how the ISPs will know which file-sharing activity is illegal? Exactly the same software can be used to exchange and share files perfectly legally. Are they going to scrutinise every file downloaded by every user, and determine whether it's a file they were legally entitled to download? Or are they going to send an accusatory letter to every user who's downloaded more than a certain threshold volume of files over a specified period? Or everyone who's ever downloaded anything using Bit Torrent technology.

Wrongheaded and unworkable. The death-throes of a dying industry.

but uploaders.

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think it is illegal to download copyrighted material from t'internet. What's illegal is sharing copyrighted material with others without a licence, ie uploading.

it's all just a laod of hot air aimed at scaring people anyway. If they cracked down on torrenting then people will simply use file storage sites instead (which in most do now). If they crack down on them on websites then people will just send them via email or make MP3 Cds and pass them around to freinds or start swapping memory sticks filled with music. You can't stop the black market in something that can easily be copied, that's a basic rule of economics.

there will always be ways to download copyrighted material from the web. It seems to me that the industry has to come up with an alternative, but is very slow to do so. One site that I discovered recently (thanks to Word blog!) is Deezer. A French site that streams music, and has an agreement with Universal. I was wondering however what's in it for Universal? I like the site as it gives me a chance to preview some albums before I buy them, but will people just use it to stream music and never buy what they're listening to?

iPods half full of illegal tracks

Research conducted by the University of Hertfordshire has uncovered that 48% of the music stored on the average digital music player has been downloaded illegally. The figure rises to almost 80% amongst teenagers. The extent of illegal downloading by one of the largest survey of youth music ownership has shocked the industry, which is struggling to cope with declining CD sales.

Former Undertones front man Fergal Sharkey and now Chief Executive of British Music Rights said "I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected." His comments certainly seem to reflect a growing trend, as CD sales declined by 10% in 2007.

The study also shows:

63% of people illegally download

Just 15% of respondents are persuaded not to upload because of the risk of getting caught

95% engage in some form of copying

info from http://new.uk.music.yahoo.com/blogs/guestlist/22;_ylt=AjNuU2qFouACyMzf8e...

Duplicated post. Sorry.

Or so the mythology goes.

if it's only CD sales that they are taking into account? A lot of people I know that still purchase music do so from iTunes or eMusic, and hardly ever buy a CD. On the subject of illegal downloaders ripping off artists, here is a very interesting article from Steve Albini, http://www.negativland.com/albini.html. It was written in the 90s, but probably still applies to bands signed to a major label. I wonder is this is what the industry is missing?

Stable door. Horse. Bolted.

Get used to it.

Earn from gigs, it's the way forward, and neatly closes the circle.

The idea of recording music came along a very long time after the idea of making music. The idea of making money out of recorded music came along, predictably, nanoseconds after the technology to do so had been developed.
The idea of, and technology for, the copying of recorded music came along, predictably, nanoseconds after someone realised that that was another exploitable revenue stream.
The biggest beneficiaries of both revenue streams are often the same people, and rarely the musicians.
In the end, music itself, and the making, recording and copying of it, will survive quite well without the music industry.

I have just read a book called the Natural Economist which aims to use economics theory to answer everyday conundrums. One of them was, 'Why do major artists oppose fielsharing but smaller independent-label acts don't?'.
It's easy to assume that the small guys are just nicer than the corporate rock big boys and want everyone to share their art.
However the theory put forward in the book is a different one.
All albums have a fixed cost, that of producing the music - this covers studio time, producers fees, mastering, paying session musicians etc. The more albums you sell the smaller that fixed cost is as a percentage of the total paid, therefore the more profit the band make. For bands who know their music is never going to sell massive amounts the fixed cost takes up such a hefty percentage of the total cover price that they're not going to lose much if people copy it and start sharing it. However costs work differently for live touring and haveing their music distributed freely gets more people to gigs where they can recoup any losses.

of your postman opening your mail before he puts it through your letterbox. Just to make sure that there is nothing in there that shouldn't be.

ISPs are not the police and should not be acting like them. And isn't copyright infringement a civil issue, as opposed to a criminal one?

Incidentally, the police have been complaining about the uncooperative nature of ISPs for years when it comes to asking for their assistance in tracking and monitoring traffic through child pornography sites. ISPs continually hide behind privacy and human rights legislation, as well as stating that these sites are impossible to police. Yet, because Chris Martin's latest royalty cheque is a few quid down, hey presto! They suddenly have the technology and the willingness to snoop on everything that we do.

gets round the fact that we have generational thing here in that lots of younger types just don't wnat to pay for music period, they don't value it. They don't clutch hard won singles to their chest or spend hours deciding which of the two lps to buy (because they can't afford both). They want it free they don't pay for broad band so taxing that's no use. When these kids grow older they aren't suddenly going to start paying for music like you average word reader. I think people antipathy to record companies has blinded them to main problem of who's going to pay the piper?

the judge says this (my emphasis):

The question has to be asked whether it will always be an automatic defence [to justify snooping by hacks] that a crime was being committed on private property, however technical or trivial. Would it justify installing a camera in someone’s home, for example, in order to catch him or her smoking a spliff? Surely not. There must be some limits and, even in more serious cases, any such intrusion should be no more than is proportionate.

What's fascinating about that - apart from the magnificent use of the word "spliff" by a High Court judge - is that the judge clearly considers across-the-board surveillance to be disproportionate to the mere suspicion that a minor offence may be being committed. This raises the question: if ISPs do start shopping their customers for downloading copyrighted material, will the courts throw it out because the evidence was obtained inadmissably?

ISPs can watch your traffic, in the sense that they can see exactly where the packets of data are going, which allows them to infer some things about what you're doing - certain software uses certain port numbers and so on.
What they can't routinely do is read the contents of those packets; if you use a P2P torrent client like utorrent, the packets are encrypted.
Add to this the fact that there are people working on even more obscurely disguised P2P protocols, and the fact that one can already join private networks within networks (like Freenet for example) and thereby make things even more difficult for the snoopers, and I really don't think that sharing a few FLAC files is going to get you transported to Botany Bay.

This "warning letter" is a lot of hot air, aimed at preparing the way for a barrage of snail mail propaganda which might, just might, scare off a few of the less tech-savvy kiddies from helping themselves to MP3s. At least for as long as it takes for them to ask their more savvy mates to show them how to duck below the parapet again.

All that will have been achieved, in the eyes of the serious file sharers, is that the industry will have confirmed themselves to be the panicking lizard skinned parasites with an eye on Darwin's clock that we knew they were all along.

I speak as someone who has downloaded many terabytes of CD quality music files (I loathe MP3s), all acquired perfectly legally from websites that anyone can find easily via Google. I don't have a single illegal file on my machines, yet I must appear to my ISP like a fervent filesharer, probably a typical target for this forthcoming missive. If it arrives I will post it here, and we can all laugh at it.

lonk when reading something on the Guardian website, http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.13/sweden-fra-adoption. It seems that Sweden are one step ahead when it comes to monitoring what it's citizens are doing!

had a great take on the Great British Bobby going around unarmed, as opposed to his highly armed American counterpart. So where the American policeman would just shoot away, the bobby would go "Stop... or I'll say 'Stop' again!"

I think warning letters will have precisely the same effect.