

UK government to block filesharers' Internet connections - bendtheblock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/28/mandelson-date-blocking-filesharers-connections?commentpage=1

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bendtheblock
This just shows how out of touch the UK govt is. I wonder which Labour sponser
lobbied for this. The government assume this is a hardcore minority. I'm not
an illegal filesharer, but I sure know a lot people that do. I don't think
it's a small minority. Questions...

\- How do you define 'illegal fileshare'? Based on the network used? The
content of the file?

\- How would this be implemented? Would the ISP do the blocking?

\- What's to stop the 'criminal' from using a wifi connection elsewhere?

\- What effect does this have on the neutrality of the net in the UK?

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NikkiA
_I wonder which Labour sponser lobbied for this._

None of them per se. This is Mandelson's baby, of course the fact that he's
been in bed (pun or telling?) with hollywood execs over the last few months,
tells you a lot.

Labour knows they're pretty much finished, NuLabour perhaps irrevocably so,
and are just trying to setup their own little cushy cash cows before June.

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tc7
Eh, maybe they should be blocked. Is it possible to look at the very very very
small minority of users in an area that use tons of bandwidth, see what
they're downloading, and make a correct decision to block them?

There may be technical challenges I'm unaware of, but it seems like this would
be very unlikely to affect reg'lar people.

If there aren't practical challenges, are objections just about the spirit of
the thing (gov monitoring over people's internet use)? Or are there objections
to illegal file-sharers being blocked?

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gloob
I can't speak for others, but here's the issues I have with it.

Firstly, as you suggest, I dislike the notion of the government monitoring the
Internet use of private individuals. Fortunately for me, I do not live in the
UK, which is (to my inexperienced eyes) a country where this is a relatively
alien notion. (Perhaps relevant: <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/uk-
approves-pol/>)

Secondly, it essentially does an end-run around large chunks of what I like
about the legal system (the parts with juries and lawyers and defendants-who-
can-defend-themselves). I suppose I just have this quaint notion that if
someone is demonstrably doing something illegal, you should drag them into
court for it rather than mucking around with some ad-hoc, newly minted system
for inconveniencing them.

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tc7
Ah, cool. I like the legal system bit. Seems that we have a system in place to
deal with these people (criminals), and we should think long and hard before
implementing something else on top of it. Or in between it.

I wonder if this kind of thing is brought up not because they want to crack
down harder, but because somewhere in the back of their minds they don't want
to have to go through the whole jail/immense fine conviction that the law
demands, but would rather just prevent the criminals from criminaling any
longer. Less fuss.

Similar, perhaps, to building a higher wall instead of arresting and
prosecuting the guy that jumps over every morning and steals your cabbages?

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dotcoma
the nanny state, from the cradle to the record store... :-(

