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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."
google
bing
Yahoo
*torrent
torrent*
isohunt
youtube
megavideo
Megaupload
RapidShare
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?
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!
A government agency in charge of deciding which sites to block. I can't imagine anything going wrong here, no way.
Read it again. It will be RUN by the copyright cartels. That's what "Rights holders" means...
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.
It will guarantee a two-tiered Internet.
A. Internet for people who know what they're doing
B. Everyone else.
I am not sure if I am against this or not. Part of me rages about the censorship. The other part says "meh, it was better when it took actual skill to hook up a modem and set up a BBS"
--
BMO
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.
Don't be silly. This article is about an unimplemented proposal, that in the UK has got only as far as a few rights holding bodies writing a report describing the fantasy world they'd like to live in. Nothing has actually happened yet.
In the meantime, attempts at shutting down websites have actually been implemented in the US - http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/06/13/218206/First-Challenge-To-US-Domain-Seizures-Filed
In destroying freedoms, the US leads and the UK just follows on behind.
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.
Sorry to have to break this to you, but you have it exactly the wrong way round.
This expert body idea is just a deranged proposal from rights holders that will go nowhere because the digital economy bill is already unpopular. There's easy political capital to be made in toning it down, and the bill is starting to have questions asked about its legitimacy in parliament.
Meanwhile, as the post above says, the USA is already seizing domain names associated with piracy. The USA is actively implementing this anti-freedom insanity, while the good old UK is doing nothing but hesitantly discussing it.
My understanding is that The Pirate Bay just links to copyrighted material and doesn't actually host any. Google links to copyrighted material, and actually hosts an awful lot.
The moment this blocklist goes live I will personally demand that Google and every other major 'net search engine, and any website hosting forums that I can post links to are immediately added and blocked.
This is an unworkable system, I'm not going to tolerate it, and I assure you, my opposition is nothing to do with 'piracy'.