News Parliament passes Digital Economy Bill

This is what most people are up in arms over - the key term is "Suspected" file sharer. It should be up to them to prove you're guilty, not for you to prove you're innocent.

 

So what? Apart from the fact that monitoring the 18.3 million households in the UK is completely unfeasible, what benefit would it be to the authorities?

 

+1 All hope is lost

 

I forsee hundreds / thousands of free wifi areas shutting down.
And what about these free wifi town centers that the government has been spending millions on? who's going to get the warning for people pirating on them?
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/11/18/swindon-scores-wifi-mesh/1

 

Surely you can just run your connection through a VPN so you have a completely different IP that points in a different country all together? How are ISPs possibly going to monitor EVERY USERS traffic? So many questions, so many vague or non-existent answers.

 

And Homedownloading is killing that...so thats what it's about, he gets ten pounds, your doctors happy (as you'll die early) the pub earns some.
Initiatives like this keep the british economy alive!

 

Well I have a letter from my MP here which says that no action can be taken to suspend or throttle accounts unless there is an "explicit assumption of innocence until proved guilty."

 

Wow, the Lib Dems just won my vote without trying.

 

Are you sure that the package wasn't quoted as "up to" xMB. It makes all the difference.

And i would love to see some PC enthusiast, Law savvy person turn this piece of legislation on its heads and shove it on the British government and the corporations leaning on them!

 

You can't really call this a democracy if, the majority of people (p2p users) are criminalised while the law protects those that are already richer than most of us can imagine (artists and there management).

The government is doing this to 'protect' the music and film industries but, who's to say music stars and movie stars are supposed to make so much ? They don't do a dangerous or heroic job so why is it accepted that they should naturally be rolling in cash ?

 

You know what? I am glad that this has passed... this will shuffle things around so hard that politicians and media companies will get whiplashed...

 

Wait, what? I would read the bill rather than a letter which doesn't have to contain a grain of truth. Trusting that is like trusting any MP's promises - foolish to say the least. You mentioned that I'm making stuff up - I quoted a legal interpretation by the people pushing the bill through. Or alternatively you can read the actual bill yourself - it only ever mentions 'suspected'. This is the illegal part of the law - since it purposely leaves the law open to interpretation and therefore abuse. For example you can suspect anyone of anything, so if the gov wants to they can cut anyone they like off. If you're posting a blog that's anti-gov, they can just use this law to cut you off of the Internet.

Lest ye forget that the terrorism act - another rather shady law. This law is explicitly for countering terrorism, and since there aren't many you can assume it's seldom used? Afterall the government and police were very clear that it's only used in extremely rare circumstances and only when they suspect the person is a terrorist (the law itself does NOT require reasonable suspicion):

"The number of people stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act fell to 200,444 in 2009, a 12% drop from 2008."

So, are there 200,444 terrorists roaming around the UK right now, every year?

"The figures show that since the US terror attacks on 11 September 2001, in the UK 383 suspects have been charged with terrorism-related offences, with 310 prosecutions completed. Of those, 74% were convicted. "

So well over 200,000 people charged every year, they get 229 convictions. That's a success rate of 0.014%, assuming 200,000 stops every year for 9 years (it's actually siginficantly higher than that).

"In January the European Court of Human Rights ruled police who use anti-terrorism powers to stop and search members of the public without suspicion are acting illegally."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8536412.stm

So tell me, do you really think that this Digital Economy Bill has anything to do with what's best for the people, or even for stopping pirates? Or since Mandelson pushed it, and he's very much in bed with large media corporations... is it more to do with money? The whole law stinks, just like the terrorism act. Fortunately I'm hoping that just like the terrorism act, they very fact the law is indiscriminate and does not require evidence will cause it to be dropped sooner rather than later.

 

people suspected of a crime are already penalised, people on remand, are not guilty of anything until it is proved in court that they have done the supsected crime, so why are they in prison, is this not illegal?

this bill is about making it easier to deal with suspected illegal copyright infringement, among other things, like forcing channel 3(itv) and channel 4, to deliver media content in other digital formats, which they already do anyway, its also about switching radio to a purely digital format, the bill covers quite a few areas not just piracy.

you need to read the bill as a whole not just the part about, stopping pirates.

 

This is BS

 

Difference is they have reasonable suspicion with at least some evidence to back it up. For example a police officer may have seen them throw something that looks like marijuana into the bushes, or they may have been driving recklessly, etc. etc.

Any law that doesn't require reasonable suspicion isn't exactly a law is it? It reads like an excuse for the police / gov / power wielder to do whatever they want. If it doesn't have to be reasonable, then they can say whatever they want and get away with it. 'That person is a terrorist / file sharing!'. Why? 'I don't need a reason, they just are'.

A lot of dodgy laws are covered up in legitimate laws so they can be pushed through. Afterall the terrorism act also has some very important and useful parts in it. It also happens to conceal a part that lets the police arrest anyone at any time for any reason. Interestingly all fascist states have exactly the same law, just not hidden within others. Now we've got a law embedded within another that lets the gov disconnect anyone from the Internet at any time for any reason.

 

I'm glad to say that my local MP actually voted no. I'm not sure whether it was down to my eloquence, but I like to think so

It's just a shame he's standing down next month

 

No, and I never said that; I've always been against parts of it (though it's worth noting it's about more than just copyright infringement/file sharing). Personally, I think the Bill is useless and the MPs will probably realise this if, as you say, they start disconnecting thousands of people's Internet connections just because someone is found to be using a P2P file sharing program, effectively sending us back to the dark ages.

 

When they own the information, they can sell it. I think the DVLA already does it. That's only the financial benefit, though.

Every government's wet dream is to have every little bit of information on every citizen. That way they can control every citizen, and stay in power. That isn't a conspiracy theory, but simple human mechanics: people with power want to stay in power. Greed begets greed.

The government don't see us as the nice, generally law-abiding citizens most of us are: we're an anonymous grey mass. They only interact with their friends (who aren't factory workers, but rather owners of large businesses, say... EMI, Universal, BAE, etc) and thus have an askew view.

Therefore, in their wrong view, if it benefits their friends it must be good. And for those that don't think like that: if it benefits their friends, it benefits themselves. Either way, it's us that are screwed.


Apart from that...

Torrent swarms are filled with false IPs as well as real ones. If the IP address you've been assigned is in there, strike 1. Adding to that, accusations based on an IP address are laughable at best. So even if you don't fileshare, you still may be accused. And an accusation is all this bill wants to consider you guilty.

There is already a law in place to fight copyright infringement, which can easily be applied to the internet: the rights owner provides evidence to a court whilst accusing the alleged infringer, the court decides based on the evidence presented and both parties' statements.
However, that's a lengthy process and doesn't benefit the rights owner in the end. That's why they cosied up to their pals in politics to get laws like this one (and HADOPI in France) passed.
Even if they get a lot of innocent "guilty" people, they don't care.

Surveilling everyone because of copyright infringement is ridiculous. I can understand random stop-and-search and a cop on every corner in a city which has seen multiple daily murders, but surveilling millions of people because of a minority who commits a small infringement is... horrendeous. We're supposed to live in free and democratic countries (remember the on-going wars to bring freedom to far-away countries?): if you're watched 24/7, that's not freedom.