"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?"

Comments

Three Strikes on /.

[TheKidWho]

Can we also have a 3 strikes law on Slashdot for dupes??

Seriously, write to them

[kazade84]

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

Re:Seriously, write to them

[erroneus]

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.

Encryption is a bad thing?

[xtal]

Not sure if this place has changed over the years, but I'm all for encryption becoming the norm.

For legitimate law enforcement needs, search warrants and traffic analysis are not impeded.

In fact, draconian enforcement of copyright would be the best thing ever - it would illustrate the absurdity of the status quo.

they need something based on the rules of cricket

[ffflala]

The US 3-strikes rule is based on a concept from baseball, and as a result probably makes little sense in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't go with something more appropriate, like a "bowled, leg-before-wicket, or hit-wicket" and you're out rule.

New rule

[T Murphy]

I propose the three strikes law three strikes law. A politician gets a strike for mentioning the three strikes law in a non-derisive manner, and gets banned from government after three strikes.

Can't Wait

[whisper_jeff]

I can't wait for some motivated group to deliver a clear message to politicians through a concerted effort to get politicians and their employees cut off from the internet simply by accusing them, three times, of copyright violations. Perhaps, once politicians and their staff are cut off from the online world, they'll begin to realize just how moronic this law is. When a simple accusation carries the weight of punishment, the possibilities of abuse are egregious.

Ah, the days of "innocent until proven guilty" seem like a distant memory now...

Re:Can't Wait

[Marcika]

All that would accomplish is immunity for politicians and their staff from this law.

Unlikely. The UK doesn't go in for granting politicians legal immunity, even when this would be of great benefit for the party in power. I don't know if there are any formal rules in this area though.

Of course, if anyone does decide to use the three-strikes approach, could they please use it against some media types too? Might as well get some benefit out of a bad law...

They don't have formal legal immunity, but if anything like this would happen, the police chiefs and the attorney general would likely determine that it is not 'in the public interest' to prosecute or punish politicians or other powerful people. (Just like it happens when an MP or minister falsifies expenses or commits other kinds of fraud.)

And one for Mandleson?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "minister" resposible for this was forced out of office twice for misconduct, he has no place even being in public office.

Re:And one for Mandleson?

[Smegly]

Some misconduct links for the unelected Mandleson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson#Recent_controversies
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. "

Three strikes in Politics..

[malkavian]

Well, considering "Mandy" has already been forced to resign from Labour twice already for scandals (involving borrowing money from someone he was supposed to be investigating to buy a lovely house in central london among other activities), one wonders if he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar yet again, will this third strike resignation force his exclusion from Politics?
Allegedly, he'd shown no interest in this whatsoever before going for a meal at a lovely retreat owned by a movie producer, and a few days holiday.. On his return, this was basically mandated with no consultation.
Yay for unelected politicians who keep coming back despite being forced to resign in shame.

Lily Allen wikipedia article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Mandelson is waiting for his third strike

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Widespread Encryption

[DanMelks]

...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.

Level of Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Hey Britons

[kevinNCSU]

Wow Britain, you just got told to take "more aggressive action" by CANADIANS. Talk about called out.

Lily Allen - hypocrite?

[fahrbot-bot]

From the Lily Allen, Social Activism page and section:

Lily Allen came out in strong support for disconnecting offenders. Creating a blog entitled "It's Not Alright" against file sharing, it subsequently came to light that she had copied text directly from the Techdirt website of an interview with 50 Cent. This led to an exchange on the internet, which culminated in accusations being made that Ms. Allen had infringed on other artists' copyrights by creating mix tapes early in her career, that she then made available via her website.

Pot? Kettle is on the phone...