File-sharing should be legal, say young Brits

As usual, this survey doesn’t help anything. File sharing is a perfectly legitimate process that isn’t in itself illegal. It only becomes illegal when the files been shared infringe copy write laws. Why should file sharing be banned because some people misuse it? Should we ban all cars because a few people drink and drive?

If the media can’t get the simple facts right, how can anyone make an informed decision?

And even if they did manage to get file sharing banned, it wouldn’t be long before another method of legal music downloading popped up. There has to be a better way to stop the illegal trading of files without affecting the legal users.

By CHRISM750 on 17 May 2010

Nothing ever made me go and start buying CDs as the original Napster did in 2000.

Not making a point or anything, just sayin'...

By Josefov on 17 May 2010

There has to be some restrictions otherwise profits from music will get close to zero and there'll be no money. No money = no professional music.

I guess they need some compromise that allows music to be copied to no more than 3 of your friends.

Newspapers are in the same boat - revenues are falling but web sites don't make enough money to pay for teams of reporters. If it continues they'll simply go bust.

I guess young people have grown up with the Internet where most things are accessible for free.

By cyberindie on 17 May 2010

@cyberindie

I'm over forty and I grew up with most music (at least the stuff I cared about) free. It was called "recording the top 40"

We did it every week and swapped tapes with out friends.

File sharing isn't illegal.

Music sharing for personal use shouldn't be either. It never used to be. Or at least our generation never had swat teams and lawyers carrying us off to prison for taping the "metallica" of the day!

Selling copied music on the other hand is a different matter. Piracy should be re-classified as "the sale of copied materials".

By cheysuli on 17 May 2010

@cheysuli

Name the place and the time! (if not too far...)
I'll get you a pint :)

By Josefov on 17 May 2010

I live in the Uk, we have to pay a TV licence fee, so that we can watch and listen to the BBC, the way I see it, if something is on the BBC, I have paid for it. Why should I have to pay again to have a copy of it in my home. Same goes with sky, if it has been shown on sky, I pay for sky so I'll download what has been on sky.

Now if I didn't fileshare, I could just get a tv recorder (or go old school and record from the radio), and do it that way, edit it to remove the adverts, I'm still getting what I want. So stopping file sharers isn't going to stop piracy. Simples.

By lomspeaker on 17 May 2010

Cannabis should be legal, say young Brits

Under 16 sex should be legal, say young Brits

Speeding should be legal, say young Brits

By Stiggy on 17 May 2010

@Stiggy

Downloading Avatar doesn't kill your brain cells.

Downloading Avatar doesn't make you pregnant.

Downloading Avatar doesn't kill road users.

Have you got any more Great Wisdoms of that sort?

By Josefov on 17 May 2010

I blame the artists.

mp3 prices are unfair

A CD album cost is similar to a mp3 album download.
However a MP3 are of a lower sound quality,
Mp3 files have no manufacture cost, no wholesale or retail costs, no wastage/ damage costs.

16-24 year old's buy the lion share of music and dvd's, they clearly feel the price is too high.

If more music artist set up their own web sites selling their music via downloads, they could sell them for a similar cost as they are currently get from the record labels.
I would guess less than £1 per album.

This would increase the volume of sales whilst hitting the pirate market very hard.

Setting up a simple web site is child's play.
If music artist's respected the fans by cutting out the middle men and sold mp3 files at fair prices everyone (except the record labels) would be happy.

Surly this is the way forward?

By Tibbs on 17 May 2010

Time marches on...

Thing is, the old days of yore where people taped music and swapped it with their mates is totally different to the environment permitted by the illegal filesharing programs and tools - taping and sharing was limited to your mates and a few others, probably 100 people at *most*. Illegal filesharing gives people the ability to share files with millions of unknown people.

I work in a school and I'm often asked by the kids why we block things like bitttorrent and I explain that it's currently illegal to get something that's copyrighted without prior permission - it is, in effect, theft. But they don't care - they want it for free. And unlike what I imagine is a hefty proportion of adults, they don't then go on to pay for things via iTunes or CDs - they just keep on downloading it for free. Same thing with games and films - I am genuinely shocked at how many kids have modded 360s and boast of how they never pay for games and how funny it is to hack online games and ruin it for everybody else.

I used to think that most filesharers were not potential lost sales (in the sense that they downloaded for free something they would *never* have bought if filesharing wasn't an option), but the attitude of our pupils has made me re-evaluate that - they 'steal' because it's so easy and they know they're basically never going to be caught, so they see it as a genuine alternative to paying for content.

Stopping filesharing is never going to kill off piracy, but it will remove it from the hands of the casual masses and move it into the realm of the dedicated criminals and the hardcore 'freedom' brigade, whereupon it's then easier to track and deal with.

I'm not saying I agree with banning filesharing, but I genuinely think in the next 10 - 20 years we're going to see a lot of industries suffer:

Music I'm not too fussed about (as I think the record companies bleed the artists and deserve everything that's coming to them), but with the advent of eBook readers, I'm genuinely frightened of what could happen when authors can no longer make a living from their work because some toe-rag has uploaded their latest novel and everyone gets it for free instead and we see publishing houses disappear. I'm also concerned about games developers, where the smaller ones end up having to be absorbed by the monstrous entities such as EA and Activision simply to survive and we lose all the glorious independent studios to corporate conformity.

By bioreit on 17 May 2010

Woah...

That's a lot longer than it looked in the comment box before submitting!

Sorry all!

By bioreit on 17 May 2010

EDUCATE YOURSELF -- THEY LIE!!

@ Josefov ...

so your saying cannabis destroys brain cells?
you need to do some research my friend!
cannabis/hemp IS a miracle plant... Just because "Big Pharma" and "Fuel Companies" cant make any money from it and will loose revenue, they fill sheeples heads with FALSE propaganda! just as they have been doing for years...

EDUCATE YOURSELF!!

ps.. filesharing, the music/film companies spend more trying to combat it than it actual takes from the industry... and many who do, for example, download an album.. go on to buy it if they like it... "Try before you Buy".

Its all about the money men wanting to keep all the money for themselves.... criminalizing millions of sheeple just as they have done with cannabis!!

peace ;)

By THCBlueberry on 18 May 2010

Stealing copyright is illegal. The morality aside, this problem has arisen because of a media industry backward.

Instead of putting up regional blocks we should have the ability to download any media on the day of release regardless of location for a fee.

I want to pay to watch some American TV shows and latest film releases. That I can't is daft protectionism, so people pirate to get access to things denied them legally. If the media industries stopped doing this then they would find a whole raft of people willing to pay for the latest blockbuster/episode/track.

Personally, the impulse exists to pay per view only the once. The suggestion to buy the DVDs (both overpriced and available only months later) is silly, as by then I'm not too bothered.

It's really quite simple: change the business model to give people what they want, when they want it instead of what the media industry wants to give us, when it wants us to have it.

By bubbles16 on 18 May 2010

@bioreit

You gotta say what you gotta say! Don't worry if it's a bit long.

One thing you've taken as fact from the music industry is their "millions" figures. Point of fact, most torrents are downloaded by a few thousand at most - say the population of a secondary school. So is that really different from my mates & their friends & their friends all taping the "War of the Worlds" double-album from our mate?

The music industry broke down in the eighties and has been declining ever since. They just thing litigation will kick-start a broken sales model. They're wrong.

By cheysuli on 18 May 2010

Yawn

We all know that "file sharing" in the sense of any old file isn't automatically illegal.

But anyone with a small amount of imagination knows exactly what the intention behind the words "file sharing" is in the context of this survey!!

By halsteadk on 18 May 2010

Pirate Party UK

I would like to urge any supporters of the legalisation of file-sharing to join the Pirate Party UK.

We will reduce the length of copyright to 10 years and legalise non-commercial file-sharing. Any profiteering from copied media is counterfeiting and should remain illegal.

For more information about the party, visit http://www.pirateparty.org.uk and chat in our forums, or come and ask our members questions in irc://irc.piratpartiet.se/#ppuk

By glambert on 19 May 2010