More news about filesharing from the UK this week. Virgin Media has announced that it is teaming up with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to “educate” the general public about ways to get legal music downloads. Part of this education, of course, includes warning people off the evils of filesharing.
The two companies will work together by sending letters to Virgin subscribers who are suspected of using filesharing services to download copyrighted material. The BPI will, apparently, provide Virgin with details of the ISP’s customers who are suspected of downloading illegal material through filesharing services.
The BPI will also give Virgin dates, times and location, although personal information will not be shared.
Virgin’s letters will contain links to legit sites for music downloads. Virgin says that more than six and a half million users’ Internet accounts are being used to access filesharing websites. No legal action will taken against filesharing violators.
The iPhone 3G has been causing a major stir. The new iPhone, however, will not give users access to 3G music downloads. Music from iTunes will only be able to be loaded onto an iPhone 3G via Wi-Fi connection or directly from a PC.
Apple is reportedly in talks with a number of major record labels about bringing 3G music downloads to the iPhone, but none of these talks have resulted in anything definite — yet. It looks as though there is still hope for 3G music downloads to appear on the iPhone 3G, but users will have to wait a while before they can get their hands on them.
The main stumbling point is that record labels are of the belief that 3G music downloads should cost more than regular Internet downloads. This isn’t devastating news, but it is one less feature that the iPhone 3G should have.
Strangely this week, there is some more news about QTrax. We’ve lost track of whether this new filesharing service has the backing of the big four record labels or not. In this latest news, the Telegraph has reported that QTrax will offer totally free legal music downloads.
We already knew this, but the big question has always been which labels the music will come from. The idea behind QTrax is that people register and download music, with revenue being generated by ads. The concept is so simple that we have been assuming from the offset that it will fail.
If it is a success, it could change how people use filesharing programs to get free music downloads. EMI has now joined the fray and offered up its back cat.
The only catch with QTrax is that users must visit the website every month or so to continue using downloaded tracks. Of course, the songs will likely be DRM-protected.
It was reported recently that filesharing company Rhever has been calling for the entire filesharing industry to evolve. Well, part of that evolution might have happened now as Rhever recently unveiled its new premium filesharing service.
Rhever’s filesharing service is “totally legal”, putting it in direct opposition with other services, such as Limewire and Ares, which are also legal but are often used for illegal means.
The new Rhever service is being touted as something of a filesharing revolution, though we’ll reserve judgment on that for the time being. Rhever claims that its filesharing services gives users high-speed access to 25 million files.
Members of Rhever will receive 15GB of space a month. At the moment, you can sign up for a free trial.
Features include comments, ratings and previews. We’re not really sure what all the fuss is about. It all sounds like PR talk at the moment. If anyone has had any experiences with Rhever, feel free to share them.
British people are as big fans of free music downloads as the rest of the world. However, the Brits have been lucky up to now because, while filesharing has received a lot of attention, there have not been any arrests or lawsuits related to filesharing and free music downloads. All that changed this week when six Britons were arrested for downloading music prior to its official release.
This marks the first instances of their kind in the UK. The six people used the now dead filesharing service OiNK. The six were arrested and then, strangely, released without charge.
While some reports have been stating that the six were arrested for downloading free music, it looks more likely that they were collared for uploading music. Free music download website OiNK has already shut down after its servers were located and wiped.
As of yet, further information about this yet has yet to be released. We’ll bring you more as we hear it.
Freemusicdownloadwebsites.com has teamed up with Freemoviedownloadsites.net to offer, surprisingly, free music downloads and free movie downloads. The idea is that the two websites will become a huge resource of free downloads.
The websites have become popular among students because they offer free legal music downloads. Both websites have links to other websites from which you can get free music downloads.
So, what’s the deal? Will these website set the world on fire? It’s unlikely. We checked out both of the websites and they don’t seem to add a whole lot more than what you can get by firing up Limewire or uTorrent.
We like the premise and the conviction with which these guys claim to offer a great product, but ultimately it falls flat on its feet. You may as well stick to Ares. Has anybody checked out these websites for free music downloads? Any thoughts on them?
Twitter has apparently taken over the world. You can’t use the web without seeing a reference to Twitter, and now it looks like filesharing functionality has been added to Twitter. TweetCube is the name of the filesharing service.
So how does it work? Well, it basically gives filesharing functionality to Twitter accounts. You log in to your Twitter account through the TweetCube website and then you can upload your files for filesharing. Next thing you know, the uploaded files show up in your Twitter stream. Pretty cool, right?
The service is free to use and you can use the filesharing website to share files up to 10MB in size. It is perhaps more of a gimmick than anything, but it’s the sort of functionality that Twitter almost certainly needs if it wants to evolve. Simplicity is great, but a filesharing function added to Twitter would make it even better.
Many people are still flying the flag for CDs, but if ever there were evidence that they are on the way out in favor of music downloads, this is it. Woolworths, a popular UK retailer, the equivalent of something like Wal-Mart in the US, has now dropped CDs from all of its 820 stores across the UK. The reason? Music downloads are apparently killing CD sales.
Woolworths will now only stock random special CD singles, such as singles by the winners of talent show such as the UK’s version of Pop Idol. The company will now focus on music downloads when it come to music.
Interestingly, a rep from Woolworths said that CD album sales are not quite dead yet, but CD singles are all but finished now. Coinciding with this news, Woolworths has revamped its music-download website, where it also offers games and ring tones.
The retailer will now go head to head with Tesco, which launched its store for legal music downloads recently.
In Phuket, Thailand, one issue that keeps cropping up is that of intellectual property. Pretty much every CD or movie you can buy in Phuket is pirated. This raises many concerns for copyright holders in the West, who are effectively being ripped off by the people in Phuket and the rest of Thailand.
One of the most interesting issues is that of free music downloads used by DJs in Phuket clubs. Most of the DJs get free music downloads from filesharing websites such as Limewire. They then burn their CDs and play them for hundreds, if not thousands, of people each and every week.
There have been some cases in Thailand of DJs being fined by the police for playing pirated music, though such a case is yet to happen in Phuket.
Phuket’s restaurants and bars knowingly play fake CD to the pubic day in day out, yet it’s open to debate whether they even know that such a thing is illegal. The difference in standards between the West and the East is often staggering.
Comcast has come under some serious fire recently for its part in putting a stranglehold over its users’ access to filesharing programs such as BitTorrent. In the light of intense pressure from customers and the media, Comcast is finally attempting to do some good to resolve the growing dispute over how ISPs allow clients to user filesharing services.
Comcast has vowed to change the way it manages its network to resolve all allegations of improper conduct.
Comcast will, apparently, work with customers and BitTorrent Inc to find a solution to this debacle. The company, which has something like 13 million subscribers, has said that it is adopting new practices for managing its networ that are “protocol agnostic”, which we assume means filesharing-friendly.
There have numerous complaints about Comcast blocking certain kinds of traffic. Hopefully this will be the end of it. Comcast has always denied any allegations, but it is obviously aware that something is up.
