Lost Time

Due to a combination of generally not having enough time, leaving my flash disk at home, and leaving my laptop at work, I haven't written anything here since, oh I don't know when. So below is what happened on 3-4 July. I have stuff to tell you about the weekend, but it's still in my head.

3 July

There is a crisis in our house. We've run out of rice. In normal houses this wouldn't be a big issue, but in an East-West fusion family, it presents a problem. I made spaghetti bolognese last night, No need for rice there. I don't know what is going to happen tonight. It's really very worrying. Incidentally, I gave myself first degree burns while stirring up the sauce last night.

I read something yesterday about gang culture being a substitute for family culture. It was the opinion of a senior policeman and it was written in response to the horrifying number of knife crimes that have recently been reported. It made sense to me, and I dont very often say that about anything said by a policeman. The theory is that more children come from broken or dysfunctional families now than ever before, and that these children join gangs to satisfy their natural tribal instinct. At least, that's what I read into it.

4 July

Google has been ordered by the American courts to hand over details of every video ever watched on YouTube. Details would include personal information about the person who watched each video. Quite frightening isn't it. The ruling was made during an ongoing battle between Google and Viacom. I'm continually amazed by the way the entertainment industry is so determined to alienate its own customer base. I shan't be buying anything from Viacom in the near future.

On a similar theme, it has recently been announced that Virgin Media in UK has made a deal with the BPI (British Phonographic Industry). The BPI has been monitoring file sharing sites and identified IP addresses of people illegally downloading files. They then made a deal with Virgin to identify Virgin users. Virgin users can expect to receive a letter informing them that their service provider knows what they are doing.

I don't think we have the whole story here. Firstly, Virgin Media is a very unpleasant company and in my experience, they will do pretty much anything for a few £s. My guess is therefore that the BPI gave them a cash incentive to send these letters out to users. Secondly, Virgin have said that they will not take action against identified users, despite the fact that the letter apparently says they might. This makes me think that they told the BPI one thing, and the public another. Thirdly, it's unclear whether Virgin have given the BPI personal information about these users. I rather doubt it, but if they have, the BPI could then take users to court without Virgin being involved.

The BPI wants all British Service providers to sign up to the same agreement as Virgin. So far only Virgin has done so. What do Virgin users think? Well, I'm a Virgin User and I'll be looking around for another provider. Am I an illegal file sharer? Well I don't share anything, but I did download the entire 4th Season of Lost because Virgin, who also supply my tv, had a row with Sky and no longer carry the show. It was the only way I could think of getting it. I haven't had the letter yet, but there was a letter from Virgin yesterday which I thought could be the one. It turned out to be an advert for a cell phone.

My conclusion, well in my experience Virgin have trouble sending the right bill to customers, so the chances of them reliably identifying customers at a given time with an IP address is slim. So far, only 800 letters have been sent, and they have a customer base of some 4 million. That would equate to around 0.02% of customers. The BPI estimates about 20% of people are using file sharing sites. So only 1 in 1000 appear to have been identified if those figures turn out to be right. What's more. I'd say the figures are probably wrong, since each one of those customers is likely to be a family with more than one user, at least one of which is likely to be using file sharing services. Am I bovvered? Nope.

Happy Independence Day to all you Yankee types. We should have a mid summer festival over here in the UK. I'm going to invent one and write to the PM about it.