In the UK, a Plan To Criminalize Illegal Downloaders 382
krou writes "It looks like the launch of the UK Pirate Party came not a moment too soon. The Independent reports that Business Secretary Lord Mandelson is going to take a hard-line stance to preserve copyright after intense lobbying by the music and film industry. 'Under the proposed laws, Ofcom, the industry regulator, would be given powers to require Internet service providers to collect information on those who downloaded pirate material. The data would be anonymous, but serious repeat infringers would be tracked down through their computer ID numbers.' Prospective punishments included restricting internet access, either slowing down an offender's broadband or disconnecting them altogether, and fines up to £50,000. The Pirate Party came out against the scheme, calling it a gross invasion of civil liberties, while Tom Watson, the former minister for digital engagement, spoke out against the move, saying that the government should stop trying criminalize downloaders just so as to 'restore 20th-century incumbents to their position of power,' but should instead be 'coming up with interventions that will nurture 21st-century creative talent.'"
anonymous? (Score:5, Insightful)
The data would be anonymous, but serious repeat infringers would be tracked down through their computer ID numbers.
This must be some definition of the word 'anonymous' that I was not previously aware of.
Criminalise Illegal Downloaders? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought criminalising something was where you took something that wasn't illegal ( but a significant amount of people do ) and making it illegal?
Re:Criminalise Illegal Downloaders? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright infringments are not in the criminal code, at least not in civilized countries where the criminal code is reserved for laws "against the general population". Things like murder, rape and arson are in there, where you may assume that someone doing it is posing a threat to anyone and everyone, not just to a selected group of people, or that someone is posing a threat to life and wellbeing of a person, a group or everyone.
In general, these things are prosecuted by the state without you requiring to sue (it's one of those things where the cases are called "the people against "+$name.
The alternative is the civil code. Here, you have to sue if you care about someone doing something. Here you have things like slander or trespassing. I could maybe not care if someone told everyone I have a romantic inclination towards fish, or I could probably not care that my neighbor constantly walks through my yard. I have the right to make them stop, if necessary by legal force, sue them and I will get my right, but the state and attorney couldn't care less until I make the first move.
What's been done by the RIAA (and its local counterparts) is to push copyright towards the criminal code. The idea is simple: Save money, and have you, the taxpayer, pay to protect their rights.
Re:Mandelson (Score:4, Insightful)
p.s. somehow Grand Viziers tend to be portrayed rather "unsympathetically" in books and films, wonder why
Copyright is stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
It deprives us from works becoming public property long after they cease to be economically feasible, being held hostage by the 'rights owners' who refuse to let them go into PD and be renewed, to serve as a foundation for new work, new art, as it has been so many times before. We are deprived from the same rights that authors and musicians during the times enjoyed, to look at what was, rethink it, rephrase it and wrap it in new clothes. Think of all the plays and movies that are based on the basic idea of Romeo and Juliet (and I'm not talking about cheezy works like the one movie with Leonardo), something that could not be done if Shakespeare lived and worked today.
How many songs have been written that used classic tunes and parts thereof as their base, rearranged and reworked to fit the tastes of today? Have you ever heard Vanessa Mae play Toccata and Fuge? If Bach lived today he could demand that his work is to be played with organs only and we would never hear this goosebump-creating work of violin again. Ever.
You see how easily that argument is turned around? Why shouldn't we spin "copyright is stealing" in return?
Britian the land of the ... err free? (Score:4, Insightful)
So we have more camera surveillance than anywhere else.
We have more regulations than most places. And now we are going to help out the big money companies by criminalizing use of the internet.
Why are we helping a business model that doesn't work and is being flogged to death. UK industry used to be innovative and groundbreaking. Now instead of encouraging evolution of business, we are actively saying we will help you keep your outdated methods and kick the people who innovate.
We should be telling the record/movie industry to move with the times and only help when they have proven they have made changes that are compatible with the customers of the day.
Yes I know about iTunes and other services. but the pricing models applied to them are often the same (or worse) than physical media. And with all the DRM pain when the industry failed again to move forward, these methods have a bad name.
Things are changing and people *are* still buying music and movies. the losses the industry report assume that the downloaded tracks would have been bought (which is rarely the case) only a small preparation of downloaded music would have ever been bought. the rest would have been borrowed (taped/copied) from physical media as has been going on for many years. I don't ever remember a lawsuit over the sale of a dual tape deck that could copy between two tapes.
More interestingly, downloaded music can lead to more sales as bands that are not mainstream are discovered and shared.
I don't condone illegal music downloads. I do condone the use of laws to fund outdated industries that have big enough pockets to buy politicians.
Re:Copying is stealing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You wouldn't steal a car... (Score:5, Insightful)
[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. /Godwin.
It's the Big Lie technique, through and through. Do you really expect otherwise from these mooks?
Re:Mandelson (Score:4, Insightful)
What constantly astounds me about Mandelson is the lack of furore about the fact that he's unelected. We didn't vote for this man. How the hell did he get to be running the country?
What is an illegal download? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep It Simple, Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One in 12 of the population might disagree. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Criminalize Leaks of private information by Gov (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a law passed that criminalizes The leakage of private information by Govt or its supreme "Yes, Minister" servants.
That way, the next time some MP or minister or a civil servant loses a hard disk containing private information, he/she faces hard time in a Federal Prison: for 10 years or more.
Why doesn't someone get the stupid ministers to pass a law like this?
There already is such a law - the Data Protection Act forces organisations to keep data secure and a major mortgage company were fined for losing a laptop which had a whole lot of personal information on it. (They later announced that they'd pass this fine on to customers because they "didn't think it was fair" to pass it onto the executives, and nobody raised a stink. Go figure.)
There is the minor issue that AFAICT the only thing they can do is fine an organisation - and of course there's only one place government can get money from to pay such a fine...
An artist's view. (Score:5, Insightful)
Definition of "illegal?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't it redundant to "criminalize" something that is already illegal? Isn't that sort of the definition of "illegal?"
Funny, I thought they were synonymous.
Re:Copyright is stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the old 'Big Lie' method of propaganda. Just keep repeating it!
You assert that without copyright there is no content.
Therefore Linux does not exist, I have a computer at home that displays nothing but a blank screen, and I only imagine it has an operating system in my diseased CyberCommie mind.
Also, music came into existence with copyright. Prior to the 18th century music was a concept unknown to the human race. The 10,000 year old wind instrument recently dug up was clearly as fraudulent as all the dinosaur skulls that ruin nice peoples bedtime stories.
Furthermore, there is a perfect correlation between how much revenue a film generates and its artistic merit. Expensive movies are critically acclaimed and popular, movies made on a shoestring budget are critically panned and never attract an audience.
It must be nice to live in a complete fantasy world :)
Re:An artist's view. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wtf is up with the UK? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its complicated. With a wide and varied population you can't identify a singular reason. Let me see if I can have a crack at enumerating a few though:
1. Boiling frogs. There was never an Enabling Act really, more a series of measures which have slowly made us one of the least free people in Europe. Ask any of my fellow Brits, I bet none of them can definitively name a date when the government anti-freedom agenda began.
2. Thatcherism. Old milk-snatcher mounted a long, brutal, and ultimately successful campaign to decimate the base of her political opponents. This has left any political organization that doesn't blindly follow the dictats of the City out in the wilderness with few members. Sometimes I don't think Americans appreciate how horrific it was; they just assume she was a clone of Reagan - but she was much worse.
3. Media lockdown. The BBC doesn't have a mandate to really rip the government a new one. The papers are owned by people with heavy financial interests in the government. Murdoch has a vast media empire (several newspapers, and the very popular Sky television network) which basically dictates policy. In one instance, the Murdoch-owned Sun ran a 'campaign' to get the then home secretary David Blunkett to make some token move against immigrants, which he ultimately acceded to in an interview with the Sun. Thing is, he had his interview with the Sun to announce this very initiative already arranged before their 'campaign' started.
4. Paranoia. Britain is a very fearful society, largely for reasons 1 and 2 above. The assumption that everyone is ruthless and out for themselves is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because believing everyone else is a greedy scheming fucker makes it easier to be one yourself.
5. Deference. The curse of British society. We are conditioned by centuries of culture to defer to those of higher social classes. Even icons of the left such as Bertrand Russel and Tony Benn come from aristocratic stock, and their aristocratic manner helped them become iconic. The concept of 'betters' is sold to ordinary people by the tacit suggestion that, whilst they have their betters, they are in turn better than others...
6. Scapegoating. British people don't look up for the source of problems, they look down. Its the chavs. Its the muslims. Its single mums. Aside from taking the heat away from power, it also helps sell deference by telling people that there are 'scum' out their that they are better than.
There will be more reasons. Frankly, I think my country is doomed.
Re:Copyright is stealing (Score:2, Insightful)
When over half a century has passed, something like Disney's perpetual ownership of Mickey Mouse--long after the figure himself has become, in effect, a part of the public domain (to use the term in the sense in which it was intended, and not the legal one), so much so that passing allusions are sufficient to invoke collective association with the character--said perpetual ownership is impeding progress. Walt Disney is dead, and I don't think that it's in anyone's best interest (nor was it the intent of copyright laws) to subsidize the existence of the creator's children long after he's dead. People want to get paid for what they do, and that's understandable and perfectly legitimate. But I think any reasonable artist/musician/etc. is not so blind as to expect their work to support their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on for a hundred years after they die, or even to desire that to happen. (IMHO, nothing stifles creativity and sense of self like having everything handed to you--but that's only MHO.)
It's an inherently arbitrary and subjective assessment to give any kind of fixed-length term to a copyright, but I think we all agree that there should be some protection for those who have created these works. The question is how much is sufficient to inspire continued creativity and invention. And that is what we should be debating.
Re:Copyright is stealing (Score:2, Insightful)
Did I? I don't recall doing that. I do, however, remember saying that any given commercial, copyrighted work, there's a good chance that that work would not have been created without copyright.
Unfortunately "argument by strawman" is not generally considered a logically valid argument.
Even though your conclusion is based on fallacious premises, you could also have picked a better example, i.e. one that doesn't use copyright, i.e. one that was always in the public domain since creation.
I hear it's also nice to live in a world where every argument against you can be shoehorned in a nice, easily-refutable mould. It, too, is a fantasy world, but I've never managed to let go and roll with it. Those pesky people with intelligence and moderation in their views keep getting in the way.
Re:anonymous? (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the link. I think I will submit a response. I submitted one to Gowers as well, not that that did us much good as the government quietly reversed their position on things like copyright term extension later despite a very, very clear view from the public submissions that this was not appropriate. Still, at least it is a matter of public record that pretty much everyone except the media did oppose that change.
In this case, I don't have a problem with penalising those who blatantly break the law using P2P. It is, after all, against the law, and the law is not unreasonable in most cases that would be affected. However, when penalising those who break the law, there should be due process and judicial oversight. The idea of giving Big Media direct access to legal resources without such oversight is... well, take a look at what happened in the US, and it's pretty clear that it's a bad idea. Unless, of course, there are statutory provisions entitling me to compensation of £100 per hour plus all other legal fees and consequential losses in the event that I am wrongly accused and have to defend myself.
Re:Mandelson (Score:2, Insightful)
You know nothing about me you patronising cocksucker. The old chestnut of 'when you get older you will understand' is just an excuse to avoid addressing somebodies arguments on their own merit.
Socialism (by which you mean, anything not pure capitalism) is a faith? But I suppose YOUR views are founded on pure logic and reason? Logic and reason that will, regardless of the evidence your are presented with, always vindicate capitalism? You really haven't taken a hard look at yourself have you?
The fact you classify Mandelson as a socialist shows just how far gone your 'thinking' is. After 30 years of Thatcherism, your idiotic prescription is more Thatcherism, based on the premise that every bad politician must be a 'socialist'.
You clearly consider yourself an intellectual, privy to a great truth that the other 'sheep' just cannot see. There are some people who believe this, and is true. There are many more people who believe this, and are medicore minds wearing tinfoil helmets. Make an honest appraisal of the stats and work out which you are.
Re:media types (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism is socialism for the rich
Mining had to die, because 'the market' said so. Manufacturing, shipbuilding, all the other things had to go to. But when industries that the ruling classes have deep interests in, such as media or banking, start losing money - they must be saved to 'safeguard jobs' and 'protect creativity'.
Twas ever thus. The market promotes self-interest, and self-interest distorts the market for its own benefit. Capitalism always does this.
Re:What is an illegal download? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think most courts would contend that any reasonable person would know that the files being offered through links on Pirate Bay are not sanctioned. Conversely any reasonable person would agree that files being offered for purchase through iTunes are sanctioned. But there is a wide middle-ground. YouTube now has so many officially-sponsored channels and deals that it's hard to know, when you watch something, whether it was posted officially or not. In fact there are even a few cases of takedown notices being sent against legitimate postings (the legal branch of some consortium sends a notice to a band's official YouTube channel, for instance). If you search for various TV shows, you'll find a range of sites offering to stream them for "free" (with ads), ranging from Hulu to sites in foreign languages I can't read. How is the consumer supposed to know which ones have licenses and which ones don't? And then there are sites like allofmp3, which are also ambiguous.
It seems really dangerous to criminalize a behavior when it can be so difficult (impossible, really) to know whether or not you're in strict violation of the law. Which is why it makes much more sense to focus on unlicensed distributors, and not on downloaders.
Re:anonymous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is more insulting that equating being technically literate with 'defending the anonymity of internet pirates'.
Welcome to slashdot.
I tend to agree with you regarding downloading (though I'm fully supportive of significant copyright reform), but what this amounts to is government monitoring in your home. As the internet grows in significance in people's lives, the information broadband providers can collect on them has too - what your read, what you say, what you buy. That data should not be collected by the government. You mention traffic cameras, but that's another balancing act - illegal driving leads to deaths, illegal filesharing may slightly undermine some commerce. I'll mention your mail. Should the government read your post to check for illegal activities? (Sure, it'll x-ray a package to make sure there are no guns, or run it past a sniffer dog for drugs, but these don't intrude to the same extent.) Should it monitor your book purchases and library use for inappropriate materials? Alternatively, we could put microphones in your house to ensure you have appropriate licenses for all of your music use. The crowd on here does tend to take an extreme libertarian perspective, but it's not as simple as saying they're wrong. Ultimately, their argument is not even that the crime shouldn't be detected and prosecuted for (though many will say just that), but rather that the tools being proposed are not suitable for a government.
Re:And how will this be done? (Score:3, Insightful)
They do what they already do, join BitTorrent swarms, note down the IP addresses in the swarm, see which ISPs they belong to, if the ISPs are UK ISPs, contact them to get their details, or get them via court order, then they sue.
The problem is that BitTorrent is by default weak to this type of attack - you have to connect to a public tracker for a specific piece of content.
If you use USENET to just download off of newsgroups on foreign servers using SSL then you should be safe to all government legislation and attempts to crack down on piracy, unless they take it to the extreme of making ISPs perform man in the middle attacks on SSL connections to see what is being transferred and catch you that way, but I don't think even Labour would go that far- it would have too many side effects, such as reducing confidence in online shopping and banking at UK firms if it was known that encrypted connections were being snooped.
Realistically I think if these laws go ahead a lot of people who don't understand the vulnerabilities of P2P systems like BitTorrent do leave them open to getting caught. Personally I do not believe an IP address connected to a tracker is an acceptable level of evidence of a crime as it's so fundamentally flawed, but unfortunately it seems people in government do believe it's acceptable. This catching of large amounts of people will go one of three ways, either it will kill off British file sharing (but leave other methods like burning CDs for mates, direct downloads, USENET etc. intact), it'll lead to a cat and mouse game where technology (such as anonymous networks built for file sharing) arise to work around the inherent vulnerabilities of bittorrent or it'll lead to public discontent and political pressure will force the government to backtrack.
Either way, if you use P2P, it's going to be a bumpy road.
Re:Mandelson (Score:5, Insightful)
Heinrich Himmler spent years scheming and manipulating to finally work himself into a position of immense power. It is that scheming and manipulation that allowed him to consolidate his position of power leading up to WW2. His behavior showed someone extremely driven (at almost any cost) to seek any way to gain power over others. Psychologically that's very interesting, as it strongly points to a personality disorder that I strongly suspect Mandelson shares many aspects with. A good example is their extreme self interest, with such a total lack of empathy for opponents. Knowledge and lies are a weapon to people like this. Mandelson is exactly like this. (People like them so often learn from a young age that lying gets them what they want and as they have no empathy to others they don't care they are lying. Worst still, they sadly see most people as overly trusting pawns their lies easily manipulate. Even worse, they consider themselves smarter for winning over trusting people).
We have seen atrocities throughout human history, so sadly there's nothing special about our time. Given the right circumstances (or more to the point, wrong circumstances) seemingly innocent people today would sadly be capable of similar levels of horrific contempt and lack of empathy to opponents and people they just see as their pawns, in their own rampant driven for self advancement at the expense of others. For example, the act of treating 1 person with contempt or 10 million people with contempt is simply the difference between the amount of power the person in power has. But if someone with a huge amount of power treats the lives of 10 million people with contempt, then you will find hundreds of thousands of people out of the 10 million are likely to end up dying if the contempt lasts months and years. We have seen that repeated throughout history and around the world. The people in power at the time, often don't want the 10 million to die. The point is, they don't care if they live or die. Their only concern if the 10 million died is what effect would that have on their own position of power. Its a totally self interested mindset. They don't even think about the victims they are only interested in how that affects them. Thankfully most people don't think like this sick minority of people, but sadly this minority so often seeks to gain extreme power over others, ultimately for their own gain from having such power over others.
If the world is to ever progress, we *all* need to learn to recognize this kind of person and then together we would have the power to stop them holding such positions of power over us all.
Re:Copying is stealing (Score:1, Insightful)
I have been COPYING music for 30 years, when cassette tapes came out the same cry went up. It will ruin the industry, people will stop making music, think of the poor starving artists you are stealing from. But they had no way of finding out how many tapes I was giving out, or tracking which records I borrowed. One of the best things about having a library card back then was taking out records and recording them.
They are desperate but most of us who are over 40 remember the crap from back then, and now we are starting to get into postions where we can tell these guys to shove it up their arse
Re:Criminalise Illegal Downloaders? (Score:3, Insightful)
Physical theft is considered a crime, because it deprives someone of a good...
Copyright infringement on the other hand, does not deprive anyone, and it is impossible to prove that something would have been purchased had it not been available for free.
Infact, it has been shown that copyright infringement has actually increased sales of various things, as it increases the product exposure, at least assuming the product is any good... If the product is really lousy, then people might tell their friends how crap it was and discourage them from purchasing it.. They would do this anyway, but you lose out on ripping off the original people with crap.
Re:Copyright is stealing (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, sorry you got modded troll. :/
Too many moronic moderators these days use Troll in place of "I don't agree"
It's not depriving you a helluva lot more than the alternative, i.e. the works not being created in the first place. For any commercial work created under copyright, there is a very good chance that it would never have been created without copyright.
That is flat out wrong, and provable.
Copyright is only a couple hundred years old, yet creative works of art have been made for over 10,000 years.
I mean, the Renaissance?
Most of the expansion of human knowledge has come about without any form of copyright protection, and in fact is measurably slower now which some say might be due to stifling effects of copyright.
For every 1 company that makes some new advance in technology, a thousand more are prevented from improving upon it for their lifetime.
In an age where scientific discoveries no longer need to take multiple life times, and a person can see the results of the same work they started, it seems more than counter intuitive to artificially limit human advancement just so some large companies can continue to rape profits from those that actually created the things that make the companies rich.
In fact, that statement is yet another example of the deep sense of entitlement that has permeated our hearts and minds over culture since piracy became popular.
You're right. Artists and their sense of entitlement over ideas that are impossible to 'own' is destroying our country, culture, and scientific advancement. I fully agree with you here.
Personally, I would rather live without a piece of crap art someone only made because they wanted a buck, in exchange for advancement of science that would make mine and everyone elses quality of life improve leaps and bounds.
After all, real artists create art for the sake of creating art. Money isn't a factor, it's only nice to get for it.
I don't do what I love for my profession either. I can't help but do the things that interest me, even for free. That's why I also work at a job, to have money to live on. Artists should remember how the rest of the world lives and come back to reality.
Re:Mandelson (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Britain, not a democracy, why does he need anyone to vote for him? No-one voted for Brown, and two-thirds of the country voted against the ruling party in the last election yet they were returned with a large majority.
You've never needed an electoral mandate to rule this country, what are you so surprised about?
Re:Criminalise Illegal Downloaders? (Score:2, Insightful)
"It doesn't directly. Someone who pirates something that they genuinely wouldn't have paid the asking price for hasn't increased the price for anyone else. By contrast, stealing a physical item that they wouldn't have paid the asking price for does impose costs on those that it is stolen from."
Yes it does. For starters, once person may not be a direct loss in sales, but as it's shared more and more and easily accessible by the masses, the owner of the copyrighted material will see less sales over time. Also, if companies know it's easy to pirate their stuff, they will start investing more money in protection, which will drive the price up for the consumer.
Copyright is Stealing (Score:1, Insightful)
And I'm not being Orwellian at all. It's plain fact. Copyright gives other people power to dictate how I may or may not use my own private property. If I buy a book written by Orwell, the estate of Orwell has legal power over what I may and may not do with that book--my own property. This a a gross violation of the most important right that underpins social progress: the right to private property. Ergo, Copyright is Stealing.
Re:anonymous? (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't respond to the ACGP, but Star Wrek: In The Pirkinning was produced for a few thousand dollars. Only twenty years ago it cost a fortune to produce an album, now it's within everyone's reach. It won't be long before MPAA vs indies is where RIAA vs indies is now.
The MPAA's situation is more dire than the RIAA's, because the RIAA has radio. The MPAA has theaters that suck. Your idea is one the MPAA should look into. Rather than surround sound they should keep the sound on or behind the screen, with a separate channel driving a separate speaker at each corner.
They should lower their rediculous prices, too. And serve alcohol. I'm sure there are a lot of other ways they could make the theater experience far better than it is now.
Re:anonymous? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for after the fact rationalization, it was prior the fact, tyvm, except anyway our copyrights lobby managed to levy a tax on blank media instead: again, it doesn't go in the pocket of who makes the art, but the copyright trolls.
But you'd rather be a sanctimonious ass, I figure.
Re:anonymous? (Score:3, Insightful)
you say the word lobbyist as if it is a bad word.
What do you think democracy is? The interested parties lobby to get their way.
What you have a problem with is not lobbying.... but the fact that lobbies you do not like are successful. ...
Corporations are a lobby.
Public sector unions are a lobby.
Lawyers are a lobby.
You could easily form your own lobby with whatever you wish. Get some names. Get people out there to care about the issue, and you too can influence government.
In any case. I do not believe in democracy for this very reason. I believe in a republic. Rule of law above the rule of men.