According to boingboing.net, (lets ignore the anonymous source for now) the UK is lobbying to implement some pretty radical steps towards copyright protection. The article states that they are planning to give their Secretary of State the power to make “secondary legislation” to amend provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patent act (1988) This would essentially give them power to create mandates without the oversight or input of Parliament. This would give them authority to create new penalties for infringements, along with granting them power to grant copyright holders “investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect uses, Remove websites, etc.” The Secretary of State would also reserve the power to form copyright watchdogs, which would effectively police their proposed measures.
The Pirate Finder General is after you.
This huge amount of power is extremely problematic considering the discretion their Secretary of State has towards in copyright protection and privacy rights. To place one person in control of how copyrights are protected, without the checks and balances of a political system, is frightening because it allocates so much power to that person.
The article also says they are even proposing to look into the content of sites that allow users to send large amounts of information, think rapidshare, megaupload, etc. If we thought that packet inspection was bad, this is on the next level. It seems like internet users rights these days are becoming less and less important in the scope of an evolving digital economy, and now with government initiatives like this that favor the rights of producers over privacy and free speech rights of citizens means this problem is not going to have a happy ending.
It is a radical proposal if you ask me, and I don’t know why Parliament would vote for this, seeing that they would in effect be giving away some of their power, but at the same time, maybe they see this as an easy way to have someone else deal with it. Give the article a read and see what you think, my favorite term is the Priate-Finder-General. Sounds pretty scary.
Some Rights Reserved