Yes, but anyone can hack WEP and WPA very easily now so even secured networks are easily available to anyone. Now, even if a computer was seized and they found illegal content on it, how can they prove that Mr X was making these files available? Maybe Mr X was letting a friend of his use his computer, and when they seize the computer, Mr X's friend is now back in Spain.
I remember reading a case where the defendant claimed he let family/friends use his computer, and that he personally had not downloaded anything, but the response was that as the owner of the PC/Network he/she was accountable for the actions of anyone who accessed it. He/She ended up having to foot the bill.
Well thats just dumb, if a friend had borrowed my car and got a speeding ticket, he foots that. Not me. Surely its the user of the equipment not the owner. I'd like to see what would happen if a big company was sued for someone using their network for downloading materials, i bet they wouldnt foot the bill!
I am assuming that if you were the owner of some misused equipment that you would be able to sue the user, as their actions have cost you money through no fault of your own. Also, if it is the responsibility of the owner of the equipment and not the user, how come the ISPs don't get sued to high heaven, they are allowing it to happen on their equipment?
Someone's gonna get a smacked botty...Hopefully http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/10/davenport_lyons_complaint/
http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148705 <-- this makes for an interesting read on copyright infringement in the modern age, i especially like this part "When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it's not society that's wrong, it's the law. Because no one can really own ideas. Newton once said, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants." It's how the arts and sciences progresses. We share, we inspire and we remix." because i completely agree with it, of course the article is probably a little biased, seeing as how they are getting sued.
Whilst I can appreciate the point, it is rather irrelevant as far as a defence goes. They are still subject to the law as it stands.
Well, i wouldnt really say you fixed it, supplemented it perhaps. Personally i have no ethical problems with downloading, if i like an artist i will buy a ticket to see them, if i like a movie i'll see it at the cinema / buy the dvd, its the corporations business model i have problems with, when we buy blank cd's/dvd's part of the money goes to the industry anyway as compensation doesnt it? Personally i think everyone who has broadband should have to pay an extra £2/month which goes to the corporations and permits you to download anything you like, perhaps even set up a dedicated private tracker so the money can be distributed correctly, then its up to the corporations to provide people with quality reasons to go to a shop and buy a physical item, everyone wins. Edit: as it happens i think we should be made to pay an extra £7, £2 for downloading, and £5 to upgrade the infrastructure, id happily pay this if it meant the end to caps and throttling and faster internet for everyone
apart from the people with broadband who don't DL things as by your plan they end up paying more for their broadband with no benefits
not at all, EVERYONE would benefit from an upgraded infrastructure, its deperately needed but the ISPs are unwilling to do it, however, with over 30million users in the UK on broadband, this would mean £150million/month to do this upgrade
What you are touching on here is that basically, piracy is just a failure in marketing. There is a phenomenon called "self-targetted marketing". It works like this: different people may be prepared to pay a different price for the same product. Some people will be happy to pay top whack; some people rather go for the cut-price bargain and are prepared to compromise a bit on what they get in return. At Starbucks, some people will be prepared to pay a premium for the extra-mocha-choco-whip on their coffee (Grande), while others just want a cheap, plain, basic coffee, no milk and sugar please. As a result Starbucks sells both: the basic coffee at a basic price, which you can add extras to at a premium. Same with other products: we have special edition items with nicer packaging, features or merchandising extras, and the basic value product. Everybody's a happy customer. This is important. As a hotel knows, a cheap sale is still better than no sale at all. That is why they have "rack rates" for people who just need a room, now, and discount bargains on CheapHotels.com for people who are prepared to plan ahead and take the weekday pockets when hotel rooms are likely to be empty anyway. Piracy is basically just the product of a failure to efficiently exploit a self-targetting market. If someone is prepared to download a crappy quality copy of a film for 12 hours over the internet and burn it to a £0,50 disc, without sleeve or box, to avoid paying £12,-- for the DVD, then perhaps you shouldn't sue them, but ask: How low do we have to price our DVD to make it more worthwhile for him to buy it, than download it for 12 hours over the internet? And what can you get away with excluding to make up the shortfall in profit? You'd be surprised. How about: bring your own DVD-R, shove it in the kiosk console, select your film, throw in a few pound coins and it burns it for you, right then and there? Want sleeve art? Another quid, please. Want a box? Another 50p. Or how about a download-at-home model? £2,-- per movie, with unlimited re-downloads of the same film if your home collection ever burns down to the ground. You simply make it not worthwhile to go through the hassle of torrenting a pirated copy. It may seem a ridiculously small profit margin in comparison to selling a £15,--, but a cheap sale is better than no sale at all.
i agree in principle Nexxo, the only problem is with increased internet speeds, it doesnt take 12 hours to download something in 1080p nevermind crap quality, which is why i suggested a small flat rate everyone pays that allows you to download whatever you want, if it was put on the cost of the internet, but by the government rather than the ISPs so that the money is definately passed on, that way the corporations are getting a steady income every month, they bring out special edition hard copy versions that people buy if they want, and everyone is happy. To those that say they dont download, would you still not download if it was perfectly legal and you were already paying for it? Also i dont believe anyone that says they have never downloaded ANYTHING that infringes anyone elses rights. Edit: Anyone that uses the internet that is, maybe they havent knowingly done it, but ignorance is no excuse.
Correct, but you have to set a "limit" on how cheap you can price your rooms at, when you are breaking even on a room there is little to no point in selling at that price, why do you have to clean a room, change all the covers etc when you're only making a few quid profit? It's only doable by huge companies... But if you have 10 hotels, 50 rooms each, and you have an average of 25 rooms a night empty, if you charged a low price and only made £2 profit a night, in a year that's over £18,000, not bad eh? Pretty good amount at the end of the year, it could pay off one of your Managers. But here is the problem, once it becomes popular, no one will pay £40 a night, they will wait until they can get a room for £15, and once demand is down, and you need to pay bills, you have to drop your prices in order to survive. You'll always have the customers who pay full price because the ring you directly or they just turn up outside the hotel, but you'll have a lot of people waiting until you drop the price. If you put that to your DVD statement, you'll have a lot of people still buying DVDs at WHSmiths for £15 a pop, but you'll also lose many many customers to the £2 download scheme. And what would you rather do? Sell one DVD in a shop for £15 or 7 direct downloads for £2 each?. I know it's not exactly the same as your not paying the creator you're paying the shop, but because the demand is still there for proper DVDs, the shop will always have to get more stock in to fill demand. In theory it's a great idea, if I could get a movie for £2 I wouldn't bother downloading it, but I'd never buy a DVD from a shop, and the hundreds of thousands of customers around the UK would stop doing that also. Also, as BB speeds are now getting faster (VM 50MB trial) it's effortless to download a DVDRip Xvid from a torrent in 10 minutes and stream it straight to your TV or burn it onto a disc. What's a proper DVDRip on 50mb? Like a couple of minutes?
If a download were £2 i would buy it over a torrent. However if it was a film I wasn't particularly interested in to the point of going to torrent it any way then i would not have paid for the dvd so no lost sale and no degradation of the percived value of the product. As it is my dvd collection is films i've enjoyed and want to watch over again but none of them have cost more than a tenner as this is my personal mental limit. The few films i've torrented i've deleted after the first watch as they were usually guff. In summary there will always be a market for dvds since even if downloads were very cheap people would still buy the physical media. Hell downloads are free just now (kinda) and people still buy lots of dvds.
yes, but if you are making £0 from internet piracy versus a share in £60million a month (based on a £2 flat rate) when its costing you nothing, then it makes more sense Edit: Steve, my idea is £2 / month to download anything
Nah i would venomously oppose a tax on bb, even as low as £2 a month as i might not download 12 movies a year, i certainly haven't torrented 12, or i might choose to get the dvd box set over the download. Another issue would probably be people over stretching the infrastructure by downloading (lots of) things they might like but never watching them a charge per item makes people think do i really want this. TBH if such a hypothetical charge was introduced i'd have my broadband maxed out at all times just show how much it irked me.
which is why i said another £5 for infrastructure changes, which need to happen anyway, and its not just for movies, that would include music and software as well. plus its then up to the ISP whether they pass this tax on to you, or take it out of their margins, broadband is too cheap as it is and its the customer that suffers for that, id rather pay more and get the service im paying for rather than getting caps and throttling.
Lets face it though the broadband providers will always pass this on regardless of whether your a little old lady who checks her email once a week or a heavy torrenter. Its an unfair tax which would be resented greatly. What your proposing is a road tax for bb flat rate regardless of how much you use the service (road) where a better solution would be fuel duty or a tiering system where people can choose, based on informed decisions, what package they want. Heavy user pay the extra for an uncapped service little old lady get the cheap service. Your £5 for infrastructure wouldn't go to infrastructure it would just enforce their bottom line for reference see the railways who get massive subsidies which are in theory for network work but in the end is given to shareholders as dividends.