tomorrow I’m off to Clacton for more Cubbage. And you all know how much I adore the Super Cub…

Track westwards up the coast towards the Blackwater, at Colne Point turn North, follow the river up past Brightlingsea and Wivenhoe, half a mile further on do a couple of wide circuits over the next village to your port side and I will be the bloke waving a pint of Spitfire at you from the rear terrace of the Anchor on the waterfront at Rowhedge :D:D:D

Call in on your way home Steve. I’ll stand you one !

Top one: Bristol Buckmaster
Second one: Boulton Paul P92.2
Third: Armstrong Whitworth AW 52 ?
Fourth: ?
Fifth: equally ?

[QUOTE=Tony C]If I understand things correctly, every (legal) radio station has to pay a fixed fee to a ‘governing body’ (sorrry I can’t remember its name) which then distributes the copyright/royality fees to the appropriate holder of that copyright.[QUOTE]

Correct to a point Tony.
In the UK when the local radio network was ‘Liberalised’ by the prevailing govenment in the early 80’s (in the interest of privatisation or ‘customer choice’ as they preferred to call it) dozens of independant local stations appeared.
With the passage of time corporate take overs have resulted in there being perhaps just three major players left supplying local radio services.

The consumer has no idea that this is the case because the corporate identity is never revealed. He/She still thinks that they are tuned to their local independant station because they get a regular local news bulletin/weather report.

Yes there is a person in a studio (during the day) but all these stations are linked to a central digital music library by phone line (usually a high capacity fixed link “private circuit”).
All these stations cover a fairly small area transmitter wise, but if you had a radio that could be tuned one after the other to Radio ‘a’ in Machester, Radio ‘b’ in Glasgow, Radio ‘c’ in Bristol and radio ‘d’ in Norwich you would find that thay are all playing the same song at the same time.
This means that they (the parent company) only pay one royalty payment depsite the fact that they are playing the music from perhaps 300 different locations at once.

Listen closely and sometimes you will pick up when the person in the studio gets really bored and deviates from the script between records
“And this one goes out to Great Aunt Maude on your 90th birthday from all the family, they know it’s one of you favourites”, what do you hear ?
‘Walking in the beaches looking at the peaches’ by The Stranglers.
Oh yeah right on Aunt Maude, I always knew you were a rocker at heart 😀

I went to see the stage show at The Rainbow Theatre and actually had a PanGallactic Garglebalster during the interval, the pain in all the diodes down my left side stayed with me for days 😀

The answer unfortunatly is realistically if you don’t want it pirated – don’t digitise it and put it out there. People on the Net don’t have the same morals it just isn’t a factor.
I in no way agree with this piracy debate I am just being realistic- unless you are microsoft you don’t have the resources to counter it.

My two bobs worth

Kindest regards
John parker

We may do better to move this discussion on to the general board if it takes off (no pun intended), I agree with everything you say John.
To tackle just one area what, in your professional opinion, is the future for the ‘entertainment’ industry ?
By industry I mean the huge conglomerates as these are the ones claiming to feel it ‘in the pocket’ owing to online piracy, (they never mention the artist loosing out do they :D).

‘Don’t digitalise it’ well the horse has really long bolted. Like millions round the world the software to make high quality mpeg’s of all my old 33rpm albums sits on my pc. I can make a hiss,rumble, wow and flutter free cd to play in the car, I also have the ability to share it with others and there are plenty of websites that offer me free downloads of their P2P software to enable me to do it. Right click, save as, install. It’s as simple as that any fool can do it.

CD encryption can be ‘cracked’ seemingly in an instant, the latest Hollywood blockbuster is recorded at the glittering premier by someone with mini cam in his jacket lapel, and it all gets out “on the net” the following day.

I am not condoning it but who amongst us here, hand on heart now, has not seen the clips in question that started all this off ? All of the guitly have been party to a breach of copyright and sconner is rightly considerably peed off about it but it’s his living after all.
If I see a cracking shot taken by one of the many talented folk on here and have that as my desktop back ground for a few days am I infringing their copyright ? They posted it here, and the software to digitally brush out any embedded (c)xxxxxx 2004 is widely available.
We are in a digital age, how can you stop it, could we ? should we ? I just don’t have the answers.

As profits fall and big business fosters even less up and coming groups of actors and musicians than it does already ( because the big bucks in terms of % profit margins cannot be made any more) will we eventaully be reduced, if thats the right word, to being entertained in our local village halls by people with real talent ? and who can actually sing and play an instrument ? Good Lord heaven forbid 😀
Phil