Digital Economy Act 2017

[Aaron]

So, the Digital Economy Act 2017 has now come in to force.

There's a summary of it here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...-set-pass.html

What's everyones thoughts on it?

[joker3327]

looking at the comments on the article..... its just as confusing as the last attempt but they managed to get this through via lack of understanding/interest... IMHO ...nothing will change apart from the copyright exploiters finding it easier to get money off old people whose ip has been spoofed or the wifi piggybacked.

[niceguyrichy]

What's everyones thoughts on it?

George Orwell etc etc...

[luke22]

i expected to end up with my isp selling my info tbh.

[joker3327]

just goes to show the ignorance of daily papers for click bait....

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ko...hrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...IylVXea7_1A0pg

[omega]

just goes to show the ignorance of daily papers for click bait....

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ko...hrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...IylVXea7_1A0pg

I do kinda wish piracy hadn't become so easily accessable to the mainstream though, I mean it's pretty bad that it's normal that non-tech savvy people can just download a simple android app or a Kodi plugin and get free access to loads of movies and TV. It's quite bad that sites are saying "oh well if you stream one or two movies you're not going to jail. Well if I steal just one or two kit kats, or one or two cars, then I will be punished, since it's a crime.

There needs to be a middle ground, where piracy isn't accepted as the norm.

[joker3327]

Agree 100% ...but when the Press either ignore what they are told or just plain dont have a clue ...how are Joe Public supposed to know.. some people believe every word the press say as gospel and will cancel amazon or netflix as they dont want to go to jail for Streaming....

I spoke to a friends dad recently who had a kodi box and was paying £5 a month for a subscription.... now he is an older chap...and he thought he was paying for a genuine pay TV thing... he did not realise he was paying for a service to decrypt and stream " a gift " as its called ..so he genuinely did not know he was streaming illegally as he was paying for it...

so all this click bait reporting needs stamping on so people know weather its right or wrong..

[niceguyrichy]

it doesn't help that the people in gov who are supposed to be in charge of such things so very clearly don't have a goddamn clue

so when the people in charge so obviously don't know what the hell theyre talking about, where's the average joe supposed to turn?

[R1gg4]

You also have to take into account average Joe Public's perception, and they are fed up of companies taking the p.

Take as an example of the way people judge these big companies, Football!

A few years ago, I used to have a sky sports subscription so I could watch premiership football, I paid X amount for all the football that the premiership sold...

Then the government got involved and said a monopoly on the football is not fair.. so they ruled that no single company could buy all the packages.. and clearly stated that competition always means lower prices.. (I mean LOL)

What actually happened was I now only had access to half the football shown on TV for the same price, and I had to pay another company (Setanta (I think it was then) then eventually BT Sport) to be able to watch all the football.

So to get the football I now have to pay twice as much. People aren't stupid. (well most people ). They know when the people in power (who make the rules) are also the people making the money; then rules tend not to favour anyone but the money people.

Roll forward a few years.. and now we have BT sport which own all of the European football... (Where's the cry of monopoly now?!?) and some of the premier league football plus half of the FA Cup matches for an amount of money. And Sky who then show the rest of the televised Premier league matches. So instead of paying X you probably need to pay 3 times X for the football you used to watch.

And yes I know it's not a right to watch football, and if you can't afford it then tough luck, but then someone offers you a way to watch for free..

I know lots of people who have these boxes (maybe I just come from a poor area), is it wrong.. YES.. is there a viable affordable alternative.. NO...

Myself I gave up on football and hollywood quite some time ago, so neither of them get any money from me any more.

[omega]

^ No. Just because you perceive something to be too expensive, doesn't justify stealing it.

[R1gg4]

No it doesn't. I'm not saying people should steal a Ferrari because they can't afford one.

but when people in power making the rules tell people competition will make things cheaper, we're doing it for the people!!!

which turns out to be complete BS.. and they're actually making decisions for their shareholding mates..

then people stop listening.. and then feel as though they are being made to pay through the nose for things that shouldn't cost what they are now costing..

[cold fusion]

I do kinda wish piracy hadn't become so easily accessable to the mainstream though, I mean it's pretty bad that it's normal that non-tech savvy people can just download a simple android app or a Kodi plugin and get free access to loads of movies and TV. It's quite bad that sites are saying "oh well if you stream one or two movies you're not going to jail. Well if I steal just one or two kit kats, or one or two cars, then I will be punished, since it's a crime.

There needs to be a middle ground, where piracy isn't accepted as the norm.

It's always been easily accessible to the mainstream. Before bittorrent there was Gnutella / LimeWire and a bunch of other P2P tools like Kazaa and lets not forget the granddaddy, Napster. Before P2P there was warez sites. And before the web there was double cassette tape systems with high speed dubbing, VHS cassettes with "home recordings", and dodgy car boot sales.

Piracy isn't something new. It's just the media distribution companies can't keep pace with technology so lobby and litigate instead of trying to compete.

The annoying thing is a lot of the tools for piracy would become redundant if the draconian media distribution companies and content owners weren't so greedy, expecting ever greater cuts for doing increasingly little. This pushes a lot of smaller, legitimate, companies out of business (as we've seen from all of the Spotify clones failing to get licencing deals) and thus creates a vacuum where piracy becomes a reasonable alternative. Essentially it's just market forces at work. Sony, Disney et al tried to monopolise the market with their crappy oldskool tech and which left the market open for a whole new industry to be created.

[cold fusion]

^ No. Just because you perceive something to be too expensive, doesn't justify stealing it.

It's not stealing though. Stealing requires one party to have had the item taken so it's not longer in their possession. With piracy the content owners still have the original content. Thus what pirates are doing is copying without concent.

To use the Ferrari example again, it's like taking a photo of someones Ferrari without their permission.

[RandomPC]

It's not stealing though. Stealing requires one party to have had the item taken so it's not longer in their possession. With piracy the content owners still have the original content. Thus what pirates are doing is copying without concent.

To use the Ferrari example again, it's like taking a photo of someones Ferrari without their permission.

I'm not sure about that analogy. It's more like buying a cheap copy of a Ferrari rather than the real thing, so even though you haven't stolen the car from them Ferrari lose out on the potential income. Plus having you driving around in a fake will ruin the image for those who can afford a real one.

[R1gg4]

I guess this is the whole problem .. there is no "real" world analogy that you can apply to the digital realm.

This is the exact problem we're in.. the people making the rules and setting the prices want to sell non material goods by using material ideals of selling.

It's just not going to work, and then add the whole global economy thing into the frame (sell it for £50 to some people, and 50p to others), and customers get annoyed.