BPI Attacks UK ISP Cost Estimates Over Anti-Piracy System

[admin]

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the group representing music labels in the UK, has hit out at ISP estimates over the cost of implementing a system to monitor and suspend suspected music pirates.

The BPI says that instead of costing well over £300m per year, the actual cost, based on their own research, will only be £13.85m for the first year and decreasing from then on.

However, BPI's numbers do not correspond with several other reports, including one from the government, which supports the BPI's plans to implement such a system. The government's report indicated that up to 40,000 households will lose the ability to pay for the Internet if this plan is to go ahead and that the total cost could be as high as £500m.

Web giants Facebook, Google, Yahoo and eBay have all come out against the proposed plan, and even the UK intelligence agencies and police have criticized the plan for making surveillance of criminals much more difficult if it forces the average Internet user to encrypt their data transfers. If the average person is using encryption, it makes it much harder to track and detect criminal activity, and it would also make the BPI's proposed system useless at monitoring piracy.

More:

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ic7ff1e2a32aab44956aa15659e4462e9

[dr_ml422]

The Music Industry should pay everything associated with piracy and tactics to get rid of it. Matter of fact they should just stop selling CDS altogether and start putting together a brain trust to come up w/some alternative format that will keep revenues at a decent scale while minimizing as much piracy as they can. It's already here really. Just have to tweak the online music services provided, and any that are offering free anything will have to pay one large lump sum up front for usage/selling rights.

Bunch of cry babies. Start putting together some really good music track to track at a decent price and maybe that would help also. Most CDs nowadays cost more than a really nice video movie.

[admin]

That's right, the copyright owners should at least contribute something towards a "solution" that will brings lots of benefits for them (if it works). I suspect they probably realise that there's a good chance it won't work (and it won't, once people move to an encrypted BitTorrent service), and so are not willing to fork out the cash, preferring others to take the risk for them. It's a win win situation for them, which means it will be a loss loss for somebody else (Internet industry, consumers).

The cost thing is also something that's a valid concern. It costs more to make movies and games, but music can actually cost more to buy then either of these if you take into account the amount of enjoyment you get out of each purchase. Of course, you can listen to good music for years and years and listen to the same song once a week without getting bored of it, which doesn't apply as much to games (which can age badly), and you certainly won't be watching the same movie every week.

There's a real opportunity with digital that labels can open up their entire catalogue, even songs they no longer produce on CD. There must be hundreds and thousands of mostly unknown or unpopular songs that would be too expensive to publish on CD, but can be easily sold online in digital form. If one thing the Internet is good for, it's to bring the obscure to the forefront.

[dr_ml422]

For the life of me I can't see how any of these Big Players got to be heads of all the parties involved w/this whole piracy issue. They actually indirectly push those to piracy w/their material and the prices they want for it.

The whole plan of getting ISP providers to charge more or ban people suspected/convicted of piracy will not work anyway. Once ISP providers see their earnings profit go down they'll be telling Music/Movie Industry players to gth. If they don't see this happening then they're a bunch of idiots too.

I mean how about wireless LTs w/built in wi-fi and a wireless router? How are they going to stop that? Let them keep chasing their tails. It's good to post about these latest news actions pertaining to this piracy thing for informational purposes and learning about them, especially for newcomers to the whole genre of Digital/Video stuff, but we could start chasing our tails discussing about the futility of such measures. Lol...

It's not going to work and we know it.