The increasing flexibility of technology is putting growing pressure on legislation and controls which were designed to dictate how that technology should be used. That raises the question of whether the governmental oar ought to have been stuck in to start with, and whether the authorities should grow up and let us decide matters for ourselves.

The problem is that, through control, comes taxation; lessen the control and the tax (whether to the government or the cartels, as in the ongoing copyright wrangles) is less dependable. That`s not a good thing from the authoritarian perspective, so they tighten control. That`s a short term solution, and one that`s fatally flawed.

The example of copyright, piracy and the US courts is a sad and tired one, so let`s instead look at the UK government, which is exceedingly keen to forcibly migrate the TV-watching public to a digital platform. Exactly why this is a good thing for the masses isn`t entirely clear, but it`s certainly good for the government, which stands to make a great deal of money out of the process.