Some good news on the internet front, for a change. Following huge levels of protest from the public, the British government has decided to abandon its idea of allowing large copyright-holding corporations to tell it which people to forcibly disconnect from the Internet.
The original suggestion, from Peter Mandleson, was that music and film companies could accuse individual net users of being downloaders. After three accusations, that person’s home (and mobile communications) would be permanently blacklisted from being allowed to connect to the ‘net. Note that wasn’t three proved copyright infringements, it was three accusations.
There’s been a lot of protest from netizens of all sorts, and eventually the government decided it wasn’t worth the bad press. They’re still suggesting that in extreme cases, temporary ‘net bans will be imposed, but these look like being the result of proper legal process, rather than a nod and a wink from the RIAA.
I guess election years are good for something, after all.
Peter Mandleson, 'The Prince of Darkness', (c) Bruce Adams.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.