UK Anti-Piracy Action
Well they call it action and even a campaign by having ISPs sending out up to 4 warning letters, to people who they believe are pirating digital content. I don't think it mentions specifically who in a house they will be addressing the letter to, I guess they can't identify who exactly. Also after 4 warnings, no further action is taken. This starts officially next year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28374457
Personally, it's just a big waste of time, money and paper. I can see people just binning all 4 letters and they just carry on as usual. Sure I understand the need for money paid for music, movie and enterainment, otherwise they won't exist in terms of high-end entertainment like block buster movies or award winning music, as they cost money. However the government is going the wrong way about doing it. Plus there's a big issue with the over pricing of the products in the first place, that consumers want lowering.
In addition to this, The government sure like to waste money on pointless things-
I mean come on, as if people need to watch some sort of educational video or shown a poster about piracy and to even spend 3.5 mill, is just crazy. That money could have helped hospitsals, schools and etc.
Are the government just too out of date or out of touch with the real world to understand what piracy is and how to approach it properly? They simply taking things in the wrong direction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28374457
Personally, it's just a big waste of time, money and paper. I can see people just binning all 4 letters and they just carry on as usual. Sure I understand the need for money paid for music, movie and enterainment, otherwise they won't exist in terms of high-end entertainment like block buster movies or award winning music, as they cost money. However the government is going the wrong way about doing it. Plus there's a big issue with the over pricing of the products in the first place, that consumers want lowering.
In addition to this, The government sure like to waste money on pointless things-
In addition, the UK government has pledged to contribute £3.5m to an education campaign that will promote legal ways to listen to music and watch movies.
Introducing the three-year educational scheme, Business Secretary Vince Cable said the initiative was all about supporting the UK's creative industries.
I mean come on, as if people need to watch some sort of educational video or shown a poster about piracy and to even spend 3.5 mill, is just crazy. That money could have helped hospitsals, schools and etc.
Are the government just too out of date or out of touch with the real world to understand what piracy is and how to approach it properly? They simply taking things in the wrong direction.
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It isn't a problem considering the entertainment industry is growing and has been faster and faster since the dawn of the internet. Plus the laws around copyright infringement are very blurred in this area and I suspect this thread will go the way all threads on this subject do.
"cost" means the people who downloaded illegally would have bought the content. In most cases I doubt that is the case.
Time and time again actions like this show that my VPN usage is justified.
Nothings changed, has it?
The music industry in particular dragged it heels for years and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age, just imagine how much they could have made if they had not been so slow to catch?
Simple greed from within harms the industry more than piracy IMO.
Millions in developing and implementing counterproductive anti-customer user-hostile measures?
If they would just focus on making their products and services the best they can be, they might be able to forget about piracy as it doesn't seem to harm them anywhere near as much as they harm themselves.
But does it? I'm old enough to remember "home taping is killing music", doesn't look very dead to me.
I remember the dubious ways they used to calculate their losses then and don't trust them any more now.
This is reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons in which they pirated a movie.
The poster on the wall mainly: http://www.imagebam.com/image/bc44e7340161731
Those who would still attempt to get things for free when those conditions are met are never going to be customers in the first place, and so you can't really count them in your losses.
I just see all the money wasted on lobbying governments and legal actions by the entertainment industry as being a complete waste. They could have built their own Netflix ten times over with the money they've wasted on fights they can't really win.
100% agree with all of these ^
I don't think it should be any sort of crime to download stuff from the net unless a loss can be proven.
The things I physically buy are decided long in advance,in most cases.
Sometimes the illegal download actually convinces me to buy the DVD/Bluray.
What a load of nonsense. It is the responsibility of the person who is logged on to the internet as to what they do when they are on it.
This is precisely it.
'Piracy' is rampant and the reason nothing more will happen is because the biggest culprits are every day people, and that includes politicians, their families, friends, civil servants etc.
Just about the only people that want tough action are the industry lobbyists.
The simplest way is to make legal ways as cheap and easy as possible - thereby ensuring that the pirates have no market. Another issue is the way access to content is controlled - so for example there is no legal way of me watching Continuum Season 3 if I was so inclined. (It is not shown in the UK and is not available on streaming services or DVD).
The music industry has learnt this lesson - hence the success of the likes of Spotify and the Apple Store,
To an extent they have learnt this lesson in that both Netflix and Amazon Prime make access to legal downloads incredibly easy, and certainly I've been impressed with the quality from Amazon. It might be worth being cheaper - you are not paying for packaging and a silver disk and these services are still on the expensive side.
The long term solution is to provide services to the consumer that they are willing to pay for. This year I will spend more on my Netflix subscription than I have spent on dvds in the last 5. I will spend more on my Virgin Media package than I have spent going to cinema in my entire lifetime.
This is the key, simples.
As proven by the business models of the IOS App Store and Google Play, people will buy stuff rather than grab it on-line if the price is fair. But while record and movie companies continue to take the mickey, and any serious attempt to control the Net would result in the digital equivalent to civil war, nothing will change.
BTW, a recent classic example of the way corporations continue to miss opportunities was with the most recent series of Game of Thrones. The finale was officially the most pirated thing in download history, yet the response was to offer episodes at a reduced rate! Like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. Why no one had the very small amount of imagination required to offer extended version of each episode, with other extras and at something like 50p each for download, I do not know.
obviously the letter would be addressed to the account holder registered at the ISP. is that not common sense? where else would they get the mailing address from?
some will. some won't - but more on the issue of cost below...
don't consumers want the cost of most things, if not everything, lowering?
what things do consumers want the cost of increasing?
of all the things to worry about the cost of, not food or housing, which are essentials, but entertainment which aren't essential
they do, but it's only your opinion that this is pointless, and it's easy to explain how wrong you are
the old money for schools and hospitals line. how tiring
you could just take £3.5m and give it to schools and hospitals, and get little to no return from it. schools and hospitals don't typically generate much income directly back into the economy, and £3.5m to add the education and NHS budgets isn't going to go far
however piracy causes a loss to the economy. it costs jobs which means the government has to pay out benefits to people instead of gaining income via taxes, and the government loses taxes such as VAT and corporation tax due to lost sales
so if you stop piracy and sales increase as a result, the spend of £3.5m can easily generate considerably more money in taxes going to the economy, which means in turn there could be far more than £3.5m generated to spend on schools and hospitals
simple eh?
in this particular instance I would say it was yourself who was more out of touch. and considering the particular government we have at the moment, that's not a good thing
so if the industry is growing faster and faster even though we have piracy, imagine how much greater it would have grown if there wasn't the problem of piracy
look at the stores that have closed down such as blockbuster, and zavvi, woolworths and many branches of fop and hmv for example. in addition to competing with online stores, and the tax loophole that was only relatively recently closed, they were competiting with piracy, with much of their products being available to download for free
why?
let's say you were going to buy x movie, but you downloaded it instead, and didn't buy it, and you got caught downloading it, and taken to court. how is anyone going to ever prove a net loss when it's basically your word to say whether you were going to buy it or not
can't you see how ridiculous an idea that is?
All six sites were blocked in May after being accused of infringing copyright by the Spanish anti-piracy federation.
The block meant mobile operators and internet service providers (ISPs) in Spain were told to stop letting customers get at the sites.
Now a court in Zaragoza has said there were "insufficient grounds" for maintaining the blocks and has called for them to be lifted.
The decision should mean that mobile companies and ISPs will lift the blocks in the next few days.
The court was considering the blocks after those running some of the accused sites appealed.
The sites blocked were SpanishTracker, PCTorrent.com, NewPCT.com, PCTestrenos.com, Descargaya.es and TumejorTV.com.
Traffic to sites fell sharply after they were cut off but some of them set up alternative domains and proxies to help regular users get around the block.
Spain has been a vigorous pursuer of pirates and has passed tough anti-piracy laws and jailed operators of file-sharing sites.