Dunc said:
they're starting to prosecute UK users for sharing music now
Miserable buggers ain't they
Yes they are but it's just the death throws of a dying industry desperately (and futilely) trying to stop technological progress. My thoughts (bored at work
) :
- "Home taping" didn't kill music, neither did the CD writer and cheap CD/ROMs
- File sharing won't kill music either....though it may kill some of the fat cats who feed upon the industry. In it's current form the music industry is like a dinosaur facing extinction. The industry needs to get it's head out of it's ass and accept that it has to change it's business model.
- It's not actually illegal to download music in the UK, only to share it for upload.
- Almost all of the prosecutions involved Kazaa which is only used by newcomers to p2p who don't know any better.
- You can't reverse technology :: no matter how hard they try to prosecute and regulate, p2p isn't going away.
- New p2p technologies are springing up all the time :: all these prosecutions will do is fuel the drive to create more secure and anonymous technologies
- The whole "downloading music is putting artists out of business" idea is crap. Many people download a few tracks and then go out and buy an album which they would never have considered buying normally. Very little of the money from a CD sale goes to the artist. I'd rather buy tracks directly from an artists' website for a small fee than line the pockets of the record moguls by buying a CD from the highstreet.
So what do you do if you want to file share in safety?
- Keep an eye on http://slyck.com for latest news regarding p2p in general and new technologies
- Reduce your *public* share to a sensible amount, I share <500 files with the general public now, and nearly all of them are non-chart stuff.
- Set up private networks with your friends - we use
Exosee but there's things like
Waste which are fully encrypted and super-safe.