Ok I’ll admit it, I have illegally download music in the past. Although that isn’t really surprising for a 16 year old lad, or just about any teenager these days. To say that anyone who downloads music illegally is a thief then we have a generation of thieves on our hands, myself included.

Since around Christmas time I don’t actually think I’ve illegaly downloaded music unless I couldn’t actually buy it elsewhere. This is mainly because I discovered just how easy it is to buy songs from iTunes, literally just a click and buy. What’s even better though is the fact that I can also buy music from my iPod. Perfect. It’s not that I didn’t know how iTunes worked but more the fact I never realised how appealing the click buy system is.

I don’t agree that music sharing should stop completely becuase if it weren’t for music sharing then a lot of artists probaby wouldn’t get noticed to the level that they do. For example if you go to a gig where there’s an artist that formed in the 21st century, you’ll find that most of the people there first discovered the artist, not through buying their CD, but by searching Limewire or some other file sharing program. Seriously.

Digital Britain is clamping down on Internet piracy.

Internet Service Providers have been battling with sharers for the past 3 or 4 years but have hardly managed to dint sharing habits, of users. They’ve tried spying, cutting off and even sending threatening letters to innocent customers, none which have really worked. Digital Britain has proposed a new tactic though, slow down the speeds of repeat offenders so that downloading large amounts of music is difficult and lengthly. To be fair it’s a good idea in theory, but the choice between waiting a bit longer to download a song or spending a quid won’t really sway many users.

(more…)