By Joe Banks
More hoo-ha this week about, as Telecom TV puts it, ‘all the nasties being smuggled through the European law-making machine as part of the so-called European Union telecom package’ (or ‘telecom packet’, as the BBC amusingly refers to it as).
What’s that? you ask, stifling a yawn. Well, it’s a series of measures that’s designed to standardise telecoms regulations across the EU (you know, the type of thing that would have your average UKIP member foaming at the mouth), but which a lot of people have interpreted as the thin end of a wedge that’s going to force ISPs to penalise customers who illegally download or share copyright material.
Yes, we’ve been here before on the JK blog, but this latest development got me thinking about the wider issue around this subject, namely our culture of increasingly expecting something for nothing.
A strange side effect of the pervasive spread of the internet is that we’ve all become used to being able to find everything pretty much at the click of button. It’s given us ‘freedom of information’ in its purest sense, unlocking a deluge of words and images on a scale that’s unprecedented in human history. And for many people, particularly the ‘younger generation’ J who don’t even remember a time before the internet, this breadth and ease of access is regarded as an absolute right.
A knock-on from this is that freedom of access to other digitised materials such as music and film is also seen by many as a right – or at least as something that needn’t trouble their wallet. The Register has memorably described such people as ‘freetards’ – much to their annoyance – but the fact remains that despite, on the one hand, appeals to their conscience, and on the other, the threat of legal action, there’s a significant chunk who can’t see what’s wrong with getting cool stuff for free.
The problem is, how do you get the genie back in the bottle? I think that, unless you bring in some super radical measures that are going to put everybody’s nose out of joint, it’s just not possible. The nature of the internet and the digital format of so much entertainment these days means that people will always find a way to ‘steal’ content – cos only mugs pay for things, right?
Of course, it’s not just the internet that’s given rise to this culture of entitlement. In fact, it could be argued that the internet has merely been a perfect vehicle for the practice of an impulse that's been rife in consumer society for decades now ie. living on the never never. Why save up your hard-earned cash for that car/three-piece suite/exact reproduction of Stonehenge in miniature when you can ‘buy now, pay later!’ Only this time, you don’t even have to pay! Avoid the credit crunch altogether!
And finally, before I sink into a morass of cynicism (I love it really!), and getting back to my original jumping off point of the telecoms packet, isn’t it odd that while we hear lots about the content providers gnashing their teeth with rage and the ISPs worrying about potentially having to dob in their own customers, we don’t actually hear much from the telecoms operators themselves, who in a way have more to gain than anybody from measures that restrict P2P activity on their networks?
Damn, cynical again...
Hey hey, this blog is featured in the current edition of PR Week in 'Best of the Tech Blogs'. You can view it here:
http://www.johnsonking.com/library/PRWeek180708.pdf
Posted by: Joe | 23 July 2008 at 12:43