Members richardmac Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 I just read an article yesterday on a new technology that can be used to essentially shut down BitTorrent stealing of copyrighted materials. Let's pretend for a minute that this can be done. How does the New Music Biz change if music piracy is reduced by 90%? I'll go first. I think iTunes sales would increase a lot, and then sort of stabilize. I think there would still be more piracy than pre-Internet, because there will still be a seedy pirate underground, but the average person won't want to dig deep enough to find it. But the average person will be more likely to rip a CD and burn a copy for a friend than back in the day, when making a cassette tape copy had to be done in real time. But the cynic in me believes that if somehow the torrents were useless, the pirate community would just invent something better and it would be on again. Here is the link I read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scarecrowbob Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 It appears that it works on a per-torrent level, and it sounds a lot more like rent seeking from some Russians rather than an actual way of combating piracy. It sounds plausible that they could disrupt a single torrent, but that folks would just create additional torrents for the same media. You could harass users this way, but it probably isn't cost effective even for the US film industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted May 14, 2012 Moderators Share Posted May 14, 2012 years ago, when I was in the CD and DVD replication biz, the industry said they could prevent people stealing the video and audio...hahahaha...the sad truth is there will always be someone smarter who comes along and says, 'gee, it can't be that hard to defeat that encoding'...and wham! it is all over the internet in a few days and the problem starts all over again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LordBTY Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 Awww man - this is a pretty decent question/hypothetical. Thing is, there is still free music available on tap via youtube/spotify. I know I would still want to listen to high quality 320s. Spotify offers this streaming quality, so it could be ok. I'm not convinced they're actually that high quality, though. It would probably increase CD sales a bit but not to the extent it will keep the record execs happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 I just read an article yesterday on a new technology that can be used to essentially shut down BitTorrent stealing of copyrighted materials. Let's pretend for a minute that this can be done. How does the New Music Biz change if music piracy is reduced by 90%? Then in the US 90% less music will be listen to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 Spotify is illegal in most countries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 years ago, when I was in the CD and DVD replication biz, the industry said they could prevent people stealing the video and audio...hahahaha... That idea did cost the major record companies several million USD for development, all nicely supported by the RIAA lawyers and IFPI bureaucrats. Didn't work, but a few people earned good incomes for 20 years. All the rest was only tokenism, i.e sue a poor women who has no money and so on. That's all it was. The RIAA could if they want identify any address from where data is sent and where the data is received, as long the data is on transfer, but they know they can't put 5 billion people in jail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted May 14, 2012 Members Share Posted May 14, 2012 HAHAHAHAHA!!! Yea right! That's a good one! Only way this happens is if we get China/UK style ISP Lockdown..People won't stand for it in the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted May 15, 2012 Moderators Share Posted May 15, 2012 Indeeed, internet anonynimity is your god given right as an American citizen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Nijyo Posted May 15, 2012 Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 It appears that it works on a per-torrent level, and it sounds a lot more like rent seeking from some Russians rather than an actual way of combating piracy. It sounds plausible that they could disrupt a single torrent, but that folks would just create additional torrents for the same media. You could harass users this way, but it probably isn't cost effective even for the US film industry. Pretty much. It sounds like an okay way for the company itself to make some money off studios with more money than sense, but I can't bring myself to even entertain the original question, since it's very much in the vein of "what if we could put ALL the toothpaste back in the tube?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted May 15, 2012 Author Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 You know, I used to feel that way, but now I'm not so sure. People are lazy. As long as stealing music is easy, they'll steal it. I don't think they have to make stealing impossible. If they just make it difficult, that might be enough to deter a big chunk of people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Nijyo Posted May 15, 2012 Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 You know, I used to feel that way, but now I'm not so sure. People are lazy. As long as stealing music is easy, they'll steal it. I don't think they have to make stealing impossible. If they just make it difficult, that might be enough to deter a big chunk of people. Most people are already deterred by the fact that it's much easier to stream from Spotify / Sirius / Last.FM / Pandora or buy from iTunes/Amazon than it is to load up a bittorrent client and wander through the valley of malware and porn to get some torrent that may or may not be what they're looking for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scarecrowbob Posted May 15, 2012 Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 Most people are already deterred by the fact that it's much easier to stream from Spotify / Sirius / Last.FM / Pandora or buy from iTunes/Amazon than it is to load up a bittorrent client and wander through the valley of malware and porn to get some torrent that may or may not be what they're looking for. I agree with this. Personally, I believe that library membership is the only effective way of combating piracy. So yes, folks are lazy, but for most people pirating good content on demand isn't trivial and library membership is easy. My long term goal is to get into a position where I can traffic advertising on services like Spotify/Hulu, as I believe that when these garner mass adoption, there will be a wide distributed market for local video and audio ads which will allow for an actual return to the business of content creation at a local/regional level. Being in a position to leverage that will be difficult, but at least it will be difficult for established entities as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members James Sheasgree Posted May 15, 2012 Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 Most people are already deterred by the fact that it's much easier to stream from Spotify / Sirius / Last.FM / Pandora or buy from iTunes/Amazon than it is to load up a bittorrent client and wander through the valley of malware and porn to get some torrent that may or may not be what they're looking for. I would disagree. Most people, especially the younger generation coming up are smart enough to tell which torrents have malware and crap. Its really not hard to tell, and its also very easy to torrent. People who can't tell shouldn't even be going online. Those people are probably the ones who are better off using Itunes or Spotify for music. There is no 100% way to make sure your computer is safe, but there are waaaaay more safe torrents than unsafe ones, and its fairly easy to tell them apart if you know where to look. As long as people get there music for free they will not want to pay substantial amounts. You cannot eliminate internet piracy without censoring the internet unless you start going after the people doing it directly. And that won't happen the public outcry will be crazy we can't even force illegal immigrants to follow the law because so many don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Nijyo Posted May 15, 2012 Members Share Posted May 15, 2012 I would disagree. Most people, especially the younger generation coming up is gonna be smart enough to tell which torrents have malware and crap. Its really not hard to tell. People who can't tell shouldn't torrent. Those people are probably the ones who use Itunes or Spotify. There is no 100% way to make sure your computer is safe, but there are waaaaay more safe torrents than unsafe ones, and its fairly easy to tell them apart if you know where to look "The younger generation coming up" doesn't even remember Napster. Napster is coming up on 20 years ago. I'm not saying that there's no one using torrents anymore, but it's a small subset of the whole music listening population. By and large, kids these days know where to get the streaming stuff through perfectly legal, social-network-integrated methods and then buy it if they like it using readily available means that are *embedded* in the stream. If you pull a FLAC file off of a bittorrent site, it won't even play on your iPhone/iPod unless you manually convert it to ALAC. Who wants to bother with that? Now, if you *only* sample the "technology enthusiast" subculture, you're going to see a lot more torrent usage, but that sample would not be representative of the population as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted May 16, 2012 Moderators Share Posted May 16, 2012 well, maybe not quite 20...seems to me the real Napster heyday was 99-01, roughly, then they went to court...the Metallica/Dre suits...followed by the major labels... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted May 16, 2012 Members Share Posted May 16, 2012 You know, I used to feel that way, but now I'm not so sure. People are lazy. As long as stealing music is easy, they'll steal it. I don't think they have to make stealing impossible. If they just make it difficult, that might be enough to deter a big chunk of people. Yes and the easiest way to get music is to stream it! I have never had to steal anything that I wasn't going to buy when I bought files, because it was always available somewhere to stream..Like if I were learning a tune or something. It's all up there ready to check out and now I have spotify, Youtube Vimeo, Vevo, etc etc...Why do I need to OWN anything? Why do I need 100's of gigs of files cluttering up my life?..Plus mobile internet use has surpassed land based globally so if you don't see the writing on the wall...It's all about streaming and it's all about the Cloud. We have some of the {censored}tiest, slowest broadband pipeline in the world in the US, that's why we're behind. In the rest of the developed world, it's already moved to streaming and over mobile Broadband...WTF do I need to download?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted May 16, 2012 Moderators Share Posted May 16, 2012 We have some of the {censored}tiest, slowest broadband pipeline in the world in the US, that's why we're behind. and we can thank the phone and cable companies for dragging their feet on this...they are not investing in their own future. Some are still stringing fibre (AT&T)...WTF? The cost per mile is ridiculous, the cost per household by comparison to broadband wifi is astronomical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted May 30, 2012 Members Share Posted May 30, 2012 Frankly, I think people would simply stop by their buddy's house with a 40GB memory stick, and load 10000 songs on it while they played poker or watched football. Torrents are not necessary, but they do enable lazy people to do the same thing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted May 31, 2012 Members Share Posted May 31, 2012 P2P can be monitored with software as long the data package is in transfer. The software Cugate for example can make a list of the addresses of the sender and the receivers. Very nice software, you also see a world map and where someone is P2P-ing a yellow dot light up. But nobody want to use this address list, not RIAA, not the recording industry, not the jurisdiction, because you can't put billions of people in jail. Apart from that it is extremly frightening as in the movies Fahrenheit 451, or Orwell's 1984. The FBI and CIA wanted this software which was developed by a German. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members HotSir Posted May 31, 2012 Members Share Posted May 31, 2012 You can't stop piracy as long as you have the Internet. And because you can't stop the Internet, you won't ever stop piracy. That's just how it is.As for the hypothetical, it's a bit silly IMO to claim with any amount of certainty that anything will happen - you don't really know what would happen, it's a big industry and the Internet is full of surprises. That's my first post on these forums, I think. So... Hey, I'm HotSir. European sax student, studying classical + jazz, played a few good gigs and I'm here for all of the tech wizardry - pedalboards, synths, MIDI magic and audio editing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted May 31, 2012 Members Share Posted May 31, 2012 You can't stop piracy as long as you have the Internet. The transfer of selective data can be prevented anytime, and also happen from time to time since years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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