No matter how many times ‘The Man’ tries to control the way people use the internet, the people always kick back. One area that’s always trying to be controlled is access to illegally distributed entertainment via P2P networks and BitTorrent. Just today the Swedish kings of online filesharing, The Pirate Bay, got a big boost when 50% of the charges against them in their current trial were dropped. It seems The Pirate Bay team have a tenacious combination of intelligence and luck that means their site is virtually untouchable by the authorities. It’ll be interesting to see if the remaining charges stick.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world in New Zealand, a storm is brewing over a new law, due to come into effect at the end of this month. The legislation, Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment, will see internet users disconnected if rightsholders accuse them of repeatedly filesharing. There will be no trial and no independent investigation, just a straightforward disconnection on a ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ basis.
You don’t have to be an expert in filesharing to know that this law will be a huge failure. Wifi routers make it easy for determined people to hack a private internet connection, meaning there’s no guarantee the owner of a connection is the one infringing copyright. Then there’s all the public access points such as libraries and internet cafes where anyone could be the infringer. In short, this law will annoy a lot of people. So why are Kiwi politicians pushing this nonsense through? I can only imagine that the RIANZ (the New Zealand music industry body) are pretty good at lobbying.
Luckily the internet is kicking up a storm of protest. New Zealand’s Creative Freedom Foundation is running an Internet Blackout week, which started yesterday. New Zealanders are being encouraged to repace their profile photo on social networking sites with a black box for the duration of the week. It’s caught the imaginations of Twitter users here in the UK too. An increasing number of black squares are replacing user photos in my Twitter client. The UK’s top Twitterer, Stephen Fry, has even got involved.
It’ll be interesting to see if the protest works. It’s being backed up by tradition petitions and demonstrations (I wonder if they’ll use the Flashmobbing tactics I talked about yesterday?) so there are lots of opportunities for them to change the political wind in their favour. The ‘Three Strikes and you’re out’ model of copyright enforcement may be more reasonable than suing the public into oblivion but to not require an independent investigation first is draconian, lazy and a demonstration of how big business lobbying of politicians is a cancer on well-reasoned policy-making the world over.
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