Hi Guys

Some of you UK folks may remember the Digital Economy Bill which passed into law (thus becoming an Act) in April this year.

You might also be aware that I have been a campaigner against the parts of this act which are against the British constitution (innocent until proven guilty) and those aspects which threaten legitimate industries to give free reign to the British Phonographic Industry and their laughable claims of lost profits that exceed the GDP of planet Earth (when you do the maths against their numbers).

The new coalition government wants to review the act and has put together the "All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Digital Economy" to assess the act and figure out what needs to change.

Whilst the fight for civil liberties has already been lost I am still hopefull that some good might come of this new initiative and that we can undo some of the damage done, so...

I am going to the House of Commons at the end of July to speak to this working group as the first step toward rectifying the outrageous circumstances which allowed the last government to sneak this legislation in without Commons debate.

Before I go I intend to fully research everything I possibly can so that I am prepared for every eventuality and so that I can deliver clear, accurate, and well informed points to support consumer rights and reverse the damage that this legislation will do.

So i'm posting here, as this effects many of the members of this community, if there's anything you think I should read up on or any opinions you would like to express on this topic either here or at the meeting, then let me know.

If you wish to attend the working group yourself let me know and i'll PM you details of who to contact etc.

Slightly off topic, but I am yet to receive a letter giving me hell.

Anyways, good luck Becky.

Quote from DevilDare :

Slightly off topic, but I am yet to receive a letter giving me hell.

Anyways, good luck Becky.

You wont have done yet the automatic systems havn't been developed, there's a whole timeline to it which starts kicking in next year, and will lead to the first disconnections toward the end of 2011. Also they don't send a letter, they send you an email to the registered email account of the broadband account (does anyone even check those addresses?).

I think you ought to take a solicitor along and argue WHY it's illegal

Thought. What if you're at the end of a contract (say 3 days left) and you pirate a lot of stuff, they wouldn't be able to disconnect you as you'd be out of contract anyhow

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

I think you ought to take a solicitor along and argue WHY it's illegal

I could do without the cost, and the law is irrellevent when making new laws and/or dealing with politicians. I do have a secret weapon though, i'll be going armed with common sense.

Quote :

Thought. What if you're at the end of a contract (say 3 days left) and you pirate a lot of stuff, they wouldn't be able to disconnect you as you'd be out of contract anyhow

There are lots of ways the act can be circumnavigated, there are more holes in it than an edam... One is to simply change the wording of the contract between customer and broadband provider to make the customer a "service provider". Another is to close and recreate the account every time they are detected as downloading something - which one ISP is considering doing automatically as part of their monthly billing, and the list goes on.

Whether your ISP is against the bill or for it will decide whether or not they elect to dodge the DEA or not, so anyone interested in downloading will simply select an ISP who is as subversive toward the act as they are, whilst regular consumers and - from my own perspective more critically - those who cant change their accounts easily such as those operating servers, they're a bit more restricted.

I can easily leave behind the footprint of illicit downloads against any IP address I wish, I dont even need to be on their network. Detecting torrents is just as insecure as the torrent network itself, to suggest it is possible to reliably identify anyone is laughable - so savvy pirates will simply circumnavigate the act, and eCommerce and regular consumers will fall prey to it.

And of course if history teaches us anything, it's that 99.9% of pirates are savvy. eCommerce is particularly vulnerable to attack from rivals, it's given everyone in the industry the equivellent of nuclear weapons and put absolutely no detterent in place against using them.

Just pay for your music and videos?

Quote from tristancliffe :

Just pay for your music and videos?

It was rushed through parliament without proper discussion, some parts are plain ridiculous...

Quote from Thinkbroadband :

(snip)

Also included is the controversial law allowing the Secretary of State to apply to a court for an injunction to block access to a location on the Internet which is or is likely to be used for infringing copyright.

(snip)

So that would be Youtube, any forums linking streams of F1/Football/etc (including this one).

Quote from tristancliffe :

Just pay for your music and videos?

The problems with the DEA do not revolve around piracy. The problem is that the legislation designed to fight piracy makes illigal this website, google, youtube, wikileaks, wikipedia, and the list is endless. Infact, according to the letter of the law, barely any of the internet is currently legal.

Also, thanks to the provisions of how the new law is to be enforced many legitimate business enterprises are extremely vulnerable to take downs, commerce on the internet faces a potential crisis which could, very literally, destroy Britains leading place in the eCommerce landscape.

Further many things we have now will be lost, say goodbye to video calling on your iPhone 4 before you even took delivery Tristan, thanks to the loss of open wireless networks.

Additionally, it would not be illegal for me to leave behind the digital fingerprint that makes it look like you've downloaded stuff, sufficient to be detected by some of the automated measures proposed, and I could do it from here without touching your PC or your network. Thus rendering your internet connection useless, not to mention the possible devastation causable by virus' designed to exploit the badly written law.

If you where running a business with your internet connection (the law does not distinguish between private and public connections) I could destroy your business from my sofa and your only means of appeal would take months and be very expensive. Under the DEA you'll be taken down prior to any judicial proceedings.

Under one of the badly written clauses the home office can take down any web site they please, based upon an ALLEGATION of POSSIBLE FUTURE copyright infringement.

Now tell me again why this law should be left as is?

I'm not saying piracy should not be illegal, i'm saying the law that was passed without commons discussion needs a major overhaul.

Personally I believe it should be thrown out and the process restarted from the beginning, but I dont think we'll get that.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The problems with the DEA do not revolve around piracy. The problem is that the legislation designed to fight piracy makes illigal this website, google, youtube, wikileaks, wikipedia, and the list is endless. Infact, according to the letter of the law, barely any of the internet is currently legal.

Also, thanks to the provisions of how the new law is to be enforced many legitimate business enterprises are extremely vulnerable to take downs, commerce on the internet faces a potential crisis which could, very literally, destroy Britains leading place in the eCommerce landscape.

Further many things we have now will be lost, say goodbye to video calling on your iPhone 4 before you even took delivery Tristan, thanks to the loss of open wireless networks.

Additionally, it would not be illegal for me to leave behind the digital fingerprint that makes it look like you've downloaded stuff, sufficient to be detected by some of the automated measures proposed, and I could do it from here without touching your PC or your network. Thus rendering your internet connection useless, not to mention the possible devastation causable by virus' designed to exploit the badly written law.

If you where running a business with your internet connection (the law does not distinguish between private and public connections) I could destroy your business from my sofa and your only means of appeal would take months and be very expensive. Under the DEA you'll be taken down prior to any judicial proceedings.

Under one of the badly written clauses the home office can take down any web site they please, based upon an ALLEGATION of POSSIBLE FUTURE copyright infringement.

Now tell me again why this law should be left as is?

I'm not saying piracy should not be illegal, i'm saying the law that was passed without commons discussion needs a major overhaul.

Personally I believe it should be thrown out and the process restarted from the beginning, but I dont think we'll get that.

You are aware there is a typo correcter here in LFS Forum eh?

The illagle? Come on B Rose...or as I like to call you..Brose..wtf is commerce.

How the hell do you expect to get that job at the Spaghetti O's factory when you can't tell the difference between a Zero and an O .

I recall becky saying she often posts from her phone. I can excuse her the odd typo in a chunk of text that big.

Question

Would anybody have any recourse to the human rights court or not? I know i Finland the Net's been declared a legal right.

Or, example. I get cut off for downloading songs I bought via itunes, could I appeal on the grounds it infringes my human rights?

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

Question

Would anybody have any recourse to the human rights court or not? I know i Finland the Net's been declared a legal right.

Or, example. I get cut off for downloading songs I bought via itunes, could I appeal on the grounds it infringes my human rights?

I think you are confusing a Universal Service Obligation (USO) to a legal right.

We too have a USO...I think our phone lines need to be capable of 28.8 dial-up modem speeds.

Do you mean downloading *from* iTunes, or downloading from a torrent (for example) songs you already own from buying them on iTunes?

Use of Torrents is a tricky one to defend, because even if you already own the thing you're downloading, you're making it available to other people all the time you're using the torrent.

Quote from Bean0 :

I think you are confusing a Universal Service Obligation (USO) to a legal right.

We too have a USO...I think our phone lines need to be capable of 28.8 dial-up modem speeds.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ ... y-water/36460?tag=nl.e539

Well in that, Finland has a 'legal right' as they put it to broadband.

Assume for a moment Britain has one, and the DEA is law, and say, you or I get cut off. Would we be able to appeal about our rights being infringed?

Something I think I read during last discussion (if I understood it right);
The act also gives bias to the big corporations to the detriment of small independant media creators...
e.g. the BBC use a piece of music where the author is not known, so it's free of charge for them to use. It's up to the author to prove it's their work before they get any credit/reward.
This is different from before where the author will be found in advance of use.
You'd need to check this for accuracy, in case it was just scaremongering.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Use of Torrents is a tricky one to defend, because even if you already own the thing you're downloading, you're making it available to other people all the time you're using the torrent.

There are a large number of legitimate uses of torrents though - large software, Linux distros ... . It's just a technology. People could always go back to distribution of things via removable storage devices and Royal Fail if need be.

Sure but there's no need to defend use of torrents for legit (as in free and freely distributable stuff) purposes. Even if you're allowed by law to make backup copies of legitimately purchased software or make copies of music in different formats, doing this with torrents means that you are facilitating illegal file sharing because you can't know whether other peers in the swarm are legal or not.

There would be if (say) you had a torrent on a LAN which you controlled

If by control you mean that you know everyone using the network, then sure it's possible. Neither LAN nor control by themselves rule out illegit uses though. We had a huge p2p system on my uni dorms LAN, consisting 99.9999% of copyright infringing material (which I personally never distributed to anyone ).

If it's about ruling out illegal uses, surely you can't rule out illegal uses of carrier pigeons. Stick a good few albums on an SD card, tape it to the pigeon ...

Hmm. New unit of storage.....1CP. Amount of data a carrier pigeon can hold.

And thinking about it, a complete, closed LAN is impractical

Quote from duke_toaster :

carrier pigeons

Are a one-to-one transfer. The sender knows the receiver, and the message is intended only for that one recipient, though it's not a very reliable or a secure way of communicating something.

It could be used to infringe someone's copyright too, but the chances of the sender knowing this are considerably higher. Public torrents however by design send to many other recipients who may or may not be "reading your messages" without the legal permission to do so.

With the way that BitTorrent works, it must be within the wit of man to make a peer to peer-type carrier pigeon system, albeit without an automated client. OK, this is quite hypothetical