Virgin Media to Launch World's First Unlimited Music Download Service

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by mertle

Could Virgin charge those to sign up who get it from there own source method. I have used a internet radio software which you purchase a contract yearly and permits you download songs you like.

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at with that. The service Virgin is launching apparently will allow both streaming AND downloads for the monthly fee

Another thought is this why dont virgin run a P2p service which then has a centrally stored data which can be increased by partisipating companies artist and even tied with VOD online service so TV series and ultimately films go on it.

The service will be centrally stored as far as I can make out - I'm not sure what P2P would bring to the service that would be useful. The BBC recently dropped P2P because it was more trouble for most that it was worth.

As for TV series and Films, that is a whole different sector and issues completely

Anybody signing up will be able to share between its users these files but user will not be able to upload own stuff to to stop piracy issues.

And exactly do you do that? With this service you can download what you like but you cannot upload anything. It is the only way to have any sort of control over the content

People will be able download store this files on medium to watch wherever. So it would useful for those with media centre could put favourates stuff to take on holiday to watch. We could even have a way to watch your Virgin media tv package subscribed on the net like sky do. But this needs a new idea as an wifi setup in the country so you could use your internet service wherever in the country via virgin wifi hotspots.

If done properly this could open so much to its customers.

You seem to be going on about TV again - this service is only about music. It is a whole different ball game for the TV and Film industry

[pacr4]

Ah I am new to this so be kind to me lol! Well this site anyway! Now the point I have always raised is that all the time we get record companies, artists, etc. etc going on about illegal file sharing sites, BUT my valid point is that I download lots of Dance music etc. and a huge amount of the various mixes and remixes of some tracks are NEVER legally available as record companies decided what they will and will not make available to download or indeed buy on cd singles, even if you can find an outlet that sells them, BUT a lot of these mixes are freely available from file sharing sites so why oh why can companies not make all the various mixes that were originally produced by various remixers before the final track listing is decided available then people like myself would legally buy them, it often happens that various dance music stations like Kiss 100 and Gaydar play mixes that were legally made and listeners love them, BUT you cannot get these mixes you like as companies choose not to release them, please don't get me wrong, MOST of my music collection is 100% legally paid for but odd mixes have to be obtained elsewhere due to this non availability.
I welcome a Virgin download site, good idea but please Virgin, don't add DRM rights stuff, if you pay for a track you should be free to reasonably use it for what you want to. Thanks all.

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Well nothing - unless they appear on P2P sites, in which case they will take you to court.

As linked to earlier you can watermark an MP3 on download with details of who downloaded it. So if that appears on the internet then Virgin could 100% prove the file came from you. How it came to be online wouldn't even matter

i think they would still have to show you intentional shared it to go after you for copyright damages the worst they could with out showing that intent would be civil for breach of contract if they put in their T&C's that you had to secure your computer and even that i suggest wouldn't get them much as you could point many breaches of highly secure systems and that you couldnt be held to have to reach the sort of standard where your computer was unbreachable

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by rogermevans

i think they would still have to show you intentional shared it to go after you for copyright damages

I not sure that they would, but there is always the possibility that they could show that not only was the music a copy of the one you had downloaded, but it had come from your IP address, then I think they would have a pretty good case for that

One or the other may not be enough, but both together might very well be.

the worst they could with out showing that intent would be civil for breach of contract if they put in their T&C's that you had to secure your computer

Well if you care to risk it when the service launches be my guest.

and even that i suggest wouldn't get them much as you could point many breaches of highly secure systems and that you couldnt be held to have to reach the sort of standard where your computer was unbreachable

And you think if you were prosecuted for Copyright theft that they wouldn't have computer experts that could work out if your computer had been hacked or not?

---------- Post added at 01:27 ---------- Previous post was at 01:24 ----------

The issues surrounding releasing music on MP3 and the legal ramifications will have been poured over by the music business long before this.

Originally Posted by BenMcr

And you think if you were prosecuted for Copyright theft that they wouldn't have computer experts that could work out if your computer had been hacked or not?

Let's not do the BPI's dirty PR misinformation for them. There is no such thing as 'copyright theft'. You cannot steal someone's copyright.

[BenMcr]

Sorry Copyright Infringment and Offences - still carries up to 10 years in prison though

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Sorry Copyright Infringment and Offences - still carries up to 10 years in prison though

You are at the top end of a very long scale with that. To get any sort of jail term, you have to be found guilty in crown court of the criminal offence of making or dealing in items that infringe copyright ... basically what we used to call 'pirate videos', although these days that could be CDs or DVDs.

What the vast majority of p2p users are doing is the civil offence of copyright infringement. You cannot go to jail for that. If you are held liable for copyright infringement in the county court, the judge awards damages against you, in favour of the copyright owner. But in the case of p2p, that has never happened, except in a very small number of cases where the person accused of file-sharing has ignored their summons and has ended up with a default judgement against them.

[BenMcr]

And thats fair enough if one or two copies of the files ended up online of course it wouldn't be worth prosecuting, or as you say a civil infringement

But, if you ended up sharing hundreds or thousands of files from the service, all linked to you - then it is likely to be a different story

[Mr Angry]

Originally Posted by Chris

You are at the top end of a very long scale with that. To get any sort of jail term, you have to be found guilty in crown court of the criminal offence of making or dealing in items that infringe copyright ... basically what we used to call 'pirate videos', although these days that could be CDs or DVDs.

What the vast majority of p2p users are doing is the civil offence of copyright infringement. You cannot go to jail for that. If you are held liable for copyright infringement in the county court, the judge awards damages against you, in favour of the copyright owner. But in the case of p2p, that has never happened, except in a very small number of cases where the person accused of file-sharing has ignored their summons and has ended up with a default judgement against them.

Chris,

Copyright infringement can warrant a criminal offence - especially secondary infringements with regard to distribution.

From the Act.

Offences

107 Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing articles, &c

(1) A person commits an offence who, without the licence of the copyright owner—
(a) makes for sale or hire, or
(b) imports into the United Kingdom otherwise than for his private and domestic use, or
(c) possesses in the course of a business with a view to committing any act infringing the copyright, or
(d) in the course of a business —
(i) sells or lets for hire, or
(ii) offers or exposes for sale or hire, or
(iii) exhibits in public, or
(iv) distributes, or
(e) distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright,
an article which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of a copyright work.

The penalties are 6 months and / or £5,000.00 fine - as per here. No "BPI dirty PR misinformation" required.

Originally Posted by Mr Angry

Chris,

Copyright infringement can warrant a criminal offence - especially secondary infringements with regard to distribution.

From the Act.

Offences

107 Criminal liability for making or dealing with infringing articles, &c

(1) A person commits an offence who, without the licence of the copyright owner—
(a) makes for sale or hire, or
(b) imports into the United Kingdom otherwise than for his private and domestic use, or
(c) possesses in the course of a business with a view to committing any act infringing the copyright, or
(d) in the course of a business —
(i) sells or lets for hire, or
(ii) offers or exposes for sale or hire, or
(iii) exhibits in public, or
(iv) distributes, or
(e) distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright,
an article which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, an infringing copy of a copyright work.

The penalties are 6 months and / or £5,000.00 fine - as per here. No "BPI dirty PR misinformation" required.

I know ... that's what I was alluding to when I said 'long scale'. At the bottom of it are the p2p people, at the top are the major-league money-making pirates, and somewhere in the middle are those who would be affected by your bold paragraph.

I'd be sceptical of anyone suggesting that p2p downloaders could find themselves on the receiving end of one of the Act's criminal sanctions though, because of the need (1) to prove beyond doubt that they actually did it and (2) to demonstrate prejudicial effect. A downloader isn't selling a direct physical alternative to the real thing. If you go down the Barras in Glasgow and buy a ripped off copy of GTA, there is something you can actually point to and say 'that represents a lost sale'. But it is well known that people download things online that they would never contemplate buying, simply due to their ready, cost-free online availability. It isn't the case that every downloaded copy of a game or movie represents a lost sale - despite those industries persistent attempts to quantify lost sales by simply putting the RRP value on every downloaded copy. If you can't quantify the extent of the effect on the copyright owner, to the standard of proof required in a criminal prosecution, then how can 'prejudicial effect' be shown?


And on the subject of industry misinformation, when I said 'dirty PR misinformation' what I meant was their persistence in the use of the term 'copyright theft' which does not exist as an offence.

Originally Posted by stewlewis

Like i said, it's all about collectors. It has nothing to do with real fans. I dare say most of the internet traffic is not 'real'.

School yard, who has the biggest collection of MP3s, they'll never listen to them all. Who is the first to find a copy of the latest album/film. Who makes the first rip themselves and tags it and how many people download it, how far around the world has it gone. (like virus writers). If a collector has rare downloads etc. he/she could trade with friends.

Legitimate fans buy the media because they want the quality. They want the package. They want the uncompressed surround sound HD movie. They won't use this service. They'll use the free ones for background music.

Middle of the road music listeners and film viewers may use this service, they don't care about 128k background music quality or they have their DVD player hooked up to the biggest plasma they could afford via scart or composite. The aren't the most Tech Savvy and they probably bought and IPod without considering sound quality.

The collectors, internet graffiti writers never gave a damn about legalities anyway and still won't. One or 2 may use this service to grab a massive collection fast, but they'll just share it anyway via other means.

If Walmart charged an entrance fee and everything was free there'd be loads of folks who raped the store of all it's good rather than popping back when they needed someting. Just cus they can...................

Good points, and factor in that the downloading will count towards your limit on your "unlimited" service I cant see me giving VM any more hard earned money.

The quality of the downloads will be ideal for background music or loading up an ipod, so its not something I would be interested in particularly when it counts towards the allowance.

[Ignitionnet]

Something that should be very much considered perhaps is that this is nothing more than PR and vapourware at this time, clearly released prematurely to get there the day before the Digital Britain report.

There is nothing particularly substantive that can be said about it all at this time. Virgin are trying to both impress the industry and impress their customers but right now there is not a massive amount they can provide. Universal may have wanted water marking (has this been confirmed yet?!) and temporary disconnection, other labels may want/demand even more.

This is an unlimited press release download service right now. It is highly, highly unlikely to go live with just the Universal catalogue and should be considered as a future plan which may or may not go live with the pricing, terms and conditions that have thusfar been mentioned.

There's no point in getting too emotional or defensive about this service. The only bit really that can be counted on is the service suspension part - this is something that can only get worse, it's not about to be lightened up through deals with other publishers. With the Digital Britain report in mind this is something Virgin are highly likely to bring in regardless in an attempt to avoid Ofcom climbing over them.

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

I not sure that they would, but there is always the possibility that they could show that not only was the music a copy of the one you had downloaded, but it had come from your IP address, then I think they would have a pretty good case for that

One or the other may not be enough, but both together might very well be.

Well if you care to risk it when the service launches be my guest.


And you think if you were prosecuted for Copyright theft that they wouldn't have computer experts that could work out if your computer had been hacked or not?

---------- Post added at 01:27 ---------- Previous post was at 01:24 ----------

The issues surrounding releasing music on MP3 and the legal ramifications will have been poured over by the music business long before this.

in court they have to in most cases show that you intended to do something

as to proving that your computer wasn't breached i can see that being a rather hard one given that most computers in this country are not protected properly any how to show that the mp3 couldn't have been taken with out your consent could be very problematic for them.

if they intend to run it that way it will fail even faster

any service that offers unlimited downloads must if they want to do well base thier modle on the baisis that they are just going to be a storage place to be used when you cant find where you filed that mp3 you wanted or just didnt bother to store as you have unlimited times to down load it and that is so cheap that it makes it pointless to do many searches to find that mp3 you want and check it for viruses and thus pointless having p2p using up your bandwidth storing them on your computer for others

whether or not using p2p to share music is ilegal or not is not the point it will happen until the alternative is easy in one place and cheap enough for a family to include in their budget

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by rogermevans

in court they have to in most cases show that you intended to do something

No you don't.

and cheap enough for a family to include in their budget

Which this will be - think about it. Rather than having 2/3/4 people buying CDs or downloads from iTunes or elsewhere which could run into £40/£50 a month - you can pay say £20 for this VM service and everyone would be able to use the music

Originally Posted by BenMcr

No you don't.

Roger's statement is entirely correct. In most cases, intent has to be established before someone can be convicted on a criminal charge. That's not the case for all offences, but the need to establish intent is still a very powerful principle in English law.