Mandy not swayed by ents mogul on illegal file sharing
Says piracy chat with David Geffen never happened
What you need to know about cloud backup
The government has dismissed reports that suggest business secretary Lord Mandelson plans to crackdown on illegal file sharing, by slapping hefty fines on thousands of individuals found guilty of abusing their web access.
A spokeswoman at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) told The Register that it was “nonsense” to “speculate” that Mandelson would target teenagers who illegally download music and films.
She said news reports that had appeared over the weekend were “simply journalists putting two plus two together and coming up with seven”.
The Daily Telegraph claimed that millions of people throughout the UK faced fines of up to £50,000 if their kids were caught illegally downloading films and music.
Meanwhile, according to the Times, Mandelson, who took over responsibility for digital policy after Lord Carter — author of the Digital Britain report — recently left the government, is supposedly mulling tougher measures against online piracy following a meeting with DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen.
He had a private dinner with Geffen, who is a long-standing critic of illegal file sharing, while holidaying in the Greek island of Corfu earlier this month at a villa owned by the Rothschild banking family.
However, the BIS spokeswoman denied that any discussion had taken place between the two men about internet piracy.
Treasury minister Stephen Timms, who took charge of the government’s Digital Britain plans earlier this month, told the Financial Times on Friday that UK.gov was hoping to reduce illegal file sharing in Blighty by 70 per cent within a year.
He confirmed that ISPs had been told to write letters to people caught illicitly downloading copyrighted material, and added that persistent offenders could face the threat of court action.
“The [70 per cent] target is a reasonable one,” Timms told the FT. “The concern is if the target isn’t hit, what happens then and how quickly we look at it again.”
Communications watchdog Ofcom would, under the Digital Britain proposals, be granted powers to step in; either by slowing internet connections or blocking access to piracy websites used by anyone who persists in illegal file sharing online.
Carter’s final report on Digital Britain was published in June. It stopped short of mandating a mechanism for persistent copyright infringers to be disconnected, but did suggest port blocking, protocol blocking, URL and IP address blocking, bandwidth capping, bandwidth shaping and filtering of specific content as sanctions. ®
COMMENTS
Unforceable - vote for any party except Labour
Parents cannot technically enforce what their children download. Children require access access to computers and the Internet for homework. Withdrawing access to computers is not an option.
My own attempt to enforce policies failed when my children spoofed both IP and mac addresses. and attempted brute force attacks on the router.
Any attempt to punish families must be punished at the elections.
@seanj
No. This is not about corruption and lobbying. It's about doing the right thing. Any form of lobbying, is generally acceptable, as long as it is about doing the right thing. We don't refer to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, Joanna Lumley's recent lobbying of Gordon Brown about the Gurkhas, because she and he did the right thing. David Geffen and Peter Mandelson are doing the right thing.
As for failing to uphold "the interests of the people they're supposed to represent." I think you're absolutely right that there are some excruciating snafus which pain many people, (which incidentally nearly but don't quite match the number and scale of those at the end of the previous Tory administration), but I very strongly disagree with you that this issue is one of those snafus. I believe artists must be paid.
Thank you however for the respectful tone of your counter-posting :-)
Unelected?
@ Lord Meddlesome
"As noted by other posters, this man was twice thrown out of positions of power within the British Parliament WHICH HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAD IN THE FIRST PLACE - he has NEVER been voted into office by the Electorate, but Blair gave him public office anyway. TWICE. The second time was a few months after the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] was removed for getting caught doing things he shouldn't."
Erm....he was the MP for Hartlepool between 1992 and 2004 - which counts as being elected when he had those positions at least in my book!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson#Offices_held
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
