The RIAA Armageddon has begun

yay local ISP

^^^^

I wish we had a local ISP still.

But for all the hullabaloo about the CAS, there’s really only one action it flags. The program will try to catch anyone who uploads an established, copyrighted file using peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, such as BitTorrent.

Not anyone who pirates using a file locker service like Megaupload. Not anyone who only downloads from P2P file-sharing services. Not even someone who slightly alters a file, uploads it for a short while on a P2P program, then stops before someone who works for the CAS notices.

Just uploaders.

Really? Still? I mean, awesome, America will just be leeching off of the rest of the civilized world. Some more. (smugface)

I'd always heard it's uploading that gets you in trouble. It's not downloading the new matchbox 20 album (what, just me?), it's sharing it with everyone else.

Right, that was what they were suing about before. I'm just surprised they're continuing with that and not going after downloaders as well.

I think it's pretty hard, with bit torrent. You're downloading from dozens of places at once, in bits and pieces. But if you have something and you're sharing it, not just bits of it but all of it, you're a much easier target.

Reminds me of a story my dad told me of getting pulled over in the middle of the night in Texas. He'd been speeding through the desert when he saw the cop lights, and per local law, they had to go wake up the judge to settle things that night. Everyone's tired, everyone's tired, and my dad asks, after paying up: "Everyone out there was speeding, too, so why did you pull me over?'

The cop's answer: "we'll get them next time."

if you torrent, and share the torrent pieces as you get them (per default), then your ip address is visible unless you've taken some measures to hide it. whether or not you're flagged (e.g. to receive a warning via your isp, passing on the threat from the copyright holder) depends on whether someone is dedicating any resources to noting that you have been uploading (even as a torrent user). i suspect, from past experience, that this is more likely the more high-volume a thing you're stealing. (more commercial, more downloaders, closer to commercial release dates, etc.)

PrivateInternetAccess gets me speeds pretty much identical to not being connected to a VPN, fwiw.

you guys could just stop stealing shit

good one.

shakes fist

Still trusting my nntp USENET source of choice.

Would appreciate VPN service recommendations though.

seedbox is da bomb

Seedbox looks cool, but looks more appealing to people for whom downloading is a much more than casual endeavor. Like, competitive seeders, private server kings, etc.

I have been happy with Private Internet Access for VPN. I mostly use it to watch US Netflix and blackedout NHL games, but its pretty cheap and pretty reliable.

you guys could just stop stealing shit

I'm pretty hardassed about only dl'ing things that I either can't purchase (OOP etc.) or have already purchased in another format (cuz really why should I have to buy something twice. Prince Among Thieves is great, I spent $20 on the vinyl when it came out, now I have to buy it again in MP3 format? fuck you)

What Shakey said.

I should stop stealing shit, right after I stop buying music on eBay too, right? I'd feel a lot worse about stealing music if there wasn't a gigantic, state-sanctioned secondary market doing the same thing.

Music was pretty awesome before the RIAA started imho. Every house had a piano. People learned how to play songs their own way. You could get a job playing music along to a movie in a theater. Etc etc etc

...Beck's new album is going to be released as sheet music....

that already happened

yeah, a bunch NPR dorks recorded their own versions

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/recorded-music-industry-revenue-rises-424574

Music industry revenue rose last year for the first time since 1999.

too bad approximately zero of that growth went to actual musicians. looks like most of it came from subscription services, which don't pay shit.

but they're easier than P2P so who cares right

they pay more than p2p

sometimes

I'm at a point now where I don't care how much or little a subscription service pays out. It's finally the right platform in the post-Napster world and if the artists push back hard enough then they might get somewhere with their cut of the revenue. Lots of (not terribly old) artists are still of the old mindset, though, so it may be a few more years before anything substantial happens on that front.

spotify etc will never pay a ton of money per play because they don't produce very much money per play

^^^

they make all their money the same way most of the rest of the internet makes money - speculative investment, selling user data, etc. these sites aren't set up to generate revenue via content, content isn't worth anything anymore.

and it'll be outpaced by something else within a few years just like Rhapsody and eMusic were

http://i.imgur.com/PmuAUfB.gif

How are you going to outpace a huge music library that you, as a user, basically "rent" each month? Are they just going to download shit directly into our minds?

I'm sure someone will think of something. and some venture capitalist will give them a lot of money to launch it, and make a shit-ton of money overvaluing its stock, then it will go public, people will kinda like it, then they'll get tired of it - rinse and repeat

How are you going to outpace a huge music library that you, as a user, basically "rent" each month?

Not to belabor the point, but this is basically the platform I've been waiting to see realized since the first time I ever read about it hypothetically in some magazine articles nearly 20 years ago.

their library sucks imho

granted I am not the standard music consumer

They're missing some things, but they often have a lot of things I'd never have expected to be there (and new releases on labels of all sizes get added all the time). It's not all-encompassing, but neither is the torrent world or the used cd/vinyl market.

I'll stick with the illegal way where I can always find what I want

what do you guys think of a quasi-kickstarter scheme where bands release songs if x amount of contributory funds are reached, after which point anyone can have it for free, because it's pointless trying to police copying anyway?

the Lex argument of 'oh Spotify is worthless because it doesn't have every single fucking thing i could ever want to listen to' is so stupid. there's never been one-stop-shopping, there never will be, but as far as individual sources go it's about as good as it'll ever get. xp

I think ppl should just go back to buying music if they really like it. Not in mp3 format.

whatever, I have no use for it xp

People listen to music in different ways. It's an amazing world.

It doesn't have a rather large percentage of what I want and I prefer to have mp3s anyway.

In a perfect world, every artist would have a "Donate!" button on their website/Facebook/whatevs and I'd just download and listen to everything I wanted and whenever I was like, oh yeah this is great, I'd donate a couple bucks directly to the artist.

yes let's make that happen!

iatee roaringly otm. I'll take a tenth of a penny over zero

shakey mo otm. i honestly think the best solution is government money for all self-declared artists (with the caveat that you have to write a twenty pager at the end of the year), but i'm not totally convinced it's within the realm of possibility.

xp well there's the real-world answer i guess