Torrentalitarianism

Once again the upper echelons of big business appear to be pushing through their own agendas in the House of Commons. No, it's not cash for questions or cash for peerages this time.

No, following on from my last blog post, it's the British Phonographic Industry again with its cash for laws. This self appointed, self serving music industry lobby group has in the last week or so managed to - in conjunction with the Government - pressure Internet Service Providers into sending threatening letters to people accused of illegal file sharing.

Essentially the BPI will be the judge and jury. They will be trawling torrents, getting IP addresses, looking up which ISP that IP address is controlled by and then instructing the ISP to send a threatening letter, however they refuse to disclose their methods so who really knows whether any of the data they are basing their accusations on is accurate?

Obviously due to data protection laws, ISPs are not allowed to disclose any private details of their customers to the BPI but personally it would not shock me in the least if they were found to be being pressured by BPI lawyers into doing this.

The pressure is mounting: the Government are considering allowing the BPI to obtain personal details of ISP customers without having to go to Court to get a Court Order to do so. So much for privacy and justice when a group of racketeers can determine whether or not you are guilty of something they themselves are accusing you of.

The Government and BPI want ISP's to threaten to disconnect their customers but thus far no ISP has said they would be prepared to do this and Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse has said;

"I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer's account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing. We believe that a fundamental part of our role as an ISP is to protect the rights of our users to use the Internet as they choose. We will fight any challenge to the sanctity of this relationship with every legal option available to us."

Well done Mr Dunstone!

ISPs are obviously affected by any possible legislation because if downloading music is driven underground and becomes difficult for the masses then people wont bother with the expensive premium high speed connections and would opt for the 1 or 2 megabit packages.


Multimurderer

John Hutton MP, the head of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham MP have also discussed the possibility of applying a tax on internet connections. The figure mentioned was approximately £30 per year and this tax would be channeled into the music business to make up for alleged 'lost revenue' due to downloading.

The self-serving culture of MPs is remarkably similar to the music industry and it's lobby groups. Indeed, it wont come as much of a surprise that Andy Burnham is one of the MPs that voted against reforming MPs expenses.

Their intention for the download tax is clearly to subsidise the music industry and probably cream off a little for the Government itself, however I think the delicious irony of this idea is that it would be the stake through the heart of the music, film and game industry.

Who would buy a game, or an album or DVD when it could just be downloaded legally provided you paid £30 a year to the Government? All online music stores such as iTunes would be history yet CD sales would probably do a little better since they would be the source for people to rip their digital copy and share it.

It seems to have been overlooked in everything I have read that the BPI is just a private organisation that only exists because of music industry profits (5% of music income goes to the BPI). Why should I pay to subsidise an archaic business model? Why should I fund an ailing industry that cannot be bothered to reform itself, instead using its incredible financial might and completely farcical claims to press the Government into creating new laws to protect it?

The music industry has this in-built - but completely absurd - philosophy that people that download an album or a song would have bought the song if the download wasn't available and as a result they feel they 'lost revenue'. Is that what used to happen before the internet and peer-to-peer boom?

Of course not. People simply recorded tracks from the radio or taped CDs/vinyls that were borrowed from friends. With DAB digital radio and multiple digital recording media you could record a decent copy of a popular track from any radio station that broadcasts DAB.

This backwards step would ultimately mean that those smaller alternative bands or producers that have been virally advertised via the sharing of music would never be popular since radio stations don't play that type of thing in general. Back to the old days of endless generic pop music and nothing else with a few moguls such as Pete Waterman sat at the top making millions from it.

Unfotunately with those in charge at the Government having no grasp of real scenarios and situations they take the bait of the BPI hook, line and sinker.


Safe and Legal

It's often mentioned by BPI and British Music Rights spokespeople that the music industry wishes to 'work with ISPs' to create a 'safe and legal' system for downloading music. What? What on earth has any of that got to do with ISPs? It's like demanding that electricity suppliers should work with home owners to improve the function of their dishwasher.

Did iTunes have to 'work with ISPs' in order to set itself up as the premier online source for legal music? No it didn't. Unlike these self serving music lobbies, iTunes didn't sit there accusing its demographic of being common criminals and instead set up a decent service. The only problem with it aside from relatively low quality (bitrate) of MP3 is Digital Rights Management, or DRM.

This draconian system was demanded by the big music industry companies and iTunes had to comply else it could not operate. DRM is an encryption system applied to media files which requires the supplier of the file (in this case iTunes) to supply the 'key' to decrypt the file to each playback device registered with them. As a result, Apple knows you can only play that track on the devices registered with them.

There are of course limitations on how many PC's, iPods and so on that you can register with Apple and furthermore you are restricted to only iTunes compatible MP3 players (which according to Wikipedia totals just 5 different devices: iPod, iPhone and 3 Motorola mobile phones).

Unfortunately for the music industry, DRM only hurts 'legal' users so does not solve any of the issues that it was implemented for. Those that use torrents or newsgroups for downloading music wont be affected, will get higher quality tracks as well as no DRM. And this, it seems, is a concept the music industry cannot - or does not want to - grasp.

Instead of looking at providing a really good music archive with almost any track ever made in it at a reasonable price in a common easy to manage format that works with any MP3/4 player with no strings attached, they choose to lean on the Government to pass legislation that will allow a private organisation (the BPI) to basically police the internet in the UK.

Proposed Draconian measures to restrict file sharing include filtering content, i.e. blocking access to sites determined to be related to copyright theft are in the pipeline. This is similar indeed to the Great Firewall of China which only allows the Chinese to see what their Government wants them to see.

Throttling of users is another thing on the agenda, but Virgin Media are doing this already whether you download legally or not.


Knock Off TV advertising

The copyright lobbies have been advertising on the television over the last couple of years with some laughable scenarios. One common theme is that by purchasing copied DVDs or music you are funding drug dealing, child trafficking, paedophiles and terrorism. Another is the comparison between downloading music and DVDs and stealing a car or stealing from your grandparents.

With the latest Knock Off Nigel advertisements they are attempting to encourage social stereotyping, so if you are someone that downloads copyrighted material from the internet then you are also someone that would steal cars and money from your family as well as steal money from work colleagues try to avoid buying rounds in the pub.

The latest advertisement shows a guy in an open office supposedly downloading films on to his laptop only to be mocked by his colleagues and some moustachio'd pied piper character and labelled a Knock Off Nigel.

But this is what makes me laugh: in reality, everyone would be placing their order for films rather than attempting to outcast the guy downloading them. Further to this, he wouldn't actually be downloading them from work anyway and wouldn't charge people for what he has downloaded either.

It just goes to show how devoid of reality both the Government and the private industry lobbies are. The scenarios they use in their propaganda are farcically exaggerated and ironically you could use Gordon Brown as the one that steals your grandmas pension, Gordon Brown as the one that funds terrorism, etc.

I guess he's a Knock Off Nigel then.