Hunt and Foster listen to Dunstone

15:34 | Tuesday January 26, 2010

Dunstone rounded up allies of his Don’t Disconnect Us campaign at Great George Street to tell them the Bill in its present form will simply lead to the development of other tools which will make it easier for people to access music for free - and undetected. This, he argued, defeats any attempt to protect copyright.

Dunstone said, "The measures in the Digital Economy Bill will hasten the migration away from P2P, ignite the development of new tools and popularise the notion that stealing content is socially acceptable, akin to breaking the speed limit by one or two miles per hour. The inevitable consequence of persisting with this legislation will be to increase the moral chasm between labels and fans and between government and citizens."

Dunstone also said that content owners were frustrating music and film fans by only allowing material to be downloaded to one device or used in only one format. He added, "Most fans grudgingly put up with it but some are smart enough to develop applications which allow content to be copied from one format or device to another. And that is the genesis of many of the tools which are currently out there. If the Digital Economy Bill becomes law, more tools will emerge and they will be simple enough for anyone to use.”

Dunstone did confirm that he did not “ encourage, condone or profit” from illegal filesharing, but he said that the Digital Economy Bill in its present form “is futile and will only hasten the development of more beneath-the-radar tools and applications.”