The future of internet and downloading mp3's

[Ritzi Lee]

Normally the internet is always seen as an anonymous way of sharing information. Also with sharing mp3's this is the case. Somebody can rip off music from vinyl and throw it online.

I've just heared on the news this would soon be part of the past. So remarks like "Mp3 downloading is killing techno" would soon be invalid. And providers who are not willing to follow this law are illigal and can expect a big bill for this.

So what's the deal?

The European community is bussy with a plan that every provider on the planet must register all the actions / moves of someone who serves through his/her account on log files. This way it is possible to run a total control on all things that are downloaded / uploaded in a period of time like software; movies; music.... Things that are worth money and are connected to some kind of royalties or copyrights.

If this plan goes on, this would mean a positive development for the music scene... This would mean that plans like the ones from "Mark EG" to sell CD's online are more secured in a way...

Sky is the limit.




Tell me your thoughts about this development.
i can imagine there are people who still want to stay anonymous and go on with free downloading and breaking copyright laws.

[The Overfiend]

big brother wins great..

[The Overfiend]

Let me rephrase that
I don't want someone monitoring how or who I get my Jenna Jameson footage from. Period

[dan the acid man]

Let me rephrase that
I don't want someone monitoring how or who I get my Jenna Jameson footage from. Period

thats what i was thinking

this will also get tied in with the "fight on terrorism".

great idea to stop illegal downloading, peodophiles etc, but overall im not keen

[Ritzi Lee]

great responsibilities require great offers.

[Jay Pace]

This would suprise me enormously if it got through.

The netherlands have just thrown out a massive piracy case on the grounds that the company prosecuting obtained account information illegally.

Data protection laws are incredibly strong in europe. I think there would be too much opposition, and too much technology to circumvent "snooping" for this to become effective.



I just spent a grand on going digital though. Bought a snappy little ibook and final scratch. Now begins the painstaking task of recording all my vinyl. Dead excited though...

[TechMouse]

If they do this, pirates will just switch over to Freenet, which is designed to be actually 100% anonymous from the ground up.

It's never a matter of "if" people get round the technology or the law, it's when they get round it.

So, it's either roll with the punches or die.

[Ritzi Lee]

If they do this, pirates will just switch over to Freenet, which is designed to be actually 100% anonymous from the ground up.

It's never a matter of "if" people get round the technology or the law, it's when they get round it.

So, it's either roll with the punches or die.

So if we have to apply the "possible" new definitions,
Freenet would be something illegal....


hmmms

[TechMouse]

So if we have to apply the "possible" new definitions,
Freenet would be something illegal....

hmmms

Yeah, good luck regulating that one - especially internationally.

[holotropik]

I was just contemplating this topic.

I didnt come up with an answer. Just face it, music is no longer controlable in an economic sense. Its too easy to distribute it for free now.

Which got me thinkin - why did the industry give the nod to the CD format?? They really shot themselves in the foot with that one. The only plus that digital audio has is the quality and workability. Copyright control is its weakness.

The effect it has is to sort out those who really want to right music just for the sake of it (better still coz they feel the urge) and not for the money in it...coz there aint none anymore.

Personally, I resigned myself long ago to just write because I want to and my passion for playing Live to a crowd in the myriad of strange places one can find oneself in the wee hours of a Sunday morn.
Thats all it was to start with and thats all it is about at the end....

Lets face it. Even if you right the best track ever you will only sell a few copies digitally before it gets spread over the net to whoever and is lost in a sea of other "too easy to get" tracks that may also be gold.

I have noticed lately that most of the music and video I have seen is copied - passed around by people from every which way. FFS, even my parents drop in home to ask me to copy a CD for them that a friend lent them.....fark!!

Something seriously has to happen to gain control again or there will be a cashless music industry. Thats probably not so bad really???

[TechMouse]

Which got me thinkin - why did the industry give the nod to the CD format?? They really shot themselves in the foot with that one. The only plus that digital audio has is the quality and workability. Copyright control is its weakness.

I think this kind of misses the point...

Once a new technology is developed, pandora's box is well and truly open and there's not much you can do to close it.

No-one in the music industry was going to carry on releasing exclusively on vinyl and cassette once Philips et al started producing CD players - the plain fact being that in the majority of consumer applications (hi-fi's, personal audio etc.) CD's gave the best trade off between quality, cost and portability.

I don't want to get into the whole "CD / vinyl" debate as at a DJ / pro audio level it becomes debateable, but you have to agree that on a consumer level (to the average listener) CDs give excellent quality on reasonably cheap equipment and media, with high portability.

So, once this Technology was released, any label / shop / distributer etc. in the consumer music market which refused to stock CDs was shooting themselves in the foot, because CDs were what consumers wanted. Big labels now either release albums on CDs or go out of business.

It's like this with mp3s now. The technology to rip audio from any source and encode the mp3 is present in pretty much every home in this country now. You can do it with every PC, and (now) many consumer audio devices... and as much as the industry is trying to retroactively legislate against it it is what people will continue to do.

Even if KaZaA (or whatever) is eventually shut down, it will evolve and people will find a new way - mainly because the computer geeks who spend their time trying to break copy protection and come up with new ways of sharing files are much more numerous (and IT-savvy) than the people trying to stop them.

Note that I'm not really arguing for or against... I'm just pointing out that this is the situation now, and no amount of arguing about "fairness" or right and wrong is going to change it.

[TechMouse]

Kind of got a bit off point there...

My point was, I think that the industry doesn't necessarily drive the new technologies as much as it thinks it does... Quite the opposite: New technologies drive the industry.

[holotropik]

And thats my point I guess (I just simplified too much and got all ambiguous n shit)....New technologies DO drive the industry.

BUT,

often this new technology is released without really thinkin through the ramifications. Its released with the mindset of controlling an indutry and commercial success - with some benefits such as portability etc.

I know the horse has bolted and there aint nothing anyone can do so I guess it remains to be seen what happens to the industry as a result. It just makes it bloody hard for us to earn the rent when there is no control for us at our end. The only ones getting anything from this technology are the patent holders of the technology.

We are left to adapt to it whatever way we can and I guess thats evolution baby...

[TechMouse]

often this new technology is released without really thinkin through the ramifications. Its released with the mindset of controlling an indutry and commercial success - with some benefits such as portability etc.

All too often stuff gets rushed to market.

If Philips and the other companies involved hadn't started manufacturing CDs then some other consortium would have come out with something else. I believe DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) was in the offing.

You just have to look at Micro$oft, and the un-ending stream of bugfixes they constantly release, to get an idea of how much pressure there is to rush new technology to market - regardless of the (potential) consequences.

It's like all the cloning / GM / stem cell bullshit. The longer we sit on our arses arguing the why and wherefores about it all, the more chance there is of some bright spark relocating to some other country somewhere which doesn't care half as much and doing it all anyway.

Such is the nature of the "free market".

No one will ever think anything through because the advantage of being first to market with something is too tempting, unless of course human safety is on the line. All the suits want to know is...

A. Will it make me money?
B. Will I get sued if it goes wrong?

[holotropik]

hehehehe....tooo true bro.

[Jay Pace]

Kind of got a bit off point there...

My point was, I think that the industry doesn't necessarily drive the new technologies as much as it thinks it does... Quite the opposite: New technologies drive the industry.

Consumers drive technology.

Societal conditions determine the uptake of products and nature of trends.
Then...
Technology provides new ways of addressing fundamental needs and motivations.

If it works for consumers, they buy it. If it doesn't suit their needs, it goes.

Betamax used to have a monopoly on video cassettes.

Olivetti had their most successful financial year before narrowly avoiding bankrupcy the following year. Suddenly nobody wanted a typewriter.

If it is appropriately priced, convienient and desirable, people will pay.

Legal downloads outstripped illegal downloads quite a while back.

[schlongfingers]

Haha that legislation would be easy as **** to get round

rename mp3 to to xyz.zip for example - the only way of tracking the actual physical contents of files would be to keep a copy at the isp, which would be completely unworkable.

[TechMouse]

rename mp3 to to xyz.zip for example - the only way of tracking the actual physical contents of files would be to keep a copy at the isp, which would be completely unworkable.

Well, that's not true, strictly speaking...

There's a lot of research going into hashing media files, so that you can uniquely identify files using a combination of values to create a key. You could easily maintain a central database of hashes... though someone would have to pay for it.

Where it does fall to pieces is the moment someone starts encrypting their internet sessions, unless you've got a supercomputer handy to break the cipher.

... and breaking a cipher is particularly non-trivial with binary data, as it doesn't contain English-language words which can be used to identify potential keys.

It'll be a sad day that I feel I have to encrypt all of the IP traffic coming out of my machine as a matter of course.

[Heroes]

what sony loose in sales they make up for in recordable media, laptops, divx devices, mp3 players dvdrw / cdrw drives, sony duo sticks, usb pens they dont give flying F000k, they covered there bases.....

[TechMouse]

what sony loose in sales they make up for in recordable media, laptops, divx devices, mp3 players dvdrw / cdrw drives, sony duo sticks, usb pens they dont give flying F000k, they covered there bases.....

I think I read in the news recently that the new "BluRay" drive going in the PS3 is going to push the price up by $100 a unit.

That's nuts.