FILE SHARING NEWS ARCHIVE
In a twist of events in the US, the judge in the Atlantic vs. Pamela and Jeffrey Howell filesharing case has come out and said that filesharing is OK – we think.
The judge denied the RIAA’s push for a summary judgment and said that just because MediaSentry, the RIAA’s partner in crime, was able to download songs from a Kazaa account owned by the Howell’s, doesn’t mean that they were distributing the songs. The songs were simply made available.
The RIAA must now come up with more evidence if it is to get a favourable verdict over the Howells.
Until now, the RIAA has sued the pants of anyone who moves for simply putting a song into a folder and making it available for free music download to people over filesharing networks.
The RIAA has not, until now, needed to prove that other people actually downloaded the tracks. The judge’s ruling overturned his initial verdict, which ruled that the Howells must pay $40,000 in damages.
When Radiohead released their latest album, In Rainbows, as a music download that you chose how much you paid for, the world’s media were quick to point out that this was about to revolutionize the music industry, from CD sales to filesharing networks.
Well, it looks like we might have all jumped the gun a bit. Thom Yorke has said this week that Radiohead will not be pulling another stunt like that again. Perhaps the fact that people paid, on average, just £2.87 for the album disappointed the band. Also, only 38% of people paid anything for it at all.
Radiohead’s actions were, apparently, a one-off that came in response to a particular situation.
Yorke said that he doesn’t think that doing it all again would have the same response.
It’s a shame really because it looks like this entire business model is a failure and the scores of bands who were lining up to follow suit may now change their minds.
Nokia is confident that its move to offer unlimited free mobile music downloads will make the company money. The phone giant is also certain that the record labels involved will make money from the endeavor.
The “Comes with Music†service is shaping up to be the hottest commodity in the world of mobile music downloads, but critics have said that the service would come at the expense of profits.
Not so, says Nokia. The service is causing a ripple because users will be able to keep all the music they download, even after their subscriptions have ended. Sony BMG hopped on board last week and Universal was already involved.
The world’s two biggest labels look set to instill some confidence in smaller labels to become involved and offer mobile music downloads.
Reports have circulated that Nokia will pay $35 just to Universal for each handset sold.
With CD sales already dwindling, there is some concern that the advent of free mobile music downloads might shove another nail in the coffin.
Almost a year after its debut in the US, Apple’s iconic iPhone may be in line for an upgrade: the new 3g iPhone is rumored to be being released this summer. You want better news? An AT&T deal will see the price of the new 3g iPhone downloads slashed by as much as $200 when compared to the old model.
This subsidy will be available to new 3g iPhone customers who sign up for a 2 year deal. This price cut would place the 3g iPhone within financial reach of a much wider range of people than the original iPhone. It is likely that models sold by AT&T will be locked or programmed so that buyers can’t take the cheaper iPhone to another, cheaper, service.
AT&T’s model is not new in the business and it will be able to make the price of the cut back in a matter of months. Nevertheless this is interesting news for people thinking about investing in the father of mobile technology.
More filesharing and music download stats for you today. This time, it looks like the number of people using uTorrent has doubled this year compared to last year. The world’s most popular BitTorrent client is on 11.6% of all computers in Europe and 5.1% of all computers in the US.
The data was gathered from millions of Windows-based PCs around the world.
After uTorrent recently overtook Azureus as the most popular BitTorrent client around, it has now started gaining on Limewire. From 2007 to 2007, Limewire lost a quarter of its users, perhaps signaling that BitTorrent is becoming the preferred method of obtaining free music downloads. Limewire still remains the most installed filesharing app available, although it is losing ground in the US and Europe.
While uTorrent is on the rise, other BitTorrent clients are steadily declining. Interestingly, the study also found that one in five PCs in the workplace have at least one filesharing program installed.
iPhone filesharing is here, althought it’s not quite as exciting as it may sound. DropCopy is a new iPhone application that allows filesharing between an iPhone and a mac. Windows users can’t use DropCopy.
You’ll first need to unlock your iPhone before you use DropCopy, but once you do, filesharing is at your fingertips. You simply browse on your Mac for files you want to transfer, drag and drop.
For iPhone filesharing in the other direction, you can move files from an iPhone to your Mac without music hassle. It’s all very straightforward and it’s a handy tool for anyone with an iPhone. The transfers with this iPhone filesharing program are fast and efficient.
Because the program cannot run in the background of an iPhone, there is no security risk, as you might associate with other forms of filesharing. This isn’t exactly the iPhone filesharing revolution we’re holding out for, but it’s a start.
In Canada, the “three strikes and your out†policy for dealing with filesharing has finally started losing ground. Lobby groups and the music industry have been pushing for the ruling to be enforced to ban users from the Internet for repeatedly using filesharing services to download copyrighted music.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is behind the filesharing strikeout policy, while Britain, Australia and Japan have also been mulling the idea.
In Sweden, ministers have already debunked the idea. The move has been cited as a violation of civil liberties and human rights. After all, such a policy means that ISPs have to excessively monitor their clients before turning over information to the government.
It’s bad news whichever way you look at it, especially given the vast number of people who use filesharing programs like Ares.
Cutting off someone’s Internet connection is not the way to go about dealing with filesharing.
The computer is such an integral part of almost any home business these days that it beggars belief to hear of people trying to do without or trying to ‘make do’ with an inferior piece of equipment. While it is clear that many a home business, especially when first starting, is under the cosh of a very limited budget, this is no excuse for not starting out right. Good computers are available for a few hundred dollars and this expenditure should be weighed against the almost instant increase in productivity that will be enjoyed for the benefit of your home business.
Likewise a telephone. While it may seem like an unnecessary expense, just losing one potential client due to miscommunication resulting from a poor phone is completely unacceptable. A hundred dollars or so is not a lot in the grand scheme of things and if you don’t lose that client then it has paid for itself very quickly. Investing in your home business is an important and crucial thing to do.
A movie about filesharing titled Steal This Film is already being hailed a major success by the filesharing community, despite the movie not yet making back enough to cover the cost of its production.
The first part of Steal This Film focuses on the raid of filesharing portal The Pirate Bay. The second part takes a deeper look into the world of filesharing. Reps from The Pirate Bay and Mininova have starring roles.
The film has mostly relied on donations from the filesharing community. For anyone interested in filesharing, this movie is a must see that really challenges the way moviemakers approach the issue of filesharing. Don’t expect Hollywood to follow suit any time soon, however, as radical forward thinking is not one of the strong points of the movie industry or the music biz.
Steal This Movie is, of course, available on all filesharing networks the world over. To donate to the cause, download this client, watch for the movie and vote for it for a chance to win the filmmakers $30,000 towards their project.
The trade body that represents digital music retailers has come out and said that record labels should abandon DRM restrictions on music downloads. DRM causes confusion and uncertainty among consumers, said the report.
ERA Digital came up with a plan to address the matter of digital music download sales, including the idea of commercial filesharing as opposed to forcing ISPs to rat out their own clients.
The British government has consistently warned ISPs that if they cannot come up with a means of dealing with filesharing, then the government will force legislation upon them.
ERA Digital thinks that rather than working against changes in music, record labels should work with the flow and attempt to exploit the systems that are already in place. At the moment, record labels are haphazardly lashing out at anyone within reach in the never-ending battle against filesharing.
|
