Lucky me! I’ve got another piece on Comment Is Free, in the Liberty Central section. Funnily enough, this may not be the strangest thing that happens today – if the other thing happens there may be a space-time paradox catastrophe event – you’ve been warned.
The piece is about whether or not it’s right for the Government to kick entire families off the internet without going through the courts (well, duh).
So here’s the key question: do we want to live in a society where people can be cut off from the internet without a trial, without a jury and without proving they committed any offence at all?
Mark Reckons said...
20 Nov 09 at 2:30 pm
Is the other thing that you are taking over from Tel on Children in Need tonight?
aron said...
20 Nov 09 at 3:09 pm
Personally i think the anti argument is being made from the wrong angle, for me it is thus…..
Last night i donwloaded a perfectly legal free 700mb game (not legally grey, but 100% free). There are 3 options that this gives the goberment.
1. Assume that the file is illigal as it is a game sized/game type file, and threaten me legally. = Obviosly bad
2. Check what i am downloading, I.E monitor my personal communications = Obviosly bad (unless you are labour/tory/lib dem/ insert hypocritical prod nose party as necessary)
3. Try and stop all file share sites or other means of sharing files = stupendisaly bad
JuliaM said...
20 Nov 09 at 6:35 pm
“Assume that the file is illigal as it is a game sized/game type file…”
Ah, but what if you BitTorrented it over the space of a week? And how can they distinguish THAT download from a perfectly legitimate one from, say, iTunes?
“Check what i am downloading, I.E monitor my personal communications..”
They’d never have the manpower to do this.
“Try and stop all file share sites or other means of sharing files..”
I’d say this is impossible. It’d certainly spark an interesting ‘arms race’.
Roger Thornhill said...
20 Nov 09 at 7:41 pm
If is a fencepost.
When they want to haul certain people up on it, they can.
Paul Lockett said...
20 Nov 09 at 8:17 pm
It isn’t just your internet connection. Mandelson’s coming for your domain name too.
Von Spreuth said...
21 Nov 09 at 9:05 am
XX JuliaM said…
20 Nov 09 at 6:35 pm
“Check what i am downloading, I.E monitor my personal communications..”
They’d never have the manpower to do this. XX
Ah. a TOUCHING nievity.
They do not HAVE to.
The beuty of the spying T.V in “1984″, and of “Big Brither” himself (or his agents), was that Smith never KNEW if he was been watched or not.
They only have to put the shits up fifteen or twenty people in one single neighbourhood, per day, then blow it up all over the news, and hey presto, EVERY one is to shit scared to fart without permission*.
THAT is why the T.V is FULL of such crap as “Motorway police live”, or whatever it uiis called there, or “C.S.I”, etc. It is like the water drip torture. EVENTUALY you will be brainwashed into thinking you MUST get caught, just like on T.V.
* A statistic. on average between 1933 and 1945, in the WHOLE of the Ruhr Gebiet, ie Düsseldorf, Duisssburg, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, etc, there were only EIGHT full time Gestapo men.
Gregory said...
21 Nov 09 at 6:50 pm
‘ A statistic. on average between 1933 and 1945, in the WHOLE of the Ruhr Gebiet, ie Düsseldorf, Duisssburg, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, etc, there were only EIGHT full time Gestapo men.’
The German public were reasonably supportive, the Gestapo, could be very tolerating, unless one was Jewish etc.
compared to the Soviet state security, not many, there were just enough Gestapo to go around.
Niklas Smith said...
22 Nov 09 at 12:56 pm
Another excellent article on this subject: Why are cyberlockers suddenly such a problem, Lord Mandelson?.
Gregory said...
22 Nov 09 at 1:24 pm
I think I was the first music industry personality to have European wide factory strikes.
My old band ( or one of them, a hobby, have taken the democracy out of copyright.
They plonk it on vinyl, of whch there are as many types as wine, and flog it in an art gallery for a grand a pop.
You also get a framed factory flat, re: record sleeve.
So it is art ( I suppose)
Gregory
Letters From A Tory said...
23 Nov 09 at 10:40 am
Mandelson’s plans are indeed ridiculous, but you haven’t put forward any better solutions – in fact, no-one has. Blunt, crude and illiberal Mandelson’s plans may be, but until someone puts together a workable policy that is affordable, fair and targetted then all of us Mandelson-haters are on pretty thin ice.
aron said...
23 Nov 09 at 11:57 am
“Mandelson’s plans are indeed ridiculous, but you haven’t put forward any better solutions – in fact, no-one has. Blunt, crude and illiberal Mandelson’s plans may be, but until someone puts together a workable policy that is affordable, fair and targetted then all of us Mandelson-haters are on pretty thin ice.”
This coming from the guy who said we should discuss what should be “allowed” in video games, whilst refusing to discuss any evidence as to whether content actually causes harm. You seem to have a “X must be controlled” mindset.
The proposed solutions are worse than the problem. The only way copyright on the net can be enforced is to allow communications to be monintored, on a “guilty until proven inoccent” basis.
You can argue technical details and loopholes all day long, but really that’s the basic *principle* that is at stake here, if you think enforcing copyright law is more important than liberty……
Stu said...
23 Nov 09 at 3:05 pm
LFaT, I’m still unclear on whether there’s a need for any policy at all. What exactly is the real-world problem we’re supposedly trying to fix? The record industry is more profitable now than it was in the 90’s. Services like iTunes and Spotify have legitimised online music and taken the wind out of the illegal file-sharing communities. The problems have solved themselves independently of Government intervention.
It is, in effect, the best example ever of how doing nothing can be a fantastic policy platform. Why can’t we do that?
Pejorative Puppy said...
25 Nov 09 at 7:57 am
Because there was limited production capacity, I sold options on CD production.
The CD release could also be on a different label, such was the novelty.
I wish I could sell options on copyright violation, or is that what some dudes are doing, if so far-out,
why do ya care, do you pay tax, I feckin don’t.