RIPA and file-sharing??

[Ian Batten]

On 01 Feb 08, at 0932, Watkin Simon wrote:
>
> In some instances the assistance an ISP is able to give to the  
> police and
> the security service to prevent and detect crime and to protect life
> effectively has to grind to a halt in order for the ISP to deal with a
> digital rights dispute.

Unfortunately, elected officials want to simultaneously fight the  
``war on terror'' and also suck up to their friends in ``the creative  
industries'' by claiming that BitTorrent is a veritable pyre for  
business interests.  Meanwhile they tell us that faster broadband is  
a key to the nation's competitiveness, ignoring the fact that a lot  
of customers for residential high-cap broadband are using it to  
download copyrighted material.

Whatever your views on the reality or otherwise of the putative  
terrorists --- and I'm with Lewis Page of The Register, a former Bomb  
Disposal guy, that the IRA were a far more competent, effective and  
dangerous threat --- dealing with them doesn't provide electoral  
contributions, parties with film stars and the glamour of the music  
business.  There's no votes in bombs not going off, and precious few  
in looking staunch when they do, as Rudy is showing.

In the USA, politicians' desire to pre-empt terror comes second to  
pandering to the RIAA and the MPAA. This isn't Bush-bashing, by the  
way: the Dems are actually far closer to the entertainment industry,  
because a lot of the Republican base believes that Hollywood and what  
they probably still think of as `race music' are a threat to the  
nation's precious bodily fluids.  There are relatively few high- 
profile entertainment industry Republicans, because being seen giving  
money to Bush is box-office poison.  Films are a much bigger  
proposition in natural Blue states; the Red-staters may approve of  
donating money to the Republicans, but don't go to the cinema in  
anything the numbers New Yorkers and Californians do.   You don't  
think ``In the Valley of Elah'' and ``Lions for Lambs'' and ``Sweeney  
Todd'' and ``No Country for Old Men'' and ``Juno'' and the rest of  
this year's Oscar Noms were being made for Texas, do you?

[[ Respectively ``Better written than it is directed, TLJ is great  
though'', ``Like having a meal at the next table to an overbearing  
academic from a lesser university'', ``Perfect in every frame and  
every note'', ``Overrated and not as good as Fargo'' and ``Previews  
in the Provinces on Saturday night''.  For the first time in years I  
did two films yesterday, ItVoE and ST, and I feel much the better for  
it. ]]

So in this country, the Labour government will pander to the  
recording industry because money talks, and then do it again because  
Americans told them to.

Of course, we could say that the real threat is placed in context by  
this.  Elected officials, who presumably have access to real threat  
analysis rather than the lies and spin the rest of us are given,  
decide to favour giving more money to U2 over defending against  
terrorists.  Either they really, really want to be photographed with  
Bono or terrorism isn't as big a threat as is made out.

ian