“Q. But is there not an important distinction to be made, in that child pornography is a criminal offence, while copyright infringement is a civil matter?
A. I don’t think so, no. If you’re infringing somebody’s copyright on the web, it’s something that should not be taking place.” http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2010/03/04/lib-dem-peer-on-why-site-blocking-is-needed-40070579/

You will never get my vote – and being under 30, that’s a lot of elections.

Innocent until proven guilty? Forget it. The next time we lecture the Chinese I wont know whether to laugh or cry.

Furthermore I find your stance on censoring the internet by blocking access to sites or removing users’ access without due process to be naive and unjust. In particular I am extremely concerned that we should not erect our own “great firewall of Great Britain” in the same mould as the way the Chinese government and the Australian government have.

I understand your amendment has to do with copyright infringement and I am very much in favour of strong copyright – I am, after all, a photographer myself and I wish to continue to sell my work. This is why the Digital Economy Bill is a disaster for copyright law in the UK. It will, through the changes to automatic copyright assignment, make it harder and more expensive to claim copyright while making copyright theft easier and then at the same time it will remove the question of what consitutes copyright infringement and the proper punishment for it from where it belongs – in a court of law, placing that power in the hands of the big business copyright holders.

I urge you to remove your support for this bill in its entirety. I do not want it and I believe that the majority of British people do not want it. I urge you to reflect their views.

We want to make our voices heard in the same ‘special way’ as the creative industry does, as I don’t see them posting comments on your blog like the rest of us do.

We want to tell you that if the creative industry wants to shut down a website in Russia, they should do so in Russia, not in the UK (they’ve succeeded in this with allofmp3.com, they can do so with others). They consider themselves to be a global business, but obviously cannot play by global rules and ride the wave on the back of countries like the UK, where people do buy music legitimately. But our wallets are only this deep, and if they want to be pleasing shareholders year on year, they have to come up with other ways to do their business.

They should wake up and realise that it’s about the consumer choice – if I choose to pay for Spotify instead if iTunes but Spotify has only half of the studios in its catalogue, whose fault is this? People do want to pay for the content on the platform of their choice, but if the labels don’t give it to them because they haven’t worked out their digital business plan in the last decade, it’s their fault. Although, I understand that telling you guys all this is like banging my head against the wall.

The creative industry is a BUSINESS and no democratic country should allow any business to intervene into lawmaking process on this scale. Business is about competition and in no way must it be given the right to influence the state to protect its interests that result in forceful and invasive actions against the citizens, who are in their overwhelming majority its consumers.

But after all, it seems this type of amendment is convenient for the both parties. The creative industry, using dubious and error-prone detection methods, would be able to force the denial of a modern basic right to the citizens of the state and the state can use this amendment as a launchpad for even more restrictive measures in the future. The Internet must be regulated only in its social aspect, and no business must have an impact on its operation in any detrimental way, just like no business has an impact on the UK’s road system.

The creative industry isn’t without its problems, but they can blame only themselves for the majority of them.

Oh, another thing – seems like LibDems are forgetting what being ‘liberal’ and being a ‘democrat’ stand for. In this case it is on-way traffic and feels like you are more corporate pluralists, just like the Tories and Labour.

P.S. Please get back to us with regards to that Maldives offer or any other that we can take to make you re-consider your stance and listen to BOTH parties.

The Tories could not make the poll tax better. Labour can not make compulsory ID cards better – even if they came with a free fluffy pink teddy bear. This awful lobbyist sponsored, digital economy destroying bill can not be made better either.

There is a clear way that the Liberal Democrats can gain from this. Fight to either kill the bill before being passed or as a priority bill to repeal should it pass. In fact repeal of this bill and every other civil liberty robbing bill passed by Neo Con Labour over the last 13 years should be a condition of any post election alliance.

The Liberal Democrats should once again take the high ground on civil liberties, Liberal is after all in the Party name.

Allowing some future minister to tinker with copyright definitions without scrutiny

I, obviously, oppose this part completely as egregiously stupid.

Except…

There’s a little part of me that wants it past, and then in the next Parlt get an onside minister on these issues (many of ours, a few Labourites, etc).

Rewrite copyright law to stop illegal infringement? OK, let’s change the law to make most of what’s being done perfectly legal…

But no, enabling powers of any sort are WRONG.

Let’s face it, clause 17 was pretty heinous. Allowing some future minister to tinker with copyright definitions without scrutiny after whosoever plied them with freebies on their yacht.

This motion has been written for LibDems by LibDems so if you agree with it, you certainly should not stop voting LibDem!

I have to interject again on this wording issue. Substantial is possibly, though not certainly, a good type of language to use in this law. It once again comes down to loopholes and work arounds. If you define what “substantial” is then you give people scope to “by the book” become legal copyright infringers. By leaving a term like substantial in the text it allows the court to take in to account the precise nature of the accusation, the situation and the relevance of the environment the infringement is taking place in, and come up with it’s own (informed) decision on if it passes the threshold.

The only issue with “substantial” is that it could do with the slightest more definition as to the intent of the wording to ensure there is some form of precedent set in the legal text rather than having to be set by an initial case.