You might be aware that Lily Allen is now using her opinions on IP infringement to get herself press and further her career single-handedly saving the music industry by telling everyone that file-sharing is bad and evil (BBC News: Lily wades into file-sharing row).

However, here are some tips for you in the future, Lily, when you start arguing the toss about rights infringement and what other artists have to say about the subject:

1. Don’t misrepresent the opinions of your peers. When you referred to The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and claimed “These guys from huge bands said file-sharing music is fine,” you might want to ensure that’s actually what they said. If, for example, they said pretty much the complete opposite, you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
2. Don’t rip off other people’s content. When you’re on a crusade about IP infringment, it’s probably not a good idea to infringe someone else’s IP, by, for example, copying and pasting their blog posts. Do this and you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
3. Don’t infringe other people’s rights. When you’re informing people about the evils of rights infringement, it’s probably not a great idea to rip off other people’s IP by scanning in newspaper articles and posting them on your blog. Do so and you might end up looking a wee bit silly—doubly so when your Photobucket bandwidth is exceeded and said articles can’t actually be read. (Although I guess this at least deals with the IP issue, since the stuff you ripped can’t be seen when your account’s down. MAJOR WIN FOR COPYRIGHT!)

For the record, as someone who’s been smacked hard financially by file-sharing (albeit with books rather than music), I do have some sympathy regarding dealing with file-sharing in some manner. However, government proposals to boot people off the net won’t do it, nor will celebs on their high-horses.

Content providers need to figure out some way of monetising file-sharing, and, most importantly, to simply encourage more people to buy content instead of copying it. People should be rewarded for doing so, rather than—in many cases—being seen as potential criminals (such as with rights ads on DVDs that can’t be skipped) or gouged for every penny they have (as with £1.89 single-TV-episode downloads on iTunes).

Hat tip for some of this post: the ever-fragrant Gary Marshall on TechRadar.

If you’re in the UK, the MP expenses row sparked by the Telegraph can’t have escaped your notice. My current highlight: an MP who claimed for two packets of Tampax for himself. One wonders what a male MP could want with Tampax in order to do his job, but then it’s probably best to stop thinking about that rather quickly.

What grates right now is the typically weaselly manner in which most politicians are addressing this problem, using typical ‘politician speak’. At best, this is insulting; at worst, it’s showing they’ve learned precisely nothing (which is probably unfair—I’ll bet they’ve learned that in future they need to be a hell of a lot more cunning regarding fiddling expenses). So, in time-honoured tradition, here are some helpful hints for our lovely MPs:

When asked about the expenses scandal, don’t look all mournful or forthright (depending on what you think will get more sympathy) while rattling on about how “the system is broken” and how “the system must change”, unless you’ve never made what amounts to a remotely dodgy claim. If you knew the system was broken and you were exploiting said system, you were involved in what’s tantamount to fraudulent behaviour. The correct answer is not that the system needs to change—it’s that MP attitudes need to change.

When asked if you feel guilty about your conduct, have the integrity to provide a straight answer, using one word: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Either you did or you didn’t do something wrong. Don’t spin the response to say “every MP should say sorry”. You are not every MP. I’m looking at you, Alan Duncan MP—and, believe me, I’d rather be doing something else… anything else.

When considering making claims in future, here’s a handy tip: when working in a job, you claim what’s required to do that job. It’s really quite simple. When I worked in a design agency, I claimed for a graphics tablet and some software. When I did client visits using my car, I claimed for petrol. Things I didn’t claim for, just to pick a few items at random: having an aga serviced, cat food, horse manure, and having a piano tuned. (On the last of those, I’ll forgive the MP in question if they make a total arse of themselves doing a live performance, tinkling the ivories on prime-time television.)

Also, when considering claims in future, bear in mind that since you’re earning at least £64,766, and no doubt have your fingers in lots of stodgy business pies, you can probably afford to pay from your salary for things like a quiche flan dish and a Vileda supermop. It might shock you to understand that not only do most of your constituents earn significiantly less than you do, but they also don’t get to claim for things like a toilet brush holder (unless they clean toilets for a living, and although MPs plumb the depths are are often surrounded by sh*t, that’s usually only in a figurative sense).

Of course, the real way to deal with this scandal is for all you MPs to stop being conniving, manipulative, shallow, lying, cheating, self-serving arseholes (perhaps learning from the rare odd exception lurking among you), but, hey, you’re MPs, right? Good luck in figuring out your replacement expense plan and working out how to use that to exploit the masses!

Love and kisses,

The general public

This morning, The Pirate Bay Four (a name that the media isn’t using to make the four people involved in The Pirate Bay sound evil, honest) were found GUILTY of being evil, nasty pirates, and sentenced to a year in prison each, slightly short of the ‘death by having eyes gnawed out by rabid squirrels’ punishment major Hollywood studios, record labels and videogame companies were aiming for.

But, in the nature of this site’s ‘helpful hints‘ series, here are some facts (or FAQs, if you’re so far gone into Web 2.0 that your skin tone is now a gradient) for any news organisations too stupid to understand what’s been going on:

1. These people aren’t actually pirates. Pirates are genuinely nasty people who go around in boats and attack other boats for hostages or huge piles of ‘stuff’ they can offload for ‘cash’. Nor are these people facilitating piracy. Piracy is the act done by the aforementioned people who go around in boats, attacking other boats. It could be argued that The Pirate Bay was, by the nature of the technology used, facilitating bootlegging, but that doesn’t sound nearly as exciting.
2. The Pirate Bay isn’t the only site where you can download copyrighted material. This will come as a huge shock to many news outlets, but at the last count there were—to use a technical term—a f*ck-load of similar sites around. I should know—my latest book appeared as a ratty, badly scanned PDF on most of them approximately three seconds after being put on sale.
3. BitTorrent isn’t a technology for “illegally sharing movies” from “poor widdle Hollywood companies that are going to cry real tears of pain” if you don’t buy their DVDs with over-inflated prices (six months after the USA gets that chance, if you live in Europe). In fact, it’s just a file-sharing technology (working in peer-to-peer fashion, thereby avoiding single-point-of-failure and reducing bandwidth resources for any one ‘sharer’). Idiots in the media might want to read the main bit of that bit again. BirTorrent is just a file-sharing technology. The Pirate Bay, despite its knowing name, therefore actually allows you to download a whole range of material, and in a manner that doesn’t make a single provider scream for mercy.
4. This could have been welded to the previous point, but it deserved its very own number: Far be it for me to point out the very simple fact that many of the companies crying their widdle eyes out are the same ones releasing a shed-load of material via BitTorrent, to get it spread more quickly and save on bandwidth costs, thereby being ably assisted by torrent trackers. You know, torrent trackers like The Pirate Bay.

Zoom (brake), zoom (brake), zoom!

1. Speed up!

It might have escaped your notice, but your speedometer has some numbers on it that are greater than 40. This is because your car is actually capable of travelling faster than 40 mph. Therefore, if you happen to stumble upon, say, a motorway, while ambling about, oblivious to the world, you are allowed to drive above 40, and will thereby have fewer fellow road users cursing the very day you were born.

2. Slow down!

OK, so I know this one is going to confuse you, since I just told you to speed up, but you know when you entered a built-up area and saw that big, round sign with a red border that had astonishingly clear ‘3’ and ‘0’ figures in? Well, that was to tell you the maximum speed allowed in that area.

This will probably be a big shock to you, but when you’re faced with a 30 mph speed limit, the ’30’ does not in fact mean ‘carry on at 40’. The aforementioned sign should have alerted you to this simple fact. If not, just watch out for frightened children darting out of the road and scowls from angry pedestrians in future, and take that as an indication that you’re a total idiot who’s driving too fast down a high-street.

3. Speed up!

Yeah, I know—you’re probably thinking “make your mind up”, but here’s the thing: cars don’t topple over when you go around a really slight corner during your 40-mph mission. You don’t need to brake at every single bend, especially if your car is barely moving at that point. Now, I’m not suggesting careering round a hairpin bend at 40, just that your brain doesn’t go: “Corner ahead. Must brake for no discernible reason,” every single time.

4. Enjoy the pretty orange lights

A quick final tip: you probably won’t have noticed this, but there are a bunch of orange lights stuck to your car, towards the sides. These are called ‘indicators’ and they are used to indicate your intentions. They’re not there to make your car a bit prettier, nor to tell someone all about the exciting manoeuvre you just made.

Before you make me punch you repeatedly in the face

1. US prices do not show taxes, but British ones do

Bitch, whine, moan. That pretty much sums up what spews out of many British mouths when comparing prices in the UK and USA. In some cases, our American chums do get it better, but often they don’t—it’s just British people being stupid.

Case in point: the new Apple MacBook line. “Wah wah wah,” have gone lots of Brits, in a Kevin-the-teenager-style emo tantrum, moaning how it’s so unfair that a $999 laptop in the USA costs £719 in Britain.

Here’s the thing: US prices are shown without taxes. Therefore, you have to compare with Britain’s ex-VAT rate. At the time of writing, the US price is about £575, meaning the UK price is a full 37 quid more. And given how much Sterling’s getting kicked on the markets right now, Apple’s actually been pretty good with its ‘internal’ exchange rate and built-in cushion.

So, for all you people bullsh*tting about how you can “fly over to the US and get a laptop and still have change for munchies”, just try it. See how far you get with your 37 quid. You’ll probably be dropped out of the plane before you get past Ireland.

2. Rinse and repeat

Go back and read point 1 until you actually understand it, and then stop whining about how expensive items are in the UK unless they actually cost significantly more (Hello, Adobe CS4!)