The UK will Deprive File-Sharers of Internet Access as Punishment? Is that Legal?
Just about the time that everyone began to dare to look up again after a couple of slow years in the US government initiative against illegal file sharers, comes now a fresh assault. The Swedish file-sharing service ThePirateBay is all over the news for having been ordered shut, and for having its founders jailed. Private file-sharers in the US are being fined $100,000 apiece again and the British and French governments have announced something like a three-strike policy against illegal file sharers. File-sharing downloaders who are caught lapping up copyrighted material by their ISP are to be reported the first time, and will hear a warning shot: they will have their Internet speeds strangled. Persistent offenders will be cut off from the Internet forever. These new measures should come into force in less than two years. But is it even legal to cut someone off from access to what has become the most basic of communication tools?
Those in power feel that it isn’t big deal, because as a practical matter, most people will take their warnings seriously and cease to break the law. But knowledgeable civil rights activists see a slippery slope here, that descends into speech restrictions. Not to say that the situation is not alarming; the British music and film industries employ millions of people; having their creative product used for free has already begun to tell on employment prospects for many creative people.
But Internet service providers themselves protest the excessive heavy handedness of this measure. It could just owe to how the law expects the ISPs to pay for the costs of the implementation. But really, is there a way to tell which side has the fair argument? The powerful free spirits who support copyright infringement and file-sharing have an excellent point. Their claim is that music is a product that is priced artificially high by a cartel of manufacturers who collude to keep their prices high. Do they really deserve sympathy any more than the rich oil producing nations that thrive on artificially high prices?
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