A dose of reality
The Times has reported an interview with intellectual property minister David Lammy, in which he revealed that the government is not going to legally oblige internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect users who illegally share music and video files over the net.
It looks like Lammy has had a welcome dose of reality and realized that even if they did bring such a law in, it would be extremely difficult to enforce. "I'm not sure it's actually going to be possible," he said in the article.
Organisations like the BPI have been lobbying for measures, such as a ‘three strikes and you're out' policy, to be put in place for some time now. But the stumbling block remains enforcement.
Lammy went on to point out: "We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms," He then embarked on a metaphor he presumably thought summed the matter up nicely: "People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap - there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television."
Perhaps surprisingly, the metaphor has gathered traction, with one "senior figure" quoted in the article as saying: "The relative cost of stealing a bar of soap from an hotel might be small, but if it came to seven million people nicking the soap each year, which is what we have in the music industry, I'm sure that hotel chain would do something about it."
Moving swiftly on, we saw a more practical approach to tacking this problem from, of all people, the Monty Python team on Monday. The realisation that trying to use force in as unconstrained an environment as the Internet is futile seems to be catching on.
