This is what I wrote to my MP about the DEBill

Dear Tony

I will try just one more time to get the point across. The bill is not needed at all...

The minister still does not get it.

The internet is throwing over many previously good business models. It is something we just have to accept.

To go around supporting the old models and old concepts and old beliefs will just cause damage to artists (not benefit) and make a lot more people, for example the young internet savvy, into extremists.

This is not the first time in history that this sort of things has come about.

Before the advent of aeroplanes the ground under your land and the sky above it were yours. So an plane flying over you was trespassing. The law was changed to reflect common sense and allow them to fly about without your permission.

On the advent of the phongraph, people feared that the culture of singing songs and passing them down generation-to-generation would die out. It did. But the phongraph did not.

Then we got a new industry built on copyright, and persued by control of the delivery chain - artists enthralled to BPI members and BPI members controlling the distribution chain of CD and DVD. And it is what we have today.

Now we introduce the internet. Which is causing two problems. First is downright copying in entirety of films and music giving no benefit to the artists. This comes about because it is simply easier to get the thing you want this way, and there is no good reason to buy or easy channel to buy made available by the BPI members. They are living in the past exploiting their old business model that relied on scarcity and control of the channel of distribution (CD & DVDs) and have not adapted to the internet. And second, because most young people today do not accept the tight infliction of copyright the BPI people are demanding and exploiting (for example they still say it is illegal to copy a CD onto your iPod! and they try to force videos to be taken off YouTube of babies dancing to music playing in the back ground, and many more examples). The BPI also uses copyright to control the geographic release of films, for example in USA ahead of Europe or ahead of DVD. They do not accept the global nature of the internet (and by the way neither do the BBC who claim to be a global broadcaster, but actually limit the iPlayer to UK IP addresses only, again at the demand of rights owners).

This all has to stop. We cannot stop progress by trying to inflict old models on the new internet and the new way young people want to consume media.

So you, as politicians, have to get on-side with people and come up with solutions that will benefit artists and yet allow the orderly transition of media to the digital age and distribution by the internet. This mostly means revising copyright law - especially about fair use. It means not using ISPs as gates to prevent free access to the internet and it means letting the old BPI business collapse (whatever you do it will anyway). The BPI does not represent the artistic endeavours of people, it is only interested in sustaining profits from its exclusive model it has managed to build up, and which is now dead.

Piracy is not a problem for our creative people, only for the BPI profitability. Good artists will continue to create and get paid for their work without them.

Lastly it is pointless to try detect and to block websites that host copyright material for downloading. It is extremely simple on the internet to mask any download, for example by encryption or VNC techniques. Many sites already exists that do this, and they will simply grow in number. Politicians do not understand the technology (even Jeremy Hunt himself thought IP stood for Intellectual Property, not Internet Protocol!). You will never get ahead of the curve of internet development, so don't try.

I have the greatest fear that the attitudes which allowed the bill to be drafted and the principles on which it is based are both flawed and are secretly lining up with the secret ACTA treaty being negotiated world wide, which contains similar provisions, not to mention the BBC also seeking to introduce DRM in HDTV at the request of studios - a thing which was tried in the USA and thrown out.

I do hope that these arguments can be accepted by yourself and any ministers involved and that the DEBill will not be implemented, and these clauses that undermine free speech and association will be abandoned. A new debate needs to be started about copyright - I have already sent you some suggestions.

Regards

Antony Watts