Virgin-Universal Deal Offers Unlimited Music, Goes After File Sharers

suraj.sun writes "The UK's Virgin Media could start suspending persistent file sharers on a temporary basis, using information provided to it by Universal Music. The ISP announced on Monday that it would, before Christmas, launch an all-you-can-eat music download service for its users, based on a monthly subscription fee. The tracks will all be DRM-free. 'In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network,' a statement read. 'This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access.' DTecNet has already been working with UK content companies for some time to do much the same thing, and is also working with RIAA in the United States."

Comments

Re:Net Neutrality implications?

[xtrafe]

I'm not quite sure what you think qualifies as 'morally bankrupt', but here's how I'd illustrate the term:

• Inspiring generations of musicians (and other professionals) to toil for free in some faint hope of rockstar-scale success is morally bankrupt.
• Crowding out a cornucopia of music, and an entire economy of middle-class musicians, is morally bankrupt.
• Conning people into thinking it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a produce a professional-sounding album when it really only costs a couple thousand, at most, is morally bankrupt.
• Convincing musicians that they should live off recordings, rather than performance, is morally bankrupt.
• Subjugating art, expression, and creativity in the name of selling impressionable children on fad after fad, is morally bankrupt.
• Leveraging the legal system at taxpayers expense in a hopeless attempt to keep a depricated business model working is morally bankrupt.
• Lying to people that somehow the most fundimental law of economics we have, that price = demand / supply, does not apply, as if somehow even gravity could be driven off by a marketing campaign, is morally bankrupt.
• Capitalizing on ignorance to charge both producers and consumers for a middleman service that can be had entirely for free is morally bankrupt.
• Trying to sell people into acting against their own self interest is morally bankrupt.
• Spying on people is morally bankrupt.
• Propagandizing is morally bankrupt.
• Brain-washing people is morally bankrupt.
• Telling me I can't twiddle the bits on my own harddrive any way I see fit is morally bankrupt.

But record companies don't care about being morally bankrupt; They're just in business to make money.
And after all that, if you really think there's still some reason that record companies should exist, and moreover deserve some portion of your income or mine, I'd love to hear it.