As much previously reported, in early 2008 the government made some unusually bold commitments to the effect that they would force the ISPs to act on illegal file-sharing if no voluntary agreement could be reached between the music industry and the net firms on how to deal with the piracy problem.
But then previous culture minister, Andy Burnham, spent the latter half of last year telling us all that it would be irresponsible for the government to make good on those commitments until 'Digital Britain' was published - because the issue would be fully dealt with in there.
In the latter months as chief culture man, though, Burnham had switched his delaying tactics to one of telling the record industry that this was "an international problem" and one where government could help most by lobbying their counterparts around the world, encouraging them to also act on internet piracy (most probably focusing on those governments based in warmer climes, it's much more fun lobbying politicians in hot countries, especially in the winter).
That shift in focus, coupled with the lacklustre commitments made regarding tackling the net piracy issue in 'Digital Britain V.1', led to growing pessimism in the music industry with regard to the government's real commitment to forcing the ISPs to take a hardline approach against those who persistently access or upload unlicensed content online. That said, in his parting shot as culture man, Burnham did say he thought media regulator OfCom should be able to force ISPs to implement "technical measures" against the most persistent online copyright infringers.
So what did the final edition of 'Digital Britain' say about file-sharing? Well, very little. The government wants a 70-80% reduction in unlawful file-sharing by 2011, but I want to spend the weekend on a Caribbean island, but however hard I want, I know I'm going to spend it in front of my Mac in Shoreditch. How are they going to achieve this? By forcing ISPs to send warning letters to those who unlawfully file-share, and making it easier for content owners to sue the file-sharers who ignore the letters, by making it easier to access the identity of a file-sharer off their net provider. Brilliant.
To be honest I'm not sure why Carter even bothered putting a file-sharing section in his report. First, all the major ISPs are already sending out warning letters to suspected file-sharers. And second, and most importantly, as anyone who knows anything about digital music (or who reads the CMU Daily, which is the same thing really) knows, DIRECT INFRINGEMENT LAWSUITS AGAINST INDIVIDUAL FILE SHARERS DO NOT WORK. Look it must be true, I put it in capital letters.
Even the thickest and most stubborn of the lawyers at the Recording Industry Association Of America (and let's face it, they employ some of the thickest and most stubborn lawyers in the world) have now accepted that suing individuals who file-share is pointless.
First, these people don't have any money, so even if the content owner wins (which they often do, albeit usually through an out of court settlement or default judgement) the damages paid rarely cover the legal and administrative cost of pursuing the legal action in the first place.
Second, so many people file-share every day of the week, you'll never be able to sue everyone, the legal costs would probably bankrupt the industry.
Third, isolated lawsuits (and let's remember, the RIAA definition of "isolated lawsuits" is thousands of them) have not proven to be a deterrent to other file-sharers.
And fourth, such litigation makes the major record companies look like a bunch of cunts - I mean, even more cuntish than they really are (only joking my major label friends) - which makes the average file-sharer even more prone to steal music, I mean, who cares if those cunts go out of business?
The direct infringement lawsuit option has been open to record companies ever since the first kid downloaded a Britney track off Napster, but it's just not a viable option for protecting copyrights, and simplifying the process a little isn't going to make it any less so.
So the point is this: either you say that P2P is and always has been a distraction, that record companies will never be able to stop people from file-sharing just like they never stopped home-taping, and that they should invest their energy into finding new ways to make money out of recordings, or get involved in other areas of the music industry, and negotiate the kind of artist contracts that allow them to do so.
Or you say that those who continue to file-share will have their internet access restricted, suspended or cancelled, perhaps via a special court to deal with such things, hoping that, while hardcore file-sharers will find ways to circumvent the system and avoid detection, such measures may deter more casual file-sharers from accessing illegal content sources.
But you don't, repeat, don't say: "well, why don't you sue the infringers?"
But what about Burnham's "technical measures".
Well, to be fair, they are in the report. OfCom, the report says, will be given powers to force ISPs to instigate "technical limitations" to the internet access of serial infringers, which might include blocking access to websites and IP addresses which aid file-sharing, capping the bandwidth of file-sharers, or introducing special filters that block the download of infringing content. No suspensions as proposed by the music companies, nor disconnections as proposed in France, but perhaps measures that might sufficiently infuriate those they were instigated against to stop them from file-sharing. Assuming they couldn't work out ways around them. Which some of them probably could.
"But it's a start, isn't it?" you may say. Well yes, except Carter says that these measures, while maybe included in new legislation now, would only kick in once it had been proven the warning letter programme hadn't worked, and he'd want a twelve month test period to check whether it had or not. Given it will take the best part of a year to get the warning letter programme onto the statute book, that could mean that it would be two years before any "technical measures" are used against file-sharers, even though the voluntary warning letter programme is nearly a year old now and clearly hasn't achieved much.
All of which means it will be some time before any tougher sanctions against file-sharers are introduced. By which time there'll probably be a Tory government, voluntary programmes like the Virgin Media/Universal Music partnership announced earlier this week may have solved the problem anyway, or the record companies may have finally accepted P2P is an unsolvable problem, and just found a profitable business model with accommodates that fact. Which may well be what the government is secretly hoping, and the main motivation for the delaying tactics.