By: MarkJ - 29 May, 2009 (7:58 AM) - Views: 1617 - Categories: Illegal Downloads
The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP), a government advisor, has published the results of two recently commissioned literature reviews into intellectual property and the behaviours of Digital Consumers in the online world. The studies reveal that approximately 7 million people in the UK are involved with illegal downloads, accounting for over half of the country's total Internet traffic.
Interestingly consumer confusion seems to play a large part, with so much of the Internet's content being "free", many often find it difficult to identify legal from illegal. There's also concern that future and far faster 40Mbps+ ( BT FTTC etc. ) broadband services will only make the problem worse by allowing more to be downloaded in a shorter space of time.
Meanwhile UK ISP's continue to argue that they are not a police force and are only mere conduits of data, not its controllers. However, we note that ISPs trying to control this flow of information not only go against net neutrality but also risk breaking the above argument. That’s called trying to have your cake and eating it too.
The UK Internet Service Providers Association ( ISPA ) once said: "ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope." ISPs cannot detect illegal traffic, unless they know exactly what traffic is illegal - a catch 22.
Typically rights holders try to report this data to ISPs, though it is far from a perfect system. The only true way to tell if somebody has done something illegal is to analyse their computers hard disk drive, otherwise you could just as easily end up targeting innocent users, which has already happened on a number of occasions.
Still, the problem does have to be tackled, and TorrentFreak's latest summary of the Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows and Movies helps to illustrate the situation. Many of the movie downloads relate to extremely recent releases:
Elsewhere we would like to see some rights holders, movie studios in particular, doing more to embrace digital technology by releasing legal distribution channels for new movies. Many people now have advanced home cinema systems and would much rather watch a new release at home than go to a cinema, yet such a notion is repeatedly shunned by the big studios.
Interestingly consumer confusion seems to play a large part, with so much of the Internet's content being "free", many often find it difficult to identify legal from illegal. There's also concern that future and far faster 40Mbps+ ( BT FTTC etc. ) broadband services will only make the problem worse by allowing more to be downloaded in a shorter space of time.
Meanwhile UK ISP's continue to argue that they are not a police force and are only mere conduits of data, not its controllers. However, we note that ISPs trying to control this flow of information not only go against net neutrality but also risk breaking the above argument. That’s called trying to have your cake and eating it too.
The UK Internet Service Providers Association ( ISPA ) once said: "ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope." ISPs cannot detect illegal traffic, unless they know exactly what traffic is illegal - a catch 22.
Typically rights holders try to report this data to ISPs, though it is far from a perfect system. The only true way to tell if somebody has done something illegal is to analyse their computers hard disk drive, otherwise you could just as easily end up targeting innocent users, which has already happened on a number of occasions.
Still, the problem does have to be tackled, and TorrentFreak's latest summary of the Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows and Movies helps to illustrate the situation. Many of the movie downloads relate to extremely recent releases:
Most Downloaded TV Shows (all episodes)Lord Carter is expected to outline his plans for tackling this problem when, sometime over the next few weeks, he reveals the final Digital Britain report. Given the lack of a voluntary agreement between the industry and ISPs we wouldn’t be surprised to see a bloodbath of anger from one side or the other, depending on which way he swings.
1. Heroes
2. Lost
3. 24
4. Prison Break
5. House M.D.
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. Desperate Housewives (wait, people actually download this? LOL)
8. How I Met Your Mother
9. Gossip Girl
10. Battlestar Galactica
Most Downloaded Movies (recent releases)
1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (R5)
2. He’s Just Not That Into You
3. Angels and Demons (Telecine)
4. The Horsemen
5. Fired Up
6. Push (R5)
7. Star Trek (Telecine)
8. Crank: High Voltage (R5)
9. Fanboys
10. Valkyrie
Elsewhere we would like to see some rights holders, movie studios in particular, doing more to embrace digital technology by releasing legal distribution channels for new movies. Many people now have advanced home cinema systems and would much rather watch a new release at home than go to a cinema, yet such a notion is repeatedly shunned by the big studios.
Share Links:
Slashdot,
Stumble,
Facebook,
Digg!,
Blink,
Del.icio.us,
Reddit,
Yahoo,
Mixx,
Propeller,
Diigo
Options:
Link | Search News
Comments: 8
Allan WeaverPosted: 29 May, 2009 - 11:28 AM
Link to comment
The obvious thing to do is to add a surgarge to internet connection charges as they did to recording tape when companies complained that the advent of the tape recorder meant people where recording the music from the radio instead of buying records.
Trying to police file sharing would cost more than the copyright holders are losing.
We must not forget that because someone downloaded a movie for free doesn't mean he would bother to buy it it or go to the cinema to watch it.
MarkJPosted: 29 May, 2009 - 12:15 PM
Link to comment
Mind you, it doesn't mean that they would not bother to go and see a movie at the cinema either. Imposing a charge on everybody, especially when the majority of Internet/phone users are using such services legally, is unlikely to go down well. I don't want to pay extra to support illegal users.
AgrajagPosted: 29 May, 2009 - 12:19 PM
Link to comment
Does adding a surcharge mean that since i'm paying money to these companies, I can download whatever I want?
Because there is no feasable way to stop file sharing, these companies need to start COMPETING with file sharing. We need legal TV/Movie downloads, there is obviously a market, so where are the services?
iZoolsPosted: 29 May, 2009 - 1:01 PM
Link to comment
Take away the illegal media and the high street won't see any more revenue. If I had downloaded 30,000 tracks worth of music over the years and was forced to delete it, or it hadn't been availabl online, I certainly wouldn't have bought 1,500 CD albums. I simply can't afford it.
Same goes for games and moves. If joe downloader has 500 movies and 100 games obtained illegaly, he wouldn't have cost the economy that much, as he wouldn't have bought that many games and movies if they hadn't been available online as illegal downloads.
This is what the statisticians don't seem to be able to get their head around -
Number of illegal downloads DOES NOT EQUAL number of lost sales.
Everyone I know that has illegal content on their PC spends as much as they can in the high street on CDs & DVDs, for some people ots £0 others its over £100 a month. Lack of P2P would make no difference to revenues
.
AgrajagPosted: 29 May, 2009 - 3:09 PM
Link to comment
What's also interesting is that Even though X-Men Origins: Wolverinewas leaked online some time ago, and became the most downloaded movie this year, it hasn't stopped it raking in over $300 million worldwide so far, and that's not including DVD/Blu Ray sales.
(Source)
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wolverine.htm
Generated in 0.56583 seconds.
DB queries: 8
Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved (Terms, Privacy Policy, Links (.), Live Chat & Website Rules).