Black day for common sense

THE HOUSE OF LORDS, that UK bastion of paid-for-peers, 'friends of Tony', doddering old men and representatives by title, have inevitably approved a law that few people agreed with.

The controversial Digital Economy Bill, which sent shivers up the spine of anyone that had ever had a sensible idea about how to police the Internet, has been approved - despite stiff opposition. The Bill is the one that could see people cut off by their Internet service provider (ISP) merely at the whim of copyright holders, and it has seen most of its support come from, you guessed it, rights holders.

Yes, copyright infringement might be difficult to police, hard to prove and, if you listen to European bureaucrats, penalising people for doing it might be contrary to human rights. But that doesn't bother the House of Lords, which cowardly has rushed out its approval of this Bill before the general election.

The Bill had its supporters. People like the British Phonographic Industry, which is supposed to have invented most of it, will be pleased, as will one hit wonder Feargal Sharkey and the lead singer of Scouting for Girls.

Last night, during a Panorama programme on the BBC, the lead singer of Scouting for Girls compared his music to bread rolls, asking whether, if he was a baker, people would still be able to swap and trade his products around the world for free? This may strike you as an odd comparison, unless you actually listen to one of his songs, which are rather plain and dull. So, perhaps he wasn't speaking total rubbish.

Elsewhere, musicians that you might actually enjoy listening to are against the Bill. People from Dave Stewart of the Eurthymics to Kate Nash and Billy Bragg, at least two of whom are tolerable, think that the idea is madness. As Billy Bragg says when talking about how Internet sharing can encourage people to come to concerts, where once they might not have, "If you can get 5,000 people to spend a tenner on you a year, you've got the start of a career."

Downloading doesn't bother Bragg, or Radiohead, or Marillion, so why does it bother people like Louis Walsh, a chart befouling producer with more money than Satan, and Geoff Taylor, the head of the BPI?

Well, the BPI reckons that downloading costs the music industry £200m a year and stifles creativity (Isn't it cocaine that does that? - Ed). Louis, obviously an artist at heart, talks about the importance of supporting the music industry big machine, which is a far cry from a pint of snakebite, a sweaty gig, a couple of tee shirt sales and a copied CD.

Marilion, meanwhile, has been spat out by the afore-mentioned music machine and has asked its fans to finance album production. That's a marketing plan that has worked for four albums in a row. So if bands don't need the machine to carry on, and the fans can live without it. Who really needs it?

A quick scan of any town centre will reveal spotty teenagers carrying guitars around and looking moody, so if fewer bands are being started we have yet to see the evidence. Also, you'd be hard pushed to find a band that would not be happy to be quoted about being treated with the same dignity as a loaf of bread, and still hope to slink away with any artistic integrity.

The idea that stopping downloading, or if you prefer, stopping people from discovering new music, will funnel more money to the music industry, is more misguided than the thought of a Gary Glitter comeback single.

Figures from government think group Demos already show that downloaders spend more money on music and bands than those that don't. In fact it is almost twice as much. Kick these people off the Internet, or even merely throttle their connections, and the music industry will really feel the impact.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group is extremely concerned about this hatchet response to file sharing, and this morning blogged this on the subject, "The BPI is waging a war on every citizen in the country by demanding disconnection. Everyone's rights are being curtailed in the name of their business interests. They are manipulating the political process and distorting the legislation that results."

"We do not withdraw the basic tool of society without the most extreme reason" he added. "We certainly do not do such a thing without a massive public and democratic debate." We do in this country Jim, we do in this country.

So even though the law is unwieldy, unjust and unpopular, in the UK for now, it appears to be just so. µ