Stephen Fry admits he’s a file sharer
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Stephen Fry is one of Britain’s best-known actors, writers, comedians, authors, television presenters and film directors.
So when he comes out for, or against, something, people tend to pay attention.
And they did when he admitted he’d shared a TV show starring his former co-star Hugh Laurie, says Sky News.
Fry and Laurie featured in the UK TV series Jeeves and Wooster, with Fry as Jeeves and, “Putting forward his views on piracy, Fry said that making examples of ordinary people is ‘the stupidest thing the recording industry can do’ citing one-off fines and prosecutions as examples of penalisation,” says the Mirror.
At an event in London, he, “launched a surprisingly ferocious attack on the music and movie industries over the way they have acted to defend their copyright,” says the BBC, going on »»»
“The entertainment industry’s pursuit of the file-sharers, he suspects “that my business – the film business, the television business, the music business – is doing the wrong thing”.
He described what he called the aggressive prosecution around the world of those who illegally download. It did no good, said Fry, to label these people as criminals.
He mocked “those preposterous” commercials on DVDs telling audiences “you wouldn’t steal a handbag”. He said he wanted to ask whether people in his industry are “so blind… as to think that someone who bit-torrents an episode of 24 is the same as someone who steals somebody’s handbag”.
There was more, much more.
But on Twitter, “Haha!” he says. “It was rather a youthful convention it must be said!
“Do you think I’ve laid myself open to attack?”
Count on it, Stephen. No one in your position says anything negative about the entertainment cartels and gets away with it — especially when they’re talking about file sharing.
“Hope I’m not misunderstood,” he says in a CYA tweet. “Such a pity if I get misrepresented as a ‘help yourself and be a pirate’ advocate.”
Too late, though.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Sky News – Stephen Fry: ‘I Use Illegal Download Sites,’ July 13, 2009
Mirror – Stephen Fry admits pirating pal Hugh Laurie’s House, July 12, 2009
BBC – Stephen Fry on copyright, July 13, 2009
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July 13th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
When Hugh Laurie start appearing as Dr. House, I thought “Poor Mr. Fry, he may well become jealous at the success of his other half.”
When I read through his blog later on, he seemed unconcerned by his costar’s success, but he appeared to me to be distracted in the blog by minutiae– too much like Andy Rooney without the complaints.
Perhaps I read too much into it. With this post, and his recent appearance in V For Vendetta, he reassumes the mantle of a Man Who Has My Respect.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:18 am
And we know what happened to Fry’s character in V for Vendetta…
It is quite possible that the cartels know precisely what they’re doing, that they’re doing it not out of malice directed at their random victims, but as a mercenary strategy to provoke legislators into ‘doing something’, e.g. “You said we should prosecute people if they infringe out copyright, and we have done so. If you’re now recanting on that to say that actually we can’t sue people for ignoring our monopoly either then perhaps you’d better compensate us with a tax instead, eh?”
That would explain why the victims they seek are precisely those that appear most innocent and most unable to afford any defence. All part of the great plan to tweak the masses and the politicians at their pressure points – with a big pay-off at the end. That should be clue enough that a tax is the fire underneath the frying pan. Don’t make a deal with the devil, cast him out. Take your liberty back that shouldn’t have been taken from you in the first place. The last thing you should do is to pay for it for the rest of your life.