The real problem with clause 17

There has been much speculation around clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill, the part that would give the unelected Lord Mandelson powers to rewrite copyright law whenever he chooses, grant powers to others at a whim, or impose duties or fines on anyone who offends him.

The Financial Times are hinting that the government may back down on clause 17, and some commentators are referring to it as a "legislative sacrificial goat" that the government will agree to drop in return for the other parties backing the other controversial (to put it mildly) proposals in the bill, such as ending the legal right to be considered innocencent until proven guilty, and punishing people who are provably innocent for the actions of others who share their wifi connections with or even without their permission.

The problem for the government is that they know file sharing is simply not going to go away without the terrifying powers that clause 17 would have granted them. If they managed to stop all p2p traffic, then file sharers would use drop boxes, or disposable mail accounts, or steganography, or encryption, or VPNs, or countless other methods. The government knows it needs the power to ban the use of any and all of these technologies overnight if it is going to cut down file sharing.

Their big mistake, and the real problem with clause 17 is the assumption if they did get clause 17 through, they could stop file sharing. The truth of the matter is that even if the whole internet were turned off tomorrow, kids would be swapping memory sticks in the playground the very next day, and what is more, they would be even more determined to share files than ever before.

A war on file sharing quite simply cannot be won, even if the government are prepared to throw out the presumption of innocence and commit the war crime of collective punishment as the bill proposes.

The choice for the government is simple: legalise file sharing, or criminalise and alienate every future generation of voters from now until you are inevitably defeated at the ballot box.

I fear the damage that will inevitably be done to society if parliament and all the 3 main parties decide to align themselves with the pro copyright lobby that such a high percentage of young people already see as 'the enemy'. Can we as a society afford to fight file sharing?