Slashdot Mirror
In the UK, a Plan To Criminalize Illegal Downloaders
krou writes "It looks like the launch of the UK Pirate Party came not a moment too soon. The Independent reports that Business Secretary Lord Mandelson is going to take a hard-line stance to preserve copyright after intense lobbying by the music and film industry. 'Under the proposed laws, Ofcom, the industry regulator, would be given powers to require Internet service providers to collect information on those who downloaded pirate material. The data would be anonymous, but serious repeat infringers would be tracked down through their computer ID numbers.' Prospective punishments included restricting internet access, either slowing down an offender's broadband or disconnecting them altogether, and fines up to £50,000. The Pirate Party came out against the scheme, calling it a gross invasion of civil liberties, while Tom Watson, the former minister for digital engagement, spoke out against the move, saying that the government should stop trying criminalize downloaders just so as to 'restore 20th-century incumbents to their position of power,' but should instead be 'coming up with interventions that will nurture 21st-century creative talent.'"
Fuck me but some people need a sense of perspective. Yes, Mandelson is corrupt scum, but comparing him with Himmler? You're the kind of wanker who'd compare Tory Bliar with Hitler.
Tosser. Read some fucking history books and get a grip.
The problem then is that your argument is much weaker for this exact reason:
It's not depriving you a helluva lot more than the alternative, i.e. the works not being created in the first place. For any commercial work created under copyright, there is a very good chance that it would never have been created without copyright.
In fact, that statement is yet another example of the deep sense of entitlement that has permeated our hearts and minds over culture since piracy became popular.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's the data itself that is anonymous -- not the data collected about downloaders, but the data (music and films) being downloaded. There may be more "pirate" material seeded, and I'm not so sure much of that is uploaded intentionally. There was a story on slashdot last week about using a file sharing app to collect peoples' private data, as most non-slashdotters just don't know how computers work. If you can accidentally put your bank details out there, you can also put thay Metallica song you "bought" from iTunes or ripped from your purchased CD out there quite innocently.
And when I download, how can I possibly know if the material is public domain, CC, copyrighted but with permission to upload, or pirate material?
My mother had a scratchy old record from the 1940 with a song I wanted a better copy of, called "Scatterbrain". When a sample is converted to MP3, all the defects are magnified. Do you have any idea how many songs with that name there are?
As Cory Doctorow pointed out in the forward to Little Brother, "piracy" only does good for an author. He was much more succinct in his explanation, but it boils down to the fact that no author ever went broke from piracy, but many an author went broke from obscurity. That's why all his books have CC licenses and are freely available at his web site in many formats, as well as free at the public library, or for sale at book stores. The fact that he gives the stuff away and still makes the NYT best seller list is proof that "competing with free" is stupid -- use "free" to your advantage, like he does.
Studies show that "pirates" spend more money on music than non-pirates.
This is the real reason the MAFIAA is at war with "piracy". The major label music industry fears its competetion, the indies, who use "free" to their advantage while the RIAA labels have the radio. The film industry is terrified of Star Wreck: In The Perkinning, a hilarious spoof of Star Trek and Babylon Five that was incredibly well made for a few thousand dollars and given away freely.
The real pirates are the established music and film industries.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm a technically literate brit, but amazingly, its my opinion that people who are serial downloaders of copyrighted material are
a) breaking the law
b) free loading off honest people who pay for stuff and thus enable it to get made in the first place.
I frankly don't give a fuck if people who are caught illegally downloading copyrighted material are caught, identified and prosecuted, just as I don't give a fuck if people who break the speed limit or get caught driving without insurance get prosecuted for that.
What next? having speed cameras or letting the police check your insurance details at random is 'an invasion of privacy!!!'
Nothing is more insulting that equating being technically literate with 'defending the anonymity of internet pirates'.
What is this? digg? torrentfreak? or 'newsforpirates'?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Hey, if you didn't work for it, and there's nobody gifting it to you, then you don't deserve it. End of story. Obtaining it without the owner's permission is theft, plain and simple. This'll get rated "troll", but I don't care, it's exactly the way I feel. I've never downloaded a single song or anything that wasn't offered for free without paying for it. I just believe when people spend months or years working in a studio and practically every waking minute to get this sound just right, or that lyric just right, so that it entertains us and gives us another "timetag of our lives" that marks an era or a generation, they deserve to be well compensated for it. That happens by BUYING the song. Its capitalism, get used to it or move to Cuba or N. Korea.
just as long as we have established what a morally empty sand selfish person you are for freeloading off everyone else, thats fine.
I'm sure you would expect everyone else to really give a shit they day you get fined by the RIAA though...
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games