It eventually passed with most MP’s not voting, despite a 3-line whip on the topic for the then-ruling Labour Party MPs.

The Bill passed to become the Digital Economy Act with a narrower margin than many expected given the voting instructions from the party – some had stood up for their conscience and for the facts, risking sanctions from their party.

The Act has been broken down by the Pirate Party into five sections:

1. Introduction and the Initial Obligations Code
2. Technical measures to limit Internet access
3. Subscriber appeals
4. Web-blocking
5. Other Provisions and Summary

This sort of technical guide would have been even better if made available before the vote. Passed around the Commons bar, it could have helped people who were clearly uncertain of technology or the Bill’s actual contents to make better sense of it.

For the regular everyday citizens who are now subject to this law, it’s also beneficial. A major problem with recent legislation worldwide is that it’s often impenetrable to anyone without legal training. The ability to access laws and understand them is key to those working with, and striving to improve them.

Meanwhile the Act is still not completed and final. Several UK Government departments, including OFCOM, have been delegated powers and abilities under the Act. There have been consultations (and there may be more) to address parts, and the outcomes of those will make a difference. Many people though, are probably expecting the worst.

On this topic, governments around the world have been increasingly disinterested in listening to the concerns of the citizens affected by the Act, while making policy based on the wishes of a few dozen large companies, and their anecdotal ‘evidence‘.

Of course, those that the Act was created to target will probably be the only ones not troubled by it, and that also says volumes about the quality of the law, and the futility of such laws worldwide. Not that such facts will stop things.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

One of the sites expected to be a main candidate for disconnection under the new legislation is The Pirate Bay. The largest torrent indexer on the Internet is synonymous with BitTorrent sharing for many people. This reputation has already led to the site being blocked in several European countries.

To prevent this from happening in the UK, The Pirate Bay has published a special information bulletin to inform users what actions they can take to get the Act revoked. The publication comes with a new doodle and temporarily replaces the well known pirate ship on the site’s homepage.

The Pirate Bay gives a brief overview of the history of the new legislation and why it’s important to take action against it. As a recommendation, they encourage users to email their candidates and ask them whether they oppose the Act or not. Another recommendation is to inform friends about the implications the legislation may have for the future of the Internet.

From the looks of it, The Pirate Bay has set the page up in collaboration with the Open Rights Group, which has been fighting the Act for months already. Despite heavy opposition from the public and several successful campaigns against the Act, those who had to vote on its passing continued to support it.

But all is not lost yet.

With the General Election coming up in early May, the act has become a hot item for the candidates. The Liberal Democrats have already said they will repeal the Act if they make it into the Government, and we’re sure that the Pirate Party will do the same.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Despite these new powers awarded to copyright holders, it is unlikely that they will stop heavy file-sharers from continuing what they’ve been doing for so long. The problem with using technology to fight technology is that it’s only a matter of time before the latter catches up with the former.

It has already been shown numerous times that DRM has not prevented anyone from sharing files, and the Digital Economy Act – with all the extra powers it gives to copyright holders – wont be successful either.

For those who don’t want to give up their habit of downloading copyrighted material, there are simply dozens of ways to download music and movies without being at risk. Much like DRM, the Act will not stop tech savvy file-sharers, it will only change the rules of the game.

Listed below are a few ways how file-sharers will easily avoid the measures that have been introduced by the new legislation.

A Simple Trick

For those who use BitTorrent to share files, there is one really simple trick to avoid being tracked by many copyright holders. Since all of the tracking software we’re aware of today use BitTorrent trackers to gather data, one can simply remove the tracker(s) before downloading and rely on DHT and PEX instead.

DHT and PEX are supported by all the major BitTorrent clients nowadays and users will be able to download just as quickly as they are used to. Instead of going through a central tracker, DHT and PEX allow BitTorrent users to get all the information they need from the swarm, and avoid the prying eyes of many anti-piracy outfits by doing so.

Although monitoring DHT is harder than using the BitTorrent trackers to gather ‘evidence’, it is not impossible. But since the leading BitTorrent tracking organization Dtecnet has no clue about DHT, we assume that it might take a while before their evidence gathering techniques are updated.

Buying Anonymity

For a few pounds a month file-sharers can circumvent the Digital Economy Act entirely with a VPN. These services offer an encrypted tunnel between your home connection and an external server and will exchange your IP-address for one in another country where UK laws don’t apply. Besides avoiding being tracked by anti-piracy outfits, a VPN will also allow access to all of the sites that may be blocked under the new legislation.

There are thousands of VPN services available on the Internet. Itshidden is a popular one among BitTorrent users, but Hidemyass and Swiss VPN have received positive reviews as well. The Pirate Bay folks offer one of the cheapest solutions, they launched their Ipredator VPN a year ago after Sweden passed their new anti-piracy law.

Ditch BitTorrent

What hasn’t been mentioned too often is that the Digital Economy Act only targets a select group of file-sharers – those who upload material. It is expected that BitTorrent and Gnutella-based applications such as Limewire will be the main targets, simply because they are the easiest to monitor.

However, there are several other ways to download copyrighted content on the Internet. Usenet providers offer premium download services that cannot be monitored easily, and as we mentioned in a previous article, there are also hundreds of MP3 search engines that allow users to download files directly on their computers without being tracked.

The bottom line is that no matter what legislation governments introduce, it is doubtful that it will have an effect on heavy file-sharers or those that can be bothered to spend 30 minutes using Google. It might deter some novice file-sharers, but the question is at what expense? As The Guardian rightfully notes today, the Act might lead to hundreds or thousands of people losing their connection based on false evidence. Is that worth it?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.