Dirty Downloaders Warning at Work
You've all probably had the memo about piracy and file sharing:Not only is this activity illegal, it is also commercially damaging and embarrassing for the company.Does the government or corporations seriously think that, had nobody ever shared files, that they would have actually bought the digital media that everyone now has?
If you are caught misusing the company network for illegal activities, not only will this result in disciplinary procedure, but may also result in a criminal prosecution
Of course not. Everyone would have the usual 20 albums or so that they had back in the pre digital days.
People have better things to spend their money on than large amounts of digital media. If it had to be paid for, a massive, massive number of people would simply do without it - as they do anything else expensive that's a luxury.
My bet is that the massive computer industry has grown in part because of the ease of access of free media.Why is it that ISPs give customers an allowance of, say 10GB per month to downloaded if they are not implicitly acknowledging that file-sharing takes place? What else are people dowloading other than moving image or audio files? I suppose you could argue that most of these are not copyrighted.
A music related point - having bought the vinyl, then the pre-recorded tape, then the CD, then the re-mastered CD, then the' legacy edition' with bonus disc - how many times are we expected to pay for essentially the same product?
Is downloading an avi file of a recently broadcast television programme that's not available for commercial purchase, then burning it onto a dvd for your own use or watching it on your laptop, essentially that different from recording on a VCR? Am I now supposed to buy expensive Blu ray discs to replace DVD as well?
I don't think the media industry loses that much money, no-one's got any more to spend - its just that the 'entertainment budget' goes to cable/satellite/internet providers rather than Sony/Universal etc - they should sort it out between themselves rather than trying to get the government criminsalise a large part of the population in order to protect dirty big businesses as they work out further ways to get our money.
