Yeah, like this is going to work.

You can hardly “ban” people from the internet. That is absurd in so many ways. And it won’t work, no matter what they do, in this way. By banning – or, rather, trying to ban – “pirates” from the internet they are trying to force the ISPs to police the internet and break contracts with their own customers.

Yes, they’re going to love doing that.

Also, why is it up to the governemnt to control this kind of stuff? It really isn’t. The internet is far too complex with its global structure to have specific national laws passed against it. Unless they are proposing to do a China, they have no chance of making it effective.

Internet piracy is best combated by the cost of the things that are most routinely downloaded reduced significantly and/or making them available online. Then it becomes nigh-on pointless. Much music piracy has undoubtedly been reduced by the availability of buying songs relatively cheaply on sites such as iTunes, and the availability of TV programmes to be watched “on demand” online after they have been broadcast, such as with the BBC’s iPlayer or Channel 4′s 4oD, will cause a massive drop in the illegal downloading of those programmes.

Instead of lobbying for laws against it, media companies would be far better advised to harness the potential and offer downloads of their own, on their own terms. Then internet piracy will die of starvation. Otherwise it will just change form.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph