The "other" pirate battle.

[ColbertWatcher]

The Pirate Bay Verdict and the Future of File Sharing
JR Raphael
Apr 17, 2009 10:59 am

The verdict against the founders of The Pirate Bay is being hailed by many as a triumphant win against illegal file-sharing. The four men involved in the BitTorrent tracking site were found guilty on Friday of being accessories to violating copyright law. A Swedish court sentenced each of them to a year in jail and a collective fine of $3.6 million.

(...)

As was the case with Napster, The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host copyrighted files -- it simply allows users to post links to material hosted on third-party servers. That's why, incidentally, prosecutors ended up dropping the initial charge of "assisting copyright infringement" and pursuing only a "assisting making available copyrighted material" charge instead.

(...)

The bigger issue is that unlike Napster, The Pirate Bay and other modern peer-to-peer-oriented networks are far less centralized and simple to shut down. And, even if The Pirate Bay itself were somehow to be shuttered, there are countless other comparable tracking services all over the world. Could they all be targeted and taken down? It's highly unlikely.

But let's take it a step further. Let's say this whole thing plays out in the high court and The Pirate Bay loses. Let's say BitTorrent completely ceases to exist as a result. (Just play along for a minute.) Would that, then, be the end of online file-sharing?

--PC World

My favorite wuote from the article:

"If they think they're going to make people stop file sharing, then they're living in a fantasy world."

The entertainment industry has to stop punishing their customers and figure out a way to deliver what they want at a profit.

[imdjh]

1. I don't mind paying iTunes for songs

I haven't run up against the limit for burning yet, since I don't make a lot of CD's and it's not the hobby for me that it might be for teenagers.

There is a sound argument that the RIAA folks can't control sharing. Yes, it's unethical to get free music from other people rather than pay for it, but this has been a part of recorded music since tape players became available. Whether I borrow a CD from a friend, or the library, or buy it at a pawn shop, the artist/label isn't getting more money for that resale/trade/borrow so how is it different when I trade/borrow from a stranger? Their only argument is that the scale is the need and urgency.

Of course, it would help if they hadn't ripped us all off all those years. Yes, I know, no one forced us to buy the tape, record, or CD. In many cases I have bought the same album three times in different formats, so it's not keeping me up at night if I got it one more time from Napster. But we didn't want 14 songs which may or may not go together and may or may not be worth buyig just to get the one that is. Artists need to get a grip on the fact that not everything they do is fabulous, or even good, and that we really don't buy into that totality of the work crap.

But I don't mind paying per song at iTunes. It's safe, easy, high quality, and about the same price as singles were when I was 14. Now it's a value.

Still, it's a shame that the record stores have closed. I miss Tower Records because they had stuff no one else had. APPLE has an obligation to go out of their way to see that absolutely everything which has ever been recorded is available. Lot's of one shot Disco and 70's rock stuff is still missing.

[ColbertWatcher]

2. "Totality of work" crap may be a contractual obligation to the record company.

The executives in the music industry are the real pirates.

[lbrtbell]

3. I think they should release .wav music files

If you listen to them on a stereo, .mp3 files sound much worse than .wav files, as used on CD's. If you buy an album on CD, you get these quality files. But buying .mp3's is like buying cassettes. You're paying for lesser quality.

And like somebody else here said, there's a lot of music you still can't get on iTunes. :(