Digital Economy Bill
Is this new law that was passed last night something to be worried about?
Quote from the Guardian:
Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats' spokesman for culture, media and sport, protested that the clause was too wide-ranging: "it could apply to Google," he complained, adding that its inclusion of the phrase about "likely to be used" meant that a site could be blocked on its assumed intentions rather than its actions.
also..
The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming protested that this could mean the blocking of the whistleblower site Wikileaks, which carries only copyrighted work
And we're complaining about China censoring the internet....
Quote from the Guardian:
Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats' spokesman for culture, media and sport, protested that the clause was too wide-ranging: "it could apply to Google," he complained, adding that its inclusion of the phrase about "likely to be used" meant that a site could be blocked on its assumed intentions rather than its actions.
also..
The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming protested that this could mean the blocking of the whistleblower site Wikileaks, which carries only copyrighted work
And we're complaining about China censoring the internet....
Post edited by chaosmongers on
Comments
and massively hypocritical too, with one hand they protect the rights of copyright owners, and then wipe them away with the other. It's disgraceful.
i presume it a money thing rather than a moral thing
That's the trouble with legal systems in general - they pay far more attention to financial that moral considerations. The words "legal" and "moral" should be synonymous, but all too often are instead poles apart.
My friend has cut down downloading stuff but when they used to take the mick (Eg it was 99p for a song to download, 69p in France etc) then he'll download illegally.
He's cut down a ton, but when Sky take the mick with the pacific and clone wars for example, these shows should be on sky 1, not sky movies (as theyre not movies, sky just want more people to have to pay for these channels) then he doesnt feel guilty.
He pays out a lot for sky and sky sports, but theyre taking the mick big time with these shows on subscription 'movie' channels.
"TalkTalk, with more than 4 million UK internet users, said that "many draconian proposals remain" in the bill, including some that would allow content companies to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block the connections of customers suspected of online copyright infringement."
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/08/internet-piracy-bill
now then, does WOS, with thousands of files we don't have proper permission to host, engage in 'copyright infringement'? It is agreed that this site is a grey area, but I doubt the government cares about our attempts to contact and resolve possible issues with authors etc, but would it amount to closing the site or closing user access to it if things got out of hand because of this bill? I suppose being in Holland might help the site itself, but still...
Martijn..?
WOS itself will doubtless be safe and I very much doubt anyone downloading from the site will be in any trouble. The Guardian had a very level headed and straight article about what the new law entails and, essentially, it's designed to cut-off users who download a lot of copyrighted work without permission. There's a problem in the vagueness - "copyrighted material" can mean an album or a film that's commercially available (which is the copyright just about everyone but the pirates agrees ought to be protected) but it can also mean an abandoned 8-bit game, MP3s of a long-deleted vinyl album, a text file containing chunks for text from a book still in copyright or a freeware videogame that uses an unlicensed music sample.
Now, using slippery-slope logic it can be argued that, therefore, if someone downloads the Spectrum version of "Bubble Bobble"from WOS then they can have their internet cut-off. However, remember that the bill is sponsored (unofficially, of course) by the entertainment industry, that the stated purpose of the bill is to protect the artistic industry and that the state's resources are limited and it's likely that those prosecuted will be persistent downloaders of commercially-available product - albums, films, recent games; that kind of thing.
However, there's another problem with the Bill - it almost-certainly won't work. As soon as it was announced it had gone through, the pirate sites immediately started telling their hordes of warez kidz how they should now go about getting things for free to circumvent the new laws. Since persistent pirates will, probably, manage to stay one step ahead of the law the state might well go looking for easier targets to "prove" to the industry that its new law works. That might mean the situation of kids getting their parents cut-off for downloading an attachment with a couple of mp3s attached from gmail might become a possibility.
As ever, though, we'll have to see. I doubt very very much we'll see anything like what the negative hysteria that was unleashed yesterday says is the future of the internet in the UK. However, I do expect the bill to both not work and to end up tokenistically cutting-off minor pirates. We shall see.
Incidentally, amidst all the fury few noticed that there was actually an excellent and long-overdue clause in the bill which the government removed. It was called something like the "orphan clause" and would have meant that any work whose copyright holder cannot be found would, essentially, have had its copyright expire regardless. This would have been a terrific boost for those of us trying to turn "abandonware" from a moral to a legal situation. When I found that out it made me more annoyed than the rest of the bill did.
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-digital-economy-bill-quick-guide-to-all-45-measures/
#4: After apparent copyright abuse, copyright holders can send a ?copyright infringement report? to ISPs with evidence of the downloading, within one month of the alleged incident. The ISP must notify its subscriber within a month, providing education about legal alternatives, evidence and information about appeals and legal advice.
#5: ISPs, if requested, must provide copyright holders with a ?copyright infringement list?, listing each infringement by an individual, anonymised user.
That's interesting and pertinent to sites like WOS. It says that copyright holders have to take action, the state won't on their behalf. That means that the chances of action being taken against anyone downloading from WOS is vanishingly small since the policy of this site is to remove games that the copyright holders are actively protecting.
Putting on my "worst case scenario" hat (it's bright green and has bells all round the rim) for a moment, it's possible that a particularly nasty law department of a company which owns copyright on games here might stumble across the site, do enough research to realise their company owns some games here (because most of them are unaware of exactly what IP they own beyond what's currently making them money), not bother to contact Martijn first for some reason, spend company time and money finding out who is downloading them and then demand the government take action. That's not impossible but so unlikely that we'd all be better worrying about being hit by a bus. Driven by Justin Lee-Collins.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8608478.stm
"Mr Watson had expressed concern this could lead to innocent internet users being caught simply since they lived in the same building as infringers."
Yeah, that's been the sticking-point for a lot of people. A lot of internet users share computers and a lot of them share wi-fi. Of course, the whole thing might well be a good argument for a) knowing who's using your connection and b) making sure wi-fi is secure.
Another thing that's got a lot of people grumbling is that there were hardly any MPs debating or scrutinising the damn thing. This is important because MPs are largely middle-aged and tend to be, to be diplomatic, not all that sussed when it comes to how the internet actually works. Most of them will have been unaware of the potential loopholes and problems they were creating, as well as the fact that pirates can and will find ways of circumventing the law.
Tsk, the sooner IPv6 is adopted the better :p
Then you won't be sharing an IP address any more :)
The internet is just a series of tubes
Internet use is seen by many as a right and for some a livelihood. This law comes right up against the EU internet freedom provision that citizens are entitled to a "fair and impartial procedure" before any measures can be taken to limit their net access http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8548190.stm I'd say asking for the copyright holder to prove it was you on an open wireless connection would be worth it's day in court, as the media conglomerates should fold quite quickly after negative publicity of innocent until proven guilty.
Oh and we have muppets in power http://i.imgur.com/1pXlO.jpg making these laws. Makes you realise MPs backing the Kraft takeover promise of keeping a factory open, or the decision that a country had WMDs was just showing their naivety and stupidity, but clearly lies for those of us with common sense enough to see the money trails.
The greatest risk to our world is lack of education and stupidity (we don't have a lack of stupidity).