The Passing of the Digital Economy Bill

Unless you live an anti-technological cave and don’t listen to the news, you will know that as has been feared amongst many people for a while now, the government have rushed through the Digital Economy Bill without a proper democratic review and have ignored the pleas of ISP’s such as TalkTalk, large numbers of the voting public along with IT experts advice all to please music industry.

The good news is none. The bad news is that as of now, copyright agencies can demand information regarding the subscriber of an internet connection to begin legal proceedings over alleged copyright infringements without gathering a shred of concrete evidence.

Evidence used in Peer-to-Peer file transfer cases has been and will continue to be disputed and has time and time again been proven to be incorrect and not uniquely identifying the to accused, however this aside the government still feel that these copyright agencies have it right. It’s like sentencing someone to murder without finding a murder weapon or having any evidence linking them to the crime. All the Digital Economy Bill will do it drive the users of Peer-to-Peer applications deeper underground and into using VPN and other encryption technologies.

The result of the Digital Economy Bill could even mean that people who provide public Wi-Fi hotspots such as those provided by McDonalds, BT OpenZone or the likes would be held responsible if their network was used for illegal Peer-to-Peer transfers and law now makes to distinction between being the person doing the downloading and being the person providing the means which is disgraceful.

What I personally find more disgraceful however is that my MP in Basingstoke didn’t even bother to turn up to parliament and cast a vote. The site ‘They Work for the BPI’ at http://www.theyworkforthebpi.com/ shows a list of all MP’s who voted and how they voted. The MP for Basingstoke, Maria Miller of the Conservatives didn’t attend the vote, nor did Julian Lewis, the MP for Totton where I am originally from.

An online comic website, DotGif has made a vey funny strip comic about the passing of the bill. Although funny, it’s sadly true at the same time to show how the music industries have managed to poison our democratic system. You can see the original at http://www.dotgif-comic.com/04/the-cost-of-the-bill/:

I think that in the case of the Digital Economy Bill the British democratic system has failed its people and the nation that it is designed to serve and I think that the MP’s who voted in favour of the bill should be utterly ashamed of themselves for allowing this bill through to drive money deeper into the pockets of the music industries who have failed to keep up with consumer demands and changing media trends and for ruining the potential technological growth of Peer-to-Peer based services in Britain.