downloading..

[Fireblade]

It's not the choice of the band that the label gets the lion's share.

[Johan]

Regardless, I can guarantee that no profit is lost onmy behalf, since I have a large Stratodiscography and I attned their shows. I cannot see how that is loss from ANY perspective. So, if they want to sue me for having a few of their albums on my PC, fine, I have not violated any swedish law by diong so.

[kolcer]

Oh and on the downloading thing, I have always kept the policy of if I downloaded anything and I liked it, I immediately head down to the music store and special order the cds. If I don't like it it is wiped off and never downloaded again.

I remeber times when i was buying CD's without hearing them earlier. I mean, i've heard some song in radio, sounded good so I bought the album. And what? When i heard to the whole album, it turned out that it is a load of crap. Those CD's are currently somwhere in my cabinet, covered with dust.

So I agree with TrialByFire. In fact thanks to mp3 I am your fan, if not p2p I will probably never start listening to Stratovarius. I have already 4 orginal albums, including limited editions Elements 1 & 2.

And about the new album, well i didin't downloaded it (besides those 5 demos - i could not resist myself), but you guys could speed up the premiere a little bit in such circumstances.

[Johan]

A rather good solution would be to publish clips a lot faster, as it has been for a few weeks, the only way to hear any material from the new album is piracy. Besides, why should journalists have exclusive rights to listen to new material?

[Beast_Pete]

So, if they want to sue me for having a few of their albums on my PC, fine, I have not violated any swedish law by diong so.

They won't sue you. They will sue the person, who spread the new stuff. They don't want to harm listeners.

[Johan]

with all the talk about IPlogging and all that Gestapo shit you never know...

[fifthtea_sausage]

Now I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

What I mean is that it is a definite possibility to track users who were infected with a trojan, because the virus could broadcast information about the computer which tried to download the .mp3.

However, those which downloaded the mp3 trojan free , the only way they can be caught is by the trails they left when the downloaded from the p2p client itself.

I, ___________________, hereby guarantee that all illegal Stratovarius downloads are free of trojans. Because I am so sure of this, I also assume all liability that might arise from trojans that are vectored by illegal Stratovarius downloads. Please feel free to contact me about any of these issues because based on some anonymous postings that I read on the internet forum and my general trust in p2p software and microsoft's operating systems, and many other things, I am REALLY sure. Really, I am!

Hehe.
Well actually what I said (or meant to say, anyway) is that if one has downloaded the mp3's and not gotten infected, then the chances of them being caught is near epsilon, and this is only if they downloaded from a p2p software or website which makes public the downloader's ip'ers so that anyone such a Stratovarius representative could find the ip and track you down.

However, if you were infected with the trojan, , I can't say I'm too concerned about you getting caught, because by your stupidity, you deserve to be. Though it would take a special trojan (such as this one which actually helps the guy who's goin after the bad guys ), and isn't necessarily true that you can be located.

I can go and start a domain, put a few stratovarius songs illegally on, have hundreds or thousands download them, and does Stratovarius have access to the ip addresses who downloaded the file I hosted? Of course not. And even if I put the nastiest trojan on there, unless I specifically wrote code so that the user's ip address is broadcasted openly (who downloaded illegally), the downloader is safe.

So:

1. In this case, its just luck/coincidence that the viraseers can be caught so easily
2. It is VERY unlikely that a non-infected illegal downloader will be caught and i100% mpossible if this user did not use standard p2p and instead used email/yousendit/private web hosting
3. Infected users can be caught and trojans are a reality
4. Of course p2p is very insecure, and I would bet that illegal downloads are full of trojans, I simply was referring to the fact that non-infected users either in individual cases can not or will not be tracked down.

[StratoRico]

The truth is that mp3 are a good way to listen to music and to fall in love with
it.

When i first hear stratovarius and then metal,i downloaded a lot of the material of each band,and i think that i won't have discovered bands like Gamma Ray or some minor bands like At Vance.
Now i'm full of original album of those bands,because i love thier music and what they have around them,but without mp3 i won't have dicovered those bands.
What if i had buy ALL the music i have.
I don't work and i have few moneys to buy albums,i probably had to work for a year to repay them but no matter,now i love them and i had buy them.
I have all the discography of strato and many cd's of other great bands,and i love metal also because of mp3.

mp3 in long terms are good to music.
I think they're more dangerous for little bands

[JensJohansson]

This is to Jens:

I was a fan of this band until I came to this message board. This has to be one of the most distasteful f****ing message boards I have ever seen to represent a band.

It's a message board. It represents the people who post there. No more, no less.

2. Now you are actually fucking around with tracking ips of downloaders and telling your most die hard fans (the posters on your precious message board here) that you could check to see if they are downloading any of your precious fucking songs and make some shameful remark to expose them? What a crock of shit! YOU have WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING TIME ON YOUR HANDS! You are starting to sound like Lars from Metallica, this is something I could see coming from him. I lost respect for Metallica for several reasons. But mainly their whining moaning groaning sue happy shit. Not too mention their shitty ass music now days.

Hey everyone this is how the band pays you back for all the support you give them!

What the hell? A bunch of drama Queens here.

So it would appear.

I am however perfectly calm.

Thanks for sharing your opinions!

[MaFiaBoY]

Whoa, Jens sound as Lars ? Drum sounds on keys are surely very funny

Damn, fucking algebra test, I don't know what I'm saying...

[Solitude_Within]

I know for a fact that in some countries they still havent made downlaoding illegal. So that may pose a problem fif you try to sue people who downloaded the music. But I dont think suing certain individuals will be worth your while but i sure hope you catch the person who put it on the internet to begin with!


"A Canadian Federal Court judge has ruled that downloading songs for personal use or having files available on a computer connected to the Internet doesn't violate copyright laws. For the time being, Canadians may use file sharing programs to download music without fear of prosecution. This activity remains illegal in most of the world though."


^ that may pose a problem..... i dunno about other countries though

[StratoRico]

Here in italy it's the same.
We punish the ones that may sold out "fake" copies of cds,but if you make your own cds and you have only ONE copy of it,for your own,you're not in danger.

[Beast_Pete]

A question: how can you know it for sure, that the IP and the ISP of a forumposter matches the downloader?

Just an example: a fan from Finland posts here. He has an IP 80.34.127.20 on one of the days, when he posts to this forum. And his ISP is the XYZ company. And there's someone, who downloads your new album, with the same IP and ISP (well, the chances are very little, but could happen) but on another day. (sorry from finnish people, but the chances that this example becomes true is the biggest for your country, because mostly finns downloaded the new album, and the most of the forumposters are finnish)

[Latuman]

Yes. It is very easy to track in P2P networks. However. No individual in Finland has been attacked by RIAA or any other agenda concerning software or music piracy.

Why would they start now?

Perhaps they know that they could sue ~80% of all 15 - 25 year olds. What sort of blow that would be on economy? Millions of euros to already rich ass record companies from people who downloaded AND bought music. Now that record companies took all their money and left more debt, they are not buying any CD's any more. Damn people have hard time understanding this.

Sure it would've been better if the promo never got out, but then again, its gonna be on the net sooner or later after the release date, so does it really matter? I cant talk behalf of people who end up listening this album and not paying for it. I dont even want to. But I want too keep my liberties and download music before I buy it, it just makes some fucking sense.

Only financial problem I face is that I dont have much money, and I have a lot of albums to be bought. I'm basically putting all my money in music. If downloading would stop, I could NOT buy any more music, its impossible, I dont make any more money that I made when I was downloading. Instead I know that I'm not going to buy anything but absolute hit albums, like all Stratovarius, Sonata etc albums I got to know when I was downloading...

[StragOvariuS]

Brazil at first? whooooooa...!!! cant believe hehe...

well...anyway Jens, if 1% is 1% of each country then 26% of 180 million(actual population of Brazil) ppl are more less like 28, 29 million people downloaded the album!!! and the polls shows that only 17%, 20% of the population access internet...and i dont believe that they all know strato or like heavy metal or know what is a p2p service or download metal songs...

hmm...this track is right? hehe...or the original or most of the seeds came from here?

[Zeppelin]

I don't agree with Jens...Yes he is a fuckin' cool person, but not on this point...

Yes he is right on points, but why does he track ? Just leave this as it is !

First of all :

yes you're right, if this mp3 sharing is made to earn money, OK it is not fair and it is a violation of laws about copyright and blablabla's... But why are you tracking ? It is the very first time ( except Metalicrap ) that I read that a band of that size is fuckin' up with downloaders.... Ok it is not a really good way to encourage artists but ! If you have some albums and you're downloading a full one, well... Just buy it later !and I'll buy the new Bruce Dickinson, the new Dream Theater and I downloaded them immediatly when they arrived in MP3...And what ? Did Bruce Dickinson complained about it ? No, he is not the most known solo singer, but he is a fuckin known Iron maiden singer, and that gives him a chance to increase his popularity and he makes money too!

Dream Theater too, even if they are well known... And Stratovarius ? They are welll known, they have die hard fans and they'll buy this album even if they downloaded it, no ? But they are not the most well-known band !

Second :

Not going to countries because they are downloading too much ? Well, it's better for you not to know which country downloads 'cause you'll make fans unhappy and unhappy fans know how to boycott !

And.... As i read and as I tried too, Iron Maiden did not have a song or two on the internet before 1 or 2 weeks before Dance Of Death came out ? They only shot Wildest Dreams live as a poor bootleg and some clips from Rainmaker or No More Lies to promote the album... And how did they keep the absolute secret on this album ?

And how did a person took a copy of new Stratovarius album ? Well...

it really discourages me to see that you want downloaders to fuck off, downloaders are fans ! I can understand that you want money and you don't want to feel like you did all this new job for nothing but...Fuck it and live !

If you don't want to play a gig, well what are you doing in a band ?

These are my two cents on the new shit... And I want to say that I'm a hardcore buyer that spend his 20$ CAN a week most of the time in cd's!

Ah and... why is the album ready when it's supposed to be released in August or September ?


PS : Jens don't take it on the wrong part, you seem like the coolest guy to have in a band... And i like the way you make toilets explode !

[Beast_Pete]

Brazil at first? whooooooa...!!! cant believe hehe...

well...anyway Jens, if 1% is 1% of each country then 26% of 180 million(actual population of Brazil) ppl are more less like 28, 29 million people downloaded the album!!! and the polls shows that only 17%, 20% of the population access internet...and i dont believe that they all know strato or like heavy metal or know what is a p2p service or download metal songs...

hmm...this track is right? hehe...or the original or most of the seeds came from here?

Nope. 26% of the downloaders are Brazilians. Not 26% of Brazilians are downloading it.

Edit: err, and btw, only 11% are Brazilians as I know, as the IP is dinamic.

[Paschendale]

Jens, good calm response.

Yes the thing about static ips is that they are given out randomly and then swapped out to someone else. For instance, a person on dial up in the US logs onto the net and posts on a message board about racecars, then they log off the net. The next person logs on the net in Mexico, YES an entirely DIFFERENT country, and can post on a message board about Mexican heritage, and have that same EXACT ip address, the very same day. Static ips are able to be loaned out to diffferent users in different countries. How do I know this? Well I tracked one of my own ips one day. You can find your ip by using your command prompt on your computer, then you can run a search for the ip number and you would be surprised what you can find. I found like 5 different users at 5 different message boards, that were from 5 different areas, including other countries.

And btw anyone that uses kazaa is really an idiot. I don't know if anyone knows this or not but the RIAA jacked a kazaa clone, YES They violated copyright law when they did this!! They called it kazaa lite and they catch downloaders this way. Run a search for the this online and you can find out the information concerning this tatic. Here is a link to an article about it.

http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/lofivers ... t1940.html

Here is one of the many places this article was put up

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/k ... riaa.shtml

[Paschendale]

Also if you are on dsl you can turn your modem off and your dynamic ip will change.

[Paschendale]

Jens, this part of that article is pretty interesting. Better be careful dude!

The lawsuit however, is not limited to the RIAA using Kazaa Lite. According to Morris even if the RIAA used the original Kazaa Media Desktop software to track users, that would represent a violation of the software's end-user license agreement. Kazaa Media Desktop's license agreement prohibits users from monitoring traffic or making search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users.
The license also prohibits users from transmitting, accessing, or communicating any data that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights of any party. The RIAA claims that Sharman Networks is not enforcing that part of the license agreement.

The Sharman Networks counterclaim, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims that companies within the music and movie industries have conspired to keep them from offering licensed content over Kazaa.

[NeonVomit]

I think this case is a bit more glaring than others, in that the album itself HASNT EVEN BEEN RELEASED YET. That makes it pretty bad. Illegal in every sense of the word.

Plus, as Timo T said, Stratovarius is NOT Metallica. Downloading Metallica Mp3's couldn't possibly hurt them, after 80 million records sold. (which, I seem to remember, was the main reason people got tired of hearing Lars bitch and whine. That's the reason I personally got tired of hearing him complain, anyway.)

Downloading Stratovarius Mp3's can and does. Bands like Stratovarius rely on a dedicated fanbase made of a relatively small number of people. Sure, Mp3 trading allows people to find out about them and learn their style, but it shouldn't replace buying the CD. There are so many people I know who download stuff and don't even like it or listen to it. They just download for the sake of downloading. What the hell is that all about?

I love this band enough to spend my money on them. Yes, CD prices are ridiculous in many cases, but it's hardly their fault is it. It's up to us to respect that, and support them best we can.

[Xtracto]

There are so many people I know who download stuff and don't even like it or listen to it. They just download for the sake of downloading. What the hell is that all about?

So what? this people would not buy the CD in the first place... so it is not a loss of revenue, that is the difference between copyright violation and stealing, you are not getting something from the other person and refraining him for using it. So he does not lose anything (if you where not going to buy it in the first place)

[fifthtea_sausage]

Again, all the p2p'ers who have downloaded the album are frantically trying to justify their positions because they fear they will be caught.

When will you people learn that no one cares about you downloading it (unless you leaked it or shared your own copy on p2p), relax, and just move on?

If you got it from a friend, you're 100% safe, and if you got it from p2p, no one cares!

Of course Jens has to come here and write some bullshit statement about how he must track you down to discourage the downloaders but can't you see through that?

[carcamano sanguinole]

well well...it seems to be the same old fuckn' history from Elements pt 1...same bullshit...same ip trackers...same "we'll catch you"...same "I'll sue everybody".....

Jens come here and use tecnical words about ip, trackers, isp bla bla bla bla...and...everybody will be in a cold jail tomorrow.

[soulforged the secon]

shit i guess now users will start loging in with usernames like
stratovirus lol

the prophecy came true look at xtracto's avatar......lol

[MaFiaBoY]

There are so many people I know who download stuff and don't even like it or listen to it. They just download for the sake of downloading. What the hell is that all about?

So what? this people would not buy the CD in the first place... so it is not a loss of revenue, that is the difference between copyright violation and stealing, you are not getting something from the other person and refraining him for using it. So he does not lose anything (if you where not going to buy it in the first place)

But you take for free what you should pay for, this is the definition of "stealing"

[Latuman]

There are so many people I know who download stuff and don't even like it or listen to it. They just download for the sake of downloading. What the hell is that all about?

So what? this people would not buy the CD in the first place... so it is not a loss of revenue, that is the difference between copyright violation and stealing, you are not getting something from the other person and refraining him for using it. So he does not lose anything (if you where not going to buy it in the first place)

But you take for free what you should pay for, this is the definition of "stealing"

You get the audio.

Not the license

Not a receipt

Not the jewel case

No printed CD

No printed booklets

You get nothing material, you get only data.

How can anyone say that the value of an MP3 album is exactly the same as the genuine copy's value? Who would ever PAY for MP3 albums when they are illicit copies? Sounds kinda odd.

[EricAdams]

Hi,

I must express my feelings and opinions about this topic.
I live in Slovakia, we were not listed in statistics above but I can tell you that I know only little people who are buying original cds...why? Its expensive, its so expensive that we cant buy album if we want. I have never bought CD before downloading and listening to it. And many albums I download and didn't buy
and I am thief? music is for people and every band must be happy when people are listening to their music. But when the only reason to make music is making money its very sad. I know very well that music of Stratovarius is not about money. Jens I for a long time I respect you as a person and also as a musician but don't call thieves the people who cannot afford buying CDs. Yes the one who download album and then sell it to another is thief.
And another thing...why I should wait for album release and then buy it and listen to it?...when I'm really into this music I want hear it as soon as it is possible...its natural so why not to download it before it si in stores and then buy itif it is worth to buy.
People here in Slovakia love Stratovarius. You were twice here in past years and it was fantastic show...and if must decide between putting my money on show or buy CD i rather go to the show sorry. Cause price of CD is many times bigger than concert.
Finally I could promise that I will buy CDs when there will be some money coase I like your music, but dont be so bad on people who are downloading...in most cases they dont want to steal your music!!!

Good luck to all

[StragOvariuS]

Also if you are on dsl you can turn your modem off and your dynamic ip will change.

or use a proxy connection...

[StragOvariuS]

Nope. 26% of the downloaders are Brazilians. Not 26% of Brazilians are downloading it.

Edit: err, and btw, only 11% are Brazilians as I know, as the IP is dinamic.

thanks to clarify this to me

Anyway...if 26% of brazil were stratofans...the guys would sell as hell here...