It seems like most countries are getting more serious about the illegal downloading and the protection of intellectual property, after the UK recently proposed disconnecting ‘pirates’ from the Internet – Australia is now considering following suit.

I guess this is just the start, laws will become more heavy handed and draconian as most of it is driven by money…even though a lot of artists now say they suspect they sell more albums because people have heard their music online.

I mean just look at Sean Kingston and Souljah Boy who got famous from Myspace.

The Government will examine new legislative proposals being unveiled in Britain this week to target people who download films and music illegally. Internet service providers (ISPs) there might be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material.

The music industry estimates 1 billion songs were traded illegally by Australians last year.

Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender’s internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender’s internet access.

The three strike system is similar to the proposition in UK to disconnect after an initial warning and a temporary suspension.

Australia has never had the best Internet for downloading anyway as bandwidth is fairly expensive and most ISPs charge by the MB.

She said action had been taken to remove illegally downloaded tracks from blogs, Cyberlocker and BitTorrent sites but this had failed to stem the estimated 2.8 million Australians downloading music illegally last year.

“Because P2P file sharing involves these music files sitting on individual people’s computers, there is very little that MIPI can do to remove those files or stop them being shared,” she said. “That’s why we have been pushing a proposal to internet service providers for a commonsense system of warning notices which, if unheeded, would ultimately result in a user having their account suspended or disconnected.”

National Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Corones said his members’ reservations over the three-strikes and code of conduct proposals would be discussed with Mr Conroy this week.

I wonder who will be next following these laws? And how will this change the way people use P2P? Bring on the encrypted tunnels? Or private VPNs to other countries to download using their IP address?

Either way it’s something keep an eye on.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Types of activities that will become illegal under the proposed laws include making or supplying “hacking tools”- computer programmes or code that can help crack passwords or bypass security systems – and will be punishable by up to two years in prison.

Isn’t this legitimate action for any security enthusiast, hobbiest or professional involved in penetration testing or vulnerability assessment?

The law will also be clarified to make it illegal to hamper the operation of a computer, closing a loophole that has made it difficult to prosecute hackers for so-called “denial of service” attacks in which hackers bombard a computer system with hundreds of thousands of requests for information over the internet, so the servers are overloaded and cannot function.

I mean laws are all well and good, but the politicians have to wary and make sure they aren’t hurting people in the wrong places.

A major problem with the UK law at present (which called for this revamp) is under UK law DoS attacks (Denial of Service) are not illegal.

It can cost online companies millions of pounds in lost business when their websites are unavailable, but laws are not clear on whether simply stopping a computer from working is illegal.

Jeremy Beale, head of e-business at the CBI employers’ group, said: “There have been very few prosecutions under the Computer Misuse Act to date, but the new laws could give security a wider currency with businesses.”

I agree we need to protect legitimate business, but please, be reasonable with the laws and don’t punish us who are trying to educate and secure the world.

Source: Financial Times