Comments on: Legalizing p2p scheme: legally borrow music from the internets

By: vamsi krishna

vamsi krishna — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:37:30 +0000

I don’t think the government or anybody can stop online piracy, as there is a new way always that can be used for piracy.
And i also agree that “pirates [are the] biggest music buyers”

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:25:13 +0000

The music industry or even the government has to get a hold on this issue. The licensing idea might be the best idea i’ve heard so far. On one hand artists deserve to get compensated for their music, but on the other there has to be a way for the people at large to legally share music with one another. A small licensing fee would accomplish that.

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:54:30 +0000

Indeed, DRM is not enforceable. I tried WireTap and it is pretty amazing. Better yet, according to the Canadian Copyright Act, it is not a copyright infringement to create a copy of a sound recording, as long as it’s for private use and not for sale/rent/distribution. (Copyright Act C-42 Part 8, paragraph 80)

There might be some blanket “breaking of digital security system” legality for removing DRM out of a file, but to my interpretation recording a playing stream leaves the DRM intact.

By: Bigbear

Bigbear — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:31:05 +0000

People probably just use a free streaming media recorder

By: Anon

Anon — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:34:10 +0000

of course you wouldnt keep anything (however some sites let you have 10 or so permanent downloads)

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:05:22 +0000

I guess it’s kind of similar, in a way that the subscription site chooses which licenses to add to its collection, on your behalf.

I’m not quite sure how such subscription sites work; my biggest concern would be taking the media for a longer period of time, such as for going offline and remote devices. Also, when you cancel your subscription, you are not left with anything to keep.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:54:03 +0000

That’s less an exploit and more the point of the setup; one can listen to whatever they want, as long as nobody else does. Though you are right, there doesn’t need to be too many licenses out there, to sustain a reasonable number of users.

The underlying ideas were that the record industry didn’t seem to have a problem with anyone sharing their purchased CDs. Legally, this is the same (you and all your friends buy 1 unique CD and then trade with each other), but the technology eliminates a lot of waste. Waste of time to walk to the store/library. Waste of license potential, when the song isn’t played. That’s the only thing that has changed — exchange has became faster and more efficient.

If the record industry is basing their business model on a wasteful behaviour, and spends its efforts on fighting improvements in efficiency, over fixing their business; then it’s no wonder that the industry is in trouble.

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:07:52 +0000

Eh, sounds like a good idea. However, I don’t see why we can’t just join those 15$ a month sites that allow us to listen to all the music we want. I mean, that should satisfy most of our needs and if enough people signed up for them, their catalogs would be really big.

By: Anthony Aziz

Anthony Aziz — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:03:38 +0000

Interesting, Tony. Though, I can see where this can be exploited. Even if the restrictions were impossible to hack, think what could be set up with instantaneous transfering. One large playlist could service almost as many people as there are songs, as long as everyone is listening to a different song. Combine a few very large, overlapping playlists, and a person would be able to choose “avaiable” songs.

Now imagine that on a P2P scale. The client determines everyone with that has that particular song, and requests the licence from them. Once the song is done, the licence is sent back (or perhaps expires after 2x the songs length, and the original licence is reactivated after that same time).

Still legal according to your rules, but it doesn’t really solve the problem of people not paying for a song, and I don’t think the people who actually care about that would go for this. Though I do like the idea. I can just find any song – and if I don’t have it, download it automatically, and then play it.