What's happening with illegal downloads ... The wild, wild web from Guardian Unlimited:

The wild, wild web from Guardian Unlimited: Newsblog: "On the face of it, this is shaping up to be good week for the entertainment industry in its war against the illegal downloading of music and videos, writes David Fickling."

Yes ... keep watching what happens here ..

Like other negative activities, the regulators will want to get to the pusher/dealer and not the poor consumer. But who is it actually harming? Most of us have copied Tapes, CD's, recorded TV shows for later viewing with friends etc etc. We have all breached copyright laws, hence most of us are not distracted by this.

The big thing to note is that for every case that goes against a program another one becomes popular. Every downloader that gets charged and punished is not going to have any impact on the millions who have PC access and are still downloading (this article estimates some 93m users downloading at anyone time).

For mobile the impact is huge - putting a squeeze on illegal downloading and legitimising (cheap) distribution networks has changed the way we look to get our music. Music on your mobile has to go one step further than just being simple ... it has to have music rights allowing you to play it on your Phone, PC or MP3 player and it has to be transparent to the average phone owner.