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."

Comments

Finally, someone gets it.

[mykos]

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.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Merls the Sneaky]

Copyright infringement is not theft.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[jimicus]

It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.

I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.

Most of the hereditary lords lost their seats years ago when Labour first came to power. So they're not the nobles they once were.

However - and this is the important bit - they are not elected by the voting public. Seats are (generally speaking) for life.

This is completely counter-intuitive and flies in the face of democracy. I guarantee there will be at least one person who will reply saying "What a ridiculous system" or words to that effect. But the thing is, it works quite well. IIRC the Lords can't introduce legislation themselves but they can discuss and block legislation that's coming through - and because their seat is for life, they don't need to worry too much about pandering to either a panicked electorate or to commercial interests who are going to be funding their next election campaign.

In fact, it works rather too well in some cases. Our Glorious Former Leader, Blair, very nearly discovered this to his cost with a few of his anti-terror bills. They only got through because of the use of "emergency" legislation which essentially allowed him to bypass the House of Lords.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[dargaud]

I used to think the house of lords was a ridiculous system, particularly when it was inherited. But now I recognize the need for a permanent govt structure with long term goals and stability. I think a system like that would work well with its members being elected for life based on various criteria: some named by the govt, some voted, some through some lifetime achievements (a few famous actors, journalists, artists, sportsmen, winners of work trade awards, persons nominated for civilian bravery, etc) in order to maximize variety. You don't want pro politicians in a system like that.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Yvanhoe]

The wonderful thing is that they had to create a legal framework to make it possible, vote it, and let it happen to realize this kind of abuse was possible. What is the job they are supposed to do again ? I thought they were supposed to be literate and intelligent people, specialist of laws and how they could be used in a nasty way in order to design them intelligently.

Day after day, I wonder if it would be a lot more damaging to choose MPs at random and let random people be incompetent instead of these elected buffoons. At least, the random people would be really representative of the population.

Re:Read up a bit more on the system

[Spad]

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.

mistaken analysis

[Doviende]

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.

Re:Always another way

[Xest]

"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.

Re:Mandelson

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing makes up for Mandelson.