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.

[icebike]

But will anything really happen or will this just be another excuse for yet more surveillance of home computer usage?

The track record of the House of Lords hasn't been so good over the long run has it?

I would bet that if Lucas gains any traction great pressure will be brought to shut him up one way or another.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Kjella]

The problem is there's no real scenario where they lose. You say "Fuck you", they take whatever evidence they have to court and maybe they win and maybe they don't but the evidence passes enough standards to never be considered a frivolous lawsuit. Didn't you see this case that was just covered on slashdot, fight for 5 years and end in stalemate. Now this is UK law and not US, but I assume it's civil with a standard of "preponderance of evidence", I've heard that this means in practice something like a 60-40 probability. Is it possible their accusations are 60% correct? Quite possible, 40% is a huge error margin. And if so, their evidence really does meet that legal standard, disturbingly enough as it is for the 40% who ends up falsely paying.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[LainTouko]

If you say "Fuck you", they'll leave you alone and go and find someone more easily intimidated into giving them money. None of these cases has ever gone to court, and they're clearly worried about killing the cash cow if it does happen.

(A couple of related cases did go to court a while back, but I think they cherry-picked people who chose ill-advised defenses which effectively admitted the bits which are impossible to prove. And someone who had moved and wasn't getting any letters, so would never turn up to defend themselves in the first place.)

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Merls the Sneaky]

Copyright infringement is not theft.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[VJ42]

Well that's a matter for the courts to decide and unfortunatly for you they have decided.

Yes, in UK law they decided that information wasn't property and thus couldn't be stolen. See the case ofOxford v Moss for more detail.

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.

[Kijori]

But will anything really happen or will this just be another excuse for yet more surveillance of home computer usage?

The track record of the House of Lords hasn't been so good over the long run has it?

I would bet that if Lucas gains any traction great pressure will be brought to shut him up one way or another.

Unfortunately it's heading in the other direction. The statement was made in the context of a debate on the Digital Economy Bill, which is designed to make it easier to punish "copyright violators" (although, as numerous Lords have pointed out, they're actually just people accused of copyright violation), by making it easier to get information from ISPs and allowing copyright holders to have a user's internet connection shut off if they refuse to stop downloading (i.e. if the record company still has "evidence" after they have written to the user and threatened them). All in all, an absolutely disastrous bill.

*Shameless plug* If you agree and want to try to get answers from Mandelson, sign the DigitalWrong letter. This is going to be printed up on huge bits of card with all the messages people have left and presented to Lord Mandelson, since he doesn't bother replying to individual letters.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[delinear]

You're right, the House of Lords gets a lot of negative press, and perhaps that's a legacy of what it used to be like with hereditary peerages and a lot of people deciding the laws of the country purely because of who their ancestors were, but yes it's changed a lot and is actually now a very useful legislative tool (along with its judicial function). It's great that people with a lifetime of skills and experience aren't simply discarded but have a real input into the way our laws are decided, and although its structure is partisan, the voting generally isn't, people generally vote with their conscience not just to bolster their party line.

A lot of the Lords' powers to block laws have been stripped away by the Parliament Acts unfortunately. As you mention certain legislation can bypass the Lords completely, I think this includes anything to do with finance and taxation, and on top of that no law can be delayed in the House of Lords for more than - IIRC - two parliamentary sessions, so while they used to be able to send laws back to "the other place" indefinitely, now they can only delay for effectively about a year. It's good that they can't hold up new laws forever, but at the same time a strong government can pretty much force through anything it wants now - as we've experienced in the last decade.

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.

[jabuzz]

The problem with the House of Lords is that the vast majority of people have no idea as to the real work that they do. The amount of poor drafting of legislation that they correct is truly staggering. The amount of just nasty ideas that get blocked is also quite staggering. However because the chamber is unelected (which has traditionally made them very hard to bribe) people see it as undemocratic, and we get the fiddling that Blair did which just served to make them prone to bribery.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[jabuzz]

Unfortunately for you the this is U.K. law and the legislation makes it quite clear the offense is "making unauthorised copies" and not theft, and is only criminal if you are doing it for profit.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Anonymous Cowpat]

The Lords can block 'money' bills but, by convention, don't. They did once at the start of the 20th century, that's why we had the first parliament act.
The Lords also let through any bill which is an implementation of the ruling party's last manifesto.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[jimicus]

Ok, where does Lord Sutch fit into the picture?

He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.

Legally, he would have been "Mr. Lord David Sutch".

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Eivind]

No, you actually couldn't, not if the claim isn't obviously frivolous.

"You owe me money, pay up, or I'll be forced to take the matter to court", is even, in principle, entirely reasonable in some situations.

The problem is that the punishments are so out of line with the severity of the transgression, that people cannot afford to let the courts sort it out, even in cases where they're quite possibly innocent.

If I say the above, and demand $700 from you for NOT taking it to court, and you know that being taken to court means potentially a year-long battle and hundreds of thousands if you loose, can you afford to take that gamble, even if you think you're most-probably going to come out innocent ?

Or do you buckle ?

That's the point where it becomes blackmail.

If the punishment for uploading copyrighted material was limited to something sane, this problem would go away.

Say if you downloaded 300 songs from piratebay, and have a share-ratio of 2, and they calculated this means 600 people illegally got a song from you, at $0.99 a song, that's a loss of $600 -- so they convict you guilty and demand you pay $1000.

That's not what happens though, you potentially end up paying orders of magnitude more. And that's wrong.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Courageous]

Well. Your lawyer would write their demand a bit differently. :-P If you can find a lawyer to write the demand the same way, please have him send me the demand. Also make sure he owns real property, I could use some extra income. :-P

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[Talderas]

The House of Lords functions in a manner that the US Senate should have functioned. Since the appointment is life time, the Lords are not subject to listening to the populism. Thus they are free to make intelligent and informed decisions rather than relying on listening to the whims of the populace, potentially serving as a mechanism by which to prevent utterly stupid laws from passing.

The US had that with the Senate, by making Senators a 6 year term and not making their appointment subjected directly to the whim of the people. Since the 17th Amendment in 1913 things have gotten progressively worse as Senators suddenly pay heed to populism.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[NotBornYesterday]

I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?

IANAL, or more appropriately, IANAS (I Am Not A Solicitor)

When you take a CD from a store, you are taking a piece of their physical inventory. They have lost a real, tangible asset to you that they paid actual, countable money for.

When you copy a friend's CD, you are DUPLICATING a physical asset, meaning that the store has all the inventory they had paid for before you copied it. They have not experienced an actual loss. Now, there are a number of imaginative people out there who like to construe this as theft, and they have done a good job of spinning "unauthorized duplication" into "theft" in the minds of many. Of course, that bit of fiction is designed to serve the interests of the copyright owners, not serve as legal advice. Also, this artificial construct ignores the evidence that many who illegally copy music are trying it, not necessarily trying to keep it. A significant number go on to buy the music, which they might not have if they hadn't "borrowed" it.

Both give ME, the same net result, which is obtaining a product or property without paying, and therefore FOR PROFIT, yet violations of each are treated completely different.

Achieving the same net result does not necessarily mean that the same crime (if there is one) was committed. For example, if I killed someone, it could easily be a) murder (intent, motive), b) manslaughter (accidental, but with responsibility), or c) self-defense (unfortunate, but justifiable). Furthermore, I could argue that you didn't really get the same net result. If you stole the CD, you would possess the cover art, jewel case, and a pressed CD. If you copied the music, you might have bothered to actually burn a CD copy of it (inferior to pressed CD in lifespan, cost of media comes out of your pocket, not theirs, unless you stole that too) without taking the case and copying the art, but more likely you just downloaded the mp3 files, which although enjoyable, are measurably inferior to the store-bought product. As a matter of fact, at this point, you have come closer to a song recorded over the radio than stealing a CD from a store.

Your interpretation of "profit" is a loose one. Personal gain is not profit.

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:Finally, someone gets it.

[NotBornYesterday]

We all draw our morals (those of us who have them, anyway) from different sources, including religion, philosophy, and personal experience. By our nature, and by the nature of how we see and experience things, we each have a slightly different perspective on these things. Despite the current vogue for blaming religion for many of the world's problems, the truth is that a vast amount of good takes place in the name of religion thanks to the various moral teachings among them (care for the sick and hungry, don't screw someone else's spouse, teach people not to lie, steal, and kill). The evil done in the world isn't the fault of religion itself - it is the fault of arrogant people who pervert religion to their own ends. If you really want to find evil, look to some of the more notable atheists, like Mao and Stalin.

If this guy finds that religion helps him not to do things he shouldn't, who are you to question it? Your arrogance and intolerance in dismissing and belittling value systems of others is similar to those who perpetrate the "religious" abuses you refer to.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[DavidTC]

Not that I mind that much, but who came up with making copies being "not theft" and "not criminal"? I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?

Because theft means, and has always meant through history, 'unlawfully removing ownership of property from someone who already owns it'. (Ownership being the right and ability to use property for your own purposes. It is the ultimate 'control' of property, as opposed to possession, which is just who controls it at any one time.)

Theft is not just 'taking', in fact. That's just one form of theft, 'theft by taking'.

You also have 'theft by conversion', where you turn the property of someone else into a different form, such as building a desk out of someone else's lumber, and not attempting to take the desk. Still theft.

And some places have 'theft by destruction' or 'theft by vandalism', which is when you just entirely or mostly destroy something of someone else.

And there's 'theft by fraud', where you mislead someone who is in legal possession of property, or the owner of property, into 'transferring ownership' to you under certain false pretenses. For example, using counterfeit money to buy things. (Which is illegal by itself, but it's also theft by fraud.)

And there's 'theft by misappropriation', where you are in legal possession of property you don't own, but attempt to do something that only the owner can do, such as sell it. Just because you have been been granted the right and ability to use property, aka 'loaned property', by the owner doesn't mean you can do anything with it.

Please note I said 'the owner'. Theft by misappropriation is taking the ability of the owner to control his property. The owner of a CD is not able to copy it, nor have you removed those rights if you copy it, and, as you're doing it with the owner of a CD's permission anyway, it would hardly matter.

Not all places distinguish in exactly these ways, and not all of them call all the offenses 'theft', but the common thread holding together the various forms of theft is: At some point, someone owned something, and the thief changed things by removing it from their control.

As making copies doesn't remove control of anything from the owner of the CD without their consent, it cannot be theft. (Even making copies without their consent isn't actually theft, and probably legal if you can do it without breaking some other law. It's like sitting on lawn furniture in someone's front yard without damaging it, but without permission. You are not intending to deprive anyone of anything. You are using someone else's property without permission, but that is not ipso facto illegal if it doesn't deprive them. Whether or not you're trespassing is another matter.)

Now you could steal in a copyright itself, if you filed various legal papers falsely transferring it to you. That would probably be 'theft by fraud', which is often just covered under fraud statues.

Theft is, technically, speaking, referred to as 'permanently depriving' someone of a thing, although I hate to use that word because people get into a stupid mode when they insist companies have been deprived of 'profits'. Unless you're stating that profits have been stolen, profits haven't been deprived by theft. Stealing my car is theft because it deprived me of my car, not because it deprived me of a way to work. I have never owned 'a way to work', and, likewise, I have never owned hypothetical future profits, and can be deprived by theft of neither.

Of course, if a civil suits happens, those might be unlawful damages to me that I can get compensation for, but damages != theft, especially since damages aren't automatically illegal. (For example, you can spread true, but damaging, facts about me.)

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[dryeo]

Of course the article is about the UK where the King James version of the bible is still under copyright.

Re:Finally, someone gets it.

[VJ42]

You were the one who said it was and I quote "For the courts to decide". I just pointed out that they had, but in the opposite direction to the one you originally suggested. I didn't comment on the decision itself, so how you can infer that:

People like you are what give companies excuses to try and control our software and the internet.

from what I said, I don't know. My actual opinion is thus: I don't personally wilfully infringe copyright, however I support copyright reform as I feel the current lengths are far too long; I think that a standard length of 10-20 years is probably about the correct limit. As such I am a Pirate - a member of the Pirate Party UK, that is.

To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied,

[sqrt(2)]

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Re:To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied,

[Soldats]

Oh good so I'm not the only one who thought George Lucas when I read that headline.
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right?
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guys?

Re:To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied,

[L4t3r4lu5]

Sorry, we already have Sith Lord in parliament

Re:To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied,

[Anne Thwacks]

Vader? I think you mean Mandelson.

Are they not the same person?

New labour: Government by the Mandleson, for the Mandelson

Always another way

[AHuxley]

Flood you local MP and legal watch dogs with "due diligence" claims.
Make the ambulance chasing legal teams feel the heat of well written complaints to all MP's in the area.
Write to the local press. get on radio, tv, youtube, name the lawyers.
Protest outside their offices and public events demanding legal reform.
Make a web page with the legal teams letters to attract many others.
Make it out rank their own site in google searches.
If they sue you, go to court.

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.

Grrr....mind trick

[whovian]

This wasn't the Lucas I was looking for.

Outbreak of common sense!

[cbope]

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.

Re:Outbreak of common sense!

[JoshDD]

He might just be blackmailing the record companies in his own way. (Pay me and I'll shut up.)

It is spreading....

[Asadullah Ahmad]

The sanity is finally spreading, which started from Australia. A few more of similar statements from Government officials, or even some cases appearing in media where customers were blackmailed like this, and users might not be bullied any more just because they use Internet.

Re:It is spreading....

[delinear]

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.

Re:Lets hope that this is the start...

[Tim C]

He's a lord, not an MP.

I wonder if people here will now realise why a lot of us in the UK value the fact that there is a second, non-elected House that can act as a brake on the excesses of the elected one?

Re:Lets hope that this is the start...

[tomtomtom]

Finally a politician who acts like they have a pair, working in government to actually bring the issues faced by the Great British public to light.

Lord Lucas is a Conservative hereditary peer, and a "backbencher" at that - so he is not working in government at all at present and neither is he likely to be even after the election. In many respects this is a shame, because he's one of the few people who have been pointing out some of the other heinous flaws in the Digital Economy Bill (i.e. the parts apart from the copyright regime - the powers it gives the government to take over the UK Domain Name Registry for one).

Actually on the whole the politicians who act most independently tend to be the remaining hereditary peers because they owe their position and therefore "allegiance" to rather fewer people than almost anyone else in government (they are technically elected to sit in the house from amongst all hereditary peers by the existing members of the House of Lords but the pool of candidates is small and once elected they are there until death or, more likely, further reform of the House of Lords occurs).

Re:Lets hope that this is the start...

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:Lets hope that this is the start...

[timmarhy]

here's a clue why the US systems fails - it's filled with god damn lawyers!

NO !

[aepervius]

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.

Read up a bit more on the system

[SmallFurryCreature]

Lords like Lucas are very difficult to pressure or to get them to shut up. As a whole, the lords are a bit of a nuisance because they tend to get in everybodies way. If you are on the left, they go against a ban on fox hunting and if you are on the right they keep insisting on this bloody liberty thing. That is where they get this bad rep from, because politicians don't like to be questioned. As citizens, we shouldn't take politicians word for it that the lords are all bad.

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.

He has been saying this for longer

[SmallFurryCreature]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87352/uks-lord-lucas-compares-p2p-to-sharing-a-newspaper/

If he is who I think he is, he is also a real lord, not a made one. Means he is rich, or at least of that kind of well to do family that scoffs at the typical goverment bribes as being WAAAAAAY to low.

Re:He has been saying this for longer

[Xest]

The Digital Economy bill has been in the lords of the last few weeks for debate. It's been grossly under-reported even on IT news sites, but to anyone that's been keeping an eye, Lucas has been quite the hero. He's been one of the the main people consistently questioning the logic of the bill's three strikes provision and so forth.

He's a smart guy, he seems to understand how the bill's plans run completely counter to hundreds of years worth of citizens hard earned legal and fundamental rights.

Let the lawmakers have their fun

[bzipitidoo]

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.

Re:Let the lawmakers have their fun

[Kijori]

Seems the way to beat this copyright cabal is to keep on sharing

Unfortunately this is the sort of quotation that plays right into their hands.

It's been a very easy ride for the copyright holders so far - opposition to their plans has come either from ISPs (who are motivated by saving money) or file-sharing advocates; this means it's been very easy for them to dismiss the opposition as greedy, self-interested pirates. The point I'm trying to get across is that it's possible to support copyright and copyright enforcement without supporting these ridiculous measures and without giving complete power to record companies.

Copyright itself is not a bad thing. Nor is copyright enforcement - disregarding the exacting definitions that are popular on Slashdot, file sharing is, in one important way, very like stealing - you get something you want without having to pay for it. What is wrong is the idea that people should be punished based only on the accusations of the copyright holders. The fact that it is nearly impossible to get anywhere through the courts isn't representative of file-sharers being cunning and impossible to find, it's representative of the fact that it is difficult to establish, on balance of probabilities, that they have actually infringed on your copyright. Changing the law to allow those people to be punished doesn't get round the fundamental unfairness of punishing people you can't prove have done anything wrong.

Mandelson

[selven]

Well, at least this makes up for Lord Mandelson.

Re:Mandelson

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing makes up for Mandelson.

Re:Mandelson

[Ma8thew]

No he doesn't. Madelson seems to have a greater influence on the government than Gordon Brown, whereas Lucas has almost none.

Re:Lord Lucas

[MichaelSmith]

Thats not the lord you are looking for.

Re:Lord Lucas

[VJ42]

That was Lord Lucan, not Lord Lucas

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:mistaken analysis

[Marcika]

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.

You know what's the mistake with your argument? Ralph Lucas is not an electioneering politician and does not need to be. He is a hereditary peer for life.

Re:sane copyright laws?

[theheadlessrabbit]

If you follow my sig, it would be something like this:

RANDOMIZE TIMER
copyrightsanity% = INT(RND * 255) + 1
IF copyrightsanity% = 0 THEN copyrightissane = 1: ELSE wereallfucked$ = "very yes"

that's not what I want

[Anonymous Cowpat]

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.

Re:Good things about Royalty...!?

[arethuza]

I don't think there is such a status as "Royal" in the UK system - either you are a Commoner, a Peer or the Sovereign.