ISP's profit from piracy?

Cantona's Collars

Found this on a site I use-won't post the link in case it breaks boards rules.It makes interesting reading though and should stir a bit of debate about online piracy and the motives of ISP's.

Paul McGuiness, U2 band manager, believes that illegal file-sharing constitutes a part of a commercial agenda of large telecoms and technology industries, earning high money at the expense of right owners.

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Paul McGuiness, a longtime band manager for U2, argues that Internet service providers are to be blamed for the damage unauthorized file-sharing has done to the record industry. In addition he claims that ISPs have been profiting over the years at the record industry’s expense.

McGuiness says that despite the fact that service providers introduce themselves as neutral bystanders, they have contributed much to the depreciation of music and all the consequences it caused to the music industry. What ISPs did wrong is that they failed to aggressively sanction unauthorized file-sharing users.

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U2 band manager highlights that faster connection speeds, for which service providers normally increase subscription fees, are actually only developed for illegally downloading customers. He refuses to believe that users may want more bandwidth to speed up their e-mails, but increasing the speed of downloading illegal content sounds as a good reason.

He also says that free material is a part of commercial agenda of large technology firms and broadband providers that need more content to create demand for services they provide. To prove this Paul McGuiness points at the figures of the past decade. Profits derived from the Internet access (both fixed line and mobile) quadruplicated within the last 5 years, while record industry revenues fell twice.

His argument sound reasonable for a number of reasons. First of all, considering that the memory storage capacity of portable players like iPod is huge, expecting people to fill it with legally acquired music isn’t reasonable at all, as it may cost up to $16,000. Is McGuiness ready to spend that much money for filling the music player? Guess not. So that’s why people download the content illegally or share music with family and friends. Although the manufacturers, for example Apple, are aware of the situation, they keep increasing the memory storage capacity to charge users more.

Also the ISPs advertise faster connection speeds to charge users more as well, though most people need only surf the Internet and check email.

So he’s probably right when considering that companies won’t stop using illegal file-sharing to profit. Still, they only have to do that because of inability of rights owners to adapt to a new business model.

jor el

This argument is not a new one, ISPs have been profiting from customers that just happen to be pirates for a long time, and there's not a lot that can be done about it.

Just as gun manufacturers make profits from people who buy guns to murder other people, and car manufacturers make profits from people who buy cars to be used as get away vehicles in a robbery, ISPs make profit from people who use the service for illegal means. It's not up to the ISP to police this, any more than it's up to Toyota to catch bank robbers.

I'm sure the subtext behind this is some sort of justification for what the music industry in Ireland are doing with eircom, in order to show themselves in a better light. They know they're unpopular, and they're trying to show how justified they are.

bobbytables

This does not surprise me in the slightest, however I think it's just uneducated sh1tstirring more than anything else and an attempt to make a point targeting the equally uneducated.

Broadband / higher speed Internet access is about creating opportunities for new network based applications, not exclusively doing what we did 10 years ago, only faster. For example, if everyone was still on dial up, Youtube would not exist, along with various other multimedia streaming portals. If the only legal applications of broadband were checking your mail and downloading "traditional" web pages, then 1 or 2megs of bandwidth would have been enough for a satisfactory user experience in most cases. However, we have moved on, and the concept of "surfing" is much broader than it was back when we were all on dial-up.

The guys that engineered the concept/application of P2P data sharing networks/applications, are the very same guys that applied that knowledge in the area of VOIP telephony. Their company is called Skype. Would Skype/Blueface/etc/etc exist if we were on dialup??. In fact I wouldn't have a home or office phone if it wasn't for VOIP, and I wouldn't have VOIP if it wasn't for a decent broadband connection. Yes I don't need 30 or 100megs of bandwidth to support my VOIP enabled conversations, but do you know what, I am also a potential customer of new applications/services that many Engineers out there have already conceived but cannot bring to market because the current speeds available on local loops are not enough to provide a decent quality of service. It's not their fault.

I have many different types of devices in my house that connect to the Internet and do different things, for completely legal and legitimate purposes. I wouldn't have half of these devices if I didn't have a quality broadband service.

I rarely find time to watch TV any more. What I want, when I turn on my TV is to search and bookmark TV shows that I am interested in, or have collaborative filtering engines recommend new shows for me to watch and simply arrange my own TV schedule for that sitting. Then stream that content in Full HD to my TV. I am not asking to copy or illegally download those TV shows, I am asking for an application and quality of service that is still not possible by today's standards, but fully believe we will have it sooner rather than later. Never again will I have to sit in front of my TV and declare that "there is nothing on", which basically means, that across all the channels I have, there is currently nothing being shown that I am interested in. So therefore I must wait until later and re-assess the situation. Digital TV just gives me more channels, which in turn just increases the potential for something interesting (again subjective) to be currently on. It's not the ideal solution. How annoyed are people when then sit down, flick through a 150 or so channels only to find nothing they like on. Yet they are still paying through the nose for the privilege of that increased potential.

The same could be applied to the likes of movie rental stores. I personally have given them a lot of business, and still pop in every now and again to buy things to add to my collection. However, I was parked outside one the other day and was looking at their returns letterbox and though to myself "redundant". It's a facility that allows customers travel to the store location and if the store is not open or the customer doesn't want to walk 20 more ft., still gives the company a way to re-gain possession of a physical disk. Does the customer want to have to go out in the rain to get the movie?. Does Xtravision want to worry about customers not returning disks or not paying late fees?. Stuff is not returned to Xtravision, not because members in general don't want to make returns, but because the process is terribly inconvenient. Higher speed broadband can create opportunities to address these sort of problems and once and for all retire inconvenient processes like these that nobody wants to have to do.

Yes broadband can also be used to illegally download copyrighted material, and a hammer can also be used to kill a person as opposed to drive nails in to wood. The concept of mis-use cases are always going to exist and are not exclusive to computer related activities. I think we are only at the early stages of realizing the potential that higher bandwidth networks provide and I look forward to all the new innovative & legal applications that will take advantage of it.

royston_vasey

"His argument sound reasonable for a number of reasons. First of all, considering that the memory storage capacity of portable players like iPod is huge, expecting people to fill it with legally acquired music isn’t reasonable at all, as it may cost up to $16,000. Is McGuiness ready to spend that much money for filling the music player? Guess not. So that’s why people download the content illegally or share music with family and friends. Although the manufacturers, for example Apple, are aware of the situation, they keep increasing the memory storage capacity to charge users more."

It is here that this article loses any credibility it had; how much did Apple pay U2 and consequently McGuinness?

Cantona's Collars

People in this country are crying out for high speed broadband,especially for business-how many have sat in front of a computer trying to upload and download files etc. and felt like years are passing.Do the likes of Paul McGuinness want us to go back to the days of dial-up.
Media players and storage devices are becoming larger in terms of memory,I have a 1tb storage device-I'd have to own shares in iTunes to fill it,it suits me to store my movies on it as my dvd collection was taking up so much space.
The music industry is constantly coming up with new ways to make money and see everything as a threat.Soon you won't be able to have music on in your car unless you're alone and the windows up in case it constitutes a public performance and your liable for breach of copyright.

watty

ISPs don't profit from "pirates". The reverse is true as the serious "infrigers" can use 100x or more traffic than ordinary users. The Majory of Interent users don't acutally use P2P and infrequently if at all "download infringing" content. Both the Music Industry and the Freetards want you to think everyone does lots of it (for different goals of course)