Digital Economy Bill is "a victory for consumers", says Microsoft

Posted on 9 Apr 2010 at 14:56

The Digital Economy Bill's passing into law is "a victory for consumer empowerment" according to Neil Thompson, general manager of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division.

While some aspects of the Digital Economy Bill, including the new provisions for the ratings system on games, are great steps forward and are what Thompson is referring to, there are many areas of the Bill that are quite the opposite. Frankly, Thompson couldn't have chosen poorer words to describe the Digital Economy Bill's passing if he'd tried.

The Digital Economy Bill as a whole is anything but a victory for consumers - it has highlighted serious failings in our Parliamentary process and a pandering to an industry that still lives in the dark ages. We fail to see how Thompson thinks that disconnecting users from the internet for alleged file sharing is a victory for consumers.

If online piracy is seriously damaging the creative industries, why didn't they seek legislation against the sale of twin tape decks with high-speed dubbing, video recorders or region free DVD players? Piracy has been around for longer than the creative industry cares to remember, but it's just a lot more visible than it used to be.

There was no measure of just how much piracy was going on before peer-to-peer file-sharing took off, whereas the bigwigs only have to visit a popular BitTorrent tracker today to find out how much money they're "losing". To work out that, they simply multiply the number of downloads by the full retail price - an unrealistic loss, since most file-sharers probably wouldn't have bought it anyway.

In fact, some of those downloaders might have paid for the game, movie or music that they've 'pirated' and have simply done so because they don't want to be inconvenienced by the draconian copy protection schemes often used these days. Have you ever sat through the copyright warnings at the start of Blu-ray movies and felt insulted? Why do we, the paying customers, have to be told that stealing content is bad? Am I a criminal because I happened to spend my hard-earned cash?

The Digital Economy Bill's brokenness goes well beyond disconnecting users from the internet, though. If the government uses its new found powers to their extreme, we could see many websites blocked because the government doesn't like the material they're hosting.

Footage like the recent Wikileaks 'collateral murder' video showing two Reuters photographers being gunned down by US Apache helicopters may never see the light of day. At the extreme end of the scale, both YouTube and Wikileaks could be blocked - either temporarily or permanently - because someone doesn't want us to see something by claiming that it's a breach of their copyright.

Author: Tim Smalley

Get more reviews, tutorials and in-depth advice, every month with Computer Shopper.
Click here to try 3 issues for £1

< Previous News : General Next >

User comments

Screwed by Big Brother again.

With reference to
The Digital Economy Bill, I thought, when I woke up this morning, that I still lived in the UK.

Evidently, overnight, I'm now in China or the former Soviet Union, where civil rights and censorship abound.

Not only is this bill profoundly insulting, and designed to inflict controll over the majority of UK citizens, but it has been generated and passed as law by miss-informed & incompetent people who have no clue about the use of the internet.

Moreover, it should be regarded as an illegal law, as it was passed after parliament was dissolved, just like "secret planning" laws are passed, so that the public have no say in the proposal or chance to object.

Laws that are passed in this way, during the night with probably 3 or 4 snoring law-lords, should be rigorously questioned.

This ridiculous situation, wherby websites can be blocked or forceably removed, because "the government" do not like it, is not what used to go on in Britain.

It is as pointless a situation as "security" cameras installed in our town centres to spy on people doing their shopping, but are totaly useless in solving crimes.

I do not like No.10.Gov, so lets get rid of that site!

I shall be voting for some party who will guarrantee our return to being free citizens at the next election.