Walking The Plank.
It seems that the business of internet piracy is very black and white. People are either all for it or totally against it. And there appears to be very little room for discussion in between. If you ask a lot of the public they will simply say it’s wrong, even if they have never used a computer. Because ‘piracy’ conjures up nasty images and sounds so blatantly illegal it puts the fear of God in many people.
But is it so clearly wrong? There are a lot of films and albums which you just cannot buy anymore and the only way to get them is by downloading. Surely there are different degrees of piracy, aren’t there?
It wasn’t so many years ago that records and cassettes were the formats we used for music. And just about everyone recorded a new album that someone else had paid for. And no-one was ever taken to court over it. Isn’t file-sharing exactly the same principle, only on a larger scale?
Of course, there is a difference between that and downloading new movies to sell. Go and have a look around your nearest car boot sale and you will find at least one guy selling illegal copies of the latest films. How they actually have the audacity to do this is a mystery to me, but there you go.
However, if you look at piracy from another perspective then it changes things considerably. There are plenty of up-and-coming musicians who are struggling like mad to break into the big time. And if you mention piracy to someone like this then it will not go down very well. You can understand it; every time someone downloads one of their albums it is costing them a lot of money.
I wonder what will happen with it all. Online piracy certainly cannot just be stopped because it is so very well established. But if it is to be controlled then it will need to be done carefully and in a sensible way.
As you all know I have been looking into this supposed enigin scam. And I found this great new website written by one of the employess, you should all really check it out!