Slashdot Mirror

But by blocking the road, which is explicitly illegal - at least according to the UK Government's own interpretation:
https://www.gov.uk/industrial-...
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/b...

Indeed, it seems there was some serious wishful thinking going on. The Foundation's people are so heavily invested in the project that they probably can't see it very objectively. Not too surprising I guess.

The BIS has just given them the bad news of how things really stand though. Here is a new update from Element 14's FAQ (one of the two Raspberry Pi distributors), quoting news from the Foundation's Eben Upton:

• 
  HOT OFF THE PRESS UPDATE FROM EBEN UPTON OF RASPBERRY PI EARLIER TODAY:
• "We have spoken with BIS this morning, and have been told that, given the volumes involved and the demographic mix of likely users, the development board exemption is not applicable to us; as a result, even the first uncased developer units of Raspberry Pi will require a CE mark prior to distribution in the EU...... ....we are working with RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell to bring Raspberry Pi into a compliant state as soon as is humanly possible."

.

The above is no surprise to anyone who uses Arduinos. Like the Raspberry Pi, they're bare boards, also from a European company (in Italy), and are manufactured in the same kind of volumes as the Raspberry Pi. They're fully certified with RoHS, CE, and FCC (Class B) certifications (as well as something called Life Zero Impact).

The Pi is even more consumer-oriented than the Arduino, since it's a fully working Linux computer and the Foundation has repeatedly extolled its great multimedia capabilities, even writing articles about its use as a media centre. This guaranteed immense interest from virtually everybody, not just from electronics enthusiasts, so huge numbers of these will be going into regular domestic situations.

Thinking that 10 thousand of the boards could avoid industrial certification when a large proportion of them will be purchased by ordinary consumers was really rather naive.

Morgaine.

Here's a study that says it does:

http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/computer-trading

And yet about 490,000 public sector jobs are about to be axed.

The Digital Economy Act (that's brought in these laws) was drawn up after Peter Mandleson dined with (music industry exec.) David Geffen at his Corfu holiday villa, despite a government commissioned report (the Digital Britain Report) just having recommended against some practises (three-strikes; disconnection) proposed in the bill, and hurriedly pushed through into law just before the elections with just about everyone opposing it.

Looks more like simple corruption to me.

For a long time people have been complaining about the big copyright owner groups not innovating or coming up with new business models but they seem to have finally done so - and it is an impressively clever one.

The DEA (well, the relevant copyright-litigation measures) are designed to make it easier for rich copyright owners to sue people (or threaten to sue them, see ACS:Law). Their aim is that this will increase their revenue by £200mpa. As there is no consensus about whether stronger copyright will actually help artists, encourage creativity etc., this can only be about the money.

1. get a law passed designed so you can make £200mpa more money.

Of course, their aim is to maximise profit, so they don't want to pay for this (part of the reason they haven't been suing so far is that it is very expensive with small returns in the UK due to their being no statutory minimum damages unlike elsewhere). They start by saying the costs of forcing ISPs to "protect" their copyrights should be shared between them (if you look through the BIS consultation responses nearly all the copyright owner groups argued for a 50:50 split). ISPs, consumer groups, and nearly everyone else rightly pointed out this was ridiculous, so the Government decided to reach a compromise that still means ISPs will be paying to make copyright owners more money.

2. get someone else to pay for your revenue-generating scheme.

But we know that ISPs won't absorb these costs, they'll pass them on to their customers as an 'Internet Levy'. Similarly, the remaining 75% of costs isn't going to come out of copyright owner profits, or their executive salaries/bonuses, or their vast lobbying budgets. The publishing groups are 'middle-men' so most likely this money will come from both ends: We already know how most record labels will add any expenses they possibly can to the "artist's share" of their revenue, so expect to see extra charges here for "protecting the artist's copyright so people can pay the artistpublisher more money". Also expect to see end prices go up (i.e. us paying more for music/films to cover this cost).

3. ????? [fiddle accounts]

Of course, the aim of this is for the "creative industries" (an amusing phrase, although in fairness, they are good at creating new legislation and accounting practices) to generate this £200mpa - but where is this going to come from? Well... us. Either through being sent threatening letters demanding we pay up, a few high-profile lawsuits, or general increased sales due to greater fear over piracy (somehow I doubt this last one will actually happen, but we'll see..) but yes, this £200mpa comes from us, the consumers.

4. Profit.

So, in summary, this law is about getting us to pay copyright owners so we can pay them more money.
As evil as it may seem, that is one impressively imaginative and innovative business model.

Oh, also it is interesting to see that there is currently no shortage of people complaining about this decision but strangely enough only 3 individuals actually responded to the BIS consultation on it... seems people are happy to complain once a bad decision is made, but aren't willing to actually do anything to help people make the right one.

Not quite true about UK exports. We have our own US-style export license required too, primary to placate....yes.....the US.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/eco/docs/export-technology
[pdf]