Throwing the e-baby out with the i-bathwater
The Financial Times reports on the government’s proposals to do ’something’ about illegal file sharing. That something is to make ISPs the law enforcer; they will be penalised if people use their networks to share files. There has been talk of a ‘three-strikes’ system whereby ISPs would be obliged to remove service from their customers if they’re found to be illegally file-sharing on three occasions. If ISPs have not acted by April of next year, the government will legislate.
The big objection I have is that it makes the ISPs responsible for policing. This is a really bad idea. Spectacularly bad. I’m hoping that Tom Watson, as a minster responsible for this who was, as a backbencher, supportive of Tim Ireland et al during the Usmanov affair, will take note and make this point to his colleagues. ISPs are businesses that run scared of legal threats. People like Schillings would act for the record companies and I suspect that a lot would quite happily make ISPs effectively block torrents or insist on high degrees of monitoring.
This is only one objection. The next - the big one - is privacy. For this to work, an awful lot of data would have to be scrutinised; that data would not only be the actual files being shared, but websites visited and searches made. There has been a lot of good work done by the government on data protection that could be undone at a stroke; as HMG knows, information does go missing. This is rather different to, for instance, child pornography as the scale, both in terms of volume of data and number of users, is far greater. Honeytraps can be used in that instance, but would be impractical when six million people in the UK alone share files.
There is another problem; the technology is used to legally share files. The BBC’s iPlayer uses peer-to-peer technology; some free computer programmes are distributed over peer-to-peer networks as it saves on bandwidth. The government has announced this plan as a means to encourage the arts and culture - something of which I am supportive - in the UK. The government will be aware that people like Lily Allen came to prominence, in part, because of file-sharing and the like.
Finally, if I go to another country - let’s call it Ruritania - and create something that is legal to have in the UK but by a method that is illegal in the UK and transport it back to the UK by legal means, no law has been broken. Given that, for instance, the legal status of the Pirate Bay is very much under debate in Sweden, it seems unreasonable to prevent us from having lives overseas. This is, admittedly, a double-edged sword, as it is the mechanism that allows for tax havens and caused the Nat West Three to be extradited for wire fraud. Nevertheless, there are implications here that the government must consider before bringing in a potentially sweeping change. I presume the government will be seeking to protect intellectual property here; it should remember that it is not the only thing that needs protecting.
xD.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
The biggest objection is that it just won’t fucking work. Demand ISPs snoops all traffic, and people will just encrypt the traffic, and start using clever tools to make torrenting look like web browsing, etc.
Cretins.
February 24th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I absolutely agree - PGP is, I understand, effectively unbreakable. Equally, some ISPs already try to block file sharing but there are plenty of ways to get around the technical means that are used to prevent it.