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The Digital Economy Bill

The disturbingly sinister Digital Economy Bill has made it's way through the Houses of Lords and Parliament. This means that bar a few formalities it is now UK law. Why is this bill so sinister?

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• Introduction.
• So what the Hell's wrong with this bill anyway?
• Links.

Introduction

I am an open source advocate and indeed have released some of my own work as open source under the GPL. This means that by definition I must be very much in favour of copyright and the whole idea of intellectual property as the licence I release my work under could not exist without it. Given that I am in favour of the idea in general, I think that stronger laws to protect intellectual property are a good thing. But there is doing things the right way and there is doing things the wrong way. And this bill has done many things wrong.

Before I go any further, I am going be very clear that intellectual property infringement isn't piracy and it's difficult to call it theft, certainly in the traditional sense of the word. I also find it hard to believe that IP infringement funds the drugs trade as the entertainment industry and government would like us to believe. Can you imagine this scene set somewhere in Columbia

.... wibbly effect ....



.... wibbly effect ....

No. Neither can I; although I am prepared to believe that DVDs of Holly Oaks are an act of terrorism even if they are legitimate!

So what the Hell's wrong with this bill anyway?

I'm going to focus on the few things about this bill and the process it went through that bother me the most.

The process

Sponsored by the twice disgraced former Cabinet Minister and now unelected First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, Peter Mandelson, the Digital Economy Bill is a very complex and important piece of legislation that has massive implications for the future of the UK. As such it was naturally given the attention and thorough scrutiny it deserved. Well not so much that as rushed through Parliament in the so called "washing up period" where the little bits of outstanding business are cleared up before a general election.

The scrutiny and debate over this sinister and frankly terrifying piece of legislation can at best be described as woeful and shameful. At worst, it could be described as a deliberately timed action on the part of the Government such that proper scrutiny would be avoided. I am not saying that the worst interpretation is the right one, but I can believe it of our incumbent Government. Depressingly easily.

The bill itself

Ignoring for the moment all the additional surveillance we will be under, the main problem I have with the bill is a nasty one indeed. It is simply the fact that your Internet connection can be cut off purely based on the suspicion that you are infringing a mega-corporations intellectual property. This bill enacts into UK law the concept of punishment based purely on suspicion and without trial. It introduces the concept of "guilty until proven innocent" in to UK law, which is truly earth shattering. And incredibly sinister, especially if you combine it with the worst possible view of the process. You have to wonder where that is going to lead in the future. How long will it be before this concept is strengthened and enacted in to other laws. Anti-terrorism laws would be my guess as to where they start. After all the government can already enact a control order on an individual who is suspected of terrorist activity. And that individual can't even see the evidence against them so they can't mount a defence!

Having re-read that last paragraph, I begin to wonder if the Digital Economy Bill is an actually an attempt to strengthen those concepts into UK law.

Now for the surveillance. In order for this law to work, every packet of data that you send through your ISPs network will need to be monitored and inspected to see if you are using bit torrent to download and share files. It also seems to make the assumption that all file sharing is illegal which means that I could potentially have my connection terminated for legitimately sharing ISO files of Linux operating systems. I find myself idly wondering if Microsoft are having an evilgasm over that. You could argue that you would only need to look for specific ports but it is trivial to change which port you connect on.

Consider that the bill requires that

How are the mega-corporations getting the information? Are you scared yet? You should be!

The most sinister aspect of this whole fiasco is just how easily our politicians were willing to vote in this piece of legislation.

Am I paranoid? Certainly, but that doesn't mean I am wrong

Links

• Peter Mandelson
• Digital Economy Bill
• Q&A on the BBC