News - Digital Economy Bill pushed through with ISP blocking injunction intact

[oolon]

so im guessing, bye bye google?

It would be interesting if see them bar the whole google site, google will base servers outside the UK, so the other option would to get ISPs to filter it, which they do not want to pay for. Which to be frank the problem, the government wants ISPs to be their unpaid police, and ISPs do not wish to do it. In china the government provides the filtering so its quite affective particularly as bypassing it, has some pretty tuff penalises.

[Saracen]

I just don't think it can be minimised, not without some very draconian systems. Such as installation on all machines of the government monitoring program. Or infact making some software illegal perhaps by proving a list of approved protocols? That would be a problem for many custom apps, would VPN be allowed etc?

If DNS is broken people will use a different lookup system, if http is broken people will make a new transport that isn't people will make the next versions alot harder to interfere with. Torrent does not have to work on the standard port, HTML does not have to be transmitted over HTTP.

This is infact the problem with file sharing, you only need one person who knows how to rip it and put it online for everyone less clueful to get, likewise you only need one person to write a program. I challege people to suggest any method that cannot be bypassed save the two routes i suggest.

Don't get me wrong I am currently working at an independent record distributor, I do want people to pay for music (they pay my salary indirectly). I don't think trying to blocking the internet is the way to do it, its the way to make the ISPs spend alot or time and money chasing shadows.

I think the requirement to produce who computer was on a specific IP after the production of a court order is right. Proper legal course should and could then occur, perhaps a court order to seize and examine equipement? People committing a crime should then go to court. Blocking peoples broadband is like adding a new class of punishment, with a lower burden of proof on it. Ok perhaps we could have a system as with speeding tickets, where people could take a different punishment, however at the end of the day they should have to be proved guilty in court if they do not wish to admit to the offense.

Edit:
yes I know people might say but Blah monitor program does not work on say openbsd, the answer would be it would be illegal to hook that up to the network as it was not "approved" software... this is starting to sound like a story on the gnu site.

Erm ... the "blocking" was talking about the ability of the secretary of State to block sites. If you're now referring to disconnecting individuals, then we're looking at a different set of provisions and a different approach.

The initial stages of the approach to individuals is merely letters. It is expected to reduce (but not eliminate) the problem because, in one situation, the account holder may not be aware that the account is being used for illegal purposes. For instance, if I were to receive such a letter and I know that I haven't been downloading illegally, the direct inference is that someone else has, on my account. So step one .... check my router security, in case it's an unauthorised external user. Step 2 - check legit users. If, for instance, it turns out that my kids are illegally downloading, they will stop. I use my internet account for business and without it, would be close to out of business. So I read them the riot act. Problem solved, and I get no more reports. Piracy goes down.

However, if I get another letter and it turns out the kids didn't take any notice of the Riot Act, I then disconnect them from the internet altogether, and they can do their web browsing and other net activities, on my machine, at my convenience, with me sitting there watching what they do. As account holder, anyone else getting access legitimately does so at my pleasure, and if they're putting my net access at risk by illegal activity, then they're in trouble with me.

And I'd bet a lot of parents will see it similarly, when they start getting letters, and especially when they start getting letters threatening net removal or court action.

As was pointed out in Parliament, anyone that actually gets their access removed will have been a serious and persistent offender that has ignored repeated warnings, and done so over a period of a year or more. Bearing in mind that this implies repeated and persistent illegal activity, that ought to have some unpleasant consequences. It's no worse, and for most people, not nearly as bad as the points system on your driving licence. The system is designed to give a fair bit of warning, but for people that persist in illegal activity, sooner or later the privilege of a driving licence will be taken away .... for a period.

This, from what I can make of several hours of watching the parliamentary discussion, is where most MPs are coming from. Many, many of them had problems with specific bits of it, some of which have been removed, and MP after MP objected to the rushed process, and many more were not convinced that the measures would be effective, or were thought through, or feared that they'd have unintended consequences, but virtually all approved of the principles the Bill espouses, which includes to protect the rights of the content creators to profit from their endeavours, and to protect from those that would "steal" them.

[vinnyT]

I'm moving to China.

[Fraz]

I'm moving to China.

I hear they're more liberal over there. I'm tempted myself.

More seriously, I do agree with the spirit of the bill, but as Saracen says, I hope there aren't any unintended consequences due to it being rushed though in such a sloppy manner.