Internet File Sharing

There was an interesting Panorama program on the BBC last night which covered the government’s proposed legislation relating to the downloading of intellectual property by file sharers over the Internet.


The technology is called peer-to-peer and it involves the participation of a central server which co-ordinates the connection of numerous peers, i.e. home PCs and Macs. These machines, and there can be literally millions of these, then cooperate to assemble the required download byte by byte. I describe the technical process as it speaks to the utter stupidity of the proposed “solution” cannot by any stretch of the imagination solve the perceived problem.


If you have teenage kids, and they have access to a computer, then you can be pretty certain they are using Bit Torrent or similar technologies to get their hands on music, software, TV series and films. The government’s proposals, if fully enacted, will see you possibly having a stiff letter from the ISP and if this doesn’t work then eventually having your Internet service suspended. Forget for a second the obvious human rights implications of this and simply look at the practicalities. You can walk into any high street white good store and buy a “pay-as-you-go” 3g data card, plug it into your computer and off you go.


And how will they trace the download to you? They will use your IP address but unfortunately it takes minutes on the Internet to set up a transparent proxy, there are thousands freely available, and you are invisible and untraceable.


So how did proposed legislation of this level of unworkable stupidity ever even see the light of day? The vested interests in the music and film industry have lobbied tirelessly for as they are completely clueless about how to deal with the new economic environment they need to function in. Their natural instinct is to turn protectionism and that has never worked in the pas and there is not reason to suppose that it will work this time either. They quite like having their noses in the trough and would like to carry on pigging out if that’s OK with everyone.


Taking the music industry as an example; it has been exploiting the talent of artists for years and offering them derisory royalty rates in return. In the new economy an artist can reach their audience directly by bypassing the record industry and selling their music, for a reasonable price to their fans and using the recordings as promotional material for their live gigs. A consequence of this new era is the death of the superstar pop groups who take a disproportionate share of the available earnings at the expense of the journeymen who slog up and down the country on the live circuit.


As Billy Bragg said on the program the music industry is fine it is the record industry that has the problem. An artist that can get £10 a year from 500 fans has the foundations of making a living from music. The sooner we see the back of the record companies and their parasitic hangers on the better in my view.


UPDATE: Link to Register article on the Panorama program