The new Digital Economy Bill aims to ensure the UK is at the ''leading edge'' of global online industries, the Government says.
Under the proposed legislation, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be required to notify users accused of online piracy.
They would also have to record how many times each subscriber receives one of these notifications.
This would allow the copyright holders to apply for a court order to get the name and address of serious repeat offenders so they can take legal action against them.
But the Bill, announced in the Queen's Speech on Wednesday and published on Friday, also makes provision for the Secretary of State to direct communications regulator Ofcom to develop tough sanctions for illegal file-sharers.
These could include bandwidth capping - where the user's internet connection is slowed down - or temporary suspension of their online account.
The Bill would give the Secretary of State power to require ISPs to impose these technical measures.
Anyone who feels they have been unfairly penalised could complain through a ''clear and effective appeals mechanism''.
The Bill also includes a power to amend copyright legislation to deal with any new technologies that emerge in the future.The new Digital Economy Bill aims to ensure the UK is at the ''leading edge'' of... more
No, it's not what you think: a swash-buckling extra-legal pirate hunter with a musket, a clipper ship and letters of mark stalking the coasts of Somalia. It's about copyright piracy. And it's kind of sinister.
The British Secretary of State is proposing legislation that would give his position the ability to create anti-piracy legislation without Parliamentary debate. The goal is to crack down on copyright infringement in a big way.
Cory Doctorow at Boing-Boing broke the story:
"This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition. This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail."
This comes as some see the music industry starting to recover from a hard decade of battling piracy. The Economist wrote last week that though sales across the industry are down a third, the music business is adapting successfully. And moving beyond suing the pants of off random downloaders. Viacom's chief counsel told a group of Yale law students that suing P2P users "felt like terrorism".
Well it certainly seems like the Brits are gearing up for the sort of extralegal powers we're used to over here with our War on Terror. ...But...wait...that's backward...the terrorists are....the lawyers? Ah, somebody'll figure it out.
At a recent roundtable discussion, Warner Bros. technology director Ethan Applen commented on BitTorrent and P2P’s bad reputation in the entertainment industry. Applen said that P2P is not the bad guy some Hollywood insiders claim it to be, but actually a great way to transfer TV-episodes and entire seasons.
The heavy punishment of illegal file sharers on the web will be counter-productive in the global fight against Internet piracy and copyright infringement, the director-general of a United Nations agency said on Thursday.
Hackers are spreading their operational bases further around the world, according to threat analysis from managed security firm, Network Box. Not only should we all be wary about what links we click on in emails, social networking sites and IM, but we should examine what data we put online.
The MPAA scored a victory last night when millions of people tuned in to CBS’s 60 Minutes. The ‘investigative’ news magazine ran a propaganda piece on movie piracy yesterday, allowing the MPAA to insinuate once again that organized crime and BitTorrent go hand in hand.
People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.
Speaking at a government-sponsored forum to debate copyright issues he said the UK would introduce a similar policy to France.
The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said.
It would mean that, for example, someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully.
....so wait, they can share it with ONLY family members? do step brothers/sister count? and if you can share it with friends...well isn't that what file sharing is anyway, only sharing with friends you've never met? the file sharing community is a big one that helps eachother out with seeding and the like, the government will have a hard time cracking down on them, but it seems the record industries lobbying and paying off the government has worked now and those prostitutes that call themselves 'politicians' are passing more and more laws to take away our rights and still keep the corporations in profits.
But some things never change do they?People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net,... more
There is still a lot of scareware out there, and many people still falling for it. Forty-three million in the last year according to Symantec. Put simply, scareware programs are designed to frighten people into running malicious software by popping up when the user is online and declaring that viruses have been detected…There is still a lot of scareware out there, and many people still falling for it.... more
The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit a with new order to remove links to copyright material.
The trio could face fines of up to $9m (£5.5m) if they do not comply within three months.
However they claim that since selling the file-sharing website in 2006 they no longer have control over it.
The Pirate Bay is a file-sharing website in which people share music, films and games by bit-torrent or peer-to-peer links. None of the material actually sits on the site's servers.
It claims to have 22m users worldwide.
When will the Music and Film industry realise that torrents are not going to go away and that they must think of a way to utilise the internet for these types of sales, and (god forbid!) let go of some of their profits!
They blame file sharers for ruining the work of the small people in these industries, but if they were bring prices down, they could still pay everyone their proper wage, they just wont be able to get their ridiculous profits.
People will always still want DVDs, they are just a little bit sick of paying £20 for one (if your getting minimum wage then that amount to nearly 4 hours work just for a DVD)
and people will always want the experience of going to a cinema just not the rip off prices!
The industries are doing it to themselves with their greed, personally I think it's obvious file sharing is the future and sharing is always a beautiful thing.The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit a with new order to remove links to... more
Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw revealed today that controversial measures to tackle illegal file-sharing will be watered down following fierce opposition.
He told the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee that rights holders will have to obtain a court order before punishing persistent offenders by reducing or cutting off their internet connections.
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From The GuardianCulture secretary Ben Bradshaw revealed today that controversial measures to tackle... more
In the war against albums being illegally uploaded on to the internet before they are released, David Tibet of the underground band Current 93 may have struck a minor, if resounding, victory. "This is a promotional CD," announces a little girl on the promo copy of Current 93's new album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain. "Anyone illegally selling, copying, uploading or downloading this material is condemned to eternal hellfire. Happy listening, God is love." Then Tibet – a devout Christian with strong views about the impending apocalypse – intones "murder" over a guitar riff heavy enough to terrify Satan. It makes you wonder whether a casual upload is really worth being cast into Hades for.
If you're not willing or able to cast damnation on your potential audience, there are other options. Will Oldham, the cult American singer who performs as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, decided that the best way to stop reviewers from uploading his 2009 album Beware was to annoy them as much as possible. Each song is interrupted by the following announcement by Rian Murphy, co-founder of Oldham's US label, Drag City: "you are enjoying a promotional CD of Beware by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy." This was sometimes given in a German or Scottish accent.
"As far as effectiveness, [the announcements] kept Beware out of the hands of digital bootleggers until it was actually released," says Murphy. "The reaction from press was mixed, as you might imagine. Some reacted harshly, either refusing to review the record or reviewing [the announcements] – and panning them.
Oldham's friend Bill Callahan put trumpet parps all over promo copies of his latest release, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, but unfortunately they made the album better, which was never going to help. Fellow US singer Cat Power's label, Matador, took to chopping 30 seconds off each track on promotional CDs of her last two albums, something the label has also done with Yo La Tengo's recent albums.
There are more conventional ways of stopping file-sharing, such as sending out watermarked CDs that can be traced to the recipient, or emailing reviewers links to streaming music that can't be downloaded. The listening party is popular for big artists: journalists are invited to record company offices to stand around, somewhat awkwardly, as they are played a forthcoming album – but can anyone really review an album based on one hearing, under those conditions? The White Stripes issued vinyl-only promos of their 2003 classic Elephant, partly because of Jack White's belief that any journalist who didn't have a record player didn't deserve to hear the album anyway. The electronic duo Autechre tried the same trick with a cassette tape – but journalists really didn't have cassette players any more by then and the trick backfired.
Ultimately, the war on file-sharing has to be a moral one, and the announcement on Current 93's album highlights the fact that anyone illegally downloading it really needs to think long and hard about the implications of stealing someone's creative efforts before it's too late. "The announcement may have a certain dark humour, but it comes from my spiritual and religious convictions," says Tibet. "Ultimately, nothing is free; we pay for everything we do in one way or another. I'll be atoning for various sins at the Judgment Seat, but the illegal downloading of other people's music won't be one of them."In the war against albums being illegally uploaded on to the internet before they are... more
Whilst the recent news that Microsoft has released a free computer security package to the public is reassuring, it does not detract from the fact that the world’s most popular operating system still has serious security flaws.Whilst the recent news that Microsoft has released a free computer security package to... more
Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot reports from the Future of Music Coalition Conference.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Can the notion of a free Internet co-exist with the rights of music copyright holders, whose intellectual property is being shared – often without consent – by a wired generation of music fans?Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot reports from the Future of Music Coalition... more
Companies are protecting themselves from high-profile threats such as malware attacks, but are often leaving themselves vulnerable from the ‘orgotten security defences. In the first of our advisory notices on ‘forgotten security’, we advise companies to examine their applications, hardware and security systems to protect against vulnerabilities resulting from insufficient monitoring.Companies are protecting themselves from high-profile threats such as malware attacks,... more
British pop star Lily Allen has topped the blogosphere this week over posts made to her anti-piracy blog “It’s Not Alright“.
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Now singer Dan Bull has responded to the debate in the form of an open letter presented as a song entitled “Dear Lily”. The full video is below, and contains some pretty good zingers.
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From Mashable
Related Current Post: File-Sharing Heroine Lilly Allen is a Copyright Hypocrite http://current.com/1mu4u4cBritish pop star Lily Allen has topped the blogosphere this week over posts made to... more
Why a government should make a law like that? There are several possible answers and none is good. Because it's ignorant of the nature of the net. Because it has more care for the interests of companies than those of citizens. Because will use it for reasons of censorship. The law of which we speak is the new French law against "piracy" on the Internet passed by the French on the insistence of Sarkozy government.Why a government should make a law like that? There are several possible answers and... more
The French National Assembly voted Tuesday to adopt, by 258 votes to 131, the so-called "three strikes" law criminalizing file-sharing. Those caught infringing copyright online could face the suspension of their Internet access, a fine or even prison.The French National Assembly voted Tuesday to adopt, by 258 votes to 131, the... more
Lily Allen torna all’attacco del file sharing chiamando a raccolta i colleghi musicisti. Con un intervento sul suo blog MySpace, la cantante di West London ha infatti invitato tutti gli addetti ai lavori a contribuire alla lotta contro lo scambio illegale di file musicali.Lily Allen torna all’attacco del file sharing chiamando a raccolta i colleghi... more
Il professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski della Harvard Business School ha trascorso gli ultimi anni a cercare di capire perché e percome le persone utilizzino così tanto e sempre più i social network trovando sorprendenti conclusioni, come le differenze tra gli uomini e le donne...Il professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski della Harvard Business School ha trascorso gli... more
In the past weeks the Pirate Bay has been ripped, copied and rebuilt by avid file-sharers, guaranteeing that the site’s legacy will be preserved no matter what. The people behind the Kiosk of Piracy take this trend to a whole new level as they have created an offline copy of the site which is open to the public.In the past weeks the Pirate Bay has been ripped, copied and rebuilt by avid... more
