MP3 Downloading to be banned in the UK from Wednesday?

[Shane Pearce]

Well,

what do u think of this it was on the news tonight. will we actually have to BUY CD's? Oh the thought of it

[Turiel]

Could you explain a bit more about what was actually said?

[Darren B]

There is no way this can be implemented

[KJ]

There will *always* be a way ...... but the companies seem to be getting smarter


KJ

;)

[Slicklink]

Not really lads, it has always been illegal to download....

of course if you have the original it is no crime to make a copy for personal use....

The Story is Digital Dowmload Services are allowing punters to download free of charge for the next week (ONLY) music from the internet LEGALLY (with the full backing of the top record companies. There is an official site..... I'll get you the URL. The whole idea is that reckonising the trends that people like to download individual files and make up their own compilations to burn, the industry now want to control it! and make money from it rather let the proliferation of pirate sites continue, if you cant beat them get something out it at least..... all prompted by the drops in sales of CDs worldwide (although sales are up in the region of 4 to 5% in the UK)

[Slicklink]

Yeah heres the text

Fans have rushed to take part in a digital music offer in which music industry-backed websites are giving away free songs.
The sites taking part in Digital Download Day have been "swamped" by demand, organisers have said.



It's almost unprecedented that we've had this level of interest in legitimate services

Spokesman
Digital Download Day
The offer - in which fans get £5 worth of free songs - was devised to raise awareness that legitimate download sites provided an alternative to pirate music services.

"It is a complete poke in the eye for the illegitimate sites," a spokesman for the company co-ordinating the offer, OD2, said.

A range of websites are offering free access to 110,000 songs by stars from Kylie Minogue to Elvis Presley for one week.

By 1630 BST, the Digital Download Day website was being visited by 15,000 people per hour.

The campaign comes as legitimate music sites struggle to convince fans to pay for songs when they can still download them for free from popular unofficial sites like Morpheus and Kazaa.


Peter Gabriel's company has organised the campaign

The £5 worth of free tracks gives users 500 streamed songs, 50 downloads or five tunes to copy, or "burn", onto a CD.

"We have not seen a level of activity like this before, and that's really indicative of how much it's captured everybody's imagination," the OD2 spokesman said.

OD2 is a digital music company set up by singer Peter Gabriel.

The participating websites were coping with demand, the spokesman said.

"It's almost unprecedented that we've had this level of interest in legitimate services.

"As far as awareness for these services goes, it's mission accomplished."

The offer was kicked off on Thursday and will last until Wednesday.

Fans have access to songs from three of the five major record labels, with tracks by Gareth Gates, Westlife, Coldplay and Dido also available.

Sales slump

The legitimate sites provide a more professional and reliable service than pirate services, OD2 says.

If users return after sampling the free trial, they will be asked to pay £4.99 per month for about 50 downloads.

Widespread illegal downloading and CD-copying has been blamed on a global slump in music sales.

Andrew Yeates, the head of the UK music industry's trade body, the British Phonographic Industry, welcomed Digital Download Day.

"Put simply, paying for music has to be a better option than stealing it. Any initiative that helps create that atmosphere is to be welcome," he said.

[KJ]

Id rather you didnt post the URL Slick (altho its up to you of course) ..... there's something very fishy bout the whole thing. I reckon it'll install some Spyware on your system (actually Im 90% certain) that'll keep track of your every online move. A nice way of the labels having their very own big brother! Think about it.

KJ

;)

[Slicklink]

Ok Kelly your very suspicious, and I initially thought that but no I saw the interview on BBC last night and they (the execs) genuinly believe that kids are downloading illegally because its changing times and they want to do their own compilations (not that its bloody free...... how naive!!!!)

make your own mind up! It'll take a long time to sue everyone that has a PC

http://www.digitaldownloadday.com/

[Shane Pearce]

it wont be too long till they find a way to stop us from downloading 4 good, all the decent sites will be going soon, Audio galaxy is gone already, whats next WIN MX?

[KJ]

Its probably the first time we havent agreed on this site Slick, and I know we're both avid downloaders of tunes, but - with respect man - you're not looking at the hidden agenda here. If you DL from these labels I can guarentee you're downloading record label Spyware too.

The way it'll go (eventually) will be us paying the *artist* directly, at a fraction of the cost. At the moment I wont be touching anything like this with a bargepole.


KJ

;)

[Turiel]

Indeed, if some of the main music swapping services were installing spyware (Audiogalaxy & Kazaa are two that come to mind), then a music label sponsodownload service definitely will!

Although, if not for the "hidden agenda", it would be nice to support something like this, cause its definitely a step in the right direction, with the objective as Kelly said being us paying the artist at a fraction of the cost.

[KJ]

From a list Im on


"If, by chance, you managed to corner an R & D head in a company that
developed DVD technology they'd probably say that the high initial
cost is there to allow the company to recoup the hundreds of millions
of <insert appropriate currency> that they spent on developing
it. I
believe that it was something in the order of $400,000,000 for CD
technology for example. Hence the companies want to make some of
their money back quickly to fund improvements in the technology
including reducing the cost of production so that the ultimate
consumer will pay less. Also, new technologies can be very
inefficient and hence there's a lot of waste costs to cover - again
using CDs as an example, when they launched CD players 2% of the
diodes they produced to read them worked, the rest had to be trashed.
Over time (with great investment) this was reduced and hence the cost
could come down. Of course this could all be corporate bollocks. They
probably knocked it all together in the garden shed at a total cost
of thruppence ha'penny the b*stards....."


KJ

[KJ]

Subject: Are You Ready For Music That Expires?

You should check out this site, it warns about CD's that are copy
protected. Fat Chuck calls them corrupted CD's:
http://fatchucks.com/z3.cd.html

Most of you consider sharing your music with a limited number of
people perfectly moral and legal. But one thing is for sure: there is
a lot of confusion about copyright and its effects on copying music
from a CD to a hard disk.

The bottom line appears to be that if you aren't making any money by
sharing your music with others, then it's unlikely that you're doing
something seriously wrong or that the music companies will come after
you. The main reason for this is that the music companies don't have
the time to sue everyone, so they just go after the big players in
the bootleg music business. But they have a few new tricks up their
sleeve that I'd like to warn you about.

Up till now, when you buy a music CD, you actually own the CD and can
play it on whatever CD player you like. You can make copies of the CD
for your own use, and can even copy it to tape or other media so that
you are not limited to using the music on just a CD player. But the
music industry is going the way of the software business: copy
protection for music. I'm not kidding you!

If you read the license agreements that come with your software,
you'll see that if the software company doesn't like how you're using
their product, then they can take it away from you and force you to
remove it from your computer. You get no compensation if they take
the software away, in spite of the fact that you paid for the
software.

Software companies can do this because you don't actually buy their
software. Instead of buying the software, you license it from the
company. The term license is adequately confusing so that people
don't even think about what it means. What it does mean is that
you're actually using the software on a long term, open-ended lease.
The software company can, at any time, decide that your lease has
expired and legally require you to cease and desist from using the
software you paid for.

Well, it looks like the recording industry is taking a page out of
that same book. They are planning to increasingly restrict your music
use, and essentially want you to lease it and collect rent in
perpetuity. You fail to keep up your payments, they make your music
collection go up in vapor. A good example of where this is going are
some new CD's that are copy protected: you cannot rip them or
transfer them to an MP3 player.

Another new scheme is being hatched by RealNetworks. For $9.95 a
month you can download a 100 songs, but you cannot burn them on a CD,
copy or move them to another PC. And they expire after a month. If
you find one you like, that one gets deducted from next month's
number. So after a while you pay 10 bucks per month for 100 songs....
forever. So, are you ready for music that expires?

What do you think of music licensing? Do you think leasing music
(like software) is the way to go, or do you think that after you pay
for something you should own it? Are you taking any measures to make
sure that if your music or software license is revoked that you can
still access your stuff?

(Article taken from winxpnews.com)

[KJ]

Let the music download

Owen Gibson
Monday October 7, 2002
The Guardian

Will Thursday October 3 be remembered as the day when digital music came of age in the UK? If Peter Gabriel has his way then the answer will be yes. In case you missed it, last Thursday was - drum roll - Digital Download Day. In a hitherto unprecedented bout of cooperation, the major record labels and the British Phonographic Industry clubbed to together with Gabriel's company OD2 to offer consumers £5-worth of free downloads. The day was, apparently, a roaring success with 15,000 people an hour besieging the site to get their mitts on some free music. Which, let's face it, isn't all that surprising.

The crunch comes when people have to start paying. So far, so obvious, but at least it was good to see everyone singing from the same hymn sheet for once. The irony is that it took a comparative minnow, albeit one owned by a multi-millionaire rock star, to bring them together. Up to now, the record industry's attitude to digital music has been, at best, half-hearted and at worst simply ignorant. Considering the internet has been a mass medium for five years now and it's more than three years since Shawn Fanning launched Napster.

It's perhaps unfair to tar all the big five record companies with the same brush, as some (EMI in particular) have been more proactive than others. But beyond launching flashy sites for their artists and then, in many cases, promptly forgetting about them, there hasn't been much in the way of commitment to the web. And that goes double when it comes to digital downloading which, for far too long, was seen as the dog in the manger rather than an opportunity.

If the BPI, the record companies, the ISPs and the artists can use Digital Download Day as an opportunity then that can only be a good thing. An entirely unscientific poll among friends and colleagues confirmed my belief that most people still aren't even aware that there are legitimate ways of downloading music on the web. If PR efforts such as these can get even that simple point across then they'll have been a worthwhile exercise.

It was telling, however, that despite the general feeling of collaboration there were still two major record labels missing from the party. OD2 chief executive Charles Grimsdale said he was confident of getting them on board soon and reckoned that within six to eight months he would be able to offer most of the top 40, as well as a huge back catalogue, through its various partners such as Freeserve, HMV and Tiscali. Indeed, it's this back catalogue that is going to drive early adopters to the paid-for sites. And it's essential that it's comprehensive sooner rather than later. People need to be able to go to a site and come away having found exactly what they want.

The other key need is to make paid-for services far, far easier to use than their illegal brethren. At the moment, that's still not the case. Anyone trying to download their free tracks at work on Thursday, for example, would probably have found it impossible as the OD2 system doesn't work with the Windows NT operating system. None of this is rocket science, which again begs the question - why has it taken so long?

But at least the penny is starting to drop, even among traditional retailers which have even more to fear than the record companies. "It's increasingly apparent that along with the stick we need to offer a carrot," Stuart Rowe, HMV's e-commerce head, said last week. Well, duh. It's a shame that such a conclusion couldn't have been reached three years ago. In the US, the Recording Industry Association of America still persists in the belief that anyone downloading tracks from the internet is a filthy criminal.

This year, there have been increasing signs that record companies are realising the value of the web as a marketing tool. And as they learn the value of making whole albums available for a day to encourage sampling and become more sophisticated in their use of email marketing, it is to be hoped that they're realising that the internet can be their friend as well as their enemy.

At the moment, digging out free music on the web is still a bit of an effort and instances of viruses, incomplete tracks and poor quality downloads won't attract casual users to the likes of Grokster and Kaaza. So, the best bet for the legal sites, in addition to making sure they offer as wide a selection of tracks as possible, is to make them as easy to use as possible.

With broadband finally taking off in a meaningful way, the next few months are crucial for the record companies in establishing the concept of paid-for downloads among consumers. They need to seize on any impetus Digital Download Day and attendant press coverage gave them and, basically, in the words of Peter Gabriel's 1986 duet with Kate Bush, don't give up.

[KJ]

Latest on legal pay-per-download sites

_________________________________

Monday June 2, 2003
The Guardian


The success of legal download sites is crucial if the major labels are to continue making money from the likes of Britney

After a period of procrastination that would put Hamlet to shame, the past few weeks have seen record industry bigwigs engaged in a flurry of activity around the issue of music downloads and online piracy. A series of court cases, launches and announcements have conspired to force the topic back to the top of the agenda for label bosses and artists alike. The catalyst was the unexpected early success of Apple's iTunes, which in the US has got record labels all hot under the collar about the possibility that online music might be a viable revenue stream after all.

But despite recent enthusiasm from consumers, it remains to be seen whether this is the start of a genuine fightback against the illegal peer-to-peer sites that have brought the labels to the brink, or the last gasp of a dying industry. The music business estimates that it lost £2.6bn worldwide to online and offline piracy last year and, to many, making a success of legal download services is their last chance to stem the tide.

Although only available to Macintosh users in the States, 3m tracks by major artists from Britney Spears to U2 have been downloaded from Apple's iTunes service at a price of 99 cents apiece since it launched last month. Even better news for five major labels - BMG, Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner - was the fact that most of the songs were downloaded as complete albums, soothing fears that online music would lead to the death of the album.

Almost immediately, record label executives were frothing at the mouth with excitement, issuing statements rejoicing in the fact that people did want to pay to download music after all. Which was perhaps a bit rich given that it took a third party to finally provide a user-friendly, pay-per-track service that people actually wanted to use.

The effects of the initial success of iTunes are already apparent. Online streaming giant RealNetworks last week announced the launch of its new download service, which will follow the Apple model, charging users 79 cents a time to download tracks once they have paid a monthly $10 subscription fee. And nothing epitomises the fresh momentum better than the purchase of Sony and Universal's unpopular PressPlay service by software company Roxio.

The manufacturer of CD burning software paid £24.3m for the service, chiefly as a quick and easy way to pick up PressPlay's existing agreements with major labels and online back catalogue rights to a variety of major artists including Justin Timberlake, Eminem and Coldplay. It plans to drop the tarnished PressPlay brand and use it as the backbone for the relaunch of Napster, the one-time scourge of the record industry, which it bought earlier this year. It too will operate along the lines of iTunes, with tracks from all current major artists and both subscription and pay-as-you-download options.

The irony of Sony and Universal's failed online distribution effort providing the backbone for the legit relaunch of the daddy of all illegal copying sites has not gone unnoticed. But it also signals a fundamental change in attitude, according to media lawyer Tony Morris. "The most important thing is Sony and Universal selling PressPlay. When you get Sony, who have traditionally guarded their rights zealously, giving a third party the right to do anything with their catalogue, that's a significant change in attitude," he says. But Morris also believes that it's a change that has been forced on the major labels, not one that has been embraced with enthusiasm.

There are signs, though, that the slumbering giants of the record industry are waking up to the potential of the web as a medium through which to sell music as well as promote it. Leanne Sharman, vice-president of sales and marketing at Vivendi-backed download site MP3.com, believes the message is seeping through. "It's only now that we're working with all five majors that we're starting to see trends towards taking advantage of the web as a sales medium," she says.

In their defence, the majors argue that it has taken a long time to untangle the morass of licensing and publishing issues before they start to think about the best way to sell music on the web. EMI has led the way with its announcement that it will put 90% of its live catalogue on the web, but progress remains too slow for many, who also point out that the company's live catalogue represents a tiny percentage of its output. Even EMI chairman Alain Levy admitted recently that the industry had a lot to do to catch up with the pirates. "If you do not have a critical mass, you can't have an offering. This has changed dramatically in the last six months. So now there is a business. You cannot build a business with half the music catalogue, you need the whole thing," he said, acknowledging what many third-party legal sites have been telling the majors for years.

Ben Drury, the head of BT's Dotmusic on Demand download service, which offers music from all five major labels, believes that the success of Apple's service will act as a Trojan horse for other sites. "The great thing is that it's been very high profile. But behind the scenes the majors have relaxed their attitude to digital-rights management, meaning that iTunes users can burn and share tracks in a way that they haven't been able to before. That attitude will filter over to this side of the Atlantic," he says. "The trend is that the illegal services are getting worse, more congested and slower while the legal services are getting better," he says.

But Paul Myers, founder of legal download site Wippit, which has been struggling for two years to finalise licensing deals with the major labels, would like to see less conversation and more action. While the big boys are coming round to the idea that they need to offer a wide range of artists, he says they are still not making them available to sites like his on reasonable terms.

"The talk is encouraging, but we have been talking to these guys for two years now. If we're the good guys and we're getting treated like this, then why do we bother? The illegal sites have better conversations with the majors than we do," he says, adding that while things are starting to move in the US, Europe is still lagging. "Ultimately, the decisions will come from the US, and to them Europe is still a small island off the coast of Boston," he says.

What has become clear over the past six months is that the majors have finally woken up to the fact that the online music genie is out of the bottle and the cork won't be forced back in by any amount of legal action. "For me, 2003 is year one of this area. The labels have realised where it's going and what they've got to do. The general consensus is that there is something there and a real business is emerging," believes Drury.

Whether the new services represent a false dawn or a new hope is unclear. Either way, all are agreed that there's a lot of catching-up to be done. "Five years too late, the music industry has realised that you're not going to stop downloading and that they need a way to commercialise it. They scored a big own goal in trying to shut down Napster in the first place rather than buying it and building on it. If you concede a penalty and score an own goal in the first minute of a match, you're going to be up against it," concludes Morris.

Those in charge admit as much. "The initial signs are that there is a lot of willingness from consumers to get music in a legal way, but it will take a couple of years to get there," says Levy. "The other point is that right now the offering is very primitive to my mind, it's just a list of tracks. We have to make it more sexy to go and download music. So we're working on all that and it will take some time."

Blur, one of the biggest-selling acts on EMI's roster, recently had a top-five hit with Out of Time, which was released online weeks before it hit the shops. Levy, and his counterparts at the other major labels, will be hoping that the title doesn't prove prophetic.