Downloading to be made illegal?

[buggalugs]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm

They're talking about a law to obligate ISP's to terminate your contract if you do an 'illegal download' whatever one of those is.

Personaly I'm not sure that it's the governments job to support an industry's business model but I guess they have deep pockets, and took a lot of politicians out to lunch or something.

They bleated on that cassette tapes would kill the industry, and VHS FFS. Nobody banned those did they? And the world did not end.... and we all enjoyed the use of these things for a very long time. How is this any different?

[buggalugs]

JustinP1 said:

buggalugs said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm

They're talking about a law to obligate ISP's to terminate your contract if you do an 'illegal download' whatever one of those is.

Personaly I'm not sure that it's the governments job to support an industry's business model but I guess they have deep pockets, and took a lot of politicians out to lunch or something.

They bleated on that cassette tapes would kill the industry, and VHS FFS. Nobody banned those did they? And the world did not end.... and we all enjoyed the use of these things for a very long time. How is this any different?

Support an industry "Business model"!?

Looking at it bluntly its theft, and the industry is asking the government for legislative support.

Look at it this way: Lets say for the sake of argument you work hard all week making a commodity - food, plants, beer, whatever. You sell some and you do OK, however recently you have not been doing so well, in fact you don't have much money to do it any more. You find that in the night, those items you were spending your own money to produce were being stolen, blatantly. As much as you can try you can't stop the thieves though. You are running close to the breadline and often losing money and working for nothing, and you don't know how long you can last...

In that situation would you be asking the government to give the authorities 'teeth' to protect *your* business model? Or is that example fine by you?

I do know what you mean but I don't think the example quite fits. They're not producing a physical item, or if they do it's incidental. It's a virtual item, and technology has now evolved that's making it impossible to control the creation and distribution of these items. So the thing to do is change they way they do business, the way they make money. That's where I was coming from with the business model comment.

We're not talking about some poor humble shopkeeper having his stock stolen.

[buggalugs]

JustinP1 said:

buggalugs said:

JustinP1 said:

buggalugs said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm

They're talking about a law to obligate ISP's to terminate your contract if you do an 'illegal download' whatever one of those is.

Personaly I'm not sure that it's the governments job to support an industry's business model but I guess they have deep pockets, and took a lot of politicians out to lunch or something.

They bleated on that cassette tapes would kill the industry, and VHS FFS. Nobody banned those did they? And the world did not end.... and we all enjoyed the use of these things for a very long time. How is this any different?

Support an industry "Business model"!?

Looking at it bluntly its theft, and the industry is asking the government for legislative support.

Look at it this way: Lets say for the sake of argument you work hard all week making a commodity - food, plants, beer, whatever. You sell some and you do OK, however recently you have not been doing so well, in fact you don't have much money to do it any more. You find that in the night, those items you were spending your own money to produce were being stolen, blatantly. As much as you can try you can't stop the thieves though. You are running close to the breadline and often losing money and working for nothing, and you don't know how long you can last...

In that situation would you be asking the government to give the authorities 'teeth' to protect *your* business model? Or is that example fine by you?

I do know what you mean but I don't think the example quite fits. They're not producing a physical item, or if they do it's incidental. It's a virtual item, and technology has now evolved that's making it impossible to control the creation and distribution of these items. So the thing to do is change they way they do business, the way they make money. That's where I was coming from with the business model comment.

We're not talking about some poor humble shopkeeper having his stock stolen.

Are we not?

OK, so if you dont steal a physical item, then its not stealing? And items that do not have weight in your had are 'virtual' and irrelevant?

Consider my previous analogy, where it was *your* work that was being stolen. This time instead of your cakes, trees, or beer that you have worked hard to produce, you work in IT from home and the 'potential customer' lists that you spent your day working on and selling to business were copied from under your nose, and given out to the companies for free?

Is that right, or is it stealing?

Or is it technologies fault, and just a matter of evolution, as the burglars now have jamming devices which mean they can sneak into your house at night, and take your work without your alarm going off...

So that would be your fault for not keeping up with the burglars? Or would you ask the government for help?

I'm not saying that people shouldn't get paid for their work, thats clearly not an argument that anyone can hope to win, and its not a viewpoint that I support. I'm opposing the way that these people are going about their business. If the music industry is dieing then downloading is not killing it, pop idol is. And picking on customers to throw their lawyers at is not the way forwards IMO. This isn't a cottage industry that asking for protection, its a bunch of cynical sharks who are only interested in playing the numbers. And I don't like them calling the shots in parliment.

At least, thats my perception anyway.

I'm not sure what the way forwards is. Perhaps bands that can sing can make a bigger percentage of their income from touring? The moves by some bands to try to reduce the number of middle men involved must also be a good thing surely.

[buggalugs]

Setting aside everything else, It does seem impossible to implement as they describe it.

Coming soon to a country near you: Even more new laws that make it all too possible... bend over boys!


UNLESS what they're going to do is rely on the copyright holders to make complaints. I think the effect of this would be to slipstream the current process of dealing with infrigements, where they have to go through a big legal song and dance with each and every infringer to identify them and do the ceace and desist thing, making examples of the odd one. Maybe with this new law all they'd have to do would be to fire off an email to your ISP and get you perma-banned just like that? It's a pretty scary thought, and how easy will it be to appeal if they make a mistake?