I’m always harping on government interference in our every day lives. Lately I’ve been looking at peoples’ desire to get the government further involved in Internet regulations. Well I’ve already shown the United States government’s incompetence in selecting people to work on Internet regulations when they put Mr. Series of Tubes, Ted Stevens, in charge. Well the latest episode of No Agenda shows us that Britain isn’t any more competent at finding people to work on Internet regulations:
The Right Honourable Stephen Timms is the UK’s “Minister for Digital Britain.” He’s the guy behind the Digital Economy Bill, which makes the US DMCA look good by comparison. Seriously, this is some terrible, terrible lawmaking.
OK got that? Here’s his disqualifications:
Here’s what appears to be a letter the DigiMini sent to another MP, explaining why the Digital Economy Bill needs to go forward. It reads, in part, “Copyright owners are currently able to go on-line (sic), look for material to which they hold the copyright and identify unauthorised sources for that material. They can then seek to download a copy of that material and in so doing capture information about the source including the Intellectual Property (IP) address…”
Yup that’s right. Mr. Minister for Digital Britain himself believes IP in the term IP address stands for intelectual property not Internet protocol (which is actually is). Remember these are the kinds of people making decisions in government. Think about that for a good long time when you decide the government should get involved in regulating anything.