A high court order in the UK has been issued to UK ISPs forcing them to start blocking access to some of the big piracy sites including The Pirate Bay probably the worlds best known torrent search engine.
More info here
Last week saw the RIAA announcing that the most important tool to fight piracy is innovation. You can read the full article on torrent freak here.
The news is very welcome news at AudioLock.NET HQ because for the past few years on top of the scanning, takedown and watermarking services we have been busy developing a range of services and tools both internally and in partnership with a few cutting edge companies to help labels maximise the revenue from their content. This is achieved with efficient marketing techniques as well as some new revenue streams. Two of these will be announced over the next month with some key labels and artists taking the lead.
Following recent pressure from MPAA on a few of the filesharing sites Wupload and Fileserve have disabled thier sharing ability. This means only the uploader of files can actually now download them. This shows just how shaken the file lockers are following the takedown of Megaupload. Whether this is a permanent move or just while they feel the heat, time will tell.
While recent moves to close specific locker and other file hosting sites have had success it is clear from data gathered by AudioLock.NET that many new lockers are appearing and the number of files being loaded to some others has greatly increased.
Watch this space….
After a short existence Fileshawk.com has been taken offline. The locker had risen very quickly on many pirate sites as the preferred file share provider. It would seem though that our and probably other companies’s repeated complaints first to the site then to their ISP has done the trick. It is likely that because of their higher than average monthly fees for premium accounts that they were providing to webmasters a high payout for downloads which is probably why it became such a problem so quickly.
AudioLock.NET doesn’t just issue takedown notices we are actively involved with site removal helping to shut such sites dealing in mainly copyrighted content.
After a month of rapid changes in online piracy following the highly publicised closure of Megaupload.com by the FBI, PIPA, SOPA and more recently many countries signing up to ACTAincluding the UK things have not slowed. In the past week in the UK the Serious Organised Crime Agency made thier move by taking down RnBXclusive which is well know to provide download links to a large amount of copyrighted content. They have even made arrests which you can read about here. With all this activity it is not a surprise that some sites are voluntarily closing. Mukki.org which has been a long standing site providing lists of links to huge amounts of music, games, films, tv shows is one such site who closed up shop this week. I am sure we will see many more…
With a number of major record labels now releasing tracks for sale on the same day that they get radio play for the first time there is potentially an unforeseen bonus for professional pirates. The reason for zero day releases is to try to reduce the lost sales caused by leaked pirated promos. While it will tackle this it does also mean there will be increased demand on the day of release when pirates can very easily buy a copy of the track on release and ride the wave of demand to maximise their ill gotten gains.
With so many file sharing sites (I am not going to help them by listing them here) now offering upto $30 for every 1000 times an illegal track is downloaded the pirates which are already buying releases as soon as they come out and are automatically uploading to several of these sites at a time are set to make even more.
Part of the reason this is such an issue is that these filesharing sites benefit from Googles indexing algorithum and therefore are frequently higher is a search that legitimate stores. This drives potential customers direct to these illegal sites.
A search for the current No.1 (Bruno Marz – Grenade) showed 6 out of the top 10 results to be illegal sites all of which are offering money to the person who uploaded the file.
Using AudioLock.NET to easily watermark every copy of music bought in download stores is the solution. The system does not affect the quality of sound and works on all audio formats while at the same time automatically alerts stores to which of their customers are the source of these leaks. AudioLock.NET is also able to issue automatically DMCA takedown notices thus quickly removing the leaks 24/7.
It is clear having been listening to presentations and feedback from labels at Midem 2011 that piracy is a huge issue directly affecting revenue streams, however they largely feel helpless to stop it. AudioLock.NET has been developed by music professionals to provide a cost effective real solution with the ability to actually grow revenues again.
AudioLock.NET will be attending the Amsterdam Dance Event 2010 to discuss music piracy and how record labels can cost effectively tackle it. We will also be launching a new feature of the already powerful array of anti music piracy tools available at AudioLock.NET which will now allow you not only to protect digital copies of your music but also CDs. The feature will allow you to select tracks or an album and who you would like to send the CDs to. The system will then automatically burn the CDs, print the discs, print a cover letter and the envelope before dispatching to your intended recipient.
This means from the same system you can with just a few clicks deliver digital or physical copies that are AudioLock’ed without having to burn them yourself.
If you would like to arrange a meeting at the Amsterdam Dance Event 2010 then we have a few times left on the 20th September so get in touch.
Unbeknown to most record labels and music producers there are thousands of professional music pirates out there who are just waiting for your latest release and hard work to make them some quick easy money.
These pirates make a living from simply buying a copy of your music and then uploading it to file hosts who will pay them for every time an illegal copy is downloaded. Don’t believe us? Then try this Google search. You will see there are hundreds of file hosting sites that provide affiliate accounts where they will pay around $8 per 1000 illegal downloads a file you upload to them gets.
These file hosts make their money through advertising to a visitor while they are downloading a file. They don’t care what files they are hosting as long as they are getting downloaded and therefore adverts are getting seen. They won’t get shut down because they plead innocence based on the concept that they can’t check the ownership of uploads and therefore will only take files down once they have received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice.
So if your part of the music industry while they are making money, the pirate is making money you are losing money. Sound fair to you?
The source of most of the original files these pirates are using are download stores. The pirates will buy a track for £1.30 as soon as it is released and will then upload it to several of these hosts in one go using an upload tool. Simple as drag and drop. Say this track gets downloaded 500 times on each file host and they uploaded it to 10 then suddenly they get $40 (£25) in thier bank. If they do this for a whole album of tracks then that is £300. Not bad for less than 5 minutes work and a spend of £15.60.
So what can we do to stop this massive drain on your income? Easy, by integrating AudioLock.NET into download stores we can actually identify the professional pirates and stop them getting the tracks in the first place. If all download stores were to use AudioLock.NET then it would be possible to generate a list of banned IP address, Names, Addresses and Credit Cards. Then each store could simply block any purchases from these thus choking the pirate from getting music in the first place. In addition AudioLock.NET monitors the internet for any illegal copies and will automatically issue takedown notices ensuring file hosts don’t get a chance to profit from this illegal activity.
You can view our latest press release about the launch of AudioLock.NET on the Yahoo News site. The response to this has been beyond our expectations. It is clear that there are thousands of record labels, producers and bands around the world who are really suffering from the problems with piracy.
We have also received some functionality requests which we are considering and we will be releasing our development roadmap soon so you can see what is yet to come.
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