Grooveshark users in Germany officially became former users of the service today after the US-based music streaming site stopped offering its service there. Grooveshark has in excess of 30 million users, less than 10% of which are located in Germany.

Rather than being presented with the usual page from where almost any music in the world can be found, local users were instead greeted with the following message:

Due to unreasonably high operating costs, the notice reads, Grooveshark is now inaccessible from Germany.

“We will miss you! You can write to us. We hope to come back one day,” it continues. “If you want to reduce the operating costs for both providers and Grooveshark, you can send a polite message to GEMA.”

GEMA is the local music rights collections organization in Germany and according to its own stats has 64,000 members and represents more than 2 million rights holders.

The organization has a history of licensing disputes, most visibly when it started blocking videos on YouTube in order to achieve a deal on its terms with the Google-owned company.

The unpopular move was even met with criticism from prominent music industry players, including CEO of Sony Music, Edgar Berger, who suggested that members of GEMA’s supervisory board had not yet arrived in the digital era.

“We want to see streaming services like Vevo and Spotify in the German market. [These platforms] must not be blocked by GEMA any longer,” he said. “Artists and music companies are losing sales in the millions.”

Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that Berger will apply the same sentiments to Grooveshark’s plight. All the major labels – Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI – are suing Grooveshark over copyright infringement or royalty issues in the United States.

That legal process was stepped up this week when Grooveshark sent a reportedly aggressive and broad-reaching subpoena to Digital Music News in an attempt to unmask a supposed whistleblower whose allegations form the basis of Universal’s copyright infringement lawsuit against the music streamer.

On its German page, Grooveshark concludes its German departure message by suggesting that users test out the local Simfy music service as an alternative, but many will simply head over to Google and type “US proxy” instead.

Source: Grooveshark Blocks German Users Over Licensing Costs

Popularity: unranked [?]

Early December, Megaupload’s ‘Mega Song’ was on its way to becoming a viral hit, only to be cut down from YouTube by a Universal Music takedown demand. In response, Megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal and YouTube reinstated the video.

The basis for the takedown has never been clear. While YouTube clearly indicated that UMG had taken the Mega Song down on copyright grounds, Universal later added that it had a deal with YouTube to take down content even if it doesn’t infringe their rights. This, the company says, allows it to sidestep any claims Megaupload makes against it under the DMCA.

Notably, though, Universal has never said exactly why it had the video taken down. Soon, however, it may have to.

In a new Megaupload court filing made available to TorrentFreak today, the file-hosting service makes it clear that it will go to considerable lengths to find out exactly what has been going on at Universal, YouTube, Vimeo and other entities involved in the Mega Song takedown.

“In its opposition to the [Temporary Restraining Order], UMG did not even attempt to defend the legitimacy of its false claims to ownership of the Megaupload Video,” states the Megaupload filing. The cyberlocker adds that UMG made several assertions which now require clarification for the case to proceed correctly.

The first UMG claim is that Megaupload sued the wrong UMG ‘entity’. They say that UMG Recordings is the correct entity since they are the ones dealing with YouTube and other video hosting services.

Second, Megaupload wants to get to the bottom of UMG’s claim that the takedown request it filed with YouTube was not made under the DMCA, but as part of a private historical agreement the label has with YouTube.

The third UMG claim is that they had nothing to do with takedowns of the Mega Song carried out at other video hosting sites such as Vimeo.

Bemoaning the fact that none of UMG’s claims have been backed up by evidence or witnesses, Megaupload says it now needs facts to move forward.

“Megaupload therefore respectfully requests that the Court grant it leave to take limited but essential written discovery…regarding the UMG Entities’ private dealings with service providers regarding the takedowns of the Megaupload Video and the identity and authority of the persons or entities who requested the takedowns,” the company writes.

“Without such information, Megaupload will be unable to determine which UMG entity instructed YouTube to remove the Megaupload Video; which other, non-UMG persons may have so instructed YouTube; and on whose behalf, on what grounds, and under what authority the removal was sought.

“In addition, as UMG has denied sending notices itself to other service providers, subpoenas to any such providers who took down the video is the appropriate means to determine the party doing so,” the filing adds.

There can be little doubt that keeping the Megaupload name in the news is something that Universal should have anticipated when they took the Mega Song down. Right now, if the aim was to shut Megaupload up and dampen their campaign, they have failed. At the time of writing the standard and HD versions of the song have close to 13.7 million combined views on YouTube.

But perhaps even worse, Universal appear to have enabled an arch enemy to take the moral high-ground in their ‘rogue site’ propaganda war and that’s why this discovery process will be so interesting.

Do Universal have an ace up their sleeve, or was the Mega Song takedown simply a terribly ill-conceived, knee-jerk, and solely destructive action? We’ll all find out soon enough.

Source: Megaupload to Universal: You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do

Popularity: 1% [?]

This coming Wednesday the House Judiciary Committee will continue discussing SOPA to decide whether the bill should move forward to the full House. Until then, lobbying groups for and against the bill continue with their efforts to influence the votes of committee members.

Increasingly, many tech companies and websites are supporting the opposition’s camp. One of the websites that has backed anti-SOPA efforts from the start is the social news community Reddit, and yesterday the site’s General Manager Erik Martin said he fears Reddit may cease to exist if the bill passes.

“If SOPA passes in anything like its current form, it would almost certainly mean the end of Reddit. It may not happen overnight, but we have a very small staff (~11, mostly engineers), and even dealing with DMCA stuff is a big burden for us,” Martin writes in a comment under his username “hueypriest.”

“SOPA would make running Reddit near impossible. And we have access to great lawyers through our parent company. I can’t imagine how smaller sites without those kind of resources could even attempt a go at it if SOPA passes.”

One of the problems for Reddit is that the site deals with millions of users and thousands of sub-communities, many of which link to copyrighted material. This content can range from photographers’ copyrighted images, copyrighted clips on YouTube, through to copyrighted movies hosted on a third-party site.

Right now Reddit is protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provision which only requires Reddit to take down content if copyright holders ask them to, but SOPA can change this liability when a site is deemed to “facilitate copyright infringement.”

Because the definitions and terminology in the bill are so vague, passing SOPA in its current form poses a threat to all user-generated sites online, and many other websites too.

One of the users on Reddit rightfully commented that SOPA would mainly target foreign rogue sites, which would mean that Reddit isn’t at risk. However, Reddit’s general manager disagrees with this view arguing that the bill’s implications are much broader.

“You are correct that this is the stated goal of the bill, which has been clarified under the manager’s amendment. However, the analysis from experts in press and various experts we have consulted independently is that there is way too much room for US sites like Reddit to be targeted,” Martin writes.

“It doesn’t matter what they say the bill is for, the language is far too vague and far too easy for various parties to use it beyond the stated goals. Given our experience with DMCA, it’s a safe assumption that various rights holders will use SOPA in such a way that US companies like reddit are impacted.”

Indeed, SOPA also has a direct effect on US sites as they can become liable for linking to so-called rogue websites. Unless the definitions are made more clear virtually every site on the Internet can become a target, for example by linking to The Pirate Bay in a news article.

Opponents of SOPA argue that these and other issues are not worth risking, especially when it’s still unclear what impact online piracy really has on the entertainment industries. A better way to tackle the piracy problem could be to focus on the availability of affordable on-demand services. Netflix and Spotify have shown that people are often willing to pay for entertainment if they get the chance.

Source: SOPA Will Mean The End of Reddit, Says General Manager

Popularity: 1% [?]

This morning we published an article on a new campaign by cyberlocker service Megaupload.

Site founder Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak he had commissioned a song from producer Printz Board featuring huge recording artists including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige. These and others were shouting the praises of Megaupload.

By this afternoon #megaupload was trending on Twitter as news of the song spread. Little surprise interest was so high; Megaupload is described as a rogue site by the RIAA and here are some of their key labels’ artists promoting the service in the most powerful way possible – through a song.

And then, just a little while ago, the music stopped. Visitors to YouTube hoping to listen to the Mega Song were met with the following message.

TorrentFreak immediately contacted Kim to find out what was happening.

“Those UMG criminals. They are sending illegitimate takedown notices for content they don’t own,” he told us. “Dirty tricks in an effort to stop our massively successful viral campaign.”

So did Universal have any right at all to issue YouTube with a takedown notice? Uncleared samples, anything?

“Mega owns everything in this video. And we have signed agreements with every featured artist for this campaign,” Kim told TorrentFreak.

“UMG did something illegal and unfair by reporting Mega’s content to be infringing. They had no right to do that. We reserve our rights to take legal action. But we’d like to give them the opportunity to apologize.”

“UMG is such a rogue label,” Kim added, wholly appreciating the irony.

A few minutes after this exchange Kim contacted us with good news. After filing a YouTube copyright takedown dispute, the video was reinstated. But alas, just seconds later, it was taken down again.

“We filed a dispute, the video came back online and now it’s blocked again by UMG and the automated YouTube system has threatened to block our account for repeat infringement,” Kim explained.

TorrentFreak spoke with Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director at EFF, who says this type of copyright abuse is nothing new.

“This appears to be yet another example of the kind of takedown abuse we’ve seen under existing law — and another reason why Congress should soundly reject the broad new powers contemplated in the Internet Blacklist Bills, aka SOPA/PIPA.

“If IP rightholders can’t be trusted to use the tools already at their disposal — and they can’t — we shouldn’t be giving them new ways to stifle online speech and creativity,” McSherry concludes.

Sherwin Siy, Deputy Legal Director at Public Knowledge, worries that this type of sweeping power would only be augmented with the arrival of the SOPA anti-piracy bill in the US.

“If UMG took down a video it has no rights to, then what we have here is exactly the sort of abuse that careless, overzealous, or malicious copyright holders can create by abusing a takedown law,” he told us.

“What makes this even worse is that UMG, among others, is pushing to expand its power to shut people down by fiat–SOPA lets rightsholders de-fund entire websites with the same sort of non-reviewed demand that removed this video,” he concludes.

Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom informs us that he has now submitted an international counter notification to YouTube, informing them that UMG has no rights to anything in the video and that the label abused the YouTube takedown system to sabotage the company’s business.

“It’s ridiculous how UMG is abusing their intervention powers in YouTube’s system to stop our legitimate campaign. They are willfully sabotaging this viral campaign. They own no rights to this content,” Kim insists.

“What UMG is doing is illegal. And those are the people who are calling Mega rogue? Insanity!”

Streisand Effect, here we come again.

Update: “The fact that this expression could be silenced by a major label — without any apparent infringement — should be seriously troubling to anyone who cares about artists’ speech rights,” says Casey Rae-Hunter, Deputy Director, Future of Music Coalition. “If this can happen to Snoop Dogg and others, it can happen to anyone.”
—

Source: Universal Censors Megaupload Song, Gets Branded a “Rogue Label”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen, who are better known by their former name of Antipiratgruppen, have revealed their latest target. Surprisingly though, it’s not a notorious torrent portal or some other so-called ‘rogue site’.

According to comments made in the print version of Politiken, RettighedsAlliancen have sent an urgent demand to the Danish “bailiff court” (known locally as Fogedretten) to have the country’s Internet service providers block US-based streaming music service Grooveshark.

“When you want to offer music on the Danish market, one must have an agreement with rightholders to do so. Grooveshark does not and has been completely uncooperative,” explained RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund.

In recent years access to authorized streaming services such as Spotify has increased for Danes, says Fredenslund, so now is the time to give those types of companies protection.

“There is a burgeoning market for online music that we believe it is necessary to support. We are in a situation where the market will die if Grooveshark continues,” she adds.

Previously other sites have been blocked on copyright infringement grounds in Denmark including AllofMP3 and more recently The Pirate Bay, but the situation with Grooveshark is more complex. Since sites like TPB do not honor DMCA-style takedown requests, arguing that they should be blocked becomes a greatly simplified process. For Grooveshark the situation is much more complex.

Senior VP of Information Products at Grooveshark, Paul Geller, is on record stating that “there is nothing illegal” about Grooveshark since like its video counterpart YouTube, by responding to takedown notices it enjoys Safe Harbor under the DMCA.

Rightsholders in Denmark, however, say they don’t have the patience to deal with the process and that taking down content effectively from Grooveshark has proved impossible. Just like the RIAA, they suggest that the DMCA swings too far in favor of service providers, and official label licensing is required for a service to be considered legitimate. (Grooveshark is in fact licensed by EMI and dozens of other labels)

Nevertheless, Geller’s position on takedowns is widely supported. Piratgruppen chairman Troels Møller describes this new move against Grooveshark as “censorship.”

“Grooveshark reacts to takedown notices, but that is not good enough for the copyright industry – they want complete control,” Troels told TorrentFreak. “And I can see why since Spotify, partially owned by the record companies, was just launched in Denmark. It is a very convenient time to get rid of the competition.”

“Denmark is becoming a censoring state, much like Syria, Tunisia, China, etc. They are effectively destroying the internet. It’s becoming less and less neutral and free,” Troels adds. “Luckily they are only using DNS-blocking so far, which can be easily circumvented.”

Troels is concerned that should a block against Grooveshark be approved, it sets a worryingly low blocking threshold for other sites in the future.

“If the same logic is applied throughout the internet, the next logical step would be to block Facebook, YouTube, Soundcloud and similar sites, which also host potentially infringing material until notified,” he concludes.

Jakob Willer of the Telecommunications Industry Association of Denmark says it’s not for his group or the ISPs to decide whether Grooveshark is legal, but hopes the service will get a chance to defend itself.

“I hope that Grooveshark will be consulted in the process because they are the ones who where applicable, will be barred,” Willer concludes.

Grooveshark’s Geller says he is unaware of any case pending against his company in Denmark.

Source: Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court To Order Grooveshark DNS Block

Popularity: unranked [?]

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

Popularity: 1% [?]

Two days ago, we revealed how a report on the economic impact of Internet piracy in Australia was so secretive that the journalists reporting on it hadn’t seen it. Even established researchers wrote in to TorrentFreak complaining about the secrecy.

It now seems that the building pressure has had an effect. After multiple phone calls, emails and even filing a freedom of information request with the Attorney General who quoted the report, it was finally made public a few hours ago.

So now that the report has been published, what are we dealing with? Well, it turns out that the ‘study’ is nothing more than a direct translation of one of the most questioned piracy reports that has ever been published.

It is entirely based on the EU-focused “Building a Digital Economy” report that was released by TERA Consultants last year. On the one hand this explains why a ‘real-estate” company could have easily penned it, as no original analysis was needed. But it also means that previous flaws were copied.

For one, the report suggests that there’s a direct correlation between Internet traffic growth and lost jobs. That is, the more traffic that is generated on the Internet, the more money will be lost. This correlation is 1 according to the report, which assumes that all growth in Internet traffic will increase piracy at the same rate.

Just to illustrate how twisted this line of reasoning is, by following the same logic one should conclude that by getting a 5 times faster connection, people will automatically watch 5 times more videos on YouTube, and visit 5 times as many websites. It’s easy to see that this makes no sense whatsoever.

This absurd logic is accompanied by the age old fable that there’s a direct correlation between piracy volume and lost sales. The report states that more traffic will mean more piracy and thus more lost revenue. It does not account for the fact that people might consume higher quality media which is greater in file-size. All projections are based on bandwidth and not the number of pirated goods.

For a complete list of fallacies, errors and misleading assumptions we refer to our previous coverage on the original report.

To us, it is absolutely incomprehensible that Australia’s Attorney General considers this report as a basis for shaping future copyright law. Aside from the fact that it was commissioned by the entertainment industry and carried out by a company that is not even four months old, it should be disregarded based on the horrible methodology.

The Australian Pirate Party, who helped with our attempts to uncover the report and the people behind it, has to be applauded for obtaining the report through a Freedom of Information request. We suspect that without this pressure, the document may have never been released so quickly.

“As taxpayers, as electors, we are entitled to transparency from our lawmakers,” Pirate Party Australia’s Rodney Serkowski told TorrentFreak.

“Now we see the reasons for their opacity. It is a study riddled with issues, and the Attorney General must now explain how he could be so easily mislead and rely on such industry propaganda, which is used as justification to impose stricter enforcement, compromising fundamental rights like privacy.”

The report, with all its flaws and shortcomings, once again reveals to what lengths the entertainment industry is willing to go in order to mislead politicians. A sad state of affairs, and let’s hope that now that it’s out, the Australian press will again pick up on it to address its validity.

TorrentFreak

Popularity: 1% [?]

For the last two years the spectre of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA as it’s better known, has loomed large on the horizon. For many the Treaty stands as a threat and is synonymous with corporate control of the man in the street and his creativity. After becoming popular with filesharers through his open letter songs to Lily Allen and Peter Mandelson, today Dan Bull is back with a TorrentFreak interview and his brand new track D.O.A.C.T.A – Death of ACTA.

Although he has been hard at work and getting good reviews in both local and national media for some time, UK-based one-man music machine Dan Bull really hit the Internet conciousness in September 2009.

After Lily Allen stirred up a file-sharing hornet’s nest with her anti-piracy rhetoric, Dan put together ‘Dear Lily‘. This open letter received several hundred thousand views on YouTube alone and a month later Dan followed it up with a dressing down of Peter Mandelson over the Digital Economy Act.

In recognition of his ability to connect with an audience, Midlands-based Dan was soon commissioned by ISP TalkTalk to create a track to protest against the proposed disconnection of file-sharers.

Now, just over 6 months later he’s back again with a brand new track. ACTA is in the spotlight this time and as usual, Dan takes his subject matter apart with insightful and often biting lyrics delivered with expert clarity and timing.

But before we get our first taste of the track D.O.A.C.T.A (Death of ACTA) with its accompanying video, here is Dan with some thoughts on the Treaty.

TF: What are your feelings on how ACTA has developed and where it appears to be going?

Dan: ACTA is being worked on behind closed doors, in a totally undemocratic fashion. What we’ve seen so far is very worrying though. It’s clearly been put together by people who don’t know or care how the internet works. Not only that, but it means that you can be punished for a newly created crime without any evidence that you’ve committed it. Just an accusation from an industry lawyer is enough – and we’ve already seen with ACS Law how irresponsible and inaccurate they are. Do we really want companies like ACS Law given the power of judge, jury and executioner?

However, it’s not too late to contact your representatives in government – start putting the pressure on and let them know this kind of secret, unelected and irresponsible policy making is unacceptable.

TF: Do you think that ACTA will actually change anything?

Dan: It’s not going to change things in the way it’s meant to. Filesharing and piracy will carry on as before – the law is always one step behind technology. The only thing ACTA will do is stifle innovation and communication. How could sites like YouTube and Flickr exist if the owners of those sites are held liable for everything their users upload? It’s like saying that Bic is responsible if someone writes a death threat using one of their pens. It’s a load of bollocks.

The funny thing is that the entertainment industry is only a fraction of the size of the technology and communications industry. Yet this tiny sector is managing to force through ridiculously backward protectionist laws that make things harder for everyone else except themselves.

TF: How do you feel that the people will respond to ACTA’s introduction?

Dan: I can’t imagine there are many people outside the entertainment industry who support it. In fact I’m surprised the technology sector hasn’t rallied together to fight against it. People who don’t know the facts about it should be told, and people who know the facts should be gravely concerned.

TF: Do you think that legislation has the ability to mould and control people’s behavior and creativity?

Dan: Yes, but only in useless ways. Filesharers won’t be swayed, they’ll just find other ways to carry on doing what they were doing before. ACTA is going to damage creativity though – pretty much all creative work is derivative of previous work, so by criminalising copyright infringement, ACTA will bring us into a ridiculous situation where all artists are criminals. Even walking to work whilst whistling a tune you heard on the radio is technically an unauthorised performance of a copyrighted work, and once ACTA is in place, it’s a crime you could theoretically go to prison for.

TF: Tell us a little about the video that accompanies the song.

Dan: The video was filmed at The Golden Hinde in London, which is a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s ship. My friend Russ Houghton came up with the pirate ship concept, and also produced and directed the video, with the help of a couple of his colleagues, who work in television. Thanks very much to them for helping out.

TF: Cheers for chatting with us Dan, keep up the good work.

The MP3 of D.O.A.C.T.A can be downloaded here and you can follow Dan on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Beer money gratefully accepted here, along with any spare Flattrs.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 4% [?]

An indie game developer is doing rather well from approaching things just a little bit differently, and even winning over pirates in the process. Notch, the driving force behind the still-in-alpha game Minecraft, says there’s absolutely no point in fighting the Internet and “the biggest revolution in information flow since the printing press”. Results so far? 155,000 people have purchased a game that isn’t even finished yet.

Week in, week out, we sit here at TorrentFreak engaged in our never-ending task to document developments in BitTorrent, file-sharing in general but increasingly the online war against music, movie and software pirates. This war has been going on now for a decade or more and shows absolutely no sign of ending. The general consensus is that it simply cannot be won.

Or can it?

Last week TorrentFreak had a very civil email exchange with someone working for a very powerful media company with an almost unrivaled reputation for being tough against online piracy. Refreshingly we discussed ways of moving forward, and touched on the relationships big companies have with their customers. Sadly, big music and movie companies have a lot of ground to make up in the PR department – relating more closely to their customers and giving something back wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.

So how could this be achieved? We didn’t get that far – so often the all-important devil is in the detail – but the example shown by programmer Markus Persson might be a great pointer.

Persson, known online as ‘Notch’, runs a company called Mojang Specifications and has dozens of projects under his belt. For now, though, his main focus is a game called Minecraft.

The development of Minecraft, which is still in alpha, is being charted on the game’s dev blog and has already attracted an excited and enthusiastic fanbase. There are many popular videos detailing the game on YouTube which seem to have begun here.

Despite currently having graphics to make a 10 year-old machine blush, the refreshing approach to this game is clearly winning over hearts and minds in the target audience. The attitude of Notch, who yesterday revealed he’s a member of the Pirate Party, is even winning over pirates.

Although Minecraft already has 658429 registered players, due to the fact that it’s widely available on torrent and warez sites, many of these are unauthorized users.

But what’s most impressive is that at the time of writing, 155521 (23.62%) of these have already bought the game of their own free will. In the last 24 hours alone, a 11804 people registered to play, and 4910 of them bought the game. (updated stats here)

In an interesting piece yesterday, Notch went into some detail on his attitude to piracy.

“To people who want to get paid for their digital works, myself included, [piracy/copying] is a bit of a problem. All of society and economics is based on an old outdated model where giving something to someone would rid the original owner of their copy, so everyone who wanted a copy had to buy one from someone else who would lose theirs, and the only source of new copies was you.”

“There might be actual development costs involved in making these copies. For example, for every wheel in the market, someone had to make that wheel. With digital copies, you only need to make the wheel once,” Notch explains.

In contrast with the media exec TorrentFreak spoke with last week, Notch doesn’t try to analyze why people pirate and labels that a moot point, but notes that while this amazingly effective way of distributing culture is beneficial to humanity, it also clashes with current economical models.

“Piracy will win in the long run. It has to,” says Notch. “The alternative is too scary.”

While Notch acknowledges that if someone pirates Minecraft he may have lost some “potential” revenue, he is also very aware of the marketing potential that pirates could release.

“But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game? I’d make three actual sales instead of blocking out the potentially missed sale of the original person which never cost me any money in the first case.”

Wasting money on trying to stop pirates or laying a guilt-trip on them are not approaches favored by Notch. Instead he prefers to offer online-only services that will add something to the game experience including level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. He hopes that these subtle feature additions can help to tempt pirates into become customers.

Of course, Notch is also pragmatic when he notes that if he suddenly got a deal with a big company, they may demand a more aggressive stance against file-sharers. Nevertheless, he feels there are better ways to deal with them than by force.

“Why fight the biggest revolution in information flow since the printing press when you could easily work with it by adding services that actually add some value beyond the free act of making a digital copy?” he concludes.

After revealing his Pirate Part affiliations yesterday, Notch also revealed his secret admiration of file-sharing.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I actually kinda like file sharing as a concept,” he told everyone on Twitter yesterday.

“It’s like the replicators in Star Trek, but seedier.”

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 3% [?]

New York Daily News

Prince: Internet age is over, digital gadgets are no good T3 … time Prince has clashed with the online revolution. He's filed lawsuits against Pirate Bay, YouTube and eBay in the past, claiming misuse of his music. Prince: the internet's completely overTelegraph.co.uk Prince Troll Says That The Internet Is Outdated, While Computers And Gadgets …Soft Sailor (blog) Prince: 'The Internet is completely over'Metro Mashable (blog) -TorrentFreak (blog) -3News all 259 news articles »

Popularity: 1% [?]