Firstly, today the founders of The Pirate Bay (and I won’t link) have been found guilty of breaking copyright law and sentenced to jail. Now whilst there are lot of torrents on The Pirate Bay that contain copyrighted files that are being shared illegally, none of these files are actually stored by the pirate bay whatsoever.  They are effectually a search engine for .torrent files.

So what does the rulings in the Swedish courts today mean?  Does it mean the fact you can find illegally shared files by Google mean that Google should be shut down?  Of course it would be ludicrous to suggest such a thing, but actually is it?  Google can be used for exactly the same thing as The Pirate Bay can.  Just Google ‘casino royale avi filetype:torrent’ and I can guarantee you’ll be able to find a page with a link to a .torrent download for that movie.

Does this mean that copyright holders shouldn’t protect their property and their rights, no of course they should, I just feel they are going about it the wrong way.

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

I have no problem with DRM until it gets in my way of doing something I want to do with it.  Now this does not mean sharing the files amongst my friends.  It means if I buy something from iTunes (pre music going DRM-free) and I change from an iPod to a Zune then I shouldn’t have to re-buy all my music.  Secondly if I want to archive all my DVD’s for playback on Apple TV and then put my DVD’s in the loft I shouldn’t have to find ways around the insane corruption that Sony puts on it’s DVD’s courtesy of the Arccos software.

For the most part DRM only seeks to annoy legitimate customers, as anyone who truely wants to pirate something, will find a way to do so regardless of how ‘protected’ the studios believe DRM to be… just take a look at how quickly BD+ got cracked.

Pricing

If I want to legitimately purchase a movie from iTunes for example, and let’s take an example of  ‘Max Payne‘, this costs £10.99 from the store. I can buy that same movie from play.com for £12.99.  Heck, when Quantum of Solace came out you could buy it from Tesco for £7, yet it was still £10.99 on iTunes and they won’t even let you buy an HD version!

Can the studios please explain to me how a movie that only has to be digitised once, costs nothing in physical storage in a warehouse, has no manufacturing costs and no distribution/delivery costs can cost only slightly less or indeed even more than it does in a shop?

If they studios want to stop people downloading for free they need to radically reduce the price of legitimately buying a film online.

Software

I can also see the arguement from the angle of the copyright holder, I am a software developer.  I have written and sold software online, only a minority of which are GPL’d.

There is a small subset of people out there that think it is their god-given right to give my software away and use it without me even getting a small amount of money for my efforts in developing it (I’ve never charge mega-bucks for applications, unlike some companies out there).

I do believe that copyright holders have the right to protect their rights, and make a living from it.

If I GPL’d my code and even though I sold it, there is nothing preventing someone else taking my same code and competing with me.  I’m not a Red Hat or a Novell of this world, I can offer the value added benefits of support and protection that they offer.  I wouldn’t be able to make any money from this type of arrangement.

This is why I believe the shared source licenses.  Basically buy the software, get the source, change what you want to in the source, but have no rights to redistribute it without permission.

They had Stewart Mac who was fantastic, they won a competition to be a support act.  Then was Biffy Clyro, who can only be described as bloody awful… the cheer that went up when they announced that it was their last song was funny!

Then on came Bon Jovi, loosing track now but I think it was the 6th or 7th time of seeing them.  I think this was way up the top along with Hyde Park in 2003!

I know I’ve been to:

These Days Tour – Wembley 1995
These Days Tour – Milton Keynes 1996
One Wild Night Tour – Milton Keynes 2001
Bounce Tour – Hyde Park 2003
Lost Highway Tour – The O2 2007
Lost Highway Tour – Twickehham 2008

I missed the Crush tour at Wembley because I was in Greece at the time and I sold the tickets to the Have a Nice Day tour as I couldn’t go. 

No where near the longest set I’ve seen Bon Jovi play, but was still a great one.  Hearing Dry County live for the first time in years was simply stunning.  The set list was:

PRAYER
BAD NAME
LOST HIGHWAY
BORN TO BE MY BABY
CAPT. CRASH
RUNAWAY
SLEEP w/ Twist & Shout & Start Me Up
BLAZE OF GLORY
WHOLE LOT OF LEAVIN’
DIAMOND RING
ALWAYS
IN THESE ARMS
WE GOT IT GOIN’ ON
IT’S MY LIFE
I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU – RICHIE VOX
DRY COUNTY
HAVE A NICE DAY
FAITH
WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T GO HOME
BAD MEDICINE w/ Shout

ENCORE:
HALLELUJAH
WANTED

So on to the next tour then.  Hopefully not too long to wait this time!

Photos: Take a look at some photos taken with my iPhone (I’ve always been a defender of not having a good camera in the iPhone as if I need to take good photos I use my dSLR, however when you’re somewhere when you can’t take an SLR a good camera in a phone is essential!)

The set list was:

Livin on a Prayer
You Give Love a Bad Name
Lost Highway
Whole Lot Of Leavin
Runaway
Born To Be My Baby
It’s My Life
You Want to Make a Memory
I Love This Town
We Got It Going On
Who Says You Can’t Go Home
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
Bad Medicine w/ Shout
Any Other Day
Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night
Hallelujah
Last Nite
Wanted Dead or Alive
Keep the Faith