Richard Branson hates you!

[scotch]

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.

[Pumaman]

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.

[Makeout Patrol]

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 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.

[EldKatt]

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.

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.)

[Becky]

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.

[DGMacphee]

There'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