Who cares what picture you see?

Some time ago, this was supposed to be the post that launched this blog. Indeed it was this story that finally persuaded me to set up a generalist blog to write about things other than music, or at least subjects that didn't fit the rigid structures of my other blogs. As usual, I spent a while prevaricating about whether or not to do it, and even longer thinking of a name for the thing, especially since I was determined to avoid an obvious musical reference there, and you know it don't come easy.

In the meantime, by an odd coincidence, a related issue has come a bit closer to home: I myself received a DMCA takedown notice for a post on one of my other blogs. By the standards of most people who comment on the subject of alleged online piracy, I seem to be something of a moderate: I've always rejected glib notions along the lines of "they can afford it" because I know that the ultimate victims are never going to be the multi-millionaire established stars who get paid fortunes for endorsements, nor the executives at media corporations who aren't going to go hungry whatever happens to the the companies; instead it's always the people in the lower-ranking jobs who have to worry. And unlike some people, I don't perceive the existence of the recording industry as an inherantly bad thing, if only because I'm too cynical to believe that something as important to people as music or film will ever not be a moneyspinner for somebody.

All of that said, though, I was still quite surprised to read this story on my local newspaper's website. And not because it isn't very well written or edited, which I'm used to. A 21-year old man from Harrow was sentenced to six months in prison last month for copying movies on his mobile phone: and when I say copying them on it, I mean he was actually sitting in the cinema pointing it at the screen, eating and drinking while he did so. It goes without saying that this is a stupid and wrong thing to do, and it probably shouldn't go unpunished, but actual jail time seems rather on the excessive side, considering the effects it'll have when he gets out; I'm not referring to him by name here because it probably gets enough Google hits as it is. And unlike the newspaper, I'm not giving the address of the presumably illegal website he uploaded this stuff to either. More to the point, perhaps, if someone said to me "When something is recorded at the cinema people no longer pay for tickets at the cinema or spend money on the DVDs," I might actually have thought about whether that's true or not before I printed it (a point also made in this more thoughtful post by another blogger). It may be just about possible that there's some potential loss of revenue in there somewhere, if people see the uploads of a film like The Bounty Hunter and decide it's rubbish, but in all honesty there can't be many people who make a conscious decision between going to a cinema and hunting round the internet for a grainy upload with munching noises all over it. There's a more subtle argument to be made about the harm that "camming" can cause, but once again nobody can really be bothered to make it.