Digital Economy Bill Passes In UK Welcome to your new entertainment industry nanny state The highly controversial "Digital Economy Bill" has passed in the UK. The bill, written largely by the entertainment industry, was pushed through the UK legislative process without a lot of public input into the potential damage the bill could cause. The bill places UK ISPs into the role of copyright police and expands government responsibility to enforce copyright dramatically, carriers being told they now must track, notify and impose "speed blocks, bandwidth shaping, site blocking, or account suspension" on copyright offenders. The entertaining part is how this bill was rammed through the UK political process without real debate: Those who wanted a full debate on the bill basically had no chance. Despite criticizing the bill heavily, the gov't basically said the debate was over, and apparently those who had been debating started shouting "Nooo!!!" ... And there you go. The entertainment industry gets its ridiculous anti-consumer copyright law with no real attempt at debate or amendment in the House of Commons. Concerns raised about how this bill could force the blocking of Wikileaks or the shutdown of internet access at small business? Ignored. The "wash up" process used to push this bill through (live blog here) supposedly involves the promise to go back and fix all the idiotic portions of the bill later -- something most believe won't actually happen. In short, you have a bill written by the entertainment industry passed by politicians loyal to (paid by) the entertainment industry who don't understand the issues or technology at hand. If you happened to be a UK politician who wanted a deeper debate on the nuances of making government and ISPs the personal police for the entertainment industry, you found yourself completely ignored.
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 | | just wow These politicians really have some balls. If I knew any of them personally I would beat the crap out of them for the UK citizens. This is another pure example of corporate take over of government. | |
|  |  StreetSpiritThis spot reserved for Xenu.Premium
join:2002-08-13
Roslyn, NY
kudos:3 | Re: just wow Un-farking-believable... Blatant corporate take over of government, without pretense of anything else. | |
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| | | | Re: Don't buy their stuff or pirate it Thumbs up | |
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 n2jtx
join:2001-01-13
Glen Head, NY | DMCA for UK? It sounds like the UK has their own stupid version of our DMCA now.
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I support the right to keep and arm bears. | |
|  Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4
4 edits |  Subscriber sanctions not OK'd yet - more work needed
expands government responsibility to enforce copyright dramatically, carriers being told they now must track, notify and impose "speed blocks, bandwidth shaping, site blocking, or account suspension" on copyright offenders. The above is not correct YET. A couple more steps are needed for the above statement to be accurate. Whether those steps will be taken is debatable. From the link in the story:
»www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/201···measures
Read our clause-by-clause guide to the bill as it stands now after being adopted by the House Of Commons and as it awaits Royal Assent …
#10: The govt. can tell Ofcom whether it should order ISPs to sanction speed blocks, bandwidth shaping, site blocking, account suspension or other limits against an ISP customer. First, Ofcom must do consultation and consider whether these measures would work.
#11: If the measures pass Ofcom's muster, the govt. can then level the measures against ISPs, but only if approved by both houses of parliament. So, both Houses of Parliament must OK any further action on blocking, acct suspension, etc.
P.S.>> And before these next votes in Parliament to actually pass enforcing regulations take place, the UK is having national elections on May 6, 2010. Who knows if the laws allowing enforcement will ever be passed. Who knows, maybe the existing gov't rammed this law thru now because they know they will not be in charge after the current gov't dissolves on April 12 to get ready for the election. | |
| | | | Re: Subscriber sanctions not OK'd yet - more work needed said by Romney2012:So, both Houses of Parliament must OK any further action on blocking, acct suspension, etc. Despite the fact that it requires further approval, the Bill should have never even seen the light of day in its current guise.
Fascist states of days gone by would be proud. | |
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amungusPremium
join:2004-11-26
America Reviews:
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| not surprised This is Big Brother's home turf. Not at all surprised that this bill passed.
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Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell:
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated." | |
| | | USA next? Since it seems our government is taking it's legislation queues from Europe lately, we most likely will follow suit. | |
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| Re: USA next? said by HarleyDude:Since it seems our government is taking it's legislation queues from Europe lately, we most likely will follow suit. We do like to mimic each other.
Its to bad, because I really had higher hopes for The UK. America's Government sold out long time ago.
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I often find it complexing that people feel that you've reached a level of maturity and responsibility if you can accept being riped off or taken advantage of for someone else's gain or enjoyment
Independent TV | |
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| | NO CANADA is next Stephen harper a few days ago mentioned doing up
a digital economy conference
YA know so he can just copy the UK digital economy bill of hte UK
PROB here is WE WOULD START SMACKING around politicians and dont kid your self 24 million net users and YOU go right ahead and try this shit
this is also why they wanted sub machine guns at parliament
THEY are SCARED.
IF this progresses we should organize a dump truck dumping of shit on parliament
if farmers can do it and get no fine so we can | |
|  Rogue WolfAte Your Homework, And Framed The Dog
join:2003-08-12
Troy, NY | Behold, a new era of government.... Quick! Efficient! Decisive! See what happens when you remove that annoying, fickle factor known as "the public" from the lawmaking process? Things get done! Now if the peons would just shut up and open their wallets, the entertainment industry could get down to the crucial business of taking all the money they deserve. After all, the corporations know what we need better than we do... it's their business to!
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Justin Timberlake brought sexy back. I'm putting it away again. | |
| | | Some Confusion ? passed by politicians loyal to (paid by) the entertainment industry I think you are conflating US and UK politics, while the politicians may have taken representation from industry the sad thing is, unlike their US counterparts, they are not paid for - they actually believe in what they're doing.  | |
| | | | Re: Some Confusion ? said by Soho97UK:passed by politicians loyal to (paid by) the entertainment industry I think you are conflating US and UK politics, while the politicians may have taken representation from industry the sad thing is, unlike their US counterparts, they are not paid for - they actually believe in what they're doing. Almost. 
Think of it like Winston Zedmore from Ghostbusters:
"If there's a steady paycheck involved, I'll believe anything you say." | |
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| | | Entertainment Industry should be boycotted Support the folks of the Uk by not buying any new products from the UK that come from these big content owners.Send a message strongly and support all those folks who are now screwed.
RIAA,MPAA,UK Content owners you will never get a dime out of me again.I am through with supporting the greedy industry.I will only buy used stuff now and no theater going either.
What a bunch of BS the folks of the UK will now have to live with thanks to some asshole greedbags. | |
|  xdeadhead220, 221, Whatever It Takes.Premium
join:2000-11-08
Mechanicsburg, PA
1 edit | coming soon to a place near you.... the 3 branches of govt...
corporate
military
and hollywood | |
| | | Comments from a Brit... There are a number of reasons why this bill annoys me:
1) the crap about the government effectively being able to block whatever they want - I completely disagree with this, and hope that the EU or the new government does something about it (the latter is not likely - they voted for the bill). There are a few ISPs who are completely against it too and intend to ignore it. (£250,000 fine)
2) The entire circumstances relating to the above measure and other anti-piracy measures are rather suspicious. The government made a massive u-turn once one Lord Mandelson (who, if you know who he is, is a multiple time disgraced politician who has to be a Lord to be in the government, since no one will vote for him - a thoroughly horrible man) saw an MPAA/RIAA type on a private yacht. No doubt some money was exchanged.
3) If you watched the debates (I did), there were only 40 or so Members of Parliament actually debating the bill. Of those, 5 to 10 actually argued the point that there was not enough time to debate the bill (election has been called, and today Parliament has been suspended and will be dissolved next week) and the time that was available was not being used properly.
When it came to a vote on any clauses or on the bill itself, 200+ MPs came out of the woodwork, having never debated on the issue, to likely vote yes and/or according to their party whips.
4) They took out the useful stuff, like the broadband tax aimed at improving rural connectivity (as a person living in a rural area, albeit with 8Mbit ADSL, I might be biased) | |
| | | Sounds alot like US healthcare reform A bill rushed through the parliament/congress with little or no debate... nothing new here. Who cares what you think. | |
| |  BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: Sounds alot like US healthcare reform said by ashworth:A bill rushed through the parliament/congress with little or no debate... nothing new here. Who cares what you think. Hate to tell you but healthcare had been debated for over a year. Perhaps you prefer the McCain/Palin/Bush method. No healthcare except for the rich. | |
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 iam xSungazerPremium
join:2005-02-23
ॐ | Censorship? lol, too late, we can sink the NWO ship now! LOL, let the showdown between millions of individual pirates and the puny defacto govt. employees begin!
Place your bets!
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