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Tech & Net News on technology and the Internet from The Times and Sunday Times

Yet another one sided article. What really gets me about this is that there is no way on the Times site to answer back to the journalist (Steve Boggan) or at least none that I can see.

- The key person in this is Gina Harkell, a musician, who settled for £2,500 for allegedly sharing 1,330 songs. Quite a modest collection really, about 100 CDs or about £1,200 worth. And not exactly the major file sharer we were told that the BPI were going after.

- "The oft-repeated mantra of file-sharers was that allowing people access to free music would generate interest and boost sales, but a whole tranche of independent and BPI-sponsored studies in Britain, the US, Europe and Canada have shown that people who get music for free are likely to spend up to 59 per cent less on paid-for music." (my emphasis) Well that depends on which study you read. There have also been studies that show no statistical link or that show a rise in spending.

- To fully understand, it is necessary to go back to 1999 when Shawn Fanning, an 18-year-old American student, released Napster, a computer software program that enabled people to swap digital music files. Alarm bells instantly began ringing at US and British record companies. If these kids could obtain music simply by swapping among themselves, surely sales would drop? And they did, as hundreds of millions of files were swapped for free in breach of copyright law. Right. In the midst of a recession and a time when singles were no longer selling.


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[ 07-Jun-05 2:47pm ] [ , ]