Once again we see an unelected member of the government putting the interests of big business before the interests of the electorate.
Peter Mandelson, the unelected business secretary of the government, apparently spent some time with record label founder David Geffen whilst on holiday recently. Coincidentally he has now announced that the government is to be much tougher on illegal file sharers and will require ISP’s to police what their customers are doing online and cut them off if they are found to be illegally sharing music files and other copyright material.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills deny their is any connection. Well, they would say that wouldn’t they. No person with any brain at all would not see some sort of connection there whether it was requested, implied or simply hinted at it is to much of a coincidence not to think there is some sort of connection.
More to the point is the fact that someone who has not been elected is making decisions that affect everyone. Quite how that fits with a democracy is open to question so we have a Prime Minister who never gave the public an opportunity to vote for him as Prime Minister appointing people who have not been elected who then decide what we can and cannot do and all this following a meeting with someone who would like those decisions to be taken because it suits their business. It stinks and doesn’t sound like democracy to me.
Just to be clear on my position on the matter of illegal downloading of copyright material. I think it is wrong but I think the system is wrong too. When we hear music on the radio it is, to all intents and purposes, free for us to hear. Music on the internet should be the same and if they want to use advertising to pay for the licencing costs so be it. They would probably make more money selling an advert for every play than they do from selling a song.
There is a lot of nonesense talked about how much the music industry loses due to piracy. I am sure they do lose out significantly but to suggest that every download is a sale lost is complete rubbish. That is like saying that if I didn’t hear some music on the radio I would buy it and that is simply not true.
Right now I am more concerned about the loss of democracy than I am about the loss of revenue for music publishers.
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