UK to soon see the end of the internet? Above the law “Pirate-Finder” being created to police the web, invade privacy and freedoms!

Living in the UK and using the internet, particularly any type of torrent or P2P software/service whether legal or illegal is soon going to become a nightmare. The reason for the hoopala is because of an planned change to the Digital Economy Bill currently under debate by Pariliament. The person seeking those changes, Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, is aiming to create a “secondary legislation” that can amend laws and bills at will and without debate or approval from any other government party as long as it’s in the name of “copyright protection”. Bullshit. This guy is a f’ing idiot. It gets worse…

Well this just sucks all kinds of adjectivies preceeding nouns now doesn’t it?

Essentially the entire point of having a system of checks and balances is erased by this bill addition as it allows this new “Pirate-Finder” to work above and beyond the law that is set in place. Gee, I wonder who’s paying him to support such a bill……

The three golden reasons for the Secretary’s push:

1. The secretary of state would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused for infringement)
2. The secretary of state would get the power to create procedures to “confer fights” for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (Another example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies, and schools to turn over personal information about internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, and all kinds of extremely illegal actions.
3. The secretary of state would get the power to “impose such duties, powers, or functions on any person as my be specified in connection with facilitating onlien infringement” (yet another example, ISps could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web).

It doesn’t take a genius or even a tech guru to understand the extremity of these statements and just how illegal and absurd it is to believe that any government would even consider such things. Can the government not see how twisted and corrupt content owners, labels, and the government lobbyists who support them have become? This completely destroys any protections and freedoms invididuals have and gives them to a few assholes in thousand dollar suits.

It’s disgusting to think about really. The measures which are being proposed are so far past illegal I don’t know how any sane human could conceive them. I hope for the sanity of all UK internet users that this bill doesn’t pass with this clause in any form. Someone else out there has to be at least slightly enraged and at the same time worried for our friends across the big blue….right?

Boing Boing

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