Indeed. It brings us back to the whole "orphaned works" issue. I make music, but the BPI isn't going to fight MY corner if someone rips off MY stuff. Why not? Because it isn't making money, yet the companies it represents (and others) want to use my stuff for free, because it isn't "officially" registered as copyright. I've done the whole "mail it to yourself recorded delivery" thing, and that is enough as it stands, but if these arseholes get their way, well, let's just say that Tom from Myspace will lose one of his friends
It kills me that privacy is only sacrecanct when it is commercially viable to be. Ultimately it solves nothing, Files will continue to be shared, music will continue to get steadily worse, legal downloads will continue to slap a ball and chain on their users with DRM, and the RIAA and BPI will continue to whine.
Music sales have been in steady decline since the early 90's, it's just that now the industry has an easy scapegoat. It is estimated (by the BPI themselves) that there are 6.5 million P2P users in the UK ALONE. So, if at the end of this 10 week campaign there have been 6,500 letters issued, that's 0.1% of the problem solved. Then, of course, if you watched the first video clip, there is the issue of plausible deniability, so it isn't even that much. It might scare a few people off, but it hasn't worked in the US so far.
