"Three Strikes" To Go Ahead In Britain 294
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the follow-the-money dept.
from the follow-the-money dept.
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?"
Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure if this place has changed over the years, but I'm all for encryption becoming the norm.
For legitimate law enforcement needs, search warrants and traffic analysis are not impeded.
In fact, draconian enforcement of copyright would be the best thing ever - it would illustrate the absurdity of the status quo.
New rule (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think they care at all what the people think? If anything proves that any form of democracy is not at work here, this does. Business interests are guiding, directing and even controlling government all over the world. The world may be pissed off at the U.S. government, but one only has to look to the "Military Industrial Complex" for why things are the way they are.
Can't Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the days of "innocent until proven guilty" seem like a distant memory now...
And one for Mandleson? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "minister" resposible for this was forced out of office twice for misconduct, he has no place even being in public office.
Three strikes in Politics.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering "Mandy" has already been forced to resign from Labour twice already for scandals (involving borrowing money from someone he was supposed to be investigating to buy a lovely house in central london among other activities), one wonders if he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar yet again, will this third strike resignation force his exclusion from Politics?
Allegedly, he'd shown no interest in this whatsoever before going for a meal at a lovely retreat owned by a movie producer, and a few days holiday.. On his return, this was basically mandated with no consultation.
Yay for unelected politicians who keep coming back despite being forced to resign in shame.
Except for Govt of course. (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing it gleefully says "file sharing" and not "music sharing". So let him grab one graphic he swipes because his office can't be bothered to cleanroom it, grab one little shareware snip that he can ignore even the postcard-terms on, and then let the last one be one of the Britain's Got Talent winning songs. Poof!
Re:Agreed - ban encryption. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone pirate Lily Allen anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
(I'm being silly. Of course I'll be contacting my MP about this.)
Re:they need something based on the rules of crick (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, there should be something to make sure that people do not consider this rule to be in the same ballpark as the rule prevalent in the criminal laws of the states in the U.S. Yes, that pun was intended.
But more seriously, being punished with the loss of the use of the internet for continuing to do something that they have twice told you to stop doing is hardly the draconian rule that in America has lead to people serving 25 years for stealing three golf clubs because they had previously committed 2 felonies. See Ewing v. California, 123 S.Ct. 1179 (2003).
Re:Agreed - ban encryption. (Score:5, Insightful)
RIPA already allows the UK police to rubber-hose your password out of you.
The interesting thing will be SSL and Tor-based stuff, which doesn't require you to even have a password to use.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
All that would accomplish is immunity for politicians and their staff from this law.
Unlikely. The UK doesn't go in for granting politicians legal immunity, even when this would be of great benefit for the party in power. I don't know if there are any formal rules in this area though.
Of course, if anyone does decide to use the three-strikes approach, could they please use it against some media types too? Might as well get some benefit out of a bad law...
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.)
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the M-I complex is more complicated. Defense contractors in the U.S. are smart about creating jobs in the states of legislators whose votes they need. This in turn builds up public support in those states for the defense programs that might not be in the overall national interest (militarily and/or fiscally).
So one might argue that when the constituents are being parochial and myopic in their support for various spending, that is democracy in action. And it can lead to abysmal results.
Re:they need something based on the rules of crick (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a good idea, it'd take 5 days to make a decision and probably end in a draw.
Sounds good to me.
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely.
Whilst mentioning encryption causes people to post that f'ing cartoon with the $5 wrench adnauseum, the fact is, even fairly weak encryption whilst data transits though your ISP goes a long long way.
For example, a certain bone-headed ISP which one of my relatives uses, enforces using their outgoing mail server for "anti-spam reasons".
Do they log all outgoing emails? You can bet they do. SMTP over SSL raises the bar just high enough that they don't bother any more.
Re: 25 years for three golf clubs (Score:5, Insightful)
"Three strikes" laws -- particularly the California version that allows petty crimes to trigger the third strike -- are problematic. There are varying levels of severity for felonies, some that deserve life sentences, some that deserve probation, and everything in between.
One guy commits two two heinous felonies, somehow lawyers his way out of long prison terms, and another guy, a) steals a purse, b) hits a parked car and runs away, and c) steals bubble gum from the store goes to prison for life. I'm not sure how any sane, thinking person on this planet can't see the glaring flaw with this system.
Mandelscum (Score:4, Insightful)
These bastards, and that slimy scumbag Mandelson have spend the past 13 years utterly ruining everything, every institution, way of life, habitat, hobby, social fabric and this?
Basically, people are slowly concluding a few things, some are less than good, but for every action, there is a reaction, clearly 13 years too late. Vote anyone but these bastards, and tell them why at every moment they bang on your door or come to your doorstep. Vote BNP, UKIP, Con, Lib - ANYONE but these slimy dark forces shits.
Their brand of nanny state 1984 insanity, and mass persecution of population, drivers, and all the rest, and their enforced political correctness and multiculturalism, and devolution, and EU fanatisism, and the rest is DEAD. OVER. FINISHED.
Its the worst government the UK has had in any modern times, and people cannot wait to be rid of them.
One more reason why Labour will not be re-elected (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously a Government with a suicide wish.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
So when your ISP cans you, with no trial, no conviction, simply waive the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 6.2 at them and demand your connection back, if/when they decline, start running it up the legal flagpole, the court system, and get the law stricken from the books.
Which is great and all that but these things take months, if not years to sort out. Meantime you've got no Internet access.
Lots of people work from home some or all of the time. Join the dots...
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Insightful)
We sign their cheques!
Given that this is politicians we're talking about, you don't - the cheques are pre-signed for you, the only thing that's yours in all this is the obligation to pay.
Re:Hey Britons (Score:4, Insightful)
Sheer persistence ends up getting these things passed,
You've spelled "corruption" wrong.
Re: 25 years for three golf clubs (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean the Department of Corrections [wa.gov], incarcerating someone at a correctional facility [wa.gov]?
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>We are in an age where those who handle the money and sell sight and sound think they're the only game in town. The Industrial part of the complex is completely gone.
>>>
I'm watching a World War 2 movie right now, where German Rommel says "We need to take Africa before the industrial might of America arrives." If Rommel had been fighting the current American economy, which revolves around Walmart and movies/music, then he'd probably say, "America? Ha. The land of 'do you want some fries with that?' is not a threat." America has no industrial might.
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Question
- How will encryption stop a rights-holder, like Warner Bros, downloading a torrent of Dark Knight and simply recording all the IP addresses they see down/uploading the content? As far as I can tell they can do that, will report it, and thus you'll get a strike.
expect the rhetoric (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed - ban encryption.
Anyone using encryption must have something to hide.
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
You miss the point. It doesn't prevent them from doing that; it makes them do that. Forcing your opponent to take active steps instead of getting everything they want by passively watching (especially stuff like mandated ISP filters, where the users would end up having to pay for it), is a good thing.
Re:Why would anyone pirate Lily Allen anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
Spotify isn't free, as long as you count listening to adverts as a payment method.
I pay for GMail by seeing ads.
I pay for Spotify by hearing ads.
I pay for X Factor by fast-forwarding through ads...
Re: 25 years for three golf clubs (Score:3, Insightful)
The massive increase in prison spending which makes a negligible difference in crime rates compared to other states is pretty good evidence that three-strikes laws don't work, yes.
Re: 25 years for three golf clubs (Score:4, Insightful)
Lacking wisdom and risk assessments are hardly grounds for locking somebody up for life. Something about the penalty fitting the crime comes to mind. If you want to go around locking up people that lack judgment, we'd have more people in prison than not.
And I fail to see how stealing golf clubs constitutes a threat against fellow citizens on the magnitude of "we must lock this guy up to protect everyone around him".
Re:Seriously, write to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually pre WWII he probably would have said "America? Where they have to make work because they have no jobs? they are not a threat.". You have to remember America wasn't some big super power then, IIRC our military was something like 58th because we had let so much just rot after WWI.
What made America a threat was the fact that we had enough raw materials we could make war without anyone else coming to our aid. If we wouldn't have brought supplies to Britain the wolf packs would have starved them out. of course whether we could do that again in a time of total war is debatable, as our oil fields have long since run dry and it would probably take a decade or more to get something like ANWR producing, even if we hurried it as part of the war effort.
So while I agree that our industrial might is gone, it wasn't very great then either. We were just able to convert existing businesses, such as having Ford cranking out tanks, and having the raw materials, that gave us an advantage once the Japs hit Pearl. Whether or not Pearl was a result of Roosevelt purposely stirring up shit with the Japs in the hopes of getting us in the war when many preferred neutrality is a debate for another day.
USA will be next (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a reminder.
Re:Encryption is a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever. Either way you still get caught, and lose ISP access. Encryption is not going to protect you from this law.