I've been in two minds about the Digital Economy Act. One of the key points of the Digital Britain report was about the balance between encouraging new business models that the internet was enabling, and protecting old business models that the new businesses were competing with— whether the legitimate or illegal kinds.

If there's one thing that we've seen clearly illustrated, first by the music industry, and now by the 'news' industry, it's that some industries will be hit hard by the Digitisation of their business.

For music, it's not just that piracy is easier and better (in the sense that it's easier to find and share pirated music, and digital copies are perfect— as opposed to the degrading sound quality of the taped CDs that we were sharing in the playgrounds 20 years ago.) It's also the fact that you can't get away with selling an entire album off the back of a couple of good songs; people can just buy the good songs, or cherry-pick the ones they want without having to buy the whole package. People can either get more for their money, or get what they want and spend less.

For newspapers, there's a similar problem; I might want the "main" news from one particular publisher, but ignore their travel, finance or lifestyle sections— the parts that are much more lucrative for selling advertising, which effectively subsidised the "news" elements of their papers. Again— the package gets broken apart, and the business suffers. (And again, ignoring the accompanying but unrelated issue that people are 'stealing' content online.)

So, while I'm keen to see moves to put Britain at the forefront of the 'new digital world', I'm not sure that it really works out if it means throwing out all the old businesses and the accompanying revenues. (Read: Taxes.)

But this one line from Cory Doctorow sums up what's wrong with sitting on the fence and trying to strike a balance between the old and new.

My whole life revolves around the digital economy: running entrepreneurial businesses that thrive on copying and that exploit the net's powerful efficiencies to realise a better return on investment.
Parliament has just given two fingers to me (and every other small/medium digital enterprise) by agreeing to cripple Britain's internet in order to give higher profits to the analogue economy represented by the labels and studios.

You can't do both. Either you throw yourself whole-heartedly into the promises of the future, or you hang onto the proven businesses of the past. Some of them will prosper in a new digital shape, like the people who built the roads that had to be resurfaced for bigger, heavier and faster cars. Some of them will see the same kind of future as the people who used to change the gas in oil powered streetlights, or sell the horsewhips that cart owners used to drive their carriages.

We need to either admit that we're hanging onto the old, or come clean and throw ourselves into the new. Because I don't believe that you can do what we seem to be trying to do right now, and try to have both.