President Obama Discusses Three Strikes Anti-Piracy Law

Posted on: March 11, 2010

ariFor years the entertainment industry has been lobbying for tougher measures against online piracy. In France this has resulted in the implementation of a ‘three strikes and you're offline' regime and many other countries are considering similar measures.

Thus far the United States Government has kept relatively quiet on this issue, but that doesn't mean that such plans are not being discussed behind close doors.

According to Ari Emanuel, a famous Hollywood talent agent and the model for the character Ari Gold in the hit series Entourage, Hollywood lobbyists are working hard to convince President Obama and others to ram through similar legislation in the United States.

“We are in the midst of talking to the president and some attorney generals and [we are] trying to implement a three strikes and you're out rule,” Emanuel said, while adding that this issue would most likely result in a “fight with ISPs”.

At this point it is impossible to assess the exact nature of these talks, but since Ari Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, there is no doubt that these talks are taken seriously. President Obama, who vouched to decrease the power of lobbyists in Washington, is not turning a deaf ear to this one for now.

Before even considering the implementation of a three-strikes model, United States lawmakers might want to take a good look at what's happening in France. Unlike earlier projections that up to 95% of the file-sharers could stop downloading copyrighted content, the piracy rate has actually increased in the face of the new law.

The entertainment industry, nevertheless, continues to push legislation as the solution to online piracy, while ignoring their own role in the creation of the problem.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/LQsPJ62eSRU/
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The 2010 XviD Sports Releasing Standards (TXSRS10)

Posted on: March 11, 2010
Here’s yet another post in our popular scene rules article series. The 2010 XViD Sports Releasing Standards (TXSRS10) have been pre’d by ‘The Sports Release Council’ and all scene released sports content encoded using the XViD codec will conform to these standards effective from 15th March 2010. If you’ve been downloading UFC/MMA content, Wrestling matches or other sports related video etc leaked onto private torrent trackers, chances are that these will conform to TXSRS10 after the...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FILEnetworks/~3/IvlbQiWLPTc/2010-xvid-sports-releasing-standards.html
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The Game Scene Charts Issue 39 – January 2010 Edition Download

Posted on: March 11, 2010
You favorite pirate magazine is back for another edition – Issue 39 of the The Game Scene Charts (TGSC) was pre’d on the 22nd of February 2010 (due to our own ignorance, this post again got delayed by a couple of weeks). This is the first TGSC issue for year 2010 and as the editorial says, it’s a fresh new start and a new year of rankings. If you are hearing about this magazine for the first time, TGSC is a publication that ranks and rates PC game release groups in the warez scene. Groups gain...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FILEnetworks/~3/K9bodbc5T70/game-scene-charts-issue-39-january-2010.html
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Pirate Bay Court Appeal Set For Just After General Election

Posted on: March 11, 2010

tpbIn April 2009, all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fines of $905,000 each. The defense didn’t accept the decision, and went on to file for an appeal.

Their appeal is now expected to head to the Court of Appeal on 28 September 2010. Nine days have been allocated in all, and the last is due on 15 October.

The dates are not fixed in stone and could be changed if the plaintiffs or defendants have any objections, which even at this early stage seems to be the case.

Peter Sunde has already taken note that the provisional date is penciled-in for after the Swedish parliamentary elections which take place on 19 September 2010.

Sunde says that the four are only available for an appeal before the elections, commenting: “Who said this case is NOT political?”

If the appeal was heard before the elections, there would be a very real chance that an affirmation of the original conviction could turn into a major political issue in Sweden. Following the conviction of the ‘four' in 2009, the Pirate Party received 7.1% of the vote in the European Parliament elections, receiving more votes from those under 30 than any other party in Sweden.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/tcBf9Wru6B8/
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Limewire PRO Adds AVG Anti-Virus/Spyware Protection

Posted on: March 11, 2010

Incorporates AVG Anti-Virus software into the P2P program for the price of $34.95.

You have to hand it to LimeWire for trying to do all it can stay relevant in an ever increasingly crowded file-sharing app marketplace. While all other P2P software is pretty much free (Usenet aside) LimeWire's still trying to give file-sharers a reason to fork over as much $34.95 for its PRO version.

To further their efforts its now been announced that LimeWire has licensed the use of the AVG Anti-Virus engine to integrate its anti-virus/ anti-spyware protection into LimeWire PRO.

“Through this partnership, all files will be scanned before LimeWire Pro will allow them to play or execute on an end user's computer, which prevents infected files from harming machines,” reads a press release. “LimeWire PRO users will see the ‘Protected by AVG' assurance whenever a downloaded file is safely scanned and cleaned.”

It's certain to be a marked improvemenmt from the current system which allows inexperience users to download harmful content to their PC, but that's only if they're convinced to fork over the $34.95.

“Peer-to-peer networks have come a long way. People are using peer-to-peer networks to share files and documents, and we are pleased to be protecting them,” said Rocco Donnino, SVP of Global Strategic Alliances, AVG Technologies. “AVG is committed to securing our online world, whatever it takes.”

The ad hoc architecture of P2P networks affords no central point where security policies can be enforced, making the networks vulnerable to infected files, adware, spyware and other malware creeping into the system. It is incumbent upon users to secure their computers in order to protect both their own computers and the general health of their peer-to-peer network.

“LimeWire is committed to providing peer-to-peer's best user experience and we are vigilant about user security,” said Jason Herskowitz, VP Product Management, LimeWire. “We are always looking for ways to improve, and with AVG's seamless integration into LimeWire, we will be providing users with peer-to-peer's most secure technology.”

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88329/limewire-pro-adds-avg-anti-virus-protection/
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UK ISPs: Site Blocking Risks Country’s Reputation

Posted on: March 11, 2010

Join consumer advocates, MPs, prominent academics, and others in an open letter to the House of Lords criticizing recent proposal to amend the Digital Economy Bill in order force ISPs to proactively block websites suspected of copyright infringement.

A number of UK ISPs have joined forces with consumer advocacy groups, prominent academics, filmmakers, actors, and even websites eBay, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google to forge an open letter to the House of Lords criticizing the recent proposal to amend the Digital Economy Bill.

Amendment 120a, as written, would use the threat of “injunctions” against those ISPs that have “actual knowledge of another person using their?service to infringe copyright,” but has failed to “prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both).”

What it doesn’t spell out is exactly how ISPs are supposed to verify claims of copyright infringement (a new ISP detective bureau?) or the means of appeal. Some site operators may be falsely accused of copyright infringement and subsequently erroneously sanctioned by their ISP.

It's already been observed that it would cause a “chilling effect” on the Internet, but these signatories add that it would “have unintended consequences that far outweigh any benefits it could bring.”

“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended,” they add.

In fact, they argue that the amendment threatens the “reputation of the UK as a place to do online business and conflict(s) with the broader objectives of Digital Britain.”

The signatories include:

  • Tom Alexander,Chief Executive, Orange
  • Richard Allan,Director of Policy EU, Facebook
  • Neil Berkett,Chief Executive, Virgin Media
  • Matt Brittin,Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland
  • Charles Dunstone,Chairman, Talk Talk Group
  • Stephen Fry
  • Jessica Hendrie-Liaño,Chair, Internet Services Providers Association
  • Jill Johnstone,International Director, Consumer Focus
  • Jim Killock,Executive Director, Open Rights Group
  • Mark Lewis,Managing Director, eBay UK
  • Ian Livingston,Chief Executive, BT Group
  • Sarah Oates,University of Glasgow
  • Jenny Pickerill,University of Leicester
  • Mark Rabe,Managing Director, Yahoo! UK and Ireland
  • Paul Reilly,University of Leicester
  • Jess Search,Founder, Shooting People independent film makers
  • Ian Walden,Queen Mary, University of London
  • Tom Watson MP

The real problem with the amendment is that it could shutter websites with merely the threat of action since there's no mechanism to make a case or even appeal the findings. All one has to do is be accused of copyright infringement to run afoul of the law.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88327/uk-isps-site-blocking-risks-countrys-reputation/
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Torrents Made Streams with Put.io

Posted on: March 10, 2010

For many the idea of downloading a movie to merely watch it once and then remove it from their hard drive has become rather unappealing and that’s why services like Put.io are starting to open new prospects for new ventures and a new segment of audience.

What is Put.io?

A service that gets files from the Web and enables either storage or direct streaming.

Put.io has the ability to fetch files from bittorrent, FTP, Direct download, Rapidshare, and also standard websites. Moreover, it can even pull links from an RSS feed and stores the files allowing you to come back and access them anytime you want.

Currently in beta, Put.io offers 50 GB of storage with 150 GB of bandwidth. While downloading files to the service will not count for the bandwidth usage, accessing the files will; this means the more you watch a file, the less bandwidth you have.

Naturally, a service like Put.io couldn’t have come without file sharing features – the site allows you to share files and folders with other people and access files from any browser supporting device. Apart from a mobile version, Put.io intends to release an API together with a Boxee plugin.

With regard to copyright issues Put.io states: "It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and other applicable intellectual property laws. Responses may include disabling access for all users to the material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating submitters of the material ability to use the Put.io service at all."

http://www.p2pon.com/2010/03/10/torrents-made-streams-with-put-io/
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Comcast Funds BitStalker Anti-Piracy Research

Posted on: March 10, 2010

comcastFor years the RIAA and other copyright holders have been sending copyright infringement notices to ISPs, requesting they forward them to their customers. ISPs including Comcast have always kindly complied with these requests, but remained a neutral party.

It therefore came as a surprise when we found out that three major US ISPs – Comcast, Cox and Warner Cable – have been funding research which aims to help copyright holders track down and gather evidence against BitTorrent pirates more efficiently.

Unlike most of the ‘passive' BitTorrent tracking tools that are in fashion today, BitStalker uses an ‘active' method through which they can actually prove that the BitTorrent client associated with an IP-address is sharing files. Where the passive methods wrongfully accuse 1 in 10 downloaders, BitStalker promises to avoid such false positives.

The researchers who developed BitStalker further claim (pdf) that their tool is much more effective than the current competition, as it would allow copyright holders to get information on 20 million BitTorrent users for a bargain price of $12.40. What remains unclear, however, is why three large ISPs are interested in funding this project.

It is no secret that the RIAA has been pushing Comcast, Cox and other ISPs to take stricter measures against copyright infringers, including the ultimate sanction of terminating customers' Internet access. However, thus far the ISPs have largely maintained their neutral position as information carriers.

Whether the funding of BitStalker's research is a signal that this may change is open for speculation. Another argument for ISPs to join could be that they want to protect their customers from receiving copyright infringement notices in error.

Regarding the BitStalker method of tracking BitTorrent users, we can say that it is not as revolutionary as the researchers portray it. TorrentFreak spoke to several people who are currently operating the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet and none of them was impressed by BitStalker's technology.

If BitStalker is indeed implemented the large scale monitoring will have to be executed from thousands of IP-addresses. Most trackers have rules in place so that one single IP-address will be banned from the tracker if it connects to too many torrents.

Similarly, if BitStalker was put on a cloud service like the research suggests, it wouldn't take long before these IP-ranges would appear in block-lists, rendering BitStalker useless.

If we add to this that BitStalker's active BitTorrent tracking method will require users to be ‘connectible', which a large percentage of users aren't, this means that it will result in many false negatives. The researchers report that they could only connect to less than half of all available peers, which might be caused in the main by the connectability issue.

Whatever the motivations are for Comcast and the other ISPs to fund this project, the good news is that less people will be accused of uploading something they haven't. Whether BitStalker will really be that more efficient depends on one's definition of efficiency. For now, we doubt that it will result in a global BitTorrent crackdown.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Ow8-ae1dHBM/
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RIAA’s Pie Gone Bad

Posted on: March 10, 2010

In an age where information is so abundant that can easily become redundant or even misleading and dangerous unless doubled by a trusty “filter” or objectivity tool, to see a pseudo-explanation of a phenomenon of such amplitude like file sharing countered immediately by a solid argumentation is like a breath of fresh air.

P2P (pie-to-pie) Fable

Surfing the net the other day I came across a great article by Mike Masnick at Techdirt, a sort of a reply to a recent RIAA statement. First of all, let’s remember some of the trade group’s latest desperate attempts to demonize file sharing and anyone coming close to it – from its efforts to link the Chinese hack of Google to Google's stand on copyright, the foolish claim that file sharers were having a negative effect on humanitarian aid in Haiti to the recent use of a fable to describe what’s wrong with file sharing.

Here’s the “exposition” courtesy of Mike:

Perhaps it's part of the RIAA's propaganda campaign for school children, but in a recent blog post, RIAA VP Joshua Friedlander compared the file sharing situation to the children's fable Nobody Stole the Pie by Sonia Levitin.
You may have heard the story. It's about a bunch of villagers all taking a little nibble of a pie, insisting that just a little bit won't hurt — and then, of course, the entire pie is gone, and everyone claims that it was "Not I" who ate the pie.

Now let’s check out what’s wrong with the picture, RIAA so keenly and self-infatuatedly presents:

“The reason the pie story functions the way it does is because the pie is a scarce and limited resource. As such, each time someone takes, it means that there is less for others. It's a zero-sum game. In contrast, with a digital file, the content is abundant and an infinite resource. Each time someone makes a copy, rather than less for everyone, there's actually more for everyone. You're actually growing the pie. Neat!”, points out Mike.

The author then goes on emphasizing the true source of the concern RIAA has when it comes to file sharing:
“The problem the RIAA and its labels face is not everyone nibbling on the pie. It's that it has always focused on selling pie at greatly inflated prices, because in the old world, you could only get the pie from a few RIAA-run pie shops. In the new world, with abundant pie, where each copy of a piece of pie expands the pie, suddenly people can get their pie from many other places. And it's been great for pretty much everyone, other than the proprietors of the RIAA pie shops.” Then he adds: “More musicians are able to get their "pies" out there, since the old pieshop gatekeeper is no longer the bottleneck. More musicians are able to make money since they no longer have to rely on the pieshop to fund their ability to make new flavors of pie.”

Artists taking the matter of selling their music in their own hands and on their own terms and keeping a revenue much larger than they would do if collaborating with a large record label, is a prospect not very appealing to music industry. Bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have proved it. Leaving aside the fact they were already famous when they made the decision to give away their albums for free and paradoxically ended up more money than they had expected, new artists could be inspired to adopt similar ways to promote themselves and that would just mean a lot of companies being forced to retire or change. And who wants changes when everything is going lavishly smoothly?

So let’s wrap it up with another fragment of Mike’s post addressing the issue of music industry vs. file sharing.

Recent studies have shown that the music industry has been growing, not shrinking over the past few years. It's just that the money is going to different places. Again, the RIAA has a blindspot for all the other places where people can get pie, and how they've build up great business models around it, assuming that if you're not getting pie from an RIAA shopkeeper, then you must be "stealing." But that's like saying every time I order pizza from Domino's, I'm stealing from Pizza Hut. Or, even worse, every time I make my own pizza at home, I'm stealing from Pizza Hut.

The real problem is not different people taking "just a little bit." The people haven't been taking, they've been growing the pie. Massively. And the musicians and record labels who understand this have been growing and profiting nicely. So, seriously, RIAA, let's leave the children's fables where they belong and start focusing on updating your antiquated business model to deal with the twenty-first century.

Nice piece of writing Mike!

http://www.p2pon.com/2010/03/09/riaa%e2%80%99s-pie-gone-bad/
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Metallica Fans Obtain Ticket Price Reduction in Israel Using FaceBook

Posted on: March 10, 2010

For those still underestimating the power of social networking, here’s a Facebook fact.

Hetfiled & Trujillo firing up the crowds

Metallica’s fans from Israel who haven’t had the chance to see their idols since the tour in 1999 and feared the possibility of losing the upcoming concert of the band due to the high price of the tickets took the matter into their own social hands.

It seems that a real army of headbangers launched a campaign on Facebook to try obtaining a more reasonable ticket price for the concert scheduled for May 22, 2010. And they did succeed! From the actual price of the ticket – way too high – $159, the fans lowered it to around $80.

The power of many, right? – While initially the group included 600 followers, in less than 4 days more than 6,000 users joined the noble cause. To be honest with you, the news makes me glad, especially since I can easily remember the desperate joy at spending the few bucks I could afford back in high-school on my first ticket to a Metallica concert.

Now, I can’t help but wonder what inspiration will be drawn from this?

http://www.p2pon.com/2010/03/09/metallica-fans-obtain-ticket-price-reduction-in-israel-using-facebook/
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Six BitTorrent Admins Arrested, Interpol Chase Two More

Posted on: March 10, 2010

gamatoAlthough it wasn't yet evident, December 2009 appeared to mark the beginning of an effort to shut down the Greek BitTorrent scene. The Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE) conducted an investigation and moved in conjunction with the police to carry out the first action of its type against a BitTorrent site in the country.

The 285,000 member Greek-Fun.com carried around 14,000 torrents linking to music, domestic and international movies, software and computers games. Around 5,500 of these torrents are believed to have linked to material in the EPOE repertoire. As is usual with these cases, EPOE were quick to point to the financing of the site as an indication of criminal behavior. Like many private torrent sites, Greek-Fun offered benefits to users who donated to keep the site running although the admins denied profiteering.

In the end at least one administrator of the site, believed to be in his early 30's, was arrested and several people were questioned with investigators linking site email addresses to Facebook accounts for evidence. EPOE said the site caused it 1.8m euros in damages.

As the bad news about Greek-Fun spread, Greece's largest private tracker – the huge 898,000 member Gamato.info – also unexpectedly went down, officially due to “technical problems”. Whatever the reason, as can be seen by the graph below, the result was a massive drop in Greek Internet traffic. Gamato remained down for several weeks, only opening again during the first few days of February 2010.

GreekTrafficDrop

Today, however, the site is down again, and the news is not good.

ELAS (Greek police) are engaged in an on-going operation to round up the administrators of the site. Already there are reports of 3 arrests in Athens (the capital and one of the world's oldest cities) and 3 in Thessaloniki (Greece's 2nd largest city). A soldier, a musician and a confectioner are among those arrested.

New information suggests that ELAS have alerted Interpol to arrest two further admins who are apparently reside outside the country. TorrentFreak has learned that they are located in The Netherlands and are being called “the brains” behind the site. The Gamato servers are also located there although it's unclear at this stage if there is a connection.

“We host a lot of different sites and do not keep tabs on our clients as long as they comply with our Terms of Service, which includes confirming to the Dutch law,” Gamato's host told TorrentFreak, adding: “As far as we and our legal counsel can see, this is the case with the site mentioned by you.”

It's believed that police are looking for 11 individuals in total. Thus far, 27 hard drives, five laptops and more than 600 DVDs have been seized.

According to the police, file-sharing on Gamato was responsible for 80% of online piracy in Greece, with EPOE calculating its losses at the hands of the tracker at a staggering 1 billion euros.

Although Gamato was a private torrent site, it didn't follow the usual format. It wasn't “invite-only” – anyone could signup – and although sharing ratios were counted there were no punishments or rewards for the amounts shared. Furthermore, unlike Greek-Fun, Gamato did not accept donations from users.

The Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE) shot to fame in 2008 when virtually every site offering user-generated Greek subtitles (fansubs) for English language movies and TV shows became recipients of its legal threats. Within a very short time sites including greektvsubs.gr, subtitles.gr, greeksubs, subs4u.gr and apsubs.com had either closed down or removed all subtitles.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3lYvRbLiwtE/
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BitStalker Can Monitor Pirate Bay Torrents for $13 p/mo

Posted on: March 10, 2010

Researchers create BitStalker, an efficient “active probing strategy” for finding copyrighted material on large BitTorrent tracker sites, but fact that the research was funded “in part” by PolyCipher, an ISP consortium, should make some nervous about what it plans to do with it.

Researchers from the University of Colorado have published a new technique for fighting the distribution of copyrighted material on BitTorrent. Current monitoring employs passive methods that are prone, as we all know, to a variety of errors and false positives.

To mitigate the potential for false positives they investigated the feasibility of using active methods to monitor extremely large BitTorrent swarms like those found on public tracker sites like The Pirate Bay. For this they developed BitStalker, a new active probing framework that identi?es active peers and collects “concrete forensic evidence” that an individual was involved in sharing a particular copyrighted ?le.

“We ?nd that the current investigative methods produce at least 11% false positives, while we show that false positives are rare with our active approach,” they say in their paper, “BitStalker: Accurately and Efficiently Monitoring BitTorrent Traffic.

They claim that BitStalker can monitor over 20,000 peers in 5 minutes using only 14.4–50.8KB/s of bandwidth. Using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) they estimate one could monitor the entire Pirate Bay with some? 20 million peers for only about $12.40 p/mo.

So how does it work?

First it gathers a list of peers in a given BitTorrent swarm by querying a tracker. For each IP address it and port number returned it then conducts a series of “light-weight probes” to find out if a peer really exists and is participating in the file transfer.

  1. Establish a TCP connection with another peer.
  2. Exchange handshake messages with the correct SHA1 content hash and receive handshake responses.
  3. Exchange bit?eld messages and receive bit?eld responses.
  4. Request and receive a 16KB block of ?le data.

The researchers say that by following these steps BitStalker can make false positives a thing of the past.

They continue:

A successful TCP probe indicates that the peer is listening on the correct port. However, an effective counter-strategy could be to register arbitrary IP addresses with ports that are opened (such as web servers). The subsequent handshake probe is more conclusive, as it indicates that the BitTorrent protocol is running on the correct port and also identi?es the content being shared by a SHA1 hash. The bit?eld probe provides stronger evidence still, since it describes all pieces that the peer has downloaded, which implies active sharing. Finally, requesting and subsequently receiving a block of the ?le provides the strongest form of concrete evidence for ?le sharing.

It's welcome news that researchers have figured out a way to find conclusive proof that a person was involved in illegal file-sharing, but it does, as they acknowledge, raise “general legal issues that this type of monitoring exposes.”

In particular, a speci?c de?nition of what constitutes “evidence” in the context of illegal ?le-sharing.

Most troubling is that the research was “funded in part” by PolyCipher, an ISP consortium created by Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications. With the MPAA and RIAA trying to get ISPs to become voluntary copyright police one has to wonder whether BitStalker may go active in the near future.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88319/bitstalker-can-monitor-pirate-bay-torrents-for-13-pmo/
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UK STUDY: ISPs Could Earn $304m w/Bundled Music Services

Posted on: March 10, 2010

British Phonographic Industry-funded study finds that bundled digital music services could earn ISPs ?203 million ($303.9m USD) by 2013.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is once again trying to lure in UK ISPs to help it fight illegal file-sharing on their networks, this time by releasing the results of a study it funded that found ISPs there could earn as much as ?203 million ($303.9m USD) by 2013 if they launched a bundled digital music services for their subscribers.

It also said the offering could help ISPs reduce the cost of “subscriber churn,” that a simple 10% reduction could help a big ISP with around 3.5m customers would generate indirect value of more than ?20m per year ($30m USD).

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe,'” says BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor. “This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs. UK music companies want to innovate and develop exciting new digital offerings. ISPs such as Virgin Media have recognized that legal digital music services offer a more exciting and profitable future than continued widespread piracy.”

It's ironic that it would cite Virgin Media as an ISP willing to offer digital music services considering the ISP spent years and a staggering eight figure sum developing “Virgin Music Unlimited” only to see it fall apart thanks to last minute by major record labels. Virgin Media later came to an agreement with Universal Music last June, but the service, promised to appear towards the end of last year, is still nowhere to be found, so it should hardly be held up as an example by the BPI.

Further damaging the credibility of their statements is the fact that the BPI tries to suggest that ISPs could make even more from bundled digital music services if only they were “offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading.?”

In other words, if they get on board with the BPI's proposals to fight illegal file-sharing ISPs could make a lot of money.

In response to the study UK ISP TalkTalk, which claims to be the country's largest broadband provider with over 4.25 million customers, sarcastically thanks the BPI for its “strategic business advice,” but says the ?203 million ($303.9m USD) figure glosses over the fact that it would have to criminalize the behaviors of many of its customers in an ultimately “expensive” and “futile” pursuit.

“Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalize its biggest customers. As it happens TalkTalk does offer a legal download service (emusic), as do other ISPs,” it said in a statement. “Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights. They will penalize innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

It's silly that the BPI is even offering such “innovative” ideas for others to follow when it can't seem to come up with any for itself. It's like getting workout tips from a couch potato.

One has to wonder why people would even want a bundled digital music service when they already have, in the BPI's own words, more than 35 legal online digital music services to choose from.

The BPI ought to commission more studies that find out what consumers actually want, and try to give it to them. Instead the music industry seems to continue doing the opposite, first figuring out what it wants and giving consumers only what it's forced to to make a profit, but even then profits are secondary to control of access.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88322/uk-study-isps-could-earn-304m-wbundled-music-services/
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UK STUDY: 40% Unable to Name Legal Online Music Service

Posted on: March 10, 2010

Consumer Focus also says that 85% can only name two, iTunes and Amazon, but UK music industry, in typical fashion, emphasizes that more than 35 exist and touts own study that found 96% awareness of iTunes and Amazon.

Consumer Focus, the UK govt-backed consumer advocacy group, has long tried to illustrate the deficiency of the country's copyright laws and the dramatic learning gap consumers have of them.

In fact, just last month it found that almost 3/4 of the population doesn’t know what they’re legally allowed to copy or record, and that's practically impossible to not infringe copyright laws as part of their daily lives unless they don't use digital technology.

Part of the problem has always been the music industry's reluctance to offer consumers viable, legal alternatives as a means to fight online copyright infringement, but as it's slowly begun to roll them out over the years new research from Consumer Focus shows how the music industry is failing to properly promote them.

Their research found that a staggering 20% are unable to name a single legal online music service at all, and that 85% could name only two – iTunes and Amazon.

“The music industry is shooting itself in the foot by not promoting legal online music services,” said Jill Johnstone, the group's International Director. “If file sharing is causing the damage the music industry claims, why aren’t they putting more effort in to promoting the legal alternatives? Before we go down the enforcement road it is only fair to ask the music industry to do more to make people aware of the legal options.”

Consumer Focus, in addition to recommending reform of the country's copyright laws, is also calling for reform of its copyright licensing system in order to make it easier to create more legal online music services with streaming, “all you can eat”, micropayment, advertisement or subscription based models.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) counters that claims of low brand awareness are a “fallacy,” pointing out that survey could've included people who don’t even have an Internet connection or interest in music.

This argument makes sense, but the BPI goes on to remind people that there are more than 35 legal online digital music services in the UK. That may be so, and I challenge even die-hard music fans to name more than 6, but it doesn't mean they're offering consumers what they want.

It also cites its own study from last November that found 96% of the Internet users surveyed knew of iTunes and Amazon among others (not stated is the actual number per individual).

“It’s just not credible to suggest that people who are downloading illegally haven’t heard of iTunes, Amazon or other legal music services,” countered Geoff Taylor, BPI's Chief Executive. “Our much larger, more recent and targeted online survey shows that awareness of legal music services among internet users is almost universal. The measures in the Digital Economy Bill are precisely what is needed to encourage illegal downloaders to move across to those legal services.”

By “encourage” he means disconnecting households from the Internet via a “three-strikes” graduated response system proposed as part of the emerging Digital Britain Bill. So rather than figuring out what they actually want, or even conducting surveys to that end, it instead is focusing on a removing digital music customers altogether (disconnection), banning open Wi-Fi, and a proactive ban on websites suspected of infringing copyright.

These certainly aren't very effectives way to “encourage” people to become new customers, especially since “illegal downloaders” are most likely already adept at avoiding detection by copyright holders (VPNs/Usenet).

Finding out what they want and offering it to them, the mark of any good business, is the only solution.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88310/uk-study-40-unable-to-name-legal-online-music-service/
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BitTorrent directory now with Trends

Posted on: March 09, 2010
File Sharing News Image The FileSharingZ.com BitTorrent directory has been upgraded with a number of new features and many improvements. You can now follow the worldwide BitTorrent evolution, as well as see individual tracker growth.
http://filesharingz.com/news/185234/BitTorrent_directory_now_with_Trends.html
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Piracy Rises In France Despite Three Strikes Law

Posted on: March 09, 2010

hadopi logoSeptember last year saw the passing of France's controversial three-strikes ‘Hadopi' law which allows the music industry to track down repeated copyright infringers with the ultimate goal of decreasing the country's piracy rate.

Under the new law alleged copyright infringers will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings. The judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to severing the Internet connection of the infringer.

Proponents of the new law claimed that the law would convince millions of people to stop downloading copyrighted content through file-sharing networks. Most critics, however, doubted the effectiveness of the system and pointed out that there are many ways to circumvent the law.

A new study published by the University of Rennes shows that the critics are indeed right. The researchers looked into the habits of downloaders before and after the law was implemented. They found that instead of reducing piracy levels, the piracy rate actually went up by 3%.

This increase in piracy shows that the French are not changing their downloading habits much, despite the tougher legislation. There is, however, an interesting shift in the sources people use to download copyrighted movies and music. At an increasing rate the French are using streaming services along with file-hosting ‘cyberlockers' such as Rapidshare and Megaupload.

These services are not covered by the Hadopi law and therefore 'safe' to use. Conversely, usage of P2P services such as BitTorrent dropped from 17.1 percent to 14.6 percent between September and December last year. Overall the research seems to suggest that the looming disconnection threat has changed how and where people get pirated content, while the piracy rate itself increased.

Another remarkable statistic uncovered by the researchers is that half of all P2P users who download copyrighted content also buy digital content online. This means that if these users were disconnected from the Internet under the new law, the music industry would lose customers and thus revenue.

The overall message put forward by the research seems to be that it is hard to deter people from copyright infringement when there are plenty of alternatives to bypass the legislation. This does not only hold for the French case but can also be applied to the UK and other countries where tougher anti-piracy laws are implemented.

The answer to the increasing piracy rates worldwide is not legislation. Instead, the entertainment industry may accomplish much more by innovating and expanding their online business so that it meets the demands of today's digital consumers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/zu_HdVNeVbs/
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Annual BitTorrent Download of 5.43 GB of SXSW Music

Posted on: March 09, 2010

Use BitTorrent to download all of the MP3 files publicly available on the SXSW website as of March 6, 2010.

It's that time of year again with the 2010 SXSW music festival fast approaching. The annual event held in Austin, TX has always been a showcase for some of the latest and greatest music artists around, and this year is no exception.

As part of the event MP3 files are sporadically made available on the site to showcase some of the artists that are scheduled to appear during the 5 day extravaganza.

Greg Hewgill has been kind enough to compile all of those MP3 files into two handy dandy torrent trackers, some 1038 files totaling 5.43GB worth of free music in all!

In case you missed last year's music or any of the years going back to 2005 when the music was first compiled into torrent trackers as a BitTorrent download, they're still available here.

Enjoy.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88307/annual-bittorrent-download-of-5-43-gb-of-sxsw-music/
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LimeWire Adds AVG Protection to Its P2P Client (Pro Version)

Posted on: March 09, 2010

LimeWire is trying? its best to keep its popularity, legit appearance and relevance in the business. The company has recently announced their plans to secure their network.

Says the press release: "LimeWire Pro users will see the 'Protected by AVG' assurance whenever a downloaded file is safely scanned and cleaned." It's great to see a developer taking a proactive approach. Plenty of P2P users don't understand the risks associated with what they're downloading, so I appreciate LimeWire doing something to mitigate that risk.

As expected, the new protection feature will only be included on LimeWire's pro version (the one you pay for) probably to make it more appealing for people who really want to spend money on file sharing apps.

Jason Herskowitz, VP Product Management for LimeWire, states "LimeWire is committed to providing peer-to-peer's best user experience and we are vigilant about user security." He continues, "We are always looking for ways to improve, and with AVG's seamless integration into LimeWire, we will be providing users with peer-to-peer's most secure technology."

http://www.p2pon.com/2010/03/08/limewire-adds-avg-protection-to-its-p2p-client-pro-version/
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Dutch Pirate Party Joins Election Race

Posted on: March 09, 2010

pirate party2009 was a breakthrough year for the Pirate Party movement. With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured two seats in the European Parliament.

A few weeks later, the Pirates in Germany entered the local Parliament after a member of another party switched sides.

In 2010 the Pirate Parties hope to continue this hot streak, especially during the Swedish national elections later this year. However, Sweden is not the only country where a Pirate Party will end up at the ballot. In the UK the local Pirate Party hopes to compete as well and the Dutch party has now decided to do the same.

In recent months there has been a lot of political debate regarding Dutch copyright law which currently allows people to download copyrighted movies and music for personal use. Several established parties have shown interest in criminalizing file-sharers, something the Pirate Party hopes to avoid.

Instead, the Pirates would like to shorten the copyright term to 5 years and legalize sharing of all copyrighted material on the Internet. Tim Kuik, head honcho at the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, is not afraid of politically organized pirates and described the Party's plans as short sighted and unrealistic.

Samir Allioui, Chairman of the Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak that he's very happy with Kuik's negative comments. “He gives people a good reason to vote for us,” he said, referring to the negative view that most people have of BREIN.

If elected, the party will do everything it can to stop abuses of copyright, promote Net Neutrality and push for patent reform. The party is further committed to increasing transparency, strengthening fundamental rights and protecting privacy.

Despite the enthusiasm of the party's members, there is still a long way to go before they can actually compete in the election on June 9th. One of the biggest hurdles is the requirement to deposit a sum of 12,000 euros, a barrier which is meant to prevent too many parties from entering the election.

Samir is confident that they will be able to raise the money in the weeks to come. He encourages all sympathizers to become a member of the Party and help to get the Pirate Party on the ballot.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Jz5i-NV4TlA/
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Ubisoft's Uber DRM Cracked Within a Day

Posted on: March 09, 2010
File Sharing News Image Ubisoft's new DRM designed to prevent piracy was cracked within hours of its release. The new DRM restricts and hinders legitimate customers even more, but in turn Ubisoft promises extra content for them. Any real impact on piracy remains to be seen.
http://filesharingz.com/news/185196/Ubisoft_s_Uber_DRM_Cracked_Within_a_Day.html
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Music Group Gets Court Injunction Against UseNeXT

Posted on: March 09, 2010

usenextUseNeXT is a brand operated by Munich and London-based company, Aviteo Ltd. UseNeXT is one of the most popular Usenet services around today and has traditionally advertised extensively within the BitTorrent community and on many torrent sites.

On 19 December 2006, performing rights group GEMA, which handles the copyrights of more than 1 million rightsholders worldwide, filed for an injunction against UseNeXT. GEMA had earlier leveled accusations at UseNeXT's advertising in which it said, among other things, the company claimed to offer 1 million MP3s through its service.

“[UseNeXT] advertised its fee-based access with unambiguous references to illegal exchange platforms. In particular it publicized the anonymity, speed and security of access to contents available on Usenet,” GEMA said in a statement, adding: “On top of that, the service also offers special, perfected search software that makes it easier to locate and manage musical works and other contents protected by copyright.”

On 18 January 2007, the Hamburg District Court issued a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT's operators, which included instructions for it to change the way in which it advertised its product and barring it from providing musical works from GEMA's repertoire. UseNeXT objected to the decision and disputed that it had ever encouraged subscribers to download copyright works, arguing that its use of the terms ‘unfiltered' and ‘anonymous' related to features inherent in the Usenet system.

On 17 February 2010, the Hamburg District Court handed down a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT which bars the service from offering a sample 100 musical works to which GEMA administers the copyright. The injunction also states that UseNeXT must go further than simply modifying its advertising in order to protect GEMA's copyrights.

Although not necessarily liable for infringements, the Court said that Usenet providers would have to take responsibility for the services and environments they provide.

In a statement, GEMA said that the Court of Hamburg's decision represents expanded liabilities for Usenet providers which go further than regulating their approach to advertising, but also apply when modified advertising proves insufficient to protect rights holders.

“The adoption of the preliminary injunction is a success in our commitment to the protection of copyright,” said Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA. “Second, the ruling also represents a further important step towards a comprehensive responsibility of the Usenet service operator for its offer.”

At this stage it's unclear how UseNeXT will choose to comply with the injunction. Unlike services such as Rapidshare that operate their own servers and actually store content, UseNeXT are a reseller of the Highwinds Usenet service. UseNeXT does not store any content, Highwinds do.

UseNeXT used to offer a search engine and software interface to access Usenet, so conceivably something could've been implemented there to bar access to the GEMA titles mentioned in the injunction. However, recent changes to their service means they are no longer offering those solutions but suggesting the use of 3rd party software, with one particular solution from Tangysoft up front.

Nevertheless, the Court said that UseNeXT is responsible for the service it's re-selling so the company will have to find an answer somehow. Many Usenet providers are already working with rights holders to automate the removal of content, so solutions are available. How quickly and comprehensively UseNeXT acts will remain to be seen.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/0-9ebPCunMc/
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CN Invite Applications Now Online

Posted on: March 09, 2010
Out of all the private torrent trackers online today, CN remains to be one of the most secretive. However, It's strict rules against publicity have not been able to prevent news from spreading across the BitTorrent universe – most people now know of it’s existence and the tracker is known as one of the best movie trackers one could get into. Thankfully, CN’s administration have responded to the growing popularity is a positive manner. Although the site hasn’t directly opened signups, numerous...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FILEnetworks/~3/RYsaTQXFypk/cn-invite-applications-now-online.html
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STUDY: 40% Unable to Name Legal Online Music Service

Posted on: March 09, 2010

Consumer Focus also says that 85% can only name two, iTunes and Amazon, but UK music industry, in typical fashion, emphasizes that more than 35 exist and touts own study that found 96% awareness of iTunes and Amazon.

Consumer Focus, the UK govt-backed consumer advocacy group, has long tried to illustrate the deficiency of the country's copyright laws and the dramatic learning gap consumers have of them.

In fact, just last month it found that almost 3/4 of the population doesn’t know what they’re legally allowed to copy or record, and that's practically impossible to not infringe copyright laws as part of their daily lives unless they don't use digital technology.

Part of the problem has always been the music industry's reluctance to offer consumers viable, legal alternatives as a means to fight online copyright infringement, but as it's slowly begun to roll them out over the years new research from Consumer Focus shows how the music industry is failing to properly promote them.

Their research found that a staggering 20% are unable to name a single legal online music service at all, and that 85% could name only two – iTunes and Amazon.

“The music industry is shooting itself in the foot by not promoting legal online music services,” said Jill Johnstone, the group's International Director. “If file sharing is causing the damage the music industry claims, why aren’t they putting more effort in to promoting the legal alternatives? Before we go down the enforcement road it is only fair to ask the music industry to do more to make people aware of the legal options.”

Consumer Focus, in addition to recommending reform of the country's copyright laws, is also calling for reform of its copyright licensing system in order to make it easier to create more legal online music services with streaming, “all you can eat”, micropayment, advertisement or subscription based models.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) counters that claims of low brand awareness are a “fallacy,” pointing out that survey could've included people who don’t even have an Internet connection or interest in music.

This argument makes sense, but the BPI goes on to remind people that there are more than 35 legal online digital music services in the UK. That may be so, and I challenge even die-hard music fans to name more than 6, but it doesn't mean they're offering consumers what they want.

It also cites its own study from last November that found 96% of the Internet users surveyed knew of iTunes and Amazon among others (not stated is the actual number per individual).

“It’s just not credible to suggest that people who are downloading illegally haven’t heard of iTunes, Amazon or other legal music services,” countered Geoff Taylor, BPI's Chief Executive. “Our much larger, more recent and targeted online survey shows that awareness of legal music services among internet users is almost universal. The measures in the Digital Economy Bill are precisely what is needed to encourage illegal downloaders to move across to those legal services.”

By “encourage” he means disconnecting households from the Internet via a “three-strikes” graduated response system proposed as part of the emerging Digital Britain Bill. So rather than figuring out what they actually want, or even conducting surveys to that end, it instead is focusing on a removing digital music customers altogether (disconnection), banning open Wi-Fi, and a proactive ban on websites suspected of infringing copyright.

These certainly aren't very effectives way to “encourage” people to become new customers, especially since “illegal downloaders” are most likely already adept at avoiding detection by copyright holders (VPNs/Usenet).

Finding out what they want and offering it to them, the mark of any good business, is the only solution.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88310/study-40-unable-to-name-legal-online-music-service/
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Court Maintains Ban on DVD Backup Software

Posted on: March 08, 2010

Judge sides with MPAA in case against Real Network's RealDVD software that would allow consumers to make backup copies of purchased DVDs for personal use.

Chalk up another win for the MPAA and another loss for consumers. For US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has issued a permanent injunction against Real Networks DVD-backup software RealDVD.

The Judge declared that RealDVD, in order to make backup copies, would likely violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Content Scramble System (CSS) license.

If you recall, back in September of 2008 Real Networks launched RealDVD to allow users to make backup copies of purchased DVDs for private use. The MPAA immediately dubbed it “StealDVD” and filed a lawsuit to ban its sale.

The kicker is that the MPAA then said that making even one copy of a DVD is illegal, arguing that the price of a DVD is predicated on the “notion of certain use rights associated with certain price points,” and that it would have to change the price of DVDs (certainly upwards) if people wanted to be able to make copies.

In other words, it only charges $9.99 per DVD, for example, because it assumes it lasts for a finite period of time. If you want a DVD you can make copies of then the “price point” must be higher to reflect “expanded use rights.”

The MPAA's statement after the verdict reaffirms these earlier sentiments.

“We are gratified by the successful conclusion of this important matter,” said Daniel Mandil, General Counsel & Chief Content Protection Officer for the MPAA. “Judge Patel’s rulings and this settlement affirm what we have said from the very start of this litigation: It is illegal to bypass the copyright protections built into DVDs designed to protect movies against theft. We will continue to vigorously pursue companies that attempt to bring these illegal

circumvention products and devices to market.”

So though you may buy the DVD the MPAA still gets to decide how, when, and where you can watch it.

And they wonder why people turn to piracy for content.

“(Real's testimony) made it clear that Real was out to deliver to consumers a product that people wanted to see,” said Fred von Lohmann, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's senior staff attorney, to CNet. “I think the message this sends is if you get into the business of enabling consumers to do with DVDs what they've long done with CDs, you'll get sued out of the business. I think that's bad news for consumers. What that means is that if you want to create a digital back-up of your movies, you have to pay for that a second time on iTunes.”

Even worse still is that Real Networks was reportedly working on a a DVD player/burner codenamed Fact that would've stored more than 70 movies on its internal HDD. This also no way to fight piracy. File-sharers simply turn to illegal alternatives, in many cases filling up 1TB HDD with hundreds of XViD copies of their favorite flics.

The MPAA insists in the same press release that “major motion picture studios continue to invest heavily in technologies that allow people to access entertainment in a variety of legal ways,” but what it's not saying is that that “access” is coming with an increasingly burdensome price.

Consumers only want to pay for a product once and they be able to do with it as they please. So it's a good thing there alternative software programs that do the same thing as RealDVD.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88303/court-maintains-ban-on-dvd-backup-software/
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Music Biz Hopes To End Piracy By Tempting ISPs With Millions

Posted on: March 08, 2010

Around seven years ago when pressure was first starting to form against the then-fledgling BitTorrent scene, attitudes were pretty much as they are now. “They'll never stop it, we'll always find a way,” cried the masses grabbing music, movies and software for free, and few disagreed.

Of course, there will always be a way to acquire media free of charge, the last few decades have shown us that. But the media industries are now having to find new ways to defend their corner. There has always been talk of Big Movies or Big Music ‘owning' politicians and lawmakers, but while this is true to the extent that their immense lobbying power allows, there has also been another more serious threat on the back-burner.

If the RIAA or MPAA owned – literally – all the major ISPs, they could affect the piracy landscape quicker than ever before. A simple rewrite or tweaking of subscriber's Terms of Service would ensure that anyone proven to be a pirate could be ejected from the Internet in an instant, no laws needed. While this is unfeasible right now, there are easier ways of encouraging the same, like business partnerships and promises of profit.

According to a new study titled “Is There A Commercial Argument For ISP Music Services” commissioned by the BPI on behalf of Universal Music and carried out by industry analyst Ovum, if the UK's most prominent ISPs all more or less immediately launched subscriber packages that included bundled music, they could generate new revenues of ?103 million by 2013.

The BPI say this figure is based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and is an amount equal to 41% of the total 2009 digital music market. In an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ the study says that the revenues could nearly double to ?203m.

Aside from the profitability implied by these revenues, the report seems keen to offer other incentives to the major ISPs – Virgin Media, Sky, BT, O2, Orange and TalkTalk – to get involved in the music business. The study suggests that the inclusion of a music element to bundles would reduce subscriber ‘churn' – the rate at which customers cancel their contracts. The example given is that an ISP with 3.5m customers could save ?20m if the bundling of music cut churn by 10%, although there is no information to show that it actually would.

While suggesting good business is to be had in getting a little involved in the music business, the BPI is keen to point out that for ISPs, the more involved they get, the more they can make.

“The revenue prospects for bundled ISP music services would be substantially increased if services were offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading,” say the BPI.

We approached TalkTalk, an ISP referred to in the study, for a comment.

“TalkTalk thanks the BPI for its strategic business advice. Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalise its biggest customers,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

Clearly TalkTalk doesn't want to do the music industry's dirty work for them, but if other ISPs got heavily involved in the music distribution business it might be considered natural for them to try and protect their revenues. That said, the leap from simple common carrier to having a vested interest could complicate their position.

Nevertheless, another issue the report highlights is that heavy competition is driving down the price of broadband services while consumer desire for bandwidth continues to increase. In any business working in plain commodities, the desire to bring in more profitable “added-value” products is strong.

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’. This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs,” said BPI Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor.

So let's imagine that the ISPs want to get involved in this market, offering bundled music for an extra ?6.49 (the price level suggested in the report) – what would be so wrong with that? It's pretty affordable after all, so why not give it a chance?

“With the right service platform, user experience and merchandising strategy, ISPs have an opportunity to reach a green-field digital music market that mainstream download-to-own services such as iTunes do not reach today,” explains report co-author and Ovum’s principal analyst, Adrian Drury.

So these suggested services aren't of the “fill up your iPod” type, but of the “can only be used sitting-at-your-computer streaming services with limited download allocation” type. Surprised? Us neither.

Trying to convert those currently using file-sharing services over to paid models is already a big challenge. Trying to switch them to an inferior product whilst being hounded by their ISP on behalf of the music industry is a different matter altogether, and something TalkTalk refuses to be drawn into.

“Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights,” their spokesperson told us. “They will penalise innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

If the record labels really did own your ISP, this is the type of environment subscribers would be pushed into. And you'd still have to fill up your iPod elsewhere at additional cost.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/CUlABzcrKkI/
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Twitter Starts Fighting Malicious Links Via New Service, March 11, 2010
As Apple Gives More Apps the Boot, EFF Presents the iPhone Developer Agreement, March 11, 2010
Choice Screen Gets Randomization Tweak, March 10, 2010
Court Maintains Ban on DVD Backup Software, March 08, 2010
Congressman Compares Lack of Radio Performance Tax to Slavery, March 08, 2010
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