Sitting on a shelf in my flat are some videos of television programmes and movies that were recorded off-air by friends of mine and then given to me.

Next to my computer you will find a selection of copied CDs, and on the hard drive of the same computer are hundreds of MP3 files, many containing music ripped from CDs I do not own.

The copy of Microsoft Word on the laptop I am using to write this column is the same as the one installed on my desktop computer, and on occasion my daughter will be using one while I am using the other. I scanned my son's school photograph and sent a digital copy to my sister.

Some - or perhaps all - of this puts me on the wrong side of UK copyright law. Not only that, but I don't care.

Even where I am clearly infringing someone's rights I do not think I am doing them any real damage. After all, I am never going to buy a Norah Jones album, and listening to the ripped version a few times only served to convince me of this.

Is sharing a crime?

Fortunately the programme makers, music publishers, photographers and software developers whose intellectual property I have used (or abused) would find it very hard to track me down.

Bond proves perennially popular

Indeed, if the makers of the James Bond movies which we have been assiduously taping tried going to court for a warrant to search my flat they would find it difficult to convince a judge.

Of course, if I were caught selling bootleg videos on Cambridge market then they would be on much stronger legal ground, because it would be obvious what I was up to.

But what if I send MP3s over the internet, or e-mail copyright material to friends? Am I in public or in private here?

Does the distinction have any meaning once I join a peer-to-peer network like Kazaa and start making my stuff available to download?

Record victory

This is not just a philosophical debate, because the ease with which online activity can be tracked and observed means that anyone sending copyright material over the net is likely to come to the attention of the rights owner in a way that would never happen with the private use of videos or even MP3s.

Now a US court has decided that once the copyright police have started tracking you they can use the law to help them.

There are occasional signs that I am not just being naively optimistic

A US-based ISP, Verizon, has been told to hand over the name and address of one of its subscribers to the Recording Industry Association of America.

The RIAA believes the person concerned has several hundred unlicensed copies of songs on his or her hard drive, all available to the wider internet community through a peer-to-peer network service.

They know the IP address of the computer involved but have no way of tracking the person down unless Verizon tell them.

But a judge has ruled that the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act means Verizon are legally obliged to do this, even though the RIAA has not actually started court proceedings.

Verizon is appealing against the decision. They may win in a higher court if more weight is given to the argument that anonymous speech is protected under the US constitution.

But the RIAA has already achieved its goal of frightening people who might have considered sharing their music collections, even though personal sharing is not necessarily illegal.

Small successes

Over here, of course, we do not have the DMCA to worry about, at least not until the European Union's Copyright Directive is written into UK law.

CDs by artists like Alicia Keys are copy protected

But nor do we have strong protection for freedom of speech or personal privacy.

A UK ISP would have handed over the subscriber details to the RIAA after getting the first lawyer's letter, pausing only to shut down the offending person's connection.

It is enough to make anyone concerned with freedom of speech, freedom of association and the importance of vibrant creative culture despair at the stupidity of the law.

Yet despite it all, even with the oppressive laws, grasping lawyers and illiberal or ill-informed politicians, I am not ready to give up on politics.

I still believe that the only way we are going to make the net work is to bring it under proper democratic control, and that means political engagement on the part of all those who care about its future.

There are occasional signs that I am not just being naively optimistic. Yesterday the US Senate voted to withhold funding for the Total Information Awareness project to assemble a massive database of all the activities of all US citizens, at least until the implications for civil liberties had been fully considered.

And last week the campaigners at Stand helped over 7,000 people register their objections to the UK Government's entitlement card scheme, leading Home Office Minister Lord Falconer to admit that the scheme may not go ahead.

These are small victories, but they are far greater than any we have ever won against Microsoft, the RIAA or the copyright lawyers. These special interests have taken away our freedoms, bought our politicians and seized control of much of our creative lives.

They will not hesitate to use the law to get what they want, so we need to work to make sure that the laws are written to reflect the interests of the people, not the corporations.

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