Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Why Illegal Downloaders Will Not Face a UK Ban

There are been a lot of gesticulations from the music industry recently, culminating to a release about how ISPs could be forced to enforce a "three strikes" system and ensure that those found downloading copyrighted materials do not ever come close to an Internet connection again. Read the Telegraph among others on the subject.

I personally think that the music industry should be spending more time working out a business model that is in tune with 21st century consumers instead of threatening privacy laws and its customer base. For an enlightened viewpoint, read the Register: "ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music" and Matt's excellent analysis of why this is stupid on torrentfreak: "This idea makes as much sense as trying to ban people from singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to each other over the telephone network, or burning down libraries to protect the publishing industry."(...) "CD sales are falling because nobody uses them anymore, and Hollywood is in rude health despite the pirates. There should be no more talk about changing laws and spending tax payer’s money on this ‘problem’ until someone proves there really is one."


1 comment:

Inner Diablog said...

And they all seemed to have missed the point that the rule would apply to uploaders not downloaders