LSE: "The use of peer-to-peer technology should be encouraged"

 
Bart Cammaerts (picture) and Bingchun Meng from the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, published a report about "the proportionality and likely effectiveness of measures to protect intellectual property, due to be implemented by the DEA (Digital Economy Act)".

The DEA mandates Ofcom  to set up a code (here) to regulate the role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in curtailing online copyright infringements.

See the authors' blog post - "Media Policy Project Policy Brief 1: Creative Destruction and Copyright Protection" - here and the report (below and here).

 

According to the research, file-sharing is probably not the reason for the decline of recorded music sales, and revenues from sales of on-line music is rising rapidly. Since "Peer-to-peer file-sharing is a technology that makes distribution of content on a large scale possible and it is not inherently illegal" the report concludes that: 

• The DEA gets the balance between copyright enforcement and innovation wrong
   
• Providing user-friendly, hassle-free solutions to enable users to download music legally at a reasonable price, is a much more effective strategy for enforcing copyright than a heavy-handed legislative and regulatory regime