Simulated Brief: More research...

In July's issue of .net magazine, it states that the founders of Pirate Bay were sentanced "to a year in prison and a £2.4million fine for infringing copyright". The entertainment industry hoped that this would cause shockwaves throughout the world of illegal downloading. However similar high profile cases "simply made illegal downloading harder to trace, harder to prosecute and harder to stop". It concludes suspecting that this court case won't have much impact on the wider issue of piracy and that sites such as Spotify and Google may be next in the firing line.

Rory Standley's (a reader) response to the above article in issue 192 of .net magazine suggests that "the music industry seems to have adapted to this very well. Has anyone noticed the many new festivals and such renewed emphasis on live performance?"
This is a good point and he goes on to say that artists even encourage the sharing of their music.

On page 19 of the same issue Gary Marshall delivers an extrememly sceptical but amusing arguement where he says "This is a very special arse[...]it's this arse from which the copyright industries pull figures when they're talking about piracy. It's the arse that decided illegal downloading costs the UK economy £12billion a year". Its interesting to see another perspective on the issue and one that is quite possibly shared by the illegal downloader. In this artical he admits that he has downloaded illegally but argues that not every illegally downloaded file is a direct loss to the industry. Many people download a song to see if they like the track enough to buy an album.