Digital Britain report proposes to save Britain's future by destroying the Internet
We are looking at the report in detail, but we are extremely concerned that the voice of consumers and citizens is being marginalised."Part of the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham speech showed a clear lack of understanding that alleged behaviour does not equals unlawful:We are concerned that there is no suggestion that consumers and citizens should be represented on the proposed copyright 'Rights Agency'. Without our voices, such an agency could easily be dominated by industry's concerns at the expense of civil rights. Consumer would be very likely to get a bad deal.
"We are concerned at the government's proposals for technical 'solutions' for rights enforcement - technical 'solutions' to social issues tend to be expensive and fail."
"One by one digital music providers like iTunes and Amazon are moving away from DRM, and trusting their customers. This is a much better example for industry and government to follow."
"We also intend to look closely at proposals for recording and reporting alleged rights infringers. While we welcome the proposal to ask the courts before taking action, we are concerned at the potential for further erosion of privacy online."
"We will only maintain our creative strength if we find new ways of paying for and sustaining creative content in the online age. We therefore explore the potential for a new rights agency to be established and following a consultation on how to tackle unlawful file sharing we propose to legislate to require internet service providers to notify alleged significant infringers that their conduct is unlawful.""The main recommendations that Boing Boing readers will be interested in are:
ACTION 11 By the time the final Digital Britain report is published the Government will have explored with interested parties the potential for a Rights Agency to bring industry together to agree how to provide incentives for legal use of copyright material; work together to prevent unlawful use by consumers which infringes civil copyright law; and enable technical copyright-support solutions that work for both consumers and content creators. The Government also welcomes other suggestions on how these objectives should be achieved.digital britain - interim report (Thanks, Glyn!)ACTION 12 Before the full Digital Britain Report is published we will explore with both distributors and rights-holders their willingness to fund, through a modest and proportionate contribution, such a new approach to civil enforcement of copyright within the legal frameworks applying to electronic commerce, copyright, data protection and privacy to facilitate and co-ordinate an industry response to this challenge. It will be important to ensure that this approach covers the need for innovative legitimate services to meet consumer demand, and education and information activity to educate consumers in fair and appropriate uses of copyrighted material as well as enforcement and prevention work.
ACTION 13 Our response to the consultation on peer-to-peer file sharing sets out our intention to legislate, requiring ISPs to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof from rights- holders) that their conduct is unlawful. We also intend to require ISPs to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders together with personal details on receipt of a court order. We intend to consult on this approach shortly, setting out our proposals in detail.
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it is seriously bad... basically ISPs will be doing the evidence gathering for the content industry and shopping their own customers to them... net neutrality has gone out the window, no doubt a sop to the ISP's as payback for rolling over and doing the dirty work for everyone else... and the customer gets to pay for the Quango... and the deep packet inspection which will be needed
ordinary Joe and Jane Citizen weren't given any say in this at all... any concerns they may have had over privacy issues, the fact that everyone is paying to do the content industry's evidence gathering for them, have been conveniently ignored in favour of the big boys wishes.
and the government is having a wet dream because the deep packet inspection hardware will be in place so they can keep tabs on everything... all in the name of anti-piracy measures and , of course, they'll wave the kiddie porn & war on terror flags around as well to justify it...
How's that encrypted, random-port, UDP based version of the BitTorrent protocol coming along?
Every technological means of oppression has a technological means of resistance.
Are there no coders in the UK?
OK, we already knew our government was technologically illiterate, no surprises in the bill. Actually the creation of the DRA would amuse me if it wasn't for the fact that I'll end up helping to pay for it. Do they really think just by conjuring up a new committee they'll suddenly be able to put a stop to piracy? That every hacker out there working on busting DRM locks wide open will suddenly drop tools and say "Oh well there's no point no, there's a Digital Rights Agency, we're doomed"?
Seems unlikely. But hey, like I said it's our government so it's par for the course.
what about this then? I thought we were free.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7854494.stm
@Billtheburger: This isn't a Bill, it's a "report" (effectively a discussion paper.)
Obviously the "rights holder's body" sounds like incredibly bad news. The back story here is that HMG have been trying to pressure the ISPs into "self-regulating" (ie., folding to pressure from the Copyright mafiaa and handing out subscriber details who they suspect of copyright infringement.) Naturally the SPs have been pushing back hard on this for years - I'm sure this goes back to the late 90s at least. The Govt is trying to call their bluff by suggesting legislation will be enacted, which is what they've always threatened. However!
(a) Labour will be out of power long before this gets to the statute book - I'd be very surprised if they tried to put through such obviously unpopular legislation during the fag end of their administration;
(b) it would be so unpopular that not even the business-friendly Tories would try to push it through - I think;
(c) events have overtaking this approach, as many have pointed out, as "content providers" are largely abandoning DRM as a busted flush and going with unencumbered formats (go Ogg!); and
(d) in the worst-case scenario, we'd end up in a situation like that in the USA, and bad as things are under the DMCA, it doesn't look like the Internet's been "destroyed" in the USA.
(e) as BillTheBurger points out above, the real story on this is that the govt., is actually trying to sidle /away/ from having to do what the Report proposes.
El Reg has decent coverage of this.
its about time our quangos became more like jury duty so we all get a chance to change things for the better.
sorry i went a bit off topic
"...requiring ISPs to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof from rights- holders) that their conduct is unlawful."
Wow. That's a slippery phrase. Who gets to say whether their levels of proof are reasonable? I'm guessing that this is a charter for rights-holders to threaten whoever they wish, with utter impunity.
" We also intend to require ISPs to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available ..."
i'm sorry, not too *teknikly litterit* here, but how do you collect "anonymised information" on repeat offenders? This word "anonymize" is not a word. Either you are anonymous or not. How do they know if you are a repeat offender unless the info is NOT anonymous?
so the gummint will have their "interwebs"- which no one uses - and a totally encrypted parallel web will arise. Maybe not a bad thing, you could be more selective this time about who you let into the true web.
this sucks - but 'destroying the internet'? for hyperbole to work it needs to be not quite so far out that it looks silly!
Explaining good writing to a best-selling author - priceless.
ok, it was the best headline ever, jeez, i'll never be so insensitive and brutal again
We've recently re-published the Digital Britain - Interim Report so that people can comment paragraph by paragraph. An Open Letter has been published and sent to Lord Carter and supporters working in government are spreading the word, too.
More details here:
http://writetoreply.org/actually/
Thanks.
haven't read it myself, so can't comment. but here's a counter opinion:
http://laurencekaye.typepad.com/laurence_kayes_blog/2009/02/digital-britain-digital-content-and-the-role-of-copyright.html