Action on Filesharing Should Have a Quid Pro Quo

Lord Mandelson is right to try to stop the illegal distribution of music and video. The scale on which it happens distorts incentives for participants in both the communications and the creative industries; and we should anyway give special care to our artists and creators whose existence is often uncertain enough without adding callous disregard for the protections copyright offers them.

He should however accompany his efforts with a requirement on the music and film companies to supply retail entertainment services on reasonable and non-discriminatory wholesale terms, instead of the highly questionable approach they currently take, demanding equity stakes, disproportionate advance payments, and coercive tools such as short term licences and put options, which benefit neither the artists and creators, nor entertainment retailers and ISPs, nor consumers.

A decade of regulatory and business failure has left us with an under-performing digital entertainment industry and badly served consumers, but no party can claim to come to the table with clean hands. Lord Mandelson should take great pains to ensure the government acts now both fairly and openly. We cannot all have lunch with the Secretary of State, but we are all stakeholders in Digital Britain.