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."

Comments

Race to the bottom

[pieterh]

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.

Re:Race to the bottom

[pieterh]

It's not the job of the legal system to feed artists, nor inventors, nor entrepreneurs. We all live or die off our ability to create value for others.

As for "all culture should be free" being nonsense and fantasy, realize that the vast majority of culture is free, and always has been. As I wrote in my previous post, your very ability to argue that owning culture is somehow a good thing depends on the massive free sharing by others of their work.

Reasonable middle grounds are fine. But the problem here is that there is no safe dividing line. It's just as with software patents. There is no objective line to be drawn between "good" and "bad". Once you allow some, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope, any defined line will move inexorably. It's obvious, really. If you accept the (and this really is the fantasy) argument that privatised culture is more valuable than shared culture, you will always accept a little more. If one patent is good, two is better and a million even better. If 14 years' copyright is good, 15 is better, and 100 is even better.

It is rather like smallpox. There's no reasonable middle ground. Eradication, abolition of privatized culture (and technology and ideas) is the only sustainable long term situation, and though it's far from an inevitable outcome, it's one worth fighting for.

Re:Race to the bottom

[pieterh]

You seem to be claiming that copyright is the basis for a successful economy. You also seem to believe that society has an obligation to feed its artists, musicians, computer programmers, and actors. Lastly, and most amusingly, you seem to claim that the copyright system currently reward these groups, rather than, for example, executives, lawyers, marketing directors, and CEOs.

Firstly, economies work (or fail) on the basis of specialization and trade. This is a basic mechanism, like natural and sexual selection are basic mechanisms for evolution. Economies depend on people dividing up larger problems into smaller ones, and trading solutions. You make bread, I'll make beer, we'll trade. Money of course allows abstraction of this trade, and consequent scaling. Copyright plays no roles in this system except to limit its efficiency, and create friction. There is no benefit to society in individuals or groups owning any part of the culture needed. It is in fact the opposite.

Second, and I'm a computer programmer, but nonetheless: society has no obligation to feed any particular sector except those who cannot look after themselves. Artists, musicians, programmers, writers, and those who would fashion bushes into amusing topiary choose their professions, and do not merit special treatment. The Netherlands tried this. It did, and still does, pay registered artists to produce works. The result is wharehouses filled with junk art. The fact here is that not only do creative people merit no special treatment, but they actually only create valuable works when they are hungry and fairly desperate.

Third, there is no evidence that copyright law helps these people you care about, just as patent law doesn't help "inventors". All forms of privatised culture benefit only those with lawyers and muscle. This also should be obvious, either from studying history (who actually lobbied to create these laws, starting in the 15th century), or by deduction (any law is only tested in the courts, and since these are civil laws, contested between parties, which party will always win? Indeed, it's the one with more and better lawyers and more taste for lawsuits).

Re:Who pays?

[GrpA]

The ISPs won't pay for this. The costs will be passed on to their users as always. And since it's a level playing field, one ISP won't gain an advantage over others.

What is likely to happen however is that important people will find that their kids activities lead to getting such letters and then maybe the older generation, which really doesn't understand the situation, will start to feel the copyright noose they placed around their own necks tighten.

That is likely to lead to change, but not before.

GrpA.

Re:British DMCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's something that returns a bunch of results when you type it into a search engine. You should try it.

Re:Who pays?

[Simmeh]

The ISPs won't pay for this. The costs will be passed on to their users as always. And since it's a level playing field, one ISP won't gain an advantage over others.

Incorrect. This only applies to ISPs with over ~400,000 users. More ISPs would of supported this, but there aren't many with a lot of users. This act promotes heavy users to migrate to less popular ISPs.

Re:Who pays?

[GrpA]

its not fair for companies to have to defend themselves against millions of criminals.

If a company has to defend itself against *millions* of criminals, then common logic holds that whatever these millions of people are doing it is not, or should not be, a crime.

GrpA

Re:Who pays?

[517714]

The burden always lies, both literally and figuratively, with those at the bottom of the food chain.

Re:Who pays?

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

By your logic I am also contributing to the destruction of the "world economy" because I don't watch films or TV programmes. I don't deliberately listen to music.

I don't buy such media and I don't "pirate" it.

I have neither interest in nor plans for fixing the segment of the economy injured through my inaction.

So, am I as bad as a "pirate" or does your argument fail at this point?

Re:Who pays?

[malkavian]

In exactly the same way car manufacturers are currently benefiting from illegal behaviour (getaway cars, etc.). Oooo.. Look, the Government pays for the locations that muggers use! They're supporting crime!
Please stop putting forth silly quotes that aren't actually even arguments.
The real story behind this is that Lord 'Mandy' Mandelson (who had twice been fired from the Labour government for misconduct and corruption that he only escaped being locked up for because he was a prominent politician. Both times he was quietly brought back in by the government of the time when the public outcry faded away.
Now Lord Mandy went away for a nice little holiday with a friend of his, that just incidentally happened to be in the entertainment industry. When he came back, he put this act on a fast track, basically avoiding most of the debate that would normally be associated with something this intrusive. There are so many things wrong with it on so many levels, an it'll ramp up the cost of internet provision hugely.
Ok, so I assume you're going to say "Well, it protects the artists".. This would be the artists that did just fine several hundred years ago with a copyright span of just 12 years? Oh, that small limit killed art because nobody would do it with such meagre protection, would they?
Well, it didn't kill art. It made a rich public domain that everyone could engage in legally.
Now, however, it's a case that if you've got loads of money (read: entertainment industry), you can hire a lawyer to say that technically, copyright terms are extendible to just shy of an infinite duration (because it's termed to be 'a limited time'. This of course deprives everyone of the public domain. Which is essentially theft. Except you've just used a lot of money to make sure it's got a stamp on it by a judge, making it legal. So, you have the unethical, immoral behaviour practiced by the entertainment industry to deprive people of what used to be a right, but spending a shed load of money (that your average person couldn't even begin to fight against) to make it legal. Then you put more laws in place to protect what you've forced through against ethics.
This has been shown (several studies) to be socially destructive, yet it's perfectly legal, and they keep on tightening the screws.
If you think that an arbitrary law is always just and should dictate what the world does, rather than saying "what works, and what is just is what the law should be", then you're rapidly going to be supporting the building of a massive dystopia.

Re:Who pays?

[Hazel Bergeron]

No, I'm applying reductio to dismiss GooberToo's absurd argument. If the mere existence of "countless chunks of the world economy, including businesses of all sizes, ranging from one man shops to multi-billion dollar corporations" is moral justification for an underlying principle on which the countless chunks rely... then we can justify slavery.

Of course, hoarding information is not equivalent to owning a whole human being, but it is a constituent part of human ownership. If you control how a human may express himself then you own some part of him. Copyright and patents are, in practice, enforced assertions of control over other people's actions, even while those people are neither causing you harm nor threatening to do so.