Demonoid Aftermath: An Open Letter to the CRIA
Written by Ernesto on October 04, 2007In the aftermath of the recent demonoid turmoil, “A former music buyer” posted an open letter to the CRIA - an impressive summary of what’s wrong with the music industry and how they alienate their customers. The RIAA and the CRIA have to rethink their business models, closing down p2p sites does not solve the problem.
To Whom It May Concern at the CRIA:
I have been an avid music collector for many years, and have approximately 1000 CD’s in my collection, not counting albums that I have purchased over the internet and own only digital copies of. I purchase approximately 30-40 new CDs per year. However, thanks to your recent decision to block Canadian users from accessing Demonoid, I have decided that I cannot continue to support this backwards, dysfunctional industry with my money any longer, and as such, I do not plan on purchasing music ever again if it means that one penny goes to your organization.
I listen to heavy metal music, a form of music that “the industry” stopped supporting many years ago, so I have a hard time feeling any sympathy. Sites such as Demonoid have done far more to promote the music I love than your organization or the industry in general has ever done. I can find out about new artists and new releases from artists that are never promoted. I can listen to music from artists that have never been played on the radio, will never be shown on MuchMusic or MTV, and never have a review or even mention of their new album written about in the local newspaper. From listening to this music, I can make an informed decision if I wish to purchase the album or not, as I am not going to gamble $15-20 on something that I haven’t heard anything off of before.
25 years ago, I primarily learned about music from friends who dubbed a copy onto a cassette tape, where I could listen to it and make a decision if I wanted to buy the tape for myself. Now, many years removed from school, my “gang” of friends to share music with has shifted from cassette tapes and the school cafeteria to sharing mp3’s online. I listen to some things that I don’t like, and consequently, I don’t buy those albums. What I do like, I buy, or at least I used to, before your decision intended to stop me from hearing new music.
The industry cries that record sales are down, and blames this all on internet downloading. I won’t be so naïve as to say that internet downloading has no impact on the sales. Downloading has certainly stopped me from making the stupid purchases where I heard one single that I liked and bought an entire album only to find out that the rest of the songs are crap, and the CD sits collecting dust on my shelf. But for every CD that I didn’t buy based on those premises, there are 2 or 3 other CDs that I did buy because I heard of them for the first time on a site like Demonoid.
In the meantime, the music industry itself needs to recognize that they are to blame for sagging record sales. For years, they have been marketing recycled crap, and people are getting tired of it. On the odd occasion that something fresh and new accidentally slips through and gets radio play, the music industry immediately signs a seemingly infinite number of clone bands that makes the “new, fresh” sound boring almost instantly. It seems the music industry doesn’t even care about making or promoting good music any more. Instead, they market a young, pretty face that can dance provocatively and lip-synch well, and push this on the radio stations to play while getting the tabloids to print large pictures of their breasts. If bands like AC/DC or Motorhead were to emerge today, they would never be successful; not because of poor record sales due to downloading, but due to the fact that they’re ugly so the record company wouldn’t promote them, if they picked them up at all. In the meantime, they’re falling all over themselves to promote Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or any teenage tramp that can be airbrushed to look sexy.
The record labels cry about downloading cutting into the profits of the sales of albums. They put out “greatest hits” albums by 20-year olds with 2 or 3 albums under their belts, released with one new track to try and sucker the fans that already have both albums into spending another $20 for one new song, or re-releasing a 3-month old album with a “previously unreleased bonus track”. Then they can’t understand why people aren’t buying them, and cry foul that people are downloading the one new song instead.
I know not only the record companies are crying. Artists that have been around long enough to have enough clout to get a cut of the record sales are concerned about their cut, like Metallica that also clamor that “downloading is evil”, and then go on to sell over 9 million copies of their last album instead of 9.1 million. Boo hoo. Meanwhile, many younger, smaller artists favor downloading, because they know it’s the only way that people will get to hear the music and in turn come out to see their shows, because the record label sure as hell isn’t promoting them. But they can’t say that out loud, can they? If they do, guess which band is going to get dropped by the label?
So tell me, what does the CRIA do to promote metal? Oh, right, you’ve got a link to the top 50 “metal” albums in Canada, which after a quick glance at the top ten this week includes punk acts like Dropkick Murphys, Finger Eleven, and Billy Talent, and rock acts like Nickelback and Queen, but very little that resembles heavy metal. (Perhaps you should ask the Celtic punk band, Dropkick Murphys, what they think of being labeled as “metal”.)
And also tell me, without Demonoid, where would I have found out about bands like Evile or Dublin Death Patrol and made a decision to purchase their album online (because no record store that I have found in Canada carries either one). And god forbid the CRIA would care about the promotion of Canadian talent, such as longtime recording artist Annihilator, which released one of the better albums of 2007. However, I have yet to see their new album sold in any store in Canada, including HMV’s flagship store on Yonge Street in Toronto, and I ultimately had to buy a copy from a UK website. Considering the only place I had heard about this album was having downloaded it from Demonoid, do you really expect anyone to make this kind of effort to buy an album without ever having heard it?
The record labels and CRIA have gone to great lengths to tell us that downloading and sharing music is killing the music industry. Open your eyes and you will see that the music industry dinosaur has already been killing itself for years, and by resisting technology rather than embracing it and using it to their advantage. “Oh, but they have,” you try to insist, pointing to the sites devoted to selling music in mp3 format online. I notice that most of the metal bands I am interested in are still not available through these services. I also notice that buying an entire album ends up costing as much, if not more, than if I went to buy it in the store, even though there are no longer costs of materials or shipping that have to be paid for, and once again, I fail to come up with any sympathy for the music industry. I hope the music industry does die, because I know that music itself will not die so with the corrupt aspects of the industry gone, only then might music once again flourish.
Sincerely,
A former music buyer
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365 Responses
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i dont know why they stopped the canadian traffic on demonoid if the server is located in canada
[quote comment="183761"]hey there. Any canucks out there? Is demonoid deleting Canadian accounts now? I am using proxy to visit the website and it seems like that my membership has been deleted. I had over 100gb uploaded and downloaded there. Demonmoid really messed up on this one.
Now its time to BUY an RS account.[/quote]
Mine hasn’t been deleted yet. Try another proxy
Absolutely. I agree.
Deimos is a shady muppet end off
I just Stumbled! this, and I agree with all of it, except substitute “indie rock” for “heavy metal.”
[quote comment="184347"]I just Stumbled! this, and I agree with all of it, except substitute “indie rock” for “heavy metal.”[/quote]
That was me. Sorry, I forgot to put my name in…
And in the end, the CRIA laughs and rolls over some more schmoes.
As a Canadian and a music listener, I completely stand behind this open letter to the CRIA.
I live in Vancouver, British Columbia and am extremely disappointed to see my primary source of new artists and bands cut off from me because I am Canadian. Therefor, it is also very unfortunate that I am forced to use out-of-country proxies to do this.
I refuse to be cut off from new artists and bands, but the action that has resulted in this added difficulty will result in my refusal to purchase ^any^ artist or band who is not independent of the CRIA.
Are you happy now? None of my money, and you haven’t accomplished a thing. If you were to call it ‘mission accomplished’ you would be akin to the Bush administration in the USA.
[quote comment="182888"]Another point supporting my theory that maybe Canadian traffic on Demonoid is the real reason behind Demonoid NEEDING to shut down easy access to their website is if anyone was paying attention to the timing of the daily maintenance the website had during the week (for me on the west coast is was about 1900 to 2000 every day). The popularity might have be stressing out the servers too much and locals/Canadians (many of us on Broadband for that matter) would get easier access to Demonoid than foreign traffic would to the site. Under those circumstances it would not be surprising if bandwidth restrictions/costs are behind a website deciding it would be better to restrict access and what better way to do it than to make a MFBS excuse as to why Canadians can’t have access to the site at this time?! On the other hand, if Deimos
doesn’t have the money/infrastructure to support the sites current local demands then why not just say so and go on some form of fundraising drive to support the site…?[/quote]
Because that would mean he’d had to admit the thousands of dollars he stuck up his nose. And that wouldn’t garner much in the way of new site funds..
Fuck Demonoid. Fuck D. This entire situation stinks like a whore house on the beach at low tide.
to: ex-demonoid moderator.
Are you REALLY an ex-mod? Did you get paid for it? Or was it volunteer? Or did you have to pay Dumb-ass for the privelege? I bet you’ve got some stories. Why not share them, or would that put you at risk?
response to point in post 278
Cnadian traffic amounted to 3.6% of demonoid traffic, #4 on the chart. The biggest was the US @ 20.5%. The next was Great Britain @4.8%. So I don’t believe we were stressing his operation in any way, shape or form. The only thing that was stressed was Dumb-ass’ little, drug addled brain.
More stats on demonoid. They used to rank at #290 on web usage they have now dropped to #330 and dropping like a shot duck. Their reach @ .3% of web crawlers has dropped to .24% and dropping like a rock. Daily page views went from .024% to .021% of web access. May not sound like much, but then Demonoid wasn’t as big as they say they are. It also shows that they’ve shot themselves in the head.
Another stat: Speed: Very Slow 93% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 6.2 Seconds
How VERY interesting.
This is company information on Demonoid:
Demonoid
Kutuzowsky prospekt,
36/1/1 Province bg
Moscow, 121172,
RUSSIA
Phone: +7 0959234281
Fax: +7 0959234281
admin [at] demonoid.com
What kind of piece of lying trash is this deimos? A lot of web criminal activity comes from Russia. Is that what Dumb-ass is doing here? True, that you can be anywhere in the world and access anything. But police forces look for outside activity. They usually don’t look under their noses. Unless someone tweaks them to it. What ARE you doing here, DUMB-ASS, data mining? Identity theft? Industrial espionage?
Hello, police? We got a dirty one.
Dear Abby;
So where can I go for files while demonoid is not available to me? Please steer me in the right direction …
Thanks cunfused
Response to cunfused, post 284
Anywhere you want, son. Just Google Torrent Sites. There’s a lot out there and they’re all better than demonoid could ever dream of being.
Amen, Brotha
Great letter, dude.
May I suggest a newspaper called Exclaim? It will help you find what you want (www.exclaim.ca)
Wow, that was really a coup de grace on record industry!Good job!Hey, why don’t you write a letter on how much you piss on american foreign policy so maybe Bushhead will commit a suicide when he reads it? Britney Spears could’ve written more meaningful stuff. As for Demonoid and Deimos, he owes Canadians, or anyone else bitching for that matter, a beating with a baseball bat.What the hell do you want? You think God appeared to him one day and asked him to host the best goddamn torrent site on the internet? All the equipment was just sitting on his porch or was dragged in by his dog? And the time invested came to him easy just as soon as he stopped watching soap operas? Shut the frack up!”Ohhh, the poor hit’n'run donors, they give theirs BIG 5 bucks and then download 100gigs of stuff with a seed ratio of 0.01 and are not told the truuuuuuuuuthhhh, the horrooooooor”!Yeah, great math - go to any store and try getting 100gigs worth of music/movies/games/books for 5 bucks..Deimos owes nobody nothing, least of all explanation.The leechers owe to him big time.He wants to cut you Canadians off? Great, his site, his decision.He doesn’t want to disclose real reason? Great, his site, his desicion.When you make a site that is better than demonoid, then start being needy.Until then, please shut up and say thanks.Canadians are just a bunch of spoiled brats.”He’s in our country and he cuts us off??!!Who the hell he thinks he is!!!Noone tells us what we can and can’t do!!!We’re Canadians!!!!” You sound just like a bunch of US rednecks.Why don’t you start a super-hero comic book “Canadian!”? Wankers the lot of you..
TO:
288 Oct 11, 2007 at 18:33 by canadians are wankers
OUR REPLY: Sod off you pommey bastard. Go suck the Queen’s wrinkled, sagging left tit. Get your brain out of that pea-soup london fog (or is it a drug induced fog?), stop sniffing your ass-gasses, get a life and fuck off.
You could also try to be a little more coherent in your rants. Someone just might think that you think. Have a plate of Mushy Peas and relax, have a pint of warm bitters (Yuck) and go blow the next King. That’s Charles, you know. Say wot? Pip, Pip and all that good pommey rot. Fuck off dickweed.
[quote comment="185334"]TO:
288 Oct 11, 2007 at 18:33 by canadians are wankers
OUR REPLY: Sod off you pommey bastard. Go suck the Queen’s wrinkled, sagging left tit. Get your brain … Fuck off dickweed.[/quote]
err, as a Canadian, I’d just like to point out that she’s our Queen too… So don’t be a smeghead.
[quote comment="185303"] “Canadian!”? Wankers the lot of you..[/quote]
Wankers, the lot of us? I was going to argue, but on second thought you’re probably right. Hope you choke on some mutton vindaloo.
To the fuckin Brit in post 288.
Plug your ears and shut your fucking cake-hole. Cause we’re gonna scream and rant and roar and a bunch of us are working with the authorities and media to yank this fucking wanker’s (Dumb-ass) chain. P2P is healthy here. It is even lawful. We don’t need or want a fucking asshole, who claims to be a Yugo, running his business out of Russia, living in Brazil, playing fucking games with us and fucking what we do have. This stupid stunt he pulled here just gives the american controlled recoding industry an energy boost. Dumb-ass has really fucked the whole P2P community. Wake up and the fuck off you pommey moron.
oh, on a completely different note, does anyone know if demonoid always used google analytic’s urchin software or is it simply being used now to identify (and be able to block) canadians?
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