In 1997 when the Labour government entered power, they rolled in accompanied by the sweet of sound of a D-ream with Undertones conducted by the Prince of Darkness. A flash delirium, designed to put the nation into a deep sleep - even the King of 'Brit Pop' was seen sleepwalking into No.10.
Fast forward to 2010 and we finally wake from the nightmare. However the "Prince of darkness" and his new buddy, an "Undertone" so out of tune that he should be referred to as the a 'Undertaker' have produced a swan song. Who yelled "Encore"?
The 'wash up' process has been spun and is now hanging out to dry. Out of the speeding turbine hangs a twisted, non-thought-out, and unenforceable piece of legislation: The Digital Rights Bill.
The Bill has been attacked in many ways, but when viewed from a qualitative and quantitative perspective (in the case of music content), the stains that failed to come out in the wash really show up.
A four minute song file produced at a mastering house contains approximately 40MB of data. A four minute song (approx 79p) downloaded from itunes who compress this file to AAC file contains approx 8MB of data. One could argue that the original Copyright theft starts here. The Mp3 file (the most commonly shared file) contains about 4MB. Hence, the consumer is sold fifth (AAC) and one tenth (MP3) of the original file content by service providers.
The deterioration of the original file affects qualitative perspective and sounds very poor in comparison. Can either format be deemed an exact copy of the original recording or should they be viewed as "ghost" copies, and sold at 16p or 8p per track? Over to the those screaming that file sharing is tantamount to stealing.
The correct definition(s) of what is deemed copyright and format infringement (along with many others related issues) must be explored thoroughly before implementing a legislation that many consumers instinctively view is ill-judged, or don't even understand.
The Internet is still in its infancy and requires time to evolve and develop. It is a slow and clogged medium hence the effectiveness and efficiency of the (file sharing) bit torrent. In time, it may well be the development of this technology that revolves the service providers' issue with upload and download speeds and allow for the delivery of optimum quantitative and qualitative content.
This may prove to be the best way to entice consumers to buy content, while allowing this amazing communication technology the space and freedom to discover and grow out of its infancy.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself, because in the words of D-ream, all those years ago: Things can only get better.
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