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Piracy Police Chief Calls For State Interference To Stop Internet "Anarchy"
An anonymous reader writes The City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is determined to continue its anti-piracy efforts in the years to come. However, the unit's head, Andy Fyfe, also believes that the government may have to tighten the rules on the Internet to stop people from breaking the law. PIPCU's chief believes the public has to be protected from criminals, including pirate site operators who take advantage of their trust. If that doesn't happen, then the Internet may descend into anarchy, he says, suggesting that the government may have to intervene to prevent this. The Police chief believes tighter rules may be needed to prevent people from breaking the law in the future. This could mean not everyone is allowed to launch a website, but that a license would be required, for example.
The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.
It has not descended, it was born as an Anarchy. Internet is anarchic by design. That's the way it always was, is, and must be.
A computer net with strict rules is not internet, it's something else.
He's a police officer...he doesn't understand any kind of design other than an Authoritarian hierarchy. You can tell him how the internet works, and he won't believe you...or he'll look at the DNS servers, see the hierarchy there, and claim that it is hierarchical after all. He's spent his entire life fighting against 'Anarchy' (watchword), and he'll be damned if he'll let it exist once he's discovered a 'nest' of it.
He's off in his own little world, fighting a war against tilting windmills...
Correction: *Risen* into anarchy ...
Despite the horror I feel at the suggestion of requiring me to "get a license" to exercise 1st amendment rights, (what is the status of free speech in england?) I think the police are in a unique position to suggest laws for consideration by legislative branch. I mean the police might get 450 request per day, "please shut down this law-breaking website". I've also heard police Seattle police chief call for marijuana legalization, and it looks like he was heard, which I think probably means Seattle police can now be used more effectively.
What would the impact of requiring a license for 1st amendment activities be? In most cities, you already need a permit to hold a demonstration, and if you held a large showing of a copyrighted film without permission, that's not 1st amendment activity. To be fair to the police there is a lot of criminal activity on the Internet. Would central control of the internet through an authority like DNS make it easier to control?
While I am in favor of having a government with laws, regulations and police, I fear that trying to let governments control the Internet would threaten online creativity and deprive us of new developments with very little effect on Internet crime (as criminals already use compromised accounts and systems to do their dirty work) I am hopeful for a more decentralized Internet in the future.
"In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'"
- Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love"
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The city of London is not subject to the same laws as the rest of England. It has at least three special rights granted to the City of London by parliment.
1) In no other jurisdiction in the UK ( England is a part of the UK ) do corporation have the right to vote in municipal elections. The City of London allows corporations to vote in municipal elections.
2) In no jurisdiction in the UK does a person have more than one vote as based on their family size. The City of London allows that the number of votes a corporation has is based upon the employee count of the corporation.
3) In no jurisdiction in the UK can a human have only a post office box inside the voting boundries and be considered a valid voter. The City of London has the right to allow corporations with no presence in the municipal boundries other than a post office box to vote in municipal elections.
4) The City of London has a special officer in parliment whom is not considered a lobbiest even though the activities of the special officer are sometimes presented a "reminding the members of parliment of the rights granted to the City of London and it's voting members" oh and those rights were granted centuries ago.
5) It is not a tax haven by definition ... because it has greater input and in some degree a bit of control of the corporate (specifically finacial industry ) tax rates in the UK than any other municipal jurisdiction.
I'm glad I'm not the only who noticed this bastard child of Andy and Barney. But, back to the original topic...
"In the end, that might mean that the Internet becomes completely ungovernable..."
That's how these idiots see the internet - as something to be governed. So far, it's been reasonably ungovernable, but as it's gained popularity, we've seen more and more "regulators" try to step in and control what happens on the internet. These nanny types have been very successful in other areas of public life, and they never seem to go away, so I'm very concerned. After all, we've already seen what dictators can do, so a clamped-down internet is technically feasible. I'd hate to see a situation where, in order to maintain freedom of information, we have to resort to a darknet model, and we lose useful things like search engines because those sites can no longer be indexed. But maybe that would be for the best? Either way, I'm not very optimistic.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Forgive me because I'm American, but no. It's not the job of the executive branch - police for example - to propose or write law. Not in America and I'm sure not in England either. It's their job to enforce it.
So no, they aren't "free to do so". They are free as citizens, in their personal off-work time, to propose laws and/or generally engage in politics, but certainly not as officials of any capacity whatsoever.