06 June 2008

Big Brother...

No not, Channel 4's attempt to turn the nation in to one populated by knuckle-draggers.

I noticed this article today, and I am of two minds. While copyright theft is a concern, especially for newly emerging "talents", I am against the wholesale admonishment of people that do download music and or movies. For example, if someone wanted to buy a movie and discovered that the DVD had been deleted and was no longer available, I believe that they should be able to download it. Of course, that is not to say that BPI, etc would necessarily agree with that theory, so if they want to prevent illegal downloading, they need to extend consumer choice by providing catalogues of older material and charging people to download them. Everyone would be a winner...

Of course, there is also the issue of DRM and what not but that's not likely to be fixed anytime soon.