Comment , Tech

How FAC have been fooled

A pretty girl turned up to their meeting and in one night the Featured Artists Coalition transformed from being a group with pragmatic views on the modern world to a bunch of self-proclaimed technical experts who don't know what they're talking about.

Last night the FAC said that Internet users should have their bandwidth constrained if they "persistently download illegal files", and that such constraint would leave "email and web access functional".

If that's the case, presumably Lily Allen will volunteer to have her own line so limited in order to demonstrate that she can still happily email and surf. Do the FAC realise that such throttling would also impact legitimate media purchases, such as Amazon MP3 and iTunes? (Maybe they're not interested in converting "infringers" into music purchasers.)

Then there's the issue of who would be responsible for identifying infringing behaviour, how such infringements would be reliably and accurately communicated to the ISPs, how ISPs would implement the sanctions and what right of appeal users would have.

Last night's statement was a retrograde step, but at least it's better than the BPI McGuinness Geffen Mandleson plan.