The UK's Digital Economy Bill

Well I have to admit, seeing as I am not currently a resident of the UK, that this bill went unnoticed by me until arstechnica posted a couple of news stories about it. Had I been aware of it previously I would have been extremely vocal in my protests against such a laughably flawed piece of legislation. The official party line states that the purpose of the DEB is to "Strengthen the nation’s communications infrastructures, equipping the UK to compete and lead in the global digital economy." Which is a nice way of saying absolutely fucking nothing at all.

Well it has come to my attention that clause 8 of the bill (which can be reviewed in its entirety here) essentially allows the UK government to block users from accessing any website that it chooses to. Of course, that is not what the politicians will tell you, instead they indicate that the what clause 8 really does is give them the right to block websites that are engaged in copyright infringement. To be clear the wording of the DEB: clause 8 allows the government to:

"[block] a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright".

What is so wrong with this you may ask. They are endeavoring to prevent copyright infractions, isn't that a good thing? Well yes, of course preventing copyright theft is a good thing, but this bill has been rushed through parliament so fast, nobody is stopping to deliberate on any of the issues or take the time to ensure that it is worded clearly. I absolutely support the idea of protecting copyrights, I have gone on the record before in support of the idea of Digital Rights Management (even if I think the current implementations of such systems are critically flawed and do nothing to restrict or discourage 'piracy'). This bill however does nothing of the sort.

If this clause was worded thus: "to block a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been or is being used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright," I would grudgingly accept it. I am not, generally, in favor of Government censorship of the internet, it leads to all kinds of craziness. Look at the whole China Vs Google nonsense, or the recent censorship fiasco in Australia. Nothing good comes from government enforced censorship. The current wording of this clause allows the government to block any site that "is likely" to be used for copyright infringement. How, pray do tell, can we ever conclusively prove that a website might be used for copyright infringement sometime in the distant (or not so distant) future. More importantly how can we disprove it, how can a website (fallen victim to such a block) defend itself against something it hasn't even done yet. Is there a fucking pre-crime division operating in London that I don't know about?

Another factor which has been the cause of criticism over the bill is the speed at which it is being rushed into law. First, the entire thing is being presented to parliament during the "wash up"  period (the brief time before the new elections) which inevitably means that less time is spent on debate as parliament wants to take care of as much as it can before the whole place is repopulated. Gary Marshall, a writer for Tech Radar emphasizes the complete lack of interest exhibited by many of the MP's who voted for the bill (and those who didn't even bother showing up), and adds that over 20,000 constituents wrote letters of disapproval during just 48 hours and were summarily ignored by their elected officials (big surprise).

What we essentially have here is a new law that will make government censorship completely legal in the UK. The messy, vague wording of clause 8 means that if the government is 'convinced' that a site, might possibly, be utilized for copyright infringement at some point in the distant future - they can legally block access to that site.

Of course, the crux of the matter here is that this bill will in no way prevent piracy. It's true that peer to peer programs have a long history of copyright infringement, and it is a very efficient way to distribute stolen content, but there are so many alternatives now that locking down P2P usage is not going to make a damn bit of difference. BitTorrent is another widely used method of file sharing that does not rely on said P2P networks. USENET groups also have a long history of flying under the radar as far as copyright infringement is concerned, but still represents a viable alternative to P2P in the acquisition of pirated content (games, movies, music etc).

The idea that copyright infringement (piracy) can be contained by shutting down access to a single website is flawed to begin with, whenever one site gets closed down a hundred others will pop up to replace it, there is no way to win that fight. It sucks, but piracy is here to stay, copyright holders and governments can continue to pass bogus legislation and implement flawed and crippling DRM schemes, but in the end the pirate always wins. Today the pirate winds up with a superious product in many cases because the version of the software they are using has had the DRM stripped out, it is the legitimate consumer that is bogged down with the infruriating DRM scheme that is preventing them from using the software they have ligitimately purchased. As Tycho over at Penny Arcade once said "I don't know why anybody tries to stop nerds from doing anything. It's really such a huge waste of time!"

But I digress - the point here is that the Digital Economy Bill is flawed, it (just like modern DRM) will not prevent or even discourage piracy. Even more alarming is that due to vague (hell, maybe even deliberately vague) wording this bill gives the government an unprecedented amount of freedom in regard to censoring the internet for British Citizens. Personally I am fucking disgusted that this bill is being passed into law. I used to think that Australia had to worst internet policies on the planet - I guess the UK is in the running for the top spot now!!

For more on this, and the possible implications of the bill, the following sites offer some interesting articles:
Arstechinca
The Register
Tech Radar
DEB Wiki Entry