July 12, 2003
FILE SHARING = MONEY MAKING
This discovery won’t be a surprise to Music Pundit, who has long maintained that downloads don’t hurt sales:
Music fans who illegally download their favourite tracks from the internet still buy albums in the shops, according to research.
The findings explode music industry fears that such internet file-sharing is killing the record industry. The results suggest most music fans still like to own genuine copies of their favourite albums.
Groups such as Metallica, Garbage and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who try to prevent fans downloading their tracks are "shooting themselves in the foot" according to the research.
The source of this story is a little surprising, however. The Melbourne Age is getting bloggy with the links.
Posted by Tim Blair at July 12, 2003 05:14 AMI knew it! Now we just have to justify it morally...!
Posted by: Mike VW at July 12, 2003 at 05:26 AMTrue. My son downloads music a lot, as do I on occasion, but we still buy music. We ask for gift certificates at (insert store name here) each year for Christmas/birthdays.
I love owning my own music as much as I love owning my own books, as opposed to going to a library. Also, I find that downloads tend to skip on a burned CD at times, but worse yet, my son has found PrOn downloaded with music tracks. (You know what prOn means... it's a Lileks trick, of course...)
Related tangent:
I would like to ask a question here about that last point: is it possible, with all my anti-version/spybot-type software, that my son can accidentally get PrOn downloads when he grabs a tune from KZaaAAzA? I've found 6 such movie files so far in recent weeks, and they are very graphic. He has always been honest with me when I've asked him about such things, and I've always checked his music downloads in progress.
If anyone has any idea why a bunch of teen-a++l-s+x movies suddenly appeared on my puter, I'd thank you for letting me know.
You can use either my email addy or my blog to give me some assistance.
TG
Posted by: Terry at July 12, 2003 at 10:56 AMTerry's anology between buying a book and going to a library is fair comment - my daughter has 200 plus CD's but is a regular downloader.
What about a simple and cheap method of payment for downloading for those of us who don't want to steal anything
I personally use WinMX which is a similar type of p2p client software, but one of the distinct features, just as in Kazaa i'm assuming, is the type of file format a user searches for as a set parameter- video/audio/image.
I have downloaded files (video) whose file extensions have been modified, hence masking the original function of the file, as in 'filename.MP3' as opposed to the ordinary 'filename.MPG' or 'filename.AVI'. After its download the user has to rename the file back to its intended extension in order to execute it properly. I've always done this knowingly and with consent though, as one has to know how to effectively rename the extension. In most cases it is evident from the file name and its corresponding size that it's not an ordinary audio tune or what ever. (eg. young_shy_virgin.mp3 - 119MB)
I've never accidently downloaded an audio file which included or turned into streaming video without my intent but to answer your question, it is possible.
However having the odds of accidently dowloading 6 such files in as many weeks is a bit suspicious [;)], unless he's unknowingly letting a thid-party upload the movies onto your machine which is highly unlikely.
very true, with the analogy of buying a book vs. going to a library. i prefer to buy books, with the idea that i'll read them again in the future (which is rare..i've got so many these days..).
i really don't see it as being illegal IF you plan to either buy the cd if you like the music or delete the mp3 if you don't like/aren't going to buy it. a testdrive, if you will.
Posted by: Samkit at July 12, 2003 at 07:17 PM