Bewildered UK media are way behind the times with Pirate Bay ruling

In their coverage of the Pirate Bay story on Monday, the Metro included this sentence in isolation: “The music industry currently loses billions every year as a result of music piracy.” It is this kind of misinformed, lazy journalism that keeps the majority of consumers in the dark about copyright and piracy. Like the greedy copyright bigwigs, too many people are simply failing to comprehend that a freely downloaded album or movie does not equate to a lost sale. In fact, in what I would say is most cases; someone who downloads something ‘illegally’ would not necessarily have gone out and paid full-whack for the product if that was their only option.

There is nothing the governments of the world can do to stop people sharing copyright material freely online. Instead, companies need to start offering alternatives to rival the convenience free downloads provide. Imagine this scenario – you want to watch a certain movie one night, or get some new music for a long drive. Do you travel to HMV, pay £12 for a CD or DVD (with most of that money going to anyone but the artist), order from Amazon and wait three days, or do you pop onto Pirate Bay and have it ready to go within the hour? Even iTunes makes the process of buying music far more difficult and inconvenient than it needs to be – locking your legitimately bought files to use with only their own products in Apple’s typically paranoid style.

The Pirate Bay is the most popular ‘BitTorrent’ site in the world – hosting millions of links to freely download any music, movie, video game or software you could ever hope for. Now one of the top 100 visited sites in the world, it is a glorious example of human freedom and sharing. So predictably, along came the High Court to attempt to block UK internet users from accessing the site by June. Exasperatingly, this is the kind of action they and the major label bosses still believe will actually curb piracy and revive the music industry. They are wrong, of course; the following day Pirate Bay revealed plans to change the way it operates to escape this ruling having any effect. 

Emerging from these recent debates is the idea that in this digital age we as consumers now hold the power – a few corporate bigwigs can no longer bully and control us into paying over the odds for a product the artist sees a minimal return from. Major music labels are rightly very worried, but their haphazard thought processes in combating piracy are only making things worse. 

Throughout society there remains a devastating ignorance on the subject of piracy, thanks largely to consumers being brainwashed by poor journalism such as the Metro’s on Monday. If more people can realise this, and not just assume that breaking copyright law is inherently ‘wrong’, we can speed up this shift in power. It is time to start celebrating freedom, sort out the messy legalities in a mature and reasonable way and stop the corporate bullies’ wallets growing ever fatter.

My favourite and least favourite PC games of 2011

Favourites - in no particular order

Batman: Arkham City - such a slick game, probably the most impressive of the year.

Battlefield 3 - the single player wasn't much more than a tech demo, but the multiplayer has improved well over Bad Company 2.

Dead Island - a real surprise package. Was it going to be a clone of Dead Rising (which I don't enjoy) or Left 4 Dead? Turns it out was a weird but fascinating blend of the two.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Did a good job of living up to the name. Just a shame it had to be consolified in many ways, otherwise it could have been amazing.

Driver: San Francisco - this is the game that got the biggest grin out of me this year. Solid, smooth and enjoyable with a very clever gameplay innovation in Shift.

LIMBO - this is the best indie game of the year, and probably the most intriguing I've ever played.

Portal 2 - Delightful entertainment.

Least favourite

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Quite possibly the most boring game I have ever played. All hell broke loose, and I yawned.

Crysis 2 - The game actually has fun multiplayer, and the single player has lots of positives, but I was devastated when I clocked on to the fact that you can stroll past all the enemies in cloak mode, even on hard difficulty. One of the worst flaws I've ever experienced in a game.

Homefront - A pointless, shameless game

Red Faction: Armageddon - Worst possible way to build on Guerrilla, swapping open-world for linear caves.

I have yet to play LA Noire and Saints Row The Third...

Burial/Four Tet/Thom Yorke - Text 010

What an exciting collaboration this is. When artists come together to form a supergroup like this, the results aren't always as amazing as expected. In the track below, they really are. You can hear the workings of all three artists weaving together with lush results. I'm now dreaming of an album by this lot, maybe with Flying Lotus thrown in for good measure.