Category: General Life

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/

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