Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Mandelson ploughs on

Pangloss feels compelled to report on yesterday's doings at the C&binet meeting (stupid name..)

The Beeb reports Mandelson as follows:

"

I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have the opportunity to appeal," he told the audience at the C&binet Forum, a talking shop set up by government to debate the issues facing the creative industries.

The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said.

The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said."


So to state the bleeding-edge obvious:

- 3 strikes will be rubber stamped quickly by Parliament (it'll need to to avoid the end of the Labour regime); getting changes through the EC on fair use/fair dealing will take 2-6 years - if it happens at all. Some trade off.
- Still no detail on whether disconnection will require judicial oversight let alone a court order. Silence plus the enforced clamp down in the European Parliament on Amendment 138 would rather indicate not. It will be administarative fiat to cut off, with the onus placed on consumers, probably without legal aid, to appeal to the courts. This is so not natural justice.

As`Jim Killock of ORG noted:

"Even MI5 disagree with Mr Mandelson - they are convinced we will see a rise of a 'Dark Net' of infringers. Nobody at C&binet from an online music service, as opposed to an old media company, thought that peer-to-peer [file-sharing] was a threat to their businesses."


Same old same old..

Interesting thought from Twitter: "if my business was cut off for allegedly downloading illegally I'd be looking for someone to sue". Will any legislation have an immunity in it for ISPs a la the US DMCA? If not, start lobbying NOW, ISPs..

Pangloss has a lodger who for all she knows downloads night and day on the house wi fi. Will it become my responsibility to interrogate her and if necessary demand access to her computer? Hello DDR..





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, exactly. The thought behind my Twitter comment was essentially your point about the lodger. Your domestic IP address doesn't come close enough to identifying an individual for the proposed policy to be proportionate - particularly if, as in my case, it is shared by a business on which I depend for my livelihood.