Millionise your lashes.  These were the words staring me in the face late one Friday evening.  I literally started crying, sobbing like a little baby.  Admittedly, I may have been more than a little bit intoxicated; but still, those words hit home.  Millionise your lashes.

What, exactly can this phrase mean?  It is relatively easy to surmise what the advertisers want us to understand – that through the use of their product your lashes won’t merely look like they have bulked up a little…no, it will look like you have millions of them.  Your lashes will be so volumised they will have become millionised.  Apparently the pin-cushion look is desirable these days.

Not only that, the use of the word – along with the image of the ‘beautiful’ woman to go with it – brings more than a subtle connotation of wealth and celebrity.  Not only will your lashes have more volume, but you as a person will be more popular; more desirable; more successful.  It is such a sorry state of affairs that such an ad need exist, and let me now remind you again of the pitiful sight that the late-night revelers feasted their eyes upon…

For here I was, drunk enough to no longer care about public perception, yelling obscenities at a cosmetics ad whilst crying enough tears to turn the world around me into a salty blur.  What a sight it must have been, I wonder if my ramblings were even coherent enough at the time for anybody to hear them.  Thankfully, my wife was there to drag me away from my ideological tantrum – to provide me with the soothing ‘I know, it’s awful’ that gave just enough of a respite to put me on a bus home.  It was just all too much, this single phrase had pushed me over the edge and into an existential despair as to the shape of the world we live in.

Despite being in such a state, ‘Millionise Your Lashes’ has now become for me a catch-phrase that represents so much.  It is a call towards recognising the absurdity of the situation we find ourselves in.  A perfect reminder that, unless we specifically and consciously take note of the direction we are heading in, we are doomed to failure.  For in its non-ironic form, the phrase represents pure egotism and self-centeredness.

It is the war cry of a species that has evolved to the point where we have complete and utter control over almost every aspect of our destiny…and yet we choose to waste that opportunity by focusing on attaining an impossible goal.

For you see, what frustrated me most about this advertisement (and every single other one like it) is not merely the words or the egotistical message behind them.  No, the worst thing is that the image that accompanies them is not even a depiction of reality!  The celebrity adorning this wonderful advertisement had been subjected to hours of hair and makeup, hours more of lighting and photography, and then finally a few more dozen hours of digital manipulation and illusion before being presented to you in all of her ‘natural’ glory.

The goal that you are being presented with is not even one that is possible for the person in the photo, let alone anybody else.  But we continue to worship at the altar of beauty; of the cosmetics companies and the fitness supplements; of women in floss-bikinis and men in tighter-than-healthy briefs.  It’s a lie, and deep down we all know it to be a lie.

The shocking part is just how much of a successful lie it is.  The cosmetics industry alone is worth billions of pounds a year just in the UK.  This isn’t even counting those forms of ‘cosmetics’, such as sun-screen, that actually have a health benefit to using them.  Nor does it include the money spent on cosmetic surgery…which is itself an exponentially growing and worrying trend that is helping to redefine just what it means to be ‘naturally’ beautiful.  With the advent of less obvious forms of cosmetic surgery, and more technologically advanced ways of doing so, this trend in literally altering the very structure of our appearance will only become more and more pronounced.  But we have to ask why we are doing this – and, more importantly, what image are we chasing by doing so?

What we’re chasing is an image that has been completely manufactured, and these days mostly via the hands of a talented graphic designer working alongside a kitted up photographer.  Ever wondered why those super-models and celebrity photo-shoots always look so symmetrical?  Why the only mole you’ll ever see is a little ‘beauty spot’ on the upper lip?

And the most shocking thing…why in ads selling cosmetic products there is a little disclaimer along the lines of ‘imagery may have been digitally enhanced’?  The absurdity of such a disclaimer should be obvious.  Don’t be taken for a fool.

Now that the rant is over, let’s draw things back a bit out of the idealised clouds that I often am found to be living in.  I’m not saying that make-up is a tool of the Devil, designed to tempt young adults into a life of decadence and sin.  I’m not attacking women, in general, for being the main audience of this con (which, now that it’s been mentioned, can often impact the body image of men just as much as women…David Beckham, point in case).  I’m definitely not saying that you can’t enjoy looking a bit ‘dolled’ up by applying some makeup and maybe some confidence in the process.  As with everything I tend to talk about here on Future Conscience, it is the need to be aware of what you are doing that concerns me the most.

Examine the ads you see before you – and they are literally everywhere – and take note of the hypocrisy involved in their creation.  Think about just how prevalent these images are, and then consider the long-term impact that they will have on the direction of our future society.  Don’t forget, such idealised and fake images of beauty are incredibly new to the human experience.  Yes, we’ve had make-up for a very long time.  Yes, we’ve always attempted to alter our appearance to be more attractive to others.  But it is only now that we are able to do so with such convincing processes that we are actually becoming blind to the change.  Now, what we see isn’t somebody that has been manipulated or altered to look beautiful – it’s just somebody beautiful.

The impact that this has on our own personal psyches is damaging enough.  But it is the impact that it is having on the collective consciousness of society that is most worrying, for it is that which will help dictate the very direction that we as a species move towards as we forge headlong into an unknown future.  Millionise Your Lashes – a cosmetic dream of absurdity.

The phone rings late one evening.  You answer it to hear the voice of a woman in distress: ‘I can’t keep this up any longer, they’re getting too close to the truth!’.  She hangs up suddenly, but not before leaving you with a cryptic clue – a password to some online network that she had managed to get a hold of.  Your next move, should you choose to take it, is to log onto that network and download the encrypted data hidden within.

But did you cover your tracks with an appropriate proxy, or just leave your home IP address open for the investigators to find you?  Unfortunately you didn’t cover your tracks well enough, and you receive a message to your Facebook account from a Russian femme-fatale asking you to return the data immediately or face the consequences.  You smile with glee at this latest twist in the world of subterfuge you are experiencing.  Because, you see, this isn’t an experience with real-life consequences of jail terms or physical danger – this is the world of Alternate Reality Gaming.

Alternate Reality Gaming is a phenomena that has been around in one form or another for the better part of 15 years.  The concept is remarkably simple, and yet impossible to pin down – an experience that transcends one single medium, blurring the lines between reality and fiction and in the best of cases leaving you questioning your own actions, motivations, and perception of everyday life.

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) run the whole gamut from corporate marketing exercises; to intricate science-fiction delivered over multiple formats; to initiation-like experiences intended to have an impact on the very core of your being.  For the most part they are entertainment, but entertainment in which all of those participating have made a mutual pact to pretend that it is real and to act accordingly.

Emerging predominately out of the mid-1990s, ARGs are about to reach a new crescendo of popularity and public recognition.  With the emergence of social media ubiquity, the ARG experience has been enhanced quite considerably; and as we approach a more mainstream acceptance of technology such as augmented reality the possibilities for this reality-blurring form of entertainment are quite staggering.  Pretty soon the line between what is physically real and what is part of the collective hive consciousness will become so fuzzy that the time will be perfect for these all-encompassing entertainment experiences.

Where previously those running an ARG might be cheeky enough to put up a few graffiti stencils on a tube station to help bring the game into your world; or direct you to meet a shady stranger in a car park who gives you your next clue; now they will be able to quite literally paint an alternate reality over the top of the world you see around you.  A world only available to those participating in the experience, whereby through the use of your camera phone (or, in the more distant future, your augmented glasses) you will have access to a living and breathing conspiracy theory, murder mystery, or other such game of urban cat-and-mouse.

To be honest, I can’t wait – and it is something that I’ve started looking into in much more depth recently as I really do believe it will become a major form of emergent entertainment over the coming decades.  With this enthusiasm, however, also comes some very serious reservations (this is Future Conscience after-all!).  Serious enough that I think it is worth discussing very openly, and hopefully some active members of the ARG community will drop by and leave some thoughts to help enlighten us.  The reservations I have primarily revolve around two things: police intervention and the possibility of gross (and possibly militant/violent) participant manipulation.

Let me give an example to help you see where I am coming from.  In Melbourne, Australia about 5 or 6 years ago there appeared a number of billboards that simply stated ‘Get Out of Your Mind’.  That was it, no further information other than a website address.  Upon further investigation, there was some kind of registration process – but one that did not indicate in any manner just what you were signing up for.  It turns out that Neurocam was a kind of hybrid ARG, art-project and spiritual experiment.

The whole purpose of it was to feel like you had joined a mysterious and secret organisation, an organisation which instructed you to perform various operations and report back to them.  It was a fascinating concept, and it certainly proved popular (if you do a Google search for ‘Neurocam’ you will find the remnants of debate about just what, exactly, this whole thing was).  There was even an article written up in a major Australian newspaper at the time.

Even to this day, it is not 100% clear who formed Neurocam (some shady entity known only as The Nautionier); what exactly it’s goals where; and whether or not it even continues to exist today.  As an art project, it was pure brilliance.  As an ARG, it perfectly blurred the line between fiction and reality.  As a spiritual/philosophical exercise, it certainly got a lot of people ‘out of their minds’ to an extent – although ultimately failed to truly deliver on its promise.  As a social experiment in obedience, it scares the living heck out of me.

Why would such a thing be cause for concern?  Well, in one of the early operations the so-called ‘agent’ would receive an email communication directing them to conduct surveillance on the public at a designated area and send the detailed report of all movements back to an unknown entity.  In others, they were asked to carry mysterious small packages to dead-drop locations – safes hidden away and buried in public parks or other such places.

The whole purpose was to become part of an experience in which your normal frames of reference no longer applied; one in which you had no relevant cultural norms to rely upon and instead exist within a newly created paradigm in which the present was more important than anything else.  From a close examination, it seems that the final fate of Neurocam was because of a failure of leadership – organisers eventually lost interest, and the second/third generation leaders were unable to continue with such enthusiasm or succumbed to the ravages of in-fighting and the lack of real credit since all involved at the top needed to remain anonymous.  But just consider the possibilities of such an exercise if done for nefarious purposes…

Because, you see, the agents did their operations.  Many of them with great enthusiasm and without question.  Some of them, even, clearly hoping that Neurocam actually was a real organisation (and indeed in many ways it was) with genuine secrets and hidden agendas.   Most of these people were involved in something fun, something that brought a sense of risk and excitement to their otherwise mundane lives.

For many people, being involved with something that evades definition like Neurocam will forever be a pivotal moment in the development of their personalities.  Neurocam became about more than the participants, more than the organisers – it became a living, breathing entity of its own with shifting agendas and structure.  Indeed, this was the whole purpose of the experiment all along.  Neurocam was Neurocam, nothing else could define it.

But let’s not beat around the bush any longer.  For there are definite areas that should raise cause for concern in this social experiment.

Willingly picking up unmarked packages and delivering them to public areas is an incredibly easy way to become an unknowing drug mule – or, even worse, a ’suicide bomber’.  Conducting surveillance for an unknown entity would be the perfect ruse for a government or militant organisation to collect intelligence.  Being given a password to an unknown FTP site and downloading the information there could set you up as the perfect cyber-patsy…all in the name of entertainment.

It might sound a bit paranoid, and indeed it is.  But what I want to highlight is that Alternate Reality Games are the perfect framework for unscrupulous organisations to take advantage of willing participants – those who want to be a part of the next James Bond movie, science fiction epic, or noir murder mystery; but only if, when all is said and done, it is inherently a fictional experience.  The problem comes from the mutual creation of a suspension of disbelief – that ‘bomb’ you are trying to disarm isn’t really a ‘bomb’; the ’secret message’ you are delivering isn’t actually of any importance to the government; the person you are ’stalking’ actually is in on the game and in the end just playing a role.

For the vast majority of these types of things – indeed, from what can be gathered, all of them thus far – it is a brilliant and truly genius way to blur the line between reality and fiction.  To make us question the paradigms we view the world with and show us a glimpse of a more exciting, illuminating, adrenaline-filled lifestyle.  But Neurocam is an example of where the line has already blurred between whether or not this is purely entertainment or a much deeper and all-encompassing experience.  The scary thing was, that there were a lot of people out there who would have done pretty much anything they were told – just to get a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole.

Even without evil puppet-masters, in our increasingly security conscious world it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets brought up on public surveillance charges or some other form of police-state heavy-handedness.

I’m being overly paranoid, I realise that.  But all I’m saying is that it’s a possibility; and because it’s a possibility we have to take it very seriously indeed. However, Alternate Reality Gaming is a truly new form of entertainment  - one to be enjoyed by those who like to challenge their perception of reality and everyday life.  Just be careful who you trust…

I wanted to try a slightly different angle with this post and create a call-out for discussion surrounding a particular topic. Before I begin however, I think it’s important to highlight the wonderful work that continues to be done by WikiLeaks (yes, their servers are down at the moment due to incredibly high levels of traffic) in providing a space for whistleblowers to find a voice.

The recent publication of over 90,000 documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan needs to be commended as many times as possible. Obviously digesting all of this material can be quite a daunting prospect, so I would direct you to the analysis done by the New York Times as one of the best mainstream media examinations of the leak.

With that important announcement dealt with, let’s get onto the question at hand: does social media negatively impact spirituality?

Let me get the initial response that we all have out of the way – ‘It depends how you use it. It’s only a tool.‘  I agree with this sentiment entirely, but for the sake of promoting discussion let’s forget about that point for a moment and presume it a given. What I wanted to look into, specifically, is whether social media in its various forms (and most particularly manifestations such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn that rely on individual digital identities) helps to promote aspects of our being that tend to have a negative impact on spiritual progression. Even more specifically – does social media feed our egos beyond all else?

Now, I’m expecting a number of you to bring up different ideas around just what spiritual progression, and spirituality, actually means – and I’d really like to promote such a response as it’s obviously one half of the question being raised here.  For me, a large component of spiritual progression revolves around the dissolution of individual ego and striving to seek success purely for personal gain.

As one progresses spiritually, there seems to be an almost universal tendency to see that progress as being done for the greater good of all rather than merely the individual. You are no longer seeking enlightenment (or however it is phrased) for personal glory or gain; you are doing so in order to play your role in the uplifting reintegration of the entire universe. A feat that, ultimately, means that you as an individual ceases to have any relevance; or even existence.

From this perspective, we can still come to either conclusion in regards to social media. In some regards, it enables us to better empathise with those within our network – understanding to a far greater degree the intricacies that their lives involve and therefore being exposed to some of the many different and varied ways of expressing the human condition.

If we enter into it with the right frame of mind, these tools can certainly provide us with a small glimpse into a form of consciousness that is wider than merely our own. The peer group becomes a microcosmic expression of the macrocosmic collective consciousness, and we might in some small way learn to immerse ourselves within it.

On the other hand, there is almost no better set of tools for the negative influence that our ego is capable of than those provided by social media. Here we have an exponentially increased ability to portray ourselves as kings of our own universes – mavericks, femme fatales, social influencers, political powerhouses, erudite authors and every other form of social category that might be desirable/hip/independent/better-than-you.

In fact, what I have tended to observe is that those who are more spiritually aware (notice I don’t use the word ‘progressed’) tend to also be those who use social media in an ego-aggrandising manner…and before you start, yes I myself am guilty of this crime and am not just passing judgement from my tower of perfected serenity. Observing this behaviour in myself is actually what led me to start seeing it in others in my social media networks, and once you start really looking for it it’s amazing just what you will see. In moments of intense spiritual focus, it can actually be quite a depressing and even terrifying experience.

I wrote a post related to this exploration, entitled ‘Crafting a Digital Identity‘, which was when I first started becoming self-aware of this tendency within my own behaviour and began to see it clearly in others as well. From what I can gather reading around the subject, I don’t think it’s something that is purely a coincidence formed out of the rag-tag group of peers that I seem to have assembled online.

The individually inflated ego is one of the true identifiers of the human condition and one that will always latch onto any available tool and outlet in order to enhance its influence. Social media quite often, ironically, leads us to become more inward looking and self-obsessed.

So, if spiritual progression finds much of its utility from the productive dissolution of this egotistical behaviour than surely social media must be seen as a highly negative and spiritually destructive influence at its worst; and at the very least a dangerous set of tools that we must be ever vigilant of if we hope to use them positively.

So what do you think? There are plenty more areas I could cover with this, but I wanted to leave them for the time being to see whether or not this experiment in creating a topic discussion here on Future Conscience might be fruitful. So please do comment, and at length if you feel up to it. I’m very interested to see where you might take this…

Is social media a negative influence on our spirituality? Or do the connections and information we gain allow us to rise above the less savoury aspects and overall find great value? What are the pros, what are the cons?  If we become a social media driven society, which at this point in time looks like quite a likely conclusion, then what impact will that have on our ability to be humble…to connect with things greater than ourselves and our own forged image?

Or is this post just another example of somebody waxing-lyrical and posting it on Facebook in order to appear ‘deep’?

It’s a real cliché these days – ethics.  Ever since the financial crisis, businesses and top-level management have been throwing around the word (and others such as values, integrity, sustainability) like rice at a wedding.  As part of my ‘real’ job, I often attend lectures and symposiums discussing these ideas and how they can relate to multi-national corporations; banks and hedge funds; start-ups and small businesses.  ‘Corporate Ethics’ is the catchphrase on everyone’s lips at the moment.

All of a sudden, everybody’s got a conscience.

Part of this is because they have been forced to develop one.  Through scathing media attacks on bankers’ bonuses and ethically questionable dealings; to simple, practical little things such as losing billions of dollars – businesses of all sizes suddenly forgot about the Gordon Geckos and became much more about the ‘common good’.  It is being sold at these lectures and conferences as a way to improve the success of your business and help lift us all out of the quagmire, particularly in these difficult times when consumer and public opinion is so fragile and centrally influential.

Managers at all levels are being asked to instil ‘from the top down’ corporate values and ethics; assessments should contain an examination of how well employees are meeting a specific Code of Conduct; corporations should consider investing more openly and publicly in philanthropic programmes.  All of these things, and many more, are being touted as the answer to all of our current problems.

To the less sceptical, all of this can only be a good thing.  We’re moving in the right direction if Directors and CEOs are considering such things, surely?  In many ways, I guess that is correct.  It’s better that terms such as ‘values’ and ‘ethics’ are bandied around with real worth attached to them than the alternative ghost-town of social conscience that led us directly into this mess.

I’m not so cynical as to presume that these discussions are not being taken seriously, or that they won’t lead to some very real improvements to the way we conduct business and the impact that the global economy has on all of our lives (and, let us not forget, the planet we exist upon).

But is this approach going to be the most effective one, the one that allows us to evolve most quickly in the direction that we need to develop in?  In other words, how much truth is there behind the sentiment – how deep does the feeling of compassion really go?

One thing that has struck me throughout many of these lectures and discussions is that the language is always couched in a manner that removes personal responsibility from the equation.  The talks are not about ‘my ethics’ – they are about ‘corporate ethics’.  The language used continues to build up the corporation as an entity in its own right, one that can have its own internal values and compassion without need to resort to external sources.  And yet, all corporations are made up of individuals – all actions and movements made in a businesses’ name are conducted by people.

It sounds obvious, and indeed it is, but the global economy is made up of individual people.  Each transaction has a reality behind it that exists well beyond the numbers on paper, well beyond the bottom line for an amorphous group of ‘shareholders’.  Corporate ethics means individual ethics – or at least that’s what we should be talking about.

Not corporate improvements; social improvements; or regulation improvements – but individual improvements.  This is the foundation that we should be building upon.  The whole might be greater than the sum of its parts, but its entire basis is dependent on the nature of those parts.  Ethical conduct exists within those parts, within us.  Not in some ethereal entity (the corporation) that only exists in our minds, but in those entities (us) who make the decisions and manifest each action.  To better the corporation/society/government, we must better ourselves.

Perhaps a practical example might bring me a bit out of the lofty clouds of idealism.  Last night I went to a lecture conducted by the head of one of the largest corporations in the world – talking specifically about ethical values in business.  There were a number of panel members responding to the initial lecture and one of them, another head of a large multi-national, proclaimed proudly that this year – for the first time – his company would be specifically assessing how closely individual employees met the corporate Code of Conduct.  The room as a whole seemed to think it was a great idea, and a wonderful way to build ethics into the fabric of any corporate structure (judging by the number of nodding heads).  I wasn’t so impressed.

To me, the whole idea takes us down a path that removes personal accountability (ironically) – replacing responsibility of action instead onto ‘the Code’.  If it’s alright by the Code, it must be proper and ethical.  Keep in mind that, for the most part, these codes are not of the spiritual variety – these aren’t ‘love thy neighbour’ aphorisms.  These codes are often made up of statements such as ‘strictly adhere to Intellectual Property rights’ or ‘be transparent and honest in reporting your financial figures’.  These are corporate Codes of Conduct, after-all.

One could easily adhere to such a code and still make decisions that are fundamentally damaging to a large number of people in our wider, global society.  You could pass with flying colours your assessment, and yet still have sold out a large portion of agricultural land, that services many thousands of people, to be demolished in the search for precious gems (possibly a trite example, but one that has and does occur in kind nonetheless).

Let me finish by clarifying a point I made earlier.  I’m not saying that the increased, and seemingly sustained, focus on ethical and moral matters within the corporate sector is not encouraging or beneficial.  It’s surely better than nothing at all.  I’m also certainly not saying that corporations shouldn’t have Codes of Conduct, or that financial regulators shouldn’t exist.  What I am trying to say is that we must question whether such actions alone are the most efficient and effective way to bring about the change that we desire.  Some also even need to ask whether they truly desire such change, or are merely paying lip-service to it in the hope of later circumventing any rules or regulations put into place.

For if it truly is change that we want.  Change on a global economic level.  Then we must focus on the individual – we must make a call for each of us to progress ideologically (and, for many, spiritually) so that when the time comes to make decisions with ethical consequences we have the best tool for the job: a true and developed conscience.

We must move away from merely looking externally for corporate ethics; move away from shedding our personal responsibility in favour of blaming group ideology.  Each of us has to make decisions every single day of our lives that have ethical and moral consequences – and each of us can strive to improve how we make those decisions.

We must ask ourselves, each day, what we have done that has had an impact – however small or seemingly insignificant – and whether or not we could have improved upon it. 

When we begin to answer that introspection truthfully, and consciously act upon that answer, is when the corporate world really will begin to change for the better.

So, big news today for those watching – the first major round of the war between YouTube (Google) and Viacom (plus Paramount, B.E.T., The Football Association Premier League and others) has been won by the accused.  Google has been given the go-ahead to continue with its YouTube business model of requiring copyright infringements to be flagged before it will act upon them.

In many ways, particularly with YouTube now apparently having over 24hrs of footage uploaded every minute, this is the only way that such a site can operate; but Google isn’t fooling anybody, in that a large part of the success of YouTube is clearly based on copyright infringement.  You could argue that a substantial part of Google’s business model as a whole is based upon copyright infringement of one form or another (the contextual ads on posts like this can often be quite a source of amusement)…for those of you with blogs or other sites, have you granted them rights to cache a copy?  But then, would we really want it any other way?

What I do like is that situations like this force commercial enterprises to come up with new ways of doing business.  It would have taken many more years for online music distribution to have taken off as it has were it not for rampant digital music piracy.  Not to mention the fact that such infringements – or the legal equivalents of, such as Creative Commons – often (not always, but often) work in the favour of artists.  Have a look at the recent efforts of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Radiohead, which caused a great deal of controversy within the music industry but proved to be a massive success for both parties.

There have also been a number of studies conducted that show that those who pirate most are also, ironically, often those who spend the most money.  They have a much deeper interest in general, and so spend more on purchasing high-quality products such as DVDs/Blu-Ray; limited editions; concert tickets; merchandise etc.

I think this battle is being so vehemently fought because many companies are starting to seriously worry about being made redundant.  Will we still require multi-nationals when our marketing needs are met through social media (i.e. what your friends like and recommend…usually by posting a YouTube clip), and our distribution capabilities directly cut out the middleman?

It’s already massively impacting the newspaper industry, however much they want to deny it, and I think it is really beginning to impact the music industry as well.  What is needed is a more egalitarian form of distribution – because otherwise we will just create our own.  But what the larger companies seem to want to do is fight change rather than embrace it.  Rather than rushing to provide us with relatively cheap, unlimited, by-demand entertainment subscriptions they cling to the old forms of distribution made digital.

I’m simplifying the matter somewhat, I know, but things are heading in this direction – and it’s almost inevitable that the vast majority of our entertainment needs will soon be met via a few subscription services rather than individual purchases.  We’re also starting to become less satisfied by being told what to think or desire, unless it comes from within our own peer group, so there goes the traditional marketing strategies in favour of more organic, viral ones.

As an aside, let’s take a look at one particular example which I feel highlights the inherent hypocrisy often involved.  I religiously use the Sky+ functionality to record television programmes so that I can watch them without ads.  Yes, I’m paying a subscription for the service (which goes towards purchasing licensing rights); but the advertisers certainly aren’t having anywhere near the impact that they were beforehand.  Even more importantly though, were I to download the same programme – or even watch it on YouTube – I would be breaking copyright law; even with this satellite subscription that would have allowed me to do the same thing legally.

What does worry me about all of this is that we are likely to see a similar situation with video as that which occurred with music – the juggernauts will come after individual users; tiny little ants that they can stomp on with their big, multi-national boots of fail.  The one thing we do know about being online is that the average user is very easy to track and identify if need be, it is very rare that anybody uses a proxy service out in the mainstream world of illegal downloading.

Viacom already successfully forced Google to hand over detailed logs of those who use the site – including IP addresses; viewing habits; email accounts and more – and it won’t be too long, I fear, before we start seeing companies use such tactics to go after individuals more and more often.  It’s either that, or they just lobby governments to do the dirty work for them…internet kill switch, anybody?

Well, I think I’ve gone on about this for long enough!  I’ve left quite a few gaps in this piece and I really want to hear your thoughts on the impact of all this – such as where might the war go next?  Because if we can be sure of one thing, it’s that the buck won’t stop here.