Recently, some 100 musicians from across the
A 3-hour discussion among participants including Annie Lennox, Ed O’Brien, David Arnold, George Michael, Nick Mason and Patrick Wolf yielded the conclusion that habitual offenders can be punished by throttling their bandwidth in order to deter them from repeating their illegal acts. The musicians however agreed that this action should be preceded by at least two warnings to the offender.
Throttling of bandwidth is seen as an improvement over the earlier idea that lines of offenders should be temporarily disconnected, as proposed by Business Secretary Lord Mandelson. However, Mandelson had spoken of disconnection as a “last resort”, and the musicians too are speaking of throttling as the final solution, when warnings to offenders fail to have the desired effect.
Because the internet has become a basic need for most of us, and with the advent of the mobile broadband and the free laptop, it can be accessed whenever and wherever a person wants; many now consider broadband access as a ‘utility’. The idea of throttling is to make illegal song sharing unviable for the user without cutting him off from the web entirely.
