From Wikipedia
“We will move to legislate to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file-sharing.”
So begins the proposed piece of legislation that will implement a “three strikes” rule in the UK. Simply, if you’re caught three times illegally downloading copyrighted material, your Internet connection will be severed. British ISPs will be legally required to kick you off the Net. A round of applause for Gordon Brown’s Government, everyone. Bravo.
It’ll work like this. Users “suspected” of having illegally downloaded something will get an e-mail from their ISP notifying them of their anti-social behavior. A second offense will result in a temporary suspension of Internet connectivity and a third will see the contract with your ISP ripped apart.
France has similar proposals, but this feels a little closer to home, the Brits being cousins and all.
This is pretty interesting technologically. Who’s to say someone didn’t use your Wi-Fi connection to download Amy Winehouse or Cloverfield? (Although I have a feeling courts would say the onus is on you to properly manage and secure your Wi-Fi connection.) What if I’m at a café and spoof someone’s MAC address and use their paid-for hot spot connection to connect to the Internet and download away? Who’s at fault there? Or, what if I never get that initial “warning” e-mail? What if I’ve configured my spam filters in such a way that the message is deemed junk and automatically deleted?
The proposal is only part of a larger Green Paper right now, so it’d have some way to go before being adopted as law.
On a scale of 1-10, how annoyed are you after reading that? I’m pretty high up there, mainly because I view these type of cases (the old one-to-many entertainment industries crying about their lost revenue) as being a waste of society’s time. I’m truly sorry LatestPopTrash didn’t sell as well as you’d like.
Users face Net ban in crackdown on pirates [The Times]
Hoping this doesn’t come in, it would just cause huge problems. There are a great many ISP’s. So if your banned from one doesn’t it mean you could goto another one.
Plus, it will be hard to get ISP’s to agree to basically removing their customers and losing them money.
Will be voting based on who opposes this at the next elections. I know I shouldn’t vote only on a matter like this, but frankly I wish we had elections like the USA where you guys get to at least choose the president. We just get stuck with a bunch of toffs or old guys who know nothing about the internet. There “being modern” is to employ someone to make them a myspace or facebook account.
I wonder how many people will have to be banned to clean the net. to make it a better place where no one does anything afraid of being banned.
soon they’ll start to ban critcs of the goverment and stuff
this is not something unexpected. in uk you have to pay a ‘tv lisence’, right?
The license fee is a different beast: it funds the BBC directly but does so in exchange for advertising-free broadcasting in the UK. BBC America and its ilk are different, but you’ll never see advertising on any BBC website or any UK BBC broadcast, or product placement in any BBC series. You’re also not “taxed” by the license fee: it links directly to TVs, so most people find themselves paying it, and it’s a flat rate per household with >=1 TVs.
The BBC is independent of government: the license fee is a throwback to the days when radio was “public service” broadcasting in the widest sense, and the BBC was the only wireless operator in the UK: the license fee kept it afloat and meant that it didn’t tax unfairly those who didn’t own a (radio, at the time). The BBC has grown increasingly critical of the government, especially over the Iraq War and all of that: Alastair Campbell despised the BBC for its’ impartiality.
(IAA Student Of Politics)
This will fail spectaculary. Most likely because they will (probably) make the same mistakes as the Dutch government when they made their anti-spam law.
The bigges mistake was the following: I
t’s only possible for the legal subscriber to complain about spam. This made it IMPOSSIBLE for someone who lived in the house and used a second e-mail adres on the same subcribtion, because he wasn’t a legal person according to the law.
Of course this will happen with this law as well, the only people who will face the wrath of the ban are the dads paying for the kids. Firstly because they will have to pay for the price hike and secondly because the ISP isn’t able to check who is behind the pc downloading (or what they are downloading) and has no other option than shutting down all acces.
This will really be a big help combating piracy. You might as well ban internet, less hassle and a bigger result.
I can see this being implemented by ISPs in a partial discriminatory fashion, as a way to ditch the non profitable high volume bad boy downloaders. Even if you’re on a VPN tunnel, if the ISP only need to ’suspect’ illegal activity, then anyone shifiing over a few gb a day will be in the frame, regardless of packet content.
Why is the british governments answer to everthing they cant get revenue from to BAN it Do they intend to BAN breathing next or only when you reach retirement age so they dont have to pay you a pension. Its like the smoking BAN if people dont want to breath the smoke let them stand outside where there is plenty of fresh air by the way Im a non smoker. What is everyone going to do when there is nothing more to BAN. I think they should spend the time on more pressing matters and in the UK we have a few