Comments on: Musing about downloads in the UK

By: Musing about unheralded heroes and heroines and accidental criminals and IPR – confused of calcutta

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:19:39 +0000

[...] because outcomes often tend to be disconnected to what the commissioned report said: we’ve been here before, as I document here. We’ve had consultations and discussions and reports aplenty, all saying largely sensible [...]

By: Remove Spyware

Remove Spyware — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:21:26 +0000

Awesome post. Thanks for clarifying a lot of issues.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:04:26 +0000

Yes, it’s the language my mother prefers to use when talking to me. I’m not a fluent reader though.

By: Anand

Anand — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:59:19 +0000

Just curious, do you speak any Tamil at all?

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:15:25 +0000

If we move to a “strict liability” regime, the question no-one has yet asked is “how does the consumer know what is illegal?” If someone eg watches a YouTube video, and the copyright holder later decides that was illegal, how many strikes is that? What action should be taken against Ms Allen for posting illegal music? She enabled hundreds of offences.

FYI: The largest group of downloaders I know are avid consumers of paid-for DVDs, who are getting hold of TV programs that have not yet been made commercially available – and will often later be broadcast on channels that are either free-to-air or flat-rate, so all that has been lost is a fast-forward through the ads. If the program is any good, then they will probably get the DVDs anyway later. NOTHING HAS BEEN LOST, and the offence has been encouraged by the business model of “split releases”.

By: Crosbie Fitch

Crosbie Fitch — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:24:31 +0000

Likewise JP, always good to bump into a fellow passenger on the cluetrain, and others still able to shift paradigms. :-)

By: JP

JP — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:59:57 +0000

Enjoyed visiting your site, Crosbie Fitch.

By: Crosbie Fitch

Crosbie Fitch — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:24:19 +0000

And flanking the lily livered, land lubbing Pirate Party, we have the hard core, digital seafaring abolitionists, of those 18th century privileges we’ve all come to know and love: the anachronisms of copyright and patent.

By: John Barron

John Barron — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:29:52 +0000

Fortunately, we have a UK Pirate Party, and such stupidity can only drive us to prominence and win us votes.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:32:07 +0000

Maybe the smart thing to do is to arrange for Mandelson to have dinner on a yacht somewhere with Bob Iger.