Has England now become a mini China?

It appears that thePiratebay.org is now illegal, well some of you may say "And so it should be banned" to stop piracy. But what has actually happened is the Internet is starting to be filtered in the UK.

Where will it end.

Never mind, bypassed in 30 seconds.

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@clusteruk

And all of this happened without due process (Magna Carta, clause 39*). Slippery slope my friend, slippery slope...




*Renumbered 29 in 1354

Last edited by SpaceDruid on 04-May-2012 at 02:52 PM.

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@clusteruk

Streissand Effect: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/04/the-pirate-bays-traffic-increases-by-12-million-following-uk-ban/

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I may be a minority, but Im actually pro filtering of the net. It all boomed so quickly that it's become a cesspool for illegal content.
Things being so easily accessible for free will make peoples hard work suffer. People already have an, "I wont buy it cos I can easily download it for free" attitude like never before. Yes there has always been piracy, but not to the degree there is these days. iTunes and whatnot dont make up the numbers either.
Ultimately this will hurt the quality and quantity of products available. It (the net) does open the doors for the little people to get more exposure, but at some point these same people will need funds to take things further, and this is difficult with the volume of piracy that the internet encourages.

Im no prude, and have my fair share of downloaded material, but I do buy as much as I can as well. Im a collector and as such like to have physical media, not to mention Im happy for people to earn a few dollars from me for the entertainment they provide me.

It's tricky though. Im not a fan of the powers that be taking things too far, but at the same time without some sort of filtering/restrictions consumers/general populace will also take it too far.

@fishy_fis

I can't speak for video games or movies, but I know sales of music in general has gone in an upwards direction since filesharing has become popular. How do I know this? I'm a major shareholder with a number of music labels, agents and independent bands (as well as being an ex musician myself that is owed quite a few royalties).

What I've found is people are more likely to find out about new (to them) artists by listening to their stuff online through illegal downloads than they ever had been able to do in the past where all the music they were exposed to was so tightly controlled by the big corporations (Even iTunes has strictly controlled content). They then go on to become fans that both buy legitimate copies of albums, but also are much more likely to see the band live.

There is no doubt that a major label promoting a few individual artists latest material has suffered, but that has more to do with market saturation and bland content that it has to do with illegal downloads. We are now in a situation where "Band X" is selling as many copies of an album it released in 1984, as it does it's latest one (as new fans start buying back catalogues). The sales are much more slow and steady, but very importantly, they are regular.

The old (now obsolete) way of doing things was to hard sell an album for a couple of weeks (in competition with every other band) and then drop it completely after a couple of weeks. Then plug it again in 10 years for the nostalgia crowd.

It meant (and still means) that bands get dropped at the drop of a hat if their sales didn't meet expected targets. What filesharing does is remove this creative medium from the very uncreative industry that has formed around it.

Had the industry existed in this way in the past, there would be no Who, RollingStones, Beatles, Led Zepplin, Nick Drake, Status Quo, The Damned, etc because none of these bands made close to the expected target sales within the first two weeks of their debut albums. Can you imagine how many bands with that potential have slipped through the cracks in recent years because their pie charts didn't have big enough a slice to impress the board meeting?

I'm aware that not everyone, heck, not even the majority of people who download an album then go on to buy it, but enough of them do to make it viable. That is still more sales than the previous situation where the big companies controlled everything.

Last edited by SpaceDruid on 04-May-2012 at 11:11 PM.

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@SpaceDruid

Well no worries until they block Google lol

Then we`ll have to use...something else whch I won`t name :o)

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