UK internet provider Talk Talk have been vocal opponents of the mess that is the Digital Economy Bill since it was first announced. Now the bill has been rammed through the dying parliament, Talk Talk have confirmed in their new blog post "Digital Economy Bill - it's a wash up" that they remain opposed to the bill and will not comply with its demands. Good for them.
Peter Mandelson's controversial Digital Economy Bill, and in particular its powers to disconnect suspected illegal file-sharers without any court being involved, could breach human rights according to this article in the Daily Record.
Well I've just sent my third email to my MP Andrew Gwynne about the Digital Economy Bill.
He 'replied' to my first email by ignoring everything I wrote about the actual bill, describing the stages through which a bill has to go before it becomes law, and saying that of course the Digital Economy Bill would have to go through all these stages before it became law, and if it hadn't done so before the end of this Parliament, then it would fall. Unless, he went on to say, it was included in the 'wash-up' which he described as "an informal agreement between the House of Commons and the House of Lords on non-contentious issues".
I already knew all this of course, so emailed back and told him that it was the government's intention to include the Digital Economy Bill in the 'wash-up' that worried me, and ask for his assurance that he'd do everything he could to make sure this didn't happen.
My elected representative ignored this second email.
Now that the Labour MP Austin Mitchell has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling for the bill to be shelved until after the General Election when it can be properly debated and scrutinised, I have emailed Andrew Gwynne again to ask him to sign the EDM. I have also asked him to let me know whether he signs it or not as this will help me to decide how to vote in the next few weeks. Let's just say I'm not holding my breath...
If you live in the UK, please write and ask your MP to sign the EDM too. Pressure is mounting over the Digital Economy Bill. The Liberal Democrats have already changed their position and now support the bill being scrapped and re-introduced in the next Parliament. More MPs signing the EDM will continue to bring pressure on the government to withdraw this ill-conceived bill.
You can easily contact your MP through WriteToThem.
Britons' love for filesharing is here to stay – and Peter Mandelson had better get used to it
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 17.54 GMT
- Article history
Stop that copying! Peter Mandelson wants us to believe that a 70% reduction in illicit filesharing is a reasonable goal. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images
There's a lot to hate about Peter Mandelson's controversial Digital Economy Bill, but there's one provision that perfectly captures the absolute, reality-denying absurdity of the whole enterprise. That titbit is the provision that holds the Bill's most drastic measures in reserve, only to be used if Britain's illegal filesharing doesn't drop off by 70% within a year of the main part of the Bill coming into force.
The idea that, at some time in the future, the volume of unauthorised copying will somehow drop off at all (let alone by an astounding 70%), is, frankly, barking. For that to happen, Britain's general capacity for copying would have to decline faster than the increase in the British desire to make unauthorised copies.
Where does Britain's capacity to copy spring from?
First, from the increase in the speed of computers: faster computers can copy faster and better. They have faster busses, can access faster drives, and can undertake complex copying tasks (synchronising or partially synchronising two drives over a bus or network, encrypting files, downloading the same file from many sources at once).
Second, from the increase in the speed and capacity of storage media.
Storage media is increasing in density and speed and declining in price at an astonishing clip, and shows no sign of slowing. In 1994, I had the job of setting up a 9GB storage array for a pre-press shop. This array weighed about 70kg, cost $250,000, and took a skilled technician a whole day to set up and another day to correctly install.
I just counted up the SD, micro-SD, mini-SD and USB thumbs in the coffee-cup on my desk into which I throw such media when I receive it with new phones, cameras, etc, and discovered that I have about 700GB worth of storage that barely comes a third of the way up the cup. This media is so cheap that I literally don't know what it cost, because it was thrown in for free with my various devices. My postal scales tell me that it weighs 221g, all told.
And when it comes to high-speed, "bulky" storage (like the 500GB hard drive I bought on Amazon when I got my latest laptop), you get half a terabyte crammed into 100g for £54. If you've still got a desktop PC, you can get a larger, cheaper 500GB drive weighing 710g for £44, a 7200RPM model that can transfer 65MBps.
Third, an increase in the speed and availability of networks. The number of places we can expect to connect devices to the internet is going up very fast – though not as fast as storage or processor speed. There are tens of thousands of cafes, restaurants, hotels, airport lounges, and offices that offer connectivity to all comers.
Fourth, an increase in the versatility of networks and network tools.
Filesharing tools have gone from the primitive, easily monitored and abstruse (IRC or the early Napster) to a very easy, attack-resistant architecture that was built in response to entertainment industry attacks. What was once relatively benign – it would have been trivial to charge for access to Napster and audit what was downloaded to pay rightsholders – has become utterly virulent. The entertainment industry's reliance on the courts for a cheap and dirty fix to all its problems has mutated filesharing into a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that has no one to sue except for individual filesharers (and the most avid music filesharers are also the most avid music everything – CD buyers, concertgoers, bootleg collectors … When you live your life for music, you do everything musical in spades).
Fifth, an increase in the general technical competence of Britons. It's easy to see that the younger you are, the easier you find networks to negotiate and use. A generation has already come of age with the net all around them all the time, and there's a half a generation above them (myself included) who were early adopters. But now that everything is better with the net — from paying your gas bill to getting permission from the council to build a shed — everyone is learning. Libraries teach OAPs everything they need to know to type "Batman Returns download" into Google.
Peter Mandelson wants us to believe that a 70% reduction in illicit filesharing is a reasonable goal, but for any reduction to occur in filesharing, all the above factors will have to fall faster than Britons' desire to fileshare grows. It's not enough to take out the networks – just ask my old students at the University of Southern California, whose weekend hard-drive parties featured singing, guitar-playing, beer-drinking, and the synchronisation of terabytes' worth of data on the drives they brought over to their mates' houses.
When solid state hard-drives capacious enough to hold every song ever recorded can be had for a fiver at the corner shop (a mere few years from now), spying on networks will simply not suffice as a means of containing copying. When every OAP has been taught to use the net, when every homeless person has a scavenged netbook, when protocols have mutated again to hide their users' transactions with state-of-the-art cryptography, there will be no penalty harsh enough to make the tiniest dent in filesharing.
Mandelson argues that Britain's Digital Economy will be based on the contrafactual premise of a steady decrease in computer speed, drive capacity, technical competence, network versatility and network ubiquity. Of course, the real digital economy is in those British companies that figure out how to thrive whether or not copying occurs – companies that use networks to reduce their costs, reach larger customer bases, and provide services whose demand and profitability grow with network use, companies such as Last.fm or Moo.com.
These companies' businesses are inconceivable without the net, but they also risk being collateral damage in Mandelson's war on the British internet. Just increasing the liability for copyright infringement (and creating a duty to police user-submitted files for infringement) could bankrupt either company overnight. How would Moo sell business cards with your personal photos on them if they could be sued into oblivion should those photos turn out to infringe copyright?
Mandelson is standing up for the Analogue Economy, the economy premised on the no-longer-technically-true idea that copying is hard. Companies based on the outdated notion of inherent difficulty of copying must change or they will die. Because copying isn't hard. Copying isn't going to get harder. This moment, right now, 2009, this is as hard as copying will be for the rest of recorded history. Next year, copying will be easier. And the year after that. And the year after that.
And don't suppose for a moment that other countries are in the dark about this. Right now, the future of the world's economies hangs on each government's ability to ignore the Analogue Economy's pleading.
Countries that declare war on copying – and on all those businesses that are born digital – are yielding their economic futures to countries that embrace it, creating a regime that nurtures the net and those who use it.
If Mandelson wants to provide a subsidy to the Analogue Economy, he could order them to license their works to ISPs at a fixed fee, so that ISPs could opt in to offer Big Content's copyrights to their users and pay a fair price. There are many difficulties and headaches with this approach, but it has the advantage of having a hope in hell of succeeding (blanket licensing is already used to manage copyright in radio broadcast, live performance, sound recordings and other technologies); that is quite a big lead over the mad idea that somehow British copying will fall off by 70% (or fall off at all) in the next 12-18 months.
- The Guardian, Wednesday 25 November 2009
- Article history
Laws primarily work by consent, common sense and persuasion. Peter Mandelson's attempts to shock and scare internet users into obeying copyright laws will backfire, and meanwhile undermine rights we all hold dear – including the right to be presumed innocent (Editorial, 23 November).
My European parliamentary colleagues recently stood up for these rights in the new telecoms package. We firmly believe that Mandelson's proposals do not fit with the new law's statement that "measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned."
Lacklustre "appeal" mechanisms and punishments based on uncertain evidence do not, in our view, fit with this article. We, therefore, welcome the Guardian's justified outrage, and that of the 11,000 individuals who have signed the petition against these proposals on the Downing Street website.
Caroline Lucas MEP
In the UK Lily Allen joined calls for a crackdown on file-sharingThe European Parliament has approved a major overhaul of telecoms law across Europe.
The package includes a provision for "internet freedom" - the first time it has been referred to in law as fundamental right says the EU.
Member states have until May 24 2011 to include the legislation in their own rules.
It comes amid controversial laws being introduced in France and the UK to cut off persistent illegal downloaders.
Protecting internet access and users' rights was a high priority for MEPs hammering out the Telecoms Package.
Many critics say the eventual compromise solution is too weak and will not prevent disconnections.
Other measures in the telecoms package include an aim to harmonise the way mobile broadband is rolled out across the EU, which would help in the push to achieve 100% broadband coverage in Europe by 2013.
It also seeks to improve co-operation between member states' telecoms regulators and make it easier for incumbent operators to both provide and buy network services.
A law on citizens' rights aims to improve how quickly customers can change their mobile telephone number and strengthen personal data and privacy protection by, for example, allowing users to opt in to the use of cookies.
Fair hearing
Perhaps the most scrutinised part of the package is that which relates to file-sharing.
It comes as individual member states introduce tough penalties for those who download content illegally.
France has introduced a "three strikes" policy for those who share illegal content. If letters fail to stop them, illegal file-sharers risk being disconnected.
And the UK's Digital Economy Bill also seeks to impose technical restrictions, including disconnection, on persistent pirates.
Earlier this month, MEPs agreed on a compromise solution to protect user's rights which read: "A user's internet access may be restricted, if necessary and proportionate, only after a fair and impartial procedure including the user's right to be heard."
What the fair and impartial procedure will mean in practice is, as yet, unclear.
MEPs also agreed that restrictions on a user's internet access can only be taken "with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy".
But an earlier amendment which ruled that any application for cutting off internet access must go through a judge was rejected.
Some critics say the compromise is too weak while some lawyers argue that it could put the UK's newly introduced Digital Economy bill at odds with the Telecoms Package.
Meanwhile protests over the UK bill have grown, with 11,000 signing an e-petition against it while others predicted "civil unrest" as a result of the bill.
