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With the support of at least 18 other politicians, UK Labour Party MP Tom Watson has tabled an Early Day Motion in which he questions government proposals to disconnect or throttle alleged file-sharers. Calling the measures “futile,” Watson says those accused should have the right to legal redress in a court of law.Tom Watson is a Labour Party politician for West Bromwich East in the United Kingdom. Famous for becoming the first MP to start his own blog, Watson was a Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office until his resignation in June this year.During his time in the Cabinet Office, Watson says he spent 18 months “immersed in conversation with the UK’s digital pioneers” and is convinced that the country’s economic future depends on “developing a set of economic and regulatory arrangements (which includes copyright, the legislative mechanism at the heart of the filesharing debate) to hothouse our digital natives”.Watson has been most vocal in his opposition to the proposals by the government to throttle, disconnect or otherwise interfere with the Internet connections of alleged file-sharers. “Not only do the sanctions ultimately risk criminalising a large proportion of UK citizens,” he said, “they also attach an unbearable regulatory burden on an emerging technology that has the power to transform society, with no guarantees at the end that our artists and our culture will get any richer.”Taking his opposition to these proposals to the next level, Watson has now tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the issue. An EDM is a device used by Members of Parliament to demonstrate the level of support among other MPs for a particular point of view. Although EDMs tend not to achieve results directly, they can attract the attention of the press, which fosters further debate and discussion.
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Topic: Labour MP: Disconnecting File-Sharers is Futile (Read 595 times)
