The Register has the worrying story here.
Apparently our shadow culture minister in the Lords, Lord Howard has tabled an amendment to the Copyright Bill giving grerater powers to the courts to grant takedown injunctions to ISPs.
To be fair, The Register admits the move is "well-intentioned" and it seems that this is to replace the current proposal to give unlimited power to Lord Mandelson but shouldn't we be fighting against any such powers that are open to abuse by big players (witness DMCA-takedowns in America)?
Having said all this, maybe I'm missing a subtlety?
UPDATE: Apparently I'm missing a fairly big subtlety, Lord Howard is a Tory! Thanks to The Bureau of Sabotage (in the comments) for doing the fact checking I failed to do...
Hopefully The Register will now update it's story. Maybe the party could send them a nice statement of our position?
UPDATE 2: Er, looking at the text of the amendment (120A), it seems that this was put forward by Lord Howard and Lord Clement-Jones (one of ours). So the story stands (but with the wrong name). Or am I reading it wrong?
UPDATE 3: The Register have updated their story and LibDemVoice has Lord Clement-Jones's explanation.
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4 comments:
El Reg has it wrong - Lord Howard is in fact a CONSERVATIVE, which makes more sense in the context. Still doesn't make his reasoning any more right though.
Looking at the text of the amendment, it looks like it's also sponsored by our spokesman Lord Clement-Jones!
And Lord Razzall, for that matter... high time for us to get lobbying and make them think again about this one. I can't see this going down at all well with anyone other than corporate interests and the odd bloggertarian.
It would have to be a very odd "bloggertarian" IMO. Wht makes you think that true libertarians would defend this sort of intervention?
Most of us are totally against Intellectual Property in principle.
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