Pirate bay, for example, currently contains this box.

“Yes, I wish to receive discount coupons, special offers
or promotions about other products.”

That’s a captive advertising audience who pay PB handsomely for their client list; that’s why ITV charge 30K for a 30 second slot in primetime TV, and that’s through nothing but aggregating other people’s content without recompense.

It is such a disappointment. Digital Britain was a great opportunity to define the digital landscape for the future, but Carter clearly lacks the technical and sociological knowledge. His pronouncements on DAB is laughable. We are supposed to endure something based on 80s technology that most of the world has rejected, all because the government wants to sell off the FM bands. When FM sounds better than DAB (which is the case for most people) then you know that there is something wrong. Even if Carter had to keep DAB (as I suspect was the case, the BBC does not want the embarrassment of ditching this baby of theirs) he could have at least mandated a minimum bitrate (and for that matter, a minimum bitrate for DVB-T).

As to copyright violation, well a little bit of encryption (to prevent packet payload inspection) and bouncing the packets through proxies (to hide where the packet originates) will be enough to thwart any mass ISP monitoring. What Mandelson is suggesting just won’t work.

As an on-topic aside, take a look at what Tom Robinson says about iTunes on the download page of his website.

As for Sophocles – he was a rich man and could work for the considerable honour and awards. Epicles, his contemporary, was equally brilliant but had to work all the hours the god sends on his smallholding as he couldn’t get a drachma for his work. (I’ve made Epicles up, by the way).

In Victorian times a big grievance was that the American market would pirate novels like those by Dickens and the author wouldn’t get a dollar. Now surely Dickens was worth his dollars while the American shysters weren’t. There has to be some copyright control over works of the imagination if the imaginers are to carry on with their work.

We have plenty of great novels from Victorian times because the authors were paid very well. No-one would embark on a huge novel like Middlemarch or Our Mutual Friend if they thought they would get five guineas for it instead of the considerable amount they earned.

Music was made long before it was possible to record it. Remember the wandering minstrel? Well maybe not but you know what I mean.

The technology that allowed music to be recorded and replayed made it possible for a major industry to prosper and, as technology has moved on, the facility to access recorded music without paying for it now threatens that industry. That happens with technology and it is necessary to adapt.

Technology, for example, has also made it possible to create an image on a digital camera without recording it on photographic film- should we make that illegal and protect the photographic film industry?

There is a strong argument that music and cinema will be more vibrant and more interesting when the grip of the corporations has been weakened. It seems to me the overall influence of the financiers was ultimately stultifying to the artists.
.

“@2, remember that to the Tory right “leftwing” means “someone I either don’t approve of or pretend not to approve of”, hence encompasses everyone from Stalin, Hitler, Nick Griffin, Tony Blair and Genghis Khan through to Michael Heseltine…”

Yeah, I know, lol!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Sophocles didn’t enjoy the benefit of modern copyright law.

What I’m objecting to is the notions that either the collapse of the music / film industries somehow implies the end of music / film itself, or that those industries have some right to be preserved in the face of changing economics.

I don’t follow your argument that UGC will be the future for film. The mass market has always liked explosions, pretty pictures, and pretty people, and they’ll always cost money, unless they’re all computer generated. No doubt there were people in the 16th century saying “Sure, you have to get patronage from a noble family and expensive paints now, but you wait twenty years and EVERYONE will be able to knock off a painting like Raphael”

Similarly to music; people like music largely because of the cultural touchstones it produces. If I want music in my own room, I can strum my guitar. (Well, Guitar Hero controller) If I wanted plays in Ancient Greece, I could have written my own – it’s just that Sophocles made a much better fist of it than me. And, seeing as he sucks in selling whips for buggies, he can’t do my job, so he had to earn a crust another way – he chose writing plays.

Punk was just the leading edge of the return to music as something people participate in, rather than passively consume. That was driven largely by the availability of cheap instruments. The next wave will be driven by the availability of cheap recording and distribution. Very, very few people will make much money from it, just as nobody makes much money from simply being literate any more.

Crony capitalism may be a sin of the right, but it’s a policy of the left.

Don’t throw me into that briar patch, Brer Wolf!

Seriously, though, what you seem to be suggesting is that the only options open to the music and film industry should be the routes they’re taking, such as the whole “Knock Off Nigel” and “You wouldn’t steal a car,” campaigns, both of which are generally red rags to a bull, and turn every spotty abuser of Utorrent into Matthew Broderick hacking the pentagon and sticking it to the Man in their puny little minds.

At the end of the day, use of the Internet IS a privilege, not a fundamental human right, like driving a car on the roads; it’s an infrastructure which costs to maintain and police – and the government are more than happy to stop you driving on roads if you start acting like a twat.

I went to Athena the other day with a hand held scanner, scanned in copies of the new Cheryl Cole calendar and set up shop flogging them at 20p a pop.

Then Mandelson’s fascist capitalist cronies had the cheek to have a go at me!

Tomorrow, I’m going to try selling printouts of Charlotte Gore’s blog to people – the only hitch is that they have to listen to me trying to sell Marmite to them, first. Of course, I have no intention of providing Charlotte with a penny of this revenue. In fact, I might knock her name off it and claim it’s all my own work.

I haven’t the remotest clue how I would act on this, but I delight in the phrase and wish the webwarriors against Darth Vader Mandelson all the very best. I’m sure you will win, and it will be a pleasure to observe from the sidelines as Mandy goes down & out in flames.

don’t think that’s necessary – my views on copyright are on record – but to say that making the UK’s regime comparable to the US’s will cripple our technological progress is the kind of batshit loonery that’s more normally expressed by Dan Hannan about the EU, or by David Icke about the lizard-people.

@2, remember that to the Tory right “leftwing” means “someone I either don’t approve of or pretend not to approve of”, hence encompasses everyone from Stalin, Hitler, Nick Griffin, Tony Blair and Genghis Khan through to Michael Heseltine…