Say goodbye to the Internet

[Yeast Lord]

It's the first I've heard of this and it's almost gone through parliament. As is always the case (like anti terrorist laws used for everything but the kitchen sink) I'm sure this law will be used with discretion lol.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

And of course the dark lord and government tv is involved:

http://www.out-law.com/page-10890

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/stop-bbc-...

To top it off we're having to pay a telephone tax so that we can have super fast broadband to browse through government policed websites.

[b2hbm]

Yep, I'd heard about that and it's been discussed on a few other forums, including one run by my ISP. They (ISPs) aren't too keen on the bill and the techies I've seen have all said it's impractical. But of course our gubbinment never bothers with technical details and just barge ahead anyway. When I first saw it, it just looked like another Mandelson "favour" to the music/film industry.

One thing that does strike me is that anyone who d/loads a lot of stuff, legal or otherwise, will have a premium internet connection and pay a premium price. If they get cut off due to implementation of this bill or simply decide not to bother as the publicity rises, then I can see ISP incomes dropping people opt for the cheapest package. For example - I d/l TV series because it seems easier than recording them myself, so I'd be a target based upon my monthly bandwidth. But if I stopped because of the hassle, then I don't need to pay £20/month for email and browsing a few forums, I can do that on £10/month. And although they don't admit it openly, the ISPs are fully aware of that.

[Oakey]

This crossed my mind earlier, the only way it will work is if the ISP's give up their customers and I can't see them willingly wanting to destroy their revenue stream.

[Jasandjules]

More control freakery and money grabbing?

[CrashTD]

The website said:

banning websites accused of copyright infringment by copyright holders.

[Arnold The Bat]

CrashTD said:

The website said:

banning websites accused of copyright infringment by copyright holders.

So therefore we could accuse the Number 10 website and the Labour Party website of copyright infringement and get them both shut down? Sounds like a plan, we could create total online chaos for the government maybe even shutting down every .gov site.

[Yeast Lord]

Arnold The Bat said:

CrashTD said:

The website said:

banning websites accused of copyright infringment by copyright holders.

So therefore we could accuse the Number 10 website and the Labour Party website of copyright infringement and get them both shut down? Sounds like a plan, we could create total online chaos for the government maybe even shutting down every .gov site.

LOL that won't work. It's one law for them and no law for us, you should know that by now if you've been living here.

[Arnold The Bat]

Yes but you are crediting the government with actually having thought this through which would certainly be a first for any government policy. I think it's worth a go.

[Uncle Fester]

So we all cancel our home internet connection contract.

I'll still have the work conection for work, but if the ISP's lose all their customers it will have to be rethought.

Everyone migrates to the first ISP providing a way around it.

[Mojooo]

To get your internet cut off under this piece of legislation I am pretty sure its a 3 strikes system

If you keep moving ISPs I presume it wont be long before the copyright holders think about specific civil action.

[Magog]

It's surely going to be an own goal. It's going to lead to an arms race of encryption, it'll make decent encryption available to everyone, and consequently make the job GCHQ, MI5 anti-terrorist police that much more difficult in dealing with the things that really matter when it comes to monitoring online activity. Good work by the government again!

[ymwoods]

Magog said:

It's surely going to be an own goal. It's going to lead to an arms race of encryption, it'll make decent encryption available to everyone, and consequently make the job GCHQ, MI5 anti-terrorist police that much more difficult in dealing with the things that really matter when it comes to monitoring online activity. Good work by the government again!

Indeed, if this goes through then I will be investing in the Pirate Bay's internet connection encrypting service. Called iPredator I believe. Bassicly it encrypts you connection and routes everything through their server...of which they keep no logs of your activity on.

[b2hbm]

Magog said:

It's surely going to be an own goal. It's going to lead to an arms race of encryption, it'll make decent encryption available to everyone, and consequently make the job GCHQ, MI5 anti-terrorist police that much more difficult in dealing with the things that really matter when it comes to monitoring online activity. Good work by the government again!

I'm sure it will lead to more encryption, but that won't matter in the context of this bill. All that matters is for the ISP to monitor your monthly d/l which they can do that regardless of if it's encrypted or not. Once they know someone uses, say, 10/20/30/100GB a month then it would trigger an alarm, and that person's details could be passed on to an enforcement body if requested or made a legal requirement.

Apart from losing income because customers pack in d/loading and switch to cheaper products, or switch ISPs to one with a more lenient informant policy, the ISPs don't want the legal requirement of identifying potential copyright infringement. I think they would know if it's on p2p, usenet, http or ftp channels but not what you've actually downloaded without a lot of work. For example, someone watching iPlayer all day would use more bandwidth than someone grabbing the latest copy of Ashes to Ashes from usenet or a d/l site. One is legal, one technically isn't, but the iPlayer watcher might trigger the alarm and warrant investigation ?

But my understanding of the bill (admittedly from forum gossip) is that it would allow a copyright holder to investigate you, come inside your house and have a poke around, etc. That's the insidious part, they don't have to have proof of a specific infringement before they get to do the big brother thing, just that you've used more bandwidth than normal, or a lot of bandwidth on a specific channel.

Any claims of anti-terrorism benefits are complete twaddle, your average bomber isn't going to send a DVD of how to make your bomb to his mates. The terrorist communications may well be encrypted but will pass well under this radar, this is aimed purely at people d/loading music, or more likely films.

[ymwoods]

b2hbm said:

Magog said:

It's surely going to be an own goal. It's going to lead to an arms race of encryption, it'll make decent encryption available to everyone, and consequently make the job GCHQ, MI5 anti-terrorist police that much more difficult in dealing with the things that really matter when it comes to monitoring online activity. Good work by the government again!

I'm sure it will lead to more encryption, but that won't matter in the context of this bill. All that matters is for the ISP to monitor your monthly d/l which they can do that regardless of if it's encrypted or not. Once they know someone uses, say, 10/20/30/100GB a month then it would trigger an alarm, and that person's details could be passed on to an enforcement body if requested or made a legal requirement.

Apart from losing income because customers pack in d/loading and switch to cheaper products, or switch ISPs to one with a more lenient informant policy, the ISPs don't want the legal requirement of identifying potential copyright infringement. I think they would know if it's on p2p, usenet, http or ftp channels but not what you've actually downloaded without a lot of work. For example, someone watching iPlayer all day would use more bandwidth than someone grabbing the latest copy of Ashes to Ashes from usenet or a d/l site. One is legal, one technically isn't, but the iPlayer watcher might trigger the alarm and warrant investigation ?

But my understanding of the bill (admittedly from forum gossip) is that it would allow a copyright holder to investigate you, come inside your house and have a poke around, etc. That's the insidious part, they don't have to have proof of a specific infringement before they get to do the big brother thing, just that you've used more bandwidth than normal, or a lot of bandwidth on a specific channel.

Any claims of anti-terrorism benefits are complete twaddle, your average bomber isn't going to send a DVD of how to make your bomb to his mates. The terrorist communications may well be encrypted but will pass well under this radar, this is aimed purely at people d/loading music, or more likely films.

Thats crazy, and I suppose Encrypting the data will not help either, things like Bitlocker have a built-in backdoor for authorities and its illegal to NOT give the password to things like that unless you have a valid reason (like you don't know it or forgot) I don't see the "valid" reasons carrying much weight though if they proove you have had to enter it so many times per month to put your downloads into.

[TheCarpetCleaner]

Aside from needing to download the occasional Linux image, I don't need a fast internet connection apart from the odd TV episode.

If a bill like this came in, I would probably cancel my landline entirely and just get a broadband dongle. I don't really use the internet apart from for forum browsing and emails otherwise.

Total own goal. I reckon broadband suppliers would go down overnight if everyone reduced their packages to 512k download or lower. I could survive happily on 256k to be honest.

[Funk]

There are ways and means of getting around this. Ironically, it'll be most likely to be innocent people who're caught up in it.

[CoopR]

Labour is dancing around proclaiming that internet access is human right in order to justify buying votes with laptops and taxing us more with a phoneline tax. So all the first person who gets banned has to do it take them to the euro courts

[WEHGuy]

Just another step towards the controlled internet2

[bobbylondonuk]

satellite internet?

[scorp]

ymwoods said:

Magog said:

It's surely going to be an own goal. It's going to lead to an arms race of encryption, it'll make decent encryption available to everyone, and consequently make the job GCHQ, MI5 anti-terrorist police that much more difficult in dealing with the things that really matter when it comes to monitoring online activity. Good work by the government again!

Indeed, if this goes through then I will be investing in the Pirate Bay's internet connection encrypting service. Called iPredator I believe. Bassicly it encrypts you connection and routes everything through their server...of which they keep no logs of your activity on.

It could also lead to an arms race of stupid legislation, like whitelisting allowed (snoopable) protocols.