I recently wrote to my local MP, expressing my concern about the Digital Economy Act 2010, particularly about the way I was uncomfortable with the “blocking Internet locations” part of the bill, which meant that one injunction could remove a site from the Internet.

The Americans have, of course, been doing this with the ludicrous “In Our Sites” operation, and annoying foreign companies whose .com domains were doing nothing illegal in their own countries in the process.

Of course what this raises is the possibility that sites such as The Internet Archive would become illegal in the UK, simply because although the material is public domain under US law, some of the material is still under copyright legislation here. The same is true of The Library Of Congress, of course, and I suspect blocking that site would be unpopular. (Indeed, Microsoft would even have qualified once.)

I complained to my MP, specifically stating that I felt that this would give foreign jurisdictions a way to complain about UK sites they didn’t like, simply by assigning local copyrights and then complaining (or not even bothering with the first part) and received an patronising, oleagenously worded letter that stopped short of accusing me of being a software, music and movie pirate (which I am assuredly not, but the accusation rankled.)

So it occured to me – how could you abuse this regime for money?

Very easily.

Let’s say I hate my neighbour – with a passion. It’s the easiest thing in the world to crack my neighbour’s wifi, which now gives me access to his Internet connection. Simply pop along to the Pirate Bay, and download – ooh, I don’t know – Nude Nuns With Big Guns, perhaps – and then report that to the copyright owner.

While I’m there, maybe I’ll then upload something illegal as well, perhaps, or even download something even worse, and anonymously report that too (although that’s nothing to do with the DEA, of course).

Result? Neighbour has a world of problems.

Now, under the DEA, do that three times and they lose their Internet connection.

Of course, the act only requires “the report relates to the subscriber’s IP address at the time of that infringement”, it doesn’t require any proof that the subscriber was responsible for it. Of course, American courts already admitted that the IP address doesn’t identify a user, which is why this act is so pernicious.

But of course, none of that is going to bother the MPs. So long as certain members (and ex-members) of the Cabinet can continue to party on big yachts owned by media moguls, who cares about making good laws?

Clearly, my local MP doesn’t.

Tags: Digital Economy Act, file sharing, In Our Sites, law, Nude Nuns With Big Guns

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 12:47 and is filed under Whinges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.