Slashdot Mirror
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."
What is wrong with the UK? All I ever see are stories about another stupid thing you guys are doing.
Not trolling. Think about it. Slashdot is like 7% stories about stupid privacy/internet stories from the UK.
Unfortunately, this story is already out-of-date. The Government denied the Liberal Democrat peers the ability to amend the amendment, saying that they'd sort it out themselves during "washing-up", the period just before the General Election when ministers and last-term backbenchers rush through last-minute legislation with minimal debate while the majority of MPs return to their constituencies to campaign.
See this Guardian article for more information.
Pirate Party UK
Thios story is typical pro-piracy slashdot spin.
Th industry too lazy to change? Maybe you can inform us of how you 'change' to accomodate the fact that people are takuing your output for free and not paying a single penny? Perhaps all of the very experienced business owners here at slashdot could emerge from moms basement and explain how you make a living that way with music?
laughable.
And ncie to see that the businesses that benefit the most from priacy, which is search engines and ISPs, are cheerleading any attempt to water down enforcement of the law. Google loves piracy, and so do the ISP's, because they do not produce fuck all intellectual property.
Businesses and people who actually fucking create stuff for a living rather than just hyperlinking to it are rightfully behind this bill.
The UK legal system operates on a "loser pays" basis, so unless there's something explicitly written into the law which puts such cases in the Small Claims Court (where there is a limit to the expenses that can be claimed by either side), you can guarantee anyone threatening to sue these people will be met with a nastygram saying "If you continue in taking us to court, we will demand costs. We're up to £20,000 now, and it's rising with every letter we write."
The people who are most likely to be cowed by such a threat are exactly the people who are most likely to get such a threat in the first place - I'm thinking particularly those who can't afford a solicitor and where the parents in the household don't really understand what the kids get up to on the Internet.
Who can afford the lawyers? Now if they really wanted to make this work (don't forget that all parties in england have to pacify the media/content owners. Do you want to upset the content producers and then be ridiculed forever in every piece of content? Go ahead, suggest the BBC should be privatized, see how long your public image survives. Yesterday the BBC aired an entirely self serving copyright program that showed only the content owners point of view. How suprising)
If this was to work, then the content owners should setup a fund from which lawsuits against them could be funded, they should be rate limited to the amount they could spend on lawyers and be stopped from endlessly appealing. The damages should be high enough that it is a serious detterent against endless false claims and for any succesful claim, the pot for making claims against them is doubled.
Else it is just a hollow shell. Nobody can afford to sue the media companies. Don't let the lib-dems fool you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court.
This is still highly lopsided.
Why does a "wrongfully accused" have to sue? Shouldn't that be that this accused has been sued already or so?
If really this way it is still that the music company just can say "you're file sharing!" without having to have any firm proof, as most file sharers will not sue in the first place because of the huge costs involved just to start up a suit.
As if slightly less terrible news is suddenly good news...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The Liberal Democrats are supposed to be the heirs of the liberal tradition in the UK, supporting individual rights against government power. Their official party platform is John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I don't really see how this fits even remotely.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
is EFNet, and you it will be among NIGGER ASSOCIATION more. If you feel said. 'Screaming support GNAA, if you don't ggodbye...she had gave the BSD
to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court
ummm, i think this is just a nice way of rephrasing the same thing. i mean, sueing anybody *was* already allowed.
This bill contains 3-strikes and you are out law, which means that if someone is merely accused of copyright violation 3 times, their broadband connection is terminated.
I'll tell you what it looks like.
In the former USSR there was no Internet, but people listened to radio. There was no 3-strike law, you only needed to be caught once. You were not allowed to get information from the rest of the 'free' (what used to be free) world, if you tried, you were obviously an outlaw.
This is what it looks like to me, not precisely, but close enough. There is Internet, and then there is the 'free' Internet and the UK citizens are losing their free Internet.
It looks even worse than what happened in the USSR. There, they just tried to prevent people from listening to BBC by interfering with the radio waves, but they could not really know who was listening, who tried to listen.
Here they will know, they will know who is listening, who is trying. Even worse, if your connection is encrypted, I am sure that there will be in the future an assumption you are braking the law, so you will be presumed guilty for having an encrypted connection, unless it is to an approved bank or to an approved store I suppose. Which, by the way, if you think about it, is a perfect next step: eliminate bank and store competition, by only allowing encryption to a very select few. You think that won't happen?
This is worse than the USSR in terms of ability to listen and to make assumptions about who is doing what. This is still not as bad as the USSR, probably you won't go to a far away place in Siberia. Not yet. Not until UK contracts Russia out to handle its prisoners. You watch, that'll happen to: contracting brutal places out to handle your prisoners, especially prisoners that happen to be anti-policy, so they are anti-corporation, anti-government.
Shit, long time ago I though Britain could have been quite an interesting place to live for a while, now, I think I'll avoid that place just as much as I avoid the US, though I must admit, I like Florida's climate.
You can't handle the truth.
Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill
It's just "Liberal Democrat", not "Liberal Democratic". There's nothing liberal or democratic about these people.
The only thing that has changed is that I can sue the rights holder if I am cut off the internet without justification. Now correct me if I am wrong, but to go through the process of finding a lawyer, communicating with said lawyer, getting forms and doing all the other things you do during a court case would be SERIOUSLY hampered by not having access to the internet. What if I can't afford a lawyer and have to read up on law...can't spend my whole life down in London at the British Library sifting through law books, I would need access to the internet to be able to do research. Also, how the hell am I supposed to check IP addresses and other such online sites I am supposed to have downloaded copyright material from without access?
I wouldn't want to do this down my local internet café really...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Is it just me, or are all politicians born with a corporate cock up their asses.
It's 2010, people voted for these scum to be elected, yet I never here anything about them helping the individual citizen.
You brushed over the report there. The report basically was ignored because it said that DRM and internet antipiracy efforts were worthless and unwarranted. So the government ignored them.
The difference is, for every 4 stupid things the US introduces, 3 are fought and 2 are shot down. For that amount, UK introduces 2 stupid things and both pass with little or no opposition.
Every time I hear the words "Bill Watered down", I am going to think of the Overton Window, a phrase that Fortunato_NC recently taught me (thanks!).
Propose some "extremely extreme law", and your going more likely to get the nice watered down ordinary old "extreme law" passed, the one that your sponsor(s) always wanted - while maintaining your political capital.
Only a matter of time before the internet start's hosting more living document's aimed to help the layman select their vote, complete with these dirty little tricks + pictures of the top political offenders... can ram that political capital you know where Mr Politician.
I've always been a bit of a liberal, but the Lib Dem's lack of cohesive leadership recently has totally shattered any chance I'll be voting for them.
This nonsense amendment was by a Lord. Firstly, the Lords can do what they like, even going against their party policy (in fact, even MPs can, but this is even more so in the Lords).
Secondly, you don't vote for Lords.
If you're not going to vote for a Lib Dem MP, based on what a Lord does, when it's neither the policy of your MP candidate nor Lib Dem party policy, that doesn't really make sense.
Admittedly, I do wish there'd be something more public from the main party itself to distance themselves from this amendment. But my own Lib Dem candidate has already confirmed that he doesn't support it - at least write to your candidate to see his or her views, before throwing your vote away.
I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid your information is out of date. We have no Jedi here, because after the government conducted a census for which everyone was legally required to provide information, the Powers That Be decided they knew better anyway and everyone who declared their religion as Jedi was just making it up.
Also, I am amused by the people who think we have an "atheist" state when there are still people sitting in the House of Lords with the power to legislate just because they hold high office in a church. No, really, there actually are.
On a more serious note, TFA is now slightly out of date as well. The House of Lords approved the Bill. Clause 17 (the three strikes provision) is still gone, but it looks like most of the rest made it through. Lord Clement-Jones, the Lib Dem peer who originally proposed the controversial amendments, seems to think that what went through was a good thing. Go figure.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well, here in the UK, we're just copying the US model. I gather that for a long time, the average viewer of The Daily Show has been more informed than the average viewer of Fox News. Over here, the average viewer of Mock the Week or Have I Got News For You? (or the average listener to The News Quiz, if you prefer) is probably more informed than the average viewer of Panorama, Question Time or Newsnight.
It's a shame, because some of those flagship BBC current affairs programmes really were good once upon a time. I think their demise comes from a combination of over-editorialising and pushy presenters. In particular, when did it become acceptable for Paxman et al. to express their own (or their editors') views, while repeatedly cutting off guests with a pithy insult before they can even finish a sentence? Politicians have responded by just sending automatons who repeat the same talking point time after time whether or not it is relevent, and the whole thing loses any meaning as a one-on-one interview or a debate between people with differing view points.
Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way. I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when there were a couple of academics of quite different viewpoints on Newsnight, and they actually did engage in a civilised debate based on factual evidence and logical argument. Paxman did a good job, asking a few questions but hardly speaking at all during the answers, both guests made interesting and well-informed points, and it was the best episode of the programme I've seen in years.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I believe this is 0 (or negative) sum.
Buying from independents via websites:
-Megacorps net income = 0
-Artists tied to Megacorps net income = 0
-Independent Artist = +1 (cash in) -X|X>=1 (work out)
-Your net result = +1 (value) -1 (cash out)
Whereas copying:
-Net result for company and artist = -X (Creation/Marketing, X is often 1 here)
-Net result for you = +1 (value)
But, ya; you're just freeloading anyway. Buy used.