You can make a difference, right now.

11th August 2009 20:13 | by Andrew Robinson

You can make a difference, right now.

Following they government's Digital Britain report, which outlined their plans for a £50,000 fine for file sharing and to introduce site, IP address and protocol blocking, port blocking, content-based censorship, transfer capping, bandwidth shaping and bandwidth capping for net connections for suspected file sharers without a trial or a chance to appeal, the Government's Department for Business Innovation and Skills are running a consultation on their plans.

We need to tell the government that we reject punishment without trial, that copying isn't stealing, and that independent evidence shows that filesharing is free publicity and leads to increased music sales.

Normally, consultations like this receive less than 100 responses. If YOU respond to the consultation as a member of the public, then we can outnumber the big businesses that normally respond. Since the results are collated and published, if government decides to go ahead with these proposals, we will be able to show that they are  doing so against the wishes of the electorate.

How to respond.

Download the consultation document here:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html write your response, and send it to mike.klym (at) bis.gsi.gov.uk or adrian.brazier (at) bis.gsi.gov.uk

Please remember that your replies will be read and summarised by civil servants who do not necessarily agree or disagree with the polices. Be polite, keep your response reasonably short and to the point, and if at all possible, start with a list of answers to the 20 specific questions that start on page 16 of the consultation document.

We recommend that you do not mention that you are a member of the Pirate Party when responding, and that you do not cut and paste from each other, to ensure that your responses cannot be dismissed as duplicates, or be confused with the official Pirate Party response to the consultation, which will be longer and more detailed.

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6 comments

12th August 2009 18:13 by funkatron
Just sent a response. I may have ranted a little in places but I did set out my position quite clearly.
13th August 2009 16:53 by daveyc
Sent a reply. Quite long. I hope they actually read it.
13th August 2009 18:36 by pzyro
is there any sort of guidelines I can follow of how to reply, I dont know how- by post? by e-mail? what format should the reply be in? can someone guide me (and others viewing the comments section here ;) how to format and send a reply.
15th August 2009 19:35 by Andrew Robinson
You can respond by email, Pzyro, the addresses are given in the blog post.
31st August 2009 12:07 by lhsi
Just about to read through and respond. On the berr.gov page it says the closing date is 29-09-09, but on the actual document it says responses should be made by 15th September, which one is right? Or is there a buffer for late submissions or some other part of the process I'm missing?
6th September 2009 12:32 by lhsi

Currently on 10 pages before starting question 9 of their 20 questions.

I found out about the discrepancy between the dates (15th and 29th); the original date was the 15th, but after adding the extra document they extended the date to the 29th.

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