The Pirates Will Always Win, Says UK ISP

TheEvilOverlord writes "The head of UK ISP TalkTalk, Charles Dunstone, has made the comment ahead of the communications minister's Digital Britain report that illegal downloading cannot be stopped. He said 'If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.' Instead he advocates allowing users 'to get content easily and cheaply.'"

Re:Yep, now explain that to the politicians please

[jginspace]

Exactly what he said:

TalkTalk has always maintained the defence that it is merely a broadband pipe and not an online policeman for the content industry.

Re:Amazon!

[PRMan]

Actually most Amazon songs are over 200kbps. I suspect that they are using something similar to the LAME alt present standard, which even people with much better hearing than I have can't hear the difference from the original.

Re:They hit the nail on the head

[A coward on a mouse]

I find designer clothes are way more expensive to buy than they are to produce so i've taken to stealing them from shops until these rip-off designers get the message and reduce the prices.

That would be stealing, not copyright infringement, and it certainly causes more damages to more the store, manufacturer, and designer than downloading an mp3 causes to the artists.

As for music, i made an album on my laptop which sounds ace and it didn't cost a penny.

Good for you! If you let me listen to 128k MP3s off the album for free, maybe I'd give you some money for a DRM-free 256k MP3, if I like your music.

So all these bands have been taking the piss out of us for years!

Happy to pay the artists, just not so much the studios; I know the studios don't pay the artists very well. In the video industry, the creative types (screenwriters and actors) have been suing / striking because they're tired of being screwed by the studios.

I'm going to sneak into their gigs for free too.

OK. Good luck with that. I've never considered gatecrashing and I don't know anyone who has.

I went to see Madonna and it was really expensive.

Supply and demand keep the prices high. There's limited space in an arena, and taking up space makes it impossible for others to occupy the same space. This is one of the differences between IP and other kinds of property.

I worked out the cost of her show with all the dancers and stuff wasn't that much.

You might want to sharpen your pencil. A roadshow like Madonna's is expensive to put on. Also, a live concert isn't something that can be canned or reproduced or downloaded.

Gatecrashing and shoplifting are not the same as copyright infringement. For one thing, far fewer people think either of them is socially acceptable than think that downloading MP3s is socially acceptable. There's a reason for that that has to do with people's perception of what's fair. Seems more people agree with me than with you about this, and that's dangerous to the major studios and labels, who can tell they're losing their grip on this market. Anyway, I think it may be time for you to get back to that briefing with the lawyers about how the anti-customer litigation campaign is going, Mr. Valenti.