How The Digital Economy Bill Sets Up A System Like China's Censorship

from the you-get-what-you-asked-for dept

We've pointed out a few times that there are great similarities between the way China censors the internet and the provisions in the leaked drafts of ACTA. They're both based on increasing secondary liability to try to get third parties to silence a certain form of expression. Of course, the same is also true of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK (which is sort of a mini-ACTA for the UK). Kevin Marks did a brilliant job comparing and contrasting the language of Rebecca MacKinnon's Congressional testimony on the effects of internet blocking in China -- compared directly to language in the Digital Economy Bill. He also makes the tie-in with Bono's statements from a few months back, suggesting that countries implement Chinese-style censorship to stop copyright infringement -- noting that's exactly what the DEB tries to do. Basically, the DEB enables a very similar form of censorship in the UK that the Chinese government has put in place in China -- it's just that it seeks to censor potentially infringing expression, rather than political expression. And, of course, don't be at all surprised when China uses these laws as justification for its own censorship policies. And, yet, it's still stunning to see US politicians heavily involved in condemning China's online censorship while actively supporting similar forms of censorship at home.

Filed Under: censorship, china, digital economy bill, filters, uk

UK Digital Economy Bill Concession Is To Allow In A Smidgen Of Due Process, After You've Been Declared Guilty

from the guilty-until-appealed-innocent dept

As the debate continues in the UK over the Digital Economy Bill, Stephen Timms, the minister for Digital Britain, is trying to appease critics of the bill, by promising to include an appeals process for those who are accused of copyright infringement and threatened with having their internet access removed. This is mind-boggling for a few reasons. First, the admission shows that such an appeals process hadn't been in the plan already. More importantly, it shows the general thinking: this is a guilty-until-proven-innocent process. You get accused and you're guilty until you "appeal" and can prove that you were falsely accused. That doesn't seem like reasonable due process. That seems like stacking the deck in favor of copyright holders against the public.

Filed Under: appeals, copyright, digital economy bill, due process, stephen timms, uk

Would UK Politicians Support The Digital Economy Bill If It Applied To Offline Activities As Well?

from the equivalencies? dept

The entertainment industry always likes to take the digital world and compare it to the physical world as if the two were the same -- often making claims like unauthorized downloading is "just like stealing a CD from a store." However, they don't seem to like it when you do that back to them to prove all the inconsistencies in their arguments. Lee Griffin wrote up a good blog post about the Digital Economy Bill in the UK, wondering how people would feel if the same rules were applied offline:

Would you appreciate being put under house arrest not because of any court determined guilt, but because of someone making accusations of copyright infringement against you for something that may or may not have occurred in your property at the time? Is it even remotely justified to put you under house arrest, to stop you from going to the library, to work, or to socialise with your friends because of those accusations alone?

Or how about point 4...how would you feel if the police were stopping you from accessing your local community centre because a single individual or organisation had threatened the local council in such a way that it is too much for the council to risk the financial cost of allowng it to continue functioning for the community? Imagine arriving at your local pub only to find it inaccessible to you, even though anyone that is visiting from another town can use it freely; not for anything that you or your town have necessarily done, but because of the implications made by an individual in a completely unscrutinised manner?

Finally, point 5 would be very interesting. Could you imagine the police coming and turfing you out of a building you've legitimately bought, and putting it back on the market without paying you a penny, simply because you knew it was in a good location and could make some money off of the future sale? Somehow I don't think that's all too likely!

Of course, supporters of the DEB will claim that "this is different!" but they seem to be the same people who will still insist that infringement is no different than theft. Funny how that works.

Filed Under: digital economy bill, uk

Dan Bull Recaps How Home Taping Killed Music With His Latest Song

from the sing-along-everyone dept

Dan Bull, who wrote, recorded and made videos for his brilliant open letters to both Lily Allen and Peter Mandelson, was asked by UK ISP TalkTalk if he would be interested in creating a new song concerning the Digital Economy Bill. In response, Bull created this lovely song reminding us all about the old home taping is killing music argument: Make sure your sarcasm meter is properly tuned before watching... Best lines? "Home sewing's killing fashion, Home cooking's killing fast food, Home sleeping's killing hotels." Enjoy.

Filed Under: dan bull, digital economy bill, lily allen, peter mandelson
Companies: talk talk

UK Lords Pass Digital Economy Bill, Now Look To Rush It Through Commons

from the as-expected dept

As was widely predicted, it looks like the UK Lords have passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill, a piece of legislation written by the entertainment industry against consumer interests, to try to prop up an obsolete business model. Now they're planning to rush it through the Commons with little debate or chance to stop an incredibly dangerous bill -- unless people start making some noise about how this bill is being rushed through, and the lack of any real public consultation or debate.

Filed Under: copyright, digital economy bill, uk

BPI Says That UK Spies Are Against Digital Economy Bill

from the strange-bedfellows dept

The debate over the Digital Economy Bill in the UK (the attempt to ratchet up copyright law to repay favors to an entertainment industry that is slow to adapt) has taken an odd twist. Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing has the details of a leaked memo from the BPI (pdf) to a bunch of recording industry execs and lobbyists, that details the state of the bill and the ongoing strategy for getting it approved. There are a few items worth noting:

1. The BPI seems to think that the UK intelligence community is now the biggest threat to stopping the bill. Seriously. Apparently, UK spies are afraid that passing this bill will drive a very large number of people to switch to using encrypted internet tools, making it that much more difficult to spy on them. This may be an accurate concern, but it's surprising to hear that the intelligence community is now considered the biggest hurdle to getting the bill passed. Apparently, the BPI is fairly unconcerned with consumer rights groups. The BPI seems so paranoid about the intelligence community, that it actually suggests in the memo that the British spying agency MI5 may have paid for a recent survey released by the ISP Talk Talk, saying that 71% of those 18-34 years old would continue to file share, using "undetectable means."
   
   The memo also mocks the fact that this particular bill now has the Open Rights Group on the same side of an issue as MI5 -- when the two are normally somewhat diametrically opposed.
   
   
2. While the BPI sounds fairly confident that the bill will get through, it recognizes that it could get stalled if enough Members of Parliament start asking questions about the speed with which the bill is being pushed through:

   As for the House of Commons -- which will be sent the Bill next week -- there is a strange sense of detachment. MPs with whom we spoke back in Autum are already resigned to the fact that they will have minimum input into the provisions from this point on, given the lack of time for detailed scrutiny. One leading backbencher has told us that there is "little point in meeting, since the Bill will be determined at wash-up". That said, John Whittingdale -- an inveterate "timing sceptic" (i.e. he's for the Bill but doesn't think it will get through in time) has said this week that he still thinks it could be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it. Whilst true in constitutional theory terms, the hard politics of the situation makes it seem unlikely. And inveterate opponents like Derek Wyatt and Tom Watson continue to blog and tweet with critical comments, but there is not the sense of a groundswell of massive opposition to the Bill.

   In other words: if you live in the UK, now is the time to start speaking up and contacting your elected officials, as well as letting others know that a bill to greatly take away your rights is about to be pushed through the House of Commons, unless you speak up now.
   
   
3. Finally, among the "upcoming" activities, the memo mentions that on Wednesday the 18th, there will be a release of a report from TERA on "The importance of saving jobs in the EU's Creative Industries." We see these types of reports all the time, and they're usually poorly thought out and poorly argued, assuming, incorrectly, that a loss of jobs in one part of an industry might not be made up elsewhere, and rarely (if ever) paying attention to the fact that artificially propping up one part of the industry has massive negative consequences for other areas in the economy. So let's see what this report says. But assuming you start seeing press reports about this later this week, make sure to read through them with a critical eye.

Filed Under: bpi, copyright, digital economy bill, encryption, intelligence, mi5, security
Companies: bpi, mi5, open rights group

UK Politicians Keep Getting It Wrong: Now Want To Outlaw Weblockers

from the damn-that-VCR dept

Earlier this week, we noted that some UK Lords were looking to make the Digital Economy Bill even worse by adding a provision that would allow a judge to block all access to a website if that site was accused of facilitating copyright infringement. After widespread outcry against the proposal in the UK, the Lords changed the proposal, but came back with an even more ridiculous proposal that would be even more stringent in allowing courts to shut down websites. Cory Doctorow has an excellent writeup in The Guardian explaining how this would block out all sorts of legitimate activities:

As our routine media files have increased in size - multi-megapixel images, home videos, audio recordings of meetings and so on - it's become increasingly difficult to use email to share data privately with family, friends and colleagues, because most email servers croak over really big files. For example, the sound editor for my podcasts uses a web locker to send me the mastered audiofiles for my review (and he's not the only audio person who relies on this; many's the time I've had an audiobook publisher send me an MP3 of an audiobook for review through a web locker).

There are plenty of personal uses too: my parents live in Canada and are always hungry for video of their granddaughter, but I don't want to make our home movies available on the public internet, so web lockers save the day for us. And when my immigration attorneys needed a mountain of scanned bank statements sent to their office for my application for permanent residence in the UK, a web locker made it easy to convey an encrypted archive to them.

There's no way to square this need for private file sharing with the entertainment industry's demand that all files be placed in the public sphere, where they can be inspected for infringement.

On top of that, he notes that such blocks won't stop unauthorized file sharing anyway. It will just drive those doing it further underground. In the end, it will just annoy people who have legitimate reasons to use such technology and/or put them at significantly greater risk of privacy violations.

What becomes clear in many of these debates is that the politicians pushing for these "solutions" don't really understand technology at all -- and, on top of that, often don't clearly understand the details of the overall issue. They just hear "piracy" and think "bad, must be stopped." But the truth is a lot more nuanced. The real issue is an industry with an increasingly obsolete business model that doesn't want to adapt. But rather than help them do that, these politicians are basically trying to deny the technology -- whether used for legitimate purposes or not -- to pretend they can set up a world that works the way it used to.

Filed Under: copyright, digital economy bill, privacy, uk, weblockers

UK Politicians Look To Make Digital Economy Bill Even Worse: Insert Web Censorship Filter Proposal

from the [redacted]-[redacted]-[redacted] dept

We've written a few times about politicians trying to fix Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill, but now it appears some politicians are trying to make it worse. One of the proposed amendments would let the government designate websites to be blocked at the ISP level. This is blatant censorship, of the kind that Australia is now trying to implement, and which China already uses. Basically, if a court determines that, via any website, a "substantial" amount of infringing content can be accessed, the court could order ISPs to block that site. The idea here, obviously, is to get ISPs to block sites like The Pirate Bay and to stifle new technologies. If this had been a couple decades ago, they would be passing laws to ban the VCR.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, digital economy bill, filters, uk

Open WiFi To Become A Liability In The UK Under Digital Economy Bill

from the unintended-consequences dept

Back in January, while in France, I experienced firsthand one of the "unintended consequences" of France rushing forwarding with a "three strikes" law that kicks people off the internet based on accusations (not convictions). Because of that, the idea of open WiFi is now pretty much gone (which, amusingly, was pissing off the very same music execs who were such big fans of the law). It seems that something similar might be happening in the UK, as the folks behind the much maligned Digital Economy Bill have admitted that there will be no exceptions for anyone operating an open WiFi network, even a library or a university. Thus, if a library had an open WiFi network, and it received a few accusations of file sharing, Peter Mandelson could decide to kick them off the internet for as long as he would like.

While it doesn't technically "outlaw" open WiFi, it does put such a big liability on it that it leads to the same result. It effectively makes it so that no one, not even community organizations, will want to offer open WiFi. At a time when the UK government claims it's trying to encourage greater connectivity, it seems pretty silly to put in place a law that could lead to exactly the opposite.

Filed Under: digital economy bill, open wifi, secondary liability, three strikes, uk, wifi

Mandelson Gets To Choose How Long Your 'Temporary' Suspension Would Be

from the forever-minus-a-day? dept

Remember how the UK was just playing a word game by claiming that it wouldn't disconnect users from the internet via Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill? That was quickly debunked, as people realized that the gov't was simply changing how it described the disconnection, calling it a "temporary account suspension" instead. Of course, that's still a disconnect. Another unresolved question, however, was how long is temporary? Turns out the answer is however long Peter Mandelson thinks is appropriate.

Filed Under: digital economy bill, disconnection, peter mandelson, temporary account suspension, three strikes