Cnut the Great
Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 06:59AM 
As a kid, I did a few illegal things. I'm not going to reveal all of them here, but I will make one shameful revelation: between 1985 and 1992 I borrowed albums from my local library, recorded them on my tape-to-tape, and then returned them to the library. Over time I built up a large collection of utterly illegal music. The librarian knew I recorded music illegally, but at no point was there any talk of revoking my membership; it was accepted. And, during my period of flagrant copyright infringement, I'm pretty sure that the music industry was doing OK whilst my illegitimate activity continued unchecked.
Fast-forward to 2009 (where, by my reckoning, I've now spent around £3,000 on CDs), and Peter Mandelson - a man who billed the taxpayer for nearly £3,000 of work on his constituency home shortly after announcing his decision to stand down as an MP - is getting tough on file-sharers, with proposals that repeat offenders have their net connections cut off. Your kids download music or movies without your knowledge? You get cut off. You inadvertently leave an access point open, and someone downloads illegal files? You get cut off. This proposal is simply unworkable, and former digital enhancement minister Tom Watson says Mandleson's regressive, tide-halting antics are akin to those of Cnut the Great. That's close enough.
This intro first appeared in the October 2009 issue (194) of .net magazine, the world's best-selling publication for web designers and developers.
Reader Comments (3)
Lord Mandelson = 'king cnut. I like the analogy. While politicians understand the reach of the internet, they seem not to understand or care about the spirit of the internet. Can someone tell me how he has been allowed to have such wide-ranging power without being elected?
I have to say that living in a post-communist country means having a long history of recording music illegally. We rarely bought tapes from the store and most of these music stores were also huge pirates, indeed. Having such a background makes your point of view about music broader than you can imagine. I am also sure that even my old collection of home-made music tapes with home-made covers did not ruined the bank accounts of my favorite bands or harmed anyone. When you make music, you want to share it with the world, to reach and inspire more people. And truth is, most people in this biz are making much more money anyway that they are losing in theory from piracy. Nowadays many performers are coming to Bulgaria for live shows and most of them are very surprised to see such a devoted audience. It wouldn't happen without the help of the long piracy tradition. About the Internet aspect of the same problem -well, it's just a media. I can download and listen to the latest album of some band and then decide if I like it or not. If yes, I will always be happy to give my money for the best audio quality there -- the true music fan cannot be satisfied with the ordinary compressed file. So downloading music from Internet is just the right thing to do. Musicians can only win from this -- some of them understand that and websites with music under CC license are the living proof.
I have no idea how much I've spent on CDs and DVDs in the last few years. Probably as much as you if not more. I'm still, however, probably in breach of their inane laws and I know that most of my friends would be too. In Ireland the government hasn't got this involved yet, but since one of the biggest ISPs threw in the towel the net result is almost the same. Why we, the consumers, have to suffer is beyond me