Comply, citizen!
Secret talks between governments? Surely, there’s another invasion on the books? Maybe one of them came up with a great plan to end all of the world’s suffering? No, they’re talking about changing and implementing international copyright law.
The discussions have a broad scope: our nations’ Wisest Men will be chatting away about anything from counterfeiting physical goods to unlawful digital distribution.
Maybe they should’ve decreased the scope, as these two problems facing the so-called creative industries (and their politician friends) are completely different and shouldn’t be discussed together.
The fact that the industry’s lying propaganda has placed any perceived ‘infringement’ upon any perceived ‘intellectual rights’ (to avoid the term “intellectual property”, as everyone should), under one all-encompassing banner of “piracy”, that it has become acceptable for our governments to dismiss their own laws and use the industry’s illogical disinformation strategy against their own people.
The counterfeiting of physical goods is the work of criminals (and is often a side-project of organised crime) and prey upon both producer and customer.
Internet distribution (the Evil Filesharing™) does not belong in the same category. Non-commercial copyright infringement, as would happen when some kid uploads a copyrighted file, falls in no way under the same definition – or any human definition – of crime.
Transparent and open democratic governments? Not in this society, apparently; where policy laundering and dodgy advisers with their own business interests at heart are the norm.
However, not all news on invasive laws is bad news. For once eager to follow the French example, the UK government has been pushing its Digital Economy Bill. Invasive? Yes. Scary? Not according to culture minister Sion Simon, who said last Monday that “people who have done nothing wrong should not be in any danger of having their internet interfered with at all.” And to spoil his countrymen even more, he even threw in a right of appeal!
A right of appeal where you prove that you are innocent. Like France’s HADOPI law, this UK law will consider you guilty until proven innocent; and you will carry the burden of proof yourself. Good luck proving you didn’t do something!
Will the snoops bother to check the contents of the available torrents? Framing your enemies is getting easier every day, why not get them booted off the internet whilst you’re at it?
If the government’s cronies are just connecting to random popular torrents and issuing notices to the ISPs of all IPs connected to those torrents (a very flawed method to say the least), will they assume that everyone connected to the torrent is both downloading and uploading, during which the real ‘infringement’ happens?
And, again, there are several problems with accusing private individuals of copyright infringement when there is such a wide array of (voluntarily and accidently) unsecured wireless networks out there, open FON networks, and so on.
It needs repeating: there are already laws in place to protect copyright holders. However, the current legislation requires rights holders to sue the alleged copyright terrorist at their own expense, and provide sufficient proof against the alleged copyright dissident themselves.
The new legislation will consider the accused guilty based purely upon the fact they were accused, and put the borden of proof (of innocence) on the alleged baby-killing dissident.
Like the French law, this legislation will cause private, tax-paying individuals to be spied on 24/7 without proper reason or suspicion. It will make everyone who uses the internet into a potential criminal who simply must be watched.
The massive propaganda making non-commercial copyright infringement the biggest crime of this millennium would turn any dictator extremely jealous. This small offence against copyright law is a non-issue that has been blown out of proportion purely because the interested parties are friendly with the lawmakers – people whose luxurious lifestyles we pay for through our taxes, and who in (utopian?) theory should cater to our needs, not their friends’ desires.