@ Lee Jackson
"Sorry but I think thats a good verdict! With the clamp down on p2p in days gone by, why shouldnt this form of linking to copyrighted material be stopped?"
The problem isn't that it shouldn't be stopped, the issue is that the burden of proof required for a conviction has been lowered for electronic crimes. In the real world if you steal something the police have to have evidence you stole it. In the electronic world just providing enough evidence to create a rough guess that someone might be guilty seems to be enough. This is unacceptable as it will (and as demonstrated by the US RIAA court cases) already has resulted in netting innocent people.
"After all, wouldnt you want the guy who told the robber where you keep your spare key to also get done!?"
Er, no? What exactly has he done wrong? I might not like the guy, but expect him to go to prison just for passing on information? Hell no. Even if he told the robber my burglar alarm code I wouldn't want him to be punished by the courts. I'd hate him personally, but this wouldn't happen to me because I wouldn't tell people where I keep my spare key or what my burglar alarm code is in the first place, so the analogy is fairly flawed anyway.
"Downloading copyrighted material is stealing no matter how rich the company is you are stealing from. People are employed by these big companies, and when profits go down, innocent people loose jobs!"
No it's not stealing, you seem to have a poor grasp of the law and this seems to be where you points are consistantly falling down. Stealing deprives the entity stolen from of the original product, copyright infringement merely makes a copy of the product. If you have a wooden front door and someone went and got their own piece of wood and carved it to the exact same pattern you could at best say they've copied your idea, but you'd sound like an idiot if you said they stole your front door. Claiming stealing in piracy cases is equally dumb.
You're also wrong on profits going down because the music and movie industry profits are up year after year despite this supposed major piracy problem. People have lost their jobs in these industries (i.e. songwriters) but that's because their jobs are obsolete and these people haven't kept their skills uptodate for the industry to have any reason to employ them. This has nothing to do with piracy though, it's the usual cost cutting profit increasing measures we've seen become such a fad in recent years and is similar to outsourcing of technical support and software development to india.
"If you think ur OK cos you only download now and again, think of the millions of others who think the same! This is such a massive issue."
It is indeed, the Office of National Statistics in the UK just this week released their latest general statistics on the British population. It stated that 12% of people in the UK file share and that's based only those who would admit it when surveyed or who don't cover up their activities meaning the actual figure is almost certainly much higher. Even with the conservative 12% figure that's 7.2million people in the UK alone. File sharing is also even more prominent in other nations such as Sweden, Australia, Canada and so on. The question has to be asked then, if it's such a big issue, if so many people do it, and if despite it being such a big issue the movie industry and music industry are increasing their profits solidly year on year then what exactly is the big deal? Aren't government supposed to support citizens? If so many citizens want to do it and are happy with it and it clearly doesn't harm the industry or at least harm it enough to do any actual net damage then why is such a fuss being made? The only result that could arise from outright abolishing file sharing is that you'd have a population that is far less cultured, has far less access to media, but still wouldn't have any more money to spend on media than they already do and hence not even any real gain for the movie and music industry.
If you abolish file sharing, we all lose. Luckily, that's an impossible goal. Still though, Lee, please, at least get a grip on the law and understand why we have things such as innocent until proven guilty and burden of proof before you comment in future.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
