Here we go

The UK's proposed digital economy bill is an iniquitous piece of proposed legislation that should be buried at a crossroads at midnight with a stake through it's wicked heart. I say Bill, that's a bit strong isn't it? After all, you won't be affected by it over on your side of the world.

True,as a copyright holder I should be bang alongside all these big companies who can see their revenue streams being eroded but I'm not. File sharing is free publicity, as the Python team found out in their own words;

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

And for the Pythons it has paid off in massively increased sales of DVD's.

Simple business sense. When offered free advertising, smile and welcome everyone to the party. It's no good having the rights to the most fabulous piece of music or prose ever if no-one is allowed to see even a sample without coughing up. There's gold in them thar vids, pardner!