Paying Money to Lose Money
I came across an article talking about piracy in the UK. Basically, major music labels are complaining to the government about losing large amounts of money to piracy. With claims of up to £200 million (pounds) lost each year, one would think that the UK government would step right up to deal with this problem, right? Well, unfortunately for these music labels, the government thinks differently. They claim that they would have to spend up to £365 million each year in order to deal with the piracy ordeal.
The £365 of spending would be put into new “three strikes” laws. These laws would be used to, ” punish repeat online infringers, and that Internet service providers should get involved in the battle.” But why would these laws cost so much money? The government stated that it would cost each internet user £24 a year, and would cost the ISP industry ( Internet Service Provider) £1 million a day! This adds up to be £365, but this is based completely on estimations. There was no data given to support these claims.
I think that these laws would be a waste of time. Surely most people who download illegal music on a regular basis would not be afraid of these laws. And I cant believe they would catch many of these offenders, let alone three times. So, people will keep downloading music illegally, these companies will keep losing money, and the government will have wasted an extra £365 million. Hopefully laws like these will never be passed, in the UK or the US.
-Andrew Hogan
Mash-Up & Remix: The Hottest F-Sem at M-Wash 
Yes, this seems fairly absurd. The music industry does lose a lot of money due to piracy and it is nice that the government wants to catch illegal downloading, but in reality it just won’t work all that well. To spend that amount of money on anything is ridiculous – especially when it will end up wasting money later on. I would hope that no other country would even think of doing something like this because we would seriously be stuck in an economic abyss from all the chaos (not that we aren’t already in the midst of a large crisis).