T3

Music industry urges BT to block Pirate Bay or go to court T3 A high court recently ruled that BT must block access to Newzbin2, after which the BPI, along with a group of film studios, music labels and publishers, has formally asked the telecoms company to block The Pirate Bay. The letter from the BPI urges BT … Music and film industry presses BT to block the Pirate BayPCR-online.biz BPI calls on BT to block BitTorrent site The Pirate BayBroadband Expert (blog) BT asked to block the Pirate BayZDNet UK The Guardian all 7 news articles »

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The RIAA has launched a criminal investigation into a high-quality recording of a Britney Spears concert that was uploaded to YouTube last month. As part of the investigation the music industry group has requested a subpoena against YouTube.

Although it’s quite common for the major music labels to send takedown requests to YouTube, as far as we’re aware this is the first time the RIAA has filed legal action against the video hosting site in order to obtain the personal details of an uploader.

In a declaration to the court the RIAA’s Vice President of Online Piracy, Mark McDevitt, requests a subpoena ordering YouTube to reveal the IP-address, email address, and any other information that may be used to identify the person who uploaded the concert.

TorrentFreak asked the RIAA for a response but their spokesman declined to comment on the case. The video in question has since been removed from YouTube but copies of the full concert can still be found elsewhere on the video site.

Although YouTube is listed as a defendant in the court documents, this doesn’t mean YouTube is being held liable for copyright infringement. The filing is for a so-called DMCA subpoena which the RIAA occasionally files as part of ongoing investigations into more ‘severe’ acts of copyright infringement.

The court docket shows that the RIAA filed the legal action against YouTube last month, and that the case was closed after a week. A copyright lawyer informed TorrentFreak that this most likely means that the subpoena was granted by the court and that YouTube agreed to hand over the personal details that were requested.

Earlier this year the RIAA filed a similar declaration at a federal court in California, where it requested a subpoena to obtain the personal details of several Box.net users. These individuals were allegedly storing pre-release music on their accounts. Box.net said at the time that they would hand over the requested details if the subpoena was granted.

“We take the confidentiality of our customers’ information very seriously, but just like all other businesses, we are legally required to comply with court orders,” the company told THR.

Thus far we are not aware of any criminal lawsuits that have appeared as a result of the RIAA’s efforts to track down these alleged copyright infringers. In 2008 the RIAA announced that it would no longer start mass-lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers using P2P networks. However, they reserved the right to go after individuals who leak unreleased content.

Source: RIAA Targets YouTube Over Leaked Britney Spears Concert

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Last week the White House published a white paper with several recommendations on how to make copyright law compliant with the digital age. Among other things, it suggests classifying unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material as a felony and to allow for wiretaps in copyright related cases.

The white paper along with its potential impact has since been widely discussed in the media, but apparently only a select few have the capacity to properly assess the consequences of an eventual change in copyright law. Music industry expert, book author and Grammy winner Moses Avalon is one of them.

“Here’s one story you won’t see going viral on a geek blog near you: the Obama administration is going to make torrent streaming, also known as P2P sharing of music, a felony,” Avalon wrote – four days after we covered the news.

Being the music industry and copyright expert he is, Avalon carefully explains how the White House recommendations will change the Internet as we know it. Not only will unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material become a felony, new legislation will also shutter legal music services that rely on P2P technology, and news sites that dare to mention the P word in public.

Although the White House white paper isn’t really about P2P at all, but about streaming, Avalon foresees a major change in the use of P2P technology on the internet, legitimate or not. In his list of services that will have to close, Avalon mentions the licensed streaming service Grooveshark and the RIAA-approved P2P service iMesh.

Despite the fact that Grooveshark and iMesh pay the music labels, they will have to go since the mere use of P2P and online streaming will soon be against the law, Avalon claims. And then there’s TorrentFreak, a site that has never encouraged readers to commit copyright infringement, but recognizes the benefits of P2P while rebutting entertainment industry propaganda.

TorrentFreak will have to change too, or be gone, Avalon says.

“You’ll start seeing less and less positive spin on P2P almost immediately,” says Avalon as he muses on the aftermath of the new legislation.

“Blogs who play fast and loose with copyright ‘facts’ and assert that P2P is OK because soon the music biz will be dead anyway, are going to get strangely quiet on the subject,” he writes.

Again, the above has very little to do with the White House announcement, which said nothing about P2P. In fact, encouraging people to commit copyright infringement through P2P services is already against the law. However, Avalon takes it up a notch claiming that writing about infringement and P2P will soon be a no go.

“What will they write about next? Who knows and frankly who cares. These guys are no different in my view than racist blogs inciting gay-bashing, and Antisemitism or ‘Freedom’ blogs that are vestibules for home-grown terrorism,” he notes while pondering the future of TorrentFreak.

And we’re not the only news sites who will be forced to change our tune, according to the expert. We’re in good company. Fine outfits such as Wired.com, Techdirt, Slashdot, Silicon Ally Insider and the blog of copyright lawyer Ray Beckerman will be affected too.

Let’s take a deep breath.

We honestly believe that Avalon’s writings are too absurd to respond too, especially coming from someone who previously said that Napster was the scapegoat of the music industry. And yes, Mr. Avalon was also the one who fiercely defended Eminem for rapping about wanting to see the president dead. Freedom of speech, he said at the time, only to now argue that writing about P2P technology is a crime.

But Avalon’s words do have impact, he thinks. He features all his TV appearances on his own YouTube channel and claims that his blog is read by 100,000 people, something he takes extreme pride in. When lawyer Ray Beckerman commented on his absurd writing, Avalon told him that he should be happy to be mentioned because it would get him some traffic. When responding to other commenters he simply ignores what’s being said, and changes the topic to himself and his outstanding writings.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to see that Moses Avalon shows signs of having a narcissistic personality disorder, to say the least. Should Mr. Avalon read a bible, he’d honestly believe himself to be the Moses who is so often referenced.

As for his writings with regard to TorrentFreak, the recommendations put forward by the White House do of course have no impact on sites that discuss P2P technology. And no, streaming and P2P services that distribute licensed content will not disappear either. It’s just the rambling of a pitiful person who just hit the narcissist jackpot with this article. Congrats!

TorrentFreak

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The music industry is changing rapidly. On the one hand there are tens of thousands of artists who use the Internet as a distribution channel and share their music online for free, but on the other side of the spectrum Big Music and Apple are tightening the bolts. We discuss the upside of the Internet and the ‘evil ways’ of the corporate interests with Benn Jordan, one of the first musicians to embrace BitTorrent and turn free music into a business.

The Internet and file-sharing services such as BitTorrent in particular are often blamed to be the downfall of music. However, the reality is that music has never been as loved and vibrant as it is today. The only thing that’s starting to fall apart slowly is the power of the big music labels and other profiteers.

The Big Music (RIAA) labels make their fortunes by promoting and marketing artists who usually only pocket a few percent of album sales. Their control over the distribution channels has given them a great deal of power, but the Internet is taking this monopoly away bit by bit. Today, independent artists and labels can easily reach millions of customers, something unimaginable only a decade ago.

That said, the advancement of the Internet has also brought in new threats. Apple. for example, is taking a big chunk of the revenue music generates online and their growing power is frustrating artists more and more. Musicians are forced to cut up songs because Apple deems them too long, and track listings are shuffled by mistake without an option for the artist to restore his art.

One of the first musicians who revolted publicly against Apple was Benn Jordan aka The Flashbulb, who found his album on iTunes in early 2008 without being aware or paid for it. In a counter move Jordan decided to share all his music on BitTorrent for free, which turned out to be one of the best business decisions he has made in his career.

On Christmas eve, where sharing is on the minds of millions of people, we sit down with Benn to talk about what has happened in the past three years. How did he fare financially? Has his opinion towards Apple or the RIAA labels changed? Where does he think the music industry is heading?

TF: You first published your music for free on BitTorrent nearly three years ago. Could you take us back to that moment and explain why you took this decision?

Jordan: I just figured that if someone was going to upload my new album to these sites, it may as well be me. I can make sure the rip is a good one and I can personalize it with a message. It wasn’t marketing or anything political at first either. Trent Reznor and some other big names released stuff in a similar fashion a few months later and the same crowd applauded, but I felt like it was more about marketing.

TF: How has this decision changed your stance toward “piracy”?

Jordan: It oddly put me in a hot seat for a bit and for a limited time, made me an pseudo expert in a field of study that doesn’t really exist yet. Again, this was all undeserved and weird. Music piracy is still a huge issue and people want answers, but they’re not sure who to ask.

I’m grateful now because it made me think, generally, file trading is just a peephole to a much larger picture. Copyright, in its current state, holds information at ransom for monetary value. While in music it can stifle culture and art, with literature and education it can be nothing more than a weapon of class warfare.

TF: How are you doing financially compared to three years ago? Have you benefited from giving away your music?

Jordan: In this particular case, yes. It expanded the amount of people who pirate my music, therefore it has expanded those who bought CDs, donated to me, or came out to shows. Another interesting thing is that it wound up in some licensing company’s hands that I’ve never worked with before, and got me additional placement in TV/film/etc, which is a good portion of my income.

TF: What are your thoughts on the big labels. Are they good or bad for the majority of artists?

Jordan: I have to be honest. Big labels that aren’t being innovative are little more than delusional laughing stocks at this point. Their numbers get worse and worse, and they push the artists to do dumber and dumber stunts to try and stay on top of things.

The shows and festivals they book are sponsored by 8 different alcoholic beverages and 10 different energy drinks, and they just punish their customers while validating their own demise. I’m not worried about them and neither should you. Its a dozen senior citizens trying to stop a stampede of fresh culture. Good luck boys.

TF: And what about Apple?

Jordan: Apple, love or hate their products, is fucking scary. On one hand, hats off. They’re business and marketing geniuses. On the other hand, they might single handedly be the worst thing that has happened to entertainment media in the last 3 years. The major record industry collapsing should also mean that artists are more free to do what they want.

For example, iTunes completely screwed up the track listing of my last album Arboreal. Their network is so influential that over half of the people who have bought the CD from my label now have botched track titles on their mp3 players. Apple doesn’t have ANY accessible artist support to deal with things like this.

They reject my cover art if I don’t have my name and the title in bold. If I want to sell a 30 minute long track (Louisiana Mourning, for example), they require me to split it up into a bunch of separate tracks. Their distribution system is so unorganized that artists have to pay business like Tunecore upwards of $40 per album (and annual fees) to do Apple’s job for them.

Again, its genius on the business side. But they’ve wedged themselves in so well that now, if I don’t have an album on iTunes (under their insane rules and lack of support), a large portion of my listeners simply won’t know how to put my music on their iPods/iPhones.

I know I sound preachy, but think about it, how is that any better than what existed 15 years ago? I still maintain that I’d rather have my stuff “illegally” downloaded than have to go down that path.

TF: What advise do you have for artists who consider giving away their music?

Jordan: That being a “consideration” is always funny to me. You either release it knowing it will be distributed for free or you keep it locked up on your hard drive. If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that no amount of bitching, threatening, lobbying, suing, or file protecting is going to stop information from being spread to those who want it.

The way I look at it is, if hundreds of thousands of people are downloading my album, I’m contributing to culture and my music will likely outlive me. Money is pretty insignificant in the face of immortality.

TF: What changes in the industry would you like to see in the coming years?

Jordan: It makes me nervous because I feel like we’re at a really big crossroad. We’re facing three big issues at the same time that are eventually going to be connected: Net-neutrality, free speech, and piracy/copyright laws. We need to make a bigger deal about it because we don’t want information to be controlled by an entity that only exists for its investors.

We don’t want a situation where if Amazon refuses to carry a book, nobody will be able to read it. Or if iTunes refuses to carry an unabridged album, nobody will be able to hear it. Most importantly, we don’t want poor people to continue being less educated than wealthy people because of the illusion created that information has a monetary value. News, history, media, and culture is made by everyone, and it is intolerable to me that we allow the messengers to hold it from us at such a high price, whether monetarily or contextually .

Now’s the time to get involved.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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After the Mulve music downloading app burst onto the scene in September, it didn’t take long for it to be closed down and cold water poured on the fun. Now, just a couple of months later, a new application has appeared which not only does everything that Mulve did, but adds more sources, integrates music discovery, last.fm, a playlist and download manager, videos, lyrics and more.

While its birth was a relatively low-key affair, the launch of Mulve into the mainstream proved to be quite the opposite. In September the news of its arrival was reported on dozens of sites but it all came crashing down just a few days later. Undoubtedly prompted by IFPI, BPI and the Big Four labels behind them, the British police moved to make an arrest. Mulve was no more.

However, as we pointed out in a follow-up article, Mulve-style functionality could be achieved in a number of different ways, but none of them really added anything to the original experience.

But now, Mielophone – a new app from a small team of Russian coders – takes the Mulve idea and pumps it full of performance enhancing substances.

“Basically there’s two of us. There was also guy who created a design for the app but he disappeared somewhere,” programmer Yamalight told TorrentFreak.

While Yamalight is a guitar-playing martial artist currently doing a PhD in Europe, his partner in the project, Recoilme, simply describes himself as a music lover.

“Our motivation to create Mielophone was pretty simple. After last.fm (and all other online radios like Spotify etc) became completely paid in Russia (‘cos they couldn’t get an agreement with local music labels etc.), there was no more sites to just listen to music or discover new stuff, or do any of cool things from last.fm,” Yamalight explained.

“So we decided to write our own app that combines all cool services into one thing.”

Once installed and run, the Mielephone interface is pretty self-explanatory. While one can search for individual tracks by clicking the ‘Tracks’ tab, music discovery can also take place using the ‘Albums’ tab. By clicking here and entering an artist or band name, a selection of album covers will appear as shown below (left). Clicking an album cover will automatically switch to the tracks view where all tracks in the chosen album will be displayed (shown below, right).

Selecting single tracks for listening in the integrated player (which also has a playlist editor) is as simple as left clicking them while download queuing is achieved with a right click. Queuing the entire album is achieved with the ‘Download all’ button in the bottom right of the track window. All chosen tracks will then be transferred to the ‘Downloads’ tab where queued but unwanted tracks can be deleted with a right click.

Downloading all queued tracks is done with a click of the floppy disc icon. Download folder location can be configured in Options/Settings.

Clicking the ‘Artist’ tab will bring up a bio of the artist in question (albeit currently in Russian) and selecting the adjacent ‘Video’ tab willl, unsurprisingly, give a collage of artist videos which can be either be viewed in the app or a web browser.

But Mielophone isn’t done yet. Aside from the selectable music sources (listed in ‘Options’) and YouTube, three other online services are also utilized.

First off, MusicBrainz is used to get albums and tracklists and was chosen for its accuracy. Last.fm is used for a number of functions including obtaining artist info and covers, to generate radio by tag, to get the top 100 songs by artist (right click, track view, excellent for discovery), and to scrobble. Lyrics.com use is self-explanatory and again accessed with a right click in the track view.

Mielophone requires Adobe’s AIR to run and was chosen in order to service users of multiple operating systems and to ensure they get new versions of the software as soon as they become available.

“The first versions of Mielophone were actually written in like 3 or 4 different languages, but when lots of people started to ask us for a version for Mac and Linux we decided to switch to AIR which has all the stuff we need and works great under all OSs,” said Yamalight.

Development of Mielophone is still underway and users of more operating systems will be able to enjoy it soon – there is already iOS and Android versions on the way.

The Mielophone homepage can be found here, and the ‘install now’ button is the most user friendly option for those without AIR already installed.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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The Guardian (blog)

Pirate Bay offline briefly after security breach CNET Russo acknowledged that he and an associate who helped get into The Pirate Bay considered selling the data to the big music labels or Hollywood studios, … The Pirate Bay compromised by SQL injection exploitArs Technica Hacker swipes details of 4m Pirate Bay usersRegister 23-year-old gets his hands on 4 million Pirate Bay accountsTG Daily The Guardian (blog) -Tom’s Guide -TorrentFreak (blog) all 90 news articles »

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First off, we have to make it clear that the major movie studios are doing great at the box-office, despite movie piracy riding at an all-time high. Other parts of the movie industry, such as video rental outlets, do seem to struggle and they have the studios to thank for this, not piracy.

In January of this year Warner Bros. announced that new DVDs will not be available at online rental outlet Netflix for the first month after they are released in stores. Warner Bros. hoped that this would increase DVD sales. However, the most likely side effect is an increase in piracy and a loss of income to Netflix.

It is a step back in a time where consumers are screaming for on-demand access and the flexibility to choose the option they want for their video consumption. The studios are clearly skeptical of all these ‘new’ technologies and are frantically adding restrictions to maximize their revenues, ignoring all market signals.

The greed of the music studios hasn’t gone unnoticed by Paul Uniacke, head of the Video Ezy and Blockbuster video rental chains. “Studio greed is what’s holding back video-on-demand,” he said in response to the studios demands to pay huge sums of money upfront if they want to offer on-demand streams.

“Movie studios are still as arrogant as the music moguls were before digital downloads and piracy destroyed them. The only thing that’s protecting the movie studios (from more widespread illegal downloading) now is file size,” Uniacke added.

Much like the big music labels, the studios are trying to control how people consume media to an extent where it becomes impossible for innovative retailers to offer a product that can compete with piracy. By this process they are killing their own business and that of many retailers, while blaming piracy for the damages.

Consumers demand convenience, availability and a high quality product for a fair price. Still, the decisions of the music labels and movie studios are mostly heading in the opposite direction as they cling to their old business of trying to safeguard their monopolies.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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Much like the movie industry, the major record labels have made a habit of attributing decreasing income from album and single sales to illegal downloading. Aside from the fact that most research has found no direct link between piracy and a decrease in sales, those who take a better look at how the money streams are divided will find that the musicians themselves are actually better off than a decade ago.

Last month the Times Online published an interesting graph plotting the various revenue figures over the last 5 years, as reported by the UK music industry themselves. The data clearly shows how the distribution of music industry income has shifted over time. Music labels earn less from recorded music today than they did five years ago, while artists have seen a huge increase in revenues from live performances.

In part inspired by the Times Online article, Swedish researchers came up with similar calculations for the Swedish music industry, which reached a very similar conclusion. Since Napster and later Limewire and BitTorrent gained an audience of hundreds of millions of people, less revenue was made from album and single sales.

For the people who actually perform on stage the outcome is entirely different though. Revenue for musicians actually went up through increased income from live gigs, perhaps thanks to piracy which offers an easy tool to discover new music. Please note, however, that no causal relationship between illegal filesharing and music revenues has been researched.

What is crystal clear from the data, though, is that the revenue streams within in industry are quickly changing. This hugely benefits the musicians who now get a much bigger share of the proverbial pie than a decade ago. Much of this shift can be attributed to the increased income from live performances which nearly doubled to 774 million Swedish Kroner in 2008.

The income figures for the music industry as a whole are less positive though. The overall revenue for the music business has remained pretty much the same since 2000, and that’s just the raw number without an inflation correction.

TorrentFreak contacted Daniel Johansson, researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, who carried out the research together with his colleague Markus Larsson. Johansson told us that he’s not a supporter of theories suggesting that illegal downloading benefits musicians.

“I can not say anything about how filesharing has influenced the figures, since that is not part of the study,” Johansson told TorrentFreak. “Everyone seems to make the assumption that file sharing is ‘good’ for artists because of this, I disagree,” adding that he cannot back this up with data.

Nevertheless, some have argued that illegal downloading makes it easier to discover new artists, which may indeed boost the number of concert visits, explaining the study’s findings. Another explanation could simply be that the tickets for live gigs have doubled since 2000, while the attendance didn’t increase or decrease.

Whatever the reasons, musicians are doing better now than at the beginning of the decade, despite or in spite of piracy.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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New Zealand Herald

Sweden's swashbucklers Irish Times The Pirate Bay site has made plenty of enemies among music labels, film studios, book publishers and games developers, who have seen their bottom lines take … Pirate Bay founder accused of running ReservellaCNET News Swedes deny owning Pirate Bay in Dutch courtThe Associated Press Pirate Bay Buyer: Deal in Doubt; Operators Deny OwnershipDigital Media Wire Forbes -TorrentFreak (blog) -Register all 171 news articles »

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Following the revelations that judge Tomas Norström from the original trial had connections with pro-copyright lobby groups, there had been hopes that the trial of the Pirate Bay Four could go to a retrial.

However, that eventuality was denied after the Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial an appeal has been granted which will take place in November. The case will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of judge Tomas Norström, because she too was linked to pro-copyright groups.

Today there is yet another question mark hanging over the head of another judge scheduled to play a major part in the appeal.

Launched as an answer to the file-sharing problem and the possible savior of the music industry, Sweden’s Spotify music service has been widely well received by both the industry and hardened pirates. But there is a problem.

According to an SR.se report today, one of the lay judges in the case has been revealed as an employee of the fledgling streaming music service.

“If the man is not judged to be biased he will be part of the court’s team at the right time,” said judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

“I would not say there is a problem, but we definitely consider it a factor to which we must draw the attention of the parties, given that Spotify is a company that provides online music,” Ihrfelt added.

But of course, the problem goes just a little bit further than Spotify simply being a provider of online music. It also counts the major music labels – the absolute arch-enemies of The Pirate Bay – as shareholders.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants in the appeal have been notified of the lay judge’s affiliation with Spotify and it will now be down to the court of appeal to decide if there is a conflict of interest.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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