

Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain? - mindstab
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/britains-new-interne.html

======
plaggypig
This Bill is even worse than feared - see London based Telnic's (.tel
registry) response to the government informing them that the statutory
instrument to seize managerial control of domain registries applies to them:

<http://prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=272545>

Allegations of "abusive" behaviour on the part of registrars or end-users
could lead an ignorant Secretary of State triggering this instrument.

So what's "abusive"? Well just for starters, registering an expired domain
name is. Yes really, that's what the government believes (see the Digital
Britain report).

So a company with about 12 employees has gone from being heralded at the UK IT
awards last week for "the biggest innovation to come out of the UK since the
www from Sir Tim Berners-Lee.".. to fearing nationalisation!

Brown thinks he can run the "Digital Economy" like a Soviet tractor factory.
Who would want to invest in this?

What a joke.

------
russell
Things are bad here with the DCMA, but things are really frightening in the UK
which doesnt have the fundamental constitutional concepts of privacy, freedom
of speech, and reasonable constraints on libel. Charlie Stross, a UK SF
writer, has a blog today on this topic. [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/11/imbecile...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/11/imbeciles.html)

BTW: he's one of us.

~~~
bumblebird
FWIW:

"things are really frightening in the UK which doesnt have the fundamental
constitutional concepts of privacy, freedom of speech, and reasonable
constraints on libel"

Only if you believe everything you read on the internet.

~~~
jrockway
The statement you quoted is technically true, however. That doesn't mean that
the UK exercises all the authority available to it or that the US does not
pass illegal laws.

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thaumaturgy
This is _fantastic_. It's great news.

No, seriously. This kind of thing is exactly what's needed to make services
like i2p (<http://i2p2.de>) popular enough to go mainstream.

Or another way to look at it, oft-quoted, is: the internet interprets
censorship as damage and routes around it.

~~~
scscsc
This has been on the tip of my tongue for a long while, so I might as well go
ahead and say it now. I am ready to acknowledge the power of technology as
much as anyone hanging around here.

But I think that dismissing the computer/internet laws currently being passed
by countries in the EU as being unenforceable, or being easily solvable by
technology workarounds is a great fallacy and the most stupid thing in the
world to do.

The cat and mouse play between technology workarounds and law cannot go on
forever, because eventually you will run out of legal workarounds. This is
similar to the cat and mouse play between the police and law breakers. Unless
you are in bed with the police, you will eventually get caught.

I think that the only viable alternative is to oppose these laws and hope they
don't pass.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Why not do both? Oppose the laws, protest the laws, and when that doesn't
work, then develop new technology to get around the laws.

This is a cycle that has been happening for millennia. It's not new.
Authoritarians come into power, then they amass power, and then they attempt
to rule by force. Usually, people first welcome their new authorities, because
they want order and they naively expect that authorities are on their side;
then they begin to become disenfranchised; and finally, they begin to subvert
the authority and eventually counteract it altogether.

The only novel thing here is the level of technology that we're dealing with
now -- but that benefits both sides.

Look at China: they've developed probably the most advanced national
communications surveillance and filtering technology in the world (depending
on how deep your paranoia runs); and while that works for many people, others
are still finding ways around it.

Or, look at BitTorrent. Media "authorities" attack centralized distribution;
hackers develop decentralized distribution. Authorities attack centralized
tracking; hackers develop distributed hash tables. Authorities attack the
protocol itself; hackers develop a new protocol. Authorities attack
unencrypted communications; hackers develop decentralized, anonymous,
encrypted communications.

Eventually this cycle of escalation will lead to distributed networks --
"guerilla" wifi mesh networks are already being used in some places -- and the
only way the authorities will be able to counter that will be to shut down
wired, wireless, and cellular communications for the great majority of the
population.

How long do you think that will remain popular?

------
pierrefar
The text of the bill:
[http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/digitaleconomy/d...](http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/digitaleconomy/documents.html)

------
foldr
It's really irritating when people write the title to make it sound as if a
bill which hasn't gone through parliament yet is already law.

~~~
bumblebird
Where would the modern internet be without groups of people getting completely
outraged by things that they shouldn't really worry about.

See also: Every person in the UK is caught on CCTV a billion times every
single day, which is fed into a central database and used by the government.
Every email is logged by the government. etc etc etc.

This is the entire business model for "The daily mail" paper in the UK - get
people completely scared to death about every single thing so they think the
worlds falling apart and they need to buy the paper to keep up with it all.
"There's pedophiles on everyones street!" "global warming will kill us all"
"the government is spying on _everyone_ " and so on for ever.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
_Where would the modern internet be without groups of people getting
completely outraged by things that they shouldn't really worry about._

You may not be outraged by the curtailment of our freedoms by a man who is
unelected and has been booted out of post twice (at least) and who is
spearheading a new copyright initiative immediately after staying at the
pleasure of a media magnate, said initiative doing nothing for the public
domain and everything for vested monopoly interests.

You may not, but those of us who prefer not to enforce the profit of the
super-rich by the rule of law, solely for the benefit of those rich, we should
be outraged.

~~~
bumblebird
It's only a few months until the whole government gets kicked out - including
evil mandleson and his cronies. I have quite a bit of faith the Conservative
government will undo a fair bit of the damage Labour have done.

~~~
cabalamat
> I have quite a bit of faith the Conservative government will undo a fair bit
> of the damage Labour have done.

Actually the Conservatives broadly support this particular bit of damage. In
fact they want disconnection of filesharers to happen sooner:
<http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2009-11-09c.6.8>

Furthermore, the Tories are also in with Rupert Murdoch -- they're widely
suspected of having done a secret deal with him -- so they'd be likely to go
along with any new restrictions on fair use etc that Murdoch wants in order to
turn the net into a locked-down pay-per-view digital newspaper. (Murdoch's
plans won't work, of course, but that won't stop the Tories pushing through
harmful laws).

So while the Tories will be better than Labour in some ways, they're sure to
be worse in other ways: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

------
cmelbye
I honestly never thought I'd say this, but this bill makes our DMCA look
awesome. Politics in Europe are so unproductive and ridiculous, I really hope
that it doesn't spread to the United States and other countries that still
have some personal freedoms.

~~~
dirkstoop
Judging all of European politics by what's happening in the UK right now is
like judging American cuisine by one meal served at McDonalds (which
admittedly, a lot of Europeans tend to do).

Nice counter-example: Finland just made broadband internet access into a legal
right:
[http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/finland.internet.righ...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/15/finland.internet.rights/)

~~~
bumblebird
I think making net access a human right is ridiculous. What next? Criminals
asserting their human legal rights to have 1MB net connection installed in
their cells.

~~~
foldr
It's not much different these days than giving them the right to send and
receive mail, I don't see why you think it's so silly.

~~~
bumblebird
Because it negates the whole point you put them in prison.

At some point we'll get the human right to "not be in a cell". And then where
will we be?

~~~
foldr
>Because it negates the whole point you put them in prison.

So you think that being in prison would be perfectly pleasant just as long as
you had a broadband connection? Some life you must lead.

~~~
bumblebird
It's a really slippery slope. And to be honest, yeah - having a net connection
is a pretty big luxury I don't think criminals serving at her Majesties'
pleasure should actually be entitled to. Obviously if they're to be
rehabilitated, then it would make sense to allow them that, but whilst they're
serving time, isn't the whole point to take away the home comforts?

There was also some call (Probably from EU) to give criminals in jail the
right to a vote. Which I also strongly disagree with.

They're in there to separate them from society. And that includes 'online'
society IMHO - hence they should not have net connections.

~~~
foldr
>They're in there to separate them from society. And that includes 'online'
society IMHO - hence they should not have net connections.

And presumably they shouldn't be allowed to send letters or have visitors
either right? There's a "slippery slope" in both directions.

~~~
bumblebird
It's only feasible to send letters to individuals. Not society. Same with
visitors. The two don't really compare.

~~~
foldr
What?

------
RevRal
This is why we need to overthrow some government and establish a hacker
nation. I think something similar happened in the movie Igor....

In all seriousness, this is pretty scary. There is a fierce dichotomy here.
There aren't very many people who believe file-sharing is _that_ morally wrong
(or morally wrong to begin with), it is just becoming _very illegal._

Things are going to get more and more ridiculous, until we are forced to re-
evaluate the very paradigms that hold up our economies. I've said it before,
"money" is outdated.

~~~
cabalamat
Y'know, a hacker nation would have an _awesome_ economy, at least its internet
/ high tech sector.

------
acg
Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=950338>

------
andre
do people have any more freedoms left in UK?

~~~
bumblebird
At least we can drink a pint of beer before we're 21. Keep your "freedom".

We also have the freedom of health care for all. You know, we look after each
other so people don't die so much.

~~~
philwelch
_sigh_

I'm happy for you that you have more freedom to drink beer. May I kindly
suggest that, when exercising that freedom, you try and avoid nationalistic
flame wars? This is Hacker News.

~~~
foldr
Why are you taking the parent to task for this rather than the OP?

~~~
philwelch
It's a fair question. To me, it's a positive thing to criticize the decline of
civil liberties in one country, but a negative thing to respond to that
criticism with a "at least we're better than another country" flame. It's not
productive at all to play the "my country is less bad than yours" game.

~~~
foldr
> It's a fair question. To me, it's a positive thing to criticize the decline
> of civil liberties in one country, but a negative thing to respond to that
> criticism with a "at least we're better than another country" flame.

The OP's comment was clearly a flame of precisely that sort. It wasn't making
any constructive commentary on civil liberties issues, just asking a dumb and
inflammatory rhetorical question.

I suggest that the only reason you find the OP less offensive than the reply
is that you're American and not British. If our internet laws are fair game
for criticism, I think your (crazy) alcohol laws and health system must be too
:)

Also, what makes you so sure that civil liberties have been "declining" in the
UK? There have been steps forward as well as steps back, I don't see any
justification for overall pessimism.

~~~
philwelch
And if there were an HN article about American alcohol and health care
policies, I'd criticize them along with you.

The OP wasn't a good comment either, but the response was even worse, which is
another way of saying "internet flamewars escalate".

~~~
foldr
But it was the OP who broadened the topic of discussion by asking if there
were "any" freedoms left in Britain. That naturally invites comparisons
outside the area of copyright law.

>especially when you're doing it in a dishonest attempt to make British law
seem better.

I don't think he was trying to make British copyright law seem better; at
least, I didn't read that into the post.

------
bumblebird
Linkbait. Why would this be anything concerning startups? Why would it
discourage startups from starting up in Britain? How will it impact current
startups? It won't.

No real news here, just some silly politicians trying to show muscle, which
will ultimately fail and be irrelevant.

~~~
iuguy
This bill very specifically concerns startups. Want to create a disruptive
service? (e.g. You create a site to allow people to rate insurance sites) -
well with this different businesses that say they're in the same industry can
accuse you of infringement (e.g. insurance price comparison sites) and have
you shut down providing they can convince the secretary of state, meaning that
if you have a competitor then you may be screwed if you don't screw first.

It's not necessarily the case that it will fail. The current government uses
laws with enabling clauses that are triggered by statutory instruments. Some
of these laws include the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (which
allows wiretapping by authorised authorities) where authorised authorities
were extended from the police to local authorities - who use it to spy on
people to make sure they're managing bins properly. Another one is the Serious
Organised Crime and Policing Act (SOCPA) which even the head of the
association of chief police officers (ACPO) has said was excessive - it allows
bailiffs to forcably enter your home and remove your goods before a hearing or
trial and to sieze all your property once arrested.

My own personal favourite is the terrorism act, which introduced stop and
search if police suspect things that may lead to a terrorist act. People get
stop and searched at football matches, on their way to work and so on
regardless of suspicion of terrorism. These things are all evil and all
believed to be irrelevant but still got through. This is no different.

~~~
bumblebird
So you think that an insurance company can accuse another startup insurance
comparison website of infringement, and get them shutdown?

Surely the same argument could be said for any law? Accuse your neighbor of
murder, accuse a competitor of money laundering, etc etc.

idk. Things always sound worse when people moan about them on the internet.
They'll affect a tiny handful of people. It's more about the government making
news stories and appearing "tough on X" rather than anything else.

I've never been stop+searched. :(

