The Key To Being A Successful Musician: Focus On Fan Relationships... Not Industry Relationships

UK ISP Boss: 'The Pirates Will Always Win'

from the so-now-what? dept

Tue, Jun 9th 2009 7:11am — Mike Masnick

Last year, when the recording industry in the UK was pushing for ISPs to act as copyright cops, Charles Dunstone, the head of Carphone Warehouse and its TalkTalk ISP, stood up and bashed the recording industry for even daring to suggest that the ISP should be responsible for the recording industry's own inability to adapt. As he said at the time of the recording industry:

"They're not just shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted -- the horse has left town, got married, and started a family."

As numerous people are submitting, Dunstone is back at it, stating the obvious to a recording industry that needs to hear it. He's trying to explain to them that, no matter how hard it tries, it can't stop unauthorized file sharing, noting that "the pirates will always win" and any attempt to stop them is simply "naive":

If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid....

If people want to share content they will find another way to do it.... It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive.

Of course, this is what plenty of people have been saying for years. There have been plenty of opportunities for the recording industry to embrace opportunities, and they've failed almost every single time. Instead, as always, they want to complain about the "pirates" and the "thieves" while other companies build the new music industry around them.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: business models, charles dunstone, isps, music, pirates, strategies, talktalk, uk
Companies: carphone warehouse

25 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

interval, 9 Jun 2009 @ 7:54am

Well...
...lots of luck on getting the labels to read his column.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Yakko Warner, 9 Jun 2009 @ 8:14am

...
[...]we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid....

I think it's way, way, way too late for that...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
James, 9 Jun 2009 @ 8:48am

Now I'm happy I'm with Talk Talk
Thats just increased by customer service rating of Talk Talk, which I haven't had any issues with anyway.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Buster, 9 Jun 2009 @ 9:09am

Been saying this for years...
I've been saying this for years. There's no way to stop it. You can slow it down or cut off one road, but there'll ALWAYS be another way of getting to the target. If you doubt it just look at the time line in general. We started with 3.5" floppies, someone would save data on it and send it to their friends; from there CDs, and once again the same thing occurred. Following that came the Napster generation (P2P sharing) and laws were made to stop it yet other companies and programs were born, and on and on. Now we have bit-torrents, as well as a few other things. It's pointless to try to stop it. BUT at the same time I'm not saying don't try, it's fun to watch the failure.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 9:33am

there's no way to stop bittorent at this point, to many companies have started using it for legitimate purposes. If you try to stop all bittorent traffic you'll start butting heads with companies that do base part of their business on it. Not to mention mIRC has been around for ages and they could never stop that program.

I hope the music industry keeps trying. While they aren't innovating they are causing massive innovation in how people share data and encrypt it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 9:42am

The point isn't to win - the point is to make it hard enough,risky enough, or annoying enough to file share that the vast majority of users won't bother.

You will never stop it 100%, but if you take it from the current levels where some reports suggest 19 out of 20 songs are downloaded illegally and move that to 4 or 5 out of 20, that a is a huge difference for the music industry, and a huge difference in the public's comportment.

It's the broken windows theory, digital style.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PeterG, 9 Jun 2009 @ 9:44am

This started as soon as there was something to copy. The first caveman to whistle a tune was heard by others who were soon copying him.

In my youth we had unlimited access to Commodore 64 games. I had so many copied games that I spent more time organizing my floppies than I did playing games. This was BEFORE INTERNET. We would just have floppy-copy parties.

People like to share. You can't stop them even if you shut down the internet.

Make a decent product, treat your customers with respect and they will be proud to buy your product to support you. Alienate them and they will jump through every hoop to not buy your product and make sure their friends don't buy your product.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Overcast (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 10:05am

If... for instance, you could find a way to generate power for free - there's no doubts that oil companies, coal companies, power companies would SCREAM.

But I don't think any amount of screaming would stop people from making their own power...

If that in fact was the case; many would praise that as one of the best things that have ever happened to humanity. Odd how music, art, and literature are widely available on the Net - yet, the focus isn't on that fact - it's on how some corporations are losing money..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 10:12am

Re:
If people were actually MAKING something, you might have a point. But this is just people ripping the artists off. Nothing made here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Killer_Tofu (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 10:16am

Good to hear
I am happy to hear about another ISP standing up to point out what hogwash the suggestions are.
One in Austrailia, and now one in the UK.
I do wish there was one here in the US who truly stood up for its customers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 10:39am

I think the ISPs are responsible for securing and blocking P2P sharing of music. Just make them intercept any instance of the word "music" in the data stream and block it, that way it will stop the pirates and benefit sites such as Warner Music and Sony Music. Yeah.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ChrisB (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 11:05am

Re:
By broken windows, do you mean the discredited theory that crime went down in New York because they fixed small things (e.g., graffiti) which help reduced big things? Legalized abortion had much more to do with that than fixing windows.

I think the only thing stopping massive scale file sharing is 1) ignorance (that it is possible) and 2) some technical difficulty (e.g., converting downloaded files). "Risk" has less to do with it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
chris (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 11:14am

Re:
The point isn't to win - the point is to make it hard enough,risky enough, or annoying enough to file share that the vast majority of users won't bother.

all it does is get easier. public trackers like TPB are easier to use than google. clients like utorrent are way easier to use than napster was. terabyte USB hard drives make trading whole collections a breeze. bits are never going to be harder to copy than they are right now, and with every bit copied the whole process just gets easier.

You will never stop it 100%, but if you take it from the current levels where some reports suggest 19 out of 20 songs are downloaded illegally and move that to 4 or 5 out of 20, that a is a huge difference for the music industry, and a huge difference in the public's comportment.

that might have been the case when it was just a bunch of broke ass college students trading top 40 tracks. but it's quickly becoming a political movement. like the hacker crackdown in the 90's and the subsequent free kevin movement, file sharing has taken on a political and philosophical tone that pulls in more and more people every day. file sharing is a youth movement. the pirate bay trial is galvanizing young people against media companies on a scale that makes the free kevin movement look like a blip on the radar. file sharing is quickly becoming how a generation defines itself.

these numbers just aren't sustainable. every dollar spent fighting piracy is a dollar wasted. as file sharing becomes more politicized, it gets worse. that dollar is not just wasted, it becomes a dollar invested in your bad image and disappointed customers. the content industry is not just wasting money, it is donating money to finance its own decline. the only weapon that media companies have in this fight is money. their enemies are using time and talent. one resource is finite and one is infinite.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 11:22am

Re:
If it was really that simple it would have been done already and this topic would be no more.

I agree with the ISP guy. Piracy is unstoppable. I'm not sure what the solution is for the record industry.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2009 @ 11:47am

Re: Re:
"these numbers just aren't sustainable. every dollar spent fighting piracy is a dollar wasted. as file sharing becomes more politicized, it gets worse. that dollar is not just wasted, it becomes a dollar invested in your bad image and disappointed customers"

At some point, there will no longer be a dollar to spend, not just to fight piracy but to create new content. Piracy advocates have to look past the ends of their noses to realize where this goes in the end.

No new money = no new big artist music.

So now run along and go download some stuff before they stop making it (then it will be a scarce good again).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
minijedimaster (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 11:50am

Re:
Are you serious?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Nagolod, 9 Jun 2009 @ 12:05pm

Re: Re: Re:
What a deluded idiotic puppet you are.

Music has existed since the dawn of time. It will take more than a medium to distribute it at nearly no cost and reach millions of potential fans to destroy it.

Oh, and if by "big artist music" you mean the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake dying off, good fucking riddance.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Nagolod, 9 Jun 2009 @ 12:07pm

Re:
Of course not, he's just a troll with a brain haemorrhage.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Headbhang (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 12:17pm

Re: Re:
Much more people are able to enjoy music than would otherwise have been possible. Most artists still seem to be doing rather well. Only largely parasitic executives whose only talent has been sitting on a pile of money feeding lawyers seem to be complaining (plus some brainwashed minions and spoiled overhyped artists).

Overall, happiness is being made, methinks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mechwarrior, 9 Jun 2009 @ 12:55pm

In fact, how will anyone stop sneakernets? With storage getting cheaper and bigger, people may just walk to their friends place and copy their terrabyte hard-drive to a NAS. Will the RIAA then force hard-drive levies passed to support their business?

Theres a point when you start receiving negative returns, and the entertainment industry is about to cross that point.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
chris (profile), 9 Jun 2009 @ 1:47pm

Re: Re: Re:
At some point, there will no longer be a dollar to spend, not just to fight piracy but to create new content. Piracy advocates have to look past the ends of their noses to realize where this goes in the end.

yeah. there isn't any new content. nothing on youtube, nothing on myspace, no artists burning up twitter, no new shows. there aren't kids on the streets of london and kingston grinding out records like there was money in it. i didn't just pay $30 to go to ninja2009 and stand in the rain. i'm not going to vegas in august to sell CD's (yes, physical plastic CD's) for my favorite artist at a booth when he releases his new album at defcon. i won't volunteer to do this in exchange for a free CD and the opportunity to hang out with him.

get a clue. there is more new content out there now than ever before. it barely costs anything to make content now once you step out of the "industry".

No new money = no new big artist music.

i don't care about big artist music. in time no one else will either. the back catalogs are already available online for free so all that's left to profit from is new, independent music that costs little to make. big ticket artists with universal appeal will just get universally downloaded. they're a waste of money.

the world changed. the music industry was mortally wounded 10 years ago and we are all just waiting for the corpse to bleed out. the same is now or will soon be true of newspaper, film, and television.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dirtydan, 9 Jun 2009 @ 3:40pm

Re: Re:
What's the point of creating something if no-one can appreciate it. The argument here has always been that the internet broadcasts 'The Arts' and the products of society and civilization to anyone who has the luxury of accessing it.
Once you have 'discovered' something that interests you - then you support it in the most appropriate way.

'If people were actually MAKING something, you might have a point. But this is just people ripping the artists off. Nothing made here.'

We are talking about the largest distribution network ever created. In my opinion; if you are going to pay for something, you will. I could never buy something that I wasn't aware existed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
jim, 9 Jun 2009 @ 9:21pm

2004 richest dead person list
1. Elvis Presley $40m (£22m)
2. Charles Schulz $35m (£19m)
3. JRR Tolkien $23m (£12.5m)
4. John Lennon $21m (£11m)
5. Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel $18m (£10m)
6. Marilyn Monroe $8m (£4.3m)
7. George Harrison $7m (£3.8m)
=7. Irving Berlin $7m
=7. Bob Marley $7m
10. Richard Rodgers $6.5m
11. George and Ira Gershwin $6m
=11. Jimi Hendrix $6m
=11. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe $6m
=11. Cole Porter $6m
15. James Dean $5m (£2.7m)
=15. Dale Earnhardt Sr $5m
=15. Jerry Garcia $5m
=15. Freddie Mercury $5m
=15. Tupac Shakur $5m
=15. Frank Sinatra $5m

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Sure, pirates get free shit but if all these dead people can make more in one year than I'll probably see in my entire life then fuck copyright.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dunncha (profile), 10 Jun 2009 @ 1:13am

I buy music or rather audio books digitally
I've joined a club and pay my price and I download my book. Excellent it works on my PC; next I drop it onto a disc so I can listen to it in the car. Opps sorry you are not allowed to burn this book as the DRM is programmed not to let me.

Hmmm that's a bit of a pisser. I only wanted this to listen to in the car because I have such a long drive to work. I contact the company and they tell me buy a MP3 player you aren't allowed to convert it to raw MP3 for use in the car. That's stealing.

I know I look for it on Piratebay. Bingo 1 hour later I have my book on a disc and can listen to it on a car. My book the way I want it.

I tried to do it the legal way but you won't allow me to use the media I have paid for the way that I want to.

So you could argue that unfair licensing is driving law abiding netizens to piracy. In my case it's true. Shame on you!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dunncha (profile), 10 Jun 2009 @ 1:18am

I used to buy legal music/audio books
I've joined a club and pay my price and I download my book. Excellent it works on my PC; next I drop it onto a disc so I can listen to it in the car. Opps sorry you are not allowed to burn this book as the DRM is programmed not to let me.

Hmmm that's a bit of a pisser. I only wanted this to listen to in the car because I have such a long drive to work. I contact the company and they tell me buy a MP3 player you aren't allowed to convert it to raw MP3 for use in the car. That's stealing.

I know I look for it on Piratebay. Bingo 1 hour later I have my book on a disc and can listen to it on a car. My book the way I want it.

I tried to do it the legal way but you won't allow me to use the media I have paid for the way that I want to.

So you could argue that unfair licensing is driving law abiding netizens to piracy. In my case it's true. Shame on you!
[ link to this | view in thread ]