Three strikes and you're offline
There are a number of countries around the world that are playing around with 'three strikes' (or 'graduated response') laws which would cut off people's access to the internet after three copyright infringements. France, the UK, Japan and South Korea all seem to be taking this approach. New Zealand recently adopted a 'three strikes' law. Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy recently said he would be looking into UK legislation on the issue.
There are a number of reasons to be concerned about these laws.
For a start, the practical aspects of enforcing bans on filesharing users are daunting. Most proposals require that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor their users. How will that work? Will they be able to do it in such a way that they don't infringe users' privacy? Will prices go up? Will ISPs be able to distinguish between using P2P sites to share illegal and legal material? And if ISPs aren't going to monitor users, who is?
No Internet means no Wikipedia. No looking up government websites. No Internet banking. No blogging. No emails. No facebook/orkut/etc (and remember, social networking aren't just about procrastination - for many people they're a key means of staying in touch with their friends, even sometimes engaging in activism). No Internet means no accessing online journals. No online interviews. No babelfish. No podcasts or online papers from other countries. Your line to much of the knowledge of the world is cut off. Your ability to access the only media where you can be heard is cut off.
Maybe this would be acceptable if the burden of proof was high. Maybe then you could justify blocking people from accessing the Internet for downloading a few songs or uploading a video. (And even then I would have some arguing to do.)
However, there seem to be plenty of reasons to worry that the burden of proof won't be high. Simon Morton said on a recent Digital Planet program that users could be cut off if someone alleges that they have been involved in copyright infringement. I'm still looking into the details of how this would work, but as it stands the burden of proof is not high. An article on Stuff.co.nz quoted Recording Industry Association chief executive as saying:
it would be "impractical and ridiculous" for copyright owners to prove
the guilt of infringers in court before demanding they be cut off from
the Internet.
That is not a promising sign.
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(Image from sharky_p2p).