Digital Act Could Spur Creation of Pirate ISPs In UK 204
scurtis writes "British anti-copyright group, Pirate Party UK, has predicted that Pirate ISPs will spring up across the country — promoting online privacy and allowing users to share files anonymously — in response to draconian file-sharing proposals outlined in the Digital Economy Act. The news follows reports that the Pirate Party in Sweden (PiratPartiet) will launch the world's first 'Pirate ISP.' The move is designed to curb the use of online surveillance in the country, and combat what PiratPartiet describes as the 'big brother society.'"
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, we'll never see anything of the sort in the USA, because the MafiAA and ISP-Mafia ensure that 90% or more of our people don't even have two rival choices for their ISP - just whatever the fuck shitty company like Cocks or Comcrap paid off the local county board for the right to run "exclusive" cable or phone lines back in the day.
FiOS is 2 miles from my house, but I can't buy it because Verizon doesn't own the fucking PHONE LINES on my side of the interstate and therefore isn't allowed to service fiber to my house either. For fuck's sake.
Re:What to call groups like these (Score:3, Interesting)
> You can't get rid of copyright completely and wouldn't want to. Without copyright, companies
> could steal GPL code without consequence because the GPL is a copyright license
> and is thus protected by copyright law.
Much as I like the availability of the GPL and other copy-left licenses, if you would give me a magic wand which would erase copyright, I would have a hard time deciding if I should use it. Face it, copyright can never really get fixed --- as in, optimally benefit society as opposed to large corporations --- because "society" doesn't help elect politicians since most of "society" are sheeple who vote for the politician with the biggest advertising budget (supplied in part by, guess who, large corporations) as opposed to voting for politicians who reform copyright laws.
Re:Is Pirate ISP viable? (Score:5, Interesting)
ISPs receive a safe harbor status provided they actually respond to DMCA takedown notices
To my mind, it would depend on whether the "Pirate ISP" simply handled traffic (i.e. was an access provider), or whether it provided hosting services too.
s.512 of the DMCA, and Art.14 of the eCommerce directive (European) offers protection for hosts (in Europe, the provision of services which "consist of the storage of information"), provided that the ISP takes steps to remove infringing material upon becoming aware of them. However, the corresponding protection for traffic carriage, Art.12, has no such requirement - as long as the IAP does not select the receiver of the transmission, initiate the transmission, or modify the content of the transmission, it is not liable for the traffic which it carries.
That being said, I would not be surprised to see an application of the Sharman Networks / Grokster reasoning, that there is a difference between being a mere conduit, over which parties transmit and receive information, where these acts are infringement of copyright, and promoting / encouraging copyright infringement (using these words loosely).
Re:What to call groups like these (Score:5, Interesting)
GPL is a clever hack of the copyright system created because people did not agree with the predominant (then) system of knowledge lockdown. Stallman has stated in the past that if he would have the power to abolish copyright, he would do so, even considering the fact that this would also kill the power that GPL depends on, because this is what GPL was created to defeat in the first place. By hacking around it.
Re:More harm than good? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think so. For one pirates are cool. So your argument is invalid. Also it is much easier to counteract MAFIAAs message if we 'embrace and extend' their message against them. They call us pirates, so we have fun like all the cool pirates do. If they can make stuff up, so can we! Piratez of the world unite and fight back the ninjas of MAFIAA! For the boooty!
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:2, Interesting)
And if having complete privacy is legislated, criminals will do whatever the f**k they want, safely hidden behind an anonymity shield that means they can never be held accountable for their actions.
The world is not black and white.
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:3, Interesting)
The invisible internet [tumblr.com]
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would add to your list the petition for judicial review, which BT and TalkTalk have brought jointly to the High Court.
When BT and TalkTalk announced that they were going for judicial review I emailed my (new, Tory) MP the following
...
...
could you please clarify the Government's stance on BT and TalkTalk's legal challenge to the Digital Economy act? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10542400.stm [bbc.co.uk] I note that the statement from BIS in the BBC article just commented on the purpose of the act, not whether the government would actually be defending it. Indeed, given the wiggle room it leaves, it could have been written by Sir Humphrey Appleby himself.
In response I've got, on House of Commons headed notepaper dated 12th July 2010 a letter a copy of a letter from her to the Secretary of State.
We've not yet received a response; I don't think that the coalition government has actually decided what it'll do with the act; it knows there's a lot of public pressure, the lib-dems opposed it a lot of Tory back bencher's are\were unhappy with the way it went through in the wash up without proper scrutiny. I'm not 100% convinced that they'll even defend it at the judicial review. Indeed, Nick Clegg is on record as saying that it "badly needs repealing"
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be, but the word 'pirate' has been strongly associated with lawbreaking since the invention of the term, and there's very little that any sort of political campaigning is going to do to change that.
That is the point of using the name.
The pirate party was established to fight the unjust laws. Thus breaking the laws as a political statement.
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:3, Interesting)
Privacy has been redefined (Score:3, Interesting)
Privacy has been redefined; from the sixties where nudity was a sin, the seventies where everything was relaxed and aliens visited the world, the eighties where nudity was a common thing, the nineties where the .com market was blooming in size, after 2000 where our privacy started to erode and take different terms and conditions.
Phonelines can be tapped, faxmachines and e-mails can be read, privacy does not exist anymore because the current technologies allow for high-speed capture of such content. Not only taps but trojans, backdoors and other nasty programs can be installed to redirect such traffic (including passwords) used on that pc to a remote location.
The "ring of trust" lies in how far the user takes his security in his own hands. Use the same password on all sites and you will ask for a disaster to come. It takes only one to break that "ring of trust" to get hacked on many more sites, even some which the user doesn't remember and/or got joined with another service provider on the net.
Emails are important in a way that they will offer unlimited access to some of such services. There is no end in how far privacy can be broken by using a simplistic password or recovery routine by finding the mothers maiden name through Facebook or any other alike service. By getting access to the "ring of trust" they get access to everything. Only one flaw and the ring is broken. "One ring to rule them all". Being lazy in using the same password will bite you once in the nuggets...
To beat the system, everyone has to stand up for their own security, privacy and protection. That means, everyone should be fully informed how important it is to keep a system safe from any trojans or backdoors, how to safely communicate with others and websites, how to determine malicious e-mail versus good, be informed how safe communication really is, what the dmca and eucd means and many more. More information to the public means more understanding. Too many things are being hidden away by legalise which only a third of the population might understand.
There are so many flaws in society and many definitions that we often don't know it anymore by ourselves. What privacy really means versus secrets. We used to play in a camp we built at a small river in a town called Duffel. We told secrets there as kids. As adult I've got a few secrets too. The Internet and cellular technology has sure redefined communications and the "can you keep a secret" thing...
I'm as open as a book although if someone asks me to keep a secret I do that in respect of that person. I don't know if I have to take that with a very sarcastic smile or not.. I'm not paranoid, although I do know reality since i'm born.
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I don't think so. You only need look at the US to see that having two elected chambers is not necessarily a good thing. While the hereditary aspects of peerages are not very nice, the vast majority of the debate that goes on within the Lords would surprise you and some startlingly frank and honest discussion is carried out that really does represent the best interest of our country.
In my ideal world (and I'm not suggesting for a moment that this is a perfect system), the upper house would be replaced with a system of jurors. Just like in jury service, a selection of 100 people are chosen at random and they debate the bill under discussion, and place their vote in favour, against, or decline to vote. There would be no politics to play, as they have no seat to defend - just like how the Lords was designed. Only now, you get the common-man check on the bill that the Commons is trying to pass.
As a by-product, I think you'd get legislation that is also a hell of a lot easier to read and understand, rather than the legalese that seems to be produced at the moment.
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that's a great idea. We should just pull Joe Blow off the street and he'll be our president for the next year. It certainly couldn't be any worse than what we have now.
If he really sucks, we can recall or impeach him.
As for having a fully elected legislature, I disagree with this idea. US Senators were not originally elected by the people, but rather by state legislatures. The reason is that voters are very easy to manipulate. (Politicians can fool some people all the time, and all people some of the time.)
Of course, there are other problems created by not having an elected (by the people) legislature, so that's why we had the hybrid bicameral one.
Re:Why Pirate? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's precisely what court warrants are for. Last I checked, none of those "extra privacy" ISPs claimed that they would ignore a warrant. They just don't want to hand anyone (including law enforcement) any information above and beyond that mandated by the law as it stands. Which is as it should be.
Re:Am I naive to think it might get scrapped? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds good!
One amendment though - you NEVER want one person in charge of something for a long period of time. They might learn how to do things better, for sure, but they're more likely to take self-interest into the equation much sooner.
That's why I suggested that for each bill, a new "jury" of 100 people were chosen. It seems fair, considering ultimately they would have to abide by those laws when deciding someone's innocence/guilt in a court.
Reform != anti-copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
"Pirate" ISPs already exist (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been running a UK ISP for a couple of years now, aimed at very heavy users who want privacy and no restrictions. I don't know if my customers are pirates or not but as long as they conform to the AUP "don't do anything illegal or stupid" then they are more than welcome to use their connections for whatever purpose they choose.
Shameless plug: http://superawesomebroadband.com/ [superaweso...adband.com]