File-sharers 'breached copyright'
This from the BBC website:
According to latest reports file sharers 'breached copyright'.
Shock! Horror!
Sorry to tell you this BigMedia, but beating up the p2p guys *isn't going to help*.
Beating up the p2p *users* isn't going to help either.
I've been to 3rd world beaches where you can pay a few dollars, euros, pounds, or rupees (or whatever) and you can fill up your MP3 player, or get CD's burned. The year before last I had a choice of over 100,000 albums, all at low cost, for my MP3/CD player or laptop.
If I was unscrupulous I could have bought loads of music for next to nothing, but I restrained myself. CD's are cheap enough in India without purchasing pirated MP3's.
But in India I can buy MP3-CD's anyhow, for about 55-80 rupees I can buy legal MP3 compilations of all sorts of Indian stuff, and I buy these whenever I see something interesting.
Yeah sure there's "pirated" information out there on p2p.
BUT .. just because people use p2p to swap material that's pirated doesn't mean p2p is to blame.
Think of it like this: One popular slogan of the U.S. gun lobby is:
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people"
Well, I have to say:
"P2P doesn't cause piracy. People cause piracy"
I will have a *lot* more to say on this subject in the coming months, because I do *have* a vested interest.
I make my *own* music .. and sometimes I want to give it away free.
But it's really hard to find web hosting for anything with an .mp3 extension (or .ogg, or whatever) because:
(i) ISP's and open hosts aren't willing to give up server space to a possibly copyright infringing MP3. You can't blame them, they could get stung for $$$$$s for hosting something they didn't know was there. Who has the time to check every MP3 uploaded?
(ii) MP3 sucks bandwidth. I don't post MP3 on this blog because my BM asked me not to. "Not enough bandwidth" he said. Imagine I uploaded an MP3 to my site when my BM was away, busy, on holiday, or just sleeeping. If it was current, by the time he woke up a 100,000 people could have uploaded that "popular tune" - at 5-7Mb a pop - not nice.
Meanwhile all this wrangling makes it harder for anyone *making* their own music to distribute it.
I wish BigMedia could get it sorted out.
But BigMedia are large corporations "responsible to their shareholders" (i.e. interested in money and nothing but money).
I think the only winners are going to be the lawyers who are going to be kept in work for years to come.
Comments
Software or Music or Video "Piracy" may be illegal, but usually only as a Civil offence, and is not a Criminal offence in most countries.
"Piracy" on the seas, still exists, and is an extremely serious criminal offence, comparable to terrorism, as it often involves murder, torture, rape, slavery, etc. of many people and involves large financial losses of cargoes and ships. It often attracts the death penalty in many countries.
When the corporate public relations machines bleat about "piracy", they are dishonouring and insulting the victims of real modern day Pirates, in Indonesia, Phillipines, West Africa etc.
Posted by: wtwu | September 5, 2005 1:36 PM