Many fan sites exist quite fine without advertising or the inclusion of materials protected by copyright. Most blogs have little to do with piracy in any active way.

Most of the music blogs I’ve seen are hosted on sites like Blogger, WordPress, or LiveJournal. These give you a free website, in exchange for hosting ads on the site. (Years ago, it was Angelfire or Geocities.) So, advertisements are more likely on fan blogs than on “pro” music sites.

The blogs are typically posts about a specific album, reviewing it and giving the history of the band or whatever, and include a link to a file locker with the album itself. Blogs like this are the most common fan blog on the internet. Are all of them “pirate sites?”

I’m talking about crafting a website for the sole purpose of the distribution of pirated materials with clear monetization of heavy adverting.

You’d be surprised how little this actually happens. For example, Peter Sunde claims the Pirate Bay actually operates at a loss. I find this believable; in general, internet ad revenue simply doesn’t bring in very much money to websites. All of the file locker sites, for example, make their money by “upselling” customers on greater download speeds and so forth.

And it would be a real stretch to claim that sites like Rapidshare or Megaupload have the “sole purpose of the distribution of pirated materials.” They sell a service to users; what those users do with that service is up to them.

it’s unlikely anyone would mistake the average blog for a warez site.

From what I understand, dajaz1 was the kind of site I described above. Their domain was siezed, ex parte, for criminal copyright infringement. That “mistake” has already been made.

I will concede that it may not be a scenario that comes up often. But it DOES come up, and it is an aspect of copyright protection that should be considered whenever reform is discussed.

I agree completely that it should be considered. The question is whether copyright law, as written, helps or hinders artistic production. Frankly, I’ve seen more harm than good.

Two examples. First, I have a bunch of friends who do music in the indusrial genre. They sometimes include very short samples from documentaries, news reports, or what have you; a few include short samples of other types of music (e.g. classical). Recently, an underground label tried to get one of their records pressed at United Record Pressing. They went through the whole process, got master plates made, paid the deposit – and URP refused to press the record because of the samples. (Also refused to return the deposit or the master plates.)

Now, these samples were transformative, a very minor part of the overall work, and couldn’t possibly affect the market for the original. So, they were almost certainly fair use, and legal. Does URP care? Nope. They’re afraid of getting sued, so they go above and beyond what copyright law actually allows. It’s a classic chilling effect.

Another example: the Timbaland/Suni case, where Timbaland copied the entire song “Acidjazz Evening” without permission or credit, added a drum beat and Nelly’s vocals, and released it on a major label. He had earlier released the song, verbatim, as a ring tone. Suni sued, but two courts in Europe dismissed the cases entirely. (Suni is suing in Florida as well, but the case hasn’t started.) This isn’t the first time Timbaland did this, either, but he has yet to be found guilty of copyright infringement at all.

The effects of copyright law seem pretty clear. It’s infringement if the public “steals” from a major label; but if a major label “steals” from an artist, it’s perfectly OK. Combine that with the uneven costs of litigation, and you have a one-sided law that benefits labels, but not the artists they rip off.

If your experience is different, then more power to you. But whether the trade-off is worth it, is not something that can be easily brushed aside.