I wonder how many people will find another reason not to vote Conservative in David Cameron’s recent speech to the music industry. Within the IT industry, probably quite a few.
In summary, Cameron praised the music industry’s technological innovation and went on to suggest that ISPs should prevent illegal file sharing. Both notions are, to most people in the IT industry, nonsense.
I feel a few lines, in particular, are worthy of comment.
“And at a time of technological revolution, you have adapted to changes in consumer behaviour with great ingenuity, launching online and mobile services.
Matching business acumen with creative instinct, you have shown you have the dynamism necessary to succeed in the 21st century.”
Is that the same business acumen that led them to resist technological advances including radio, cassette tape, DAT and recently music downloads and ring tones, only to finally capitulate when they had virtually no other choice? From what I’ve seen, the music industry’s innovation is limited to finding new ways of maintaining the status quo.
“And each year, an estimated 20 billion – that’s right, 20 billion – music files are downloaded illegally.
This alone has cost the music industry as much as £1.1 billion in lost retail sales since 2004.”
The record company staff must have been delighted to hear their own line quoted verbatim back at them. Based on the behaviour of my own friends, I can’t understand why anyone would believe this particular piece of propaganda to be true. People don’t download only music they would have bought anyway; I imagine they’re much less discriminating in what they download for free than what they’d actually pay for.
But whatever, the figures don’t add up. 20 billion files a year, assuming 79p per file at retail adds up to £15.8 billion per year, not 1.1 billion over the past three years. But then I only got grade C at Maths GCSE, so maybe I’m missing something.
“…decriminalising the millions of people in this country for copying their CDs onto music players for personal use…”
Can’t argue with that.
“Some ISPs claim there is nothing they can do to stop illegal downloading of music.
But last month alone, there were eight sites that hosted more than 25,000 illegal downloads.”
And those ISPs are pretty much right. Block those eight sites and another eight sites will appear, or another technology will develop that doesn’t require tracker sites.
“They have already established the Internet Watch Foundation to monitor child abuse and incitement to racial hatred on the internet.
They should be doing the same when it comes to digital piracy.”
I screamed inside when I read this. The casual linking of these three disparate areas of internet activity looks so obvious when you don’t understand the practicalities or potential fall-out. It’s not as simple as blocking ISOHunt or MiniNova.
ISPs fight child porn and hate speech because they are evil. They make an exception for these two particularly nasty activities. File sharing is not evil; it may be illegal and it may harm some people’s business interests but it’s not evil. A party supposedly against state intervention in business and private life shouldn’t take the voluntary blocking of two extreme activities as a cue to hint at the need for the statutory blocking of far less harmful activity.
But it’s not just about the thin end of the wedge. Political Penguin has an easy to understand explanation of why it isn’t just a matter of blocking torrent tracker websites. Imposing, or even just strongly suggesting, that ISPs should filter certain content marks a fundamental change in the role of the British state and it would impose a huge financial burden on … you and me! We’d pay for the ridiculous arms race that would ensue and that the ISPs would lose.
I don’t have answers to file sharing or piracy. I do believe in copyright. I believe that artists deserve payment. I don’t believe in propping up a failing business model, if that’s what it is, by adding an enormous and worthless burden of red tape to another industry.
Update: Prague Tory has left a comment and my reply to that clarifies some of what I’ve written above.
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