I’ve come to this debate a little late. As someone who supposedly keeps up-to-date on events digital, this is a little shocking. In fact, it’s a downright disgrace that a bill has reached this point in the House of Commons with so few people knowing about it, with even fewer understanding the implications.
For my enlightenment I must thank @zoesee for her tireless #debill tweets, which encouraged me to watch last night’s Panorama – ‘Are the Net Police Coming for You?’ – on the subject. However, Panorama barely scratched the surface.
Initially, the Digital Economy Bill sounds like a good thing. The idea of protecting copyright, preventing people stealing the work of artists and denying them a source of income should be applauded. But not in this form.
The DEB has some serious implications, so please sit back and enjoy my rant…
Suffer the parents
The music and film industry are not trying to crack down on the huge piracy operations here, selling the dodgy DVDs in your local market or via even dodgier websites. This bill is aimed at stopping your children from casually downloading content.
Now, I believe that parents are responsible for what their children do online and nobody else. The parents depicted on Panorama last night were a disgrace, claiming ignorance and denying responsibility for what their children are up to.
But, these parents are a fact of life. Indeed, part of my income is made up of cleaning up the mess that children cause to their parents’ PCs by downloading adware, spyware, virus infections you name it, because the parents are without clue.
If your child or someone in or near your home or business is using your internet connection to download illegal content, it is you, not them, that will suffer. It is you that will have the speed of your connection throttled, so that your internet now cannot be used to run your home business. It is you that will be disconnected, you that will be prosecuted.
Little Johnny upstairs, not doing his homework but instead downloading his favourite music and TV series is about to cost you your internet.
Wireless security
I visit many homes and businesses where their wireless networks are wide open to passers-by, three in the last week alone. When I leave they are nicely locked down, but I won’t be able to visit you all.
If little Johnny wants to download his music and cannot at home, he will find the nearest unlocked wireless router and connect to that. The owner of that router is then to blame and risks their own broadband throttling, disconnection or prosecution.
Once all the open networks are shutdown, then Johnny starts looking for those where the wireless security is easily cracked. The oldest security standards are easily bypassed and, while I have no idea how many are out there, I suspect there are thousands and thousands of routers running 64-bit WEP encryption (such as all the original BT Home Hubs).
Johnny is encouraged to develop his abilities to bypass security technology. Although he could avoid all of that, stay at home and instead learn about encryption and tunnelling.
Hiding the data
There are already ‘off-the-shelf’ services that can encrypt your downloads and route them via intermediaries that completely hide the content and destination of your downloads. Those who are clued up are already using them (so those guilty of serious copyright theft are never going to be stopped anyway!)
They are not very popular with the average Joe Public, but soon every little downloading Johnny will want to use them.
This next part is blatant scaremongering, it is in the spirit of a Daily Mail style attack on the internet and I hate to use it, but it is effective and partly true.
If encryption and tunnelling, the hiding of data, its source and destination become commonplace, then it becomes an obvious tool for the criminal, terrorist or paedophile.
There, I said it, this argument only needs to mention “Nazi Germany” and my journalistic credibility can be seen flying out the window.
Protect the big boys, punish the little.
The DEB also has some lovely little loopholes, especially around ‘orphaned works’. An orphaned work is one where you cannot identify its original creator. It could be any kind of image, video, text, whatever.
If the original creator’s identity is removed from that work, which is very easily done, then they cannot be identified.
If the creator cannot be identified, thanks to the DEB, anyone is now free to use that work. Your latest holiday snaps could be next year’s holiday brochure. This article could be a front page story (yeah, right) and we would get nothing for them. If we find out are work is being used we could receive, at best, a nominal apology.
For those struggling to eke out an existence as an artist, this could be devastating. You try to publicise your work, perhaps advertise a limited edition print online. Suddenly your limited edition could be on everyone’s next birthday card and you lose out entirely.
@zoesee puts it a lot more eloquently in this post on her blog and if you doubt this could happen, Google Paperchase…
What can you do about it?
- Sign this petition to prevent the widespread orphaning of works, this petition to stop your broadband being cut-off
- Write to your MP
- Protest!
A Microsoft Certified Professional with many years of large corporate experience and training, he now focuses on helping small businesses make the most of their IT.
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