UK record lobby wants Pirate Party to shut down its Pirate Bay proxy

The BPI -- the UK version of the RIAA -- got the courts to order the UK's ISPs to censor requests to The Pirate Bay. The UK Pirate Party set up a proxy in anticipation of the order. Now the BPI has demanded that they shut it down. Word is that the news of the national censorship of TPB drove titanic amounts of UK traffic to the site. Will the current round do the same?

• [James Holden]

  Don’t they know there are hundreds of TPB proxies? They’re also really easy to set up for anyone with a modest amount of sysadmin skills and a cheap VPS. I shall await my BPI letter.

  • [Ashen Victor]

     Shhhhhhh! Don’t tell em!
    They are better living in sheer ignorance.

• [Pat Buckley]

  Put – up a wall , and a gate will be built !

• [Chris Morse]

  actually, properly laughed out loud.
  best opportunity for a [slowClap] evar

• [HubrisSonic]

  and I DEMAND that the closing of the RIAA.  #whatarewe5?

• [peterblue11]

  …and I want them dinosaurs to stop breathing….

• [annoyingmouse]

  I read a classy one from the BPI yesterday.  For anyone who doesn’t know, the BPI (along with ERA) also operate The Official Charts Company in the UK, which does the pretty self-explanatory job of officially doing sales charts.  One would imagine that the purpose – in fact, possibly sole purpose – of such a company would be to promote the most popular music (& etc.) in the country every week and to encourage friendly competitiveness amongst the people the BPI claim to represent.  i.e. The ultimate aim of their charts, one would presume, is to increase sales for the artists (aka the folk, talented or otherwise, who do the real work).  Sadly the Official Charts Company (and therefore the BPI) don’t really seem to see it this way. 

  Now many of you might have come across various wikipedia pages (and by various I mean thousands) that conveniently link to a site called chartstats as a source for all those interesting “oh so that song made it to number 73 in October 1976″ pieces of trivia that we all love (don’t lie, you do).  Chartstats.com is a listing of chart archives that does nothing more than list lists published by the OCC – lists that, as I’ve mentioned, were presumably solely put out to promote sales for the BPI/OCC/Artists.  The website doesn’t have adverts and is non-commercial but that hasn’t stopped the powers that be stepping in and saying “we’ll have none of that sort of free promotion round here.  Move along!”.  http://www.chartstats.com has an explanation for those interested but basically the site that used to have all sorts of amazingly detailed charts and graphs covering their archives of every weekly chart since its inception has been gutted to the point that it only has the most basic information now (peak positions and number of charted weeks, I believe).  Probably shouldn’t shock anyone that even this skeletal setup still has far more information that the OCC’s abysmal site, which barely covers basic information except to link to this weeks songs on itunes and amazon (oh and by the way, BPI, way to offer variety there to help the shops and other official online channels you claim to support!) but not much more and certainly nothing, and I mean nothing, to encourage sales.

  Well, done BPI, another brilliant victory for you guys in your campaign towards becoming completely and utterly obsolete.

  • [ocatagon]

     Unfortunately, charting music and movies has only encouraged people to view it as a sporting event where art can only wins or lose. People buy into the winners whether they actually like it or not, and are discouraged from actually liking something that loses. Charting does a serious disservice to art.

• [peregrinus]

  It might be amorphous, it might be self-replicating, it might evolve faster than we think, but damnit!  If we work 24/7, if we snort enough coke,  we can BEAT THIS THING!

  Now where the fuck is my minidisc player?  I’ve got Madonna’s latest studio cuts on there.  Who moved my fucking minidisc player?!  Jesus Christ you can’t get the people, you fucking bunch of WANKERS!  And where’s my poster campaign?  Huh?  What??  Digi-fucking nothing people don’t respond to that ok fuck!

  You all talk like you know something, anything about this business and are so INNOCENT of how this is all done jesus where’re my cigs christ i need a line but fuck!  where’s donna that new receptionist she looks good for a  shag on a friday don’t tell the missus she wouldn’t understand and what?  what?  what??

  … where’s my fucking minidisc?!

  • [Jake Rennie]

    Dictated but not read.

• [Xploder]

  One word: PEERBLOCK…

  sheesh