Insurers Suggest Podium & Stage Collapse Tragedies Are The Inevitable Result Of File Sharing?

You may have heard about the recent tragedy at the Belgian Pukkelpop music festival, in which a tent collapsed in the middle of a big storm and four people died. This came soon after a series of other mishaps with stages collapsing, including at a Cheap Trick show, a Flaming Lips show and the big collapse at the Indiana State Fair, which resulted in multiple deaths as well.

Apparently some unnamed insurance companies have come up with an interesting theory behind all these collapses. As pointed out by JonMontgo, one company seems to be suggesting there's a direct connection to unauthorized file sharing. This comes from a BoingBoing post, which actually links to an image from a Belgian (?) newspaper: It does not sound like anyone's trying to get out from paying what they owe, but are just trying to explain what happened. Alex Schroeder on BoingBoing did a "loose translation" and came up with:

"The crashing down of the podium of the Pukkelpop rock festival that killed five and injured eighty last August 18, is maybe not due to the violence of the storm. Confronted with multiple similar catastrophes, the experts of insurance companies see it as the unexpected consequence of the falling disc sales. The bands have a vital interest in giant concerts, they rent giant podiums overloaded with video equipment and spots. The rain and the wind do not destroy more often than before, but when they fall, the damage is much greater."

That seems like a pretty weakly supported assertion. I'm not sure that the importance of concerts automatically leads to more video equipment, but whatever. Either way, it seems like a pretty big stretch to somehow pin this on file sharing.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110916/12183515986/insurers-suggest-podium-stage-collapse-tragedies-are-inevitable-result-file-sharing.shtml

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