[Free-sklyarov-uk] "Attack of the Cyber Pirates" - first impressions

[Robert Elliott]

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Quoth Alan Carter on Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 11:37:26PM +0100:
> The pirates they showed didn't strike me as very positive models at
> all.  I don't think the DJs did much to endear themselves to the
> general public, and the girl who spent =A3100 a month on music wasn't
> given much of a chance to emphasize that.  However, the guy from Public
> Enemy, and the film producer, both came across very well. =20

Personally, I thought the woman who spend UKP100/month on music was more th=
an
adqueately represented; the fact was mentioned a couple of times. Chuck D.
acquitted himself and his point of view very well; I thought he was probably
the most coherent interviewee on the programme.

> Even so, I
> don't think it was enough.  The good publicity from those two was
> barely adequate to make up for the bad publicity I believe the portayal
> of the DJs will have generated.  Having the Intel person take a stand
> against mandatory copy protection was also encouraging, and perhaps
> more convincing than the other pro-sharing accounts as he came across
> very professionally and what he said was plausilbe, even if he didn't
> have much of a chance to back it up.

The DJs were unquestionably portrayed as dicks; I suspect it was a fair
portrayal. However, the Universal guy more than made up for for their
inadequacies; I doubt many people would take his arguments seriously. And
given the frequency with which he popped up, that's a fair amount of time
taken from pro-DRM peole who'd othewise have made more rational arguments.=
=20

> The only one who really hinted at
> the music industry's desire to curb the freedom of all music listeners,
> not just pirates, was the manic Universal guy; the others were a bit
> quiet about copy protected CDs breaking iMacs.  I believe the program
> was biased against our cause and didn't cover some of the most
> important issues.  No mention was made of the negative aspects of copy
> protected CDs, and the recent/coming changes to the law were hardly
> discussed.

Any one of us on this list could've made more cogent arguments. However, we=
're
not documentary makers. I suspect that any programme which tries to be
balanced is inevitably going to be interpreted by *both* sides as biased. T=
he
programme was only about half an hour long, remember. That's not nearly
enough time to present every argument by both sides.
=20
> Now, Pete Waterman...this one really annoys me...
Actually I thought Pete was nearly as bad as the guy from Universal; he
rambled a bit, said nothing that others hadn't already. A bit of an irrelev=
ent
contribution I thought. I'd say that the only reason he was there was that
he's the only one the audience might have heard of.

All in all, I thought that it was a balanced programme.

robert
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|Robert Elliott           | 10 let a$ =3D"just another BASIC hacker"       =
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