(UK) Digital Economy Bill

[D3ads]

This is something that will affect a lot of UK users, I've never heard of it before and I wonder if some of the other UKers here have either, so here we go. Obviously if you live outside the UK then this isn't a concern for you.

Basically the UK Government are bringing a new set of laws in regarding the "digital economy", designed to combat piracy.

Sadly the bill is basically designed to criminalize anyone who uses a large amount of bandwidth - if you download a large amount of data (regardless of legitimacy) your internet connection will be either cut off entirely or reduced in speed. If you want it restored, then you will have to go through the lengthy and costly procedure of contacting your ISP to justify your bandwidth usage.

Furthermore, the Government are planning to block various websites; and private netspace for hosting files will be banned. This latter point especially irks me, since it's extremely important to modding teams.

Providers of publically available internet connections have indicated that they will be withdrawing from service, such is their fear of litigation once the bill comes into effect.

The official position of the Government is that the bill will be made law, without any public debate.

More information on the bill can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/ma ... onomy-bill

If this doesn't sound particularly cool to you, write to your local MP to petition for a debate. If the bill gets an open debate, then the law can be postponed - and ultimately hopefully disappear altogether. The campaign group 38degrees has a pre-worded document you can copypasta to your local MP http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speako ... einternetl

My thoughts;

Anyone who uses Steam to buy and download a 20gb game is going to be fucked... what the Hell? This is even worse than America's anti-digital crusade.. and there was me thinking that we were better off than most places...

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to purchase webspace sufficient enough to host files, many people rely on sites like megaupload and rapidshare to distibute files for media and modding purposes as aforementioned as it's quick, easy and free to all involved.

The people behind this are probably a bunch of retards who probably hate video games and the Internet anyway... it's all a fucking fix! I don't know if cba to write any emails/letters to MPs though, it seems pointless to bother since this is a fixed backdoor agreement that lots of people will never hear about...

Discuss.

[sarge mat]

Christ I didn't know it would effect anyone who downloads a lot even if its not illegal stuff. Who knows what's going to happen with it now that the election is set for early may. Some where going to rush it though but others called for it to be held back. The fact is its been written by people who don't have a clue about the modern world.

Bit pointless me writing to my local MP. I live in Northern Ireland and her party refuse to take their seats. Fucking hate this place.

But anyway it looks like a lot of people are taking notice of this so I hope we can get it sorted.

[Psy]

I guess today's judgement day as it's going in for a second hearing at 3:30pm. Let's hope for the best. :\

[Pampers]

wtf is this a joke? whats the point of getting a fast connection if they are just going to cap it anyway?

first Australia now the UK

[Steppenwolf]

Lol how the hell do they want to enforce that? Also whats this bullshit about using a lot of bandwidth? So i take it you don't have HD pay TV via broadband in britain?

They should call it Anti Digital Economy Bill actualy.

[PogoP]

Won't really affect me as I'm with shitty Virgin Media in Stoke on Trent and get around 800 bytes per second anyway

But that really is shocking. I hate how they think they can combat piracy just by limiting people's bandwidth.... That just doesn't work...

[dux]

It just goes to show how out of touch they are. I'd get pissed over this but there's no point, nothing I, or anyone else I expect, can do about it.

[BaRRaKID]

www.torrentfreak.com as several news and opinion posts about this if anyone is interested.

[Mazy]

Yeah, having civilization progress FORWARDS was getting old, this is much more interesting.

What a fucking farce, if that goes through.

[Chavvo]

UK trying to be China?

One more method that probaly wont works, the "new" and stupid one is to reduce the bandwidth depending on the ammount of data you download, i never seen anything more stupid than this. Piracy files are not the only ones that have a huge size, so even when you get a legal file you'll spend time and energy to restore yout connection. Fuck off UK.

About the host sites condemnation I have nothing to say, ridiculous.

More ridiculous than all this happened in Brazil, some years ago the local government blocked the youtube cuz a paparazzi busted a famous girls (in brazil) having sex on the sea

[Thrik]

This sounds so mental I can barely believe it'd actually happen, especially when government-backed corporations like the BBC have been aggressively pushing high-bandwidth services like streamed TV during the past year or so. It's going to affect so many legitimate uses it's unreal, to the point where it'd just cripple internet use in the country.

[the0rthopaedicsurgeon]

there's a video of the debate on the bbc site. the culture secretary says the bill is meant to protect our 'creative sectors', when not only do record labels take the vast majority of record sales (of which out of the largest, only one is british), but if their definition of piracy is 'lots of bandwidth', how is that going to tackle people downloading 5mb MP3s? i don't think the film industry suffers as much, especially with the money they're still making, but they're ignoring the fact that every downloaded song/movie/game is not a lost sale; a lot of people who pirate wouldn't buy the things they're downloading however much they cost, other people use them as demos before buying them legitimately.

but this doesn't actually surprise me, this government is absolutely clueless about any form of technology, and now the election is only weeks away they try to rush through as many laws like this as they can while most MPs are away campaigning and the media are away covering the election.

[Sentura]

Won't really affect me as I'm with shitty Virgin Media in Stoke on Trent and get around 800 bytes per second anyway

But that really is shocking. I hate how they think they can combat piracy just by limiting people's bandwidth.... That just doesn't work...

capital punishment at its finest.

if i can have a say here, i think you guys in the UK (and honestly, around the world too) need to vote people into congress who have a grip on the age of the internet. a few bad eggs is never enough to warrant capital punishment, and certainly not one this harsh. unfortunately i don't think it is only the fact that ignorant people are in your congress - i think largely the fact that any sort of investigation on piracy and internet use costs money; and it may be too much money to shell out for something most people outside of the computer business to care.

[D3ads]

I don't think anyone in congress has a decent grasp of the Internet, except maybe Cameron...

[D3ads]

there's a video of the debate on the bbc site.

I'm watching some of this (damned if I'm going to watch all 4 hours of it!), it's very clear from this that as I said before... none of these people are in-touch users of the Internet and probably only ever use it rarely if at all..!

I still want them to say what would be a "suspicious" amount of data before someone gets a letter through their door...