A couple of events have taken place over the past couple of days that’s bad news to the internet as we know it. First off was an ISP sending warning letters to its customers to stop downloading music from the internet or else their internet access would be cut off. On BBC “Virgin Media has sent about 800 letters to customers warning them that they should not be downloading illegal music files via file-sharing sites.” Virgin has since gone on record stating “Virgin now claims that phrase was a "mistake" and it is running an "education-only" campaign that does not make any sort of judgement about the activity of its users.” This came about only because it made its customers mad by sending in the first round of letters and now faced with the prospect of losing customers Virgin has no other option but to eat humble pie and backtrack. However, the real villain behind this is BPI (British Phonographic Industry) filled with fat cat executives who want to continue holding on to their monopoly in music and make sure consumers pay through their noses for music CDs and the like instead of moving on with the times and embracing newer models of music/content distribution. Madonna’s deal with Live Nation is a great example of this. Radiohead selling their album online and letting the consumers choose the price is another great example. The fat cat execs at BPI I am sure don’t want to move with the times and want to hold onto the monopoly on the music industry and the means they choose to go about doing this it to threaten legal action against the very consumers and then tie up with other corporations and threaten to cut off internet access. Shame on BPI and shame on Virgin Media. I am glad for one that I don’t live in England that’s controlled by such moronic corporations. Pity the English consumer.
The other incident took place on the other side of the Atlantic with a United States Court ruling that Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube. Wow, can you Digg that? Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights". I am totally flabbergasted by the very notion of this idea. Come to think of it we cannot even own the content on YouTube. It’s hosted on Google’s servers and all we can do is clog our bandwidth trying to watch high bandwidth content in the form of videos on YouTube and now even that’s considered online piracy. Anyone who has visited YouTube and watched content on it knows it’s only small clips that one gets to see and not an entire full length Hollywood blockbuster. Not that anyone could watch an entire movie on YouTube with our limited internet bandwidth anyways. Still it’s real dumb to even suggest piracy on YouTube, but sadly or dumbly however you look at it, a United States Court seems to think so and now who knows if all the users on YouTube will get threatening legal letters too and might be even they will be threatened with losing their internet access. A world without the internet definitely paints a very bleak picture don’t you think.
Come to think of it, who has not downloaded music or movies from the internet? Anyone with access to a system with internet connection has downloaded from the internet, that goes without saying. Before I launch into a tirade about the pros and cons of downloading stuff from the internet and online piracy, Darren Waters from the BBC has already got the same idea and blogged about it too. Of course I don’t agree with Darren Waters’ blog this time around. It’s titled “No defence for ‘stealing’ music” and calls every downloader a thief to their face. Now I have always found Darren Waters to be a sensible blogger and quite informed too, but this post only goes to show that since he works for the BBC he too has to side with the Big Bad Corporations and let the little guys all over be damned. I would not have expected any better from the BBC, but Darren Waters’ has certainly disappointed me.
The last laugh I am sure is with the pirates and as long as stuff is put out on the internet people will continue downloading it. The point is how much smarter are the uploaders and the downloaders going to get. I for one am sure the pirates will only get smarter and start encrypting when uploading and downloading stuff from the internet. I will be cheering them from the sidelines. Yeah, I am always for the underdog and the little guy, always.
Test