There’s something quite critical that never gets mentioned in the “file sharing is killing music no it’s not yes it is no it’s not yes it is” debate. If you work in pretty much any large factory or office in the UK there will be a person there who will sell you a DVD of a recently released movie months before it hits the shops for £3 and any mainstream music CD you want for a couple of quid, in a case with a colour cover. Now, given that there are rather more people working in these sorts of places than there are with broadband connections and a working knowledge of peer-to-peer networks, and that actual money is being made from the former while the latter are giving the stuff away for free (or sharing, as we like to call it), you’d think there’d be a bit more noise being made by the record industry, perhaps demanding that employers stop this illegal activity going on in their workplaces and getting the police to infiltrate the canteens and use CCTV footage to prosecute the dealers.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for ages but at first I thought I might be getting someone in the shit. Now I’ve seen it going on again and again in every place I’ve worked this year. This is bigger than the VHS pirates of the 80s, beyond the dodgy bloke at the car boot sale. This is utterly mainstream. If anything’s going to hit high street sales this is it.
Maybe I’m missing something here, I dunno…
And it’s not just places of work, Pete. In most schools I have worked in over the last seven years there has been a few kids who do the same thing, particularly with CD’s. Bizarrely, it’s the schools in more affluent areas that house kids like this the most. I suppose it makes sense as they can afford the hardware as mum and dad are paying. At least one lad was doing it without his folks knowing, using the educational pc they bought him for his own entrepeneurial gain. Weird thing is if I did that when working in a school I’d be in trouble, but nothing was ever done about this.
In recent years they moved to DVDs, obviously.And that’s not to mention the trade in copied PS1 games for chipped Playstations that was rife in schools until PS2 took over. It’s all a far gry from nipping out with a bucket and sponge to wash the neighbours cars which is how I made extra cash when a young teen.
I was listening to the greatest hits of Aztec Camera on the way to work this morning- on a pirated CD bought ‘under the desk’ from a lass at work whose brother knocks them up in his spare time. Feeling a little guilty about it now….
I suppose that, in order to make pirated copies there have to be a few originals sold to those who do the pirating. I have friends who have worked in Viet Nam who claim to have huge DVD collections, all obtained from the black market. They do admit that the quality of the copying is extremely variable (the worst being by hand held video camera in outdoor movie theater – you can imagine the result!) The key, apparently, is the ability to have the DVD before its release date. Big deal. I was more than happy to wait until August 10 for my legitimate copy of Kill Bill Vol. 2 for several reasons. It’s legal, it’s excellent quality, it’s supporting my favorite dirctor and all the many credited people who made the movie.
There is an interesting grey area, however. Making copies of CDs for personal use is legal – as long as they are not sold to others. Where does black phase into white? When I give away a CD to a family member?
Using the UK Customs and Excise as a guide (not exactly related but close) they specify that you can import incredible quantities of booze and cigarettes from the Continent (tax paid in France or wherever) as long as these are distributed only to friends and family. So says the large sign at Birmingham International Airport. Pwerhaps the record/movie industry should follow the same logic?
And a quick aside – Using OSX you cannot use Grab when running DVD Player! How very intersting!
Jonathan – didn’t mean to make you feel guilty – I can’t take the moral high ground in this issue thanks to my p2p habit… What I meant was a lot of noise is made about file sharing but nothing about this kind of thing. Why is that?
Dad – If someone really really wants a decent copy of a CD / Movie they’ll pay full whack for it, but if you just want to waste an evening with some mainstream hollywood entertainment and you’re not bothered about the quality then £3 is a pretty good deal.
There’s an interesting semantic thing here, I think. I’m coming to the conclusion, having digitised all my music, that I’m not really that bothered about “owning” it. If it vanished I’d just go and get some more. We’ve become used to fetishising packaging and building up collections of music, films, books, etc, but why? Yes, I have a large collection of comics but that’s because I have a pseudo-academic interest in that and refer to them. My books, on the other hand, consist of three piles, despite spending years in a bookshop. I feel no need to “own” a book once I’ve read it. Same goes for DVDs. It’s fun to watch a blockbuster movie once but do you really need to own Die Hard unless you’re a big aficionado?
Rambling… sorry…