It's all the Downloaders fault!

[Patrick]

......that the economy's in a mess! ;D

At least 7 million people in Britain use illegal downloads, costing the economy billions of pounds and thousands of jobs, according to a report.

Shared content on one network was worth about £12bn a year according to the research commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property.

The peer-to-peer network had 1.3 million users sharing files at midday on a weekday. If each of them downloaded only one file a day this would amount to 4.73bn items being consumed free each year.

I smell some legislation being cooked up? What do you reckon?

......but what could they possibly do about it!?

[Alpha Hooligan]

I reckon that "P2P WILL NEVER DIE!!!"

Go fuck yerselves big music/film companies....try giving a bit of value for money and people might consider paying a FAIR PRICE for your trash.

Oh, and BTW , I'm downloading the first 6 series of "24"...if I like it, I will buy the DVD's, if I don't like it, I will delete it and the makers won't have lost a single penny.

The 12 billion figure is pure fantasy.


AH

[Alpha Hooligan]

AH

[Patrick]

A pity the companies hosting the downloads can't use any money from advertising on the sites to pay into some kind of fund that could be used for "literary/music" purposes. Such as contibutions to writers/musicians workshops - or just charities or health research. It would be a brilliant coup for them - if they say "Blah percent" of each download is going to dementia research for instance - that would be one in the eye for the publishers who don't always pass on a reasonable profit dividend to the author or producer I expect the situation may be better than it used to be - but I'll bet that it's still biased to the publishers favour!