So it’s bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it’s perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids?
But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.
Again, why do people want to live in the UK?
Lolercopter.
“the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial”
Peter Mandelson has copyright infringing files
“Again, why do people want to live in the UK?” It seems that they don’t.
Another question I’ve been asking myself for a few years: why do people want to live in the US?
Well the US is still a few years behind the UK. Anyone still in UK either likes the Fascist Nanny State or has been castrated/lobotimised. Well, Canada or Australia may be better expat homes, for now.
I wouldn’t count your chickens. This type of copyright regime could easily come in for ACTA signatories. Discussions on the treaty are underway but it seems to be too secret to bother informing any of the citizenry who might be affected.
In the US you are already subject to random searches without probable cause that can lead to confiscation of equipment or fines. The onus is on the traveller to prove that they own the material in question. I guess that means that we should carry all our original CDs with us to show that we haven’t stolen the material on our ipods?
Look out people, it’s a slippery slope. Once they have the power, they’ll never give it up!
The two hackers were sitting at a bar, one says “hey all we have to do is write a program that infects every computer with copyrighted materials with an automatic program that connects everyone to every file sharing system everywhere in the background and automatically informs all of the governing authorities of the infringement and it will shut down the entire internet. Boy won’t that be BURRRRP fun.”
Of course, this is just a hackers dream.
Disregarding the obvious, please, let me know when the governments of the world have their next inane idea of how to save us all from our rights to copy intangible things while providing plentiful discounts for new cars at taxpayers expense.
“Again, why do people want to live in the UK?” Well I Haven’t Since this Government Got Into Power, in 1997. And I am Resposible for the #reasonsnottoliveintheuk Hash Tag, I don’t expect it will bring much, but every eye open is a start.
The Answer for most is to get into Politics themselves, and most don’t want to.
Open rights Group are leading the campaign against Mandelson’s three strikes proposals. We’re having a Q&A session for bloggers to let you in on our work and get your views.
When? 1830, 24 November 2009 (for an hour or so)
Where? irc.freenode.net/openrightsgroup (How to use IRC)
RSVP to michael@openrightsgroup.org
We want to make blogger Q&As a regular feature in future so please do get involved with this and feel free to pass on the invite.
For more info, check out the Open Rights Group
This should be enforced universally–any file download, email attachment or ftp transfer would be assumed to be infringing somebody’s copyright. The only solution is to black-out the entire internet. This is the only reasonable solution to protect the publishing and entertainment industries from the wanton theft of their products. Also, the sale and possession of, cell-phones, computers, telephones, digital cameras, e-books, paper and pens, and any other device that could be used to infringe on copyright should be banned under pain of life imprisonment and confiscation of all property.
http://lordsoftheblog.net/2009/12/02/digital-economy-bill/