nothing necessarily new but it was interesting to see grimes twitter reaction to her leak yesterday

dan – just a polite request (and this applies to EVERYONE!) – can youse please provide the actual link to this kind of thing?? Grimes’ Twitter is at https://twitter.com/#!/Grimezsz but I can’t see the tweets you refer to. I’ve NO problems with links to relevant stuff like this and it saves me time scooting around looking for it.

Ivan – very good points, which I agree with as well, though I think the argument made in the Monday Note about geographical and time barriers, which heighten piracy, is one worth parsing thoroughly.

Halandor – in case people are interested, that chart is at http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/081611thirty

The problem for the record industry is that they thought that CD bubble would go on forever. I’ve told this story before here (I think): I worked in a major label in the 1990s in London and was the guy sent to do meetings with various tech and telecoms people who would call in to talk about the internet and new technologies and opportunities – I was sent because, at the time, I was the only one who was even remotely online-savvy. Anyway, I’d come back from the meetings raving about what I’d heard and how we had to investigate these things more and prepare reports etc but no-one would listen because the label, like every label, was making out like a bandit from CD sales. What I found out years later was that there was someone like me at every label in town, who was taking the meetings and getting enthused but who wasn’t being listened to. I’ve zilch sympathy for the labels because it’s their own intertia and own inability to futureproof their business which has led to this impasse.

https://twitter.com/#!/shesmyman/status/162620113823084545

https://twitter.com/#!/Grimezsz/status/162679365040209920

https://twitter.com/#!/Grimezsz/status/162679622717284352

the first is a tweet she retweeted. the next two are replies to a tweet from her mother whose reactions are interesting in themselves.

never knew you were a major label hack for a while Jim, god love you..

why isn’t the plain-as-day fact of this bubble in the chart you’ve now provided the link for above not a bigger part of the narrative? obviously, the majors are going to suppress such facts.. but perhaps it’s in everyone elses interests to shout it from the rooftops.. someone needs to stick those figures right up Seán Sherlock’s uptight rectum.. although he probably wouldn’t understand them. the interesting stat on the stop ireland’s sopa petition is as of yesterday evening it was attracting a signature every four seconds.

for me (and i’m not getting all conspiratoire here but..), the piracy legislation they’re slowly trying to implement online will have an undoubted knock-on effect with an individual’s privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of expression. there’s simply no way of enforcing any piracy laws without encroaching on people’s privacy.

What’s changed post SOPA in the US is the scope and determination of the reaction. Yochai Benkler (key legal scholar, wrote The Power of Networks) is a must-read on this(http://techpresident.com/news/21680/seven-lessons-sopapipamegauplaod-and-four-proposals-where-we-go-here.

Milton L Mueller’s (whose book Network & States is all about territoriality of enforcement and internet governace) observation is also worth noting, that we are all Internet exceptionalists now (http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2012/1/25/4985495.html

Linda Scales who was one of the authors of the Copyright and Related Rights Act which is the one found to be faulty by Justice Charleton is keeping very much to the just a bit of housekeeping message (http://kluwercopyrightblog.com/2012/01/26/ireland%E2%80%99s-sopa/). In a sense it is just “housekeeping” but the process and outcomes can be enormous.
If injunctions were only to be used to seek relief against clearly criminal cases of massive infringement by actors making money you’d find much less resistance. As it stands courts will decide the scope and limit of the law and that worries people, justifiably.

This is not about intellectual fig leafs, copyright is a conceptual mess at the moment and has been for years. JP Barlow was on the money back in 1994 (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html).

The simple truth is people don’t respect copyright as it stands, especially young people and especially music consumers (music is inherently social). You can see that in the Oxford Internet Institute report or any reserach in the matter really.

The other idea or meme that has taken flight is that no one believes these industries. See how Julian Sanchez’s take on the piracy numbers(http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-regulation-and-the-economics-of-piracy.ars)

I’ve most of EMI’s back catalgoue and each album is wholly legit. As is the rest of my music collection. WHen was a kid was convinced by that old sleeve liner that used protect the record and had a stylised skull and x-bones with the skull made out of a cassette and the warning ”HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC”. Never would buy pirated stuff after that. Got older also was convinced by the idea of the tragedy of the commons, that stuff people got for free they would destroy by over-consuming and lack of re-investment. I see EMI were one of the group of major labels went after and shut down Napster. Piracy isn’t the only thing that doesn’t recognise borders or boundaries of statutory instruments. THere are other things like say landmines. Of which EMI was one of the world’s largest manufacturers for a long time (up until around 1996). So another reason for feeling a little less sympathetic to the ‘plaints of the Labels perhaps. Plus this statement from your first link there Jim
”Indeed it is unclear whether internet music file-swapping is so bad for the music industry after all.

Users of Napster software, which allows users to share digital music files, are likely to buy more records than non-Napster users, according to a recent survey of 2,200 Napster users”.

The tragedy of the Commons is premised on the Commons being a finite resource. I wonder in cyber-space is there any sort of Commons though? People used be hung for stealing horses from the Commons as one judge observed it wasn’t so much to punish them as to discourage others from stealing ‘orses from the Commons. To which one might reply ‘But people still steal horses from the Commons!’. Given labels don’t even have to go to the expense of producing a physical product any more as in some sort of carrier media like a CD tape or vinyl aren’t they effectively owners of infinite grazing?

Still all my music is legit. Only ever bought one pirate CD (threw away the CD and kept the case and badly photocopied artwork. Just as a protest against the band concerned. Bought in a bar in Glyfada in Athens deliberately because it was a Metallica one. Not so much for their stance against filesharing and piracy generally as that pretty dreadful rehash they did of the song I’ll be buried to (Whiskey in the JAr) sorry lads did ye have to? Never mind landmines that was a bomb.

I wonder, given how little most artists allegedly get (those who don’t have to close up shop here and shift to the ‘Dam for tax optimisation reasons anyway) feckall from their labels I’m wondering if there oughtn’t to be a new way at looking at music and indeed the written word in terms of copyright? Ireland’s apparently the first place in the world that a copyright ruling was ever made (‘to every cow her calf so to every book her copy”) and that ended up kicking off a war in which thousands were killed plus ca change again given certain Labels’ affinity with producing records not just in music but in landmine production. Anyway. My point was that back in the time of St. Colmcille and the Battle of the Books it took massive individual effort and inputs of time energy and materials to make a copy of an original work. Not so the case today. Perhaps it’s time to update the law on copyright.
Still wouldn’t justify counterfeit in any way shape or form. Worked in the Far East long enough in certain respects my work was involved with stopping counterfeits of my company’s products and I’ve seen all sorts of lethality produced by pirates too. Antibiotics in name brand containers that are largely cement dust; absolutely convincing main auto parts manufacturer brake pads made out of pressed grass, main auto manufacturer branded track suits with no flame retardant in them; the same people in China make and distribute pirate DVDs and CDs make and distribute thos sort of things also so unfair perhaps to blame the music biz for producing lethal things that respect neither borders nor boundaries nor stautory instruments.

Have you heard any rumours about attack on irish government sites last week in protest of new EU legislation?

Copyright should simply be abolished. It’s economically absurd, but also morally bankrupt.

http://questioncopyright.org/

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

http://piratpartiet.se/

Between the war on drugs we don’t like (a-okay with alcohol, one of the most harmful drugs) and the war on terrorism that we don’t like (a-okay with police terrrorising protestors though) and now the war on sharing, is it any wonder that “young people” don’t respect the law? Laws that are worthy of respect are still respected – most people aren’t going around murdering people. But that’s because it’s wrong, not merely because it’s been made illegal through gross regulatore capture by greyhairs at the heads of corporations.

thanks

Companies need to start making it easier for people to buy content legally online. Music, for example. If you have an Android phone that won’t run iTunes, it is frustratingly difficult to buy music legally. Until they make it easy for me to buy a song online on my device (which is a very popular one), they can bugger off.

@ 22 What are you on about ?

Notions that copyright should be abolished are utterly wrong headed, for a mass of reasons.

Without copyright protection, then the recording of popular music basically comes to an end. It costs a lot of money to create a professional music recording – how does that get earned back if it gets pirated and downloaded for nothing? The outlay doesn;t stop at recording, an act has to go out an promote their single or album, and these campaigns also cost money – lots of it. Nobody will buy a record that they don’t hear about.

This applies at all levels, whether it is a major record label or a small indie band juggling their credit cards.

If there is no means of recouping the cost and turning a profit (i.e. earning a living) then nobody is going to spend the money. It’s as simple as that. The same goes for films, books or any patent etc.

The existence of copyright means that it makes economic sense to make something, the absence of copyright means no economics and the world will have to get used to having much less music, films and books etc to savour.

What about the thousands of employees working in recording studios, promotional agencies, distributors and retailers (high street and online), who’s jobs depend on the fact that the music they work on is copyright protected.

Piracy is not a victimless crime.

Agree 100% with Wayne. The more you think about this issue, the more you have to concede that the industry had the ability to head this off at the pass but didn’t do so. I have sympathies for the labels – it wouldn’t be any other way seeing as I worked in the sector back in the day – but I find the fuming, legal actions and trying to turn things around to be wholly pointless. The only way out of this is through innovation and sadly, the innovative people in the major record business have already scarpered.

John Flahive – interesting that you spin what we’re saying here – ie a positive proposition that the industry needs to innovate to take account of how people’s consumption habits have changed – into a pro-piracy statement. I can’t speak for Wayne but that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m agreeing with the position put by the Monday Note above that legal challenges and blocking access do not work and that’s it time – time which is long overdue – for the industry to take some innovative steps. Perhaps deal with that, rather than spinning. After all, one way to “minimise’ piracy and crime is to give customers what they’re after – a system of hearing or downloading music which is not geographically- or time-encumbered and is priced right.

@ 30

Yeah they should have thrown in the Mp3 codes too , especially as if you had bought it on CD you could have just converted to Mp3 by just putting the disc into your laptop. So then you are at a disadvantage buying the vinyl…..I know you can convert vinyl to Mp3 but you need a special usb turntable

Love Solar Bears myself too