City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit(cityoflondon.police.uk) |
City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit(cityoflondon.police.uk) |
See section 198 of the relevant law, which is clear about the need for business to be involved for a criminal offence. (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/cdpact1988.pdf)
See section 7 (http://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law) - where they don't mention "trading", which is what tips it into a criminal, rather than civil, offence.
See also section 8, which doesn't mention "format shifting" - it's not legal to rip a CD that you buy to MP3, but this is changing. (Or has changed?) (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/dec/20/uk-copyright-la...)
I think it is ok to go after the sharks but where do you draw the line, 10 copies, a 100?
However, I must credit them as they warn people before taking them to court. So, if you're a website owner in the UK. I'm just giving you a heads up to say that if you're being investigated, they will probably contact you in person.
I do think the BPI have definately gone too far, they currently trying to get Grooveshark blocked from popular UK ISPs. The BPI only exists to monopolize the music industry.
Grooveshark is a company that profits off of content that they have no rights to. They hide behind the DMCA and are complete scumbags who pretend to engage in fair business practices and then turn around and renege on agreements, all the while people defend them as if they're making some form of moral stand against the oppressive music industry, when in reality they're choosing to make money on the back of the hard work of others.
Spotify is a fantastic alternative to Grooveshark that has a wealth of music in their library, they're compliant with labels and the law and have millions of users, I don't see the BPI trying to shut them down. Maybe, just maybe, there can be an instance where the "music industry" is in the right. Grooveshark is a shameful business.
I look forward to the day that Grooveshark shuts down. I'm all for revolutionising the music industry and changing the world, but there is a serious line crossed when a company consistently uses others work to profit, without permission. Spotify is doing it legally.
http://www.theverge.com/policy/2013/8/6/4592346/grooveshark-...
The only reason Spotify doesn't have too much competition is because few are those willing to waste so much money on such a low margin business, not because they have a ground breaking technology or business model. The fact that they now have to compete with rdio, pandora, apple and google streaming will probably deepen their losses.
A fantastic company in this field will be one that will print money like it streams music.
If the BPI is unhappy with Grooveshark because of their music being on it, either make a deal with them or DMCA all the artists. If they block the whole site, they're only making it harder for me to listen to the type of music I want to listen to. As I said, it's a monopoly.
The piracy wars are going to be won or lost based solely on user experience, mark my words.
> UK Launches Intellectual Crime Unit
Mistake or premonition?
Er... is that implying that a police unit is being given judicial powers?
Allowing the police to deal with certain minor infractions themselves is far more efficient than the alternative; ordering every offender to appear before a magistrates' court even for the most minor infraction, such as a speeding ticket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Act
The first link concerns a small group protesting against increased automation...this has happened in practically every place that has had manufacturing...
The second concerns road safety acts, although they sound ludicrous by todays standards, served as an important step in the transition from horses to automobiles - in a country which had been relying on horses for transport for atleast 1000 years prior.
The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident.
The term “intellectual property” is at best a catch-all to lump together disparate laws. Nonlawyers who hear one term applied to these various laws tend to assume they are based on a common principle and function similarly.
Nothing could be further from the case. These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues.
I think common sense applies in drawing the line. A kid who burns the occasional DVD and sells it in the school playground to cover his costs, probably not worth pursuing. An organized group importing counterfeit DVDs by the container-load and distributing them through an established distribution network, probably worth pursuing.
http://allthingsd.com/20121206/spotifys-daniel-ek-on-profits...
Spotify is simply hoping to grow so big so fast that labels can no longer afford to bleed them to death. They are not exactly building warehouses.
You're completely missing the point. It's irrelevant that you can get music for free, because it's not produced for free. It costs money to produce music and to arrange it to be available on Amazon or iTunes or where ever.
It's not unreasonable to expect you to pay for music. I don't mean to imply anything about "stealing", but you wouldn't walk into a supermarket expecting to just take stuff either. It's about someone producing something of value that you want.
Look, I'll happily debate intellectual property structures and incentives and all the rest, but the thing--the big elephant in the room--is that everybody just wants to be able to push a button and get music.
At the end of the day, the core relationship is between the artist and the listener--everything else, be it recording or ticketing or distribution or whatever, is secondary fluff.
Grooveshark offers the most compelling experience to the user right now, regardless of how scummy (and I do mean scummy!) their business practices are.
I do realize that people are selfish and just want everything for free, and that computers & the Internet enable them to circumvent having to pay for music.
That doesn't change anything about my point, though.
Do you realize that if music producers can't make a satisfactory profit, then music will just not be produced? Again, it costs money to produce music and to make it available for purchase. I've downloaded music, just like everyone else, but as a genuine music lover, I've also happily paid for some 200 - 300 CDs back in the day, and those comprise roughly 95% of all the music I listen to.
Do you get it? It's alright to pay for music. It's downright expected by anyone producing it. There is no free lunch. There aren't many things of real value that you can expect to get for free. Open-source software is a rare exception, but that doesn't really apply on the desktop, so.. yeah. Think about this stuff. You need to see beyond yourself.
Both of those i had to appeal and won instantly when talking to the magistrate.
Allowing these morons to issue fines and penalties for more complicated issues such as in this case is a very bad idea.
This is a fine principle provided that someone innocent who defends themselves successfully in court will then be compensated so they don't lose out in any way. The reality appears to be that for things like minor traffic offences, you can wind up spending more time and far more money travelling to have your day in court than you would have lost if you just paid up under protest, and you might also be risking a higher penalty if the court does find you guilty of exactly what you were previously charged with.
With motoring offences there is also the points system to consider, so it might be worth going to court for that reason. However, generally someone prosecuted but found not guilty in the UK doesn't seem to get any sort of compensation for even actual financial losses they incur defending themselves, never mind the value of their lost time or anything to make up for the obvious distress for an extended period that going to court in these cases is likely to cause.
It's rather like the small claims track. In principle, it's a worthy public service. In practice, for a professional with a full time job and family commitments who is working without expert advice because the point is to avoid involving expensive lawyers in low-value cases, the time just to figure out how to file against someone without jeopardizing your case before it's even started is prohibitive.
I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations. There are certainly cases in which officers were mistaken, there are mitigating circumstances, or you can avoid punishment on a technicality, but I can't think of any instances in which authorities have been caught issuing vexatious fixed penalty notices.
Why must it always be costly? It is a perfectly rational alternative policy to bring a smaller number of prosecutions, and to compensate defendants for their costs, wasted time and distress, if a prosecution fails.
I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations.
You might like to look up some of the published data about the proportion of appeals that succeed against things like local-authority-issued parking tickets and ANPR-based congestion charges. It happens all the time, and erroneous charges aren't even close to the kind of isolated incidents you seem to believe they are.
As a matter of fact, there have been plenty of stories of deliberate policies to issue penalties aggressively (and sometimes outright unlawfully), but this doesn't really matter to the victims anyway. Whether it was malicious on the part of the authorities or their enforcement people just got duped as in the cloning case you mentioned makes no difference at all to an innocent third party who gets slapped with a penalty notice they didn't deserve.
I'm not well versed in the details, but I understand you can reclaim certain costs incurred in defending yourself in such cases.
It is, alas, completely impracticable to cover all costs, as many of the costs (compensation for the distress caused, time spent worrying about the case, etc.) are non-pecuniary.
Hence defending an accusation will always be costly. No one is ever going to come out of a court case, even when proven innocent, thinking the whole experience had a net positive impact on their life.
> You might like to look up some of the published data about the proportion of appeals that succeed against things like local-authority-issued parking tickets and ANPR-based congestion charges. It happens all the time, and erroneous charges aren't even close to the kind of isolated incidents you seem to believe they are.
That's what I was referring to in the subsequent qualification. People routinely get off the hook for such infractions on technicalities, but that doesn't render the initial accusation baseless.
Generally speaking, the person will have been at the location on the given date, doing something or other that gave the authority good reason to issue them with a fine.
If they were not, it is usually a reasonable misunderstanding (e.g. cloned plates, stolen car, taken without owner's consent, ANPR system mis-read a plate) and relatively straightforward to clear up.
> Whether it was malicious on the part of the authorities or their enforcement people just got duped as in the cloning case you mentioned makes no difference at all to an innocent third party who gets slapped with a penalty notice they didn't deserve.
What else are you going to do? Stop issuing penalties for motoring offences full-stop because a tiny percentage of vehicles on the road are stolen, or taken without the owners' consent, or have cloned plates, and thus issuing a penalty to the owner will stress them out?
Very little. If you've had professional legal representation then naturally the legal profession tends to look out for them, but the compensation to defendants personally (and to other parties involved in a case, such as witnesses and jurors) for their time and inconvenience is negligible.
What else are you going to do? Stop issuing penalties for motoring offences
It is sad that you dismiss that possibility without even considering it. Our structure for penalising poor driving in the UK is woefully unfit for purpose:
1. Its sanctions aren't an effective deterrent for the relatively small number of drivers whose behaviour really is habitually unacceptable and likely to cause significant problems for others.
2. It penalises many generally good drivers for breaking arbitrary rules without any evidence that what they did was actually dangerous, or even inconveniencing anyone else.
3. In some cases, it even gives drivers a despicable choice between driving safely and driving legally, because obeying those arbitrary rules when they are obviously inappropriate under the circumstances will antagonise and/or inconvenience other road users. Some of those other users will then do something more dangerous, such as performing a risky overtaking manoeuvre, and while the law may say that the other driver is then responsible for the resulting accident, that is of no comfort to the innocent and now dead third driver who was coming the other way and wound up in the head-on collision.
5. It penalises many generally good drivers for minor errors that everyone makes at some point, based essentially on luck. If everyone were actually prosecuted reliably and uniformly for these offences, so many drivers would lose their licence within a month that the law would be brought down or the government would be. Because prosecutions instead happen only intermittently and the law is inconsistently applied, it instead serves as an effective fund-raising tool, often with a glaring conflict of interest where effectively altering driver behaviour would reduce revenues so the incentives are aligned with catching people out rather than deterring undesired actions, and it breeds driver resentment.
In short, our system does not effectively defer serious bad behaviour, while simultaneously penalising behaviour that may not have caused any real problem at all and reducing general respect for the law among a very large proportion of the adult population.
With the rise of automated penalties where no review by a human with common sense need even be involved, man is now judged (often erroneously) by machine, and as I've been arguing, that means the system causes wildly disproportionate distress to a significant number of completely innocent people. I don't accept your claim that the people getting off on these appeals were almost always there and doing something wrong really and just got off on technicalities. I've never seen any data to support that position, in contrast to numerous reports that would indicate otherwise and demonstrate beyond any doubt that these kinds of automated enforcement systems are often fundamentally flawed.
(Just to be clear: I have been a driver for many years, and never had so much as a parking ticket. I have no personal axe to grind here. I just think obviously broken "justice" systems should be fixed, not defended as if making something the law automatically makes it right.)
Musicians don't need producers--in fact, this has been a role only recently filled in the 20th century. They don't need them to perform, they don't need them to record, they don't need them to make money. In fact, you can very easily find examples of producers doing more hard than good...just ask any fan of Streetlight Manifesto.
Technology, both in recording and broadcasting, has advanced to the point where we don't need these gatekeepers. The market will adapt to supply good-but-cheap recording gear for musicians who can't afford lots of studio time. The market will create cheap online labels--already has.
You didn't say a damn thing the artists, man. You just kept trying to find a way to fund the middlemen. People like you are what'll kill music, if anything.
>> And I'm telling you that nobody gives a shit, because they just want to listen to music.
Sure, you Just Want to listen to music, but that doesn't mean musicians/producers/record-companies should then just give it to you for free. This is what you're still missing.
I Want to have sex with hot women, but that doesn't mean they should then just automatically stop and spread their legs at me where ever I go.
> Musicians don't need producers--in fact, this has been a role only recently filled in the 20th century. They don't need them to perform, they don't need them to record, they don't need them to make money. In fact, you can very easily find examples of producers doing more hard than good...just ask any fan of Streetlight Manifesto.
Sure, traditional record companies are increasingly unnecessary, but people still need to somehow become aware of an artist's music - otherwise no one will buy it. In other words, there's still a need for "awareness middlemen" and/or advertising, even if home studios have made record companies unnecessary on the production side.
But see, when you declare that you just Want Stuff For Free, you're not making a distinction between those evil record companies and their poor abused slaves, the artists.
You can download the shit out of an independent artist's music, but he too wants you to pay for it. Gracing someone's music with the attention of your ears doesn't actually put food on his table.
There are songs available for purchase. If you want a particular song, you should pay for it, because the song has value to you. If you download it for free, you get something of value, but the music producer gets nothing. That's simply not a fair trade. To be more exact, it's not even a trade. It's you by-passing the trade.
I cringe whenever I hear someone express this sentiment, it's the equivalent of the nuclear option. Do you really think these companies are just going to get frustrated, pack up their toys and go home? No, of course not. It's the same reason I don't buy into these "starving artist" sob stories: no one can escape market forces. The fact of the matter is, that business landscape is extremely competitive and typically requires a large initial investment. It's always been this way. The one force that seems to be an equalizer is technology in general getting cheaper and cheaper, NOT the protectionism known as copyright.
As I said, if the producers can't make a satisfactory profit, then they'll stop producing music. See, that would actually be the point where they'll just throw in the towel. If everyone thought that they're somehow entitled to receiving music for free, like the guy I responded to, then the only music you could get would be the musical equivalent of open-source.
> It's the same reason I don't buy into these "starving artist" sob stories: no one can escape market forces.
Oh believe me, I'm all for market forces. I'm not saying musicians should be entitled to making a living through music either.
> The fact of the matter is, that business landscape is extremely competitive and typically requires a large initial investment. It's always been this way. The one force that seems to be an equalizer is technology in general getting cheaper and cheaper, NOT the protectionism known as copyright.
Note that you're actually talking about business there. So am I.
I don't even support IP enforcement or patents etc, I'm just saying that if no one takes music producers up on their offer of voluntary exchanges of music for money, then all those who are producing it to make money will simply stop.
And this is a GOOD thing. We don't need them. Those companies filled a needed economic role before when cost-effective recording and distribution was a problem, but it's not anymore. Keeping them around is just encouraging economic abuse, i.e. rent-seeking in the form of royalties and licensing fees.
No, I don't realize that. The overwhelming majority of music never makes any money because making money isn't the point. Making money is the point for a small contingent of entrenched players who carved out a market for themselves decades ago and are now seeing it disrupted. Far more artists fear obscurity and irrelevance than could ever fear piracy. Any residual coin they make due to any eventual popularity is just icing on the cake.
I do realize that music is a passion for musicians, but record companies are in it for a profit. They're businesses, and they're what I was referring to.
You're free to seek out indie musicians on CDBaby or whatever and then download the shit out of their music, but even they'd at least prefer that you buy it. That's why their music can be found online.
I'm aware of that. But I don't think the guy I originally responded to thought even that far. That's why I responded. He's just completely oblivious to the fact that people putting music up for sale actually do expect others to pay for it.
I doubt it, but if that is true, then there's a natural incentive to pay for music, and there's no need for copyright law; if people want music to be produced, they'll be forced to pay.
Yep, it's possible his music is just not good enough, and that he should pursue other ways of making a living. Market forces and all.
> You forget the primary function of a music production company is to act as a bank for the artist, they'll sign a contract with anyone who is willing to re-pay a loan
Well, I'm not sure it's that simple. They're expecting a return on their investment. If a new artist signs up and takes on a $1M "loan", but then proceeds to sell zero records, how will the loan get paid back?
> The point I was making is that it's not things like Grooveshark discouraging those practices, it's cheap technology which has made it more cost-effective for artists to just avoid production companies all together.
Sure, it's never been cheaper to make and sell music online. That's fine, but I was talking about the business side of things, where music producers really do expect/hope people to pay for it, because otherwise they wouldn't be putting it up for sale.
It's quite effortless to by-pass paying for music, but that doesn't mean the music you're happily downloading for free was meant to be free.