JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Industry Message Forum Your songs pirated!?!

If you have music online, it has probably already been pirated.

Check this pirate site for your music: http://www.de-regalo.com/en/

It seems all my bands songs held on Soundcloud are available to download on this site. The good news is not my songs from Bandcamp or Reverbnation. However might they also be susceptible in the future.

Scary

Yep, this is the news in the Shoutbox at the moment.

Particularly annoying is that even though my tracks aren't downloadable on SoundCloud, they can be downloaded on the pirate site.

At least no money is being charged for downloads, but it's still an aggravating situation. I'm in the process of deleting all my SoundCloud tracks.

Several people on Facebook are already up in arms about this and are instructing the site owners to remove their (those peoples') songs.

Donna

Hey, my songs aren't on Soundcloud and they're on this...I typed some of my songs in and they ARE on it..they didn't have my permission....

Someone needs to alert Google so they can remove the pirate site from the search engine.

My songs are free to download from my site. I don't worry about copyrights or pirates.

Free downloads
http://jimcolyer.com/music/

Yeah, my music is on every pirate site imaginable. Of couse, without my permission. That's just how it is.



It would be awesome if that was all that was required to close a site like that. We could have saved the music business as we knew it in pre-2000.

And Google is as much of the problem as the sites

I don't know what the Google "terms of agreement" were pre-2000, but they are pretty cut and dry now. I'm not a lawyer, nor an agent for Google, but Google does in fact remove web sites (from their search engine) that engage in piracy.

Good to know. I've got a few on my list. YouTube, the biggest offender of them all, for starters. I'm gonna report Facebook, Twitter, The Pirate Bay, Rapidshare, Mediafire, etc....and it might be appropriate to report Google themselves.

Google did publicly protest the Anti-Piracy bill.

They are not on the side of the content creators

Stevens (what is your name by the way?), you read my mind.

Brian

I quit posting songs to soundcloud ( I still do "private" listings, though ) because it is mined by chinese and russian sites where they offer your songs for free download.

Pat Hardy Lockwood

Welcome to the Internet!

What has been made available for free will be 'harvested' and distributed for free by others wether you have attached a 'creative commons license' that allows free sharing or not. Stuff that is not free will be uploaded to the internet and will then be harvested and so on...

There are quite a few suspect robots that crawl the net to gather copyright protected material, most of the visitors to the web site I administer are such 'bad bots'.

But also the 'good' and big ones - search engines and content providers (Google and Google's YouTube, for example) - profit from free content. That makes them the biggest opponents of copyright holders.

The good news:
it is slightly more cumbersome to fetch or harvest stuff that is only streamed and cannot be downloaded directly (everything IS downloaded actually, but often only to be cached temporarily). http://www.deregalofm.com/ seem to have difficulty harvesting streaming files. Thus, all my stuff is corrupted on their site - not that I would mind ;-)

Cheers,
Bernd

Bernd your 100% right that really the safest way to protect your music is to stream it from your own website. I think it was HTML2.2 that first allowed streaming.

In a way it's kind of funny that musicians that use free websites to post their music like Soundcloud, ReverbNation and Soundclick then complain when people download their music for free. (Keyword: FREE). Maybe if they spent a few dollars to get their own domain and streamed their music from there it would reduce the amount of free music available and add worth to what they've created.

It's people looking for a cheap way to promote their music complaining about people looking for a cheap way to listen to music.....A match made in heaven.

Morning Sue!

You can stream with the free mini membership at Broadjam.com http://www.broadjam.com/ - for cheap musicians like me.

However, there is streaming audio software that records streaming audio files. Not sure of the quality, but I'm told it's good.

Other than not making your music available online, there's no sure-proof method to protect one's creations.

Best, John

Hiya John,

Actually anyone that buys software to record streams qualifies as idiot in training.......The files do get downloaded onto your computer if you know where to look(you don't need the software).

Retrieving an mp3 in that manner is a bit complicated Sue. Too complicated for idiots. That’s why they make the software.

John

I missed a gold mine -- software that moves the file from one folder to another folder but takes 5 min so that the person buying it thinks they got their monies worth plus that gives me the chance to sell them a new version that does it in 4 min .... repeat for versions 3, 4 and 5.

Don't feel too bad Sue. We've all missed opportunities.

Best, John

Hi John,

there is no quality loss when you 'record' audio files from a stream. It's a copy of the very file you're listening to. The trick is attaching a proper name because the file in the cache directory of your computer has some temporary ((hexadecimal) file name. That's it.

Fortunately, most people don't know where to look, and harvesting software would have to handle the files one by one to be able to attach proper names. That's why streaming is a relatively good measure to prevent - or at least reduce - piracy.

Bernd

Hey Bernd! The trick is searching your cashe shortly after streaming. Then look for a recent file 2-5 MB. Though we probably shouldn't be giving this info.

Best, John

Hi friends,

My son works at Google. I visited, talked with people, read books, and as far as I could see, they are not evil...

IMHO it is too easy to turn against powerful companies just because we need scapegoats. The problem is not with Google, they want to empower us to create, to feel good, to watch videos, listen to independent music etc...

Youtube implements extensive copyright protection and if you know how you can ask them to take down videos with pirated music. (but BTW to fight IODA and other shark companies to unjustly claim every music in sight is another point to discuss).

The problem is with them at the bottom!! small companies wanting to make a buck or just to get big and sell up to the next bigger fish around. Or with mafia-type people who would anyway sell their sister along with a free MP3 from russia...

Also, let's be honest: many of us get free stuff from TV, internet BUT also get paid for others getting OUR stuff!! Remember, we used to record our favorite LP's or radio shows onto cassettes so we could listen to our favorites later? I did... or the double cassette decks with a Copy button... raise your hand if you never did! That included myself until I realized my duplicity... now at least I feel better participating in a kind of karmic "give-and take"... lol...

Funnily enough, since I accept that my music is heard on all kinds of sites - legit or not - I sell more downloads digitally.

So yes, we have to assert our rights, but be careful as the Big Bad Wolf is not necessarily where we think it is, nor necessarily big or a wolf...

Best wishes for us all http://www.jpfolks.com/forum/images/icons/default/cool.gif

Ariel

Ariel,

Your son may be wonderful... Google, with all the money they rake in and with their world dominance, paid single digits (somewhere around 3.9%-6.9% in taxes in 2012 I believe). So I am not really convinced they are not evil, no matter what their motto says. It doesn't mean their workers are evil, but someone is guiding that behemoth.

Your second comment about taping off radio IS LEGAL IN THE USA. It is considered time shifting and it was taped off radio which had already paid for the right to play it AND gotten paid by advertisers for the number of listeners. Illegal file sharing pays nothing. Posting on YouTube without permissions also pays nothing. I don't have a single song legally for sale anywhere and I STILL found my tracks on YouTube. I did get them removed, but not by Google, I went to the people who posted them and got them to pull them down, but I bet they are still on servers somewhere since stuff never gets deleted completely it appears. The biggest problem is that people simply don't know how and where their music is being used on YouTube. If some idiot puts it behind some video footage and doesn't name it in a way you can search and find it, you're screwed... and that happens ALL THE TIME! US laws says you are supposed to get paid 10K for each singular illegal use or play of a song without permission. That is true for Grandma's but not for YouTube. Their defense is that are simply too successful to monitor their site... so they get away with it, end of story and you don't have the power or money to sue them and get anywhere. Google is the biggest, baddest wolf in world history and to think otherwise is beyond wearing rose colored glasses when looking at it. They scare me way more than governments do. Their power to control all aspects of live in the world and their level of data mining and manipulation of all things on the internet goes far beyond any other company or government in the world. People used to say you can't fight city hall. Well, as hard as that is, it is easy compared to Google. They could crush any of us any time they pleased. And the scary thing is that some companies have used it to manipulate their results in ways to cover up warnings and scam alerts and Google is so big it doesn't care to prevent it. We just had that happen with a well known scam operation who had paid a company to cover their tracks and they did it successfully including our own site which had been "cleansed" to diffuse negative search results without appearing to do so. We are not high tech enough to stop it, but you'd think Google could.. if they wanted to. And that is where you are correct... small companies doing small bad things go unnoticed because it isn't worth it to them to care.

Thanks, Brian, good discussion!

You answer touches several interesting points and I'll have to think about before responding.

Would you mind if I had someone at Google look at your comment and respond? THAT would be interesting to read!! Actually, my son asks me and other friends for feedback for some Google products, and passes our comments to a team involved in that product.

So maybe we could contribute to the solution instead of blaming the problem?

Great!

The biggest culprit IS Google, their employees maybe well-meaning (and sligthly naive), that doesn't change much.

You might check out the dispute between YouTube and GEMA (the German PRO), not necessarily their differing ideas about the height of license fees (that's fine, that's negotiating*), but the methods YouTube uses to manipulate internet users to bully our PRO: by placing fake messages on top of their videos claiming the GEMA forbids them to be shown.

There have been similar issues with Google Books, Google News, and Google Images. The common denominator being that Google actively fights against the international copyright.

Bernd

* there have been ridiculous agreements with other - weaker - European PROs. These seem to include a most favored reinsurer clause. if the strongest PRO - the German GEMA - reaches a better agreement with YouTube this will be applied in all European countries. Hence the harsh dispute - and very unfair means applied by Google/YouTube.

As long as there are people in the world that don't see anything wrong with stealing art, and songwriting is an art,they will steal it anyway they can.Even if they can buy it for a fraction of what it cost to produce a song,they will steal it.99 cents for a song that cost hundreds(if not thousands) of dollars to produce seems like a bargain to me but the five finger discount is even more a bargain to a person that has no scruples.People pay $5.00 for a cup of coffee that last them five to ten minutes, but they will not pay 99 cents for a song that they can enjoy anytime they want for a lifetime.Hard to figure but who can fathom the thinking of the human mind.Our only hope is that there are enough HONEST people that are willing to buy what they need and hopefully that need is our music.

I've even stopped putting CDs up on CD Baby because I did a search and found a site over in Russia selling my CDs,artwork and all,for $4.00,the only place they could have gotten it was by buying a copy from CD Baby and then duplicating it to sell from their own site.I don't blame CD Baby,they are in the business of selling CDs,but I don't see anyway to stop this from going on.

I know people that down load free music off the net and they don't mind saying so,even when I point out that it is wrong,I don't think it stops them.They don't see taking something that is cheap as stealing,even if there is a price tag on it.I've told people that if you take something that belongs to someone else with out their permission and with out paying the asking price,then it is stealing.

Wow - makes me rethink posting to Soundcloud.....

Pop

Interesting comments from Brian Austin , here and I totally agree
with him.

Nothing is fool proof, but in general we can only benefit from
having songs posted.

It seems anyone can put a song up on you tube, and that can only benefit us as song writers.

I have discovered some Hot talent on You Tube, and in turn have gone out and bought the C.D.s

In general any one who has not made it as this time, could benefit from someone liking their songs, and maybe contacting
them wit some sort of proposition.

I also believe that some learning writers are going a bit over the top by believing their material is being lifted or stolen.
By Who? what is the benefit, ? You are not famous because you don't write hit songs and have not learned how to do it.
Thats being blunt and truthful.

Also how many sites do you guys need to be on, Just Plain Folks is the biggest by far, many of the same faces pop up on some very amature web forums , for what reason.

The sure signs of amature is someone who believes everyone is out to steal his/her material , Anyone who did that would not even know how to use it in my opinion, and if you believe Real Pros are going to do it , I'm afraid you are very mistaken.

Hi Everat,

That has happened to all of us, I've had album songs and single songs pirated in the way you describe. but what can we do about it.

Governments don't give us the protection, I've stopped worrying about it otherwise you stop becoming a songwriter.

Concentrate on becoming a better writer, than you are today
don't let the negatives stop your artistic bent

Probably a song may not be "Lifted" that isn't out on a Major Label. The cost to put out pirated songs by a small artist may cost more than it is worth. Re-producing whole albums without paying a license fee has been done by Foreign enities that haven't signed the Berne Agreement.

Copyright protection is recognized in all the Countries that have signed the Berne Agreement. So a copyright owner can seek a remendy in any country that has signed the Berne Agreement. Some countries still have not signed the Berne Agreement and so seeking a remendy is difficult if not impossible. When product is sold in a country that has signed the agreement without the proper license it is usually confiscated. Not only music but many other products that are protected by patent or copyright.