I Own My Music

Miles Doughty, the frontman of Slightly Stoopid, a band we’ve never heard of, has gone on record and said that filesharing is good because it gives people who would not have otherwise heard your music a chance to listen to it.

This is in line with many bands and artists who have sung the praises of filesharing for making music available to the masses in a way that was, until recently, virtually impossible.

Filesharing is said to give artists direct access to fans and would-be fans while putting record labels in the precarious position of not really having any point. Miles Doughty has praised filesharing for the exposure it has given his band, although that exposure wasn’t enough to make it to our iPods. Or perhaps it was, given this news report. The mind boggles.

Anyway, Miles Doughty says that filesharing increases a band’s ability to tour and play live shows, giving a band the opportunity to do what it’s supposed to: play music.

Despite music pundits insisting that CD sales are dead and that filesharing is the only way people are getting their music, Lil Wayne’s new album Tha Carter III has sold by the bucketload since its release on June 10.

CD sales in the US have dipped by about 11% in the past year, thanks to filesharing and other ways of getting music, but that didn’t stop Lil Wayne shifting 423,000 units in a few days.

Predicted figures for the album put CD sales at anything up to and above one million. So people are still buying CDs and filesharing has yet to kill the music industry. Interesting.

Lil Wayne’s new album is more popular than the likes of Mariah Carey and Usher. This kind of reception to a hit album is rare and is perhaps something that the music biz can learn from. Despite Lil Wayne’s new album finding its way onto filesharing networks before its release, sales of Tha Carter III appear to have not been affected at all.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has come under fire after the announcement that it is teaming up with Virgin Media to send warning letters to people who use filesharing services, such as Ares.

There was a BBC article about the issue that suggested that Virgin Media is more concerned about the music industry than it is about its customers. The article went on to say that such a move only really highlights the fact that Virgin is monitoring its customers’ Internet usage.

A rep from BPI responded to the BBC article by saying that action must be taken against illegal music downloading in order for licensed music services to make any money.

It’s a typical case of the filesharing community versus the music industry. The only difference here is that the filesharing community is represented by someone in a powerful position, namely a BBC author.

I decided that it was time to retire my old version of Ares Galaxy and pick up one of the newer — and better — version of Ares. I hadn’t been a position where I needed to download Ares for some years now, so I was essentially new to the area.

I’d been on the Official Ares site before; it’s good resource for ‘current affairs’ of the P2P filesharing world and is a great information resource. I vaguely remembered that the site had a reviews section. I’d not been there before, but I thought it might be a good place to start on my quest to download Ares.

To say I am impressed with the quality of information there really is an understatement. Even if I were new to the p2p filesharing game I wouldn’t have any trouble deciding which was the best way to download Ares. I went ahead and managed to download Ares (Ares Ultimate was my Ultimate choice) without much trouble.

Thanks very much Official Ares – you made my day a lot more trouble free than it could have been. Lifesaver. I would definitely recommend this site to new and old hands alike. There’s nothing like it anywhere on the Internet.

We had no idea that Fergal “Teenage Kicks” Sharkey had a blog, but he does, over at the Guardian website. Fantastic. In his latest post, Sharkey says that a recent survey of 14-to-24-year-olds in the UK revealed that 63% use filesharing services to download music.

Those surveyed said that they love music and that they do still like CDs. More than 80% who use filesharing services said they would be interested in legal filesharing services.

Even if such a filesharing service were created, more than half of those surveyed said they would still buy CDs. Fergal Sharkey sees the solution to all of this in subscription-based filesharing models. He may have a point here.

Fergal Sharkey seems to be one of a select group of musicians in tune with the way the music industry is heading. It’s refreshing to read a balanced and insightful opinion on filesharing and music downloads from someone who has a powerful voice.

Good job, Fergal.

Rogers Cable, Canada’s largest ISP, recently held a press conference to dispel a few myths about how it shapes its bandwidth with regards to people using filesharing networks.

A spokesperson from Rogers said that the ISP does not block filesharing traffic. Rather, it controls the traffic when it is uploading data. Apparently, many people are unaware that when they download material through filesharing networks, they are also uploading data.

Rogers limits the rate at which users can upload material. The idea behind this is that filesharing users then do not then overwhelm all other Internet traffic. Apparently, expanding the network would not solve the problem, so limits must be installed.

Filesharing traffic is designed to overwhelm other traffic. With filesharing traffic expected to triple by the year 2012, ISPs such as Rogers will have their work cut out for them to control the traffic.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently gave a demo of its new method for hunting down people suspected of downloading copyrighted material through filesharing services and other such means. This new method specifically targets students who have been using filesharing services to share music they shouldn’t have been.

The infamous Media Sentry, the RIAA’s partner in tackling filesharing, uses similar software to that which Internet users have access to for downloading music and movies. Media Sentry first scans filesharing networks for copyrighted material.

Media Sentry then matches the files with records of known pirated songs. If files are matched then Media Sentry will try and match the user’s IP address with that of college campuses. If a match is found there then the files are carefully scrutinized before a letter is sent to the campus. It’s a remarkably simple process, but it is catching out hundreds of students across America. It’s strange, however, that the method specifically targets college campuses.

There was no mention of what action the RIAA takes against people whose IPs are not on college campuses.

Comcast’s recent attempts at reconciliation with the filesharing crowd have been hindered somewhat this week after three fresh lawsuits were filed against the company. This time, the lawsuits allege that Comcast deliberately misled customers by advertising completely unrestricted access to all of the Internet.

This is the latest in a series of complaints against Comcast, which has been accused of blocking traffic to BitTorrent services. It was confirmed that Comcast had been restricting BitTorrent traffic, but then after continually denying the allegations, Comcast came out and announced that it was partnering up with BitTorrent to ensure that traffic to BitTorrent was not hampered.

The latest complaints are attacking Comcast for not outlining that it would meddle with any traffic and not informing customers of its actions. The customers who have filed the complaints basically think that they paid for a service that wasn’t delivered.

We’ll keep you updated with case as we hear more about it.

Interesting news from Great Britain this week. To our knowledge, this is the first initiative of its kind. Filesharing is a common way of getting free music downloads in Great Britain, but this new plan may deter a few people. Although legal action won’t be taken in this particular case, subscribers to Virgin Media’s broadband service might soon have a letter turn up in their mailbox warning them of the dangers of filesharing and illegal music downloads.

The move comes after Virgin Media joins forces with the British Phonographic Institute (BPI). Although personal information will not be shared, the BPI and Virgin Media will send letters to the addresses of people who have been using filesharing websites to download copyrighted material.

No further action will be taken because the BPI thinks that a lot of the people may have had their accounts used for filesharing without their knowledge. We’re dubious about this line of thought, but it is interesting to see an ISP taking action in this way.

“CLEAN! Tested with the top antivirus engines” notes the front page of the Ares Destiny. Is that so? It seems like Dealio – the so called “shopping toolbar” – didn’t come up in any of those tests. While the inference that Dealio is not technically a virus may be true, it certainly could be categorized as malware. An ad-server by trade, Dealio infects your computer and pops up adverts for various items when you least want them. Getting rid of Dealio is not simple and, all in all, it has caused a lot of trouble to a lot of people.

And this is unfortunate because Ares Destiny is a good, solid piece of software that, without this unfortunate addition, could definitely be recommended.

Getting Ares Destiny is easy: the website is clear and uncluttered and the free download links are prominent. Once you have the file installation is a breeze (even the additional ‘bonus’ bits of software – Dealio included – don’t make any fuss about being installed. No real surprise there, though.

Once Ares Destiny is on your machine you will soon find yourself downloading files of your favorite music. The interface is rather bland but definitely functional and it just works. Which is good.

BUT. This functionality and ease of acquisition cannot redeem the software for infecting computers with an ad-server. Call it what you want, Dealio is bad news.

You can get a clean version of Ares with no adware at www.aresvista.com

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