As with all music that’s performed in public, the bar owners are required to pay the royalties, even if there are just handful of listeners present.

Royalty collection agencies take this obligation very seriously and drive around the country visiting local bars and pubs to check whether they obey the law. Those who don’t usually get a bill in the mailbox, and if they refuse to pay up it gets worse.

Every year hundreds of small establishments are sued by copyright holders, often with help from performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI. This week, Giacomo Jacks, a restaurant/bar from Amityville, New York, became a target.

The bar is being sued by Warner Bros. and Pure Songs for playing two songs without permission back in February. As they failed to secure the rights, Giacomo Jacks now faces a maximum of $60,000 in damages.

While these lawsuits are fairly common, the song over which Warner Bros is suing stands out immediately, as it’s more than 80 years old.

The song in question is the classic love song “I Only Have Eyes for You,” written by Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin and used in Warner Bros’ 1934 movie Dames. Since then it has been covered dozens of times, including the well-known Flamingos version.

In the lawsuit Warner Bros. claims to have been severely harmed by the public performance in the Amityville bar, for which it demands proper compensation. Since the actual damage can’t be calculated they ask for up to $30,000 per infringement.

“The said wrongful acts of the Defendants have caused and are causing great injury to the Plaintiffs, which damage cannot be accurately computed, and unless this Court restrains the Defendants from the further commission of said acts, said Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury,” the complaint (pdf) reads.

While Warner Bros. appear to be on sound legal ground (the song’s copyright only expires after 95 years) suing a small local business over a 80-year old song is not the best PR. That said, considering previous cases that dealt with the same issue, Giacomo Jacks will most likely lose the case or end up paying a hefty settlement fee.

Meanwhile, various unauthorized copies of the track are played hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube and elsewhere.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The call resulted in hundreds of submissions, which were made public recently. One of the topics being covered is the issue of “digital resales.” In other words, whether consumers should be allowed to sell digital music files, videos and software they purchased previously.

In the United States the ReDigi case has been the center of this debate, with a federal court ruling in favor of Capitol Records last year. In the EU, however, the Court of Justice previously ruled that consumers are free to resell games and software, even when there’s no physical copy.

In the submissions to the EU Commission consultation numerous parties weigh in on the subject. Interestingly, the UK Government takes a rather progressive stance by stating that people should be allowed to sell “used” tracks bought in the iTunes store, or used videos they’ve downloaded from Amazon.

“As regards the resale of copies, the UK notes that traditional secondary markets for goods can encourage both initial purchase and adoption of technologies, and the prospect of sale on the secondary market may be factored in to an initial decision to buy and to market prices,” the UK response reads

“There seems to be no reason why this should not be the case for digital copies, except for the ‘forward and delete’ issue noted by the consultation,” it adds.

In other words, according to the UK Government people have the right to sell any digital files they have bought, as long as the original copy is deleted. This stands in sharp contrast to the various record label groups who warn that digital resales may crush the industry.

IFPI, for example, notes in its submission that allowing digital resales would hurt the entire music industry, and threaten the livelihoods of many artists.

“In the recorded music sector, the consequences of enabling the resale of digital content would have very harmful consequences for the entire music market,” IFPI writes.

“The notion that the exhaustion principle should apply to copies acquired by means of digital transmissions in the same way that it applies to physical copies ignores the many differences between the two kinds of copies and between the two distribution processes,” the music group adds.

IFPI signals three main differences between digital and physical distribution that warrant a ban on digital resales. According to them, physical music is different because:

• the quality of these deteriorates with time, and often due to wear and tear or mishandling
• purchasing an item at a used record store requires traveling to the store and searching for a copy of the phonograph record
• the resale only concerns the original recording, not copies of that recording

In other words, people shouldn’t be allowed to resell digital music because it’s too convenient, and because the copies don’t lose their quality.

While it’s no surprise that the labels are against digital resales, these arguments do raise some eyebrows. After all, there are also many physical products that are easy to ship and keep their value over time, which are perfectly fine to resell.

IFPI is not alone in their restrictive view on selling used digital files. The UK-based music group BPI also submitted a response to the consultation, using similar arguments, as did individual labels such as Universal Music and Sony Music.

“The consequences of allowing resale of previously purchased digital content would be devastating to the music industry. It would compete directly with the sale of original digital files as they would be entirely substitutional,” Universal notes, for example.

It is now up to the EU Commission to sift through all the submissions to see what the ideas of various stakeholders and the public are on the matter, and how this should impact future legislation.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Last week Reuters reported that a jury had found MP3tunes and its associated search engine Sideload.com guilty of copyright infringement.

Sideload was one of the first sites that searched external file-hosting services such as RapidShare. Initially MP3tunes won a summary judgment in its favor, but that was overturned by last week’s ruling.

Yesterday the final verdict on the damages was handed down and, as expected, MP3tunes and its founder were ordered to pay millions. The exact amount isn’t absolutely clear, but EMI lawyer Luke Platzer estimates it to be around $41 million, including $7.5 million in punitive damages.

In total there were 2,100 copyrights at issue in the case, some of which were associated with major artists including The Beatles, Coldplay and David Bowie.

But even after seven years, the case isn’t over just yet. According to a Reuters report, Robertson’s lawyer has plans to file an appeal.

Founded in 2005, MP3tunes was one of the first “cyberlocker” sites, long before Dropbox and others came around. The site eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2012, in part due to the legal bills it had to pay.

“EMI spent an estimated $10 million dollars with multiple law firms to arm their attack against MP3tunes in an attempt to thwart unlicensed personal lockers. They know it’s difficult if not impossible for startups to fight long costly legal battles,” Robertson wrote at the time.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Unlike other leaks, however, this copy wasn’t exactly what most pirates were looking for.

At first sight the album appears to be full length, and even the start of all tracks seem legit. However, those who continue to listen are in for a surprise.

After the first minute or so the music becomes muffled, just as RuPaul breaks in with a message for the downloader.

“Girl, you done stole my album. Uh Uh, you better don’t hookah, you better get your tail on over to iTunes baby, because I want to get some of that,” is how the first track “Freaky Money” goes after a 30 second intro.

Then RuPaul continues with some random conversation, funny skits, as well as some additional pirate-shaming as you can hear below.

It appears that it took quite a bit of effort to put the pirate leak together, as every track contains a unique message. In addition to poking fun at pirates, most of the conversation is about the tracks themselves, or just random thoughts.

With the track “Modern Love” RuPaul starts talking over the music around a minute into the song.

“It’s RuPaul up on WERQ, I’ve decided to change my radio station name to WERQ, ain’t that better? That’s right, you’re listening to WERQ, this is Ru, you’re listening to the BOOT motherfucking LEG of my album.”

“I wasn’t going to cuss, because I thought, oh no, we can’t do that. But hey, this is some motherfucking pirated shit, this is illegal, bitch, you’re illegal, as.. as, you’re the one illegal!”

On the final track “Born Naked” RuPaul again starts by condemning the person who downloaded the album, then continues to chat about the track and the people who participated in the ‘leak’, which is in effect an extended advert for the album.

The parts where RuPaul talks over the tracks are actually quite entertaining at times, which makes it pretty unique. The tone isn’t too serious, although the message probably is, which is a good combo.

It definitely beats the decoy files music labels used to upload, which wouldn’t play at all. Instead of frustrating potential consumers, RuPaul is sending a friendly reminder to those who perhaps forgot to pay.

Ironically, those who like RuPaul will have to pay a visit to The Pirate Bay to grab a copy of this collector’s item.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

First there was a shift from CDs to MP3s, soon to be followed by a massive increase in paid and free streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube.

Despite the legal offerings the major record labels are still concerned about online piracy. Every day millions of people access music through unauthorized sources, with torrent sites being one of the largest platforms.

Today we take a look at the most pirated artists of 2013, with Bruno Mars leading the chart with more than 5.7 million downloads. Rihanna and Daft Punk come in second and third place, with over 5.4 and 4.2 million downloads respectively.

As can be seen below, over the past year Bruno Mars was most downloaded in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil and Australia. If we look at the number of downloads per Internet users, Portugal would come out top.

The data presented here is provided by music analytics company MusicMetric, which helps artists to get insight into who’s listening to their music. The company was kind enough to share the top 20 most downloaded artists with TorrentFreak, as well as the 20 most played artists on free streaming platforms such as YouTube and Vevo.

Looking at both lists, which are included at the bottom of this article, there’s an interesting observation to make.

For years the top record label executives have been claiming that it’s impossible to compete with free, but YouTube and others appear to be proving them wrong. Compared to these legal plays, the pirated downloads via BitTorrent are a mere drop in the ocean.

For example, Bruno Mars was played nearly 2 billion times in 2013, which comes down to 5.5 million views per day, roughly the same as all pirated downloads in the entire year.

Of course this comparison is not really fair, as pirated downloads include albums, and those who download it may play it many times. But still, it’s quite obvious that the music industry can compete with piracy, through a medium that didn’t exist a decade ago.

Even better, revenue-wise YouTube and Vevo have become a serious source of income. The major labels haven’t been very open about their revenue sharing deal, but EMI Music chief financial officer Paul Kahn said during the LimeWire trial that his label gets half a penny for each YouTube play.

Half a penny may not sound much, but with billions of views it quickly adds up. For example, with 2 billion ad-supported views Bruno Mars would rake in $10 million.

That’s not too shabby, right?

Below is the list of MusicMetric’s estimated BitTorrent downloads in 2013 from January until the last week of December. Other sources of unauthorized music consumption are not included.

The table below shows the most track and video plays on “social media”, as defined by Music Metric. This includes YouTube and Vevo plays, which account for the most plays by far.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The RIAA and other industry players link these billion dollar losses to online piracy, claiming that more has to be done to protect their copyrights.

Interestingly, new research published by Glynn Lunney Jr., Professor of Law at Tulane University, suggests that the alleged file-sharing losses may actually be in line with the core intentions of copyright law.

Under the U.S. constitution Congress has the authority to enact copyright law “to Promote the Progress of Science.” Over the years courts have clarified that to do so, copyright law must “encourage the creation of new works” and “encourage the dissemination of existing works.”

It is clear that file-sharing encourages the distribution of existing music, and in a paper titled “A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output” the professor examines what the connection is between music piracy and the creation of new music.

To this end, the research looks at the appearance of new and existing artists and tracks in the hit charts, to see whether there were any significant changes in the years after file-sharing hit the mainstream. The results of this analysis are quite surprising, to say the least.

The paper provides empirical evidence that file sharing did not reduce the creation of new hit songs. Instead, more new music entered the hit charts, an effect that’s driven by existing artists.

The data shows that the output from existing artists increased, while new artists appeared less frequently in the hit charts. However, since the new material from existing artists was greater than the loss from new artists, the “creation” of new music increased overall.

“Specifically, the [result] suggests that the 58.92 percent decline in record sales would be associated with a net increase of 20.6 new songs in the study’s sample annually, all else constant,” Professor Lunney writes.

The paper suggests that this increase in output may be directly related to the decline in revenue, and the researcher describes two effects of file-sharing that impacted creation of new music.

“First, it shifted output along the music-other margin and led to fewer new artists, as some individuals, given the lower returns available in music, decided to devote their time and creativity elsewhere,” Professor Lunney writes.

“Second, it shifted output along the work-leisure margin and led to more new music from existing artists, as the lower returns led existing artists to substitute work for leisure,” he adds.

Since the increased output by existing artists is greater than the decrease from new artists, the end result is an increase in new hits.

“Because the second marginal effect outweighed the first, file sharing, even assuming that it caused the decline in record sales, led to the creation, on balance, of more new hit songs.”

Keeping in mind that copyright intends to promote “the Progress of Science” by encouraging the distribution and creation of new works, Professor Lunney can only conclude that sharing music without permission of the owner should be legal under copyright law.

“Given that file sharing thus advances both of copyright’s purported objectives, there would seem to be only one reasonable answer as to whether file sharing, at least with respect to music, should be legal under copyright law,” Professor Lunney writes.

This leads to the counter-intuitive conclusion that the music industry’s claim that copyright law should be enforced to protect artists’ revenues to protect the creation of new music, falls flat.

“The proposition that file sharing reduces revenue and therefore must reduce creative output is both neat and plausible. Yet, as this study has shown, for music, it is also wrong,” Lunney concludes.

While the research sheds a new light on the connaction between music piracy and copyright, one has to doubt whether it’s a good thing to have “more of the same” as a result.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The most logical explanation for this finding is that “pirates” are more engaged than those who don’t share, and that they complement their legal purchases with unauthorized downloads.

This means that unauthorized file-sharers are in fact the music industry’s best customers. So, instead of hunting down these pirates for lawsuits, it may be more rewarding to play for them.

The English heavy metal band Iron Maiden is reportedly doing just that. The veteran musicians use the services of music analytics company Musicmetric which allows them to see where their albums are most pirated.

“If you know what drives engagement you can maximize the value of your fan base. Artists could say ‘we’re getting pirated here, let’s do something about it’, or ‘we’re popular here, let’s play a show’,” Gregory Mead, CEO and co-founder of Musicmetric told Cite.

Instead of suing these unauthorized file-sharers, the band used the information as input for its tours, and not without success.

“Maiden have been rather successful in turning free file-sharing into fee-paying fans,” Mead said.

The overview below, for example, shows that Iron Maiden is most popular among Brazilian pirates with 463,467 downloads in recent years. The band is also relatively popular in Chile with 1,300 downloads per 100,000 Internet users, which totals 70,932 downloads.

Iron Maiden’s recent tour had a heavy focus on South America, where the band has a lot of Twitter followers and unauthorized downloads. The band played in Paraguay for the first time, for example, and concerts were sold out throughout the region.

Musicmetric suggests that the file-sharing data helped Iron Maiden turn these pirates into paying customers, simply by heading over there and playing for them. It’s impossible to download the true experience of a live concert, so the chances are high that several pirates will turn up.

“If you engage with fans, there is a chance to turn a percentage into paying customers. You can see that through various bands using the BitTorrent network in a legal way to share content,” Mead says.

It’s refreshing to see that instead of hunting down pirates for lawsuits, file-sharing data is being used by artists to plan their gigs. After all, it is much more rewarding to play for your fans than to try to bankrupt them in court.

Update: The Cite report suggested that Iron Maiden used the analytics to plan their concerts, however, this claim remains unsubstantiated. TorrentFreak contacted Musicmetric before publication but we were unable to get a comment in time as they were out of the office for a few days.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, while going after individuals sharing an album or two on BitTorrent usually amounts to an endless and expensive task, music labels are very happy to make exceptions. One of the industry’s pet hates are album pre-releases, and for those they are prepared to commit significant resources.

One such case concluded yesterday dates back to early June 2011 when a copy of Beyonce’s album ’4′ appeared online more than two weeks ahead of its official launch. An investigation carried out by the IFPI and anti-piracy company DtecNet (now MarkMonitor) led them to an IP address registered to a woman in Gothenburg. It was later established, however, that she was not the only one with access to her Internet account.

Also using her wireless connection was a neighbor, a then 47-year-old man. IFPI and Sony Music Entertainment said he uploaded the album to the Internet during June 8 2011, 16 days before the album’s June 24 launch.

Revelations that the man worked in the industry as a DJ and music producer added interest to the case, however it later became clear that he was not the source of the original leak. Torrent site records show the album was uploaded at least the day before but that didn’t matter to prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson, who stated that a pre-release is still a pre-release, no matter who released it first.

In interviews with the police the man protested his innocence, stating that he only believed he had been downloading the album for personal use, something he believed was permissible in Sweden.

“I had no idea when the Beyoncé album would be released, these days it’s almost impossible to know when the release takes place,” he explained. “If I downloaded the album illegally from a site such as The Pirate Bay, I would not have had a clue that it was a pre-release of the record or not.”

Of course, since BitTorrent is a two-way protocol he necessarily became an uploader too, something which exposed him as a pre-releaser of the album, despite his protests.

Earlier this month the man went to court for a two-day trial, with the now 48-year-old standing accused of breaches of copyright law. Hanging in the background was a huge $233,000 damages claim from Sony Entertainment, who said that the leak had not only damaged its marketing strategy and sales revenues, but had also hurt its relationship with Beyonce whose reputation had been damaged.

After much drama and deliberation, yesterday the sentence was handed down. The man was found guilty of copyright infringement but the verdict was hardly the scary affair the IFPI and Sony had hoped for.

In the event the court rejected imprisonment and handed down punishment based on the ‘day-fine’ system, which ranks the severity of the offense (in this case 80) and then multiplying that by the defendant’s daily income minus certain expenses.

Grand total – $1,200.

“They tried to make an example of me to intimidate both Swedish and foreign citizens,” said the 30 year veteran of the music industry. “Given that Swedish taxpayers have had to pay for this it smells a little bad.”

De-escalating matters further, it’s also believed that Sony has withdrawn its claim for damages. If true, that suggests that the music industry’s switch to chasing down BitTorrent users has proven just as time-consuming, costly and ineffective as observers believed it would.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Interestingly, new research suggests that this shouldn’t necessarily be the case as the use of samples may actually boost sales of the original tracks.

These findings come from an article titled “Fair Use, Girl Talk, and Digital Sampling: An Empirical Study of Music Sampling’s Effect on the Market for Copyrighted Works,” of which a draft version was published a few days ago.

At the center of the study is Girl Talk‘s album All Day. Girl Talk is the stage name of Gregg Gillis, who is renowned for sampling the works of hundreds of other artists without obtaining licenses.

As a result, many music platforms refuse to carry Girl Talk’s music, even though Gillis argues that his sampling is fair use. Whether the fair use argument holds up has yet to be seen, as none of the sampled artists has taken Girl Talk to court.

In the new study, patent attorney Mike Schuster examines the effect Girl Talk’s sampling has on actual sales. With 374 sampled songs, All Day is an interesting example to assess whether the samples help or hurt sales, and the results are quite clear.

“This study found that within the bounds of Girl Talk’s All Day, the unlicensed sampling actually benefited sales of the sampled songs,” Schuster writes.

The findings are valid at a 92.5% degree of statistical significance and appear to be unrelated to factors such as sample length and previous success. While Schuster recognizes that his research is just an initial step, he hopes that it will make courts recognize the positive effects of sampling.

“Beyond supporting the premise that digital sampling may constitute fair use, the results of this study raise several notable issues and subjects for future study. One such issue is that courts only address an alleged fair use’s effect on the market for the original as a binary system, wherein the only options are harm to the market (disfavoring fair use) or no harm to the market (favoring fair use).”

The study notes that in this case both the original artists and Girl Talk would benefit from considering the samples as fair use. This is something the courts should take into account.

“There is no accepted rule on how to treat a market benefit. The failure to address this issue is questionable because a market benefit actually furthers the utilitarian goal of copyright by incentivizing the creation of new works through economic gain,” Schuster writes.

Whether the major record labels will agree with this stance has yet to be seen. For now, Girl Talk will continue his trademark use of samples and his new album is expected to drop soon on Illegal Art.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On the other side, however, numerous studies have also shown that on average file-sharers spend more money on legal purchases, whether it’s music or box office tickets.

The most logical explanation for this finding is that “pirates” are more engaged than those who don’t share, and that they complement their legal purchases with unauthorized downloads.

The above indicates that music piracy might not be the right scapegoat for the massive losses the industry has suffered since the early 2000s. At least, not the prime reason. This appears to be supported by new data released by the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom last week.

Since last year Ofcom has surveyed the download habits of tens of thousands of Brits. The latest data wave shows that between March and May of this year about 9% of the people in the UK pirated music, with Ofcom signaling a clear downward trend compared to last year.

The estimated number of downloaded tracks in the UK dropped from 301 million last year to 199 million in the latest measurement. In other words, according to Ofcom’s findings a third of all music piracy evaporated in a year.

The number of people who admitted to pirating music during the same period dropped as well, approximately 10% during the same time frame.

This is great news for the music industry, but neither the BPI or IFPI have cheered on the findings in a press release. It might be that they are not convinced by the data, or perhaps they too might have noticed that the unprecedented drop in piracy had virtually no effect on music sales.

While it’s true that streaming services such as Spotify are expanding their user base at a rapid pace, overall sales revenues in the UK are still dropping. While piracy plunged, music sales fell from $1.41 billion in 2011 to $1.33 billion, a hefty 6.1% decrease.

Previously, when music piracy increased various industry groups pointed out that there was a direct correlation with the decline in sales. This argument will be much harder to make now.

Of course, the music industry can point out that 199 million downloads is still very significant, and that the losses might have even been higher if piracy hadn’t declined. That said, it’s clear that unauthorized downloads are not the only problem for the music industry, and that there are other, perhaps more important, factors that explain the continuous losses.

In fact, Ofcom’s study once again shows that not all pirates are cheapskates. Those who consumed a mix of legal and illegal music said they spent the most on music – £95.31 – while those who only consumed music legally totaled £41.40.

Perhaps that explains the recent sales decline?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.