Government Illegal Downloading Report

With the internet growing ever more influential each passing day, the UK government has issued a new report which is set to take action against illegal downloading.

It has been a decade since the Napster case turned downloading music from a niche hobby into front page news. Metallica might not have been very happy, but fans everywhere rejoiced as a new means of obtaining and distributing music emerged.

Since then, the growth of the internet has exploded. Virtually every business has a website with some music magazines (hello!) existing exclusively on the internet.

Digital Britain is a new organisation set up by the government to ensure that the nation exploits the internet to its full economic capacity. Launched last year, the organisation aimed to establish a pattern for digital growth in the UK economy.

The group issued a report yesterday (June 16th) which contained a number of recommendations with regards to illegal downloads.

The report outlined that "the civil infringement of taking someone else's intellectual property or passing it on to others through file-sharing without any compensating payment is, in plain English, wrong".

Digital Britain aims to encourage the growth of a market for safe and legal downloads, with royalties being paid to the most important people - the artists who record the tracks.

However some figures have argued that the report does not go far enough. Steve Purdham CEO of website We7, which streams albums online legally, said: "The Digital Britain report had the opportunity to set an outstanding aspirational agenda and create a memorable turning point in the UK's digital evolution, but sadly falls short of giving the real focus for significantly enhancing Britain's competitiveness in the future."

"Music and other high value content need two things - a strong deterrent and framework to protect the value and investment from piracy so that we can continue to produce world class music in the future - and secondly high profile education to guide people to legal services."

"The report missed the opportunity to provide the true pathway to protecting our creative industries from illicit file-sharing."

In addition to this, the report stated that all UK radio stations would be digital by 2015.