Article in the Independent HERE

Quote:

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After today's ruling Bt said in a statement: "This is a helpful judgment, which provides clarity on this complex issue.

"It clearly shows that rights holders need to prove their claims and convince a judge to make a court order.

"BT has consistently said that rights holders need to take this route.

"We will return to court after the summer to explain what kind of order we believe is appropriate."

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Yeah right, no spin there then: because they just love chucking £1 million down the drain with every such case on a contested High Court action where, when they lose, they end up paying both sides' costs.

Next time anyone waves a lawyer's letter at them, they'll fold - and rightly so. Their shareholders will expect nothing else, and won't want to be associated with trying to defend the indefensible.

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

As noted above, BT has for some years operated a system intended to "block" access to a limited number of websites / URLs containing images of child sexual abuse. Sometimes known as "Cleanfeed", this is an attempt to reduce the likelihood of innocent people accidently stumbling across such material.

Now, some Rights Holders have asked a court to order BT to use the Cleanfeed system to "block" access to the Newzbin2 website.

This development is both stupid and dangerous:

1. Bona fide activities may be slowed down and sometimes break altogether (e.g IWF / Wikipedia incident)
   
   
2. What will be blocked next? Sites involving religious hatred? Sites "of use" to terrorists (ie. almost anything)? Stuff embarassing for the govt of the day? Next round of MPs' expenses??
   
   
3. Meanwhile, the pirates will simply continue as before, as such "blocks" are trivial to work around.
   
   
4. However, some methods of bypass open up other risks (including viruses, malware), so encouraging people to do such things is really not the cleverest plan. The result will sadly be more lawlessness on the Internet, not less. Much bad activity which is currently traceable will cease to become so. Not to mention likelihood of more people being unwittingly exposed to kiddie porn.
   

This is an arms race, and it can only end one way - badly

Oh yeah, and I forgot - dunno about others, but I'd barely heard of "Newzbin" until this case. Newzbin have just been handed a huge amount of free publicity.

I am reminded of the time the BBC attempted to "ban" a then obscure band called Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Most of us recall the results...

( yikes - was that really 27 years ago...! )

Quote chris...:

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What will be blocked next? Sites involving religious hatred? Sites relating to terrorism (ie. almost anything) ? Stuff embarassing for the govt of the day? Next round of MPs' expenses??

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This case has been taken up as a breach of the 1988 Copyright, Design and Patents Act (CDPA). It only sets a precedant in cases where there has been Copyright infringement.

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It's time all clinical trials had to report their results - www.alltrials.net

Quote chris...:

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This development is both stupid and dangerous:
[LIST=1]

Bona fide activities may be slowed down and sometimes break altogether (e.g IWF / Wikipedia incident)

---

Surely adding one more site to the list that is already blocked by Cleanfeed won't make any difference?

Quote chris...:

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What will be blocked next? Sites involving religious hatred? Sites "of use" to terrorists (ie. almost anything)? Stuff embarassing for the govt of the day? Next round of MPs' expenses??

---

Ah, the old 'slippery slope' argument. Does anyone really believe that this is the first step towards widespread censorship of legitimate investigative journalism?

Quote chris...:

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Meanwhile, the pirates will simply continue as before, as such "blocks" are trivial to work around.

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Well, maybe. Or maybe at least a few people will be deterred. Either way, should copyright owners simply do nothing to protect their property?

Quote chris...:

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However, some methods of bypass open up other risks (including viruses, malware), so encouraging people to do such things is really not the cleverest plan.

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So people who continue to attempt to break the law are now open to greater risk of virus infection? My heart bleeds!

Quote chris...:

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Not to mention likelihood of more people being unwittingly exposed to kiddie porn.

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Er... that seems like a slightly tenuous extrapolation based on the banning of one web site!

Great judgement, ALL ISP's should be ordered to block piracy sites and those site owners made to pay damages and be jailed. Piracy is theft and should be treated like it, no excuses! I actually can't believe that anyone in this industry would make allowances for piracy. Just makes me wonder how many of you defending no action against those criminals actually make a living of their music. I bet none really....

Quote Sam Inglis:

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Surely adding one more site to the list that is already blocked by Cleanfeed won't make any difference?

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Hi,

This case involves "Newzbin2", the site set up after the operators of "Newzbin" got into hot water. What are the chances the site owners will work around the block by creating Newzbin3, Newzbin4, Newzbin5 etc etc. Unfortunately, the Cleanfeed system doesn't scale very well.

Also, the incident I referred to involved collateral damage where editing of Wikipedia pages was broken entirely for many people.

Quote Sam Inglis:

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Ah, the old 'slippery slope' argument. Does anyone really believe that this is the first step towards widespread censorship of legitimate investigative journalism?

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It sets a precedent of using the Cleanfeed blocking system for things other than images of child sexual abuse.

Quote Sam Inglis:

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Either way, should copyright owners simply do nothing to protect their property?

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Ah, the old 'we don't have a good plan, so we'll opt for a bad plan instead' pitfall.

Quote Sam Inglis:

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So people who continue to attempt to break the law are now open to greater risk of virus infection? My heart bleeds!

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Your computer and your personal data are constant under attack from other computers infected with viruses. As I said, creating more of these and hindering existing helpful efforts to mitigate them might not be great news.

Quote Sam Inglis:

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Quote chris...:

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Not to mention likelihood of more people being unwittingly exposed to kiddie porn.

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Er... that seems like a slightly tenuous extrapolation based on the banning of one web site!

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Simply that people will shortly be deploying workarounds (VPNs, proxies etc etc) to bypass Cleanfeed - a system which was intended to reduce likelihood of accidentally stumbling across images of child sexual abuse.

Quote Sam Inglis:

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Quote chris...:

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What will be blocked next? Sites involving religious hatred? Sites "of use" to terrorists (ie. almost anything)? Stuff embarassing for the govt of the day? Next round of MPs' expenses??

---

Ah, the old 'slippery slope' argument. Does anyone really believe that this is the first step towards widespread censorship of legitimate investigative journalism?

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Of course not, legitimate investigative journalism died out over thirty years ago. I think the question here is, is this the beginning of fast tracking site censorship? Unfortunately, this was on the agenda at Bilderberg 2011 and it was agreed that the time had come to censor.

I don't have the full list but you're looking at: anything seriously criminal, copyright violations (though it was agreed that website certification would need to be introduced later), anything politically radical and so on.

Quote chris...:

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Your computer and your personal data are constant under attack from other computers infected with viruses.

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Is it really? So too must be everyone else's. From whom, I wonder... There are a huge number of personal computers in the world compared to the number of people, let alone systems, dedicated to hacking them. Forgive me, but I was under the impression that whilst you might be unlucky enough to be targeted by a virus or hack attack, it's not exactly true that everybody's computer is under "constant attack from other computers infected with viruses".

My own PC at home has never once contracted a virus or been hacked from externally. My laptop was, just once, hit by a Trojan maybe 5 years ago. The origin of it turned out to be one of those 'dodgy' emails with attachments that you get sent from your friend. That's about it. So from my personal experience, at least, this seems a rather sweeping statement

Edited to add: Of course I am aware of the THREAT of virus attacks and suchlike, that's why we all (should) have virus protection etc. on our computers. But that's rather different than saying it's all under attack all the time.

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SOS Web Editor, Support & Social Media
Friend SOS on Facebook | Follow SOS on Twitter

Edited by Jennifer Jones (01/08/11 04:32 PM)

There are agents running around the web lookin for open doors all the time. Have a look at your firewall logs.

Jennifer, the internet is a mass of hostile pinging, port-inspection, and a dozen other more elaborate things. Most of them you'll never notice - it's not dissimilar to germs and insects whizzing around through the air outside your front door. They're really only a problem if your default place to store perishable food (raw meat, etc) is uncovered, open to the air on a table beside an open kitchen window... which is how most Micrsoft OSes used to be, pretty much

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote Jennifer Jones:

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Quote chris...:

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Your computer and your personal data are constant under attack from other computers infected with viruses.

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Is it really? So too must be everyone else's. From whom, I wonder... There are a huge number of personal computers in the world compared to the number of people, let alone systems, dedicated to hacking them. Forgive me, but I was under the impression that whilst you might be unlucky enough to be targeted by a virus or hack attack, it's not exactly true that everybody's computer is under "constant attack from other computers infected with viruses".

My own PC at home has never once contracted a virus or been hacked from externally. My laptop was, just once, hit by a Trojan maybe 5 years ago. The origin of it turned out to be one of those 'dodgy' emails with attachments that you get sent from your friend. That's about it. So from my personal experience, at least, this seems a rather sweeping statement

Edited to add: Of course I am aware of the THREAT of virus attacks and suchlike, that's why we all (should) have virus protection etc. on our computers. But that's rather different than saying it's all under attack all the time.

---

Try taking a look at any router log. Port scans are a constant, looking for common and not so common unprotected ports. It's easy to scan large IP ranges , especially if you have a botnet to do it.

As for whom, well, other infected machines looking to expand their botnet.

Viruses and the people behind them have changed considerably over the years. You may or may not have had a virus in 5 years, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Few anti virus programs cope with root kits and unless you know the function of every process running on your PC and what ports it has open, you can't really say.

Anti virus programs are far from infallible. All they can really do is tell you that of the infections they know about, they didn't find anything. Even then processes can be hidden and so never get scanned.

Run a netstat on your machine during a browsing session. Do you know the end points of all those addresses? Are you really sure your DNS server is what it says even if the addresses were seemingly valid.

The reason botnets are so successful is that the owners of the infected machines are unaware that they are infected. Some even have their own AV to protect the host from being infected by other botnets / viruses.

Want to send spam? A small smtp engine on your machine can be limited to sending a few emails every hour, interleaved with legit traffic and be hard to spot.

Want to take down a gambling website for hours? You can hire a botnet to do it at a modest price. Whilst there have been a few high profile botnet take downs recently, they have limited short term effects.
Botnets are big organised business. Stuxnet is arguably nastier and now anonymous claim to have the source, with some pointing to the USA as part author.

Underestimating determined hackers didn't work out so well for Andrew Crossley of ACS "Law". HB Garry didn't do so well either.

Every connected PC is a powerful resource. Tens of thousands of them are a saleable commodity and market forces, whether good (grid projects such as Cancer research) and bad (Zeus et al) do the rest.



- Joe -

This is not a serious threat to freedom of the press etc. There is a working system which blocks kiddie porn. 99.9% of people are contnt not to be able to access illegal content, and thus risk arrest, and a few nutters will try increasingly desperate measures to circumvent the ban.

Copyright is just the same: I was talking to the IT-savvy managing parter of a London law firm last week. She has no idea what her three teen daughters are accessing, or when, or why. She does know they've all watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4 without going to the cinema.

If her internet gets cut off it affects her ability to serve her clients and could lead to professional embarrassment including (if she were convicted) possible disciplinary proceedings by the regulators leading to her being struck off as a solicitor. It's an accident waiting to happen. She, like 99% of responsible parents, wants the ISPs to remove the risks for her. Her kids, like 99% of kids, will not go the extra mile to find workarounds. They will buy music and films instead.

US jury trials are awarding damages of $1.5 million for 24 music downloads. Once some innocent(-ish) parents go bust and lose their house over this stuff, people will start to wake up.

The internet did not rewrite any laws. Governments do that.

--------------------
Dynamite with a laser beam...

Quote Steve Hill:

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There is a working system which blocks kiddie porn

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Hi,

As I said, the Cleanfeed system was designed to reduce the likelihood of accidentally stumbling on such material. The copyright situation is quite different - as the aim is to stop people who are actively and deliberately trying to get the stuff. The Cleanfeed system is not up to this job.

Quote:

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a few nutters will try increasingly desperate measures to circumvent the ban.
[...]
Her kids, like 99% of kids, will not go the extra mile to find workarounds.

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The workarounds are trivial. Many kids will use them. You'll find that 90% of school kids know how to get around the school's "block" on facebook - even if their teachers / parents don't.

That said, for what it's worth, some of the "parental control" type software available to install on on your PC itself is actually somewhat harder to bypass than anything an ISP can do in the network core. Responsible parents might want to consider it. Perhaps someone (ISPs even?) should be advising her on it.

Quote:

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The internet did not rewrite any laws. Governments do that.

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Governments cannot rewrite the laws of physics, much as they might like to.

It seems that the government have intervened on the side of BT. Vince Cable has declared that blocking websites is 'cumbersome and unworkable'.

Full story here: guardian article

/e

Quote ezza:

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It seems that the government have intervened on the side of BT. Vince Cable has declared that blocking websites is 'cumbersome and unworkable'.

Full story here: guardian article

/e

---

Once again the government has failed to 'grasp the nettle' and lost the opportunity to take a positive step forward. Surely the introduction of a measure that, whilst not perfect, it does offer some protection for rights holders.It's got to be better than doing nothing. Can it not be introduced as an interim measure?

"protection that's proportionate to needs and based on evidence" I am not sure what evidence Vince Cable is talking about here but the recorded music industry is going to disappear altogether if the current status quo is allowed to continue.

The creative industries are possibly one of the few where we still have a real influence and opportunity to make a positive contribution to the UK's balance of payments.

P

When you think about it, the broadband providers have made fortunes off the back of copyright infringement because one of the great drivers has been young people. Don't know if it still goes on but last year I was looking for a new broadband provider and was told that one of the advantages of a particular company's service was I could download so many movies and so many songs. How do you do that I asked? Just go to a filesharing website and download I was told. Is that legal I asked... you get the idea. Same goes for portable media players, though wisely the new law will allow you to make copies of a CD you have already bought for personal use which is, I think, reasonable.

Quote ezza:

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Vince Cable has declared that blocking websites is 'cumbersome and unworkable'.

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Good that they've recognised that. But sadly this recognition of reality is too late for the high court - see the judgement being discussed in this thread.

Last year, web-blocking provisions were sneaked into the DEA (s17) without debate or scrutiny, but, like the rest of the DEA, have not been activated yet. Today's announcement suggests they aren't going to activate those DEA provisions, at least for now. However, this has nothing to do with the Newzbin2 web-blocking injunction obtained last week under CDPA (s97A), of which we'll very likely see more.

Quote Phil O:

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It's got to be better than doing nothing.

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Again, the old 'we don't have a good plan, so we'll opt for a bad plan instead' pitfall...

Continuing to pursue this will simple involve a pointless waste of time and money.

Blocking simply doesn't work. Easy to work around. And not just for determined geeks - easy for the masses too. Pretty much all access to infringing material involves the use of tools (to access torrents or whatever). These tools will simply be extended (by the clever people who write them) to bypass any blocks. The average clueless teenager using the tools won't need to know about this. They will not even know that the hurdles were there, because the tools will jump the hurdles for them.

Quote:

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Blocking simply doesn't work.

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Hmmm - demonstrations of failed intellectual property protection don't get much better than this: The DCMS have provided a neat illustration in their publishing of the OFCOM "site blocking" report…

http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8365.aspx

which says “The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has redacted some parts of this document where it refers to techniques that could be used to circumvent website blocks. There is a low risk of this information being useful to people wanting to bypass or undermine the Internet Watch Foundation‟s blocks on child sexual abuse images. The text in these sections has been blocked out.”

In their infinite wisdom, the DCMS have (like many others before them) attempted to black out the text they consider sensitive. But it's trivial to recover the text. On my Mac, I can simply cut'n'paste the black bits from Preview into Notepad - and see the redacted text.

Quite likely they'll fix this (at the above URL), but already non-redacted versions are circulating e.g here. The non-redacted versions will probably be seen by more people than the original (everyone likes to see something they shouldn't). And the people who look at these non-redacted versions will not be technically competent, and they won't even need to use copy'n'paste from Mac Preview. They'll simply see the material itself.

So the DCMS have kindly made the point in the simplest of ways… the argument that small hurdles make any difference is just wishful thinking.

Life isn't so simple.

Or as someone else put it, a department which is unable to censor a single PDF does not exactly inspire confidence when it proposes to censor the entire internet.

Quote Steve Hill:

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...If her internet gets cut off it affects her ability to serve her clients and could lead to professional embarrassment including (if she were convicted) possible disciplinary proceedings by the regulators leading to her being struck off as a solicitor. It's an accident waiting to happen. She, like 99% of responsible parents, wants the ISPs to remove the risks for her. Her kids, like 99% of kids, will not go the extra mile to find workarounds. They will buy music and films instead.

---

They will buy music and films?. Unless they are 16+, I doubt they have more than £15 a week to dispose of. From memory, kids also buy sweets, food, clothing etc.

Sure, some probably are spoilt rotten by their parents, but I think it's specious to say once a small measure has been taken against piracy, they'll start buying music and films with some imaginary stash of money from somewhere.

It costs £12+ to go to the cinema (inc drinks/food etc), new dvds are around £15, cds are a bit cheaper granted. Ultimately though, these purchases are too expensive for your average child. Most of the musicians and studios (film and music alike) that are of interest to youngsters are making huge profits, you'd think if they wanted youngsters to legally buy music they'd offer some kind of subsidies for under 18's, but it's easier to point fingers from their ivory tower.

Quote Frederick:

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Most of the musicians and studios (film and music alike) that are of interest to youngsters are making huge profits.....

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Really ??? EMI, Warners by any chance?

The patient is 'bleeding to death'. Can we not, at least, put a tourniquet on for now?

P

the basic point is:

- the people in charge are technically-incompetant wankers

- they can't save us from climate armageddon, collapse of the global banking system or thermonuclear war, never mind illegal filesharing.

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

I remember being 16 and only having money to buy 1 record in a few months. All of us recorded each others records and radio shows on compact cassette. Then after listening to them, the decision to buy a certain album was based on the recorded songs. So I guess we were pirates too

On the other side now I'm one of the few in my neighborhood who still buys CD's...

And then again... more and more people around me are buying songs in iTunes! I also read an article that pointed out that the biggest downloaders also buy relatively many songs on-line.

Just: in the end I don't think blocking sites is going to bring anything good.

Quote Frederick:

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Quote Steve Hill:

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...If her internet gets cut off it affects her ability to serve her clients and could lead to professional embarrassment including (if she were convicted) possible disciplinary proceedings by the regulators leading to her being struck off as a solicitor. It's an accident waiting to happen. She, like 99% of responsible parents, wants the ISPs to remove the risks for her. Her kids, like 99% of kids, will not go the extra mile to find workarounds. They will buy music and films instead.

---

They will buy music and films?. Unless they are 16+, I doubt they have more than £15 a week to dispose of. From memory, kids also buy sweets, food, clothing etc.

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WTF? Were you even born before mp3s existed? Music actually WAS bought by 16 year olds before mp3s, you know. If you don't know, I suggest you do a little reading.

Johnny, you remind of a song by The Maytals, Johnny Cool Man....so cool Johnny.

What I said was they will buy music AND films, implying that they hardly have enough money for one, let alone both, not at the kind of levels expected by the industry at any rate.

The idea that downloads are 1:1 with purchases is nonsense, as someone further up replied, when we were poor kids we just taped off one another or the radio, unless of course something was really worth our pound. Did we have lax morals, were we pirates or just disenfranchised, you tell me.

If Warner et al are truly struggling, I have little pity. One should make hay whilst the sun shines. I remember seeing a behind the scenes extra on the Rush Hour 3 DVD, it was basically an exercise in "look how much money and toys we have, aren't you jealous". Hardly endearing...

Quote Frederick:

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I remember seeing a behind the scenes extra on the Rush Hour 3 DVD, it was basically an exercise in "look how much money and toys we have, aren't you jealous". Hardly endearing...

---

There is that aspect, yes. But it's by no means the whole story. Much of the music industry IS struggling. But please can we discuss that side of things in a different thread (if haven't already discussed it to death).

The question here is, will blocking a bunch of URLs make any significant difference. And also, will it f**k other things up in the process.

To which the answers are "no" and "yes".

Quote Frederick:

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They will buy music and films?. Unless they are 16+, I doubt they have more than £15 a week to dispose of. From memory, kids also buy sweets, food, clothing etc.

---

I was spending about £20 (anybody want to work out what 17 years of inflation puts that at in current terms?) a week of my own well earned money at the age of 14 on vinyl, so the suggestion to anyone at the age of 15 who uses that one as a arguement is sort your work ethic out and get a part time job.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote feline1:

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the basic point is:

- the people in charge are technically-incompetant wankers

- they can't save us from climate armageddon, collapse of the global banking system or thermonuclear war, never mind illegal filesharing.

---

Totally agree with you:)

However I fear that will never change but in the mean time we will have to at least try and protect ourselves from the thieving idiots ripping our music. For that reason I think every little helps LOL

You know the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the ISP's have been lobbying MP's against taking action. After all it's in their interests not to be held accountable. And a certain international corporation has broadband interests !!

See I'm not sure I agree with this - ISPs want to sell us super fast connections, but they don't want us using them to constantly download tons of data, which is why they were all really hostile to stuff like iPlayer when it emerged as it was going to cost them in bandwidth. Uploading costs them even more IIRC.

I'd have thought that ISPs would be quite happy to block filesharing.

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http://www.jeremycorbett.co.uk

Quote ow:

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There are agents running around the web lookin for open doors all the time. Have a look at your firewall logs.

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Exactly what I was going to say. My log file 'rolls round' in less than 24 hours
... and yes, I know I'm late to the party.

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It wasn't me!
(Well, actually, it probably was)

Edited by Folderol (12/08/11 06:12 PM)

Back in August, Steve wrote:

Quote Steve Hill:

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a few nutters will try increasingly desperate measures to circumvent the ban.

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Well, the BT "block" isn't even in place yet (likely mid-october), and it now seems "Newzbin2" have brought out a new client designed to circumvent the block, ready for when it comes:

http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-release-encrypted-client-to-defeat-websit e-blocking-110914/

Didn't need psychic powers to predict this would happen. As I've said, this is an arms race, and it can only end one way. Especially as the bad guys can move faster than the good guys.

Feline1 was pretty near to the mark with his post:

Quote feline1:

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the basic point is:

- the people in charge are technically-incompetant wankers

- they can't save us from climate armageddon, collapse of the global banking system or thermonuclear war, never mind illegal filesharing.

---

oh no! But does this mean that if I try and get the filesharing server to play noughts & crosses, mankind will be saved?

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

History suggests that not all arms races were won by the bad guys.

Fat lady has yet to sing. The answer is not about beating the technology (impossible), it's about changing consumer behaviour. (Possibly via some deterrent sentences, I fear).

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

Quote Steve Hill:

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History suggests that not all arms races were won by the bad guys.

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Fair enough. But in this case, the odds are massively stacked in favour of the pirates.

Quote:

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The answer is not about beating the technology (impossible), it's about changing consumer behaviour. (Possibly via some deterrent sentences, I fear).

---

I couldn't agree more. But many folk seem to have an idea that tech will provide some sort of magic bullet. As opposed to educating / bringing up their kids to obey the law.

Yes, you are right, IPSs don't want every customer using up all their bandwidth day and night to down-up-load data, BUT they sell it, always, in this vain: "It goes this fast that you can download 10 movies an hour unlike our rival, which speed only allows for 5!!" (true sale banter!).

But not just internet providers, also computers/accessories sellers: how many adverts are out there telling us that their newest computer has a 2 Tb HD, which will "let you store" thousands of songs or hundreds of HD videos"?
Since only a tiny minority of wealthy people actually owns 'thousands of records or DVDs", the implication is that to take full advantage of their wonderful toys (and justify their sale to you of a new toy), you 'must' access illegally cloned material. There are not so many musicians/movie makers out there needing to store their own original material!! The rest is stolen.

It is definitely an instigation to crime. Just it is.

But movies and records are sold and made by "dirty capitalist pigs, banks and corporations", so it is right to steal from them. Actually morally acceptable. A duty even. ***locks.

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www.bugiolacchi.com
Songwriter/guitarist

lol does anyone actually know of a hit record made by a bank? lol

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote bugiolacchi:

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Yes, you are right, IPSs don't want every customer using up all their bandwidth day and night to down-up-load data, BUT they sell it, always, in this vain: "It goes this fast that you can download 10 movies an hour unlike our rival, which speed only allows for 5!!" (true sale banter!).

---

Legal film downlaoding exists.

Quote:

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But not just internet providers, also computers/accessories sellers: how many adverts are out there telling us that their newest computer has a 2 Tb HD, which will "let you store" thousands of songs or hundreds of HD videos"?
Since only a tiny minority of wealthy people actually owns 'thousands of records or DVDs", the implication is that to take full advantage of their wonderful toys (and justify their sale to you of a new toy), you 'must' access illegally cloned material. There are not so many musicians/movie makers out there needing to store their own original material!! The rest is stolen.

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Songs are not albums. But for the sake of argument :

average 10 songs per LP X 100 LPs = 1000 songs. I know people with 1000 albums. That would make it 10000 songs. Still in the realms of probability.

Quote:

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It is definitely an instigation to crime. Just it is.

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Not really. No more than filling up your car with petrol is instigation to war in the middle east.

Quote:

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But movies and records are sold and made by "dirty capitalist pigs, banks and corporations", so it is right to steal from them. Actually morally acceptable. A duty even. ***locks.

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It is never morally acceptable. Only when it becomes "cool" to NOT use storage and use streaming services and cloud computing will these issues be moot. At the moemnt, people hoard loads of things on their hard drives. I know people who dl films illegally but haven't watched half of what they already have. It's the hoarding and personal storage we need to address.

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I'm All Ears.