file sharing versus piracy

there seems to be some serious confusion in the UK government, and I think the ISPA shoudl http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7059881.stmadvise them better - in a recent quote (and it may be a misquote) on the bbc, a
spokesperson said that they dont want to come down on 14 year olds file sharing ,but they do want to stop people making money out of piracy. So one of the glaring errors in this is that people who are doing a lot of UPLOADING from P2P systems are NOT MAKING money - if they were it would be easy to prosecute them as there would be evidence of this from a payment system (bankaccounts receipts etc) and often they'd probably also not be paying tax (e.g. VAT etc) and could also be done for that - the problem is that frequent uploaders are just downloaders with LOADS of uplink capacity (e.g. students) and often have no money.

If they had a means to do DRM and Payment, then they would also have a means to make LOADS OF MONEY like the record companies, because if someone had a cool way to do online music distribution for profit and not just fun, they'd LICENSE the technology to official record companies to replace the RUBBISH DRM currently around.

Fact is there isnt a decent system, so the ONLY reason for a government to clamp down is to
a) protect unreasonable profits from music business (which is dying)
and
b) delay people working on solving this lack of a decent technology which protects
only Big Record Companies, and not indies or artists, and doesn't actually protect consumers or large numbers of artists or create a platform for innovation.

If the government wants to get in on the loop on piracy, follow the money is sufficient - you don't need special laws. they only serve to delay a better world.

You heard it hear last.