I bought the £40 boxset :D
but I know people who used limewire because the radiohead site was busy

Radiohead ftw!!
bringing down the failed experiment that it the music industry

Namely, that if something is available for FREE (which this thing was!) it cannot be called 'pirated' when it is put on a filesharing network.

They cannot take this as an example, when a lot of people on the filesharing networks might have been distributing them on there to cut the band a break (because bandwidth does cost money today!).

There will be more pirating when the CD is release because a lot of people will want a full quality recording and not want to pay for it a second time. Pirating is also easier than going to some website an entering a bunch of info. How many of those pirates are under 18 and maybe don't want to give up their info or don't have a credit card?

"The peculiar statistics show that online piracy is not really an issue of money anymore, but rather something that has just become ingrained in users across the country, and the world."

I think its more a matter of covenience. Its far easier to simply download a cd, takes less time then actually going the store and buying it. As well, alot of people now look for new music on downloading sites, far safer then taking a $20 gamble on crap.

uhmm 500,001 times now :)

Unless they had something in the license agreement stating that the music MUST be downloaded from their site or other music site outlets, the sharing of the FREE music via p2p would not be considered piracy. The analysts or the PR reps that ran the numbers are idiots in the fact that they are trying to pass it off as piracy. You can't pirate an open-source software. All they request is that you don't resell it or alter its state prior to sharing with others and that their credits are intact upon redistribution.

So to say the song is free and that you shared a free song with someone else is theft is pretty asinine.

so let me get this straight... you say a peer-to-peer network is illegal? (ANY network!?) Where is THAT written?

I realize that copywrited stuff (including an essentially free album if 'purchased' for nothing) cannot be distributed except illegally on said network, but since when does that make the NETWORK illegal? is now the entire INTERNET illegal? lol :-?

As has been mentioned, you can't "pirate" something that's free. You're not violating any copyright either. Peer-to-peer networks are not illegal, nor is distribution of non-copyright material over them. So what's this story about?

My room-mate downloaded the album through bit torrent, because Radiohead's site was too busy. He went back and gave them money later when he could get access.

I realise this is a cut-and-paste from a press release and not actually written by Tom's Hardware, but get a grip guys and at least editorialize when something is this ridiculous!

The media is trying to spin this into "see, pirating, it's not the high prices" plus a glimpse of "we can charge as much as we like."

"Free Radiohead album reportedly still pirates 500,000 times" How the heck can something free be pirated? Isn't that a self-defeating sentence?

Most of these reporters are so far removed from the subject they are trying to cover that its obvious.

Kudos to Radiohead for trying something different.

Lets hope others follow this path. Now they just need to work out a better mechanism for distributing the music that avoids the website issues that others experienced.

I would think that most people probably used p2p due to download speed / access issues, not the money or any engrained piracy issues.

Technically the word pirate is "to use or reproduce (a book, an invention, etc.) without authorization or legal right." Since the songs have been reproduced without authorization, they are pirated. Price is immaterial. Yes, I know it is only a technicality. On another topic, the price you can pay tops out at £99 (about $108), not the "nearly infinite amount of dollars" stated by TH. Just nitpicking here...

I agree. It's free, therefore not pirated.

However, I do think people should download it from RH's site if they are able. That way, RH, and the record industry, has an idea of how many people actually want an album. Basically, purchasing an album sets the trends of the music industry. If there is no record of what albums have been purchased, then record industry will take fewer risks signing more creative acts, and we get way more lame music. For all we know, there could be a lot of kids want to hear music like Motown and Led Zeppelin thanks to Amy Winehouse and the recent resurgence in the the over-simplified "70's Rock" sound...but since most of it is downloaded of p2p, the record industry just pushes Britney Spears and Blacked Eyed Peas and Hinder our faces not knowing that kids know the difference between crap and good music if they got a chance to hear it.

Of course, it's the music industry's fault for setting prices so damn high on CDs, so in many, many ways, I can't blame people for file sharing.

just because you can get it for free doesnt mean you can copy it. the radiohead album is copyrighted. they have allowed you to buy a copy of that licence (and therefor the music) for $0 if you want. however, if you copy it, you are stilll getting copyright content without a licence to use it, therefor its piracy.

dont you just love the fucked up legal shit we have nowardays?

It's the "middleman" behind the RIAA sue machine. Glad Radiohead stuck it to the man!

this shows that the speed in which you get the music is also a piracy issue. sounds like if the site werent so busy that 500,000 would be more like 10,000

I got the album off inrainbows.com on day 0 and the site was terribly slow (no doubt because of the free album available). If I hadn't been at work, I would have grabbed it off of bittorrent and had it in 10 min rather than waiting 30 minutes for the pages to refresh. Not to mention, its hard to feel guilty for downloading a free album off of bittorrent. And as for the info they request for downloading, you can just put garbage in there if you want, none of it is validated (or at least non of it WAS validated when I did it).

There is no concept of open song as in open software.

Even though the album "can be free" of charge if you pay $0, the band hasn't stayed that the album is released as free. They still in hold of the copyright and hasn't allowed any other distribution channels.

Finally, people downloading from those P2P networks may not even noticed they can get it "free" from the official site which they have to chance to set their own price.

wow.. just wow lol! i know its forwarded article but the original article writer realy messed up on a few points..
RIAA/MPAA propaganda, P2P networks are absolutely not illigal, and how can a free product be pirated? no it was not pirated, it was spread! and Radiohead apparently liked it from other articles ;)
it was spread to let others know about them, and their sales are doing great, they didnt mind at all that it was "pirated".

the reason for copyright to stil apply to the songs is not realy to prevent "P2P" spreading, but to prevent other companies and organisations making profits from their work, aka REAL pirating ;)

like those street stands where you can buy burnt discs of movies and music, thats real pirating, thats what copyright was supposed to fight, yet RIAA/MPAA is focusing on sharers, also called pirates but completely different from real copyright pirates that make profits on others work witch the law was originally made to fight.

If the music is copyrighted, it doesn't matter if it's free or not.

Cursing there, fella. Well, I actually looked into it, I've always hated Radiohead, but I wanted to check out the process, it's a bit annoying, and the site is pretty poorly designed, I can see why people would pirate it over this system now.

The ability to copyright something free had alluded me, ah, Law.

A lot of the comments here are so dogmatic and caught up in semantics it beggars belief.

I personally agree with the term 'pirated' here if the album wasn't downloaded from Radiohead's site.

They have allowed you at whatever cost to legally obtain the download from their site, and obtaining it from p2p is illegal, regardless of the album's cost. Listener's need to grasp and appreciate this.

To say otherwise is just disrespect for the artist involved. And it's wholly unfair especially since the artist has met us more than halfway.

Do p2p networks make any money advertising on their websites or their softwares?

I paid 5.45 pounds, because I like Radiohead, but Warner will launch the CD later so it will have a "normal" launch ... so its more like a experiment than anything else
And piracy in this case is more about laziness...

still steal it?

wow. how sad. or pathic.

omg the site sucks. I dont want to pay 90 cents for this.


You know whats even better... All this money was going to Radiohead. no big music company i.e. Warner,bmg/sony etc.

So all the people that said they hate the machine and thats why they steal music. are now shown for what they are. 2 bit crooks and liars.

If a company gives away a promotion for free...another company cannot take the free promotion and offer it as thier own...even though the original offered it as free. For instance...Adobe Reader. It is free...but it is not leagal to just have it on your site to download without contacting the parent company and getting permission...yet you can have a link directing your customers to thier site...no permission required. There is legal justification behind calling the downloads "pirated". That being said...I think all music shoudl just be commercials for live shows and revenue should be made from airplay or performances...so the recordings should be free.

They could as well put a bittorrent link (which they could seed just for a couple of days) after you filled in some kind of survey including the price for the album... Their bill for web hosting would be slim and they would have the info they needed (at least how many people were interested in their album).
You can get Linux distros over P2P for a reason...

Peer-to-peer networks aren't illegal, it's the illegal use of them that is, however. Also, the content is free anyway, so it's not illegal to procure it in the aforementioned manner. Many people probably did it because they wanted a better D/L speed.

Theres a difference between something that is free and something that is public domain... These songs aren't in the public domain so RadioHead still has the right to say how they can be legally distributed...

If they say you aren't allowed to share them and can only get them off their website then that would be the copyright agreement. Anything else would indeed be breaking copyright and hence can be called pirating.

Can something be stone if it is free? Can music be pirated if it is free to download and one pays whatever (if any) amount one wants?

The real discussion people should be having about Radiohead's "pay what you want" strategy should be twofold.

1) How much money did they make with this release compared to what they made from their previous CD release. Since their now taking in 100% of the profit as opposed to 1-5% it would be interesting to see if they broke even or did better without the recording industry.

2) How much exposure did they get to their music. Do the purchases peer-to-peer downloads compare to the marketing push they would have had from a label?

>> just because you can get it for free doesnt
>> mean you can copy it. the radiohead album is
>> copyrighted. they have allowed you to buy a
>> copy of that licence (and therefor the music)
>> for $0 if you want. however, if you copy it,
>> you are stilll getting copyright content
>> without a licence to use it, therefor its
>> piracy.
>>
>> dont you just love the fucked up legal shit we
>> have nowardays?

What, you think that if someone's selling a book, and they give you an advance copy for free, you ought to be able to scan it and distribute it for free? That's essentially the deal, here.

There is no minimum fee Opicu, if you place in zeros you can download it after registered. I actually payed since i a great fan of radiohead and i loved the initiative, but some friends of mine(not all) decided to put zeros and download it.

It seems Forbes bought counter in PTP networks, and tuned it to particular song. - Is it possible to count how many times file was shared?

the downloads weren't "free", as anyone who downloaded the album would know and anyone with half a brain to actually research the thing they're writing an article should know. There was a 1 pound (i.e. about $2) transaction charge. So stop being retarded.

This is more representative of the success of a media sharing model, then about who did or did not want to pony up 0$.

Damn. Is it piracy? isn't the important question here. The important idea to take away from this is the sheer success of the distribution method utilized. The idea that people routinely, and habitually go to certain sites or groups of torrent / p2p sites to get media. Plain and simple.

The uccess of the distribution model is such, that people pick from the menu and get what they want. As both are free, (I paid 15 pounds for myne precisely because there was no EMI, etc middle man) the lessons that should be learned here are:

1.) Most large acts today have no need for traditional distribution to sell electronic format albums.

2.) Regardless of price, people have habitual places they go to find the media they want, and even though we cannot prove all those x numbers that downloaded via p2p knew it was free anyway, we can draw a conclusion that they got it from the most convenient source for them. In this case their friendly neighborhood p2p method that they check regularly anyway. Economy of effort people.

Also, if the weren't gonna pay RadioHead anyway; their is a valid argument that RadioHead saved money by not paying for the free rider's bandwidth.

Frankly arguing over "is piracy" / "isn't" is stupid in this case, as any answer is useless anyway. In this case, "piracy" probably helped their bottom line. What I want to know is if they profited from the venture to a greater or lesser extent then with the traditional model. That is the real Key question.

i downloaded this album twice from inrainbow.com site - no need to register since i was long since registered to waske.uk ... and guess what? both downloads where actually free - first time all zeros, second tmie just for the fun of it : '0.01' lol i mean i guess 1 penny is actually free xD

enjoyed the album, pre-ordered boxet great fan of radiohead and i dont regret it xD

A lot of folks are arguing that you cannot pirate something that is free, since it is already free. However, this is not the case in this instance. Radiohead (and only Radiohead, not a record label) still retains the copyrights to their work, and thus they own the sole rights to distribute their work. Because they in which they distribute their work makes it effectively free does not change the fact that only Radiohead has the legal right to distribute said work.

It's strictly a legal argument, as Radiohead is not going to try to sue anyone. Furthermore, copyright infringement laws originally based the penalties on the damage done by the crime of infringement. Still, the distinction between a song uploaded (or simply making available) and an actual lost sale is lost in most piracy discussion.

That said, I will disagree with the conclusion the article draws. Saying that "online piracy...is something that has just become ingrained" is an oversimplification involving numerous leaps of logic. This article explicitly argues that when money is not an issue, users instead use P2P technology as opposed to the method of the distributer out of habit. The statistics DO NOT support this conclusion! All these statistics show is that when price is equal, a large minority still prefer P2P for some reason other than cost. Jumping to the conclusion that their choice was based on habit precludes the conclusion that end users see advantages to whichever P2P system they prefer to finding the content they want.

How many "legal" downloads from Radiohead's site have been? More than 500,000? Less than 500,000? Why such emphasis only on P2P downloads? I think this article is demeaning of the Radiohead experiment and to draw attention to "piracy".

Just downloaded it from Radioheads site for nothing and it took about 1:30 to actually download. Filling out the form with info took about another minute. I read their terms and conditions and they dont mention anything about copyrights, distribution or anything else that looked like a limitation on use so I assume I can do what I want with it since I now own it. I never heard them before I have to say I like it.

They should include commercials.

They could claim the number of downloads plus a percentage of indirect downloads and get revenue from it anyway.

I mean having to take a couple of commercials would be a small price for an album. Not sure how you could assure they were actually accessed though and not just deleted/stripped out.

If a band wanted to charge for music, could they torrent an encrypted version of the song? Anyone can download the song. If you want to play it, you pay for the password.

People would share the password, however, the band would make more money than they would with a label even if only 1/10th of the people payed. If you trust your customer, they will be far more likely to do right by you.

If musician signs contract with big label he get 5-10% of money. From artist’s perspective’s sell-pirating ratio is in a round one to ten-twenty. Since Radiohead sold 1.2M and ppl “free” downloaded 0.5M albums, they still see much higher efficiency of such distribution then signing contract with big label!
More musicians will be much better off financially and will have more fans, if they go without middlemen, and world will have wider choice if available money for music is limited. Current big-label formula needs only one “expensive idol”.

Music is a part of the human soul if you ask me. People sing in the shower, feel rhythms in their lives and such. True artists are expressing themselves because they have to, not because of a business model. Shifting the paradigm on this issue can help explain rampant piracy.