Mandy outlines government crackdown on illegal file-sharing

Does this apply to downloaders or just people who upload?

it'll treat both parties as criminals. why they can't just get the isps to block access to sites is beyond me, they say they don't have the technology but cuba and china have the technology, what they mean is they don't want to set a precedent of censoring the internet, despite the fact large swaths of horrendeous content is already censorsed.

i've never understood why some people feel the need or decide they have the right to upload and share entire albums/discographies. and those people who rip things from the tv, take the time to cut out the adverts, etc why do they do it? personally i think 'sharing is a healthy ecosystem and have been downloading music for a decade and without Napster i never would have started DiS and invested in the realm of £300k in releasing records. blah blah blah

The large entertainment companies missed their chance to take control of how media is distributed digitally and havn't been able or willing to make their products widely available in a way which would have been able to compete with the then fledgling filesharing networks.
Advice was given some time ago and was ignored.
Centralised networks such as Audiogalaxy, Emule, WinMX and Napster could easily have been bought and retooled to be effective platforms for selling music on a realistic and affordable basis.
But rather than take these good ideas and make them their own, changing how media is distributed, the large entertainment companies failed to realise how much damage filesharing could realistically cause and tried to destroy each of them in turn.
Peer to peer filesharing sprang up as a direct result to this threat and has meant that no real control can be maintained and as a result of this everybody is going to lose out one way or another. From creator to consumer, hitting the service providers along the way.
Napster was bought out, but was repackaged in a heavily neutered and ineffective way. Fail. The industry didn't really understand or trust this method of distribution so sought to hobble it, which is what they did for the legal sites when they first appeared. Poor site design, lack of real choice, restrictive DRM, licensing issues with other companies, etc etc.
I personally don't want internet access restricted or censored in any way, it sets a bad precedent, but at the same time I don't want to be part of an ongoing problem which sees musicians and artists stretched and stressed due to not being able to make an actual living from what they do.
The companies generally won't care about them as these musicians and artists are effectively employees, but these employees are getting paid piece rate rather than an actual wage, so they get hit worst of all in this. Due mainly to a lack of foreward thinking on the part of the companies that make money from their sweat.

Lord Mandellson would be best advised as a Business and Trade minister to try to look into different business models for his friends with large boats to use, rather than criminalising everyone straight off the bat. It gives the impression that he is less bothered about the people involved (consumers and creators/record label employees) than he is about the opinions of people such as David Geffen.

(sorry)

if Ofcom can determine the difference between illegal filesharing and legal filesharing