Illegal music downloading.

[Garmard]

I read an article on the BBCi last week about how music piracy will never be stopped no matter how complex the technology to stop it is.
I am appalled that piracy is on the increase and begs the question of whether the internet is properly policed, as it quite rightly should be.
What do you AB'er's think?

[rojash]

There always be a certain amount of intellectual property theft - it was going on long before the Internet (schools being among the biggest offenders). The best way to discourage it is to make it easy for people to purchase at a fair price. Unfortunately the dinosaurs of the film, music and text publishing businesses are more interested in propping up their old business models, making legal acquisition difficult, and charging total rip-off prices.

[Davethedog]

When I was a kid people used to record vinyl onto tape and now cd's onto computers and then onto other cd's all my actual CD's only get played in the house.

Soon you won't be able to buy anything physical and it will all be downloads.

And still they will be copied.

[tamborine]

Internet connexions are bought, that gives access to the web to upload/download from chosen sites.

Sites like AB have their own webmasters/monitors to police them. Is it piracy to download Youtube music here - not at present. The variety of info on the web can only be beneficial.

Computers in the home/workplace can be monitored by the payee.

[VHG]

>I am appalled that piracy is on the increase and begs the question of whether the internet is properly policed

Musical piracy can still be done even without the internet.

I have an external hard drive. I can easily "rip" the music off all my CDs to mp3 format, and copy them to the external drive. This could be hundreds of tracks.

I could than take the external hard drive round to my friends house and copy all the mp3 files off my external hard drive on to his computer.

This is musical piracy, and does not involve the internet at all.

But how do you stop that?

[daffy654]

Inteernet connections are not bought, they are rented to us. We never own them.

It is illegal to upload copyrighted material to Youtube and to download it from there.

[tamborine]

my wifi is bought not rented.....I can connect for free in lots of places. I do rent Broadband - so you're 50% right daffy.

[ChuckFickens]

Tambo,

Yo don't own the equipment your wifi connectx (!) to, you just rent airtime from them.

[12thPaladin]

Thanks to Lord Mandy's digital rights bill, measures to combat illegal downloads and file sharing will soon be mandatory for all ISP's. Virgin Media are currently conducting trial runs of software called CView, based on the highly controversial Phorm technology that utilises deep packet inspection. Everything you type, everywhere you go and everything you do is intercepted, recorded and analysed. So much for privacy, what will be the point of anti - spyware software?
Phorm failed to get the green light because the information gathered would be used to target ads, but now slightly tweaked under a new name with a new agenda, ISP's will get what they wanted. I wonder how long it'll take for this system to be abused, private information collated and sold to the highest bidder.

[andy-hughes]

Piracy is on the increase - and it will never be stopped because it is human nature - to get something for nothing.

The Internet's major plus point is also its major minus point - it is not policed, which allows true freedom of speech - and piracy.

Speaking as an 'older generation' AB'er, i can confirm that the debate about music 'piracy' has raged for thirty years, with no signs of abating.

In its early days, the debate was about home taping - the record companies bleating that it denied them / their artists income for their work. Statistic proved that the vast majority of people who taped a friend's album bought an original copy for themselves, thus neatly nixing that argument.

Now, with the net and downloads, people simply accept 'free' music as a right, and that will never change. Again, the upside is that millions of musicians have a platform for their work - and may have to compromise on financial rewards in order to use the system.

The only hope that the 'industry' has is to clamp down on people who are making vast profits from illegal file-sharing, and that is a difficult battle, with the abikity of 'pirates' to fold up their tents and steal away into cyber-space, to set up elsewhere ten minutes later.

In conclusion - should the net be policed? Probably - but by who?

Will piracy of music ever be stopped - no, which is a good and a bad thing, largely depending on whether you are a musician or a fan.