Avast, piracy is a harsh mistress. At least that's what the movie and music industries want you to think. I'm not sure about the publishing industry, and I'm unaware of Penguin or Ladybird taking out lawsuits against file-sharing websites. You see, where the giants of media are concerned, it's a black and white world. They're brilliant shining forces for good, and anyone who so much as downloads one mp3 is a vile personification of evil. We ourselves are caught in the middle, but to the media world, we might as well be the shark from JAWS. 'It's really a miracle of evolution, all it does is eat, buy DVDs and CDs, and makes little sharks.'

And a legal pox against anyone who distributes copyrighted material online, as The Pirate Bay have found out. I've never used it myself, but it's one of the more popular Bit-Torrent search engines, and as such, is a big target for people such as Sony, Fox, BMG and the likes. As before, they're saying it's relatively clear-cut. Piracy=evil. And we're told thousands of times on the videos we watch, it funds organized crime. Because the 13 year-old who's just uploaded the new Kings of Leon album is clearly part of the cosa nostra.

I'm not denying there are groups out there which use piracy as a cashcrop for their criminal activities, it just seems an odd position to take when it's aimed a lot more at online piracy, which is less about terrorism, and more about saying 'hey, check this album out.'

I take a bit more issue with people distributing movies, specifically because they have been designed for the movie theater, for people to watch them on a sixty-foot screen in a huge auditorium with earth-shattering sound, as opposed to being cramped in front of your computer with your iPod headphones. The thing is, the cinema is expensive. Last time I went it was around £7.50. In this recessionist age, that's a lot of money to fork out for two hours of what a lot of the time amounts to big-budget drivel. And if you actually want to see a decent movie, chances are it'll be at the local multiplex for a week if you're lucky, so you have to pay more money to find an arthouse cinema that shows it, which will inevitably be severely out of your way. Rental is easier, but still, Blockbuster has killed all the small local stores, and Lovefilm NEVER sends you the title you want. Bottom line, I don't really support downloading movies.

Music is a whole new kettle of fish. We are usually told that downloaders are killing the music industry and taking valuable income from artists. Which, frankly, is a load of shit. The industry is killing itself by A: refusing to step into the digital generation without extreme control (i.e. DRM) and B: ridiculous price-fixing. We all know CDs don't cost a lot of money to make, so why am I asked to pay almost twenty pounds for some of them? More the point, if I download an album that is no longer commercially available, is that illegal? No one would get royalties if I paid £60 to someone on Ebay. Yet it won't be reissued because it's not "commercially viable" i.e. it's not mainstream crap that will storm the charts. We've been fucked in the ass for decades by the music industry over price fixing, and as the majors finally realize digital distribution is here to stay, they're no doubt rubbing their hands with glee over how much more they can charge us. 'No physical media, no packaging, yet we can still charge £13.99 and the fools will buy it!'

As for taking income from artists, I find it hard to believe that anything "pirated" is by anyone who is really struggling to pay bills. If you pirate a Coldplay album, it's not going to stop Chris Martin eating. It's more likely going to make him buy one less Lamborghini, or one less Tiffany's tiara for his humiliatingly-named daughter. Not to mention the fact that having more people exposed to your music, paid or not, will increase your incomings and popularity in the long run. Assuming you're not shit.

It just seems hypocritical. And the saddest thing is that we put up with it by buying CDs, which, by the way, I still do. It's just that I go to Ebay instead. I suggest you do too.