Iron Maiden Tracks Down Pirates…. And Gives Them Concerts | TorrentFreak

TorrentFreak  reports a variation on the frequently-heard theme that either illegal downloading actually enhances sales of legit music, or it doesn't. Unfortunately, it is now recognised as inaccurate: it seems that it's more in the nature of speculation about what Iron Maiden (or anyone else) could do with the data that they can get hold of about downloading, and Iron Maiden were merely used as an example - but chosen for the very good reason that they have a record of going where the fans are, even if those fans are downloading illegal material. The CiteWorld article tells us that the band has played some very profitable gigs in South America.

It's hardly surprising that the people who download illegal stuff are often supplementing spending on legitimate stuff, including concert tickets - it's not that people buy the illegal stuff and trade up to the real thing, in the way that I used to tape friends' LPs (and allow them to tape mine) before buying a copy of the record if I liked it (and wanted to hear it properly). It's also not far removed from buying bootlegs when you've already got all the albums the record company sees fit to release, and it's also not far removed from allowing fans to tape gigs, as the Grateful Dead always did and Robyn Hitchcock (to name one) does now.

So they would be identifying where's a good place to go on tour by using data about downloading. Clever, huh? As you'd expect from a band with a Hartlepudlian guitarist. I didn't knowingly go to junior school with him.

Perhaps now that it's had so much exposure, Iron Maiden or someone else will think of actually doing it. That would be a Good Thing.

Downloading in the news

Downloading has been one of the main themes of the past few days - first with the Newzbin judgment, now with the government making new announcements about how the Digital Economy Act will work.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Others v British Telecommunications Plc [2011] EWHC 1981 does not, you will observe, actually involve Newzbin. That's because after an earlier case Newzbin, an internet search facility dedicated to movies, did a spot of restructuring and reappeared outside the jurisdiction. For the copyright owners, it became a matter of going after the ISPs, the only people in the equation who they could bring to court.

As my good friend Jane Lambert, who at one stage represented Newzbin, has written the case up in some detail, I won't say it all again: her blog is here. Does this judgment solve the problem? Hardly. It seems to require the use of technology that is not yet available, which as another friend, Simon Halberstam of Kingsley Napley, notes is like declaring open season for a few months - everyone who feels moved to do so will be downloading illegal copies while they can. Simon asks why the movie industry can't work out how to use the technology, in the way that the record industry (what seems to be generally called the music industry, though I can't conceive of music, as opposed to recordings of it, as being an industrial product) has, and a good question that is too. The Internet is designed to be resilient, and it can be expected to evolve and circumvent restrictions.

Undaunted, the government has now told us that recipients of notices under the Digital Economy Act 2010 will have to stump up £20 if they want to appeal. They'll get it back if they succeed. Wow. Given how mass enforcement exercises like the one that got two Davenport Lyons partners (one no longer with the firm) fined and suspended from practice, and led to the demise of the absurdly trendily named ACS:Law, have shown just how inaccurate information about who is downloading what from the Internet, this looks like an most unwelcome imposition.

Pursuing downloaders: sharing the proceeds

It's now several  months old but this piece from The Guardian reveals that ACS:Law took 40 per cent of the money received from recipients of threatening letters relating to downloads of music. For the adult movies it also handles claims for, the lawyers would retain even more. Interesting to know these figures.

Russian president calls for reform of international IP treaties

Sometimes I get that sense of the world sliding away from me - as it did for Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I vividly recall reading Frank Zappa's obituary in the Financial Times: that still epitomises for me how radically the world had changed in a few years, eliding the passing of an iconic cultural figure, the fact that he might qualify for an obit in that newspaper (a few years before, few of its readers would have recognised his name) and indirectly the disappearance of the Iron Curtain (brought to mind because of his appointment by Vaclav Havel as a special ambassador to the West - what a tribute for a fan to pay to a musician!).
The news that President Medvedev was talking to musicians at the Rhythm and Blues Café in Moscow might have caused similar feelings. The fact that there is such an establishment in Moscow might alone have been enough once to produce that sliding feeling, but I am reconciled to the fact that times have changed. The fact that he was arguing for reform of international IP conventions, singling out Berne and Geneva (the phonograms convention, I assume, not the red cross one), could also prompt the same sensation.
His point that those conventions are stuck in a different era, before the Internet allowed faithful copies to be sent around the world in the blink of an eye, when Frank Zappa was unknown to FT obituary writers, is well-made. The notion that downloading needs to be treated "like any other crime" is a bit worrying ... fortunately Russia is a different place from what it was in Vysotskiy's day.