

Keeping Pirates at Bay - riffer
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14299558&source=hptextfeature

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jacquesm
The most effective way to share files is to buy a 1 Terabyte harddrive and
become part of a sneakernet swapping ring.

Who cares about downloading individual files when you can get whole libraries
for the cost of a harddrive, storage is now so cheap that you can get a
library of 300K mp3s or 1300 movies for around $100.

The RIAA/MPAA are going to have to search peoples bags on the street in order
to stop that one from taking off.

USB sticks will eventually even make that look like childs play, but they are
still a bit expensive (64G for $150 or so).

~~~
randallsquared
Naw, this has the same kinds of risks as drug-dealing, except few people would
be willing to chance prison for a movie, if they thought it was a real
possibility. Going from darknet to sneakernet is a step backward. What needs
doing is a combo TOR/bittorrent client for Windows that emphasizes the
security of the TOR route over the normal bittorrent route with UI design,
while still allowing the latter, so that the client can gain traction.

~~~
aw3c2
While the usage might be awkward at first (you have to run a main application
which you control through your browser), I2P is great for anonymous
filesharing. Bittorrent is strong, there are 3 or 4 trackers with fresh
uploads all the time. Speeds are lower of course, but 10-20 Kilobytes/s for
new well-swarmed torrents are possible with not too much effort. The
applications you can use with I2P are often normal desktop applications, for
Bittorrent there is for example PyBit.

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marze
What is interesting is what the article doesn't say. It doesn't contain the
words "Apple" or "iTunes".

In the US, Apple has about 90% market share for legal music downloads. They
have 25% market share for _all_ music sales, physical and download.

I can think of nothing more relevant to the topic than how Apple has managed
to pull this off, but the article ignores it completely.

See:

[http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/08/19/apples-itunes-
nabs-...](http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/08/19/apples-itunes-
nabs-25-market-share-of-all-u-s-digital-music-s/)

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aw3c2
If I could use anonymous micropayment to purchase the files, then I would. Up
to 50¢ per song. I would want my formats though, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. And a
way to redownload whenever I need to.

~~~
tptacek
Otherwise, you'll just take what you want?

~~~
furyg3
Yes, sadly he will, and so will millions and millions more. As a society, we
can sit around and call them immoral, say it's stealing, shame them, draft
legislation, whatever.

Or... we can accept the situation as it is now (and is likely to be in the
future) and just tell the industry that it's their business model, they can
deal with the monitoring/policing/lawsuits of it all.

Our collective responsibility to them is very limited (ensuring they get their
day in court and that Little Jimmy pays them what he owes them, about
$.99/song). We don't need to resort to draconian
legislation/monitoring/enforcement to ensure that no one may, at any cost,
illegally download T-Pain's newest single.

In short: it's your business model, you deal with it. In the meantime I'll be
over here doing something that someone else is willing to pay for...

~~~
aw3c2
Nope, I actually try to boycott (it always sounds so silly) the music industry
nowadays. I switched to Linux about 2 years ago and also shifted to (mostly)
free music. I found that in the genres I am interested in, there is more than
enough (actually way too much) genuinely free music available.

Still there are many albums and tracks I would love to financially reward the
original creator for (I already contact them or review). Both non-free ___and_
__free.

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nkassis
I've been buying a lot from Amazon MP3 lately. Mostly because I'm much less
willing to spend the time to find what I want which isn't always very popular
stuff. It's so much easier to just search on amazon for it. Now if only I
could find a similar service for Movies, I might not have to do all this work.
The MPAA needs to understand that DRM is making their stuff very inconvenient
for most of us. We don't want to rent a movie for 6 bucks we want to own a
movie for that amount or maybe even for 10.

~~~
bajsejohannes
Amazon MP3 looks promising, but alas:

    
    
       We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is 
       currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous
       states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia. 
    
       We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
    

So the industry is in my opinion far from what they try to be -- from the
article:

    
    
       It does not need to make piracy impossible—just less convenient than the legal alternatives.

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chrischen
> Most innovative are the plans to offer unlimited downloads for a flat fee.

RealPlayer has had this for like forever now. And with realplayer you could
also load it onto your mp3 device. Not sure if it worked on iPods though,
maybe that was why it never took off.

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onreact-com
The music industry as we know it must die. It's a dinosaur. It had at least a
decade to adapt but it failed miserably and its still ignoring the reality.

Musicians like Trent Reznor or Radiohead have shown a new way of earning money
for musicians: Cutting out the middleman. The music industry is not needed
anymore. It's only hampering progress.

