p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- By way of an update, a2f2a (artists-to-fans-to-artists),  is now online with debates on payments to artists, writes and wrongs on copyright, and a lot of other items of immediate interest, going hot and strong, as p2pnet readers who’ve already joined in will tell you.

If you  don’t like music, don’t bother.

But if you do, it’s for you.

If you’re a music maker and/or a music lover, register and add to the conversation.

Says the mission statement »»»

Artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them.

Our goals at a2f2a are:

1. Help find a practical and workable system which offers artists fair remuneration in exchange for access to material by fans;
2. Help each community better understand the other; and,
3. Help set the agenda for discussions about the role P2P can play within the emergent digital record industry.

Together, we can do it – artist to fan to artist.

Spread the word.

See you over there …

Cheers! And all the best …

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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October, 2009

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Fans want to pay musicians …

p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Singles sales in the UK are breaking records.

According to  Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry), file sharing is ruining the corporate music industry and if there was any justice, file sharers would be heavily penalised with forcible disconnection from the Internet and jail time included in punitive measures.

The Big 4 argue file sharing equals sales lost. It’s exactly the same as walking into a shop and stealing a CD off the shelf, they claim.

But a moment’s thought puts the lie to both contentions, even setting aside academic and other studies such as, say, Felix Oberholzer (Harvard Business School) and Koleman Strumpf’s (UNC Chapel Hill) The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales.

It states clearly: “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates” and, “Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.”

Explosion in the singles market

It used to be when someone bought an album, they expected to perhaps get two or three decent songs out of it. The rest would be garbage.

The arrival of the net fixed that. Today, people can, and do, access single tracks, completely by-passing corporate filler dross.

Now, the Guardian has Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company, saying, “The explosion in the singles market has been nothing short of astonishing this year”.

Some 117 million singles have already been sold so far in 2009, surpassing the previous record of 115.1 million set in 2008, says the story, noting:

“The total has been reached with 10 weeks of trading, including the vital Christmas period, still to run this year, which also marks the 60th anniversary of the single.”

And the trend looks likely to continue, says Talbot.

“Unlike the albums market, which is dominated by CD sales, the UK top 40 is now almost entirely comprised of digital singles,” says the Guardian. “During this year, 98.6% of all singles were sold in digital formats.”

“That singles have hit these heights while there are still more than a billion illegal downloads every year in the UK is testimony to the vibrancy of the download market,” states BPI boss Geoff Taylor in the story

“Consumers are responding to the value and innovation offered by the legal services and these new figures show how the market could explode if the government acts to tackle illegal peer-to-peer filesharing.”

Says UK artist and activist Billy Bragg, co-founder of a2f2a.com:

“So a billion ‘illicit’ files are being downloaded each year and yet we’re seeing record numbers of download sales?

“Could the two be in any way connected?

“Isn’t it about time the BPI recognised the important promotional role played by the p2p community and stopped trying to suppress file-sharing?”

Stay tuned.

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indistinguishable from zero – File sharing: zero effect on downloads, February 12, 2007

Guardian

October, 2009

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‘Explosive’ UK singles music market

p2pnet news view | Advertising:- Japan has created another monster.

And it’s scarier than Godzilla.

It’s part of a Microsoft promo to launch W7 in the land of the rising Sun and, for a limited time, indigestion.

That’s it on the right.

For ¥777, you get seven patties.

But only for seven days.

Clever, eh?

What will they think of next?

Let the heart-burn begin.

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launch W7 – Windows 7: 5 reasons why not, October 23, 2009

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Windows 7 Japan burp-a-thon

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “A few weeks ago, I googled myself (I’m not ashamed to admit I do this all the time) and found that I was being used by others as the representative of the ‘wacky news-wants-to-be-free contingent’,” Jenna McWilliams (right) tells p2pnet.

Jenna — an educational researcher for project new media literacies and a Guardian online columnist — has a wicked sense of humour, which is one of the reasons she’s such a great writer.

Also, there’s two of her. She’s the firstborn of a set of identical twins.

Anyway, back to discovering she’s part of the ‘wacky news-wants-to-be-free contingent, “My reaction went like this,” she says:

“Hey, I’m not one of those wacky news-wants-to-be-free–wait, okay, I’m not wacky, but I do believe news wants to be free.

“For those of us who believe we can and must find new, financially sustainable models of news delivery, the recent Technorati State of the Blogosphere report offered lots of encouraging news.”

Here’s Jenna’s take on what the Technorati report might say about the future of the news, as posted on her blog »»»

Much has been and will be made of the following statistics, culled from technorati’s survey:

Two-thirds are male

• 60% are 18-44
• The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population
• 75% have college degrees

40% have graduate degrees
One in three has an annual household income of $75K+
One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
Professional and self-employed bloggers are more affluent: nearly half have an annual household income of $75,000 and one third topped the $100,000 level

• More than half are married
• More than half are parents
• Half are employed full time, however ¾ of professional bloggers are employed full time.

These statistics are worth mulling, as they point to a disturbing trend toward the mainstreaming of what was previously a counterculture form of communication. Others have begun exploring this in depth.

What interests me most at the moment, however, is the statistic on journalistic credentials. According to the report, 35% of respondents have worked in traditional media formats, including newspapers and magazines, radio, and television. Compare this to the less than 1% of the entire American work force employed in traditional media fields.

And one more statistic before we dive into analysis: Of those who identified as having employment history with traditional media sources, 72% are no longer employed by a media outlet. This means that just over one-fourth of the bloggers surveyed are formerly affiliated with traditional media outlets.

Why does this matter? Because it points to two interesting and important trends among bloggers: They have had more exposure to traditional journalistic ethics than does the average American; and they are disproportionately drawn to blogging as a news circulation format. This is, in my view, a double smackdown to those who fear that the shift away from traditional news sources will lead to a decreased quality in reporting.

Journalistic ethics, carried over

As I’ve explained before, I’m a former newspaper reporter whose paper folded after a long slide toward decreased advertising revenues. Not all of us who worked at that local paper were journalists, exactly–our crew included two sales reps, two assistants, a circulation manager, and various part-time employees–but everybody at that office embraced a deep commitment to honest, responsible information delivery. It kind of came with the territory.

Journalism is guided by an ethical framework–what we might call an appreciative system–that’s undergirded by intellectual rigor, critical curiosity, and chronic curmudgeonry. Though this commitment is move visible in its breach (which is in part why Jayson Blair became a household name), it’s a big piece of what drives so many people into traditional journalism even as its dying gasps turn into death rattles.

Disproportional representation: paid journalists become voluntary journalists

Old journalists never die, they just get de-pressed, har har. In fact, the thriving popularity of blogs and their potential to reach a vast–indeed, potentially almost infinite–audience is by my lights part of what draws us traditional media curmudgeons to new media. Though I can’t speak for all traditional media-affiliated bloggers, I can tell you that I was drawn to journalism because I believed in its power, believed in its transformative potential. I believed, even before I could articulate it, in the power of a free press in a democratic society. That’s free as in speech, not as in beer.

Now, as a blogger, my understanding of “free press” has changed: When I talk about the power of a free press, I now mean free as in speech and as in beer. This does not, contrary to common belief, mean that I believe we can sustain a thriving communication system without funds; I just don’t believe that the people should be required to pay for information. I have elsewhere delineated between ‘news’ and ‘the news’ and discussed various approaches to funding that may be more sustainable than the current system, so I won’t go into that here; instead, I only want to submit that for many traditional-media types like me, blogs offer what a career in journalism did, only more so. More communication of ideas, more potential readership, more opportunity for direct conversation between the writer and her readers. News can be broken, immediately, to overwhelming impact, via blogs; ideas can be offered, discussed, and modified; a reading public can be mobilized to act.

There are those who will (and do!) argue that unpaid citizens will never be willing to commit to reporting on local, national, or international news without pay; or that even those who are willing to do so will offer substandard, biased, or useless content. These charges may be true, but only of a subset of the online journalistic population. For the rest of us, our commitment to delivery of high-quality, well researched and useful information has never been higher or more valuable — essential, really, to a democratic society built on a presumption of freedom of speech and of the press.

Stay tuned for more of Jenna.

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blog – sleeping alone and starting out early, October 21, 2009

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The kids are alright !

p2pnet news view P2P:- “Hey Jon. No posts today?”

That’s from Jazz over in the UK.

Sorry for the delay, today. I had a bunch of emails to answer, there’s a long and very complicated article I’m trying to format (thanks, Tom K ) and I’m still feeling a bit washed out from this flu bug I contracted from somewhere.

So I will be posting, but it won’t be for another hour or so, and there’ll be fewer posts than usual.

Cheers!
Jon

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

October, 2009

Excerpt from:
Sorry for the delay …

p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- US ‘anti-virus’ firm McAfee, which piggy-backs on the popularity of celebrities such as Jessica Biel and Brad Pitt to hype its product, is now using spam emails as a self-advertising tool.

It says spammers are “increasingly piggybacking on the reputation of big brand names to take advantage of their online audiences,” according to TechCentral.

“In its new spam report, McAfee also said that it was also seeing an increase in ‘targeted’ or ’spear’ phishing, and brand abuse in non-phishing e-mails,” says the story, going on:

“McAfee warned that corporations needed to be vigilant about the type of brand abuse that criminal gangs would use to ‘tap into’ their audiences.”

It “used to be easy to spot a spam message: poor language, misspellings, grammar errors, and sloppy graphics,” it says at, but, “the latest spams are professional, and almost foolproof.”

So who ya gonna call … ?

Meanwhile, as I posted in the story on Biel and Pitt, McAfee still owes p2pnet $$$ for using us for advertising purposes without our permission.

“Anti-virus and security companies routinely pump out  custom-made scare reports in the hope of frightening the gullible into buying ‘product’ I said, going on, “But Brad Pitt [in this instance, Jessica Biel] isn’t alone in being singled out to promote McAfee stuff — whether he likes it or not.

“The same thing happened to p2pnet.

“No! Really!”

I went on, “ ‘Why not bring this subject up with a lawyer and sue McAffee for defamation and so forth?’ – suggested p2pnet reader few bux in a comment post to my story McAfee targets p2pnet. Again.”

I added »»»

Biggie ’security’ company McAfee is implying p2pnet is a dodgy site with spyware and malpractice downloads, and it [McAfee] is doing so to promote its [McAfee's] so-called SiteAdvisor ’service’.

Nor is this the first time. The company made exactly the same accusations last year.

“You know how it works,” I responded to few bux. “Lawyers cost lots of money and I don’t have any.”

The real danger, I added then and repeat now, is that someone might take McAfee seriously.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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hype its product – McAfee shock-horror Jessica Biel report !, August 25, 2009
TechCentral – Latest spam e-mails are ‘almost foolproof’, October 13, 2009

Read more:
New McAfee ‘report’

Marketers want anti-spam bill altered CBC
The Canadian Marketing Association is lobbying MPs to change an anti-spam bill so that consumers have to opt out of receiving commercial email messages, rather than opting in to get them. In a message sent to its 800 corporate members — which include Costco, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Home Depot and Rogers — on Thursday, the CMA urged companies to get in touch with their local MPs to demand changes to the proposed legislation, which is expected to enter a critical phase on Monday. The current draft of Bill C-27 will require a marketer to obtain a consumer’s consent, whether implied or explicit, before sending them an email. The CMA says this clause will limit companies’ ability to prospect for new customers or grow their businesses.

Complaint sought to be amended in Fairey v AP, false statements made by plaintiff Recording Industry vs The People
In Fairey v. Associated Press, the fair use case involving a painting of Pres. Obama from a photograph, the plaintiff has sought to amend his complaint, on the ground that he had made incorrect statements about the photograph on which his painting had been based. Additionally, his motion states that he had initially attempted to cover up his mistake, rather than bring the mistake to the attention of his attorneys.

Minnesota man suspected of encouraging suicides Associated Press
A nurse who authorities say got his kicks by visiting Internet suicide chat rooms and encouraging depressed people to kill themselves is under investigation in at least two deaths and could face criminal charges that could test the limits of the First Amendment. Investigators said William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, feigned compassion for those he chatted with, while offering step-by-step instructions on how to take their lives. “Most importatn is the placement of the noose on the neck … Knot behind the left ear and rope across the carotid is very important for instant unconciousness and death,” he allegedly wrote in one Web chat. [Is he related to Dexter? ]

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low Pew Research
The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Pirate Bay appeal pushed back to next summer The Local
An appeal launched by the four men found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial is unlikely to be heard until next summer, a Swedish appeals court announced on Monday. The Svea Court of Appeal has decided to delay hearings in the next phase of the trial of the four men behind the popular file sharing site. While the appeal was originally scheduled to be heard in November, bias accusations against two of the judges set to rule on the case have made it impossible to keep to the original timetable. The bias allegations may eventually be heard by the Supreme Court, which wouldn’t likely issue a final verdict until February, adding yet another wrinkle to commencing with the next phase of Pirate Bay trial. And since the appeals court is already fully booked for most of the spring of 2010, efforts by Carl Lundström, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde to overturn the district court’s guilty verdict won’t likely move forward until next summer.

Hurdles remain as FCC ponders Internet data rules Associated Press
With Democrats in charge in Washington, supporters of so-called “net neutrality” rules seem poised to finally push through requirements that high-speed Internet providers give equal treatment to all data flowing over their networks. These rules – at the heart of a five-year policy debate – are intended to guarantee that Internet users can go to any Web site and access any online service they want. Phone and cable companies, for instance, wouldn’t be able to block subscribers from using cheaper Internet calling services or accessing online video sites that compete with their core businesses. Yet making that happen is proving thorny – and it’s likely that the courts and perhaps even Congress will ultimately get involved.

Judges have final decision on Twitter Australian IT
The Federal Court will leave it up to individual judges to decide whether to allow cases to be covered from within their courtrooms on new media platforms such as Twitter. The issue arose after two technology journalists, Andrew Colley from The Australian, and Liam Tung from website ZDNet Australia, started using the microblogging site to publish running reports of the landmark iiNet copyright case being heard by judge Dennis Cowdroy in Sydney and which is big news in Hollywood. Last week the Perth internet firm’s lawyers cross-examined four senior executives from Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Disney and 20th Century Fox which are part of a group of 34 companies attempting to win a landmark legal decision and which could make Australian internet providers liable for acts of copyright infringement by their customers.

cheers

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

October, 2009

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p2pnet World Headlines: Oct 19, 2009

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Paying for information is “a dying behemoth,” says Alice Taylor, commissioning editor for education at Britain’s Channel 4 TV.

“‘ ‘Piracy’ – as done by teenagers, all my friends, pretty much everyone I know, is simply demand where appropriate supply does not exist,” she says on Scotland’s new Perspectives website, going on:

“Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies — in other words, anti-copying, anti-fair use — are also anti-accessibility. They attempt to block and restrict, and they fail every time. Every single time.”

Taylor, married to Cory Doctorow, says to be accessible, “work needs to be available, always and to everyone, going on »»»

No delineations, no restrictions: it’s too messy. Too expensive. Too dull.

Restricting access restricts a person’s ability, as a creator, to be discovered. We must embrace accessibility, and think open and global. Think spreadable and shareable. Perhaps free, perhaps not: see what works. Try it: if you have a digitised creation, try selling digital copies. Try giving it away for free, alongside a tip jar. See what happens. Examine internet-native content producers like Joss Whedon – who has made far more money personally from his internet-native Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog than he has for his Fox-broadcast Dollhouse – and Felicia Day, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Justin.tv, Ze Frank. The entire community of Etsy craftants and Spreadshirt-ers.

Accessibility gives us competitive, business advantage. It is inclusive of the blind and partially-sighted, who make up 70% of us humans over our life spans. It is inclusive of other cultures and tastes, and gives the creator access to a potential audience of Everyone. It’s inclusive of learning and the sharing of knowledge. The accessible content will leapfrog the locked-down content. It’s cheaper, too, and doesn’t that make business sense?

To push past bigger, older, more established businesses, the solution is to be agile and modern, to be internet-native and innovative. The older, slower dinosaur-works will sink, weighed down by their expensive defenses, regulations and costly and pointless protection mechanisms. We must not let these dying behemoths take away someone’s internet access – and connection to the world – for some accusatory, unprovable ‘piracy’ claim, ever.

“We must not let the internet’s neutrality be bought and sold by corporations,” says Taylor on Perspectives, adding:

“This is our free and global internet, in our 21st Century, and thinking of accessibility, it’s our greatest asset yet.

(Cheers, Fancy That)

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Perspectives – How do we ensure that creative content and work are accessible to all?, October 19, 2009

See the rest here:
Piracy equals demand without supply: TV boss

p2pnet news view Music | Mobiles:- ASCAP recently sued AT&T, claiming each time a cellphone ringtone rang, you were listening to a performance. And that required a royalty payment to ASCAP.

So says Mashable.

“Thankfully, federal judge Denise Cote has ruled that a ringtone going off does not constitute a public performance, because the carrier has no way to control when a ringtone plays nor any expectation of revenue when it does,” says the story, continuing »»»

She also said there was no way to determine whether the threshold for ‘public performance’ would be met for any particular ringtone playback, since it usually requires a ’substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of its social acquaintances is gathered.’

And her ruling has implications for Big Music efforts to claim royalties on 30-second song previews and performance fees for TV show downloads, says mMashable, adding:

“Part of the language in the judge’s ruling also considered a ringtone download as not being a public performance either, which could set a precedent for the other suit in which ASCAP/BMI are seeking royalties on downloads.”

(Cheers, catflap)

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Mashable – Judge: No Royalties for Music Industry Each Time a Ringtone Plays, October 15, 2009

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Judge: No Royalties for Music Industry Each Time a Ringtone Plays

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Ringtones aren’t performances: ruling

Magistrate Judge: Neither Ray Beckermann Nor The RIAA Vexatious TechDirt
Remember last year when the RIAA sought to have lawyer Ray Beckermann declared a vexatious litigant and asked for sanctions? Well, a magistrate judge has now said that the RIAA’s complaints were “largely overstated” (shocking, I know) and that Beckermann should not face any sanctions: “Although defendant’s counsel took an unusually aggressive stance and, at times, veered into hyperbole and gratuitous attacks on the recording industry as a whole, I do not find clear evidence of bad faith on counsel’s part.” Beckermann had filed a similar complaint in response, claiming that the RIAA was vexatious, but the judge ruled against that one as well (again, I’d say reasonably). All in all, this looks like sour grapes on the part of the RIAA who wasn’t used to any lawyers actually challenging its lawyers on its overly aggressive legal campaign. [Also see Judge rejects RIAA sanction demands ]

Peer-to-Peer Passé, Report Finds Wired
Peer-to-peer file sharing has been the bogeyman of the internet, but a new report suggests it’s destined become a fear of the past — replaced by cheap streaming video. Rising from the ashes in the early 2000s of banned services like Napster, P2P soon became demonized as an imminent threat to software industry, Hollywood and the internet’s backbone, prompting high-profile piracy trials, federal government hearings on traffic management and hand-wringing from ISPs who said torrents of illicit traffic would overwhelm the net. But peer-to-peer file sharing is falling out of favor quickly, according a new report from Arbor Networks, a network-management firm used by more than 70 percent of the world’s top ISPs. Falling out of favor so fast that the report declares that P2P is dead to ISPs.

C4 to air content on YouTube Financial Times
Channel 4 has signed a pioneering content deal with YouTube , becoming the first broadcaster to make a comprehensive range of full-length television programmes, such as Skins , Hollyoaks and The Inbetweeners , available on the Google-owned video sharing site. Channel 4 will make its entire 4oD video-on-demand “catch-up” service of new programmes available to YouTube users, free of charge, shortly after broadcast. It will also make available around 3,000 hours of programming from its archives, including shows such as Brass Eye, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Teachers . Content will be fully available from next year, and will be limited to UK viewers. Media companies in the US have deals to show some full-length content on internet video sites like YouTube and Hulu, but Channel 4 is the first to do such a comprehensive deal.

Hell awaits for illegal file-sharers Guardian
In the war against albums being illegally uploaded on to the internet before they are released, David Tibet of the underground band Current 93 may have struck a minor, if resounding, victory. “This is a promotional CD,” announces a little girl on the promo copy of Current 93’s new album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain. “Anyone illegally selling, copying, uploading or downloading this material is condemned to eternal hellfire. Happy listening, God is love.” Then Tibet – a devout Christian with strong views about the impending apocalypse – intones “murder” over a guitar riff heavy enough to terrify Satan. It makes you wonder whether a casual upload is really worth being cast into Hades for.

Eastlink DNS Hijacking … dslreports
Just a heads up to anyone who is on Eastlink in Canada (located in Halifax). Eastlink this past week has decided to dabble in DNS hijacking.I’ve opted out twice so far. It’s nice to suddenly find all your computer names no longer resolve properly to internal addresses but resolve out to search.eastlink.ca instead.

Anti-File Sharing Propaganda Back To Focusing On That Horrible Malware You’ll Get TechDirt
The thing that you sort of need to admire about the copyright maximalist lobby is that they attack the problem from so many different directions on such a constant basis. It’s almost impossible to keep up — though, you do begin to notice some patterns. A particularly popular move is to alternate between the moral argument against copyright infringement (stealing! bad!) and the idea that file sharing is going to destroy your computer (we’re just looking out for your safety!). It looks like the industry is back on that latter kick, as two recent stories indicate.

Truth or Hot Air: Balloon Boy’s Father Speaks Out People
Richard Heene faced his own wild ride on Friday, battling rumors that Thursday’s frantic rescue effort to save his 6-year-old-son Falcon – who was believed to be aboard a homemade helium-filled balloon that floated high over Colorado for more than two hours with National Guard and sheriff’s helicopters in its pursuit – was the result of a publicity stunt. Appearing on Friday’s Today show, Heene said such accusations were making him angry. As he spoke to the NBC morning program’s Meredith Vieira, Falcon, who had safely hidden in the rafters of the family garage while the balloon adventure played out on national TV, got sick to his stomach on camera.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

October, 2009

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p2pnet World Headlines: Oct 16, 2009 #2