The government also promised to protect all our personal details with the "Data Protection Act".......

Where are your (and my) details now.  ?

The "government" may "want" to do something, but the internet is much bigger than they think, so they can "want" as much as they like..... the "practical side of it " is where the real "government money has to be spent" if the "government want to police it" ...... as I have just mentioned..... start counting............

view this site.........


http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/

Do you know how most illegal downloads are carried out? Most are by P2P so after you have found one user illegally downloading copyrighted material just need to monitor the upstream data to find others that are receiving this material and pass the IP address on to the ISP's that own them. Then these ISP can monitor these users for a time to gain more IP addresses etc, etc.

I didn`t realise it was that easy......Hey, just had an idea, why don`t we set up a company, and get the government to pay us for every illegal downloader we find?
 

I reckon we could really "clean up" and make millions more than google & yahoo, oh, and good old bill gates too....

Probably will happen like the sources offering lists of IP addresses to stop spam.

I did try to tell you it wouldn't be that hard... You were too obsessed with being right..

O.K. Then .......... let`s do it .....

Moderators Note

Back on topic guys and gals.  This is an emotive subject, but lets keep to the subject at hand and keep away from personal attacks.

B.

If you want a detailed answer to that, you're on the wrong forum. But by way of illustration, I recently worked with a band who were contributing a track, along with a lot of other bands, to a charity CD. Bands, studios, engineers etc. all gave their time free (so you might guess that no-one was wanting to spend more time than necessary on the project!)

I worked on the first session - the track lasted about 5 minutes, and the drummer got it right on the third take. (Which on its own is pretty amazing, since even seasoned session musicians make mistakes, and often need multiple takes which are pieced together to get one good one). 15 minutes then to get the drums down? Yes - but only after we had spent about an hour and a half moving mics, retuning drums, trying different damping methods on the kick drum etc. to get the drum sound the band wanted on the track. (And that's pretty quick). And before we could even start to do the drum takes, we needed to record a guide track - the whole song with a rough mix of keyboards, drum machine, and vocals which the drummer then used to play along to. So from unloading the band's gear in the studio to getting the good take of the drums used up the entire morning. In the afternoon we added the bass track - it was quite a complex track, and the guy never got it completly right once, so we had to make sure each section of the track was available on at least one take. We recorded a few different versions of it so that we had choices at mixdown time. That was it - first day gone!

Someone else took on the second session, but I know from talking to him that day two was similar - multiple versions of two guitar tracks, keyboards, piano - all recorded individually, and all with multiple retakes. Working late into the night they got the vocals put down.

Day three, the band cleared, and left it to the mixdown engineer who spent a full day listening to all the different takes, piecing together the best ones, and mixing the whole song together. After he had completed his mixdown, it went to someone else for mastering, which is yet another time consuming process.
Having worked on plenty of commercial recordings, I can tell you that this was a pretty quick turnaround time, and a lot less than is spent on many tracks.

Yes, and plenty of them are very good - but without the backing of a label, most of them will never have any commercial success - that's starting to change, but it's a gradual process. And for every good band out there, there are an awful lot of rubbish bands. Even among the good ones, you often find that they can "pull it off" onstage, but are hopeless in a studio.

Basically yes! You've got a choice if you want to make it in the music industry - either you try to get picked up by a label (And put up with the fact that until you become a household name, they will make more money out of you than you get yourself!), or you go it alone. Go it alone is becoming easier, but it's still a hard slog, and quite often depends on getting a lucky break. Many brilliant musicians don't have the business skills and experience to promote themselves, even if they had the technically ability to put together a good recording on their own. (Good recording gear is now relatively cheap - but you still need to know what you're doing with it to produce a winning track!)

shutter - can I join your company? First preference is for Getaway Car Driver, but if that position is gone, I'm really good with a tea trolley!   

I'm not convinced that deterants don't work - I really do slow down to 30mph now where my mate got 3 points! 
And I don't take drugs for athletics anymore (actually I find that the picture on my TV is just as good without them!)

You know I got flashed by a Gatso speed camera in my first week of driving after passing my test. I was only doing 28MPH in a 30 zone but it scared the pants off me. It was enough to teach me very early on that speed limits are to be respected.

Those were the worst 14 days of my life waiting to see if they were gonna try to bust me for a crime i didn't commit lol

Lucky you weren't done for indecent exposure then! 

But the question remains, how do you know that they don't have the right to download and use that material.

Bono could sit at home and download a U2 album via P2P from a source which doesn't take care of sorting out copyright issues.

But its not illegal for him to use the track.

The problem is not so much people downloading stuff, its people making stuff available without ensuring they comply with the copyright restrictions.

Erm, doesn't that statement show that this specific form of deterrant doesn't really work?

If it were working, you wouldn't need to slow down, as you'd already be complying with the limit.

It shows that whatever deterrant is used, people will find ways to anaesthatise themselves from the punishment.

I've said before that I see it as the start [or acceleration] of an expensive arms race. One in which the losers will be the honest consumers who buy our music, and those who deign to have an internet connection at all.

ISPs will have to invest heavily, when they already compete in a crowded marketplace with very tight margins, and the only place costs like this can go are downstream or upstream.

The downstream portions will have to be payed for by us directly, whilst I suspect the majority of consumers have never done anything wrong.
Any costs passed upstream to the record industry, will be an additional cost burden to pass on to *their* honest consumers.

So, to re-iterate the winners and losers;

We all lose, because our internet connection charges increase.

The smaller ISPs lose that can't afford to dump a huge slug of cash into the project at the outset, and have to rely on raising the capital so they can spend it (means we are likely left with the tier1 ISPs such as BT, CPW, SKY and Virgin - We may be lucky if the regulators allow BT to invest capital in setting up the kit/software/processes/staff at our ISP)

One could argue that we lose again because of the reduced choice and loss of niche providers for ADSL in this country

The musicians that the politicians misguidedly think they are protecting/helping lose because of the increased cost burden applied to purchasers of their music.

Meanwhile, the incentive for distributing copyrighted material grows ever stronger.

Winners:

The beaurocrats on the gravy train who get paid for administering and regulating this misguided proposal.


Don't get me wrong, I want piracy to stop as much as the next person. I want the record companies to get paid for every copy of the song that is produced and distributed - I (admittedly naively) believe that this is the only way that everybody can win.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the proposed measures for tackling the problem.

I was joking! The point is, we all probably know people who have got points for speeding, and as a result are a lot more careful about ensuring we stick to the speed limit.
Another example is the introduction of seat-belt fines. How many people do you know who have been fined? Probably very few, yet the statistics show that without a doubt, the introduction of penalties had a huge impact on the number of people who wear their seat belts. Most laws are deterrants - there are few if any where the authorities expect to catch everyone who breaks the rules. Does that mean that because some people get away with it, we should do away with all laws? Of course not. So just because we can't hope to catch all pirates doesn't mean we shouldn't try and catch some, and if enough are caught and this becomes publicly known, it will, just as with most other laws, have a deterrant effect.

That's not to say that making ISP's the people to do it is necessarily right - I'm just trying to establish the principle - breach of copyright is piracy, efforts should be made to prevent it, those caught should be penalised, and this will act as a deterrant to others. No way will we ever stamp it out completly, but that doesn't mean we should just say that piracy is acceptable.

ISP's may not be responsible for piracy, but they could contribute to the fight against it. Some of the tools already at their disposal for monitoring and regulating traffic will show up trends likely to indicate heavy P2P usage. I don't think the IPS's themselves should have to investigate the end users - but I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of them handing over data to a properly regulated investigatory system for in depth analyses and follow up investigations.

But Bono source of the download may not be legal

Is not what being asked for an enforcement of PN (any presumely other ISP's) T&C's

The source is irrelevant as alot of legal software is downloaded via bittorrent to save on server bandwidth costs. The issue is whether or not Bono would have the right to download copyrighted material. In that case yes he would. But to choose someone elses song and download it no he wouldn't

People really need to understand that its not the downloading of stuff that is the issue - its the fact that folks aren't getting the copyright holders permission to do so. (And the associated transfer of wealth therefore doesn't occur)