Under pressure from the music and film industries, France had pushed hard for tough measures against illegal downloaders. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had advocated a “three strikes and you’re out” rule, under which Internet use would be tracked and users caught downloading would be warned twice before their Internet access would be cut off for a year. Britain is also considering such a move, lawmakers said. Read the rest of this entry »
BACKSTORY: a group of file-sharing bastards in Sweden were arrested, charged, tried and convicted to the tune of X millions of (American) dollars. OF COURSE the “powers-that-be” are the usual suspects, RIAA et al. and undoubtedly the Hollywanks.
Judge Tomas Norstrom is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. He denies he had a conflict of interest during the trial. Ya, RIGHT!
ISP’s have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report. Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable.
Some question if the report that a pay-per-view system be introduced is a hoax, but the march to regulate the web is documented…
By Tim Wu Posted Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008, at 10:15 AM ET
Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T’s network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes.
Big Brother Breathes…
But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself.
If I were a shareholder, I’d want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company means what it says, we’re looking at the beginnings of a private police state. That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system designed to monitor millions of people’s Internet consumption? That’s not just Orwellian; that’s Orwell.
"The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered ( moved, seconded carried and minuted ) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices"
-- C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
from The Screwtape Letters
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