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.