This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

And this is UK "three strikes" law abomination, written , and concerning Armchair activism, Politics, Software, and Rants

What the fuck? I leave the country for three weeks and while I'm gone we turn into the bloody Soviet Union? BoingBoing: Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse. In short, Lord Mandelson has proposed a law under which if you are accused of copyright infringement three times, you get cut off from the internet. Not convicted of it. Not even tried for it. Just accused. Peter Mandelson, I think you might have infringed copyright. Peter Mandelson, I think you might have infringed copyright. Peter Mandelson, I think you might have infringed copyright. That should make it more difficult for him to send people emails. Charlie Stross has more: "Want to write a casual game for the iPhone and sell it for 99 pence? Good luck with that — first you'll have to cough up £50,000 to get it certified as child-friendly by the BBFC." Gary Fleming writes: "Think about that for a second: the accuser gets to blame anyone they like and with no evidence of copyright infringement, have a punishment inflicted upon them." Geeklawyer says: "The con­se­quences can be severe. In Fin­land Inter­net access is now a civic right. For many the Inter­net is as impor­tant a house­hold ser­vice as elec­tric­ity or san­i­ta­tion: Geeklawyer often strongly con­sid­ers what the broad­band is like when decid­ing where to live. If a family’s kids down­load MP3s the whole house­hold will be blocked from Inter­net access. Col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment. All of this is based on no proven harm, at least none apart from the Music and film Indus­tries telling us that the sky is falling down. To call this a dis­pro­por­tion­ate and draconian response is almost under­stat­ing it." Now, I spend half my life on the internet, so I might be seen as biased here. But it's increasingly a vital tool for the modern world. Cutting off someone's net access for misuse of it is broadly like cutting off someone's hands because they used them to commit a crime. The very punishment is grotesquely unfair. Add to that the points about how a filesharer's daughter now can't use the internet to help with her homework, and then crown that with the fucking cherry-on-top that all it takes is accusations of misuse, not proof, and suddenly we're the USSR. This is not a promising development. I half wonder whether this is deliberately the most draconian and invasive Internet usage law outside Communist China just so that they can bring in a law which will look minimal by comparison but is still a ghastly violation of whatever rights we have left. Do it online when you deal with government, says direct.gov.uk. Unless someone else in your house has sent three mp3s to their friends, in which case you are shit out of luck in Mandelson's New World Order of the laws being run by media corporations like some horrible Neuromancerish nightmare. Go and sign the Number 10 petition to say you don't want this. There are 7000 signatures already; the government has known form with ignoring petitions that they don't want to hear, but with an election coming up they can't ignore everything. Send a message to Lord Mandelson himself via the Open Rights Group. Contact your MP and tell them what an abomination you think this is. Go do these things now.

Comments

rascal999

ssh tunnels ftw

Tom

Join the pirate party.

Rodney Dawes

Wow. That is beyond insane. And we have people bitching about public health care options. Yay consumerism. I also love how stealing has somehow become "copyright infringement" as well. Stealing and bootlegging are not copyright infringement. They are theft. Sampling and claiming the work as one's one would be copyright infringement. Since when did the media industry get to re-define legal terms? Clearly these people should have their fingers and hands cut off instead. And the Lords need to read a damn legal dictionary.

d0od

You're certainly right to highlight this, and i for one hope this never comes to fruition as actual statute.

TalkTalk (an ISP over here, who've just gotten a lot bigger by buying Tiscali) are mounting both a legal challenge and media campaign against Mandy's insanity.

The worse aspect about all of this is the fact Mandelson was quite apathetic to the three strikes law... until he spent a weekend onboard the private Yacht of several members of the copyright fraternity pushing for touch sanctions against users...

On the plus side, the EU are standing quite stead-fast about making internet access a civil right and certainly would not allow any "accusation" based disconnection to stay in practice for very long, either.

The only thing that could get worse regarding this is if the Conservatives get into power... Boy would they stamp on ISP's with an iron fist...

Sri Ramkrishna

Actually, you guys should just boycott the media companies. Go to create commons and just make new stuff. You don't need those guys. Once they start losing money, they'll notice then.

sri

Maciej Piechotka

Technically AFAIK in soviet union noone was guilty before trial in theory.

BTW. "You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition." - what is the definition of British resident? As I'm EU citizen I don't need to have visa, register at the police etc.

vds

Seriously, we have the most ridicoulus laws in the entire world but, even in Italy that would not pass! :) For the moment at least! :)

Rodney Dawes

@Maciej I think it means "you must be able to vote for things in Britain."

Rodney Dawes

@sri They've started losing money already, and noticed. Hence all the stupid laws and RIAA/MPAA insanity. But once laws hop into the realm of accusatory sentencing, there's really nothing you can do. Boycotting won't help. You could not even own a computer or Internet access, and still be accused, having your ability to get Internet access denied in the future. Although, I also don't really see how they could actually ever enforce such a law either, with the pervasiveness of open wireless networks and such.

Jimbo

TBF, Ars Technica doesn't think this law has a chance of coming into reality before the election takes place and I agree. So while it's right to get up in arms and show we won't stand for this, the reality is that it is the Torries (or Lib dems?) internet policies we should be looking carefully at, because that is likely what we will have to put up with in the coming years. Anything Labour proposes this late on is just a waste of space, unless you really think they will win another election.

That said, if you get the chance throw some custard at Mandelson.

Digtal Economy Bill « Stuart’s Weblog

[...] The petition See also Stuart Langridge’s, Wendy M Grossman, and Cory Doctorow’s [...]

Maciej Piechotka

@Rodney: Well. But I can vote for some things (local councils) and cannot for others (parliment).

UK Three-Strikes Law » Unstructured Musings Of A Geek

[...] can’t convey the pertainent points as well as a certiain Mr Langridge does, so here is a link to his blog post about the subject. I warn you his blog post contains strong language, but I feel it’s [...]

This website belongs to Stuart Langridge. Contact details are available. Don't eat yellow snow. Valid HTML5, at least in theory, except for the bits that aren't because I'm that futuristic that I'm ahead of the spec, oh yes. HTML5 help from Bruce Lawson, among others. Fonts from the superb FontSquirrel. End.