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I'm not sure how relevant this is, but there was a rather worrying
quote I noticed from the debate in the UK's House of Lords yesterday
that seemed to be talking about the government here implementing
something similar. During the debate on the Digital Economy Bill (an
impressively evil piece of legislation itself) there was a discussion
about how internet subscribers could protect themselves and their
systems against third parties downloading copyrighted material through
them (some of the Lords seem under the impression that wi-fi systems
can be perfectly secure and that you can easily add a blacklist for
copyrighted material sites to your home network... but anyways). The
following was mentioned:<br>
<br>
<blockquote>Something else that the Government are apparently
contemplating, which
I approve of, is a service whereby people could have their own computer
checked to demonstrate that it had not been used to download illegal
material, as a quick and convenient means of defence. I presume that
this would be done remotely, with people allowing some
government-authorised contractor to have remote access to their hard
disc and run a checking programme, at the end of which they would say,
"Tick. This computer has not been used for that purpose and the
necessary protections have been installed on it". - Lord Lucas
[<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100118-0005.htm">http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100118-0005.htm</a>
second paragraph]<br>
</blockquote>
It strikes me that this could imply that the UK government is not only
looking into software to scan citizen's computers to check it is
'secure' and contains no copyrighted material (no idea how that would
even work - how can it distinguish licensed .mp3s downloaded from
Amazon Mp3 etc. from unlicensed ones?) but they are also hoping to be
able to do this remotely; personally I don't want anyone (including
myself) accessing my entire hard drive from a remote location
(particularly with my ISP implementing deep packet inspection) and
certainly not the government (never mind a 'government-authorised
contractor' [government language for a company overpaid and
under-qualified but with close ties to certain senior figures].
Obviously we in the UK will do what we can to fight such legislation
(as we are doing with the DEB) but having something similar put in
place elsewhere would certainly not help.<br>
<br>
-Will Tovey<br>
<br>
Rackham wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:0BC1C630-739D-4256-A960-926523480452@partipirate.org"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hello all
In France the LOPPSI text is set on the National Assembly agenda for the 9th to 11th of february. Amendments can be proposed till saturday 23rd of january.
Denis
NO DADVSI - NO HADOPI - NO LOPPSI</pre>
</blockquote>
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