Illegal music downloaders beware!

[colm]

Lads, illegal file sharing / downloading cannot last forever.

It probobly will because the record company's are too greedy & want it every way. Sony for example are quick enough to complain about their material being copied but are at the same happy to sell hardware & software that enables copying.
People have been copying & sharing music al long as music has been around. Remember the line when tape recorders came out. Home recording is killing music . Again here Sony were happy to take peoples money for their tape to tape decks. That was over 20 years ago, guess what?? it hasnt killed music.

Technologically, it's not that hard for them to solve the sharing problem. And I'm sure they will solve it.

I doubt it. It has eluded the movie industry for years.
As long as they keep infringing your rights to back up the media you have paid for then there will always be those who will work to overcome the restrictions.

 

[Chris]

People are sick of being ripped of having to pay €25 for a CD that costs about 50c to produce. Charge a fair price & people will pay..

I think your 50c to 'produce' is mistaken. It costs about 50c per CD to take the content, press the CD, print the booklet and put the disk and booklet in the case. Production of the CD and its content, however, is much higher than that. If it werre correct then a successfull album with sales of 1 million would cost €500k to produce. That would not cover costs of recording editing and marketing, not to mention the artist.
Don't want to be devil's advocate, so I must say that I do agree that prieces charged for new release albums is rediculously high. What I do is wait 6 to 12 weeks and then rarely pay more than €8 with one of the online retailers. If I really want a new album straight away, there is always the option to buy it from iTunes for €9.99.

As for how are they would be able to find out who is downloading what, with the deal they have/will have with Eircom, I imagine they will be able to legally monitor Eircom customers for data traffic using certain network ports and protocols used in P2P sharing. Monitoring network traffic is very simple. If you were to connect directly to the broadband hub at your local phone exchange, you could use a very simple monitoring tool to listen to all the network traffic passign through. This would allow you to read people's emails and see what websites they are visiting, among other. Only encrypted traffic is safe.
I think it would be a lot more difficult to monitor bit torrents, as you are not downloading from/sharing with one single peer, but I could be mistaken. I don't see why the music industry or Eircom would have to 'entrap' people by putting out their own shared files. All they need to do is monitor the network traffic.

 

[TarfHead]

.. so I must say that I do agree that prieces charged for new release albums is rediculously high. What I do is wait 6 to 12 weeks and then rarely pay more than €8 with one of the online retailers.

The new CDs from Springsteen and U2 are available for order/pre-order today from online retailers for less that €9. Do you think that to be "rediculously high" ?

.. I don't see why the music industry or Eircom would have to 'entrap' people by putting out their own shared files ../quote]

Because that is the method agreed with eircom and, I assume, to be pitched to other retailers. And, as such "rediculously " easy to circumvent.

 

[colm]

The fact that they are only targetting peer to peer networks really is testament to how far behind , & how out of touch they are with whats happening.

 

[Chris]

The new CDs from Springsteen and U2 are available for order/pre-order today from online retailers for less that €9. Do you think that to be "rediculously high" ?

Actually I don't Must be a sign of the times, last year new releases were selling at over €13. Good to know!

Because that is the method agreed with eircom and, I assume, to be pitched to other retailers. And, as such "rediculously " easy to circumvent.

Are you sure about that? From what I read in the papers in the last days, all they said was that Eircom would be informed of IP address of cusotomers in 'breach'. Anyway, makes no difference to me really as I don't download music illegally.

 

[colm]

Are you sure about that? From what I read in the papers in the last days, all they said was that Eircom would be informed of IP address of cusotomers in 'breach'.

I think he means there are numerous other methods besides using peer to peer networks.

 

[TarfHead]

Are you sure about that? From what I read in the papers in the last days, all they said was that Eircom would be informed of IP address of cusotomers in 'breach'.

I based what I wrote on something I read this morning which now, of course , I can't lay my hands on. In short, the music companies will upload some content, track the IPs used to download it and then hand over a list to eircom. This method is what prompted my 'easy to circumvent' statement.

 

[MB05]

Eircom have only agreed to send warnings to those IPs idenified by the music companies and enforce a 3 strikes and your out policy. The reason they fought the music companies in the first place is because they wanted eircom to put software on their network etc and eircom were against this. I doubt they will allow the music companies access to their network or their customers internet history. The emphasis is firmly on the music companies to come up with the goods.

I am very surprised they agreed to anything as the other operators are already claiming that the agreement doesn't apply to them and they are not planning to follow suit. If the music companies don't sue the other operators and force them to comply to a similar arrangement I can see eircom rolling back on it as they will lose a lot of business.

 

[Caveat]

Just as an aside - I feel quite strongly about illegal music filesharing in that I would never do it - a stance formed by a love of music, respect for the artist(s) and the belief that if it's good enough to own it's worth paying for.
I think I'm in the minority though.

Realistically however, I think things will drastically change (e.g. Radiohead and a few others) and the music industry will probably be a very different beast in say 10 years or so.

A blessing in disguise maybe then? Filesharing will probably ultimately have lead to the writers and musicians themselves benefitting from a more generous share of the profits from 'released music' (whatever form that may take)

And that can only be a good thing.