Slashdot Mirror
"Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain
David Gerard writes "Lord Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen and announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain. The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?"
I've contacted my MP. The open rights group has a brief PDF to send to them so they are clued up. Ask them to back EDM 1997.
More info here: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/ask-your-mp-to-help-protect-our-freedoms-on-the-net
BTW, there's an editor on wikipedia who keeps on moving the detail about Lily Allen's stance on copyright infringement into a subsection labelled "Social Activism' on her page. Hardly social activism I would think to speak out about something that is in her own financial interest.
In other news, serial resigner, unelected jobsworth, and general insult to the democratic process "Lord" Peter Mandelson, having been appointed to high government office on a technicality by serial bad decision maker, unelected jobsworth, and general insult to the democractic process Gordon Brown, will shortly be resigning, again, having demonstrated a stunning lack of competence in public office, again.
Sorry, we've got an update: the Labour Party are going to get hammered so badly in the general election next year that they might actually come third, the current administration is already in lame duck mode, and Mandelson's views are all but irrelevant.
Frankly, I'm more worried about what David Cameron and his crew are going to do when they get in. If memory serves, they have publicly backed screwing the people in favour of Big Media pretty much any time the question has come up, also directly contravening overwhelming public sentiment expressed to Gowers et al.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It wasn't railing against encryption, it was pointing out that both the police & the intelligence services have voiced their disapproval over the "Three Strikes" idea because it's likely to increase the use of encryption and therefore make their lives more difficult. i.e. It's not just a load of pirates that Mandy's ignored on this one.
European Convention on Human Rights, Article 6.2
"2.Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law."
The ECHR is part of British law.
but wikipedia is missing some other controversy:
From Lord Mandelson: Whitehall's Emperor, or just a team player?
"Unelected yet holding a raft of political positions, including that of cabinet minister, Mandelson is the TV executive who learned to play both the Labour party and the UK system. Previously forced out of Blair's cabinet office twice, once for mortgage fraud and once for abusing his power to help chums get passports, Blair nevertheless then gifted Mandelson the job of Britain's European Commissioner for Trade in 2004 where he hob nobbed on yachts with Microsoft executives and Russian oligarths wanting favours, and then inexplicably returned to the UK in 2008 a very rich man.... Who says the public sector doesn't pay?!! Even the UK citizenship of Mandelson's Brazilian boyfriend stinks of favourtism and misconduct. Reinaldo Avila da Silva came to Britain in 1996 aged 22 on a student visa and was picked up by the then 43 year old Mandelson pretty much on his first night out. Da Silva had no right to British citizenship in 2005, indeed it was apparent that he had overstayed his visa and as such was an illegal immigrant. No worries, a few phone calls from Mandelson and da Silva was safely clutching a shiny new British passport. "
That's why the spy agencies are against it. The best way to avoid an arms race is to simply avoid raising the stakes so the other side remains blissfully ignorant. If things are good now, not rocking the boat is the best solution.
MOst ISPs block outgoing SMTP, for spam reasons. Despite this, an annoyingly large amount of spam still comes from outgoing SMTP connections, enough so that sending email from a dynamic connection is mostly useless anyhow because of the dynamic IP blocklists.
The solution is to either use the ISP's mailserver, or your own mailserver at your hosting provider using stuff like Authenticated SMTP, which, surprise, uses a different port. It's an intentional workaround, because either your mail is going through your ISP (who can detect if you're sending 1000 emails a day 24/7), or your hosting provider (ditto, if the spambot is smart enough to steal your SMTP authetication details). Since all modern email clients support this standard, it's just a setup issue. And Authenticated SMTP can use SSL (to protect login credentials) if you're inclined.
The title ' "Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain ' is, err, a little misleading (what, on /. ? never).
My understanding is that the policy is being proposed form inclusion in a new bill. AFAIK this then has to be bounced between The House of Commons and the Lords and finally signed by HRM before it is law. And this assumes it is not removed and/or amended in this process.