Lloyd Webber calls for P2P Regulation

Valerie | 06 Apr 2009, 09:26

Music composer and theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber has attacked internet service providers (ISPs), blaming them for facilitating online piracy and has called on the government to safeguard Britain’s creative future by drawing attention to “the cataclysmic consequences for all creative industries if this area remains unregulated”.

Speaking to the House of Lords on Thursday, Lloyd Webber said:

“The question that occurs to me is whether, in 10 years’ time, Britain will be a place from which, say, the Beatles could have emerged. Will Britain be a fertile environment for all creative talent? Will Britain be a place where music, TV, film, games and publishing companies are sufficiently healthy to invest in British creative talent and take it to the rest of the world?

“No, not when there are no longer shops selling the physical products and when the internet has become a sort of Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy”.

Whilst admitting he “had no real answers” to the question of how to reduce piracy, Lloyd Webber urged the government to delay its plans to invest money in improving the national broadband network until a solution to illegal file sharing can be found. He also referred to the proposal outlined in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report that suggested ISPs should collect and share data on copyright infringement so warning could be issued by rights holders, arguing in favour of tougher measures such as the “three strikes” regime, whereby repeat infringers would be cut off from the internet.

Lloyd Webber’s comments come as high profile musicians such as Billy Bragg and Robin Gibb have, in a letter to The Times, accused Google of devaluing songwriters, following a dispute over the payment of royalties from music videos played on YouTube.  A YouTube spokesman said that the firm “cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played”.