I actually thought the best article on the subject was over at Ars, but below are a few other synopsis.

Via The Daily Swarm:

CNET:

The court decision could represent the biggest threat to online file sharing in years. According to a survey by the NPD Group, LimeWire users account for 58 percent of the people who said they downloaded music from a peer-to-peer service last year. AtCNET‘s Download.com, the LimeWire software has been downloaded more than 200 million times. In the last week alone, the software was downloaded nearly 340,000 times….Wood’s ruling could at the very least mean a shift in the downloading habits of millions.

Mediamemo:

A big victory for Big Music: A federal court has ruled in favor of the music labels in their fight against LimeWire, one of the most prominent file-sharing services on the Web….What does this mean for the music industry? Assuming Wood’s ruling stands, this one will definitely feel good for the labels, and it would have been a very big deal had they lost. But it certainly won’t help them in fighting less formally organized P2P services or those set up outside the U.S.

TechDirt:

As you can see from the ruling, LimeWire never really had a chance….Of course that doesn’t mean this isn’t troubling in many ways. In fact, it reiterates many of the problems with the original Grokster ruling. For example, it mentions things like the fact that LimeWire folks knew that LimeWire could be used to transfer copyrighted works. But that’s meaningless. Email can be used for transferring copyrighted works.FTP too. The web as well.

Either way, I’m still wondering if…it’s possible to create a system for more efficiently sharing files that doesn’t violate the inducement standard…The law should not be set up in a way to outright ban a technology that has a wide variety of useful applications, and is used for plenty of legitimate purposes, even if it’s also used (even if regularly used) for infringing purposes.

RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol’s Statement/Victory Lap:

“This definitive ruling is an extraordinary victory for the entire creative community. The court made clear that LimeWire was liable for inducing widespread copyright theft….“LimeWire is one of the largest remaining commercial peer-to-peer services. Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators. The court’s decision is an important milestone in the creative community’s fight to reclaim the Internet as a platform for legitimate commerce. By finding LimeWire’s CEOpersonally liable, in addition to his company, the court has sent a clear signal to those who think they can devise and profit from a piracy scheme that will escape accountability….We are gratified by the court’s careful and thorough analysis of the facts and applicable law.”

Related posts:

1. RIAA to Abandon Mass Lawsuits
2. How Harvard Law Threw Down The Gauntlet To The RIAA

Today, that retrial has been denied, leaving a traditional appeal as the only means of recourse for Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Carl Lundström, and Gottfrid Svartholm; who are each facing a year in prison and nearly $1m in damages to pay.

Here’s where the case was swung in favor of the Judge:

Judge Tomas Norström belongs to the Swedish Copyright Association, and sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (a group that champions stricter copyright laws). He claims that membership to said groups is critical for a judge in his field, as it is a means by which he stays current on issues of copyright law. Overseeing the appeal, Judge Anders Eka declared that Norström should have disclosed his memberships before the trial, but that endorsing copyright law (which is what Norström does by belonging to said groups) is doing exactly what a Judge should be doing, endorsing the law. The court stated,

That a judge agrees with the principles that are fundamental to this law cannot in itself be a reason for bias.

In other words, Judges can’t be called biased simply because they support the law.

Peter Sunde now claims that The Pirate Bay will now file charges against Sweden for violation of Human Rights.

Related posts:

1. The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict – Guilty
2. Judge: Illegal Downloads Don’t Equate To Lost Sales

Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty – backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

Today, Friday April 17, the court issued its decision:

“The court has found that by using Pirate Bay’s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case,” said the district court. “This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances.”

read the full story.

Related posts:

1. Pirate Bay Trial Witness: File-Sharing Not Bad For Music Business
2. Pirate Bay Judge Deemed Unbiased: Retrial Denied

[via ars]

What happens when a professor who believes that file-sharing has been beneficial to the music industry takes the witness stand in The Pirate Bay trial, then learns that prosecutors have been talking to his boss about the quality of his research? Fireworks—and flowers.

The Pirate Bay trial settled into something (sort of) approaching normality today as two professors took the stand. One explained more about how BitTorrent functions; the other got into a fight with prosecutors, suggested that file-sharing wasn’t bad for the music business in general and that it has led to a huge transfer of wealth to artists, and sarcastically asked the court to send flowers to his wife.

Read the full story.

What’s even funnier is you can track how many flowers have actually been sent to his wife here. So far, over 125.

Related posts:

1. The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict – Guilty
2. Music Industry Should Embrace Illegal File Sharing

U2′s yet-to-be-released album, No Line on the Horizon, is already available on P2P networks across the Internet thanks to a leak that the band is always so adamantly working to prevent. Considering U2′s views on piracy and Safe Harbor, the leak is both poetic justice and confirmation of the band’s fears.

What’s the worst thing that could happen to a band that is adamantly pro-DRM and anti-filesharing? Having an unreleased album leaked all over the Internet, of course, and by one of the Big Four labels to boot. U2′s upcoming album, No Line on the Horizon, is slated for release on March 3, but it’s already available on numerous filesharing sites and P2P networks thanks to the accidental posting of the album by Universal’s Australian branch.

Read the full story.

Related posts:

1. The Edge Pulls Inspiration from Jack White and Jimmy Page For U2′s Upcoming Release
2. Details On U2′s New Album Release

The Ruckus music service shut down over the weekend, raising the question of whether universities are done offering sponsored legal download services to students.

The music industry, struggling to find workable business models for the digital age, apparently can’t even give its product away. Ad-supported services like SpiralFrog have generated what can only be charitably called a “lack of enthusiasm,” while another ad-supported service called Ruckus just shut its virtual doors this weekend. Such services were once held up as the answer to (first) collegiate music piracy and (eventually) to music piracy in general, but the ridiculous encumbrances offered by DRM helped ensure that neither solution proved compelling.

Legal music subscription services once looked like a possible way of dealing with campus copyright infringement; if students were simply given the music, why would they continue torrenting? But initial experiments with paid sites like the revamped Napster generated an outcry as students objected to having their school fees used to pay for services that many did not want or could not use.

Ruckus looked like an incredible solution.

Read the full story here.

Related posts:

1. QTrax: Free, Legal Music Downloads Are Finally Ready
2. Muziic Player Streams Free Music From YouTube

The IFPI, considered by some to be the global version of the RIAA, says that 40 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2008. Those songs don’t necessarily translate into lost sales, as we’ve seen recently, but the IFPI estimates that 10% of illegal downloads are equivalent to lost sales. Where they got that number, I’m not quite sure, but let’s trust them at that and say that there were 4 billion lost sales worldwide this past year. That’s a serious amount of revenue!

We’ve now seen the EU, France, and even the RIAA here in the states consider a “three strikes” rule with regards to copyright infringement. That would mean 3 offenses and your internet would be disconnected by your ISP. The measures were shot down in the European Parliament, and I’m glad. It’s too tough to prove that any one individual was the one responsible for the file sharing. People have a right to have an open wireless network, and shouldn’t necessarily be held responsible for the actions of others on thier network. I’ve always been in favor of offering up a solution to the problem, rather than simply punishment for misdeeds.

Here’s some stats from the report [via hothardware]

• Seven out of ten (72%) UK music consumers would stop illegally downloading if told to do so by their ISP (Entertainment Media Research, 2008)

• Seven out of ten (74%) French consumers agree internet account disconnection is a better approach than fines and criminal sanctions (IPSOS, France, May 2008)

• Eight out of ten (82%) American teenagers familiar with the law think sanctions for illegal downloading are appropriate; 57 per cent of those unfamiliar with the law agree (KRC US, January 2008)

• 90 per cent of consumers would stop illegally file-sharing after two warnings from their ISP (IPSOS, France, May 2008)

Those stats might be a bit misconstrued though, as not all internet users engage in any file swapping at all. According to the IFPI, only 18 percent of Europeans admit to engaging in file-swapping. 64% of internet users in the UK, US, and France said that they would stop swapping if their ISP sent them a warning letter. So the question is not how the general public (that 64% for example) would respond to a warning letter from their ISP, but rather how P2P users would respond. According to a study by The Leading Question and Music Ally, only 41% of file sharers said that a warning would get them to stop. That means that 6 out of 10 file sharers would completely disregard a warning from their ISP that their internet use was being monitored. Once the stakes were raised to an internet disconnection warning from their ISP, 63 percent of file sharers said that they would stop sharing. That’s the real astonishing number for me because it means that nearly 4 out of every 10 file sharers would absolutely not stop file sharing even when threatened with disconnection.

All those numbers further my point that the solution to the piracy debacle is not litigation or reprimanding abusers, but it needs to come in an alternative option for content acquisition; a legal process of downloading content that provides a better user experience than P2P clients, at minimal to no cost. If the IFPI’s numbers are accurate with regards to how many songs are shared per year, even a small decline in file sharing will yield a significant gain in revenue for the ever ailing industry.

Related posts:

1. Judge: Illegal Downloads Don’t Equate To Lost Sales
2. Music Industry Should Embrace Illegal File Sharing

US District Judge James P. Jones has ruled that copyright holders cannot equate each illegal download with a lost sale. Just because somebody downloaded your song, doesn’t mean that they would have purchased it otherwise. Practically what that means is that you cannot seek restitution based on the amount that hypothetically would have been gained if the person would have purchased your song through legal channels.

Via ArsTechnica:

Record companies cannot collect restitution for every time a song has been illegally downloaded, a US District judge has decided. Judge James P. Jones gave his opinion on United States of America v. Dove, a criminal copyright case, ruling that each illegal download does not necessarily equate to a lost sale, and that the companies affected by P2P piracy cannot make their restitution claims based on this assumption.

I’m not sure how much I like this ruling. While I can see the point that the judge is making, the essential argument on the part of the defendant is, “Well, I wouldn’t have downloaded the song if I couldn’t steal it.” That’s the equivalent of me stealing a Ferrari from the local dealer and my defense being, “Well, sir, I definitely wouldn’t ever have bought that car, so I stole it. Therefore, I can’t be forced to pay the dealer for how much the car is worth.” Seriously?!

“Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price,” Jones wrote. “[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free.”

So now it’s the copyright holder’s fault for not making their content avialable for free? Take that back to my Ferrari analogy, “Well, sir, I wouldn’t have stolen the car if they would have just given me the pink slip for free.” That makes no sense.

I should point out that this does not absolve defendants of criminal charges, but severely limits the restitution that copyright hodlers can seek. Civil suits can ask for monetary damages based on some other scale, but it appears that copyright holders will not be able to calculate that value based on the price of their content. How then should they determine what they’re owed? I don’t want to see people steal songs, but I don’t want to see copyright holders abuse this ruling the other way either, and start collecting thousands of dollars per song shared instead of the actual value they would have charged for the song. Make sense?

read the full article here

Related posts:

1. 95% of Music Downloads are Illegal: IFPI
2. Pirate Bay Judge Deemed Unbiased: Retrial Denied

Spotify is a music player that allows users to stream any songs they want, without downloading the songs onto their computer. In that regard, it functions much like Pandora, and the sound quality is comparable. Where it one-ups Pandora is in the fact that’s so much more than a music discovery tool. Spotify lets users select the specific songs they want to hear, create playlists from songs hosted on other users’ computers, and share their playlists with other users. The GUI looks a bit like Songbird, a mashup between iTunes and last.fm.

To keep the streaming efficient, but also allow users to discover new music, Spotify operates by hosting the most popular songs on its own server for fast streaming, and more obscure artists through a P2P streaming system. So essentially, users don’t have to purchase any music, but have access to all the music that any other users are willing to host on their computers. How is this legal?

Spotify users can select from two versions of the program. The first is a free, ad-supported version and the second is a subscription based, but advertisement free model. From that revenue generated, Spotify pays record labels the appropriate royalties. They already have emphatic support from major labels like Universal and EMI, and why not? Labels see this as the first time they can finally tap into some cash from the P2P nightmare that has been crippling them for the past decade.

As far as downsides, Spotify is currently restricted to computer-only use. You cannot load music onto your MP3 player or burn music onto CDs since there are no files actually held on your computer. As wi-fi becomes more readily available, I think Spotify has promise of becoming a strong network music player. We’ve seen leaps and bounds made in that direction since the advent of 3G. The Pandora application uses the same streaming music technology, and works great when I’m taking long drives all the way up California.

The other hindrance I see is bandwidth. As Spotify becomes more and more popular, how will they keep the streaming quality high without a superior net infrastructure? This might be why they have kept it restricted to particular countries for now.

All in all, I like the idea. Get the labels and artists paid, but keep the music accessible. You can check out a video from the Spotify site here.

Related posts:

1. Spotify Overthrows iTunes… for UMG… in Sweden…
2. Spotify iPhone App

A quick look at album sales in the U.S. shows that they have been dropping consistently since 2004.It looks like the RIAA is abandoning mass lawsuits in favor of a new structure for combating illegal file sharing. I think that it’s a good call since the current practice of suing individuals was clearly not working on a large scale. The chances of getting sued were too slim for people to be scared out of sharing, and there was still never a way to say difinitively that the person being sued was the person who was file sharing anyway. Consider open wireless networks. The RIAA would have to seize computers to prove that the shared files were even taken by the person in question, and to my knowledge, that never happened. The anonymity of the internet must be combated before people think that their actions need to change. Offloading a lot of that hunting workload to the ISPs, which the RIAA plans to do in this new plan, will help bring more file sharers to the RIAA’s attention. What they do with that huge influx of new culprits has yet to be seen, as there will still be no way to prove that the holder of the ISP plan was the one file sharing. Do the ISPs then pin responsibility for network security on the customer? The RIAA plan is to issue several warnings to copyright violators provided to them by ISPs, as well as throttle their net speed as punishment. The RIAA is also reserving the right to sue, but expressing a desire not to progress that far down the line of punishment. I’m not a fan of throttling, but until another solution is found, it might be a viable deterrent. I’m just thinking that if my net speed is having enough trouble handling my email and basic browsing, the first thing I would cut is any P2P software hogging my personal bandwidth. If it’s not me that’s sharing, but I have an open network, I’m going to close my network to keep the bandwidth for myself.

I also thought it was a good move by the RIAA to not release the names of the ISPs they’re working with. That would very easily lead to an unfair market for the ISPs since customers would simply elect to use the ISPs not cooperating with the RIAA.

Both this article and my previous article, Major Labels in Favor of P2P, suggest that any solution to massive file sharing is going to involve the cooperation of ISPs. I think Jim Griffin’s plan to roll in a fee with ISP service to pay copyright holders might be more alluring to the ISPs themselves, as it’s a fee that they collect rather than a new department that they need to spend revenue on. I can’t imagine that cooperating with the RIAA is going to be any ISPs top priority either, so we’ll see how this plan works in practice rather than theory.

Here’s the article.

Related posts:

1. RIAA Victory Over LimeWire – The Implications
2. Merry Christmas From The RIAA

Jim Griffin is leading the charge for an ISP fee to be rolled into each ISP client’s bill in order to compensate record labels being victimized by illiegal P2P downloading services.

Critics of the program have argued that such a structure would be extortion, to the effect that you’re essentially paying a record label not to sue you when you download their songs. I think that’s a bit extreme, and at least appreciate that Warner is making a concerted effort to figure out how we can make music profitable in the digital age (without litigation of course).

I have two main qualms with the system as described:

1) File quality assurance. With P2P clients, the file you get is always hit and miss. I remember bands that used to re-tag their songs as being by different artists in order to try and swindle people into downloading their music in an effort to create a fan base. For example, if I had a new and unknown shoe-gazer band, I might tag my song as being by My Bloody Valentine or Smashing Pumpkins in order to get people to download it and hear my music, when they were infact under the impression that they were downloading some unreleased Pumpkins tune. You’re also not guaranteed any type of bitrate, meaning you could spend time hunting down a song only to find that you just downloaded a clipping, monophonic, bit-crushed version of a live bootleg recording. Lastly in this category is how to enforce that only music gets downloaded instead of software, video, etc. In addition to record labels and entertainment groups, do you also need buy in from any digital media product provider out there?

2) Imposition. I’m not too keen on the idea of the $5 fee being put on my bill each month regardless of if I use P2P services or not. Essentially, you’re forcing the masses to absorb the costs from the actions of a growing, but still relatively small, few. Even with the fee, I’m not likely to get my music on a P2P client simply because of the file QA problems mentioned above.

Now onto Choruss. Griffin’s OneHouse Digital registered the domain for Choruss.com earlier this year, though there’s nothing up yet. College campuses have been chastised as the most prolific abusers of copyright. When I was in college, one of my suitemates got hit with a subpoena regarding some content he downloaded on P2P client Kazzaa. The University stepped in and took the heat for him, but then installed a lot of watch dog software on his PC and limited his net usage on campus. Some universities have really gone to bat for their students, like UCSC, actually winning a case against the RIAA claiming that they should not be obligated to release students’ personal data.

Enter the Choruss. Choruss applies Griffin’s ISP-fee-based model on college campuses. A small fee, rolled into each student’s tuition, would go to record labels in exchange for a covenant by the labels not to bring litigation against the university’s students. A nonprofit tech advocate Educause has been presenting the unlimited music plan to colleges accross the country using a really cheesy (but informative) PowerPoint presentation:

Nice.

We live in an age where people essentially choose whether or not to pay for music based on their own moral compass. The only thing that will get the music freeloaders to pay for their music might be some sort of enforced fee like Griffin proposes. Let’s see how Choruss pans out, and what tweaks it might need. Record labels are drowning, and we’ve been standing around describing the water for the better part of a decade. Griffin’s proposition may be the first step in finding some little blow-up orange floaties.

Related posts:

1. Steve Bowman On Record Labels
2. 95% of Music Downloads are Illegal: IFPI

I  had argued that lower priced music would be the best way to combat illegal file sharing; and this was a huge plus for the Amazon MP3 store, as you could pick up the latest and greatest albums for often times under $5. Why download illegally when you can do it the right way for so cheap, especially when all of these P2P clients could potentially expose your computer to malware and other software with bad intentions?

Well, apparently, the right way still isn’t the most convenient way. Remember when Radiohead released “In Rainbows”? For a certain amount of time, you could go to their website and download the album, paying what you wanted for it, even nothing! A study found that through October, when the album was offered, huge numbers of people still downloaded the album illegally, rather than going through Radiohead’s site to get the album in a legal fashion.

A lot of speculation was generated regarding how much the band would actually make through this method of album release versus a more traditional one. They pulled the plug on it after just three months, releasing the album in traditional formats leading you to surmise that cash flow from the online release was less than spectacular. The traditional album sales sky rocketed to to the top of the charts, and most attribute that success to the buzz generated around the online promotion. Radiohead then caught flack for being insincere with their intentions, using the new format as simply a hype generator rather than harboring legitimate hopes of an industry revolution. Trent Reznor’s was the loudest voice to question Radiohead’s motives. In the end, the band’s manager did say that they were unlikely to do it again, so take that for what it’s worth.

All that said, unless society undergoes a massive paradigm shift to where illegal music downloads are not the norm, the music industry must find a new model to make money.

here’s the article

Related posts:

1. Pirate Bay Trial Witness: File-Sharing Not Bad For Music Business
2. 95% of Music Downloads are Illegal: IFPI