Can you really go to jail for downloading music ?

Hi everyone.......

For those of you who keep your ears to the ground or in this case close to your laptops or pc's, you'll have heard of pirate bay, the Swedish file sharing website whose owners recently got themselves a jail sentence and 3million pounds fine for owning and running a website that facilitates the download of illegally shared copyrighted material. 

Ok, the last paragraph had a lot of English, but the point is these guys, unless they have a successful appeal are going to jail for a year. I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. In my view it's preposterous and an absolute sham. If Warner bros and co want to sue someone they should go look for the millions of users who actually share these files, not at pirate bay and the millions of other companies who have file sharing websites. The site can be used to share both legal and illegal copyrighted material and it's up to the users to know the difference and abide by the letter of the law (whatever that letter's supposed to be).

What is pirate bay anyway……….? To answer that I got this extract from a BBC article on the case

“….it is described is the world's most high profile file-sharing website. It was set up in 2003 by an anti-copyright organisation, Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

The site is essentially a forum for people to post music, movies, computer games and other forms of electronic media so that other people can download them without having to buy their own copies - or to pay the copyright holders for them.

The site itself does not actually contain the copyrighted material, but provides links so that it can be found elsewhere……….”

The battle to stop the illegal sharing of music has been a long one and while my sympathies go to the entertainment companies, I don’t think they’ll ever completely win. As long as the internet is largely free (and it’s staying that way or I’ll have to find a new job) files will be shared whether illegally or otherwise is irrelevant. The point is people will always want to share stuff.

Recently, Virgin Media in associsation with the BPI (the body that represents the UK record industry ) started writing letters to some of its broadband users threatening them with prosecution over the downloads been made by the users. That’s kind of scary, receiving a letter like that will really upset me, even though they’ll probably have a good case. The only way illegal file sharing can be stopped is via prevention not punishment. How many will you punish, pirate bay alone has up to 22 million users, and probably 80% of them have at one time or the other illegally shared files. That’s way too many people to arrest and prosecute. Me thinks Warner bros and co should find some way to prevent copyrighted files been shared, while I have some ideas on how that can be done I won’t reveal them here as I’m not sure I’m ready to give ITunes 79p every time I feel like hearing something nice, so I hope they take forever in finding a solution.  

Anyway, my original question was can you really go to jail for downloading and sharing illegal stuff? My guess is that the Entertainment Company might probably try and arrest a few folks (maybe the ones who have downloaded enough stuff to start their own iTunes) but it won’t work, there are just too many of them. So my answer is No. I don’t see normal folk like you and me going to jail for file sharing or downloading stuff, although I’m pretty certain it won’t last forever. Eventually someone will find a way to stop it or reduce it to a bearable minimum. 

 

 

 

419 scams; why Nigerians?

Hi my name is Tunde, welcome to my blog.....
I've never really blogged before but i figure it's a good way to say stuff your friends never let you say, you know, if they already think you talk too much.

Anyway the main reason for the blog is to talk about the web. I love the web. I think it is man's greatest invention. It has made the world smaller, faster and a bit more effective but also it's made the world a more dangerous place or has it?

Again, welcome to my blog....

Not too long ago, a Caucasian friend of mine at work was always looking at me funny. Eventually I plucked up courage and asked him what his deal was and he explained that his dad had being scammed by a Nigerian via email. One of the very popular "419 scams:. He said he knew I had nothing to do with that particular scam or any other one for that matter but he just couldn't help looking at Nigerians funny.

Now I find that extremely annoying and disturbing. I am Nigerian and I love being Nigerian but I sure do not like being looked at "funny".

We're all familiar with the scam emails people get regularly; usually Nigerians telling about some uncle who happens to be the ex-president whose assets are frozen in some remote part of the world. And they need help in retrieving the funds. Eventually, they'll ask you to part with some of your hard-earned money as this will assist them in retrieving that which belongs to them and their family-obviously not true.

Most of us delete these emails once we get them. Unfortunately, some people do fall for the scam and money is sent across the ocean in the name of assistance and some unfortunate fellow is left with a huge chunk of money gone.

I'm not going to go into how to avoid them, there are tons of sites available that do that already. I'm more interested in this question, " why are the scammers mostly Nigerians?

Nigerians are one of the most hardworking set of people you'll ever meet. They are enterprising, amazingly intelligent and they love having huge rewards for their hard work-well, who doesn't? Now there's nothing wrong with having huge rewards for what you do, quite a lot of people do, they're called entrepreneurs and high risk takers. But if you take that love for high risk and huge rewards, combine it with a slightly less than normal sense of morality and a bad economic situation (where almost nothing works the way they should), you'll end up with a set of people who have a slightly warped sense of how to get what they want.

Before all my Nigerians brothers and sisters shoot me for the last paragraph, let's look at the matter without sentiments. I do not think all Nigerians have a slightly less than normal sense of morality. Personally, I think on the average, the whole world has a slightly less than normal sense of morality.

Most Nigerians are very moral people. It's just that the very few who are not, work so hard at the schemes making it look like the whole of Nigeria is sitting in some cyber cafe sending rogue emails to unsuspecting Europeans. Eventually, I believe the trend will die out. Certainly not the trend of trying to scam people on the internet because as technology evolves so do these schemes, but the trend of Nigerians alone spearheading the scamming. Better still I hope the art completely dies out even though i'm pretty sure it won't.

Nigeria is growing economically and pretty fast at that. In a few years, those guys doing so much hard work scamming, will find that they can do other stuff (legitimately) and have the same odds of achieving huge rewards.

So the next time you get an email from a Nigerian trying to scam you and there's a Nigerian on the table next to you, please spare him the funny looks. It's not the fault of the Nigerian scammer; he is just in the wrong place at the wrong time with opportunities that don't readily yield results. This is his justification for the scam but not all Nigerians agree.

If you have any comments feel free to drop me a line.
Next week i'll be talking about some new subtject on the web, i'll also be reviewing, what i like to call, secret corners of the web where you can find very useful websites, that can do stuff most of us never imagined possible.

have a great week folks.