Gene Simmons doesn't hold with all this modern stuff

Gene Simmons took time out from shouting at clouds to have a little rage at file sharing for killing rock. Let's hear him out, shall we?:

"The next KISS of the next BEATLES or whoever it is is not gonna come along, because there is no infrastructure. Here… Let's play a game. From 1958 until 1988 is thirty years. What have we got? Well, let's see… We have Elvis Presley, THE BEATLES, THE [ROLLING] STONES, Jimi Hendrix… the biggest bands of all time. And then in disco, you had Madonna, Donna Summer… all that. The biggest of all. And then in pop, you had Michael Jackson, THE JACKSON 5… all that stuff… and U2. And in heavy metal, you had METALLICA and IRON MAIDEN and all that stuff. Okay. And Prince and all that… From 1988 until today… give me the new BEATLES and the new STONES. Give me just one. You can't. Rock is dead. And the reason for that? Downloading and filesharing. When you stop charging for things, it becomes worthless. And there's gonna have to be a business model that's gonna have to change.

I suppose it's hard to argue that if you don't charge for something, it becomes worthless in a strict financial sense, but I'd have really liked to have heard from Simmons how filesharing stopped bands generating during the 1990s, before it became a thing. Maybe it's just such an evil force that it travels out in time in all directions.

Or, perhaps, rock started to look tired because people who had made some records ten, twenty, thirty years previously stuck around flogging branded merchandise off their reputation and strangled a lot of the creativity in the scene. What do you think, Gene?

Or, maybe, if you're looking for a 21st Century Madonna, and don't immediately think Beyonce, you're just too far from what's going on. Maybe discounting the whole R&B scene, maybe not thinking Kanye or Jay-Z are as culturally relevant as deep-reaching... maybe the problem is that you don't really recognise what the heirs of Presley look like, Gene.

'Cause there are great bands out there, but there's no support system." He continued: "You know, there's a ten-thousand-hour principle [the principle which holds that 10,000 hours of 'deliberate practice' are needed to become world-class in any field]. There's a book about that. Before THE BEATLES went into the studio to become THE BEATLES, they played clubs for ten thousand hours. That's years. You have to do something for thousands and thousands of hours before you get any good on it.

You're right, Gene, there is a book about the 10,000 hours theory. There's also - far more significantly - a study into it. It's bollocks.

Nowadays, instant gratification means you can hum in your shower, then wind up on 'The X Factor' and you're on television and you get a recording contract. But almost none of these singers who get recording contracts become huge. And that's because the taller the tree, the deeper the root that needs to be in the ground to hold up all that weight. So if you have a tree with no roots [makes falling hand motion]." Simmons added: "I love the new pop singers. I love Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. I've met them both. They're all great and talented… What's gonna happen when you're 40 and 50? Will it still work? That's the test of time."

What's beautiful here is Simmons suddenly realising that he's completely undermined his own argument by remembering Taylor Swift, so decides that she doesn't count as we don't known what she'll be doing in twenty years. Swift has been a jobbing musician for eleven years already, which means she's already been going for a year longer than The Beatles managed. Despite her career having happened entirely post-Napster.

But, still, always interesting to hear from you Gene. Good to know the opinions of the leader in the Branded Rock Merchandise Market.

Sky Broadband casts itself as wheezy cat; Pirate Bay proxies as mice

Sky Broadband has started to block access to Pirate Bay proxy sites, in a bid to inspire the creation of other Pirate Bay proxy sites ("defeat unlicensed file sharing once and for all").

File sharing not killing music after all, it turns out

It's not Girls Aloud coming to a graceful end; that other music industry trouper, the claim that file sharing hurts music sales, has pretty much been laid to rest as well: Extensive research from the European Union confirms what a lot of us have thought all along: unlicensed listening doesn't really take money from anywhere else:

The goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior of digital music consumers on the Internet.Using clickstream data on a panel of more than 16,000 European consumers, we estimate theeffects of illegal downloading and legal streaming on the legal purchases of digital music. Ourresults suggest that Internet users do not view illegal downloading as a substitute to legal dig-ital music. Although positive and significant, our estimated elasticities are essentially zero: a10% increase in clicks on illegal downloading websites leads to a 0.2% increase in clicks on legalpurchases websites. Online music streaming services are found to have a somewhat larger (butstill small) effect on the purchases of digital sound recordings, suggesting complementaritiesbetween these two modes of music consumption. According to our results, a 10% increase in clicks on legal streaming websites lead to up to a 0.7% increase in clicks on legal digital purchases websites. We find important cross country difference in these effects.

So - it differs a bit from country to country, but broadly speaking, there's a tiny positive effect, and - oh joy - even legal streaming leads to a small rise in actual sales.

Even if you accept that the upswings are as small as to be zero, that's still no negative effect.

You don't, of course, take down one of the RIAA-IFPI shibboleths with data and expect the music industry to admit they've been wrong. So they try a response to tear the research to shreds. It doesn't quite work:

IFPI believes the JRC study is flawed and misleading. The findings seem disconnected from commercial reality, are based on a limited view of the market and are contradicted by a large
volume of alternative third party research that confirms the negative impact of piracy on the
legitimate music business

Let's just look at that a little closer, shall we?

"Flawed and misleading" is quite a big claim - one suggesting incompetence and one duplicity. You better have something strong and convincing to follow that up.

"The findings seem disconnected from commercial reality". And, really, they don't. "This survey doesn't confirm what I believe, so it must be wrong" is just piffle.

"are based on a limited view of the market" - this seems to be the objection that the survey takes no account of legal streaming. Except it does. Look, that bit we quoted up there makes it clear that the impact of legal streaming on the download market is part of the thing they were investigating. Bit misleading to complain that research hasn't investigated the effect of legal streaming on legal streaming, isn't it?

"and are contradicted by a large volume of alternative third party research that confirms the negative impact of piracy on the legitimate music business" - nice to see the music industry calling itself a legitimate business. There's a pleasing Corleone ring to that.

I think this existence of contradictory data is upon which the IFPI are building the claim of the survey being misleading.

Trouble is, two of the three surveys are referenced by the EU survey - their findings detailed, and proper references given; the intention being that people read them alongside the EU findings.

To not have included the research which contradicts their findings would have been misleading. You know, like if the music industry issued a press release which only cherry picked research which agreed with them and ignored the research which took an opposing position. Like this one.

So what of the flaws? The IFPI details a "key example" - which apparently is so key they need no further examples:

A key example of this problem is the treatment of iTunes ‘clicks’ by Nielsen. iTunes is a major legal music service and an essential data point in establishing legal music consumption. Nielsen measures use of the iTunes application, which involves any activity around iTunes - such as a user simply plugging their iPhone into the PC (which launches the iTunes application), a user listening to music via iTunes, a user synchronising their Apple device with their PC, a user renting a film on iTunes, or downloading a game app. Each one of these instances are counted as an iTunes ‘click’ and considered as legal music behaviour by the JRC. This severely impacts the results and is not a good proxy for legitimate music consumption

Does Nielsen really count someone launching a desktop application as a click on a website? If that's true, then the methodology flaw is Nielsen's. (I've dropped an email to the IFPI to check where they're getting this definition of a click from.)

Even if we take this at its word - although people who still sync iPhones with PCs are hardly going to have much of a grasp on modern technology - there's no indication of how "severely" the impact of this is. (Really? Every time someone starts and stops a song and starts another one of their desktop iTunes player Nielsen adds a click on iTunes? That's extraordinary if true. Is it?) The IFPI might be right, this could undermine the findings. But rather than give us any data which could be set against the research, the IFPI just shrug and say they reckon it's just enough to know it could be flawed.

If they were interested in the truth, the IFPI would be pointing to a better source of the music interaction data. That they don't suggests their takedown is a panicky attempt to get everyone to look the other way.

[UPDATE: Took a while, but finally got a confirmation from Nielsen that their methodology can, indeed, include people recharging their iPhones as a visit to iTunes. I don't think that fatally undermines the EU report, but it does weaken it to the point where it's worth approaching the findings with a bit more caution. I've written more about this here.]

Twenty dollars a pop: BMG chase payments for unlicensed files

Having realised the limitations of dragging everyone who might have got hold of an unlicensed mp3s into court, BMG have come up with a new wheeze. Let's be generous and call it sending a speculative invoice which invites account holders to give them twenty dollars to make the threat of more expensive legal action go away.

Twenty dollars, I guess, seems like a fair price to the RIAA, who believe that a dodgy file or two should destroy your entire life. But, as Torrentfreak points out, they're not actually telling the truth when they make their demands:

TorrentFreak discussed this BMG project with lawyer Samuel Perkins of the Brody Hardoon Perkins & Kesten lawfirm. Perkins pointed us to the FAQ page on the settlement site where it states that even when an Internet account holder is innocent, he must take responsibility for the actions of others.

“BMG acknowledges that in many cases the subscriber will not be involved in any unlawful downloading, and will not even have any knowledge of it. I represent many such innocent subscribers,” Perkins begins.

“Under current US copyright laws, they would not be liable for copyright violations that occurred using their Internet subscription. BMG misrepresents subscribers’ copyright liability by stating that ‘most Internet service provider contracts state that the contract holder is responsible for actions taken on the Internet service.’ This statement is designed to convince subscribers that they are liable for a copyright violation if a neighbor or a family member secretly downloads copyrighted material,” Perkins explains.

“The subscriber is only liable for copyright infringement if he or she intentionally induc[es] or encourag[es] direct infringement, or infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it.

“By deliberately obscuring the distinction between the subscriber’s contract with the ISP and the subscriber’s liability under federal copyright law, BMG’s website attempts to trick innocent subscribers into settling copyright infringement cases when they in fact have no liability,” he concludes.

A 3000% plus mark-up and a false insistence of who owes the money. The record industry is still behaving as it always has, clinging to methods that don't work.

Where is music shared? Not so much online, it turns out

Here's an interesting little chart that was leaked to TorrentFreak. It's from the NPD survey into Digital Music from the end of last year, and forms part of the RIAA's campaign for a "six strikes" rule in the US:

What you'll spot about this is that the unpaid acquisition of digital music, far from being an internet-centred phenomenon, actually takes place in the physical realm. All these years on from Hope Taping Is Killing Music, and most of the time tracks change hands without cash flowing in the opposite direction, it's still done face to face.

The sheer amount of musician's money the RIAA is pouring into lobbying for control of the net, and the enormous dents to our information rights they're calling for, and they're not even worrying about their bigger challenge.

Of course, a cynic might think that because physical swapping is even harder to do anything about, and attracts less glittery opportunities for RIAA people to meet-and-greet in Washington (always a good chance for them to put out feelers for their next jobs), that might be why we hear a lot less about hard drive swapping. But it couldn't be that, could it?

ACS:Law lawyer now Potless:Bankrupt

Andrew Crossley, the man from ACS:Law who sent cash-demanding letters claiming illegal filesharing activities with often scant evidence, has been declared bankrupt.

It's not all bad news, mind: given his impecunious circumstances, he's had his £200k fine for being rubbish at protecting personal data reduced to £1000.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Amazon cloud

Bascha watches the record industry squawk as Amazon allow you to swap a hard drive at your house for a hard drive in the cloud, and sighs a long sigh:

I do not think that Sony and their ilk would be, shall we say, opposed to having one giant virtualized pool of everyone’s music resources. One place where you stored every music file you owned? That would make it eerily simple to monitor music consumption. To identify misappropriation.

The problem is that the major music labels do not own Amazon’s pool, and they don’t have means to see inside it. Google and others, it’s been suggested, were in talks with the labels to negotiate terms for very similar technologies. Licensing terms could kick back for music stored, monetarily and--most likely--in data and assurances. In addition to the fees they already paid for music sold.

[Thanks to Michael M for the tip]

Limewire shutdown so significant, it changes users' behaviour in the past

Following the shutdown of Limewire, music industry research monkeys NPD were quick to claim a significant victory:

[T]he percentage of Internet users who download music via peer-to-peer services was at 9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to 16 percent in the same period earlier in 2007

As Alan Wexelblat points out, that is pretty impressive, given that Limewire didn't shut down until, erm, the fourth quarter of 2010:

The claim, then, is that an event that happened in the last 3 months of a three year period somehow caused a retroactive drop? Either that violates causality as I understand it, or someone in the P2P industry has invented time travel and isn't sharing it. Or maybe, NPD is full of shit[...]
To cut NPD a small amount of slack here, they do admit that former LimeWire users are moving to other sharing networks. But really, this is just marketing puffery. NPD has no idea what caused the drop in self-reported file sharing over the past three years. Maybe it was that people thought it was an increasingly bad idea to admit that they used LimeWire to random marketers when there was a relentless stream of bad headlines about LimeWire.

It's possible that the drop was also caused by more people coming online, and those new users less interested in peer-to-peer filesharing and such pursuits, just wanting to watch video or make Skype calls to grandchildren.

Still, if the music industry really does believe the drop in figures are significant, it must be sucking a thoughtful tooth - a big drop in filesharing activity without actually having the need for an expensive, fractious court case. Money well spent.

[via Boing Boing]

CPS says copyright violations 'civil, not criminal'

It came a little late in the process, but the Crown Prosecution Service have dropped a case against two men accused of running a film 'piracy' website in Bristol. The Telegraph says:

The Crown Prosecution Service told Bristol Crown Court today it would not proceed with the trial following legal advice that the alleged copyright infringements were a civil rather than a criminal matter, a spokeswoman for Avon and Somerset Police said. Not guilty verdicts were recorded.

It appears the CPS had not really bothered to do much research into the case, relying instead on "facts" given to them by FACT, the Federation Against Copyright "Theft"; when they eventually looked closely they realised that criminal action was "neither necessary nor appropriate."

No word yet on how much public money has been wasted on a case designed to protect a few private interests; hopefully, though, this will be the last case of its sort.

Unlicensed filesharing unbothered by music industry efforts

The BPI have issued one of their panicked reports claiming that the roof is falling in:

Illegal downloading in the UK is growing, with around 7.7 million people choosing not to legitimately buy their music online, according to new figures.

A report suggests that more than 1.2bn tracks were illegally downloaded last year, costing the retail industry £1bn.

That's the BBC version of the report, straightfacedly accepting that a file downloaded without pay equals a lost sale.

It's worth thinking about this with last year's PRS report into how well and fast the UK music industry is growing as a background, and that it's an industry worth over £3bn. Does anyone really believe that without unlicensed filesharing, there'd be an extra billion quid in the industry?

Of course not.

While it's likely that the availability of free alternatives has meant some marginal customers have taken their money elsewhere, there's two things we've learned over the last decade and a half. The music industry can't stop the marginal cost of tracks dropping to near zero, and all their efforts so to do have probably cost the labels more than they would have lost if they'd just accepted their business had changed and dealt with it.

Instead, here we are, on the cusp of 2011 - nearly a decade since the Pyrrhic victory that closed down Napster - and we're still getting the BPI trying to find a way to return us to 1994:

"It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the burgeoning digital entertainment sector," [BPI's Geoff] Taylor said.

So, Geoff, is the sector being ravaged by "three quarters" of all music being "stolen", or is it "burgeoning"? It can't be both.

Earlier this year the BPI reported that music sales in the UK had grown for the first time in six years.

It said that legal downloads had boosted sales, rising by more than 50% to earn £154 million, compared with £101.5 million in 2008.

And it looks like "burgeoning" is what it is.

More to the point, after fifteen years of consistent reports from BPI saying pretty much the same thing, shouldn't we by now be looking at a music scene completely empty of new bands, new songs, new thrills?

Taylor ends with a plea for more legislation. The BPI always think that what is needed is more unenforceable legislation. The trouble is, with the bunch of turnips sitting in Westminster at the moment, they might get their wish. More time, money and effort trying to buck the marketplace. It'll still fail, though.

Ne-Yo considers all possibilities except album not being any good to explain sales

Why would the disappointing Ne-Yo album be struggling to find a market?

Any ideas, Ne-Yo?

He told CW50detroit.com's Gossip Girls section: "I was a little disturbed by my first week numbers, but a lot of things went into that first week number.

"The album getting leaked a month in advance definitely had something to do with it."

You know, you could be on to something there, Ne-Yo - obviously, once people had heard how rotten the record is, they'd be less likely to buy it.

Mr. Yo had previously suggested on Twitter that filesharers have their hands cut off:

"ALL HACKERS DIE SLOW!! It's stealing plain and simple! There's places where they cut people's hands off for less! Y'all SUCK!!!!!"

You'll notice that 'sticking a copy of NeYo's album on the torrents' is a larger crime than, you know, ordinary theft.

Ne-Yo - his name is short for Ne-Yo-Gi-OH - attempted to explain his calls for sharia law to be applied to filesharers:

"I just feel like people don't have patience anymore. Where's the class and integrity that came with music back in the day?"

By "class and integrity" he's talking about the days when the record companies colluded illegally to rip consumers off with artificially high prices while simultaneously ripping off the artists with horrible contracts.

"You listen to it before it's supposed to be listened to and then you don't like it but you didn't even give it a chance to get done.

"That's like eating a meal before its finished cooking; of course you're not gonna like it!"

Ah yes - and which of us can truly say we don't dismember relatives who take a spoonful of soup from the pot while it's still on the stove. I know I do, and I don't consider that to be a hysterical overreaction on any level at all.

Music industry exceutives blame PC Mag for exposing their futility

You can understand the rage felt by the music industry executives who have signed a letter accusing PC Mag of 'encouraging' people to steal music.

What got them angry was a piece written in response to the closure of LimeWire, which effectively said "there are lots of similar services which haven't been shut down".

In other words: the music company has just spent a fortune fixing a leak in their bathtub while the water is cascading from the hot water tank in the roof.

Still, let's hear what the copyright industry has to say, shall we?

We write to express our deep disappointment with your decision to publish Chloe Albanesius’ October 27 article, “LimeWire is Dead: What are the Alternatives?” as well as Sarah Jacobsson Purewal’s November 9, 2010 article “LimeWire is Quietly Resurrected: It's Baaack!” Both articles are nothing more than a roadmap for continued music piracy. The disclaimer in the first, “PC Magazine does not condone the download of copyrighted or illegal material,” rings hollow to say the least.

If, like me, you missed these articles, you'll be delighted that the wise owls at the record industry have drawn your attention to them - Limewire Is Dead and It's Baaaack may very well have passed unnoticed had there not been all this foot-stomping from the RIAA. They really know how to grow an audience with a viral campaign, don't they?

Let’s be honest. The vast majority of LimeWire’s users were interested in one thing and one thing only: downloading our music for free with the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal. The harm done to the creative community when people are encouraged to steal our music is immeasurable. Disclaimer or no, when you offer a list of alternative P2P sites to LimeWire – and include more of the serial offenders -- PC Magazine is slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs – including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together. Even worse is offering a direct link to a “resurrected” Limewire as follows: “I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly. In the event that you, yourself, would like to do some research, you can download the client here (direct link).”

We've all been doing this long enough, yes, to not need to point out that use of the word "steal" and claims of job losses is just nonsense. Or that filesharing services have non-evil uses, and just as saying 'here is a list of places that sell crowbars' isn't an extortion to breaking and entering, saying 'here are peer-to-peer networks' isn't an encouragement to commit crime.

Our argument is buttressed by the fact that PC Magazine offered no alternatives that are 100% legal.

None of the alternatives listed are any per cent illegal. The befuddled music execs have confused 'contain unlicensed files' with 'are not RIAA-approved music selling sites'.

In fact, legitimate download services, who have developed business models based on a respect for copyright and have entered into mutually beneficial arrangements with the music industry are undoubtedly outraged by your feeble attempt to undercut their ability to compete in the legal marketplace.

Legitimate music download services aren't listed in a piece about peer-to-peer networks because they're not peer-to-peer networks. It's like moaning that there's nothing about vegetarianism in an article recommending butcher's shops. And those legitimate services have managed to build a presence alongside, not even despite, the existence of much better-known peer-to-peer networks. Generally, they've tended to accept they're part of the landscape and concentrate on giving people reasons to pay for files instead - something the music industry still seems incapable of grasping as being fundamental to a successful online business.

We would hope that your sense of decency and the realization that even PC Magazine has a responsibility to the rule of law, would have informed your editorial decision in this matter. We suspect you’d feel differently about this issue if, like the music industry, you’d had to let go more than half of the talented writers and journalists who create your magazine because of uncontrolled piracy of their work. Unfortunately, it is clear that the rule of law was an afterthought.

Yeah, you journalists, sitting around in an industry which hasn't been affected in any way by the development of the internet. It's not like your stuff can be cut and pasted, is it?

Oh.

Here's the list of signatories in full:

Rich Bengloff, President, American Association of Independent Music
Ray Hair, President, American Federation of Musicians
Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, National Executive Director, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
John LoFrumento, CEO, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
Del Bryant, President & CEO, Broadcast Music, Inc.
Elwyn Raymer, President, Church Music Publishers Association- Action Fund
Ed Leonard, Chairman, Gospel Music Association
Gary Churgin, President/CEO, Harry Fox Agency
Barry Bergman, President, Music Managers Forum-US
Jim Donio, President, National Association of Recording Merchandisers
David Israelite, President & CEO, National Music Publishers Association
Steve Bogard, President, Nashville Songwriters Association International
Neil Portnow, President/CEO, The Recording Academy
Mitch Bainwol, Chairman & CEO, Recording Industry Association of America
Pat Collins, President/COO, SESAC
Rick Carnes, President, The Songwriters Guild of America
John Simson, Executive Director, SoundExchange

Ray Hair? Seriously?

Peter Jenner: Maybe we charged too much

Peter Jenner - president of the music manager's group, the IMMF - has already speculated that the fight against piracy might well have been a lot of effort in the wrong direction. Now, he's gone a bit further via the MidemNet Blog:

There is no evidence that there has been any serious decline in illegal use, yet sales have held up. Maybe we don’t need any more customer bashing. Maybe we should be trying to find new outlets and business models for our retailing partners, rather than treating them as the enemy. Maybe the penny is beginning to drop that collective licensing of digital services is the way to go, and that the development and encouragement of new altruistic filters (online and off), to turn our customers onto great new music is a good idea.

He also echoes the suggestion of Rob Dickins a few weeks back that maybe music has been overpriced:

Now they [the major labels] need to ask serious questions about their decline, and stop looking for easy culprits and facile solutions. Is the collapse over the last few years more to do with unbundling the album, failure to provide the right excitement in A&R, poor marketing and abysmal relations with retail that has led to the collapse of so many retailers (thank god for Tesco, ASDA, and Sainsbury for using records as a loss leader).

Maybe records were too expensive after all.

Maybe our core traditional audience wanted to spend their money on games, cheap fashion, getting drunk, and mobile phones rather than recorded music. Maybe we had ignored for too long the over 35’s who are probably the key buyers for CDs the premium product.

I still think we're a few years from most of the RIAA admitting that they were so convinced filesharing was the cause of all their woes they forgot to even run their own businesses properly - it's like an oak tree assuming its leaves are falling because of the mistletoe, as it started showing its berries around the same time. But it's encouraging that some people are starting to ask the right questions.

Perhaps Feargal Sharkey should have listened to the Culture Show programme, instead of complaining that it was so unfair.

Maybe in a couple of years.

BT hit delete, tell Ministry Of Sound these are not the customers they're looking for

That stamping of feet? That'd be coming from Ministry Of Sound, enraged that BT have deleted private data the MOS were demanding to pursue unlicensed filesharers. MediaGuardian explains:

BT had agreed to retain the personal details of 20,000 of its customers earlier this year, so that Ministry of Sound could pursue them once an injunction on the court order was lifted. However, the record label today said that BT had "failed to preserve" the details.

The telecoms company was granted an injunction on the original court order, submitted by law firm Gallant Macmillan on behalf of Ministry of Sound, on 4 October. The broadband provider argued that it would continue to challenge such orders – known as "Norwich Pharmacal orders" – until the rights holder and law firm can prove that accusations of illegal filesharing have "some basis".

It almost makes you forgive BT for those Kris Marshall ads, right?

Ministry Of Sound likes to think of itself as a record label, although grouping a bunch of other people's tracks together and slapping a picture of a foxtrelle in a bikini on the sleeve isn't really being a record label, is it? Still, it has copyrights and it's going to protect them, dammit:

The Ministry of Sound chief executive, Lohan Presencer, said: "It is very disappointing that BT decided not to preserve the identities of the illegal uploaders."

Alleged illegal uploaders, surely, Lohan. You claim they were "illegally" uploading, but BT suggested that you hadn't shown these claims had any basis.

"Given that less than 20% of the names remain and BT costs have soared from a few thousand pounds to several hundred thousand pounds, it makes no economic sense to continue with this application."

Again, there's that whining sense from the copyright industry that they shouldn't be expected to pay the costs of their own security - like the bloke from the corner shop wanting the council to pay for his CCTV as the kids who steal Mars bars use the street to get there.

It's a bit surprising, though - let's say everyone on the MOS list was somehow stealing from them. 20% of a list of 150,000 is still 30,000 chummies making off with Carl Cox remixes.

And, surely, the people on the list must have been serial abusers to have made it worthwhile pursuing them in the first place, so shrugging about 30,000 bad, bad people seems a bit strange.

"We are more determined than ever to go after internet users who illegally upload our copyrighted material."

Except, oddly, not for the 20% of names for whom BT still hold the details. Not really determined about them any more.

"We will be making further applications for information from all ISPs. Every time that a track or album is uploaded to the web it is depriving artists of royalties and reducing the money which we can invest in new British talent."

Ah, yes. New British talent. Those '15 years of anthems' or 'Dave Pearce: 1995' albums don't just create themselves, you know.

Look, I could go through the whole 'an unlicensed download is not the same thing as a lost sale' argument, but I think even Ministry Of Sound know that nobody really believes in the old 'every time a track is downloaded, an angel loses its wings' saw. In fact, lets just pretend that Lohan said "everytime someone goes out in the sunshine for free vitamins, it means the loss of a sale of an orange and reduces our ability to invest in Florida."

The sudden decision to drop the pursuit of 30,000 alleged infringers might look a little like Ministry Of Sound not really wanting to have to explain the quality of their data in a court. BT sweetly points out they're more than happy to help. With safeguards:

"The safeguards we aim to establish via the court are on the security of data handling, a threshold for providing a customer's details based on a minimum number of separate incidents, the tone of contact with broadband subscribers and a reasonable approach to financial compensation sought."

All of that seems reasonable enough. You'd have thought that Ministry Of Sound, determined to pursue these villains, would have been happy to give those assurances, and give them quickly. Strange that - despite this sapping their ability to invest in another Housesexy collection - they chose not to.

[Thanks to Michael M]

The copyright industry in action

Companies which still pretend they make music or films get really prickly when you suggest they're little more than copyright farms. The figures behind ACS:Law, the 'whoops, there goes all your private data online' legal firm gives some clarity onto how copyright claims are more a nice little earner than anything. From MediaGuardian:

For a typical letter demanding £300 as settlement for the allegation of filesharing, the record company would get between £60 and £90, while ACS:Law would retain £120. The rest would go to pay the companies which find the alleged filesharers, and to pay internet service providers to hand over data.

According to figures leaked online, and information from industry sources, approximately 10% of net revenue that comes from people who pay on receiving the letters is paid to the company that tracks down the IP addresses of suspected illicit filesharers.

A further 15% is paid to the internet service providers for retrieving the data, following a court order, detailing the names and addresses of the people implicated by the IP addresses collected through the tracking software.

I don't think it's any surprise that the pursuit of unlicensed files has become an industry for its own sake, in much the same way that clamping firms have nothing to do with protecting parking spaces and more about shaking the wallets of drivers.

What's missing from this breakdown is any indication of how much goes to the artists in whose name this is supposed to be done. Bugger all, you'd have to suspect.

Anti-filesharing lawyers emails "published to the web"

Whoopsie-daisy. ACS:Law, one of the legal firms that has done very nicely, thank you, out of pursuing unlicensed music files appears to have published thousands of pieces of personal data on the internet. Technology Guardian reports:

The website went offline after users of the online messageboard 4Chan orchestrated a sustained attack on it, putting the site offline for much of the week. A file containing the confidential information – which includes thousands of emails to and from the company – appears to have been inadvertently published on the front page of ACS:Law's website as it recovered from an attack, security experts Symantec told the Guardian. The file has since been distributed widely across the internet.

What do ACS say?

Andrew Crossley, the lead solicitor at ACS:Law who has shouldered much of the ire from compainants, this morning told the Guardian that he had contacted the information commissioner about the distribution of this confidential information, adding: "We're aware of it and unable to comment about it for legal reasons."

What those legal reasons are aren't clear - perhaps ACS:Law have taken an injunction out on themselves to prevent them suggesting that email communications with them might end up on the internet. Although they'd be aware of it happening.

You might think that they'd pop along to have a chat with a similarly stupidly punctuated PR firm for advice on whether not saying anything at all is the best approach when many of your secrets have apparently been strewn across the internet.

France unleashes force of Hadopi

The French copyright industry has started to request identities of unlicensed filesharers. It's getting off to a "lowkey" start:

The scope of the operation is mind boggling. The copyright holders will start relatively ‘slowly’ with 10,000 IP-addresses a day, but within weeks this number is expected to go up to 150,000 IP-addresses per day according to official reports.

The Internet providers will be tasked with identifying the alleged infringers’ names, addresses, emails and phone numbers. If they fail to do so within 8 days they risk a fine of 1,500 euros per day for every unidentified IP-address.

So in a month or two, the ISPs might be having to cope with a million demands a week. Or handing over a million and a half Euros a week to the copyright industry.

To be honest, you can't really imagine the music and film companies have the resources to formally request all those details, nor do anything with them if they could.

Now it's coming into force, it's clear that Hadopi is as poorly thought-out and unworkable as everyone who didn't have a vested interest suggested. How soon before it falls apart in the courts?

Guy Garvey sends file sharers to hell

In a slightly confused attempt to have-cake-and-eat-it, Guy Garvey has decided that some filesharers are damned, and others forgiven:

"If you genuinely can't afford music then of course you're going to rip it," the singer said.

"If you can afford it and you don't pay for it then you're going to hell and you've got your own room. Especially when it's a smaller band. There's no excuse."

In other words, damnation is now - like so much else since Cameron-Clegg got in - subject to means testing.

It's encouraging that Garvey suggests there might be shades of grey here, but that raises more questions than it answers. Is it worse for a banker to download a single track he could afford than a bloke on benefits taking 150? And what if the banker downloaded Madonna but the benefits guy was polishing off unsigned acts?

And - yes, really - doesn't it all depend what "it" is when Garvey says 'don't pay for it'. Does he mean that you should pay at moment of download? Or of listen? Or each listen? Is it worse to download a track you could afford to buy but don't listen to it, than downloading one you can afford and playing it 150 times?

If you download a song when you're on the dole, but continue to listen to it when you find a job, is that bad? And is that worse than if you buy a song because the artist is struggling, but the artist then starts to thrive at Elton John levels and doesn't then refund the cash?

Garvey then - he thinks - moves on to a different subject, which is actually the same:

He added that he felt his band were in a privileged position 20 years into their career to now have a supportive record label.

"You come across people [record labels] who've dropped Elbow all the time. If you throw a rock in London you'll hit one.

"We're lucky to have a paymaster in the current climate. It's not lost on us."

But Guy, all the "paymasters" are doing is managing the money. Your paymasters are actually the people who buy your records. The labels are middle-management. And - given that in twenty years you've been mucked about so much - don't you think it at least interesting that the clearly flawed industry of the previous years has changed just as you find a label happy to work with you and a public that is able to discover you?

I think your hell might be looking for the wrong people, don't you?

Tory-Lib Dems tell copyright industry to pay costs of pursuing unlicensed files

Ah, if only David Geffen had thought to invite a couple of Lib Dems onto his yacht, maybe things would have been different. The coalition have told the copyright industries they'll have to bear most of the costs for pursuing unlicensed filesharers.

ISPs will only be made to pay the costs of notifying their customers; 75% of the bill will be passed to the people who care about the copyright.

However, the government's decision today, based on a consultation on the cost-sharing proposal, said that the argument to split detection costs had been rejected as a "business as usual" bill for copyright holders.

"This argument was rejected as the initial proposal to share costs 75/25 was made in the full knowledge that copyright owners did have these separate costs to bear," said the government. "At the level of the individual copyright owner the level of detection activity (and any legal action) is a matter for them. It was considered these were largely 'business as usual' costs that copyright owners would face as part of protecting their own copyright material."

In a related decision, citizens won't be forced to pay a fee to appeal against one of these proceedings:

"As a free system risks the possibility of large numbers of unnecessary appeals, the government will monitor the situation closely, and reserves the right to introduce a small fee at a later stage," the government added.

This puts me in a horrible position of thinking that the coalition have made a good decision. Better if they'd scrapped the whole idea of snooping and letters, but it's a start.

You can tell its a good decision, because the copyright industry is squealing about how it's soooooo unfair:

"We continue to believe that ISPs should bear a greater proportion of the costs of communicating with their customers about illegal peer-to-peer use on their networks," said a spokesman for the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), which represents the UK's music companies.

"We will work closely with the government and Ofcom to ensure that the costs framework overall is workable and affordable, in particular for small labels, and that the Code can be swiftly implemented."

Won't it cost what it costs?

Switzerland: It's not just for hiding looted gold and tax evasion any more

The Swiss love of privacy has been extended to IP addresses. Ars Technica reports that Logistep, one of those snide companies which spies on internet users to see if they're using unlicensed files, isn't welcome in the Alps any more:

Switzerland, which is not an EU member, has decided that it can't sanction Logistep's behavior. The country's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Hanspeter Thür, took Logistep to court and this week won a major victory. The Federal Supreme Court ruled that IP addresses are in fact personal information and that companies like Logistep can't go about slurping them up for mere civil cases like file-swapping lawsuits. Logistep must cease all current copyright infringement data collection.

Logistep, of course, feel this is a bad thing:

Logistep's dueling statement (in German) rounded up a quote from Nikolai Klute, a Hamburg lawyer, who said the decision flew in the face of most other European precedent: "Soon, Switzerland is likely to have the reputation of a safe haven not only for tax evaders, but also for copyright infringers."

Switzerland has always found its tax and banking regime does wonders for its economy. Somehow, I don't think Switzerland is going to abandon privacy because Logistep indulges in name-calling.