A study conducted by PRS, the British music royalty collection agency, looked into the downloading habits of the average user of file-sharing networks. They found that the most downloaded tracks mimic the music charts. That is, people tend to download music that’s already popular.
In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.
A handful of studies have shown that those who download music illegally actually buy more through legal channels. But why? Are pirates really this generous or could it be that this is just a side-effect of the failing music industry?
The victory for the entertainment business was Pyrrhic, although this initial success is dampened by a possible mistrial. Nevertheless, four Swedes have been martyred. Yet content creators and consumers are no closer to new business models that solve the problem.
In a few days the verdict in the Pirate Bay trial will be announced, a decision that could have far reaching consequences for fellow BitTorrent trackers and file-sharing in general. Through this poll we’d like to hear what the public believe the verdict will be. Generally in favor of The Pirate Bay Four – or against?
BitTorrent users are often referred to as pirates, even though there are plenty of legal uses for the most used file sharing protocol. Even for those who use BitTorrent to download copyrighted content, the motivation to do so varies. Through this poll we would like to discover why you use BitTorrent.
The Internet and file-sharing networks like BitTorrent have shifted music promotion from the labels to the people. Increasingly, record labels are losing control over what music the masses are listening to, and according to some musicians this is is actually a good thing.
Microsoft ran into major bandwidth problems when they released the latest Beta of Windows 7 to the public. The company decided to delay the release while they added some more servers, citing “very heavy traffic”. If they had only used BitTorrent, this heavy traffic would have actually speeded up distribution, instead of slowing it down.
What will happen to BitTorrent users and their favorite sites in the new year? What will happen to the music industry’s new efforts to combat piracy with the help of ISPs, and what about efforts to legalize file sharing? We asked guest columnist Janko Roettgers for his predictions for 2009.
The music industry is changing. While the record labels are desperately trying to protect the revenue stream from album sales, a new generation of artists is starting to realize that they are better off when they give away their music for free. By now, we’re all familiar with the industry’s view, but what drives these artists?
P4P is touted as the new and improved P2P. The technology has the potential to lower bandwidth costs for ISPs and speed up downloads for P4P enabled filesharing clients. There is a dark side to this new technology though. The strong anti-piracy connections are fuel for conspiracy theorists, and Net Neutrality might be at stake.
