UK Internet Filtering Bill Watered Down

superapecommando writes in with news that in the UK, Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court. The previous version of the Bill had drawn instant criticism from some of the world's largest technology companies, including eBay, Google, and Yahoo, who signed an open letter against the filtering proposal. Blogger Glyn Moody summed up opposition to the Bill, stating that in its previous form, it was "utterly one-sided, where the only winners are a music recording industry too lazy to change, and the losers are everyone else."

Comments

Re:What bullshit

[migla]

If it's a case of paying a *reasonable* price direct to the artist, I'll gladly pay.

There's a difference between leechers who just want a free ride (and unfortunately always will), and those of us that can actually see the wrong in a situation and stand by our principles to effect some kind of change.

Since we can just copy some culture, nurturing the minds of all people, virtually for free, it seems just plain wrong not to. And how else, but with a bit of socialism, could we ensure the starving artists (or others starving) don't starve.

Just make sure everyone gets food, shelter and clothing (and perhaps internet by the water pump or equivalent, at least) and set culture free as in freedom and free as in beer.

Most people would still want to sell their time for added luxury. And capitalism could do its thing. Why should the market enable some people to bathe in luxury while others starve, though? There would still be plenty of room between starvation and ecological disaster for capitalists to play their game. They would just have a little less luxuries to bathe in.

Yeah, that's a bit longsighted and not easy to accomplish, but its also the proper thing to do, as I see it and any small steps that could be identified as leading in that general direction from here, should be taken, in my opinion.