Tag Archives: alison butchart

“We can’t turn back the tide of internet piracy, says TV boss”

By Mark Pack | Mon 19th October 2009 - 7:59 pm

Interesting news from The Herald:

Internet piracy is merely demand where appropriate supply does not exist, people will never go back to buying music legally, and protecting information online will only destroy businesses, according to a provocative essay set to appear on a Scottish Government-funded website tomorrow.

Written by Alice Taylor, commissioning editor for education at Channel 4, the essay flies in the face of Westminster’s Digital Britain report, which recommended that persistent file-sharers should have their internet access restricted or even barred.

Taylor argues that enforcing out-dated attitudes on how information is shared – ie, paying for it – is “a dying behemoth”.

She writes: “We must not let these dying behemoths take away someone’s internet access – and connection to the world – for some accusatory, unprovable ‘piracy’ claim, ever.”

These views chime with the instincts of Nick Clegg when I asked him about this at the party’s Bournemouth Conference.