There’s a lot of talk about the Digital Economy Bill – and none of it good.

It seems that rather than improve our broadband network and nurture the digital business springing up across the UK, the Government would rather concentrate on brown nosing the entertainment industry in yet another ill conceived attempt to control content.

You can read the bill and see for yourself; the draconian extremes it goes to will only achieve two things:

1. Further alienation of customers from the industries pushing this crap forward (and probably more file sharing)
2. Reductions in the number of people online if it is enforced.

The battle to control content has been going on since the advent of records, there is a great book which sums up the 40 plus years of failure on the part of the record industry to do anything about sharing music which sums up the problems of their approach very nicely:

Bootleg: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Recording Industry – Clinton Heylin

Maybe these industries should try actually moving with the times instead of wandering around railing against them like a pack of lumbering, luddite dinosaurs.