2009/10/20 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
Joking aside, I think that if I had a moment alone with Peter Mandelson and could curb my violent impulses for five minutes, I'd put it to him that cutting off someone's internet for illegal downloading is a punishment liable to be suffered as much by the innocent as the guilty.
Can you get him to meet some famous musicians? Childhood TV stars perhaps? No? Your opinion means approx diddly squat then.
Flick through http://dominicseuroblog.wordpress.com/ if you want to see the kind of tactics used.
I'd also like to tell Mandy that copyright terms of life plus 70 years is helping a select few whilst denying huge amounts of culture to the many and that owning something for 70 years after YOU'RE FRICKIN' DEAD is unlikely to be the spur to activity the government thinks it is. In addition, a next generation that inherits income from copyrighted works actually is disincentivised from getting a job if the income from the copyright is sufficient to support them. The government normally *loathes* people who don't go out to work, but apparently it's fine if your dad happens to have written The Da Vinci Code.
At this point dropping below life+70 isn't going to happen. There isn't much of a campaign to extend it beyond that though.