Alan Ellis deserved to make money for what he did - he built a successful, efficient, popular service for people to find music. Instead of suing him, the record companies should have bought oink.cd of him and added some kind of monthly subscription model and/or a pay-to-buy-ratio system.
Importantly... does this mean that other people can now run free torrent sites like Oink with no legal risk? I'm not sure how British law works, in terms of setting precedents and the like...
I agree that Ellis should have tried to turn this into something positive before all of this went down. There were several signs that OiNK was on radar, including [successful] efforts to block the renewal of the .me.uk domain name.
I also think that record companies may now be seasoned enough to accept something like this; the thing is that the pitch needs to be made before they pay off INTERPOL to take you down.
Such a pitch should also come from one whose hands are clean, so to speak. If Ellis had made the pitch they probably would have said, "Good idea, but instead of paying you, you just give it to us for free and we'll put in a good word after your arrest."
As long as copyright exists in its current form there is no way for a record company to purchase and make a site like this legit. The key thing about oink was the rarity of the material, old vinyl records that were converted an uploaded. Stuff that's been out of print after its first publishing 30 years ago....
I disagree. While I think copyright laws are overly draconian, the creator of the intellectual property deserves to have control over where, how, or if its distributed.
Its not Mr. Ellis's prerogative to introduce a new business model around their content.
I don't understand this logic. He may have built a successful, efficient and popular service. But he still did so on the basis of other people's work and the entire basis of the site was to take away the creator's control over their own work. Sure his site itself contained nothing illegal and all that. But the fact remains that the people who create a piece of intellectual property must retain the rights to do with it as they please. They shouldn't have to be taken at the whims of the community just because a lot of people happen to like/want it. If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours. If we can't respect the people that create and/or own the intellectual property, then we are part of a disgusting society.
If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours.
Absolutely. Until Salinger hits the metaphorical "publish" button, his books belong to him and no one else. But the minute he decides to share them with the world he enters into the realm of copyright law, which is (at least originally) designed to create a good enough bargain to incentivise him to publish, but which ultimately results in all these works entering the public domain.
There is no such thing as intellectual property - merely intellectual licensing agreements.
Comments
Alan Ellis deserved to make money for what he did - he built a successful, efficient, popular service for people to find music. Instead of suing him, the record companies should have bought oink.cd of him and added some kind of monthly subscription model and/or a pay-to-buy-ratio system.
Importantly... does this mean that other people can now run free torrent sites like Oink with no legal risk? I'm not sure how British law works, in terms of setting precedents and the like...
I agree that Ellis should have tried to turn this into something positive before all of this went down. There were several signs that OiNK was on radar, including [successful] efforts to block the renewal of the .me.uk domain name.
I also think that record companies may now be seasoned enough to accept something like this; the thing is that the pitch needs to be made before they pay off INTERPOL to take you down.
Such a pitch should also come from one whose hands are clean, so to speak. If Ellis had made the pitch they probably would have said, "Good idea, but instead of paying you, you just give it to us for free and we'll put in a good word after your arrest."
As long as copyright exists in its current form there is no way for a record company to purchase and make a site like this legit. The key thing about oink was the rarity of the material, old vinyl records that were converted an uploaded. Stuff that's been out of print after its first publishing 30 years ago....
I disagree. While I think copyright laws are overly draconian, the creator of the intellectual property deserves to have control over where, how, or if its distributed.
Its not Mr. Ellis's prerogative to introduce a new business model around their content.
I don't understand this logic. He may have built a successful, efficient and popular service. But he still did so on the basis of other people's work and the entire basis of the site was to take away the creator's control over their own work. Sure his site itself contained nothing illegal and all that. But the fact remains that the people who create a piece of intellectual property must retain the rights to do with it as they please. They shouldn't have to be taken at the whims of the community just because a lot of people happen to like/want it. If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours. If we can't respect the people that create and/or own the intellectual property, then we are part of a disgusting society.
If Salinger had decided he never wanted any of his books published and no one should ever read them, that's his choice, not ours.
Absolutely. Until Salinger hits the metaphorical "publish" button, his books belong to him and no one else. But the minute he decides to share them with the world he enters into the realm of copyright law, which is (at least originally) designed to create a good enough bargain to incentivise him to publish, but which ultimately results in all these works entering the public domain.
There is no such thing as intellectual property - merely intellectual licensing agreements.