Richard. It is wrong to download a digital copy…

But, and I think with thanks to everyones comments that I’m beginning to get my head around this, my point is that that is (right or wrong) the reality we are currently in. Isn’t the smarter option to try and find a way to get what we currently have to work?

Can I throw drugs back in the ring (not literally, you’d all be licking white powder of the carpet.. ugh). It’s fairly accepted, by those that have studied such things, that the more you try and surpress casual drug usage, the further underground it goes and the WORSE it becomes.

Rather than force downloaders to go to greater lengths (because they will as they have ‘established (in their own minds at least) a reason for doing what they do) why not work with them to find ways that work for most?

There will always be those who break laws, no matter how lax and free they are, but I’d warrant the majority of people are on the law-abiding side of things, even if they are in a grey area (if I can record a TV show onto DVD, and then rip that DVD to video file on my PC, why can’t I just skip the manual stage and download it… or is that manual stage my ‘payment’ for breaking the agreement?)

When I’m thinking about anything along these lines, I do tend to try and avoid the extreme cases – those people who wouldn’t dream of downloading anything illegally, and those who don’t blink an eyelid and will continue to find ways around any legal, or technology barriers.

For those of us in the middle then, to build on what Richard mentioned “downloading a digital copy of something that you may or may not pay for some time in the future is wrong” AT THE MOMENT. Surely this has to change in the future?

I’d also query the supposed moral right to download TV shows from the states, that may or may not be (eventually) broadcast in the UK some months later. For one thing, what if those programmes appeared in Britain on a premium channel that you don’t personally subscribe to?

I quite agree with the arguement that, as consumers, we should not be charged multiple times for the same content – and so, if we buy a CD or DVD, we should be allowed to make copies for our own personal use. But downloading a digital copy of something that you may or may not pay for some time in the future is wrong.

The TV people would say ‘no’, because you didn’t pay them to watch the show in the format or at the time they deemed suitable. It’s similar to the ridiculousness of commercial software: the consumer never actually pays for the software, they only pay for the licence to use the software. That doesn’t gel with the consumer’s mindset/the most generally accepted concept of ownership (ie I pay for a product, therefore the product is mine).

Yes, you are right to think that you’ve paid to watch Heroes because you pay a licence fee to the BBC and the BBC broadcasts it, but what’s really happening is that you’ve paid for the privilege of watching it only in that format and under those conditions, and no others. It’s the same reason why TV networks in the US tried to force TiVo to prohibit fast-forwarding through/cutting out commercials (did they succeed?), since for them it’s a condition of their content provision for the commercials to be forced on the viewer; in other words, if the viewer doesn’t see the ads, they haven’t paid for the ‘licence’ to view the show.

What makes a mockery of this attitude of the TV networks, of course, is the humble VCR (or these days, the DVD-R, I suppose). If the consumer is allowed to copy a broadcast, with ads removed if they choose, then they have in effect broken the ‘licence’. But of course there’s no punishment for it, because it was declared perfectly legal in the courts. As it should be!