Dutch ISPs stand up against entertainment industry!

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Asp-Z
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29 Jan 2012, 12:36 pm

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Two large ISPs in the Netherlands have said they will not be blocking subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, as demanded by the Hollywood supported anti-piracy outfit BREIN. T-Mobile and KPN argue that blocking websites is a threat to the open Internet, and suggest that the entertainment industry focuses on new business models instead. BREIN is now expected to take the ISPs to court.

pirate bayTwo weeks ago, the Court of The Hague ruled that Ziggo, the largest ISP in the Netherlands, and competitor XS4ALL have to block access to The Pirate Bay.

The ruling was the first to bring broad censorship to the Netherlands and in a response XS4ALL said they were “bitterly disappointed”, noting that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests.”

For BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group that started the court case, the verdict wasn’t quite enough. The Hollywood-backed group wasted no time issuing requests for other ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay as well. Or else.

After internal discussions two large ISPs – KPN and T-Mobile – are now on record stating they will not honor BREIN’s request. This means that millions of Internet users in the Netherlands will still be able to access The Pirate Bay without having to go through proxies.

Speaking out against censorship, both Internet providers state they will only block The Pirate Bay following a court order and that innovation is a better way to deal with the problem of piracy.

“KPN sees the blocking of websites as a drastic measure for which a court order is required,” KPN said in a statement, adding that innovation is needed to curb piracy.

“KPN doesn’t believe a blockade is the right solution. What is needed are robust, attractive business models that are easy to use and offer a fair deal to both producers and consumers of content.”

T-Mobile also said that it will only respond to court orders, while it emphasized the value of an open Internet.

“T-Mobile strongly supports an open Internet and is fundamentally against shutting off access to websites. Dutch law is very clear when it comes to blocking access to the Internet. T-Mobile will only respond to a court ruling, not to demands from a private party such as BREIN.”

If BREIN follows up on threats that were made earlier, both ISPs can expect to be sued by the anti-piracy outfit in the near future. Ziggo and XS4ALL, meanwhile, are expected to enforce the blockade this coming Wednesday, February 1st.

Whether the blockade will have much of an effect is yet to be seen. Judging from what happened in other countries when the site was blocked, users will quickly find ways to route around the blockade to regain access to the world’s largest torrent site.


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Finally! If only other ISPs around the world would do the same! BT wasted no time in bending down for the entertainment industry when it came to censorship.



DemonAbyss10
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29 Jan 2012, 2:23 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
Two large ISPs in the Netherlands have said they will not be blocking subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, as demanded by the Hollywood supported anti-piracy outfit BREIN. T-Mobile and KPN argue that blocking websites is a threat to the open Internet, and suggest that the entertainment industry focuses on new business models instead. BREIN is now expected to take the ISPs to court.

pirate bayTwo weeks ago, the Court of The Hague ruled that Ziggo, the largest ISP in the Netherlands, and competitor XS4ALL have to block access to The Pirate Bay.

The ruling was the first to bring broad censorship to the Netherlands and in a response XS4ALL said they were “bitterly disappointed”, noting that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests.”

For BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group that started the court case, the verdict wasn’t quite enough. The Hollywood-backed group wasted no time issuing requests for other ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay as well. Or else.

After internal discussions two large ISPs – KPN and T-Mobile – are now on record stating they will not honor BREIN’s request. This means that millions of Internet users in the Netherlands will still be able to access The Pirate Bay without having to go through proxies.

Speaking out against censorship, both Internet providers state they will only block The Pirate Bay following a court order and that innovation is a better way to deal with the problem of piracy.

“KPN sees the blocking of websites as a drastic measure for which a court order is required,” KPN said in a statement, adding that innovation is needed to curb piracy.

“KPN doesn’t believe a blockade is the right solution. What is needed are robust, attractive business models that are easy to use and offer a fair deal to both producers and consumers of content.”

T-Mobile also said that it will only respond to court orders, while it emphasized the value of an open Internet.

“T-Mobile strongly supports an open Internet and is fundamentally against shutting off access to websites. Dutch law is very clear when it comes to blocking access to the Internet. T-Mobile will only respond to a court ruling, not to demands from a private party such as BREIN.”

If BREIN follows up on threats that were made earlier, both ISPs can expect to be sued by the anti-piracy outfit in the near future. Ziggo and XS4ALL, meanwhile, are expected to enforce the blockade this coming Wednesday, February 1st.

Whether the blockade will have much of an effect is yet to be seen. Judging from what happened in other countries when the site was blocked, users will quickly find ways to route around the blockade to regain access to the world’s largest torrent site.


Source

Finally! If only other ISPs around the world would do the same! BT wasted no time in bending down for the entertainment industry when it came to censorship.


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29 Jan 2012, 3:13 pm

Well, they are right about one thing, innovation is a much better way to deal with piracy. That's the whole reason people do that in the first place, because there is no innovation.



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29 Jan 2012, 3:24 pm

Mindslave wrote:
Well, they are right about one thing, innovation is a much better way to deal with piracy. That's the whole reason people do that in the first place, because there is no innovation.


QFT



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29 Jan 2012, 6:13 pm

What innovations?

What business models?

I keep hearing people say that's what the industry needs to do, but not very often have I heard any constructive alternatives. The music and movie business is in the business of selling music and movies. If everyone gets them for free, what alternative means of making money from making music and movies are there?

I come down in some ways on one side, and in other ways on the other side of this issue (don't ask me to elaborate ~ I'm not going there :P ), so I'm not challenging anyone other than to offer some real viable alternatives to the way these businesses work now. I believe there are some, but I haven't thought of one yet that would make them anywhere near as much money as they do now. I doubt any of my ideas would support the industries without severely affecting the quality of products they offer.


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29 Jan 2012, 7:24 pm

MrXxx wrote:
I keep hearing people say that's what the industry needs to do, but not very often have I heard any constructive alternatives.

To be fair, it is the content industry's problem, not the problem of people who don't want the internet to break. And, on top of it, they haven't done anything to understand the internet despite it being mainstream for nearly 2 decades.

I don't think it's that hard to come up with alternatives. Look at iTunes. Not a perfect solution, IMO, but it was immensely successful even though the record companies were dragged into it kicking and screaming.

The content industry has less to complain about than they think, isn't doing as badly as they keep saying, and hasn't bothered trying to figure out how to make money off the internet rather than try to make the internet go away.

If it were a strict choice between the internet and all big content, and one of them had to go away (which it isn't), I'd still be on the side of the internet. To a very large degree, freedom of speech lives on the internet, and that's much more important than certain artistic forms or big companies surviving. That's even if they were in danger of being wiped out completely, and they aren't.


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Asp-Z
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30 Jan 2012, 9:24 am

Constructive solutions: Netflix and Spotify. The industry needs to focus on supporting these services and others like them instead of trying to harm the open internet.



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30 Jan 2012, 12:20 pm

MrXxx wrote:
What innovations?

What business models?

Forgive me but IMHO that first question really sounds stupid: If a solution or idea already existed, it wouldn't be an innovation.

What business models? What about all the models they don't use?

As someone on here has pointed out, they could do exactly as the pirates do but better & earn all their advert money or better.

Speaking of adverts, I have never seen an advert for a legal download site. Streaming is just as bad. How about advertising your products smarter?

Setting up a download site per studio, having RRPs, making things easier to download.

Just a thought



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30 Jan 2012, 1:53 pm

I actually agree with the comments above. It's just that the industry has over a one hundred year history of working a certain way. I'm not going to post a history lesson here about it. It's too long and involved. Digital distribution changed everything. I think everyone knows that.

As the Internet exists right now, the old industry paradigms clearly aren't working anymore as well as they used to, for the Industry.

I totally agree that many of the measures attempted by the industry are intentionally designed as measures that, in their minds, will allow them to continue using business models they have used for the past several decades. Clearly some of the measures proposed, if not all, probably won't work to that end anyway. Clearly many, if not all of them could infringe on the perceived (or actual) rights of Internet users.

What many consumers do not seem to understand is how the industry has "worked" for the past one hundred fifty plus years. Changes in how the industry works, made in the early part of the twentieth century actually put into place mechanisms that allowed the creators of music to reap the rewards of what they created. This included not only recording companies, but also the individual writers and composers. Those mechanisms, when the introduction of file sharing came into play, put a huge dent into the profits of record companies, as well as the residuals that writers and composers collected.

What one should understand it that the more people who create music and movies get paid, the more incentive there is to pursue these arts as a career, not just for the big companies, but for individual writers and composers as well. When that incentive starts to fade away, less and less people will want to pursue writing and composing new and innovative music and movies. This limits the amount of creativity and innovation that plugs into the arts from year to year.

If you can't make a living at it, why would you do it?

The fading amount of creativity and innovation then limits the amount of truly new ideas that are available to consumers.

Consumers are US. Therefore, it DOES affect us and what we have available to us. It SHOULD concern us how musicians and other artists might think of new ways to make money from what they do.

Is it even POSSIBLE to make a living as a composer if you give your music or films away?

How?

If all one says is, "It's their problem, not mine," then fine. You will have to satisfy yourself with what limited art there is out there to choose from. Just don't complain that it's crap. And a lot of it is becoming crap. Few new artists out there sound to me like "new music." Few films that have come out in the past ten years or more seem to me to be truly innovative. Ever wonder why so many of the recent movies that have come out are rehashes of old films. A lot more of them are now than a lot of viewer even realize. Why are they doing that instead of coming up with new stories? Ask the writers, who are having a hard time making a living at doing just that. It's cheaper to redo and old story or film, especially if the original writers are dead.

I believe digital distribution and piracy are in large part responsible for the lowered quality of what is available to me as a consumer.

It's also become something of a paradox. Many download old music illegally because their complaint is that there is very little good stuff to choose from in new music and films. Yet by not buying into anything new, and not paying for the old, they are making it even more difficult for the industry as a whole to produce anything that's any good.

You might think from hearing the gross figures after a movie being released, that they are doing fine. What you may not realize is that for every movie making hundreds of millions of dollars on opening weekend, there are HUNDREDS of others that don't even break even, and have to make up the difference (if they can ~ and a lot of them don't), selling them on DVD. Those big selling movies CARRY the ones that do not sell well. They ALL cost a great deal of money to produce. The music industry works in much the same way. Songs and albums that do well, financially carry those that do not succeed financially.

Now there is the argument that if movies don't do well, it's because they aren't any good. I beg to differ. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding the mentality that money is what determines whether art is any good. I happen to love a LOT of movies and music that never did well financially.

The direction the industry is headed, and has been headed for a long time now, has been to dump acts and film projects that probably won't do that well financially, in favor of art that will sell big. And that has put a huge dent in what is available to ME to consume.

I love music and movies. I listen to and watch a ridiculous amount of both. I've gotten sick of how few choices there are out there for the kind of stuff I like to watch and hear. My tastes are not popular. Since only what is popular is what is now being produced, my choices are severely limited.

Is that ALL the fault of illegal downloading. No, of course not, but illegal downloading IS an undeniable influence on this situation.

There's a lot of speculation on the net about how musicians, artists, writers, composers and movie makers could make a living even if they GAVE away their products. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Some come from the industry itself. Many come from other sources.

I just think that consumers, instead of just tossing the blame and responsibility onto the industry, ought to take some responsibilities themselves. If you want as much freedom of choice as you can possibly have, it's better to offer some solutions.

I'm just asking if anyone here has any. To simply say, "It's not an innovation if the idea doesn't exist," doesn't help. The ideas DO exist. Just because they exist does NOT mean they aren't innovative. Innovation requires actually TRYING them. If they haven't been tried, they ARE innovative.

And here's the undeniable truth behind all of this. If every single person who illegally downloads copyrighted material, stopped, and PAID for everything they have illegally downloaded, this problem wouldn't even exist.

Well I'm not unrealistic. I know damned well that isn't going to happen. BUT, to place all of the blame on the industry is just denial of the truth. This problem is NOT all their fault.

So where do we go from here?

What can be done or changed so that artists will continue to produce good quality art, and more artistically inclined people will continue to go into the business, able to support themselves?

If your answer is, "It's not my problem," then don't complain when the quality of art declines, and you can't find anything worth watching or listening to.


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30 Jan 2012, 2:10 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
Constructive solutions: Netflix and Spotify. The industry needs to focus on supporting these services and others like them instead of trying to harm the open internet.


I've forgotten what they're doing now, but I do remember reading some pretty creative stuff about what they've been trying. I don't subscribe to either of them myself so I've not kept up with them. Like I said, there are some good ideas out there. There's a lot that I've not read about yet too.

I'd just like to hear more of them.

I realize too, that most consumers in general wouldn't know what can be done alternatively, but sometimes good ideas come from surprising places.


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30 Jan 2012, 2:30 pm

Is curving the piracy of copyrighted materials really the aim of these attacks on the internet?


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30 Jan 2012, 3:00 pm

Depends on what you mean by "these attacks."

The entertainment industries efforts are to protect their own interests, and most of the motivation behind that is to curb piracy. But they aren't the only efforts to control what goes on on the Internet. Even their efforts though, I am sure, are influenced by what one might call "nefarious" sources.

Whenever laws are written, even long before the Internet, that attempt to curb illegal activities, there have always been concerns over how those laws will affect personal freedom and civil liberty.

There are also differing philosophies toward the arts in general. I'm surprised more discussion isn't happening in that realm. For example, should art, music, movies etc. be business oriented? Should musicians be guaranteed pay for playing or writing music? It wasn't all that long ago that most artists were lucky to get a meal for what they did. But then, there was little to choose from in the way of entertainment when that was true. It is precisely because of the business models that came into existence during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries that we came eventually to have so much music and entertainment to choose from. If those models are forced to change, there is a very high probability that there will be less quality art to choose from.

There are no easy answers. There never has been. Control over anything implies restriction. There will always be people that complain about restrictions.

There are certainly some laws and regulations being proposed that aren't about piracy. There are certainly some that are. Both types will have affects on how freely the Internet is used.


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30 Jan 2012, 3:12 pm

Mindslave wrote:
Well, they are right about one thing, innovation is a much better way to deal with piracy. That's the whole reason people do that in the first place, because there is no innovation.


+1

The tough thing to find for most music out there are sites that have both mp3 and wav. Often enough anymore people want a cd, or at least they want as close to the 44.1 khz 16 bit as they can get, and don't want to go to the store - great, they've got the intenert. They don't want to wait for it to come in the mail; great, there's wav! Don't mind supporting the artists but, I suppose it does get annoying when you're looking for things and you simply can't find what you want as you want it.

snapcap wrote:
Is curving the piracy of copyrighted materials really the aim of these attacks on the internet?

For the love of money? It's no big shock. People are rather sheep-like these days, people seem to vote based on what industry they work in quite often, seems like there's nothing too enigmatic here - wrongheaded for sure but not out of the ordinary of group job protection mentality.


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30 Jan 2012, 4:35 pm

MrXxx, you're right that it's a very old industry. And perhaps you'll be able to remember the days when everyone used to tape the latest songs off the radio and the RIAA kept crying wolf about how it was killing music? Or when videos and cable were branded pirate mediums which would kill Hollywood? Or when game data being broadcast over pirate radio was going to kill gaming? All this, of course, is utter nonsense. And I think the same of the idea downloads will kill the industry.

The internet is a relatively new thing, but the idea that new technology will somehow damage the entertainment industry is not. The industry as a whole resists new innovations rather than adapting them right away and have done so for ages and ages. This is very unsustainable and there always comes a point where they're dragged kicking and screaming into using whatever the new medium is, but not before they've had a chance to churn out propaganda about how it'll be the end of the world unless it's destroyed.

To quote Dan Bull's tongue-in-cheek song Home Taping Is Killing Music: "Home taping killed the radio star, after radio topped off the album charts, like when gramophones killed the publisher, once publishing had done it to the orchestra."

Taping didn't kill music and downloading won't either. Profits are soaring higher and higher each year for both the RIAA and MPAA, in fact. They've been steadily growing for absolutely ages. The only thing that can possibly kill the industry is the industry itself, and with technology progressing at the rate it is and with the MAFIAA still trying to cripple the internet in order to protect their dinosaur of a business model, maybe they'll finally do it soon. And you know what? If they die because they didn't keep up with market trends fast enough then quite frankly they should be left to die. YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes have already made the record labels obsolete anyway.



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30 Jan 2012, 6:43 pm

MrXxx wrote:
My tastes are not popular. Since only what is popular is what is now being produced, my choices are severely limited.

This isn't different from how things were before downloading became possible. The thing is, unpopular tastes are more likely to be catered to over the internet than in a physical store.

One of the nice things about the internet is that it lets you find obscure things fairly easily.

One of the things that gets stomped on by old-school copyright enforcement is a bunch of creative, interesting youtube videos. I had one particular favorite that I really miss that was an interesting mix of Rihanna background music and some giant space robot anime video. I've also seen anime reviews get taken down because they use footage from the show in the background while they talk about it. Strict copyright enforcement is not a pure force for more new art.

Asp-Z wrote:
And perhaps you'll be able to remember the days when everyone used to tape the latest songs off the radio and the RIAA kept crying wolf about how it was killing music?

I actually found a rather hilarious quote by a former MPAA chief that compared the VCR to a rapist or murderer or something.


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30 Jan 2012, 7:32 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
MrXxx, you're right that it's a very old industry. And perhaps you'll be able to remember the days when everyone used to tape the latest songs off the radio and the RIAA kept crying wolf about how it was killing music? Or when videos and cable were branded pirate mediums which would kill Hollywood? Or when game data being broadcast over pirate radio was going to kill gaming? All this, of course, is utter nonsense. And I think the same of the idea downloads will kill the industry.

The internet is a relatively new thing, but the idea that new technology will somehow damage the entertainment industry is not. The industry as a whole resists new innovations rather than adapting them right away and have done so for ages and ages. This is very unsustainable and there always comes a point where they're dragged kicking and screaming into using whatever the new medium is, but not before they've had a chance to churn out propaganda about how it'll be the end of the world unless it's destroyed.

To quote Dan Bull's tongue-in-cheek song Home Taping Is Killing Music: "Home taping killed the radio star, after radio topped off the album charts, like when gramophones killed the publisher, once publishing had done it to the orchestra."

Taping didn't kill music and downloading won't either. Profits are soaring higher and higher each year for both the RIAA and MPAA, in fact. They've been steadily growing for absolutely ages. The only thing that can possibly kill the industry is the industry itself, and with technology progressing at the rate it is and with the MAFIAA still trying to cripple the internet in order to protect their dinosaur of a business model, maybe they'll finally do it soon. And you know what? If they die because they didn't keep up with market trends fast enough then quite frankly they should be left to die. YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes have already made the record labels obsolete anyway.


I do remember. What many consumers are unaware of though, is that once cassettes came on the market, cassette manufactures were eventually required to pay a fees structured to make up for the perceived losses incurred. This was meant to offset whatever losses might happen due to music sharing through taped vinyl recordings and later CD recordings. How they calculated it all is beyond my knowledge and rather questionable. The same concerns were raised yet again when CD's came out.

There is a vast difference between the amount of damage that might have happened between sharing tapes and sharing digital files. When it came to individuals sharing, tapes had to be physically recorded, which took time and effort, then had to be physically handed out to individuals. The main concern at that time had very little to do with individuals sharing tapes. The main concern at that time was bulk pirating by people in the industry taping masters and bulk copying them to cassettes. That actually was a legitimate concern. It did happen. Remember the carousels of cassette tapes we used to see in just about every convenience store? A huge number of them were pirated recordings, bulk distributed to those stores by fly-by-night salesman who had no clue, and frankly didn't care where they came from. That was what the fee was designed to offset.

Digital recordings, as they are distributed today, do not require any duplication at all. A single file hosted on a server can be distributed to thousands of individuals simultaneously in a matter of seconds for a single song, or a matter of minutes for a full album. No other technology has ever been capable of that. Legitimate digital distributors do still pay fees. Illegitimate distributors no longer need any physical media to transfert he music to. There is no physical media that fees can be tacked on to. It's a whole different ball game now. There is no way to recoup any losses from illegal digital piracy.

With every previous leap in technology, there were cries that the new technology would kill the industry, and each one of them may very well have done just that, if the industry hadn't eventually found a way to offset the threat with some kind of licensing or fee. Once digital came along, they discovered very quickly there was NO way to offset piracy with licensing and/or fees alone, since now there is no longer any physical "thing" to tack anything onto.

BTW: Gramophones actually did kill the printed staff music industry (at least it killed what it was ~ ever heard of Tin-Pan Alley?). Radio also killed live performances, at least for a time. Radio stations now have to pay a fee now for all the songs they play, and are required by law to log every song they play in order for the Artist Rights Societies to track who's songs are being played and how many times so that they can distribute songwriters and composers their rightful dues. There are others ways of tracking live performances, but that obviously isn't affected by digital files.

It's a very complex, and questionably accurate set-up, but it has worked fairly well for over one hundred years. Digital piracy is unquestionably a threat to the current system. How much of a threat is debatable, but what I personally think is not debatable at all is the POTENTIAL of digital music files to kill the industry that no other technology has ever come close to matching. There is no question that if we all want to continue to have the same access to variety and quality that we've enjoyed for many years now, something has to change.

If nothing changes, I believe we'll be seeing the industry as we know it fall apart. Nothing will be left but homegrown music, which in a way might be good, but I believe we're already seeing more than the tip of the iceberg where that is concerned. Anyone with a DAW in their bedroom, basement or garage can now make pretty good recordings and distribute them on the internet, IF they know what they are doing with the equipment. The problem is, an awful lot of them don't have a clue how to create a quality recording, and the more homegrown music becomes the source of music available to the consumer, the more low quality crap recordings you will see. Though for a while we may see more diversity, finding good quality stuff will become far more difficult.

And though it doesn't cost millions to set up your own DAW at home, and if you know what you're doing with it, you can make a recording just as good as most professional studios today, it still costs quite a bit of money relative to the shallow pockets of most musicians. To truly do it right takes more than making it a hobby. It's got to be a passion at which you spend a great deal of your time. If you can't at least make a part time living from it, it's not worth it for most musicians.

Mark my words, you will see a severe drop in the percentage of quality recordings available.

Digital Rights Management doesn't work. It's been tried, and there have always been ways found around it. DRM, if you don't know what it is, is the addition of coding in files that prevent copying without a purchased license. That crap only works as long as it takes for hackers to find a way around it. Because that does not work, that means that ALL digital files will eventually be able to be copied.

That said, the only way to prevent copying is legislation and Internet control. There is no technological way to prevent piracy anymore. That's a given. Lacking that there are only two choices as I see it. Either clamp down legally on piracy, or accept there is no way to prevent it, and learn to make money some other way.

Personally, and this may surprise you but it's true, I believe that we'll find that legislation and control will work no better than all the attempts at technological solutions such as DRM. They tried DRM though, and they will try legislation. It will fail too.

Since neither work, and piracy can not be stopped, that means that all artists will have to resign themselves to the fact that their art can and will be given away.

Because this is what I believe will happen, that is why I am so interested in what alternatives there are. How, once the art world resigns itself to inevitability, do artists now make a living at what they do?

And here's my final point, to bring this discussion back around to what it's really about (Internet freedom). Most of the reason behind the most recent efforts to control the Internet have been all about preventing piracy. Preventing piracy has been all about preserving income for people who create music. Therefore, the interests of artists to make money are intrinsically tied to our desire for Internet freedom.

If a new paradigm were constructed for artists to make a living that does not require the actual sale of music, this entire discussion would become moot...

...until other reasons are used to control the Internet.

It would be nice though, to come up with a way to stop the perceived necessity for this particular effort.


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I'm not likely to be around much longer. As before when I first signed up here years ago, I'm finding that after a long hiatus, and after only a few days back on here, I'm spending way too much time here again already. So I'm requesting my account be locked, banned or whatever. It's just time. Until then, well, I dunno...