Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

This Bill is even worse than feared - see London based Telnic's (.tel registry) response to the government informing them that the statutory instrument to seize managerial control of domain registries applies to them:

http://prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=272545

Allegations of "abusive" behaviour on the part of registrars or end-users could lead an ignorant Secretary of State triggering this instrument.

So what's "abusive"? Well just for starters, registering an expired domain name is. Yes really, that's what the government believes (see the Digital Britain report).

So a company with about 12 employees has gone from being heralded at the UK IT awards last week for "the biggest innovation to come out of the UK since the www from Sir Tim Berners-Lee.".. to fearing nationalisation!

Brown thinks he can run the "Digital Economy" like a Soviet tractor factory. Who would want to invest in this?

What a joke.

Re: Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

#6

Post by russell » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 9:12 PM UTC

Things are bad here with the DCMA, but things are really frightening in the UK which doesnt have the fundamental constitutional concepts of privacy, freedom of speech, and reasonable constraints on libel. Charlie Stross, a UK SF writer, has a blog today on this topic. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbecile...

BTW: he's one of us.

Re: Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

#7

Post by joeter » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 9:53 PM UTC

andre wrote: post #2

do people have any more freedoms left in UK?

liberalized gambling laws

Re: Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

#8

Post by tomjen2 » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 9:55 PM UTC

Interesting, even if you where accused in front of the star chamber (abolished 1640 because it took away too many rights) you couldn't be put to death.

So in some way, this legislation is actually worse.

Re: Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

#9

Post by Slashed » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 10:15 PM UTC

andre wrote: post #2

do people have any more freedoms left in UK?

I will answer your question as a Londoner - Unfortunately, no. Though, now I live in Dublin and I already got a first letter from my ISP, warning me about using P2P networks. Gee, what a bunch of *holes!

Re: Britain's new Internet Law: Death of the Startup in Britain?

#10

Post by cmelbye » Fri, Nov 20, 2009, 10:30 PM UTC

I honestly never thought I'd say this, but this bill makes our DMCA look awesome. Politics in Europe are so unproductive and ridiculous, I really hope that it doesn't spread to the United States and other countries that still have some personal freedoms.