back to article Hunt: Online file-sharing is a 'direct assault on freedoms'

Search engines and internet service providers (ISPs) could be forced to make it harder for users to access copyright infringing content online under new UK communications laws, the Culture Secretary has said. Jeremy Hunt said that the UK needed to "explore all options" that would make it more difficult for websites that " …

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Considering the distribution of wealth we're about as close as we can get without actually enslaving anyone.

  1. Mr Young
    Meh

    Filesharing is "theft"?

    It's not theft is it? How many file-sharers have been charged with theft Jeremy?

    FAIL

  2. Mike Flugennock
    Coffee/keyboard

    Can't help laughing

    I know I should be furious and outraged at Mr. Hunt's remarks -- and I am, of course -- but somehow I can't help snickering, as this guy's outburst has got to be the funniest thing I've heard since about six or seven years ago, when some TV programming big-shot went on the NBC "Today Show", looked the whole country in the eye and told us, with an entirely straight face, that people who tape TV shows to view later -- and fast-forward through the commercials -- are "thieves".

    Oh, how I cackled at _that_ one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      At least with VHS...

      the industry eventually came up with a business model (rental shops, reasonably low prices) that most people saw as fair. That probably did more to kill tape piracy than any legal measures or campaigning.

      Perhaps within the next decade or two, they'll manage to do the same in the digital domain. Perhaps they'll even manage to make a system that channels a fair share of the rewards to the smaller creators (you know, the ones that might actually need it).

      And perhaps porcine-powered aviation will finally become viable - who knows?

  3. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Coat

    "...nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products..."

    No, we call them market stalls.

    There's no need to get me my coat - it was too chilly to bother taking it off.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From an end-users perspective, what's the difference?

    1. Record a TV series onto a PVR HDD, watch it over and over.

    2. Torrent a TV series onto a Computer HDD, watch it over and over.

    * apart from maybe having to whiz through the adverts with # 1.

    1. David Beck

      The difference is "geographic rights"

      In case 1. you are in the same area as the rights holder, who paid to distribute the content.

      in case 2. you need not be in the same area as the source of the content.

      None of this is really about copyright, it's all about distribution rights. The content providers (these are not the content creators) own the rights to distribution and pre-internet owned or sold licence for most of the distribution channels. They are having a bit of trouble with the fact that those days are gone and they can no longer control distribution. No one wants to pay that much money for the rights to distribute content that was distributed in the US a year ago if everyone outside the US who wanted to see or hear it has already done so using "grey" channels to acquire it. The noise about copyright is only made since enforcing distribution territories would be a non-starter in court (after all Obama gave region 1 DVD's to Brown, was that an offence?).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ David Beck

        Good answer.

        I agree.

        However, surely the end-user cares not for the distribution channel.

        They simply wish to consume the product.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Again?

    Which yacht was he entertained on ? And what was he fed? I Would like this enlightening stuff, please.

  6. Dave 15

    Idiot

    The guy is clearly off his trolley. Pity he isn't sacked on the spot for such lunacy - guess its probably because most of the idiots he works with are too busy fiddling expenses to notice.

    Still, it would be good if the ISP's all got together and decided to completely shut all UK ISP operations completely... that would solve the problems for both sides.... and then cause such mayhem that perhaps hunt not cunningham will think a little

  7. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Devil

    Evil Corporatism and Stasism farts on us again.

    This Hunt is a corporate stooge backing more gross over-extension of an anti-capitalist and destructive corporate privilege (not freedom) to lazily sabotage competition; shame on him!

    There is nothing fair or helpful to the economy about patents, copyright and any other form of so-called "Intellectual Property"; it is a state subsidy which breeds complacency, laziness, stagnation and higher costs to the economy.

    Adam Smith had a lot to say against the evils of government suppression of commercial competition against favoured commercial bodies, including the higher costs to society which result.

  8. Roger Mew

    Copyright. Huh

    OK so I make a tune and someone buys it and copies it thats copyright theft.

    I make a cabinet in wood, someone PHOTOGRAPHS it, not even bought it and thats OK.

    I wire a house and do something a bit novel and someone visits the house and copies it, thats OK. Why is it that only things done by so called artists get copy right whilst the people that work get zilch...

    Oh its just clicked, I get very little for my long hours and graft, people that would not know work if they fell over it want to keep getting paid over and over.

    Well I want to be paid a copyright for the street lighting at Chalfont St Peters Roundabout on the A413. It was my idea so everybody thats used it needs to pay me copyright of say 1/- everytime they pass it!!! Any body that modifies it is also breaking copyright including the drunk idiot that smashed into it with his Hillman Imp on the first nite I switched it on. (circa 1968)

    Roll on limewire stuff copyright and stop taking the michael. Use a IP hiding system and also OpenDNS.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How positively Oorwellian

    >>that freedoms and the law should "apply equally" online as they do "in the physical world"

    For "freedoms" read "restrictions".

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