Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirates life for me - decriminalisation of online gaming piracy

At first glance it sounds ludicrous to even thinking the above is true, while others might praise it for it's progressiveness, but nontheless the British government has, in cooperation with some of the country's biggest internet service providers and media companies, come to a consensus to launch a new initiative called "Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP for short)". This initiative is meant to decriminalise piracy of games, movies, music and other media all together. This decision comes after branding the former punishments of the crimes ineffective. These former punishments included: cut of violaters' internet connection and the creation of databases of file-sharers.  
Starting in 2015 persistent file-sharers will be sent four warning letters in which their actions are explained as illegal, but if the notes are ignored no further action will be taken. 
Geoff Tayler, the chief exectutive of BPI (The British recorded music industry) said the following: 

"VCAP is not about denying acces to the internet. It's about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice". 

 Many other opinions of the VCAP initiative can be found here. 

Now, what do I think of this 'out of left field' initiative? Well it could possibly be a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have all been young and naive when venturing the vast ocean that is the internet, and stumpled upon something that said "download for free" and clicked it without hesitation. Many of us have undoubtably done something on the internet that previously could be viewed as illegal, but we just didn't knew better. So this will without question help misunderstandings, that has cost a few people alot in the past.  
On the other hand most online piracy is done, knowing that it is wrong, so how much will this actually accomplish? Will this just cause even more copying online? I think that it is possible that it will lessen the amount of online copying, but under a very special condition: 
- Many game developers have shown a sort of "fear" of certain online puplishing, afraid of the possibility of piracy. But that same fear, has caused certain games to become less optainable, and therefore prone to more piracy. If game developers were to make each game more accesable to online purchase, then more people would (in my opinion) be more prone to actually buying the game, rather than rely on pirated copies. 


It's an interesting development to say the least, especially after the whole ACTA(Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) and SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act)-debacle of 2011. This seems to be the pendulum swinging in the complete opposite direction. No doubt, it will be interesting to see where this takes us. Will this mark the waters of the internet a safer place to embark, or is this the stepping stone to the next great pirate era? Oh that reminds me, I have yet to watch the latest episode of One Piece! 
Popcorntroller out!