UK Government To Terminate File Sharers' Net Access

An anonymous reader writes "New plans published by the UK Govt show that they hope to terminate internet access for people suspected of breaching copyright by file sharing. Under the proposed new laws ISPs who fail to enforce the policy will face prosecution in the courts. Users falling foul of the new law will be subject to a three strike policy: First suspected instance of illegal file sharing they would receive a warning, at the second — a suspension, and at the third they will have their Internet connection terminated. It isn't clear whether users will be prevented from ever using the internet again, or whether simply subscribing to a new ISP will reset the process."

Comments

Would we tolerate this with any other utility?

[elrous0]

Imagine if the government started cutting the phone lines and electricity of anyone suspected of illicit activity, with no absolutely no due process. Would we tolerate that even for a second?

What about all the people falsely accused? Are they going to have to go to court and prove they DIDN'T do anything illegal just to get internet access back?

A sad day for the UK, and an unfortunate precedent that I'm sure the U.S. and others will soon follow.

Re:Lawmakers

[ddrichardson]

There is no British law - Scotland has its own system, which I haven't seen made mention of yet as to how this proposal affects us.

You need to appreciate the sheer volume of ludicrous laws that have been implemented in the UK since Tony Blair's New Labour were voted into power. There are a lot of things that have been made illegal that people don't even know about. This looks to be another of those scenarios where someone has been lobbying the government who have been in discussion with industry members without any public transparency or debate and are about to introduce some sweeping, ill-conceived and ill informed draconian law.

People in the UK need to wake the fuck up and stop paying so much attention to all the bullshit that the news tries to make us focus on and face up to the real issues. Look at the effect of islamic terrorism post media coverage - the UK was subjected to terrorist attacks from Irish Republicans for over 30 years which people accepted and lived with effectively, now the media has created a focussed paranoia which is impacting settled British families of Asian decent.

This may sound extreme but there are parralels as to how many dictators have drawn attention from there real interests by blaming a group of people. In this cas the recession is the issue but we can just blame p2p users.