-- Last night Eircom signed a deal with the 4 big record labels in Ireland which agreed to the shutting down of music downloaders internet collection based on evidence of file sharing. The times had the story today on the front page and while most other internet providers went with the obligatory "yeah we're going to look into the viability of enforcing similar proposals" this is still quite a worrying thing, well at least in my opinion.
Regardless of just how blind and stupid record companies are this isn't going to work. There will always be another litte computer wizard who will just come up with ways of getting around whatever measure of protection we build around intellectual property. Now intellectual property is something I have a huge objection with but this isn't the time or place for me to show just how pretentious I am.
The real point here is that people will not go back to the traditional system. Take artists/bands like Cadence Weapon Nine Inch Nails Diplo, Spank Rock, Animal Collective ... who have all figured out how to play the new market in ways that, and here's the great part, finally put the art before the industry. These are all bands who, with the exception of NIN could never have really made it in the old system of record companies, and this is what music fans are more and more coming to expect from their music.
The increased focus on the progression of music has come about because of how society has become more culturally entrenched. Art is cheaper to make cheaper to promote and more readily availble than at any time in history.
And by proposing to shut people off from this the industry will alienate its clients where it isn't simply ignored by the more tech savy among us.
This is all very indicative of the horrifically short sighted reactionary law making policy in this country. Remember the debacle regarding the sex laws 4/5 years back? Record companies applying this level of preasure is a desperation move and in reality will have no effect, as argued above. But the right of the companies to apply this preassure is a disgrace and when they do topple over the next few years Ireland will be stuck with archaic intellectual property laws.
couple of other interesting articles on this
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/irish-isp-agrees-to-disconnect-repeat-p2p-users.ars
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/isps_music_business/
