CitizenSmif

https://plus.google.com/u/0/11131408...ts/HQJxDRiwAWq

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HardYoungBlack

Yeah I saw this on facebook. If even remotely true then the amount of control the MPAA/music industry has over our government is truly frightening.

evo190

I guess Google boys will be next then since they offer 70% to artists... not as good as 90% MU was planning, but still pretty damn good (I think).

Google Music for Artists ? Google

salamkool

Because there is too much of junk files and illegal content like adult oriented
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cheshire

These asshats got busted because they were advertising all over every torrent site on the planet "Instant downloads now!" "Only $29.95/mo for every song on earth!" so gimme a break on the conspiracy shit. It was their advertising that bit them in the ass, not their service.

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Rexibit

The FBI has been investigating them for the last two years.

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d_diggler

Even if it's not true, the concept is still sound.

The entertainment industry only has itself to blame for piracy in many ways.

A prime example -

Tried to buy season four of breaking bad, not available in the UK, available online in the US but only if you're in the US.

So I can't get it legally, can rip it off within 3 clicks.

Have money, want to buy, can't...

Traditional distribution channels are dead or dying and customer demands have changed. I never thought the entertainment industry would still be fighting this in 2012.

And for the record, I don't pirate but I'm sure as shit am not going to go down to the record shop or be in front of the TV at 8pm on Wed to watch a half hour program with a further half hour of advertising shit.

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Rexibit

Exactly. I had this argument on FB with one of my local politicians in my state. He couldn't seem to wrap his head around anything but, "Pirates are only thieves as an explanation of why people download copyrighted content."

Yeah, some people are just cheap and want it for free, but 90% (probably more) would buy it if it was either more convenient to get legally or was available in their area. There's a reason why piracy has been on the decline in the last 5-7 years, and it's not because of legislation. It's because of services like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc.

The main-stream-media and big entertainment just keep pushing the idea that pirates are just theives, but it's because big entertainment wants to nickle and dime for everything that piracy is such an option. I am not advocating piracy, but they bring it on themselves.

For instance, on Netflix, I found the show Leverage from TNT. I watched the first two seasons online. Season 3 rolled out and TNT pulled all online episodes (yeah, even the first two seasons) to artificially try and boost their TV ratings. What's more, it was available on HULU the day after it aired, so I watched it there. Then they made it so the new episodes would only show online 3 weeks after it aired. WTF?

All the entertainment industry is doing is alienating customers and forcing them to have to pirate to view their content. They seem to want to keep people tied to traditional models of sitting and only watching TV or listening to music when "they" decide to release the content, instead of to get it and view it at the customer's schedule.

All music and video is digital now during recording and filming, there's no reason why content shouldn't be available for download at prices less than DVDs as a whole at the time it airs.

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lukep

If this is remotely true (where are the "over 1 million testers?") then someone here needs to figure out how his biz model worked. It said that he could pay artists when their songs were downloaded for free. -Yeah, it could be an offer in exchange for a free track, but I'd bet it was something easier for the masses to accept than an offer form.

If someone can figure out exactly what that biz model was the next step is to get the word out to as many as possible so someone with some resources and balls will hear about it and start the next Megabox up ASAP. Kim Dotcom would want this to happen. We all do.

As for google music; it's not as easy to swallow as megabox was going to be. (According to the story.) there are more restrictions with gmusic than just 70%.

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ShadowCaster

Maybe a percentage of revenue for clicks on ads placed on download page or something like that?

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blogspotter

Techcrunch just covered it... Late as always though.. lol

Was Megaupload Targeted Because Of Its Upcoming Megabox Digital Jukebox Service? | TechCrunch

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Jeeta

Ad revenue was only a small portion of the $175 million they've estimated. Most of his income was from 'premium accounts'. Plus if you divide estimated ad revenue by the number of downloads, it'll add to a pittance. Conversion ratios will be horrible, but volume makes up for it. I bet premium account conversion rates are like 0.03% or something ridiculous like that. But with 50 million visitors a day that's still like 15,000 sales a day with price ranges from 5.00 - 199.00 EUR or so.

yast

This. Beside that they made some big mistakes.

First, hosting around 1200 servers in the US like everybody knows now.

Second how they handled file uploads and DMCA notices.
See, when someone uploaded a file there was a MD5 hash created and compared to their DB to see if it already exists.
If so, the newly uploaded file wouldnt be saved on the servers, the user just got a "new" link to the old file.
So when a DMCA complain came in, they would only delete the link from the complain, but let the file up with all the other links to it.
I am pretty sure thats one of the main reasons which broke their neck.

Another issue is that it looks like they where paying people to upload copyright material. Seems there is prove for that also.

If they can nail them on that,they are really fucked.

babylonian

Wiggy

Another (yet totally divergent) example to throw into the mix - saw an article posted on another forum yesterday discussing the Xbox 720. It's supposed to have all these upgrades and shit, but one of its supposed characteristics is that it's not going to have the ability to play used games. Your brand new game will somehow sync up to your machine specifically or your Xbox Live account or something like that.

If they end up going through with this, this does nothing but alienate the ever-living hell out of the customer. Can you imagine not being able to buy used games at Game Stop? Or rent via Gamefly? Or that your kids can take a game to their friends' house?

I know this is a totally different kinda example than what's being discussed here, but these companies are going so overboard with their anti-piracy issues, that they actually end up driving more people to piracy, IMO.

Flash4Ever

Now they have to shut down YouTube, if law is equal for everyone:

"We're just like YouTube," Megaupload lawyer tells Ars

cheshire

I think this is the least of your worries. Everything is moving to downloadable content anyway. In the very near future you wont even be able to buy games on a disc at the store. You'll buy "points" which you use to buy games. The game is downloaded to your XBox and you can't take it anywhere.

Gamestop, gamefly and there rest have their days numbered. Writing is on the wall.

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lukep

Nah, the difference will be that money was paid to people for pirated content... Basically incentivizing piracy. YT never paid for vid uploads.

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janiye

Interesting. Mediafire is claiming it is different because it does not incentivize the upload of copyrighted material. Your post makes sense in line with that thought

cheshire

Don't they though in a round-about way? I mean if your channel gets enough views then Google does a profit sharing on the advertising revenue with you.

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lukep

Yeah, there is that... But Google's Lawyers are much better than Kim's so I'd say they're getting away with that excuse.

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mimoza3

they just got too big and the government was looking for an excuse to show the world they are fighting downloading sites, now we will see how some fast Russians are going to build download empires on RU based servers, and the FBI could try running around Russia...

Flash4Ever

Yes YT splits page ads revenue with channel owner, I have a lot of "whole movie" links in my favorites box uploaded more than 2 years ago with ads on. The main difference between MU and YT is not in the lawyer but in the DMCA requests processing. YT deletes files immediately after a DMCA (with all the monkeys they pay), MU didn't give a fuck.

blogginginc

So, they don't suspend publishers uploading those "whole movie" videos ?.

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thosmi

How is MegaBox different than what the TuneCore offers? That service has been around for years and doesn't appear to have caused any major issues with the record labels.

It seems that if MegaUpload was taken offline due to the MegaBox, the major problem was the idea that you can get paid for free downloads. Although, mostly it seems that Universal is pissed because they didn't figure it out first or because it was creating an alternate store for purchasing, as opposed to using established digital music retailers as TuneCore does.

Flash4Ever

Only after a DMCA request filed by the legal owner of rights.
Publishers are suspended only after iterated infringements (don't remember the exact number).

Kerkat

There's a radio station in the UK that only plays unsigned bands, the bands send in a CD and the station plays the best of them. The station doesn't get crippled with royalties so there's no advertising, just music all day. The bands get a break and get their songs played and the listeners can download the songs.

Win-Win-Win situation.

lukep

^Except that the music sucks 99 songs out of 100, of course.

But it is an awesome attempt. How does the radio station pay its' overhead?

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