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?"
The UK parliament is in enough trouble through them dishonestly claiming too much expenses -- time for a real reform. Men of honour don't seem to exist in politics (in large enough numbers), so we need real transparency and accountability.
Guy Fawkes night is soon -- maybe a real reenactment is about due!
...And I say we need to be encrypting our traffic anyway. The average computer contains more than enough processing power, and the average 'pipe' width can easily handle the extra resources needed for widespread use of encryption in day-to-day use.
In addition, the recent trend in government is towards snooping and perv-ish behavior: China with its "great" firewall, USA with its unwarranted spying and packet sniffing, and now the UK with its new "three-strikes" policies. I pay my ISP a significant sum of money to deliver me 1s and 0s as fast as they can, and there are very, very few exceptions in which they have a need to know what those 1s and 0s add up to.
I call upon the open source community to lead the way -- while I would love to see the big leagues (Microsoft, Apple, etc) apply their tonnage behind such a problem, pigs are more likely to fly first. How hard would it be for a browser to automatically attempt to negotiate a secure connection for every visited web page and only use normal, unencrypted access when a secure connection fails or cannot be completed in a secure amount of time? People running web servers would not have to make major modifications, only implement a new protocol.
Thanks for allowing this to happen. I expect it will be only a few months before someone stands up in Canadian parliament to make a speech that includes the phrase "3 strikes laws have already been enacted in other nations, such as Britain...". There comes a point where you should realize that angry letters aren't going to get it done, you're going to have to accept your responsibility to take more aggressive action when your government does not stand up for its people.
If one person in a family is accused of pirating, the whole household gets cut off?
If one person in a company is accused of pirating while at work, the whole company gets cut off?
If one person in a ministry is accused of pirating while at work, the whole ministry gets cut off?
Who is _allowed_ to accuse?
I disagree - I happen to work for a massive piece of this 'M-I Complex', and we're dying here. All the major aerospace and defense companies are going through a seriously hard time and shedding people or outsourcing like mad.
If it were as simple as this, I wouldn't be looking for work :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Do you think they care at all what the people think? If anything proves that any form of democracy is not at work here, this does. Business interests are guiding, directing and even controlling government all over the world. The world may be pissed off at the U.S. government, but one only has to look to the "Military Industrial Complex" for why things are the way they are.
Oh the leading party cares very much what people think - though usually more if "what people think" is dramatically at odds with "what they want to do". In such cases, they'll spend inordinate amounts of money (oh, and where does that money come from...?) to tell people what to think. See also: ID cards.
Furthermore, individual MPs are frequently so loyal to their party that no matter how braindead the idea, most will still fall into line and vote for it. My own MP is part of the incumbent party and I don't think she has ever said so much as a single word against any of the government's policies. There's no earthly way she's going to rock the boat over an issue like this.
Pot? Kettle is on the phone...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The M-I C actually was dramatically downsized during the Clinton/Republican Congress years, and according to the Bush's proposed budgets from 2001-to-2010 would have been downsized even further (with the surplus directed towards the SSA trust fund).
Then 9/11 happened, and like fools that respond to trolls on the internet, we responded to Bin Laden's baiting. Now things are out of control again. I had enough sense to say, "Ignore the Arab. Two skyscrapers are not worth starting a war over," but nobody listened. We should have continued along the original course.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And then the People will sue.
And the case will rise to the level of the EU Court, which will declare these laws unconstitu..... uh, in violation of the Lisbon Treaty. Namely the EU Charter of Rights: "Article 48-1. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law." i.e. 3 strikes is invalid because it assumes guilt without trial.
This law can also be argued to violate Article 11 - "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers." And Article 14 - "Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and continuing training." How can little Johnny do his homework if his internet has been cut, and he can't access wikipedia?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I loved this section, as found on the BBC:
The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said. The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said. It would mean that, for example, someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully.
So now we just need to find three instances that an MP shared any copyright material with a friend or colleague. Presumably accidentaly leaking millions of instances of personal details held in government databases doesnt count?