As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.
Please be assured that any further contact with us, regardless of medium, will result in:
a) a suit being filed for harassment.
b) a formal complaint lodged with the bar of your legal counsel, for sending frivolous legal threats.
It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.
Please also note that your e-mail and letter will be published in full on
http://www.thepiratebay.org/.
Go fuck yourself.
Polite as usual,
anakata
Monday 9 May 2011
Sunday 8 May 2011
Researchers conclude piracy not stifling content creation
Researchers conclude piracy not stifling content creation
File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they've posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music. As such, they argue it's worth analyzing the deeper question of whether file sharing is putting a damper on music creation. Their conclusion is that this is a much more complicated question, but the answer seems to be "probably not."
Some academic fields rely on the use of working papers—complete drafts of potential publications—to solicit feedback on the basic arguments and analyses used in the work-in-progress. These days, that simply involves posting it on the Internet for all to see; you can have a look at the document yourself. There are clearly a few places where the authors could polish up their arguments, but the paper makes a compelling case that the relationship between file-sharing and copyright law is a complex one.
The authors construct a bit of a causal chain between file sharing and the intent of copyright law to foster creative works. First, you'd need to know that file sharing was harming music sales, and that the music industry wasn't finding alternative ways of generating income. Then you'd need to show that the loss of income provided a disincentive to musical creativity. They recognize that this calculus might seem a bit heartless, though: "It might seem curious to some of our readers that we do not consider the welfare of artists and entertainment companies in our calculus. Our approach, however, reflects the original intent of copyright protection, which was conceived not as a welfare program for authors but to encourage the creation of new works."
None of these questions, however, turn out to be easy to answer. The authors point out that the decline in music sales came at a time where the replacement of vinyl with CDs was tailing off. The actual piracy of a copyrighted song may not represent a lost sale, either: in some cases, the individual would never have paid for the music anyway, while many studies have shown that file sharing can act as a prelude to legitimate sales. In the end, they join many of their academic peers in deciding that the role of file sharing in the music industry's woes is overblown, noting, "many studies conclude that music piracy can perhaps explain as much as one fifth of the recent decline in industry sales."
So there is some damage, which handles the first link in their logical chain. This leads us to the question of whether there's offsetting revenue. "File sharing also influences the markets for concerts, electronics and communications infrastructure," the authors argue. "For example, the technology increased concert prices, enticing artists to tour more often and, ultimately, raising their overall income." In support of that argument, they note that, to generate $20 in concert income, artists used to have to book sales of about 8.5 CDs; that figure has dropped to under 6.4 in more recent years. Adding in total concert revenue to record sales actually shows the industry grew a bit between 1997 and 2007.
The authors get a bit clumsy with their arguments here, as they consider how piracy might have fostered revenue streams that don't go to the music industry, specifically iPod sales. If you tack those sales on top, the growth in that decade shoots to 66 percent. But it's pretty obvious that iPods were displacing other forms of portable music players, so that revenue clearly came at a price elsewhere.
If the first two links in the chain are tenuous, the last one pretty much gets demolished. There's essentially no indication that the more challenging economics are slowing down creative content production. In the five years prior to 2007, film production is up 30 percent, album releases have doubled, and book releases are up by two-thirds.
The authors also cite statistics that suggest that finances aren't (or at least, shouldn't be) the primary motivator for creative musical works. Because of the structure of the music business, even a gold record doesn't guarantee a windfall to artists, and the ratio of gold records to all records suggest that success is distributed by a system that most resembles a lottery. People clearly seem willing to put time into producing music even if it's not paying off, as the authors note, "even among those who spent at least thirty hours a week on music-related activities, only 22 percent derived at least four-fifths of their income from music."
Given that all the links in the causal chain are, at best, tenuous, the authors conclude that, while copyright infringement may be hurting the music business, that shouldn't be taken as an indication that it's affecting the theoretical basis of copyright law, the fostering of creative works.
It will be interesting to go back to see how the work evolves once the authors receive community feedback, as there are some interesting bits of trivia that the authors don't develop well. For example, a random survey of over 5,000 consumers showed that, although their iPods contained an average of 3,500 songs, over half of these had never been played. They also cite statistics that show some songs that leak to file sharing sites ahead of their release don't see many downloads until record company promotions start, leading them to conclude that "unless the industry drums up support for a new release, it is apparently difficult to give it away for free."
More generally, the authors seem to suggest that file sharing may be an inevitable outgrowth of the fact that copyright restrictions have been a one-way street. "Over the past 200 years, most countries evolved their copyright regimes in one direction only: lawmakers repeatedly strengthened the legal protections of authors and publishers, raising prices for the general public and discouraging consumption."
These points aren't directly relevant to the main thrust of the authors' argument, but it's possible that the community will help them develop them a bit better, since they do appear to be relevant to the overall question of why we grant copyright protection in the first place.
Some academic fields rely on the use of working papers—complete drafts of potential publications—to solicit feedback on the basic arguments and analyses used in the work-in-progress. These days, that simply involves posting it on the Internet for all to see; you can have a look at the document yourself. There are clearly a few places where the authors could polish up their arguments, but the paper makes a compelling case that the relationship between file-sharing and copyright law is a complex one.
The authors construct a bit of a causal chain between file sharing and the intent of copyright law to foster creative works. First, you'd need to know that file sharing was harming music sales, and that the music industry wasn't finding alternative ways of generating income. Then you'd need to show that the loss of income provided a disincentive to musical creativity. They recognize that this calculus might seem a bit heartless, though: "It might seem curious to some of our readers that we do not consider the welfare of artists and entertainment companies in our calculus. Our approach, however, reflects the original intent of copyright protection, which was conceived not as a welfare program for authors but to encourage the creation of new works."
None of these questions, however, turn out to be easy to answer. The authors point out that the decline in music sales came at a time where the replacement of vinyl with CDs was tailing off. The actual piracy of a copyrighted song may not represent a lost sale, either: in some cases, the individual would never have paid for the music anyway, while many studies have shown that file sharing can act as a prelude to legitimate sales. In the end, they join many of their academic peers in deciding that the role of file sharing in the music industry's woes is overblown, noting, "many studies conclude that music piracy can perhaps explain as much as one fifth of the recent decline in industry sales."
So there is some damage, which handles the first link in their logical chain. This leads us to the question of whether there's offsetting revenue. "File sharing also influences the markets for concerts, electronics and communications infrastructure," the authors argue. "For example, the technology increased concert prices, enticing artists to tour more often and, ultimately, raising their overall income." In support of that argument, they note that, to generate $20 in concert income, artists used to have to book sales of about 8.5 CDs; that figure has dropped to under 6.4 in more recent years. Adding in total concert revenue to record sales actually shows the industry grew a bit between 1997 and 2007.
The authors get a bit clumsy with their arguments here, as they consider how piracy might have fostered revenue streams that don't go to the music industry, specifically iPod sales. If you tack those sales on top, the growth in that decade shoots to 66 percent. But it's pretty obvious that iPods were displacing other forms of portable music players, so that revenue clearly came at a price elsewhere.
If the first two links in the chain are tenuous, the last one pretty much gets demolished. There's essentially no indication that the more challenging economics are slowing down creative content production. In the five years prior to 2007, film production is up 30 percent, album releases have doubled, and book releases are up by two-thirds.
The authors also cite statistics that suggest that finances aren't (or at least, shouldn't be) the primary motivator for creative musical works. Because of the structure of the music business, even a gold record doesn't guarantee a windfall to artists, and the ratio of gold records to all records suggest that success is distributed by a system that most resembles a lottery. People clearly seem willing to put time into producing music even if it's not paying off, as the authors note, "even among those who spent at least thirty hours a week on music-related activities, only 22 percent derived at least four-fifths of their income from music."
Given that all the links in the causal chain are, at best, tenuous, the authors conclude that, while copyright infringement may be hurting the music business, that shouldn't be taken as an indication that it's affecting the theoretical basis of copyright law, the fostering of creative works.
It will be interesting to go back to see how the work evolves once the authors receive community feedback, as there are some interesting bits of trivia that the authors don't develop well. For example, a random survey of over 5,000 consumers showed that, although their iPods contained an average of 3,500 songs, over half of these had never been played. They also cite statistics that show some songs that leak to file sharing sites ahead of their release don't see many downloads until record company promotions start, leading them to conclude that "unless the industry drums up support for a new release, it is apparently difficult to give it away for free."
More generally, the authors seem to suggest that file sharing may be an inevitable outgrowth of the fact that copyright restrictions have been a one-way street. "Over the past 200 years, most countries evolved their copyright regimes in one direction only: lawmakers repeatedly strengthened the legal protections of authors and publishers, raising prices for the general public and discouraging consumption."
These points aren't directly relevant to the main thrust of the authors' argument, but it's possible that the community will help them develop them a bit better, since they do appear to be relevant to the overall question of why we grant copyright protection in the first place.
Saturday 7 May 2011
Copyright debate shows politicians have no idea what the internet really is.
Copyright debate shows politicians have no idea what the internet really is.
Some idiotic statements were made during the passing under urgency of the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill in Parliament last month.
National MP Katrina Shanks led the charge of the uninformed, blithely telling the House: "But it is really important to remember that file sharing is actually an illegal activity." The patently absurd statement - billions of people share billions of files, photos, videos, etc every day - reveals a breathtaking ignorance.
It didn't stop there. "It is interesting how software develops over time as well. It is so common, and I had no idea that the software was so common," Shanks wittered. "I did a little search on Google on Jonathan Young's iPad beside me. In fact, that is technology in itself." Gosh.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more inane, up stepped National's Jonathan Young to remind us about the movie The Terminator and declare: "In that film a computer system called Skynet ruled the world. It was like the internet today."
It's sad enough that these people are making laws to control something they clearly don't have a clue about. Sadder is what, as politicians, they fail to see. The internet is the greatest democratising force of all time - surpassing the printing press in reach and influence.
Yet these politicians show they really have no idea what the internet is. Some commentators weren't much better - one declaring "the internet and file sharing are one and the same thing." No, they're not.
Music or movie files travelling via BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer file sharing programs are just one of many types of traffic that travel on internet tracks. Other travellers include web pages, music files from the iTunes store, software updates, email, instant messages, phone conversations via Skype and other internet telephony services, streaming video and audio via YouTube, plus heaps of other stuff.
And over the next 10 years you can guarantee there'll be new types of traffic that we can't yet imagine.
The beauty of the internet is its simplicity. First, that it's open and not under central ownership or control so anyone can join and no one decides what it can be used for. And second that it's designed to do one simple thing: deliver packets of data from one place to another. In doing so, it's agnostic. The internet doesn't know what's in the packets - fragments of files, web pages, email, porn videos, phone conversations, images, whatever. The network doesn't care, delivering them all equally.
In the process the internet and the devices tethered to it - computers, iPads, mobile phones, etc - become a giant copying machine. When viewing a web page, for example, a copy of the page is loaded into the video memory of your device to display it on the screen. Look at something on the web and you've made a copy of it.
Which is why applying outmoded copyright laws to control what the net does, automatically and effortlessly by its very nature, is never going to work. Digital technology has made it so easy to copy, edit, remix and publish anything that is available in digital form that everywhere you look - on blogs, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube - you'll find something that infringes copyright.
If you really want to stop copying, you have to shut down the net.
The point here is that our copyright laws, and especially the current bill, are laughably out of touch with reality. These are laws doomed to fail - as they have for a decade or more - and yet our politicians keep passing them. It's an exercise in futility, and brings the law itself into disrepute.
Worse still, these are laws that undermine New Zealand's sovereignty. As WikiLeaks cables show it's the United States making these laws, not us.
The cables show how successive governments have been puppets to American meddling, largely driven by the American movie and music industries' inability to adapt to internet disruption of their business model.
What's needed here are politicians prepared to say no (as the Green Party did) - to pause and think about what's really at stake and look at other ways that creators, in the age of the internet, may be rewarded for their work.
To recognise that file sharing protocols are actually an incredibly efficient mechanism for delivering information and to stop the gross imbalance that has been allowed to develop between the legal privileges of rights holders and society's need to facilitate innovation and creativity.
Above all, we need to realise that passing a law that bypasses due process, gives primacy to the accuser over the accused, and cuts off an individual's internet access because he or she might have downloaded some songs, is draconian and a waste of time and money.
Fortunately, if you care about these issues, there is a way to make your voice heard.
Help the Pirate Party of New Zealand become a registered political party and then vote for them in the next election. With some representation, at the very least, it would raise the level of debate in Parliament.
It's not as silly as it sounds. The party follows in the footsteps of the Swedish Pirate Party founded in 2006 which aims to reform laws regarding copyright and patents as well as strengthen the right to internet privacy.
In 2009 it got 7.13 per cent of the total Swedish votes in the European Parliament elections, and ended up with two seats in the European Parliament. Power to the people.
Jeff M
Some idiotic statements were made during the passing under urgency of the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill in Parliament last month.
National MP Katrina Shanks led the charge of the uninformed, blithely telling the House: "But it is really important to remember that file sharing is actually an illegal activity." The patently absurd statement - billions of people share billions of files, photos, videos, etc every day - reveals a breathtaking ignorance.
It didn't stop there. "It is interesting how software develops over time as well. It is so common, and I had no idea that the software was so common," Shanks wittered. "I did a little search on Google on Jonathan Young's iPad beside me. In fact, that is technology in itself." Gosh.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more inane, up stepped National's Jonathan Young to remind us about the movie The Terminator and declare: "In that film a computer system called Skynet ruled the world. It was like the internet today."
It's sad enough that these people are making laws to control something they clearly don't have a clue about. Sadder is what, as politicians, they fail to see. The internet is the greatest democratising force of all time - surpassing the printing press in reach and influence.
Yet these politicians show they really have no idea what the internet is. Some commentators weren't much better - one declaring "the internet and file sharing are one and the same thing." No, they're not.
Music or movie files travelling via BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer file sharing programs are just one of many types of traffic that travel on internet tracks. Other travellers include web pages, music files from the iTunes store, software updates, email, instant messages, phone conversations via Skype and other internet telephony services, streaming video and audio via YouTube, plus heaps of other stuff.
And over the next 10 years you can guarantee there'll be new types of traffic that we can't yet imagine.
The beauty of the internet is its simplicity. First, that it's open and not under central ownership or control so anyone can join and no one decides what it can be used for. And second that it's designed to do one simple thing: deliver packets of data from one place to another. In doing so, it's agnostic. The internet doesn't know what's in the packets - fragments of files, web pages, email, porn videos, phone conversations, images, whatever. The network doesn't care, delivering them all equally.
In the process the internet and the devices tethered to it - computers, iPads, mobile phones, etc - become a giant copying machine. When viewing a web page, for example, a copy of the page is loaded into the video memory of your device to display it on the screen. Look at something on the web and you've made a copy of it.
Which is why applying outmoded copyright laws to control what the net does, automatically and effortlessly by its very nature, is never going to work. Digital technology has made it so easy to copy, edit, remix and publish anything that is available in digital form that everywhere you look - on blogs, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube - you'll find something that infringes copyright.
If you really want to stop copying, you have to shut down the net.
The point here is that our copyright laws, and especially the current bill, are laughably out of touch with reality. These are laws doomed to fail - as they have for a decade or more - and yet our politicians keep passing them. It's an exercise in futility, and brings the law itself into disrepute.
Worse still, these are laws that undermine New Zealand's sovereignty. As WikiLeaks cables show it's the United States making these laws, not us.
The cables show how successive governments have been puppets to American meddling, largely driven by the American movie and music industries' inability to adapt to internet disruption of their business model.
What's needed here are politicians prepared to say no (as the Green Party did) - to pause and think about what's really at stake and look at other ways that creators, in the age of the internet, may be rewarded for their work.
To recognise that file sharing protocols are actually an incredibly efficient mechanism for delivering information and to stop the gross imbalance that has been allowed to develop between the legal privileges of rights holders and society's need to facilitate innovation and creativity.
Above all, we need to realise that passing a law that bypasses due process, gives primacy to the accuser over the accused, and cuts off an individual's internet access because he or she might have downloaded some songs, is draconian and a waste of time and money.
Fortunately, if you care about these issues, there is a way to make your voice heard.
Help the Pirate Party of New Zealand become a registered political party and then vote for them in the next election. With some representation, at the very least, it would raise the level of debate in Parliament.
It's not as silly as it sounds. The party follows in the footsteps of the Swedish Pirate Party founded in 2006 which aims to reform laws regarding copyright and patents as well as strengthen the right to internet privacy.
In 2009 it got 7.13 per cent of the total Swedish votes in the European Parliament elections, and ended up with two seats in the European Parliament. Power to the people.
Jeff M
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