Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Pirates repelled

The BPI has won a historic High Court judgement forcing UK ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay.

This isn't great news - the idea of access to any website being blocked on the say-so of a cartel run by three-and-a-half multinational organisations would always be an affront to natural justice - but, obviously, the BPI are delighted:

BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale.

"Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them.

"This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."
Geoff Taylor must know, in his heart, that this isn't a win, though. It's not even locking a stable door after the horses have bolted; it's turning up at stables that have long since been turned into holiday homes and putting up a 'No bolting' sign.

Not a single extra penny will find its way to a sound engineer as a result of this; the only people making money are lawyers. So much effort still being poured into a policy that failed in the early days of the century.


1 comment:

Frankosonic said...

Do they really have no concept of how torrent trackers work?

Plus they don't seem very clear on why they are even doing it.

Yes, Pirate bay make advertising revenue off hits, but they're not taking it offline (unlike megaupload) – just blocking access from some UK ISPs.

Given the fact there will almost certainly be immediate workarounds (and no interest from the ISPs in doing anything other than the bare minimum according to the court order, so they won't go proactively closing loopholes) – the Pirate Bay will barely notice a ripple in their income stream.

So it's not punishing the Pirate Bay and they are deluded if they think people will suddenly start just BUYING things instead, so as you say – it won't make the artists any better off. It's a nonsense.

If they are really interested in the things they seem to be suggesting they are interested in (punishing those behind Pirate Bay and redirecting income to artists etc) they would apply to have Pirate Bays bank accounts seized and then distribute the money to every artist with a live tracker on there!

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