Well at least they're not actually taking any action yet. This is designed, and will probably work, to decrease the vast numbers of teenage "bedroom downloaders" who all hop on limewire every night to download the latest 'Fiddy album. They at least acknowledge that it's NOT going to stop people who are a bit more tech savvy and who aren't going to stop just because the BPI sends a threatening letter.
One interesting idea was the government proposing a £30 "levy" to allow people to effectively have a sharing license for music online. An interesting idea certainly that leads one to a number of conclusions. Namely:
1. Well this just sounds like "Protection Money" since when have the BPI become the mafia?
2. They claim that if each of the 7 million music pirates in the UK paid up, it would cover the losses made by the music industry due to piracy. So wait a second, it's not actually to cover the losses made by the artists is it? No.. it's making sure that the BPI bosses keep their fat wallets.
3. If you're going to pay £30, well why not just pay the same for a month's unlimited Napster downloading? Considering it's legal now, you'd probably get more out of it anyway.. Napster "to go" is 14.95 a month, so for two months of getting all those albums you're after, you might as well just pay up. It'll probably be faster than the more "conventional" methods anyway..
Napster
is legal, right?
Most ISPs are still against the 3 strikes policy for now, and rightly so. It should be no one's decision, other than a courts. Whether some sort of throttling service would be more appropriate i dunno (although Virgin already does this for free
) - say if you're caught, they throttle you down to dial up speeds so it's impractical to do anything.
I think they should have fixed fines though. This crap about "unlimited" fines is just stupid. Personally i think you should pay as much as the album is worth plus a flat say, £500-1000 fine for a one off infringement case - so music corps can't say "ah well you donwnloaded Music by Madonna, that'll be $200,000 please - oh wait didn't we tell you, it's up to 8 grand PER SONG". I mean cry me a river people, music just isn't worth the fines they're trying to justify.