The Piracy Playlist

Taped Tunes to Illicit Streams

Author

The Déjà Digest
June 21, 2024

Background: In a crackdown on digital piracy, five men were recently convicted for operating Jetflicks, an unauthorized streaming service that allowed users to access a vast library of movies and TV shows.

Jetflicks was no small-time operation. The service offered a sophisticated platform that rivaled major legitimate streaming services in both functionality and user experience. Subscribers could watch high-quality streams of the latest TV shows and movies, often just hours after they were released. Federal investigators revealed that the Jetflicks team employed advanced software to scrape and upload content from various sources, creating a comprehensive and continuously updated library.

At one point, Jetflicks claimed to have more than 37,000 paid users and 183,200 episodes of television.

While the technology and platforms may change, piracy remains a constant.

Deja Vu: The "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign was a response by the music industry to the widespread copying of music onto cassette tapes. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) launched the campaign in 1981. The slogan became iconic, often seen on record sleeves and advertisements, symbolizing the industry's fight against unauthorized copying.

Copying music became easier at the time thanks to the advent of dual cassette decks and portable tape players. The campaign led to discussions about imposing a levy on blank tapes to compensate artists and record labels, a measure that was implemented in some countries.

Fact:

Punk band Dead Kennedys openly mocked the campaign. Their album "In God We Trust, Inc." included a parody warning that read, "Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help."

Stats:

In 1980, cassette tapes accounted for 18% of global music sales; by 1986, this figure had risen to 35%. Surveys from the 1980s indicated that up to 50% of music consumers regularly engaged in home taping. This short lived success for cassettes was followed by a sharp decline.

The Rise and Fall of the Compact Disc

The Rise and Fall of the Compact Disc where US CD sales have gone from a peak of 942.5 million copies in 2000 to 34.4 million in 2022.

Profile: Alan Sugar

A catalyst for allowing people to copy music at home came from a the dual-cassette technology breakthrough credited to U.K. consumer electronics pioneer Alan Sugar. While exploring Akihabara, Tokyo’s hub for cutting-edge electronics, Sugar spotted a professional-grade Sharp twin cassette deck. Inspired by this find, he and his company Amstrad set out to create a more affordable consumer version, launching it in September 1981.

In his memoir, What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography, Sugar recalls their marketing strategy. "Our national newspaper advertising was being cranked up," he writes. Sugar instructed Malcolm Miller to include a notable disclaimer in their full-page Daily Mirror ad for the new TS55 twin cassette tower system. The ad prominently featured a bold warning: '*It is illegal to copy copyrighted material. This machine should only be used to copy material you have generated yourself.'

This disclaimer, as Sugar noted, employed a bit of reverse psychology. "People would read it and think to themselves, 'Hey, that's a good idea! I can use this machine to copy my mate's Abba cassette.' That was the effect the warning had," Sugar explained.

Despite clearly stating the legal limitations, the underlying message subtly encouraged consumers to use the device for copying tapes, all while maintaining a façade of legal compliance.

Phrase: Home Taping Is Skill In Music

As the technology on cassette recorders improved, homegrown engineers began taking pride in their copying abilities. This parody phrase of the BPI PSA became a movement in itself and encouraged people to create, record, and copy music at home.

List: The Long Ling of Jetflicks

  • Napster: In the late 1990s, Napster revolutionized music sharing by allowing users to freely share MP3 files. This peer-to-peer service quickly became popular but was shut down in 2001 following a series of lawsuits from the music industry.

  • The Pirate Bay: This infamous torrent site has been involved in numerous legal battles since its inception in 2003.

  • Megaupload: Founded by Kim Dotcom, Megaupload was a file hosting service that was taken down by the U.S. government in 2012 for allegedly enabling widespread copyright infringement.

  • Popcorn Time: Often referred to as "Netflix for pirates," Popcorn Time allowed users to stream movies and TV shows via torrents. It faced legal scrutiny shortly after its launch in 2014, with various versions of the service being shut down by authorities in different countries.

Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world -- and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology.