Next week United Kingdom legislators are proposing a new law under which surfers who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the Internet. This proposed Green Paper, which the Government is due to disclose, sometime next week, will require ISP’s to take action against the estimated six million users a year who access pirated material. The law is expected to propose a ‘three-strike’ system, similar to that already in place in the US and France.

Users suspected of illegally downloading films or music (Shouldn’t this be All copyrighted material) will receive a warning e-mail for the first offence, a suspension for the second infringement and the termination of their Internet contract if caught a third time.

So the picture we can draw from here is—“Suspected illegal music and video content sharing” will be penalized. Question is who will decide whether the suspect is in fact did commit the crime? I am sure the legislators are not suggesting handing down badges to ISP’s to become cyber police. On the other hand in order to ISPs to know that you are downloading illegal files to your computer would require them to have access to personnel information on your computer, wouldn’t that violate privacy act/Data protection act? And even the top Govt. Agencies and financial institutions have history of data breach, giving ISP’s access to personal information wills just another hole in privacy protection, don’t you agree?

I am smelling plain political interest here, this so called green paper is intend to protect the interest of Music and film industries, not copyright infringement by giving away general people’s privacy.

Hey legislator guys did you try to think passing a law that will put pressure on Hosting and Domain registrars to shut down the illegal sites like children pornography sites? That would have been much easier.

So we the democratic world always express our outcries over China’s Internet “firewall” and the denial of freedom of access to the majority of Chinese. But will allow our ISPs “sniff” Internet traffic, and then obviously which opens the door to snooping Web Site accesses for whatever reason the state deems fit. Don’t you think its pure hypocrisy?