Censorship mission creep?

[andygates]

I'm hearing rumours that some UK ISPs (including BT Mobile) are blocking access to the Pirate Bay, claiming it's an IWF thing.  If they're true, this is a very bad thing.  Censoring is all vile, IMO, but censoring kiddy smut is at least defensible; blocking just TPB would be a triple-fail: extending IWF's mission from "stopping kiddy smut" to include "and protecting TimeWarnerSonyArseflakes' profit"; only blocking one torrent site out of hundreds; and failing to act on the torrents themselves (tip: google "my favourite telly show" filetype:torrent).

I'm hoping this is scuttlebutt that will blow over in a day or two.

Comments

[despaer.livejournal.com]

I will grant you that large media companies have much to answer for, one only has to look at how much they charged for years for CDs, and I will also grant you the point about ISPs not arbitrarily censoring random sites that take their choice. But how is A. N. Artist to protect his lovingly created film or music from being freely copied without him being paid? I am not trying to be smart here as I have thought and thought about this and I have got no idea how to do it without exactly the sort of draconian restrictions that the net is designed to prevent (usually with success).

The problem is, there are always people willing to take a free ride, and this is fine for a large project which will pick up a few paying customers or can have spinoffs like tours and merchandise but for the medium players

So how do we thwart both the greedy media companies as well as those who don't wish to pay for their goods?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Same way it currently works, only without so many lawyers: some folks share, some folks leech, and some folks pay.

I'm suggesting that the people who have a free ride (1) don't matter apart from upsetting an arbitrary sense of 'fairness' which is a personal, moral annoyance and not a market matter, and (2) function as advertisers to people who might themselves buy.

A number of studies (Canada, Sweden, etc) have shown that the people who download most naughty music also buy more legitimate music: basically, they're music fans, who get their fix in a spread of ways. People who don't buy much music generally don't give a stuff about it, and so don't download either.

In other words, the dilemma of customer / freetard is a false one.

[carldem.livejournal.com]

Only anecdotally (of course) I have bumped into many buyers, both occasional and collectors who have significantly reduced their buying because they can download most of what they want, and the few dollars they get in their wage packets only go so far at the store.

So I do feel sorry for A Random Artist but then they don't really get a good run from most labels anyway.

And I do recognise the massive investment in marketing, development both primary and secondary the labels put into the market.

But just as they have little protection against their product being ripped off, what protection do the consumers have against them over-charging, over-capitialising or just acting as cartels?

As in all things its just a balancing act.