Ian Morris
Ian Morris loves televisions so much he's been banned from wedding chapels in Las Vegas for trying to marry them. When he's not romancing technology, he can be found watching American TV. Ian likes roast potatoes, but he doesn't like digital rights management.
Friday 21 August 2009, 11:04am
Peter Mandelson and the £50,000 fines for music downloaders
When you read a story in the Daily Mail, sometimes it's hard to know if it's based in the same universe that the rest of us inhabit. So when I read that Peter Mandelson had proposed a strict new law that could see filesharers subjected to a £50,000 fine, and potentially prison time, I had to double-check with other publications. But it does indeed appear that Mandelson has made the proposals, which could see all sorts of people in some very hot water.
The decision to propose these new punishments seems to have occurred after Mandelson had a lovely cosy dinner with David Geffen. Pure coincidence, I'm sure. Geffen is famous for setting up Asylum Records and Geffen Records, and being a co-founder of DreamWorks SKG. Geffen has always been a strong anti-piracy advocate. You can see why -- his personal fortune is a paltry $4.6bn, so he's clearly been horrifically mauled by music downloaders.
I'm not saying music downloading is okay. But I am incredibly frustrated by the speed at which the music industry seems to move. Only this week I wanted to download a dance track, but couldn't because it wasn't available 'in my region'. And this is the issue. Both the music and film industries are falling over themselves to protect their monopolies. We see it in DVD region coding, and we see a situation where I can't buy a song, but I can download it illegally from a free file-hosting site.
I don't doubt some of those people who are fined, if these proposals are enacted, will deserve it. After all, selling pirated music is inexcusable. The problem is it's hardly ever those people that are hit with the big fines. Look to America, where people sharing 30 files are fined $675,000 -- not the people running the top sites that feed the whole online filesharing community.
These fines have the potential to be more costly than if you walked
into the shop and stole the CD. It doesn't seem fair that depriving a music store
of its physical property would be considered less criminal than creating a
new copy of some data. Particularly when there's often no legal alternative.
What do you think? Are massive fines and potential prison terms fair punishment for downloading music? Is it the only way to discourage people?
Comments on this post
We should look to Spain where downloading anything is legal for personal use so long as there is no legal alternative that allows the consumer to sample digital product effectively before purchase. Sounds like Mandelson thinks it's fair that we consume media almost blind to what we're getting. I don't.
Posted by Anonymous on Tue 25 August, 2009 2:29 PM
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There are two problems here: Firstly, as you point out, the industries push people towards illegal file sharing because of the inconvenience with trying to do things the legal way. Secondly, if file sharing is such a huge problem as the rich corporate media leaders would have us believe, then I want to see some blood. I want to see evidence that some record labels and film studios have actually been forced out of business because of loss of profits from file sharing. As far as I can tell, while people are illegally file sharing, all these studios are still turning a profit. Which makes their rampant anti piracy measures look more like a desperate money grab than anything else.
Posted by Anonymous on Tue 25 August, 2009 2:39 PM
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I think that if the file you downloaded is not available in you region you should be able to download it. I recently had this experience with House were although season 5 had finished in the US, I couldn't find anyone who wanted paid to let me see it.
Posted by Jason on Sat 29 August, 2009 10:07 AM
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Please bear with me while I go round the houses to make my point. Viviane Reding, the EU Telecoms Commissioner, when commenting on mobile roaming charges and the UK, said that the UK seemed to be more interested in the interests of the mobile phone companies than the consumer..... and therein lies the problem. The UK Government wants to be seen as the 'Party of Business' so they will often back business instead of seeing things from the consumers' viewpoint. When you see that lots of people, in a park, are walking diagonally across the grass, despite the 'Keep off the grass' notice, what does that tell you? It tells me that the people are voting with their feet and a new path should be laid where people are choosing to walk. The route Mandelson could have taken is, 'look, people want to download music, often for free, how can the music industry satisfy this need and still make money?' It seems that Spotify has one answer, but only time will tell. On the subject of 'file sharing' anyone who uses 'peer to peer' technology is, by the very nature of the technology, a file sharer. Thus the definition of sharing need to be very carefully defined. The other point I have to make is that the music industry claims to be losing so much money, perhaps by multiplying the number of 'illegal' downloads by the cost of a download. This thinking is very flawed. 1. A track might be downloaded that the downloader doesn't like sufficiently to pay for it. 2. There is a limit to what people can afford and some people will download far more tracks than they can ever afford to pay for. It is time to eliminate regional boundaries and have a radical rethink on how the music industry is going to make money. Governments should back the consumer more and press the music industry to deregulate and move to new models to maintain their income.
Posted by Brian on Tue 1 September, 2009 12:01 PM
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