Athan
Resident Freddy
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2003
- Messages
- 1,063
One thing to take into account is that the very earliest any of the DE bill anti-download stuff will be enforced is around Spring 2012.
A user's timetable to the Digital Economy Act
Although I think the biggest danger with people knowing this is that they'll relax and forget about the whole DE bill, stop badgering their MPs to do what they can to kill the legislation and in 2 years time get a big shock.
Of course I'm of the opinion that the BPI etc are in for a big shock when even if they see a fall in copyright infringement they won't actually see a causally-linked rise in income (i.e. just because someone 'pirates' something doesn't mean it is a lost sale... many will 'pirate' when there's no chance they would have paid for the content anyway). It's a bit hard to tease out such correlations (or lack thereof) though as such industries are in flux, even if they try to act like nothing's going to change. I believe there was a report recently about overall UK music industry income (maybe even profits) rising in the last year, despite CD sales falling, i.e. digital sales now account for more of their income than physical sales.
A user's timetable to the Digital Economy Act
Although I think the biggest danger with people knowing this is that they'll relax and forget about the whole DE bill, stop badgering their MPs to do what they can to kill the legislation and in 2 years time get a big shock.
Of course I'm of the opinion that the BPI etc are in for a big shock when even if they see a fall in copyright infringement they won't actually see a causally-linked rise in income (i.e. just because someone 'pirates' something doesn't mean it is a lost sale... many will 'pirate' when there's no chance they would have paid for the content anyway). It's a bit hard to tease out such correlations (or lack thereof) though as such industries are in flux, even if they try to act like nothing's going to change. I believe there was a report recently about overall UK music industry income (maybe even profits) rising in the last year, despite CD sales falling, i.e. digital sales now account for more of their income than physical sales.