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

Linkbait. Why would this be anything concerning startups? Why would it discourage startups from starting up in Britain? How will it impact current startups? It won't.

No real news here, just some silly politicians trying to show muscle, which will ultimately fail and be irrelevant.

People working on startups are resourceful. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find free wifi/3g/get cable/adsl from another provider etc etc etc

I agree the law is stupid and ill thought out and puts the whole idea of innocent until proven guilty out the window, but technology is hard for some people like unelected politicians to grasp. So they mess up, and make stupid laws.

Meanwhile, people just sidestep and make the laws useless and irrelevant.

This is why we need to overthrow some government and establish a hacker nation. I think something similar happened in the movie Igor....

In all seriousness, this is pretty scary. There is a fierce dichotomy here. There aren't very many people who believe file-sharing is that morally wrong (or morally wrong to begin with), it is just becoming very illegal.

Things are going to get more and more ridiculous, until we are forced to re-evaluate the very paradigms that hold up our economies. I've said it before, "money" is outdated.

This bill very specifically concerns startups. Want to create a disruptive service? (e.g. You create a site to allow people to rate insurance sites) - well with this different businesses that say they're in the same industry can accuse you of infringement (e.g. insurance price comparison sites) and have you shut down providing they can convince the secretary of state, meaning that if you have a competitor then you may be screwed if you don't screw first.

It's not necessarily the case that it will fail. The current government uses laws with enabling clauses that are triggered by statutory instruments. Some of these laws include the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (which allows wiretapping by authorised authorities) where authorised authorities were extended from the police to local authorities - who use it to spy on people to make sure they're managing bins properly. Another one is the Serious Organised Crime and Policing Act (SOCPA) which even the head of the association of chief police officers (ACPO) has said was excessive - it allows bailiffs to forcably enter your home and remove your goods before a hearing or trial and to sieze all your property once arrested.

My own personal favourite is the terrorism act, which introduced stop and search if police suspect things that may lead to a terrorist act. People get stop and searched at football matches, on their way to work and so on regardless of suspicion of terrorism. These things are all evil and all believed to be irrelevant but still got through. This is no different.

So you think that an insurance company can accuse another startup insurance comparison website of infringement, and get them shutdown?

Surely the same argument could be said for any law? Accuse your neighbor of murder, accuse a competitor of money laundering, etc etc.

idk. Things always sound worse when people moan about them on the internet. They'll affect a tiny handful of people. It's more about the government making news stories and appearing "tough on X" rather than anything else.

I've never been stop+searched. :(