Public urges Government rethink on DEA

Whilst the first numeered point made may be true and there may be issues to iron out over the coming years in regard to the Digital Economy Act the second point sounds great but offers no solutions to the problems caused to creators and investors in copyright material. It seems like a soundbite devised by ISPs or others who benefit themselves from having no protections in place but who appear to want to deny or weep under the carpet the central issue. That is that illegal filesharing is having a huge financial impact on the businesses investing in copyright material and on the creators of such material dependent on these businesses to invest in their talent and support them in the early stages of their career development. The knock on effects are also making more people in volvd in such sector unemplyed and ultimately stifling creativity as companies simply stick to investing in sure fire commercial success i.e. the bland and non ground breaking music or film or writers. I do hope that the government will realise the huge cultural and financial benefit that our copyright creating industries bring to the UK.

Why doesnt the Government make all robbery legal then ? We live in times, when wrong is being represented as right,and when wrong is being almost legislated as being right. Our Industry will deff crash for good, unless someone at the top, halts all the skewed thinking,of the neer'do'wells. Maybe the huge tax loss caused by piracy, will wake someone up. Technological coding of material, will always be overcome by these criminal minded types who steal & hack away our lifeblood. There is no excuse towards not catching, and prosecuting these amoral scum. Software exists, whereby all U.R.L. & servers, can be immediately given an order to cease and desist. The offender would escape via another route, but would be caught again, but on that occasion, would be brought to full justice by, not the law, but by the mere fact of being followed every step of the way, each time that they would have moved position. Giving them hell, through virtually stalking them, would possibly not make their clever efforts worth it any longer. We all hate "tailgaters", they are a menace. So why dont we legally menace them? It should'nt be that difficult to set up a comprehensive tracking system...we may never beat 'em, but we could make their pathetic lives hell in the meantime.

I can only strongly agree to Roy's comment. Prior to the mainly digital exploitation of music the UK's government received huge tax revenues from our industry. The industry used to be a vital economic factor in the UK. Not having appropriate laws in place at the right time played a substantial part in the decline of such revenue. Still 'pussy footing' about a proper legislation to protect intellectual property from the free use by file shares is not exactly helping our industry and the general economy. It is high time to have this problem solved by professionals and not by 'two teenagers' running the country, currently.

Isn't it amazing how liberal thinking people are when it doesn't impinge on their own income. At the moment ISP's serve as 'fences' dealing in stolen property. If we want a 21st. century solution for a 21st. century problem, why not look back to when publishers lost the mechanical market (i.e. sheet music) to the phonographic industry. They successfully lobbied governments to impose a mechanical copyright on all grammophone record sales. Hasn't the time arrived that ISP's should be made to pay a copyright to both the publisher and the master owner for each piece of copyrighted material passing through their system, be it music, film, games or any other copyrighted software.

I can't see how illegal file-sharing can be stopped, it requires to much manpower to filter out copyrighted material, either from the ISP end or the file-sharing sites. Plus the fact that people can encrypt it all inside password protecter .rar files with names like 9847019.rar. The government cant control content by making people upload their files through defined sites, anyone can get a domain and FTP software.

Thank you to those that responded in a similar vein to my anger in respect of the moral argument as to whether we ought step up the pressure amongst ourselves, to once and for all, get some real radical legal action going, not so much through employing top lawyers, or through expensive lobbying of M.P.'s and Senators etc, but, by playing these pirate scum****, at their own game. Whilst I totally respect Bobon's view that suggests the complication of it all, to employ tracker methods etc, and to the technical nightmare that it would be, in order to tailgate these fraudsters, but surely, if a kid can hack into the Pentagon,then it cannot be beyond the realms of imagination, for a system to be devised, which would tailgate these common criminals, who, misguidedly think,believe, that to steal, is some kind of God given right, and a virtue to be admired. I dont blame our Industry for leaving holes in the internet fence. We are in the Music Industry and not in the security business. Our Industry, sad as it may have been in previous times of the old days of payola and greed etc, is not any different from most other types of business. There will always be those that bend the system. However, if the pirates bend us much more, then there will be nothing left to bend..we will be totally broken. This issue is much more serious than most investigations to date have exposed. It is to be highly commended, that Music Week Magazine, features our comments, they are ahead of the game, and most likely hear the bells of doom clanging in the near distance too. Where do we go from here ? Simple...find that kid who hacked the Pentegon, he will show us the way.

I'm still waiting for the exciting, innovative, legal music services to emerge that were promised when the Digital Economy Act became law? It has been three months now. Where are they? Until you provide a legal service fans actually want, people will continue to pirate. Threatening to kick people off the internet will only make things worse.