Just found out about this, thought some of you might be interested.
If not, you should be.
http://stopvirgin.movielol.org (http://stopvirgin.movielol.org)
QuoteThe new CEO of Virgin Media, Neil Berkett, has openly stated in an interview that they think net neutrality is “a load of bollocks†and claimed they're already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others. They would then put websites and services that don't pay Virgin in the "slow lane", meaning those sites would load slowly and cause most users to give up using them, feeling forced to use whatever Virgin wants to push through their network.
This is not the first time an internet provider infringes upon net neutrality, but it is the first time that an ISP so brutally states that they simply plan to limit internet access to a television-like system in which the access provider completely regulates the content you have access to.
Virgin Media has over 3.5 million customers in the UK and the real danger is that when they start applying this system to their network, all major internet providers around the globe will soon follow the trend. Because this is exactly what major ISP's have been wanting to do for years.
It's in Revelations, people!
Wow they make it sound serious :o Maybe it is...
But then. How is a company going to make sure everything goes slow? Virgin media is not the host of everthing on the web. How are they going to stop me if I pay for super speedy internet and host files?
If all ISPs start doing this then let's say... Some people want to try a new internet search engine, they have some good ideas and think they can make something useful. They start working on it, can't pay the fees to be put in the "fast lane" of internet speeds, no one uses their search engine because it's too slow and they go out of business.
Let's pretend that that company was Google.
Let's pretend 2 brothers wanted to start an internet cartoon and they couldn't pay to be put on the fast lane, there goes Homestar Runner.
I just can't imagine how internet start-ups would get by with this new business model.
I hope they do it.
It will be a great way to teach them a lesson they clearly haven't learned.
I really don't get why corporations think they can get away with this kind of shit.
If they do this, people will simply find a new (perhaps better) way of getting online. It's like the music labels fighting against mp3. They will not win. Take away one way of getting something, the people will find another way. The internet will simply not be controlled in this fashion. I'm surprised they're even considering it, but hey ... stupidity seems to be what humanity is [d]evolving to these days.
* shrugs *
I agree.
If all else fails, we'll just go back to the days of dial-up speeds... and go around clubbing one another and hunting mammoths, or whatever it was we did then.
I don't mind dial-up or close to that speeds. Are they nuts? Will I give up AGS because of that?
What a stupid bunch of morons... :(
You know ... were I the owner of an ISP I would totally go along with Virgin (and all other idiots that think this is a good idea) and then when they put it in place I would not follow suit. I would then make BILLIONS when all their customers leave them and come to me!
Guess it goes to show an ivy-league education doesn't necessarily equate to intelligence. Dolts.
I don' t get a word... :-[
I hope all ISPs do this at once. I mean, hey, the US will be all over it and we all know there's no such thing as "Europe", "Asia" or "Australia". It would be a perfect opportunity to start up a small corporation that offers a "Freedom Flatrate" for way-above-fucking-competition fees that ignores this system. Profit + looking like the good guy! :=
/EDIT: Britain, America, the moon... it's all the same.
Here is a site devoted to net neutrality. There is an online petition you can sign, etc...
http://savetheinternet.com/=faq (http://savetheinternet.com/=faq)
I still don' t get what is net neutrality, ISPs, etc...
What I think I understand is that "The THING is bad".
What I don't understand is Akatosh' post:
"I hope Virgin does it, so the rest of the world will be able to say "We don' t have that evil thing that the americans do have"
But... Ain' t Virgin British?
Nacho,
Your internet provider, can introduce various speeds, according to the webpages you want to view. So pages that have paid (youtube, yahoo, for example) will go extra fast, while other pages which have not paid, or don't have enough views, for example AGS, will go slowly.
Bottom line? You either pay the toll, as a website owner, to go fast and not lose your traffic, or you don't and die in the slow lane desert.
Virgin, as far as I know, is British, yes.
Thanks Nik :)
I don't see the problem with this. It's not going to end up with free websites running at dial-up speeds, it'll simply mean that websites who pay a premium can guarantee that their users can see their content at full quality, all the time.
Suppose Youtube introduced an HD version that streamed at 10 Mbps -- at peak times most people wouldn't be able to watch videos without them stuttering due to bandwidth congestion. But if Youtube paid a fee for their traffic to be given priority, it would ensure that you could watch the videos properly at any time. It wouldn't affect normal websites like AGS -- customers wouldn't put up with an ISP that ran everything so slowly.
Really, it's the same argument as toll roads. For most of the day, you can just use a free road and get to your destination fine. But at peak times, the free roads are heavily congested and so if you want to can pay a toll to use the toll road instead and get there faster. Why should the net be any different?
Quote from: Pumaman on Fri 18/04/2008 20:26:02
Really, it's the same argument as toll roads. For most of the day, you can just use a free road and get to your destination fine. But at peak times, the free roads are heavily congested and so if you want to can pay a toll to use the toll road instead and get there faster. Why should the net be any different?
What? If they were charging people for accessing the most popular sites (to avoid
congestion in the tubes or something) I could buy the comparison. Or if we're talking about the fact that ISPs want you to pay them so they can do their stuff, just like some roads are financed by tolls. But in this case, what's happening is that a company is paying an ISP in exchange for aiding the delivery of their product, giving them a market advantage. Toll roads do not work that way, in my humble experience.
Now, if I were an ISP I just wouldn't do this, because I think it's unethical and stupid. But I'm a bit skeptical (though I haven't reflected much on this and have no firm opinion) about
legislated "net neutrality". Maybe I ought to move with the times, but to me an ISP is just a guy with a huge router, who lets people plug into it for a fee. Why shouldn't he get to do what he likes with it? If he does something stupid (which I think this is, along with morally wrong and so on), people will plug their stuff in somewhere else (I sure would), and others will complain about it (I sure would, if asked). That's the beauty of freedom and that stuff. When it works, that is. If it turns out that
everybody starts doing this, and nobody cares, then we're entering
dangerous territory (I mean it), but I don't think we're there yet.
Quote from: Pumaman on Fri 18/04/2008 20:26:02
It wouldn't affect normal websites like AGS.
But it would! There would still be congestion and now these high bandwidth services would take priority, thus slowing down the rest. The only way this wouldn't affect the "normal websites" is if they beefed up the intertubes (pardon my overly technical jargon) to avoid the congestion altogether, but why would anyone pay for the faster lines in that case? Of course, this doesn't mean everything else goes at dial-up speeds, but I still find this quite disturbing.
I'm not the least bit surprised if some ISP does something like this by the way. It's business after all. Bad business in my opinion and of dubious morality, but I doubt they're interested in my views on the subject.
Problem with anything to do with legislation is that it should be based on the freedom to express opinion, choice, etc, which this thing won't affect.
I was discussing it with my wife and she said that it's illegal because it cencors stuff. But it doesn't! That's the whole point!
It actually makes sense for Virgin, I'm sorry to say...
I mean, the way out is this: Imagine Virgin decides to install a new network of some sort... Faster, better, etc. (they already have according to adds in the tube). Anyways. They make a "new road", a new "highway". That highway is reserved for people who pay the toll! Not the users, but the websites! adventuregamestudio.co.uk didn't pay? Oh that's too bad. It can't be on that lane! Yahoo did? YAY for yahoo!
Nobody's stoping anything, they're just making it immensly difficult. (<-While AGS won't be really affected, in my case where I exchange lots of MB daily (audio is heavily), it might just be a problem. I mean a 5 minute tune could be 5 MB. With my current connection it takes a few secs. In dial-up it takes close to 10 minutes I imagine. And the problem is that the people interested in my website, will be a bunch of different people... So they won't necessarily have paid "the toll". Plus the toll is to be paid by me, not my potential clients.
EDIT: business is business and has nothing to do with morality, or anything at all! sorry! (this is going to tube). Don't confuse different things...
Quote from: Nikolas on Fri 18/04/2008 21:39:06
I mean, the way out is this: Imagine Virgin decides to install a new network of some sort... Faster, better, etc. (they already have according to adds in the tube). Anyways. They make a "new road", a new "highway". That highway is reserved for people who pay the toll! Not the users, but the websites! adventuregamestudio.co.uk didn't pay? Oh that's too bad. It can't be on that lane! Yahoo did? YAY for yahoo!
It's completely new and unfamiliar to me (I was unaware of this issue until I stumbled upon this thread), but all the Big Guys seem to be using this rhetoric: that the
websites are their customers. The common rhetoric seems (from what little I've learned in the past minutes) to be: "They are using our
TUBES, and somebody has to be pay for these
TUBES, so it's only fair that
they pay us!" Well,
they already are, in my old-fashioned view of the world: the customers of the ISP, the users, pay for their connection. But the understated premise here is that
websites ought to pay the ISPs for their
distribution services. The guys driving on the hypothetical toll road are Yahoo and Google, not you and I, and we're not driving on the Big Highway to see them: they're driving to see us. This model implies that the medium
belongs, in some way, to the providers (with money), rather than the users. Is that bad for the world? It might be. Is it bad for the good old Internet? Probably.
Quote from: tube on Fri 18/04/2008 21:35:22
But it would! There would still be congestion and now these high bandwidth services would take priority, thus slowing down the rest. The only way this wouldn't affect the "normal websites" is if they beefed up the intertubes (pardon my overly technical jargon) to avoid the congestion altogether, but why would anyone pay for the faster lines in that case?
If an ISP squeezed the non-premium traffic down to such a slow speed that it was annoying/unusable, then nobody would use that ISP and they'd go bust -- so they wouldn't do it.
The more likely thing that'd happen would be that the premium content would be allowed to eat into the bandwidth currently used by peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent, which account for a large proportion of overall traffic and can be slowed down without causing much user impact.
QuoteBut the understated premise here is that websites ought to pay the ISPs for their distribution services. The guys driving on the hypothetical toll road are Yahoo and Google, not you and I, and we're not driving on the Big Highway to see them: they're driving to see us.
I think the whole reason for this "premium content" thing being considered is that there are now more and more high-bandwidth applications such as video being used on the internet. If ISP's try to keep buying more and more bandwidth to enable it all to download at top speed, they'd have to put prices up to you and me.
Therefore, a way of keeping the prices down to the consumer is to charge the content provider instead. If they don't do this, then in a couple of years we'll end up in one of two situations:
(1) most high-bandwidth content like video streaming becomes unusable at peak times due to bandwidth congestion
(2) end-users like you and me start having to pay per GB for data downloaded, thus funding the network from the other side
Taking this into account, charging the providers sounds like the fairest way to do it.
Quote from: Pumaman on Fri 18/04/2008 22:58:45
I think the whole reason for this "premium content" thing being considered is that there are now more and more high-bandwidth applications such as video being used on the internet. If ISP's try to keep buying more and more bandwidth to enable it all to download at top speed, they'd have to put prices up to you and me.
Therefore, a way of keeping the prices down to the consumer is to charge the content provider instead. If they don't do this, then in a couple of years we'll end up in one of two situations:
(1) most high-bandwidth content like video streaming becomes unusable at peak times due to bandwidth congestion
(2) end-users like you and me start having to pay per GB for data downloaded, thus funding the network from the other side
Taking this into account, charging the providers sounds like the fairest way to do it.
That's a good point; I hadn't thought about that side of it, which is indeed a more legitimate excuse. However, we can still hope that the technology fairy brings us
cheaper bandwidth as the demand rises... Indeed, that has been happening forever, hasn't it? It's not like bandwidth today costs just as much as it did in 1990, and ISPs have just been paying more and more for it...
This has been coming for years.
Internet these days is more expensive than it was 10 years ago, and you get less than you did then too.
Of course governments want to regulate the information we have access too, but not nessecarily as a money game. IMO its got alot more to do with the controll on information than who paid who for what, thats just an excuse.
However the modern internet user is also at fault.
With the advent of "web 2.0" everyone wants everything NOW and they want it in ultra high quality.
Too many kids these days who werent around for the beginnings of the "internet" just take for granted the speeds we get today and dont at all apreciate the advances in tecnology over the past 10 years.
Its this attitude of "i want it now" that ties up the internets "tubes" and starts to make these companies ask what they can do to regulate traffic through their servers. To them the answer is simple, charge for traffic / access to your server. You can understand why too.
Say your tracetr goes like this:
Your Home ----- Your ISP ----- Virgins server ---- YouTube
Every time you watch a vid at youtube, your tieing up resources on virgins server.
Why should Virgins paying customers have to suffer because you (who doesnt pay them) are streaming vids through their server?
If anything their model should be CUSTOMER based and not Website based.
That is, a site owner cant pay Virgin to allow their traffic at a faster rate, however any people using Virgins IPS should get priority over people on other ISPs whos traffic is just routed through Virgin.
Id be more worried about governments passing legislation to say what we can view on the internet (Like China for example) than worrying about Virgin trying to keep their users happy.
They way I understand it, it's not about us (as consumers/punters/surfers/whatevers) hardly at all.
WARNING: Poorly thought-out metaphor approaching!
It's like Virgin are standing you at a crossroads and saying "you can be driven down this road to get an apple from this place that's paid us, or you can wade through this knee-deep treacle to get an orange from those that haven't."
Most people would just go for the easy option.
Even if they really wanted an orange, an apple will do considering the effort saved.
As a result, hardly anyone is buying oranges, so the orange merchant goes out of business.
Okay, ignore that metaphor for this next bit...
While it's true that "normal" sites like this one (that only transfer a few K at a time) will hardly be affected, as Nik and MrC have said, sites that transfer/stream large files (whether it be mp3s, swfs or more) will potentially be crippled unless they pay the protection money.
It's not about censorship, or making the most of resources, or anything like that.
It's just about money. Nothing more.
If some sites will pay the ISPs for tipping the balance in their favour, the ISPs will gladly accept it.
If this thing happens smoothly for Virgin, I can see it going one of two ways.
1) Every other ISP on the planet will think "hey, that seemed easy enough, we'll do it too". This is bad.
2) A couple of ISPs (such as BT are claiming to do at the moment) will not follow suit, and therefore get a lot more business for providing their service the way it is now. Nothing will really change.
And a possible 3)
Those ISPs that didn't follow suit will wait until they've got all the business, and then do it anyway. This is just cheeky.
I personally think that #2 (possibly #3, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it) is the more likely, but this is uninformed, uneducated guesswork.
And yes, Virgin was initially a British company, but I think they've gotten so huge and global now that it's kind of a moot point.
Quote from: Nikolas on Fri 18/04/2008 21:39:06
EDIT: business is business and has nothing to do with morality, or anything at all! sorry! (this is going to tube). Don't confuse different things...
That's a very... American way to look at things. Personally I think every action that affects others has moral implications, be they good or bad. Actions done by businesses for monetary gain do not deserve any special treatment. But this is going way off topic, sorry.
Quote from: Ultra Magnus on Sat 19/04/2008 04:11:46
It's not about censorship, or making the most of resources, or anything like that.
It's just about money. Nothing more.
If some sites will pay the ISPs for tipping the balance in their favour, the ISPs will gladly accept it.
Of course it's about money. The ISP industry runs on wafer-thin profit margins -- Virgin for example made a loss of £460 million last year. If they're to stand any chance of making any money and not going bust, they have to try and get income from wherever they can find it.
Since the industry is so competitive, they can't raise prices to customers since they'd all change to another ISP. So they've got to explore other ways of making ends meet.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. If they go down that road, how long until those "knee-deep treacle" (to use Ultra Magnus' metaphor) turn into road blocks entirely? How long until companies pay ISPs to slow down their competitors' traffic?
Also, I find the "people will just change to another ISP" a magical solution. If a lot of people nowadays forgot the era of dial-up, a lot seems to forget that ISPs aren't grocery stores, rural regions often have only one ISP available, and changing to another one when you aren't happy with yours isn't an option.
If ISPs can't handle nowadays' bandwidth needs, they just have to stop offering services they can't supply and slow down their higher speed services until they can handle it again, but the internet should be left unfiltered and uncensored.
More? More! More...
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html)
I get the feeling that Virgin have stumbled upon some Producers-esque opportunity to make millions of moneys by driving away all of their customers. :-\
'Tis a bit old. Apologies.
There are two big misconceptions that people have in this thread.
1) "The ISPs own their infrastructure and should be allowed to do what they want with it." Technically, they do own the infrastructure. However, the innovation that makes a two-tier internet possible is a fiber-optic cable network, which was laid down in the united states with taxpayer money, not ISP money. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to say that everyone should have equal access to a utility that was put in place with public money.
2) "If some ISPs implement a two-tier internet, I can just jump ship to another ISP." You could, but it probably won't do you any good. There are only a few ISPs that own their own infrastructure; most lease it from those few big companies. Therefore, only the big companies need to implement it, and suddenly everybody that's leasing either goes along with the scheme or has to build their own infrastructure (which they certainly do not have the resources to do). The big companies that own all the infrastructure are naturally the companies that are making noise about this.
Unless the leadership of the first world wants to see the Internet devolve into yet another medium that is dominated by massive corporations and upon which it is impossible for small businesses or hobbyists to compete (such as is the case with, for example, television), they need to legislate protection of network neutrality.
You have to drill down to what the Internet, essentially, is. It is a network of computers that has NO ownership. So for any ISPs (which in this case is all the major ISPs that control large chunks of the Internet access, the "big guys") to limit traffic by restricting traffic to non-paying poor souls and grant traffic to big corporations that can afford it, it just plain wrong.
And most people do not have the luxury of choosing various high-speed internet providers. In my old hometown of Westport, MA, the only option was Charter Communications cable internet. Verizon DSL did not reach most of Westport. And Verizon would be in on it, too. As for my current home city of Fall River, Comcast is really the only option with (you guessed it) Verizon being a distant second, only available in certain areas.
Speaking strictly for America, if you have all of the "big guy" ISPs under this deal where they restrict traffic for the non-paying sites, that's probably somewhere near 90-95% of all of the country unable to view their favorite non-corporate sites (like AGS and small-guy sites like fan sites, etc.).
This issue does indeed threaten the "little guy" that just wants to become famous through sheer content and usability. Sure, we'd get unrestricted access to YouTube, Google, and MSN, but what's the Internet if nearly 90% of our options are no longer feasible because of this? That's why the issue of Net Neutrality is a very important one.
Quote from: Ultra Magnus on Sun 22/06/2008 22:18:02
More? More! More...
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html)
I get the feeling that Virgin have stumbled upon some Producers-esque opportunity to make millions of moneys by driving away all of their customers. :-\
I'm not sure what to make of this. My first reaction was "this is an outrage, they can't do this!!". But when you think about it some more, does anyone start mounting protests when a high street music shop announces it is to start prosecuting shoplifters?
If anything, sending shoplifters a letter after stealing their first 1000 items warning them not to do it again would be considered a rather light-touch justice system.
Is it just that we've all become so accustomed to getting things for free on the internet, that any attempts to change it are likely to be resisted just because we're used to having them for free?
I don't see anything wrong with protecting what is yours within the limits of common law, but I do see something wrong with any attempts to regulate or otherwise 'control' the internet. Piracy and the sheer volume of information available are the two largest justifications for the move towards regulation, and realistically regulation always leads to less freedom; historically, regulation leads to more regulation and more regulation until you have little freedom.
Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 22/06/2008 22:59:03I'm not sure what to make of this. My first reaction was "this is an outrage, they can't do this!!". But when you think about it some more, does anyone start mounting protests when a high street music shop announces it is to start prosecuting shoplifters?
If anything, sending shoplifters a letter after stealing their first 1000 items warning them not to do it again would be considered a rather light-touch justice system.
This is true.
If it were the record labels or the BPI themselves, then I'd say fair enough.
However, Virgin are pretty much a third party in this case.
It's like driving in to town and stealing stuff from a shop, but being nicked by the car park warden and having them threaten to take your car away. This isn't their beef, so why get involved?
Of course, it's their service and they are entitled to do as they please, but a lot of their customers will probably start using a different car park.
That's a very good analogy, Ultra Magnus. I was struggling to find one myself, but that works. Virgin can do what they want, but do they really have legal standing to press charges if one of their customers is doing illegal stuff? Maybe in a distant way they might be able to do that, but it just seems odd... more odd than wrong.
Quote from: TerranRich on Mon 23/06/2008 03:56:43
That's a very good analogy, Ultra Magnus.
Why thank you, sir.
It's better than the treacle metaphor, at least.
Quote from: TerranRich on Mon 23/06/2008 03:56:43
Virgin can do what they want, but do they really have legal standing to press charges if one of their customers is doing illegal stuff?
I think it's like trespassing, in a way.
Like those stories of kids being arrested for wearing offensive T-shirts in malls that cropped up 10 years or so ago.
Of course, you can't arrest someone for wearing a T-shirt, but as long as it's your property (you being the head of security, or whatever) you can tell them to leave. If they don't leave when you say so then you can nab them for trespassing, regardless of the situation.
And as long as there's a sign somewhere saying "we reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone for any reason" (as there always is), then you've legally already given them fair warning.
Virgin probably can't touch you for downloading
per se, but they can get you for violating their terms of service, which can include any stipulation they feel like throwing in.
This isn't something Virgin randomly decided to do as a third party -- it's not in their interest to lose customers.
It all comes from the UK government threatening to change the law (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/22/burnham_dcms_filesharing/) unless ISP's take a more active role in stopping piracy... Virgin are just the first ISP to actually do so.
Quote from: Ultra Magnus on Sun 22/06/2008 22:18:02
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html)
Oh Snap! :o It's the po-po! Gotta bounce! *Runs away and changes ISP*.
Seriously, how do they plan on implementing that? How can they tell legitimate files and illegal files apart? And with the 'estimated 6.5 million customers whose accounts are used for regular criminal activity' possibly being disconnected, where is all the ISP's buisness going to go? Down the toilet is where. I don't think this system will ever work, at least not for several years, as even though the government is promising a part in this, I don't think they realise what kind of work needs to be taken.
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 23/06/2008 19:31:13
This isn't something Virgin randomly decided to do as a third party -- it's not in their interest to lose customers.
I doubt they actually will lose that many customers.
Sure, they'll lose a few, but most people will weigh up the hassle of finding a way around the problem against the hassle of switching ISPs and choose the former, especially as most of them probably get their internet, phone, TV and whatever else all in a handy package these days.
Quote from: TheRegister.co.ukBurnham has repeated government threats to legislate against ISPs if they don't voluntarily agree a system...
Ah yes, in the same way that you
voluntarily hand over your wallet when someone's got a knife to your throat. ::)
Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 22/06/2008 22:59:03
Quote from: Ultra Magnus on Sun 22/06/2008 22:18:02
More? More! More...
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/virgin-warns-illegal-downloaders-stop-or-face-prosecution-842086.html)
I get the feeling that Virgin have stumbled upon some Producers-esque opportunity to make millions of moneys by driving away all of their customers. :-\
I'm not sure what to make of this. My first reaction was "this is an outrage, they can't do this!!". But when you think about it some more, does anyone start mounting protests when a high street music shop announces it is to start prosecuting shoplifters?
If anything, sending shoplifters a letter after stealing their first 1000 items warning them not to do it again would be considered a rather light-touch justice system.
Is it just that we've all become so accustomed to getting things for free on the internet, that any attempts to change it are likely to be resisted just because we're used to having them for free?
If you consider illegal downloading to be an articulation of consumer discontent with the value that's being offered by publishers (and record labels in particular), no, not at all. Sure, people do like having them for free, but the vast majority of people will pay for it. They just don't want to have to pay between 18 and 30 bucks (Canadian, probably different elsewhere) for it.
I know a web site that will print CDs with jewel cases and full-colour jackets for $1.75US on demand. Considering the inflated price of on-demand manufacturing and the doubtlessly large percentage of that $1.75 going toward profits, walking into a high-street music shop and being expected to spend $13+tax on a CD single is absolutely asinine.
Try USD $20 per CD, when most services let you download them legally for $9.99... and not-so-legally from those Russian sites for $0.09 per song. ;)
Quote from: Makeout Patrol on Tue 24/06/2008 05:44:55
I know a web site that will print CDs with jewel cases and full-colour jackets for $1.75US on demand. Considering the inflated price of on-demand manufacturing and the doubtlessly large percentage of that $1.75 going toward profits, walking into a high-street music shop and being expected to spend $13+tax on a CD single is absolutely asinine.
I hope you realize, though, that
pressing the discs is not the only cost involved in music production. Time in a high-quality recording studio (and access to the millions of dollars worth of equipment therein) is neither free nor cheap, and musicians and engineers also like getting paid, understandably. And then there's marketing, which I have somewhat less insight into myself, but which is far more costly than the average person might realize. I'm not saying that this is enough to explain and dismiss the issue, but building your entire case on the fact that
producing physical CDs is cheap is futile and ignorant.
I'm more concerned about whether ISPs are going to violate any data privacy laws to work out whether I've been downloading illegally or not.
They are well within their rights to prosecute people for abuse of their service (as according to their TOS), I don't have a quarrel with that. But I'm just concerned about how they might accumulate the evidence.
Disclosing your details to the BPI based on the BPI's evidence gathering might be against data protection laws (although I am sure something could be worked out), but if they are doing the prosecution themselves I can't see any legal or privacy issues. Increasingly people are talking about encrypting all traffic since we can't trust our ISPs and have very few legal protections... this sort of thing doesn't help.
The way it works is that the BPI investigates file sharing places like BitTorrent, and collects the evidence in the form of the IP addresses that are sharing music.
They then contact the ISP that owns the IP address, and ask them to forward a warning letter to the customer.
Of course, if the BPI wanted to press criminal charges, data protection law would allow them to go via the police to get the customer's details from the ISP, since a crime has been allegedly committed.
Quote from: EldKatt on Tue 24/06/2008 11:12:34
I hope you realize, though, that pressing the discs is not the only cost involved in music production. Time in a high-quality recording studio (and access to the millions of dollars worth of equipment therein) is neither free nor cheap, and musicians and engineers also like getting paid, understandably. And then there's marketing, which I have somewhat less insight into myself, but which is far more costly than the average person might realize. I'm not saying that this is enough to explain and dismiss the issue, but building your entire case on the fact that producing physical CDs is cheap is futile and ignorant.
It's true that there's a lot more underhanded, shady shit going on here, but we can still make a valid point referring only to record prices. Why, for instance, does Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire cost $21.99 (http://"http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFSM2128761&catid=20988") at Bestbuy.ca, but only $9.99 on the iTunes store? A tiny company like Kunaki can make a profit manufacturing a single CD on demand for only $1.75; according to this, a relatively big label like Arts & Crafts (and A&C is about as big as it gets in Canada) is apparently in a pretty dire situation, as assuming a 10% retail markup for Best Buy, it costs them
$9.80 to manufacture a single CD. This is quite clearly not the case; if they can turn a reasonable profit selling the album on iTunes for $9.99, they can turn a reasonable profit selling the album at Best Buy for less than $12.91, taking into account the 10% markup and $1.75 manufacturing fee. (People will jump on me for mixing Canadian and American figures here, but the fact is that the two dollars have hovered at an extremely similar value since last October or so.) You also have to take into account that it doesn't cost Arts & Crafts anything near $1.75 to manufacture a single CD - again, that figure comes from a print-on-demand service, and Arts & Crafts, like all other big labels, does large print runs (also, one of my favorite things about A&C is that their CDs come not in plastic jewel cases but these nifty folding cardboard cases with only the plastic that's required to hold the disc in place; it is, in my opinion, a much nicer way to package a CD, and it would appear that the materials are considerably cheaper).
You also have to keep in mind that recording costs are almost always absorbed by the artists, not the record labels; almost every CD you listen to was financed by a loan to the artist from the label, which has to be paid back with royalties.
Shady shit? I don't think I mentioned shady shit. I pointed out that studio time and personnel (musicians and engineers) cost money. Those are necessities for making music. Musicians needing to get paid so they can buy some food is not shady stuff. Neither is marketing, really--it's almost as much a necessity as anything else, whatever you may think of it.
Anyway. Yeah, there seems to be a rather hefty difference between buying a CD and buying an album on iTunes. But you have to take into account, for instance, that the costs involved for the retailer are different. A company selling CDs has to keep a stock of merchandise, and they have to pay to get the stuff there. In many cases they also have physical shops, which have to be located somewhere people want to be, need a lot of people working, and also need their own little stocks. All this has to be included in some way in the price you pay, and none of it applies to iTunes. Again, I'm not saying that if we take this into account there won't be any difference, but comparing on the basis of manufacturing costs alone is just not a fair comparison.
Quote from: Makeout Patrol on Wed 25/06/2008 01:21:40
You also have to keep in mind that recording costs are almost always absorbed by the artists, not the record labels; almost every CD you listen to was financed by a loan to the artist from the label, which has to be paid back with royalties.
OK, I can't dispute this (though I can't confirm it either)--but where do you think the artists get their money? Regardless of whose name is on the bills, the money that goes into production comes from sales, to a large extent. I fail to see how it's relevant to this discussion who is actually shuffling it from the one to the other in the meantime. Besides, for the label to be able to even lend money, the label has to have money...
(I realize this is entirely OT, people. Feel free to stop me if you want to talk about Virgin and stuff.)
No, carry on EldKatt, it amazes me that people don't understand how a business that does all (or the majority of) its selling through physical outlets with staff and bills and rent and physical merchandise will therefore have stuff that COSTS MORE than an online-only retail business selling non-physical products.
Quote from: Senator Ted Stevens - June 2006There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service is now going to go through the internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people.
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
http://seriesoftubes.net/archives/2-Its-Not-A-Truck...Its-A-Series-Of-Tubes.html