UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Parents are being warned they could face fines if their children are caught illegally downloading music on the internet.

Childnet's Mary Louise Morris and Gina Harkell, who had to pay £2,500 after her son was caught, discuss the problem on the BBC News site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/4072566.stm (click on the video link below the photo).

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Err well get the Nobel Prizes out... it's in breach of (c), it's illegal, you do the crime you do the time!

Personally I don't get it. Why download, when the quality's cack, and the better product isn't much more expensive, and is legal! Someone explain it... ;)

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Is that downloading or uploading? Last time I looked there was a difference?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

the RIAA is going after users who are predominantly sharing files, however a recent law change due to take affect in sweden on july the 1st makes it illegal to download originally it was only uploading which caused much uproar.

the RIAA is really knocking on the doors of those who are uploading files, if there is no supply then there really is no need for the RIAA to go after users who just download.

thats for now anyway.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Yes, there is a difference but both are equally illegal. As Kronas has said, if you stop all uploading then there cannot be any downloading which is why they concentrate mostly on people uploading. Don't be fooled into thinking that if you only download then it is OK as you could still get a similar bill and be £2,500 out of pocket or whatever.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Erm becasue you only want 1 or 2 tracks from the album and don't want to pay the £14.99 for the whole thing. I'm not too sure where the isn't much more expensive bit comes from the music companies have been keeping CD prices artifiailly high for some time now.

I agree that its Illegal acording to the laws that the music companies spent a fair wack of the profits from these high priced CD's on lobbying the governments to impliment and as a result the music comapnies are allowed to sepnd even more of the profits from these high priced CD's on suing you for any money you haven't spent with them.

I still can't believe that an Global industry thinks that the best solution it can come up with is to sue its customers. There are other methods like providing a resonably priced alternative (It took Apple to provide that and they can only do it because they're making the money on the Ipod's).

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

recently, i've always gone to see bands i like, and bought their music at the gig. you pay less, get the full experience, and as much as possible avoid funding the creaking major labels!

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

My Ipod is the reason i download, i genuinely never bothered before, not worth doing if u haven't got the media to use it.

I wouldn't say quality sucks, at worst it varies but its still not a big problem, i mean i don't remember the last time i 'just had' to have something. Its all out there knowing where to find it is the trick.

But i agree if the uploading stops then there's no point downloading, and an industry suing its consumers just makes no sense. Apple's approach has been the most successful since Napster sold out but its still not perfect, i'm not sure what the solution is to satisfy commercially the artist, their record company, the media and the consumer.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

how do they find them ?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

It makes as much sense as Marks and Spencers prosecuting shoplifters. They are also M&S's customers.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Two points..

1) The copyright laws (admittedly not the DMCA which I don't think applies in this country) have been around a lot longer than CDs...

2) IIRC The loser of a case pays the fees?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

ok so here's the 'its just plain theft' argument, well yes i don't deny it in the real world it would be. But this is the internet which is a whole diferent entity wouldn't u say. Its only regulated by one thing... ur own morals and concsience.

U may feel that that is a weak argument but there's a major difference between the two worlds. Hey all business wants to do is find a way of gettin their customers to part with their money in a different way. Business still hasn't grasped how to facilitate the customer experience in a complete manner. For one thing ISP's arent' interested. I love the likes of BT's/AOL ads where they tout 'no download limit'... cause hey we're not responsible!! Makes me laugh every time.

How do u regulate someone who wants to link to a music file from their blog?

Anyone who gets greedy can expect to get caught, i exercise my choice both in content and volume. Can't help you if u don't like it.

At least the outcome of downloading is that retail prices have dropped. i'm no economics expert so as i said in previous post i've no ideal what business model will suit all interested parties.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

iTunes store..... 79p x 2 for two tracks = 1.58 ... not that expensive IMO ;)

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

True but is it anywhere near the actual cost... music is just data these days so what is being paid for, who needs to get paid, are we just facilitating old business models and contract agreements cause no one has thought of a better one??

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

But downloading is not killing the music industry. Single sales are actually up this year and when you take into account legal downloads, 88% up.

The industry has been stupidly slow to react to a changing marketplace, relying on outmoded distribution methods because they feared change.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Music is just data? Think about it and you will see it's a lot more than that. What is involved in getting that data?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

i really don't appreciate that tone.....

My point remains the same are we being forced to pay for old business models and contractual agreements.

Yes the artists needs paid, yes the 'tech support' for want of a better phrase, for the artists need paid, but after that won't the internet do the rest, news, biog, promotion, viral ad, band sites, mesage boards ( i mean aren't the best bands/albums word of mouth) etc. Though touring can be loss leading they can also be profitable, not the best example but Rolling Stones anyone.

And still the internet remains as another completely different environment, populated by people who are free to act as they wish - legislate that when no-one wants to try.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

This thread was not really meant to be about the rights and wrongs of filesharing. Rather it was meant to be a warning that filesharing can hit you hard in the pocket. There are a lot of people who think that just downloading a few music tracks is acceptable and perfectly legal and it is only uploading that is an offence. This is not the case so be warned.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

noted.......................

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

To be fair I think we were already well aware of that but with millions in the UK downloading illegally the industry needs to reconsider its tactics. I am a heavy purchaser of music but also download (like I used to tape my mates records in the good old days). Suing me and people like me might well be counter productive.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

In what way could it be counterproductive?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

What was wrong with the tone? :confused:

You have to remember that not everyone has internet access, in fact most people don't. Music still has to be made available for the ones that don't. The internet is but one method of distributing music but that method should still bear its share of the costs.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

If they skin me for £2.5k that's a lot less in my coffers to spend on Play.... and antagonising your best customers is never advisable.
__________________

True but the majority of homes do. Nearly 60% of UK households now have internet access (Sept 04 figs - virtually double 2002 figs). The industry has been widely condemned for failing to keep technological pace - if it had launched low cost downloads early it could have at least stifled illegal download sites. It is also a terribly inefficient and conservative industry, still largely signing 'me too' acts and having a mud-at-wall approach to A&R (which probably hurts more artists as they get unceremoniously dropped).

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

But if they skin you for £2.5k, that's money you already owe them for their property which you acquired dishonestly. That's a bit like me telling one of my suppliers, 'if you make me pay that invoice, I'll have less money to spend with you in future!'

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Yes but I spend much, much more than the average consumer on CDs and often use download sites to taste songs to determine whether to by an LP or not. In a way, download sites are an effective marketing tool for the industry.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

But iTunes lets you do that, legally. I expect other legal music download services do as well. Back in the old days, there was a certain amount of justification for services like Napster - I d/l'ed Coldplay's Parachutes, we decided we liked it, we went out and bought it. 128k mp3s are no substitute for the real thing. But now I can just pop into the iTunes music store and sample something legally and without cost.
__________________

And I can't see how they can be effective advertising if just one warez monkey can acquire himself £2,500 worth of goods! That's a pretty gyenormous advertising budget, whn you multiply it by the number of busy little warez monkeys there are.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Lot of stuff I listen to isn't on itunes, though they have got better having resolved the dispute with independent labels. But they still want what, £7.99 for an LP. For a quid more I can get the CD all wrapped up, plus the excitement of a parcel through the door. :)

No doubt I will move over to itunes et al in time mind, my ipod making me less concerned about having a CD on the rack.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

That is true assuming everyone (or even most people) who uses this site are honest enough to buy the music they are listening to. Note, I don't know the actual figures of people who do find a song on say,
, azeurus, then go and buy it (I do this), but I suspect a lot of people don't.

One thing I have found with iTunes though. If you register your computer for playback, then blow up the computer without unregistering it (as I did), it can be a bitch peruading Apple to unauthorise it for you..

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

It works as marketing because opinion leaders - those that regularly read the NME etc and are well into music - tell their mates who then go and buy the product. It's how home taping, which the industry said was killing music, used to work.

Amatize that "£2,500 " (always suspicious of how such things are costed) across many labels and artists and it seems less of a momentous cost. As an online marketing comparative, easyjet spends £18k per day on Google alone.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

I download tracks and albums that i *think* i will like and if i like them enough i will buy them.

If it wasnt for mp3 there are a lot of stuff that i wouldnt have bought.

The music industry expects us to buy something before you have even heard it - not on in my opinion - especially when the stuff you mostly listen too comes from bands, groups or DJ's you've probably never heard of.

I have about 27gig of music on my iPod - around 25 Gig of that is legit - Once i buy an album i will back it up from my PC onto my iPod at the bitrate and codec i use for a better copy, yet the industry is trying to bring in software on CD's that they intend to use to stop me from backing it up onto my iPod.

They can swing for all i care and i guarantee you that ANY album i buy that has copy protection goes back and instead i download it illegally.

How dare they doctor a CD that i want to listen to so that it dosent work in certain machines, thats just wrong IMO and they deserve what they get - which from me - is nothing.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Whatever...
It won't stop it.

The 1% that get done (bet it's not even that) won't be me, always some other downloader.

The actual chances of being the one that gets caught are very slim.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Whilst i can't say that i buy again what i've got now, in line with previous comments i at least know what i will buy when it comes to it.

DRM.... such a clumsy and reactionary piece of software, and its breakable anyway which is well documented, it'll go the same way as MP3 on mobiles (not that its ur media of choice of course)

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Also who the hell is thinking of the artists who produce the music to begin with.Why should they lose out on their royalties because some numpty wants to have music totally free? However I can understand the annoyance with the middlemen in the business because for a long time they haven't really cared about their customers getting value for money.But not paying anything to the artists who are the whole reason the industry exists is hardly fair at all.

If there was way to download the music I like while paying royalties to the artists I would rather do that.To think that they should just make music for nothing does seem somewhat selfish and shortsided.However the music industry is NEVER going to consider doing this.Perhaps if there wasa way for individual artists and groups to do it themselves would you pay the artist?Or would you just not care?

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

I bet that's what the ones who get caught thought.

Let's cut out all the BS though. There are many filesharers who will never buy any music that they can download.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Yea, works for me........ like everything else in life, do the work expect to get paid. As i said previously, used correctly the internet enables alot of the middlemen functions to be done away with and put back in the hands of the band.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

It may, of course, be perfectly possible for bands to earn a crust selling direct via the net, cutting out the inefficiencies and injustices that the major record labels bring. If artists create a direct link with consumers then those consumers are likely to be more loyal and willing to pay for their output. The disincentive to this is the marketing cost - but at the moment we get a disproportionate amount of marketing spend devoted to safe bankers for which a solid return is all but guaranteed and which create super rich artists. Selling direct could still yield a decent living for many more artists and impressive ones for some.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

True - but that dosent guarantee that if they couldnt download it that they would buy the thing as record companies seem to think.
__________________

Take the Crazy Frog thing recently anyway and the amount of downloads its had via ringtones - 2 MILLION of them at 1.50 a piece in the UK alone - and for what, a rehashed old single with an annoying **** dingalinging. How much did that cost to set-up?

And they complain about sales dropping and profits down.

They're taking the urine to be honest.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

I want a copy of the Au Pairs' Playing With A Different Sex. It's deleted and not available on itunes. I'
I've culled most songs from kazaa and bearshare - should I have done so?

(NB. if anyone has a hard copy for sale I would willingly pay for it - though generally stuff I already have on vinyl, and for which I have therefore paid a copyright fee, I'll illegally download with a clear conscience)

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

The middlemens functions will still exist though as long as there is a need for physical copies to be made. The problem is though that economies of scale are diluted the more copies that are downloaded. Production costs to obtain the music will stay the same but after that costs will rise. It will still cost the same to produce the artwork for the CDs and their covers but this will be spread across a smaller number of physical copies. Production runs will be smaller and therefore more costly per unit. Transport costs will be around the same but again shared amongst a smaller number of physical copies. Wholesalers and retailers will have a smaller number to sell so may have to either go out of business or increase prices. So, the greater the percentage of music that is downloaded, the dearer physical copies may become.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

I know the feeling. Some old Gun Club material (The Las Vegas Story for instance), has only recently been released on CD, and is hard to find on Vinyl. Excuse me for downloading this. Like others have said. I generally buy a fair bit of music, and it's not the chart stuff, but small independent bands that are unlikely to be on Itunes (A while ago I had to buy a cd directly from the label, as Amazon didn't stock it). I will download music to sample it, and if I like I will buy it (though admittedly not if I like just one song from an album).

I will be buying the The Las Vegas Story CD btw, even though I have it in mp3 format. I like the idea of supporting a label that re-releases classic old material that not too many people seem interested in.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

The problem with that is it immediately removes a large proportion of potential customers from the marketplace. If you don't have an internet connection you cannot buy. That leaves two possibilities, paid for downloads and illegal fileshares. Guess which a large percentage will choose. The artists themselves will not setup the site to sell the music, etc so a new breed of middleman will emerge who profit from the new distribution method.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Can't disagree with that analysis except to say if retail is to survive it will have to adapt and the likely scenario on the High Street will be download and burn kiosks which also offer artwork where appropriate.
__________________

But the trend is for internet access achieving mass penetration, with broadband subscriptions soaring. And why won't artist set up their own sites. Very many already set up their own labels, own their publishing etc

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Shouldn't the children also be taught that downloading music off the web is illegal? I bet most don't understand it.

Sorry if this has already been posted.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Yeah but even so, it's still crap quality except the worse thing about it is that you've paid for it.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

That idea was tried several years ago by John Menzies with instore burning of PC software. This was not a success. People want to buy something that looks attractive and not looking like it was knocked up on the side for a boot sale. High street retailers need a fair markup to stay in business.

But there is still a huge percentage of the population that doesn't have and may never have internet access. Even those that do may not have the slightest desire to download and burn their own music and DVDs. The christmas present of a couple of DVDs just doesn't look the same if burnt in the home with no artwork. There will still be a market for physical copies for some time to come.

I don't think that many musicians would take to running their own download sites. Too much hassle and unlikely to succeed big time without big money marketing.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Apparently, If you're going to break copyright laws. You're better off doing it on a large scale

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

The copyright laws have been around a long time but its taken quite a lot of lobbying to get the law so that they could get much more copyright protection on music and to make it easier to go after the filesharers. My point is really that they've spent far more trying to sue people than they needed to, if they'd gone after the business with a reasonable priced offering I might have some sympathy with them.

As I could see it, the original quote was pointing out that downloads in general were cak.

Its kind of like M&S saying right we've got a new way that we could distribute our products that reduces our logitics costs by 90% and reduces the ability of people to shoplift but instead of using it we're going to carry on charging £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ for our stuff but we'll hire 10 times the number of security guards and swat team to jump on everyone who shoplifts.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

Big time? So, are they artists or businessmen/women? And therein lies the rub. I said a decent living, not Lear Jets and Champagne baths. The current system lets a very few make a very lot. Direct distribution could let many more artists to make a living.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

And you are entitled to do so. About buying the Au Pair's album: What realistically would it achieve? The band won't see any money from it, only the guy you buy it off. Given the band/label or anyone else connected to them won't see any money, I don't suppose they'd care. It doesn't matter how it changes hands or how many times, they only see the royalties once.

Interesting how now Brits can be sued, when we thought being in another country made us largely untouchable. I wonder how they were caught.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

download it , like it , buy it :tu:
download it , hate it , bin it :td:

i for one got sick of buying albums after hearing one tune on the radio to only find out the rest of the album was ***** :(

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

This is what I do.

Re: UK music downloader pays £2,500 after being caught.
 

I believe that the brits are being sued by the UK equivilent of the RCAA. (BPI I think) I suspect they've been waiting for the fuss to die down after the Americans decided to sue the ass of everyone before starting and the practice to become acceptable to the general public.