also spread the word to game developers and lovers. One whole section of mandelson’s bill will essentially cripple hobby and independent game developers.

Unless your game is of sport, music or…wait for it… Religious basis, the slightest violence, controversy or swearing will mean you could be imprisoned and/or fined for distributing it for free on the web.

I can only see vaz’s hand in this, and it means there is even more reason to oppose this bill (not even getting in to government wanting to control domain name registration despite all other nations moving in the opposite direction)

Well, I’ll support this obviously: file sharing is close to my heart.

But PERSPECTIVE please:

‘Nor should anyone be punished merely for sharing a connection with an illegal filesharer; collective punishment is an infringement of human rights, and a war crime.’

I’m no legal expert but doesn’t ‘war crime’ refer to human rights abuses during war time? And since this government HAS committed actual war crimes aren’t you devaluing that term?

Another slightly larger group opposing the Bill here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Against-the-Digital-Economy-Bill/204797858335

Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give your money and/or your time to the Open Rights Group. If we work together, we can defeat this hateful, tyrannical proposal designed to benefit only Mandelson’s wealthy chums in Geffen.

This bill *must* fall.

Um, the war crime bit seems like hyperbole and shouldn’t be present IMO.

Best of luck, mate, but there were two Facebook groups set up as part of the Iraqi employees campaign and neither of them did a damn thing. I used to send messages round asking them to contact MPs and there was never any reaction.

Whereas the blog posts appealing to readers to write to MPs and contact the media achieved tangible results: I’ll never forget the first time I spoke to my MP, Lynne Featherstone, who said that MPs had ‘all been getting mail about these Iraqis, and we’ve all been pestering the Home Office and the MoD’.

I need to write a longer post on what I learned about online campaigning, but for starters I wouldn’t advise relying on Facebook. People- at any rate, in the UK- just collect Facebook group memberships as if they were wearing badges, but they won’t take any form of action at all.

What also needs to be highlighted is the element in the proposed Bill which would give Mandelson, his heirs and successors the power to amend laws relating to copyright/IP by Statutory Instrument (and, given his hobnobbing with the likes of David Geffen, there’s no denying in whose direction such amendments would be made), and that it would also give the relevant minister the power to give quasi-policing and quasi-judicial powers to industry lobby groups.

The real disgrace is that, once again, punishment would be exacted against people on the grounds of a mere allegation made by the BPI and its movie and software equivalents. Never mind all that tedious mucking about with such unmodern concepts such as ‘evidence’ and ‘due process’, let’s just get *somebody* punished. That’s ‘business friendly’, isn’t it?

‘collective punishment is an infringement of human rights, and a war crime.’

I don’t know much about this bill, but with idiots like this opposing it, it sounds like it is probably an excellent idea.

What are the arguments against it that don’t also apply to say, ticket barriers on the underground, which as far as I know don’t have a court built into the mechanism?

Try starting from the assumption that ‘I want to steal stuff’ isn’t a valid argument…

Open rights Group are leading the campaign against Mandelson’s three strikes proposals. We’re having a Q&A session for bloggers to let you in on our work and get your views.

When? 1830, 24 November 2009 (for an hour or so)
Where? irc.freenode.net/openrightsgroup (How to use IRC: http://is.gd/4XcXZ)
RSVP to

We want to make blogger Q&As a regular feature in future so please do
get involved with this and feel free to pass on the invite.

For more info, check out http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

Why is it a breach of someone’s human rights to be disconnected if their connection has been known to be used to illegally download something? I’m not saying I agree with the bill, I just don’t see where human rights come into it.

Yes, I don’t think a rights-based narrative is helpful here, either. I presume the OP means it’s a denial of freedom of expression as it forbids people from sharing information. However, it’s no different in this regard to existing copyright laws.

Ok, I agree that Mandelson’s proposal is, to lapse into the vernacular, a “diabolical liberty” but a war crime? WAR CRIME? What on earth are you on about? Is this some, not – so – subtle, attempt by evil corporate interests to discredit any campaign against the proposed legislation by making it look ridiculous?

@2 Shatterface: I’m no legal expert but doesn’t ‘war crime’ refer to human rights abuses during war time?

Of course it does. That’s why it’s called a war crime.

I’m not claiming that the DE Bill is in itself a war crime; clearly it can’t be because it isn’t happening in time of war. What I am claiming is that the DE Bill contains measures, that if done to an occupied population during a war, would be considered a war crime. The point is that collective punishment is considered a legal no-no.

I should probably amend the text to make this clearer.

“Yes, I don’t think a rights-based narrative is helpful here, either. I presume the OP means it’s a denial of freedom of expression as it forbids people from sharing information. However, it’s no different in this regard to existing copyright laws.”

Well I guess you could argue freedom of association if you were particularly stubborn. However the main point is our government has already said a decent connection to the internet is fundamental to society and participating in it.

For the same government to restrict the use of this “fundamental” is the same as giving a whole family an ASBO for the alleged (and unproven) accusation of wrongdoing by a single member of their family, based on “evidence” that isn’t personally identifiable as relating to any member of that family…wouldn’t you argue this is an affront to their rights also?