One of the worst things about the internet disconnection proposals up until now was how it totally and utterly bypassed the usual protections of our legal system- a right to a fair trial, proper burden of proof, all that jazz. The old proposals, as the Pirate Party explain:
is that the music industry will monitor what people are downloading, and on their say-so (not in any court of law), internet subscribers will receive two warning letters and then have their internet access cut off. The music industry will not have to prove that the subscribers have being doing anything wrong; instead Mandelson’s plan is that they will act as judge, jury and executioner.
The proposals have now been modified to allow a fair hearing for the accused, and to not disconnect them until their “crimes” had been proven in a court of law; this isn’t much of a compromise when the basic aim of the proposals was waaay off to begin with. The pro-copyright lobby in France tried this year to pass what would have been an exceptionally intrusive law known as the HADOPI law, but in a sudden fit of common sense, they key element, disconnection without the approval of a judge, was struck down. Even without such that element, it still relies on the claims of the copyright holders above actual evidence. The last thing we need is similar laws on a Europe wide scale.
