Slashdot Mirror
UK Internet Filtering Bill Watered Down
superapecommando writes in with news that in the UK, Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court. The previous version of the Bill had drawn instant criticism from some of the world's largest technology companies, including eBay, Google, and Yahoo, who signed an open letter against the filtering proposal. Blogger Glyn Moody summed up opposition to the Bill, stating that in its previous form, it was "utterly one-sided, where the only winners are a music recording industry too lazy to change, and the losers are everyone else."
Unfortunately, this story is already out-of-date. The Government denied the Liberal Democrat peers the ability to amend the amendment, saying that they'd sort it out themselves during "washing-up", the period just before the General Election when ministers and last-term backbenchers rush through last-minute legislation with minimal debate while the majority of MPs return to their constituencies to campaign.
See this Guardian article for more information.
Pirate Party UK
What is wrong with the UK? All I ever see are stories about another stupid thing you guys are doing. Not trolling. Think about it. Slashdot is like 7% stories about stupid privacy/internet stories from the UK.
There are a number of reasons for that:
There are plenty of other countries where privacy/Internet asshattery is going on (such as France), but Slashdot isn't quite such an appropriate forum.
Anyway, all of the above doesn't diminish the fact that the UK government really doesn't have a clue when it comes to the Internet, and doesn't rate privacy very highly on its list of priorities.
Pirate Party UK
Maybe you can inform us of how you 'change' to accomodate [sic] the fact that people are takuing [sic] your output for free and not paying a single penny
Except you're a troll, because:
Some good changes that the industry could make would be to, firstly, stop lying, and secondly, to stop trying to criminalise their own best customers
Pirate Party UK
The UK legal system operates on a "loser pays" basis, so unless there's something explicitly written into the law which puts such cases in the Small Claims Court (where there is a limit to the expenses that can be claimed by either side), you can guarantee anyone threatening to sue these people will be met with a nastygram saying "If you continue in taking us to court, we will demand costs. We're up to £20,000 now, and it's rising with every letter we write."
The people who are most likely to be cowed by such a threat are exactly the people who are most likely to get such a threat in the first place - I'm thinking particularly those who can't afford a solicitor and where the parents in the household don't really understand what the kids get up to on the Internet.
No one cries for horse buggy makers or tanners or typewriter makers. Some times, technology makes your business model completely obsolete. The best thing is to come up with a new one, either in a totally new industry or maybe adapt to the conditions the new technology has made. Trying to legislate against the new technology is bad for everyone as it holds up progress.
Who can afford the lawyers? Now if they really wanted to make this work (don't forget that all parties in england have to pacify the media/content owners. Do you want to upset the content producers and then be ridiculed forever in every piece of content? Go ahead, suggest the BBC should be privatized, see how long your public image survives. Yesterday the BBC aired an entirely self serving copyright program that showed only the content owners point of view. How suprising)
Well, we upset the content producers by our very existence, but we still seem to be getting some media coverage -- indeed, several media organisations have contacted us in the last few hours asking for statements!
We've published a press release about last night's Panorama programme:
The Pirate Party UK has come out as highly critical of the BBC's recent Panorama programme for its disappointing coverage of the Digital Economy Bill.
Although Panorama attempted to give a fair hearing to both sides of the controversy surrounding the bill, it was ultimately considered inadequate. In particular, the BBC was criticised for its failure to get informed commentary from organisations opposed to the bill, such as the Open Rights Group, Coadec and the Pirate Party, meaning that the arguments both for and against the Digital Economy Bill were incomplete, largely misrepresented and often factually inaccurate.
...
Panorama: Separating Fact from Fiction
Pirate Party UK
My friend, stop with the politics because it's actually very simple - if it's too expensive, don't buy it. Then grow a backbone and don't copy it either.
Very good advice indeed, and not only is that my approach, but I recommend it to everyone else as well. Check out sites like Jamendo. Also, donate to support those artists and corporations who have a 21st-Century approach to distribution.
When you start hitting these mega-corporations in their wallets, then they will start to listen to you.
This just isn't true. If you stop pirating, and buy their media, they decide that their increased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) are working, so they work to get more of them. On the other hand, if you stop pirating, and don't buy their media, they decide that their decreased income is because the anti-pirate measures (DRM, horrific legislation, etc) aren't working, so they work to get more of them.
Screwed if you do, screwed if you don't.
I -- and the Pirate Party -- have absolutely no intention of "[stopping] with the politics." The erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights being pushed for by the international media cartel are totally disproportionate to the actual damage they are suffering (minimal), and are fundamentally unjust, and deserve to be fought against.
Pirate Party UK
Nope. I remember all too well when CDs came out. We were told they were virtually indestructible, would play covered in jam & hairs and would be much cheaper than vinyl. At the time, they were around 10GBP in the UK compared to 5-6GBP for a vinyl album. We were told within a couple of years they would be cheaper than vinyl. Ten years later they were 15GBP+
The chances are that if I get jam or hairs on a CD, I can wipe it clean and it will play as it did before - unlike a vinyl LP. Besides which, if you get jam and hairs on CDs and fall for marketing hype then you probably need to be put in a cage in a zoo with a label "Greater Idiot" on it.
As for £15 CD prices - get real. Maybe if you buy everything in HMV in the high street - in which case you go in the cage also. I buy around 5 or 6 music CDs a month, I don't remember the last time I paid more than £10 for one; plus I buy a lot of remasters meaning they've got the extra tracks on them making them twice as long as a vinyl LP anyway.
Yep(ish) but you did get double LPs with glorious artwork, liner notes etc.
Yes, agreed, a lot of the great artwork hasn't survived well being knocked down to CD size, although many do have good liner notes - especially, again, on a lot of the remastered stuff. I always thought it was a missed opportunity to not put some of the old artwork and photos on the music CD as well.
That's a whole other agument. Back in the day, the A&R department might let a band put out 3-4 albums while they found themselves. Many now great bands had some dreadful early works - if we followed your rules we'd never have the good stuff. That was always the equation, the handful of uber successful groups funded the up and coming ones.
Yes, I think part of your statement is true, even to this day. I've certainly read somewhere that the Britney Spears of the world selling their trash by the millions helps to finance smaller artists - but then surely that's an advantage a record company has over a small artist trying to market themselves?
As to the first part of the statement, I'll talk about what I know. I mainly listen to classic rock & blues music from the late 60s to the present, and many artists that have been active pretty much throughout all of that period - e.g. Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin (and their solo projects), Nazareth, many others...
In pretty much all of those cases, the artists served "apprenticeships" on the pub and club circuits before making it anywhere near super-stardom. In turn this meant that many of the songs which would end up on albums had probably been played in front of live audiences for some time before, so I think this helped many bands put out very high quality initial albums.
In many ways that's changed today because artists are, in many but not all cases, are catapulted to fame instantly, just because the record companies market artists as fashionable and see a chance to make quick bucks. That's why, in my opinion, the general quality of music has dropped now.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It's not a suprise. Panorama is probably one of the few things I hate the BBC for. Panorama is basically the BBC's answer to the Daily Mail.
Panorama is frequently wrong, and the BBC frequently has to publish apologies, but these apologies are always hidden away, or non-obvious, and occur long after the BBC has already shown said episode of Panorama anyway. It was Panorama for example that started the BBC's push about Wifi being dangerous and giving teachers headaches, even though all of this was entirely unproven by them. It was later found that the BBC was indeed out of line, but the apology was merely published online and the damage was already done- countless schools around the country were adamant that Wifi was dangerous and started removing it from all the classrooms. I was working in Education IT at the time, and it was hard work trying to make the schools realise Panorama was wrong, even after they had issued the apology.
Panorama has similarly done shock stories full of inaccuracies on things like children using the internet too.
It's just a bad, bad TV series, and the BBC should be embarassed for even allowing it to continue. It's really a horrible stain on their otherwise generally good reputation.
There is another aspect to that:
If you dont copy:
- net result for company and artist = 0
- net result for you = 0
If you do copy:
- net result for company and artist = 0
- net result for you = +1 (you 'enjoy' the art without compensating the artist/company)
Hence why copying is NOT the way to make a stand, you are just a freeloader.
Better idea:
Buy from independants via web sites:
- Megacorps net income = 0
- Artists tied to Megacorps net income = 0
- Independant artist = +1 (possibly more money than going via Megacorp per sale)
- your net result = +1
Have a nice day!
Yeah, I don't know why the BBC struggles with serious current affairs programs so much. Particularly when you look at programs like Horizon and series like Planet Earth, and Life which are generally nothing short of outstanding. They clearly can do serious programs well, they can clearly do comedy current affairs programs well, it's not as if their news site and the current affairs stuff on there isn't generally excellent either. They just can't seem to mix it all together to provide serious TV based current affairs shows without ending up in an epic fail.