TorrentFreak Email Update

Music Royalty Society Collects Money For Fake Artists, Bathroom Equipment and Food

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 03:36 AM PST

If you play music in public, sometimes even if you play it in relative privacy, music royalty societies want you to pay them money. It’s big business. The UK’s Performing Right Society (PRS) collects around £650 million every year and isn’t scared to flex its muscles when people aren’t paying. Got a business where staff listen to radio and a passing member of the public hears it? You owe them money. PRS have even taken the police to court for playing music in police stations.

This type of behavior recently caught the eye of Basta, an investigative and satirical TV show in Belgium. They had received complaints about SABAM, the Belgian association of authors, composers and publishers, so they decided to have a closer look. The results were both hilarious and extremely worrying.

The Basta show begins with the team driving along in a car. They had picked up a hitchhiker who was listening, along with the rest of the car’s occupants, to the radio. Worried that they might owe SABAM some money, Basta phones them and asks. SABAM explained that if there were less than 5 people present that could be counted as part of a family circle. No charge.

Next a pair from the Basta crew are sitting on a train and one their cellphones starts ringing – with pop music as the ringtone. Oh oh, this could mean trouble. With 9 people in the same carriage SABAM could be very interested in this. Another panicked call to SABAM reveals that in this instance, since the ringtone was already paid for, no royalties need to be paid. Another very lucky escape.

But these are just a couple of outrageous situations, even by SABAM standards. Other, more common situations had been raising concern among the public and Basta viewers. One email to the show described how SABAM showed up at a dorm party and demanded 30 euros. Another outlined a situation where a business owner was sued because a TV playing in his private kitchen could be heard by the public in his shop.

So Basta decided to have a little fun with SABAM, to see how far the rabbit hole went.

First they created a very nice flyer advertising a party called “Where is Everyone?” displaying a tagline of “DON’T BE THERE!” along with a date for this great event. After setting up a single disco light in their chosen location and hiding in the trunk of a car to monitor the venue, then came the wait. Would the SABAM music police turn up for money? Of course they would.

Disappointed at the apparent emptiness of the party, SABAM’s inspector got back in his car and drove away but he was clearly worried that some money might be getting away, so he returned a short while later and called the number on the flyer, which of course belongs to one of the Basta crew. The call was of no help so no wiser as to what is going on, he tore the event poster from the wall and left.

After dark he came back yet again, this time looking at an empty room with a single disco light strobing in silence. Confused and asking himself “Where is everyone?” he left for the final time.

But the Basta team hadn’t finished yet. On its website SABAM has a price list which shows how much it charges for venues of different sizes. The lowest price range is for rooms measuring from 1 to 100 square meters. So, after carefully measuring out an area of 0.99 square meters – conveniently underneath several balconies so more people could attend in the vertical space – they notified SABAM of the event.

The inspector turned up and after identifying the organizer of the party, started to discuss how much they would have to pay for their 0.99 square meter party. The answer, of course, should be nothing, but the SABAM inspector insisted that they know “very well” that 1-100 square meters actually means 0-100 square meters.

At this point the SABAM guy pulled out his invoice and charged a fee of 82 euros. “I’ve worked at SABAM for 26 years and i’ve never seen this before,” he said. But Basta still wanted to get to the bottom of another accusation – that SABAM take money from the public for artists that they don’t represent.

Making a telephone call to SABAM from a public toilet, a Basta team member looked at the manufacturer of a hand dryer and explained that Kimberly Clark would be performing at an upcoming event. That would cost 134 euros minimum said SABAM.

Next the playlist. What if Kimberly Clark sang songs not covered by SABAM? Titles such as ‘Hot Breeze’, ‘Show Me Your Hands’, ‘I Wanna Blow You Dry’, ‘I’m Not a Singer I Am a Machine’ and the ever-timeless, ‘We Fooled You’, for example.

Five days later the answer came from SABAM. All of the songs were “100% protected” and so Basta must pay 127.07 euros.

Concerned that this might be a one-off mistake, the Basta team tried again, this time taking brand names of products from the supermarket including Suzi Wan, the name of a Chinese food wok kit, Mister Cocktail and the Party Mix, which is a hybrid of a drink and some party food, and Ken Wood, the food mixer.

SABAM Artists

They got bills from SABAM for these ‘artists’ totalling more than 540 euros.

Clearly, since SABAM are collecting money for these ‘artists’, they should get the money they are entitled to. So with their wok kit, food mixer, drink and party food in a box, Basta headed off to SABAM headquarters to sign them up for payments. Of course, these products weren’t allowed to be artists.

So why on earth are SABAM taking money on their behalf? Answer: Because SABAM don’t check when they collect money from people, they just take it. SABAM repaid the 540 euros.

While the Basta team have deliberately portrayed SABAM’s business as a complete farce, which appears to have been particularly easy, by the end of the TV show (which is in Dutch by the way, but don’t let that put you off now you know the outline, it’s hilarious) one can’t help feeling pretty angry. While SABAM staff are simply doing their job, the system is ridiculously one-sided and is often backed up by legal action.

We often hear horror stories about these collection societies, now you can see one operating first hand. The TV show can be found here, enjoy.

Arrr! The Music Pirates Are Still Here

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 05:56 AM PST

A few days ago the piracy research firm Envisional published an elaborate study into (unlawful) file-sharing traffic on the Internet. Commissioned by NBC Universal the researchers combined older Internet traffic estimates with their own research on the use of various file-sharing platforms.

Although we’ve been quite critical of such studies in the past, especially when they’re funded by the entertainment industry, we have to admit that this is one of the best reports we’ve seen to date. Those who are interested in the use of BitTorrent and how it compares to other file-sharing services should definitely have a read.

The researchers clearly know what BitTorrent is all about, and although several assumptions and methodological choices paint the outcome to a certain degree, there’s not much to complain about in the data they present. Unfortunately, however, even solid data can be easily misinterpreted in the press.

Over the last days several readers have pointed us to an article that appeared in two of the top tech news outlets, Wired and Ars Technica. The article – “Where have all the music pirates gone?” – is written by one of the best tech reporters we know, but in this case the conclusion is way off.

The article zooms in on Envisional’s breakdown of content types that are “most popular” among BitTorrent downloaders. For this analysis the Envisional researchers looked at the 10,000 most downloaded files on the PublicBitTorrent tracker in December 2010.

As it turns out, pornography and films are in the lead with 35.8 and 35.2 percent respectively. Music on the other hand can be found at the bottom of the list with a measly 2.9 percent. Sounds plausible so far, but the article failed to mention something that clearly affects the outcome.

Most popular torrents?

top torrents

The overview of the 10,000 “most popular” torrents is based on a snapshot of the number of leechers. In other words, the rank of the most popular torrents is based on the number of people people who were downloading a file at the time the tracker was polled, not those who already finished it (including seeders).

This obviously results in a huge bias since the average video file of BitTorrent is much larger than the average music file. Based on a sample of millions of torrents we found that the average video torrent is 1.73 GB while music torrents average at 214 MB. So, video files are 8 times the size of music files.

Larger file sizes mean longer download times, and this is one of the explanations why there are far less music files in the top 10,000. Movie torrent simply take longer to complete so there are generally more people listed as leechers. If the top 10,000 was based on actual completed downloads the percentage of music torrents would have been much higher.

We’re of course not arguing that more people download music on BitTorrent than movies, but based on the above it seems likely that the difference between the two categories in “actual” popularity (completed downloads in a given time) is being misrepresented. One thing’s certain, the music pirates have definitely not vanished from BitTorrent yet.

The original article does point out correctly that worldwide, the music industry is doing a much better job at presenting alternatives to piracy than the movie industry. Whether music piracy has gone down because of it is a different question though, and one that at least needs some comparison data in order to be answered correctly.

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Tuesday, February 8, 2011