Thread: Britain's "Digital Economy Bill" goes public tomorrow

Britain's new "Digital Economy Bill" should have been announced in Parliament by now (I'm -8 hours of GMT) and will be published for the public tomorrow morning 7:30am GMT... It should be interesting.

Among the many items it includes - digital radio - video game censorship for children - is a proposed change in the way news is aggregated. It seems Britain may take on the method by which headlines are lifted and "copyrights are infringed" when the likes of Google, Ask, or MSN "pirate" the front page of a Brit paper and post it on the web for all to see for free in their search engines. If this proposal becomes law, the big search engines will have to pay a few pounds for those news bites or risk the wrath of.... parliament?... Men in bad wigs?... Larry the Cable Guy?



The next item that will certainly be worth reading tomorrow morning will be Britain's new stance on file sharing. It is expected to lay out a new 3-strikes policy under which persons who have downloaded copyrighted material will have their internet connections severed after 3 warnings. The effects of that could be extremely wide-ranging. I am sitting here paraphrasing an article from a British newspaper just to bring you the news. Strike one.

They are also talking about a list of "new powers" to protect rights holders. Who knows what that means once Parliament is done with it. There's talk of a "serious offenders list" and it sounds like they're saving something extra special for those guys.

LORD Mandelson has stated in a letter to the leader of the house (of LORDS?? or COMMONS?? who knows??) that he is concerned with "cyberlockers" - websites that offer users private storage spaces whose contents can be shared by passing a weblink via email. I'm making sure to clean out my smelly cybersneakers and my dirty cyberskivvies, before they find my cyberlocker.

"These can be used entirely legitimately, but recently rights holders have pointed to them as being for illegal use." Ooops. My bad. Another quote without tuppence for permission. Strike Two.

The bill will certainly affect rights holders such as record and movie companies, internet service providers, and consumers. The companies will support it. Consumers will hate it. ISP's will sit on their hands until they figure out if they are going to make more money or less money from it.

I wonder if they can give Google three strikes and disconnect its internet??

Now go back and read this again, out loud, with a bad British accent. I'm quitting now before I'm disconnected.

Very interesting read, please keep us apprised of developments.

As promised, Britain's "Digital Economy Bill" was published Friday morning. I could just violate their copyright and quote the whole boring article from the Guardian, but instead, in my best Inigo,"Lemme summup!"

I'll quote just enough to get myself another strike in my long history of infringements.

It's a sneaky law. The bill provides a power to allow the Secretary of State to amend the current copyright law out of the view of Parliament... The bill outlines the "three strikes" rule for file-sharers, by which internet users can be disconnected, and it also includes a vague provision that piracy must be reduced by 70% or the government will introduce a series of "technical measures," which could include temporary account suspension. The Secretary is going to be allowed to amend the current copyright provisions appropriately for technological developments that have occurred or are likely to occur. Huh? Likely to occur? WTF?

Do they actually read this shit. "Reduce piracy by 70%, or else make new laws to prevent things that might happen." "Yea, let's use 70%. That's a good number. It will make it sound like we're really doing something."

It's pretty obvious the Brits have been taking lessons from the dipsticks in charge of the American Congress, writing laws with no regard for either intent, reality, or outcome. "Let's write a 2000 page bill that NO ONE can read or understand and vote on it (even me, and I wrote the stupid thing, hehehe)."

As expected, the music and movie industries voiced their complete support for the digital economy immediately. Go figure. I'm not even going to quote those spokesholes. We've all seen the same shit from RIAA and MPAA before. Also as expected, internet users have almost unanimously expressed their complete opposition to the bill.

Voicing an opinion on behalf of internet users, Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, warned that "people's rights are at stake".

"The bill doesn't require any test of evidence before harsh punishments are imposed on people accused of copyright infringement, and opens the door to a ratcheting up of unwarranted powers without democratic scrutiny," he said. "There is a massive swell of action against this bill, led by creators, citizens and people working in digital industries, who are outraged by this attempt to hijack our rights."

What was really surprising, after today's publication, was that two of Britain's three biggest service providers pulled the trigger without hesitation and trashed the bill immediately.

A spokesman for one the ISP's stated that while his company does not support copyright infringement "we live in the real world and understand that no amount of policing and censorship will solve the problem ... it doesn't matter how many websites are blocked, how many services are shut down or how many individuals are pursued, people will always find ways to access copyrighted content for free. There is an army of 'Robin Hoods' out there developing tools which allow completely undetectable access to content. No amount of monitoring can spot it. Shut one service down and 20 will pop up in its place."

This guy gets it. It's nice to see somebody with a real world perspective.

A spokesman from a second company also attacked the plans, saying that while abuse of copyright was wrong, "we have real concerns about the government's plans and the lack of legal protections for accused individuals".

"We believe that technical measures are not the way forward and that a system of court fines for repeat infringers is preferable. Such an approach would not only protect innocent people, it could also create a fund that could be used to support the UK's creative industries," he said.

It will be no surprise to anyone if this new bill elevates what is now a civil crime to a new status as a criminal felony. That is after all, their job, to demonize internet users, and to protect the greedy corporate interests who are donating a small part of the profits back to these politicians' election campaigns. What isn't clear is the ISP's role in all this. Will they be forced to act as an arm of law enforcement, on behalf of the corporations with out any judicial oversight, and in total opposition to their own customers? Will users who are alleged to have shared files be disconnected after mere accusations by the industry goon squads who are running their own undercover honey pots without any investigation, judgment by a court of jurisdiction, or appeal?

Other members of Parliament and legal analysts have made it known publicly that they consider the new bill was written in a hurry and not well thought through. Parliament's legislative agenda is heavily congested before the next election, so don't expect any action on this POS bill any time soon. But you can expect to see some draconian changes in British law and the way it treats file-shares sometime between 2011 and 2015. If this first effort is anywhere close to the final bill, expect something written by a handful of guys who think they know what they are doing (but actually know squat about the internet), that will trample everyone's rights, be unreadable, unenforceable, and totally outdated by the time it's enacted. We should expect no less.

Rupert Murdoch will sleep a happy man tonight knowing he's going to soon be able to charge Google and Microsoft for using the headlines of his newspapers in their overnight search engines.

I can't help but laugh at a lot of this - I can't help it, even if it is sort of serious. In my mind's eye, I keep seeing these old men in those bad curly headed white wigs and imagining them speaking with their posh British accents through bad English teeth. I say. Pip, pip. Here. Here. And all that rot. You've got to admit that it's easier to laugh at them than it is to laugh at Botox Pelosi and Dingy Harry.

This bill is far from being passed and hopefully it will never see the light of day cause its pure garbage. It goes against all rights & freedoms as humans. I understand what they are trying to do, but this thing is a little overboard. Im not from the U.K. and if this gets passed i will feel really bad for anyone who lives there. It will basically give the big corporations like the movie & music industries the power they so dreadfully want and thats a scary thing. We need to fight against stuff like this and stand up to these idiots. This makes me sick in the stomach that i cant even write anymore.

Originally Posted by SomeoneElse

A spokesman for one the ISP's stated that while his company does not support copyright infringement "we live in the real world and understand that no amount of policing and censorship will solve the problem ... it doesn't matter how many websites are blocked, how many services are shut down or how many individuals are pursued, people will always find ways to access copyrighted content for free. There is an army of 'Robin Hoods' out there developing tools which allow completely undetectable access to content. No amount of monitoring can spot it. Shut one service down and 20 will pop up in its place."

Has Napster and Oink taught them nothing?