The whole music and film industry against “the internet” is getting a little ridiculous. From the Pirate Bay trial (follow it on twitter) this week to the Davenport Lyons debacle (yes, debacle! a friend of mine got a letter and the one piece of evidence? An IP address, I mean come on!)
Through following Stephen Fry on twitter I come across this law being put into effect in New Zealand. From what I can tell a section of this law will allow “for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny”. Basically if you’re accused, your internet connection is taken down!
Find more details at http://creativefreedom.org.nz/
I don’t even think the whole copyright theft or illegal file sharing is the root issue. I think it’s the fact that the music industry and film industry know they were too late to the internet party and rather than use technology to innovate they got scared and decided to use what they know, the law.
to be fair the copyright infringement is absolutely rife and the amount of people downloading torrents etc without ever having bought the material is silly.
Most of the people I know have downloaded something they have no right to and usually stuff thats not that expensive.
However the draconian methods being used by the industry to attempt to scare people and also in some cases fine people is stupid.
I agree they should come up with some way of producing this content so it is available for a fraction of the cost at high quality then perhaps pirate bay et al wouldn’t exist (they only index stuff any how) then again perhaps there are some people who beleive they don’t have to pay for stuff and never will.
What I object to is they assume if your i.p address is against something that YOU viewed it or downloaded it… this is not the case there are lots of people with unsecured wireless networks in there house.. now if i sit outside your house and download a heap load of stuff , you’re going to receive that letter and can’t proove it wasn’t you.. likewise they can’t proove it was you … all they can get you for is you are responsible for the connection.. again the less tech savvy get screwed and the more tech savvy have a way out.
I beleive in innovation but those organisations with old fashioned business models (for example the record companies) don’t seem willing to change … this unfortuantey is at the root of the issue and they just don’t see it.