Piracy v Free Beer

01 Jul 2011

The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents Warner Bros, Paramount and Disney, is taking BT (British Telecom) to court to force them to block users access to Newzbin. I have a few issues with this

• Why just BT, there are numerous ISP’s in the UK so why target BT? I think because if it picks on the largest ISP and wins all the others will just fall into line. But it is a bit unfair to all of BT’s customers that they are being victimised first (but I’m sure all of BT’s customers are all law abiding citizens anyway!)
• This is a clear infringement of people’s civil liberty and if passed will open the floodgates for Big Brother to step in and start the slippery slope to Internet censorship. The whole point of the Internet will be lost.
• Is there an argument for Piracy? Well, probably not. I guess if I’d worked bloody hard on something (software, music, film, TV etc.) and some bugger nicked it then I wouldn’t be happy. BUT hang on, if that person wouldn’t have bought the item anyway (they just got it because it was free) then is that so bad? You wouldn’t have got a sale anyway so where is the problem? Stating that the film industry “lost” several hundred millions of pounds is just a finger in the air, how do they know that? Plus for me in particular films, and the cinemas showing them, are just not value for money. They’re making a killing out of the customer in over priced food and tickets and at the end of the day the film that was advertised turned out to be crap. Extra for 3D, forget it you got to be joking. Music doesn’t fare much better although I think the current pricing on (some) CD’s is value for money. Digital downloads are a different story, 99p for a song - come on iTunes that is way too expensive.
• They are targeting the wrong people. As usual it’s the little people that suffer. The MPA should be going after the site owners (and the other, potentially criminal, minority who are intent on making money from piracy). But that’s too much hassle, let’s target the end users much easier and can be done in one fell swoop.

The trouble with this is we have heard it before and it’s made no difference. In the 80’s we had the slogan “Home Taping Is Killing Music” an anti-copyright infringement campaign by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Has it made a difference, I doubt it as there are still as many musicians as ever. I often wonder why we are allowed to buy equipment, at cheap prices, that allow you to copy things. Why don’t they just make them more expensive and out of the average persons reach?

Well for what it’s worth I hope the case is thrown out of court. The Internet should remain a place of the FREE (as in free speech not free illegal stuff). In any case, even if they ban Newzbins I’m sure it’ll come back again as something else. We saw that with Torrents, a few sites got closed down but there are still lots of them still out there serving up the latest “free stuff”. I also know of 3 NZB sites that do the same.