Digital Economy Bill
Apr 8th, 2010 by wizzardsblog
I’ve heard about this bill, not really looked into it that much. But now starting to pay a little more attention to it.
We have all illegally downloaded stuff at some point in our lives, come on admit it. I’ve done it in the past with music, however the difference is, I’ve actually gone out and bought the tracks because I like them so much.
The problem with this evidence gathering where copyright holders can slap ISPs with a “copyright infringement report”. If they do it based on IP address which from my point of view is the only way they can gather evidence.
Does the government realise that people share IP addresses, especially if they access the internet via a router or their ISP uses proxy servers, what about internet cafes? Worse still someone can drive by your house and if your wi-fi network is insecure they can download Lady GaGa’s latest tracks illegally then drive away and your IP address will be flagged.
There are many people out there who just browse the internet and to be slapped with a warning from their ISP because they are being forced to (because of the £250k fine) would send some people into a blind panic and worry them un-necessarily.
We are in the 21st century not the 19th century, the world has evolved so should the copyright laws.
I’m sure this bill was passed by technophobic MPs.
This bill also gives the right for someone in government to snoop on what I am Downloading wether it is a legal or illegale download. It also gives the government the right to censor the net by blocking access to any site that may infringe copyright law. This could, as an extreme example, see Google being placed on a black list.
So much for free speech and a free internet, today you see both die by the hand of “copyright” owners (or the BPI as I like to call them)
Did you see the re-tweet from @citizensheep? A scanned in letter from Stephen Timms MP the Minister for Digital Britain. If he cannot get basic internet terminology correct what hope have we got? I think the last sentence in my post says it all. I should have been a little stronger in my language and replaced it with “luddites”.