The government has revealed details of its Digital Economy Bill, trailed in the Queen's Speech. One proposal which has already attracted a great deal of attention is the introduction of new penalties for those suspected of internet piracy, from disconnection to hefty fines. Laws which allow the swift termination of pirates' internet connections (often on a 'three strikes and you're out' basis) have been spreading across the world recently, from France to South Korea.
Interestingly, the number of illegal downloads has been in decline recently. To take just one example, Sweden - home of both the Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party, now represented in the European Parliament - has seen 60% of file-sharers reduce or halt their activity, according to a recent survey. The music industry will doubtless argue that this is a consequence of just the sort of legal penalties now being proposed. But though Sweden has indeed tightened its laws recently, as good a case can be made that it has been driven by the emergence of appealing alternatives like Spotify. After all, the fact remains that the chances of any individual downloader being hooked are tiny.
Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing has hard words for the government's new proposals:
[The Bill] consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.
Comments
The internet has always been a problem for all governments because it is not under their control and for all governments the free flow of information is not to be encouraged. This copyright legislation shows up how willing the UK Government (and others) are to take the shilling of large corporations and it is a useful method to accustom the electorate to the monitoring and control by the government not only of data going across the internet but of the electorate's access to the internet.
I once read an SF book years ago called "Noir" by KW Jeter which was set in a world where copyright infringement however small was punishable by death or worse. The corporations employed their own private investigators who had the power of judge, jury and executioner over a copyright infringer.
I thought at the time that the idea of copyright infringement as a capital offence was ludicrous and they're not proposing that in the current legislation which Mandelson proposes.
However with the proposal of huge fines for copyright infringement, the monitoring of all data for copyright infringement and the cutting off of access to the internet for copyright infringement where corporations can act as private police forces the ideas set out in, "Noir", are not so ludicrous now.
Labour's plan seems to be driven by what have become core platforms in the party. The need to please big money and the need to extend governmental control and regulation into every aspect of life in Britain.
Whilst I agree this bill is nasty and the enabling clause downright scary, I should point out that the enabling clause explicitly disallows the creation or modification of criminal offences (see my coverage of this at Magna Carta Plus). Thus Mandelson cannot invent "any" penalty. It seems to me that it would enable him to impose whole monitoring of the content of internet traffic on the other hand.
The enabling clause explicitly disallows the creation or modification of new offences, thus Mandelson cannot impose new jail-time penalties, contrary to what Cory Doctorow says. That said it is a nasty bill and the enabling clause is outrageous.
Sorry about the second comment, it wasn't clear the first one got through!
This needs to be made an election issue both in the UK and in Australia
This needs to be made an issue in the elections likely to be held in 2010 in Australia. I intend to stand as an Independent candidate and make this an issue. I intend to question every other candidate in every electorate what their stance will be on this and make their responses (or lack of responses) known on the Internet. An example of how I did so in the Queensland State elections cand be found here. The response to it was not great due to it being posted late in the election campaign and it being ignored by the media, but I think the principle is sound. I suggest that people in the UK do the same. Unfortunately the brain-dead 'first past the post', as opposed to preferential, voting system that Britain still inexplicably uses makes it difficult for minor parties to stand and raise such questions without creating unintended election outcomes. Nevertheless, I would not let that stop me from standing as a candidate and raising that (amongst many other critical issues) during the course of the election. Of course the real solution is to adopt a Swiss-style Binding Citizens Initiated Referendum system that will allow any policy to be put to electors every three months where a sufficient threshold of citizens have indicated their support. James Sinnamon Brisbane, AustraliaPost new comment