Peter Mandleson wants your Mum to know what you look at on the Internet in your “private” time… the dirty devil.
Right… er… I suppose first off apologies and explanations are in order. A planned festive break quickly turned in to protracted blog lethargy… sorry…. Normal service is resumed.
Now the pleasantries are out of the way it’s time to give something of social media, Internet persuasion the Shitegeist treatment…
This weeks topic is neither particularly contemporaneous or strictly in accordance with the Social Media ethos these ramblings have so far tried and failed to adhere to. But bear with me; it holds great relevance to anyone with an Internet connection, it has more or less died on its arse in terms of press coverage and comes with the added bonus of a corporate sponsored, celebrity endorsed bandwagon to jump on.
I am of course talking about “The Digital Economy Bill”… if the title alone doesn’t cause a stirring in your trousers seek immediate medical help, you may be dead inside.
Peter Mandleson the sometime fraudster, one time owner of the best facial hair ever to grace British public life, is touting the bill under his guise as the Business, Innovation and Skills czar.
BEST TASH EVER!
Among other proposals too numerous and dull to mention Mandleson is proposing, “throttling” and in extreme cases cutting off the broadband connections of users caught illegally file sharing.
Now this in itself is not strictly news, record labels, the government, the movie industry, etc etc have been bellyaching for years about “tackling” the issue of file sharing. But this is the first time new legislation has been tabled to actually directly deal with the problem in this country.
To quickly break it down, under the proposals ISP’s will be responsible for monitoring the internet use of it’s customers, generating warning letters and then if the problem persists, reducing the bandwidth of the offender. In the most extreme cases ISP’s will also be obliged to completely cut off the Internet connections of offenders.
Now in my other guise I interviewed a thoroughly nice man from Talk Talk, who are admirably opposing the bill though their ‘Don’t Disconnect Us” campaign.
Before going in to the obvious: violation of privacy and infringement of human rights stuff he spoke about the technical limitations of enforcing these measures, notably the issue of people using “borrowed” Wi-Fi connections to download illicit files.
“In a lot of cases it will be people who have no knowledge of any downloaded material that will receive warning letters and have their connections either throttled or cancelled. It is so easy to use someone else’s network. You have heard cases in other countries of people receiving warning letters about the downloading of pornographic materiel, in cases like this you are disrupting people’s lives, it raises questions about people’s human rights.”
Basically it will lead to unfair sanctions being handed down to totally innocent parties. I don’t think it’s very fair to punish Mr. Café owner because the wanker upstairs uses his wireless to torrent High School Musical.
Now the human rights / privacy stuff…
The case with the pornography he was talking about was of a Gay teenager in Germany using a P2P site to download some “once nightly unpleasantness inspiration”. I’m sure he didn’t plan to come out via the legal department of his Mother’s ISP.
So those who are yet to flock the nest think about your poor Mother next time you use Boolean search terms to fulfil niche and shameful curiosities. Imagine her opening the envelope, seeing it there in black and white, her mind racing at a million times a minute like a pornographic Poirot processing who the culprits must be until through intimate knowledge of your Fathers preferences and a process of elimination she lands on you… Imagine the shame, the disappointment, and the illusion of her cherubic little son smashed. Replaced with an image forever etched in her mind of her precious little boy spread-eagled out on her best Egyptian cotton frantically fapping away like his life depended on it to [insert horrible search term of choice here]. The poor woman. If Mandleson gets his way THIS WILL DEFINITELY HAPPEN.
Anyway…
Man from Talk Talk and now sort of personal hero of mine described the unfair powers rights holders (record labels, movie studios etc.) and ISP’s will have over users:
“This will set them up as the judge and jury, in essence they can force us to make a judicial punishment without any legal recourse. It goes against 794 years of the Magna Carta. If this law goes through people will have to prove themselves innocent”
And he’s right… Whether you download or you’re the innocent victim of some pilfering sod piggy backing your Wi-Fi it is not fair to disconnect you from the Internet. The ISP’s will be breaching a contract you signed without these conditions in place without the opportunity to explain yourself. If you dared breach the terms in your contract for, let’s say, not paying the bill they’d disconnect you quicker than you can say… “Please Mr BT let me finish myself off first.” Trust me I know. It has to run both ways.
Now let’s quickly reflect on the issue behind this whole thing. Record labels and the terrifying, and imminent end of their free ride.
Dear Sir / Madame: EMI, Warner, Warner Brothers, Sony, etc etc…
While every other industry, baring possibly newspapers worked out how to sell their wares on the Internet you carried on regardless; signing artists for huge advances based on rapidly declining record sales, pumping millions in to the same old marketing and promotion, selling in to the same old channels.
All this whilst continuing to spend the same colossal sums on the substance fuelled exuberance of your executives, basically doing everything but working out what your next move was going to be. What did you think you were doing?
Yes you managed to stop Napster, but by the then Pandora’s box was open, there was no going back. Why did it take tiny start ups like Spotify to provide an elegant solution? Why could you not use your long acquired wisdom, contacts, reach, resources and expertise to make a streaming service that is actually financially viable?
I don’t know, I’m no expert but was it greed, ignorance or both? Did you think just by ignoring it, it would go away, or did you just want Apple to monopolise the tiny percentage of people that download legally? You had the chance and you blew it guys, you could have finally been the farmer, the wholesaler and the shopkeeper, no more giving a margin to retailers, you could have lived the dream, been Kings once again but you fucking blew it… How do you feel…?
The sad thing is it’s the fans that are going to lose out. Now you serve no greater purpose than flogging every recess of your back catalogue to the advertising, television, film and games industries how is the new blood going to get found and nurtured?
Your paralysis has subjected us to a the musical equivalent of Groundhog Day, Police reunion after Police reunion, U2 album after U2 album, society will be held in an awful war of attrition with these behemoths of old as they pup out track after track of special collectors 25th anniversary, last tour ever drek until they die or we lose the will to live. All this in the name of scraping the very last drops of oil from the bottom of the well after Shell has fucked off like the desperate profiteering, devoid of original thought fuckers that you are.
You were a necessary evil, and as a necessary evil you had one responsibility, keep shit running ok, everyone else managed it, why not you?
Lots of Love.
Shitegeist.
Now I don’t know what the alternative could have been, but the fact that these guys didn’t have a stab at it until the game was well and truly over is a crime against their industry, the pure arrogance of it is enough to astound me.
It’s not all bad news though as record sales decline live music has flourished, the festival and gig scene in this country has never been more vibrant. What saddens me though is because of their failure draconian measures like the Digital Economy Bill are being tabled, middle weight and small bands can no longer make a good enough living to keep making music anymore and as a result another little part of our culture has died due to the ever-relentless economic realities of the age we live in.
Going back to the original thrust of the post you can follow the progress of the bill here, and sign up to the Talk Talk campaign if you are so inclined.
Thanks again for reading….
And thanks for bearing with us during the extended festive break….
SG.
Just to remind you, we still have Twatter, I promise to be more vocal now I’m out of hibernation, 400 followers, a few more listings and some nice mentions, so again a massive thank you to everyone….
Your Shitegeist 