Speaker: ACTA: Don't sell us down the river
526 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 14 15 16 17 18 … 22 Newer→ Last
-
I assume that acts that are happy for their works to be widely distributed, will continue to use the internet to put free versions of their work up.
Yeah but it offers so very much more. Many acts are postively using, and encourage remixes, tracks on mixtapes, grey dissemination of new bits and so on, as a very valuable way of increasing their profile, buzz, chit-chat and so on. It's not unheard of for acts to greet the number of hits they get on Limewire with a thrill..it shows people that like music value them as an act. P2P is your friend was an (non-major) industry catchphrase a year or two back
No one sells music/movies/etc except through them.
Fairly much the same response the new indies had in the late 70s. Rough Trade is still selling music, albeit after a bump or two, 30 years on..
-
It is equally pertinent to the issue of illegal downloading and copying. People want songs; some pay, some don't.
Yeah, I think I've got your opinion on that pretty much down by now, Paul, but I'm not sure how it's relevant to what I was saying: I'm just musing about the artificial/unwanted nature of the album format for most music consumers.
-
It is equally pertinent to the issue of illegal downloading and copying. People want songs; some pay, some don't.
Totally correct. Some people used to tape songs off the radio, too. Or borrow tapes and CDs off friends and take copies. And don't get me started on mix tapes!
Some leakage is inevitable. No system can avoid it, and I remember seeing a (very quickly pulled) report that was on the RIAA website that suggested that leakage within the music industry's distribution systems was responsible for greater recordable losses than "piracy". About three times greater, from memory, and this was when "piracy" was being blamed for over a billion dollars a year in industry losses.
-
Personally, I favour doing nothing at the moment (aside from shortening terms and clarifying fair use) and if things get worse introducing some form of public financing, but that's way away in the future, and we'll see what happens.
Finally, something on which we unquestionably agree. It had to happen eventually, I guess. I also agree with your belief that things will continue to work.
-
Or borrow tapes and CDs off friends and take copies. And don't get me started on mix tapes!
An article I read a year or so ago said that 95% of respondents to a survey used "sneakernet" - aka giving a copy to your friends.
-
People want songs; some pay, some don't.
Yep, agreed, and I'm thoroughly against the wholesale dissemination of whole catalogues online..really fuck you. I came across an NZ based blog recently that had a whole album that I control up there for "preview purposes". If it had been a track or two, more power to them, but the whole album sucked, so I arranged for a take-down notice.
But drawing the line is hard. I love the blogs full of those long lost indie 45s that have never appeared anywhere and are unlikely to, and happily would allow my old 7"s to appear on such, as I have. I think most acts and independent labels feel the same. Majors, of course, have a very different attitude and have teams of lawyers taking down things they don't even own, or have no intention of ever releasing again, to the detriment of the act, the writers, society and everyone else. And once again, fuck you to that attitude, which I see as worse than some misguided fan posting a whole album on a blogger site.
But what worries me is that these corporations are becoming, and see themselves, as the gatekeepers to our culture, and things like S92a and ACTA allow them to do that, especially as they are driven by that most corporate driven nation, the US (and I'll hand you back to Mr. Bono now).
-
If it had been a track or two, more power to them, but the whole album sucked, so I arranged for a take-down notice.
That's a really unfortunate way of phrasing it, especially in light of your comments about the album being the poison-of-choice of the labels, carrying only a small handful of worthwhile tracks.
Thanks for the giggle though ;) And I agree, that really isn't very cool. Would you consider a couple of tracks, in their entirety, to be an actual fair use? -
that leakage within the music industry's distribution systems was responsible for greater recordable losses than "piracy"
Or shall we talk about how majors regularly mark down stock by acts and then give it away as free 'bonuses' or 'deletions' to retailers, thus avoiding any artist royaties but encouraging large orders from the retailer of the new release often by completely unrelated acts to the ones who just had their royalty stream snipped off. That's where most of the stuff in the cheap bins comes from, or those specials....
Piracy has many levels.
But maybe we are leaping into another thread best left behind...
Would you consider a couple of tracks, in their entirety, to be an actual fair use?
Sure
And the album really didn't suck....
-
That's where most of the stuff in the cheap bins comes from, or those specials
I feel quite dirty now. I haven't bought (or downloaded, before anyone starts!) new music in quite some time, but the last time I did it was from one of those bins. Justified to myself on the grounds that at $10/CD I wasn't giving some part of the big four excessive sums (yes, that is why I don't buy music). Now you're telling me that, quite likely, the artists got none of the money :/
And I knew that wasn't what you meant about the album. I was just amused by the phrasing, given some of your past comments.
-
@Peter
Ah. I've been back to page 6 – you underrate yourself. That's a very good post with much to discuss.
Firstly, let's not pretend that just because something is on the internet that the distribution is free: you still need servers, marketing, etc.
It's certainly more of an issue for film and TV given the larger file sizes, and as you note music is a different beast for other reasons.
But take a look at what Phoenix Foundation are doing with Bandcamp today. Their work is their marketing – here, have a track to try out; the only price is jumping on our mailing list, which you probably won't mind doing. And Bandcamp's not only free, it provides a really great service, with downloads in multiple formats, including FLAC and Apple Lossless. No illicit offering will ever approach that.
Also free, pervasive and influential: YouTube, MySpace Music, Twitter, Last FM …
So it will be very difficult for the individual artist to compete in the diverse market of the internet, when they are the 4872nd hit on google.
I have to say, if you're 4872nd hit on Google, you're doin' it wrong. This is the age where can do have an opportunity to make your own luck in that respect.
But how much of a problem has piracy been for you really, versus the general brokenness of the market in screen works?
I download BBC4 documentaries because there is no legitimate way to obtain them. Swathes of BBC programming are not offered for sale by BBC Worldwide, in part because the cost of sale is too great. And these are things for which there is demonstrably an audience.
Given all this, the real problem is making sure that the market for distributors needs to be an even field, so that quality can actually rise. Currently, the old distribution networks (ie major studios) want to make deals with the ISPs to guide traffic to certain sites more quickly than others. So, as you can imagine that's going to cause problems for independent niche distributors who will find that if they're not able to compete reasonably as their websites are streaming more slowly and consumers will move to the big companies.
You'd be a mug if you were trying to do your own streaming. But there are people who'll do it for you for free or cheap in music and, I suspect, emerging in screen works.
The exploitation of new platforms has been poor for screen so far. I'm surprised that TiVo will be launching with such standard offerings. Where's the 'Ant Timpson Selects' section on TiVo's CASPA on-demand?
The pricing's wrong too. $2.95 an episode for the first series of Breaking Bad doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to much more than hiring the DVD, with all the associated additional costs for production and distribution built in there. (And then there's the unsold inventory problem with physical formats – when I see huge piles of legitimate DVDs for $2.95 at JB Hi-Fi, I'm wondering if creators see any of that.)
In terms of their real impact on independent screen production in New Zealand, which is actually the bigger problem – internet piracy, or an ineffective and inefficient market? It seems to me it's the latter by a long stretch.
-
(And then there's the unsold inventory problem with physical formats – when I see huge piles of legitimate DVDs for $2.95 at JB Hi-Fi, I'm wondering if creators see any of that.)
Ah. I see Simon answered my questions before I posted it:
Or shall we talk about how majors regularly mark down stock by acts and then give it away as free 'bonuses' or 'deletions' to retailers, thus avoiding any artist royaties but encouraging large orders from the retailer of the new release often by completely unrelated acts to the ones who just had their royalty stream snipped off. That's where most of the stuff in the cheap bins comes from, or those specials..
It starts to get hard to draw an ethical distinction between that and downloading ...
-
What I'm saying, and it's really the extent of it, is - can we have a principled discussion, instead of just a discussion masquerading as pragmatic that is really just as ideological?
Dude, it's hard to be responsible for your characterisation of other people's arguments.
I actually think the discussion is detailed and interesting.
-
Okey dokey.
-
At which point I'd be urging you all to join me in taking a drink.
But I can't, because I have my worst gout attack in two years. And yes, I'm on the medication. And I'm going to the Chris Knox launch gig tonight.
Other forms of pain relief may have to be employed.
-
Justified to myself on the grounds that at $10/CD I wasn't giving some part of the big four excessive sums (yes, that is why I don't buy music). Now you're telling me that, quite likely, the artists got none of the money :/
It depends..some is legit budget or mid price stock. It's usual practice for a wholesaler to, after a period, put a release into a mid price or budget catalogue, so, using an Auckland example, those tables of $10 CDs you see outside Rhythm Records in Ponsonby and elsewhere, are legit, (reduced) royalty generating items (although labels are shocking at actually accounting to the acts..I saw a Fats Domino interview a while back where he said he'd not had any accounting from EMI since the 1970s...so all those Greatest Hits and Rock'n'Roll collections you see out there simply don't exist).
It's when you go into the warehouse and see bunch of fairly substantial albums cheap, or see a wall of major label releases at a silly price in JB HiFi you can quickly work out what's what and that they exist as retailer inducements from wholesalers.
And, yes, the crazy silly priced DVDs I'd guess.
-
It starts to get hard to draw an ethical distinction between that and downloading
Very, very hard. Particularly since the downloaders are doing it because they want to consume the content. The labels are doing it so they don't have to pay the artists. Some of the former are guilty of the same sin as the latter, to be sure, but when the labels are constantly crying about the poor artists...
Simon, that assuages my soul somewhat. These albums were already moderately old (18 months, maybe two years after release, if not longer in one case) when I bought them, so definitely candidates to be put into a lower price bracket.
-
instead of just a discussion masquerading as pragmatic that is really just as ideological
Where's the line? Is it impossible for an ideological solution to also be pragmatic? Leaving regulation as it is (or, ideally, cutting terms and codifying fair use) and seeing if a market-based solution (Keir, STFU!) can present itself is certainly ideologically attractive to me, but it's also absolutely pragmatic. Just leave it the hell alone, instead of tinkering and tinkering under the assumption that it's broke. We don't know if it's broke, but it certainly feels like some people are out there screaming "If it's not broke, fix it until it is!"
-
I should say I'm enjoying this copyright thread more than the last one -- better signal-to-noise, I reckon.
But there are ma few flurries. My apologies if I've come across snippy at any point. Let's keep it collegial.
Well, mostly ;-)
-
-
A Dogbert that slides in here nicely
Heh.
-
And for those people who can't play it legally (OSX, Linux, etc), there's always bittorrent
I know you're being flippant, but this is back to my point about convenience. So far, if you want to play Blu-Ray discs you have precisely two choice: buy a hardware player, or buy a computer with Windows. For Mac-heads, that's hardly an appealing thought, though with BootCamp and other techniques it's not exactly outrageous - except that Macs won't have built-in BR drives until there's a stable, Apple-released BR player, and given that we're now two releases of OS X into the life of BR I'm not expecting that situation to change in the foreseeable future. For those of us who happen to be fans of open, however, it's a big problem, especially if we don't terribly want to have to add yet another box to the living room.
The demand exists, I'm certain, but it will only be met on the terms of the movie industry. Yet again, we see clear evidence that they have no desire to relinquish any control even if it will mean a gain in paying customers. That leaves people to source high-def content off torrents, because there's no legitimate way to get it otherwise. -
Apologies for yet another ridiculous essay like post. Like I say, I’d love to be a bit more conversive if I could.
Anyway, I’ll just start by answering a few questions.
Movies do cost millions to make. But do they have to
Yes, if we want to actually pay the people involved. Even low budget films like REC was 3 million. And there’s no one getting anywhere near rich in those numbers, I can promise you that.
The real problem that the major labels appear to have is this entrenchment of both Hollywood accounting and also the massive cost structures. The very existence of a $20m list and a $10m list says that the entire industry is built on enormous, ridiculous costs.
The real problem that the major labels appear to have is this entrenchment of both Hollywood accounting and also the massive cost structures. The very existence of a $20m list and a $10m list says that the entire industry is built on enormous, ridiculous costs.
Yes. They are. But then, movies actually do cost a lot to make. The 3million dollar REC was all interior, mostly one location, no international stars, and was pretty short (80 mins or so?). Look at the length of a credits list sometime, many of those people are employed for a lot longer than the shooting time. 10 million isn’t actually that crazy.
Anyway, your list of 25 successful sub-1 million dollar films over the last 25 years or so is not something to base an industry on. Nobody would be able to earn a living and the industry – at least an industry of any quality – would simply fold.
I’m not suggesting a very tiny minority of the film industry are grossly overpaid. The rest of us (if we’re lucky) simply manage to earn a living. So please don’t take a couple of small examples of film stars and movie moguls and make gross generalizations.
But to be honest, that’s the market dictating those terms for the tiny minority. If a vast amount of people go to see a film simply because it’s got Adam Sandler in it, then Adam Sandler’s agent is going to ask for a silly amount of money, and budgets will inflate. If big, expensive special effects are what it takes to bring the masses in for the live experience then that’s how it is. In fact, it’s exactly the free market at work you’ve been arguing for all along.
With free software like Massive and relatively cheap stuff like Maya even semi-decent special effects can be done at home.
Yes, with the hell of a lot of EXPERTISE and TIME (and, in many ways, these cheaper programs require more expertise and time). Which somebody ought to be paid for, no?
some movers & shakers in the movie industry are tacitly accepting that improving the "live" experience is a good way to make money.
Yes, that’s true, but only for the big screen blockbuster experiences. Smaller scale films without a lot of special effects are not able to compete in the same way. The advent of stronger home cinema experiences will make things worse.
Peter, you keep on saying the same thing back: "Higher costs of production". That is the only reason I can see you having advanced for why movies cannot be treated the same way as music, and I happen to think that it's a crap reason.
Well, yes it would be a crap reason if that’s all I had actually been saying. Production is not the only issue, so also is distribution and consumption. In fact some of the other issues I’ve advanced are at least more concerning than cost of production. Please go back and look at what I actually wrote about why they’re different; there are a large number of other reasons. I would write them again but it’s frustrating to repeat the same thing over and over.
Looking at your example of Tormented, it may be that the lack of a proper marketplace didn't help.
Well, it may be I guess, if you don’t know anything about it, but if you did, you’d find it is not true at all. In fact the opposite is the case: the Production Company worked very hard on creating their ‘market’ or consumer base or whatever you want to call it, and then those same people turned around on release and downloaded it for free on the internet.
Fro memory, the producer described it as: ‘at first shocking, and then, in retrospect, completely inevitable’.
I'll also point out that, in any other industry, if you released a product that garnered hundreds-of-millions of dollars in revenue but didn't make a net profit you would be looking for a new job. In another industry.
Because that’s what I do all the time?
Meanwhile, Modern Warfare 2 takes a staggering $550 million in its first five days on sale -- and that's while the torrent and warez sites seem to be groaning with cracks and copies of it. People still do seem to buy stuff.
Games also are a little different, as they require online play which is far harder for pirates to fake their way onto.
Let’s be clear though: no one has ever said people don’t also buy stuff even if it’s available for free. Especially people like us, who have enough concerns about copyright, ethics and ‘the art’ to churn out 15 odd pages of discussion. But I also believe there are a lot of people – particularly of the upcoming generation, who have been brought up with the notion of free IP – who don’t feel quite so ethically conflicted as we do.
Peter Cox at least backed up his position with examples from real life, but of ambiguous evidentiary value.
Find me evidence. Find me real numbers. Not stuff from big media press releases, but audited sales figures and income distribution reports.
Well, there’s no way because we don’t have numbers. Particularly in these early stages. Like I’ve said, there’s no ‘control’ earth that we can compare to and get numbers of what the situation would be like if we had no piracy. DVD sales may go down 20% in a year, but is that piracy? Or did all the films that year just suck? Are people buying less DVDs and instead getting blu-ray, which are more expensive, so per unit the numbers go down? There are no numbers that can’t be disputed a million different ways – such as the MPA’s insistence on using number of downloads = amount of lost revenue, which I think we can all agree is plainly ludicrous.
But not having solid indisputable numbers is not a reason to dismiss the argument. It may be a reason to be a little more cautious about what we do to stop piracy, as the effect is not completely known. But there is ample evidence as I’ve listed, and plain common sense when you understand the industry, that the film industry is going to experience a *much* more difficult situation that music, and that in fact people who are not just Rich Corporate Evildoers are going to suffer. Many people with a sound understanding of the industry, and in fact many of those who have pioneered film distribution into the internet age, are very, very worried. I know. I’ve talked to them.
No, they’re not idiots, yes they understand all the arguments that have been put forward here. And they, with good reason, are convinced piracy is the problem.A lot of the contributions to this thread seem to be premised on the assumption that the technology cannot possibly be good because downloading is running rampant. "Won't somebody think of the artists?" kind of thing, and from that we start running off into this world of designing a solution. Only, I don't see that we do need a solution, because I am very, very far from convinced that there is a problem. Fine, that's a point of serious disagreement. But it's no less extreme than the approach that I'm seeing that we have to plan for a problem because, in the absence of evidence that there's not a problem we have to assume that a problem exists.
That’s fine. And like I keep saying, that’s mighty comfortable position to have when your ability to feed and clothe your children is not on the line. I’ve given you solid examples, pointed out why there are no solid numbers, and there most likely never will be until it’s too late.
</quote>Without intending any disrespect, I don't count Peter and Keri's experience for much for the same reason that I wouldn't expect you to count my experience for much.</quote>
No, I’m dismissing a lot of your experience because you don’t actually have much experience at all in the industry that you’ve been talking about, and many of your comments reflect that (including lecturing those that do in where we’re going wrong: “gee, why don’t you just make great movies for under 1 million?” Well thanks, we never thought of that. *golden age of cinema begins*). Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude about it, but it’s true. I know it’s with the best intentions, but from our point of view it’s a tad patronizing.I have to say, if you're 4872nd hit on Google, you're doin' it wrong. This is the age where can do have an opportunity to make your own luck in that respect.
Sure, but once everyone is on board with the various cheap online marketing angles, it’s going to get flooded, and you’ll be back to square one.
You'd be a mug if you were trying to do your own streaming. But there are people who'll do it for you for free or cheap in music and, I suspect, emerging in screen works.
Perhaps, but as you mention an 8 gig file is going to be a very different beast to most music, even flac, so we’re in for a wait before that becomes viable. Particularly if (heaven forbid) your film actually starts doing well, downloading starts to accelerate, and servers come under pressure…
As a side-bar, one solution is for the studios to stop pissing their pants about "piracy" and let people who buy DVDs get a 'digital copy' as part of the package.
Hell yes, in fact, I’d like to see people who purchase an online version, be able to get a substantial discount for the DVD/BluRay, with only the extra costs of physical production/distribution of the disks/box/booklet added on.
The pricing's wrong too. $2.95 an episode for the first series of Breaking Bad doesn't sound like much, but it adds up to much more than hiring the DVD, with all the associated additional costs for production and distribution built in there.
I’ll go you one better. The pricing is absolute bul**hit, and as a result I don’t blame anyone for pirating instead of paying exorbitant prices. HOWEVER, the only answer for fixing this is to open up competition for distribution which should bring prices down. Once Netflix (and the direct from internet to tv gadgets become more reasonably priced) the rest enter the market things will change I’m sure, and we might start to see some proper services as consumers decide where we want to go.
But then you have to look at the fact that illegal downloading is more than likely to be actually slowing the uptake of new distributors entering the market because the margins for new entrants into digital distribution are being hurt by those downloaders. So piracy is actually partly to blame for these exorbitant prices. Either way, allowing piracy to continue unchallenged certainly won’t help.
Or shall we talk about how majors regularly mark down stock by acts and then give it away as free 'bonuses' or 'deletions' to retailers, thus avoiding any artist royaties but encouraging large orders from the retailer of the new release often by completely unrelated acts to the ones who just had their royalty stream snipped off.
It starts to get hard to draw an ethical distinction between that and downloading ...
The difference is that the artists can get together, form a union and demand better conditions. Hence the latest Writer’s Guild strike, which successfully got writers a decent stake in the online earnings. We can’t do that with illegal downloaders.
I’ll add that our last big strike was in regard to DVD and VCR, and we pussed out and ended up with rubbish conditions. Fortunately we didn’t make that mistake this time :D But anyway, I guess the point we’re making is that we’re not completely powerless and we *can* actually look after ourselves.
Now, if the Guilds disintergrated, that would be a different story…
Oh god, I haven’t even gotten into what I actually wanted to say, which is about this:Gio, Paul, Peter, Kyle, Keir -- where do you all stand on this? What balance best serves the public good? How should we best move forward? Again: put away the moral thunderbolts -- what might actually work?
Damn straight. Let’s assume that a reasonable enough portion of us admit that it might be worth looking at some proper solutions that weigh up risk to the industry vs public good. Which, at least to me, is a much more fascinating, and practical discussion.
I have few thoughts about that which I’d like to hear discussion on, but okay, this post is long enough. I’ll start another one.
Well done to anyone that made it this far. Sorry. A lot to deal with.
-
No, thank you, I was hoping you'd answer some of the ludicrousness concerning film budgets. I'd add that people who made a very successful low budget film once, pretty much never made a second one. Independent directors like John Cassavetes, who made it their mission to produce films that way and was certainly not beholden to the star system or special effects, spent his career raising money for his films, which were still *very* expensive to make.
There is a very interesting film about the making of Rossellini's Open City that gives a glimpse of this. In the end they managed to complete it on their shoestring budget, but it was both a miracle that they finished it and that it got any distribution. You simply couldn't expect everybody to work that way.
-
Peter Cox:
I've got to join with Gio and say you've got nothing to apologise for. I can handle "essays" when they're as interesting and usefully provocative as yours.
There is a very interesting film about the making of Rossellini's Open City that gives a glimpse of this. In the end they managed to complete it on their shoestring budget, but it was both a miracle that they finished it and that it got any distribution. You simply couldn't expect everybody to work that way.
Rossellini also managed to make a film where the shoestring budget was the least of his problems -- the sheer practical difficulties of making a watchable film in a city where people were more worried about finding food than usable film stock, and the faculties he would have been able to call on were (often literally) in ruins, were awesome.
Sure, I respect people who can make a movie with five bucks and a wad of chewing gum. You can even argue that Tarantino's best work is still Pulp Fiction (which was made on an extremely tight $8.5 million budget, with people like John Travolta and Bruce Willis effectively working for scale, and in Willis' case, modest profit participation.) But there's a lot of stories worth telling you just can't realise like that. Just as not every play can -- or even should be -- staged like a Beckett blackout sketch.
-
(again, apologies, for the lack of being able to take part in the discussion properly. My internet access is unreliable at the moment. In fact right now an Itlalian Café owner is giving me a dirty look for my 3 hours internet access for one cup of tea)
Moving on from something I DO know a bit about, to something I'm just starting to gather information on, so I'm very happy to admit I'm fumbling about these issues still.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I’m no friend of the MPA, nor are most Guilds. Not only are we constantly at battle with them anyway over the rights of artists. So, no, we trust them about as much, and perhaps even less than Matthew or Colin do. However, it’s also frustrating to see them engage so pathetically with the wider community when there’s an issue that the 'artist’s' Guilds and the MPA actually have in common. In large part that’s part of the reason I’m getting involved with the discussion myself.
Basically, first off, I don’t think ACTA is necessarily the issue here. The issue is the form of the legislation that enacts whatever they decide. However the more I learn about ACTA the more I worry about what legislation, in terms of 3 strikes rules, will be launched onto us without the govt. So a lot depends on what options the government will have when legislating deterrents.
Anyway, ACTA aside, the problem with S92 is that it was a rushed, poorly thought out piece of legislation: the crappy definitions of what constitutes an ISP, guilt upon accusation with no legal recourse, etc.
So first off, the thing that’s vital is no matter what system we have we need an ombudsman or similar system to monitor what’s going on. We don’t want these laws to be used in ways unintended.
My personal point of view is that all it would really take is people to feel as if their illegal activities are being monitored for illegal downloading to go down notably. The penalties themselves don’t have to be overly severe, though there certainly need to be some.
Personally, I’m in favour of a fine after warning. The money can perhaps go back into the creative industries that are being stolen from, and perhaps even some to the ISPs for the additional monitoring work they have to do. Or maybe into further education about piracy? I don’t know what the technicalities of the law are in regards to fining people without them having the option of going to court?
But if it’s the threat of internet being cut off then to be honest I don’t think it’s the end of the world, given that people can swap to a new ISP (although that has problems itself, with people trying to exit ISPs contracts, etc). I understand that the right to the internet is something quite vital, but to be honest, if you’re going to get caught so many times that you’ve gone through every single ISP in the country you deserve everything you get. It’s a problematic solution, but with an ombudsman, there is at least recourse to guilt upon accusation, and we won’t find innocent people getting caught up.
To me, the vital thing is actually the warning itself. To me it’s more a case of targeted education: let people know the ways in which pirating is harming the industry, that what they’re doing is effectively theft, which is harming the artists, and personally, I think many casual illegal downloaders will think twice. People, generally speaking, are ethical, they just need a gentle reminder of that fact. Of course, it has to be decently put together, and not a repeat of the MPA’s dubious statistics on earnings losses and the like.
Obviously there are also the technical issues about how that monitoring takes place, whether the ISPs can do it reasonably without too severely walking on the privacy of customers, and how accurate it all actually is. I’d love to hear some feedback from the more technically experienced regarding this. For example: can we monitor specific websites and then if people visit websites such as pirate bay or isohunt for the torrents, their activity is logged, and then if they start downloading large amounts of data that also gets logged, hence, evidence? What holes are in that? Is there a better way?
I would also like the government to legislate some decent guidelines about what the ISPs are supposed to do to monitor pirates, how they’re supposed to react, what evidence they should be including in their notices, etc.
Finally, I would also like us to all get into the Net Neutrality fight to stop the big companies and ISPs getting together to increase speeds to certain areas of the internet and decrease others, which is going to be a much greater harm to internet users, than the odd issue we’re going to have with an anti-‘piracy’ law. Given that Net Neutrality growing into a bit of an issue in the US (McCain just came out against it), now seems as good a time as any to lobby to get this issue covered in our law while the general internet freedom issue is coming up.
Okay that's is. Cheers. Now having that drink Russell suggested ;)
PS Thanks Gio and Craig! Very kind of you both.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.