It’s time to get worried. By way of the digital economy bill, Lord Mandelson means to punish innocent people and limit their right to a fair trial. He means to grant his successors the power to block web content by order, without restriction. His proposals are aimed at restricting copyright infringers, but in reality will damage many people who have never done anything wrong.

The reason for this is as simple as it is unjust. Mandelson and the music companies monitoring copyright infringement can perhaps identify the household, business or cafe where someone is uploading a file, but they cannot identify which person or computer did it. Their answer is to make the internet account holder – the person paying the bill – liable for everyone’s actions. And then, to disconnect the entire household.

Disconnection of whole families is not an acceptable punishment. It is the modern day equivalent of banishment: it will disrupt social lives, education and people’s livelihoods. It is designed to threaten and intimidate, and cow people into behaving, with no regard to the consequences of using the law in such a manner.

Restricting the right to a fair trial, state censorship, disproportionate state punishment against households (and businesses of all kinds) for the actions of individuals – these are the tools used by tin pot dictatorships. The Executive Director of the Open Rights Group is right – this isn’t the way our government should be behaving over anything, and we shouldn’t be fooled – the people most at risk of the bill are younger people, who have amongst the least power in society, and who are currently possibly the most ignored minority group in the run-up to the general election. The bill will affect everyone, because it’ll give the government the right to arbitrarily censor the internet as it sees fit. Abuses by such laws are already kicking off in Australia, and it would be crazy to think the same wouldn’t happen here – when laws exist which can be abused, they are invariably abused; it’s the nature of power. Killock continues:

Hardly anybody thinks this bill is a good idea – outside of the music and film lobbies; not even most musicians I have spoken to. But politicians need to hear us much more loudly if they are going to react. You can help by contacting your MP, and explaining what this bill really means, to you and to others. You can take action with Open Rights Group: do it now!

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