p2pnet view Music | P2P:- The entertainment cartels regularly and routinely hijack local governments and media to present their specious ‘file sharing’ and ‘copyright violation’ statements.

Then, national and international print and electronic outlets jump right to it, either ignoring, or misrepresenting, what’s happening, publishing unbalanced and completely inaccurate reports as though they’re based on factual information, coming from credible and reliable sources

In Canada, the Globe and Mail in particular consistently carries not only biased, but incorrect, reports on the war between ‘consumers’, as they’re called disdainfully, and the corporate music and movie cartels, which are using legislation originally drawn up to protect citizens, to attack them in the name of the bottom line.

In Britain,  ”The Digital Economy Act was passed in April last year”, says Emma Barnett’s (right) story in the Telegraph, going on, “It proposed a multi-step solution to cutting digital piracy, which will begin with warning letters to filesharers and will end with the suspension of repeat offenders’ internet connections.

“Nine months on, no warning letters have been sent out to try and curb the seven and half million UK internet users regularly illegally downloading music, while the Act goes through the necessary Parliamentary procedures. ”

“[...] seven and half million UK internet users [who] regularly illegally downloading music”, states Barnett categorically, just as though this was a proven, undisputed fact.

Actually, the number varies between seven and seven-point-seven million, depending on which inaccurate story you happen to be reading.

Either way, the ‘statistic(s)’ is/are the industry’s own, which means they’re automatically suspect given both Hollywood and Big Music have been shown time and time again to custom manufacture numbers to suit the purpose.

“Could the numbers possibly have come from the same people who are using them to browbeat not only the UK government, but other governments around the world, into using taxpayer cash and resources, as well as police and law enforcement agencies, on purely corporate copyright bidniz?” – asked p2pnet in 2009, going on >>>

Yes, those figures did indeed come from the media industries themselves, who merely ‘estimated’ them, said Glyn Moody in a comment post to ‘7 million Britons are file sharing thieves’.

He said in a post on his open blog:

Along with death and taxes, one of the other certainties in life is the constant flow of reports from the media industries claiming that copyright infringement is causing them to loses billions of pounds of revenue each year, and that they will inevitably go to the wall if even harsher legal sanctions against infringement are not brought in (although, strangely, they have been saying this for about 10 years now, and they seem not to have gone bust yet .)

And it is strange, we said. “The big corporate movie studios and record labels have been claiming for years they’re being ‘devastated,’ a word repeatedly used by cartel extortion units such as the RIAA and MPAA, as well as various spokespersons, but somehow, some way, they grimly struggle on, continuing to report eye-popping, mind-boggling revenues all the while.”

Now,  ”At the end of last year Geoff Taylor, the chief executive of the BPI, a body which represents the music industry, called for the Government to act more decisively in 2011 to curb illegal filesharing, after new figures show more than one billion tracks were downloaded illegally in the UK during 2010″, says Barnett, quoting more completely unsubstantiated figures.

He told the Telegraph, she goes on,  “None of the Digital Economy Act’s measures have been implemented yet. Provisions such as sending out warning letters to repeat offenders hasn’t even started. We are still waiting for the code of practice to be published by Ofcom….We are concerned that the implementation of the Act’s measures will face further considerable delay in 2011 and that there is still no action on the ground.”

Taylor “has also called for the Government to force internet service providers, such as Virgin and TalkTalk, to block sites which allow people to download music illegally. Furthermore, he wants the Government to ensure that search engines, such as Google rank legal sites, such as Spotify above illegal sites, in their search indexes.”

The way in which an industry talking head is allowed to hector a national government as though he has some kind of official standing, when in fact he’s merely a paid spokesman for four industries which owe allegiance only to their shareholders and investors, is astounding.

Even more shocking is the fact the BPI actually had a hand in creating the legislation Taylor refers to.

Meanwhile, it’s never been even vaguely proved a file shared equals a sales lost and in fact, it’s been argued that to the contrary, file sharing is an invaluable, and priceless, form of viral advertising.

But then, the Big Music copyright campaign has never been about music as such: it’s about gaining complete control of the net as a corporate distribution unit.

No need to stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

Follow me on Twitter.

Telegraph – Government clampdown on illegal downloading moves a step closer, January 21, 2011
p2pnet –  7 million Brits are file sharing criminals !?, September 5, 2009
creating the legislation – Big Music’s BPI: ‘worst sort of corporate lobbying’, April 5, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2011 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Music, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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