Anti-piracy ménage a trois?

It's not often you get to list the names Celine Dion (dreary French Canadian warbler) Neil Kinnock (verbose Welsh waffler) and Lars Ulrich (drummer for heavy metal band Metallica) in the same sentence.

But legislation being drafted in the European Commission makes the three unlikely bed fellows.

Metallica's Ulrich is well-known in the music industry for his high-profile opposition to Napster. He claims that unscrupulous netizens are stealing the bread from his table by using copyright-infringing file-sharing services.

Celine Dion, as well, is at the vanguard of the music industry's attempts to halt piracy, allowing her CDs to be sold with copyright protection that prevents them being played - and copied - on PCs.

And now one-time labour leader Kinnock is giving them both a helping hand, by promoting legislation in the EU that will tighten piracy laws.

It will call for tougher sentences for copying music and software throughout the European Union, so there are no havens for the organised criminals that perpetrate the copying.

Software piracy, as music piracy, is a crime and shouldn't be tolerated. However, the EU has to be careful not to merely dance to the tune of the record and software companies on this at the expense of the consumer.

So far the notoriously uncompetitive music industry has merely used the courts to shut down innovative services such as Napster whilst failing to address the market created by them.

It still thinks it can have complete control over the way everyone in the world consumes their music - because it owns the production process, the manufacturing and the distribution - and it is scared to give this control up.

The reality is, this will change, people will buy digital music over the web, and the industry will have to accept this.

The software industry so far has been smarter - it knows users want to download software and is happy to provide this.

Until the music industry follows suit, we should keep a watchful eye on giving ever-increasing copyright power being given to a business using it to crush innovation.