Out of tune

Is it just me, or is everyone sick of the music industry's constant whining about how it is everyone else's responsibility to stop piracy of their products? They have apparently convinced the government, that well known expert in information technology, that ISPs should take steps to prevent ilegal downloads, or face sanctions. Now Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse, operators of the TalkTalk broadband service, has refused. He has said the demands are unreasonable and unworkable, and it is not his job to be an internet policeman. Good for him. The next step would presumably be for the government to make telephone companies cut off people who use the phone to arrange crimes. That would put an end to illegal activity at a stroke, wouldn't it?

As a further example of government cluelessless about technology, social network sites are to be expected to ban the email addresses of known sex offenders, who will be required by law to divulge these addresses to the government. Does anyone who is not a politician or bureaucrat actually expect this to work? Doesn't the government employ any real expert who could have told them how easy it is to obtain a disposable email address that could be used to register with a site? Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the music industry's book and get ISPs to refuse to connect sex offenders in the first place? Now there's a thought!

It's alarming when you see the bad decisions that are made by governments in areas you happen to know something about. Though it does shed some light on the decision making process that led to going to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that no-one had actually found, and which turned out to be a figment of Bush and Blair's imaginations.

« Log analysis for Linu… | Home | A matter of trust »