While browsing through my feeds I found this article on 901am which reports about plans of the UK government to ban all users from the internet who kept pirated audio or video files on their computer. You have 3 chances, 2 will be email warnings and the third will mean termination.
Now if this is true, what would this mean?
First of all the fact that warnings come per email it sounds as if some monitoring system is in place. Here in Germany government discusses some online searching of your computer (not clear how this should be done though) but only for terrorism and the like. Additionally we have data retention laws in place already asking providers to store connection data for up to 6 months. Is this the same in the UK? Taken into account how I experienced London with all it’s cameras (and there is still crime in London…) I guess it is.
The other question is what actually a life-long internet ban means for a person (e.g. if you were young and naive and did this with 18)? Having no internet in the future will mean a big disadvantage. You will have problems to educate, you will have problems to stay informed, you will have problems to stay in touch with your friends (imagine somebody having no phone or cell these days), you will have problems to find a job. Having no jobs means having no money.
Having no money means you are not able to buy CDs! Because the institutions behind this approach are probably the music and movie industry lobbies. But it will not save them! Instead it will destroy many lifes.
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