rebootied

But today the government will take the unusual step of proposing much stricter rules midway through the Digital Britain consultation process. Illegal filesharers will still get warning letters but if they continue to swap copyrighted material they could have their internet connection temporarily severed, although it may be possible to retain basic access to online public services.

A similar law in France under which filesharers could be cut off for up to a year was recently kicked out by the country's highest court as unconstitutional. In the UK, privacy groups are likely to challenge any similar legislation as contrary to human rights law.

The power to introduce technical measures, meanwhile, will rest with the secretary of state, not Ofcom and their introduction will not rely upon an arbitrary 70% reduction in piracy but be up to the minister's discretion as he tries to secure the future of the UK's creative industries.

"The previous proposals, whilst robust, would take an unacceptable amount of time to complete in a situation that calls for urgent action," according to a draft of the government's new plan.

Paul Quirk, co-chairman of Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association, threatened: "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores."
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Prince's latest gambit also succeeded by acknowledging that copies, not songs, are just about worthless in the digital age. The longer an album is on sale, the more likely it is that people can find somewhere to make a copy from a friend's CD or a stranger's shared-files folder. When copies approach worthlessness, only the original has value, and that's what Prince sold to the Mail on Sunday: the right to be Patient Zero in the copying game.

Gonzales proposes new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement
Posted by Declan McCullagh

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.

"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy. ( full article text )