
Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz - adnymarc
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-day-8-090225/
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FalconNL
"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

I must say it's getting really hard to tell the difference in this case.

"less is being paid for than ever before." Really? The second the first
recording company came into business it was making 18 billion a year? I'm
fairly sure it's still higher than throughout most of the history of the
recording industry.

"Unfortunately The Pirate Bay does what it says in its description and its
main aim is to make available unauthorized material." No, its main aim is to
facilitate the sharing of files. The users choose to upload illegal material.

"It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and
when we ask them, they confirm that." Prove it. I download plenty of music to
see if it's any good, sometimes via youtube, sometimes via torrents. Probably
at least 95% isn't, so I delete it again. I certainly wouldn't buy it.

"When asked if downloaders have less money than others, Kennedy said that
younger people have the money but just don’t spend it on music anymore.
Kennedy said that the reduction in sales in the music industry is directly
attributable to illegal downloading." Again, PROVE IT. I suspect that if you
put music sales next to video game sales you'll see some very close
correlation between the decline of the former and the rise of the latter.

"He was asked if he understood BitTorrent. [...] It was very clear he knew
nothing about any remotely technical issues." Perhaps you could spend 10
minutes reading up on it so you know what you're talking about in a court of
law?

"The reason for this drop is that the number of premieres have increased but
sales have decreased. File-sharing has somewhat made the market thinner." Or
maybe people have only a limited budget for movies, so now they have to split
it between them, resulting in lower sales per movie? Or you just make too many
crappy movies? Again, get some proof.

"Sandgren further told that the damages they claim are based on a fictitious
license fee." So basically they're just pulling numbers out of their ass.

"He had to admit, however, that he has no evidence to back these claims up."
I'm not even going to comment on this one.

If only I were the judge... I'd hold them in contempt of the court for wasting
everyone's time with unsubstantiated BS. Or better yet, sue the entertainment
industry because they cost me several billion dollars. How did I arrive at
that figure? Well, I have no evidence to back that claim up, but it seems
reasonable to me. Now give me my money.

Pathetic.

~~~
jacoblyles
>""Kennedy said that the reduction in sales in the music industry is directly
attributable to illegal downloading." Again, PROVE IT."

Of course, it is impossible to "prove". But there is a strong correlation
between the rise of downloading and the collapse of sales in the music
industry. It would be sloppy reasoning to dismiss any causal relationship
between the two a priori.

~~~
FalconNL
There is also a strong correlation between global warming and the amount of
pirates (<http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/001857.php>). While I agree
that dismissing it a priori is a bad idea, correlation still does not mean
causation. Hence the request for proof instead of conjecture. If you're going
to take someone to court you had better be able to prove your accusations.

~~~
jacoblyles
There is a very plausible line of causation in the downloads => music sales
hypothesis that does not exist in the pirates => global warming hypothesis.

Please be courteous and refrain from using obvious straw men in your
arguments. It makes the person you are responding to feel like you are not
taking them seriously.

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vaksel
No its not the pirates that killed the music biz...its the music biz
themselves. Instead of adapting to the changing market conditions, they've dug
in and decided to litigate

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pauljg500
One off the cuff question related to this that popped into my head - Does a
person implicitly own the digital rights to all of the music they have
purchased in the past? (cds, vinyl, etc)

Can an older guy to download via torrent all of the music from old vinyl
records he has in the closet? Considering economic conditions, receiving 9.99
for every crappy cd I bought as a teen would be nice.

Could one sell back to the record industry for the "value" of the digital
rights?

I don't really agree with this, but one could apply this logic to vhs/dvds,
books.

~~~
noonespecial
This is a huge part in the disconnect of views between the entertainment
industries and the public. Physical media scarcity of past decades enabled a
false duality to develop that entertainment companies have come to depend on.
They want you to have to buy their product as if its a physical thing, but
then behave as if its a temporary license grant. When you understand this,
their seemingly irrational behavior starts to make a little more sense.

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chacha102
" He then admitted to not knowing how The Pirate Bay works so the defense
lawyers put it to him - if you don’t understand how TPB works, how can you say
they are to blame?" I really want to hear the answer to that one. Most people
probably know how TPB works even if they don't use it. This guy probably
doesn't know a thing about the internet except that it is a source of money,
and people can use it to download music.

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anatoli
I find a couple of things ridiculous about this whole thing.

1) The music industry refused to acknowledge the impact of iTMS instead
pretending as if CD sales are the only thing making them money. I might be
wrong, but isn't iTMS the number 1 seller now... ?

2) I have a deep, very deep problem with commenters who say stuff like "piracy
for life" or "I'll keep pirating till I die". They're just confirming the
views of the music labels.

~~~
joeyo

      2) I have a deep, very deep problem with commenters who
      say stuff like "piracy for life" or "I'll keep pirating
      till I die". They're just confirming the views of the
      music labels.
    

I do agree to an extent that statements such as these may in some sense
undermine The Pirate Bay's case. However, an argument could certainly be made
that in the era of essentially free copying (i.e. almost no marginal cost)
society is better served by a regime without copyright. I cannot look inside
the commenter's head to see if he is making his statements on this basis, or
simply likes to receive free digital information-- but in the limit it ends up
being the same: such statements are ultimately an expression of the need for
some type of copyright reform so that the laws can be more aligned to how
people on the whole actually behave.

