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Re: Jenni Russell's article of 25th June 2005,
"Have you no conscience?"

I am obliged to try to intervene in the case where it is clear to me that someone is guilty of rampant bullying,
namely the cases being bought allegedly on behalf of the music industry against children.

Firstly it is clear in the current much vaunted case that the parent and child do not have the money
to have bought the songs legitimately in the first place nor do they have the money to pay the fine.
This means that there was no loss of revenue from them.  Nor was there loss of revenue from others:
since nothing physical was taken, its also clear then that the download did not prevent
anyone else from paying for the songs (unlike stealing a phsycial object such as a CD)
Bullies often take from victims who can ill afford to lose.

Secondly, many of the prosecutions appear also to be using the "upload" argument: that a down-loader who runs
one of the file sharing programs on a broadband link will typically source files for upload;
however, given the prosecution must admit that there are legitimate uses of P2P, then, 
per se, there is no problem with this inherently. Someone doing this is no more "offering" the files 
for upload, than is the Internet Service Provider.  The argument above applies: the down-loaders 
upload these files may also represent zero loss of revenue. Arguing that downloading songs 
for free reduces sales is like saying playing songs on the radio reduces legitimate sales,
Where is the evidence?  Its surreal.  But bullies frequently start a fight for no reason.

Thirdly, if there are multiple possible defendants, is there not some legal principle about who one chooses to
start with when one prosecutes? If a peer-to-peer network of users exchanging files to see what they might wish to
buy is a problem, then the ISPs are part of that problem, and are potentially more able to pay.
Wouldn't there be a case to be made that the BPI are clearly wasting courts time by bringing multiple small cases 
instead of a large one.  Of course, bullies like to pick on small people.

I'm not claiming these are legal defences as I am neither a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV,
but they seem compelling arguments that the BPI is wasting time, tax payers' money, and is 
behaving in a way counter-productive to that industry.
It is also behaving like a bully.

Perhaps the Children's Commissioner could investigate this?

sincerely
Professor Jon Crowcroft