Lord Lucas Says Record Companies "Blackmail" Users 236
Kijori writes "Lord Lucas, a member of the UK House of Lords, has accused record companies of blackmailing internet users by accusing people of copyright infringement who have no way to defend themselves. 'You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail.' The issue is that there is no way for people to prove their innocence, since the record company's data is held to be conclusive proof, and home networking equipment does not log who is downloading what. Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane."
Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the best thing I've read all week. If I went to someone and said "You have wronged me so pay me money or I'll report you to the cops", I could be reported and sent to jail. Maybe if I had a lawyer write my threat up, my demand would magically be non-extortionate.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
But will anything really happen or will this just be another excuse for yet more surveillance of home computer usage?
The track record of the House of Lords hasn't been so good over the long run has it?
I would bet that if Lucas gains any traction great pressure will be brought to shut him up one way or another.
Read up a bit more on the system (Score:5, Interesting)
Lords like Lucas are very difficult to pressure or to get them to shut up. As a whole, the lords are a bit of a nuisance because they tend to get in everybodies way. If you are on the left, they go against a ban on fox hunting and if you are on the right they keep insisting on this bloody liberty thing. That is where they get this bad rep from, because politicians don't like to be questioned. As citizens, we shouldn't take politicians word for it that the lords are all bad.
Re:Read up a bit more on the system (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's why the government have been trying to get rid of unelected members of the House of Lords for most of the past 10 years; something that I suspect the next government will continue to do.
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And it's why the government have been trying to get rid of unelected members of the House of Lords for most of the past 10 years; something that I suspect the next government will continue to do.
Not quite correct. They have done a great deal to get rid of the hereditary peers, but most of the members of the House of Lords are appointed by the Government and Opposition themselves -- but still not elected. Some government MPs have proposed electing some of the Lords, but it has never looked likely to succeed.
Actually, even in the House of Commons (parliament) there is less appetite than you would think for an elected House of Lords -- if the Lords were also elected, then the justification for the P
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:4, Insightful)
But will anything really happen or will this just be another excuse for yet more surveillance of home computer usage?
The track record of the House of Lords hasn't been so good over the long run has it?
I would bet that if Lucas gains any traction great pressure will be brought to shut him up one way or another.
Unfortunately it's heading in the other direction. The statement was made in the context of a debate on the Digital Economy Bill [digitalwrong.org], which is designed to make it easier to punish "copyright violators" (although, as numerous Lords have pointed out, they're actually just people accused of copyright violation), by making it easier to get information from ISPs and allowing copyright holders to have a user's internet connection shut off if they refuse to stop downloading (i.e. if the record company still has "evidence" after they have written to the user and threatened them). All in all, an absolutely disastrous bill.
*Shameless plug* If you agree and want to try to get answers from Mandelson, sign the DigitalWrong letter [digitalwrong.org]. This is going to be printed up on huge bits of card with all the messages people have left and presented to Lord Mandelson, since he doesn't bother replying to individual letters.
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Except that bampot Pa Broon is in no position to wield a large majority, AND there's a general election in May, so there's only actually around 30 days of parliamentary business left to try and force this through, with a majority so thin that he's had to give major concessions (with our money) to minority parties to get his bills through in the past.
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But will anything really happen or will this just be another excuse for yet more surveillance of home computer usage?
Good question. Do we really need Yet Still Another Government Oversight, or draconian set of laws?
The real answer is "Loser Pay," whether in the UK, the US or elsewhere. We might word it something like, "the party prevailing shall be entitled to reasonable reimbursement of expenses incurred in obtaining relief." (And "reasonable" could be defined starting with, "the going rate in your area for quality legal representation.")
The problem in the US, of course, is that the Bar associations are (inexplicably, IMNHO) opposed to this.
(I say "inexplicably" because their favorite argument, that it would hurt poor clients, is specious; if anything, if the client had a decent case, the lawyers could help them even with small, currently "unprofitable" cases under the current system, while still receiving fair compensation. They could change their image overnight from sharks to champions, because they COULD afford to take the case of the little old lady whose landlord refuses to fix the heater.)
The Supreme Court ruled against reimbursement some years ago in a landmark healthcare case, as I recall ... and there was a story posted here just the other day about an RIAA case being dismissed, but WITHOUT the defendant being able to recover expenses. That's just wrong.
Loser Pay would be the answer. We just need to educate everyone, whether liberal/progressive or conservative/traditionalist, about just why this would work.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you actually couldn't, not if the claim isn't obviously frivolous.
"You owe me money, pay up, or I'll be forced to take the matter to court", is even, in principle, entirely reasonable in some situations.
The problem is that the punishments are so out of line with the severity of the transgression, that people cannot afford to let the courts sort it out, even in cases where they're quite possibly innocent.
If I say the above, and demand $700 from you for NOT taking it to court, and you know that being taken to court means potentially a year-long battle and hundreds of thousands if you loose, can you afford to take that gamble, even if you think you're most-probably going to come out innocent ?
Or do you buckle ?
That's the point where it becomes blackmail.
If the punishment for uploading copyrighted material was limited to something sane, this problem would go away.
Say if you downloaded 300 songs from piratebay, and have a share-ratio of 2, and they calculated this means 600 people illegally got a song from you, at $0.99 a song, that's a loss of $600 -- so they convict you guilty and demand you pay $1000.
That's not what happens though, you potentially end up paying orders of magnitude more. And that's wrong.
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Couldn't agree more.
All they are doing is taking advantage of an insane law and then lobbying to keep it that way. Repeat.
If the damages were not so out of wack with reality this extortion scheme wouldn't work as most people would just be, "fine, see you in court jackholes!"
However when facing a decision that for all intents and purposes could ruin you financially, you would be hard pressed to justify defending yourself, and most will just pay off the goons to be left alone.
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If I went to someone and said "You have wronged me so pay me money or I'll report you to the cops", I could be reported and sent to jail
No you couldn't, at least not legally. This kind of threat is considered perfectly acceptable and is the basis of the "civil recovery" schemes that shops use against shoplifters: people caught stealing don't want the police involved, so will happily pay not just for what they stole but also a small amount extra, which is theoretically supposed to cover the costs of the civ
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Well. Your lawyer would write their demand a bit differently. :-P If you can find a lawyer to write the demand the same way, please have him send me the demand. Also make sure he owns real property, I could use some extra income. :-P
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Day after day, I wonder if it would be a lot more damaging to choose MPs at random and let random people be incompetent instead of these elected buffoons. At least, the random people would be really representative of the population.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is there's no real scenario where they lose. You say "Fuck you", they take whatever evidence they have to court and maybe they win and maybe they don't but the evidence passes enough standards to never be considered a frivolous lawsuit. Didn't you see this case [slashdot.org] that was just covered on slashdot, fight for 5 years and end in stalemate. Now this is UK law and not US, but I assume it's civil with a standard of "preponderance of evidence", I've heard that this means in practice something like a 60-40 probability. Is it possible their accusations are 60% correct? Quite possible, 40% is a huge error margin. And if so, their evidence really does meet that legal standard, disturbingly enough as it is for the 40% who ends up falsely paying.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you say "Fuck you", they'll leave you alone and go and find someone more easily intimidated into giving them money. None of these cases has ever gone to court, and they're clearly worried about killing the cash cow if it does happen.
(A couple of related cases did go to court a while back, but I think they cherry-picked people who chose ill-advised defenses which effectively admitted the bits which are impossible to prove. And someone who had moved and wasn't getting any letters, so would never turn up to defend themselves in the first place.)
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Summons are sent by registered mail and you have to sign for them and you have 5 days to respond in writting (Court of Queens Bench) if you don't respond they automatically rule against you.
I believe that it is "decided in your absence", and there have been a handful of cases where a judge has decided that the case is so shaky that even in these circumstances they decide in favour of the defendant.
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Right. It's only criminal charges that can get decided in your absence. Civil suits, no so much.
If someone bringing a suit can't locate someone to serve them, they can hardly locate them to collect any money they have to pay. The courts frown on you just wasting the court's time with a meaningless suit.
This obviously applies to cases where the defendant is known at the start. If they are not, the court might let a 'vs. Doe' lawsuit proceed until they are identified. But if identified people cannot be loca
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright infringement is not theft.
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I don't think he was talking about a 'legal' religion. Downloading for free something that you should be paying to acquire is morally wrong. It might not be theft, but it's certainly stealing.
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It is about as morally wrong as breaking a contract.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Informative)
Well that's a matter for the courts to decide and unfortunatly for you they have decided.
Yes, in UK law they decided that information wasn't property and thus couldn't be stolen. See the case ofOxford v Moss [wikipedia.org] for more detail.
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Also, murder isn't theft? Does that mean I can steal your life?
Hey, dumbass, not all crimes are 'theft'. Using someone's social security number is not 'theft', it is fraud.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
People like you are what give companies excuses to try and control our software and the internet.
from what I said, I don't know. My actual opinion is thus: I don't personally wilfully infringe copyright, however I support copyright reform as I feel the current lengths are far too long; I think that a standard length of 10-20 years is probably about the correct limit. As such I am a Pirate - a member of the Pirate Party UK [pirateparty.org.uk], that is.
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An encription algorythm is also a number and you can steal that as well all information stored electronically is a number. But pirate's will come up with any excuse.
I suppose the point here is that it is, in fact, hard to understand the huge difference between "theft" and "accessing information illegally" or "using illegally obtained information to commit crimes."
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Yeah, I've heard of identity theft [wikipedia.org]; always sounded like fraud [wikipedia.org] to me though.
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The courts decide how you interpret your religion?
For what it's worth, I support your decision not to pirate anything, I just found that twist of the conversation strange...
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Unfortunately for you the this is U.K. law and the legislation makes it quite clear the offense is "making unauthorised copies" and not theft, and is only criminal if you are doing it for profit.
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I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?
IANAL, or more appropriately, IANAS (I Am Not A Solicitor)
When you take a CD from a store, you are taking a piece of their physical inventory. They have lost a real, tangible asset to you that they paid actual, countable money for.
When you copy a friend's CD, you are DUPLICATING a physical asset, meaning that the store has all the inventory they had paid for before you copied it. They have not experienced an actual loss. Now, there are a number of imaginative people out there who like to construe thi
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Not that I mind that much, but who came up with making copies being "not theft" and "not criminal"? I'd like to ask them what the hell is the difference in me stealing a CD from a music store and me "making unauthorised copies" of a friends CD?
Because theft means, and has always meant through history, 'unlawfully removing ownership of property from someone who already owns it'. (Ownership being the right and ability to use property for your own purposes. It is the ultimate 'control' of property, as oppos
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my religion does not condone theft
Neither does mine, but theft has nothing to do with copyright infringement and my bible says nothing about copyright infringement. In fact, my bible was copied over and over and over long before there were copyright laws, and is in fact in the public domain.
Sometimes $4000 on a lawyer makes you feel better that settling for the $2000 they wanted.
My religion does not condone what you did there, either. My freely copyable public domain King James bible says "if a man sues you
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But this is not a man suing you, its a corporation. My understanding behind that phrase is that by being generous in return for their cruelty, you will hopefully inspire them to be a more generous person themselves.
If the RIAA (or equivalent) sues you for $1000 and you give them $2000, the closest thing to generosity you'll get in return is a confused accountant sending you a check for the amount you overpaid. There will be no appeal to the corporations sense of decency, because they have none.
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Of course the article is about the UK where the King James version of the bible is still under copyright.
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Instead of a simple "Fuck you", one could find inspiration in The Pirate Bay legal responses [thepiratebay.org]...
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite good that the Nobles finally stand for their nation and condone globalisation.
I would have expected it to come from a civil entity as it should be expected from a democracy.
Most of the hereditary lords lost their seats years ago when Labour first came to power. So they're not the nobles they once were.
However - and this is the important bit - they are not elected by the voting public. Seats are (generally speaking) for life.
This is completely counter-intuitive and flies in the face of democracy. I guarantee there will be at least one person who will reply saying "What a ridiculous system" or words to that effect. But the thing is, it works quite well. IIRC the Lords can't introduce legislation themselves but they can discuss and block legislation that's coming through - and because their seat is for life, they don't need to worry too much about pandering to either a panicked electorate or to commercial interests who are going to be funding their next election campaign.
In fact, it works rather too well in some cases. Our Glorious Former Leader, Blair, very nearly discovered this to his cost with a few of his anti-terror bills. They only got through because of the use of "emergency" legislation which essentially allowed him to bypass the House of Lords.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Informative)
You're right, the House of Lords gets a lot of negative press, and perhaps that's a legacy of what it used to be like with hereditary peerages and a lot of people deciding the laws of the country purely because of who their ancestors were, but yes it's changed a lot and is actually now a very useful legislative tool (along with its judicial function). It's great that people with a lifetime of skills and experience aren't simply discarded but have a real input into the way our laws are decided, and although its structure is partisan, the voting generally isn't, people generally vote with their conscience not just to bolster their party line.
A lot of the Lords' powers to block laws have been stripped away by the Parliament Acts unfortunately. As you mention certain legislation can bypass the Lords completely, I think this includes anything to do with finance and taxation, and on top of that no law can be delayed in the House of Lords for more than - IIRC - two parliamentary sessions, so while they used to be able to send laws back to "the other place" indefinitely, now they can only delay for effectively about a year. It's good that they can't hold up new laws forever, but at the same time a strong government can pretty much force through anything it wants now - as we've experienced in the last decade.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Lords can block 'money' bills but, by convention, don't. They did once at the start of the 20th century, that's why we had the first parliament act.
The Lords also let through any bill which is an implementation of the ruling party's last manifesto.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ok, where does Lord Sutch fit into the picture?
He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Legally, he would have been "Mr. Lord David Sutch".
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> He was never a lord. He took advantage of the fact that it's perfectly legal to change your name by deed poll to anything you want - so he changed his name to Lord David Sutch.
Under UK law you don't need a deed poll to change your name. It's perfectly legal to do so without any formal record. There are restrictions on what you can do if you happen to change your name that way (you cannot stand for parliament for example) and most institutions will require evidence of your change of name but legally, yo
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Yup, in the UK, you can't change your name to something that might infer a rank or title.
http://www.ukdps.co.uk/AreThereAnyRestrictionsOnNames.html
We will not accept an application for a name that:
* does not include at least one forename and one surname;
* is impossible to pronounce;
* includes numbers or symbols;
* includes punctuation marks - although you can have a hyphen to link forenames or
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Although I agree that hereditary aristocracy is not democratic, neither is plutocracy.
Given the normal mathematical regression to the mean, the great families of, say, the Restoration aren't necessarily so economically high and mighty today. In an era where you have far more constituents than you can possibly meet, money rules. Hereditary nobility might be the only chance for a person of modest means to hold office.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:4, Interesting)
The House of Lords functions in a manner that the US Senate should have functioned. Since the appointment is life time, the Lords are not subject to listening to the populism. Thus they are free to make intelligent and informed decisions rather than relying on listening to the whims of the populace, potentially serving as a mechanism by which to prevent utterly stupid laws from passing.
The US had that with the Senate, by making Senators a 6 year term and not making their appointment subjected directly to the whim of the people. Since the 17th Amendment in 1913 things have gotten progressively worse as Senators suddenly pay heed to populism.
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Oh, but that was by design. Now the senators don't have to worry about state legislatures and governors recalling them over their cumulative abuses, as long as they can snooker 20% (~1/3 of their state will be partisan anyway) of the people who bother to vote in senate races, they can get away with pretty much anything for five of those six years.
Since the 17th Amendment in 1913 things have gotten progressively worse as Senators suddenly pay heed to populism
Oh, a pun! what fun!
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Essentially.
And the pun wasn't intentional.
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Canada has that too 'cept we call it a Senate.
Re:Finally, someone gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the House of Lords is that the vast majority of people have no idea as to the real work that they do. The amount of poor drafting of legislation that they correct is truly staggering. The amount of just nasty ideas that get blocked is also quite staggering. However because the chamber is unelected (which has traditionally made them very hard to bribe) people see it as undemocratic, and we get the fiddling that Blair did which just served to make them prone to bribery.
To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied, (Score:5, Funny)
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
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As if millions of
Re:To which Lord Vader of the RIAA replied, (Score:5, Funny)
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right?
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guys?
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I'm sure right now George Lucas's mind is blown.
Tomorrow, he'll be trying to figure out what he can do to become a Lord.
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Ob. Robot Chicken Star Wars (Score:2)
I've altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it more.
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Are they not the same person?
New labour: Government by the Mandleson, for the Mandelson
sane copyright laws? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane"
mod summary +1 funny
Re:sane copyright laws? (Score:4, Funny)
If you follow my sig, it would be something like this:
RANDOMIZE TIMER
copyrightsanity% = INT(RND * 255) + 1
IF copyrightsanity% = 0 THEN copyrightissane = 1: ELSE wereallfucked$ = "very yes"
Always another way (Score:4, Interesting)
Make the ambulance chasing legal teams feel the heat of well written complaints to all MP's in the area.
Write to the local press. get on radio, tv, youtube, name the lawyers.
Protest outside their offices and public events demanding legal reform.
Make a web page with the legal teams letters to attract many others.
Make it out rank their own site in google searches.
If they sue you, go to court.
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...
Declare bankruptcy, get laughed out of court by well funded and backed solicitors / media companies, and live without any possibility of credit, mortgage, or a management position for the rest of your life.
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There ought to be a file-sharers union with a legal defense fund. I'd donate to that.
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Re:Always another way (Score:5, Insightful)
"If they sue you, go to court."
Problem with that one is anyone that has said they're willing to go to court over it has had the case dropped, and there's no recourse, or way to force them to put their money where their mouth is. They just rely on the people who are scared to death at the idea of the court costs and so just settle regardless of innocence or guilty because as Lucas says, the music industry's "evidence" is being treated as proof of guilt when it's anything but.
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They need clients and standing in the community.
Sit in his or her car park, follow their clients back to their house/office/ company.
Using your letter, describe the 'quality' of legal representation they have hired to all the staff.
If they like to be seen doing community work, tell the other people donating their time about your lawyers day job.
Use the "evidence" letter - its yours
Any modern art competitions? Scale it up and enter it - big tim
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You could take them to Small Claims Court to recover costs incurred by their hastily abandoned legal threats.
Say you had to spend a few hours checking your PCs and wifi to make sure they really had made a mistake, and then write them numerous letters until they gave up. How much is your time worth? £100 per hour? Pretty cheap by legal standards. If you can show that you lost out financially (e.g. you could have spent that time earning money, but even letters, stamps, paper and ink all have value) you
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You'd struggle to claim for your time unfortunately, it's not that easy.
When I was with Demon internet and they dropped me to 128kbps for a month with no notice stating I'd crossed my monthly allowance which was never in my contract and which I'd never agreed to I took them to the small claims court. They didn't turn up to defend, however I was still only granted things that were provable- i.e. XBox live, Dark Age of Camelot were unusuable for the month, also I was allowed to recoup the cost of my subscript
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And, just to add a shameless plug in there, sign the DigitalWrong letter! [digitalwrong.org]. You write what you want to say to Mandelson they get it printed up on some big paper with everyone else's and go and try to give it to him. More effective than writing a letter and you don't even have to pay for a stamp.
Grrr....mind trick (Score:4, Funny)
This wasn't the Lucas I was looking for.
seriously (Score:2)
when i heard "Lord Lucas" i thought "good gosh, george has done gone from genius in the '70s, to feeble hack in the 2000s, and now into outright dementia, confusing reality with his fantasy world, imagining himself senator palpatine himself, walking around in his bathrobe and hissing at ILM underlings and trying to vivisection visiting cartoon network executives with a torchiere lamp from the reception area"
Hear, hear, M'lud! (Score:2)
n/t
Outbreak of common sense! (Score:2, Insightful)
What an amazing outbreak of common sense! It's about time at least some of the politicians start to acknowledge that the underhanded, shady, illegal and extremely prejudiced methods used by the media companies are a huge problem. If only the politicians in the US would get this, but somehow I doubt they will. They are too deep in the pockets of the media companies at this point to ever recover.
Re:Outbreak of common sense! (Score:4, Interesting)
He has been saying this for longer (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87352/uks-lord-lucas-compares-p2p-to-sharing-a-newspaper/
If he is who I think he is, he is also a real lord, not a made one. Means he is rich, or at least of that kind of well to do family that scoffs at the typical goverment bribes as being WAAAAAAY to low.
Re:He has been saying this for longer (Score:5, Informative)
The Digital Economy bill has been in the lords of the last few weeks for debate. It's been grossly under-reported even on IT news sites, but to anyone that's been keeping an eye, Lucas has been quite the hero. He's been one of the the main people consistently questioning the logic of the bill's three strikes provision and so forth.
He's a smart guy, he seems to understand how the bill's plans run completely counter to hundreds of years worth of citizens hard earned legal and fundamental rights.
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And you can bet your left testicle that Rupert Murdoch would try to make sharing a newspaper illegal if he thought he could get away with it. After-all - you may have just cost him a dollar-fifty.
It is spreading.... (Score:2, Funny)
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Such optimism (Score:2)
>Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane."
Sadly, history indicates it wont work like that. Instead, companies will strive to lock down personal computers so we end up with limited operational rights. It will probably become illegal to own an ogg player.
NO ! (Score:3, Insightful)
No it will mean even residential user will be forcwed to log everything in their system, and if they do not they will be found breaking the "private logging law" (soon to come). Seeing the power trip the UK is on, you have to be +5 insane or +5 funny to think otherwise.
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No it will mean even residential user will be forcwed to log everything in their system, and if they do not they will be found breaking the "private logging law" (soon to come). Seeing the power trip the UK is on, you have to be +5 insane or +5 funny to think otherwise.
My fear is you may be correct. I can easily see a future where cable modems and firewalls are forced to ship with extensive logging which cannot be tampered with by the end user (probably logging to a syslog server at the ISP).
I just hope Labour don't win the upcoming election. Not that I think the Tories are much better right now, but with any luck they'll find they have bigger things to worry about.
Let the lawmakers have their fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems the way to beat this copyright cabal is to keep on sharing, keep on using the Internet. Playing their game, trying to outlobby them, looks like a losing proposition. They can lobby for all the laws they like, but they can't rescind the facts of nature, which is that copying is inherent in the universe. This Copyright Inquisition will fizzle out eventually, the likes of Jack Valenti will go down in infamy next to Torquemada, and centuries from now this hatred, fear, and attempted suppression of copying and extreme punishment of alleged copiers will seem as counterproductive, senseless, and inexplicable as the torture of random people does now. Though I would like to see it happen rather sooner than the length of the typical copyright term.
The lawmakers for their part may choose how they want to look. Do they want to look corrupt, clueless, and irrelevant by taking the money and enacting the industry's idiotic proposals that make about as much sense as enacting a law that pi must equal 3.0? Or look good and far-seeing by not taking the money, and serving the people? Nice that this Lord Lucas is apparently opting for high road. I wish him luck.
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Seems the way to beat this copyright cabal is to keep on sharing
Unfortunately this is the sort of quotation that plays right into their hands.
It's been a very easy ride for the copyright holders so far - opposition to their plans has come either from ISPs (who are motivated by saving money) or file-sharing advocates; this means it's been very easy for them to dismiss the opposition as greedy, self-interested pirates. The point I'm trying to get across is that it's possible to support copyright and copyright enforcement without supporting these ridiculous measures and wi
Mandelson (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, at least this makes up for Lord Mandelson.
Re:Mandelson (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing makes up for Mandelson.
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mistaken analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, what we have is a group of wealthy smart businessmen whose financial interests conflict with ours. They have made a series of decisions that benefit themselves and their wealthy friends (who will scratch their backs later when they retire from politics and need a cushy position on someone's corporate board). They are not stupid, and quite often not so misinformed as we would like to think.
Typically what is happening in one of these situations where some certain politician has one of these "epiphanies" is that he just wants to change his position on something because he has decided that it will benefit him. He makes out like he's been misinformed and has discovered the light. By implying that the opposing side is an unjust position, he's making a persuasive argument for people to support his position.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Typically what is happening in one of these situations where some certain politician has one of these "epiphanies" is that he just wants to change his position on something because he has decided that it will benefit him. He makes out like he's been misinformed and has discovered the light. By implying that the opposing side is an unjust position, he's making a persuasive argument for people to support his position.
You know what's the mistake with your argument? Ralph Lucas is not an electioneering politician and does not need to be. He is a hereditary peer for life.
that's not what I want (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully, at the very least, the fact that parliament has realised this fact will mean that copyright laws will get a little more sane.
I don't want to see more laws, I want to see some prosecutions! Common-law blackmail is still illegal, and still carries life imprisonment & an unlimited fine, and doesn't require the thing threatened to be illegal.
Other Lords (Score:2)
I've been following the upper house debates on the Parliament channel for a couple of weeks now.
The Labour lords are really taking a battering on this bill (The Digital Economy Bill) from all sides - Independent, Lib Dem and Conservative.
There are a couple of points that they (Labour) really can't seem to explain:
- Is the 'subscriber' at fault when infringement occurs, or is it the actual infringer who will be served notice?
- How do you correctly identify the guilty party (infringer), when you have only the
Don't be... (Score:2)
Don't be holding your Limey breath waiting for that to happen. Me thinks the MOP is just as corrupt as the US House and Senate.
Watching CSPAN is getting to be like watching a G-rated version of Rome....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He's a lord, not an MP.
I wonder if people here will now realise why a lot of us in the UK value the fact that there is a second, non-elected House that can act as a brake on the excesses of the elected one?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone in the US should realize that, its the same job the Supreme Court is supposed to fill (and sometime even does). The problem is it can go the other way- an unelected group can put the breaks on needed legislation and good change. For a US example, see the Dred Scott decision. The trick is finding a way to assign people to that group that honestly have the best for the nation and the people in mind- not an easy task. Any system you build will eventually fail it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone in the US should realize that, its the same job the Supreme Court is supposed to fill (and sometime even does).
The problem with that is that SCOTUS is strictly limited in what it can and cannot overrule, on the basis that they can only declare a law invalid if they can find some constitutional reason for it.
In the UK, the House of Lords is quite able to prevent an otherwise acceptable law reaching statute simply on the grounds that it would be a bad idea. This is forever beyond the power of SCOTUS,
Re: (Score:2)
If they do then you are lucky but you won't be lucky all the time. Consider the behaviour [wikipedia.org] of Old Rednose [wikipedia.org]. All things considered I would prefer to do without arbitrary powers being granted to individuals and fall back on real democracy.
Re:Lets hope that this is the start... (Score:5, Informative)
Finally a politician who acts like they have a pair, working in government to actually bring the issues faced by the Great British public to light.
Lord Lucas [blogspot.com] is a Conservative hereditary peer, and a "backbencher" at that - so he is not working in government at all at present and neither is he likely to be even after the election. In many respects this is a shame, because he's one of the few people who have been pointing out some of the other heinous flaws in the Digital Economy Bill (i.e. the parts apart from the copyright regime - the powers it gives the government to take over the UK Domain Name Registry for one).
Actually on the whole the politicians who act most independently tend to be the remaining hereditary peers because they owe their position and therefore "allegiance" to rather fewer people than almost anyone else in government (they are technically elected to sit in the house from amongst all hereditary peers by the existing members of the House of Lords but the pool of candidates is small and once elected they are there until death or, more likely, further reform of the House of Lords occurs).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thats not the lord you are looking for.
Re:Lord Lucas (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)