Note that the "City of London"[0] is a city within Greater London.
City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#22I don't like the BPI, they investigated me and made me take my website down (they came to my house, it was a fun day). However, I must credit them as they warn people before taking them to court. So, if you're a website owner in the UK. I'm just giving you a heads up to say that if you're being investigated, they will probably contact you in person. I do think the BPI have definately gone too far, they currently tryi…
> they currently trying to get Grooveshark blocked from popular UK ISPs. The BPI only exists to monopolize the music industry. Grooveshark is a company that profits off of content that they have no rights to. They hide behind the DMCA and are complete scumbags who pretend to engage in fair business practices and then turn around and renege on agreements, all the while people defend them as if they're making some form…
That's all well and good, but when I need to stream music instantly Grooveshark has my back--no fee, no sign-in, no bullshit.
The piracy wars are going to be won or lost based solely on user experience, mark my words.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#23Note that the "City of London"[0] is a city within Greater London. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_london
Also explained by a CGPGrey video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spotify is not a fantastic alternative. They keep on losing money in spite of growing revenues: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/31/4575506/spotify-doubled-re... The only reason Spotify doesn't have too much competition is because few are those willing to waste so much money on such a low margin business, not because they have a ground breaking technology or business model. The fact that they now have to compete with r…
The CEO of Spotify has stated that they are choosing to forego profits at present so that they can invest in the long term success of the service, however they could be profitable if they needed to be. The comments on that article you linked to provide a valuable example of the value of what Spotify are doing: Amazon. http://allthingsd.com/20121206/spotifys-daniel-ek-on-profits...
Amazon isn't faced with a non-rational business conglomerate with complete control over every product.
Spotify is simply hoping to grow so big so fast that labels can no longer afford to bleed them to death. They are not exactly building warehouses.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#25Looks like the Brits haven't changed much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Act
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#26Note that the "City of London"[0] is a city within Greater London. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_london
Yes, this title should be changed.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they currently trying to get Grooveshark blocked from popular UK ISPs. The BPI only exists to monopolize the music industry. Grooveshark is a company that profits off of content that they have no rights to. They hide behind the DMCA and are complete scumbags who pretend to engage in fair business practices and then turn around and renege on agreements, all the while people defend them as if they're making some form…
That's all well and good, but when I need to stream music instantly Grooveshark has my back--no fee, no sign-in, no bullshit. The piracy wars are going to be won or lost based solely on user experience, mark my words.
> That's all well and good, but when I need to stream music instantly Grooveshark has my back--no fee, no sign-in, no bullshit.
You're completely missing the point. It's irrelevant that you can get music for free, because it's not produced for free. It costs money to produce music and to arrange it to be available on Amazon or iTunes or where ever.
It's not unreasonable to expect you to pay for music. I don't mean to imply anything about "stealing", but you wouldn't walk into a supermarket expecting to just take stuff either. It's about someone producing something of value that you want.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's all well and good, but when I need to stream music instantly Grooveshark has my back--no fee, no sign-in, no bullshit. The piracy wars are going to be won or lost based solely on user experience, mark my words.
> That's all well and good, but when I need to stream music instantly Grooveshark has my back--no fee, no sign-in, no bullshit. You're completely missing the point. It's irrelevant that you can get music for free, because it's not produced for free. It costs money to produce music and to arrange it to be available on Amazon or iTunes or where ever . It's not unreasonable to expect you to pay for music. I don't mean t…
And I'm telling you that nobody gives a shit, because they just want to listen to music.
Look, I'll happily debate intellectual property structures and incentives and all the rest, but the thing--the big elephant in the room--is that everybody just wants to be able to push a button and get music.
At the end of the day, the core relationship is between the artist and the listener--everything else, be it recording or ticketing or distribution or whatever, is secondary fluff.
Grooveshark offers the most compelling experience to the user right now, regardless of how scummy (and I do mean scummy!) their business practices are.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you disagree with a penalty issued by the police, you can appeal to the judicial branch. This is a fine principle provided that someone innocent who defends themselves successfully in court will then be compensated so they don't lose out in any way. The reality appears to be that for things like minor traffic offences, you can wind up spending more time and far more money travelling to have your day in court than…
Unfortunately, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Defending yourself against an accusation will always be costly. I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations. There are certainly cases in which officers were mistaken, there are mitigating circumstances, or you can avoid punishment on a technicality, but I can't think of any instances in which authorities have…
Unfortunately, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Defending yourself against an accusation will always be costly.
Why must it always be costly? It is a perfectly rational alternative policy to bring a smaller number of prosecutions, and to compensate defendants for their costs, wasted time and distress, if a prosecution fails.
I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations.
You might like to look up some of the published data about the proportion of appeals that succeed against things like local-authority-issued parking tickets and ANPR-based congestion charges. It happens all the time, and erroneous charges aren't even close to the kind of isolated incidents you seem to believe they are.
As a matter of fact, there have been plenty of stories of deliberate policies to issue penalties aggressively (and sometimes outright unlawfully), but this doesn't really matter to the victims anyway. Whether it was malicious on the part of the authorities or their enforcement people just got duped as in the cloning case you mentioned makes no difference at all to an innocent third party who gets slapped with a penalty notice they didn't deserve.
Re: City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit
#30I don't like the BPI, they investigated me and made me take my website down (they came to my house, it was a fun day). However, I must credit them as they warn people before taking them to court. So, if you're a website owner in the UK. I'm just giving you a heads up to say that if you're being investigated, they will probably contact you in person. I do think the BPI have definately gone too far, they currently tryi…
> they currently trying to get Grooveshark blocked from popular UK ISPs. The BPI only exists to monopolize the music industry. Grooveshark is a company that profits off of content that they have no rights to. They hide behind the DMCA and are complete scumbags who pretend to engage in fair business practices and then turn around and renege on agreements, all the while people defend them as if they're making some form…
I'm already aware of Grooveshark being gray-area, however, the law is the law. They are not breaking the laws in the UK or the USA, as far as I am aware. Spotify is good, I continue to use Grooveshark because Spotify has only popular musicians, I listen to underground music. If Grooveshark gets closed down I will switch to YouTube. The reason I use Grooveshark over YouTube at the moment is purely because of the 'Now Playing' lists.
If the BPI is unhappy with Grooveshark because of their music being on it, either make a deal with them or DMCA all the artists. If they block the whole site, they're only making it harder for me to listen to the type of music I want to listen to. As I said, it's a monopoly.