The Norwegian Music-Streaming Experience Shows Why Tough Anti-Piracy Laws Are Unnecessary

from the facts?-who-needs-facts? dept

Thu, Jan 26th 2012 7:45am — Glyn Moody

We recently wrote about how the availability of music-streaming services seems to be have a big impact on reducing the scale of illegal downloads in various Scandinavian countries. Thomas Steen pointed out to us that the country with the highest proportion accessing music authorized streaming services is his native Norway, which is particularly noteworthy because Norway also has the least aggressive laws against illegal downloads in the region (he kindly put together a document comparing cases in Denmark, Sweden and Norway involving piracy to highlight this.) That not only undermines the case for tough anti-piracy laws, but also Norway's own plans to bring the laws in, which are still grinding their way through the system.

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Filed Under: anti-piracy, copyright, laws, music streaming, norway, regulations

40 Comments

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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 7:25am

Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
Have you lost your mind?

Without them we would have a world devoid of all creative endeavors. No one anywhere at anytime would ever create anything that could be copied again.

There would be no new movies, no new music, software would never get improved, nobody would ever invent, create, design anything again.

Without AP laws how could any creative professional expect to make money?

Oh, yeah I guess Techdirt is not the place to make that argument.
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- Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:02am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Our proof is right above, where's yours for your claims?
  
  Assumption and 'Gut Feeling' don't count as proof.
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  - Richard (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 1:15pm
    
    Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
    Faulty sarc detector....
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Ninja (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:06am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Clean and objective trolling that completely ignores facts and sounds like it's true.
  
  9/10!
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- Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:12am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Without AP laws how could any creative professional expect to make money?
  
  By "creative professional" you are referring to a lawyer, right?
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- BraindeadBZH (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:12am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  You're maybe right or *not* (Minecraft is a good example). But, please, give an example where a law has lead to innovation and creation. Legislation is a destructive process. Laws always reduce your freedom, sometime it is necessary like laws against murder, rape, ... It think there is enough laws to protect intellectual property. Everybody know that it is illegal to share works which are not yours. Now it is time to stop spending millions on laws and protection and start building real alternatives.
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  - Jay (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:21am
    
    Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
    You fell for it. XD
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    - Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:24am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
      Yeah seems a few did. I was playing the role of the true AP believer, playing.
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    - BraindeadBZH (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 1:50pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
      I know this is a troll my friends. But, sadly, there is people who actually think this is true. So I just make an explanation for them. Unfortunately I think they don't read this kind of blog... :)
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- btrussell (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:21am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  http://www.break.com/index/8-year-old-guitarist-makes-us-all-look-bad-2291886
  
  Got a link to Techdirt? I keep getting links to techdirt.
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- Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:23am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Really? I was being over-the-top. Sarcastically Ironic? Maybe a little?
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- PaulT (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:24am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Voted as funny, because nobody can be serious about that, right?
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  - Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:31am
    
    Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
    I don't get it. How could my comment be taken as anything but a serious comment? Mega-Content sure believes it is true. So therefore since they believe then it must be true.
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- Carlo Piana, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:32am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Do you have any proof of what you say? "No one anywhere at anytime would ever create anything" seems a bit exaggerated, since the world is full of stuff which is freely copied, if not even copyleft. Surely, you are familiar with the Creative Commons and Free/open source software (it runs the Internet, as you surely know, and, yes, by the way it's free, and big business like IBM, Oracle and Google heavily invest on it).
  Also can I point out that:
  a) "anti-piracy" does not mean "no copyright" � but we can discuss even if copyright is necessary;
  b) not because one business model exists that was born in a pre-Internet era, this is now the only viable business model;
  c) same thing was said when personal VCR became available: "how would you think the movie industry would survive if people can freely copy movies and see them on the telly"; experience tells us differently.
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  - Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:37am
    
    Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
    Read my other comments. It was meant to be an over-the-top representation of what they would say in answer to the column.
    
    Does no one see sarcasm anymore?
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    - Ninja (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:54am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
      In this day and age it's pretty hard with our trolls as a prime example. But your comment was a very good trolling attempt, I almost fell for it till I saw your nick ;)
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      - Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 9:13am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
        I can see that but it was even past the extreme level of rhetoric they would engage in. I hope.
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    - The eejit (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 10:46am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
      Poe's Law of the Internet is your friend.
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- Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:38am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Woosh. This post went completely over your head.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Guy, 26 Jan 2012 @ 2:28pm
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  Preach. We need voices like yours to fight against stupidity.
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  - Anonymous Guy, 26 Jan 2012 @ 2:29pm
    
    Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
    Oh nvm, as I have further read, you're a troll. Thanks for the waste of 5 minutes of my life. Get a life, kid.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 12:15am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
      Wow, looks like a troll fell for the anti-troll! Who's the one that needs to get a life?
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- Erik, 28 Jan 2012 @ 7:48am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  "Without them we would have a world devoid of all creative endeavors. No one anywhere at anytime would ever create anything that could be copied again."
  Is this guy serious?
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- DNY (profile), 29 Jan 2012 @ 9:13am
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  According to your "reasoning" there was no English literature before the Law of Queen Anne, Albrecht Durer didn't make a living selling prints, and Mozilla Firefox doesn't exist.
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2012 @ 6:03pm
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  1. Google open source.
  2. Google linux.
  3. Google Blender.
  4. Google source forge.
  5. Do you still believe your point is valid?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2012 @ 6:03pm
  
  Re: Anti-Piracy laws unnecessary?
  1. Google open source.
  2. Google linux.
  3. Google Blender.
  4. Google source forge.
  5. Do you still believe your point is valid?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 7:52am

i wonder where the pressure is coming from to get Norway to increase it's anti-piracy laws, especially when they have the proof in front of them that nothing needs changing? it never ceases to amaze me that when something is working, how someone has to come along to try to fix it by fucking it up completely!
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- Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:08am
  
  Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jan 26th, 2012 @ 7:52am
  There's lots of money in fucking shit up.
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- DH's Love Child (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 10:33am
  
  Re:
  I would guess that the pressure is coming from the US.
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Ninja (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:18am

Don't let facts get to you, Mike. Copyright isn't about facts, it's about lost jobs, stolen bits, huge financial losses and flying unicorns.
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- Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:29am
  
  Re:
  Don't forget campaign donations, paid-for lobbyist luncheons, and jobs for ex-senators.
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  - Ninja (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:35am
    
    Re: Re:
    Nothing to see here, sonny, move along. You should expect a raid against your home for copyright infringement.
    
    "But, sir, I'm just voicing my opinion."
    
    Sonny, don't make me arrest you for recording me with your cell phone cam.
    
    "???????"
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fogbugzd (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:18am

>>especially when they have the proof in front of them that nothing needs changing?

That right there!

Above all else, the industry must do something about the Norway situation because it disproves what the IP lobby is saying. SOPA woke up some parts of the media and the tech community and they no longer automatically swallow the industry propaganda unchallenged. Before the SOPA disaster it didn't really matter if there was counter evidence because no one was paying attention to anything other than industry press releases. Now that some people in the media are waking up there is a great danger that the counter evidence will catch attention of some mainstream reporter looking for an easy story.
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Sk8punk, 26 Jan 2012 @ 9:13am

Apples to Oranges
As much as I want to agree with the general argument here (and I agree in theory still), this doesn't prove your point. Comparing a tiny, homogenous country like Norway to the US or even the rest of Europe stretches the apples to oranges metaphor. Norway is almost all white middle class, has restrictive immigration laws, and is a relatively closed monoculture (with an exploding Islamic minority, but this development is too recent to impact this argument).

Obviously, you cannot compare such a tightly closed and controlled society with the more open and free wheeling US. Hell, we have more illegal immigrants from our third world neighbors to the south than the entire Norwegian population. LA County is 3 times bigger than Norway- and 10 times more diverse in social, economic, and ethnic terms. The comparison is pointless.

Still, I agree with the basic idea. We just need to base it on more appropriate data.
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- GiladSharon, 26 Jan 2012 @ 11:55am
  
  Re: Apples to Oranges
  Norwegians are not fools, much less so than the yanks in any case. Common sense and decency is inherent in Scandanavian Nations, and as such, common VOLK will not stand for corporate cronies trying to "own" the net(facebook`s shugerman and jewgle`s brin, for example)and interfering with their internet trends. This is a concerted effort globally to distract newsreaders. netizens will force repeal of these infirngements on freedoms of info.
  
  disinPHORMation
  
  2011 etymology tophats created top 2 buzzwords for the year: "occupy" and "piracy", both entirely deflective from their most prevalent and critical occurances, Palestine, and the Palestinian Territorial Coastline.
  
  the OCCUPATION of Palestine is a crime against humanity and common decency---------------------the occupy protest movements did nothing to impede banker(corporate) moves on the Continent of Europe.
  
  the PIRACY in international waters near the Palestinian Coast and the murders commited in the course of the acts of PIRACY by the Israellys was also a crime against humanity.-----------------------------the furore over file sharing and internet freedoms and the occupy protest movements have virtually erased google search results for the two terms which in 2010 would have certainly brought the user to the Palestinian Human Rights/Apartheid debate.
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Beech, 26 Jan 2012 @ 9:14am

Dear Mr cynic.

No one gets it because you forgot your "/sarc" tag. We've forgotten how to recognize sarcasm without it.
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- Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 9:35am
  
  Re:
  No, I am beginning to think it is because of something much scarier. I think it is because the rhetoric has risen to that level of absoluteness.
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 10:20am
    
    Re: Re:
    Right on the nose. These are people who are impossible to parody because the rhetoric they routinely engage in is so extreme as to be immune too exaggeration.
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    - The eejit (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 10:50am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      See also, Stephen Solbert and his "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow" superPAC ads.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
sesem, 28 Jan 2012 @ 5:31pm

I don't know if the econmic part has too much to do with compared to the US. The price for a subscription is about buying one new CD in the USA each month. Maybe less. And there is a practical part of it. We see people who have never downloaded music earlier use Spotify and Wimp because it gives a hugh music library and is _easy to use_.

My mother havn't bought a CD in maybe 10-12 years. Now she is a Spotify premium-subsciber. And there are new generations coming. My 9 year old have her own Spotify Unlimited-subscription. She have never downloaded music, and I will guess she will find solutions like Spotify easier.

For many, transfering music to their phone ain't easy. With Spotify or Wimp, it's easy to have music on their phone.
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