Don't forget all the fat cats between the recording studio and the music store syphoning off all their extortionate cuts for doing what??

The big names don't need advertising.
They'd be hard put to keep a new release quiet if they wanted to.

News just in!!!!

This may also be applied to mail carriers.  They will be required to open and check every letter and parcel that passes through the postal network 

Obviously not true but can you imagine that ever happening. Surely its only the same thing???

I only send through the post these days if it cannot be scanned,faxed,e-mailed or uploaded. I do all my things online i don't get paper bills for anything.

And when I do send something through the post it never seems to arrive. Likewise some parcels I get seem to go back to ponds force sorting centre and disappear. Even the ones where I have to pay as the sender didn't pay enough

The world's gone bad..

its a bit insane to be honest, we do still have a right to freedom of thoughts, right?

I agree entirely, but that fact that the fat cats get their share does not avoid the fact that music theft also hits the small guy. The fat cat may take more than his fair share of the money, but he also keeps a heck of a lot of people in employment. You can't hit one without the other. Bear in mind too that the big names are the minority - of course the mega-rich artists can afford to take a smaller cut and/or sell their music cheaper, but that doesn't make it okay to steal from them! Also consider that it is the income generated by these big bands which allows the fat-cats to invest in other bands, most of whom fail to "make it".

mcgurka - "I've seen docs that record companies can produce discs for 12p a cd" no doubt, if all you're looking at is the cost of the disc and getting it to the shops. But out of the remainder (and after fat-cat deductions of course!) they pay out a fortune on advertising (which they may not need strat, but they still do it!), making videos, having A&R staff out looking for new acts, and plugging the unheard of names who have just turned out their first album, putting "hopeful" bands into studios to see if they can make it - the list goes on - and it all means that people in the music industry are kept in work and being paid. Take away the money, and will the fat-cats take less? I don't think so - no, it will be "we need you to cut your studio rates", "you need to record this with fewer session musicians", "you need to record this video with a smaller crew" - all the guys at the lower end of the scale will be the ones to loose out!

So we agree then, policing the internet is sometimes necessary, and allowing anarchy to rule may not be okay all the time? The piracy debate is very different to the censorship one - one is about people assuming rights they don't have, the other is about removing legitimate rights. Are you suggesting that stealing someone's intellectual property is OK?

Actually in writing it's libel - not slander. Censoring it? Not directly - taking action against it? - of course! If you libel someone on-line, and can be tracked down, you face the full force of the law - people can and have been taken to court for things they've published online.

And that makes it okay? That's like saying "If food was made more affordable, then there wouldn't be as many shoplifters". You might have a different opinion if you were the one who was being stolen from!

Liam1412 - I like your postal analogy! But although you've illustrated the extreme view, bear in mind that delivery companies dealing with parcels going between countries do often X-Ray them! So to a small degree, delivery companies do check the content of what they are moving. They also act on behalf of the government - very frustrating when you order something cheap from America, only to have the postman ask you for the customs fee before he can give it to you!

No, I dont think I would, and thats exactly what im saying. The reason i dont buy discs often is that it is far to expensive to justify. I dont watch music videos, so I dont need that, why does it need (guessing here) 4 days of studio time and loads of crew to record a good song. A&r people out looking?? There are plently of bands screaming to be heard now, and because they dont get picked up on by these a&r people, they loose out?

Ultimately, the end result is that the musician will not loose out by cutbacks, just the fatcats will. Look at simon cowell, millionaire... gets thousands to appear on a tv show for 1 hour everynight, is it worth the thousands he gets paid, no. Its not.

I just dont want to see it go completely to pot. Because to be honest, if PN started filtering and tried to charge me for it, no offence, but they'd be told where to shove their ADSL. Contract or not.

Valid point although in most cases this will be for safety so the plane carrying it does't get blown out of the sky.  The only reasoning I can see behind this is because Mr Fat Cat may only be able to get a 14 litre engine in is Rolls Royce Phantom instead of  a 20. 

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shutter - I'm sure you'd be pretty annoyed, and rightly so, if one of your red-arrows pictures appeared on a commercial poster for an air-show or something? It's your picture, you didn't give permission for its use, so it's a breach of copyright.

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Yes, I would be annoyed, and assuming I have seen it being used in that way, I can take necessary legal action to gain some redress......

My point was not particularly about downloading and using my photo`s (or from any other site) but more to make the point regarding the technical aspects of "detecting" the download.   

The time taken to find the photograph, then decide "I`ll have that" is immaterial, because if it is known that "someone is listening" you just plan your attack to be at a random time.... 

The actual time taken to download the picture must be in the region of "nano-seconds".  and this would be virtually undetectable, and so therefore, the "illegal" download has taken a lot less time than this explanation.....

I'am not sure shutter but I don't think all your albums exert the copyright, Dont really know the full legalities but I think you should have

Going off topic to answer Pierre-pierre..... All my albums do have a copyright notice on the bottom, and legally since I took the photographs, they are, by default, copyright to me, whether indicated or not on my site.  As I intended for people to view them, I am giving that permission "to view" by publishing them on the internet. But as in "hard print", the copyright of all orginal work (including photographs) remains with the author, unless he/she has refuted his/her claim to that copyright by means of legal agreement, or cash incentive. 

Unfortunately I can still see this happening.

What would happen would be that ISPs would be forced to start sampling file transfers and then analyzing those files for signs of piracy.

Obviously ISPs would not have the processing power to analyze every single client connection so I would imagine they would be forced to sample something like 1 connection in every 200 for illegal activity signs.

Even so, it's still pointless. If it were me I'd then simply turn from hi-tech to lo-tech. Stuff all the encrypted file transfers which would raise suspicions... Stenography would kick into play instead. Simply break down files into 20Kb pieces and hide them inside non-copyrighted images and send batches of images to a peer. If the file piece thats hidden inside that picture is itself encrypted then no-one will ever even prove anything was transferred apart from non copyrighted images which is 100% legal.

It's a war. Where there is a war there will always be solutions found to every problem encountered. Like SSL technology for secure sites. Sure, the connection might be secure, but that doesn't mean the actual server itself is also secure. Furthermore though, SSL was designed to be safe, yet what they forgot is that it was also designed to be decrypted at the server end. If it is passed as decryptable information then it can be decrypted by anyone with enough effort. In the end, it's all about using techniques which are not obvious to anyone else.

My neighbour has a VW beetle he's restoring. Sure it has a key hole like most cars for starting, but thats the obvious place to look if you wanted to hot wire it and steal it. He actually has a hidden starting method (which I'm not privied to) to start the vehicle. The key mechanism is just a decoy.

Will it be that hard to police? Would you only need to monitor the users that are in the top 2% of usage? I would hazard a guess that this usage is made up of illegal P2P traffic.

C`mon....... give this some serious thought.... how many computers are there in your town, then in your county, then in your quarter of the country, then in the country, then in your hemisphere, then in the rest of the world. Now start counting again, how many isp`s that you can name, how many can you find out about, and that is only in your small part of the world, now go a bit furthe afield, and then go abroad,  keep counting,   then...... start employing the people to "police" all those bits of equipment, and all the traffic they handle, count how many downloads in a 1 hour period, throughout the usa alone, then get someone to listen and sort all that traffic..... Oh yes.... it would be a "doddle" to police. 

Perhaps you should see the post further down...... want to see the internet?   

Then you will realise just how "easy" it would be to police.....

As I said, each ISP would probably take random samples of file transfers as a deterrent.

Which would deter absolutely no one..... take drug sampling in athletics......... random tests...... bans........everybody stopped taking hormones/drugs?   I don`t think so....

It will still deter some - Thats a start and makes the rest of the job a little easier.

What you don't realise is that the government want to protect the music/software industries as they get TAX from it. They'll find a way to enforce this is they are determined. Their money depends on it and we all know how much they like their money....