Yesterday, music’s troubles seemed so far away

I want money,” the Beatles sang, and even today, with two band members dead, they know how to make it. They have sold 2.25 million box sets, at £170 each, in the first five days since the re-release of their entire catalogue. That turned out to be more than the two million sales chalked up for Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and represents, if you like to think of things that way, a triumph of tangible media over downloads — as book buyers are still wedded to the paper format and a dispute that nobody understands prevents the Beatles appearing on iTunes or any other legal digital store.
The Beatles’ comeback, though, also rests on copyright law. Without copyright, there would have been rampant piracy in the band’s 1960s heyday, long before illegal file sharing was invented. And that would have meant not much money going to the Fab Four or, more important, to EMI, their record company. It is fair to say that without the massive commercial success of the Beatles, EMI would have been just another small record label, or an obscure subsidiary of a foreign corporation — one that certainly would not have had the profits or capital to invest in later generations of mainly British talent, whether Pink Floyd or the Spice Girls. And if EMI would have been nothing without the Beatles, there would have been no global music industry without copyright law.
Copyright is so basic an idea in capitalist society that it is now taken for granted, to the point where stealing music online is seen as a victimless crime. But the decline in music sales has been so relentless that some in the industry are demanding desperate measures, such as the right to cut off the internet connections of the serial illegal downloaders — which, courtesy of Lord Mandelson, might become government policy.
The Business Secretary, though, misjudged the reaction that would follow when he suggested disconnection as an idea last month. Cutting off people’s internet links just because they have committed a civil offence is an emotive issue (to put it mildly), and for all the importance of having a sensible copyright framework, it is also a massive red herring, as the ensuing row has shown.

But never mind, because the music industry is in the middle of a fine civil war over the issue — a celebrity death match that pits Billy Bragg against Lily Allen, or Ed O’Brien from Radiohead against Björn from Abba.
This, of course, is marvellous for newspapers, which love nothing more than a story involving a celebrity (a problem, ironically, partly caused by years of music industry publicity).
Yet this row is also splendidly pointless, too, even though there are desperate calls for the music industry to come together and “speak with one voice” in the hope that this will impress Lord Mandelson. At the time of writing, there is talk of a statement — an agreed position on how to combat illegal downloading — coming from the alphabet soup of trade bodies that claim to represent musicians. Lord knows, though, why we expect musicians to agree on anything, particularly if it is as controversial as internet disconnection. And, frankly, who cares if they do? If we rely on celebrities to determine public policy, then it is time for the rest of us mortals to give up democracy in favour of the fascism of the famous.
The real debate here is between the music groups and the internet providers — the companies that, after all, would have to do the disconnecting if, indeed, it came to that. Some internet companies, such as Virgin Media, have proved receptive, mindful of the importance of the content industries. Others, such as BT and Carphone Warehouse, side with their customers. And both sides are at least partially right.
Charles Dunstone, of Carphone, for example, is correct to point out how fraught the whole process of cutting off connections could be. Innocent family members might be affected, while the hardened downloaders will hide their internet addresses or simply head off to the local café to use that connection instead. On the other hand, it no longer seems right for internet providers to sit idly by and in effect conspire in theft by saying that what goes on over their networks is nothing to do with them, when the crisis caused by digital piracy is so severe.
Disconnection, though, probably misses the mark on two counts. First, cutting people off probably won’t cause anything like the social and civil problems that its critics make out, not least because only a few Britons will be affected.
Second, cutting off a few people will not stop piracy, anyway.
Given that it is not likely to be particularly effective as a sanction — and given that people get het up about the mere possibility of being cut off — it is not worth introducing either. Other, less controversial technical measures — such as blocking known pirate sites — should be adopted instead.
Let us hope that Lord Mandelson will ignore the cacophony generated by the music industry thrashing around over the disconnection issue and simply take a decision. If there is much more twist and shout on the subject, we will all go mad.