Blurred Keys

Osama bin Laden’s deputy
blamed Tony Blair’s foreign policy for the London bomb attacks in a
video broadcast today and warned of "more destruction" to come - the Guardian

Tony Blair recently denied any connection, Blurred Keys is pretty saddened to say whom
we trust on this one. How can any one trust what the PM now says?

Also on Guardian Unlimited, Ken Livingstone on ‘Three ways to make us all safer‘ - support the police, treat Muslims with respect, and pull out of Iraq. Livingstone, now there’s someone we want to vote for.

[Edit: take the word 'latest' out, and it's fine...] With Google’s feature, Google Alerts, users can track the most recent ‘relevant’ Google search results and news, and with an account, you can use ‘managed’ alerts. The company suggests some applications - "monitoring a developing news story", "keeping current on a competitor or industry", "getting the latest on a celebrity or event", "keeping tabs on your favourite sports team", and err, stalking, or spying on people’s web presence, Blurred Keys guesses. 

The latest edition of Murdock’s trilling read, ‘the Sunday Times’, features Sir Tony O’Reilly implying that there is some kind of conspiracy to defraud the newspaper industry, saying there is a need for action over copyright theft on the internet in which newspapers are the victims.

“I can see the newspaper industry getting together the same way as the recording industry got together, except in a more effective way,” O’Reilly told the Sunday Times.

O’Reilly is chief executive of Independent News & Media who publish Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Belfast Telegraph, Evening Herald, Sunday World the Star and a number of regional papers  – they also own titles in New Zealand, United Kingdom, South Africa, and India. According to the company’s website, they operate “over 70 on-line editorial and classified sites”. (In addition, O’Reilly is chairperson of Waterford Wedgwood, and Eircom.) 

Video advert for ‘24′ DVD on Times Online - can print newspapers do that?

O’Reilly went on to attack the internet as an advertisement medium, saying that some things aren’t suitable to advertise online. Really? What exactly? While at the Sunday Times website Blurred Keys was entertained by advertisements for cars, DVDs, holidays, online poker, along with branding for insurance. A quick look at the Indo’s site gives advertisements for mortgages, Tesco, and motor insurance. The advert for the DVD box set of the TV program ‘24′ on Times Online was a video (pictured above) - can newspapers do that?

In further outburst of conservatism, and a dig at blogs, Sir Tony states “You can trust newspaper writers. Can you trust a blogger?” – well sir, Blurred Keys trusts some blogs a hell of a lot more then we trust newspapers linked to certain people.

Napster - the original face of illegal downloading, now turned legal.

Most ‘illegal downloaders’ are among the industries’ best customers, or so it seems…

Before recently Blurred Keys hadn’t much concrete to go on, but as it turns out the feedback we have got in the past from the majority of downloaders of music, games, films, and TV programs, is probably a correct view of the real situation. In that ‘illegal downloaders’ also buy loads of DVDs, CDs, concert tickets, and cinema tickets, they watch TV, listen to radio, and frequent establishments which pay royalties - all adding up to the fact that most are the industries’ best customers.

A new research backs this up – “According to the 2005 Speakerbox survey, people who share or download music from illegal sites spend up to four times as much on legitimate music sites than other music fans” - electricnews.net.

That’s not to say there aren’t people who will download illegally and never pay a penny for music, there are. But the overall impact of P2P downloading is grossly being exaggerated by the concerned industries.

A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development agrees, “Digital music piracy is acknowledged as a problem by the OECD but the report cites other factors — such as the rise in the number of entertainment sources — as being more likely to have had a significant impact on music sales” - electricnews.net.

If you were to believe a lot of the downloaders, P2P actually has increased their spend on music, and other entertainment. For others, their media consumption just far outweighs what they can afford and this is partly backed by the rise in the number of entertainment sources, as cited by the OECD.

It’s also as well to point out, in past years where the music industry were shooting about the decline in sales, but unlike the US, CD sales were actually up in Ireland – or so claimed the Irish Times’ ‘the Ticket’ supplement. In addition France, Germany, Japan, and the UK also “experienced steady or growing CD sales”, according to an ElectricNews.net article. Meanwhile going wildly unchanged, the word of the reverent industries is accepted as fact by a worrying amount of journalists.