As Frankie boyle said recently on Mock the week. (re lord Mandy) ‘Who made him a Lord anyway? The Sith?

How did we get to a position where non elected government members are dictating policy and Law?
This whole scenario smacks of blatant ear bending and old boys network from the money behind the copyright holders.
Nobody supports Piracy, but this is clearly about companies who have failed to develop retail models for the new digital information age and are trying to defend revenue streams that went out of date with Lord Mandelson’s hair cut!

Re: Max Zeus

Surely, in your example, the Motto would be “Treat a criminal like a criminal and they’ll carry on acting like a criminal”.

@splodgebucket
from the Blog:
That’s not what TalkTalk – one of the six ISPs involved – is saying this morning. “The evidence that is used to identify offenders is unreliable due to the prevalence of multi-users per account and Wi-Fi-hijacking and so will result in innocent customers being cut-off from broadband,” says TalkTalk, which branded the proposed legislation a potential “breach of human rights”.

the methodology is severly flawed, anything like what is being proposed should be shot down by the EU, much like the French 3 strike rules were.

If illegal file sharing is to be considered a criminal offence, then surely ‘on balance of probabilities’ is not a sufficient burden of proof? Never mind the moral principle, I would be amazed if it proved robust to appeal.

This may have been noted elswhere but are the media companies right in their assumption that filesharers will automatically pay for the music if they can’t download? I think that most won’t so the artists will have zero exposure.

The EU Convention on Human Rights guarantees:

Article 6 provides a detailed right to a fair trial, including the right to a public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal within reasonable time, the presumption of innocence, and other minimum rights for those charged with a criminal offence (adequate time and facilities to prepare their defence, access to legal representation, right to examine witnesses against them or have them examined, right to the free assistance of an interpreter).

Article 10 provides the right to freedom of expression, subject to certain restrictions that are “in accordance with law” and “necessary in a democratic society”. This right includes the freedom to hold opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas.

Article 11 protects the right to freedom of assembly and association

There is no way they will be able to get away with this shite. TalkTalk are correct. Restricting your freedom of association or ability to receive and impart information without trial will never stick.

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Hear that? It’s the sound of the next election getting closer. Be afraid, Labour…

I’m not defending illegal sharing. And for the most part, when it comes down to it , I would think others would be of the same opinion, copyright theft is theft. No argument.
My problem is with the cack handed and ill though out methodology they seem poised to adopt to tackle this issue. Maybe if the bloated fat cats in the recording industry (not the actual creative owners) took a bit of a profit hit and started trying to market content for a reasonable price (no media, no shop outlet etc) then there would be no need for pirates to exist?
Start cutting peoples internet connections and, as ledbelly says, sales of dvd blanks and blueray media will go through the roof. On the plus side, the Royal Mail will start making a profit again!

Can’t agree David, sorry. If you want to claim that Internet Access is a right, then you can’t make it into an intelligence test and then expect to see it used for more and more aspects of daily life. Cutting off a teleworker because their kid has set up LimeWire, or the branch of a business, is absurd – and the existing precedents for telco and ISP self-regulation show that they are all, without exception, not fit to manage such a situation. What about multi-occupancy houses or student digs? What’s the point in cutting those off for the behaviour of a single user? The “dumb enough” assessment should be applied to the enforcers, long before it’s pointed at the public.

They should be thinking along the lines of if you goto the movie you get a free 700Meg download link to a copy of the movie to download, with someone’s head in way of every climax scene and then you can give a copy to friends and family. And tell them how good the movie was

So, how are they going to work out if you’re file sharing or just transferring large amounts of data all day? I work from home for an IT dept, so quite often will be transferring large amounts of data such as install files for legitimate software that needs reinstalling on remote PCs. Are they going to assume that ‘you’ve uploaded 500MB of data today, that must be illegal?’

Look at this another way. Most of our government are, scientifically speaking, “Stupid and Ignorant”. They may be quite capable of robbing the poor and creating new human rights laws but when it comes to anything technical they do not have a clue. We really should not even argue with these people but simply say, “This is too stupid, in its present form, for us to even discuss and let alone enact.” Once you start discussing with these people they use your own information to tie you up in knots as a substitute for knowing what they are talking about and finding a good solution.

People, you just don’t get it! The vast majority of people who download copyright material do so because they can not afford to buy it.
The only reason they download is because it is free. Do the movie and music industries really believe that denying a single mother or low paid worker internet access will force them to bomb down to HMV and shell out £20 on Spiderman 4. They won’t because they don’t have the money!
It must be a real hardship for the movie and music executives to lie awake at night worrying about a lost sale to a single mother on £65 a week benifits who they believe would have blown a third of her income on a DVD to keep her 10 year old son occupied for 2 hours.
Or how about the 20 year old guy with no qualifications destined to perform manual labor for the rest of his life on minimum wage scrapping an existence rather than a living – how dare he download a few songs and deny someone in the music industry another Ferrari.
People who purchase original products do so because of two reasons, they can afford to and they have pride in ownership.
People who download copyrighted content cause no loss of income to either the move or music industrie. How can you claim to have lost revenue when the individuals downloading do so because of limited income.
If a woman going home by bus rather than a taxi because she can’t afford, passes a guy selling Prada knock off handbags and buys one for £10 – does that mean Prada lost revenue – of course not!
I’m not condoning any type of downloading but I just don’t except the concept of lost revenue by the blood sucking leeches of capitalism. Don’t you get it? They can not stand the loss of control. That the poorer members of society actually get something for little cost keeps them awake at night.
Each person belonging to the working class has a limited income and that is stretched more than ever. The ISP needs to be payed for their service, the electric needs to be payed for the PC to be switched on for long hours.
So where exactly is this money for more DVD’s and CD’s to be found?
I wish the internet were disconnected world wide for a year just to prove to these idiots that very little would change regarding their income.
Remember the old ‘HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’ message. Well did it!!!

If you feel strongly about this, don’t just write here; here are the guys to write to at the Dark Lord’s Castle:

mike.klym@bis.gsi.gov.uk,
adrian.brazier@bis.gsi.gov.uk

I have absolutely no sympathy for the music industry. The whole thing is a corrupt, unfair cartel anyway. Even if I do go out and spend £15 on a CD, barely £1 of that will actually make its way to the artist themselves.

I know there’s other costs involved, but for years the music industry has been content to pocket almost all the money from sales.

Then there’s the loudness war as well. Only in the music industry do people create a product, intentionally damage and degrade it, then complain when people find themselves less willing to part with money for it. The sound quality of modern CDs is frankly atrocious, yet I’m still expected to go and shell out £15 for 10 songs which sound like a flat wall of fatiguing and distorted racket.

Most industries would examine themselves and see how they could improve their products, the value of them and the ease of how they can distribute them to their customers, but not the music industry.

Nope, their business model has failed spectacularly and instead of trying to fix it, they just try and coerce the governments into approving draconian legislation to cut people off from the net if they’re even suspected of downloading a few songs.

Absolutely ridiculous.

@steve cassidy
“.. the right response to being teased by shallow materialism ..” but it isn’t shallow at all. It is deep psychoilogical brain-washing that is at play here, creating the must have the latest feel good sounds/movies endorsed by celebrities. These guys spend millions on learning how to “persuade” us to buy their crud; why should anyone be exempt from it? Why do you think ads are banned. We’re gullible. And SLRs get nicked as a result.

Steve Cassidy – a Mercedes SLR is tangible so that is not a good comparison. Although I understand your point.
If we accept a talented music artist can become wealthy with a successful album why is it wrong for the untalented who can not afford, to have a free copy of that artists work. Do not all genuine artists want to reach out to as wide an audience as possible or is it just about the money?
If I walk into HMV and shoplift a CD that is theft. If I download a copy and burn it to a disc I have paid for is that theft?
As far as I know it as a civil offence not a criminal offence.
With my downloaded copy nobody as lost anything because I did not take anything tangible and had no intension of buying a real physical product – so who as lost what?

My own personal view is a simple one. When you purchase original Music/Movie you pay for a real product that has value and quality. It is not a poor imitation that has missing content (movie) or poor audio quality (mp3).

When you download copyrighted material the tradeoff is in my opinion huge. But it is free.

So as a society what should we do – resent the fact that some people have not got whatever it takes to earn good money and whinge that while the rest of us (myself included) buy original copyright they make do with piss poor copies (that I would not be given) with half the content missing or makes a 15K HiFi (Yes mine) sound like a £50 ghetto blaster from Argos, but hell they got it for free.

Most people who download are just about keeping their head above water financially. They don’t have 2 or 3 holidays a year abroad. They don’t drive a Merc or BMW. They don’t walk round in a few hundred quids worth of clothes.
They don’t drop a couple of hundred quid in a restaurant.

But thay may be walking around with a £35 mp3 player listening to a 4 year old Oasis album they downloaded off the ‘tinternet’.
So lets get some laws passed that terminates their internet contracts and bangs them up like the parasite criminals they are.
Then we who can easily afford to buy our music and dvd’s and can at the very least get a sound nights sleep.

We’ve become accustomed to a shifted burden of proof through the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and other similar Orders. In the case of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, the Crime and Disorder Act has the word ‘proved’, unqualified. It was left to the Law Lords to decide that this is to an enhanced civil standard.
 
I can imagine some top politician viewing file-sharing as anti-social, and thinking the ‘Internet ASBO’ is the answer. Although, file-sharing isn’t anti-social. It’s the exact opposite. It’s the same sharing that the compact audio and VHS cassettes allowed. Those were limited to your circle of friends and family. Now, in the same way the Internet allows any two people with computer and webcam to have a face-to-face chat, you can share with the whole world.
 
Steve Cassidy wrote, “I am in favour of criminalisation of sharing ‘stuff’.” The idea that file-sharing should be criminalised is bizarre. Non-commercial copyright infringement is already a crime, when it’s done on a scale that causes significant harm to the rights holder. If there are a few people doing a lot, it’s feasible to attempt to collect evidence up to the criminal standard. We’ve seen this in cases such as OiNK and DVDR-Core. But, with file-sharing in general, we have many people each doing a little. Would it be acceptable to have the police raid tens of thousands of homes up and down the country that rights holders have accused of being the worst for file-sharing, with all computer-related equipment being taken away for forensic examination, in the hope of pinning it on individuals?
 
With millions of CCTV cameras and millions of police stops, I think we have enough intrusion in our everyday lives. We don’t need large numbers of homes being raided.

It isn’t like stealing a car! Of course it isn’t! Anyone spouting THAT argument should take a moment to consider…

If filesharing is stealing, why isn’t reading a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room? It’s putting a file(magazine) in a public environment(waiting room), where anyone can study it at their leasure thus denying the magazine a potential sale.

A friend lends me a book – I’m stealing and he’s denying the publisher a potential sale.

At a friend’s house, I choose a CD and put it on her player. That’s stealing – I haven’t turned any money over to the publisher, yet I’m listening to their product on-demand.