The present UK labour government are justifying their intentions to turn file sharers into criminals with questionable research commissioned by the music industry. They have taken 136 survey respondents and extrapolated this into 7 million copyright infringers. This ridiculous and entirely fictitious figure is now being used by the government to justify a proposal to disconnect internet users based purely on accusation, no evidence required. The government advisory Board claimed it commissioned the research from a team of academics at University College London, who it transpires got the 7m figure from a paper published by Forrester Research. A BBC reporting team hunted down the relevant Forrester paper, but could find no mention of the 7m figure, so they contacted the report's author Mark Mulligan. Mulligan claimed the figure actually came from a report he wrote about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. That report was privately commissioned by none other than the music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had actually been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m. That 6.7m was gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software - in other words, only 136 people. Of That 11.6% of respondents who admitted to file sharing this was then adjusted upwards to 16.3% "to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it." The report's author told the BBC that the adjustment "wasn't just pulled out of thin air" but based on unspecified evidence - sic. Apart from the fact that this is yet another Labour government attempt at eroding our freedoms via deceit this means for you as a parent you should be aware of what your child is downloading. It would appear they have every intention of trying to criminalise file sharing and punish those caught doing it.