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/b/tards and Pirates Beware

DaleGribble1

“If you want, I can teach you how to make a bomb out of a toilet paper roll and a stick of dynamite.”

There was an interesting article published yesterday on boingboing.net about Britain’s new Internet laws that I think students (and owners of Utorrent) may be interested in.

The author of the article, Cory Doctrow, highlighted some of the law’s more ridiculous points

It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial).

Doctrow also describes the strain placed on Internet Service Providers by the law

A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

Of course Internet freedoms, including censorship and file-sharing, has been a popular topic for discussion since its inception into mainstream culture. The question for Americans is now whether or not the law proves to be popular enough for this country’s legislation to run with the idea and respond in kind.

In any case, you know someone out there is trying to figure out a way to “Hoard me up some Internet cause the government’s gonna take it away”

Better head to Costco.

  1. Betz says:

    What’s really gross about this law is the seemingly complete circumvention of any remnant of judicial processes – trials, penalties, and possible incarceration – for internet users by the “Business Secretary”, Peter Mandelson.

    The article goes on to explain that Mandelson basically has the right to invent whatever penalty he wants to, on almost anybody he chooses, for improper internet usage – without a shred of evidence needed.

    I’m sure the UK’s ISP’s are not happy about this. The buck of responsibility of enforcing internet usage has been foisted onto them. Call me crazy, but I think that the jobs and responsibilities of “enforcing” should be placed on those whose job it is to “enforce” laws – you know, the police – and not private enterprise.

    This is just bad, bad, bad …. or, in the language of internet Users …

    FAIL.

  2. Gsim says:

    I do what I wants on the internets. I am hiding behind 7 boxxies.

  3. C.T. Behemoth says:

    This situation is laughable.

    The ‘rulers of the series of tubes’ know that they can’t win, so they just try to make it a pain in the ass. Unfortunately for them, the more they focus on policing and not embracing the new developments…the more they hasten their demise.

    I’m talking to you BMG and Hollywood (and Metallica).

  4. Timothy says:

    You just mentioned the place we do not speak of by name….you are playing with dark forces, mate, dark forces indeed.

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