I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate.
Having been disconnected, your customers can only find out about your product offerings by ringing you up and asking, or by requesting a printed brochure. Perhaps you could give all your salespeople fax machines so they can fax urgent information up and down the supply chain. And there's always the phone – just make sure you've got a bunch of phone books in the office, because you'll never Google another phone number.
Call it a modest proposal in the Swiftian sense if you must, but I'm deadly serious.
You see, the big copyright companies – record labels, broadcasters, film studios, software companies – are lobbying in the halls of power around the world (including Westminster) for a three strikes rule for copyright infringers. They want to oblige internet service providers (ISPs) to sever the broadband links of any customer who has been thrice accused of downloading infringing material, and to oblige web-hosting companies to terminate the accounts of anyone accused of sticking infringing material on a web server three times.
They're not even proposing that this punishment should be reserved for convicted infringers. Proving infringement is slow and expensive – so much so that the Motion Picture Association of America just filed a brief with the US court considering the appeal of Jammie Thomas, a woman
sentenced to pay $222,000 in fines for downloading music, in which the trade association argued that they should never have to prove infringement to collect damages, since proof is so hard to come by.
I mean, it's not as though internet access is something important right?
In the past week, I've only used the internet to contact my employers around the world, my MP in the UK, to participate in a European Commission expert proceeding, to find out why my infant daughter has broken out in tiny pink polka-dots, to communicate with a government whistle-blower who wants to know if I can help publish evidence of official corruption, to provide references for one former student (and follow-up advice to another), book my plane tickets, access my banking records, navigate the new Home Office immigration rules governing my visa, wire money to help pay for the headstone for my great uncle's grave in Russia, and to send several Father's Day cards (and receive some of my own).
The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It's only
vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day).
This trivial bit of kit is so unimportant that it's only natural that we equip the companies that brought us Police Academy 11, Windows Vista, Milli Vanilli and Celebrity Dancing With the Stars with wire-cutters that allow them to disconnect anyone in the country on their own say-so, without proving a solitary act of wrongdoing.
But if that magic wire is indeed so trivial, they won't mind if we hold them to the same standard, right? The sloppy, trigger-happy litigants who sue dead people and children, who accused a laser printer of downloading the new Indiana Jones movie, who say that proof of wrongdoing is too much to ask for – if these firms believe that being disconnected from the internet is such a trivial annoyance, they should be willing to put up with the same minor irritation at corporate HQ and the satellite offices, right?