The Pirate at Bay

I woke up this morning to the BBC World News service announcing a court decision against a file-sharing website called the Pirate Bay (http://thepiratebay.org/). The Swedish owners of the site have been sentenced to a year in jail and an enormous fine.

I confess I had never heard of this website before so I checked it out. Although the site itself does not contain any material that infringes anybody's copyright, it is certainly guilty of aiding and abetting such abuse.

The Pirate Bay uses the bit torrent file sharing protocol that enhances download speeds and file availability by employing a network of user's sites as download sources.

The same file-sharing protocol is used by a service called UK Nova that I have been recommending as a source for downloading British TV shows.

There is some very intelligent discussion on the UK Nova discussion forums about the Pirate Bay legal decision. One contributor offered verifiable statistics to support the notion that peer-to-peer file-sharing runs hand-in-hand with an increase in the entertainment industry's revenues.

I am inclined to support the idea that file-sharing is an opportunity to level the playing field and allow less-well-known entertainers to gain an audience that is denied to them by the mainstream entertainment industry.

Should we shed a crocodile tear for multi-millionaire movie and rock stars who plead that file-sharing is unfair to them? My eyes are dry.

Whatever your opinions are, make the most of services like UK Nova while you still can!