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

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

#51

Post by cabalamat »

philwelch wrote: post #35
foldr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you taking the parent to task for this rather than the OP?

It's a fair question. To me, it's a positive thing to criticize the decline of civil liberties in one country, but a negative thing to respond to that criticism with a "at least we're better than another country" flame. It's not productive at all to play the "my country is less bad than yours" game.

Indeed, both the UK and USA have serious flaws. As do all other countries, I imagine.

But on a wider scale, they are both also some of the most successful and free countries that have ever existed, and clearly have better human rights records than, for example, Northn Korea, Sudan or Zimbabwe.

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

#52

Post by cabalamat »

bumblebird wrote: post #25
iuygfhn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you called your site say "hacker news" and some local councilor decided that "hacker" was offensive - under this law they can simply delete your domain registration.

Then you'd post about it on twitter+reddit and the whole baying mob of sheep that compose the modern internet would track down said councilor and make their life a living hell forever.

Said councillor probably wouldn't be on the internet. Or he'd only check his email once a week and wouldn't notice.

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

#53

Post by bumblebird »

foldr wrote: post #41
bumblebird wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really slippery slope. And to be honest, yeah - having a net connection is a pretty big luxury I don't think criminals serving at her Majesties' pleasure should actually be entitled to. Obviously if they're to be rehabilitated, then it would make sense to allow them that, but whilst they're serving time, isn't the whole point to take away the home comforts? There was also some call (Probably from EU) to give c…

>They're in there to separate them from society. And that includes 'online' society IMHO - hence they should not have net connections. And presumably they shouldn't be allowed to send letters or have visitors either right? There's a "slippery slope" in both directions.

It's only feasible to send letters to individuals. Not society. Same with visitors. The two don't really compare.

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

#54

Post by bumblebird »

cabalamat wrote: post #52
bumblebird wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you'd post about it on twitter+reddit and the whole baying mob of sheep that compose the modern internet would track down said councilor and make their life a living hell forever.

Said councillor probably wouldn't be on the internet. Or he'd only check his email once a week and wouldn't notice.

People on reddit+twitter hunt people down in real life all the time.

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

#55

Post by uriel »

RevRal wrote: post #16

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…

Who knows, this might work: http://seasteading.org/

At least until Carmack manages to build rockets that can take us somewhere further away from all the insane people in this planet and their suicidal tendencies.

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

#56

Post by bumblebird »

noste wrote: post #46
bumblebird wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really slippery slope. And to be honest, yeah - having a net connection is a pretty big luxury I don't think criminals serving at her Majesties' pleasure should actually be entitled to. Obviously if they're to be rehabilitated, then it would make sense to allow them that, but whilst they're serving time, isn't the whole point to take away the home comforts? There was also some call (Probably from EU) to give c…

>There was also some call (Probably from EU) to give criminals in jail the right to a vote. Which I also strongly disagree with. Going by the stats at http://felonvoting.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=28... felony disenfranchisement is not that popular in western democracies.

I guess thats relevant if you believe things like this should be decided by the majority.

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

#57

Post by bumblebird »

foldr wrote: post #32

It's really irritating when people write the title to make it sound as if a bill which hasn't gone through parliament yet is already law.

Where would the modern internet be without groups of people getting completely outraged by things that they shouldn't really worry about.

See also: Every person in the UK is caught on CCTV a billion times every single day, which is fed into a central database and used by the government. Every email is logged by the government. etc etc etc.

This is the entire business model for "The daily mail" paper in the UK - get people completely scared to death about every single thing so they think the worlds falling apart and they need to buy the paper to keep up with it all. "There's pedophiles on everyones street!" "global warming will kill us all" "the government is spying on everyone" and so on for ever.

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

#58

Post by scscsc »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

This is fantastic . It's great news. No, seriously. This kind of thing is exactly what's needed to make services like i2p ( http://i2p2.de ) popular enough to go mainstream. Or another way to look at it, oft-quoted, is: the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

This has been on the tip of my tongue for a long while, so I might as well go ahead and say it now. I am ready to acknowledge the power of technology as much as anyone hanging around here.

But I think that dismissing the computer/internet laws currently being passed by countries in the EU as being unenforceable, or being easily solvable by technology workarounds is a great fallacy and the most stupid thing in the world to do.

The cat and mouse play between technology workarounds and law cannot go on forever, because eventually you will run out of legal workarounds. This is similar to the cat and mouse play between the police and law breakers. Unless you are in bed with the police, you will eventually get caught.

I think that the only viable alternative is to oppose these laws and hope they don't pass.

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

#59

Post by shiranaihito »

bumblebird wrote: post #19
philwelch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh I'm happy for you that you have more freedom to drink beer. May I kindly suggest that, when exercising that freedom, you try and avoid nationalistic flame wars? This is Hacker News.

... and that's why I flagged this article. As well as the "European startups don't work hard" rubbish. Unfortunately they keep coming. Plus, the OP comment of "Does the UK have any freedoms left" is obviously quite ridiculous.

In other news: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/13/1347.asp

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

#60

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bumblebird wrote: post #57
foldr wrote: post #32

It's really irritating when people write the title to make it sound as if a bill which hasn't gone through parliament yet is already law.

Where would the modern internet be without groups of people getting completely outraged by things that they shouldn't really worry about. See also: Every person in the UK is caught on CCTV a billion times every single day, which is fed into a central database and used by the government. Every email is logged by the government. etc etc etc. This is the entire business model for "The daily mail" paper in the UK - get p…

Where would the modern internet be without groups of people getting completely outraged by things that they shouldn't really worry about.

You may not be outraged by the curtailment of our freedoms by a man who is unelected and has been booted out of post twice (at least) and who is spearheading a new copyright initiative immediately after staying at the pleasure of a media magnate, said initiative doing nothing for the public domain and everything for vested monopoly interests.

You may not, but those of us who prefer not to enforce the profit of the super-rich by the rule of law, solely for the benefit of those rich, we should be outraged.

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