to be disappointed

[Kaloki]

Ok, I know I'm not. Just wanted more people to know about this.

Did anyone watch the Digital Britain debate last night? Bear with me, I know politics is boring, but this will affect you.

Do you use google? Or YouTube? Heard of WikiLeaks?

Do you think these should be blocked in the UK?

How about to you believe in innocent until proven guilty? Do you believe that if accused of something then you should pay to appeal, even if you are innocent?

Do you think decisions about these things should be made without a vote? How about, do you think votes should be made by people who can't be bothered to listen to a debate? (Especially people who are paid to do just that)

I?m 25, a web designer and graphic designer, I?ve never voted before due to believing that the politicians don?t listen anyway. Last night proved my point. In a bill that claims to be against theft, it shows they are more than willing to steal not only our internet access but also our right to a fair vote.

This bill gives them the right to disconnect internet access based on an accusation, belittling the theory of innocent until proven guilty. Now they have the right to treat you as a criminal with little evidence (using IP addresses as proof shows a complete lack of expertise) and charge you for appealing. They can cut off websites that ?may? host illegal downloads, this includes Google due to it?s ability to search for torrents. Added to that, they?ve given the government power to change the bill without a vote. How long before the UK finds itself banned from controversial websites. Aren?t we following China?s lead a little here?

The internet is a haven for creative minds, we shouldn?t have ourselves restricted. No matter how they?ve packaged the bill to the masses, hiding it behind the pirating issue, it is much deeper and more worrying than that. The public believe that if they don?t pirate then they?ll be fine. They won?t.

And all this because the MP?s decided they wouldn?t show enough respect to actually listen to us, or bother to show up. Where were the MP?s who missed the debate but showed up to vote? Will they come out of the woodwork and explain why they support the bill? My guess is that they couldn?t, all they know is what they?ve been told to vote, and not by their constituents.

AIBU to think the whole system needs to change? If they don?t have the decency to listen, they shouldn?t have the right to vote.

Pretty much every website with user generated content is at risk now. The DEBill, because of the clause about "apparent" file sharing, means that because the potential is there to file share, the sites can be reported. And seeing as the onus is then on the site to appeal (guilty till proven innocent) this could kill a lot of sites. The bigger ones may survive due to being able to fight the legal bills - however this depends on how many battles they have to face - but smaller sites would suffer.

Message forum - could potentially have links to torrents, or have users sending links in private messages

Search sites - could also retrieve links to torrents

Blogs - could have comments that lead to torrents

There's also the risk that one site may link to another that links to torrents, therefore "sharing" the torrents.

This is why, up until the new bill, torrents were difficult to police, as sites do not host the torrents, the users do, and sites were used by the users to share. Therefore the sites are not technically doing the sharing, and therefore not breaking any laws. But now..

That's the problem with the bill, it may not be used for these things, but it is worded ambiguously enough that it could. Does anyone want to hand this much power to the government?

Thanks for the link to CNet's piece which hints at (worst case scenario) even retrospective linking could cause a site to be banned.

That could mean a lot of fun if a domain name one registered had (at some point months before) been banned. How could one prove (given many people use WHOIS Privacy services) that person registering has / had nothing to do with a site using same domain name that had been banned...

{ Just as an aside, Kaloki, has gbbo.co.uk caused any problems/lost work, or are you involved with more specialist design work so doesn't matter to you? Loved the satellite ears photo, by the way, though fortunate my cat is 150+ miles away else she'd get bad ideas about your pets! }

It's insane isn't it? That bill gives them too much power without putting any real safeguards in place. It leaves it wide open to abuse, and anyone who thinks it wont get abuse is very optimistic! Loads of corporations have been trying to get YouTube shut down, now they have the opportunity (using the looseness of the bill) to, at the very least, block it from UK users.

The domain name issue is going to be a nightmare, given how many variations there are. For those who don't know web design, domains expire if you dont pay. So say you had a new business and registered a domain name of, say, "insertnamehere.co.uk", if that domain had previously been used to host pirated files then closed down and had expired, you would then get in trouble. Because you would struggle to prove it wasn't you orignally. And because it is expired, you would have no way of checking before buying it.

webdude To be honest I didn't even know that site existed. There are so many sites out there promising quick business websites I just tend to ignore them. I rely mainly on word of mouth anyway, though health problems mean I can't woek right now anyway.

Little satellite ears isn't so little anymore! My little darling is growing up.

Not so sure it would be a problem with .co.uk as anyone using it commercially would have address details on WHOIS, compared with some 'dubious' use where registrant could claim personal use {unless clear they made money from it} and not have anything more than "Mickey Mouse" as registrant. However, with .com .org etc it would be more of a struggle.

Well, I had seen some web design sites dropping prices by hundreds of pounds to the sub-100 mark to get business, but getting a free domain and free hosting for 2 years, and only paying for domain renewal, does feel like a kick in the balls for this one-man-band...

Sorry to read of your health issues - something you will recover from I hope...

Petition to repeal the Digital Economy act.

Web design is getting harder to earn on, partly because of sites like gbbo, but also because of reliance on social networking sites, and other designers undercutting prices. (These are usually the ones with dodgy coding) I've been getting requests to redesign sites which have been designed using obsolete code!