Digital Economy: Lib Dems miss opportunity to be liberal...again

 Over at Lib Dem voice there's a guest post proffering an alternative response to the Digital Economy Bill currently going through parliament.  The "people's party" has expressly committed itself to attacking the people's rights in response to incessant bleating from the Intellectual Property Farming Industry by proposing some form of mandatory cutting off of people's internet connections if they are discovered downloading or sharing copyrighted material.

The guest author, Jim Killock of the "Open Rights Group", a body campaigning against these aspects of the bill, argues from the basis that ISPs will be forced into "collective punishment" by disconnecting people who may done nothing wrong, but whose accounts have been used by other people, perhaps without the knowledge of the account holder.  I think this is the wrong tack for supposed liberals to be taking.  We should instead be focussing on the whole basis of this bill's origin - the further protection of intellectual property by the state, against the interests of the people who elect them and in favour of the interests of the corporate megaliths with the sleekest lobbying operations.

Here's the comment I left on the discussion following the post:

Wrong tack I believe. And I disagree with the notion that when you contract a service from a private company they have not got the right to set whatever rules they like. Event the nationwide universities’ network has the same rule – you as account holder are responsible for any misconduct, based on the terms and conditions of service, carried out with the account, regardless of whether it was actually someone else using your account, unless you can prove your account was hacked. 

Sure, the resulting sanction, suspension of your account, is usually temporary since we do regard it as an essential service, but, and particularly in halls of residence, it could be permanent and you could be forced to use the open computer labs instead.

That said, as I stated, this is the wrong tack for developing a new economy. It is purely based on the wishes and lobbying of the rights-holders. As usual, regulation is being captured by the industry with the biggest lobby (and no doubt the best entertainment budget) in preference to the rights of the people who elect these legislators.

We should be using the opportunity to present an alternative world view – of abolishing intellectual property rights as amounting to artificial state protection on unscarce resources that has resulted over the years in a flourishing commercial scene of IP “farming” by some of the biggest and most influential corporations in the world, certainly at the expense of the consumers (which makes it extortion and theft of our rights), and most probably also at the expense of many would be artists whose entry to the market is effectively controlled by these megaliths of corporate greed and control.

Then, if one or other ISP wants to control the download of some product or service produced by one of its corporate buddies, they can do so in their contracts, and see how they fare in competition with those who don’t. Problem solved.

Come on guys – we are Liberals, supposedly. Intellectual Property is inherently illiberal. A state enforced attack on one group by another who has the ear of government. It is a monopoly right. We don’t believe in monopolies and state created ones especially, and seek to eradicate them. Do we? There is clear water to be gained in this between the corporate cronyism of both Tories and Labour and a real Liberal marketplace.