Why I'm Happy If They Criminalise It

So, Lord Mandelson comes back from his holiday and decides to pay for it by quickly adding a bit to the Queens Speech that will allow his mates to increase their vast fortunes. http://torrentfreak.com/britain-mulls-turning-7-million-into-download-criminals-090816/ 

Lets forget the fact that this should all be debated in the Digital Britain debate in parliament later this year and look at what positives might come from this.

Since nobody in power is willing to define exactly how evidence will be gathered I have to say that it would be of great help if the government would criminalise the offence and then the evidence would have to be gathered in a proper manner against each individual.  This is important because the media industry would like to be able to circumvent the judicial process completely and use the flimsiest evidence obtained by "sub contractors" (IP harvesters) as proof and force ISP's to act on it, hence saving themselves from the problem of having to individually prosecute their own best customers in a civil case or using the police to investigate a crime.

The burden of proof in a criminal case would have to be beyond reasonable doubt instead of the balance of probability required for a civil case, so while an IP address could be accepted by a technologically unaware judge as proof of guilt in a civil case, there would have to be a proper trail of evidence gathered by the police through obtaining a warrant to monitor an individuals internet use if there is a valid reason for suspecting a crime is being committed.

I am a bit cynical perhaps, but I'm sure the government will find a method of justifying not using the courts to decide guilt on this particular crime. Can you imagine the outcry if a terrorist suspect was convicted on evidence obtained by a commercial company using highly intrusive and undisclosed spying methods, the suspect would walk free because the evidence was inadmissible and would have a nice big wad of cash to compensate him or her for such a huge breach of his human rights. Maybe it's because there aren't large sums of money to be made from going after terrorists that our ignoble leaders haven't found a way to bypass the individual right to trial that seems to apply to all but filesharers.