Question about the Digital Bill?
April 7, 2010Am confused. If you take the civil liberties issue away. And even the downloads issue.
We need a bill to define the principles under which the digital economy is to develop. We need a bill which understands what the internet is, how it is going to change our society. How it has already done so.
Downloads issue aside- this bill doesn’t do that in anyones opinion.*
It has massive public opposition, the ISP’s who are central to it don’t want it.The public don’t want it. By no measure does it achieve the aims it was set out with
Rather than establish the presence the internet will have in our society, it concentrates on downloads(where there isn’t consensus that there is actually problem)- and is the equivalent of protecting the scribe’s business, in order to establish how the printing press should be used.
We are going into an election closer than any since 1992. It reinforces Labours position as a party who have absolutely no regard for civil liberties, which isn’t exactly news.
Yet they are rushing it through. Why?
This is a very big question. And arrogance doesn’t answer it.
*Link added later but well worth a read.
Deeplyflawedbuttrying's Blog 
The astonishing thing is they’re dumping some of the tax measures, yet rushing this one through without so much as a debate. It’s the lack of any debate that angers me.
in all likelihood this bill is being fronted by Murdoch and Cowell, who stand to defend their revenue streams by the allowances of this bill and further alienate artists at a creative level from commercial viability. PRS is doing a cack-handed job as it is, and as it always has done.To extend the PRS to include photography as well as phonography, with still no effective legislation protecting orphan works is transparently ineffective.
This bill has been in the works for this specific occasion. Changes are being brought simultaneously in France and Germany. Italy remain an ‘internet, what internet?’ country under Berlusconi and believe me the change is already being felt on Youtube, where music tutorials are quickly pulled for copyright theft.
This new PRS will be phenomenally successful at generating income through fines and fares, purgatorial reconnection agreements and we ought to expect a snarl-off between SKY and Virgin once and for all where bandwidth is concerned. Sky will win, they’re in the Tories’ pockets.
If there were any way, oh any way in our democracy of fighting this undemocratic bill i would gladly comandeer a Kyrgis police van and storm the gates.
But this fight is unwinnable.
oh, Russia are onboard.