Megauploads closed down

[Jack P]

Megaupload shut down by US officials - Tech News - Digital Spy

[claend]

Originally Posted by Jack P

Megaupload shut down by US officials - Tech News - Digital Spy

But oh really, why on earth FBI arrests people in New Zealand and other countries??...
I thought Obama was going to close Guantanamo instead

This world is really screwed IMO...

[initialsBB]

Nice! This is great news.

[BootsyGraham]

Don't you guys realize that people are just going to put them on other sites that do the same thing?

[initialsBB]

wow, that idea had never occurred to me

[Demor]

Sure, in that case the "officials" just have to track them down aswell and make them close up shop..... Rince and repeat untill it is just to much trouble for the offenders to bother.

The argument : "They will just go elsewhere" as a defence for these type of people irritates the h€#&! out of me.

[Murphster]

Originally Posted by Demor

Sure, in that case the "officials" just have to track them down aswell and make them close up shop..... Rince and repeat untill it is just to much trouble for the offenders to bother.

The argument : "They will just go elsewhere" as a defence for these type of people irritates the h€#&! out of me.

Exactly, because that formula has worked so well with the drugs trade.

[Demor]

Geeee,.... That has nothing to do with the margins made on the product...or better yet the dependency on the product sold.??? You know many download addicts? Think before typing.

[Murphster]

Originally Posted by Demor

Geeee,.... That has nothing to do with the margins made on the product....??? Think before typing.

What? Do you honestly believe the guys that run these sites are doing it for nothing? Have you not read about them? The money they are making from advertising revenues? By the way, from what I have read, the CEO of Megauploads is some big shot rap producer (I have never heard of him), Alicia Key's husband apparently.

This is not a bunch of spotty teenagers running the free download industry, it is businessmen, just like the guys selling drugs. They are doing it for the high margins involved.

My point is, this approach has been proven to fail time and time again though out history. It did not work with prohibition, it did not work with the drugs trade. But still it is the only way people think they can deal with it. Spend years investigating to shut down an operation and then the next day start all over again.

What this problem needs is creative, smart and different answers. But that requires the people in charge being creative, smart and different. Something that is never gonna happen.

[Demor]

You responded during me editing my post.

The drug trade will just increase the price when they loose a transport or plant because they don't care. People will BUY their product because they are dependant on it.

[claend]

IMO we need a regulated high quality streaming system that pays fairly the rights holders.

The old model is not comming back, so if the industry and governments can't figure a way that satisfies consumers and creators... Piracy will fill the void again.

[claend]

Originally Posted by Demor

You responded during me editing my post.

The drug trade will just increase the price when they loose a transport or plant because they don't care. People will BUY their product because they are dependant on it.

... This is short-sighted IMO, sorry.

[BootsyGraham]

Originally Posted by Demor

Geeee,.... That has nothing to do with the margins made on the product...or better yet the dependency on the product sold.??? You know many download addicts? Think before typing.

It's this type of thinking that put the industry in the condition that it is in today.

[Demor]

Whoaaa..... What???

[Dick_Money]

I say good it got closed. Make it as much trouble for people as possible to download material they do not own.

Also for people touting alternative income sources (streaming), shouldn't the market be pushed that way in a natural economic sense. Not through theft.

[Laurend]

That's just 4% of the internet.

[Demor]

Originally Posted by Dick_Money

I say good it got closed. Make it as much trouble for people as possible to download material they do not own.

Also for people touting alternative income sources (streaming), shouldn't the market be pushed that way in a natural economic sense. Not through theft.

Exactly +1000

[pdiddy boy]

Oh so the FEDs think shutting down MegaUpload and a few other media sharing sites will miraculously revive doomed economies of the world. I think they need to focus on shutting down the corrupt bankers and banks manipulating and pillaging our world financial system first !

[Murphster]

Originally Posted by Dick_Money

I say good it got closed. Make it as much trouble for people as possible to download material they do not own.

Also for people touting alternative income sources (streaming), shouldn't the market be pushed that way in a natural economic sense. Not through theft.

The problem is that markets cannot be pushed anywhere. Consumers decide the market, not producers. Same thing as prices, capitalism is a concept built on the idea that consumers will determine that price of an item. The producers that try to fix a market suffer for it in the end.

When consumers decided they wanted to get their music online then the music industry should have stepped up and figured out a way to do it. They were too slow, mainly for greedy reasons, trying to cling onto an old business model. They lost the fight ten years ago.

So now it is time to do something new, kick start a new market and encourage people to buy in it. But not by force, that can never happen. They have to offer a better alternative.

They are acting likes greedy thugs, and while they might have reason to, and I will not argue with you on that, it is still an awful move. At the end of the day they need to convince people to pay for music, acting like thugs is never, ever going to work. They are just alienating their consumers even more.

Corporate suicide.


**

And to be clear, I am not suggesting that the record companies should not be trying to shut down the pirates. They are perfectly entitled to do that. Their problem is that this is all they seem to be doing. They have an image problem. They should be combining this activity with other activity that involves making their product better, than gives them better PR. Anything that doesn't leave their customers thinking what a bunch of bullies they are.

[Murphster]

Nobody think it is interesting that the CEO of Megaupload is Swizz Beatz?

I wonder how many other illegal sites are being operated by people within the music industry? How funny is it that all we hear from the record labels is that piracy is hurting artists revenue when it is the same artists that appear to be involved in the piracy business.

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by BootsyGraham

Don't you guys realize that people are just going to put them on other sites that do the same thing?

eventually, people might not want to go to jail...

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by Murphster

What this problem needs is creative, smart and different answers. But that requires the people in charge being creative, smart and different. Something that is never gonna happen.

Everyone in the music business is looking at creative, smart and different answers. Of course that doesn't mean you can't hit the takers where it hurts at the same time.
You are persisting with this - you can only do one thing at a time - line of argument I'm sorry to see.

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by Murphster

The problem is that markets cannot be pushed anywhere. Consumers decide the market, not producers. Same thing as prices, capitalism is a concept built on the idea that consumers will determine that price of an item. The producers that try to fix a market suffer for it in the end.

When consumers decided they wanted to get their music online then the music industry should have stepped up and figured out a way to do it. They were too slow, mainly for greedy reasons, trying to cling onto an old business model. They lost the fight ten years ago.

So now it is time to do something new, kick start a new market and encourage people to buy in it. But not by force, that can never happen. They have to offer a better alternative.

They are acting likes greedy thugs, and while they might have reason to, and I will not argue with you on that, it is still an awful move. At the end of the day they need to convince people to pay for music, acting like thugs is never, ever going to work. They are just alienating their consumers even more.

Corporate suicide.


**

And to be clear, I am not suggesting that the record companies should not be trying to shut down the pirates. They are perfectly entitled to do that. Their problem is that this is all they seem to be doing. They have an image problem. They should be combining this activity with other activity that involves making their product better, than gives them better PR. Anything that doesn't leave their customers thinking what a bunch of bullies they are.

greedy thugs are the pirates who deny artists their rights, and this is not about innovation...

There's no innovating around Piracy because Piracy is the product. Again I ask where is the list of great bands and films developed and financed by The Pirate Bay, Grokster, Kazaa, Napster, Limewire, etc?

If Piracy is the "evolved business model" why aren't the pirates creating content to show us how it's done? Why do any of these truly innovative models need dead old dinosaur content anyway? Explain that to me...

Don't tell me it's not their job to create content because they are just "distributors" and then tell me that creators need to innovate better distribution as part of their job.

It's not a creators job to create distribution any more than it's the distributors job to create content.

But the funny thing is, distributors have nothing without content first. So instead of them stealing content from creators, why don't they just create it themselves and show the record industry and hollywood how it should be done? Because they can't.

You can't have it both ways.

If you want to insist it's a problem of innovation, I want to see the genius innovators creating content and making a profit from doing it. But as yet they have not, and they will not because that argument is simply false. Content is expensive to create which requires an ROI to sustain it. Piracy removes the ROI through theft.

As for how much better off musicians are today, that is false as well. More Professional Musicians made more money in the 90s. Here's what today musicians are getting under "loser generated content" models:

Digital Music News - 99.9% of Tunecore Artists Make Less Than Minimum Wage...

[Dick_Money]

Originally Posted by Murphster

The problem is that markets cannot be pushed anywhere. Consumers decide the market, not producers. Same thing as prices, capitalism is a concept built on the idea that consumers will determine that price of an item. The producers that try to fix a market suffer for it in the end.

When consumers decided they wanted to get their music online then the music industry should have stepped up and figured out a way to do it. They were too slow, mainly for greedy reasons, trying to cling onto an old business model. They lost the fight ten years ago.

So now it is time to do something new, kick start a new market and encourage people to buy in it. But not by force, that can never happen. They have to offer a better alternative.

They are acting likes greedy thugs, and while they might have reason to, and I will not argue with you on that, it is still an awful move. At the end of the day they need to convince people to pay for music, acting like thugs is never, ever going to work. They are just alienating their consumers even more.

Corporate suicide.


**

And to be clear, I am not suggesting that the record companies should not be trying to shut down the pirates. They are perfectly entitled to do that. Their problem is that this is all they seem to be doing. They have an image problem. They should be combining this activity with other activity that involves making their product better, than gives them better PR. Anything that doesn't leave their customers thinking what a bunch of bullies they are.

Problem is we are not talking consumers, we are talking thieves. Consumers didn't push the market this way.

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by pdiddy boy

Oh so the FEDs think shutting down MegaUpload and a few other media sharing sites will miraculously revive doomed economies of the world.

Uh, no I think the Feds think shutting down Megaupload will bring a criminal to justice.

[BootsyGraham]

Originally Posted by rack gear

greedy thugs are the pirates who deny artists their rights, and this is not about innovation...

There's no innovating around Piracy because Piracy is the product. Again I ask where is the list of great bands and films developed and financed by The Pirate Bay, Grokster, Kazaa, Napster, Limewire, etc?

If Piracy is the "evolved business model" why aren't the pirates creating content to show us how it's done? Why do any of these truly innovative models need dead old dinosaur content anyway? Explain that to me...

Don't tell me it's not their job to create content because they are just "distributors" and then tell me that creators need to innovate better distribution as part of their job.

It's not a creators job to create distribution any more than it's the distributors job to create content.

But the funny thing is, distributors have nothing without content first. So instead of them stealing content from creators, why don't they just create it themselves and show the record industry and hollywood how it should be done? Because they can't.

You can't have it both ways.

If you want to insist it's a problem of innovation, I want to see the genius innovators creating content and making a profit from doing it. But as yet they have not, and they will not because that argument is simply false. Content is expensive to create which requires an ROI to sustain it. Piracy removes the ROI through theft.

As for how much better off musicians are today, that is false as well. More Professional Musicians made more money in the 90s. Here's what today musicians are getting under "loser generated content" models:

Digital Music News - 99.9% of Tunecore Artists Make Less Than Minimum Wage...

Danger Mouse
Odd Future
Akron/Family

Basically any small band that has played Coachella in the last ten years or so.

Most bands do not make money off of their records. I'm sorry guys, but it hasn't been that way for many years. Bands make their money from touring, playing shows, and selling merchandise. Record labels make their money from albums, not bands.

[Murphster]

Originally Posted by Dick_Money

Problem is we are not talking consumers, we are talking thieves. Consumers didn't push the market this way.

Thinking like that is the reason why they are struggling to find an answer. It is thinking like that which has got them in the position they are today.

They are consumers, they are customers and whether they pay for it or not is utterly irrelevant.

People who watch commercial TV are consumers and customers even though they don't pay for it. YouTube is a business where it's entire customer base don't pay a penny for its product.

Like it or not, illegal downloaders of music are this industries biggest consumers. Pissing them off is stupid.

[rectifier]

Anonymous strikes back..

Anonymous strikes back by taking down DoJ, Universal Music [Update: RIAA and MPAA too] – Tech Products & Geek News | Geek.com

[Michael Jin]

Originally Posted by Dick_Money

Problem is we are not talking consumers, we are talking thieves. Consumers didn't push the market this way.

Who do you think are the people out there downloading music? It's the same people that buy music and also the same people that you're marketing to. Demonizing the target audience that you depend on by calling them a bunch of thieves generally doesn't get you very far nor does it encourage them to support you.

That much just seems like common sense to me...

[Jack P]

Swizz Beatz's Megaupload Shut Down By Feds - Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV