But these clowns claim to be ‘elite’, yet they can only provide one file format (and no bitrate info (ie – the quality of the file they offer off the original MIDI or similar) either I don’t think)! Even if you upload to the archive, for free, they will do all the work for you – sort out all your album tracks* into separate track downloads under every file format you can think of.

I offered to cover costs for them to burn me CDs, and they couldn’t do that either.

Just because it’s ‘free’ doesn’t mean it’s not as bad as the BPI spying or some other aspect of the controlled-phoney areas of music.

*ie – your own made-by-you music / audio; I doubt they allow anything pirated there

Your right, Napster and alikes might be suitable for the average user not in search for particular artists/tracks.

True, I personally think they should let you have a peek at their content (without download or let’s say 30 sec’s of 10 songs) before you actually join them and pay for their services. Paying just to find out that do not have what you’re looking for is a nice business model but ultimately sucks.

In the end you’ll indeed have to resolve to buying the album containing the one song you want and get the others as unwelcome ‘gift’. (I usually check the left over section for this kind of stuff, but you still feel rather silly that an album would have set you back €20 at the time of release and now you pick it up between €7 to €9).

P2P and a likes are not likely to disappear nor will pirated software/music/video/movies, they have become an integral part of internet.

So what are you meant to do in those circumstances; you don’t pay in advance to join something, in the event they *may* have what you want…

and what if no-one sells what you want? I’d imagine that if I bothered to list all the tracks I’ve wanted for aeons and never got, cause I’d have to buy a whole album for one song, few of them would appear for legit online downloads.

The usenet service looks promising, although ftp binaries obviously can be downloaded / uploaded already anyway – unless it’s encrypted though, the traffic can still be intercepted and read.

Indeed it’s rather strange that a non-govermental body like the BPI will provide such data to Virgin, seems rather illegal.

It seems the ISP’s are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one side they have costumers to service and protect what their costumers behaviour. On the otherside their are non-govermental organisation urging them to surrender details regarding supposed copyright infringement. Real governmental organisation are forcing them to shed light on internet traffic regarding things like copyright infringments, childporn and possible terrorist behaviour.

The thought of an ISP producing log/trace data to suit the needs of a govermental body is rather sickening, it might be naive but I hope they will resist such temptations.

Getting the distributing side to stop can be rather difficult. Russia (Poetin) for instance has not signed the European Cybercrime Convention so they will be reluctant to do your bidding.

It’s quite funny how, for instance the MPAA or RIAA, has made it their business to pursue the ’small; fish in the tank instead of going for the proffesional pirates. Guess they just want to show that the average jane/Joe isn’t save from them.

I personally think that downloading actually has enhanced some artists reputations and sales. The bad thing is the music industry is a bottomless pit always wanting more and specialising in one hit wonders instead of solid artists. All the ‘find a new idol in whatever field’ programms are a tribute to this one hit wonder thinking.

However, I’d earlier been at a site I also had never visted before, so it’s possible that one was to blame.

“The BPI has teams of technicians to trace illegal music downloading to individual accounts. It will hand these account numbers over to Virgin Media, which will match them to names and addresses.”

How are they allowed to legally trace any internet traffic down to an account number or IP? Since when is the BPI the police, and have a search warrant that allows them to trace or search communications traffic?

Put it this way: if they suspected someone recieved a copied file in the postal system, would they be allowed to intercept mail, and open it up to see what was in it? Of course not. The internet isn’t any different, it’s electronic communication rather than postal based.

You aren’t even allowed to use recordings of telephone conversations IN COURT, INCLUDING IF YOU’RE THE POLICE, unless you had prior approval to be specifically allowed to intercept and trace the call.

If I was an ISP owner, I’m not saying I wouldn’t listen to complaints about a user, and I’d still look at any evidence presented even if it wasn’t legally gathered, as is the case with all this copyright-related spying, BUT – I’d need more than just say a log file and trace details on it: those can be faked, especially if you don’t actually see them running yourself in realtime. I’d need to hear the backstory – how did you come to locate this person doing whatever it is online? What about them or their traffic made you think they were doing whatever it was?

AND – I’d ask them why they aren’t going to whoever is hosting the sites being downloaded from, and telling them to stop their services.

If it comes to something even more personal, like intercepting transmissions between individual users (ie – they aren’t downloading from websites or servers, they are sending files to one another directly or by e-mail or some such) then I’d be especially interested to find out how they came to be intercepting people’s private communications with one another.
That isn’t hit-and-miss; how many users communications have they illegally spied on, in order to read messages saying something like ‘here’s that cd I copied for you’????

There’s a BIG DIFFERENCE between making someone a copy of a tape or a CD or some such, and pirating loads of material and selling it.

The fact that they aren’t going directly to any providers of the material individuals are accessing proves to me that they are spineless and can’t be trusted.
They’re just like those twats that spend million$ on adverts about paying TV licences and tax discs, and it costs them more to put on the ads and crush perfectly working vehicles than they’d recover in taxes.

I’m not even interested in downloading copied films and music; I just know what this is really about. The sooner other countries start offering ISP access to different countries, the better.
The internet is meant to compensate for some of what’s wrong with offline human society: namely things like borders between countries, taxes on top of goods bought and sold, lack of anonymity, and difficult and costly information access.

Someone should hack all these spying bastards offline.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/30/cnvirgin130.xml

but at the same time will offer it’s users a new usenet service which suposedly will be intraceable.

torrentfreak.com/isp-to-voluntarily-disconnect-file-sharers-from-the-internet-080331/

Perhaps Mr. Branson has cooked up a new way to distribute his music via this channel ?? or might they be merely generating the evidence they need to get some conficted for copyright infringements?

http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?smlid=3856

Why don’t you go back to see the wizard G, and ask him for a pair of balls as well this time, so you don’t keep on doing what the enemy programs you to do and say.