British ISPs Fail To Defeat Digital Economy Act 184
judgecorp writes "ISPs objecting to the British government's Digital Economy Act have lost a court challenge which argued the Act breaches fundamental rights. There's still room to appeal, but it looks like alleged file sharers will be getting warning letters next year."
Coffee Shop (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the job of the legal system to feed artists, nor inventors, nor entrepreneurs. We all live or die off our ability to create value for others.
As for "all culture should be free" being nonsense and fantasy, realize that the vast majority of culture is free, and always has been. As I wrote in my previous post, your very ability to argue that owning culture is somehow a good thing depends on the massive free sharing by others of their work.
Reasonable middle grounds are fine. But the problem here is that there is no safe dividing line. It's just as with software patents. There is no objective line to be drawn between "good" and "bad". Once you allow some, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope, any defined line will move inexorably. It's obvious, really. If you accept the (and this really is the fantasy) argument that privatised culture is more valuable than shared culture, you will always accept a little more. If one patent is good, two is better and a million even better. If 14 years' copyright is good, 15 is better, and 100 is even better.
It is rather like smallpox. There's no reasonable middle ground. Eradication, abolition of privatized culture (and technology and ideas) is the only sustainable long term situation, and though it's far from an inevitable outcome, it's one worth fighting for.
Re:Who pays? (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall similar arguments when people tried to outlaw slavery. Anyway, it's for the market to decide who counts as a free human!
Any other idiocy you want to share?
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Interesting)
By your logic I am also contributing to the destruction of the "world economy" because I don't watch films or TV programmes. I don't deliberately listen to music.
I don't buy such media and I don't "pirate" it.
I have neither interest in nor plans for fixing the segment of the economy injured through my inaction.
So, am I as bad as a "pirate" or does your argument fail at this point?
Re:British DMCA? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Digital Economy Act was a piece of legislation rushed through at the end of the last parliament just before the election. It's common to do a sort of tidy-up before an election usually this is with the less controversial bills.
The act requires ISPs to send warning letters to infringers and may be used to force ISPs to disconnect the service for repeat infringers. This is seen as placing too heavy a burdn on the ISPs and somewhat draconian against accused file sharers, especially because they may not actually be guilty of any wrongdoing.
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm applying reductio to dismiss GooberToo's absurd argument. If the mere existence of "countless chunks of the world economy, including businesses of all sizes, ranging from one man shops to multi-billion dollar corporations" is moral justification for an underlying principle on which the countless chunks rely... then we can justify slavery.
Of course, hoarding information is not equivalent to owning a whole human being, but it is a constituent part of human ownership. If you control how a human may express himself then you own some part of him. Copyright and patents are, in practice, enforced assertions of control over other people's actions, even while those people are neither causing you harm nor threatening to do so.
Re:Who pays? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you believe copyright law is a good enough justification for that then you are 'anti-pirate' if you don't you are 'pro-pirate'.
Tell me how you'll enforce copyright once everyone switches to out of country VPNs without effectively snooping on absolutely everything that anyone does and I'll reconsider my 'pro-pirate stupidity'.