Anti-counterfeit trade agreements are in process at the moment, currently in their final draft. Around 40 countries will be included in the law when passed, including New Zealand. Huge controversy has surrounded this issue as one area of the proposed legislation allows customs official’s unlimited access to your hard drive when travelling abroad. Some people will see this as a positive thing, being the first major act of state enforcement against illegal piracy such as the common music download. However a majority of avid technology users see this as a gross invasion of privacy and a complete over-reaction to the crime itself, shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime? Wouldn’t money and intellect be better spent preventing the piracy from the source, being websites like limewire?
Why not tighten up the laws surrounding the origins of websites like limewire? In a way this situation can be likened to drug crime; why put so many recourses into finding the drug takers rather than the drug dealers? They are the real criminals.
Target the source.
Thoughts are invoked of poor students being fined thousands and thousands of dollars for downloading a couple of songs because they cannot afford the cd while some computer nerd in a dark room feeds hundreds of songs into limewire a day, making it so accessible to everyone.
This is not to say that the downloader’s down know what they’re doing but simply that maybe they are not the ones to go after…besides you will never track down everyone who has ever downloaded a song, movie or file but there can only be a limited number of people providing the opportunity to do it.
Is this just another revenue gathering exercise?
Friday, October 15, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.