It was the case that one had to judge by the cover of a movie or an album whether it was any good. That meant lots of rubbish movies and tunes that no one liked very much, but couldn’t return. Now we only buy the movies and albums we actually like.

Case in point, look at Wolverine, out in bitorrent before it was in the cinema, but it still broke all the records on its first week after release. Because people LIKED it, and went to see it again at the cinema after downloading it, then went on to buy the DVD.

So Hollywood loose money on rubbish films, and they complain that they can’t trick anyone into seeing garbage anymore, they shouldn’t be getting our money for that rubbish anyway.

This law will not change anything, except maybe generate 7 million new British customers for VPN services based abroad and send even more money out of the UK. – as well as persecute countless British citizens because their kids suffer the misfortune of liking Metalica.

The television sets in our house are often not turned on for days on end. When we went on holiday this year we didn’t have any ‘net access. So what did we do instead late evenings ? We watched some DVDs and the telly!

P2P may have some effect, but it ISN’T anything like the effect they would have our MPs believe. People are simply doing other things.

MPs would have to ban the internet altogether for the Media companies to regain their lost revenues and that really wouldn’t be on Mr. Watson!

I am completely baffled by this, and would like to know, how someone who is completely unelected can return from a holiday after meeting up with some media mogul, and then issue an edict to the nation that the rules have got to be made tighter, and legislation introduced much sooner than was planned.

Who is this fellow ? Where is the democracy here ?

We, the voters elect people, who we can then kick out of power if they do things we do not like, when they are our local MPs. How can anyone kick Mr “Lord” Mandelson out ?

Believe me, there is a good deal of public opposition to this policy. As others have said, what is needed is reasonable cost online alternatives to media piracy, but if the industries won’t adapt to provide them, then the government should not be supporting greedy luddite corporate entities who want to act like Canute. There are already CIVIL remedies already available to such entities if they wish to use them.

Having someone such as Lord Mandelson who isn’t even elected to power, issuing such edicts to people is completely unacceptable, and indeed quite monstrous and manifestly undemocratic.

I do not believe NL want to win the next election. Certainly this isn’t going to help them, and I am looking forward to the whole repressive NL machine being taught a long overdue lesson by the people with the real power, the electorate!

It is truly scary where we are heading. The copyright industry already have private police forces in FACT and BPIAPU that have unrivalled access to state databases on UK citizens, are able to buy search warrants, have police arrest people for downloading (as they recently did) and are able to continue to unlawfully retain people’s property even after the High Court rules against them.

Now we have a situation where the same big US media companies that are directors of FACT (Sony, Universal, News Corp, Disney) are buying the right to disconnect UK citizens internet connections without following a proper legal process. It is absurd that this can be alllowed to happen in a democratic country. Legal process is there to protect the citizens and it is telling that Big Media wish to bypass this vital process.

Of course this will not be the first time that these companies manipulate the law to bypass legal process. Currently the private police force FACT has a policy of intrusive investigations of people, collecting evidence to support their view and then bypasses the Crown Prosecution Service so they can run the private criminal prosecution themselves. In copyright cases the state has ceded control of the investigation and prosecution to a representative of US conglomerates.

And if anyone thought the Tories would be any better just look at the connections between certain front bench figures and the copyright industries favourite law firms such as SJ Berwin. They have all their bets covered.

Assuming its technologically possible for ISPs to filter all Internet traffic at a deep enough level to make some meaningful judgement; assuming it is economically feasible to do so; and ignoring the privacy issues that arise from that, there are still several more concerns that need to be addressed:

There is a question over whether we can simply accept the word of the entertainment industry or ISP providing the ‘evidence’ in the form of an alledged ‘infringing IP address’, date and copyrighted work. The ‘evidence’ is weak in that it identifies a broadband account, it does not even reliably identify a computer, it most certainly does not identify the perpetrator of the aledged copyright infringement.

It is clear that businesses including those in the telecommunications sector, let alone those in or employed by the entertainment sector are behind the technological curve when it comes to the creativity employed by current-day hackers. We can reasonably expect a continued rise in cases where computer equipment is ‘hijacked’ remotely and used as a proxy for copyright infringement.

As security becomes an increasing concern, we would naturally expect to see the protocols exchanged between computers increasingly incorporate encryption; this will make it extremely difficult if not imposible to discern legal and illegal filesharing from other online business transactions and virtual private networks.

Finally, even if it can be proved that a member of a household engaged in copyright infringement, how can it be justified to deny Internet access which is fast becoming an important household utility?

The trend is clearly to provide more government and local council services online. If broadband access is denied families will be disadvantaged, prevented from seeking out the best deals online for car/home insurance, financial products, electricity and gas, filing tax returns, applying for a road tax disc, etc. etc.

If slower broadband speeds are imposed on a family you run the risk of imparing the productivity of adults who work from their home office. Similarly, Internet telephony services would likely be adversely affected, as would access to legitamate streaming video services such as YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

The trend in broadband applications is an increasing requirement on bandwidth (Internet Speed), any policy seeking to limit a household’s bandwidth would run the risk of lagging the technological curve and have an unpredictable impact a year or two down the road.

Quite frankly I’m annoyed that the government doesn’t focus it’s time on more deserving issues instead of pandering to the whim of the entertainment industry which has for years continued to delude itself into thinking that each copyright infrigement is equal to a lost sale.

Perhaps the youths of today treat music as a disposable commodity because arguably so much of the industry’s output today lacks any true creativity/quality? I don’t suppose that occured to Mr Geffen.