Reactionary
Mar. 3rd, 2010 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Look! This post is not about That Video Game.
Instead, it's about the UK Digital Economy Bill. According to the Parliamentary website on the subject, this Bill is at the report stage in the House of Lords. But that's the only place you can currently find any in-depth information on the Bill and the changes being made to it that isn't a (and pardon me but I know no better way to put it) tech-geek blog. Seriously - I did a Google search for news on the subject and I got tech-geek bloggery and a couple of news articles barely relevant if you took the words I was searching and shuffled them around a bit. Nothing from the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, the Beeb... But then again, the Beeb are having their own problems, what with the push to save BBC6 Music. Still, while the news about the recent Lib Dem Lords' ideas for the UK Digital Economy Bill is fairly recent, we haven't seen even a glimmer in 'mainstream news' and I doubt we're going to except in a easily-hidden blurb in a corner of page 5. No one really wants to make an issue out of reactionary bullshit that promotes censorship in a bid to make media moguls happy.
Basically, the whole thing stems around the attempt to deal with copyright infringement. There are easy ways to deal with copyright infringement. For starters, there's establishing a single universal global release date for media, which would prevent the poor sods with international friends and a yen to see the programmes said international friends are on about from having to torrent said show just to see it at the same approximate time as said international friends. While we're at it, there could also be steps taken to ensure that there's a universal format for things like DVD releases and iTunes videos and stuff showing on BBC iPlayer so that those of us who want to own something that may never be released in the format our nation uses can still actually give companies our money and get what we want, instead of having to torrent the thing just to be able to see it at all. There's ditching the restrictive, buggy, impossible to purge DRM measures that some companies (looking at you, Sony) stick in their digital media, because I know a fair few people who will torrent something because they don't want to risk putting DRM software on their computers and don't know how to remove it once it's in. All these things and more (there will be an upcoming rant about how, if people want to increase sales of media, they should produce media worth buying for a change) could be done to deal with a good 75% of the reasons people tend to torrent stuff. There's always going to be theft (let's face it; every business that produces a product has to account for 'shrinkage' and digital media isn't going to be any different) but there'd be a lot less piracy if it wasn't so hard for people to get what they want by actually ... y'know, paying for it.
But no, the UK government has apparently decided that the best way to deal with the copyright infringement issue is to crack down on the end user. Because apparently, going on a yacht cruise with David Geffen and then trying to force yourself into the position of Pirate-Finder General (to coin the phrase of one Cory Doctorow) is a sight easier than turning around to Mr Geffen and saying, "Look, you're bringing this on yourself". Apparently it's easier to force ISPs, under penalty of six-figure fines, to invade the privacy of their customers by monitoring activity and then shut off the internet of an entire household if they are deemed to be violating copyright (whether or not everyone in the house was responsible for said copyright violation, which strikes me as a terrible miscarriage of justice, and the inclusion of a cafe or pub's wifi capability or even a library internet network because someone downloaded something the government says they shouldn't have over said network only makes it worse) than to actually deal with the problem.
And now two Lib-Dem Lords are talking about blocking sites that is deemed to contain "a substantial portion of [CONTENT]" that violates copyright. Which sounds rather like YouTube and any blog that contains a large number of embeds to YouTube videos, no?
I'm hoping this never gets past the Lords. I don't see how it can. The "Three Strikes" system is going to be hard enough to implement without people jumping up and down and screaming about miscarriage of justice because they're punishing the innocent along with the guilty. The forcing ISPs to invade the privacy of customers and fining them if they don't comply is going to take more restructuring of their systems than any company is willing to undertake. And if they try to censor YouTube because of its ostensible copyright violations? Someone's going to start making really unflattering comparisons to China and it'll get ugly. This is reactionary, overzealous, nonsensical and utterly unworkable, and the sooner it gets snuffed, the better.
Instead, it's about the UK Digital Economy Bill. According to the Parliamentary website on the subject, this Bill is at the report stage in the House of Lords. But that's the only place you can currently find any in-depth information on the Bill and the changes being made to it that isn't a (and pardon me but I know no better way to put it) tech-geek blog. Seriously - I did a Google search for news on the subject and I got tech-geek bloggery and a couple of news articles barely relevant if you took the words I was searching and shuffled them around a bit. Nothing from the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, the Beeb... But then again, the Beeb are having their own problems, what with the push to save BBC6 Music. Still, while the news about the recent Lib Dem Lords' ideas for the UK Digital Economy Bill is fairly recent, we haven't seen even a glimmer in 'mainstream news' and I doubt we're going to except in a easily-hidden blurb in a corner of page 5. No one really wants to make an issue out of reactionary bullshit that promotes censorship in a bid to make media moguls happy.
Basically, the whole thing stems around the attempt to deal with copyright infringement. There are easy ways to deal with copyright infringement. For starters, there's establishing a single universal global release date for media, which would prevent the poor sods with international friends and a yen to see the programmes said international friends are on about from having to torrent said show just to see it at the same approximate time as said international friends. While we're at it, there could also be steps taken to ensure that there's a universal format for things like DVD releases and iTunes videos and stuff showing on BBC iPlayer so that those of us who want to own something that may never be released in the format our nation uses can still actually give companies our money and get what we want, instead of having to torrent the thing just to be able to see it at all. There's ditching the restrictive, buggy, impossible to purge DRM measures that some companies (looking at you, Sony) stick in their digital media, because I know a fair few people who will torrent something because they don't want to risk putting DRM software on their computers and don't know how to remove it once it's in. All these things and more (there will be an upcoming rant about how, if people want to increase sales of media, they should produce media worth buying for a change) could be done to deal with a good 75% of the reasons people tend to torrent stuff. There's always going to be theft (let's face it; every business that produces a product has to account for 'shrinkage' and digital media isn't going to be any different) but there'd be a lot less piracy if it wasn't so hard for people to get what they want by actually ... y'know, paying for it.
But no, the UK government has apparently decided that the best way to deal with the copyright infringement issue is to crack down on the end user. Because apparently, going on a yacht cruise with David Geffen and then trying to force yourself into the position of Pirate-Finder General (to coin the phrase of one Cory Doctorow) is a sight easier than turning around to Mr Geffen and saying, "Look, you're bringing this on yourself". Apparently it's easier to force ISPs, under penalty of six-figure fines, to invade the privacy of their customers by monitoring activity and then shut off the internet of an entire household if they are deemed to be violating copyright (whether or not everyone in the house was responsible for said copyright violation, which strikes me as a terrible miscarriage of justice, and the inclusion of a cafe or pub's wifi capability or even a library internet network because someone downloaded something the government says they shouldn't have over said network only makes it worse) than to actually deal with the problem.
And now two Lib-Dem Lords are talking about blocking sites that is deemed to contain "a substantial portion of [CONTENT]" that violates copyright. Which sounds rather like YouTube and any blog that contains a large number of embeds to YouTube videos, no?
I'm hoping this never gets past the Lords. I don't see how it can. The "Three Strikes" system is going to be hard enough to implement without people jumping up and down and screaming about miscarriage of justice because they're punishing the innocent along with the guilty. The forcing ISPs to invade the privacy of customers and fining them if they don't comply is going to take more restructuring of their systems than any company is willing to undertake. And if they try to censor YouTube because of its ostensible copyright violations? Someone's going to start making really unflattering comparisons to China and it'll get ugly. This is reactionary, overzealous, nonsensical and utterly unworkable, and the sooner it gets snuffed, the better.