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Lord Lucas Says Record Companies "Blackmail" Users
Kijori writes "Lord Lucas, a member of the UK House of Lords, has accused record companies of blackmailing internet users by accusing people of copyright infringement who have no way to defend themselves. 'You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail.' The issue is that there is no way for people to prove their innocence, since the record company's data is held to be conclusive proof, and home networking equipment does not log who is downloading what. Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane."
This is the best thing I've read all week. If I went to someone and said "You have wronged me so pay me money or I'll report you to the cops", I could be reported and sent to jail. Maybe if I had a lawyer write my threat up, my demand would magically be non-extortionate.
"Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane"
mod summary +1 funny
-I only code in BASIC.-
What an amazing outbreak of common sense! It's about time at least some of the politicians start to acknowledge that the underhanded, shady, illegal and extremely prejudiced methods used by the media companies are a huge problem. If only the politicians in the US would get this, but somehow I doubt they will. They are too deep in the pockets of the media companies at this point to ever recover.
by the lawmakers, and in turn, will require all home networking equipment to have logging and backdoors for the UK police and the music industry hit squads to monitor your activities within your own home?
That's how I see this unfolding, someone will take into consideration what he said, and pass an archaic law like that, oh and at the cost of the citizenry too. Not complying will also result in being shipped to a prison camp.
After all, our holy masters of the music industry must be satisfied.
Anyone in the US should realize that, its the same job the Supreme Court is supposed to fill (and sometime even does). The problem is it can go the other way- an unelected group can put the breaks on needed legislation and good change. For a US example, see the Dred Scott decision. The trick is finding a way to assign people to that group that honestly have the best for the nation and the people in mind- not an easy task. Any system you build will eventually fail it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Vader? I think you mean Mandelson.
here's a clue why the US systems fails - it's filled with god damn lawyers!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane."
No it will mean even residential user will be forcwed to log everything in their system, and if they do not they will be found breaking the "private logging law" (soon to come). Seeing the power trip the UK is on, you have to be +5 insane or +5 funny to think otherwise.
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visit randi.org
Seems the way to beat this copyright cabal is to keep on sharing, keep on using the Internet. Playing their game, trying to outlobby them, looks like a losing proposition. They can lobby for all the laws they like, but they can't rescind the facts of nature, which is that copying is inherent in the universe. This Copyright Inquisition will fizzle out eventually, the likes of Jack Valenti will go down in infamy next to Torquemada, and centuries from now this hatred, fear, and attempted suppression of copying and extreme punishment of alleged copiers will seem as counterproductive, senseless, and inexplicable as the torture of random people does now. Though I would like to see it happen rather sooner than the length of the typical copyright term.
The lawmakers for their part may choose how they want to look. Do they want to look corrupt, clueless, and irrelevant by taking the money and enacting the industry's idiotic proposals that make about as much sense as enacting a law that pi must equal 3.0? Or look good and far-seeing by not taking the money, and serving the people? Nice that this Lord Lucas is apparently opting for high road. I wish him luck.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Well, at least this makes up for Lord Mandelson.
And it's why the government have been trying to get rid of unelected members of the House of Lords for most of the past 10 years; something that I suspect the next government will continue to do.
The poster here is making a big mistake about government. He is assuming that politicians are dumb and uninformed, and have made these bad decisions through ignorance. This assumption leads to the idea that "if only they knew", then they'd choose to make good, smart decisions that benefit the rest of us. If this were the case, all we'd need to do is educate them and things would get better.
In fact, what we have is a group of wealthy smart businessmen whose financial interests conflict with ours. They have made a series of decisions that benefit themselves and their wealthy friends (who will scratch their backs later when they retire from politics and need a cushy position on someone's corporate board). They are not stupid, and quite often not so misinformed as we would like to think.
Typically what is happening in one of these situations where some certain politician has one of these "epiphanies" is that he just wants to change his position on something because he has decided that it will benefit him. He makes out like he's been misinformed and has discovered the light. By implying that the opposing side is an unjust position, he's making a persuasive argument for people to support his position.
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
"If they sue you, go to court."
Problem with that one is anyone that has said they're willing to go to court over it has had the case dropped, and there's no recourse, or way to force them to put their money where their mouth is. They just rely on the people who are scared to death at the idea of the court costs and so just settle regardless of innocence or guilty because as Lucas says, the music industry's "evidence" is being treated as proof of guilt when it's anything but.
Unfortunately he's more likely to be the King Canute in this instance, the solitary voice trying to hold back the tide of government jumping on big media's bandwagon. The best we can hope for is that it reaches the ears of enough of the populace that it becomes a differentiating factor between the two big parties at election time, at least then we'll have a choice. Unfortunately the populace are largely too busy watching I'm a Celebrity Fat Pet on Ice to bother about the erosion of their rights. Bread and circuses indeed.
Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane.
I don't want to see more laws, I want to see some prosecutions! Common-law blackmail is still illegal, and still carries life imprisonment & an unlimited fine, and doesn't require the thing threatened to be illegal.
FGD 135
It's also why at times the Lords can do a very good job.
They go wrong at times. Some of us question the Lords Spiritual because we do not agree with their position as a special interest group with clout. On a whole the House of Lords can be that extra check for a government. Reading the transcripts of their debates on various topics they seem to have time to discuss things properly and do so without the party political point scoring we see in the lower house. There are some ideas that the lower house come up with for which we are glad that there is someone to get in the way and block it.