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Get It Right From A Genuine Site, will you? Now here’s a mural

By | Published on Monday 26 October 2015

Get It Right, Get It From A Genuine Site

Hey everybody, don’t worry yourselves about piracy any more will you, because the government’s got it covered.

They’ve just painted the side of a building in Birmingham. And just in case that doesn’t work, they’re going to do the same in Liverpool, Cardiff, Bournemouth and Edinburgh. Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Fifteen years of catastrophic internet piracy just because no one thought to paint the side of a building.

We’re talking about ‘Get It Right From A Genuine Site’ here, the educational initiative stemming from the previously reported Creative Content UK partnership. Via this the entertainment industries and the big internet service providers pledged to educate consumers about copyright and piracy, while at some point also sending out warning letters to web-users suspected of tapping illegal sources of content.

Though few are embracing the mission as enthusiastically as TalkTalk, which has taken its involvement to the next level by giving the world access to its customers’ bank information, so rights owners can just jump in there and grab some cash if they reckon someone has stolen their content (maybe, possibly not). Or was that just another education programme about the importance of getting security right on the net?

Anyway, Get It Right. The mural painting in Birmingham got underway earlier this month, while the anti-piracy campaign officially kicked off this weekend. And just in case funding quirky and interesting art projects mainly gets people into quirky and interesting art, rather than communicating any message about copyright (as happened with the music industry’s equally lacklustre Music Matters campaign a few years back), ‘Get It Right From A Genuine Site’ also has a big fat telly ad, which launched this weekend.

The ad, sensibly, avoids the “if you pirate content you’re basically a car thief” line, opting instead for a “go legit and we’ll keep entertaining you – pirate and there’ll be no more fun times” approach.

That could possibly work, though probably only as part of a wider initiative that has more actual education in it, rather than just street marketing and some ad agency flim flam. For starters, the threat that piracy will kill off all the music, movies and telly shows we love seems a little hollow, given how much piracy there has been in the last two decades, and how much music, film and TV there is today. A little more on why copyright is actually a good thing is therefore probably required, which is a trickier message to deliver.

But, hey, in the meantime the Get it Right website does have a handy list of ‘genuine sites’ users may like to tap for tunes, like Rara.com (now offline), MUZU (creditors meeting held last week) and MySpace (which is still going apparently). So that’s good.

And now here’s culture minister Johnny Whittingdale with a quote: “Copyright is the bedrock of the creative industries, which are worth £76.9 billion to the UK economy. From cutting-edge video games to box-office smashes, the continuing success and availability of our creative industries relies on customers making the right choice to access content legally. I am delighted that rights holders and internet companies have come together under the banner of Creative Content UK to educate consumers about both the need to properly reward creativity, and the threat that online piracy poses”.



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