Tune Out Drop In Turn Up

While a 31 year old Swede was found guilty today of copyright infringement in an appeal hearing against an earlier conviction:

After a retrial, a 31 year old man from Linköping, Sweden, was found guilty this morning in the District Court.

The court decided that for uploading 4,500 music tracks and 30 movies with the filesharing application Direct Connect, the defendant should receive a heavy fine and a suspended prison sentence. Initially the file-sharer had been accused of uploading around 23,000 music tracks, but Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s (APB) use of questionable investigative techniques forced the prosecutor to withdraw some of the charges.

In its verdict, the Linköping District Court decided that due to the large number of files involved in the case, handing out just fines wasn’t enough, hence the suspended sentence. This situation of sharing many thousands of files at once affects the BitTorrent user a lot less than those using other methods of sharing, which is probably why the music industry prefers to target users using ‘folder sharing’ clients, such as DirectConnect, LimeWire and KaZaA. (TorrentFreak)

On the other side of the world stranger things are happening. As I blogged earlier:

Australia's biggest musical acts are crying poor in a new documentary that seeks to discourage people from obtaining music illegally and change the public's perception that they live a high life of riches and glamour.

But now the video has been withdrawn due to one of the artists featured claiming that he was misrepresented in the advertisment:

One of the artists interviewed for the video, Lindsay McDougall of Frenzal Rhomb, was livid after watching it last week, saying he was duped into joining an anti-piracy "witch hunt".

He called it a case of the record labels "crying poor", prompting the music industry to recut the video to exclude him.

"It seems that the industry used the artists to achieve an anti-piracy and woe-is-us message," said Jared Madden, 32, who, with colleague Adam Purcell, is responsible for the Tune-Out campaign. (Music industry's piracy message out of tune)

The campign, tune-out.com is addressing the 'music industry' (whatever that might be) in general:

You the Music Industry have failed to move with us in our discovery of new and exciting ways to interact, collaborate, and communicate. We have embraced the digital space and the opportunities it affords us, and we have changed because of this. We are developing new forms of entertainment which have transformed the way we interact with each other, with you, and with music. This is an ongoing process, and we are excited about what we will discover tomorrow.

Interesting times indeed.