IPFI chief says it's time to hose down the networks

So to be clear, the objection is just that people will instantly get the world's music on their machines – and never buy anything again?

Once you get into the subscription model you have to decide when it will time out.

Nokia came to me a couple of years ago and said we want you to license the music for our customers, and they said if we can get ten per cent of our customers to buy in, we can provide ten percent of the revenues of the music industry. So a few things occurred to me.

Fifteen customers like Nokia gives me 150 per cent of where we are now. That's just fantastic, and where I want to go. I asked does this subscription time out, and they said no, it can never time out for people but they said people change their phones all the time, so effectively, it times out.

That's a good model. You can't have a subscription model where somebody on a monthly model of say $10, go on in January, download 6m tracks, and leave in February.

None of this easy, but we've got to $3bn. The FT was giving me a hard time because in year one digital revenue went up 200 percent, in year two it went up 100 per cent, and this year they went up by 40 per cent. I said, "surely that's what happens?". I've got a really big number against me and that's five per cent legal and 95 per cent illegal. For all the shortcomings in the ISP strategy, I believe that will dramatically affect it.

People are spending on music in different forms. It's becoming a received wisdom with a certain number of people – with what Fake Steve Jobs coined "freetards" - that sound recordings shouldn't have any value and that artists should just perform for a living.

I heard that less in 2007 and 2008 than before. In this week that's just gone I've done interviews with the business press, and there was just one that was "old school" as far as I was concerned, and that was The Guardian. All the others are prepared to have better conversations than a few years ago.

Well, somebody will be extracting value, making money from around that sound recording - it just won't be the creator.

But if you or your readers think the ISP strategy won't work – I'd love to hear one that does work, and if someone's got a better solution for me then I want to hear it.

This is a tough problem. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, "Great, I have to sue two kids or an ISP today."

It's lovely being Professor Lessig - to have the academic argument and to be a hero, and put up these fun videos - but he's working in a bubble. He doesn't have to work in the real world.

And Google puts millions into his little department...

Well, there you go. And he's changed his position. Before, if you signed for a licence you gave everything up for free. I think he realized it's incredibly flawed. So now he's got a commercial license. At least he's learned along the way – something we all have to do. So even he's moved to realize that people are motivated by getting a return on their creative works.

There's plenty of amateurs. My daughter's just learning the flute – I can put her up on the internet for free and nobody need ever pay for it, and nobody wants to listen to it. Eventually if she puts enough effort into it, and makes a career, she's going to want to have records to sell.