Feargal Sharkey calls for calm

In the light of the sudden and clumsy Geffen Yacht proposals for punishing unlicensed filesharers, Feargal Sharkey popped up on the BBC Five O'Clock News Hour to counsel for calm.

These proposals, he stressed, were just for discussion, not actual rules. It's just proposals. Nobody was saying anyone should be banned permanently from the internet for breaking the rules.

Why was Sharkey suddenly popping up to do the Treasury's job for them? Obviously, he has a point: Nobody is saying anyone should be banned from the net for good. But that's a bit of a faux defence. What is being proposed is temporary exclusion from the internet; Sharkey is trying to make things sound reasonable by stressing that there's no proposal for something worse.

It's like someone proposing amputation for theft, and a government spokesperson trying to make the ideas sound reasonable by saying "let's make it clear, nobody is talking about executions."

For UK music, treating these ideas as if they're actually quite light proposals makes sense - if you pitch this as part of a discussion (but wasn't there already a discussion taking place?) rather than rule making, people might be a bit more relaxed about the ideas; Sharkey makes soft noises about how the idea of temporary exclusion is only intended as a last resort - but how can you be sure that's how the rules would be used when they're in place? (At least until the ECHR strikes the rules down as unlawful, at massive expense to us all.)

BBC News defends Jackson coverage

As with any major news story, there are questions over how much coverage the news organisations should give to it, and there have been grumblings that the BBC did too much about Michael Jackson's death.

Mary Hockaday has blogged a response on the BBC Editor's site:

Some stories divide audiences, and clearly there are those who aren't interested in Michael Jackson. But we have to try to serve a whole range of readers, listeners and viewers - and undoubtedly a great many of you were extremely interested.

The audiences to our main television bulletins were a little higher than average for a Friday evening and the statistics for our online content broke records: more than 8.2m global unique users, the second highest since Obama's election. The BBC News mobile site had its biggest-ever figures on Friday.

Hockaday, though, seems to be answering a different charge - should the BBC have covered the story at all - to the one she sets out to deal with - should the BBC have done as much.

I doubt if there's anyone who would argue that Jackson's death should not have been on the news, and very few would be able to suggest that the story shouldn't have been a lead. And, unquestionably, there was a desire to know from the public.

The question is if the 'desire to know' was in balance with the 'amount to tell' - given that BBC News Channel astons were still trying to portray 'Jackson dead' as breaking news during elevenses on Friday, it might be fair to suggest that there was, by then, a shortage of actual information to impart might mean a slightly less steely gaze should have been fixed on the expired man.

Mini Liveblog: Gambaccini remembers Michael Jackson

BBC News at Midnight puts in a call to The Great Gambo, who points out that he's actually quite in demand right now: "I"m getting calls from news organisations" and confirms that he knows, for a fact, that "this is the number one story in Japan right now."

Gambaccini also confirms that he once met Jackson's llamas - presumably while someone in the gantry was wishing they'd got the llama on the line instead - and recalls having had a conversation with "the late John Peel" about what a great showman Jackson was. Even if you didn't like his music, apparently you couldn't deny his showmanship.

"He was probably as clever as a fox" is Gambo's final judgement, having skated over all the unpleasantness by simply dismissing his personal life as "odd".

Now they've got a live link-up with people at Glastonbury who are hoping that it won't spoil the festival for them - "I hope it won't overshadow the great bands we've got on this year."