Things have changed dramatically in the Western world in the small number of years we have been in the 21st century. Violence and War are dominating our news and new laws are been brought into to counter terrorism. however it has not just stopped at terrorism, we see new strategies to police copyright violations, these crimes to not result in deaths in fact the record industry is still making more and more money. However this has meant that measures typically been used to counter terrorism are been used to catch so called “pirates” this includes monitoring internet connections, searching laptops, MP3 Players and even mobile phones for copyrighted material.
But why do I think this is wrong? First off it’ll make millions of people guilty up to 6 million download music in the UK alone. That figure properly tells you enough about how the current copyright laws are out of date and unfit for purpose. However they can make profit for record companies because they can sue individual downloaders for large amounts, due to there large legal teams they almost always win! This gains them more money, in most cases more money than they claim they have lost in the process of the users so called piracy.
I respect and understand why the record companies feel they must do something about piracy but how long does the record industry honestly think it can keep selling plastic disks in cases? The music industry must evolve to keep itself alive and not act like thugs and taking away our freedoms in the name of making more money. the major labels that claim that piracy is hurting there business will not go bust anytime soon.
My concern is that because large corporations like Sony BMG and Universal Music both huge legal teams and a lot of cash they can just buy (or sue) governments into conforming to there demands such as searching devices at airports and borders. Forcing ISPs to begin censoring the internet in the name of economic gain.
Corporations having power is a big threat and is beginning to show that it is taking effect. take News Corp, in 2007 at the World Economic Forum Rupert Murdoch confessed (See: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0K2pLo8JV5Y) he used his news network to gain support for the Iraq War. Fox News take a right-wing bias and typically support a Republican candidate in the elections, this is been shown in the number lies made up by Fox News regarding the Democrat nominee Barack Obama. There has also been concerns highlighted in the award-winning film by Michael Moore Fahrenheit 9/11 of Fox News reporting of the 2000 Presidential Election. This kind of Corporations dictating the opinions of people during an election is of course dangerous and could great a environment of a dictatorship.
Newspapers have done this for years, take the Daily Mail which is heavily biased towards the right. The Independent is very much so towards the left and takes a liberal bias in its reporting. The Telegraph takes a quite conservative stance and is very traditional. The Guardian takes a very liberal stance and is a big on environmental topics. But with the advent of 24 hour news channels beamed into every home it makes voicing the opinions of a corporation much easier and much more effective.
0 comments:
Post a Comment