“Exclusive Record label trade association the BPI wants sweeping changes to UK online copyright practice in 11th hour amendments to the Digital Britain bill.

The amendments would grant copyright holders injunctions against websites and service providers similar to the US DMCA act – but with no ‘safe harbour’ provision to verify whether the claim is merited, according to documents seen by The Register.
”

“In a statement, the BPI told us:

“Clause 17 is an essential component of the Bill since it provides a mechanism to deal with the increasing threat of illegal downloading from non-P2P sources and other future threats.

In light of the ongoing debate on the current draft of Clause 17, we thought it prudent to propose possible alternative approaches, including a straw-man s.97B.
However, Clause 17 remains our favoured approach to address forms of online infringement ,b.other than P2P filesharing. ”
”

“The amendment game
With the Lords due to debate the Digital Britain Bill today, the ISP trade association ISPA and major labels are both lobbying hard, tabling dozens of amendments.

One by Conservative peer Lord Lucas would put search engines above the law, making them immune to any copyright claims at all.

According to Paid Content, Google would be free to store and distribute anything it wanted, selectively abolishing copyright.
“

If they actually have to prove copyrights were infringed upon, and they do this by grabbing a copy from someone.

Now in case they have the rights to do so, then it isn’t an infringement.

But on the other hand, if they don’t, they are breaking the law themselves, which apparently is illegal…

That post, #32, by Reasoned Mind? That wasn’t the real Reasoned Mind. It was me, an anon poster who argues with RM and neo. I was posting like he does, but I was also ridiculing him with the extreme measure of my posting. I mean, work camps? Come on. I wouldn’t put it past him to honestly support that notion, though…

The point is that everyone here thought he was the real Reasoned Mind. I apologize for the deception, but it proves a point: Nobody here thought the post was too extreme for Reasoned Mind, proving that he’s either just a troll or is an extremist idiot.

I propose the adoption of a version of Poe’s Law (for fundamentalism) as applied to filesharing: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of antipiracy that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.” My suggestion for the name is neo’s law, in reference to the neostyles idiot who likes to troll this site. Or RM’s Law. Whichever.

The meetings are all aired on http://www.parliamentlive.tv – the next one will be here http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5496 (I think). It will likely also be aired on the BBC’s “Democracy Live” on their House of Lords section. As with the last couple of sessions there will likely be a live discussion on the debate in the Pirate Party UK’s irc channel (http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/chat/).

More information on the Bill itself can be found here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/digitaleconomy.html

“Do you really want that on your conscience? What do you think Kurt Cobain would say if he was still alive?”

Much of the discussion was over the wording and the meaning behind specific words or phrases (such as “particular” on page 1, line 7, “appropriate” in lines 8 and 10, and “wherever possible” in line 12) and the possible interpretations these words could have – that should give some idea of the level of detail the Lords were going into.

Of course, the minister just stuck to blunt reassurance about everything so no real progress was made, but the fact that the entire first clause passed by 106 votes to 55 shows just how close this could get.

If anyone is particularly interested, a full transcript of the debate can be found here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/index/100106.html#contents but there’s quite a lot of it.

Better informed comment/troll roasting ratio please. I should not have to scroll past that troll even when he’s NOT POSTING.

Thank You.

@28 by duke

Thanks for the info, it seems one can always count on the brit’s to come thru w/ news on this topic.

Do you know if any of the interesting amendments mentioned here were specifically defeated? In other words, See any bad news for our side in your lords watchin?

@22 liked your comment, but..WALL OF TEXT

It is true that the packeted nature of torrents, and the impossibility of proving a 1:1 copy, makes any prosecution of p2p highly dubious. This FACT, however, has never stopped successful prosecutions before.

The simplest solution to why what mandleson is:

hes a cunt.

There are significantly more innovative ways to tackle this problem. Involving the government is the worst possible option.

Oh and i’d like to point out that none of this cash is going to you, why are you defending your right to pay for something that can be gotten free, natural selection says we should do otherwise, unless your mother being your sister made you fail natural selection

“..infringement of the owner’s copyright APPEARS to have taken place through peer-to-peer filesharing networks on a subscriber’s IP address;”

Its a loophole which causes plausible deniability (words taken from truecrypt). It does not say it actually happened so you can get 1000′s of meaningless letters as they cannot disconnect or let anyone pay on even a 1000 “suspicions”. The moment a letter comes to go to court you just wipe the files and do a cleanup of traces afterwards.

@reasoned troll
Are you stealing ‘time’ again ? See a few aricles back since you have all the time in the world to search for it.

First: Did you even read the article? It seems to me that, yes they are taking a stand against piracy, BUT, they are rethinking how they are going to do it, possibly not be quite as strict as they originally had planned due to outcry of the citizens and civil rights groups.

Second: It has been proven that even a secure wireless internet signal can be hacked easily by somebody who knows what they are doing. So even if a person DOES take the proper steps to secure their signal, you still think they are to blame?

Third: Fear becomes anger, and anger leads to rebellion. Trust me…it never worked and never will to enslave the people by fear, at least not for a long time. Eventually that fear will lead to total anger and hate. Then, rebellion and war.

And Fourth: Just admit how much of a douche you are already so we don’t have to keep saying it.

I’m sorry. I just HAD to respond. That is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard! That’s EXACTLY what the industry needs to do.
And it’s about damn time some politicians listen to the people. Because if they don’t, the people will revolt.

The day will come when someone hacks your wireless and you go to jail on behalf of the law you voted for.

And when you are in there being molested by the other prisoners you will have a long time to think about how good that law you voted for was.

Also may i remind you that the law has been created to reinforce common sense as in have written obligations that match the majority’s belief.

Law is there to press a standard in the individuals. It mirrors the habits and beliefs of the majority.

Law is also created to protect and grant rights to the wide public.

Law is there to serve the citizen.

Now law in 2010!
- is here to force the many to the will of the few.
- is here to enslave entire nations.
- is here to be used to milk the population of every last cent on behalf of company’s.
- is here to turn a citizen with full rights & privileges in to cash cows.

I don’t know who and where you are but think that you may not have the mental capacity to realize what is going on around you, and to critically asses loopholes in legislation and how it may affect yourself.

Just like we said, obvious troll is obvious.

I’m glad to see the fine ladies and gentlemen of the UK government taking a firm stance against piracy, and I applaud Lord Mendleson for his actions in this regard. I also agree with assigning liability to account owners- if someone who owns a connection does not take the necessary steps to prevent piracy, they’re just as guilty as the pirates themselves.

Mark my words, thieves. The day is coming when you won’t dare even think about stealing content, out of fear of being sent to the work camps. If fear is what governments and industries must use to curb theft of legitimate digital product and untold billions of dollars in subsequent losses, then that’s what it will come to. You brought this on yourselves, and each of you will be held accountable for your actions.

I meant you could claim it as an expense. You know like a duck hut, or a second property. Like an upstanding British MP.

It was a lame attempt at comedy on my part.

I think the best formula for to calculate lost revenue is

Lost revenue from a decline in physical media sales + lost potential sales from a lack of viable alternative to piracy + lost revenue from boycotts due to their refusal to innovate and constant raping of innocent people.

Downloading is lost revenue ONLY because the music industry refuses to adapt to the demands of the market

I watched nearly all of the discussion yesterday (thanks to the internet!) and had some of my faith in the British parliamentary system restored; several of the Lords definitely seemed to understand what they were talking about (there was at least one analogy involving an iPhone and Charles Dickens and a reference to “silver surfers”; the Lords is so much more fun than the Commons). Note: these are the appointed or hereditary peers, not the elected MPs – most likely they will all just fold and do what the government tells them to.

Anyway, in the 3ish hours they debated yesterday they got through the first 19 of 299 amendments, and the first of 49 clauses. This could take a very long time. Unfortunately, none of the amendments held, with the government’s minister (Mandelson’s deputy) essentially saying “but we don’t intend this law to be used or interpreted like that, so we don’t need to make it clear in the legislation”, or in one case that he didn’t “think that there’s much at stake in this particular amendment”.

Anyways, we’ll see what happens in the next sessions; in the mean time, the Pirate movement is doing what it can.

Could I also add the following to your comment if I may.

Those MPs that have been found with their hand in the honey-pot (so far 100)are resigning at the next election but the best part of this is that they will get a year’s salary for doing so.

Now if I ripped off my employer he would call the police and I’d be jailed and have a criminal record for the rest of my life AND no golden handshake.

Remember we are the ones employing these MPs – Something to think about.

In any case, it’s good to see many Lords agree that Mandy Bill is draconian. There are issues in the amendments too but just the fact that it’s being reviewed is pretty good for something Mandy wanted to shove down the British throats.

It’d be interesting to calculate the value of the losses. I remember a torrent that I had a 6.3 ratio but I had downloaded less than 10% of it. So basically I uploaded 6 times the same content (or even more since I could have uploaded the same Mb of data several times). How do you put value in that? And considering that the uploaded data was over the total size of the torrent (i.e.: I transferred more than the size of torrent even though I haven’t finished it), how can you prove I uploaded all the content? Might have some chunks that weren’t uploaded…. Oh and if I downloaded, liked and bought the CD/media/whatever?

It’s much more complicated than Mandy and MAFIAA think lmao. A good denfense with an unbiased and informed judge (and trial) would be enough to demolish each an every argument from MAFIAA and merry friends.

Next it will be put on the back burner because of real issues like terrorism, High seas piracy, war, environment and unemployment.

The United Kingdom general election is due to take place on or before Thursday 3 June 2010, = its all over for Gordon Brown’s Labour party.

Before then if you do get a letter from ACS law or any of the other extortionists demanding cash; Just EXPENSE it.

You are a troll and it is obvious.

Just read your own post. It’s that obvious.

“However, downloads are not generally as profitable to the industry as physical products. And despite the healthy state of singles sales, these do not usually generate significant profits for record companies, who look to album sales to recoup the investments they make in up-and-coming bands and singers.”

In this day and age the record company expect people to buy bulky CDs. Today people use MP3 players. Nobody bothers with portable CD player, just too bulky, CD change, etc. No way. One MP3 = loads of Albums.

Keep up with the times!

Didn’t you follow the TPB case? The copyright holders will just calculate the hypothetical licensing fee for making the DRM free work available to the number of torrent users out there. That can be a huge amount of money, even if it’s just a single upload.

“the value of the infringement on the basis described in the initial obligations.”

Price doesn’t equal value and the purpose of copyright is to add value to society. If you think about it a bit, translating such a value to a price is just as difficult as translating the value of having read this TorrentFreak article into a money figure.

59 Page 6, line 27, at end insert—
“(4A) An internet service provider may recover costs, reasonably incurred in sending a notification report under this section, from the copyright owner.
(4B) A copyright owner may dispute the charge levied by the internet service provider under this section by appeal to OFCOM on the grounds that the charge does not represent costs reasonably incurred in sending the notification.”

So – ISP’s can pass the costs back to the industry (IE the £500 million they say it will cost?)

Also – those who are claiming the infringement must must include a sworn statement that they own the copyright… Since we already know of many occasions that the labels have used works without owning the copyright, this could lead to some interesting results – and could potentially cost them a fortune as they will be asked to prove their ownership at virtually every appeal!

The fact that they will have to prove losses may also stop these John Doe lawsuits from ACS Law as the copyright owners have to follow this procedure (three strikes) before pressing charges.. imagine pressing charges against someone when you have already given them evidence that they only caused you £1 in losses!

It’s such a shame that he may not keep his peerage… Lord Lucas is by far the most switched on Lord re internet and privacy issues – and is defending our rights to the last!