Britain's new internet law. Fanflippingtastic.

Whilst the new powers in this bill are hilariously draconian, I think you're all forgetting how completely incompetent our police and wider legal system are. This is essentially a lot of noice and the chances of anyone ever actually getting charged with anything through this are incredibly fucking slim. Also, it won't get passed into law before the election and with any luck, the Tories will drop all the Big Brother stuff once they're in charge. If we end up with a hung parliament and the LibDems in a position of even partial power, this'll never get through.

Anyway, the stuff about a new ratings system is pretty good news. Currently, most games are sent voluntarily to the BBFC for rating and selling an 18 rated game to a minor is as much of an offence as selling them an 18 rated DVD. Because the current system is voluntary however, there are still grounds for idiots to try and ban games and game content. By introducing a compulsary system (That'll be indistinguishable from the BBFC ratings as I understand, not the US ones you get on game boxes at present), there will be no more games getting banned, as they'll get slapped with an 18 rating and released.

Contrary to popular opinion, almost nothing gets banned in films over here these days. You've got to go a long way out of your way to even get a film an 18 rating under current guidelines so by formalising a ratings system, we're guaranteed no more calls for bans and no cut content.

I very rarely download shit anyway, it's a long way down the list of illegal things I do with any sort of regularity so I don't really have a problem with this bill as it stands.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think the most important point is point 4 which essentially says that it's up to Copyright holders to make the first move when they think people are ripping them off, rather than putting the onus on the ISPs as was originally touted. As Copyright holders have no legal right to look at what websites I'm looking at, that clause effectively stymies all the rest of the anti-piracy measures. Whoever put that in was quite brilliant really as the bill would have been laughed out of the house in it's original form. All the new bill really achieves now is making computer game ratings compulsary and allowing for a system other than the BBFC ratings to be used (One assumes PEGI, although that'll confuse more idiotic parents than it'll help), forces Channel 4 to make some kids programmes and allows their online stuff to come out of their programming budget and all that domain crap is just to make sure that companies take some contact details when they're selling HSBCbank.eu to Nigerian scammers.

Most MPs hated the original document, the one that got approved is seriously watered down from that. Also, Commons approval doesn't make it law and it's unlikely to get through the Lords in four weeks, meaning that the new government we'll have in May can just tear it up if they want and I believe the LibDems are pretty heavily against this so axeing it may well form part of their coalition demands.

There's nowhere I can't reach.