back to article ISPs' pirate-choking blocking measures ARE effective – music body

High Court orders dished out to telcos in the UK and elsewhere in the European Union demanding that they block access to sites serving pirated content have helped to decrease access to BitTorrent trackers, a music industry body has claimed. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry published its annual report …

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  1. The Axe

    So pirate bay might be down, but are others up? And what's happening to legit music sales. Are they going down because people don't get the chance to try the music before buying or are they going up because people are forced to buy?

    1. g e

      Buy

      As in second hand

    2. WonkoTheSane

      You forgot the third option - sales are going down because current music is complete & utter Cowell (pronounced cr@p).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @WonkoTheSane

        +1

        Pirating is going down as well because there is bugger all worth pirating.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Legit music sales will continue to decline because people don't want to have

      to pay twice for the same crap...

    4. Sparx

      and Im sure I read something from one of the big streaming outfits saying that an 11% drop in piracy could be attributed to the quality and availability of their network....

      1. Dr. Mouse

        TBH I used to pirate a lot of music. This was because I didn't want it myself, but people wanted it at parties. I wasn't going to pay for it (in my youth I would have copied their CDs, or tapes, to get it).

        Now I pay £8/month to google and get it all on there. I hardly notice £8/mo, and I don't have to choose what to buy or download, I can just add it to the playlist when someone asks.

        1. Oninoshiko

          @Dr. Mouse

          This is a good point, and I would like to know how much is actually attributable to legal services that makes access as or more convenient then the illegal services.

          What happened in areas that didn't implement blocks?

          1. Killraven

            Re: @Dr. Mouse

            There have been other studies discussed here in the past year that stated that BitTorrent activity dropped rather at about the same rate as legal download services became available, on a country by country basis.

            So, no real surprises here, just a change of marketing departments.

          2. Robert Helpmann??
            Childcatcher

            Re: @Dr. Mouse

            ...I would like to know how much is actually attributable to legal services...

            Exactly! This is a classic instance of correlation being equated with causality. I would also like to see piracy stats from a third party rather than from a group that has a vested interest in inflating reports of abuse.

  2. g e

    So it's still for everyone else to solve

    Other than the entertainment co's

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    business as usual

    the IFPI provide justification for their existence (give us more money), by issuing farts, every now and then. Everybody knows how effective these are, and the pirates carry on as before. Everybody (?) happy.

  4. Peter Simpson 1
    Pirate

    How about VPN use, is that down?

    I've heard that some significant portion of worldwide VPN traffic is bittorrent.

    1. Danny 14

      Re: How about VPN use, is that down?

      or newsgroups. Old school still going strong.

      1. Doogs

        Re: How about VPN use, is that down?

        Talking about old school, have you seen the capacity of USB sticks recently?

  5. Eguro

    Or it could be the growing prevalence of alternative - legal - online ways to get to music?

    Also:

    "A search for the name of any leading artist followed by the term 'mp3' in the leading search engines still returns a vast proportion of illegal links on the first page of results."

    So that's how it's done, I never really knew how to find the newest music I wanted for free - thanks IFPI

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Quite Right !!

      I hung up my (music) Peg leg and Eye patch, when i found out about Spotify.

      Used it free for 2 weeks, have been a subscriber ever since !

      Now just need the same for film, for me to retire fully from marine based intorwebz facilities

      *anon for obvious reasons

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Spotify

        Streaming providers are no use to me - when I'm listening to tunes its generally in an offline way. For starters I work in one of the countless companies whose corporate firewall blocks such services, and I'm not going to chew up my mobile data allowance by listening to tunes all day to work around that. Other than that I'll out and about with my music player device, without a reliable network connection.

        Secondly, stream services charge you whether you listen to tunes or not. As I only tend to have time to listen to tunes on the odd occasion, I don't like the model which makes me pay for something I'm not using. At least with my CD collection, I've paid only once up front.

        I would buy a whole lot more CDs, if they weren't STILL pricing at £20-£30 a piece even for old school stuff such as I listen to.

        Thats all about music, but for movies its a whole different story. We used to watch Sky box office a lot, which is form of streaming provider - but we discovered Netflix shortly after buying a smart TV. No wonder blockbuster went ... well ... bust. The only thing I would say about Netflix is that their content selection doesn't seem to cover any of the older more classic movies. No sign of 'Mad Max', 'Leon', 'Terminator', etc. Have heard that some of these are available on Amazon streaming, which frustratingly doesn't have an app for our Samsung smart TV!!

        On that note by the way, it was a sad experience in early Feb to visit the Oxford St HMV store - only to find they were running a closing down sale ...

        1. Fuzz

          Re: Spotify

          "I would buy a whole lot more CDs, if they weren't STILL pricing at £20-£30 a piece even for old school stuff such as I listen to."

          Where are you buying your CDs? I can't remember the last time I paid more than £8 for an album and even that is the price you pay on day of release.

        2. Lionel Baden

          Re: Spotify

          @AC

          I fully understand what you mean I live in 2G coverage !!!

          Spotify has an offline mode where you only have to login 1 a month, if you really want to be stingy about data.

          you can also make your playlists available offline and it will download them to whatever device your using.

          I agree its not suited to everybody the pricing package

        3. new666uk

          Re: Spotify

          Sadly you've identified the problem right there - it's easier to get high quality rips illegally than legally especially when it comes to movies or TV shows.

          As producers and marketeers create arbitary 'market borders' with slightly different content or release dates the more I benefit from simply downloading a copy. No DRM, no mandatory advertising/warning (as on streaming) and no issues with content providers (netflix / Samsung etc) not having signed contracts to provide me with the content I want.

          I would happily donate a £ value to the artist / producer / developer directly via a PayPal type solution provided it bypasses all the distribution and physical production people who have not contributed to the product I obtained.

  6. cyclical

    As far as I can tell, licensing music (and movies) to streaming outfits and actually making the content easy to stream is going to make far more of an impact than making Google stop indexing the content. I know people who have access to invite-only piracy sites who don't bother torrenting content any more because it's simpler to just type it into spotify or watch something on netflix. Problem is, they need to make it easier. For instance if I want to watch 'Game of Thrones' on my tablet I can't do it, because the Sky Go won't install on rooted devices (presumably for anti-piracy reasons), and HBO don't license it to anyone else. Because of anti-piracy measures the only way I could watch it on the train to work would be to pirate it, despite having paid for the content via a Sky subscription.

    1. Danny 14

      The same with UV stuff too. There are too many hoops to jump through for already paid content. Again, it is easier to search for a particular encoding and download then use the offered options.

      I had to move my XBMC from linux to windows (eurgh) so that it could "tab out" for sky and netflix. If they had a linux XBMC plugin then i'd be off windows again in a shot.

      1. Michael Habel

        I had to move my XBMC from linux to windows (eurgh) so that it could "tab out" for sky and netflix. If they had a linux XBMC plugin then i'd be off windows again in a shot.

        I gather that this is cause Netflix use Silverlight to stream their Content instead of Flash or HTML5 which may well happen someday... Perhaps then.. Till then there's Navi X... But its sadly KO'ed again. Hopefully it'll be back up again soon...

        1. RAMChYLD

          "I gather that this is cause Netflix use Silverlight to stream their Content "

          So Moonlight and Mono doesn't cut it then? Shame.

        2. KroSha

          There's a checkbox in the Account Playback setting to prefer Silverlight or HTML5, where available. You can only access the setting over the website, not from an app, and it depends how they originally encoded the show.

  7. Ben Rose
    Megaphone

    Streaming

    "It said that file-sharing had dropped by 11 per cent in the countries where such measures were imposed on ISPs"

    Of course this has nothing at all to do with it being even more convenient to use services like Spotify and Netflix?

    Pirating is not down at all due to enforcement measures, it's down purely as it became more convenient for people to listen legally.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Streaming

      Yeah, but lobbying and legally bludgeoning people into doing their job for them costs the rights-holders money so they *have* to claim some sort of success to report to the shareholders. Personally, I trust their figures about as far as I can spit a hedgehog.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    High Court orders dished out to telcos in the UK and elsewhere in the European Union demanding that they block access to sites serving pirated content have helped to decrease access to BitTorrent trackers, a music industry body has claimed.

    Was there a disclaimer on the bottom of the page?

    "The pirates who brought themselves a VPN plan, when this business interest only legal censorship was enacted, might disagree with the measurement methodology used to produce this statement."

    1. NogginTheNog
      WTF?

      Censorship?

      "The pirates who brought themselves a VPN plan, when this business interest only legal censorship was enacted"

      I don't particularly agree with a lot of the actions of the music corporations, but how is trying to stop people illegally access your copyrighted product without paying for it censorship?

      Also I've no time for muppets who'll shell out for VPNs but won't put their hands in their pockets to buy the stuff they'll download through them!

      Just because something might not be available exactly WHERE you want it for the PRICE you want it, doesn't mean you have the right to just help yourself for free (otherwise the Porsche and Ferrari dealerships might be in for some trouble!).

      I await all the freetard downvotes...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Censorship?

        Posting anonymously for the first time:

        I download torrents through a VPN. I don't think that warrants labelling me a freetard.

        Whether it's okay to download depends, I think, on whether I would have paid money for the download or for a physical CD/DVD. My music downloads tend to be of albums referred to in what I've read about other musicians; if A is similar to B or C is influenced by D or E plays something on an album by F then I often want to have a listen to B or D or F. There's no way that I'd spend money just to satisfy that curiosity. More often than not the download is wiped before I've listened to more than a little of it. If I do keep it there's no loss to the artiste since I wouldn't have bought it anyway.

        Where I would pay, I do pay. Thus I've downloaded a number of guitar courses, decided that I'm going to make use of some of them and then downloaded those for payment from their creators' sites.

        I know I could download a torrent of an excellent 25-disc course - because I've done it. I'd earlier paid for the course on disc. I, perhaps illegally (uncertain in the country I'm writing from), downloaded the course because I'd managed to lose one of those discs and downloading and burning was the only way I could replace it without buying the whole course a second time.

        I think my downloading actions are ethical and do no damage to the holders of IP rights. Nor does my use of VPNs to give me access to television programmes in countries normally blocked to me, such as the UK, Spain, France and the US.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Censorship?

        I don't particularly agree with a lot of the actions of the music corporations, but how is trying to stop people illegally access your copyrighted product without paying for it censorship?

        It's no good asking me, I don't torrent or usenet anything, I've never felt the need to.

        I do however consider blocking content (of any description) censorship. I'm not against censorship, I firmly believe some content must be censored (child pornography for example, although I'm much more in favour of just executing those who produce it and thus reducing the availability of it).

        I'm not in favour of censoring anything to suit a 'business interest'. If the people with the business interest need the law to censor content in order to protect their business model, then their business model is broken, and they should direct their resources to fixing it.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Censorship?

        I pay for all my content, but to access the content I pay for on the devices I want in the manner I want requires downloading the content in an open format.

        None of the "players" in this market offer that so whilst I do pay for all my content - full Sky sub, TV License, Spotify premium sub - I am required to use newsgroups in order to access that content.

        Actually, the BBC do, almost all content from them I can use get_iplayer on, and the broadcast content is easily captured. I'd like to say the same for ITV, Channel 4, 5, but most of them put their HD channels only on the encrypted Sky platform and not on Freesat.

        Spotify is getting better, but as an archivist/collector their practice of constantly removing or replacing albums means that my carefully selected playlists end up with tracks from compilation CDs instead of the original album, which makes me very angry.

        Yes, I know I'm weird.

      4. grammarpolice

        Re: Censorship?

        "I don't particularly agree with a lot of the actions of the music corporations, but how is trying to stop people illegally access your copyrighted product without paying for it censorship?"

        Definition of censorship: The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated.

        That's how.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why pay money for a VPN? I've been a'pirating direct for years and never got any trouble for it.

      Mind you, I buy music rather than download it, ideally direct from the artist if at all possible.

  9. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Knock your head on the wall

    Every day it is sunny, then claim your headbanging is what's making the Sun shine...

  10. GarethB

    Dropped 11% in countries with blocking

    Any mention of how much it dropped in other countries or what the trend was in total?

    It sounds to me like they are just manipulating the stats to make it look like what they are doing is having an effect.

    In reality people who's ISP blocks access will just use something like TOR which will make them appear to come from a different country most likely anyway. So it will make it look like people accessing it within the UK are fewer but greater in other countries.

    1. Velv
      Pirate

      Re: Dropped 11% in countries with blocking

      Or alternatively, how much has it gone UP in countries without the blocking.

      All those VPNs need to terminate somewhere ...

    2. Tom 35

      Re: Dropped 11% in countries with blocking

      Of course they manipulated the stats, or just pulled numbers out of their arse. That's what they always do.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dropped 11% in countries with blocking

      Any mention of how much it dropped in other countries or what the trend was in total?

      Yes, in the linked PDF it says that BT usage went up 15% in EU countries without blocking. No attempt to consider if any of that was displaced VPN traffic.

      My BT usage has definitely dropped a lot over the last year, but only because I discovered Primewire. It'll be straight back up again if that goes away...

  11. Mr Anonymous

    Why can't I get all media from one streaming source

    They won't out compete BitTorrent until you can legally stream all media content from one provider, having muptiple streaming accounts to access media is just not good enough when competing with free.

  12. Rabbit80

    Access to bittorrent trackers has decreased..

    Maybe because most people use trackerless torrents / DHT these days?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Access to bittorrent trackers has decreased..

      That doesn't seem to stop the scanning companies -- guess how I know :-)

      // using a VPN now

  13. Davie Dee

    This is very curious given that there isn't a single website (that's still operational) that cant be accessed through one means or another and this has been widely known for a while, hell even the BBC practically ran a "how-to" guide on its click show a while back.

    I also wonder where they get their figures from? is this ISP traffic, website traffic counters? the downloaded counter on the torrents that they shouldn't be looking at (or is it ok for them to use the websites we are now forbidden to look at?) just wondering

    I predict a 20% reduction in downloads when new movies are stream able and a further 60% decline when they make films worth watching (and paying for!) whos up for a wager?

    1. Danny 14

      data was from GCHQ. They download it from your router each morning.

  14. Amorous Cowherder
    Facepalm

    Effective?!

    Oh sure they are, so all we do now is simply append the word "proxy" to any dodgy sites we might still need to look at, all in the name of educational research you understand!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A non-representative sample of one.

    Me, that is :-

    It is so ridiculously easy to buy the music I want that I really just cannot be bothered stealing it - in the sense of my obtaining it for free illegally, regardless of whether or not you believe copyright is theft.

    I've also matured enough to realise that my desire does not give me an entitlement to someone else's work.

    1. DiViDeD

      Re: A non-representative sample of one.

      Easy to buy the music you want, yes. But in a lossless format? Or in a version that hasn't had the dynamic range squeezed to within an inch of it's life? Until record companies can offer something that hasn't been compressed down to telephone call quality and remastered by a deaf engineer, then it's Ahoy Maties for me!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quality

    I just got a new (old) car with no AUX input, so gone back to CD's, I'd forgotten how much better they sound. mp3 were fine for days of small storage capacity, but maybe time to re-acquire everything in some lossless format, or just stick with CD's, still got no AUX input after all.

    1. No, I will not fix your computer

      Re: Quality

      Don't blame me for the downvote but, I suspect whoever downvoted you should have gone on to say there's a couple of important points you seem to be missing;

      #1 mp3 comes in many levels of quality, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 320kbps CBR and a CD, most people would be able to tell the difference between 128kbps and a CD, depending on you (and the type of song) you can get away with as much (or as little) compression as you like (and 256kbps VBR is a good compromise between size and quality).

      #1.5 "mp3" often is used to refer to "compressed music" but AAC 256kbit VBR is probably as good as 320kbps mp3 (at least I can't tell the difference).

      #2 A car is a really bad environment for audiophiles, not only will the speakers be positioned less than optimally for your ears, there's odd shapes/sound reflections, engine noises etc., you might have isolators to stop the electrics for interfering (you might not), and if the CD player is old, then I guess the speakers are too?

      I've played 96kbps vbr from an iPod mini (using a wireless adapter) in a car and it's perfectly acceptable, I've also built and installed a touchscreen PC playing FLAC encoded CD tracks, one thing for sure is that a shit song is a shit song, no matter the quality, and a great song (like my old Pet Sounds mono recording) is a great song even with fuzz and crackles.

  17. Anon5000

    Lies, damn lies and statistics

    The Pirate Bay is no longer blocked in Holland after a court found that blocking the site made no difference to piracy levels. If you pull the IFPI stats apart and find how they came about their results there will likely be many holes to their logic. The IFPI has to justify it's existence and keep donations coming in just like many of the other media lobby organisations.

    Apply to the statistics the increasing availability of cheap legal alternatives, increased newsgroup signups, increased use of VPN's as well as flash based streaming sites and the numbers will likely show that the IFPI has their figures wrong as well as the amount they attribute to website blocking.

    Although I have subscriptions for TV and Amazon Prime streaming, I pirate the same content I legally have access too. Artificial blocking of the services on rooted android devices as well as the lack of Linux support due to Silverlight DRM means it's too fiddly to use. Pipelight is an option but Sky only works with one version while Amazon another. Why go through all the hassle every time when you can click a few options in Sickbeard/Couchpotato and then fire up XBMC to watch the content in any room at a better quality than the alternatives.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I used one of the blocked download sites ...

    ... to obtain content that doesn't seem to be available anywhere else - support material for hardware I own, from a company that no longer exists. I wonder how much similar legitimate content is being made unavailable by the blocks, and how much this will cost UK users.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WhoTF is this new IFPI?

    Wasnt the RIAA, MPAA BPi enough?

    Now theres another cowboy outfit MONITORING our traffic for their cocaine and drug fuelled lifestyles.

    Why pay them?

    Oh, forgot to mention, based on this research by them , Peter Mandelson has been proposed for a knighthood By her Majesty on her yacht in the Med. with the ususal wining and dining.

  20. Scuby

    Buying, downloading.

    I used to buy The Triple Play Media, BluRay, DVD and an iTunes Digital Copy. Brilliant!

    Then some studios refused to provide iTunes copies in favour of UltraViolet, requiring that I sign up to Flixster and UV, inconvenient because I now have to manage 2 seperate Digital Libraries.

    Then they stopped releasing Triple Play Media and provide Blu Ray with a UV Digital Copy, no big deal, just disappointing

    Now they've starting releasing BluRays with no Digital Copies.

    And they wonder why people download!!!

    I download copies of the Titles I buy, with the Audio encoding so I can play them through XBMC in whichever room I'm in.

    I want my media through 1 provider, in 1 Library, downloadable\streamable with full audio encoding (7.1 or 5.1) and released the same time as the US. (TV Shows as soon as the episode has aired)

    1. Tom 35

      "Digital Copy" = crap

      Half the time the Digital Copy has expired by the time I buy the DVD/Blu-Ray.

      The first one I tried was WM crap that I had to email them three times to get a working code, then the Quality looked like a VCD.

      UltraViolet? What a joke. Just give me an MP4 file I can play on anything I want. I'll buy it on disc or find something to watch on Netflix (Netflix works on my computer, phone, tablet (even makes my Surface some what useful) BluRay player...) before I'll go near that UV pile of crap again.

  21. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Perhaps...

    A good few piraters have actually downloaded everything they need? As other posters have said, most modern stuff is total shite besides, most of the bands I listen to are pushing up the daisies or well past pension age so their music output is limited. For those that put out new stuff, CD's from Amazon fit the bill nicely.

    Record companies are hardly interested in putting out a complete Dave Brubeck back catalogue now are they? A few Boy bands a year plus the odd one hit wonder will keep the execs in white powder a lot longer.

  22. batfastad
    Pirate

    Never

    I'm still a while away from entering old-fart territory but I don't listen to modern mainsteam music. Even if I did, I would never buy it at new price from an actual shoppe.

    For over 10 years now I've been buying (and selling) CDs/DVDs almost exclusively from 2nd hand sellers on ebay, discogs, Amazon marketplace. If I remember correctly, buying 2nd hand is piracy in the eyes of UK law just as much as downloading. And until the City of London Police* start seizing ebay/amazon etc domains then their persuit of download sites comes across to me as farcical.

    The stuff I collect is more niche (70s/80s soul, rare groove, disco etc). Or modern electronic from specialist online download sites (traxsource.com or direct from artist/label).

    * It appears that the City of London Police are the UK's copyright enforcement agency these days. I can only assume their charter must have been officially amended at some golf club somewhere. Either that or they've solved all their other crimes, all those financial irregularities we keep hearing about at city firms.

  23. Kevin 6

    Maybe

    Just maybe its down 11% cause 11% of the people's taste evolved to where they don't see the point to downloading the crap music that is put out today.

    Honestly its been ages since I bothered with downloading any music, and even then I never touched a torrent as the same reason why I didn't touch CD's why should I get 1 tracks of complete and utter crap for the one song I wanted. Was always so much easier to type in the song title .mp3 and get the one song ;)

  24. chivo243 Silver badge

    Leave it to the Reg..

    posted here a while back, blocking doesn't work...

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/29/dutch_court_pirate_bay_ban_lifted/

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BitTorrent <> Illegal service

    despite what IFPI would have the world believe, not even this work of heroic fantasy (which suggests/implies that "piracy" is "everyone else's problem, our out-dated business model needs protection from it") makes a credible link between BitTorrent as a system and "piracy" as an activity. If we are to believe the headlines from this report, Royal Mail is pure evil and must be destroyed, as it allows for the distribution of copies of content (no matter how legal) without IFPI's explicit consent for each and every source and destination.

  26. Miek
    Linux

    I can download as much as I like on my broadband connection, P2P is not throttled, but, there just isn't anything available to download that I don't already have or want. Sounds more like an 11% drop in material worth pirating rather than an 11% drop in piracy.

    BTW, I purchased a considerable amount of music that I enjoy listening to regularly via Amazon on CD which in some cases also gives you access to MP3 cloud hosted versions of the CDs you buy.

    Then some git nicked my car stereo ... so, fuck listening to music.

  27. JaitcH
    FAIL

    If media companies remunerated artists ...

    equitably, I might have some sympathy. Performance money theft is rife in the business.

    These media companies only seek to maintain their excessive income, so I have no sympathy with them or qualms in 24/7 downloading via commercial fibre optics.

    That's ignoring the fact few originals are available here.

    Given the rampant lieing as to 'successes' by the software industries, I doubt these figures are accurate, especially since the new encrypted downloading became available.

  28. Joe Harrison

    doesn't mean you should have bought it

    The majority of music I like is a bit niche, so niche in fact that you cannot buy it. It is not on sale anywhere. Literally the only place you can get it is some obscure .br website to which the artiste uploaded it or if you are lucky someone re-torrented it.

  29. Chad H.

    ISPs' pirate-choking blocking measures ARE effective – music body

    Meanwhile in Turkey...

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Being more selective helps as well

    Well, maybe people have become more selective as well. I've become rather selective in my downloading habits and check a few episodes before really following a series, since you need to have the time to actually watch what you've downloaded. Initially, lots of people, especially when their bandwidth has increased, simply download just about anything they can, because they can, but after some time people become more rational (or so you hope).

    @Joe Harrison

    I'm really curious as to your niche music. I'm more into electronic music, and there's hardly a reason not to buy records or digital downloads. In the UK you have, for instance, Bleep (download site related to Warp records), Boom Cat, in the Netherlands we have Clone Digital (I tend to be a regular customer for their physical products - marketing alert) and for DJs there's a bunch of other sites as well. I've got a number of records that have download codes attached as well, and something like Bandcamp, which is a more or less direct platform to get some releases for a reasonable price.

    Note that most of the sites I mentioned, DON'T use DRM compared to things like iTunes. So there goes another reason for downloads. And they're way closer to the actual artists.

    1. montyburns56

      Re: Being more selective helps as well

      I can't think of any music download site that does use DRM these days, even iTunes stopped using it over five years ago.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Japan has the correct approach

    Mandatory minimum two years prison time and high fines for piracy and facilitation of piracy.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No doubt the addition of 20% VAT on all downloads (music, films, books) from next January will help.

  33. Graham Marsden
    Holmes

    Music Industry declares...

    ... that laws passed to protect the Music Industry are a good start, so we need more of them.

    See icon for details.

  34. Tom 13

    Re: It said that file-sharing had dropped by 11 per cent

    No, at best the people you can see file sharing has dropped 11%. You have no idea how much file-sharing is taking place these days.

  35. Stretch

    Sigh

    One day it will be correctly recognised that 1s and 0s have no intrinsic values, and just coz you do something doesn't mean you deserve to get paid.

    Whack. A. Mole. FTW.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sigh

      Spoken like someone who's never created anything of any value in their life.

  36. sisk

    Somehow I don't think the decline of BitTorrent usage correlates to a decline in piracy of music. I find it far more likely that the pirates have moved on to methods that aren't so heavily in the spotlight.

  37. Sanctimonious Prick
    Facepalm

    Addicted To Downloading

    Just can't stop it. Been like that since the old BBS days.

    My downloading has gone up considerably in the past 12 months. I was downloading 20GB per month due to a download cap that was in place at the time. Since the cap has been removed, I'm now using more than ten times that old cap per month.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    11% seems a reasonable figure. if you got 100 000 people together 11% of them wouldn't know enough beyond typing the one name of the site they use (ie pirate bay) or using a bookmark

    The remainder have simply used $search_engine and discovered alternatives or had google suggest a top site/seach suggestion of "pirate proxy".

    The percentage of actual,regular home users using VPN will be small, so perhaps a percentage point in that 11%

  39. John Savard

    Google's Fault?

    Aren't American companies by law required to take action in response to all claims of infringing material? Imposing a limit on the number of claims submitted by a rightsholder, unless specifically authorized by the law, would be a violation which would rob Google of its Safe Harbor protections.

    Of course, if the law allows such limits, because of the cost burden involved, the rights groups shouldn't blame Google for making use of them, but should blame Congress.

  40. Corinne

    They talk about the amount that torrent downloading has dropped, but do they state anywhere that there has been any increase at all in legal purchase of downloads? Because the whole argument for blocking all the torrents (despite them having perfectly legal uses) was that people were downloading music illegally instead of buying it.

  41. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    So, the "music" industry wants to go after Google now ?

    I wish them good luck there. I really do.

    And I'm going to buy a truckload of popcorn to watch the proceedings. It's not every day you get to see a cage fight between a white-collar junkie and a gorilla on steroids. The IFPI won't even know what hit it.

  42. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Devil

    Just end IP already.

    IP is not necessary, business did just fine before it, and will do fine when it is gone.

    IP is really just corruption to set up artificial government backed monopolies like guilds, to exclude competition; not to protect innovation, but to stifle it!

    The absolute worst hypocrites of all are in Hollywood, who used the lack of Copyright protection there to shamelessly plagiarise others work, but then had copyright brought in even stronger, so that they could not be competed with while casting spells with their Druidic Holly Wood wands; the music corporations are doing much the same corruption, and hear better music from unsigned artists and independent artists, so I have no sympathy or even pity for these parasites.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    blocking isn't that effective, everyone i know is either using proxies to access pirate bay or the Tor based pirate browser

  44. Rick Giles
    Linux

    Can we...

    get them to block ads and click trackers too?

    Why am I paying for a capped bandwidth that ads and click trackers can use? Granted, it may be a small amount, but still, I'm paying for it.

  45. Proffesor Madhead

    Its a Conspiracy! :0

    The isps are throttling due to bandwidth limitations.. im not sure if this practice will exist when the fibre optics are down.

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