Avast, file-sharing pirates! Drop your weapons! Or rather: hang on to your weapons while the forces of good consult about how to join battle, legislate, write to you to ask you to desist and finally – ahaar! – forcibly curb your piratical ways.

Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report talks tough on reducing illegal downloads. But while it aims to give the music companies, moviemakers and other content-owners the tools to force pirates to walk the plank, it has made the plank very, very long.