Britons: here's a petition to the Prime Minister to abolish the new Digital Economy bill's provisions that will require ISPs to cut off your household's internet access if anyone living there (or using your network) is accused of three acts of copyright infringement:
This petition has been set up in response to the Government's proposal to cut off internet access to those who are caught illegally downloading copyrighted files. We think this has one fundamental flaw, as illegal filesharers will simply hack into other peoples WiFi networks to do their dirty work. This will result in innocent people being disconnected from the internet. What's more, such a punishment should be dealt with in the proper way, in a court of law. This guilty until proven innocent approach violates basic human rights.
Tell your friends.
Previously:
- Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying ...
- Dirty ISPs can sabotage the nation's digital future - Boing Boing
- BREAKING: Leaked UK government plan to create "Pirate Finder ...
- Brits: send a message to Mandelson and fight "three strikes ...
- Brits: sign petitition to kill proposal to disconnect accused ...
- Brit business secretary promises to punish accused file-sharers ...
- Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off ...
RSS Feed
Hi Cory,
The link doesn't work as posted. Please remove the trailing /l so that it reads http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/
After having a little fawn over the bill, in particular the section pertaining to copyright infringement available in a fact sheet here: http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/digitalbritain/digital-economy-bill/factsheets/ or in full here http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/digitaleconomy/documents.html I could find nothing to suggest that they could cut you off without a clear route of appeal and with the right to a first tier tribunal.
I strongly recommend you have a read before you make everyone signing that petition look like a knee jerking fool. Also, the problem with this bill has little to do with the cutting off threat, it's the civil rights that are being stamped on by a so called free country.
In short, there is no benefit to citizens/consumers other than giving the corps a cheaper (for them) vehicle to make money from us. And anything that may or may not pop up in the future is also catered for whether or not it's going to happen, most likely. In other words, increased privacy invasion on the off chance of something possibly happening.
All,the link seems to have been fixed now, as it's working fine.
Petition signed, and number of signatories is growing fast! Tell/Email your mates!
Be sure to sign in all caps so the king can read it.
There's one thing I don't get. If the whole household is penalized doesn't it amount to guilt by association? How could such a thing fly in court? I don't think that it would be judged constitutional in my country, Canada, for sure.
done and done.
IamInnocent, As I understand this the proff of guilt is not being used in a court trial but is just shown to the ISP who has the right to refuse service to a person. Because this person could be presumed to have access to any services provided to the home the only way to deny service to the person is to deny service to the residence. While it does seem unfair and certainly there is a problem with it legally and morally, there is legal precedence here in the states (and I assume in England) for denial of service as long as it does not present a danger to to peoples safety.
This is just more of the big corps finding loopholes in the law that allow them to do what they want. hopefully this loophole will be closed soon.
NicO / Innocent,
As I understand it, it's like renting someone a car. The car is only rented to one person, so it's their responsibility to ensure that the other members of the family (who will also benefit from the car) use it correctly.
Now, that may be right or wrong, but it is how it is being persued (pre the internet being declared as a human right).
Oh, no.. I think I just saw the next logical step: Internet insurance. Oh crap..
I think this effort is based on a faulty assumption.
Namely, that people that have given up (insert huge, fundamental human right here) are going to fight to retain (insert marginal, incremental modern privilege here).
For instance, Chinese people have given up the right to choose the number of children they have - a truly unbelievable sacrifice of fundamental human choice. So what in the world makes you think they're going to rise up and fight the suppression of some marginal meditative yoga quasi-religious sect ? (falun gong)
Or, for instance, a race of islanders who have cheerfully wired up every space in the country - even old country roads - with cameras to track their every move, while slowly, but surely, moving toward mandatory national ID cards. You think they're going to suddenly stand up for this ?
Sure they are.
It can't. The whole point of the exercise is to avoid the courts, which would not allow this sort of thing.
> As I understand it, it's like renting someone a car.
More like how renting someone a car would be if three unproven accusations of shoplifting against anyone who's ever been inside the car would cause the renter to lose their driving license forever.
His Holiness St Stephen of Fry was tweeting this earlier today. Signed. I have a legal friend who is giddy with the amount of work that bad legislation like this will bring her...
If Mandelson doesn't get this through before the election, does anyone know what the Tory position is?
The "three strikes" law to disconnect suspected file sharers is wrong because
• It applies punishment after accusation not after a fair hearing, discarding the principle of "innocent until proven guilty"
• It applies collective punishment to all users of the particular broadband connection, i.e. the whole household.
• As has been observed by others, an internet connection is "a pipe that delivers freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech" as well as entertainment. Disconnecting this entire pipe is a disproportionate response.
Howdy I always wonder if Britain wants a strong labour force or a bordor line slave labour market. After all these years it is fair to say Britain prefers an "bordor line slave labour market"
Kula May
Won't the rapid development of wireless networking technology soon make it possible for people to set up their own internet? Won't that make the ISPs obsolete anyway?
Actually I hope the law passes as it will set the stage for trolling the likes of which the internets have never seen.
Imagine if you will a simple contest to attempt to get as many people banned as possible. How long before all of Britain is offline?
If this is passed in the UK, expect them to come to the US, hold up the law, and say "The brits passed this, why the hell won't you consider joining with the rest of the world community and modernizing your IP internet laws?"
That's how the copyright lobby works. It worked on the DMCA in several countries, it will work here.
This is a global fight.
@Anonymous #16
That exactly what I'm thinking when it comes to the ACTA.
How do you take down a law that's impossible to enforce en masse? Simple, make the government enforce it.
@anon #15
Yes. This concept is called "free speech or stone age".
Modern commerce is so dependent upon information that removing this infrastructure condemns a society to a "stone age". Further, as commerce rapidly evolves, it is impossible to distinguish between the critical and superfluous aspects of this infrastructure, so selective control is impossible. Even if a state actor takes drastic action, the mere existence of portable computers, open wireless networking standards and encryption guarantee the populace access to free speech - even without the Internet.
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html
Done!
I'm doing enough nagging to my flatmates about putting the milk back in the fridge, switching lights off, washing up dirty dishes, etc... Don't fancy adding "don't fileshare on the home broadband" to the list.
@ innocent, Canada seems intent on doing the same thing. Take a look at these:
http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/fo/intellect_property.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
it is just barbaric, from the summary at the house of lords:
* Copyright owners identify cases of infringement and send details including IP addresses to ISPs;
* The ISPs verify that the evidence received meets the required standard, and link the infringement to subscriber accounts;
* The ISPs send letters to subscribers identified as apparently infringing copyright. They keep track of how often each subscriber is identified;
* If asked to do so by a relevant copyright owner, ISPs supply a serious infringers list showing, for each subscriber who has been identified repeatedly by the copyright owner, which of the copyright owner’s reports relate to that subscriber. The list does not reveal any subscriber’s identity;
* Copyright owners use the serious infringers list as the basis for a large scale “Norwich Pharmacal” 3 court order to obtain the names and addresses of some or all of those on the list. At no point are individuals’ names or addresses passed from the ISP to a copyright owner without a court order;
* Copyright owners send “final warning” letters direct to infringers asking them to stop online copyright infringement and giving them a clear warning of likely court action if the warning is ignored; and
* Copyright owners take court action against those who ignore the final warning.
tbh, the provisions in the bill that drop the requirement for regional gaelic language programming are more troubling to me.
Open rights Group are leading the campaign against Mandelson's three strikes proposals. We're having a Q&A session for bloggers to let you in on our work and get your views.
When? 1830, 24 November 2009 (for an hour or so)
Where? irc.freenode.net/openrightsgroup (How to use IRC: http://is.gd/4XcXZ)
RSVP to michael@openrightsgroup.org
We want to make blogger Q&As a regular feature in future so please do get involved with this and feel free to pass on the invite.
For more info, check out http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
It's amazing that trying to sign the petition gets no reply back from the government, thus making it impossible to join... typical backhanded censorship from the gov as ever
I thought about promoting this petition, but the text seems to accept the general goal of punishing people who share. It criticizes only the absence of trials in Mandelson's current plan. He could "remedy" that detail as Sarkozy did in France, by adding de-forma trials designed to rubber-stamp the punishment. That would not make it any better, but it would defuse this objection.
Instead I urged Britons to call their MPs and object to the
War on Sharing as well as this particular plan.