Free stuff! Lets face it, we all like it. It explains the furious popularity of Freshers’ Fair. And every one of us at sometime has, if nothing more, been tempted by the availability of free music. The internet is full of it. Peer-to-peer sharing of music, films and games is at record levels. But is this an example of the “something for nothing” culture gone too far? This is the livelihood's of many an artist we are talking about after all. The government certainly seems to think so, and it is serious on cracking down on internet piracy, with new directives outlined in the Digital Britain report released in November. Is this merely a piece of rhetoric designed to persuade the country into believing an illusion of action, or does it show us something more, some real intention?
On first reading the report, if rather dry, is at least an example of governmental policy from somewhere other than the dark ages. It mentions Spotify, Limewire, the Pirate Bay; these are terms exemplifying a welcome update to what was previously a severely archaic area of policy. Happily, the report suggests that Britain will have universal broadband access by 2012 paid for by a 50p a month broadband tax, and outlines initiatives designed to help new companies in many areas of industry to grow and be protected.
However, the section on copyright infringement and piracy is what has got everyone talking. Aimed at stopping the problem that the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) estimates costs the music business alone £180 million a year, it proposes forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to monitor Internet traffic, notify persistent file sharers of the unlawful nature of their activity, and to take action on people who sufficiently ignore these warnings, up to and including booting them off the net. ‘Sufficiently’ here apparently means a 70% reduction in file sharing. Why a 70% reduction is enough is unclear, but it is a significant proportion nonetheless.
However, the ideas have not gone down well with many industry experts. One main problem put forward is with the methods it plans to use to catch offenders. Firstly, ISPs would have to search arduously through many legal and legitimately downloaded files, because not all P2P is unlawful, hoping to find unlawful content; an incredibly intrusive and legally difficult to justify process. Also, IP addresses, which the government is seeking to use as identification, are a very poor form of ID. Serious copyright infringers, the ones who are more likely to sell and make money from their activities, know very well how to hijack the IP addresses of others, or to change the IP of their computer to match that of a computer thousands of miles away. This could easily result, critics suggest, in an accusatory letter on the doormat of an innocent family. Thirdly, an IP address can refer to a wireless network. There is a tendency in today's society towards unsecured, public wireless networks, with ambitious long term plans for “city-wide webs of access” in New York and London in the pipeline. These networks can be used by many people; in a house, library or neighbourhood, meaning identifying the individual perpetrator is often impossible. Cutting off the entire network could amount to a form of collective punishment. But it seems that in order not to accuse the wrong people here, the government would have to outlaw these public networks, something it does not intend to do.
Even if they could somehow do all of the above successfully and track down those involved, it seems the ISPs don't want to. The UK's largest ISP, TalkTalk, has started a campaign and petition against what it calls Peter Mandelson's “Draconian” measures against its users. The petition currently has over (insert current amount) signatures and is the (insert place in list)th largest petition this year. A spokesman for TalkTalk, Charles Dunstone, promised on the TalkTalk blog that “if we are instructed to disconnect your account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rights holders we'll see them in court”. Even Stephen Fry tweeted in opposition to the bill.
The main problem seems to lie in the proposals making it very difficult to punish the people that need to be punished. Occasional offenders, children or inexperienced computer users, unable to conceal what they are doing and unaware of the consequences of their actions, are far more likely to get caught than the serial pirate, who, already five steps ahead of both the government and the ISPs, happily continues downloading, his activity hidden. Also, curiously enough, a quote directly from the government's Digital Britain report states: “A recent study in Scandinavia has shown that the biggest users of unlawful peer-to-peer material are also the biggest paid-for consumers of music”, bringing into the spotlight the legitimacy of the figures the BPI is using as evidence.
Perhaps the music industry needs to get more inventive and take an active role in its own future and the future of its clients, instead of waiting for complex government policy that could be as problematic as the issue it is trying to eradicate. For example, Radiohead offered their album In Rainbows online, stating that customers could choose to pay however much the album was worth to them; this is a generosity that we see echoed in many new record labels and artists. It is this inventiveness that the larger labels now need to embrace. It is high time they changed, provided a service the internet cannot, and made the range of products available to the consumer of better quality and more competitively priced. Instead of cheap, poor quality, almost disposable items, why not make a CD or DVD art, something collectible, bought for its own sake as well as for the music. Think about the artistic beauty of an old vinyl sleeve, and you'll understand. Perhaps then, the proposals on piracy outlined in Digital Britain would not be needed, as P2P sharing would not be seen as a more attractive option after all.
Tom Agar
11/01/2010
