Love Labour, hate Blair.

[aidan_skinner]

One day, nearly 16 years ago, I was sitting in my Technical Drawing class sketching isometric views on graph paper and Asif burst in clutching a radio.

"John Smiths dead!"

We all gathered round the teachers desk and listened to the World At One, wondering what would happen next.

Comments

[greylock]

What's a Digital Economy Bill when it's at home?

[aidan_skinner]

Think DMCA on steroids, with a few provisions for things like universal access to 2Mbit in the next 2 years but mostly focussed on cutting off users from the internet without due process. The clause which allowed you to pay a nominal fee if you couldn't be bothered contacting the owner of a copyrighted work to use it was dropped fortunately. Disconnection is still in there, along with pre-emptive blocking of sites "likely to be used for piracy" - eg. Google returning search results for bittorrent clients.

[greylock]

How curious. I did hear about the disconnection, but not a lot else.

Sounds horrible. And they passed it?

[aidan_skinner]

Yep, with a total of about 6 hours debate in the bloodied death rattle of the parliament. Literally the last thing this benighted government did.

[meowpurrr]

TBH I hope to never meet an MP in person, or I may "lose my composure".

[green_badger]

I am pleased to see that my Labour MP voted against it. xxx