Law Fail

As you can see, MPs took their duty to turn up and discuss this important bill very seriously

Last week, the UK parliament showed its utter bankruptcy by passing the spectacularly bad Digital Economy Act into law with virtually no debate.

The law as regards the internet in the UK is now a total shambles, a pigs ear which has been written by the corporate culture industry to safeguard their own profits.

Noted knobhead and Subbuteo player Richard Mollet is reportedly delighted. He is one of the leading corporate music industry lobbyists, and now a Labour election candidate, who helped get this dogs dinner passed.

For the rest of us however, it’s another illustration of how the UK parliament is completely undemocratic and has absolutely no interest in defending the rights of UK citizens when they conflict with corporate profits. A big campaign was mounted against the bill, with thousands contacting their MPs.

But, unfortunately, this strategy has failed. It’s time to start talking about how we defend innocent filesharers when the demands for payment start rolling in for companies who can claim copyright infringement. One of the worst things about this law is that it means that in many cases a company will just have to accuse someone of having infringed on their copyright, and, like with libel laws, most won’t have the money to defend themselves in court and will have to just pay a fine.

One of the ridiculous consequences of this is that people who HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN FILESHARING are getting accused. Check out this story about an Inverness couple who received a demand for payment for alleged filesharing, and who didn’t even understand what they were being accused of!

Of course, it’s hardly surprising that MPs don’t grasp these issues properly. Many contributions to the debate in parliament showed that they have an understanding of the internet about as good as your angry Dad when Windows breaks.

For example, Stephen Timms, who is Britain’s “Minister for the Digital Economy”, thinks that an Internet Protocol (IP) address actually stands for “Intellectual Property”! What more proof do we need that all this chat about the digital economy is nothing more than a cover for for more corporate profits?

Letter send by the Minister to other MP's

Although, credit where credit is due, even I have to respect defending this piece of capitalist legal vomit through a Star Wars metaphor:

The advocates of illegal downloading-for that is what it is-have succeeded in painting a picture that is very seductive, but very misleading. The best way to illustrate this is by means of an old-tech linear-medium metaphor. In this metaphorical world that they have constructed, my hon. Friend Mr. Watson, who is in his place but not paying attention, is Luke Skywalker. He is the little guy, the plucky loner fighting the machine. Clay Shirky is Obi Wan Kenobi, the wise, broad, almost mystical guru figure. Peter Mandelson is obviously Darth Vader. Rather more counter-intuitively, however-this is where the metaphor begins to fracture-the evil Sith Chancellor Palpatine, the most evil universally bad figure of all, turns out to be Steven Spielberg. That is who Luke Skywalker is fighting-the ultimate rights holder, the acme of creative content ownership. When Spielberg turns out to be the ultimate evil, we know that the metaphor-otherwise quite cleverly constructed by the freedom fighters-is not just flawed, but misleading, damaging and dangerous. When Spielberg is the ultimate evil, it turns out that creativity is the enemy. It is creativity that Luke and his pals are after.” Sion Simon, Labour MP for Erdington.

This transparent attempt to show the government is down wit da internets kidz will of course fail, once we start getting hit with pointless fines. Leftfield says: join us on the dark side, and get as much out of the net for free while we still can!