Pirate Bay
I’ve used it for TV shows. I pay my Sky bill but I’m rarely home to watch it. I’m making excuses because I know I shouldn’t be doing it. I know it’s wrong to have things I’m not supposed to have unless I pay for it. But we (and I’m including me) do it.
When I was a kid the Internet was just fields. Music was on Tape and CD’s and bought in shops not laptops and phones. But even then I’d borrow a friends CD and tape it. Now that’s stealing. However, my friend bought that CD and lent it to 4 of his friends, a scale the media industries obviously could cope with at the time. Now if you share an album/film you bought it’s with thousands of people.
I watched the way people got music change and instead of changing with it, the industry thought it was either a fad or that the old way of distribution would still hold sway. Now the media industries are feeling the pinch and people are starting to lose jobs.
And as a musician who depends on my music to pay my bills I see it too. But, and it’s an Jenifer Lopez size but, if it wasn’t for myspace, file sharing and the internet The Blackout may not have broken through and I’d be working in an office. It allowed people to take a chance on an album because it cost them nothing but some disk space that could easily be reclaimed with a click of a button. And from that we gained fans who would buy tickets and merch, which would help the band financially in a different way. With one hand it took but with another it gave. Nothing is ever black and white.
It’s taken 10 years for streaming services to come around which offer a legal way of letting people listen to music for free (or next to free) with the artist still being paid (granted not very much). People can listen to an album/band before spending their hard earned cash on a product that can sometimes be over priced. But is it too late? Why pay £5 a month for all the music and TV you want when you can pay £0 a month. People have been doing it for ten years why change now?
Pirate Bay was blocked by UK Web Providers today.
Some say it’s a victory for the people against pirating. But is it a step too far? At what point do you stop blocking information? Here’s a list of all the blocked sites in China (link) that include ABC, American Cancer Society and Government Information Office, Republic of China. Link. I know pirating is wrong and I’ve seen how it affects people, myself being one of them but a friend brought up the point that blocking information is a slippery slope.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/China-highlights.html
It’s not how people get the music/films that needs to be changed; it’s peoples perception of it’s worth. They see bands on stage and in magazines and think they’re all rich living on a boat off the coast of Malaga. Some one once told me “people are either a lot less well off than you think or a lot richer than you can imagine”. For 80% of musicians it’s the former. We can’t force someone to change the way they think or do things we can only show them that in doing these things, people’s lives are affected. And that the things they love most, music, film, a FREE Internet will suffer, the signs of which are already popping up like an unwanted porn site.
Gavx
