former Chief Operating Officer of New Music at EMI says limewire pirates were best itunes customers
 

http://torrentfreak.com/former-googl...tomers-110726/

don't feel bad about the torrents i'm downloading now. thanks.

Oh jeez .....

How would one go about acquiring the data to support such a statement?

My first thought is you would have to know the identity of a pirate, then have their records to show what and how much they pirated then you would need their records as to what they actually purchased and paid for.

Is that kind of information readily available for comparison?

interesting question

He profiled his close relatives and buddies, 100% solid stats

the only way this can be explained is those users got ipods and iphones and were 'forced' to use itunes to load stuff on them. if those users could figure out the way to do it without itunes they wouldn't purchase through itunes in the first place.

your argument is just matching one thing to support your ideology without giving too much thought why it actually happened.
has nothing to do with 'try-before-you-buy'

it's limewire not torrents

you created an account like napster
which means you had a hell of a lot more data to track when you sued the company for the records.

emi was part of said suit and therefore had access to that data

There's a small problem with your theory of how he came upon the data to support his assertion.

In the torrent freak article, it says Merrill profiled Limewire users "during his stint at EMI."

Merrill was forced out his job by EMI in March of 2009. EMI sued Limewire in June of 2010. Discovery in that case would not have started for several months thereafter.

So... did EMI give Merrill access to the data obtained through discovery in their lawsuit after he was fired, or do you think he came up with the data to support his assertions through some other means? I suspect the latter is the case, myself.

EMI was not a party in the RIAA suit against Limewire that kicked up in 2009, btw, so you can forget about them having obtained the relevant data that way, too.

I'm not saying he's wrong in his conclusion, btw (I would not be at all surprised if it were true). I'm just saying that he could not have obtained the data in question the way you think he did. :2 cents:

where are you getting your information about the cases

http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA...acy/1154722015

this happened in 2006

EMI was in the original case


http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20...ol;mlt_related

he does not state where he got the information from.

I don't think this is a "try before you buy" type of system. I think the majority of the users ripped music without ever having paying for it.

Rhapsody is a "try before you buy" type of deal. I pay $70 a year to stream whatever music I wish, and part of that is kicked back to the recording companies. (This recently changed being as I was an original Rhapsody member, back in the day when your MP3 could only fit three songs on it - Rhapsody was free to use for me for years.) On average, above and beyond what I spend a year to stream, I also buy about $50 of music, song by song.

It's a really good system being as I buy both new music, and older music from the 70s and 80s that you can't buy on CD these days.

The record companies completely fucked up here. Instead of making it easier to buy music and cutting their costs by delivering it online directly to the consumers and cutting out the usual costs and middle men, they locked everything down. In the end a handful of companies - iTunes and Rhapsody - are now the places to buy music, which takes a huge cut of the profits. They fucked up.

And do you know what pisses me off? Is some of the artists were in on this - locking down their music.

Kid Rock is a great example. He had videos on YouTube about how bad illegal downloading was, yet at the same time his music was not for sale on iTunes and not for sale on Rhapsody. I could listen to his music for free on fucking YouTube, but could not buy it legally online no matter what.

These artists failed to understand how they could benefit from this.

Hmm... the ruling in the RIAA case doesn't list EMI as being among the plaintiffs, that's why I thought they weren't a party to the case. I definitely got the date wrong, though; in a different source I looked at earlier, I misread the date of publication of the Court's decision as the date of filing. Sorry about that!

Having said that, while it sure sounds like EMI and the other labels referenced in that article accused Limewire in 2007, it also looks to me they didn't actually file their case until 2010, and as such, discovery in that case could not have started prior to 2010.

It's also possible that there was an earlier case filed by EMI, but not fully adjudicated, and what I'm looking at is a later filing. I can't find any evidence that's the case, though.

At any rate, I don't think Merrill's conclusion is outlandish, regardless of the source of his claim. I just think it's a bit unlikely that the source of the data was discovery in any lawsuit.

What the heck... I know some of the attorneys involved in these cases; I'll just ask around and find out for sure.

still lime fucker own some % of fb and his cock is rided by hot chicks

Piracy is a really weird phenomenon. I think in regard to music, Limewire and Napster were just the first ones to jump on digital distribution. People wanted to be able to download individual songs that they liked. For some, it obviously had to do with price, but for a lot of people it was just a convenience thing. There's a reason why iTunes is so huge.

The same goes for movies. People want to be able to stream movies online. The price isn't a huge issue. This is why Netflix is so popular. As they continue to expand their library, I think we'll see a lot of people that were pirating move over to Netflix.

Video games too! I used to buy video games once in a while, but I pirated a lot of them. I still usually download a game before I buy it to make sure it works, but with over 60 games on my steam account, I don't think many people could label me as a thief. I just like to know what I'm getting myself into. That said, Steam's expanding library has made it easier to get games digitally, which is really all I wanted.

I think piracy, especially early piracy, catered to two different types of people. Those who wanted digital distribution and those who didn't want to pay. There will always be people who don't want to pay, but there's not much we can do about that. Nowadays, media is becoming more available online. I think piracy will drop (or remain level while online sales increase) as this happens.

Porn's a little bit different. I think a centralized VOD / streaming service would probably be best. AEBN is good, but I think it'd do better with a flat monthly fee for all of the content. I could be wrong.

Quit trying to sugar coat theft.

Lol what a nonsense,of course they are best customers since they need to get somewhere content to pirate it further,same goes with porn pirates which probably have accounts on many paysites,but they also release content on pirate sites very fast.

he's full of shit

where is the mystery here? they were building lawsuits against people, how do you do that without getting names? When you run the same names through the itunes database you look for matches... problem solved....

I guarantee that for every pirate that buys a few songs on itunes there are thousands more that never buy a single song. I have no data to back up that statement but neither does that guy.

You know whats awesome.. spotify you can listen to whole albums! You pay the monthly fee to get to listen to it on your mobile device

I guarantee you that Gideon solely posts here in order to wind up the easy-to-wind-up.

He is pointless.

If everyone just stopped replying to him, he'd stop.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

your guarantee something you have no data that back up your statement

btw he does have data to back up his statement

emi would have records of sales from their itunes payout info

and they most certainly have access to the records they got from 2006 suit they were involved in

I'm really starting to think torrentfreak is making up these ridiculous fucking articles.

Movies and songs are a different ballgame where try before you buy is concerned

Are you really as dumb as you pretend to be? Seriously, is this an act? If you're trolling just say so and I can play along.

More mindless dribble from a content thief.

.

please note that this jackass was also a past google guy. they love free.

you might want to check out box office results of wolverine

the work print was released months before the full release

and they had amazing numbers

lots of people saw the entire work print and still went to see the full movie in theaters because they wanted to see what it look like completed

the 3d issue is the same sort of upsell

btw that problem is solved by access shifting

if you can get it legally on the same day from every source (including free from bit torrent) piracy would not exist at all.

your making wild unproven claim and guarantee them and then argue that original arguement has no proof either.

really think about how stupid your statement is

for every pirate who buy a single song on itunes you claiming there a 1000 people who have NEVER bought a single song.

so that would mean they never bought a song before napster
they will live 70 years plus and always find every song for free and so fast it would be cheaper to just spend a buck.

they will never find a single band they want to support by buying the music

and never every come across the dozens of musicians who have been properly trained on how to convert piracy traffic into sales.

I understand the reflexive rejection of Doug Merrill's claims by most of the people who have posted in this thread, but suppose for a moment that he has actual data to back up that claim?

If your opposition to piracy is founded on the notion that people who obtain content from pirated sources never purchase the same sort of content, or do so only in insignificant numbers, then I can see why you don't like Merrill's point, one bit.

IMO, however, even If Merrill is right, that doesn't mean that piracy isn't a problem, and it doesn't mean that Limewire should not have been held liable in the cases they lost.

I'm trying to find out, definitively, what Merrill's assertion is based on. I'm inclined to withhold judgment on what he said until I have a better sense of his methodology and sources.

I think it's also important to remember that just because any given person who illegally obtains content is also a frequent purchaser of that same manner of content, that fact doesn't magically make them less liable for copyright infringement, if and when they engage in actual copyright infringement. As such, it's very much possible to acknowledge that Merrill's assertion might be true and still think it's right and proper to hold people accountable for copyright infringement.

In other words, conceding the fact that some pirates are also paying customers doesn't mean that one thinks piracy is "OK." :2 cents:

i just read he was fired from emi for making up internal reports among other things.

i have not bought one single piece of music since napster and neither has anyone i know. and not one of us has ever been a part of any statistical sample that we know of.

file sharing immaterialized a large section of the human project, now the financial system is going through it, next up will be the actual meat and bones aspects of physical production.

i like being full of shit... :2 cents:

lol, did you actually ever own an ipod ? you can download stuff "illegaly" and just load in Itunes and put it on your ipod without a problem

i believe there are dumb pirates in existence just as well some clever ones. if people could not figure out how to move their limewired mp3s to their iphones/ipods they had no other option but to purchase favorite tracks through itunes.

piracy may be a problem but what your calling piracy isn't really piracy

i use torrents like a VCR for TV shows/movies
i can do that because the fair USE of time shifting using the cloud makes it legal

i use torrents like the radio
because i live in one of the 25 countries which have a piracy tax.

OH NO! Another attack of the free content retards!

lol, you have to be really really stupid to not know how to do that .. you dont need any special skills or special program for it

you can just open the folder wit the mp3's and click and drag to itunes ..