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Backlash Against File Sharers Continues

24th October 2007 | by Gavin Riley

Let battle be joined, or that's what the U.K authorities would have you believe right now. With the closure of OiNK yesterday, the file-sharing community is bracing itself for a further wave of attacks.

As TorrentFreak pointed out earlier today, the record label representatives IFPI and BPI, have changed tack, teaming up with the police and using carefully choreographed raids, that look great on the news, but unfortunately discard any presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Leaving the dodgy ethics aside though, the battle continues, with the BBC now reporting that the Government is jumping on the bandwagon, and cracking down on those people "stealing" music.

Lord Triesman, who is the "parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills", has called on ISP's to take a more activist role with the problem of file-sharing, and if they fail to do so, he says the government will be left with no option but to get involved.

He says talks between ISP's and the music industry are "progressing more promisingly than people might have thought six months ago".

"While he said that the government had no interest in "hounding 14-year-olds who shared music", it was intent on tracking down those who made multiple copies for profit.

"Where people have registered music as an intellectual property I believe we will be able to match data banks of that music to music going out and being exchanged on the net," he said.

"We have some simple choices to make. If creative artists can't earn a living as a result of the work they produce, then we will kill off creative artists and that would be a tragedy."

Interestingly he admitted that: "If we can't get voluntary arrangements we will legislate", thus in one fell swoop, throwing out of the window privacy concerns internet users may have, all for the sake of all those people earning vast profits.

So the battle is joined, however, we suspect the government, like the record industry before them, under-estimates the fast moving file sharing scene, and like the war on terrorism, once you kill one of the bad guys, another 100 seem to sprout up in its place.

We watch with interest......

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