Well, here it is, as expected, the Digital Economy Act. It starts getting interesting on page 5 (page 8 of the PDF). If you wanted further evidence that both of the two biggest political parties just don't understand the Internet, this is pedantic, but they spelt it with a small "i" throughout.
I, like tens of thousands of others, am obviously gutted that this is now becoming law, but I would just like to say kudos to Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, who fought vocally against this draconian piece of ignorant rubbish right from the start.
Aside from the awful content of the act itself, the complete lack of debate in the House of Commons on this bill was summed up pretty well by Don Foster, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath during the debate itself. He said:
We are often concerned about why members of the public hold us in such low regard, but anybody observing our proceedings tonight will not be convinced that this House is doing its job of holding the Government to account. We have spent more than an hour discussing just one clause of a 50-clause Bill in the knowledge that we have less than an hour left to cover all the remaining clauses-that is hardly evidence that we are doing our job properly. It is frankly totally disgraceful that a Bill of this complexity has been given so little time for debate in this House.
Only 40 MPs voted against the bill, including Foster, Watson and my current MP Lynne Jones, who had already written to me to let me know that she would. My current Labour candidate to replace Lynne Jones, Steve McCabe, voted for it despite admitting to me that he didn't think it was a great idea. Well he's lost my vote now.
In case you're interested, the full voting record is available as usual in Hansard, here (pages 96-99 of the PDF are the relevant ones).
Oh, and by the way, the act itself is probably a copyrighted document, with that crest and everything, so you probably don't want to download and read it from here.
Comments
It is a long-standing
It is a long-standing principle of English common law that ignorance is no excuse for non-compliance with a law. Thus, I believe that courts would reject any attempt to copyright laws, since any restrictions in their distribution may permit or strengthen defences based on ignorance. The state of Oregon tried to assert copyright on its statutes a couple of years ago (in order to raise money from sales of copies of laws), but I believe this attempt failed.
This is typical of the
This is typical of the government, irrespective of its public face, labour, conservative, liberal.The fact of the matter is, there is an overriding PERMANENT government which acts as the final arbiter on bills brought before parliament. the fact of the matter is. this act,"the digital economy act"was passed because there were financial incentives to pass the act, just as happens with the renewal of tee BBC applications for n increment, or continuation of, the TV licence fee. somnolent to which we are all subject regardless of whether or not we watch BBC television.( unless we can by some stroke of luck persuade the friendly, insignificant looking enquiry officer that we do not , indeed posses TV receiving equipment.) let me sum up by offering my definitional of piracy which the entertainment industry has so flagrantly bastardised at the expense of its performing artists who have little or no say in what is done with their revenue until they are fortune rough to have bank acounts fatter than the record/cd producers.
Piracy by my definition is the taking by force, any ship, vehicle or other form of transportation on the high seas,and claiming ownership of said vehicle, and the contents therein.
file sharing is a co operative endeavour between the user, the provider and everything in between. how long will it be before it is an offence to play music while your friends are visiting?are we heading towards a situation where a piece of music, or film will only function for one listening or viewing session, one one piece of equipment never to be heard gain without a per session payment? . we are moving away from the concept of mutual trust to a situation where "trust". is a commodity to be given out at the discretion of major corporations and institution.
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