The Internet. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s also a horrible cesspool of ignorance, stupidity and downright ugliness. But hey, we made the Internet in our own image. It has become the last medium for freedom in the modern world. A completely unregulated, un-moderated haven where you can do what you want and say what you want. Until now.

Lord Mandelson

If there’s one thing that Labour don’t like, its freedom. In their 12 years in office they have introduced many new laws and legislation’s that have done fuck all but restrict the public from doing things that are mostly harmless, all under false claims that they were “making us safer”. Now Peter Mandelson, Labour’s Business Secretary, has decided that the freedom is too great despite clearly being too old to know or understand what the Internet really is.

The move will require Internet service providers to restrict and then cut off internet access to Illegal file sharers. For those of you that don’t know what that means, it is people that use programs to illegally share and download copyrighted music and/or films/TV. This has been around as long as the net has and no I don’t condone it, but it is not a serious problem! In-fact its barely a problem at all. Here’s why:

  • It’s supposedly destroying the music business. 2009 is a record breaking year in music sales. It is already (yes we are still in October) the highest grossing year for music single sales of all time, with sales so far of 117.6m
  • Those who regularly or occasionally download music illegally are 10 times more likely to pay for music. It’s the truth. Sharing music is the how people discover new music. If they like it they will inevitably buy it.
  • File sharing is in major decline. It’s an old problem, that was thriving about 4 years ago. But its just not the case anymore, legal technology has caught up making it far easier to purchase songs and watch movies and TV legally. iTunes is thriving as now nearly every artist sells all of their music on demand, Spotify has revolutionized the market further by allowing users to listen to full albums for free, exposing them to adverts every half hour or so. All major television networks now offer their shows on demand for free online. File sharing and the freedom of the Internet made these things happen, so for that it should be applauded.
  • The only people suffering from File sharing are the head honchos in the music biz. The ones that insist on producing utter shite that they know will make money. Music is sacred, it’s as older that civilization. It’s an honest expression of emotion passion, its a universal language, a release, it is simply beautiful. That is except when it isn’t. And it isn’t when its being manipulated to make money. Money that goes straight into the pockets of the head honchos of the music biz. When file sharing started to hit profits a few years ago it threw a major spanner into the works of the business. But it started something amazing. It forced the music business to actually up their game, and the further rise of the Internet has given people unlimited access to bands and artists that they otherwise would have never discovered. Music has thrived over the past few years and it is because of the Internet.
  • The people who use file sharing problems are usually not stupid. They have a very good understanding of the Internet. They will find ways around the ban, whether that be a VPN, pay as you go mobile broadband or any other manner, there will be plenty of ways to get around it if you want to. You simply cannot restrict downloads from a single application. Everything is a download, even viewing a web page downloads information. Restricting illegal downloads is simply not possible.

So there you have it. The music business is doing better than ever and its all because of file sharing. So what are the government really trying to do here? Well Labour seems to have a policy of “if anything that’s very slightly bad happens, lets just make it illegal”. It’s a policy that has lead the UK into all time highs of people in prison, highs in knife crime, highs in unemployment and highs in youth offenders to name but a few. Again they fail to see the things that cause crime are the problem rather than the crimes themselves. Perhaps they are trying to get a foothold into ending net neutrality and freedom. If this does go ahead it will be a landmark in the history of the Internet.

Perhaps they are being advised by someone living in the past. Or perhaps they are just completely fucking stupid. One thing is for sure, they are not listening to the people of this country or anyone that has ever used the Internet.