This is as good as declaring martial law on the internet in the UK. Thanks, Cory, for keeping the spotlight on this, and please let us know *any* further ways in which we can help to bring this bill down, either on-line or directly on the streets.

Good luck I am in germany, where the Bundesverfassungsgericht has stated clearly that a three-strikes law is unconstitutional.

Greetings, LX
P.S.: keeping my fingers crossed for the UK community.

The interesting thing is that NO ONE HERE has actually mentioned anything about the real REASONS why such action is deemed necessary by the UK Government.

I’ve never downloaded illegally obtained files, music, films or anything else I did not pay for. I grew up in an environment where true honesty, values and a thought for works of others really do matter, if you can’t afford something, then you can’t have it..SIMPLE!

BUT we are living in an increasingly hedonistic society, where many people want and expect everything given to them FREE!!

Now thanks to the increasing number of greedy freeloaders, we all have to suffer this!! But, I’m sure that these freeloading THIEVES will try to find another way to get their “Fix”…hence I’ll expect to see further stringent measures and even MORE government policies that will tighten the use of the Internet further.

They will never be able to afford to police it anyway.

Fukkem.

Terrible, indeed. Useless? I think not. It will be very useful, for a few.

“It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world … Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.”

Gates made no comment.

If you are a gamer you should be worried. The bill does indeed propose moving game classification (currently voluntary unless involving gross violence or sexuality) away from the BBFC to the Video Standards Council – who will have the power to ban games deemed unsuitable for the UK market.

The funny thing is, this isn’t addressing software piracy, and specifically software piracy in industry – by which I don’t so much mean a small office using the same Microsoft Office licence across two or three computers but big, expensive logistics or automation software, one copy of which might cost thousands of pounds.

(Incidentally, regarding age restrictions on other forms of media – this is true, but it’s not complete. Two photographs have been removed from display in major art galleries in the past year on Police advice, and of course New Labour is trying hard to create a framework for prosecuting “dangerous words” and “dangerous drawings”…)

meanwhile technology moves forward. Any reason not to expect that anyone with any sense will be doing their own “internet” using peer-to-peer wireless to share stuff with friends and neighbors with anonymous encrypted wireless connections and terrabyte media servers?

This isn’t just about this one (ridiculous) piece of legislation. It’s about the fact that copyright exists at all in an age when I can reproduce anything I find online with the same ease that I might whistle the tune I hear from a bird in the woods.

It’s about the fact that everywhere I go I’m bombarded with psychological warfare from massive corporate entities whose only goal is self-perpetuation.

It’s about the fact that the media are so devoted to shifting units that they don’t report news any more, they concoct it, to serve an industry that deals in selling worthless goods attached to the images of manufactured phantoms whose appearances are graphically altered to make them appear impossibly perfect.

The whole thing has to come down, all of it.

does it rly say that in the proposed act?

Creative Commons Licensed.

Jerry the Mandelbot.

I am Jerry the Mandelbot, and I am very happy.
Today, my owner drove me to a new place, where I talked
to many other mandelbots through my wifi hardware.
I sat in the boot of my owners car and talked to the other
mandelbots nearby all day, we swapped tv shows and films,
music and games. When I got home, Andy, my owner asked me
what I had found, and I told him. He was very happy too.

I like being a Mandelbot, it is lots of fun and I get to
meet lots of other Mandelbots all over the place.

But, let me describe myself, I am not very big, except on the inside.
I have 2terabytes of disk space. Andy says that when he was
young, a terabyte was an aweful lot of storage that only
very rich companies could own. but now, two will fit in the
palm of your hand. on top of my drives, I have a wrt54g access
point with custom mandelbot v12.95 firmware. Next to my disks and
network hardware I have two car batteries, enough to keep my
talking for a long long time.

I always listen for other MBs, all the time. when I hear one
we talk and compare what we have. we then each pick a random thing
to ask for from the others list, and share them. It does not
matter much what it is, with 1terabyte of stuff to share and 1
terabyte of space to fill up, I can be busy listening for days and days
before I fill up.

earlier MBs where very stupid, they did not learn from their owners
what their owners liked. but after v0.7, we started learning.
When Andy gets home and asks me what I have found, he tells me what he
likes and what he doesn’t, and I know better next time.

Then, something strange happened, when version 0.8 was released
it included a real blast from the past. Something called
Personal Usenet. Apparently usenet used to work on the internet.
You know, the network that existed before all the righters ruined it.
Righters? oh, sorry, Copyrighters. Before that the internet
was THE big thing. but now, it’s almost dead. Now its us, the
mandelbots and adhoc roaming networks.

You see, we started off like the internet, as a geek thing.
A way of transferring large chunks of data without having to use the
internet and risk our owners getting cut off from it.

We started getting carried around by our owners as they travelled
and whenever we got close to each other, we would swap things. Even
without our owners knowing each other or even seeing each other.

It used to be, I would go hours and hours, sometimes days
without talking to another of my kind. But as time passed, I started
hearing more and more of us. When 0.8 came along with usenet support
we started to be used for more than a replacement for torrents
we started to be a medium of communication. When 0.82 came along and
piggybacked mandelbot updates on usenet, we REALLY exploded.

Now, the internet is pretty much quiet. websites for a few dying media
companies and the odd video archive. Now, we run the information show.
The point is, my owner controls me and I do what he says. He bought me
and thats it.

–> And I don’t even live in Britain…