Digital Economy Bill

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Yes, IP does stand for both Internet Protocol and Intellectual Property - but for a legislator (like the Minister for Digital Britain !) not to know which meaning is being referred to is an inexcusable display of incompetence imho.

Originally Posted by Moejoe

I should clarify. They did not know what the IP in IP Address meant. They are MP's though, so we're not dealing with the sharpest of people to begin with.

to me that is one of the worst aspects of this type of bill / act / law ; the blistering incompetence of the people writing them. when Hadopi was being discussed in france several members of the Assemblée were interviewed and asked "what is peer to peer ?" only one of them knew what it was. Christine Albanel (at the time, Minister of Culture, personally responsible for pushing the law) was interviewed about internet safety and declared TWICE that yes, her computer is protected by a firewall. which one ? "Open Office." these are the people making decisions about internet use and accessibility.

[BookCat]

Do you know if anyone has this with English subtitles? Sorry, I only speak English, shameful, I know!

Take a look at this vid and the ones in the sidebar. It illustrates the strength of feeling about this bill and the amount of protest likely to ensue. The whole thing will collapse like the poll tax.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOyg1GUY18U

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

to me that is one of the worst aspects of this type of bill / act / law ; the blistering incompetence of the people writing them. when Hadopi was being discussed in france several members of the Assemblée were interviewed and asked "what is peer to peer ?" only one of them knew what it was. Christine Albanel (at the time, Minister of Culture, personally responsible for pushing the law) was interviewed about internet safety and declared TWICE that yes, her computer is protected by a firewall. which one ? "Open Office." these are the people making decisions about internet use and accessibility.

Every time one of these ill-informed shills for the media conglomerates votes in another uninformed law, we just come back with ten new ways to circumvent that law. In this cat and mouse game we're a billion and more mice to their handful of cats. They can't win, no matter what they do.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Do you know if anyone has this with English subtitles? Sorry, I only speak English, shameful, I know!

sorry, i don't. but here is one with french subtitles, which i've translated below :

this is not the time when she was interviewed and asked point blank "what firewall do you use" (that probably happened after this). in this particular video, Albanel (again, then Minister of Culture, pushing the Hadopi "3 strikes" law...) is explaining oh so eloquently that :

"on this question of software, of free software, of course, when you purchase software for example the Microsote (sic) Pack (that i know is not free software) with word, excel, powerpoint, there are of course firewalls, as i just said, there is security software, but on free software you can also have firewalls which, of course... for example, we, at the Ministry, have a free software which is called "Open Office" and there is effectively a security program in there which prevents the Ministry of Culture to have access of course, and the suppliers of free software supply firewalls, they even supply free firewalls. so this argument is without foundation, that is what i wanted to say."

leaving aside the fact that most of that is utter gibberish and makes little to no sense (is there even one complete sentence in there ?) she clearly states that MS Office is an example of a firewall / security software you have to pay for, and that the Ministry of Culture uses a free firewall, called "Open Office", which "prevents the Ministry from having access" (to what, we don't know). personally, i think if Open Office is preventing anyone from having access to something there's likely a problem.

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Every time one of these ill-informed shills for the media conglomerates votes in another uninformed law, we just come back with ten new ways to circumvent that law. In this cat and mouse game we're a billion and more mice to their handful of cats. They can't win, no matter what they do.

it still seems like a travesty to me.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

sorry, i don't. but here is one with french subtitles, which i've translated below :

this is not the time when she was interviewed and asked point blank "what firewall do you use" (that probably happened after this). in this particular video, Albanel (again, then Minister of Culture, pushing the Hadopi "3 strikes" law...) is explaining oh so eloquently that :

"on this question of software, of free software, of course, when you purchase software for example the Microsote (sic) Pack (that i know is not free software) with word, excel, powerpoint, there are of course firewalls, as i just said, there is security software, but on free software you can also have firewalls which, of course... for example, we, at the Ministry, have a free software which is called "Open Office" and there is effectively a security program in there which prevents the Ministry of Culture to have access of course, and the suppliers of free software supply firewalls, they even supply free firewalls. so this argument is without foundation, that is what i wanted to say."

leaving aside the fact that most of that is utter gibberish and makes little to no sense (is there even one complete sentence in there ?) she clearly states that MS Office is an example of a firewall / security software you have to pay for, and that the Ministry of Culture uses a free firewall, called "Open Office", which "prevents the Ministry from having access" (to what, we don't know). personally, i think if Open Office is preventing anyone from having access to something there's likely a problem.



it still seems like a travesty to me.

That's hilarious! The translation makes it all the more clear that these idiots have no idea what they're doing. Still a travesty of course, but I'm no longer worried. The only people who will get stung by these new laws are the ill-informed and, if the hackers have anything to say, the people who instituted these laws to begin with.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

That's hilarious! The translation makes it all the more clear that these idiots have no idea what they're doing. Still a travesty of course, but I'm no longer worried. The only people who will get stung by these new laws are the ill-informed and, if the hackers have anything to say, the people who instituted these laws to begin with.

yep, in between banging my head against the wall i'm laughing. i agree that these idiots probably think that the cd tray is a cupholder. but i worry that as a result of their ignorance even more people will be unjustly penalised (the people who *aren't* hackers, and therefore don't know how to protect themselves from invasive and fundamentally flawed "IP protection" schemes...). because they're the ones setting up the new laws and deciding how to track things and how to punish them... and they're legislating on things they clearly don't even have a basic understanding about.

[BookCat]

Don't mean to keep linking to youtube, but this vid is a great overview of the pirate-aspect of the bill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4S4siQAfY4&NR=1

Cory Doctorow is on there.

As to the French minister, had she just told the world that their computers could be easily hacked? I'm sure she just didn't know what on earth she was talking about.

I'm voting Pirate Party UK. Yes, they do exist.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

yep, in between banging my head against the wall i'm laughing. i agree that these idiots probably think that the cd tray is a cupholder. but i worry that as a result of their ignorance even more people will be unjustly penalised (the people who *aren't* hackers, and therefore don't know how to protect themselves from invasive and fundamentally flawed "IP protection" schemes...). because they're the ones setting up the new laws and deciding how to track things and how to punish them... and they're legislating on things they clearly don't even have a basic understanding about.

That is the major problem. Hackers and the informed will just use SeedF**cker when it reaches maturity, or they'll VPN with SSL on Usenet, or fall back to IRC, private trackers and media-deposit sites. It's the young kid who uses Bearshare or one of those terrible P2P apps to download a few tracks and then ends up having to pay fines to these criminal cartels. Or maybe it'll just be random hurt, because the technology they laughingly use to track 'illegal' downloads is more or less guesswork and shouldn't be usable in a court of law. Hopefully the hackers are busy at work modifying their tools so that all the IP's tracked are those of the lawmakers and media moguls.

I believe the best thing to do is make Copyright pointless at the base level. Creators need to start dumping their stuff immediately into the public domain without any thought of copyright. When something is totally free there's no way to restrict that freedom for anyone, no way to legislate against sharing that which is freely shared. We as creators and audience need to wrestle our culture back from the hoarders of IP and make sure it never falls into such disrepute again.

[BookCat]

HarryT might be interested in the last part of this debate.

This bill will just never work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mggzA...eature=related

Will someone please pm me about how to embed vids. I put the code in and the code showed in the preview, not the vid.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by BookCat

HarryT might be interested in the last part of this debate.

This bill will just never work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mggzA...eature=related

Will someone please pm me about how to embed vids. I put the code in and the code showed in the preview, not the vid.

Copy the code after the = and before the & in the address, not the full address.

In the video above you'd copy the mggzAg7yjOc part inbetween the Youtube tags.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

the ridiculous fast digital radio switchover push, ...

I don't know if anyone has ever heard how bad DAB radio sounds, but when I had one, Radio 4 and BBC7 weren't even in stereo they were in 1950s style mono. Hardly progress if you ask me.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I don't know if anyone has ever heard how bad DAB radio sounds, but when I had one, Radio 4 and BBC7 weren't even in stereo they were in 1950s style mono. Hardly progress if you ask me.

Radio 4 (like Radio 1 and 2) is 128kbit stereo; Radio 3 is 160kbit stereo; Radio 7 is 80kbit mono. Given, however, that Radio 7 is a purely speech station, this is entirely acceptable for its purpose (most audiobook MP3s are 64k mono, by comparison). I have Radio 7 on all day, every day on DAB. I don't believe Radio 7 is stereo on FM, either, is it?

The whole point, though, of freeing up more bandwidth in the radio spectrum is to permit more stations, and at a higher bitrate. You've noticed, I'm sure, that the FM spectrum in the UK is currently so full that it's very often impossible to pick up one station without interference from those around it, especially in the evening.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you really think that the digital radio switchover is being rushed? I was under the impression that it wasn't happening until 2015? I know that I've not had a "non-digital" radio for years, other than my car radio.

DAB had been a pretty much unqualified commercial disaster, and the quality is generally extremely poor ime. DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale, who the HECK thought that name was good idea *sigh*) might be better, but it's also incompatible with DAB...

[Sparrow]

I like DAB - I could never get rid of the 'FM hiss' on any of my old radios.

With DAB, BBC Radio 3 (classical music station for those not aquainted with it) is crystal clear in my area, much the best quality sound I've ever heard on radio.

I do think it's a shame there's compression on other stations though - it's not what we were promised.

[HarryT]

The other big advantage of DAB is that it's MPEG-2, which can be directly recorded. I have a "Pure" DAB radio which can record onto an SD card, and use that capability extensively.