WoW Moviewatch: Stealth legislation that could affect Europe on Monday

by Moo Money Jul 6th 2008 at 12:00PM

If you live in Europe, you should be really concerned right about now. A small group of MEPs are trying to sneak in a law that could punish you even if you're innocent. When it goes through, if anyone in your household has been determined to be file-sharing by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) three times, they'll blacklist your IP for life!

There's less than one day to stop this from being passed. It was slipped in right before the legislators broke for the summer, hidden within a huge package of telecom legislation, so most of them won't even get a chance to read it before they vote! Hugh Hancock, Johnnie Ingram, and Matt Kelland decided to do something about it by creating a machinima to warn everyone. If you would like to know more about what's going on, check out the Strange Company website, where they outline what you can do to help.

[Thanks, Hugh and Johnnie!]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Tags: hugh-hancock, johnnie-ingram, machinima, matt-kelland, stealth-legislation, strange-company, world-of-warcraft, wow, wow-moviewatch

Filed under: Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)

John Jul 6th 2008 12:08PM

While I think that in principle this is a bad law, and a bad idea, I have to say, maybe you could just, I dunno, stop filesharing? (of copywritten works) You don't want to be sued or get some nasty malware anyway, so it's a pretty good plan, you know?

Moo Money Jul 6th 2008 12:24PM

It doesn't have to be you that does the file sharing. It could be anyone in your house. Say your little brother is downloading porn, you get a virus, or someone steals your wifi. What if your buddy stops in and just wants to "check his email" and then downloads something? You're the one that's punished.

Dan Jul 6th 2008 1:15PM

WoW patches are sent over BitTorrent, which is commonly used for illegal downloads as well.

One day you might be forced to reinstall WoW from scratch, and the day after you get a mail home warning you about filesharing because all those patches you had to download triggered some automatic system.

Do that twice more and your cut off, without any possibility of an appeal. Hope you enjoy gardening...

Kylock Jul 6th 2008 1:26PM

Not to mention plenty of people use bit-torrents in legitimate ways, I know of many local bands that seed their open liscence music over BT. Does that mean I'll get my ip blocked for downloading and sharing open source music and projects?

Piracy is a problem, but this is like using a nuclear bomb to take out a tank.

Mongoose Jul 6th 2008 3:39PM

Remember, you don't even have to be deliberately file-sharing. Just accessing copyright content. Do you know what's at the other end of every link you click on, and whether it's legal? Like watching an unlicensed trailer on YouTube. Or watching a machinima movie with an unlicensed soundtrack. Or perhaps a mashup? Or listening to a podcast which includes a cover version the band didn't pay the original songwriter's label to license. Or perhaps you looked at a Web site where the guy nicked an image from somewhere else on the Net. That's why it's a bad law. It doesn't just get heavy-duty file-sharers, it's totally indiscriminate.

Here's a quick test for you - do you know for certain whether Strange Company's "stealth" video is 100% legal? Or did you maybe just use up one of your three strikes by watching it?

Savant Jul 6th 2008 12:08PM

This relates to WoW how? Yeah so you can't pirate files anymore, boo hoo. Cry me a river. Keep the blogs on topic and stick this topic somewhere else.

Moo Money Jul 6th 2008 12:23PM

It relates to WoW because they used the game to make a machinima and make a difference.

Kylock Jul 6th 2008 1:24PM

Also, wouldn't new patches fall under this or did Blizzard get rid of the P2P client?

darkra Jul 6th 2008 12:13PM

I'm not worried.

This is a textbook "Law that will never be enforced"

Roxton Jul 6th 2008 1:09PM

They said that about a lot of things, like the Terrorism Act of 2003 (UK). Lots of provisional powers were given to the wrong people by it under the implicit consideration that they were never to be used. And now in the UK the government and your local council have over 200 ways to enter and search your home legally without your consent or knowledge.

This ridiculous piece of stealthed legislation will probably be enforced rigorously, because Sarkozy, the corrupt bastard, has just been given European presidency, and is in the pockets of a number of big corporations, including several large music labels.

SHADOW RENEGADE Jul 6th 2008 12:23PM

Well savant as this site informs its users of information, and as I'm sure there are a lot of eu reader (myself included) it is nice to know things like this, i for one had no idea of this, so i would say thank you wow insider, this is a wow blog so any thing that would stop us playing wow, hmmm i don't know like losing our internet ? is a nice thing to read