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"Expert Body" To Decide Which Sites To Block For Copyright Infringement
Barence writes "Rights holders in the UK are proposing to appoint a 'council' and an 'expert body' to decide which websites should be blocked by ISPs for infringing copyright. The controversial Digital Economy Act made provisions for sites accused of hosting copyrighted material to be blocked by British ISPs. 'The cost of the proposed scheme is not indicated, but is likely to be substantial, including the running cost of two non-judicial independent bodies and the cost to ISPs of permanently blocking websites,' Consumer Focus said."
Who said you can block what I can see? This aint Egypt!
google
bing
Yahoo
*torrent
torrent*
isohunt
youtube
megavideo
Megaupload
RapidShare
Problem solved. Yo-ho-ho, pass the rum! Patch me through to www.mp3.pirate!
Freenetproject.org is one of interesting alternatives to information blocking. Still high-latency (sites opens in 10 seconds, bigger >1 MB files download in minutes) but probably most secure (more then TOR/i2p?) and definitely uncensorable.
Installation takes 5 minutes.
With 5 more you can get addons: Frost, FMS and Freetalk boards&sharing systems.
Btw #freenet on irc.freenode.org - we will gladly assist new users.
I share my files over samba
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
There are no details of how the two panels would be made up, but the importance of the proposals mean they could have wide-ranging impacts on civil law
So, before it's ratified, no one (the general public) will have any idea that it's made of shills and stakeholders.
Wonderful...
They're nuts. It's like pissing in the ocean, just what do they think they'll accomplish? Is there anyone in any government anywhere with a brain? I look around and see people out of work, rampant crime, war, and these asshole have time for this stupid shit?
This may be costly but well worth it.
So the techniques I'm aware of:
1) Deep packet inspect for gets to specific sites.
2) DNS hijacking.
3) IP address blocking of known sites.
1) All 3 of these have workarounds. Deep inspection of traffic can be overridden with the use of HTTPS.
2) DNS hijacking could be bypassed by using DNS servers from outside the country (or setting up your own). Of course, they could filter traffic on the DNS port outside of their network and force you to resolve everything through your ISP.
3) IP address blocking can only be worked around if you route through another IP. This means using a proxy or VPN.
I can tell you if my country did this, I would setup a VPS in another contry, install OpenVPN on it and use OpenVPN when I wanted to get access to more questionable sites.
There are workarounds to any type of blocking they do. Unless they completely lock down the internet for their customers (forced proxy servers or something), people will work around it.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Don't doubt experts - they know more than you and are capable of making dispassionate, informed decisions and are morally capable of making unpopular judgments. Remember, citizen, opposition to the opinions of the educated is anti-intellectualism.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I applaud the UKs effort to bring up the costs for existing companies, create meaningless new government bodies and at the same time harshen the climate for new upstarts. This will continue to strengthen our Scandinavian dominance in this sector. Thank you both for this and the very affordable pound.
A government agency in charge of deciding which sites to block. I can't imagine anything going wrong here, no way.
When someone says "expert body", I reach for my gun
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Suddenly reminded of the great firewall of china...
Based on their logic, YouTube would be one of the first sites to be blocked, right? Right? Right? Right.
'The cost of the proposed scheme is not indicated, but is likely to be substantial, including the running cost of two non-judicial independent bodies and the cost to ISPs of permanently blocking websites,' Consumer Focus said.
MAFIAA: austerity my ass, we don't give a fuck about UK deficit (to surpass the Greece one), you just take care I still receive my money
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
You can't solve a social problem with a technical solution.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
This will be bought off by the copyright cartels before it even forms.
Remember, The RIAA has damages in excess of the entire planet's GDP*. *According to the RIAA
Perhaps it's time we demanded of these so-called rights holders - "rights" which We The People GRANTED to them - to conclusively prove to us that granting them these copyrights has actually done anything at all to encourage further creativity? If they can't prove that, then we should revoke their rights and let them scratch in the dirt for a living like the rest of us. We've been presuming for far too long that copyrights (and patents) actually function as intended.
The record and movie industry pundits must be laughing, instead of them having to protect their IP like every other industry the UK tax payer now has to fork of funds so some smack sniffing BMW M series driving record industry exec can screw the artists and the public.
out of an expert body.
What an insightful comment. People fail to see that piracy isn't as much a lack of technological protection but the social reality that information cannot be controlled.
You/Your company/government advocates a
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting piracy. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Pirates can easily use it to discover new upload/download sources
(x) Creative Commons and other legitimate licenses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop piracy for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with your broken system's overhead as you propose another system
( ) Customers will not put up with it
( ) Copyright lobby groups will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from pirates
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many internet users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(x) Pirates don't care about invalid peers in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the internet
(x) Open proxies in foreign countries
(x) Ease of searching the tiny alphanumeric address space of all domain names
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in TCP/IP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than TCP/IP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches from ad banners
( ) Armies of worm-riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of Copyright lobby groups
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Copyright lobby groups
( ) Dishonesty on the part of the Copyright lobby groups themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Windows XP
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) TCP/IP packets should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Bittorrent without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Uploading/downloading data should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time domain names are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government monitoring my internet access
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person/company/government for suggesting it.
Why are things like this always in the name of big business, instead of the little guy, "Joe Public"?
Imo @ least, the "powers that be" should be implementing DNSBL @ these levels (ISP/BSP) against malware purveying sites, spammers/phishers, known maliciously scripted sites, & botnet C&C servers also... not just for large industrial concerns!
(To prevent, for example, malware theft of folks' money if they use online commerce via credit cards & what-not instead... & other things that come along w/ that type of ride also)
* Plus, IF this is gov't. financed ESPECIALLY, because if it is? THEN THE PUBLIC OWNS IT, not corporations! The general public should get a benefit too then... imo @ least.
APK
P.S.=> See - I just KNOW that'd really help to "knock the snot" out of the malware/botnet/spam/phishing problem pretty well, as long as its kept up on judiciously in being updated etc.!
That simply because most folks that get them and continue to spread them are usually folks who aren't aware of securing their systems, or that downloading just anything + clicking on "OK" from a popup off the internet in say a browser, wouldn't "blunder into" spots like that online (because they're not the types that know how to bypass DNS &/or DNSBL (dns block lists for those unaware of it, probably not many here on this site I wager))
... apk
Awesome! That's honestly funny, and so true...
Mod parent up!
That sounds good, but I don't think it is true. Let me give a short example (pasted from: http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/dickens_london.html):
Until the second half of the 19th century London residents were still drinking water from the very same portions of the Thames that the open sewers were discharging into. Several outbreaks of Cholera in the mid 19th century, along with The Great Stink of 1858, when the stench of the Thames caused Parliament to recess, brought a cry for action. The link between drinking water tainted with sewage and the incidence of disease slowly dawned on the Victorians. Dr John Snow proved that all victims in a Soho area cholera outbreak drew water from the same Broad Street pump.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the new Metropolitan Board of Works (1855), put into effect a plan, completed in 1875, which finally provided adequate sewers to serve the city. In addition, laws were put in effect which prevented companies supplying drinking water from drawing water from the most heavily tainted parts of the Thames and required them to provide some type of filtration.
Social problem. Technical solution.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
... as that allows the bribery money to be concentrated amongst just a few people, and makes it easier to buy the results needed.
Your comment is right-on and reminds me of the now-put-to-rest checklist which was posted over and over again, replying to people who thought they had a technical solution to the problem of spam email.
We see now that all of these technical solutions, which dealt with technical details of how email worked, could never eliminate spam itself, which has now mutated and is a cancer infecting all the varied forms of digital communication which now exist. Why? Because it is a social problem (enough people are dumb enough to make it worthwhile), not an exploit of a particular technical weakness of how email works.
The interesting thing is... if you treated copyright infringement much like we treat marijuana here in Australia, things would get a lot better.
A little bit of weed doesn't do a lot of damage and is kinda fun every now and then. A lot of weed is pretty bad, but as long as you're only using it yourself, eh... not a huge issue, but clearly you should cop a fine for it.
But deliberately growing warehouses full of weed, for the express purposes of selling it is pretty bad since it's usually tied to organized crime. Even worse, deliberately manufacturing *cocaine*, a much worse drug, is clearly bad and should be punished heavily.
So we understand that there are "less bad" and "more bad" scales on these things. But now, what if the cops (or vigilante groups with huge congressional power posing as cops) are mass-producing cocaine? Surely they should be fallen upon from a great height and made an example of, right?
http://gizmodo.com/329648/mpaas-university-toolkit-taken-down-for-violating-copyright
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-steals-code-violates-linkware-license/
That's just the top two results on a quick Google search. Other examples exist, I'm sure of it.
Now, the MPAA in both cases didn't just download an illegal copy of Photoshop. They stripped out the licencing and branding, rebranded it as their own, and then used it an profit making enterprise as though they themselves wrote it. THAT is the kind of copyright infringement that SHOULD be punished- it's literally taking someone else's work, pretending it's yours, then making money from it. They didn't just shoplift a copy of Photoshop from a store, they claimed they wrote it themselves.
And yes, they should be punished far worse than any individual. They pretend to be the ultimate authority on copyright enforcement, and treat it extremely gravely- Jamie was sued into bankruptcy for downloading mp3's for personal use. Surely their own actions, however, which are so much more malicious in nature, and so much more damaging to a society as a whole (and again given their position as de-facto "copyright cops") should be treated far more harshly. An individual who is busted for speeding gets a fine, a police officer who is busted for speeding can lose their job. And these particular police officers aren't even cops, more like shopping mall Rent-A-Cops arresting 13 year old kids for possessing a bit of weed while simultaneously running a commercial grade meth lab in their basement.
Yes, the MPAA's incidents are not nearly as numerous as the huge amount of copyright infringement that goes on everyday, but their actions are so much *worse* given their circumstances. They should be punished accordingly. If anyone should understand copyright infringement and copyright law, it should be the MPAA.
So, given this, I propose the MPAA and all its affiliatories, sister companies, shell companies, parent companies, CEOs (present, former and past) and anything to do with them should be purged utterly from the internet to make an example of them.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Maybe if more people like yourself who are supposedly against it would stand up for what they believe in instead of hiding behind the AC Mask.....
The C is there for a reason!
That seems more like an environmental problem with a regulatory solution to me. A better analogy would be if the people really loved drinking out of the Thames and the government put up a fence to try and stop them.
Records and films industries make money out of us so that they can use it to lobby for the laws that benefit only them.
The government taxes us so that they can fund the enforcement of this piece-of-crap legislation.
The ISPs will milk us dry even more to cover the cost of this "regulation".
...to generally solicit. What else do you expect from our leadership?
Vote accordingly.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
Music and film industries make money out of us to lobby for laws that are only beneficial to them. The government taxes us more to enforce this piece-of-crap legislation. The ISPs will milk us dry again to cover the cost of this extra "regulation". For Pete's sake, we should be born with KY jelly sprayed on our orifices.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Effectively industry is trying to establish an additonal authority with the power of judiciary, but entirely controlled by the "laws" of industry. That is the end of any democratic system.
Slashdot. News for pirates. Stuff that's anti private property rights.
If this site is going to keep featuring stories that are only of interest to the Marxist thief contingency among us, then just go ahead and make it official already.
You are missing the real point.
1) They block the child porn. Few people will defend that.
2) They block 'copyright material'.
3) They block whatever they feel like, suppressing critical stories on themselves and allowing critical stories on their political enemies. After all they really do believe that they know what's best for the public and they desire power above all else.
4) The country is in the hands of a few corrupt people who will abuse the situation for all they can take out of it. - Massive profit!
They have setup their infrastructure at stage 1 and are now working on implementing stage 2.
The jump between 2 and 3 is so large your point becomes laughable.
Ken Clarke is having all his sensible proposals stomped on by the Tory Right, who are increasingly resembling the Republican nutjobs. Nadine Dorries resembles Bachmann more and more every day (is that libellous?). Just like the US, the far right is actually a minority - but very vocal and supported by Murdoch.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
How exactly would "blocking websites" actually work without resorting to the tactics used in China? (which seems somewhat unlikely atm) Do government officials realize just how trivial it is to get around these things?
Ursula von der Leyen (Zensursula) tried to introduce this in Germany. The BKA (Bundeskriminalamt) was supposed to run lists of domains to be blocked by German ISPs. There was so much protest, that the CDU (probably biggest political party in Germany) had to put her down and put her into another position within the government (I am still not sure why that woman is still in politics, she should leave the country as our former minister of defence did.
That secret list, proposed by the CDU, was leaked at Wikileaks in Germany. That's when the BKA raided Wikileaks's offices in Germany in search for child porn and confiscated most of their machines and the domain (the site was down for ~1 month). Those were the methods they used to silent them...
This all happened beginning 2009 and the members of the Pirate-Party Germany increased by ~1000% in a couple of months, they are the 6th biggest party atm.
I am wondering if the British do/try the same now?
blah blah ... Marxist thief ... blah blah ...
Aren't you tired of getting your elbow wet when you try to take a crap?
Yet another no-trial, no-evidence extrajudicial solution. Copyright infringers don't respect the law, and neither do the authorities on the evidence of this, so what's to choose between them?
Really? Because that's basically what's happened in the media business here.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Better. In this case, they'll put up a series of scattered three foot wide by two foot high sections of fence, with signs on them saying "Please do not climb over or go around this fence".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
*sigh*
Google take down copyrighted content on receipt of DMCA requests, as do all the sites you list.
Some just laugh at them, and continue to break the law. Those are the sites they want taken down, and no wonder.
The article is laughably trollish and biased. Costs involved in a simple blocklist? TRIVIAL.And is anyone REALLY going to argue that 'thepiratebay' does not infringe copyright?
Get real.
Slashdot pirates are just fucked off they might need to actually pay for peopels work for once.
Let's hope it's not a body which spends a lot of time playing golf, having lunches, enjoying yachts etc which belong to, or are paid for by, anyone who could be described as having vested interests in this regard.
Social problem: Israeli reservists were using the rifle magazines to open bottles of beer, damaging them.
Technical solution: The new rifle, the IMI Galil, had a built-in bottle-opener.
Agreed: They have their "lobbyists" and "pull" (what you said) & do basically fund the campaigns of politicians to put them in office (in the USA @ least, and it's probably the same in the UK or anywhere else that has elections).
I just honestly feel (heck pretty much KNOW) that what I noted would work for a lot more people is all, INCLUDING "big business" (for anyone/all people concerned really - we're all human & consumers).
I say that, because making DNSBL happen vs. the threats I noted (which can affect anyone or anything online) is not very difficult to implement on a DNS server.
E.G.-> The lists of the data ARE OUT THERE (in fact, I convert them to add to a custom HOSTS file here in addition to HOSTS file data that's publicly out there as well & have 1,445,162++ known bad sites/servers/hosts-domains blocked out in it, & I never get "sick" online (heck, not since maybe 1996 or thereabouts)) so, it's VERY doable...
(Yes, even the "hard part" (getting the data itself really)).
Yes - I was going to say what you did (believe-it-or-not, but I decided against it... I was just about to hit the "submit" button, & edited it out).
(I.E.-> I just didn't want to sound like some "political dissident" etc./et al, because I'm not - I'm like anyone else, just an ordinary person/Joe Public too).
* It's good to see that others see things as I do I suppose... @ least THAT came out of it!
Perhaps they'll "wise up" & implement what I suggested as well one day... it'd do wonders imo! Some DNS servers already do, like NORTON DNS (for sure vs malware/botnets), OpenDNS, &/or ScrubIT (these last couple are more vs. "objectionable content" like Pr0n etc. (protecting kids really etc.), though...
So use them: Just a suggestion.
Additionally, & after all - I've lived for nearly 1/2 a century now, so I'm not that "green/wet-behind-the-ears".
E.G. -> NOW, there's also the "train-of-thought" perhaps that "protecting businesses protects jobs", but... there isn't an industrial concern/business out there that spends as much as the entire combined public does, just a fact.
It's "Joe Public" that keeps economies moving really, not just large businesses etc./et al (I think when they finally "get it" on that account, IF they ever do? The world's going to be a better place, but, heh... this is the way it is, and probably always will be).
Another is much like you hear tell about the DEA: If they actually took a "war on drugs" seriously (killing them @ their sources, not the street dealer but say, the Columbian coca fields near & in the Andes mountains iirc, or the poppy fields in the "Golden Triangle").
Doing that, yes, they could actually take out the problem... imo @ least!
APK
P.S.=> HOWEVER - Do that last thing I noted above? Millions of law enforcement prorograms & people lose jobs... lol, talk about a "catch-22 situation", & f'd up thinking, but it's our current reality now though!
TO myself @ least? That's like saying "Well, we could cure cancer, but it'd put a lot of doctors out of work"... wtf?!?
Still - This IS the world & reality though... apk
They're nuts. It's like pissing in the ocean, just what do they think they'll accomplish? Is there anyone in any government anywhere with a brain?
They do what the money tells them to.
Deleted
So if they did that? It's possible they'd put ENTIRE INDUSTRIES around computer security out of work... that's in regards to the analogy I used here (pasting it in now/requoting it):
Another is much like you hear tell about the DEA: If they actually took a "war on drugs" seriously (killing them @ their sources, not the street dealer but say, the Columbian coca fields near & in the Andes mountains iirc, or the poppy fields in the "Golden Triangle").
Doing that, yes, they could actually take out the problem... imo @ least!
APK
P.S.=> HOWEVER - Do that last thing I noted above? Millions of law enforcement prorograms & people lose jobs... lol, talk about a "catch-22 situation", & f'd up thinking, but it's our current reality now though!
TO myself @ least? That's like saying "Well, we could cure cancer, but it'd put a lot of doctors out of work"... wtf?!?
Still - This IS the world & reality though... apk
Think about it: Many of the ISP/BSP support calls ISP/BSP get? GONE.
Think about it: All the computer tech shops (mom & pop up to Best Buy "Geek Squad" sized levels), whom I absolutely KNOW have a good 80% or better of their support calls around the problems I note, & thus, livelyhood? Again - GONE.
Yes - There's a "possible downside" to what I state too, in thinking in "absolutes" & from 1 side only as I was initially. I thought about it, & there you are.
APK
P.S.=> HOWEVER - there you are, on "the world today" (and probably how it's always been before my time too):
Again - NOT doing this vs. the malware/phishing-spamming/botnet C&C servers problem via DNSBL (DNS block lists) against those threats?
Once more - It's just like saying "We can cure cancer, but it'd put doctors out of work" (not completely though - there'd still be other hassles to deal with medically, and same in computing too!)
... apk
You can use a HOSTS file to bypass DNSBL (DNS Block List filtering) simply by "hardcoding in" your "favorite sites" - @ that point, once that's done? You act as your OWN "DNS Server" (resolver of hosts-domains/subdomains to IP addresses)... bypassing DNS altogether & even lightening DNS server request loads!
That's in regards to this point from you:
"2) DNS hijacking could be bypassed by using DNS servers from outside the country (or setting up your own). Of course, they could filter traffic on the DNS port outside of their network and force you to resolve everything through your ISP. - by Necroman (61604) on Wednesday June 22, @10:33PM (#36537704)
Is there a "downside" to it? Well, yes, but it's minor! Sometimes, hosts-domains change their hosting provider, & thus, their IP address... this is rare though.
E.G.-> I hardcode in 250 of my favorite sites into my HOSTS file for these purposes (because it's FASTER than calling out to a remote DNS server for one thing (many orders of magnitude so in fact, local access is always faster, especially once the HOSTS file is cached in either the local DNS caching client in Windows, or even the local kernel mode diskcache subsystem)), & know how many have changed of that number in the last 5-6 yrs. now here?
Only 8 of 250... that tell anyone anything?? It's easy enough to correct using PING too... I ping the ones that change, get their correct IP address, & then it's a matter of opening up notepad.exe & editing them for the correct host-domain-to-IP Address resolution & voila: Corrected in SECONDS time flat, easily, using a text editor!
APK
Britain came up with the Star Chamber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_chamber, didn't they?
Government is supposed to be elected to represent the will of the people, not to represent powerful interest groups.
This is just totally shame-faced corruption, on an unprecedented scale.
The minister responsible should be summarily dismissed for gross misconduct.
Technical problem: there's sewage in the river that we drink from.
Technical solution: build adequate sewers.
Citation needed.
Now you're describing red districts.
I cant fathom how you got modded up.
Its a good piece of history, but it was a technical problem with a technical solution.
There was nothing social about it.
This is not a social (read: Political) problem. This is problem is health-oriented, hence a technical issue. Had the problem been (as suggested by another) that the public enjoyed drinking only from the Thames and would accept no other, then you would have a political problem. And note that a technical solution would not work there for the same reason it never works - people are willing to work to circumvent obstructions. And anything made by man can be circumvented by man.
The fundamental problem with this issue is that there is genuine merit on both sides of the argument.
It is clearly the case that certain Big Media organisations have engaged in legally dubious pricing practices over the years and have engaged in hostile lawsuits against innocent targets. It is clearly the case that privacy and freedom from unwarranted state intrusion into our lives is valuable and should be protected.
On the other hand, it is also the case that there are sick people in the world who really do exploit children and vulnerable people, and it is also the case that copyright infringement is illegal today, and for as long as that remains the case, the technical problems with enforcement created by the existence of the Internet require technical solutions on the same scale.
Fundamentally, I think the whole Internet anonymity vs. censorship argument is aiming at the wrong target. If you have to rely on Internet anonymity and technical measures to protect your ability to communicate, you have bigger problems, and it's time to move to the next box (soap, ballot, jury, ammo, in that order, as the saying goes). This is the case in several countries in the world today, but each of them is effectively in a state of civil war, so what is on the statute books doesn't really matter for the immediate future.
On the other hand, if we accept that the basics of civilised society, legitimate government and reasonable judicial processes are in place, I believe we should try to work within that system to fix the parts that let it down. In such a case, anonymity and darknets put those who know how to use them above the law, pure and simple, and not everyone who benefits is going to be a nice person.
Copyright isn't an unreasonable economic tool, and the idea of paying people a fair price if you benefit from their work is OK, but the current implementation of our copyright system is a joke and needs fixing so it has some kind of credibility with the general public. Thus we shouldn't allow large, commercial organisations with a track record of abusing the legal system anywhere near any kind of enforcement action without appropriate judicial process.
On the flip side, as a basic principle, we should have a judicial system where someone whose legal rights are being infringed can take some proportionate action against the infringer. A right you cannot defend is no right at all. The key is to build a process that relies on impartial scrutiny but can act in a timely fashion. And as I said, if we can't do that, we probably have bigger problems to worry about.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"We have top men working on it."
"Who?"
"Top... Men!"
As a Minister he is not allowed to tread on the toes of his colleagues. Our MP is now a Minister and apologises for this - but he didn't make the system.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It would be so much easier to just accept reality instead.
No, it was quite clearly *not* a social problem (polluted water? technical problem) and the "solution" was at best half technical. Last I checked, passing laws wasn't a technical solution, and if it had really been a social problem, people would have continued to pollute and drink from the Thames even after it was pointed out that was a bad idea.
Nathan's blog
Social problem: disease caused by unclean water
Technical problem: there's sewage in the river that we drink from.
Social problem: people are dumping sewage into the river we drink from
Technical solution: build adequate sewers.
My point was that technical and social problems are often intertwined so blanket statements like the parent comment are not universally true.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I adore your utopian view, but the harsh reality is, "the people" will vote for whatever the TV tells them to. It would only take a few programs spouting off idiocy about how without copyright there would be no TV, movies, whatsoever, and what do you think would happen?