Why hasn't Kazaa been shutdown?

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: UF Jspec
P2P is not illegal, it is when you swap copyrighted material that it becomes illegal.

Right, but I'd wager 90% of the stuff swapped on Kazaa is copyrighted.

 

[human2k]

Originally posted by: UF Jspec
P2P is not illegal, it is when you swap copyrighted material that it becomes illegal.

Exactamundo. Too badd more than 90% of the stuff is illegal. (well actually thats good insn't it?)

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: rudeguy5757
I actually got into a debate with someone over this...I probably have $2,000+ sank into my computer...pay $50 dollars a month for my cable modem...and spend hours trying to find good files...I would happily pay an extra 20 or so a month for a few movies or music files...maybe more

Do yourself a favor and look at the Google ads on the bottom of this thread. Here, lemme help you out:

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Why would anybody join a $10/month service when they can download all they want for free?

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: rudeguy5757
I actually got into a debate with someone over this...I probably have $2,000+ sank into my computer...pay $50 dollars a month for my cable modem...and spend hours trying to find good files...I would happily pay an extra 20 or so a month for a few movies or music files...maybe more

Do yourself a favor and look at the Google ads on the bottom of this thread. Here, lemme help you out:

ExtremeZ-IP 2.1
Robust Windows and Mac File Sharing More compatible and faster than SFM

Napster Music Replacement
MP3s and Movies. Low $1/month. Search the music database for free.

Napster Replacement MP3s
$0.97 a month, Find any Song! Unlimited MP3 Downloads - No Popups

Find Virtually Any Song
Burn CDs, get movies, MP3s & more As low as $0.99 a month. 100% Guar.

Napster's Replacement
Free Trial Offer - Instant Access Billions of songs to download &play

Why would anybody join a $10/month service when they can download all they want for free?

Simple. Availability of files and speed.

If record labels had any brains whatsoever they would spend the money to digitize their entire library of songs at several different bitrates, set up servers on some very large bandwidth, allow free browsing of the files and then charge people for downloads according to the bitrate of the encoding. Once they recouped the money from setting up the servers all they'd have to cover would be the bandwidth, server maintenance and keeping track of royalties. All the costs involved in printing the CDs, shipping them, producing and shipping the instore artwork, etc would be gone. I don't see how they wouldn't make a ton of money. I'd pay to be able to get 256kbps copies of anything I could think of.

 

[TheeeChosenOne]

Originally posted by: jagr10
I don't know why the music industry wastes millions of dollars trying to shut down these p2p networks. Why don't they spend the same money on making a huge database of good quality songs that you can buy for like $1 or $2 each. They could add some packages too. Buy 20 songs for $8 or something.

Or they could do something like let you choose which songs you want on a cd and they ship it to you. That way you can customize your cd's with quality songs. At least the company would make some money that way.

I used to work at one time for a major music label that is suing Kazaa. The rationale is that the company can make more money selling an album for say $16 (with one good song and 9 crap songs) than letting people buy only the ONE $2 song that is worthwhile. This math is very simple for them.

Plus, you have music publishing royalties that would be affected. There would be huge resistance among music writers getting shafted by the labels. RIAA, Ascap, BMI and the labels all have to be in the SAME boat to make this work. It won't happen, as there is toooo much strongarm politics and egos involved.

 

[LakAttack]

What I don't understand is why the RIAA doesn't just go after CD-RW manufacturers and blank CD manufacturers. They should get a small royalty for each of these items sold. Isn't that what the movie industry did with VCRs? Say you normally pay $5 for 50 blank CDs and $50 for a CD-RW drive. Add a tax to that and make it $10 and $75, then divide those proceeds amoung the artists represented by the RIAA. I don't think anyone would have that big of a problem with that, and they wouldn't have to start going after individuals, which will probably cost more in the long run than it will recoup.

 

[human2k]

I watched a 20/20 special about how expensive concert tickets prices are getting. THey intereviewed one of the guy who organizes Aerosmith's concert, and he said some of the reasons why concert ticket are so expensive is because they are losing $$$ from mp3/kazaa/napster. Good thing I'm too poor to go to a concert.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Fausto1
Yep. I'm totally amazed the RIAA and other groups haven't sued any ISPs to take down their news servers yet. There is an astounding amount of copywrited material posted every day......or so I hear. 😉

AFAIK, ISP's are only liable if they're informed that copyrighted/illegal material is originating from their network. They can't be forced to drop usenet, they only are required to go after individual posters. Their course of action is to threaten the offending poster with termination of their account. Posting such material from your ISP account is a bad idea, because you can kiss your cable modem goodbye if you get reported for violating the policy enough times.

I suppose if RIAA/MPAA somehow could figure out a way to report EVERY single posting of illegal material, they could potentially get the ISP's to drop usenet rather than deal with the headache. So then you buy premium usenet service from a 3rd party, which is where the ISP's all outsource their usenet feeds from anyway, and also what all the power posters use. If the premium usenet servers become legal targets, they move offshore.

Usenet predates all this P2P sh!t, it's the original decentralized "file-distribution/copyright-infringement/piracy" network. Unfortunately it's not a very efficient way of distributing binaries, and I think that fact, more than legal considerations, is ultimately what will be the downfall of binary-rich ISP-provided-news-service as it exists now. The whole thing is spiralling out of control, if you get good completion and more than 2 days retention from an ISP right now, consider yourself lucky. The daily feed is ridiculous, IIRC something like 500+ GB/day.

 

[Shade4ever]

Originally posted by: LakAttack
What I don't understand is why the RIAA doesn't just go after CD-RW manufacturers and blank CD manufacturers. They should get a small royalty for each of these items sold. Isn't that what the movie industry did with VCRs? Say you normally pay $5 for 50 blank CDs and $50 for a CD-RW drive. Add a tax to that and make it $10 and $75, then divide those proceeds amoung the artists represented by the RIAA. I don't think anyone would have that big of a problem with that, and they wouldn't have to start going after individuals, which will probably cost more in the long run than it will recoup.

Yes, and I'm sure the people who back their legitimate data up to CD-r/rw will be glad to know the extra $$$ they spend will help keep Britney Spears and the like singing...

While fileswappers might not take issue with this, those with non-piracy related uses for blank CDs would be unfairly hit with costs unrelated to their work. Of course, as good as our gov't is at fairly distributing costs of services, I'd expect this answer to be implemented anyway.

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: human2k
I watched a 20/20 special about how expensive concert tickets prices are getting. THey intereviewed one of the guy who organizes Aerosmith's concert, and he said some of the reasons why concert ticket are so expensive is because they are losing $$$ from mp3/kazaa/napster. Good thing I'm too poor to go to a concert.

Oh please, that is total crap. Tickets were expensive way before P2P even really existed. The music industry is losing money because they're greedy idiots who would rather sink all their money into creating the "next big thing" than actually nurturing any real talent that might not have the huge appeal of Britney. Those of you who are Jawbox fans know exactly what I'm talking about. :|

 

[Mill]

Originally posted by: Spooner

Originally posted by: TheEvil1

Originally posted by: idNut

Originally posted by: TheEvil1
its cause the fukin rule. and dont wanna bend over to teh man. more power to them
also bedcause all their studd is over sees

You get the award for worst speller!

|
\/
keep lookin
read sig

that's a lame excuse! go back to school!

Yeah really.

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactory

Originally posted by: Fausto1
Yep. I'm totally amazed the RIAA and other groups haven't sued any ISPs to take down their news servers yet. There is an astounding amount of copywrited material posted every day......or so I hear. 😉

AFAIK, ISP's are only liable if they're informed that copyrighted/illegal material is originating from their network. They can't be forced to drop usenet, they only are required to go after individual posters. Their course of action is to threaten the offending poster with termination of their account. Posting such material from your ISP account is a bad idea, because you can kiss your cable modem goodbye if you get reported for violating the policy enough times.

I suppose if RIAA/MPAA somehow could figure out a way to report EVERY single posting of illegal material, they could potentially get the ISP's to drop usenet rather than deal with the headache. So then you buy premium usenet service from a 3rd party, which is where the ISP's all outsource their usenet feeds from anyway, and also what all the power posters use. If the premium usenet servers become legal targets, they move offshore.

Usenet predates all this P2P sh!t, it's the original decentralized "file-distribution/copyright-infringement/piracy" network. Unfortunately it's not a very efficient way of distributing binaries, and I think that fact, more than legal considerations, is ultimately what will be the downfall of binary-rich ISP-provided-news-service as it exists now. The whole thing is spiralling out of control, if you get good completion and more than 2 days retention from an ISP right now, consider yourself lucky. The daily feed is ridiculous, IIRC something like 500+ GB/day.

It is pretty silly, which is why I can't believe the RIAA hasn't done something about it yet. I have about 24 hours to grab something big like a .bin file off my ISPs server before bits start dropping off.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: LakAttack
What I don't understand is why the RIAA doesn't just go after CD-RW manufacturers and blank CD manufacturers. They should get a small royalty for each of these items sold.

The "music-only" CDR blanks have a charge on them. Supposedly burners have a $2.00 RIAA surcharge. Don't know about data CDR's.

Originally posted by: human2k
I watched a 20/20 special about how expensive concert tickets prices are getting. THey intereviewed one of the guy who organizes Aerosmith's concert, and he said some of the reasons why concert ticket are so expensive is because they are losing $$$ from mp3/kazaa/napster. Good thing I'm too poor to go to a concert.

Yes, I've read that the record companies are starting to try to get a cut of the concerts, because the revenue stream in recorded music is slowing down.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Fausto1
If record labels had any brains whatsoever they would spend the money to digitize their entire library of songs at several different bitrates, set up servers on some very large bandwidth, allow free browsing of the files and then charge people for downloads according to the bitrate of the encoding. Once they recouped the money from setting up the servers all they'd have to cover would be the bandwidth, server maintenance and keeping track of royalties.

At 256kbps, you'd be looking at 77MB just for 10 songs with an average of 4 minutes/song. The RIAA sells CDs from most big name bands by the thousands. It'd be nearly impossible to sustain the bandwith needed to give the end-user any appreciable download speed.

I think most people forget economies of scale. An album like Meteora from Linkin Park will go Platinum within the month. Its a 36 minute CD, and at 256kbps encoding, you'd be looking at 70MB for each CD. Assuming Linkin Park sells 500,000 copies this month (which would not surprise me in the slightest), that would be 35,000,000MB or around 35 Terabytes of data just for their one album.

All the costs involved in printing the CDs, shipping them, producing and shipping the instore artwork, etc would be gone. I don't see how they wouldn't make a ton of money. I'd pay to be able to get 256kbps copies of anything I could think of.

The RIAA won't make nearly as much money moving to an all download-based revenue stream. They'd still have to mass-produce the CDs to recoup the money lost from hosting their own servers.

The best solution that should keep everybody happy is simply drop the price of new CDs. The last few CDs I've purchased cost ~$10-12 brand new, which is down from ~$15-18 average a couple years ago.... and people STILL aren't happy.

 

[LakAttack]

Originally posted by: Shade4ever

Originally posted by: LakAttack
What I don't understand is why the RIAA doesn't just go after CD-RW manufacturers and blank CD manufacturers. They should get a small royalty for each of these items sold. Isn't that what the movie industry did with VCRs? Say you normally pay $5 for 50 blank CDs and $50 for a CD-RW drive. Add a tax to that and make it $10 and $75, then divide those proceeds amoung the artists represented by the RIAA. I don't think anyone would have that big of a problem with that, and they wouldn't have to start going after individuals, which will probably cost more in the long run than it will recoup.

Yes, and I'm sure the people who back their legitimate data up to CD-r/rw will be glad to know the extra $$$ they spend will help keep Britney Spears and the like singing...

While fileswappers might not take issue with this, those with non-piracy related uses for blank CDs would be unfairly hit with costs unrelated to their work. Of course, as good as our gov't is at fairly distributing costs of services, I'd expect this answer to be implemented anyway.

That's just a cost involved - when you buy a VCR, it may be for only watching movies you rent, but because you CAN tape TV, there is a tax on the VCR. Maybe I'm getting that wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. AAR, that is just the only viable solution I can come up with. You can't stuff Jack back in the box, but something needs to be done.

 

[nakedfrog]

I'd like to see a report of just exactly how much the RIAA/individual labels have spent thus far on P2P related legal battles.

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: Fausto1
If record labels had any brains whatsoever they would spend the money to digitize their entire library of songs at several different bitrates, set up servers on some very large bandwidth, allow free browsing of the files and then charge people for downloads according to the bitrate of the encoding. Once they recouped the money from setting up the servers all they'd have to cover would be the bandwidth, server maintenance and keeping track of royalties.

At 256kbps, you'd be looking at 77MB just for 10 songs with an average of 4 minutes/song. The RIAA sells CDs from most big name bands by the thousands. It'd be nearly impossible to sustain the bandwith needed to give the end-user any appreciable download speed.

I think most people forget economies of scale. An album like Meteora from Linkin Park will go Platinum within the month. Its a 36 minute CD, and at 256kbps encoding, you'd be looking at 70MB for each CD. Assuming Linkin Park sells 500,000 copies this month (which would not surprise me in the slightest), that would be 35,000,000MB or around 35 Terabytes of data just for their one album.

All the costs involved in printing the CDs, shipping them, producing and shipping the instore artwork, etc would be gone. I don't see how they wouldn't make a ton of money. I'd pay to be able to get 256kbps copies of anything I could think of.

The RIAA won't make nearly as much money moving to an all download-based revenue stream. They'd still have to mass-produce the CDs to recoup the money lost from hosting their own servers.

The best solution that should keep everybody happy is simply drop the price of new CDs. The last few CDs I've purchased cost ~$10-12 brand new, which is down from ~$15-18 average a couple years ago.... and people STILL aren't happy.

Hmm...interesting. Thanks for the info, that puts things in a different light.

Most CDs aren't $10-12 tho. Go to BestBuy, Music Wherehouse, etc and everything is still $15-18. You can almost buy a CD player for the price of a CD these days.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Best Buy != Wherehouse Music. Wherehouse charges like $17 for normal CDs. BB from what I've seen charges $14 for normal, none-sale CDs.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: Fausto1
Hmm...interesting. Thanks for the info, that puts things in a different light.

Most CDs aren't $10-12 tho. Go to BestBuy, Music Wherehouse, etc and everything is still $15-18. You can almost buy a CD player for the price of a CD these days.

I bought 30 Seconds to Mars' new album and Linkin Park's Reanimation for $24 total (including tax) at Best Buy about a month ago.

From what I hear, you can find the non-DVD version of Meteora for under $15 at many retailers.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: Fausto1
It is pretty silly, which is why I can't believe the RIAA hasn't done something about it yet. I have about 24 hours to grab something big like a .bin file off my ISPs server before bits start dropping off.

My ISP owns, I get ~36 hrs. 😕

There's no way to know the time table on this, but like I said, I think as the daily feed continues to grow with all these cable modem flooders, the cost will get prohibitive for ISP's to stay in the game with any kind of reasonable retention. Either the ISP gives up on paying for upgraded service and lets retention drop to the point of lunacy (which is where you and I seem to be at now) and the free feed becomes effectively useless, or they bite the bullet and pay for it. Or they just drop it completely. Once a couple of major ISP's drop it (or charge extra), they all will. Then it becomes a pay service for everyone, and ironically, posting volume will probably go down for quite a while because it's not going to be free, which sort of defeats the purpose of a worldwide piracy system. 😀

 

[nakedfrog]

Most CDs aren't $10-12 tho. Go to BestBuy, Music Wherehouse, etc and everything is still $15-18. You can almost buy a CD player for the price of a CD these days.

Almost? I bought my daughter a cheapo discman for $17.77 for Solstice this past year. No anti-skip, but still...
I got a GC for a local record shop, and I was browsing, and I saw they wanted $34.98 for Pink Floyd's The Wall -- made me REALLY glad I already bought it a while ago.