Europe to Censor Net - Net Apps Could Be Illegal

Europe to Censor Net - Net Apps Could Be Illegal

news.bbc.co.uk

Susan Hall, media partner at solicitors Cobbetts LLP said: "The amendment will cause several problems, firstly, many broadband users routinely transfer large files which are encrypted.

"Many of these are acting quite legitimately and in order to determine whether or not such large files are or are not the produce of illicit file sharing the ISP will have to carry out an unprecedented degree of analysis of its customers' traffic. "Furthermore, computers are frequently shared - within offices, within homes, within educational institutions and inadvertently, where wrong-doers "piggy back" on an inadequately secured Wi-Fi connection.

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Is this a sign of things to come?

Europe is looking at catching illegal file sharers, but as part of the legislation, they're going too far and it appears it will result in all 'net apps having to be certified for use before they can actually be used online.

Is this so they can put weak crypto into the products, or otherwise introduce ways of circumventing the encryption easily in order to make way for a bigger plan to snoop on a massive scale?

What about encrypted e-mail? Will that be targeted?

I don't think civil liberties have been this eroded since ... well .... a very long time indeed!!

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Its completely ludicrous and ridiculous for them to even consider trying to do this.This will erode ALL of a persons privacy every single bit of it.The people who have even thought of it should be sent to prison immediately without the possibility of parole.
However of course we know our geek buddy's will just as quick invent something to counteract there outright breach of privacy.I doubt it will ever be passed into law.
If they pass this, this will be the beginning of global enslavement.

[edit on 7-7-2008 by Being_From_Earth]

So what does this mean to the independent programmer?

If I write a program that makes my life easier, I should be able to use it. I don't want to have to get government approval before my program can utilize the TCP/IP protocol.

I hope to god this does not get passed, there is must too many negative possibilities that will eventually find their way into the minds of the law makers.

How does one determine open source software to be usable on the internet? It is constantly changing, having things added or removed, and always being upgraded. Will this mean the end of the open source community?

This is such a scary law, and in my opinion it will turn into being all about money. Whatever companies can pay the most money will be the ones who have their software government approved. The small group of developers will no longer exist, because it would be a waste of time to spend years working on a program only to have it rejected because someone else is paying more money to use their software exclusively.

Such a sad world we are living in any more..

So what does this mean to the independent programmer?

That's an excellent question. I wonder the same.

I'm writing an app at the moment that could be targeted because it uses crypto precisely to keep things confidential. As it could be argued that it uses the 'net, would it also need certification?

I hope they see sense and throw this out before it is too late.

With Virgin Broadband reporting users to the BPI and helping them, I can see this actually happening.

[edit on 7-7-2008 by mirageofdeceit]