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Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing [107]
Are they stupid, too? I mean, if there's no jobs for them, there's no content to steal...
Lots of people say that torrenting "kills jobs"
I don't really think this is true. It's like when people said that taping songs off the radio, or coping something on to VHS would kill the industry1 MP3s were going to kill the music industry not long ago! I mean libraries were meant to kill authors FFS! It's a tired argument hashed out by companies that refuse to update their outdated business model. They are lies, and it's about time that people stopped listening to them.
Most artists tied in to big record companies don't really see a lot of profit from releasing albums any-more, most of their money comes from gigs, and merchandise. And the music companies make quite a lot of their money pedalling music videos to TV companies, and places like Youtube actively promote album sales. Either way, they are still making billions in profit.
It's the same with TV and films. DVD sales count for far less than they do for selling a series to the TV networks, and often torrentlng actually encourages the purchase of films and TV series, as does music.
How many people in the UK would have had access to something like "The Wire" without torrents? Not many, I can assure you. And how copies of The Wire were bought on DVD without it ever airing in the UK? Tens of thousands.
How many people are opened up to smaller independent films on sites like Youtube? With ACTA, I think the quality of films would drop, as we would only hear about the films with the biggest budgets (ie crap), and be done for copyright infringement for even uploading a small clip of a new, exciting indie film we just found.
Are TV companies really losing money if I watch re-runs of (for example) Masterchef Australia, considering you can't buy it anywhere, and the TV companies in Europe are not showing it?
I think torrentlng and file sharing is a very complex issue, which HAS NOT been looked into adequately by DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED BODIES.
So why an undemocratically elected lobby is pushing this through, when the real issues haven't been discussed yet, I don't know.
What's more worrying is that ACTA will affect the real world. It will limit our access to generic medicines. It also treads into the dark waters of political suppression of information.
This thing could very realistically KILL people.