficacy. The country has recently taken several major steps to curb piracy and strengthen the rights of intellectual property holders within its borders, starting with their “controversial prosecution of The Pirate Bay. Then, at the beginning of this month, Sweden’s IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) law went into effect, making it easier for authorities to track down alleged pirates.

One might have expected that these measures fail, given the fact that they have been met with considerable public opposition. However, at least for now, the facts tell a different story. Within a matter of days of the passage of IPRED, internet traffic within Sweden dropped 33%. A week later, media content provider InProdicon reported that their music download sales had increased by 100%. The majority (60%) of these sales were of Swedish artists.

On the flip side of the coin, the IPRED law has also created increased demand for VPN services, which anonymize the internet activity of users. The Pirate Bay itself is offering its own VPN service for a small monthly fee, which was rolled out shortly after IPRED came into effect.

Which side do you think will eventually gain the upper hand?

Sweden sees boom in legal downloading [The Local]

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Industry trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Pirate Bay vs. Sweden, Round 1

Swedish website The Pirate Bay has been a central source for BitTorrent-based piracy for over five years. Though they do not actually host any files, their torrent tracker and torrent database are filled almost entirely with various illegal media, from software to music and movies. The site and its founders are infamous for their blatant disregard for intellectual property laws and those who would attempt to enforce them; in fact, TPB has an entire section of their site devoted to ridiculing individuals and organizations who send them copyright infringement notices.

Not surprisingly, the guys that run TPB (and one guy that donates to them) have now been taken to Swedish court and face serious criminal penalties for their actions. The trial, which began yesterday, essentially pits the interests of organizations like the MPAA and IFPI against the anti-copyright movement particularly prevalent in Europe. Already, some of the charges have been dropped by the prosecution, primarily for technical reasons. Initially, TPB was accused of actual infringement, but due to the nature of BitTorrent, facilitation of infringement was more accurate.

Which party do you side with? What do you think is going to happen?

Pirate Bay trial gets massive online coverage [NetworkWorld]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

95% of All Music Downloads Are Illegal

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has recently released their 2009 Digital Music Report which has some surprising, and not-so-surprising, findings. On the not-so-surprising side, digital single sales have again grown massively, increasing 24% from 2007. The #1 digital single, Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop”, sold 9.1 million copies - his album “The Carter III” didn’t even break three million physical sales in the States.

Another shocker; 95% of all music downloads are unauthorized (read: illegal) with no payment to artists or producers. While this sounds about right, I have to wonder what their study methodology was. After all, free music released through licenses like Creative Commons, or fan works on sites like OCReMix, shouldn’t really count as ‘illegal’ even though there is no payment to artists or producers.

Among the surprising findings included in the study was that 72% of UK music consumers said they would stop downloading music illegally if they were asked to by their internet service provider. Really? That’s how we can cut down on 70% of music piracy, just ask people to stop pirating? Again, I’m curious to see how this question was phrased and who was being asked, since it seems unlikely to me that a simple, polite request is a more effective deterrent than threatening criminal or civil prosecution.

The full study is definitely worth a read, even if you just check out the summary. There are some great figures that have nothing to do with piracy, such as a breakdown of how many artists there are in any given genre on MySpace.

Most Online Music is Illegal, Study Says [PC World]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Industry trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.