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Album Piracy, What Should Have Been Done!

Pakistan_piracyI read a great post by Amir.in which covered the steps about how the piracy issue should have been dealt yesterday when owner of Mag4you was arrested and how it was dealt. He said

By writing this i am not sympathizing with Mag4you, neither i take any rights off from Fire Records, but i hardly think Fire Records material would have mattered so much for mag4you to deny removal of content and go to jail

Summary of what Amir said:

  • When someone has problem with content, website owner is contacted to remove it.
  • If content isn’t removed, data centers where the site is hosted are contacted then. The hosting gives the warning of 24-48 hours to website owner, followed by domain suspension (which no website owner can afford, so content is usually taken down).
  • He adds

I am 100% sure above mentioned steps wouldn’t have been taken just because the owner of the web is Pakistani and is in Pakistan so just track him down in his home and arrest because. It’s Pakistan. We all know what our police do. They arrest first and than collect evidences while they are supposed to collect evidences first and then arrest.

All those who think that Pakistani websites are doing nothing, they must be aware of the all revenue generated by the websites running from Pakistan is much more than the over all software industry. Websites have been regularly bringing income in Pakistan and have silently played major part in running economy.

I believe, it’s extremely important to take down piracy seriously. It’s musicians’ right to get paid for their work but was it the right way to do so? I am sure piracy is like stealing the content but for years there wasn’t a law about it and then when all of us got used to downloading and uploading content for free, we get jailed?

Yesterday, Fire Records came over here and left this comment

Law had to take its course. We need to understand, appreciate and abide by laws. This is how civilized societies are supposed to behave.

Yes, law had to take its course but that is SO NOT how civilized people behave. Civilized people look forward to protect their content by DMCA and issue a warning as soon as the violation is made and if no action is taken, the site goes off.

Few days back Mr Rohail Hyatt came over and found his song being pirated. He requested me to remove it (without threatening to imprison me) and I did take it off. That is how I believe civilized people behave.

Sadaf believes music websites still play major part in promotion of artists and there isn’t a single artist who didn’t take support of these sites to get fame. For years music piracy is being done by music shops who google out the stuff and burn 5 movies along with their mp3s in one CD and sell for 30 Rs each filling their pockets. If piracy issues are being taken strongly, stop that first.

It doesn’t matter when the songs are being recorded and mixed on pirated version of Adobe Audition installed on pirated Windows and Macs but it does matter when those songs are pirated. I DO NOT support piracy but why is it that we can pirate others’ content and if someone else does that we get angry?

Why does Fire Record expect the smaller sites to stop when bigger fishes get away with it? The bigger fishes are the competitors and smaller sites would never like to see their traffic drain by stopping piracy while their competitors enjoy it.

Conclusion :

Website owners:

  • Please stop album piracy, it will be better in your and musician’s interest.
  • Try to contact [email protected] to apply to gain licenses for streaming their music.
  • Also request information about the rules and laws you have to abide.

Fire Records:

  • Please provide the website owners with rules and information to comply with. I am sure you can’t ask each one personally but writing about it at your website will be cool.
  • Please publish details about if there is a time span after which albums can be legally uploaded or streamed.
  • Please provide with details if streaming album demos is fine or not.
  • Stop the bigger pirates before catching the smaller ones. It shows how powerless you are against the bigger ones and encourages piracy.
  • Grow up! Start performing things in a better manner.

By Hamad Dar

Hey, I am Hamad. I like Rock/Metal music from the 80s. My favorites are Guns n Roses and Pink Floyd. Apart from that i listen to Underground music of Pakistan and try to promote them as much as I can.

5 replies on “Album Piracy, What Should Have Been Done!”

Hey! You’re right. You immediately removed the track when I requested you to do so. Thank you for the very informative post and I agree with the advice you have left for website owners and record companies. I totally agree that the real pirates are still out there operating effortlessly whereas individuals are targeted because they are soft targets. I’d be happily jumping up and down if this whole effort was being done to aid the artists and for the betterment of music in general in Pakistan. Unfortunately, it’s only being done for the sake of business. First the artists are stripped of their rights because they are desperate and then sponsorship money is made on the bought up licenses and not a single paisa is shared with the artists. There should be action against this if you ask me. I urge artists to not fall in this trap and fight for their rights. The best possible deal they can get into is to NEVER give up the rights to their songs and to make sure they have a cut in any future deals made from their creativity and hard work. If you don’t get a deal with your rights intact, take a stand, release online and give your music out for free if necessary and believe in yourself and your work. It may be hard initially but it will pay off in the long run…

This is Just my $1 – .98 worth of input into this affair…

hey ,

how about tackling down the bigger pirates of pakistans music, that is the indian film industry,
copying our pop songs, without any credits to the singer or to pakistan, or for that matter, the record company,

can the FIRE RECORDS take care of this too ? that none of their artists songs are copied by india.
why not taking a step to sue them for doing this,
this way the world will know better about the reality of indian music and about how great is the pakistan’s music,

another thing, why not work on bringing the international music companies in pakistan to open their offices here ,hire our artists,i hv no idea how this can be done,but sure the gurus of the industry like Rohail Hayaat may know better,

why this is more important to me, lets see
our artist go to india to release their albums internationally through indian companies, in return their music cassetes are kept under the label of INDIAN MUSIC, in the music shops all over the world, a non pakistani and non indian will think that oh yeah indian music is great,actually he is listening to pakistans music.dont go far, just go to dubai and see what i mean.nusrat fateh ali, atif, ali zafar, junoon, strings, jal..all u will find under indian music.
who gets the cedit?, india,.. also if u go to discos, the DJS will play pakistans rock music and people dancing like crazy, i have heard people,the goraas i mean, telling oh man, indian music is great

can we work on this…FIRE RECORDS, u belong to a big media group….can u do this..

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