And...
.... Yet another reason I'll be continuing to vote Lib Dem...
As if trying to stop Scheming Dave and His Lordship of Darkness from getting / maintaining power wasn't enough...
Fifty Strikes and… we'll tell your Mum
Unlicensed file sharers have a new name to toast this morning: Lord Razzall. Together with his Lib Dem colleague, the party's spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport Lord Clement Jones, Razzall has tabled an amendment (No.76) to the Digital Economy Bill that gives serial infringers a bit of leeway. Well, quite a lot of leeway …
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:08 GMT EvilGav 1
No, no, no, no, no.
It still misses the fundamental point. Just because someone makes a claim, it does not make it fact if they repeat it n number of times.
If the copyright holders are so sure of themselves, take people to court for breach of copyright, the way they currently can under current legislation.
Any law which puts hear-say as evidence (you know, just like the eCRB does, thanks LieBore) is not a viable law. Any law which removes the right of Habeas Corpus (equally, like all the fines for littering, anti-social behaviour and so on, thanks LieBore), which has been enshrined in law since the Magna Carta, should not get through parliament (assuming MP's "work for you").
This government is full of so much fail it's quite unbelievable.
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:54 GMT Ian Yates
Why?
Just because they haven't won, doesn't mean they won't.
If people stopped putting up with the Tory/Labour rubbish and actually took a stand by voting for a different party, the country would probably be in a better state.
Don't vote for who you THINK will be the next government, vote for who you WANT to be the next government.
And my usual advice: If you don't know who to vote for, DON'T VOTE! Ticking the "blue" box or the "red" box because it's your favourite colour or your parents' choice is worse than not having an opinion.
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:15 GMT MinionZero
@"fifty free download sessions"
What so if you reconnect 50 times (even while downloading 1 file), then its time up.
Well thats just about every file sharer. Within 50 days, everyone using file sharing software could be easily squeezed into this definition of "fifty free download sessions".
Sounds like another empty and meaningless political statement. So they want to re-word the document, so they can tell us, hey everyone, look we done good, (just before an election) yet its actually meaningless.
Sounds like another typical two faced politician. :(
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:16 GMT Richard Gadsden 1
Tim and Tim get it right
Pleased to see that the Tims understand that cutting people off the internet is a serious thing and should not be done casually.
As I read it, it's not 50 infringements, but 50 complaints, and each complaint would have to be for a new infringement that occurred after you had be notified of the previous complaint. If you managed to get 50 solicitor's letters sent to your ISP about you, then you would have been trying really hard to get yourself cut off.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:30 GMT Graham Marsden
Err, what?
Which party has actually bothered to put up *ANY* real opposition to NuLabour's nonsense? Here's a hint, it ain't the Tories.
They had the chance to kill idiocy like the Extreme Porn legislation, but they didn't because, as one Tory Peer admitted to me "We don't support Lib Dem amendments".
Wow! Thanks, guys...
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:42 GMT Alan Gregory 1
why don't they...
Ignoring the dodgy figures spouted by the recording and music industries because we know that every downloaded album is not necessarily a lost sale, much as they want us to believe it is.
Why not levy a charge on every unlimited broadband user, say £20 a year, to be divided up between the copyright holders.
ISP's moniter traffic, but to allow fair division of the cash raised to the copyright holders.
So they get the cash owed and serial downloaders are no longer worried about a knock on the door from plod.
If you don't want to pay the £20, then you are fair game for possible legal actions.
Seemples
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:54 GMT Andrew Orlowski
@Alan Gregory
"Why not levy a charge on every unlimited broadband user, say £20 a year"
Excellent! A new compulsory Poll Tax that goes to subsidize the music biz. I'd like to see you sell that idea to the Daily Mail, Grauniad, Reg commenters, etc.
Dealt with here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/20/how_to_destroy_the_music_business/
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 17:05 GMT David 105
A £20 Levy
I think the point being made was that if you want to download stuff, then you can pick a broadband subscription that has, included in the cost, a £20 levy that goes to the rights holders as a payment for their creativity. If you don't want to download stuff (ie youo'd prefer a physical medium or you don't really like the stuff that's being produced, whatever) then you pick a broadband subscribtion that doesn't include the £20 levy. Then if they found someone with a non levied subscription downloading copyright material, they can do all the stuff the media mafia are requesting. If you've paid for a levy then you can download what you want as the rights holders will have been compensated.
Correct me if I'm wrong, original poster
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 19:52 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
A private tax?
That will be what - a charitable collection to keep recording industries executives' champagne flowing?
What we need (and what the music, movies, software industries really need but refuse to see) is a legal ban on DRMs. Only then these "rights-holders" will be able (forced) to compete on equal terms with "free" downloads (which are never free anyway - bandwidth, time to search, risk of getting a virus instead of lady gaga or whatever...). Yes there will always be infringing downloads but they will be marginalised and anyway they just replace what used to be the word-of-mouth spread of awareness about products in pre-internet era.
Itunesky clearly showed that there is a market there so, when the "rights-holders" will stop chasing control and start chasing business they can get a share.
At the moment though, the IP owners are solely after the control (in reality none of them cares about piracy in the sense of people downloading stuff) because they have this wet dream that once they assured total technological control over the use of content they will magically multiply the returns per product x10, x100 times without making much efforts.
Imagine, you will have to ask their permission and pay every time you want to play, stop, rewind, FF something. Want to play it in your car? - there is a car tariff. On a plane? - hurry, get you special discount on air passenger rate. Want to play something on a higher quality player? - there is a license for that - just download the "platinum" unlock key. And sorry, you are not licensed to watch that movie on a SONY TV, your license is for Samsung and weekdays only, no weekends...
Well, I can see that there are naive but highly paid executives who are having orgasms at the thoughts of how much money they will make when they get there, but it's never going to happen, Mandelson or no Mandelson. So, they need to just relax and get down to business and a legal ban on DRMs will be a good incentive for them to start.
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 19:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Private King Johns
I bet you love the television licence, don't you? What do you mean by "no"?
If the media industry executives were our elected representatives (instead of being in bed with our elected representatives and Mandy, who isn't elected, obviously), then they'd have tax-raising powers. But they aren't. And they aren't representatives of a public asset that can be considered an extension of the public bureaucracy. So, no free money for them!
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 15:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
What's needed is a STIFF penalty -- for making false allegations
The way to ensure action is only taken only when justified is to have an anti-fine of at least ten times the standard penalty if somebody implies another has committed an offence and the implication turns out to be false.
Example -- man knocks on door "You don't have a TV licence, please prove you don't have a TV".
If TV found -- fine £1000. Fair enough, an offence was committed.
It TV not found -- fine the caller £10,000 for investigating without adequate proof.
Same with file sharing, ebay takedowns, etc -- if you don't have 100% irrefutable proof, don't take action -- there must be compensation of at least ten times the potential fine to prevent abuse.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 10:09 GMT Steve Swann
@AC 15:54
Erm... you need to think that over for a moment. Europe is swiftly becoming our last great hope for freedom and civil rights in the UK. As anti-federalist as we might want to be, we can't deny that without the ECHR and other EU organisations (yes, I know the ECHR *isn't* the EU or EEC) we'd be completely stuffed.
Look at the ECHR response to ID Cards, Phorm or s44 to see what I mean.
I'm rapidly becoming pro-European because they seem to be more concerned about our rights than our government is!
Thats one more tick for the Yellow Party.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:28 GMT heyrick
Seemples
It's a meerket. I know. But it has taken me the time of clicking reply and writing the first five words before I remembered it was "compare the market", thanks to the "compare the meerkat" version. A fairly brilliant bit of creativity there. But, without going to the site (and I have no plans to), compare... compare what? Prices on knock-off iPods? Insurance? My-bed's-better-than-DFSs-bed?
It's like those deliciously obscure adverts for silk cut or the drink-ones-with-Rutger-Hauer. If you didn't already know, you'd probably have no idea WTF it was about. Like what's the deal with those big fake bulls on the hillsides in Spain? It's the same deal. A legacy of an advertisement. Just like "seemples" will be. Ten years from now people might still be saying "seemples" with no idea it was a CGI foreign (Russian?) meerkat advertising comparing... something.
Seemp... no, I shaln't. :-)
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 16:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
@registerfail
Intelligent mindset?
That would be why here in Southport, the Lib Dems have systematically destroyed our once thriving town. Under their leadership they have taken a seaside resort and tried to turn it into a shopping centre. The last thing the area needed was more shops as weh have shopping centres on all sides - Liverpool, Preston, Ormskirk and Wigan all competing for shoppers money.
The sensible thing to do would have been to provide attractions to bring people to the town to spend their disposable income on, things that other areas could not provide. Instead we now have an endless parade of shops you can find anywhere - M&S, Next, Topman, River Island etc etc which is hardly an incentive for anyone to come. Why should they bother if they can get the exact same things on their own doorstep? The Lib-Dems are at a loss to explain why visitor numbers to the town are down, when most of the residents can tell you exactly why.
Anytime anyone comes up with an idea for a new attraction, they shoot it down. Anytime a new shopping centre wants to open it gets the go ahead, while all the time they increase the council tax rates while reducing the available services and have gradually moved all decisions about what happens to the town over to Bootle, instead of keeping it locally in our own town hall. They have public consultations on plans for the town and then completely ignore the wishes of the residents. Look up the pedestrianisation of Chapel Street as an example. It was put to a public vote, we decided we didn't want it so they ignored us completely and spent millions of pounds of our money because they had already decided that is what they wanted to do.
Council services are a shambles, repairs are a shambles, local housing is expensive despite constant reassurances they are commited to affordable housing for local people, the roads are full of pot-holes that never get repaired and all the time the 'intelligent mindset' that you mention complain about what is happening to the town and how badly run it is.
Then at the next vote guess what they do - they vote them in again because that's who they have always voted for and are too scared to change. They then continue to complain about lack of services, council tax increases and all the rest because the 'intelligent mindset' didn't have the sense to get rid of them at election time and not because they thought that they are doing a good job.
Whatever you do, do not vote Lib-Dem - even the monster raving looney party would do a better job of management than those idiots. I shudder to think what they could do if they got control of the whole country. As a former Labour voter, I feel my only option in the next general election is to vote Tory as Labour have made a complete mess of the country and the Lib-Dems have made a complete mess of my town.
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 19:34 GMT Plasma
@ AC
This is happening to every northern town, irrespective of whether they are Labour or LibDem run. No matter which party holds the seat, the staff who actually make the decisions are the same.
Here in Wigan we were 'rewarded' with a new shopping centre, the Grand Arcade, when half the shops in the already-standing Galleries were empty.
Large, generic out-of-town retail parks are the norm across the country now. Every town is being standardised, and pulled into the CCTV/police state.
Commerce rules now, sadly, and the companies with money make the decisions, not the people.
Is this the antidote?
http://www.youtube.com/user/cveitch#p/c/1C5F0FF4E4F424EC
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
floating
In (previously) safe Labour constituency. Vote Lib because they are more likely to lose Labour the seat. No, I wouldn't want them in power, but it would be nice to see Labour in the C21 reduced to the position of the Libs in the last century.
me, I'm an anarchist, a tory anarchist but an anarchist.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:24 GMT OrsonX
another thought....
my biggest concern with the LibDems is that they want to rehabilitate all the murderers and put them back in society (-1 there)
however, at lest the LibDem leader (whatever he is called!) is not of the GB/TB God-squad ilk and won't be claiming God told him to invade whatever country the next lot of oil's found in (+1 there)....
....that does remind me, they were opposed to the Iraq war too...hmmm, another +1, I might have to find out their leaders name after all so I know where to put my X
[PS: +1 for the downloads too!!]
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Tuesday 19th January 2010 16:55 GMT Individual #6/42
Losing the plot
I'm sure that I've missed something but isn't a chunk of this bill about making an acitvity (copyright breach over the Internet) that only has to be proven in the courts on the balance of probabilities and for which there has never been a successful plaintiff., into a crime for which no evidence need be shown, with absolute power to enforce punishment.
Reminds me of CBBC Horrible Histories
"Have you had something bad happen in your life? Then call Witchfinders Direct! We'll burn an old women without justifcation. Call now"
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:16 GMT JaitcH
The BPI - technical humourists
Living in VietNam I enjoy the benefits of a 'Mandy' free environment where Bittorrent rules and copy software compilations on DVDs sell for a $1.50.
Annually BPI comes out with its 'guesstimates' of hot software used in the Indochina region based upon pure fantasy. If the government of VietNam doesn't know how many computers are in existence in the country, how does BPI know?
The police, along with some government techies from Ha Noi, make a lot of noise and search offices, without warrants, for computers loaded with hot software. . Fortunately we have a totally corrupt police force and for $16 they will warn people of impending inspections.
We have now gathered a collection of very, very realistic disks - complete with hot licence stickers (sold in China) - so when our green-uniformed Plod arrive we proudly show them our licences and after a coffee they disappear.
Little wonder Linux is being blessed by governments hereabouts and schools have standardised on open/freeware programs.
But as sure as hell, the BPI will out and about spreading their lies and idiots like Mad Mandy will be taken in yet again.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:33 GMT Palladius
3rd party cliches
"The simple fact is that the Lib Dems could also promise jetpacks for all... sounds good, but it ain't going to happen 'cos they ain't going to get in at a national level."
Is it just me, or does this statement not make a lot of sense? Criticising a party for promising the impossible is entirely valid, but if their policies are feasible why would a smaller party be more or less likely to implement policy when elected than the main two parties, given that, if elected, they would have received a huge mandate for reform.
The statement seems to hinge on the premise that you'd rather have policies you don't want, but will definitely get. That seems almost as deranged as not voting for a party because they wont win. I'm pretty sure an election is not a quiz, and you don't get marked on your answers afterwards.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 00:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Who gets the £20?
"Why not levy a charge on every unlimited broadband user, say £20 a year, to be divided up between the copyright holders."
The problem with this concept is deciding just who the 'copyright holders' are. It's all very well assuming it's the big 4 record labels or certain Hollywood or other big media players, but it's wrong-thinking to follow this train of thought. The copyright holders could, in reality, just as easily be small independent labels or film production companies, or even individual artists and creatives themselves. What slice of the £20 are they going to see?
If these indies don't get a slice of the £20 how fair does it make a system which guarantees income for some businesses at the expense of others, because if subscribers who are music or movie fans have £20 less to spend each year, it's those struggling grassroots creatives who are going to suffer the most.
The EASIEST option is simply to change the current civil laws to allow for file-sharing without financial gain. As soon as money enters the equation (if somebody is charging you for downloads), it becomes a commercial venture and thus uncompensated copyright infringement becomes an actionable offence, under civil law, just as it currently is.
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Wednesday 20th January 2010 10:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
So now...
So now you just repeat the same accusation 50 times instead of 3 and it magically becomes fact! We need this bill to be dropped entirely - no part of it is welcome.
btw... The word 'fail' is a verb, not a noun. Why do we accept continuous Orwellian new-speak style distortions to our language? No wonder shit like this gets through.
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Friday 22nd January 2010 22:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
An interesting read:
The bit I liked in this was about how 90% of the worlds media is controlled by 4 corporations.
Edited for size - go have a read of the entire article tho - it's very informative.
http://questioncopyright.org/bob_ostertag_speaks#comment-6397
Copyright notice: These web pages are devoted to questioning the idea that copyright is necessary for the promotion of creative expression. Therefore, our content is released to the public and can be considered to be in the public domain: you may copy, share, excerpt, modify, and distribute modified versions of this and other pages from QuestionCopyright.org.
The Professional Suicide of a Recording Musician
Submitted by bobostertag on Mon, 2007-04-09 13:12
Bob Ostertag
"When record companies first appeared, their services were required in order for people to listen to recorded music. Making and selling records was a major undertaking. Recording studios and record manufacturing plants had to be built, recording technology and techniques developed. Records not only had to be manufactured but also distributed and advertised. Record executives may have been crooked in their business practices, callous about music, or racist in their treatment of artists, but the services the companies provided were at least useful in the sense that recorded music could not be heard without them. Making recorded music available to the general public required a significant outlay of capital, which in turn required a legal structure that would provide a return on the required investment.
What exactly are these corporations? To begin with, we should note that the major “record companies” are not actually record companies at all but huge media conglomerates. Most “independent” labels are owned by a corporate label. Each “major” is in turn owned by an even bigger corporation, and so on up the food chain. At the top of the chain sit a tiny handful of media giants: Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, Viacom (formerly CBS) and General Electric. These corporations are among the world’s largest. All are listed in Fortune Magazine’s “Global 500” largest corporations in the world. They have integrated both horizontally (owning lots of record labels, lots of newspapers, and radio stations) and vertically (controlling newspapers, magazines, book publishing houses, and movie and TV production studios, as well as print distribution systems, cable and broadcast TV networks, radio stations, telephone lines, satellite systems, web portals, billboards, and more).
This incredible concentration of power over news, entertainment, advertising, music, and media of all kinds is a recent phenomena, and is fueled by the very same digital technology that has made the Web and the recording-studio-in-the-bedroom possible. In 1983, 50 corporations dominated US mass media, and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. By 1997 the 50 had shrunk to 10, one of which was created in the $19 billion merger of Disney and ABC. Just three years later, the end of the century saw the 10 shrink to just five amidst the $350 billion merger of AOL and Time Warner, a deal more than 1,000 times larger than “the biggest deal in history” just 17 years before. As Ben Bagdikian, author of the classic study The New Media Monopoly noted, “In 1983, the men and women who headed the first mass media corporations that dominated American audiences could have fit comfortably in a modest hotel ballroom… By 2003, [they] could fit in a generous phone booth.” [4]
These companies own the most powerful ideology-manufacturing apparatus in the history of the world. It is no wonder they have convinced most musicians, and most everyone else, that the entire endeavor of human music-making would come to a screeching halt if people were allowed to listen to recorded music without first paying a fee – to these corporations. I know many musicians for whom making records in an environment dominated by corporate giants has been an exhausting and thankless task from which they have derived little or no gain, yet they remain convinced that taking advantage of the free global distribution offered by the Internet would constitute some sort of professional suicide."
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
