If, like me, you remember the 80s, you may also recall recording the Top 40 on Sunday nights. Up and down the country, people were hovering over their cassette players with their fingers over the pause button, trying to get the perfect recording before Tony Blackburn spoke and ruined it. Back then the music industry told us that home taping would signal the end of the music industry and that it must be stamped out. There are clear parallels with today’s debate about filesharing and the Digital Economy Bill.

That’s why we teamed up with Dan Bull, the musician behind Dear Lily and Dear Mandy, to create our very own music video. ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’ is a tongue-in-cheek video that features 80s legends Madonna, George Michael and Adam Ant (well, actually it’s just a trio of look-alikes) lip-synching to the song Top of the Pops style.

The song’s release coincides with the results of some research we conducted which found that the majority of music fans would simply switch to alternative ways of accessing copyright-protected content for free, if using peer-to-peer (P2P) services leaves them vulnerable to disconnection. In fact, 80% of 18-34 year olds questioned in our survey said that if new legislation made it dangerous to use P2P services they would switch to using methods which are undetectable.

We’ve consistently made it clear that we don’t encourage illegal filesharing. But in our view, the government’s filesharing proposals won’t change a thing – persistent filesharers will find another way of getting songs, movies and software illegally. It’s a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

Home taping didn’t kill music in the 1980s – it survived. The same will happen now in the internet age – illegal filesharing won’t kill music. And if you read the comments on the Have your Say page on www.dontdisconnect.us you’ll see that most people agree and suggest that the answer to bands making money out of their tunes lies in adopting new business models, not record companies trying to clamp down on suspected filesharers.

Proposals to suspend the internet connections of those who repeatedly share music and films online will leave consumers with a bill for £500 million, ministers have admitted.

The Digital Economy Bill would force internet service providers (ISPs) to send warning letters to anyone caught swapping copyright material illegally, and to suspend or slow the connections of those who refused to stop. ISPs say that such interference with their customers’ connections would add £25 a year to a broadband subscription.

To read the full story visit Times Online.

These days history repeats itself three times, first as tragedy, then as farce and finally as an ill-considered and illiberal proposal from Lord High Executioner Mandelson, the unelected Minister for Stuff in Gordon Brown’s government.

We saw it recently when he decided, against all evidence and in direct contradiction of the proposals in the Carter report on Digital Britain, that rights-holders or their representatives should be able to kick people accused of sharing copyright material without permission off the internet.

Then Mandelson, who owes his position in the government to the patronage of Gordon Brown rather than the mandate of the electorate, called for the ability to make up new copyright laws without having to go to the trouble of getting elected MPs to debate them. Perhaps he reckoned that operating without full democratic accountability was working so well for him that it might be useful if the music and movie industries could benefit from the same flexibility.

Read the full piece on Index on Censorship.

The Government has used the Queen’s speech to confirm that it will press ahead with plans to disconnect illegal file-sharers.

The measures will be passed as part of the Digital Economy Bill, which will force ISPs to penalise persistent file-sharers.

PC Pro has the full story.

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has shut down its tracker technology and replaced it with a new form of peer-to-peer network. The group claimed that the move was not down to a court order but because the technology is out of date.

The Pirate Bay will now move to a decentralised system to allow users to find peers. Tracking will be handled using Distributed Hash Table (DHT) or Peer Exchange (PEX) nodes, and torrent files will be distributed using ‘Magnet Links’.

V3 has the full article.

Forthcoming laws to reduce the level of peer-to-peer copyright infringement with threats of disconnection will affect “hardly anybody, other than the most serious and egregious recidivistic offenders”, according to culture minister Sion Simon.

The Digital Economy Bill, to be announced in the Queen’s Speech next week, will mandate a regime of notifications warning against illegal filesharing, followed by restrictions on bandwidth and possible suspension of the broadband accounts of those who do not stop.

The plans have attracted claims by consumer groups and ISPs that innocent people could lose internet access, an increasingly vital service. Mistakes are inevitable given many poorly secured Wi-Fi networks and flawed infringement detection procedures, they argue.

The Register has the story.

That is the view of telecoms and copyright lawyers contacted by TalkTalk, the UK’s biggest broadband provider to homes and a consistent critic of the Government’s plans to tackle internet piracy.

Their interpretation of the new EU Telecoms rules, agreed in Brussels on Thursday, deals a serious blow to the Government’s proposed anti-filesharing measures which allow disconnection without a proper legal process.

Scott Fairbairn, a specialist in telecoms and intellectual property law at CMS Cameron McKenna, said: “The recently agreed wording in the draft EU Telecoms Package is clear. Rights holders cannot act as judge and jury in these matters.

“They cannot simply instruct ISPs to disconnect their customers or restrict their internet connections. In no way can that be considered to be a ‘fair and impartial’ procedure as article 1(3)a of the new Framework Directive demands.

“At the very least there would need to be some kind of independent and impartial tribunal to consider the merits of each case. If such an essential safeguard is not part of the UK measures then BIS would be in contravention of the new European law.”

The EU agreement states that restricting a user’s internet access may only be imposed “with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy“, and as the result of “a prior, fair and impartial procedure…”

“I am extremely concerned that much of the UK government’s proposals as they stand would be illegal,” said Paul Brisby, a leading telecoms lawyer at Towerhouse Consulting. “For the UK to impose a requirement to cut off end-users without a prior hearing would not be permissible.”

Andrew Heaney, director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk, said: “These European rules have now put into legal language what fair-minded people instinctively knew was right and just.

“No one should be disconnected from the internet unless it is established whether they broke the law through an impartial legal process starting with a presumption of innocence. The accuser has to prove guilt and if guilt is established then any penalty must be tailored to fit the individual circumstances.

“The need for a fair process is critical because the evidence that rightsholders use can only identify the broadband connection not the individual filesharer. This means that millions of account holders are at risk of being wrongly punished due, for instance, to unauthorised wi-fi hijackers using their connections.

“Although the new rules are not yet UK law, we call on the government to respect the spirit of what is intended and to drop its draconian plans to disconnect users without a proper judicial process.”

TalkTalk’s campaign against the proposed measures – www.dontdisconnect.us – has gathered considerable momentum. To date 1,615 people have signed the campaign’s petition on the No. 10 website.

The European Parliament and Council is due to make a decision on its Telecoms Reform Package in late November.

The package will entitle users in all 27 EU states to be put through a “fair and impartial procedure” before being disconnected.

The outcome is a compromise agreed during all night negotiations.

Some members of the European Parliament felt nobody should lose their connection until after they had been prosecuted in a court for illegally downloading content.

The BBC discusses the latest news to emerge from the European Parliament.