Matt_Phillips

yes that was crass. Sorry.

...because our techies download it from the person uploading it (though it's slightly more technical than that). It's audio tested and verified before being sent to the ISP.

This process has stood up in the High Court and has been used to bring some 50k + cases across the EU.

Follow the link on "three step policy" above if you're interested.

It's got nothing to do with the particular artist, or the size of the label they're signed to.

It is unlawful to copy, or distribute creative works unless you own the copyright: that right is retained by the artist (unless they've signed a record deal - that reassigns or licenses those rights to a label) holds true whoever you are.

Without going into the tedium of the fine points of copyright law - I'm making the distintion between p2p as a technology and using that technology to do something that's against the law.

You may be right that that making sweeping statements would be reductionist: but I didn’t. It seems, though, we agree that most p2p use is about acquisition rather than discovery - which is the point I was trying to make.

On your second point about where it leads - we represent the labels, and labels are in the business (crudely) of artist investment and services in exchange for exclusive rights. Promotion clearly needs to translate into revenue at some point, and (not levelling this criticism at you personally) far too many people lose sight of that latter part. I’m not saying ever person at every label gets every decision right every time – but working out that balance between promotion and sales in a rapidly changing digital environment (where everything is available for free anyway) isn’t as simple as is sometimes assumed. The onus is arguably on us to do a better job of communicating why it's not a simple case of the industry being "clueless and ineffective".

What is certain is that churning currently unlicensed and unpaid music consumption into paid-for is massively complex, and there’s no one-size fits all solution.

You have a point on my use the word freetard, incidentally – not my invention but a bit crass of me to use it, I clearly didn’t intend to offend anyone.

@ darkanddivine

There's all sorts of models to be had: the big challenge for the labels was to get into a position to able to license these platforms. There's obviously still gaps in the catalogue (time & money) but there's a lot available.

There's no "industry" dictat on what model it supports - certainly the BPI isn't prescriptive here. All of these are commercial decisions for each label to make - and I can't speak on their behalf in that regard. But many I speak to seem to have the attitude of license anything, provided the terms are right (ie. unlimited p2p for pennies isn't attractive).

Re the sampling, I get the impression that the sorting the myspace, youtube, bebo etc are part and parcel of the product managers' job - so I guess the "expire" idea is pretty much redundant since you can track down a free (licensed) stream pretty easily these days for most artists.

I'm just expressing a point of view.

"The truth is that I and many other people use filesharing primarily as a means to discover the music of artists that we hear about but are not familiar with, rather than just to download the new TV on the Radio album which I know I want and am happy to pay for."

Hear about where? Most people I know find out about new music through word of mouth, online or otherwise. All I'm saying that examples like Fakesensations (the artist whose post promoted mine) who grew awareness by posting their album on the mininova homepage (and attracting passing traffic) are the exception rather than the rule and that clearly won't work for everyone.

I'm not taking a stab in the dark either: virtually every study (independent of us) points to that the "promotional" value of p2p is outweighed by the people who use it as a means to avoid paying for music.