In a rather worrying turn of events, the UK parliament is preparing to pass a bill heavily lobbied for by the music and film industry, to protect those companies from “pirates” violating their copyright by sharing music, videos and other content over the internet.

Critics say that the bill is not just about illegal file sharing. It will put into place mechanisms to make IP service providers responsible for controlling what goes through the pipes, and from there to censorship of information considered undesirable it is but a short step.

Here are some articles that give an idea of the pressure that is being applied to push through this law, even before the next elections, just at a time when members of parliament aren’t paying attention. After all, everyone wants to be re-elected, so in the “wash-up period”, anything can pass with little or no discussion.

Massive Protest Against UK Anti-Piracy Bill

To the absolute dismay of most outside the music and movie industries, some of the most controversial elements of the Bill are unlikely to receive any major scrutiny and will be dealt with quickly under the so-called “wash-up”, a short period between the announcement of an election and parliament being closed down.

“It is outrageous for corporate lobbyists including the BPI, FAST and UK Music to demand that MPs curtail democracy and ram this Bill through Parliament without debate,” says Killock, adding: “The British people did not elect UK Music and the BPI to write our laws.”

UK Digital Economy Bill: It Has To End Here

This isn’t about file sharing or fighting for your right to download dodgy MP3s. It’s about much more than that.

It’s about stopping a law that could bring libel-style censorship to UK ISPs, forcing them to block the next YouTube on copyright owners’ say-so – with no penalties for organisations making misguided or malicious accusations. It’s not hard to imagine politically awkward sites such as Wikileaks ending up on the blocklist too.

It’s about stopping a law that would make cafes and libraries, and anywhere that offers a free Wi-Fi service including your school or college, responsible for their users’ activities, seen in many cases now, which would bring an abrupt end to open Wi-Fi…

Let’s kill the Digital Economy Bill

There are several major issues that campaigners have with the bill, such as clause 17, which would allow ministers to muck around with copyright law at their whim in the future and ramp up even more severe penalties against Internet users who are merely suspected of having infringed copyrights.

The bill would also allow ISPs to punish subscribers without the need for a court injunction, with their connections suffering from being “cancelled, capped, bottlenecked, shaped or simply slapped with a discretionary fine” as another Inquirer writer nicely put it.

The UK is not alone in efforts to put in severe choke capabilities on internet use. Several other countries are going in the sam direction. One notable exception is Iceland, where a contrary trend is being started. Deliberations are under way to create a safe haven for anyone whose freedom of expression is threatened…

Here is a more in-depth article that treats the international aspects of the control mania that seems to have gripped many governments.

Web 2.0 Versus Control 2.0

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

In 2009, some sixty countries experienced a form of Web censorship, which is twice as many as in 2008. The World WideWeb is being progressively devoured by the implementation of national Intranets whose content is “approved” by the authorities. UzNet, Chinternet, TurkmenNet…It does not matter to those governments if more and more Internet users are going to become victims of a digital segregation. Web 2.0 is colliding with Control 2.0.

Western democracies are not immune from the Net regulation trend. In the name of the fight against child pornography or the theft of intellectual property, laws and decrees have been adopted, or are being deliberated, notably in Australia, France, Italy and Great Britain. On a global scale, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), whose aim is to fight counterfeiting, is being negotiated behind closed doors, without consulting NGOs and civil society. It could possibly introduce potentially liberticidal measures such as the option to implement a filtering system without a court decision.

Some Scandinavian countries are taking a different direction. In Finland, Order no. 732/2009, states that Internet access is a fundamental right for all citizens. By virtue of this text, every Finnish household will have at least a 1 MB/s connection by July 31, 2010. By 2015, it will be at least 100 MB/s. Iceland’s Parliament is currently examining a bill, the “Icelandic Modern Media Initiative” (IMMI), which is aimed at strictly protecting freedoms on the Internet by guaranteeing the transparency and independence of information. If it is adopted, Iceland will become a cyber-paradise for bloggers and citizen journalists.