There were many things that pointed to @lyndahere perhaps not
being a genuine fan including her own admission in a recent blog post. As many
fans and I have noticed and pointed out she seems to be permanently fixed in
the same position, in the front row of every concert and constantly being in
the right place at the right time coincidence at Great Big Sea and Alan
Doyle performances announced and unannounced. Now Alan Doyle and Bob Hallett's appearance at the Dean Brody concert were bootlegged and links distributed via social media. The appearance or the possibility of an appearance was not shared by @lyndahere with all
the fandom until after it happened.
I don’t think having a ‘professional’ bootlegger and
photographer at a concert is a good idea for many reasons outlined in this blog other than the fact
it is illegal. For example, @Lyndahere has bootlegged Russell Crowe’s Indoor
Garden Parties in Newfoundland and New York quite a few times. Fans don’t have to buy a CD or download the music from
Itunes or in any other form. All fans have to do is set up an account on YouTube
and have all the free live music they want. A lot of the legal
music is loaded up in a range of pirated forms.
Fans can download the bootlegged live music distributed by
@lyndahere on mp3 players for free. So they don't have to buy music, go to concerts or buy
merchandise to be included in the fandom and participate in social media.
Bootlegged videos and piracy supports non-paying fans in fandoms nicely.
And much of it being fostered by @lyndahere. That is based on personal experience (Although I have bought CDs, DVDs and concert tickets on two continents).
Musician and artists social media feeds include photographs and live recordings from fans. If musicians and artists are going to use fans to publicise
their cause then it should be a genuine fan experience, not one pretending to
be a fan and one who by their own admission is not a fan and has declared it in their
blog.
There are some very talented fans in the audience taking photographs and bootlegging Great Big Sea and Indoor Garden Party concerts or at any concert for that matter. Their work is distributed on social media by the fans and the musicians and artists themselves. All fans who are interested in taking photographs and videos should be given the same opportunities to participate and have their contributions recognised and shared if they want to. A great way to reward fans for going to concerts. Musicians and artists can deny fans and professional photographers access as Russell Crowe has done at his indoor garden parties. There are those who do the right thing and apply for a license and been denied. Then the musicians and artists such as Russell Crowe use a 'professional' bootlegging, photographing fan to publicise an event. This is unfair in my book.
There are some very talented fans in the audience taking photographs and bootlegging Great Big Sea and Indoor Garden Party concerts or at any concert for that matter. Their work is distributed on social media by the fans and the musicians and artists themselves. All fans who are interested in taking photographs and videos should be given the same opportunities to participate and have their contributions recognised and shared if they want to. A great way to reward fans for going to concerts. Musicians and artists can deny fans and professional photographers access as Russell Crowe has done at his indoor garden parties. There are those who do the right thing and apply for a license and been denied. Then the musicians and artists such as Russell Crowe use a 'professional' bootlegging, photographing fan to publicise an event. This is unfair in my book.
If the fans don’t photograph or bootleg a magic moment then who really cares? Having magical moments not shared but talked
on social media and in the news are good publicity for the next concert. Like a
famous Canadian musician once said along the lines of fans really don’t need to
see musicians dribble down their front shirts or make stuffs ups which everyone
does occasionally.
In the past Canadians such as Alansis Morrissette, Barenaked Ladies and Bryan
Adams have been at the for front of the anti piracy movement in Canada as
Canadians are some of the worst music pirates in the world.
The first article is from the Huffington Post about Canadian music piracy in 2012. It states there have been few prosecutions in Canada. In December 2013, the following year a Canadian man from Manatoba was prosecuted and fined for illegally distributing pirated music CDs. The article is copied below. It is not a problem unique to Canada but highlights some action currently been taken.
From the Huffington Post on Canadian music piracy....Music Piracy Canada Among the Top Countries for Unauthorized Downloading by Daniel Tencer on 20 September 2012. (no copyright infringement intended)
Canadians may complain about high internet bills, low download limits and too few choices for providers, but that certainly isn’t stopping people from illegally downloading songs like crazy.
A new study of BitTorrent users has found that Canadians are fourth in the world for unauthorized music downloads on the popular BitTorrent file-sharing network. Only the U.S., Britain and Italy rank higher, but on a per capita basis, Canadians download more unauthorized music than any of those countries.
On a per-person basis, Canadians downloaded nearly two-and-a-half times as many unauthorized songs as Americans in the first half of 2012 (23.95 million in Canada, versus 96.68 million in the U.S.).
The first-ever Digital Music Index from analytics firm MusicMetri found the most pirated piece of music in Canada in the first half of 2012 was the Kanye West and Jay-Z album Watch The Throne.
But expressed as a percentage of total sales and downloads, the most pirated piece of music in Canada was the Hedley album Storms — suggesting that Hedley fans are the most likely to download pirated music.
Overall, the study found that about three billion songs and albums were downloaded through the BitTorrent network in the first half of 2012.
Music piracy has been the target of numerous lawsuits in the U.S., some of which have resulted in huge fines for downloaders Canada has had few such lawsuits, but it has seen at least one lawsuit against unauthorized downloading of movies, which appears to have been abandoned.
The high rates of intellectual property piracy in Canada have been a source to tension between the US and Canada with the U.S. pressuring Canada for years to toughen its approach to piracy.
And, as the MusicMetric study itself has shown, it's fairly easy to tract computers that connect to file sharing networks.
Music Industry Cheers Piracy Conviction of Manatoba Man December 20 2013 in the Edmonton Journal. (No copyright infringement intended).
WINNIPEG — The Canadian Recording Industry Association says the conviction of a Manitoba man for music and video piracy is a huge step in the fight against illegal recordings.
Raj Singh Ramgotra of Winnipeg pleaded guilty this week to dozens of charges related to criminal copyright infringement. He was given a two-year conditional sentence and must pay $550,000 in fines and restitution.
“This really is a banner day for the Canadian music industry and for artists and record labels across the country and around the world,” association spokesman Richard Pfohl told a talk show Friday on Winnipeg radio station CJOB.
“This is one of the largest — if not the largest — verdicts against an offender in history.”
Ramgotra, 36, was arrested in 2008 after an extensive RCMP investigation into Winnipeg-based Audiomaxxx.com.
Pfohl said Ramgotra was technically savvy and was shipping an estimated 10,000 bootlegged CDs and DVDs a month from his operation.
“He had a website where he would burn these CDs — none of which he had licensed, all of which he had stolen — and sell them for $3.99, which obviously directly undercut legitimate sales,” Pfohl said.
“At one point he was one of the largest sites in the world for physical piracy.”
When the RCMP busted Ramgotra, they seized five 12-burner CD and DVD burning towers, computers, hard drives, commercial CD printers, colour copiers and other office equipment, Pfohl said.
He also said that Ramgotra pulled in nearly $2 million from his operation, so “that’s money that came directly out of the pockets of artists and record labels.”
The association says the victimized artists included Shania Twain, Nelly Furtado and Jay Z.
Pfohl explained that music and video theft has moved on to where individuals download their own material from illegal sites, so there’s no longer the need for a middleman to physically burn and pirate CDs.
That’s changing how the recording industry fights copyright infringement, he said.
“Our main focus now is ... licensing new legitimate online services, so frankly, even if you were inclined to, it doesn’t really make sense to go to the piracy. Nowadays there are dozens of legitimate music services out there that can do everything from give you an a la carte download ... to streaming on demand.
“There’s no excuse to go to the pirated stuff.”
Consumers who use a site they know to be illegal are liable as well, Pfohl pointed out, although authorities in Canada don’t as a rule go after them the way the United States tried to do.
“At the end of the day, you always want to go up to the big fish. It’s the equivalent of taking down the big drug dealers as opposed to trying to get the end users. That’s not the way to go.”
Pfohl believes Canadians are getting the message about illegal downloads and realize they can get more music than they ever have been able to and do it at a reasonable price point.
“We’ll never be able to stop piracy 100 per cent. There’s always going to be someone who says, ‘You know what? I don’t even what to pay five bucks a month. I’ll just take it for free.’
“But I think we’ve got the average consumer to realize: ‘It doesn’t make sense to put myself at risk.”’
The first article is from the Huffington Post about Canadian music piracy in 2012. It states there have been few prosecutions in Canada. In December 2013, the following year a Canadian man from Manatoba was prosecuted and fined for illegally distributing pirated music CDs. The article is copied below. It is not a problem unique to Canada but highlights some action currently been taken.
From the Huffington Post on Canadian music piracy....Music Piracy Canada Among the Top Countries for Unauthorized Downloading by Daniel Tencer on 20 September 2012. (no copyright infringement intended)
Canadians may complain about high internet bills, low download limits and too few choices for providers, but that certainly isn’t stopping people from illegally downloading songs like crazy.
A new study of BitTorrent users has found that Canadians are fourth in the world for unauthorized music downloads on the popular BitTorrent file-sharing network. Only the U.S., Britain and Italy rank higher, but on a per capita basis, Canadians download more unauthorized music than any of those countries.
On a per-person basis, Canadians downloaded nearly two-and-a-half times as many unauthorized songs as Americans in the first half of 2012 (23.95 million in Canada, versus 96.68 million in the U.S.).
The first-ever Digital Music Index from analytics firm MusicMetri found the most pirated piece of music in Canada in the first half of 2012 was the Kanye West and Jay-Z album Watch The Throne.
But expressed as a percentage of total sales and downloads, the most pirated piece of music in Canada was the Hedley album Storms — suggesting that Hedley fans are the most likely to download pirated music.
Overall, the study found that about three billion songs and albums were downloaded through the BitTorrent network in the first half of 2012.
Music piracy has been the target of numerous lawsuits in the U.S., some of which have resulted in huge fines for downloaders Canada has had few such lawsuits, but it has seen at least one lawsuit against unauthorized downloading of movies, which appears to have been abandoned.
The high rates of intellectual property piracy in Canada have been a source to tension between the US and Canada with the U.S. pressuring Canada for years to toughen its approach to piracy.
And, as the MusicMetric study itself has shown, it's fairly easy to tract computers that connect to file sharing networks.
Music Industry Cheers Piracy Conviction of Manatoba Man December 20 2013 in the Edmonton Journal. (No copyright infringement intended).
WINNIPEG — The Canadian Recording Industry Association says the conviction of a Manitoba man for music and video piracy is a huge step in the fight against illegal recordings.
Raj Singh Ramgotra of Winnipeg pleaded guilty this week to dozens of charges related to criminal copyright infringement. He was given a two-year conditional sentence and must pay $550,000 in fines and restitution.
“This really is a banner day for the Canadian music industry and for artists and record labels across the country and around the world,” association spokesman Richard Pfohl told a talk show Friday on Winnipeg radio station CJOB.
“This is one of the largest — if not the largest — verdicts against an offender in history.”
Ramgotra, 36, was arrested in 2008 after an extensive RCMP investigation into Winnipeg-based Audiomaxxx.com.
Pfohl said Ramgotra was technically savvy and was shipping an estimated 10,000 bootlegged CDs and DVDs a month from his operation.
“He had a website where he would burn these CDs — none of which he had licensed, all of which he had stolen — and sell them for $3.99, which obviously directly undercut legitimate sales,” Pfohl said.
“At one point he was one of the largest sites in the world for physical piracy.”
When the RCMP busted Ramgotra, they seized five 12-burner CD and DVD burning towers, computers, hard drives, commercial CD printers, colour copiers and other office equipment, Pfohl said.
He also said that Ramgotra pulled in nearly $2 million from his operation, so “that’s money that came directly out of the pockets of artists and record labels.”
The association says the victimized artists included Shania Twain, Nelly Furtado and Jay Z.
Pfohl explained that music and video theft has moved on to where individuals download their own material from illegal sites, so there’s no longer the need for a middleman to physically burn and pirate CDs.
That’s changing how the recording industry fights copyright infringement, he said.
“Our main focus now is ... licensing new legitimate online services, so frankly, even if you were inclined to, it doesn’t really make sense to go to the piracy. Nowadays there are dozens of legitimate music services out there that can do everything from give you an a la carte download ... to streaming on demand.
“There’s no excuse to go to the pirated stuff.”
Consumers who use a site they know to be illegal are liable as well, Pfohl pointed out, although authorities in Canada don’t as a rule go after them the way the United States tried to do.
“At the end of the day, you always want to go up to the big fish. It’s the equivalent of taking down the big drug dealers as opposed to trying to get the end users. That’s not the way to go.”
Pfohl believes Canadians are getting the message about illegal downloads and realize they can get more music than they ever have been able to and do it at a reasonable price point.
“We’ll never be able to stop piracy 100 per cent. There’s always going to be someone who says, ‘You know what? I don’t even what to pay five bucks a month. I’ll just take it for free.’
“But I think we’ve got the average consumer to realize: ‘It doesn’t make sense to put myself at risk.”’
