"Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain 294
David Gerard writes "Lord Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen and announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain. The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?"
Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Informative)
I've contacted my MP. The open rights group has a brief PDF to send to them so they are clued up. Ask them to back EDM 1997.
More info here: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/ask-your-mp-to-help-protect-our-freedoms-on-the-net [openrightsgroup.org]
Lily Allen wikipedia article (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, there's an editor on wikipedia who keeps on moving the detail about Lily Allen's stance on copyright infringement into a subsection labelled "Social Activism' on her page. Hardly social activism I would think to speak out about something that is in her own financial interest.
Mandelson is waiting for his third strike (Score:5, Informative)
In other news, serial resigner, unelected jobsworth, and general insult to the democratic process "Lord" Peter Mandelson, having been appointed to high government office on a technicality by serial bad decision maker, unelected jobsworth, and general insult to the democractic process Gordon Brown, will shortly be resigning, again, having demonstrated a stunning lack of competence in public office, again.
Sorry, we've got an update: the Labour Party are going to get hammered so badly in the general election next year that they might actually come third, the current administration is already in lame duck mode, and Mandelson's views are all but irrelevant.
Frankly, I'm more worried about what David Cameron and his crew are going to do when they get in. If memory serves, they have publicly backed screwing the people in favour of Big Media pretty much any time the question has come up, also directly contravening overwhelming public sentiment expressed to Gowers et al.
Re:Whoever wrote TFS is retarded (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't railing against encryption, it was pointing out that both the police & the intelligence services have voiced their disapproval over the "Three Strikes" idea because it's likely to increase the use of encryption and therefore make their lives more difficult. i.e. It's not just a load of pirates that Mandy's ignored on this one.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:5, Informative)
European Convention on Human Rights, Article 6.2
"2.Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law."
The ECHR is part of British law.
Why would P2P switch to encryption? (Score:3, Informative)
If everyone on P2P started encrypting the transportation it would make no difference because the arrests and letters to pay or else have not been caused by MITM sniffing.
If P2Pers start encrypting all files you have to have some method of getting the password out to everyone and that would require some club or private site and once you have that it is easier to get a legal right to inspect and copy all infomation on that site. Such a site would have email address and other information about the users, so if anything this is something that P2Pers would avoid.
The only place P2P where encryption would work is with blocking the IP address of the people sharing but that would require some central site that routes the traffic so it is not really P2P anymore.
I don't really understand in depth how P2P works so what am I missing here?
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:3, Informative)
I think they're talking about schemes where projects like the B-2 bomber have parts manufactured in all 50 states, making projects like that hard to kill, since they employ someone in every congressional district.
Re:And one for Mandleson? (Score:5, Informative)
but wikipedia is missing some other controversy:
From Lord Mandelson: Whitehall's Emperor, or just a team player? [independent.co.uk]
"Unelected yet holding a raft of political positions, including that of cabinet minister, Mandelson is the TV executive who learned to play both the Labour party and the UK system. Previously forced out of Blair's cabinet office twice, once for mortgage fraud and once for abusing his power to help chums get passports, Blair nevertheless then gifted Mandelson the job of Britain's European Commissioner for Trade in 2004 where he hob nobbed on yachts with Microsoft executives and Russian oligarths wanting favours, and then inexplicably returned to the UK in 2008 a very rich man.... Who says the public sector doesn't pay?!! Even the UK citizenship of Mandelson's Brazilian boyfriend stinks of favourtism and misconduct. Reinaldo Avila da Silva came to Britain in 1996 aged 22 on a student visa and was picked up by the then 43 year old Mandelson pretty much on his first night out. Da Silva had no right to British citizenship in 2005, indeed it was apparent that he had overstayed his visa and as such was an illegal immigrant. No worries, a few phone calls from Mandelson and da Silva was safely clutching a shiny new British passport. "
Re:Agreed - ban encryption. (Score:3, Informative)
The dealt with this already (sadly). The RIP Act allows the state to send you for jail for 5 years if you can't (or won't) supply the means (i.e. passpharse / key) to decrypt content in your possession.
The legislation was drafted so poorly that it is to the extent that if someone gives you some encrypted data on a disk and you don't know the key and the police demand it, then you fall foul of it and can go to jail.
Anecdote:
Someone actually performed a stunt at a press conference at the time and confronted a minister supporting the bill as I recall, but handing them over a floppy disk with the confession to a real crime they had committed (most likely something real but trivial, like theft I presume) and informed her they had burned the disk containing the key and that as such she was now withholding evidence of a crime and so had fallen foul of the law.
For dramatic flair, they had a video of them burning the disk with the decryption key.
The minister responded "that's not what the legislation says". The protagonist responded it was to which the minster replied "well, that's not what it means".
Would be great if anyone could remember who was involved.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:4, Informative)
They don't have formal legal immunity, but if anything like this would happen, the police chiefs and the attorney general would likely determine that it is not 'in the public interest' to prosecute or punish politicians or other powerful people. (Just like it happens when an MP or minister falsifies expenses or commits other kinds of fraud.)
There are numerous examples of this. My favourites are Harriet Harman, the solicitor-general, who was caught speeding. The police officer in question claimed she was doing 99mph. Coincidentally, 1mph faster would have earned her an automatic 1-year driving ban and a much more serious criminal record likely resulting in her sacking from government.
Another good one is the recent case of Baroness Scotland, who was caught breaking a law which she herself was partly responsible for the creation of (she employed an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper then later claimed she'd seen documents giving the housekeeper the right to work in the UK but failed to keep copies so there was no evidence as to whether this was actually true or not).
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:5, Informative)
That's why the spy agencies are against it. The best way to avoid an arms race is to simply avoid raising the stakes so the other side remains blissfully ignorant. If things are good now, not rocking the boat is the best solution.
MOst ISPs block outgoing SMTP, for spam reasons. Despite this, an annoyingly large amount of spam still comes from outgoing SMTP connections, enough so that sending email from a dynamic connection is mostly useless anyhow because of the dynamic IP blocklists.
The solution is to either use the ISP's mailserver, or your own mailserver at your hosting provider using stuff like Authenticated SMTP, which, surprise, uses a different port. It's an intentional workaround, because either your mail is going through your ISP (who can detect if you're sending 1000 emails a day 24/7), or your hosting provider (ditto, if the spambot is smart enough to steal your SMTP authetication details). Since all modern email clients support this standard, it's just a setup issue. And Authenticated SMTP can use SSL (to protect login credentials) if you're inclined.
Re:TOR (Score:2, Informative)
It's been done [wikipedia.org], although there are questions about exactly how secure PD is (closed source, performance-orientated.) There's also Freenet [freenetproject.org] which aims to be considerably more secure/anonymous, but is slower and still under heavy development.
Jumping the gun (Score:5, Informative)
The title ' "Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain ' is, err, a little misleading (what, on /. ? never).
My understanding is that the policy is being proposed form inclusion in a new bill. AFAIK this then has to be bounced between The House of Commons and the Lords and finally signed by HRM before it is law. And this assumes it is not removed and/or amended in this process.
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree - I happen to work for a massive piece of this 'M-I Complex', and we're dying here. All the major aerospace and defense companies are going through a seriously hard time and shedding people or outsourcing like mad.
If it were as simple as this, I wouldn't be looking for work :)
Looks like you missed the parent posters point. You would most likely vote to keep your job in the Military Industrial Complex [wikipedia.org]. Even if you say you would not, and claim to be one of the few that understands the big picture that the MIC is a very bad deal for [wikipedia.org]everyone [wikipedia.org], it would be a hard stretch to imagine the majority of your suffering co-workers and all other dependent's in your state following your lead.
I doubt America will ever shake the shackles of the MIC - people are too motivated by self interest (as in, I want a Job, thanks), and things have only gone waaay downhill since Eisenhower warned how bad things could get [wikisource.org], so its not like nobody didn't see it coming
Re:Can't Wait (Score:4, Informative)
As we always say here on /.: copyright infringement is civil law. Not criminal law.
Oh, so you're that guy who keeps spreading this misinformation in every copyright-related Slashdot story.
FYI, in U.S., copyright infringement was always criminal if done for profit; since 1997, even that is no longer true [wikipedia.org], and even simply giving someone a copy for free can be a criminal offense.
In UK, apparently [wikipedia.org], it can also be a criminal offense to merely distribute " large enough number of copies to have a noticeable effect on the business of the copyright owner". Considering how number of copies made, and consequent damages, has been counted so far in P2P cases that went to trial, I'd say it's something that would be trivial to run into just by running BT.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright infringement is still a civil offence in the United Kingdom! ECHR covers criminal offences.
Once again, people, illegal doesn't mean criminal!
Re:And one for Mandleson? (Score:4, Informative)
Text:
Sith Peter Mandelson has carefully ignored the Gowers Report and the Carter Report, instead taking the advice of his good friend David Geffen (Dreamworks, Geffen Records, previously Warner too) - announcing that 'three strikes and you're out' will become law in Britain.
This is the same "minister" who was forced out of office twice for misconduct, he has no place even being in public office, especially if his views are not unbiased; especially given two Governmental reports to the contrary.
This law is unconstitutional and doesn't account for users with insecure internet connections who are abused and requires no court intervention. European has even considered this a abuse of human rights if it goes forward. It would not be surprising to hear of DCMA style complaints being made, even wrongly, and ISPs would be forced to disconnect users without any proof.
The Open Rights Group has, of course, hit the roof. Oh, and never mind MI5 and the police pointing out that widespread encryption will become normal, hampering their efforts to keep up with little things like impending terrorist atrocities. Still, it's worth it to stop a few Lily Allen tracks being shared, right?
Re:Can't Wait (Score:3, Informative)
Jailed for refusing to provide a key? Interesting. That violates the EU Charter of Rights:
Article 8-1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
Article 48-1. Everyone who has been charged shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
If the data was not cracked, how could the state declare guilt? The person should be released. It's too bad the EU neglected to include the right to not self-incriminate. In the U.S. you are not required to turn-over an encryption key, because of the Constitutional right to remain silent.