News Downloaders face being cut off

Access Denied

It was like that when I got here...
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This is completely unworkable. People who download music and movies illegally will do so no matter what measures the Government implement. If they cut off their broadband they will simply move to a different ISP or hijack someone elses wi-fi. Besides there are enough programs out there that make tracking what someone is downloading impossible that the Mandelsons target of a 70% reduction in illegal file sharing and downloading is a joke.

Discuss!
 

CorNokZ

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It's easy to say when you're not the artist losing out on a lot of profit every year, isn't it?
 

Thadius

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The thread topic is misleading, I expecting to see a video of a downloader being mutilated :(
 

Everz

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It's easy to say when you're not the artist losing out on a lot of profit every year, isn't it?

Yes, woe is us having to settle for a ferrari instead of a bugatti. Woe is me.
 

Thadius

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Itsd not the artist that suffers most, its the various sound engineers and such,m those who do most of the grunt techie work for shitty pay, that miss out this most.
 

CorNokZ

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I bet you'd be pissed if you did some work and someone else stole it and distributed it without you getting any gold
 

Thadius

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I bet you'd be pissed if you did some work and someone else stole it and distributed it without you getting any gold

We have all camped Cloudsong, just to find the artifact on the guy who stole the mobs House Merchant....



:(
 

kiliarien

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I bet you'd be pissed if you did some work and someone else stole it and distributed it without you getting any gold

Agree & disagree here. I do believe smaller bands and production staff in particular seem to be losing out.

Larger bands & actors/actresses/studios? They seem to be making MORE money, studios have offered larger budgets on more films (until the recession et al, which was way after illegal file sharing) and actors' salaries' have continued to climb.

Something here doesn't fit - and it's big media businesses going 'boo hoo, we're only making 500 million profit instead of 2 billion'. They can go stuff themselves.

Govt legislation will never be ahead of the game.
 

old.Tohtori

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Once more they don't count out the people who wouldn't buy their music at all without piratism, from the "stolen records" and as such would lose sales too, due to people telling others of a nice band they downloaded.

In any case; pirates won't go away, stop throwing money at trying and use that money to lower CD prices.
 

pwn

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It's easy to say when you're not the artist losing out on a lot of profit every year, isn't it?

Maybe so, but most of the music I download is by artists who are either dead or already stinking rich.
 

fl3a

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Agree & disagree here. I do believe smaller bands and production staff in particular seem to be losing out.

i dont know about the smaller bands thing. some of the musicians i know who have put out a record are quite happy to find someone listening to their music, even if it is downloaded or someone has put it on youtube or whatever the hell. as long as people are listening to it it is good. records are just a part of getting the people to know what kind of music the band does. once the music is out there, there will be people coming to their shows, paying the ticket prices and mayhaps (if possible) buying the autographed records after the show.

now, to talk about the 'behind the scenes people' who are missing out on profit due to piracy - thats bullshit. there are two kinds of people working behind the scenes.
the ones that get paid per hour or per job, and they dont give a fuck how well it sells or whatnot. they get paid when their job is done, not when the record goes platinum. and the other type of people are those that do nothing other than have the means of production - they are the people who own the recording studios, who get to tell the radio stations to play this and that song by this and that artist, that kind of people. the first get paid whatever happens, and the second are getting an unproportionally large paycheck for the bs that they do.

the original cds i have are by artists that are not that well known, that i bought directly from the artists themselves. they are the same studio records that you can get in the record store, only i had downloaded them earlier, liked it, gone to their show and bought it from them. the rest of my music collection (about 30gb these days) has all been downloaded. and i dont feel bad about it one bit.
 

Chronictank

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It's easy to say when you're not the artist losing out on a lot of profit every year, isn't it?

Artist doesnt lose out the distributor does

And you assume that every track downloaded is a lost sale, which is not the case no matter how much mr/mrs corporate wants to believe it is
So the 70% quote for all intents and purposes may aswell just be plucked out of the air

While i don't condone piracy it is stupid to assume 70% (assuming it is even true considering it couldnt have come from a more bias source) is even a meaningful number other than the number of tracks downloaded
 

kirennia

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Music:
In the music industry, correct me if I'm wrong but aren't album sale profits pretty much all going to the record label? In accordance with that, bands get their money largely via touring and you can't download a tour...sort of ;). Why on earth should a band be worried about the money from album sales anyway. Surely by default, all bands should be happy that their work is being heard. If your album really is good enough, you'll make money from it anyway. Piracy just adds to the word of mouth. How many bands have people heard since the introduction of file sharing that they otherwise would never have heard?

Back in 2000 some friends and I went to Reading festival, threw a CD onto the main stage and it was played in between bands. I wont forget how happy we all were that it was played and essentially, the introduction of the internet has given the oppurtunity for this scope of publicity to be increased many times over. Okay file sharing might loose a fraction of monetary sales but the offset of internet publicity more then makes up for this... give a little, take a little and where is the problem with that? Don't punish people who essentially give you free advertising,

Films:
With films, it's questionable. Undoubtedly, piracy does to some degree reduce potential sales, thus profits. At the same time though, rather then throwing their toys out of the pram, perhaps more film producers should be adapting with the times, avoiding ridiculous salary actors/actresses and concentrating the budget elsewhere such as in making a decent storyline (re: Michael Bay). That will more then offset the minimal damage done by piracy where if films weren't available for downloading, many people just wouldn't bother anyway. Word of mouth of a genuinely decent film will make money for the producers in the long run. If in doubt, look at the budgets and sales of labelled 'classic films' which still continue to make money to this day such as The Godfather trilogy and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Transformers will be forgetten about in a years time and in my opinion rightly so...

Games:
Then there are the games whereby some outright stupid changes are being made to the games themselves (re:DRM), punishing those who actually pay for games rather then anythingelse. Unfortunately, many companies are using piracy as a scapegoat for easier, shoddier production of titles on the consoles instead of the PC where the whole industry seems to be turning to shit. Perhaps it's just a sign that large scale game development just doesn't work anymore (if indeed, it really ever did) and that more people should band together in smaller groups and produce original titles which people are more willing to pay for as the price tag is more suitable.

Unfortunately, as I have this thought the pessimist in me is shining through though; as much as I hate franchises such as just about every EA game ever in existance (re:sequels), COD54 etc, it does have some appeal to the teenage masses which is why they're still in existance. Sad... even pitiful but it's just basic supply and demand :(


All:
I'd be half tempted to put in isolation those who make shit, large budget feature films, game franchises and rinse repeat ad nauseum manufactured 'bands/artists' and say they're the only ones who have anything to be worried about with piracy. Bottom line, I personally don't give a fuck about that particular group of people; if something is worth while, I'll part with my cash...the rest of them I wouldn't bother with them if I actually had to pay anyway. Some will argue that you shouldn't download if you wouldn't buy something but seriously, how many titles in all three art groups have we all been promised will be good with clever advertising only to find out, they're in fact complete shite.

I'm therefore a try before you buy consumer and beleive others should be too. If afterall I fell into the trap of paying £40 on say 'Command & Conquer 65 : Revenge of the mind of the body of the symbiotic entity that once was Kane' and it turned out to be rubbish, that's £40 I wouldn't end up giving towards a production team which genuinely deserves it.
 

Gahn

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Once more they don't count out the people who wouldn't buy their music at all without piratism, from the "stolen records" and as such would lose sales too, due to people telling others of a nice band they downloaded.

In any case; pirates won't go away, stop throwing money at trying and use that money to lower CD prices.

This i do agree!
 

Syri

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Once more they don't count out the people who wouldn't buy their music at all without piratism, from the "stolen records" and as such would lose sales too, due to people telling others of a nice band they downloaded.

In any case; pirates won't go away, stop throwing money at trying and use that money to lower CD prices.

I agree with Toht completely here. The majority of piracy is people who wouldn't make an impulse buy anyway, and just want to see what it's like. The amount who pirate for keeps is extremely low.
Also it's not like piracy is a new problem. It started with recording your mate's lp onto a cassette tape, moved on to tape to tape, cd to tape, cd to cd, video to video and so on, it's been going on for years, just in different ways.
Best way to combat it is to make owning and trying out the media cheaper and easier. Have more free, low quality samplers, and the option to buy the higher quality version, at a cheaper rate than current. I'm sure that alone would generate a lot of sales, as a lot of the file sharing is just to try something out, and see if you would actually like it.
just my view on it all anyway.
 

Hawkwind

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It's easy to say when you're not the artist losing out on a lot of profit every year, isn't it?

Yeah! Seeing them on street corners asking for change is quite embarrassing!

To be honest record companies should have embraced new technology and created their own versions of iTunes years back. Instead they are playing catch up without understanding the market at all.

People got ripped off when media changed to CD. I remember in mid 80's when CD first came on the scene and we were told the disks would last forever, you can scratch them and still work and they were cheaper than vinyl to produce! Yet albums went from between 5.99 to 7.99 up to around 14.99 plus. We were completely ripped off by the record companies. They got what they deserved imo!

You should see how the record companies rip off artists, just look at the Clash for a prime example. A group forced to stay on the road to afford to eat whilst their record company made millions. They are no angels!

I still buy a lot of CD's have over 500 at home. The only stuff I download is UK and US TV.
 

Genedril

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People got ripped off when media changed to CD. I remember in mid 80's when CD first came on the scene and we were told the disks would last forever, you can scratch them and still work and they were cheaper than vinyl to produce! Yet albums went from between 5.99 to 7.99 up to around 14.99 plus. We were completely ripped off by the record companies. They got what they deserved imo!

IIRC they justified the price hike as 'paying for the development costs' of CD tech. They claimed that in time the prices would go down (Boom Boom as Basil might say).

Artists do get a cut of album sales but it's infintesimal for most Artists (likes of U2 & Metallica probably get a fair whack) so while it's wrong (it's theft any way you cut it) playing the moral 'you're making artists starve' card is far from truthful. Whether you care about it being theft is down to the person - I don't care about breaking the national speed limit (but expect to pay the penalty if I get caught).
 

Sparx

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Piracy is nothing new at all, we have all been infront of our stereos taping the top 40 to get the songs as children.
Or bought dodgy DVDs

This is just a modern way of copying. Stop this and another method with happen
 

Zenith.UK

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Spotify and Grooveshark must be looking forward to the increased suscription numbers.
 

soze

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If i could not dl music my CD collection would be about 100 albums lighter I will dl a band in a genre i like and if i like them i will buy it if not i tend to get rid. Lots of albums i own i have seen one song on TV and decided it was ok but i would not spend £10 on a album based on that.
 

Overdriven

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I've cut my piracy levels by like 90%, Spotify helped that. Plus I just stream video now, cba downloading. Megaupload premium is nice.
 

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