Digital economy bill rushed through Parliament

Of course it will only be used against bad guys, right?

So what's the problem? Govt wants to be able to shut illegal sites down, or deny criminals the means to commit a crime. Shocker – not.

molgrips – Member
So what's the problem? Govt wants to be able to shut illegal sites down, or deny criminals the means to commit a crime. Shocker – not.

Or

Government has given itself the right to shut down any site which it thinks might think about using copyrighted material without the copyright owner's consent.

Will there be no legal process for this? No channels for appeal? No scope for legal comeback in the event of an incorrect decision?

Where does it say they can arbitrarily shut you down on a hunch, without evidence?

They can block "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" eh? Pretty wide net there, sounds fairly serious to me.
I've never used the word draconian before but wondering if this might warrant it.

>Where does it say they can arbitrarily shut you down on a hunch, without evidence?

It's all part of a slippery slope though isn't it.

Anti-terrorism law for example:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4291388.stm

"Walter Wolfgang, from London, was ejected from the hall after shouting "nonsense" as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended Iraq policy.

Police later used powers under the Terrorism Act to prevent Mr Wolfgang's re-entry, but he was not arrested. "

Remember that ?

Ah there'll be a way round it. Geeks will always find some crafty solution.

I do wish the Government were honest though, and just said 'look, we'll decide what you can and can't look at, ok?' and have done with it.

It's the War on Terry.

Lots of pictures are posted on this forum without the express permission of the copyright holders.

However, my hunch is that this is targeted at music and film piracy.

remember not just labour, the few conservatives who voted also voted for this

and an alternative interpretation, google publishes copyright material. The government has the power to ban google.

Murdoch must be loving this, no competition, a total block on off-message newsagencies.

Talkemada, did you get The Sun's photographers permission to post that? You'll get STW shutdown.

Given that this bill must have had cross party consent, whoever gets in is unlikely to do much about it

What's "Digital Economy" supposed to mean then? Just call it what it is, Censorship.

How exactly are they gonna do it?

Don't Like That, shut it down Smithers. err.. it's popped back up somewhere else Sir. I said Shut It Down!, err…

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

The key word you are missing here is 'court'.

So it's not arbitrary any more than being tried for a crime is arbitrary.

I don't entirely agree molgrips. A law that says that you can be imprisoned indefinitely if a court is satisfied that have, do or are likely to sympathise with persons harbouring evil designs against the security of the nation (say) is still arbitrary.

The problem is not whetther there is a judicial process involved, it is that the definition of the offence is so wide that the main thing that decides whether you fall foul of it is the discretion of the person prosecuting.

I am not particularly in favour of the terror laws although I appreciate that it's a very difficult situation and the police need to be able to do their job.

I think that if they came around your house and said that they thought you were likely to be downloading illegal material, the onus would be on them to prove it via evidence. Why would this not be the case?

Basically it seems like a lot of IT Geeks getting upset because they think the Internet should determine the Law, not the other way round.

It's another pile of poorly drafted, ill-conceived bollocks from a govenment that's both vastly increased the thickness of the statute books whilst simultaneously thinning the number of competent civil servants who draft the stuff. Regardless of the motives for whole thing being highly suspect it should have simply been thown out on the grounds of being a large steaming heap of legislative unpolishable turd.

Nice succinct, clear even-handed apolitical assessment of the situation there Eccles 🙄

He's right though 😉

It's just too easy to rant and rave. I've quite frankly heard too much groundless frothing.. dunno why people bother typing it.

The problem with this, as with RIPA, is that it gives a load of power that the bill basically just assumes won't be misused. Controls are weak and oversight is equally weak and I've no reason to believe that the punishments in the DEB won't be used as a bludgeon rather than a targeted last resort.

Protecting copyright holders is all well and good, but when the balance is so heavily shifted in their favour over the rights of the individual it's too far.

I only read the Guardian bit – just didn't read like you are suggesting atlaz. But I'm no lawyer.

Some of the parts are reasonable, but there's a lot of worrying stuff about copyright holders being able to ask ISPs for people who have had complaints against them for infringement so they can start proceedings. Basically given the track record, what this will lead to is loads of people getting served with court summons or being cut off from the internet by overzealous legal teams at the big media companies.

It COULD work out to be really fair, but I just have doubts it will come off that way.

If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.

How are they going to detect me downloading 'possible' copyright stuff from a filehosting site e.g Megaupload based in Hong Kong? (not that I would dream of such a heinous act)

molgrips – I refer to the house as a whole as much as the cabinet. Both sides appear to favour quantity of legislation over quality and the reduced civil service means that it's harder to get it sir humphrey'd out.

Right well your second post on the subject was a lot more reasonable and enjoyable to read 🙂

I agree – the system is badly flawed on all sorts of levels. It needs more reform than could ever be passed though, unfortunately.

The most worrying thing about this bill is the way it was passed. 40 MPs turned up to try and debate the entire thing in just 2 hours, raising many concerns and requests for clarification. Then 200 or so others turned up at the end and voted in favour of it regardless.

***DEMOCRACY***

Democracy is utterly crap, but it's all we have.

Really annoyed with my MP over this – despite assuring me personally that the Liberal Democrats would ensure a thorough debate on the issue, barely 20 MPs were in the chamber and he didn't bother to vote at all despite being the Shadow "Media, Culture, and Sport" minister.

Will probably still end up voting for him though, simply because 99% of the time he tends to do the right thing in Parliament.

We are in dire need of the biggest reform since the Civil War, imo.

We are in dire need of the biggest reform since the Civil War, imo.

we're in dire need of a revolution!

Revolution implies violence tho.. I'd like to think I could do it without bloodshed.

The only stuff I have read on it (admittedly net based so some bias there) has nothing but bad things to say about it. Can any of those who think this is all IT bods getting overly huffy provide us some links to positive arguments for the bill? (apart from "piracy is bad mmmkay?")

As deft said this was an appalling example of "democracy"

Well you will say goodbye to access to youtube for a start
http://www.macvideo.tv/encoding/news/index.cfm?newsId=3217192&pagType=samechandate
FFS the UK is turning into China!!!
Is that the sound of private vpns cashing in on this?? There is always someone 10 steps ahead of these idiots in power. The American government have even funded software to stop censorship in China (freegate) It just makes me laugh that we are living in this so called free world. Aren't umpteen thousand troops fighting off in a dusty hell hole to fight oppression?
Also it puts vulnerable web users (see your average none web savvy user) at risk from folk hacking their wi-fi and using that to file share!

I was hoping the House Of Lords would stop it going through. 🙁

They can block "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" eh? Pretty wide net there, sounds fairly serious to me.

Yes, this could mean anything at all – from projects such as Handbrake and get_iplayer to sites like Wikileaks. Worrying.

All it will do is line the pockets of private vpn companies. It makes me laugh tbh as it was proven that those who do file share spend more money on music, dvds etc than those who don't.