Internet bad, internet good: what’s going on, Labour?
You may have heard of two technology-related stories in the news recently.
The first is that Gordon Brown is going to spend £300 million on his Home Access scheme to bring free laptops and one year’s worth of free broadband subscription to poorer families across the country.
The second is that Lord Mandelson is pushing for tough counter-piracy measures for internet filesharers, including disconnecting entire households from the internet.
What Labour seem to be doing is giving out internet access with one hand while taking it away with the other. Education Secretary Ed Balls has declared that there are educational, economic and social benefits to being on the internet that cannot be ignored. Indeed, the internet is so vital that part of the criteria you need to fill to qualify for the Home Access scheme is that you are a child on free school meals. That means these laptops and free internet access come with a similar priority level as providing food for underprivileged children. If that doesn’t sound like an opinion leaning towards classing internet access as a human right, I don’t know what does.
But Mandy obviously is unconvinced, since it is still his intention to cut off entire households from the internet because of the action of one of the house’s residents – or even the action of a neighbour – even when there’s every likelihood that a disconnection would result in more ‘innocent’ people (non-filesharers) than ‘guilty’ people (filesharers) being denied all those social and educational benefits.
A disconnection from the internet today is more crippling than ever. Apart from the real inconvenience it would cause to people no longer being able to look things up or check their online banking at their leisure, it would also stand in the way of anyone who occasionally works from home (seemingly more and more people nowadays), and it’s tantamount to capital punishment for anyone with lots of social networking contacts they can’t see very often in person.
And so far I haven’t even addressed the real problem. Buying DVDs and music is fine for those able to afford it and who are also ignorant enough to presume that £15 is a fair price for a DVD or CD (it isn’t). But those more technologically inclined will find ways around being tracked if they want to continue filesharing. Downloading will never, ever stop. But handing out free laptops and free broadband to poor children is going to give them the previously unseen option of downloading music or watching TV shows online. What will the Government do when its own broadband users commit copyright infringement? Disconnect them as fast as possible?
The internet is either a vital resource or it isn’t, Labour. Perhaps Brown should make sure everyone in his cabinet agrees which before they start making contradictory comments to the media.
Or just lynch Mandelson and let the crows have his eyes, whichever.