It’s very rare that I’ll inflict my political views on people by
e-mail, however, this has recently come up, and I wanted to make sure
that you understand what this newly proposed law could mean to you.
It’s only relevant to people in the UK, to ex-pats or Armed Forces
people, so if you want to forward it on – please do, but please think
before you forward, and don’t just blanket send it to everyone.

** If you don’t want to read all of the below, then I’d encourage you
instead to have a look at http://www.dontdisconnect.us/ **

In the Queen’s Speech [1] when parliament was opened for the 2009-10
session, the following was said:

“My Government will introduce a Bill to ensure the communications
infrastructure is fit for the digital age, supports future economic
growth, delivers competitive communications and enhances public
service broadcasting.”

The bill referred to is the “Digital Economy Bill”, which is due to be
introduced to Parliament this or next week, and it’s caused a lot of
fuss with us Technophiles.

Essentially, this bill allows “Rights Holders” (for example, Music
Labels, Film Studios and Television Networks) to contact your ISP and
insist that they issue you with a formal notice if they *believe* you
to be unlawfully sharing their content on the internet. After “a
certain threshold” the government has suggested [2] that it would be
acceptable to temporarily disconnect you from the Internet. A law
similar to this one was recently introduced in France, which insists
on disconnection after 3 warnings.

Now, again, this seems fair, if you can’t do the “time”, don’t do the
crime… but, how do they actually know it’s you? Because of certain
technical limitations of the Internet, everyone sharing a single
internet connection (for example in a house, at an office or a
internet café) will appear to come from the same internet address, and
this will cause you problems in this law, because:

* If you let someone use your computer to access the Internet, and
they unlawfully download some files, then the bill payer will be
blamed.
* If you have a Wi-Fi connection which is not properly secured [3],
and someone uses that connection to share a file they’ve downloaded,
again, the bill payer will be blamed.
* How about if your computer gets infected by malicious software
(spyware, becomes a member of a botnet, or worse still, is actively
hacked) and they use that as an untraceable machine to download their
content – again, the bill payer is blamed.

My other worry is that none of this goes in front of a court of law –
this all occurs between the ISP and Rights Holders, so if you get
disconnected, it will happen without any judicial oversight and the
prosecution’s burden of proof is never required… someone (usually
outside the UK) will accuse you of breaking the law and you will then
get disconnected from the Internet. To me, that hardly seems very
fair.

There’s a petition [4] against this law which is currently available
to be signed (provided you live within the UK, you are an ex-pat or
are a member of the Armed Forces), and, if you agree that it isn’t
fair, I would strongly encourage you to write to your MP [5]. If you
do decide to write to them, please review the content at the Don’t
Disconnect Us website [6] and review some of the letters which have
already been written [7] [8] as this e-mailing service will remove
duplicate e-mails so if you just copy the content it’ll never get to
your MP.

Thank you for your time. The links I have referred to above, labelled
[x] are listed below if you want to read them.

[1] Queen’s Speech: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21361
[2] Stephen Timms defends the Digital Economy Bill:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/20/digital-economy-bill-stephen-timms
[3] Ways to secure your WiFi connection:
http://www.dontdisconnect.us/secure-your-wireless/
[4] The petition against the Digital Economy Bill:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/
[5] You can contact your MP via e-mail at this website:
http://www.writetothem.com/
[6] Don’t Disconnect Us official website: http://www.dontdisconnect.us/
[7] A letter I wrote to my MP:
http://jonspriggs.posterous.com/a-letter-to-my-mp-threestrikes
[8] A letter written by someone else to their MP about this law:
http://grahambinns.com/blog/2009/11/24/digital-economy-bollocks/

Posted via email from Jon’s posterous

Dear Andrew Gwynne,

I’m writing to you, as my MP, to ask for your support, to try to
discourage the implementation of the Digital Economy Bill that was
introduced recently.

This proposal is very worrying to me, as a Free Culture (Open Source
Software and Creative Commons) Contributor and activist. A large part
of the distribution of this Free Culture Content is performed over
peer to peer networks, such as BitTorrent, and it appears that this
law is trying (in part) to discourage the use of peer to peer
networks, on the grounds that they may be used to unlawfully transfer
files.

I also worry that during discussions of this law between Stephen Timms
(Treasury Secretary) and The Guardian newspaper, he suggested that a
temporary account suspension from one’s ISP would be an acceptable
movement without any judicial overview. Given that Finland has
recently recognised Internet Access is now such a fundamental part of
our day-to-day lives that they are classing it as a Human Right, I
worry that this movement could effectively prevent many of your
constituents from being active in society.

I’ve also noticed that many ISPs and most of the policing and
intelligence services have stated they disagree with the
recommendations of this bill (for a variety of different reasons), I
would be grateful if you could support their position and reject this
bill in it’s current state, if you are able, when it is presented.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Spriggs

Posted via email from Jon’s posterous