Digital Economy Bill Passed

[PimpinPenguin]

It's happen, the controversial bill was passed today. Now for those who may not know what this bill is, it's a bill supposedly to stop piracy by forcing ISP's to hand over user information who are suspected of pirating, and using a 3 strike system to permanently ban pirates from the internet. But most worrying is this clause here which

The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the granting by a court of a blocking injunction in respect of a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright.

This clause essentially allows the government to block websites which they believe infringes on copyright so websites like Youtube or even Wikileaks can be blocked. Now personally i'm furious at this. First this all started because that unelected Mandelson had a very nice holiday with Dreamworks co-founders then a few days later came up with this bill then got it bulldozed before parliament is dissolved claiming it's to important to wait, yeah right.
I wasn't sure on voting in this election and this has made me decide not to bother this country is far to corrupt to bother. Good ole UK democracy never fails to make me sick.

http://torrentfreak.com/digital-economy-bill-passes-file-sharing-end-soon-100608/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8608478.stm

 

[FrostedxB]

Is this just on websites or are they tracking like Limewire type programs as well?

 

[Laivasse]

I've been fuming over this the last couple of days as well. It's an utter, utter disgrace and signposts - if you needed a signpost - the death of democracy in Britain. What you have is a bill conceived by the most corrupt, disliked and conversely probably the most powerful politician in Britain (Mandelson), backed with full force (ie. huge wads of cash and bungs) by a powerful business lobby, and opposed by... no one on any side of the House, essentially, because they're all either in the BPI's pocket or too self-interested to vote against the party whip. Even the Lib Dems only showed token opposition, and a huge chunk of MPs didn't even bother to turn up to vote.

The amount of discussion this bill got in Parliament was trifling, because the election is just about to occur so it's been crowbarred in before this pathetic government is forced out on its arse.

The reason, for me, that the MP expenses saga was so disgusting was because it was a symptom of having politicians who consider this sham of democracy to be acceptable. Mercenary, greedy, cowardly, out of touch scum. Even the best of them might have some nebulous sense of wanting to work for the public interest but their wallets and careers always take priority in the short term. If I hear any of them ever again wondering about why there's so much voter cynicism, I'm going to puke right into Stephen Timms' mouth. They're lucky that they're ruining the democracy of a country where the electorate are too spiritless to jam the barrel of a gun in their eye for abusing their power.

Is this just on websites or are they tracking like Limewire type programs as well?

Limewire, etc. is going to be monitored by rights holders in the same way they have for the past few years, although I believe the onus is now more on ISPs to keep better track of what their users are downloading. I'm not sure how that's going to happen, but then neither are the politicians or industry shills, so we're all even. What's different now is that repeat offenders - or rather, repeat unproven suspects AND the people who share an IP with repeat unproven suspects - can have their connections severed. As such, there are great fears that many businesses will withdraw their public wi-fi for fear of falling foul. There is an appeals process, but get this: it has deliberately been made expensive in order to 'deter mischievous appeals'. Can you believe the gall of these ****ers.

The site-blocking thing is a different provision. It allows for any site that 'has been, is being or is likely to be' infringing copyright to be blocked entirely, as Penguin quoted. So yeah, probably the majority of sites on the net.

What makes the bill even more disgusting is that in its original form it rode roughshod over the rights of photographers in regard to so-called 'orphaned works'. Essentially the big media industries wanted to be able to ignore the copyright claims of photographers, so they could more easily scavenge material from all over the net to use in their marketing. Alas, such greed and hypocrisy is characteristic of those who blow the most hot air over 'morality'.

 

[No Limit]

Sucks to be you guys. But look on the bright side, only a matter of time before someone comes up with a new sharing scheme that will get around this. I wonder how effective a form of bitorrent would be using encryption. They could still monitor who is seeding and leeching but your ISP wouldn't be able to know when you are downloading illegal content unless they were monitoring a perticular bit torrent tracker (not really their responsibility under this law). If it was combined with a private tracker that took good measures in not allowing copyright holders in it could also be effective at stopping monitoring of who is seeding and leeching.

 

[Evo]

I vented here - http://thereticule.com/2010/04/on-the-digital-economy-bill/ and the comments thread on RPS is really good - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/08/democracy-inaction-uks-deb-passes/

Penguin, I totally disagree with your way of thinking on not voting, that just means the same old people will get in again, Labour and Conservatives. I know the Lib Dems weren't the best with this Bill, but they are the most likely force for change at the moment. Not voting does nothing, go vote for someone, anyone really otherwise nothing will ever change.

 

[Evo]

Just got this email via http://www.38degrees.org.uk/

We fought a hard fight, but the Digital Economy Bill has now been forced through its crucial third reading in the House of Commons. 189 MPs voted in favour and 47 against. It will now almost certainly be law within days. [1]

Our adverts, and our people-powered avalanche of emails and phone calls caused a stir in Parliament. But the government was determined to ignore public opinion to force the Digital Economy Bill through.

Why did this happen? Music industry lobbyists have their fingerprints all over this law. The government's position can be traced back to a shadowy meeting between Peter Mandelson and Music Industry figures on a yacht in Corfu last summer. [2] And music industry lobbyists appear to have played a key role writing sections of the law. [3]

Right now, it's perfectly legal for corporate interests to lobby the government in secret. We can only guess how much the music industry spent to get this law passed. 38 Degrees members are campaigning for new rules to ban secret lobbying. If the public had a right to know who was lobbying whom, and what about, corporate lobbyists would find it a lot harder to pull strings behind the scenes. That would help stop stitch-ups like this happening again.

There's a general election in 4 weeks. Our next set of MPs will have to further debate small parts of the Digital Economy Bill. It's more important than ever that secret meetings with lobbyists are banned.

Will you write to your election candidates now and ask them to pledge to support new rules to ban secret lobbying?

Click here to take 90 seconds to email your local election candidates:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/ban-secret-lobbying

We may not have won, but we showed that by working together we are powerful. Politicians now know that they can't just force through draconian internet laws without anyone noticing. Our people powered uprising scared the music industry so much they rushed out their own adverts to fight ours. We forced the bill up the political and media agenda, and created a real controversy.

38 Degrees is a people powered movement that brings you together with other people to take action on issues you care about. Over the next few weeks we'll be working with our partners on this campaign, Open Rights Group, to work out if there is more we can do together. We'll stand ready to get involved again if there's another chance to challenge this law, or if new draconian internet proposals rear their head. Our partners on this campaign, the Open Rights Group, will stay more focused on just this issue, so for more regular and detailed updates please join their action list here:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/get-action-updates


Thanks for being involved,

38 Degrees Team



NOTES

[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/08/digital-economy-bill-passes-third-reading

[2]http://www.politics.co.uk/news/culture-media-and-sport/mandelson-s-filesharing-corfu-link-denied-$1321086.htm

[3]http://boingboing.net/2010/03/12/leaked-uk-record-ind.html

 

[Tagaziel]

I wasn't sure on voting in this election and this has made me decide not to bother this country is far to corrupt to bother. Good ole UK democracy

It's voter inaction that had these people elected in the first place.

 

[Eejit]

It's voter inaction that had these people elected in the first place.

Nah, I blame the electoral system for only giving most people a choice between two parties which are equally morally bankrupt, the third (and others) which is somewhat better will always be massively disadvantaged without electoral reform. Even the coming election for most people is a choice between two evils.

 

[No Limit]

The problem for 3rd party candidates is that an election is always a choice between the lesser of two evils. So by voting for the 3rd candidate a lot of times you are voting the guy that is more evil.

We have a ****ed up system. I used to think it was just here in the US, I guess that's not the case.

 

[Eejit]

No, but a lot of other European countries have better systems than first past the post.

 

[Tagaziel]

What's stopping you from a career as a statexman?

 

[Acepilotf14]

I was about to get mad but then >UK.

Well, it's certainly bad. I really hope we don't follow suit.

 

[lord_raken]

I'm sorry man. I hope you can get the damn thing repealed. Remember, the government works for you... remind them of that important fact.

Can the Government block sites without a judicial ruling? This sounds like a proto-censorship act. The good news is that if they try to move onto outright censorship a whole lot more people will get ticked off and I don't think any government wan't to commit suicide. But be careful they always go for the finges first http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=167978 .

Just remember the 5th of november and if the Government get too uppity just put on a Guy Fawkes mask and get to work.

haha! Anyway. Do what you can to get it repealed or at least revised. If enough people speak out they WILL about-face.

 

[Vigilante]

Oh thank god, I thought this was passed in the US for the first few seconds. Sorry for you guys =/. I'm sure there'll be work-arounds, though.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Penguin, I totally disagree with your way of thinking on not voting, that just means the same old people will get in again, Labour and Conservatives. I know the Lib Dems weren't the best with this Bill, but they are the most likely force for change at the moment. Not voting does nothing, go vote for someone, anyone really otherwise nothing will ever change.

I know what you are saying but unfortunately we are stuck with the 2 party system Labour or the Tories will get in i'm sure of that. There are far to many people with party loyalties who are blind to there mistake. I know a guy who despite hating everything Labour does will still vote for them because they are a Labour household. End of the day there is no democracy i feel, the MP you vote for don't care about there constituencies and only do what the party whips tell them to do if they can even be arsed turning up. At one point there was only 15 MP's debating this bill which i find pathetic. The only good thing is that the UK government is so incompetent they are bound to **** this up somehow.

 

[V-Man339]

Man, and I thought our voting system was shitty...

 

[unozero]

I was about to get mad but then >UK.

Well, it's certainly bad. I really hope we don't follow suit.

aclu would go crazy,rightly so...for once.

 

[Solaris]

So when does thepiratebay et al get blocked then.