Piracy

“Illegal music downloading is like casual racism; widespread and inevitable. That doesn’t make it acceptable!” That was a frustrated exclamation from Sydney singer-song writer Josh Pyke during our recent interview.

It’s a notion that’s drummed into children from a young age by parents and teachers: “just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right”.

Apparently millions of adult Australians have forgotten that advice, and as a result we’re not only breaking the law en masse, we’re cheating hard-working musicians out of deserved pay. As Pyke says, music piracy is similar to race-based bigotry; inherently wrong yet widely accepted.

Continue reading "Punch: Piracy on the High Cs is music’s greatest enemy" »

Digital Rights Management doesn’t work. DRM is a method of locking digital media so it can’t be shared. Except it fails. For every form of DRM employed, pirates instantly break it.

DRM only inconveniences honest, paying customers. For example, in the case of eBooks, a person might justifiably want to have their book on their PC and their tablet, but DRM can prevent that.

I regularly get Google Alerts about my books being mentioned online and many times it’s when they appear illegally on filesharing sites. For every download like that, it’s a drop of cash not going to keeping food on my table, right? Actually, probably not.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: I’m an author, take my stuff for free" »

Doubtless we’ve all seen that gritty urban anti-piracy ad that equates half-inching cars and televisions with illegally downloading movies on the internet.

The message, writ large is “DOWNLOADING PIRATED MOVIES IS STEALING, STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW”. It’s a fair point, and surely one that only a klepto of the highest order would even attempt to argue with. You would think.

The last time I graced a cinema with my presence, for the umpteenth time my peepers were affronted with the Hollywood sign sized words “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR”.

Only this time something in me twigged. I instantly turned to my mate and blurted, “Yeah, but I would if I could download one”. And though I happily got the laughs I was after, the saddest part was, it was the truth.

Continue reading "You wouldn’t steal a car, but I would if I could download it" »