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British Internet File-Sharers to be Disconnected
28 Oct2009
This post was written by Admin
There is a storm of outrage brewing at Peter Mandelson’s latest idea to tackle online piracy. The business secretary’s new idea is to introduce tough measures for seeking out file sharing ‘Pirates’ and disconnecting them from the Internet through their ISP (Internet Service Provider).
France has just been able to pass a similar policy, called “graduated response” bill. This has also been met with fierce opposition from the European Parliament on several occasions with its main criticisms being that only Judges should have this type of power to be able to disconnect users from the Internet, not ISPs.
However, MEP Catherine Trautmann had persevered and amendment 138 has now been replaced by a weak provision which does not carry any safeguard for freedom by EU Citizens on the on-line world. This amendment can be seen here.
This has now sparked a mass of concern throughout the EU member states as it allows for greater restriction on the online world, and implementation of “three strike policies” throughout countries including the UK.
Mandelson, the UK Business Secretary, has acted on this and has been met with criticism over his proposals from the ISPs. Many of the ISPs such as Talk-Talk are calling the announcement “ill-conceived” and “wrong in principle”.
Fundamentally these proposals are an over reaction to a problems which could be resolved within the industry it is affecting, such as the music industry. File sharing is not illegal, and yet the new proposal will affect all file sharing – not just illegal music downloads.
The monitoring and policing of these policies will affect all internet users. In France the proposals will go so far to lock the IP addresses to set users in order to track and monitor internet usage and imposing a “white list” within free WiFi areas in order to secure possible loopholes in the scheme.
To impose such draconian policies will inevitably damage the productivity and e-commerce hub for UK internet users that has taken 10 years to bring to fruition. The problems are arising within in specific industries, and this is where they should be tackled head on, logging usage on specific sites, and setting up an organisation to monitor new media sites to ensure illegal activity does not happen.
Holding discussions between media artists and web and technology developers has to be a intelligent way to over come such issues as file sharing “piracy, rather than sending the UK back to the dark ages.
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1 Response to British Internet File-Sharers to be Disconnected
Lee
October 29th, 2009 at 10:49 am
If this happens service providers or the Government will have to either educate or send staff round to peoples homes in order to make sure everyone with Wi-Fi has their network fully secured, otherwise innocent people maybe cut off. One provider has already proven this point by hacking into home wireless networks (with the owners permisson) to show how easy it is and how unfair this whole idea is.
The piracy issue needs to be thought about alot more carefully than just cutting people off, personally it doesnt affect me as I hate downloading music and films, I prefer to actually have a product in my hands, but I find this whole idea very big brother and overboard.