ORIGINALY POSTED ON JAPANATOR
There is currently a bit of a war of words going on in the file-sharing-o-sphere. Our friends over at
JapanFiles.com have thrown down the gauntlet with
jmusic_uploads, a Japanese music sharing community on LiveJournal. The digital music distributor has crossed paths with the community several times in the past, citing several members of illegally providing downloads of their artist's music. The company often went directly to the powers that be at LJ, who then yanked user accounts with little to no notice. This brute force attack was met, unsurprisingly, with some outrage and confusion.
Now it would seem that JapanFiles.com has once again approached the community, this time offering up something of an olive branch. While they are still standing their ground in regards to the zero-tolerance of illegal downloads, they are now attempting to work with the community. Instead of their previous slash-and-burn tactics, they are now offering to regularly keep the community up-to-date with their artist list, notifying them of new acquisitions as soon as they go live on their site. They then expect all tags, posts and links to be removed from the community within 48 hours. It is only then that they will pursue legal action.
They've even gone so far as to set up their own LJ account to directly field questions and concerns from community members. The truly amazing thing is that the member reactions have been extremely civil and downright intelligent (with a few exceptions of course.) Right now it seems like the community is still skeptical about JapanFiles.com, their tactics and even their legitimacy as a company.
Head on over to Japanator for JapanFiles.com's initial email, and the resulting FAQ in which they answer a few of the users' biggest concerns.
READ MORE HERE
Zac Bentz's blog
Follow
RSS
Contact
I wonder how many of those members are from outside of japan though. The biggest problem with all entertainment media, is that they fail to sell globally all at once, instead resorting to region specific territory sales. This isn't good enough and is the soul reason why filesharing will always be rife.
So long as old business practices are far behind the haste of the net, not much will change.
Contrary to popular belief, not all of us are thieving free-loaders. Yeah, I download and torrent (and watch grainy PV’s on Youtube)… -BUT- when the bands make Re-releases at U.S. price through a U.S. distributor like Free-Will-America, JShock or Fontana Universal, I go out and I -BUY- them. I don’t care if its in Hot Topic next to Falloutboy, or if its in Wal-Mart next to Garth Brooks. $14 JRock CD’s is a _GOOD_ thing (unless you’re a selfish elitist who doesn’t want “n00bs” catching on to your super speshul sekrit myusikz). And as for iTunes, I don’t own an iPod (got a Sony though), and Apple’s files are proprietary (and have DRM crap) so that’s out…
Bottom line, don’t pull a Lars Ulrich on the people who buy your U.S. re-releases, who buy your t-shirts, and who pay out the arse to travel to your concerts. The internet made this fandom what it is. Want J-fans to stop downloading? Re-release the older albums, re-release the PV DVD’s that for now, we can only get as cheap Korean bootlegs on Ebay.