Two interesting pieces on piracy in today’s Technology Guardian:

First up, Victor Keegan on music downloads, explaining why the music industry’s insistence that ISPs stop the flow of illegal downloads is boneheaded and unworkable.

‘The music industry simply won’t give up blaming everyone but itself for the sorry state it claims to be in,’ he writes. ‘If ISPs are responsible for pirate music flowing past them, then ditto for pornography and everything else. Great idea: I can sue my service provider whenever a virus gets onto my PC. How dare they let it through!’

Keegan points out that the companies offering solutions for the furture of music – Apple with iTunes, Nokia with Comes with Music, Spotify, Last.fm etc – are coming from outside of the music industry, which is presumably too busy getting all litigious about teenagers illegally downloading the odd track they can’t yet afford to pay for.

It’s easy to see the future of music moving away from the outdated big record companies, with artists linking up directly with the likes of iTunes and Spotify, leaving Simon Cowell and co wondering whatever happened to the 1980s.

Next, Mark Harris on movies, and the RealNetworks vs Hollywood trial. Seven movie studios are suing Real over its RealDVD software, which allows users to make digital copies of their DVDs – with copy protection left intact, and without the ability to burn extra discs.

Harris quotes Real vice-president Bill Way: ‘Here’s the interesting thing. They have not brought a copyright infringement case against us. They have not brought the classic Universal v Sony VCR case, I presume because they knew they would lose it.’ As Harris points out, Sony is now one of the studios suing Real.

Is ripping a DVD to a PC any different from ripping a CD to an iPod? If you pay £16 for a DVD or £11 for a CD you should be entitled to watch or listen to it in any way you choose. Making a copy for personal use cannot be piracy, otherwise 90 percent of the population must be criminals. How about the studios focus their efforts on developing alternative delivery methods (ad-supported streaming movies, perhaps)?

Harris says DVD sales are declining by 20 percent a year in the US. This has little to do with piracy. If Hollywood really wants to save its skin it should probably stop churning out so many crappy movies.

Film, Music, Technology Piracy, The Guardian

The BBC is reporting today on internet football piracy, claiming that more than a million people watch English Premier League matches via illegal internet streams. I wrote a feature on these illegal streams, and the practice of illegal broadcasts in pubs, for FourFourTwo magazine back in September 2006. You can read the feature here (PDF). The fact that it’s still a problem some two and a half years later suggests that the Premier League are struggling to contain it.

How the practice works is that the streamer tunes in to a live football broadcast, perhaps from Sky or Setanta in the UK or – more often for games not being screened live in the UK – from a foreign broadcaster, and streams the broadcast via the internet. Viewers can then watch the game on their own PCs using streaming software or directly via their web browsers. Dedicated sites list upcoming fixtures and post links to streams. The BBC report suggests that most viewers don’t know that this practice is illegal.

It’s debatable whether viewers watching the streams are breaking the law, but the seeders who broadcast them could face prosecution. Certainly, the Premier League are targeting the streamers and not the viewers.

It is illegal to broadcast Premier League matches in England or Scotland during a ‘closed period’ from 3pm until 5.15pm on a Saturday afternoon. Sky and Setanta never cover these games, but many foreign broadcasters do. So an English or Scottish pub showing a foreign football broadcast at 3pm on a Saturday is breaking the law. Regulations outside of England and Scotland seem less clear, and when the world wide web is added to the equation the technicalities of the problem become very difficult.

It’s worth pointing out that not all internet football streams are illegal. Sky and Setanta both stream live Premier League football on the web to subscribers. Interestingly, French broadcaster Canal+ has recently streamed live FA Cup football via its website, available without subscription to viewers in the UK, although the broadcaster’s Premier League footage cannot be viewed in the UK.

All interesting stuff, although ahead of next season as a Newcastle United supporter perhaps I should be investigating the legalities of watching Championship football…

Football, Technology Piracy