John Walker's Electronic House

Can the campaign against sharing stoop any lower? John Walker is spitting blood.

Copyright Watch is very angry. This is relative to how angry Copyright Watch usually is. Very. Angry. “Campaign” group, Childnet have launched a leaflet entitled, “Young People, Music and the Internet: A Guide for Parents about P2P, file-sharing and downloading.” Based on the shock-revelation that parents are clueless about file sharing, this new campaign purports to be an attempt to protect young people from the “dangers” of downloading music from the internet.

Which dangers?, you immediately ask. Oh, how sweetly naive of you – they don’t actually have to name these dangers. Merely mention that they are out there, and then leave you to worry. Trawling through Childnet’s pisspoor website (www.childnet-int.org), there’s no single explanation of what impending doom awaits the poor, vulnerable little sausages, other than the most embarrassingly vague attempt to claim that often downloaded files are mislabled, and contain porn. Well, yes, true. BUT NOT MP3S, you lying, cheating scare-mongerers.

Preying on the very matter they pretend they want to solve – that parents don’t understand the details of file sharing – this deceptive campaign can barely be bothered to disguise the real motive. Guess how many links away you are from an IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries – the BPI, RIAA, etc) site. That’s right – one. Immediately revealing itself as a front for the IFPI farce www.pro-music.org, it is nothing but a low, low attempt to scare more people out of daring to share music.

CW is sure that Childnet /thinks/ it has the best intentions. Its whole reason for existing is to try and make the internet all child-friendly, rather than suggesting parents be halfway aware and responsible for their own children’s actions. And oddly enough, they don’t respond to our emailed enquiries.