Be Excellent To Each Other

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7522334.stm

Right, I'm off to Be, then.

In the meantime set up iPlayer and 4OD and tell them to download every show on there to /dev/null.

Fine with me. I only take. Fuck sharing.

edit: balls, they're sending letters to downloaders, too. Reading is ace!

I don't even do that, it's the principle of the thing for me.

Fixed that for him.

He should try a local butchers.

Fergeal used to work for the people who regulate commercial radio in the UK. He told a mate of mine that whenever he visited radio stations they'd play "a good heart" while he was sitting in the reception area.

Hundreds of thousands of letters. For fuck's sake.

Incidentally, a thought occurred to me the other day (shock, etc). When the subject of child pornography comes up, people often argue for criminalising posession and acquisition of it on the basis that doing so "stimulates demand for the material", and therefore encourages harm. However, I kind of doubt that most users pay for it, not least because that would create an easy link between them and any supplier should the police catch either one, and I can't imagine how you'd go about paying cash for such a thing if you weren't already involved with some sort of network. I mean, nobody pays for porn anyway, so I don't see why they'd pay for child porn. So I doubt it's a stretch to say most, and probably the vast majority of viewers essentially pirate the material. And apparently this stimulates the 'industry'.

However. When discussing any other industry, the line people take is "it damages the industry and means suppliers aren't paid so can't provide more", which is the direct opposite of the highly analogous child porn line.

Now, you may think I'm arguing that possession of child porn should be legalised. I'm not. But they can't both be true, can they?

That's a damned good point sir.

In order for the two to be analagous you'd have to assume that child pornographers have overheads to pay and shareholders to feed, mate. As they don't, the "can't afford to keep supplying" bit doesn't apply - they don't make it for the money. They make it for fun, and share it with like minded nutjobs in the hope, presumably, of getting some in return.

You could say the same about software, it's just distorted by the current marketing model but who's to say that's valid?

Plenty of people make software for fun.

Until Dudley complains about what language you've written it in.

Seriously man. Visual Basic? In 2008?

Might as well use a Spectrum

If people make it for fun, and it doesnt' cost them, then they'll continue making it whether other people are using it or not.

I'd probably agree with that.

UNLESS, of course, the motivation of doing swapsies is a driving force. Which I suspect not.

So - option (a) [downloading of child pron isn't (appreciably) driving up its creation] - would seem to be the correct view.

Which is a little uncomfortable when it comes to the question of whether it should be illegal or not. Clearly it should, obviously, but still. Odd.

But I still don't think it's analagous enough (or at all) to software, music or DVD piracy, due to the lack of monetary considerations.

There must be some sort of monetary considerations for some of it at least - there are, or have been 'professional' rings producing it in the past. Whether or not that's a significant part of the distribution that goes on I've no idea, but if it is, it's more simliar to the media industries than they'd like.

You make a good point but I'd dispute this slightly... I (know people who have-Ed) paid for porn over the net in the past - while you can certainly find two people fucking for free easily enough there's quite a few small industries around certain fairly obscure (completely legal) fetishes where the amount of stuff available for free is hugely limited because there's not a big market for it. Hence these companies do fairly well selling very specifically to a small demographic.

I'd imagine child porn falls into a similar category- I doubt very much there's that much of it out there on the internet for free.

I'd agree - you can get vanilla stuff no probs, but try getting decent balloon fetish porn for free. Impossible!


Errr, so I've heard.

Anyone know if daemon is affected, does that come under the umbrella of any of those listed?
i have no idea....

Why aren't they emailing customers? Letters are so unfriendly to the environment, and I'm sure they aren;t sending them reorded delivery so how can they prove the customer ever received a letter? Email they could prove.

So right now we are lookoing at a two way conversation...

Trent Reznor: "Music is free now, like it or not"

Feargal Sharkey: "Piracy is theft"

So, let's start taking bets on who most people are going to listen to...

Also, if I torrent an album I already own, and they send me a letter... then what?

Or a file marked BohempianRaphsody.mp3 which is nothing of the sort when I play it back? Are they actually proving the downloaded data is a copyrighted thing, or just a filename?

What about bands who've personally told me they don't mind if I pirate stuff because I've bought loads already and I'm good at spreading the word?

I've worked in the ISP industry, and one of the better known ones I worked for would get email from http://www.iwf.org.uk/ informing us of suspected child porn images on usenet. Since said ISP had its own usenet servers, we would act on these emails and remove said images. A classic junior admin crap task, that one.

That would be just what they - iwf - spotted but there was a fair number of items some days.

The thing about the whole music piracy thing, is that they always say 'if you keep pirating oour stuff, our artists aren't going to make any more'

Really? No artists are music enthusiasts, who'd make music even if it was made illegal?

And given the fact that most artists get fuck all for record sales, and make all their cash from live shows anyway...

It's true that performing artists make fuck all from record sales, however songwriting/composing performers can make a fair amount from sales, not so much directly from the record label but they get a decent percentage from the publisher through licensing.
Also, artists have begun to make less from touring/merchandise since the record companies have realised that the world has changed* and have started taking a cut from that now.
_{*They used to use tours to promote new releases, now they have started using releases to promote tours due to the changes in how people use music.}

What the industry doesn't seem to have got its head round is that downloading music is a good way to; a) discover new music, b) see if an artist is worth going to see live, c) see if an album is worth buying.

Anyhoo, what I'm wondering is how they are going to monitor what people are downloading? Will they just be logging people visiting the various torrent sites or connecting to filesharing networks like they do when you use the computers at work/uni/wherever or will it be more sinister than that?

Are they allowed to monitor though, surely thats invasion of privacy. I hope I get a letter just to say my heavy downloading is illegal films you pricks give hollywood my numnber. Note to ISP this is a bot responce and this bloke uses his internet to download shit nights on the town photos and all the throttling you do to my connection on the weekdays is cuntish fucking shiteness on your own behave you fucking shit fucking cuntish motherfucking arseholes. PS I love torrents.

That sounds like a pretty logical comparison, although I suspect paedophilia is less niche than bald women fetish or whatever. But I suppose that's offset by the criminality of it somewhat.

Hurrah!

In related news, Ben Folds appears to have leaked his own album onto the internet. Nothing new, you might think, but it actually appears to be a fake album. He's actually gone and recorded a whole bunch of songs with silly lyrics (some poking fun subtly at the whole downloading thing) and leaked that. We know something's up as they're entirely different to the ones he's been touring the last 6 months...

WANT

WANT ALSO.

It's called "Way To Normal" if you were to say google that with the word "torrent"...