UK Government Proposed Internet Law A Big Mistake
The UK Government is about to propose that UK citizens be banned from the Internet if they are suspected of downloading music, TV or movies that infringe copyright. The Brown government intends to pass new laws that will see Internet Service Providers fined if they do not follow the government’s instructions about banning users. Why are they doing this? Seemingly, it’s because music and film companies have told the government that they lose billions in annual revenues because of these activities. The UK government is about to make a big mistake if they really go through with this. Here’s why:
- The UK already has copyright laws that deal with infringement of the type of intellectual property owned by music and film companies. New laws aren’t the answer.
- Policing of laws in any democratic society can happen only by consent of the members of that society. Millions of people are infringing these copyright laws every year. That should be telling the government what the British people (aka known to politicians as “voters”) think of these laws in the context of music, TV and film downloads. The current laws are simply not enforceable because of the lack of consent of society as a whole. Neither will any new laws be. This is nothing to do with “rights” or “wrongs” and whether it’s a good idea to respect intellectual property in general. It’s just a fact that millions of people don’t respect it in this particular case.
- The underlying reasoning behind the proposed new legislation is flawed: even if you stopped all illegal downloads, there would be no new revenues flowing to music and film companies as a result.
It’s probably worth explaining why that last statement is true, because it seems that many people don’t seem to get it. The point is: the reason why downloads are popular is not only that they’re free. It’s because illegal downloads provide media in the ways that people want it. That is, with a download, people can watch or listen to what they want, when they want, where they want… and yes, of course, at what they regard as a good price.
Even people that are happy to pay premium prices for the latest high-def content on HD DVD and Blu-ray, though, are now turning to downloads because media companies simply aren’t prepared to sell them the content they want to watch to at any price; let alone a good price. For example, say you want to buy a season of the Fox TV show 24 in HD on Blu-ray. Well, sorry you can’t. Fox doesn’t sell it.
The truth is: every media company in the world has, for the last decade totally failed to provide their content in the ways people want. That’s the reason their revenues are down. That’s the reason they’re in trouble. Executives in media companies need to spend less time lobbying governments and alienating their customers; and more time on trying to understand their own businesses.
Why on earth media companies think they’re suddenly going to start getting huge boosts in revenue when they resolutely refuse to sell their product to people, in the ways they want to buy it, is beyond baffling. And why a democratically elected government would think it’s a smart idea to ignore the views of millions of people who pay their salaries, and can vote them out of office is equally confusing…
Asam Bashir wrote:
It’s even worse then that and clearly shows how our government cannot think for itself. There is no way they’re going to stop pirates, the history of computers has shown us that, no matter what system they create, someone, somewhere, will create a system to defeat it - even right now all it needs is for pirates to switch over to encrypted p2p systems and that will become a major problem for government defence agencies overnight, small amounts of encrypted traffic on a network is interesting, huge amount then it becomes impossible task to try and crack the encryption - this was same argument used by inventor of PGP, Zimmerman, and was promoting it for use for non-sensitive information because that makes it harder for agencies/interested parties to track since any significant increase in encrypted traffic make the job to crack it all, and so find out what’s inside, impossible.
Does the UK government really want an increase in UK wide encrypted traffic? Em, think about it you morons and talk to your geeks up in GCHQ…
It will be impossible to stop pirates, the above is just one example, pirate technology would evolve very fast and RIAA and ISP won’t be able to compete, has Apple managed to stop hackers cracking the iPhone, has Microsoft managed to stop pirates? What makes UK government think ISPs can do a better job? They won’t, but the result, an increase in encrypted traffic is not in long term British interests right now.
Also seems like ISP’s themselves have another defence line for battle with the RIAA,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/12/anti_filesharing_paper_leak/
“ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music.”
Posted 13 Feb 2008 at 12:57 am ¶
simon wrote:
You make some interesting points, especially about not encouraging the use of encryption, and the development of new encryption techniques. I happen to know that even anti-terrorist government agencies (who have access to the latest tech) sometimes fall behind on their abilities monitor consumer technologies in the way they want to, simply because the technology doesn’t exist to monitor and takes time to develop.
And in general, unintended consequences are a big reason why the current government is so misguided in believing that new legislation is the answer to every problem.
Posted 13 Feb 2008 at 5:23 pm ¶