The British government has admitted that the cost of implementing new anti-piracy laws, which will force ISPs to become copyright cops, will cost a staggering £500m per year. Previously, UK ISP BT estimated the cost to be £365m, but it seems their estimates were very optimistic to say the least.
The cost of the anti-piracy operation is set to be passed on to the citizens of the UK, adding to their monthly ISP bills and by the government's own estimations, 40,000 households, most of them law abiding citizens, will be forced offline due to this measure.
Britain's music industry's own research, which assumes that every single download is a lost sale, suggests that piracy "only" costs £200m per year. So the reality is that the UK government plans to force Internet users to fork out £500m to solve a £200m problem, and the problem probably won't get solved anyway, or at least not to the satisfaction of the music industry (since one download does not equal one lost sale).
The British music industry recorded a turnover of £3.6 billion in 2008, and is set to improve on this in 2009 again. So you have to ask, why isn't the music industry spending its huge, record earnings to solve its own problems?
More:
The cost of the anti-piracy operation is set to be passed on to the citizens of the UK, adding to their monthly ISP bills and by the government's own estimations, 40,000 households, most of them law abiding citizens, will be forced offline due to this measure.
Britain's music industry's own research, which assumes that every single download is a lost sale, suggests that piracy "only" costs £200m per year. So the reality is that the UK government plans to force Internet users to fork out £500m to solve a £200m problem, and the problem probably won't get solved anyway, or at least not to the satisfaction of the music industry (since one download does not equal one lost sale).
The British music industry recorded a turnover of £3.6 billion in 2008, and is set to improve on this in 2009 again. So you have to ask, why isn't the music industry spending its huge, record earnings to solve its own problems?
More: