In a "declaration of war" against file sharing sites (legal or otherwise), big labels backed "UK Music", a group that claim to represent the artists but in fact represent the labels has asked the government to monopolise the internet for their benefit.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87080/uk-music-wants-to-filter-illegitimate-p2p-sites/The UK govt’s consultation process on how to address illegal file-sharing concluded this past Tuesday and its final decision for legislation will be announced sometime in November
UK Music proposes that P2P and other “illegitimate” sites be filtered. It says the “development of a list stating the most egregious illegitimate sites; filtering access to such sites, which would also cover other websites, such as unlicensed one-click hosting sites, would be invaluable.”
Filtering raises a whole new pandora’s box of privacy issues. Who will devise and maintain the list? What happens when other interest groups want to ban unsavory “illegitimate” sites like we’ve seen in Australia?
There is some light on the horizon however
Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, owner of Talk Talk, the UK’s largest ISP, has already vowed to sue the govt if tries to implement a “guilty until proven innocent” approach and will “resist any attempts to make it impose technical measures on its customers.”
Other ISPs like BT are also refusing to punish file-sharing customers. BT’s consumer chief John Petter says enforcing the plan would cost customers £24 ($38 USD) a year and his industry as much as £1million ($1.5 million USD) per day.
It also rejects any proposal that means inspecting each customer’s traffic for signs of illegal usage
It seems big business is trying to subvert the internet for its own purposes and now would be the best time for those who care about sites like this one that would likely be censored to get political and start asking their MP some very important questions such as why should the recording industry set UK policy on usage of the internet ?
I,m sure there are many more questions you can add to your letters but its either use your voice or lose it to copyright despots who seek to silence even sites like our own here that have never told folks to download copyrighted content, should we be censored by a corporation ?
