Oh, dear…
Oh. My. God. Over in the UK, they’re in the process of passing the Digital Economy Bill, which three seconds of research suggests is analogous to the DMCA here in the U.S. Better people than I have already written extensively about why it’s Truly Evil, but this is pretty funny. “Copyright owners are currently able to go on-line, look for material to which they hold the copyright and identify unauthorised sources for that material. They can then seek to download a copy of that material and in so doing capture information about the source including the Intellectual Property (IP) address…” Pretty sure “IP” stands for “Internet Protocol,” but what are you gonna do?
Now, my experience with the British political system includes several episodes of “Yes Minister” and the movie “In the Loop,” so I don’t know where the MPs go for their computer training. (Do you guys in the UK have the Video Professor?) But come on, confusing “Intellectual Property” with “Internet Protocol” just reeks of, “I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m just writing what the lobbyist tells me to write.”
I should probably explain that quoted sentence. It’s a letter written by one Stephen Timms, the Minister for Digital Britain, sent to some other Member of Parliament, MP in the parlance of Whitehall. Timms is basically saying, “We must pass the Digital Economy Bill, for the sake of the Mankind.”
UK readers are encouraged to whinge about the bill in the comments.