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The Pirates Will Always Win, Says UK ISP
TheEvilOverlord writes "The head of UK ISP TalkTalk, Charles Dunstone, has made the comment ahead of the communications minister's Digital Britain report that illegal downloading cannot be stopped. He said 'If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.' Instead he advocates allowing users 'to get content easily and cheaply.'"
I believe the industry knows that you cannot stop 100% of software piracy. I don't think that's their goal.
I remember back in 2000 when I went to my dentist. He sat me down and started making the usual small-talk, asked me where I worked, what I was majoring in in college, etc. When I told him I was a comp sci major, he brought up Napster. My dentist was using Napster. He went on and on about how computer illiterate he was, but he had no problems using Napster, and how he was finding songs on there from back when he was a kid, how he could find anything he wanted, and how simple it was to get whatever song he wanted...
I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.
Amazon has 89 cent downloads. And .99 to 3.99 albums (one per day). Pirates should check out Amazon!!!
Here is what I've gotten (albums for less than $3.99) in 6 months:
$ ls -d */* |cat
Aerosmith/Big Ones
Alanis Morissette/Flavors Of Entanglement
Amy Grant/Heart In Motion
Bob Marley/Live At The Lyceum
Bon Jovi/Cross Road
Boston/Boston
Butch Walker/Sycamore Meadows
Cary Brothers/Who You Are
Creedence Clearwater Revival/Chronicle_ 20 Greatest Hits
Creed/Greatest Hits
David Bowie/Heroes
Eagles/One Of These Nights
Elvis Costello/My Aim Is True
Forgive Durden/Forgive Durden Presents Razia's Shadow_ A Musical
Heart/Make Me
Inxs/Kick
Jack's Mannequin/The Glass Passenger (Amazon Exclusive)
Jackson Browne/The Pretender
James Morrison/Songs For You, Truths For Me
Jimi Hendrix/Electric Ladyland
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts/I Love Rock N' Roll
Joe Bonamassa/The Ballad Of John Henry
Joshua Radin/Simple Times
Kate Voegele/A Fine Mess
Katy Perry/One Of The Boys
Led Zeppelin/Led Zeppelin
Madonna/Like A Virgin
MC5/Kick Out The Jams
Metric/Fantasies
Mieka Pauley/Elijah Drop Your Gun
Neil Diamond/Sweet Caroline
No Doubt/The Singles Collection
Pink Floyd/Animals
Prince/Purple Rain [Explicit]
Queen/News Of The World
Robin Trower/Bridge Of Sighs
Rod Stewart/The Definitive Rod Stewart
Seether/Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces Spaces (Bonus Track Version) - [Explicit]
Seth Walker/Leap Of Faith
Shiny Toy Guns/Major Tom
Soundgarden/Superunknown
The Apples In Stereo/New Magnetic Wonder
The Band/Greatest Hits
The Benjy Davis Project/Dust
The Go-Go's/Beauty And The Beat
The Pussycat Dolls/Doll Domination
The Weepies/Hideaway
The White Tie Affair/Walk This Way
The Who/Who Are You
U2/No Line On The Horizon
Van Halen/Van Halen
Van Halen/Van Halen II
Various Artists/Motown Number 1's Vol. 2
Whitesnake/Whitesnake
Yes/The Yes Album
they're still calling us pirates. I like to think of myself as someone who likes to walk around the tollbooths the entertainment industry puts in front of everything, not walk through them. Haven't they got enough money? How many copies of my favorite albums do i have to buy to replace the ones i lost, or had stolen or whatever? Because the tollbooth owners don't care about that sort of fairness, how can i be expected to WILLINGLY put up with the hassle of the tollbooth experience when i can just walk around? The ISP guy got it spot on in one regard -- the only way to combat the culture that has developed to avoid this hassle (ie filesharing) is to make stuff dirt cheap and mega accessible. But there's no or very little profit in that is there, and so here lies the contradiction of trying to own something in digital form and make "good healthy profits". Normally i would sarcastically say "good luck with that" but its simply not funny that while they're trying to make these healthy profits we have to put up with all the associated nastiness of their stand-over tactics and absurd propaganda... can we have the revolution now please?
You can't stop copyright infringement but you can inhibit free culture.
we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.
or even worse, introduces new problems without solving the intended ones.
Trouble is, some of the new problems it introduces (namely overbearing policing of actions online, bordering on a police state) are not usually seen as problems by the politicians (at least those in power or which hope to achieve it soon), but rather goals that they date not describe publicly...
but you were copying to crap cassette tapes. You didn't have digital audio tape. Why not? Cuz the RIAA won that one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
As long as the technology was localized, where they could attack a single format, target manufacturers, etc, they could keep it under their thumb. Things are, I think, fundamentally different now that digital copying and digital redistribution is ubiquitous.
You weren't making anything like the quality of copy that is possible now, and you had no way to anonymously dump a million crappy cassettes for other people to pick up, either.
Although technically you might have called what you were doing piracy, I think the Internet has fundamentally changed the game. He might have needed to say "piracy at this scale" vs. just piracy, but functionally it's just a minor quibble.
Liberty uber alles.