Ms Grace Borg, a redoubtable and indefatigable champion of the music industry in Malta, took the ISPs to task last week (an ISP is one of the people involved in getting ‘Net content to pop up on your screen) and told them in no uncertain terms that they have to play a part in stopping illegal downloading.

I have no quarrel with Ms Borg and her redoubtable and indefatigable efforts to protect the music industry. Just to define my terms, what we are talking about when we refer to "the music industry" in this context is not a bunch of struggling bands being helped to propagate their stuff and sell the fruits of their talent. To an extent, the only local talent that Ms Borg has ever interested herself in, if her public utterances are any indicator, is the local talent that tries to get itself representing Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest, which is to my mind a somewhat oxymoronic way of convincing anyone that you have talent.

But I have no quarrel either with this aspect of Ms Borg's activity - which is very much a side-line to her very successful retail activity - and if she enjoys it more power to her snazzily-clothed elbow. After all, so many people seem to enjoy Eurovision and commenting about it, why shouldn't she have her fun too?

Recognising, as one should in a society ruled by the law, that the fruits of one's endeavour and talent should be rendered unto the owner thereof, I have no quarrel, either, with Ms Borg's defence of the music industry as I have now re-defined it. In other words, I recognise that she has a commercial interest and that she has every right to defend it and to scream and shout in an effort so to do.

After all, this is what people do and you can't blame them for it. Look at the GRTU, for instance, as far as they are concerned, the revision of the rent-laws, which might make it possible for owners of property to get a commercial rent from property rented to commercial operators for peanuts, should be carried out in such a manner as to protect the commercial operators and not the owners.

The GRTU's brief is to protect its members and while the rest of us might feel that commercial people should act commercially and not seek the protection of antediluvian laws, you can't really blame the GRTU for trying it on.

Just as you can't, in a less wide scale, blame the operators of shops in the Freedom Square / City Gate area for bleating and whinging. The rest of us know they don't really have a leg to stand on, and that they certainly knew that the area was going to be re-developed and that their leases were somewhat precarious, but why shouldn't the Reggie Favas of this world stamp their feet and try to get something out of the situation?

It's not as if Mother Theresa was a shop-keeper, after all.

So it's understandable that Ms Borg wants to protect her market and that she wants to be able to charge what she likes for the music and movies she imports. Back in the good old days, before play.com and amazon.co.uk and whatever, if you wanted to get your hands on some music or on a movie, you had to trot along to one of the shops of the Exotique chain and shell out some hard-earned dosh. You could rent a dodgy video, of course, but there were limits.

Or you could wait till you went on a trip to London or wherever and take advantage of the way cheaper prices that Virgin, HMV or whoever seem able to charge. No doubt the pricing structures had something to do with economies of scale and monopolistic architectures, but the bottom-line for us poor flippin' consumers was what it was.

But while on the subject of downloads, which is where we started, why isn't Ms Borg campaigning for LEGAL downloading, instead of whining at the ISPs to stop illegal downloading? If you try to go onto iTunes and download music or other content legally, by paying for it (or onto play.com or any other place where you can buy stuff) you find that Malta is not included amongst the countries from which you can do this.

Why this is has never been fully made clear, though I'm sure that copyright has something to do with it.

Ms Borg could, but perhaps might not, turn her talents to persuading iTunes that, since we already buy most of our content from play.com anyway, there's nothing really dangerous to opening the taps a little bit more and making it even easier to get cheaper music and movies.

In the meantime, though, the market will rule, however much Ms Borg stamps her foot: if you can get stuff cheaper (or free) you will and the more artificial barriers that are put up, the more resourceful people will try to get around them.

Make it easy and cheap and I, for one, would buy rather than faff around, on the other hand.