Oh, Peter. You are so obvious but that's why everyone loves you so much.
Yes, it is old Lord Mandelson again up to his old tricks. After a lovely, free, holiday on a yacht moored in Corfu (yes another expensive yacht near Corfu) courtesy of David Geffen, co-owner of Dreamworks who has a major axe to grind on pirate copies of media being downloaded on the web, Peter has personally intervened to beef up the new laws governing downloads in the new Digital Britain initiative.
Once again, the war on piracy has been taken to the consumer not to those who put the content on the web who actually stole it in the first place. Those characters are much harder to chase as they are slippery, elusive and getting as rich as David Geffen - so maybe someday they will have expensive yachts and free holidays to dole out. Consumers? No, they are weak, puny and easy to catch, particularly as the new legislation governing security allows the Government to question the ISPs who provide our internet services for records of every movement, word and message we send. Welcome to Digital Britain - who knows, maybe blogs like this will be illegal soon as I mention a Politician's name.
In Sweden, a whole Political Party has sprung up ostensibly to tackle the download issue but has leapt to prominence by gaining an MEP seat when it tackled the issue of excessive security laws. It will be a direct consequence of laws, supposedly intended to safeguard us from terrorist attacks, that allow Governments to monitor everything we do on the web, that will be able to find out who has wantonly downloaded music, software, films etc and violated copyright so that they can be fined.
Yes, that's right - fined.
It's all about money. But then again, you don't have to follow Peter Mandelson far to find money. He met Gadaffi's son twice this year, once on that very yacht, and guess what? Yes, the Lockerbie Bomber is freed to a hero's reception in Tripoli and we get more trade with Libya - just wait and see.
This isn't rocket science, you know. It isn't even subtle. This is rich people scratching a power-hungry Minister's back, who is unelected, who correspondingly does their bidding in Government - accountable to no one.
Once again, Welcome to Digital Britain.
No comments:
Post a Comment