Thread: Living a Digital Existence Week 2 - Part 2

Living a Digital Existence

Week 2 – Part 2

So as promised, here’s part 2 of your 3 part Living a Digital Existence blog.

Pirates of the Broadband, at bandwidth’s end!

Just quickly, to add onto yesterday’s post, here’s an article that has appeared on BBC Technology news today that some of you may find very interesting.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Broadband users reach their limit

So, onto today’s topics. After our conversation on broadband suppliers, me and my friends got onto talking about downloading, both legal and illegal. The main topic of conversation was the price of downloading (both monetary and social) as well as how ISP’s and industries can stop illegal downloading.
As many of you will know, downloading music and films can be a rather expensive hobby. I certainly do it through iTunes for music, and whilst it is still cheaper than buying CDs from a shop (£7.99 for most albums on iTunes, £0.79 for single songs) and you do occasionally find the odd bargain, it all adds up after a while. I must have spent at least £50 on music from iTunes in the past few months.

I fully understand that artists have to be paid for their work, after all, you wouldn’t expect to walk into a doctors surgery and expect them to treat you for free! But what I object to, is the fact we have to pay over the odds for these CDs and downloads when it actually costs less than 50p to make the physical CD and then through the millions of sales they get, they make millions of pounds. Whilst I don’t blame them for this, I mean, who wouldn’t make millions of pounds if they could! But I just think we pay far too much for these CDs.

Now, due to these high prices, people choose to illegally download for free. And obviously, you can’t blame people wanting to get this music for free when it costs so much to get it legally. Now, whilst I partly agree with the Artists in that they should be paid for their work, in my view, sharing music is no different to me sending my mate an album over msn. After all, he isn’t purchasing the music himself, I have purchased it and in effect it’s like lending the CD to him to copy. Is that illegal? In truth, I couldn’t give a toss because they’ll never find out.

So whilst Mr. Bono and friends sit on their tour buses doing what they love, can they really complain that they are making £300 million from their music rather than the £400 million they would be making if everyone bought it? No. I don’t think he can, the greedy bastard. Why not give it all to the Africans instead of getting people to donate their own money you silly ponce, then people might give a crap.

So moving on to the subject of how to stop people illegally downloading. Well to me it is clear and simple. I think one of my mates mentioned that Nokia (or one of the mobile companies, I can’t remember which) make you pay a one off monthly payment, and then you get unlimited music downloads for that month. HALLE-BLOODY-LUJAH! Somebody, somewhere, actually has a brain cell or two. God knows how long I’ve been saying this, but if you give people a one off payment a month, say £10, and then give them unlimited downloads for that month, people would be more than willing to use this kind of service. Now, maybe I’m wrong, so feel free to post your views on this! (Don’t be scared, I won’t bite ) But I know I would be willing to have this kind of deal. If they thought about it, they would make just as much money from it. You would have £120 a year from people, if you times that by the millions around the world that would use the service, you would make more than enough. Obviously, you would still have people who download illegally, but that I’m afraid, is always going to happen.

So, in conclusion, we wanted either: Artists/ Producers etc. to stop charging us so much, or a one off payment every month to download as much as we want.

I will only touch on my last subject, as I seem to have gone on a lot about the downloading, but basically, I was looking through eurogamer.net’s round-up of PAL releases this week, and saw a Jamie Oliver cooking game! For our American members, Jamie Oliver is a pretentious little twat who tries to make everyone eat grass and other rabbit food, in a vain attempt to make our lives f**king miserable. Now, who on Earth, would want to play a cooking game where he tells you what to do! The developers (I didn’t even bother to look who it was) should be strung up and shot in my humble opinion. I’ve heard InsaneNutter going on about Barbie’s Riding School or something along those lines before, and so I want you to post the most ridiculous games ever, you know, the ones that were so bad they never actually put on the shelves and are somewhere in GAME’s back room collecting dust. I really want to start getting people posting on these blogs, so please do post, as it will lead to better conversation and debate!

And that Ladies & Gents, is what Grinds my gears! Check back tomorrow for your usual Living a Digital Existence blog!

Until next time...

David

(MunkyMagikUK)