To the general public, this can be seen just as any other old, media-hyped news, but exactly how significant of an issue is this? This effectively means that the treasury are having to cover the costs of illegal content, where a 700MB film can theoretically be downloaded in just a few minutes, with only a 50mb/s connection.

Views of SABIP

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Policy (SABIP) have put their research forward which can be seen below.

• Board in recent reports have argued has big impact on UK government + meaning it has a bigger effect on the economy, which we do not want in times like these.
• Their research has found this hypothesis as well as people’s thoughts to actually downloading illegally from a wide range of sources, including popular copyright industries.
• SABIP report has included study by the UCL Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research of a content-sharing network with 1.3 million users showing that if 1 person downloading one file per day, annually it builds up to as high as £12 billion.

“The fundamental question is not how or why the downloading, copying and dissemination of unauthorised content takes place but who does it, and can this behaviour be changed?” the report notes. And if it cannot be changed, what does need to change: the law, the business models, or the relationship between the creative industries and the public domain?”

As we are in the recession, it is not surprising consumers are saving each penny and so are using VoD services like BBC iplayer and downloading illegal content, even though the chances of being caught is really quite high now. Can you blame them? What are your thoughts on the topic? Will it finish in the same way the PirateBay trial is heading, especially as half of Sweden’s traffic came to a halt…

Search engine giant Google has emerged as the world’s biggest brand. Google is now worth almost 25% more than Microsoft, crossing the $100 billion (£68 billion) value mark, according to the fourth annual BrandZ top 100 most valuable global brands ranking.

Despite the tough economic climate, Google’s label value has rose 16% in a year, while the overall value of the top 100 brands has risen by two per cent in the past year. The company’s value of $101.4 billion makes it 25% more valuable than the second largest brand, Microsoft, which is worth $77.3 billion.

This is the third consecutive time that Google has topped the list, making it a truly phenomenal brand- to which Lorraine Twohill, marketing manager, said:

“We know that without consumers you have nothing and there is a great element of trust in us.

“We think about the consumer first and expect everything else to fall into place after that. We don’t feel big. We still work in little crappy teams and we feel very small.”

The Brandz study said in a year of global financial turmoil, when every key financial indicator plummeted, the value of brands remained strong. Furthermore, the ‘recession depression’ which has taken over the world, seems to have significantly helped fast-food, cigarette, and alcohol brands. McDonald’s recorded a 34% increase in brand value, followed by Marlboro (33%), and Budweiser (23%).

The top 10 brands: