Rights and wrongs of music piracy aside, am I the only one who finds this a slight exaggeration?

In a reaction to Robbie Williams’ recent remarks on music piracy, The BBC reported some comments from Culture minister Kim Howells:

Mr Howells added that Williams’ comments were helping “do the work for international gangs involved in drugs and prostitution who find music piracy an excellent way of laundering profits”.

This seems a bit much to me really, especially when juxtaposed against the next paragraph in the report:

A prolonged slump in CD sales has been blamed on fans downloading songs from royalty-free websites and an increase in the ease of copying, or “burning”, CDs on home computers.

From what I understand, most of the fuss has been over this last issue, and most of the “solutions” put forward by the Music Industry have been aimed at making life more difficult for the end user – the determined organised criminal won’t be quite so easily put off.

Perhaps what we have here is the start of a new strategy, since the assault on consumers hasn’t met with the most favourable of reactions.  What next… Music Piracy – the Terrorist’s friend?