britain
BT boss urges fines for filesharing customers
Corporate crusaders for free speech unite Mandybill Ian Livingston, the boss of Britain’s biggest ISP BT, is lobbying for the government’s proposed technical sanctions against filesharers to be replaced with fines.… ?
Continue reading »Punk Filesharing Protest Song Wins Stephen Fry/TalkTalk Competition
TalkTalk’s campaign against UK Government’s plans to impose the notorious “three strikes” law and the entire debate sparked by Lord Mandelson’s anti-piracy proposals altogether was of great interest for us right from the start as you could easily see from our posts. As we have previously pointed out, such a law would be a serious blow to the people’s freedom on the Internet since alleged file sharers would have their Internet connections cut off without the guarantee of a fair trial prior to that. Moreover, as TalkTalk has underlined a number of times, this absurd measure not only will fail to prevent illegal file sharing but will cause a dramatic increase in Wi-fi theft .
Continue reading »Prove Piracy Losses Says Digital Economy Bill Amendment
Yesterday, a “line by line examination” of Britain’s Digital Economy Bill took place during the first sitting of the House of Lords committee stage. There are 74 proposed amendments to the Bill. In terms of file-sharing, amendments are suggested to the section which obliges ISPs to inform their customers that an infringement has taken place via their account.
Continue reading »UK “Three-Strikes” To Cost Consumers $800 Million p/yr
Means plan would unfairly require majority of population whom don’t file-share to pay for the failings of the entertainment industry. A new report indicates that an “ evolved ” plan by UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, head of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and whom ultimately is tasked with implementing the recommendations for dealing with illegal file-sharing as outlined in the Digital Britain report , to disconnect accused copyright infringers from the Internet will cost UK consumers more than £500 million ($799.5 million USD) annually. That means an individual “three-strikes” tax per broadband connection of approximately £25 ($40 USD) a year.
Continue reading »Jamie Cullum Admits to Being an Ethical Music Pirate
IFPI and the BPI would have people believe there are millions upon millions of illicit file-sharers in Britain, milking the very life-blood out of the industry. Much of their online presence is gearing to achieving this impression. While the situation is a lot less serious than they make out, it’s difficult to dispute that in the absence of really attractive alternatives, large numbers of people are indeed turning to file-sharing networks and services to satisfy their music discovery needs.
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