Repeal the ‘three strikes’ aspect of the Digital Economy Bill

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The idea

Essentially, to either repeal or change the Digital Economy Bill to remove the '3 strikes and you're disconnected' clause. While it may have been rephrased to sound like it doesn't mean 'disconnected', it still has the same net output.

Why is it important?

This particular aspect of the bill infringes on the freedom of the voting public not to have their web browsing snooped on, using some ethereal idea of 'protecting the rights of companies perfectly able to protect themselves' as justification. Copyright is a civil matter, and as such the government has no role to play in enforcing it for companies or in determining who is or is not allowed access to the internet. In fact, one might go as far as to say that the government has no role in deciding what people do on the internet, beyond the basics of personal safety or material that is clearly illegal in any form (such as child pornography).

In real terms, the practicalities of enforcing this are ridiculous – relying either on deep packet inspection to actually know whether internet users are filesharing or not, OR taking the word of record labels as gospel. And we KNOW from previous examples that they make mistakes in identifying alleged filesharers. Plus, of course, this bill sets a disturbing precedent of the government decreeing exactly what is and is not allowed as an activity for the public, way beyond the limits of common sense (as mentioned above).

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