At this point it’s unlikely that readers will be unaware that Taylor Swift has removed her music from Spotify, complaining that the service fails to “fairly compensate” artists, writers and producers.

“We were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay,” Spotify said in a response. “It’s a love story, baby. Just say yes.”

Swift did not, despite claims from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek that the artist was on track to pull in $6 million from Spotify this year if she’d left her content online. Presumably she’ll still get few million dollars from the streaming service, but in a statement yesterday Ek said that reduced availability for fans will mean more turn to illegal services such as the world most notorious torrent site.

“And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was 1989,” he said.

While that revelation wasn’t too much of a surprise, nor the highlighting of YouTube as a potential magnet for fans who don’t want to pay, the decision by Ek to flag up a competitor as a pirate holdout has poured yet more fuel onto the Swift fire.

“[Swift's] songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free,” said Ek. “To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark.”

The gibe drew an instant rebuttal from James A. Pearson, EVP Corporate Communications at Grooveshark.

“We would normally never comment on a competitive service and their dust-up with one of the world’s most popular artists. But as Spotify’s CEO — who it’s worth mentioning is the recent CEO of uTorrent — an app used by over 100M people, which had similar perception issues — called Grooveshark ‘a pirate service’ in his blog response to Taylor Swift today, we had to comment on that element,” Pearson said.

On the history, Pearson is correct. In the early days of uTorrent Ek worked with uTorrent creator Ludvig ‘Ludde’ Strigeus before the pair sold up to BitTorrent Inc. in late 2006 and disappeared into the moonlight to create Spotify. Strigeus is a Spotify developer to this very day.

Of course, mentioning uTorrent in retaliation to “pirate service” remarks doesn’t really help calm things down and only drags other third parties into the controversy. However, when looking at the spat from Ek’s perspective it’s not difficult to see why he’s irritated by Grooveshark.

Search Spotify today for Taylor Swift’s 1989 and the only results returned are for cover versions by former cruise ship musician Robert W. Weber, aka Molotov Cocktail Piano. Search Grooveshark for the same and it’s an entirely different story.

The odd situation here is that while Swift put her own music on Spotify and will get millions back this year as a result, she has now stopped that revenue stream by removing it entirely. On the other hand she didn’t put her music on Grooveshark but it’s there for anyone to stream, until she has someone pull it down with a DMCA complaint of course.

Why the Spotify retraction came before the Grooveshark deletion is anyone’s guess. In a 2013 interview, Grooveshark CEO Sam Tarantino reported that in 2009-2011 his service had 35 million users. Today Spotify has an estimated 50 million so calling the services ‘competitors’ is probably fairly accurate, despite the differences in their business models.

Spotify say they have paid $2 billion to artists while Grooveshark claims that licensing deals in place with thousands of artists has resulted in “million” in payments. However, up to now neither the company nor Swift have mentioned a specific licensing deal for the singer’s music. Until they do, Daniel Ek is unlikely to withdraw his statement.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

As the debate over Internet piracy sizzles Down Under, groups on all sides continue to put forward arguments on how to solve this polarizing issue.

The entertainment industries are clear. The current legal framework in Australia is inadequate in today’s market and tough new legislation is required to deter pirates and hold service providers more responsible for the actions of their users.

ISPs, on the other hand, are generally concerned at the prospect of greater copyright liability, with many viewing content availability at a fair price as the sustainable way to solve the piracy problem.

In order to better understand the opinions of the consumer, Aussie telecoms association the Communications Alliance has conducted a new study, the results of which were published this morning.

The survey, carried out among a sample 1,500 Australians, reveals a public split roughly 50/50 on whether piracy is “a problem” but one that also believes that it will eventually end up paying the bill for solving it.

A recurring theme for the prevalence of piracy in Australia is availability of content at a fair price, and the results of the survey appear to back up that belief. A total 60% of respondents said that improved entertainment product release strategies would lead to less piracy while 66% noted that cheaper, fairer pricing could achieve the same.

Just 19% felt that Government regulation resulting in stiff penalties for file-sharers would do the trick, and when it comes to pushing anti-piracy responsibilities onto service providers, almost three-quarters felt the approach would be ineffective.

Unsurprisingly the issue of cost is important for consumers, with 69% holding the opinion that “identifying, monitoring and punishing” ‘pirate’ subscribers would eventually lead to more expensive Internet bills for everyone. When questioned, 60% of respondents felt that the bill for dealing with piracy should be paid by the rightsholders.

Privacy was also an issue for 65% of respondents who said that monitoring Internet users’ downloading habits would have “serious privacy implications.” However, the most popular reason for not shifting responsibility to ISPs is the fact that pirates are always a step ahead, with 72% believing that given rapidly changing technology, a way around any technical measures will always be found.

“This research comes as the Government considers responses to its discussion paper on online copyright policy options. It paints a picture not of a nation of rampant pirates, but rather a majority of people who agree that action taken should include steps to reduce the market distortions that contribute to piracy,” commented Communications Alliance CEO, John Stanton.

While the entertainment companies have their tough demands and the ISPs have their objections, it seems likely that a solution will be found in the middle ground. Better pricing and availability will have an effect on the market while educational campaigns will help to sway some of those sitting on the fence. A total 59% of respondents favored the latter approach.

Whether ISPs will have to play a more active role remains to be seen, but given developments in the UK and United States, a notice-and-notice scheme to warn and educate consumers seems particularly likely.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Working for prominent clients such as Warner Bros. and BMG, Rightscorp began sending DMCA subpoenas to dozens of smaller local ISPs in the United States this year.

Unlike regular subpoenas these are not reviewed by a judge and only require a signature from the court clerk. This practice raises questions because federal courts have long decided that DMCA subpoenas are not applicable to file-sharing cases.

Perhaps unaware of the legal precedent most ISPs have complied with the requests, but the tide is slowly changing. Earlier this year Texas provider Grande Communications protested a broad subpoena and now Atlanta-based ISP CBeyond has followed that lead.

CBeyond, owned by Birch Communication, is refusing to hand over its customer data. The ISP has filed a motion to quash the subpoena at a federal court in Georgia arguing that Rightscorp is on a piracy fishing expedition.

“Rightscorp served an invasive and overly broad Subpoena on CBeyond seeking personal identifying information of more than a thousand of CBeyond’s subscribers,” CBeyond writes.

“This Court should not allow Rightscorp to use the federal court system as a vehicle to embark on a fishing expedition, and instead should quash Rightscorp’s Subpoena,” the company adds.

Among other things the ISP points out that Rightscorp ignores federal precedent which states that DMCA-subpoenas are not applicable to P2P-filesharing cases, as the Internet provider itself doesn’t store any content.

This matter was previously decided in a case between Verizon and the RIAA more than a decade ago, and has been upheld in subsequent cases. The fact that Rightscorp ignores these cases warrants sanctions, according to CBeyond.

The Atlanta ISP further accuses Rightscorp of trying to exploit the lack of knowledge of smaller ISPs, pointing out that they have already obtained the personal details of many U.S. subscribers through these “fishing expeditions.”

“This year alone, Rightscorp has filed approximately 100 miscellaneous actions like this one, trying to force regional ISPs to disclose personal identifying information from their subscribers,” CBeyond writes.

“Rightscorp’s strategy is to gamble on regional ISPs being unaware that Section 512(h) does not support these subpoenas on a pass-through ISP, and to hope that regional ISPs will avoid involving counsel and incurring legal expenses to fight Rightscorp’s subpoenas,” they add.

The motion to quash from CBeyond is similar to that of Grande Communications earlier this year. However, where Rightscorp was quick to pull their subpoena in the Texas case, the anti-piracy company now intends to file a reply.

Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec previously told TF that the court made the wrong decision in the RIAA case and that they were willing to fight this in court.

“The issue has actually not been addressed by the vast majority of Circuit Courts. We believe that the decision you cite will be overturned when the issue reaches the Supreme Court,” Sabec told us.

Whether that’s the case has yet to be seen…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Opinions on the state of the recording business are everywhere, from the ongoing row over Taylor Swift jilting Spotify to the endless debates over illegal downloading.

Most industry commentary on the latter is provided by the suits, whose corporate line dictates that unauthorized sharing costs money and jobs, and could ultimately mean the end of the industry.

Just lately their emphasis has been placed on personalizing the debate, with the aim of making the public have more empathy with hard-working artists. The line goes that if these people aren’t given a financial incentive to create, eventually it will be the art that suffers through lack of investment and development.

Then along comes Rob Zombie and turns the argument on its head.

In an interview with LoudWire covering filmmaking, his upcoming album, and even Alice Cooper, Zombie says that while everyone in the industry is complaining about illegal downloading, it simply isn’t an issue for him.

“I don’t care about any of that stuff. In fact, in a funny sort of way the fact that nobody buys records doesn’t bother me. In fact, I feel like it’s freed me,” Zombie said.

“I never did anything to sell records, per se, but when you take that pressure away 100 percent, I swear to God you get more creative because it doesn’t matter anymore.”

While the idea of not having to create art within a profitable formula is an interesting one, it’s not one that the majority of artists have the luxury of. However, Zombie says that not only does he enjoy operating outside the box, he’s happy to let people have his music without paying for it.

“That’s really been the case, I’m happy to give it away for free. I don’t care. I just want to make it, play it, get crazy with it. I hear a lot of musicians crying about it but for me, it’s re-energized us,” the musician concludes.

While Zombie in 2014 speaks of how piracy has benefited him, five years ago he had less flattering comments on the practice.

“The pirating thing is bad. The people it hurts the most are the ones you least think it hurts,” he said. “It’s not the big Britney Spears albums that are being pirated; it’s the indie bands that don’t have two cents to their name.”

And so the see-saw continues….

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Pirate Bay is without doubt one of the most censored websites on the Internet.

Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and this list continues to expand.

Now the music and movie industries plan to bring the blockades to Sweden, Pirate Bay’s home country. To that end, record labels Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music teamed up with Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry to file a lawsuit against one of the country’s largest ISPs, B2 Broadband.

The copyright holders demand that the Internet provider blocks access to The Pirate Bay as well as streaming site Swefilmer, Dagens Media reports.

According to the lawsuit, the companies previously asked the ISP to take action against the piracy that occurs on its networks, but without result. B2 doesn’t believe that it’s responsible for the actions of its users and turned down the request.

The copyright holders disagree. In their complaint they write that the ISP is responsible for the pirating activities of its users on both The Pirate Bay and Swefilmer.

“In each case, the objective conditions are met for B2 Broadband to be deemed guilty of being complicit in the copyright infringement that’s committed,” the complaint reads.

Attorney Henrik Bengtsson is convinced that the music and movie companies have a good chance of winning the case, as similar blockades are already in place in Denmark, the UK and elsewhere.

If they indeed win the case, Bengtsson believes that they may demand similar blockades from other large ISPs in the country.

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, is not happy with the attempt to make B2 responsible for the traffic it transmits.

“It’s neither the first time nor the last that this parasitic industry has found it easier to attack the messengers. This is why we have messenger immunity, why the mailman is never responsible for the contents of a message and the phone company not liable for what’s said in a phonecall” Falkvinge tells TF.

“The Internet must catch up to modern civil liberties standards,” he adds.

Thus far the copyright holders have not commented publicly on the lawsuit to avoid a media spectacle. “We have deliberately chosen not to push this. Neither party wants to make this media process,” Bengtsson says.

If the court sides with the copyright holders it will be the first time that a Swedish ISP has been required to block a website on copyright grounds.

Whether such a blockade will be very successful remains to be seen though, as there are plenty of alternatives and circumvention tools available. This includes VPN services, the many proxies that make up 9% of The Pirate Bay’s total traffic, and TPB’s own PirateBrowser.

Earlier this year the Dutch Pirate Bay blockade was lifted because the court deemed it disproportionate and ineffective.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.