If you haven't seen it already, Richard Gale's fake trailer for The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon is wonderful and hilarious.
The trailer is also a pretty good illustration of what the Government's doing to our internet freedoms, so you might want to watch it before you read the rest of this.
Done that? Good.
The Extremely Inefficient Weapon isn't a particularly good weapon, it has to be said, but over time it drives its victim crazy. The Government's a bit like that.
Boink! Insane plans to monitor everyone's online activity. Boink! Plans to slow down alleged file sharers' connections so they struggle with email, let alone anything useful. Boink! Forcing ISPs to spend between £360 million and £420 million per year on pointless anti-piracy systems.
And then the Government swaps its Extremely Inefficient Weapon for a rocket launcher. WHOOOOOOOOSH! BWAAAAAAP! Bye-bye, public Wi-Fi!
We're not exaggerating. Public Wi-Fi is already under threat. This week it was reported by ZDNet that a British pub with a wireless hotspot had been fined £8,000 for customers' illegal downloads, and while the story seems odd - details are sketchy, but it's much more likely that the sum is an out of court settlement rather than a fine handed down by a court - the prospect of open Wi-Fi operators being sued silly by cash-happy legal firms isn't hard to envisage.
But that's nothing compared to what the Digital Economy Bill is up to.
Under the proposed new regime, Wi-Fi will work like this. You can choose between one of two options: either you're essentially an ISP, in which case you'll need to become a copyright cop and police the connections of anyone using your network at great expense, or you're not an ISP, in which case you're responsible for any dodgy downloads.
Placing impossible demands on providers
As Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, puts it in The Guardian, the intention of the Bill "is to ban open Wi-Fi so that it cannot be used as an excuse when (whenever that is) the opportunity comes to repel the unfounded allegations of infringement which generate the warnings."
Edwards suggests that the law would place impossible demands on closed Wi-Fi providers, too: identifying alleged infringers "will be fiddly and expensive though and the cost of Wi-Fi to [places such as] McDonalds would probably go up so much it would be uneconomic to supply. Bang goes a free service which has proved a public boon and a remarkably popular enticement to customers in the ongoing recession."
Maybe it's that the Bill is badly drafted, or maybe it's that the Government still doesn't understand the internet - which, given its importance to our economy, is a pretty terrifying thought. Or maybe it's a global conspiracy that involves everyone from the Freemasons to The Nolans.
Whatever the reason, what we've got here is a War on Piracy, which we're sure will be as cost-effective, as precisely targeted and as successful as the War on Drugs and the War on Terror - and it's a war in which public Wi-Fi looks set to be an early casualty.
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Liked this? Then check out Digital Economy Bill sparks mass protest
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Your comments (7) Click to add a new comment
syganymede
February 28th
7. The people that own copyright material should take more care of it. If they do nothing to exploit sales of their product, then they must accept the loss. This has always been the case (Cassette tapes, VHS video recorders, etc) and has not harmed the business. Just because now the studios have lost strangle hold control of their distribution chain (the CD and DVD) does not mean the collapse of the industry, they must adapt.
Ok, so the internet is a bigger threat , but should be countered not by legislation, but by new business models by copyright owners - i.e. by studios and labels (don't think that artists own copyrights! they mostly sign them away in exchange from promotion to big media businesses...)
This Digital Bill or DRM or whatever is not justified in an open society, it is against freedom.
However the international steamroller behind it is huge, already the EU and UK are in the final stages of negotiation of a US treaty called ACTA which could sign away our freedoms and rights without debate or votes. Check it out with your politician, ask if he has seen and considered ACTA. Tell him to vote against the Digital Bill.
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roberto
February 28th
6. Lets get rid of Brown and his liberal looney government!!
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shodanicron
December 2nd 2009
5. The video he links into the opening is hilarious.
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nitrofan
December 2nd 2009
4. Just typical UK socialist rubbish.
With things they cant get right (which is most of them) either tax it or ban it! F Off Brown and take your criminally incompetent monkeys with you
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stu531
December 2nd 2009
3. anteaus, I agree with much of what you say and ideally this would be correct. However, I seem to remember that one of the chief proponents of this, Lord Peter Mandelson, ain't elected.
Home taping never killed music.
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anteaus
December 1st 2009
2. Thing we need to always keep in-mind is that this is a democracy, not a dictatorship. The people decide what we want our society to be like, and what we don't want it to be like.
If protecting copyright means having all kinds of Orwellian restrictions placed on Internet access, and our computers laced-through with DRM software which makes them slow and unreliable (thinking Vista here) -then we don't HAVE to accept this course of action. There is an alternative, which is to scrap or modify copyright law to avoid this situation. And, if more than 50% of the people vote that way, then it shall be so.
Remember, WE decide. The RIAA or Sony don't have this power. We the people do. WE tell the corporates how and in what ways they may make money. The dog wags the tail. Not the reverse.
The consequence of copyright abolishment might be the end of massproduced films and music. Or, it might not. Who knows? Either way that is preferable to a gagged society and crippled computers. It may even be for the good, since it will encourage the return of real music and acting to smaller, local venues.
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