Openly and PM'ing links to illicit RU sites

Like in music, the internet has the opportunity to rip off the artists and companies. OK the companies have behaved contemptuously historically, but we have paid for it by a decade of pretty much dire music. blah. same with film. blah. same with tv. blah.

Cricket. Internationally a lesser sport than RU but massively greater in terms of global interest is under great threat by illicit sites where more than 50% of its viewers do so illegally.

Personally I would love rugby to be bombed back into the stone age era of pre-sponsorship and sides playing in just plain rugby shirts and players engaging in the sport for the love of it.

Don't worry. I'll be dead soonish...

So far (at time of post) round about 60 people have read this post and have said nothing.

Reminds me of the outcry against easy credit before the banking crash.

Portnoy wrote:Like in music, the internet has the opportunity to rip off the artists and companies. OK the companies have behaved contemptuously historically, but we have paid for it by a decade of pretty much dire music. blah. same with film. blah. same with tv. blah.

Cricket. Internationally a lesser sport than RU but massively greater in terms of global interest is under great threat by illicit sites where more than 50% of its viewers do so illegally.

Personally I would love rugby to be bombed back into the stone age era of pre-sponsorship and sides playing in just plain rugby shirts and players engaging in the sport for the love of it.

Don't worry. I'll be dead soonish...

I don't buy your argument. There's been some fantastic music released in the last decade. Are you making the mistake of expecting it to be produced by the bland homogenous megalithic record labels? Frankly the sooner they all disappear and stop peddling their transparently manufactured, product placed and demographically refined twadlle the better.

Similarly Hollywood can go bite one as far as I'm concerned.

The only artists who are complaining about the revolution that is the break up of the media marketing monopolies are those who have no actual independently marketable talent. Those who do are largely embracing the immediacy of their audience.

So if the public can view rugby for free what will be the consequence? The various regional monopolies will be broken up, the vast sums of money flowing to blazered directors of clubs will cease, players will stop treating the game as some kind of publicity circus in which things as fundamental as their national identity are merely tradable commodities, the best coverage will be free to air, the people showing up will be interested in rugby, the players will be interested in playing rugby....sorry but I fail to see the down side. Is that your point? I was a little bit confused by your trailing paragraph.

Frankly if all the middle men, and crony capitalists in this world with grotesquely over-inflated opinions of their own value in a process to which they add precisely nothing, were stuck onto a large spaceship and jetosoned into space, we'd all be a lot better off. Literally and figuratively, possible metaphorically and pscyhologically as well.

miteyironpaw wrote:

Portnoy wrote:Like in music, the internet has the opportunity to rip off the artists and companies. OK the companies have behaved contemptuously historically, but we have paid for it by a decade of pretty much dire music. blah. same with film. blah. same with tv. blah.

Cricket. Internationally a lesser sport than RU but massively greater in terms of global interest is under great threat by illicit sites where more than 50% of its viewers do so illegally.

Personally I would love rugby to be bombed back into the stone age era of pre-sponsorship and sides playing in just plain rugby shirts and players engaging in the sport for the love of it.

Don't worry. I'll be dead soonish...

I don't buy your argument. There's been some fantastic music released in the last decade. Are you making the mistake of expecting it to be produced by the bland homogenous megalithic record labels? Frankly the sooner they all disappear and stop peddling their transparently manufactured, product placed and demographically refined twadlle the better.

Similarly Hollywood can go bite one as far as I'm concerned.

The only artists who are complaining about the revolution that is the break up of the media marketing monopolies are those who have no actual independently marketable talent. Those who do are largely embracing the immediacy of their audience.

So if the public can view rugby for free what will be the consequence? The various regional monopolies will be broken up, the vast sums of money flowing to blazered directors of clubs will cease, players will stop treating the game as some kind of publicity circus in which things as fundamental as their national identity are merely tradable commodities, the best coverage will be free to air, the people showing up will be interested in rugby, the players will be interested in playing rugby....sorry but I fail to see the down side. Is that your point? I was a little bit confused by your trailing paragraph.

Frankly if all the middle men, and crony capitalists in this world with grotesquely over-inflated opinions of their own value in a process to which they add precisely nothing, were stuck onto a large spaceship and jetosoned into space, we'd all be a lot better off. Literally and figuratively, possible metaphorically and pscyhologically as well.

It may be the closet socialist in me - but i couldn't agree more.

In about 24 years time 2 billion people will be watching rugby streaming to their tablet for 50cents per game.
The big media companies will not be getting any/much of it.
Fans will be happier
Players will still be handsomely rewarded for their toil
Welsh and English fans will be sniping at each other.
ABs will win their 3rd world cup

When some underground rugby teams start distributing their games for free on the internet will we all start watching them instead of the 6 nations?

nganboy wrote:In about 24 years time 2 billion people will be watching rugby streaming to their tablet for 50cents per game.
The big media companies will not be getting any/much of it.
Fans will be happier
Players will still be handsomely rewarded for their toil
Welsh and English fans will be sniping at each other.
ABs will win their 3rd world cup

I think we can get all that done in 4 years time ngan. Well. 3 now...

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:When some underground rugby teams start distributing their games for free on the internet will we all start watching them instead of the 6 nations?

Way to misunderstand the metaphor PSW!

Portnoy,

I suppose worst case scenario, if left unchecked it could lead to a lot of rugby matches coming off the telly.

Another question, why do you want to see a return to amateur rugby? Is it mere personal preference, a case of "things were better in my day" or is there some aspect of the game that demands it in your opinion.

The biggest problem with Pro rugby is the way we stumbled in to it - so it is still rather diorganised. Other than that what we have now is far better than the shamateurism of days of yore.

One of my favourite players is Peter Winterbottom. When he first played for England he was a yorkshire farmer playing for Headingley. I think it was after the 83 Lions tour when he played in NZ club rugby for a season ( a well remunerated season) and then played at Quins who found him a "job" at a city stock brokers. Only at the beginning of his career was he a true amateur.

How about Jason Leonard? Initially self-employed he was often unable to work on a Monday and Tuesday due to the effects of a weekend match. His love of teh game was costing him his health and his wealth - until he too joined Quins.

Rugby in Ireland is unrecognisable since professionalism.

We have had 83,000 people at a Leinster v Munster match. At least once a season we were get 50,000 to see the provinces play a match.

It generates massive money in terms of merchandise, tickets etc. I really think Munster Rugby is one of the biggest industries in Limerick.

I work for a 100% rugby dedicated company - 20 years ago there isn't a chance I could have worked full time in such a job.

Got any jobs going Stag???!

miteyironpaw wrote:

Portnoy wrote:Like in music, the internet has the opportunity to rip off the artists and companies. OK the companies have behaved contemptuously historically, but we have paid for it by a decade of pretty much dire music. blah. same with film. blah. same with tv. blah.

Cricket. Internationally a lesser sport than RU but massively greater in terms of global interest is under great threat by illicit sites where more than 50% of its viewers do so illegally.

Personally I would love rugby to be bombed back into the stone age era of pre-sponsorship and sides playing in just plain rugby shirts and players engaging in the sport for the love of it.

Don't worry. I'll be dead soonish...

I don't buy your argument. There's been some fantastic music released in the last decade. Are you making the mistake of expecting it to be produced by the bland homogenous megalithic record labels? Frankly the sooner they all disappear and stop peddling their transparently manufactured, product placed and demographically refined twadlle the better.

Similarly Hollywood can go bite one as far as I'm concerned.

The only artists who are complaining about the revolution that is the break up of the media marketing monopolies are those who have no actual independently marketable talent. Those who do are largely embracing the immediacy of their audience.

+1 and couldn't agree more

If you think about it, maybe there was only a 60 year period in human history where loads of musicians could become multi-millionaires off record sales. Before the record was invented they had to just travel around playing their tunes and making a living, comparable to everyone else. Now the internet seems to making records and cd's worthless. Maybe soon playing live music is how musicians will have to make their money, once again. And the musicians of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's were just lucky.

History is repetitive and never forget that the hippies of the 60s are the big conglomerate heads of today. Stamping down the little free-thought, no-copyright, don't-bug-me man downloading guy who smokes his secret-behind-his-parent's-back 'rebel' root. The ex-hippie is the oppressive 'big business' guru who screws the common small-man to pay for helipads, penthouses and world class professional women.......!

And so to today - the present 'hippies'; the little bedroom illegal-downloading boys with their guitars, their riffs, their real bedroom revolution music, their soulful singing and their hacked collection of corporate music and movies (they don't hack each other's creative drivel btw!!! No, it's the stuff they say is the commercial crud that they want to download for free )
- well, some of them will become bedroom successes. That'll transmute into post-computer-nerd success, that'll transmit into commercial demand and sponsor money chasing that demand, that'll transmit into new companies designed to appeal to the 'rebel downloaders' market from whence came our illustrious little singer; and those companies will finally be headed by the bedroom 'free-download rights' boys who have grown up, learned a few lessons in money making, stamped a few heavy lawsuits on some bedroom geek downloaders, floated their companies on the suits and grey skies big markets, made a trillion dollars and are strictly non-smokers as it ruins the plastic face-surgery......

History repeats. Never think you're cooler than the big corporate guy in the suit - more often than not, he was once you.

nostalgia just isnt what it used to be!!!!

Ah, but you're looking at it with rose tinted testicles.

I don’t get the point of this thread.

I read:

Music – bad
Cricket – “under threat”
Rugby – I wish it was amateur

The times will always move, and as long as companies try to hold people to ransom over their passion, be it music or sport, others will find a way to circumvent the rules. Long may it continue.

The problem is Mikado that as long as people find a way to circumvent the rules and there's enough people doing it then the companies will change the rules/playing fields and always find a way to make money from it.

Yes and no Smirnoff – lets say I fancy downloading an album, if it’s U2 then they don’t need the money, I can find 100s of places to download the album illicitly if I want. Then I can throw it onto my iPhone and nobody knows the difference. Same with a movie, I can watch Lord Of the Rings in full glorious HD with included extras all for nout. Yes the music labels and movie studios can furrow their brows and warn of court dates for everyone, but it would cost them more money than their worth to put everyone who downloads a dodgy file in court. People win!

But then you download the album -you and millions of other people use the same site - PirateBay, the big corporate men close down PirateBay and also set up a subsiduary that allows you to download albums/films for small amounts of money and get things like exclusive trailers, interviews, extras or unreleased songs and such stuff.

But the main way the big corporate compnaies are making money is that they know it's difficult/impossible to stop downloading music, but they also know that any artist they back is going to get heard by a much larger audience - a huge amount of people because people will hear it for free (illegal downloading, youtube, myspace, internet radio) and they also know lots of these people will want to see the best bands live - so they treble the admin fees for live gigs and double the cost of tickets. While getting the artists to play more gigs - and encouraging any band whose ever split up (and their members are still alive) to reform without bringing out any new material = instant and low investment cash cow.

I suggest the number of controlled pre-release versions of major hollywood movies or hard worked studio releases that fall into pirate hands through anything other than incompetence, greed and laziness is very small.

If the very companies who complain about these devious and resourceful pirates allowed material to actually be released on its actual official release date and sell on it's merits (something they are clearly terrified of) then I suspect 99% of the "problem" would go away.

They have to know that when they're massively distributing hundreds of advance copies that somewhere in their own distribution network there will be a weak link. i.e. the guy they pay sweet schelack all to and yet believe should have maximum loyalty to the company.

Very true, and if it ultimately leads to people seeing more live music then that’s all the better.

I take your point about bands being reformed and over exposed too.

I’m not sure we were disagreeing at all there.

To be honest back before I was born people had worked out ways of buying cheap cassettes and recording a record (loaned from the library or borrowed from a friend) onto them. Then the CD came out and folks found ways of copying them and giving them to friends. THen MP3 and the internet came out and people found ways of sharing the music that way. That will happen even if you shut down all the internet, as you can illegally share music by allowing someone else to rip a CD you own etc etc.

As for rugby, there are some folk who watch matches that are on sky etc on the internet, however there are thousands of fans who turn up to watch matches in prerson. Also I have watched a match online (Ulster v Scarlets, BBC NI on the beeb site) and must be honest I wish i had not bothered it was blocky and hard to make out who was who (players not teams).

My mate has a sky subscription, he gave me his sky go password and I can watch every match they show (except the ones on the red button) in perfect clarity. It doesn’t cost me anything or him any more than he pays now. Since every match that I can’t be at is on some tv channel I’m all set, but nothing beats going to see it live.

Mikado - Apologies wasn't trying to disagree with you and I love live music - the reason I brought it up though was that less that 10 years ago I could go and see lots of different bands for £12 in Cardiff students union or the Welsh Club/Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff, or around £20 in the CIA/Bristol Carling Academy and slightly more in London venues, now you're lucky to pay £35 for a pretty low demand gig in the CIA and can pay anywhere up to £70 in the CIA to see a popular act (or a middle of the road appeal to everyone act depending on your point of view).

A lot of this money goes nowhere near the artist, and Ticketmaster and LiveNation take huge cuts (particularly with their £7 admin and booking fees) of any tickets sold. So it's not benefiting the artists or the fans just the fat cats - this is one reason why Wales tickets are so pricey as all tickets are sold through Ticketmaster

Leinster tickets are sold through them too. They’re known as ticketbastard on the Leinster fan site

Thats good Mikado - seems you have the best of all worlds 1.you go to as many live games as you can 2. you don't miss the ones you can't go to, 3. you don't need to put up with blocky streams and most importantly 4. you're ripping off Murdoch and keeping money out of his pocket!

Mickado wrote:Leinster tickets are sold through them too. They’re known as ticketbastard on the Leinster fan site

+1

Mickado wrote:Yes and no Smirnoff – lets say I fancy downloading an album, if it’s U2 then they don’t need the money, I can find 100s of places to download the album illicitly if I want. Then I can throw it onto my iPhone and nobody knows the difference. Same with a movie, I can watch Lord Of the Rings in full glorious HD with included extras all for nout. Yes the music labels and movie studios can furrow their brows and warn of court dates for everyone, but it would cost them more money than their worth to put everyone who downloads a dodgy file in court. People win!

But Mikado if you work in a factory making.......................well, iPhones. iPhones being bought (money changing hands) means you get to keep your job and can therefore afford the next incarnation of the iPhone, when it inevitably shows itself.

Now let's say a new movement of 'back-of-the-van' starts up where theft is seen as some kind of anti-Capitalist, anti-corrupt-big-business, human-rights, coloured wrist-band sort of thing...ie, cool with the in-kids. And they start collecting their free iPhones from the back-of-the-van.

The company you work for loses profit, you lose a job .....and...... most important of all, you have no more brand new latest-version iPhones showing up from the cool street-movement vans. Source dries up.

So what do you have? The back-of-the-van mob cheer that a big World Oppressive monolithic company has fallen into ruin but still want to keep their street cred. So they start giving out some generic trash phone made in Mongolia. No it doesn't work all the time but who cares - it's revolution, man.


I'm not against the notion of people trying to get things for nothing - Sales are a prime example of when people rush out to get nothing for little or nothing! But I'm totally against many of the faux reasons this generation uses for wanting their something for nothing. 'Yeah man, big business against us, screwing us, charging to much, save the trees, save the whale, CND, etc, etc.'

No - it's simply that something is always sweeter to the senses when nothing is paid for it.

Fly, if every record company went belly up tomorrow, there would be just as much music as there ever was.

I don't buy your argument. There's been some fantastic music released in the last decade. Are you making the mistake of expecting it to be produced by the bland homogenous megalithic record labels? Frankly the sooner they all disappear and stop peddling their transparently manufactured, product placed and demographically refined twadlle the better.

You'd be suprised just how many of those bland megalithic record labels help fund/part or fully own the smaller 'underground' labels. Best trick in the book no one thinks the band has sold out and that they are the next best thing come from nothing but it was a cheap punt through a major record companies little sister company that selected them from the crowd.

Maybe soon playing live music is how musicians will have to make their money, once again. And the musicians of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's were just lucky..

The best artists (well in my opinion anyway) still do. Hence why places like Rock City in Nottingham, Corporation in Sheffield etc still have bands on every weekend before their club nights. It's also why musical festivals continue to grow in the UK.

Apologise if I strayed massively from the original point. Streaming live sport is becomming every more popular and Sky offer it. If I'd bother to subscribe and I was away from home and had my trusty laptop I could log on and watch live sport straight from Sky Sports 1 or 2. Yes some illegal sites will stream it as well but there's always been that level of counter fit industry lurking behind the legal industry supplying to those who won't pay full price.

Mickado wrote:Fly, if every record company went belly up tomorrow, there would be just as much music as there ever was.

How many jobs does one movie give? One Hollywood movie. You can count them at the end but I won't be hanging around waiting for you to end!

That's work... that's their living. That's mortgages and kids and pensions and food on tables. People might try to invent fancy reasons why movies are expensive to produce and then expensive to buy. So? Yeah they are because they give that much work. Hundreds and hundreds of names in the credits.

Everyone who doesn't want to keep all those people employed still wants to keep their own job. The question is so what then makes your job so special? Do you offer a service? Do you sell stocks? Do you produce a product? Not personally asking you those questions Mikado, but I'm saying that's the legitimate question thrown at the guy who says he doesn't want to pay for something because the methods behind its creation is anti-people.

So the music is fine - the guys can perform on street corners and pick up the money there. So what about everything else? Where do the animation artists go? Where do the costume designers on big movies go? To hell with them folks, they should have been musicians.

Oh come on. Titanic made nearly 2 billion quid in the box office. A VAST amount of movie revenue comes from cinema receipts. How was any movie studio able to stay open before VHS sales became a reliable source of income?

I still go to the cinema, I just don't buy DVDs. I also buy music by the way, I was speaking hypothetically earlier. Also I subscribe to Netflix.

Not saying 'don't be bold and buy'. Your choice. People's choice. Wasn't even directing my initial comments at you personally but to the general idea doing the rounds here that 'not paying' is some form of human right, and because the big corrupt bad men are annoyed, that virtually guarantees it's legit. Or in other words, downloading is a political tool used to punish big business.

Rubbish as an argument is all I'm saying. Downloading is legit because it feels good getting something for nothing - not having to pay. That's the only reason out there. My comments weren't directed at you or your habits, Mikado - I was just using communication with you to discuss the arguments on the thread.

Understood Fly, I've taken your comments in the context they were intended.

I agree with you to a point though, it's like the dope who were looting in London and came out with comments like "we're getting our taxes back". What I don't like is how big companies just pish themselves when they start losing money and threaten everyone with a court date.