Ti segnalo l’ottimo articolo del giornalista Stuart Campbell sulla massiccia campagna anti-pirateria che affligge il pubblico inglese in questi giorni. Campbell suggerisce, credo correttamente, che la campagna non sia tanto rivolta ai pirati (se sono pirati, se ne fregano) quanto ai legislatori, in vista delle pesanti modifiche restrittive richieste alle leggi sul diritto d’autore. Molto significativo questo passaggio:
The leisure corporations are conducting, in fact, a war not against pirates, but on their own customers. For many years now, honest consumers paying full price for legitimate products have been saddled with crippled, inferior versions of what the pirate users get for free:
- Pirate users don’t have to keep their precious PC game discs spinning endlessly and noisily in the drive (and being subjected to repeated handling) while they play the game.
- Pirate users don’t have to sit through all those infuriatingly long, unskippable splash screens / trailers / adverts before they can watch the actual movie on their new DVD, while the poor saps who paid for it in a shop do.
- Pirate users don’t get their brand-new music CD home only to find that it won’t play in their computer because it’s been made in a non-standard-compliant “anti-piracy” format which prevents legitimate users from legally listening to music they’ve paid for.
- Pirate users can use their game consoles to play games originating from any country, while legitimate purchasers of, say, a game from Japan will be unable to play it on their legitimate, but UK-bought, Playstation 2.
- Pirate users don’t have to uninstall perfectly legal software applications from their PCs, or put up with the secret installation of damaging programs if they want to play their new games, unlike the unfortunate legitimate consumers..
And so on. But astoundingly, the entertainment business still doesn’t think it’s made life miserable enough for its honest, paying customers.
Grazie a WebMink per la dritta.