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British ISPs Fail To Defeat Digital Economy Act
judgecorp writes "ISPs objecting to the British government's Digital Economy Act have lost a court challenge which argued the Act breaches fundamental rights. There's still room to appeal, but it looks like alleged file sharers will be getting warning letters next year."
Have the people wanting the measure fund it. Why should the ISP have to be burdened with the costs? All they are is a connection, not an enforcement arm.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I admit, I've been living under a rock, but what is this Digital Economy Act?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And as the world flattened, and the West lost its historical advantages over the rest of the world, one hope remained. The Internet. Anglophone, agile, it offered a future where the talent and skills of Europe and America could earn their keep in a world starving for digital products. Sure, export all your industrial capacity to Asia. But they'll be importing their digital services from the West. Win-win.
Except it didn't happen like that. Patents and copyright, originally designed to protect the rights of a few, spread like cancer in the new digital economy. The "rights holders" and their lawyers wielded disproportionate influence over politicians. The newer digital businesses, though larger, didn't focus exclusively on control, lobbying, political influence, and protectionism.
One by one, the startups failed. The cost and risk of doing business was just too high. The Internet, once a lawyer-free zone, became the hunting ground for a new breed of legal parasite that used Google to search its prey. Society itself, which in the 21st century found itself heavily digitised, became captive to the "rights owners" and their lawyers.
One by one the digital businesses forced themselves to become involved in politics. It was only in 2024 in Europe, and a full decade later in the USA that the first pro-digital political parties took control of major power blocks. In the 21st century, there was no left, no right. There was only forwards, and backwards.
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Just send the warning letters to everyone who supports the bill. They won't be so chipper then.
My internetting is no good.
don't vote, so you've not consented to be governed, issue a 'Notice of Conditional Agreement'
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
My latest psychic prediction.
Suppose I walk into a coffee shop, and (in honor of the previous comments) download the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy via a torrent. I committed the crime*, but the coffee shop would get the notice indicating they need to take corrective action. Is this the first step in destroying public WiFi access? (*That is, unless you consider the movie itself to be a crime against the book)
Britain also horrendous libel laws.
Given that warning letters without significant supporting evidence can be considered damaging to the reputation of an individual, it would seem appropriate that if you are on the receiving end of a warning letter, you should sue the sender for libel.
If this happens enough, then it might results in changes to one of the DEA laws or libel laws, so it would be a win win type deal.
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http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/14/1718258/European-Court-of-Justice-To-Outlaw-Net-Filtering#
I though this implies that NO ISP can be forced to filter the internet. Surely parts of the DEA require exactly that (IP blocking for example).
Seriously, it is their faults. Stick with me here.
It is their faults. Why is it their fault you ask me?
Because they don't tell the people who they NEED: the customers.
These agencies who are promoting DEA, DMCA, ACTA and crap like that are using the general public as a vote on their side, even if they haven't voted.
They are using the ignorance of the general public against ISPs.
Trust me, if you told even half of ISPs customers, every one of that half would be outraged at this bullshit.
But they don't know a damn thing. They are in the dark. And if nothing gets done, one day, the connection price will go up slightly. (with a possible reason depending on how nice the ISP is)
We need to get the general public to know about this stuff. We don't need to flood them with the crap we know, we just need to say "hey, do you know the X industry is trying to use your voice to steal even more money out of you? "
Surely there are some smart people around here who are good at protesting preparation?
Simply make some standard information page, some banners, make a site dedicated for it (yeah, no doubt it will be DDoS'd, report the IPs, solved)
The general public are lemmings, they don't pay attention to this kind of stuff, they take it for granted that things work, they believe in the Honour (Trust) System, that everyone deals fairly with each other and doesn't backstab or cheat others. (more so with companies than other people, re-read that, other people, companies are run by other people, use that in the information page)
Nothing will get done unless the whole country sees what is happening.
It is about damn time we wake them up to the cruel truth.
The ISPs win because they now have an additional revenue stream - they are supposed to pay 25% of the costs of pursuing transgressors, but I imagine it's the ISPs who get to define that cost, and someone else has to give them the other 75%. Filesharers win because it will still be impossible to identify a transgressor from an IP address so they can safely ignore the letters without worrying that a court can actually do anything to them. Parents lose because they get hassled by letters about their children's behaviour. I'm sure Mumsnet will be on the case once the letters really start rolling in, and the provisions in the act will get neutered as part of a red tape clearing exercise.
Korma: Good
The tech improvements to hide yourself from the watchers will start accelerating. The technology war has just begun.
Honestly, this will be interesting to watch.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think illiterate posters make reading the site kind of painful sometimes, too. I think AC was kind of a jerk about it but I don't think it's wrong to expect that people learn to word things correctly.
Bow-ties are cool.
Note: I really do believe that copyright is as bad as patents.
Copyright doesn't prevent you from doing anything that you'd be able to do if there was no copyright.
On a practical level, yes it does. The problem is that when you create a work (a film for instance) there's an added cost involved in "clearing" any copyrighted material that may be included in the work. One could respond by saying "so don't include anyone else's copyrighted material in your work" but that work is everywhere. It pervades our culture. From that perspective I would say that copyright is too powerful.
Would big budget movies get made at all without copyright? Would we see as many songs if songwriters couldn't support themselves through writing songs?
Personally my problem with copyright is the extent of its power, not the nature of it. 100 years is too much, IMO. Personally I believe that creating something with that kind of longevity is as much a matter of luck as of skill. Skill and hard work are very important, of course - but for every George Lucas of the world there are probably a hundred or a thousand others who worked just as hard, produced something just as good, but due to timing or chance or whatever just didn't manage to achieve a runaway success that they could leverage into a perpetual meal ticket. It's fair to profit from good fortune but there's no reason law should make it should be a free ride lasting for generations.
When a work strikes a chord with a generation of people, when it really takes off there's a boom of interest, which inevitably wanes as people move on to other things. Then, later, nostalgia kicks in and people look back at the work they enjoyed years ago, and there's a resurgence of interest. I think it would make sense to define copyright in terms of this period: copyright lasts through the initial wave of interest, but expires around the time of the nostalgia-driven "second shot". About 25 years, perhaps. If the original creators want to capitalize on that work some more, make more work (for instance, the Star Wars prequels, made about 20 years after the original films.) and latch on to another generation. But certain things have to be released at that point, too: in the case of Star Wars, exclusivity over distribution of the original films would no longer be protected by copyright, and story elements (like lightsabers, Jedi, etc.) would no longer be protected. I think that is quite reasonable: in this scenario the people who, by hard work and providence, have created this huge blockbuster have been able to profit from it through its first wave of popularity and well into its second: but that generation for whom the experience of that work is a shared cultural milestone will, in their lifetime, have the opportunity to build on that themselves if they like, and their ability to be recognized for that work will be based largely on merit. The original creator's best shot at retaining control over their creation would then be name recognition:"That's not real Star Wars canon because George Lucas wasn't involved".
Changing the length of copyright also changes the stakes: the potential reward for producing a lasting copyrighted work is much greater if you (or your heirs) can still profit from the work 100 years later. This means "intellectual property" is big business: everyone wants the next Star Wars or Beatles - they want to own the work that will "define a generation" and stick with them for life. So, yeah, long copyright terms are important if you want high-budget films. If the exclusivity of your return on investment into a film is "only" 20 years, you may not be able to justify sinking $300 million into it.
But personally I don't feel that it's worth it. I think by making the stakes so high, we've created an environment where it's difficult to take creative risks. Experimental work is marginalized because of the barriers to entry. With lower stakes (as defined by copyright)
Bow-ties are cool.
They're not substantially. Nor are they preventing them from doing so. It does allow the better ones to spend more time writing songs once they are established though.
Not necessarily the better ones... A lot of it is a matter of exposure, rather than actual merit. I think shorter copyright terms (and hence lower stakes overall) could mean greater opportunities for artists in general: lower reward for someone who achieves huge success, but on the other hand, since the stakes are lower, the major players (record labels, etc.) won't throw as much money around trying to influence who becomes popular, which will make the business of making music more accessible.
So goes the theory, anyway. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
I wonder when our current overlords will realize they are fighting a losing battle? They may take our internet connections but they'll never take our freedom!
On the flip side, you're not most customers, so his point stands uncontested. You would have to assert that most people would wait for five years to get a movie or whatever.