Andrew Lloyd-Webber led a debate in the UK’s House of Lords yesterday on internet piracy, and didn’t mince his words, looking ten years forward to “a world where there are no longer shops where you can buy the physical products and where the Internet is a Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy”.

Oh, and: “The music business, because of the universal popularity of music, its ease of access and its relatively low bandwidth requirements will be the first to fall, but other cultural industries will surely follow.” He encouraged the UK government to take action, warning that “only if illegal downloading is properly addressed can new business models have the room to breathe and succeed.”

What the fustier members of the House of Lords made of a debate around this new-fangled internet thing is another question, of course, but it’s a sign of how seriously the issue is being taken that it’s being debated in such a forum.