Pirates lose their bay

One thing I spotted while peeking around the various news sites was that UK ISPs are starting to ban The Pirate Bay.

I'm anti-piracy. I'm with the "it's theft and shouldn't be tolerated" crowd. But not because it's against the law. I don't actually care too much about the law abiding aspect. No - I care about the damage that the pirates cause.

But wait - what is The Pirate Bay ? It's a place you can (perhaps!) go to in order to find out where to steal media content available online. That can be music, games or video. And there's probably more stuff on there too. It's like having a "How To Rob HMV" or "How To Shoplift" manual available on the web.

Did the looters in London get widespread condemnation ? Yes.
Do online pirates get the same treatment ? No - and a lot of people join in.

There's no difference, except that online pirates don't go out to do it, they do it from the anonymity of their internet connection.

The damage ? If I like something, I'm always hopeful there's more from the same place coming soon. If content is stolen, then that's cash that isn't going to the developer, author or artist. I'd like there to have been more Alisha's Attic albums. But they got miffed and left the business. Good software houses close because rampant piracy means they can't afford to develop sequels to classics. We got ever more draconian and brutal copy protection measures built in (I boycott Ubisoft because of that).

By stealing stuff, you're taking cookies from the hands of coders. (Cookies are an essential part of the diet of software people - honest). You're preventing the next generation of classic media from being created.

That's enough of me getting on my high and mighty pedestal though.

I have been known to send a music file or two over MSN. I'll send "you might like this" type selections over to my sister and they'll come back my way too. That's technically stealing too but in my defence, a lot of those files have gone towards me or my sister picking up albums we'd never have looked twice at. I don't see a difference there to posting Youtube links.

We've discovered artists like Aimee Mann, Hannah Peel, Goldfrapp (5 albums and counting), Bat For Lashes, Kasabian that way, to mention but a few. If we like it, we'll go out and buy the albums. And then more albums come out later. But what we won't do is open up the Torrent tracker and download them.

That's just the way I feel about it.

Stealing is bad - all sites like PirateBay do is encourage it. Although what some of the online sellers do (charging extra for digital distribution ? Withholding content that's on the disc ?) approaches theft.